A Long, Long Sleep

by Anna Sheehan

  The creature was melting, flames leaping from his plasticized body, yet he continued slowly toward my tube. His system had no recognition of pain. He continued to burn, fire scorching the ceiling of the subbasement. A fire alarm went off, but the heat from the initial explosion was so volatile that the fire-suppression system above our heads was already damaged. Shelves filled with antiquated junk burned behind and around him. One of his legs collapsed beneath him, melting into liquid. An arm dripped like a burning candle.

  I slid my tube lid open and watched as my enemy, my father’s tool, collapsed into a burning puddle. With his head on fire, half of his face melted away, I heard one last statement, mushy with melted plastic. “Mission, aborted.

  Damage report . . . 11 . . . percent . . . capacity . . . 10 . . . percent . . . 6 . . . per

  . . .” The voice melted along with the rest of it.

  I wished I felt triumph. All I felt was immensely tired.

  Belatedly, the redundancy program of the fire- suppression system took effect, and I was splashed by a sudden shower of rain. For some reason, it made me laugh. The cool wetness soothed the pain of my burn. I held my face up to it and lifted my arms. Against all odds, I was still alive. The last remnant of my parents’ control was melted at my feet, tangled in a web of thorns it could not escape. I was the rose. I was the briar patch.

  – chapter 26—

  The water didn’t do much good for the plastic fire, and the fumes in the room were something lethal, I’m sure. I must have looked an absolute witch when Bren, Otto, and Xavier pelted across the subbasement to my rescue. I was standing in the rubble of my slaughtered stass tube, arms spread, laughing somewhat hysterically in the artificial rain, with the still- burning remains of the Plastine flaring behind me. I dropped my hands when I saw them, grinning rather sheepishly. Their belated rescue had been thwarted. I almost felt bad about that.

  Xavier was the one who spoke. Gingerly, as if afraid I’d lunge for his face, he asked, “Rose? Are you all right?”

  I giggled, then coughed, shuddering. The cold water and the fumes from the burning plastic were wreaking havoc on my stass- fatigued body. “Yeah,” I said.

  “What are you all doing here? Why didn’t you cell the police? Otto, your arm!”

  His arm was hung in a makeshift sling. I recognized the fabric of the ruined cushion back at the dorm.

  Xavier looked completely lost, wet and frail and ancient. It was Otto who came to me, putting his good arm around my shoulder and leading me gently (very gently once his thumb touched my neck and I told him exactly how much I hurt) back toward the lift. “I’ll be fine,” he told me. “I’ve had worse. We did cell the police, but Bren’s grandfather knew we’d get here faster. He was pretty sure where it was going, and the Plastine was still in stealth mode. Hard for the police to track.”

  “I’m sorry you got hurt.”

  Otto flashed me a burst of thought, of how he would have felt if he’d just stood back and let it all happen. I cringed. He was right. It would have been worse.

  “I’m sorry for what I thought at you.”

  “I know why you did.” The image of the guardian briar- rose hedge came again into my mind.

  “You were right,” I told him silently. “And I know who I have to protect.”

  The look of horror in his yellow eyes when I thought of Seraphina and Stephano mirrored my own thoughts. “Anything I can do,” he offered.

  Bren had gone ahead of us and was waiting at the lift. He’d stopped the water.

  “I’ll take care of the fire,” he told me, pulling a fire extinguisher from a red cabinet on the wall.

  “You tell Xavier I expect to see him upstairs,” I called after him.

  Bren threw half a laugh back at me, and then I let Otto pull me into the lift and up to my apartment.

  “Are you sure you’re all right?” I asked once we’d gotten inside. “Your arm.”

  “I’ll go to my doctor. Penny’s going to want to hear about this, anyway. She loves adventure stories.”

  “Your doctor’s at the lab?”

  “Of course. Who else could figure out how I work? I don’t even heal the same way. Besides, you’re the one who really needs a doctor. You’re as red as a rose.”

  “But a live one!”

  Otto’s eyes crinkled. “Where are your parents?” He wasn’t really thinking the word parents, but that was a close translation.

