by Amy Plum
I look up from the file and Google his parents. Hundreds of pages about charity work, museum sponsorships, and club memberships pop up. There are photos of Sinclair and his parents posing in formal clothes, arms draped casually around politicians and celebrities, champagne glasses raised.
I take a look at the subject four window on my screen, and there he is, looking similar enough to the rich kid in the photos to recognize. But in a hospital gown, and with sensors attached all over his body, he could be the poster boy for Money doesn’t buy happiness.
Zhu and Osterman burst into the lab. “What the hell happened?” Zhu cries.
With a pained expression, Vesper responds. “Subject three went into cardiac arrest, no warning.”
“Did any of the others show signs of cardiac stress?” Zhu asks.
Vesper shakes his head.
Osterman combs his fingers through his nonexistent hair. “For fuck’s sake, this is all we need right now. And a minor as well.”
“She was nineteen,” Vesper mumbles.
“Well, thank fuck for that!” the director roars.
Zhu steps down into the testing area and walks over to BethAnn. As she checks the sensors, she detaches them one by one, peeling off the electrodes and pulling out the IVs until the girl is just a body lying on a bed in a white hospital gown. She looks more pitifully fragile than before.
Zhu tests everything manually, feeling the girl’s pulse on her throat and her wrist and pressing her ear to her chest to listen to her nonexistent heartbeat. “Okay,” she says finally, turning to Vesper. “You can call the morgue. And have the bereavement team notify her parents.”
Vesper makes the two calls. In the meantime, Osterman has stepped down into the testing area and is walking around gazing at the subjects. “I know that what you’re doing here is very important,” he states to Zhu, “but I still don’t understand why we had to include minors in this test study.” He leans in to get a better look at Beta subject one . . . Catalina.
“Because this test only works on subjects whose brains have not completed myelination,” Zhu says, holding BethAnn’s limp hand like she never wants to let go. “That’s why we only used trial subjects under the age of twenty.”
Osterman shakes his head like he doesn’t want the words to sink in. “High risk. Bad publicity,” he murmurs.
All of a sudden he looks up at me, and stares back and forth at Zhu and Vesper. “What is this . . . person . . . still doing here?”
Zhu looks at me like she has totally forgotten I was here, but Vesper says, “Jaime, premed student at Yale, doing a required internship, was the only witness besides myself to the death of subject three. Jaime is taking detailed notes of everything that happens, which could be quite beneficial if any legal situation were to arise.”
Osterman’s expression changes from one of scorn to looking like he wants to adopt me. “Jaime . . .” he says, in a buttery tone.
“Salvator,” I fill in.
“Jaime Salvator . . . of course. I remember you. You came recommended by one of our most prestigious donors, Ms. Walton-Masters.”
I plaster on my smarmiest smile, and that seems to please him. Unsurprisingly, since smarm feeds on smarm.
“If I remember correctly, your mother works for her,” Osterman comments, stepping up to the workstation platform.
“Yes, sir,” I respond.
“Ms. Walton-Masters told me your story. You won a full-ride scholarship coming from one of Detroit’s worst neighborhoods.” I can tell from his look that he’s wondering if I got it thanks to affirmative action or merit. I feel my smile slipping.
“Jaime is also at the top of this year’s premed track at Yale,” Zhu adds supportively.
“Well, Jaime,” Osterman says, standing before me, hands clenched behind his back, “you just let me or my secretary, Jonathan, know if you need any additional information or materials for your research. We have nothing to hide. Everything is open to a promising young rising star like yourself.”
“Thank you, sir,” I say, giving a weird little seated bow, though I didn’t even know my body could do that.
He turns and strides out of the room.
Vesper and Zhu look at each other.
“Who have you talked to?” Vesper asks softly.
“Only three of the parents and legal guardians who had decided to stay . . . the parents of the youngest one, the mother of the narcoleptic, and the aunt of the African boy. We’re still trying to contact the others,” she says. Hanging her head, she wipes away tears.
