I reach out and grab his hand. Something was off with him last night, but I’ve put it down to nerves about what might happen today. I know the feeling. My stomach is tight, and even though the journey on the hovercraft-snowmobiles was so much faster and easier than the skis yesterday, I’m fueled by fear of what might happen if we don’t do this in time. We even had to skip out on an incredible breakfast that Tobias’s mom was laying out for us.

Jinx stops, which breaks me out of my thoughts. Now that he’s done with sending electric shocks up the wall, the outline of the door is much more visible. There’s even the dark outline of a security panel. Finally, a breakthrough.

>>The security on this wall is shockingly lax. I bet even your beetle could break in.

“Why is that?” I ask him. It seems surprising that Moncha would have gone through all the trouble to build this secret place, and then not bother with top-notch security.

>>Well I guess it wasn’t supposed to be anything nefarious originally—just a testing facility. They didn’t expect anyone to find it. Why do you need to lock something that nobody can find?

“Wait, so it’s not locked?” asks Kai.

>>No, it is locked. Still, that shouldn’t be a problem for us. Like I said, even the beetle could do it. In fact…

He flicks his tail, sending a directive to the little baku on my shoulder. Slick crawls down my arm, then takes a flying leap onto the door. The sticky suction pads on his appendages immediately grip on to the door, where he scrambles over to the lock mechanism. He works his magic, sticking one of his pin-like antennae into the lock and whirring it around with expertly programmed efficiency. Zora programmed this lock-picking capability to help me get into my locker when the padlock stuck. She is far too clever for her own good.

A minute later, the door pings open.

>>As far as I can tell, this is a completely closed system. The easiest way to make sure no one can find out about it is to make it as discreet as possible. It would take huge amounts of electricity to sustain this dome. I assume anyone suspicious about it would think the houses around Lake Washington were using the power.

Tobias frowns. “But we have solar energy at the cottage.”

>>Exactly.

“What do you mean by huge amounts of electricity?” I ask.

>>Just look.

He headbutts the door, which swings open.

There are no words.

I stumble as I step through, barely catching myself on the edge of the dome.

By stepping in, I’ve gone from winter wonderland outside to an eerie permanent summer, a fake sun in a clear blue sky and not a breath of wind chill to stir the pleasantly warm temperatures.