I nod. In the shielded beam of a light, I sketch what I remember of the corridor using the pile of the carpet for a canvas. Across from my room, just to the left, is a door to a stairwell. To the left the corridor jogs and there are several rooms. To the right, there is the large sunroom and one other: Dylan’s. Finishing my map, I place an X where Dylan should be.
Abalone studies my map. “Good detail, but things may have changed since you lived here.”
Midline coughs what I realize is a laugh. “And she may have flipped directions, like by the Jungle. What say we split? Me and the Professor go left, an’ you and Sarah, right. We won’t be so far apart for us not to holler for help.”
Professor Isabella raises a startled eyebrow at Midline’s choice of partner, but nods agreement. “Remember, though, Dylan and Eleanora may not wish to be ‘rescued’—this place may be all they know.”
Abalone stands, reaching for the door handle, before I can adjust to the shocking thought. I hadn’t wanted to leave the Home, had I? Would they feel any different about the Institute?
“I’ve unlocked the electronics on this level,” Abalone whispers. “Ignore any telltale that reads ‘Locked’ and go through.”
Then she presses down the handle and pulls the doors open. Quietly, I follow her into the hallway and to the right.
Walking after her down a hallway that seems nearly unchanged since I was a resident here, I am escorted by a shadow of my smaller self. Up and down this grey, nubby carpet, I would run, chasing Dylan and, more distantly I recall, Eleanora. I loved active games like these, because even then I couldn’t talk.
Dylan was less active than I. I think his head often hurt him, for my memories of him frequently show him with head in hands in a darkened room, speaking only in a husky whisper.
The click of the door latch startles me from my reverie and I walk after Abalone from the pearl and grey of the hallway into a man’s bedroom. It is empty, but even as I register that, I am recovering from the expectation that, like so much else, this room would be unchanged.
A faint scent of shaving lotion tints the air, but there is something besides its sharp spice—a mustiness that tells me even before Abalone turns on a low beam light and I see the dust on the dresser tops, the barren closet, its door ajar—that no one lives in this room any longer.
Dylan, apparently, has moved on and my dragons hiss my disappointment. Abalone has arrived at the same conclusion.
“They’ve moved him,” she whispers. “Let’s see if the others have had better luck.”
They haven’t. When I step into the hallway again, Abalone hard on my heels, someone grabs my shoulder and pulls me to the side. Someone else grabs Abalone. I feel myself quickly and efficiently patted down. The bag with Betwixt and Between is taken from me and Athena is removed from my shoulder.
I hear Abalone cursing a long and brilliant line of profanities that sear my ears. When I am allowed to turn, I see that they have taken her tappety-tap and that a large man in the same dark blue as those who attacked the Jungle is twisting her arm.
Professor Isabella and Midline are standing with guards behind them. The trickle of blood from one man’s lip reveals that Midline did not subdue easily. Too late, I remember the floor’s uniform soundproofing—a source of both amusement and annoyance to me and my sibs.
But memories are unimportant now, faced as we are with a half dozen guards and Dr. Lea Haas. If she is hoping to intimidate the Free People, she must be disappointed, for Professor Isabella’s words are calm.
“We were coming to meet you when these people leapt out from the stairwell. I am afraid that we were a bit over-matched, despite Midline’s valor.”
Midline shuffles his feet as if embarrassed, gaining a suspicious look from his bruised guard.
“Get them below,” Dr. Haas says coldly. “Accidents can be arranged, especially for dregs like these. Sarah, though, she can stay here—in her old room. There’s something in that.”
Her words give me an idea which is no sooner thought of then enacted. I slide my fingers to Athena’s control bracelet and touch a series of moves. Immediately, there is a loud, pained cry and a flurry of silver-grey wings.
“The bastard bit me!” is all the guard has time for before the Pack sprints for freedom.
Professor Isabella opens the door to my room, dodging inside. Midline chooses not to follow, preferring to deck the guard nearest to him. The other, the one with the bloody lip, is fumbling for a tranq gun.
