“I don’t want to go anywhere,” I say, willing myself to be calm. I know, at some level, he’s my only chance. He’s the one who lingers over me. I must manipulate him right. “I want to stay here with you.”
“You’re lucky it wasn’t one of the others who noticed you were awake,” he says. “I really ought to report this. The doc will want to adjust your meds.”
“Don’t tell them,” I say. “It wasn’t luck. I waited to wake up just with you.”
“Is that right?” he asks, looking pleased.
“I have an idea,” I say. “Why don’t you lighten up on my meds so you and I can talk sometimes? I’ll keep it a secret if you will.”
He rubs his nose and smiles again. “That’s funny,” he says. “You’re asleep all the time. You have nobody to tell.”
Duh. Exactly, I think. “I like to see you smile,” I say.
He glances over his shoulder again and leans near so I can smell the potato chips on his breath. “I like your smile, too. This is the most exciting thing that’s ever happened to me.”
“Don’t tell anybody,” I say.
He whispers confidentially. “Okay.”
“Can I ask you something? Do you have a girlfriend?”
Straightening again, he shakes his head, but a touch of color rises in his cheeks. “I never know how to talk to girls.”
“You’re talking to me,” I say.
“I guess. This is different, though.”
“No, we are definitely having a conversation, and I am definitely a girl.”
He breaks into a quick, private smile and then frowns again. “I really need to put you back to sleep.”
“Will you do me a favor?” I ask.
He looks a bit wary. “What?”
“You smell like the outdoors,” I say. “Like the forest.” This is patently untrue. He reeks of tobacco. “Could you bring me something green to smell?”
“You want something alive, from outside?” He sounds surprised.
I nod. “It would mean so much to me.”
He is grotesque to me, this evil troll, but when he pauses to consider, his eyes take on a liquid, dreamy quality, and he looks younger. He pushes back his mousy hair and rubs behind one ear.
“It might help your dreams,” he says pensively.
“Is something wrong with my dreams?” I ask.
He hesitates, then shakes his head. “No. They’re fine.”
He’s lying, obviously. Panic tingles at my throat. Dean Berg hasn’t killed me in a brief, merciful way. He’s been mining me for over three months. He’s kept me wasting. Tethered. This is exactly the hell my other voice foresaw when she escaped.
“Ian, please. You have to help me! You can’t let them keep me here!”
He reaches for the dial on my IV again. “Don’t get excited,” he says. “It’s your job to sleep.”
“Just bring me something green,” I say. “That’s all I want. Promise me!”
He shakes his head. His lips go straight and firm.
I want to scream at him.
“When can we talk again?” I ask. “Ian?”
His eyes go sad. “That’s enough, now. Just close your eyes.”
I hate obeying him. He infuriates me. But I do what he says.
It’s an exquisite kind of horrible, lying there blind, hearing him breathing and knowing he’s turning the dial on my IV. We have a fragile new pact that’s built on us both knowing that I’m awake. He could do anything to me, and I’m helpless to stop him, but I have to hope he enjoys the power he has. The control. The mercy. I want him to sense how grateful I am for his decency and gentleness.
Not that he’s decent at all. He’s a pawn. A Berg tool.
The brown, warm heaviness seeps into my blood. I hold out as long as I can, resisting the meds with will power. If only I knew how to be smart like my other voice was.
Where are you? I call to her.
I listen to the hollow of my mind, waiting while the delicate emptiness plays in my ears, but only my own echo answers back, mocking me. She’s gone. I miss her. I hate her, too, and bleating for her won’t bring her back. A swirl of bitterness fills me. If she’s extinguished, it’s no less than she deserves for abandoning me.
I never asked to be in charge, but I’m all I have left now.
“I’m sorry,” Ian says softly. “That was a mistake, talking to you. I didn’t mean to get you upset.”
He smears a touch of gel on my eyelids. In a moment, he’ll close the lid of my sleep shell and walk away. He’ll never let me wake again.
“Kiss me goodnight, Ian,” I whisper.
“What?” he asks.
It’s my last trick to play, and I can’t bear to say it again.
Gentle pressure lands not on my lips, but on my forehead—a kind kiss from a monster. It tears at me. I can’t tell which of us has won this round, him or me.
Then my lungs fill with pure loneliness, and I’m back to the airless agony at the bottom of my pond.
2
THEA
THE VOICE THAT LEFT
MY BELLY DIPPED, returning to gravity. I could breathe again, too. The weighty fullness of my body swelled into being around me, and each warm, corporeal cell of flesh dazzled. My second breath brought the raspberry scent of roses, cloying and near.
An indifferent twilight lingered inside my eyelids. The strands of honeyed light that I last recalled spinning around my sister and me were gone, and so was the euphoria of release. My hands felt small and empty.
Are you there? I asked silently.
I lay waiting for the familiar shift of my inner voice to stir at the back of my mind, but my mental corners remained as clean and still as a swept pine floor. I felt odd. Not just awake, but new. Inhaling deeply, I filled each tiny pocket of my lungs. My muscles came painfully alert, like they might respond if I tried to move, but I didn’t dare to test them or open my eyes until I had my bearings. If I was still in the vault, someone could be watching.
Approaching wheels gathered volume until they squeaked to a stop.
“Good morning, Mr. Flores,” a woman said. “Coffee?”
A man spoke up in a deep, weary voice, as American as a cowboy’s. “Thanks. Black will do. What time is it?”
As liquid poured audibly into a cup, the aroma of fresh coffee cut through the redolence of the flowers, and the clues of normalcy thrilled me. Let this be real, I thought, and not some dream.
“Five eleven,” she said. She had an unfamiliar accent and a lilting voice. “Looks like a beautiful day out there. How’s your daughter? Any change?”
“Her heartbeat’s up slightly,” he said. “I don’t know if that means anything.”
Me. They had to mean me.
“There it goes again. See that jump?” he said.
“Right. This will be the day,” she said. “I have a good feeling about it. You said black, right?”
“Yes, perfect. Thank you,” he said.
The coffee lady wished him a good day, and the rolling noise receded into the distance. No way could I still be in a vault of dreamers. Whoever these people were, wherever I was, I must have escaped, which set me teetering on the possibility of joy. For a last moment, I primed myself, readying for anything and guarding myself against disappointment.
Then I opened my eyes on a painfully bright world.