“It’ll be okay,” Vesper reassures her. “This is just a temporary setback.” But as his glance sweeps the room and meets my gaze, I see that his eyes are as empty as his words.
CHAPTER 19
CATA
THE SECOND WE HIT THE WALL, I AM BACK INSIDE myself. It’s like my spirit fled my body when it was squished up against that dead boy, and though I wanted to get back in . . . needed to get back in . . . I couldn’t. My body slammed the door and locked me out. But as soon as I knew I was safely out of there, something cracked open and let me back in.
We’ve returned to the Void and are heaped in a kind of a pile. Sinclair’s lying on the ground on his back, and I’m draped across him, facedown, stomach across stomach, staring at the sole of a brown faux-croc Doc Marten. I crane my neck to see George lying spread-eagle on her back. Fergus has one arm around her leg, and his other hand clenched tightly around my forearm.
“What. The. Hell,” George says. It’s so quiet here in the Void, compared to the storm we just left outside, that it sounds like she’s shouting.
I have two options: roll over Sinclair’s head, sticking my boobs in his face, or roll the other way, over his crotch. Both equally compromising. I decide to prop myself up on my hands and knees and crawl off of him, but Fergus has my wrist in an iron grip. “Um, Fergus, if you let go of my hand I might be able to get off Sinclair,” I suggest.
“Sorry,” he says, and lets go.
“Hey, do you hear me complaining? It isn’t every day a cute girl literally throws herself on me,” Sinclair says.
I look down from where I’m straddling his chest to see his amusement at my stunned expression. My brain is trying to compute whether or not his remark was flirty, and then I register his cheeky grin. Flirty. Definitely flirty. Which, considering that my crotch is basically in his face, I’m not quite sure how to handle.
George gives a dry laugh. “And he’s flirting mere minutes after being dug out from between dead, maggoty bodies and escaping a freaky static monster.”
“I don’t like to dwell on the past,” Sinclair says lightly.
I unstraddle him with as much grace as I can muster. Giving me a teasing wink, he stands and brushes himself off, even though his clothes look as brand-spanking-new as before we got buried alive.
George turns her attention to Fergus. “Getting kind of cozy with my upper thigh, there, are you?”
He turns bright red and untangles himself from her leg. “Only doing what it took to save you from your ‘freaky static monster,’” he says, trying hard to sound cool and collected.
“Hey!” comes a voice, and I turn to see Ant scrambling to his feet a little ways away from us, Remi by his side. They make their way over.
“Are you okay?” Remi asks, looking worriedly at me.
“I’m fine now,” I reassure him.
Sinclair’s brow furrows. “Yeah, what happened to you, anyway? I thought you had died there for a minute. Like, panic-induced heart attack, or . . . I don’t know.”
I hesitate, and then decide to tell the truth. “I dissociated. It happens.”
“What’s that mean?” Fergus asks.
“When something horrible happens . . . sometimes . . . my brain just kind of checks out. Leaves.”
“She had to roll over a dead guy and got her face stuck up against his,” Remi explains to Ant. “There were maggots on her mouth,” he whispers.
I shudder violently and Sincl
air wraps his arm around me. “We’re okay now,” he says. His hug feels like an afterthought, like it’s something he thinks he should do instead of it coming naturally. But I’ll take any kind of comfort right now, so I lean my head on his shoulder. He squeezes once and lets me go.
“That happens to me sometimes,” Remi says, breaking the silence. “The disassociation thing. My doctor said it’s a symptom of my post-traumatic stress disorder.”
He has PTSD too? I think, and then just as quickly remember that he survived a genocide. Of course he does. How could he not?
He had to deal with war . . . with automatic weapons and murder. The source of my PTSD isn’t as obvious. It’s the outcome of my messed-up childhood. One that no one believed besides a school counselor, a judge, and my dead mom’s best friend. It didn’t help that my brother and sister told the police I was lying. He forced them to, I think. It’s the only way he could keep them. For the hundredth time I forgive them. It’s not their fault.
