Ghost Hope

by Ripley Patton

  “It’s a deal,” Mr. James said, laughing at my boldness.

  “You don’t even know what it is yet,” Palmer said to me.

  “You want me to tell a bunch of Holders that Mr. James is the good guy,” I said. “And leave out anything else. Sounds simple enough.”

  “And there will be a small demonstration,” Mr. James added.

  “A demonstration of what?” I asked.

  “It’s better if we don’t explain until the time comes,” Mr. James said, giving a sidelong glance toward the double front doors. “Not all of my employees are as loyal as they once were. But come in.” He gestured toward the house. “You both must be exhausted.”

  14

  DAVID MARCUS

  “Put it there,” Gordon grunted, directing me to an open space in the RV’s lower storage compartment.

  Gordon and I had come to an unspoken truce, at least for the time being. He told me where to put things, and I obeyed like a good little soldier. With as much as we were stuffing into the mammoth camper, you’d have thought we were prepping for Armageddon.

  I slid the case of canned applesauce into the slot, and headed back to Mia in the pantry for more supplies. As I approached the back door, I could hear the television broadcasting the local evening news. Mia had turned it on, hoping to catch something about the occupation at Umatilla. I very much doubted she would.

  But when I opened the door and walked in, Mia, Lonan, Reiny and Kaylee were all standing in front of the TV. I caught a brief glimpse of a reporter, back-dropped by a huge broken gate. She was saying something about “live, exclusive, breaking news.”

  Mia turned to me and said, “Go get Gordon. Now.”

  I didn’t have to. I could already hear him clomping in behind me, and Lonan moved aside, giving us both a better view.

  The scene on the screen now featured a helicopter flying over a strange bumpy desert at sunset, the reporter’s voice narrating. “We have some footage here of the depot taken earlier this evening,” she said. “The ground formations you’re seeing are actually underground igloos once used to store chemical weapons. Thankfully, all those weapons were destroyed several years ago, with only the igloos and a few other abandoned buildings left on the premises. That is until yesterday when, during a peaceful occupation of the contested land by local special interest groups, this strange new structure was discovered.”

  I stared at the screen as the helicopter flew over the dome and compound. There it was, just like I remembered it, whole and smack in the middle of a new piece of desert.

  “No group currently on the ground is claiming responsibility for the structure,” the reporter continued. “Initial reports seem to suggest that it materialized overnight. As you can see, there are lights on in the building, but witnesses on-site say it is locked up tight and impenetrable. Producers here at KTWO news have contacted the US Military’s Base Realignment and Closure Commission, the branch now responsible for the decommissioned base, but they have not yet responded to our queries. As for conjectures that this is some kind of secret military facility, that remains to be seen. Whatever it is, rest assured KTWO news will keep you up-to-date and informed on the latest developments.”

  I turned to Reiny and Lonan, fighting to keep my cool. “Did you know about this?”

  “There were vague rumors at the council meeting,” Reiny said. “But we couldn’t be sure.”

  “But you knew it was a possibility, and that’s the part you weren’t telling me.” I glanced at Kaylee, trying to gauge her reaction, but she was staring at the television, transfixed by a commercial for cat litter. “You were going to take her back to the dome and not even tell her? What the hell?”

  “No,” Reiny said, shaking her head. “That’s not—”

  “Bullshit,” I spat. “The CAMFers could still be in there, or The Hold. They could both be there, for all you know.”

  “Have some respect, boy,” Gordon said, looming in my direction.

  “Gordon,” Mia said, taking his arm and pulling him back.

  “David,” Lonan said, taking my arm in a similar way, “calm down. We did not know the compound was there. Now we do, and so do you and Kaylee. It must have displaced to Umatilla and has only now been discovered. If anyone managed to remain inside, they could still be there, that’s true. Or they might have left. Or someone completely new could have stumbled upon it and powered up the lights. We have no idea, which is one of the reasons we need to go.”

