by Piper Dow
"Did you get to use the phone?"
"Yeah..." her voice trailed away as she tried to puzzle out what was amiss in the phone call. "Something's going on. I'm not sure whether it has something to do with me or not, though." She met his eyes and smiled. "I mean, it could just as easily be something going on with Sam and the girls, or Wayne, or Mom and Dad trying to buy the gift shop, right? Not everything in the world is about me." She laughed and shrugged. "How's the book?"
Matt held it up so she could see the title. "This one's pretty good, it's about this girl who sees sound as color. It says it's a real disorder—siness, sinessthess," he flipped the pages to try to find the word.
"Synesthesia?"
He gave up flipping pages. "Probably, yeah. Anyhow, the girl who has it says her cat's breathing is mango colored, and when there are workers doing construction on the house she sees all kinds of colors." The corner of his mouth lifted in a wry grin. "I dunno, seems like it could be kind of cool."
She smiled in agreement. She was a little surprised at how many books Matt had read in the few days since she had found the cart of books tucked in a corner of the hall near the activities room. It turned out that the hospital was a sort of hybrid cross between a long-term care facility and an acute care hospital. All of the patients were Shades, or in her's and Matt's cases, being monitored for Shade symptoms. The reinforced rooms were set up for people who had been exposed. Like Matt, they didn't always have smooth adjustments.
"Have you thought of what it might be like, to be a cat?" Kelly had spent plenty of time trying to imagine it. She'd talked with Sam, who had tried to describe learning to shift and what she'd learned as a coyote, but wouldn't different Shadeforms have different experiences?
Matt stuck a straw wrapper into the book to mark his page and set it aside, shrugging. "I mean, it could be cool, right? Those cats were huge, so they'd be able to climb whatever tree they wanted, they had thick fur so they wouldn't have to worry about being cold." He shrugged. "But, that other guy got stuck, right? What if I change and get stuck like that?" He shook his head and stood up, arching his back and stretching. "I'm better off not thinking about it at all until they're sure it's going to happen."
Kelly frowned, watching as he strode to the window and gazed out at the garden. They had been here a week. After that second day, when she had found Matt and insisted they move her so he could see her regularly, he had calmed down and stopped throwing the furniture around. He still spent a lot of time looking out the window, though.
"Matt? What are you thinking?"
He was slow to answer, and didn't turn from the garden when he did. "I've been wondering about my sister; where she is, how she's doing..." his voice trailed off and he finally turned to face her.
Kelly didn't bother to keep the surprise from her face. "I didn't know you had a sister, Matt! Is she older? Younger? Do you have any other siblings?" He had told her, back in the Morganzer's cage, about his mother dying and his step-father kicking him out of the house. He didn't go into detail, but Kelly could tell that his parents hadn't been good to him when he lived with them.
"Well, she's my step-sister, really," he said, returning to sit on the end of the bed. "Lisa used to come to our house on weekends when I was a kid. She was nice." His eyes were unfocused, staring at the wall somewhere above Kelly's head. "She tried to stop him—her father, I mean. He never hit her, even when she stood right in front of me to block him." His lips curved in a soft smile before turning into a grimace. "She didn't know it made him worse when she wasn't there."
His eyes focused on Kelly's face. "Anyhow, she went away to college, and my mom got really sick. I saw her once, after she came back for the summer, but they had turned her bedroom into Mom's room, with a hospital bed and stuff. There wasn't room for her to stay overnight, and it was too far for her to come just for a few hours. Then Mom died."
Kelly waited, but he had lapsed back into silence. "How long has it been? Do you know what town she lived in? What's her name?" Her mind was racing, planning how she would word her searches when she got back to her laptop.
Matt cocked his head at her, curiosity etched into his expression. "Five or six years, I think?" He did the math in his head. "Five years. Mom died when I was sixteen. Her name is Lisa Robbins, but I don't know where she lives."
Kelly nodded, filing the information away so she could search for his sister. Surely she would be on social media, if not in some of the online directories. Suddenly she caught what else he had said.