I think I hear him mutter, “Not even for union rates,” but I am too busy to be sure.
With Professor Isabella and Midline freed up, I dive Athena at the guard nearest to Abalone. When he raises his hands to shield his face, Abalone throws her full body weight into a punch between his legs. He shrieks, doubles, retches, and she seizes her computer before it can hit the floor.
A touch of night air tells me that Professor Isabella has the window open in my room. Two guards down and a third occupied with her injured comrade. Midline distracts a fourth, using the doorframe as a shield from the tranq slivers. A pair remain by Dr. Haas, trying to get a clear line to one of us without hitting one of their allies.
I decide to continue equaling the odds. The owl swirls up and around, diving at the man firing at Midline. Automatically, the man raises his gun, shooting at the darting, dodging blur on wings.
“Don’t fire at the bird,” Dr. Haas shouts. “It’s the blond girl who’s doing it! Get her!”
Actually, she is not completely correct. Athena’s own circuitry is handling her immediate activity, but if they get my wristband…In my moment of revelation, I completely forget the guard behind me. She turns from helping the man Abalone had hit and grabs me.
My arm is pinned behind me with expert pressure and minimal force, yet moving brings sudden, sharp pain. I freeze in place.
Dr. Haas tosses her white lab coat over Athena and the owl sinks, still beating her wings until a safety override shuts off the motion and she crumples. I wonder if only I hear the chirped anger.
Abalone and Midline are poised to spring, but I call out desperately, “There’s such divinity doth hedge a king…”
Abalone completes the line, sliding the door shut, “that treason can but ‘peep’ to what it would.”
I barely hear Midline’s whispered, “We be of one blood, ye and I” before the door clicks shut.
Suddenly brave, Dr. Haas’s two goons leap forward and to the door. Dr. Haas walks to an intercom.
“They won’t get away,” she says to me as she flips it on and begins to rapid-fire instructions.
But when the guards burst open the jammed door of my bedroom, the room is empty. The grounds are searched, but no one is found, nor does security report any unauthorized vehicles crossing the Institute’s airspace.
No one even tries to question me and even if they did, I had been so distracted when Abalone reviewed her escape plans that I could not have told them how it was managed. But I do remember that Peep has been Abalone’s pupil and suspect that alone is enough to guarantee a quick and easy escape.
But this is small comfort; larger is the knowledge that the Institute will not trouble them further. Now that I am returned, they will have no reason.
I hope.
Thirteen
NOT EVEN AN HOUR AFTER MY SURRENDER, I AM TAKEN TO A panel van and from there to a small airfield. At some point, I must have been sedated, because I remember very little of the ensuing journey.
When I come to myself, I am in a room that smells hospital but proclaims prison. The windows are sealed and the door has no latch on the inside. Yet, I had expected something like this. What I had not expected was to find Betwixt and Between and Athena waiting for me on a small round table. Athena’s control band sits beside her.
I leap up from the narrow bed, slowing as my head swims.
“Careful, Sarah,” Betwixt cautions. “I think this room is monitored. Watch what you say.”
“I have drunken de
ep of joy,” I promise, “and I will taste no other wine tonight.”
“That’s careful enough,” Between mutters. “I can barely understand her.”
I hug them, ignoring the hardness of their rubbery spikes. Then, more gently, I stroke Athena’s wings, checking for damage from her fall.
“Oh, dear girls, we are in a pickle,” Betwixt says. “I watched as they brought us in and this place is about as accessible as a hibernating mud crab. I am not sure that even Abalone’s magic can find us. We may be stuck.”
Picking them up and setting Athena on my shoulder, I go to the window. The prospect is not promising. A green tangle surrounds us above and below. I remember Sherlock Holmes’s horror of the countryside and wonder what he would make of a tropical jungle which not only isolates, but conceals and destroys as well.
Next, I inspect my quarters. The room I awoke in contains a foam extrusion bed, the round table, which is of only slightly firmer stuff, and some cushionlike chairs. A sliding door reveals a comfortable bathroom, equally designed with the resident’s safety in mind. There are no sharp edges, no hard surfaces; there is not even a deep sink and certainly no tub.