  “Knowing Barry and Patty, playing golf or something,” I said. “No, that’s ungenerous of me. Probably at work.”

  “I only ask because the police were going to cell them.You might want to be able to guess when they’ll get here.”

  I nodded. “Right,” I said. I slipped into my room and pulled a fresh uniform off a hanger. It was more difficult getting dressed with my burned fingers than I might have thought. They still felt on fire. “Ow!” I muttered, pulling the soft cotton over my heat- burned flesh. My wrenched shoulder hurt, too, and my knee throbbed, and my eyes still stung a bit, and all my muscles ached, and Bren had really bruised me trying to get the collar off. And to top it off, my elbow was still swollen from hitting the Plastine on Nirvana. It was hard to dress. I only slipped on a shirt and skirt, abandoning most of the rest of the uniform.

  When I limped back out to the living room, I saw Otto had pulled the first aid kit from above the refrigerator. Rather deftly, with his one good arm, he managed to put Icestrip™ bandages on my fingers, which made me feel cold, but also made my fingers stop hurting so much. He made me swallow a painkiller, and he was just spraying my lightly burned face with a cooling salve when Barry and Patty came home.

  “What are you doing here?” Barry said.

  “What trouble have you gotten into this time?” Patty asked.

  “Why did the police cell us?”

  “Who or what is that?” Patty added, pointing at Otto, who rolled his eyes.

  I ignored their questions. “You’re fired.”

  “What?” Barry and Patty both looked at me in shock, and Otto made a strange, choked sound. He was laughing. I took strength from that.

  “I said you’re fired. Get out of my apartment.”

  Patty’s face turned incredulous. “I don’t know what you’re thinking, young lady, but we are your appointed guardians. . . .”

  “No, you’re not,” I said, without ire. “Guillory hired you to keep an eye on me.

  You were never designated my guardians. Everything had to go through him.

  Well, Guillory’s dead. And until someone reorganizes the company, that means I’m the one who employs you. And you’re fired. From this job, anyway; go back to Florida and pick up where Reggie made you leave off.”

  They protested until Xavier strode, damp and elegant, into the foyer. “Listen to your boss,” he told them quietly. “If it isn’t her, it’s me. If she doesn’t want you, that’s it.”

  Unable to decide which of us to look at, Barry asked, “Did you mean it when you said we could go back to our jobs at Uni Florida?”

  “Yup,” I said.

  “I guarantee it,” Xavier added.

  Barry nodded. “All right, then.” He turned to his wife.

  “Let’s pack.” And they both disappeared into the master bedroom. Xavier shook his head at their retreating forms. “I’ll find you someone better,” he said to me.

  I stared at him. He looked away, backing toward the door. “Someone has to cell the police; tell them the worst is over.”

  “Done it,” Bren said, popping up from behind him. “On the way to turn off the fire system.” “We’ll need a paramedic.” “Done. Celled Mom, too. They’re on the way.” Xavier nodded. “Yes. Well, I’ll go wait for the ambulance.” “No,” I said to Xavier. “You stay.” Xavier gazed at me. “I think someone should show them to the scene.” “Bren can do that, or Annie,” I said. “We have to talk.” Xavier bowed his head. “Now might not be the best time,” he said. “Now might be th
e only time I ever get you in a room with me again,” I said. “You’ve been avoiding me since I came out.” Xavier swallowed. “You’re right. I have.” I glanced at Otto.

  Otto, who knew the whole story. He took my hand. “I’ll take Bren out to the garden, wait for the police.” “Thanks,” I said. I watched the two of them go, then turned back to Xavier. He was wet and rumpled, and he obviously hadn’t slept for days. He looked very much like he didn’t want to have this conversation. I went to the bathroom to get him a towel, so he could at least dry his hair.

  Zavier had been locked up in the bathroom with a bowl of dog food and a chew toy. He jumped up when I opened the door, and he nearly made me scream as he promptly put paw and nose on all my most tender spots. “Ow! Sit! Stay, Zavier!”