I turn my thoughts back to Remi, and something clicks in my mind. We both have PTSD. Ant is . . . whatever he is. BethAnn was obviously anorexic, besides there being this sadness about her that seemed almost physical. Fergus seems pretty balanced besides his low-blood-sugar fainting thing. But when something stressful happens, he fiddles with his mysterious tattoo, which makes me wonder what the story is behind that. That leaves George and Sinclair, and I’m not totally convinced they’re one hundred percent “normal.” Most of us here have problems. It feels like a clue.
I tuck it away to think about later, because Fergus is talking. “We got separated. Again. But it wasn’t as far away as in the African place.”
“So it looks Cata’s hand-holding strategy could be right on . . . if everyone can manage to do it.” Sinclair raises an eyebrow at Ant.
“I’m not the one who ran away,” Ant says, crossing his arms and tossing his head in a way that makes the dangling strings from his earflaps wave back and forth. “I just let go.”
Fergus pats him on the back. “It’s okay. That door thing freaks me out too. Not to mention what we might find behind it.”
“It’s too loud, and I had to cover my ears,” Ant says, tapping on his leg four times, and then checking his pulse.
Remi rolls his eyes so violently you can practically hear it.
“Listen, it doesn’t matter,” George says. “We have less than twenty minutes to figure out what’s going on and get ready for the next nightmare.”
“How are we supposed to figure out what’s going on?” I ask. “Nothing here makes any sense.”
George shakes her head. “It’s not total anarchy. We already know that there’s a fixed-time thing. Ant? You’ve figured out how long we stay in the Void. What about the nightmares? Has that been the same each time?”
“Around fifty minutes,” he says to her and then, gazing around at us, flinches uncomfortably from being the center of attention. “At least it was the first couple of times. This time I wasn’t able to keep track.”
“That last one seemed a lot longer,” I say.
“Probably because we were in a coffin with three rotting corpses,” Remi responds. He doesn’t look as traumatized as I feel. Maybe because he’s used to being around dead bodies.
“So we do have some rules,” George says, and holding up a hand, starts counting on her fingers. Thumb: “Twenty minutes in the Void, then fifty minutes in the nightmare.” Index finger: “Our proximity in the Void affects how we land in the nightmare.” Middle finger: “However dirty or injured we are in the nightmare, we start from square one again in the Void.”
“Unless we’re dead,” adds Remi.
“And not exactly square one,” Sinclair interjects, and, reaching into his back pocket, he holds up the keys that he got off the dead kid in the coffin. “I brought these back from the nightmare. So we don’t literally start from scratch every time.”
Everyone stares at the keys like they’re cast in solid gold instead of aluminum or whatever they’re made of.
“We can bring things back and forth!” says Ant, awestruck.
“And apparently George here is capable of costume changes,” Sinclair says, and then holds his hands up defensively as George directs an evil gaze at him.
“Yeah, you never told us how you did that,” I say.
George just shrugs. “I didn’t really think about it,” she responds. But there’s something in her tone that suggests she knows more than she’s telling.
“Sinclair brought something back from the nightmare. George can unconsciously change what she wears. That would imply that we have some kind of control,” Fergus says, and everyone falls quiet.
“Prom gown,” I say, and, holding my arms out from my sides like Cinderella, I look down. I’m still wearing my jeans and tennis shoes. I look up and meet Fergus’s gaze. “Just testing.”
“Maybe you need a certain level of concentration,” Fergus suggests. “Or feel really strongly about it.”
“That reminds me of something else,” I say. “Remember when we were in the pitch-black Void at the beginning and someone said, ‘I wish there were light,’ and suddenly the lights went on? Who was that?”
Ant raises his hand tentatively.
“How did you do it?” I ask.
He taps on his leg four times and whispers something under his breath. We all wait, watching his lips move as he stares intently at the ground.