  One of the reasons. So, there were still others they weren’t telling me.

  “We’re wasting valuable time,” Gordon said. “We need to leave now. As soon as that story goes live on the larger networks, all hell is going to break loose.”

  “Go start up the RV,” Lonan told him, nodding toward the door. “We’ll be out in a minute.”

  Gordon frowned, but he and Mia headed out.

  “We’re going,” Lonan said, looking from me to Kaylee. “You need to decide if you are.”

  Kaylee was still staring at the television, which was back to the news and rattling on about some giant weird mound of dirt that had recently been discovered just outside the town of Oymyaken, Siberia, the locals claiming it had mysteriously appeared overnight.

  “Kaylee,” I said, crouching down and putting my face level with hers. “If you’re afraid, we don’t have to go.”

  Her eyes finally flicked from the TV back to me, locking with mine. It’s like magic, she said, her voice in my head full of wonder. It tells stories like the pictures in my mind when I read. How does it do that?

  “It’s just a TV,” I explained. “Didn’t you have one in the compound?” Reiny and Lonan didn’t have a TV, which I’d thought was odd, but it had never occurred to me that Kaylee had never seen one.

  No. Just books, she said. They didn’t let me have electronic devices. Of course, I’ve read about them, but I never imagined it was so—realistic. It’s just like seeing the world, except flatter and in a square frame. Oh, and I want a kitten. I’ve always wanted a kitten. Can we get one?

  “Maybe. Listen, I need you to understand—If we go with Reiny and Lonan, we’re going back to the dome. I know it frightens you, but—”

  The dome doesn’t frighten me. She laughed. But I liked flying over it like a bird. That was amazing.

  “So, you’re okay with this?”

  Sure, she said, smiling.

  Did she have any concept of what I was asking her?

  “David,” Reiny said, bending down, her eyes pleading with me. “We need to go.”

  “Okay.” I nodded.

  15

  KAYLEE

  Living in the tiny house with Lonan, Reiny, and David had been nice. We’d eaten around a table, the way families did in books. Real life was sometimes like books, but not always. Books were cleaner. There wasn’t so much dirt and mess, and things weren’t as random. In a book, I could eventually figure out why something happened, because everything in a good story happens for a reason. But out in the world things were always happening—things no one would ever bother to write about—just a whirlwind of meaningless moments I was constantly sifting through, trying to find the thread of the story and where it was going.

  But now the calm, homey, dinners were done.

  Everyone was frantic because the dome had been on the television. And I knew what that meant: the climax of the story was building. Things were going to start happening, important things way better than quiet conversations around the dinner table.

  David took my arm and escorted me to Mia and Gordon’s giant house-bus. On the way, I saw Reiny and Lonan climbing into the truck, their PSS sparkling at me in the dark. Reiny’s was minuscule, a pinprick of light close to her heart, and Lonan’s was a soft glow near his left temple. Often, the location of the PSS inside someone told me something about them. People who manifested it in their torso area were usually caring. People with PSS in their skull, like Lonan, were usually thinkers. And people with PSS in their extremities, like my
sister, were people of action.

  David had been very surprised when Reiny had told him that almost everyone in the world had PSS, but I’d been able to see that all my life. Most of my abilities hadn’t manifested until recently, but that one had been with me for as long as I could remember. David tried so hard to pretend he didn’t care about others, but his entire chest was PSS, so I knew better. I also knew it helped him to think I needed his protection. It made him feel better. So, I let him think it.

  I sat down on a cushioned bench in the bus, across from my father’s painting of me, which I’d insisted we bring. I was glad David had found it. Even if my father was dead, I had finally seen him in Gordon’s picture, and I could tell by his painting that he’d loved me. I wasn’t sure if my sister did. Back in the compound, she hadn’t really known who I was. She’d just needed my help. Then she’d sent me away in the displacement, landing me with David and his memory ball. I’d assumed that was all part of her plan—that she knew what she’d been doing. But then I’d begun to wonder. What if it had been a mistake? Or even worse, what if she’d sent me away on purpose because she didn’t like or want me. That happened sometimes in books. Sad, tragic books.