  He sat down, panting, clearly glad to see me again. I grabbed a fresh towel and let Zavier follow me back to the living room. “Here,” I said, throwing the towel to Xavier.

  He caught it quite deftly, for an old man, and dried his face and shoulders with military efficiency. “Do you like Dizzy?” he asked almost absently.

  I turned to Zavier. “You answer to Dizzy?” I asked him. He looked confused for a moment, then wagged his tail placatingly. I patted his blond head. “I call him Zavier,” I said. “With a Z.”

  Xavier froze. “Oh,” he said. He covered his face with the towel again; I suspect he did it more for something to do than because his face was still wet.

  I stared at Xavier, forcing myself to see the boy I knew. It wasn’t hard. I couldn’t believe I hadn’t noticed it right away. But then, he’d barely spent five minutes in the same room with me until last night. And I probably hadn’t wanted to see. I petted my dog’s head. “I needed to ask you something.”

  “I know,” Xavier said, and his voice fell like a lead weight.

  I took a deep breath. “How could you leave me like that? For so long?” I asked.

  I said it without malice.

  Xavier let loose a deep sigh and slowly lowered himself to one of his chairs.

  “You’ve no idea how it’s tortured me,” he said, refusing to meet my eyes. “I’ve been asking myself the same question every hour since Bren found you. I’ve barely slept. I . . .” He sighed again, then forced himself to look at me. “I truly didn’t know.”

  “How could you not know?”

  Xavier’s head moved in the way it had as a child, when he thought I didn’t understand something. “Rose.” He paused. “You broke up with me.”

  I nodded, trying to understand. I curled up on the couch. “So, you thought . . .

  it wasn’t your role anymore?”

  “No,” he said.

  “Please, I’m trying to understand this, Xavier. Either you absolved yourself of responsibility for me, or you felt I deserved to lose my life. And I refuse to believe that. Despite . . .” It was remarkably hard to pull the next words out of the pain. “Despite your staying away even when I came back.”

  “No, damn —” He hesitated, unable to find words. “There is no absolution! Do you know how long it’s been? I’ve been looking back through fifty, sixty years, through every moment of my life, trying to see how I let this happen, and there is no excuse that can absolve me of this . . . neglect. How could I let you know, now? How could I . . . torture you with the knowledge of me? Better let you believe I had died, along with everyone else.”

  I looked at him. This really wasn’t my Xavier. My Xavier’s eyes used to laugh.

  My eyes caught on the sketchbook on the coffee table, the one I’d abandoned when I grabbed the new one for my trip with Reggie. I pulled it over and found a blank sheet. “Did you ever try to find me?” I asked, tugging the charcoal pencil out from the spiral binding.

  “Yes,” he said, surprising me. “Not hard enough, apparently.”

  “Tell me,” I said. I sat back and watched him, letting my hands begin another sketch of him.

  “I didn’t realize what had happened, at first,” he said. “After you said good- bye.

  I saw you in the corridors, but you avoided me. You’d disappear on and off, and I’d start to get nervous. But you always came back, and you still avoided me. At first, I believed you really didn’t want to be with me. And then, when you finally disappeared for so long, I was glad. I didn’t want to see you. It . . . Everything always matters so much at that age. It hurt, seeing you, and not being with you.”

  I smiled ruefully. I was still that age.

  “But then . . . a year went by. Åsa was gone, and I began to wonder if maybe . .

  . maybe Mark and Jacqueline had forced you to break up with me. And because you weren’t being the perfect child they’d created, they’d stassed you, just to get rid of you. It was just a little suspicion, at first. But it ate at me and ate at me until I was about to head for college.” I sketched a study of Xavier’s wrinkled hands as he moved them, emphasizing his speech.

  “I mean, I’d be gone. And there’d be no one else who even knew you were there.

  So I waited until your parents went off to one of your mother’s charity galas, and I broke into your apartment.”

  I could just picture him, sneaking to the Unicorn central computer, hacking into the key codes until he could sneak into my apartment.