The decorating scheme in both rooms is uniformly done in shades of tan and beige, lighter for the walls and floor, darker for the furnishings.
Tour completed, I sit on the bed. After the activity of the last several weeks, the abrupt stillness galls. The green curtain of foliage gives me no sense of time and I have nothing with which to amuse myself.
Idly, I stretch my hearing to find what the room might say, but it only reeks of newness. All I learn are the locations of the concealed monitors. Betwixt and Between are correct; anything done in these rooms will be monitored.
Unwilling to talk, I activate Athena and lose myself in the owl’s pleasure in flight. Gradually, I slip out of my concerns and into a simple world, dodging after dust motes in the sparkle of the sunshine.
They leave me alone for several days; two, I think, but it might be three. Meals arrive on some irregular schedule and though Betwixt and Between complain about the blandness of the fare, I do not care what I eat.
The thin paper receptacles the food arrives in crumple into brown dust after a few hours, but until then I can fold origami figures, remembering Bumblebee teaching me and Chocolate how to make them one night when it was too wet for even the Tail Wolves to go out and do business.
I eat and sleep and play, but refuse to speak, and after some time, they come to me. More specifically, she does: Dr. Haas.
She comes into my cell, white, golden, emerald. My eyes are hungry for color after the dull, tan room, the unremitting green without. She is some relief and as such I study her.
Seating herself on one of my spongy chairs, she flashes her white shark’s smile at me.
“You know, I don’t believe we’ve ever been introduced—even though we’ve met several times. I’m Lea Haas and I’ll be working with you here at the Institute.”
I refuse to play her pretty game and sit mute. Betwixt and Between hiss “Bitch” and Athena hoots soft agreement. Allowing a faint smile to curl my lips, I study her. Was that the faintest blush on the alabaster skin?
Before I can decide, she has shifted, crossing one leg over the other. “Sarah, you are due some explanation. Since you cannot—or will not—converse with me, I am forced to lecture.”
I say nothing and she sighs. “Being difficult will not help you, Sarah. It may even hurt.”
Again pause. Again I stay silent. Again the sigh.
“As you may remember, Sarah, you were born in the Institute’s original complex. What you may or may not know is that you were part of an attempt to breed for some very specific and very improbable talents. Enhanced memory and empathy were the lesser qualities; the goal of the project was to maximize what has been dubbed ‘magical thinking,’ the ability to obtain impressions from what are commonly termed inanimate objects.”
I must have given some signal that I understood, for she stops her lecture and looks at me.
“I see. You know something of this. Interesting.”
Inwardly, I growl, unwilling to show any more. Dr. Haas studies me for a moment more and then continues.
“There were various attempts, but finally success, or something close, was achieved with three children. Even with these three, the results were less than ideal. The eldest, a girl named Eleanora, did show potential, but her main talents were in memory. The youngest—you, Sarah—showed incredible potential, but was unable to communicate. The middle, a boy named Dylan, was highly talented, but so sensitive that he was prone to collapses. Still, the project intended to develop all three.
“Then came a budget cut that severely crippled the Institute. Eleanora was dropped from the project. Sometime later, after another cut, Sarah was also dropped. Since she was nonfunctional, she was institutionalized. Independent funding was found and work on Dylan was continued. Eventually, he gained control of his abilities and proved invaluable.”
She stops and I am suddenly aware that I am leaning forward, waiting for her next words. I gesture impatiently, tired of the farce, tired of being strung along.
“What next?” she interprets, smiling thin-lipped. “Dylan was working for the Institute on a sensitive project when he suddenly died.”
I cry out, an inarticulate thing that is pure pain.
“Yes, your brother is dead. But the Institute needs to finish his project and only someone with similar—or greater—talents can do his work. That’s you, Sarah.”
