by Atkins, Dawn
…
The next morning, her heart a boulder beneath her ribs, Rena waited with Gage for the attendant to bring Cassie’s body into view. Gage put his good arm around her as if to keep her upright.
“I’m not going to faint,” she said, annoyed. “You couldn’t catch me anyway.”
He kept holding on and she wasn’t sorry, because when the cloth flipped back and she saw Cassie’s dead face, the leopard tattoos dingy smudges on her blue-yellow skin, Rena’s knees gave out. “It’s her,” she cried, turning into Gage’s arms. “I knew it, but I couldn’t believe it.”
Gage ran his hand over her back, trying to soothe her. She felt him nod, telling the woman they were finished.
She pulled back, out of his arms. “I can’t believe they killed her and I let them.” She tightened her fists, wanting to hit something or someone. Fury burned through her with a guilt kicker and it was hell.
“Stay steady, Rena. We’ll make it right for her.” She caught a flash of gold in his deep brown eyes, a flare of anger and grief.
“And for Beth,” she said. “We’ll make it right for Beth, too. I’m sorry you lost her.” Her grief for Cassie helped her understand Gage’s suffering.
Gage pulled her close with his one good arm and she wrapped her arms around him, too, doubling their strength, like a thick tree with a hurricane ahead.
Twenty minutes later, Rena parked the van in the health center parking lot and turned to Gage. “You ready?”
“Oh, yeah.” He’d insisted he felt good enough to help her.
She’d called ahead for a blood test and Yolanda told her Dr. P. was out, which was exactly what Rena wanted to hear. She wanted to slip into the doctor’s office to find that urgent file and anything else that looked promising before she headed for the lab files, while Gage kept Yolanda occupied up front.
“I’m not sure about this. Yolanda’s bored, but she’s not stupid. She might not give you the time of day. No offense, but you look like something risen from the dead.”
“You’re underestimating my charm and wit.”
“Maybe she’s into S&M.”
The jokes were halfhearted, but they needed to relax a little.
“Let’s roll,” Gage said.
“You mean hobble?” She waited while he winced his way out down the sidewalk. At the door, they locked eyes, then headed in, warriors on a real-life quest.
At the front desk, Rena’s doubts about Gage’s performance melted away. Inside of a minute, he had Yolanda cooing over his injuries. Rena was about to offer to head back to the lab when she heard a voice from down the hall. “Is Dr. Cramer in?” she asked.
Yolanda never took her eyes off Gage. “Just for paperwork. No appointments. Show me where they taped you up,” she said to Gage.
Shoot. She wouldn’t be able to sneak into the doctor’s office, so she’d have to settle for checking out the lab file cabinet. “I’ll wait in the lab,” Rena said. “Take your time. I’ve got a great magazine.”
She went straight for the black files, curious about what they held, especially since Maya’s note on Rena’s folder had said “Confirm not black.” She tilted her head to read the names on the flaps. Alba, Jeanie…Conway, Elvis…Dillon, Nick. Alphabetical order and she recognized several she knew to be Lost Lives. Then she saw it—Fletcher, Cassandra. Cassie’s file. Black files were Lost Lives for sure. If Maya was concerned that Rena was going “black,” whatever that meant, maybe she would have been evicted, too. Maybe it hadn’t been the accounting issue at all that had gotten Cassie kicked out.
Why would that mean eviction?
She paused to listen. Yolanda and Gage were still yakking, Gage’s voice extra loud so Rena would know when Yolanda was on her way back to take Rena’s blood. She opened Cassie’s folder. On top were mood sheets from Group clipped to lab reports—blood tests probably. There were four stacks—one for each of her status levels.
On the bottom of the last page of the first three stacks the words “okay for next cohort” had been stamped in black ink. The fourth stack had a handwritten note: Failure to respond. Regression/decompensation likely. Rec: remove from study.
Were all the black files like this? She checked another one. Same note. A third and fourth also. Lifers got evicted not because of anything they did wrong, but because of their reaction to the drugs they’d been given. Failure to respond. They were removed from the study, which meant evicted from the Life. Lost. The idea chilled her to her bones.