"You've been living in the woods for five years? Your step-father kicked you out when you were sixteen? Wait—Robbins is your last name. Did he adopt you?" She tried to hide her reaction this time. What kind of man would adopt a child and then beat him, and kick him out when his mother died? "Is he still alive?"
Matt's expression shuttered, and Kelly knew she hadn't been successful at hiding her horror.
"Yeah, all of that. I don't know if he's still alive, though." He picked up his book again. "I'm going to finish this soon. Would you get me another one?"
Kelly nodded and slid off his bed. "Sure. I might do some of my classwork. I'll be back in a while." She didn't tell him she was sorry, even though she was. Matt didn't want her pity. She didn't want to get his hopes up, either, but she headed to her room and pulled out her laptop. She wasn't sure what she would find, but she knew how to find things on the Internet. Maybe this was something she could do for him.
Chapter forty-four
Kelly sat back, thunderstruck. It hadn't been difficult to find Matt's step-sister. Lisa's presence was all over social media—she tweeted, posted, snapped, or videoed on every app Kelly could think of to check. In the past two weeks she had increased her efforts, all to find Matt.
"The boy I knew could never have done what he is being accused of. He would never hurt that girl. If anyone has seen him, please let me know."
"Matt could be a victim of whoever else took that girl! Please help me find him!"
"Mattie, if you are watching this, please, just click the link to message me. I believe in you!"
"The police aren't looking for Matt or Kelly anymore. Photos from the hospital cameras look like them, but where are they now? What's going on?"
Kelly wanted to run into Matt's room, show him what she had found, but something held her back. Why hadn't the police gotten in touch with Lisa? What had the police been told, that they had stopped looking? She needed to talk to David! Without her cell, she couldn't remember his number.
Frustration at not having her cell phone clawed its way up her spine and into her skull. Her parents had brought clothes and her laptop so she could try to catch up with some of her classes, but the police still had her cell phone. She’d been disappointed at having to wait to get in touch with Tyler, since he wasn’t on social media and her only way of contacting him was through his cell phone, but that delay also gave her time to process some of what she was feeling. Needing to talk to David about Lisa was a much more immediate issue.
Pursing her lips, she clicked on her Facebook page and idly scrolled her newsfeed. She skimmed the red alert notifications at the top and had a sudden inspiration. She opened her messages and scrolled until she found her conversation with Sam, then hit the button to make a video call.
"Hey!" Sam's smile was warm, if a little distracted. "What's up? Oh, hang on a sec." She leaned out of view for a moment. "No, three and seven make ten, right? You wrote that right here. So ten take away seven makes..."
There was a slight pause before a little girl voice answered. "Oh! It's part of the same triangle family! It's three, not four. Thanks, Sam."
Sam popped back into view. She crossed her eyes and wrinkled her nose at the camera, quickly so Shannon wouldn't catch her, then grinned at Kelly. "We're doing homework. I want to take the girls to see their mom before supper." A little blonde girl with large blue eyes and a pouty mouth crept into view on the screen behind Sam. Kelly smirked as she watched the girl edge closer to where S
am was sitting. She preened, tilting her head this way and that, smiling and batting her eyes as she moved. Kelly laughed when she realized Meghan must be watching herself on Sam's computer screen.
"Hi! Us is going to see Mama today when Shannie finishes her work!"
"Yes, Meggie, we are going in a little bit," Sam said. Shooting Kelly an apologetic look, she said, "here, do you want to color a picture to bring to Mama while Shannon finishes? I'm going to talk to Kelly for a couple minutes in the other room, and then we'll be ready to go." She set Meghan up with crayons and a coloring book, then carried the laptop to the kitchen. "I'm sorry, I probably only have a few minutes. I can call you back after they're in bed, if you want to chat," she said.
