Don't Turn Around

by Michelle Gagnon

  “Peter!” his mother said sharply.

  Mason smiled thinly again. “I believe I’ll allow your parents to explain.” He inclined his head slightly. “I hope this will be the last time we meet, Peter.”

  And with that, he left the room. The guards stayed, though.

  There was a long moment of silence. Finally, Priscilla said, “There are things going on, Peter. Things that you probably wouldn’t understand.”

  “What, I’m an idiot now?” Peter said.

  “Will you please sit?” she asked.

  “No.” Peter crossed his arms over his chest. Part of him felt like a peevish kid, but the fact that they were acting all normal, like this always happened on a Sunday evening, bothered the hell out of him.

  “All right.” His parents exchanged a glance. Bob looked like he was afraid to open his mouth again and let the wrong thing slip out. His mother cleared her throat, then said, “Mr. Mason said they caught you going through your father’s files last night.”

  “He’s lying,” Peter said. “I was on my laptop. That’s what they took, remember?”

  Priscilla’s eyes narrowed. She slipped into what he always referred to as her “lawyer voice.” “As you said, Peter, you’re not an idiot. And neither are we. You were snooping in your father’s drawer, and saw something you shouldn’t have. It made you curious, so you decided to check it out on your own laptop. Can we at least agree on those basic details, and not insult each other’s intelligence?”

  After a beat, Peter reluctantly shrugged. “Yeah, okay.”

  “All right, then. Apparently, today, Mr. Mason found you doing something similar at the library.”

  “And how the hell did he know that?” Peter demanded. “Who are these people? What are they, following me?”

  “Probably,” Bob chimed in. “They’re probably watching all of us.”

  “And that doesn’t bother you?” Peter said, incredulous. He looked back and forth between them.

  His parents appeared chastened. “You have to understand, there’s a good reason for it,” his mother said in a low voice. “We wouldn’t have put us all at risk unless …”

  She trailed off. When she didn’t continue, Peter said, “Unless what? Why would you agree to let a bunch of guys follow us around?”

  “Bottom line is this, Peter.” Bob spoke up. “If you keep digging around the way you do, with, you know, computers—” Bob made a circular motion with his hand; technology had never been his strong suit. “Very bad things will happen. And not just to us, but to other people, too.”

  “You said we weren’t insulting each other’s intelligence anymore, right?” Peter asked, looking back and forth between them. “So just tell me what’s going on. I’m almost eighteen; I’m going to college next year. Don’t treat me like a kid.”

  “We can’t tell you,” his mother said, a note of pleading in her voice. “Believe me, Peter, we’d love to. But we simply can’t.”

  “Why not? If I’m already in danger, don’t I deserve to know why?” They didn’t answer, and he pressed, “What’s Project Persephone?”

  His mother blanched, but Bob’s jaw set back into a familiar line. The authority in his voice returned as he said, “You are not to go digging around anymore. Period.” After a beat, he tacked on, “And you’re grounded. No car, no computer, no phone.”

  “Crap,” Peter said, suddenly realizing that jackass Mason had taken his iPhone with him. The creep was probably reading his texts from Amanda right now.

  “And if we find out you’ve been disobeying us,” his father continued, “that’s it. You’re out.”

  “Bob—”

  “Out?” Peter was floored. “Like, out of the house?”

  “That’s right,” Bob said. “I’m done with this. You want to be a pain in the ass, go do it under someone else’s roof. Here, you do what we tell you to do.”

  His mother tried to interject. “He doesn’t mean—”

  “Damn right I do.” Bob jutted his chin up an inch. “Your choice, Peter. You want to be treated like a grown-up? Fine. It’s your life.”

  “But, Dad—”

  “You know what?” Bob continued, his voice suddenly cold. “Your brother would never have done anything like this.”

  “Bob!” his mother exclaimed with horror. “Stop it!”

  He whirled on her. “It’s true, and you know it. We lost the wrong son.”