Rena shoved Cassie’s folder down the back of her pants to show Gage and hang on to as evidence. She was reaching for her own file to read over, when she heard Dr. Penelope through the wall. “Maya? Penelope here, returning your call.”
Rena held her breath, hoping Gage would keep Yolanda busy long enough for Rena to hear Dr. P.’s side of this conversation. She couldn’t snoop in the doctor’s office, but this call could be important.
“I know you’re upset,” the doctor said in a calm voice. “There’s no need to be hostile with me. I’m just the messenger… It’s up to you to how to manage it… I don’t know how long.” She slowed her speech, as if talking to a child. “Erosion depends on sensitivities to shifts in dopamine. The first washouts were predictors… Yes. We knew there was a risk… Eventually? All of them… Of course Nigel will be disappointed. If you want, I can tell him for you.”
“Nice talking to you, Yolanda,” Gage said loudly enough for Rena to realize that the receptionist was on her way back. Rena stepped away from the shelf.
Yolanda entered, frowning when she saw Rena holding her folder.
“Just saving you time,” she said, wiggling it cheerfully.
Yolanda didn’t quite buy that, but didn’t seem to care enough to argue. The blood draw was as painful as ever, but Rena hardly noticed, her thoughts were racing so fast. It sounded as if Electrique wasn’t working as they’d intended it to, that all Lifers would eventually suffer, depending on their response to dopamine, whatever that was.
Would they be permanently harmed? What if the drugs could kill them, as might have happened to Beth’s boyfriend? Rena’s own detox experience would be a good test. If she survived, there was hope for everyone else. If not?
She shivered inside and squeezed her eyes closed. She wouldn’t allow that into her mind for one second.
“Relax, I’m about done,” Yolanda said.
Rena opened her eyes and stared at the rows and rows of folders on the shelves behind Yolanda. Each one represented a Phoenix Lifer. There were eleven more clinics with this many folders, one for each Lifer being drugged, who would become sick or die, hundreds of innocent people, and Rena was the only Lifer who could do something about it. So far.
Chapter Seventeen
Outside the health center, Rena found Gage in the van, his cell phone pressed against his ear, notepad on his lap, scribbling as he listened.
She climbed into the driver’s seat, taking Cassie’s folder from her pants before she sat. Gage gave her a thumbs-up with his sling hand, but kept his attention on the phone.
“This helps a lot, Professor. I’m sure the clinic will want your analysis before they treat her. I’ll get you the number… Good… We’ll talk then.” He closed his phone and turned to Rena.
“That was the ASU researcher?”
He nodded. “There is some complex shit going on here. This is what’s in the ink.” He looked down at his notes. “Some new SSRI—that’s selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor—along with an MAOI—monoamine oxidase inhibitor—MAOI and an SNRI—serotonin norepinephrine reuptake inhib—”
“Translate please,” she interrupted.
“Mood drugs. Psychotropics. Anti-depressant, anti-mania, and anti-anxiety drugs.”
“They’re giving us psych meds through our tattoos?”
“Yes, but the drugs are all inert—inactive—which mystified the guy until they combined the sample with the Electrique I gave him. Evidently the stimulant chemicals in E serve as a catalyst, activating
the mood drugs.”
“So E makes the tattoos work?”
“It seems so. And only Lifer E, by the way. Gamer E is an ordinary energy drink—stronger than commercial brands, which is why gamers are hot to smuggle it out.”
“So you were right about the black dot.”
“Yeah. The researcher said that a dermal delivery system is a slow trickle, like a nicotine or birth-control patch, so I figure each ink color must release a different chemical.”
“That’s why Day-Day says no Electrique right after a tat? Because of the interaction when the tattoo ink is fresh?” The pieces fell together. What had Nigel said? The truth will click in your mind, like tumblers in a lock, exactly right and true. The truth was clicking, all right, and it horrified her.
