Read Online Broken Dreams (The Chronicles of Mara Lantern, Book 5) by D.W. Moneypenny - Free Book Online

the front door and the foot of the staircase into a hall extending into the left side of the house. After one hundred feet, they came to another set of double doors. Ping reached for the doorknob but paused. “It might be a good idea for you not to touch anything inside,” he said.
    “I thought this was my steam laboratory. Why shouldn’t I do whatever I want in there?” Mara said. She crossed her arms for added emphasis.
    “Well, it is your lab,” Ping said. “But since you claim to not be Mara …”
    “You can’t have it both ways, Ping. Either I’m Mara or I’m not. Either you believe what I told you or you don’t.” She stepped toward the door. She was more interested in getting him to admit that he believed her than getting inside the lab.
    He held up a hand. “Very well. I believe you. All the more reason to be careful inside. There are volatile substances, and I don’t want to explain to your counterpart why half her house is missing when she gets back.”
    “So you accept Dad and Sam will return later with another version of yourself. You admit that’s a possibility?”
    “I’m not ready to go that far. Let me put it this way. I’m convinced you are not quite yourself, and I’m open to that possibility. You must admit that is further than you would go if you were in my shoes. We both know that’s true.”
    “All right. I promise to be careful. Can we go in now?”
    Ping turned the knob and pushed open both doors. Mara’s breath caught in her throat. The room before them was cavernous, soaring through the second story of the house. It was so wide and deep it took up this side of the manor, though it was difficult to be sure. Dozens of pipes and hoses hung suspended above an equipment-laden doughnut-shaped counter in the center of the room.
    “Where do you people live around here? This lab is massive,” Mara said, her head craning and swiveling as she stepped inside.
    “Living quarters are on the third floor. The steam lab takes up most of the south side of the house while the fabrication shop occupies the north. The kitchen, pantry and utility rooms run behind the back wall of the lab,” Ping said.
    A loud hiss and a clunk startled her. She jumped backward and bumped into Ping’s hip. He reached out and steadied her. “That’s just the compressor.” He pointed to a bank of tall copper pipes stacked vertically along the back wall fronted by a broad console of dials, levers and knobs. It reminded Mara of a pipe organ. One of the pipes hissed again, and a cloud of steam filled the air near the ceiling.
    “What does it do?” Mara asked.
    “It provides distilled steam under pressure for your—er, Mara’s—experiments,” he said. He pointed to the top of the copper pipes and indicated the smaller tubes branching from them, mounted along the ceiling and fanning out to the sides of the room where massive transparent cylinders stood in copper-framed alcoves lining the walls. Each was as thick as a tree trunk and reached the ceiling.
    Giant test tubes.
    While the cylinders and alcoves were identical, the clouds that roiled inside were distinct. Some glowed with color, and others were almost imperceptibly different. Yet others luminesced, and some seemed shadowy, to absorb light.
    “How much steam does this girl need to perform an experiment?” Mara asked, her gaze passing over the huge alcoves.
    “The large cylinders along the walls contain production steam—finished product ready to be distributed to the rest of the world. Technically this is a manufacturing facility as well a development laboratory. Most testing and experimentation is done here at the counter once a steam sample has been synthesized. If the results are satisfactory, then Mara will fabricate any related hardware that might be needed. Of course that’s done in the fabrication shop.”
    “Of course,” Mara said with a tinge of sarcasm. “So she makes steam and sells it? People around here can’t boil a pot of