  His mother turned toward him, mouth slightly agape, eyes wide. “Peter,” she said, chagrined, “your father didn’t … he doesn’t really—”

  “The hell I don’t,” Bob barked. He spun back to Peter, his face flaming. “You know what? Just get out. I can’t stand the sight of you.”

  Peter felt like his insides had turned to liquid, and if he took a step they’d wobble and flow right out of him. Tears bubbled in his eyes, casting his parents in a watery shimmer. He stared back at Bob, who had gone completely stony and expressionless. They’d fought before, but never like this. Peter barely recognized him; it was like facing off against a total stranger.

  His mother stood slightly behind him, looking stricken, her hands opening and closing as they dangled by her sides. She appeared to be fighting back tears, too. But she didn’t say another word.

  Peter turned to leave the room. The guy by the door eyed him but didn’t make a move to block it. Pushing past him, Peter stormed down the hall. He heard his mother make a strangled sound, and the two of them started arguing again. He didn’t care anymore.

  Once he got to his room, Peter slammed the door. A wave of sound in his head like a train roaring through, chasing away the capacity for clear thought. He went back to the door and slammed a fist against it, as hard as he could. The pain brought him back.

  He shook out his hand, then collapsed on the bed. But he was too agitated to remain still. He jumped back up and started pacing. The worst part had been the guilty expression in his mother’s eyes. Seeing it, he knew—this was something his parents had discussed, something they secretly agreed upon. Peter could picture them sitting across from each other over breakfast, lamenting the fact that the wrong son had died.

  Peter grabbed a bag from the back of his closet. He started packing it without thinking, just cramming stuff in until the duffel was full. Peter got the bag zipped halfway shut; then it strained and refused to close all the way. He yanked out a few handfuls of clothing and tossed them on the floor, then tugged it closed and pulled it over his shoulder.

  He was still wearing his jacket and shoes, since he’d been hustled into the house and hadn’t had a chance to take them off. His backpack was downstairs, but it wasn’t like he’d need the textbooks; he wasn’t planning on going to school tomorrow. Peter patted his pocket, checking for his wallet. Then he swallowed hard and popped open his bedroom window. Even though it was on the second floor of the house, there was a trellis leading down to the backyard. When he was younger and theoretically still had a curfew, he’d used it to sneak out a few times.

  This time, he was using it to leave for good. Peter took one final look at his room. Then he eased out onto the ledge and pulled the window shut behind him.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Noa rarely dreamed, but when she did, it was always the same. Smoke and flames. Screaming. Leaves flickering red and orange and the smell of terrible things burning.

  She’d been asleep during the accident. The most important thing that had happened in her entire life, and Noa had only regained consciousness halfway through it. Back then she’d been an extraordinarily heavy sleeper. Her father used to tease her about it, called her his little bear because she went into hibernation every night.

  They’d been driving home late from vacation. A dark road in Vermont, windy and steep. The last thing she remembered was her mother singing along to the radio, some sappy ballad that had been popular at the time. Noa was snugged into a booster seat in the back, her head drifting back and forth as the car swayed around corners. The whole car danced along the ro
ad in time to the rhythm of her mother’s voice. Her father chimed in on the chorus, off-key. Her mother sang louder along with him, a laugh in her voice, her hand lightly brushing his shirtsleeve.

  It was winter, New Year’s Day. Noa had a dim memory of staying up late the night before. A slew of older kids running around, leaving her feeling slightly awestruck. She’d been too young to be included in their games, and too old to play with the babies. That was okay, though. As an only child, she was used to spending a lot of time alone.

  She’d overheard puzzling snippets of adult conversation, someone’s dad getting a little too loud before being gently ushered from the room. People counting down and cheering and kissing one another. A constant din of conversation rising and swelling around her. Noa sat there for hours, wide-eyed, tired but too exhausted to sleep, until someone noticed and her father lifted her in strong arms to carry her to bed. She let her head fall limp against his shoulder, felt her mother’s soft lips brush against her cheek as her eyes drifted shut. That final night she’d slept on a sagging air mattress in a room full of other kids, their breathing soft and irregular around her, the air uncommonly musty, the smell of stale alcohol and dog hair drifting up from the carpet.