Kelly nodded. "Sure, I'd love that! But, I have a quick question first. Do you know what the task force has told the police? Because Matt was wondering about his step-sister. He hasn't seen her in years, so I looked her up on here, and she's been making posts everywhere looking for him! For years, it looks like, but especially since we were taken. She said the police told her they aren't looking for us anymore, that there's been a development, but that they aren't telling her more. I want to tell him I found her, but why haven't they told her we've been found?"
She saw Sam glance beyond the camera's view. "I don't know how much they want me to say, so keep this to yourself, okay?" Her attention was back on Kelly. "The police have been told that you were found, and that you've been taken to a facility to determine if there was any injuries caused. The task force gave them a report, but it's vague, you know?"
Kelly nodded, but didn't interrupt.
"They can't tell the press what happened, and they don't have you or Matt to stand next to at a press conference, so they've had to be vague, too, or risk accusations of a cover up. Mom and Dad have had their phone ringing off the hook from reporters wanting to interview them. One station took stills from the hospital security cameras of you guys coming in, and they look like you're covered in blood, but you were helping Matt walk in, so that suggested Matt wasn't the one who abducted you." Sam looked like she was staring at Kelly's chin. It was disconcerting until Kelly realized she was probably looking at Kelly's eyes on the screen. "Lisa reached out to us, after the photos. I think she was afraid to before that, in case he did have something to do with your disappearance."
Kelly thought about that, about what her family must have been going through—wondering, afraid to think the worst. The never-far-away trembling threatened, and she quickly pushed those thoughts away. She blew a slow, steadying breath and glanced at Lisa's profile still open on the screen behind her chat with Sam. "So, what do I do? Do you think I can show Matt? She's all he has, Sam." Her voice broke despite her attempts to control her emotions.
Sam hesitated, thinking. She nodded, at first slowly but soon with increased confidence. "I think you should pray about it before you show him, because God can prepare them both, better than anyone, right? But, I know what she's going through. He can't tell her about the Shadows, you know that, but he should know how desperate she's been to find him." Sam's smile was gentle. "You're a good friend to him, Kelly."
Chapter forty-five
Kelly paced her room, wringing her hands and trying to get her knuckles to crack as a way to release tension. Dr. Martins closed her laptop on its confusing reports of test results and eyed Kelly sympathetically.
So much of what she'd just heard left Kelly feeling like she was swimming in a vast ocean with no land in sight—out of her league, exhausted, with little hope of survival. The test results Dr. Martins had been discussing with Mr. Stelart the day they'd finally let her see Matt had been Kelly's. They'd run more tests in the ensuing days, all returning increasingly conclusive results: the Morganzers' experiments had been successful. They had managed to change Kelly's DNA.
"Roger, the one who was running all of the experiments, was really excited the first day we were there," Kelly recalled. "He told Mike, the one that bit Matt, that it wasn't his problem that the police found my car, because what he found in my blood was the breakthrough they'd been looking for." She turned to Dr. Martins, not bothering to hide her frustration. "What could he have seen? If I already had something in my blood they were looking for, why did they inject me with that serum?"
Dr. Martins shook her head helplessly. Kelly already knew Dr. Martins didn't have the answers Kelly needed. The notebook Matt had grabbed from Roger's desk before setting fire to the lab was filled with formulas and hypothesis jotted down, but Dr. Martins had already told Kelly she wasn't a researcher.
"The Morganzers might be the only ones who would be able to decipher those pages," she had said, "but they have disappeared."
The news reports of the fire stated that a body had been found amongst the rubble, but by the time the fire had been contained, the upper floors had collapsed down into the first floor. There wasn't even enough left standing for officials to be certain there had been a lab, never mind that there had been human specimens being kept in cages.
Just one body found. Kelly thought again of Joe asking if she thought his daughter would ever know what happened to him, but pushed the thought away for now.
"What about Matt's blood?" Kelly rolled her eyes at the doctor's head shaking before she'd even finished her question. "Ugh! I know, you can't tell me."
"Even if I could tell you, Kelly, Matt's test results would have no bearing on yours because Matt was bitten," Dr. Martins explained. "If Matt's blood results do show genetic changes, there would be no way to know whether the editing the Morganzers attempted was to blame, or if he would have changed anyway. Some people do."