I glance over at Remi. He’s closing his eyes, making a visible effort to control his impatience.
Ant clutches his hands together and starts chanting something indecipherable. I go over to him and put my hand on his shoulder. “What are you saying, Ant?” I ask softly.
“Periodic table of elements,” George suggests. She’s obviously better in chemistry than I am, since I didn’t recognize any of it.
“It helps me concentrate,” Ant whispers.
Sinclair slips the keys back into his pocket, shaking his head in dismay. “So, do you remember how you did the light thing?” he prods Ant.
“I just really wanted it to be light. I hate the dark.”
“So maybe you were feeling kind of panicky?” Fergus suggests.
Ant nods his head.
“Maybe it takes a strong emotion . . . or intense concentration. That could be the key,” Fergus says, rubbing his tattoo.
Still whispering elements under his breath, Ant stares at Fergus like he’s considering what he said and then lowers himself to the floor to sit cross-legged. He closes his eyes and lowers his head like he’s praying, his back hunched like it’s a shell protecting him from the rest of us. And when he sits back up, he is holding a little leather notebook and a pen in one hand.
“No. Way!” exclaims Sinclair.
Ant releases a huge sigh of relief, like he’s been holding his breath this whole time. With his free hand, he taps six times on the ground. “Six,” he says. “I needed six things. The hat and gloves and . . . Four isn’t enough.”
George gives us all this look. “Looks like we can make stuff we need,” she says.
I correct her. “Ant can. My prom-dress experiment didn’t go so well, remember?”
“Yeah, but did you really mean it?” George asks. “What emotion did you have when you wished?”
“Sarcasm, definitely. Curiosity, maybe,” I admit.
She smiles a quirky smile. “That might not be enough.”
Silence covers the group like a lead blanket, and I imagine we’re all wishing for one thing or another. But nothing else appears like Ant’s magic notebook. Meanwhile, he has opened it and is scribbling away, stopping from time to time to click the pen six times before continuing. George herds us away and says, “Let’s leave him alone and go talk. We can figure this thing out, I’m sure of it. At least we can figure more of it out.”
As we walk away from Ant, Sinclair sidles up to me and drapes his arm companionably around my shoulder. He leans in to speak quietly enough that no one else can hear, which in the silence of the
Void means he’s practically whispering.
“So . . .” he begins, “don’t you think George is ordering people around a bit too much?”
I lift my eyebrows in surprise. “Well, she’s good at organizing and directing conversation, but I wouldn’t say she’s ordering anyone around.”
Sinclair shrugs. “I mean, you were the one who came up with the holding-hands-as-we-went-through-the-door idea. She hasn’t actually come up with anything useful.”
“We’re all working together on this. It’s not like there are teams,” I say, nudging him playfully.
“Well, if there were, I’d want to be on yours,” he says, squeezing my shoulder. His breath tickles my ear.
“Do you want to know what I think?” I give him an impish smile. “I think you’re sore that George gave you the brush-off, and so you’re: one, trying to get back at her, and two, giving it a try with me.”
Sinclair throws his head back and laughs. “My response to that is: one, you’re more perceptive than you look, and two, do you blame me for trying?”
I shake my head in mock dismay. “You are such a player. I don’t blame you because I don’t take you seriously. But at the very least it’s entertaining.” And the hugs and attention aren’t bad either, I think.
He looks pleased with that reply, and, lowering himself to the ground next to where Fergus, George, and Remi have sprawled out, he pats the spot next to him for me to sit.
“So we have twenty minutes in the Void to plan, and fifty minutes in the nightmare to survive,” Fergus begins.
“I wish it were the other way around,” Remi says.
There is a general murmur of agreement.
“We know we can count on certain things being the same every time,” I say. “There are always three knocks before we change worlds. Here in the Void, the blue door appears, and it doesn’t matter where we’re standing . . . we get swept into it. In the nightmares it’s the Wall, but each time, we’ve had to run to get there.”