  Brunch the next day, the adults’ voices set on mute, the roar diminished to a grumble. Kids yawned and whined and teased until someone snapped at them to quiet down. They ended up staying late, even though her mother wanted to get on the road. Her father said it was only a few hours’ drive, they’d be home in plenty of time, and besides, this way Noa would sleep in the car.

  The radio, the song. The sleep. Then the fire.

  In the dream, Noa’s eyes were fixed on the trees webbed through the shattered moonroof. They throbbed and pulsed, hot and red, in time to her heartbeat. There was a monster in the car, a loud angry one that roared as it devoured. She could hear her mother scream, fighting it. Her father never said a word; he’d already been overcome. Noa couldn’t see the monster; her head refused to move. But she listened as it consumed her parents, then came for her. She felt its hot fingers stroking her legs, reaching for her hair, trying to wrap her in a tight embrace. It was like that giant snake that coiled around its victims, then swallowed them whole. The minute she felt that heat reaching for her, she pictured scales and dryness and a massive mouth opening wide …

  At the last possible moment, Noa was torn from the monster’s grasp. She was suddenly thrust out into a sharp cold that was almost as bad as the heat. More shouting and then other hands were on her, frigid ones this time, and she still couldn’t see; her eyes were running too wet for her to focus.

  Sometimes she made it all the way through the dream, but more often she woke up as the monster loomed above her. Every time, Noa wished she could change it, make it so that she, too, had been consumed. It would have been better for a lot of reasons.

  Tonight, though, she woke up as soon as her body landed in the snow. She bolted upright, confused by the strange surroundings and the fact that she was fully dressed. Then she remembered: the operating table, the apartment she’d rented.

  She still shivered, despite the fact that she had three wool blankets and a down comforter piled on the bed, and the heat remained on eighty. She got up, keeping one of the blankets wrapped around her shoulders as she turned the dial on the thermostat up even higher. Noa padded to the fridge, but the sandwich looked even less appealing than it had earlier.

  The clock on the stove read three a.m. Noa stretched an arm above her head. She’d been asleep for about five hours, but felt as if she’d slept for days. She picked up her laptop and stretched out on the couch. Idly she wondered how Linux was doing. He was a ratty feral cat that had started hanging out on the window ledge outside her apartment shortly after she moved in. Noa figured that the previous tenant must have fed him, because he’d sit there for hours, giving her a reproving look. So she caved and started setting out a bowl of dry food every day. He refused to actually enter the apartment, but would nap there on nice afternoons, paws tucked beneath him. Once he even let her pet him.

  Linux was a survivor like her, she reasoned. Despite his scraggly appearance, he probably had a half dozen people in the neighborhood leaving out food for him. She couldn’t worry about him right now.

  Noa checked her email. Nothing new from Vallas, so he’d either given up or was angry about her slow response. She chewed her lip, debating whether or not to send him an email. She could just give him the other files. But she was worried about what he planned to have /ALLIANCE/ do with them. She needed to find out more first. She’d have to finish going through the folder branded with her name.

  Noa opened another document and started skimming it. To keep track, she’d categorized them into subfolders as she identified them—that way she wouldn’t end up going through the same material twice. One was labeled “Stats,” another “BS” (for the unintelligible doctor’s notes), and a third, “Possible.” This third category was the most promising. Even so, 99 percent of the contents was scientific jargon that went over her head. But Noa was convinced that if she could decipher enough of it, she’d be able to figure out what was going on. Three documents in, Noa stumbled across a typed summary of some sort of experiment. She couldn’t understand everything—it was a quagmire of words like histopathology, encephalopathy, and hemizygous and homozygous cervidized—but the gist was that some sort of operation had been performed. It made reference to other charts and documents, and on the final line, which read, “Results,” someone had typed: “Pos/Neg: see note.”