Kelly nodded curtly and resumed pacing. She had come to a grudging respect for Dr. Martins, but her frustration with the doctor's educational manner was building.
"Right, I know. But what does this mean, then, for me? You said my DNA has changed from the first tests you ran when I first got here. How do you know if it's done mutating? And, what does that even mean? I haven't been bitten, so how can I be a Shade? Does this just mean I'm susceptible?"
Again, Dr. Martins shook her head sympathetically. "I wish I could give you more information. We really don't have all the answers, yet. The changes a gene-typical person goes through as their body tries to ward off the Shade DNA work similarly to an immune response to a virus. We can't be sure, yet, what the Morganzers did in their tests, or what they injected you with. What we know is that your blood no longer reacts to Shade DNA as though it was a virus; it accepts it as though auto-generated—as though it came from you."
Kelly didn't want to offend her, but suddenly she desperately needed to Dr. Martins to stop talking. She ran her fingers through her hair, squeezing her head between the palms of her hand, and closed her eyes. "I'm sorry. This is just...can we continue this later? It's a lot to try to take in."
Dr. Martins cleared her throat. "I know it's a lot. I'll be happy to continue this conversation later, whenever you are ready. But there's something else you need to know."
Kelly's eyes flew open and she narrowed her gaze suspiciously. "What?"
Dr. Martins looked around the room Kelly had been assigned for the past week. Clothes draped the back of the chair and the end of the bed. Her breakfast tray was on the deep window sill. A mug sat atop the dresser next to a few paper napkins and a half-eaten bag of Skittles from the vending machine. Another mug rested on the hospital table next to her laptop. Kelly's eyes took in the scattered items and she opened her mouth to apologize, but Dr. Martin spoke first.
"We've been discussing your discharge date at our morning meeting. I'd say we can cover another couple of days, but that's all."
Kelly felt the icy shock hit her. Her eyes flew to Dr. Martin's face, meeting the woman's reluctant gaze. "What do you mean, my discharge? What about Matt?" She rushed to forestall more comments about privacy. "I can't leave him here alone! Please—you know what that will do to him!"
Dr. Martins' unhappy frown and downcast eyes didn't change her words. "I'm s
orry, Kelly. I understand your concerns, but this is a medical facility. Your stay is only covered as long as you have medical needs that are best met here. You have no physiological or psychological needs that cannot be met through an outpatient model. We have stretched our ability as far as we are able."
Kelly felt hollow. She slumped onto her bed and watched soundlessly as Dr. Martins left the room.
Chapter forty-six
"Kelly, be reasonable. It's wintertime. You'll freeze!"
"I won't freeze, Mom, that sleeping bag is rated for twenty below. Besides, I'll only be out there at night. They'll let me in Matt's room during the day." Kelly tried to inject more enthusiasm into her voice than she felt.
She had brainstormed ideas in the box, out of the box, and all around the box, and camping outside the facility was the best she'd been able to come up with. She didn't have money for a hotel, nor was there one close to the area. She hadn't been able to talk Mr. Stelart into letting her stay in the facility, but he had acknowledged that there were no specific visiting hours she would be forced to keep to.
"Kelly, there has to be something else we can do." The fact that Kelly had anticipated her parents' protests didn't make them easier to address. She knew that if circumstances were different, she would agree with them. As it was, she wasn't eager to sleep in a tent in the woods by herself.
"What, Mom? What else? Because Matt hasn't changed yet, but I'm pretty sure he's going to. He has some of the same symptoms that Sam had before her first shift. He needs to be somewhere with people who can help him in case something goes wrong. His step-sister Lisa wants him to come stay with her, but Matt doesn't want to put her in danger." Kelly lifted her hair in her hands and laced her fingers on the top of her head. She kept her voice low, carefully watching the doorway for signs of visitors. She hadn't discussed her plan with Matt yet.