Squaring my shoulders, trying to ignore my dragons’ weeping, I sit up straight, proud for once to be locked away from such people by my insanity. For once, by saying nothing I truly speak as fully as I wish.
“Oh.” Dr. Haas almost laughs. “You wonder how we’re going to manage anything because of your ‘autism.’ There have been many advances in the years since you left us, Sarah, and some of them are going to take us right inside your head. You’ll be able to say all you want, just as freely and fluently as you—or as we—wish. Think about it. Won’t it be wonderful? And while you’re thinking, I’ll be setting things up for your first session.”
She leaves and I fall back, trembling, on the bed.
“She wasn’t telling the whole truth,” Between says.
“I agree,” Betwixt adds. “She’s hiding something.”
“But I couldn’t catch what,” Between says. “I tried, but she’s too good. One thing she was lying about was Dylan’s death—at least she didn’t tell the whole story.”
“He is dead, though,” Betwixt replies sadly. “I’m sure.”
I roll over and bury my face in the beige bedding, my own instincts agreeing with what the dragons are saying. Yet, I don’t have any answers or even any free will. I suspect that if I do not at least go through the motions of cooperating, they will have ways prepared to force me.
So when two of the navy-uniformed guards arrive, I jump to my feet and smile. They do not stop me from taking Betwixt and Between and only hesitate slightly when I set Athena on my shoulder. That they do not refuse me my petty arsenal confirms what I have deduced. Even if I were to win my freedom, there is nowhere for me to go.
Our first stop is a room tiled white on walls and floor. The only furnishings are a chair with padded arms and headrest and a long table covered with various pieces of unfamiliar gear. Another of the blue uniforms, a stocky, brown-haired woman, is waiting.
“Now,” she says, her voice hardened with some nasal accent, “I know you don’t talk, but I hear y’do hear, so listen up. The word is that you are to have your hair shaved clean off. There are two ways we can do this. One is you can sit down pretty and pretend you’re at the beauty parlor going for a flipping avant-garde look. The other is me and my buddies sit you down, strap you in, and you lose the hair just the same.”
I walk and sit, clutching Betwixt and Between and wondering if there is some reason for this process or is it only a bit of malice intended to humiliate me.
The machine in the woman’s hand buzzes merrily and my hair drops off in heavy, cream-colored chunks.
As she works, the barber and the guards discuss some ongoing poker game, without a single word to me beyond “tilt your head” and “raise your chin.”
I had nearly forgotten how the sane treat the insane during my time with the Pack, but I fall into the role of malleable dummy easily enough. When she finishes, she holds up a hand mirror. The jade eyes that stare out at me are all the rounder within a face unframed by hair. I lift a hand and rub the naked, smooth surface. It feels strange, and softer than it looks.
“Pretty, eh?” the woman grunts. “Now, next you go over into that corner shower and wash off any hair. When you’re done, put on the wrap you’ll find in there and bring all your old stuff here.”
Obediently, I go over and am relieved to find that there is a curtain I can draw, providing at least an illusion of privacy. After washing, I towel off and find the “wrap.” This proves to be a knee-length robe and a pair of loose drawstring trousers made of soft, grey cotton.
Once dressed, I bring my denims and shirt, which whisper to me of the Jungle, out to the woman.
Wrinkling her nose, she accepts them, “Right. March her up to Comp-C. Dr. Haas and Dr. Aldrich are waiting for her.”
As we walk, I try and recall if I remember a Dr. Aldrich and decide that I do. Vague memories of a very tall man with a soft, deep voice come back. He must have been very important for me to recall him so immediately upon hearing his name.
Although the complex is able to house many people, we pass relatively few, making me believe at least some of Dr. Haas’s tale of economic hardship. Comp-C turns out to be an antiseptic upper floor filled with the subliminal hum of electricity and large machines. Almost everything that is not white is painted a brilliant neon orange that shrieks at my eyes.
My guards escort me to a door that opens in anticipation of our approach. I step in alone. Dr. Haas, in her familiar lab coat and predatory smile, awaits, but I dismiss her to study the other.
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