“I figure they’ve been testing dosage levels with different formulations of E,” Gage continued. “Remember the charts Beth stole? The first column had Lifer IDs, the second looked like lot numbers of Electrique. Every few pages a different lot was listed.”
“And the blood tests we get track the effects.” It made a perfect sick sense. She held up the folder. “I swiped Cassie’s file. They watch our moods with the bubble sheets from Group.” She showed him Cassie’s mood evaluations and the note cutting her from the study. “All the Lost Lives are in these black folders and they all have the same kiss-off note. They got evicted when the drugs stopped working, not because they did something wrong or learned some secret.”
“That’s bent, but it makes sense.”
“Also, I overheard a call between Dr. P and Maya while I was in there. Dr. P said every Lifer will have problems. How soon and how bad depends on sensitivity to something called dopamine.”
“That’s a brain enzyme. Serotonin’s another one. The ASU guy told me different mood drugs affect different brain enzymes, depending on what the patient lacks or has too much of.”
“The drugs can’t kill us, can they?”
“Beth’s boyfriend didn’t die from an injection, so maybe some people are more sensitive than others. Cassie was sick before she got evicted. She had seizures.”
“They both had that blood burning feeling, too.”
“They tried to numb out with alcohol.”
“God. I thought Cassie was an alcoholic. When she got cut off from E, she must have really suffered. I snuck a few cans out with her.” She swallowed hard.
“She told me. I brought her more, but she said it didn’t help.”
“Was she dying? Oh, no.”
“I tried to drag her to the hospital, but she refused.”
Blood seemed to be draining from Rena’s brain as the full extent of what had happened came to her. “We’ve been lab rats in a science experiment.”
“That’s how it looks. From a clinical standpoint, it’s criminal, but brilliant, according to the professor. Research on psych drugs is horrifically slow and outrageously expensive. Liability alone is astronomical. FDA approval takes years. Funding goes mostly to basic research, not this kind—translational research they call it—testing drugs on people, which is vital to getting any new drug on the market.”
“Why would they do this to us? For the greater good?” She winced at hearing the words that used to mean everything to her.
“For money or power or both. The Blackstones not only wanted your worship, they used drugs to twist your minds, to control you, see what they could learn from you.”
“There has to be good here, too.” It was too horrible to believe they could be so cruel. “Nigel and Naomi love us. Maybe Maya and Mason have done this evil in their name.”
“Come on, Rena,” Gage said gently. “I know this rips you apart, but you have to see them for what they are.”
“There is good in the Life. There has to be. It’s not black and white or clear-cut like you see it. Reality is all shades and blurs.” Her voice shook and her throat closed against the urge to cry. Did she even believe that? The words were Maya’s, who’d lied to Rena from the day they met.
She forced herself to focus, to move ahead. She knew the next thing that had to happen. She picked up Gage’s phone from the console and thrust it at him. “Call the director at the detox clinic. Get me in today. I have to get clear of these drugs before I do one more thing.”
…
The next day, Gage sat beside Rena’s bed in her small room at Desert Haven rehab clinic. Intake had taken an hour, but they’d finally begun treating the nausea and pain that had been building since the previous afternoon when she stopped drinking E.
Rena was scared and suffering but so brave. Every time he looked at her, his heart cramped. “You sure you don’t want to taper off like the doctor suggested? Stay as you are until after it’s over?”
“I have to show Lifers how it feels to be clean,” she said. “I don’t have time to do it slow.” Astra the warrior was strong in her voice, though she looked shaky and frail in the hospital bed.
He wiped her forehead with a cool cloth. “You thirsty?”
She nodded and he tipped the straw to her cracked lips. “Thanks,” she said afterward, leaning back into the pillow. “This better only take seventy-two hours. That’s how long I said I’d be gone, plus I need time before the launch party.” She grimaced and grabbed her stomach.
“It’ll take what it takes,” he said. That was the best the doctors would say after consulting with specialists in psych meds and stimulant-type addictions.