  Then there was my mother. I’d never met her or seen her. Mothers were always important in books. The desire I felt to see my mother, to touch her and know her and be held by her: it was more than any words that could be written.

  Mike had promised to reunite me with her. He’d promised to give my family back to me.

  But something had gone wrong with his plan. I knew that now, and my best chance of correcting it was back at the dome. To find Mike and my family again, I must start there.

  I glanced around the inside of the bus, taking it all in. It had a tiny kitchen and bathroom. They were so cute, and I wanted to touch everything. I wanted to open the cupboards and peek into every nook and cranny, but David sat down next to me, all serious and tightened up like a coiled spring. I could feel the tension in his body calling out for me to touch it and relieve it, to siphon it off like I’d been doing for days.

  Instead, I reached into my right pocket, touching the memory ball. David called it the magic eight ball, and he thought it was a toy. It hadn’t taken me long to realize he didn’t know what it really was, or what it held. At first, I’d thought people in the world must know everything, but now I understood how much there was to know. As soon as I’d figured out what was inside the black ball, perhaps I should have told him. They were his memories, safe and sound, not lost forever like he thought they were. If I’d been a character in a book I was reading, I would have been screaming at me to tell him.

  But I didn’t. That was my first untruth—unless you counted the note I’d slipped to Olivia in her cell telling her not to trust Grant. That was a test, a first tiny tasting of deception that hadn’t worked. I had no reason not to trust Grant, other than the fact that I’d had my sister to myself before he’d come along. Jealousy. That was always in books, and I had been thrilled to feel it burning in my bones. And then I’d written the lie: Don’t trust the boy. Because I could. Because I didn’t want her to.

  She’d ignored me and trusted him anyway, and ultimately it had gotten us all out of the dome. So much for my first lie. I thought then deception must be a thing that only worked in books, or I was just terrible at it. Now, I knew you simply had to practice a little. It was like learning an instrument. It never sounds good the first time you play.

  So, I didn’t tell David about his memories. After all, what was the point? I couldn’t give them back to him. There was only one person who could do that, and it would only hurt him to know something so dear was so close, yet so far out of reach. That was where telling the truth versus lying got tricky. It wasn’t black and white like I’d thought it would be. It was very, very gray.

  The house-bus rumbled to life, the vibrations of the engine coming straight up through my seat. I jumped, startled, then nestled back into the bench cushion because I wanted to feel it more. It felt good. Of course, I’d read about all kinds of transportation in the dome library—trains, planes, buses, ships, cars, trucks, and everything in between. But I’d never actually ridden in a vehicle, and it was one more thing books hadn’t quite rendered completely. And even though I knew it was coming, I was still surprised when we started to move, the bus lumbering around in a bumpy circle before finding the main road.

  It’s a moving house, I mind-spoke to David. It feels almost alive like it’s growling or purring at us. Or it’s just eaten us and is running away to digest us in its lair.

  “You’ve never ridden in an RV?” he asked.

  I’ve never ridden in anything, I told him. Just on top of horses, but that’s nothing like this.

  He smiled and shook his head, then looked out the back window as if he thought someone might be following us.

  With all the excitement about the dome, he seemed to have forgotten about the cubes. He hadn’t said a thing about them since we’d come back from Gordon and Mia’s last night. I certainly hadn’t forgotten them. They were in the other pocket of my sweater, even now, and I stuck my hand in, touching their hard corners, just to be sure because I’d told David yet another lie. I couldn’t read who the cubes belonged to or where that person was. That was the thing about cubes. They were blanks. The glowing I’d shown David on Reiny’s steps had all been a trick using my own PSS. Of course, I’d known what the cubes were as soon as I’d seen them at the bazaar. And maybe they couldn’t lead me anywhere, but they were powerful all the same, extremely powerful when combined with a PSS artifact. My sister would want them back. Or Mike would. So, when David had only let me have one and shoved me away like a child, I’d been very angry.