  “I didn’t know if you’d be glad to see me or not. But I was eighteen, and I already had a place of my own at Princeton. And no matter what you thought of me, a year in stass for no reason was beyond ridiculous. I’d already come to the conclusion that it was abusive.”

  He sighed. “I thought I’d give you the option . . . not of being with me, but just of . . . getting out of there. No more stass, no more playing dress up as Mommy’s little ‘live doll,’ no more, ‘Yes, Daddy, of course, Daddy.’ Just you.

  Just Rose.”

  With my burns still smarting from the Plastine’s attack, I could just imagine if he’d succeeded. The Plastine would have caught up with us at Princeton, new, fresh, not suffering sixty- two years of neglect. Programmed to kill any who tried to stop it.

  That thought gave me pause. If I’d been given the choice, back before I was stassed, of giving up my love for him or letting him die, I knew what I would have chosen. I would have gladly sacrificed sixty- two years of my life for his.

  Fate had always been against us, no matter how much I loved him.

  Xavier took a deep breath. “And, yes, if you’d wanted, just you and me. As we’d always been. I missed you.”

  I closed my eyes at that. I felt a stir in my chest that I hadn’t felt since waking up. Not nervous flutterings and giddy uncertain hopes, but a tiny sparkle of real joy.

  “I crept to your closet, but your tube wasn’t there,” Xavier said. “Your room was still there, all your things, but you were gone. I stood there, not knowing what to do. Then, apparently, it turned out my hacking skills weren’t up to the challenge. I’d set off an alarm and the police burst in and arrested me. They put me in a jail cell for the night and tried to contact Mark and Jacqueline to charge me with breaking and entering.” He took a deep breath. “The arraignment didn’t get very far. Before dawn, almost everyone in the police station was dead.”

  I looked up from my sketchbook, horrified. “No,” I whispered.

  He nodded. “My timing could have been better, I guess. But then, if I had let you out right then, you’d likely have gotten sick, too. The plague hit ComUnity that very day.” He took a deep breath. “I was there, alone in my jail cell.

  Charges hadn’t yet been drawn up. And as I waited, suddenly I saw people through the bars, sweating and coughing and clutching their chests and then screaming and screaming. . . .” He shook his head. “I huddled in the corner, staying as far away from the death as I could. I was . . . scared. I was so glad I hadn’t found you. I could hear the screaming from the streets, and sirens wailing from the ambulances. And then they stopped, and I realized their silence was more frightening still.” More than his hand was trembling now.
“I had no food, no water for two days. And then I started to get sick.”

  “No!”

  He pursed his lips at me, trying to tell me it was all right. “I was far away from the general population, and I hadn’t touched anyone, so the disease didn’t catch me until it became airborne. I started to cough, just at the end, as the bodies started to decay. By that time, I wasn’t scared any longer. I was almost relieved. I didn’t want to be there anymore. And just then, as I was preparing to die, UniCorp security dressed in biohazard suits pushed open the doors against the piles of dead and shoved antibiotics into my veins.”

  He shrugged. “Mom and Dad were dead. Princeton was a ghost town. Mark and Jacqueline had disappeared, headed, I found out later, to one of their off- world colonies. By miraculous chance, they hadn’t brought the plague along. I was drafted into the civil service, and I spent the next five years treating plague victims, quelling riots, and distributing supplies.” He looked at me. “I won’t say you weren’t in my thoughts, because you were. You had to be. You were part of my life for so long, you became an imprint on my psyche. But there was death all around me. I knew you were in one of two places: either safely in stasis or already peacefully dead. Either way, there was nothing I could do for you.”

  In my sketch I shaded his eyes. Yes, I could see the horror there. The stern lines that so much tragedy had etched onto his face.

  “When I finished my stint in the CS, I applied for an internship at UniCorp.

  Ordinary college education had gone by the wayside, but my bout in the CS

  counted in my résumé. I was surprised they took me in, but my name was known. Mom and Dad had worked for Mark, and your parents still remembered me. Apparently, in all the chaos, it had never filtered back to them that I’d broken into their home.” He took a deep breath. “I only joined UniCorp for one reason. To get close to them, to ask them about you.”