“Three days, no more.” Her blue eyes were cloudy with suffering, but she would gut it out, like the soldier she thought she had to be.
“Jesus, you’re stubborn.” He wanted to say the right things to her, but his head was jumbled up with feelings he usually blocked or dodged. With Rena, he somehow couldn’t keep his defenses in place. “It’s normal to be scared. You don’t have to act tough with me.”
“I’m not scared.”
“Sure you are. Anyone would be.”
“You think because I’m a girl I’ll fall apart. I won’t.” She cried out, then curled into a fetal position, tears squeezing from her eyes.
He brought her the kidney-shaped bowl and she heaved up nothing but water. She was gray against the white sheets. The sight was like a punch in the gut. “What can I do?”
“Go pick up the listening devices and the tape recorder.”
“We’ve got time.”
“Then rest. You’re injured.”
“If I rest I’ll get stiff.” He was down to Tylenol for pain so he could drive a car again. Showering was brutal and his ribs ached like a mother whenever he moved, but he was more or less operational.
“Then quit fidgeting and staring at me.”
“I hate to see you suffer.”
“Then go home. Don’t look. I’m getting better.” She looked terrible.
“I’m not leaving.” He’d left Beth when she needed him. He wasn’t doing that again.
“You didn’t let her down, Gage. Beth made her own decision.”
He was startled that she’d read his mind. “I pulled away from her. I must have. She thought I would judge her.”
“She knew you loved her. It was all in that old photo. Obvious.”
“Then why didn’t she come to me when things went bad?” The question burned through him. “She didn’t trust me.”
“Beth wanted the Life. She was trying to fix it on her own. She didn’t want you to rescue her, Gage. Oooh.” She moaned and turned away, curling up again. “You should go,” she gasped out. “It’s getting worse.”
“You keep trying to chase me away, Rena, but I’m not leaving.”
She groaned. “Maybe I don’t want you to see me like this.”
“Too bad. I’m here.” He leaned down and kissed her forehead. He didn’t care how foolish he felt or how annoyed she got. “I’m sticking.”
And not just for the agony of her detox. He wanted to be in Rena’s life. He wanted to get closer, to know her better. That was risky, he knew. The idea made him break out in a cold sweat. He coul
d get hurt. He could hurt her.
Rena had a whole life to build once she escaped the cult. She might not want to see his face again. But he hoped she’d feel the way he did. He hoped he’d get more time with the smart, strong warrior woman he’d only begun to know.
“You’re weird, you know that?” she said, but she managed a weak smile before she threw up. He took that as a good sign.
…
Just kill me alternated with Don’t let me die in Rena’s fevered mind as she lay in the clinic bed kicking the NiGo drugs.
Her body twisted with agonizing cramps and floated with fever dreams. She was Astra, white heat flaring from her hands and feet, levitating Lifers to safety with a mere gesture, then she was buried in dirt, clawing her way to air.
She floated one minute, zoomed wildly the next, and fireballs ricocheted in her brain. She sobbed and yelled and retched until her stomach muscles ached. Colors flashed and vibrated, melted and spun. She drowned in ice water, then burned in a summer oven.
And Gage was there for all of it. No matter how bad it got, Gage stayed. He wiped her forehead with a cloth she couldn’t tell was hot or cold that seemed to scrape her skin, then soothe it. When she thrashed around, gasping in panic, his hands held her, his voice soothed her. “I’m here…you’re getting through…you’ll be fine.”
Now and then she heard him call for pain medicine, after which she would slide into a pool of warm soup. Time passed—slow, fast, slow—and always with Gage nearby.
Meanwhile, within her, Astra whispered to her of her strength, her duty, of the power she’d always had and would continue to have even without the Life, without a Dome suit or a battle to fight.
Then, finally, after what seemed like years, Rena floated to the surface of her misery and opened her eyes to a calm, quiet world that didn’t shiver or spin or flare with color or heat or ice.
“Hello,” Gage said, smiling down at her.
“Hello,” she croaked.