  Unfortunately the note was apparently in another document. Noa cursed under her breath. She’d copied backups from the AMRF’s main server, and they were in a jumble, with no overriding order or organization. The original files and folders were probably arranged in a way that made sense on a separate network.

  Noa was skimming a study on “transgenic mice,” whatever those were, when an email alert popped up on her sidebar.

  She went back to her inbox and frowned: another message from the mysterious A6M0. This time the subject was GET OUT NOW.

  Noa sat up straight and opened the email, a feeling of dread growing in the pit of her stomach. The single line read: You’re not safe there. Leave now.

  She chewed her lip. Who was sending these? And why were they messing with her like this?

  Noa quickly went to the window and pulled aside the curtain, looking down at the street below. It was poorly lit, just a few streetlamps spaced far apart. She couldn’t see much in the shadows, but it didn’t look like there was anyone out there. She stood there uncertainly, debating. She’d left the messenger bag by the door the night before, packed with everything but her laptop, jacket, shoes, and the clothes she was wearing. Paranoid, but she wanted to be able to leave quickly if necessary. Should she go? It was freezing outside, and she was already cold. This was probably just someone trying to spook her, or even flush her out, forcing her back out on the streets where they had a better shot at finding her.

  She decided to ignore the warning and went back to her laptop. But another email had already popped up from the same sender. The subject line was the address for the apartment.

  Noa’s hands started shaking so hard she could barely center the mouse to click it open. She froze. The body of the message was a jpg of a building at night. In the single lit window, she caught a glimpse of her profile peeking out from behind the curtain.

  Someone had taken the photo minutes before when she’d checked the street. Which meant they were right outside.

  Noa slammed the laptop shut and skidded across the room, jamming it into the messenger bag. She struggled to pull on her boots—thank God she hadn’t gotten the kind that laced up. Tugged on her jacket and did one last check of the room.

  As she closed the front door behind her, the elevator bell chimed.

  Noa raced for the emergency stairwell at the end of the hall. She heard a shout, and glanced back over her shoulder. No security guards this time, just a bunch of big men d
ressed in black. She pushed open the door and launched herself down the stairs. She could hear them tearing down the hall after her.

  Peter rang the dorm buzzer again. He’d tried texting and calling Amanda, but she wasn’t picking up, even though it wasn’t that late. Which made him a little worried—could she still be pissed off about what he’d said earlier?

  Peter checked his watch: a little past midnight. It had taken forever to get here without a car. He’d left his Prius at the house, with Bob’s speech about how spoiled he was ringing in his ears. Screw them, he’d thought—he didn’t need any of it. So he’d hiked a few miles to the nearest T station and waited what seemed like forever for a train to arrive. He’d just gotten to the point where he was worried that he’d missed the last train when one pulled into the station. He’d had to change trains twice to get here, each time forced to wait at least a half hour. Now he was exhausted, starving, physically and emotionally drained. It was freezing outside, too. Ice had formed a solid layer over the pavement and wind gusted over it, sending scattered leaves racing across the surface like speed skaters.

  Laughter sounded out behind him. Peter turned to see two figures making their way down the path that led to the dorm: a girl and boy, walking together. The walk was slippery, but not so treacherous that the girl needed to clutch the guy’s arm the way she was. His head was bent toward her, and he said something. The girl tilted her chin up, laughing in response, and Peter’s heart clenched.

  It was Amanda.

  When they were ten feet away, she saw him. The guy with her looked up, too, then asked, “What is it?”

  Amanda murmured something. They paused, then kept walking toward him.

  Peter tucked his hands in his pockets. His stomach wound in on itself in a tight gyre as Amanda stopped in front of him.

  “Peter,” she said. “What are you doing here?”

  “I tried calling, but your phone must be off.”