  It had also been my first realization that people out in the world had a different plotline than my own, perhaps even in opposition to mine. David was living his own story, and I was only a minor character in it. I began to understand that if I wanted to help my sister and be reunited with Mike and my mother, I would have to take charge.

  That’s when I’d told David we had Grant’s cube and I could tell where he was. I lied well that time, and it worked exactly as I’d hoped. David had taken us straight to Gordon and Mia’s, desperate to get the other one. Now I had them both in my pocket, side by side. Oh, and then there was the other thing I’d found and taken, the thing in Gordon’s den pulsing with PSS and calling to me. It had been easy to slip away while he and David were fighting. Even easier to slip through the wall of the house and hide it carefully inside my boot, then scurry around to the front door as if that was where I’d been all along. I wasn’t sure why Gordon had been hiding that slim, sharp knife, pulsing with the PSS of a dead man. But it was mine now. Once we’d arrived back at Reiny’s, I’d kept it out of sight until I could sneak it into the bag they’d given me to pack for the dome.

  Mike Palmer had always said I knew nothing of deception.

  He’d also said I was one of the quickest learners he’d ever met.

  “Don’t be afraid,” David said, scooting closer to me on the bench and putting his arm around me. “It’s going to be okay. I promise.”

  I’m not afraid. I smiled up at him as the RV rumbled on. Not even a little.

  16

  JASON

  The testimony about the Eidolon was easy. The Hold council, a group of seven people sitting behind a huge table, including that asshole, Holbrook, and Mr. James’s wife, called me as a witness and asked a shit-ton of questions about what I’d seen and what I’d done. There were a lot of pissed-off-looking adults in the audience, and a handful of kids my age, glassy-eyed and battle-worn. I didn’t recognize any of them specifically, but I knew that look. They were survivors of the Eidolon and had probably already given their accounts. So, I stuck to the truth, mostly. I did skip the part about shooting Samantha at Mr. James’s request, and I neglected to mention my newly-acquired ability. Oh, and I certainly didn’t tell them the massacre had been my old man’s handiwork. I thought I’d recogn
ized some of his men that night, and he’d confirmed it with his boasting back at the lodge. Fineman had hired them to run The Holders off the cliffs so they could be captured down below by the doctor’s men. But my old man hadn’t exactly followed the plan.

  The entire time I talked, Mrs. James glared at me. She was sitting next to Holbrook, leaving no question about her loyalties now. She must have been faking her cooperation at the farm, or what she’d learned about Mr. James at the compound had been the last straw. Whatever. She was a two-faced bitch with secrets of her own. She knew I’d shot her daughter at her husband’s request, but she didn’t bring that up. She was still protecting her own interests.

  When the council was done with their questions, Mr. James got up and started asking me about what had happened after the Eidolon.

  I told them Passion and I had run, and how we’d gotten caught. I described how Holbrook’s people had treated us like criminals. How he’d drugged me and locked me in a crate, and that got him some nasty looks. Then I tried to make Mr. James sound really good, explaining how he’d gotten me out of Holbrook’s clutches, taken care of all of us at the farmhouse, nursed his nephew back to health, and tried to rescue Olivia from the CAMFers.

  “Yes, Yes,” Mr. James said, sounding impatient. “But back at the farmhouse, do you remember my medical assistant, Reiny, giving you a shot, something she referred to as a vaccine?”

  “Yeah,” I nodded, wondering what the hell that had to do with anything. “She said it was for some virus going around Oregon.”

  “Well, that wasn’t precisely the truth,” Mr. James said, pacing toward the council. “You see, when we gave my nephew, David, an emergency blood transfusion after the Eidolon, we discovered something very unique about the donor’s blood. Her plasma was PSS, and not just any PSS. It had a unique property, a stabilizing element we’d never seen before.”