by Unknown
“You’re right,” he says. “I don’t. I’m just saying how it looks.”
“Well, you’re wrong.”
“Great, I’m wrong,” he says, falling back into his chair.
I sit too, but I crouch on the very edge of the seat, my hands clenched together and squeezed between my thighs. “Are they treating you okay?” I ask, remembering the Reduciates’ attempt to starve and freeze me. No matter what he’s done, I still want Benson treated humanely.
“I’m in prison: I get one ten-minute shower a day, three meals, all the bottled water I care to order, and at night they give me a mattress. But you know what?” He looks up, and when our eyes meet, the blue seems to burn into me.
“What?” I whisper.
“I’d take way worse to stay away from the Reduciata.” He does this shrug thing with only one shoulder. “And be closer to you.” His voice cracks on the last word.
“Benson, I—” I put my elbows on the table and drop my forehead against my hands. “I can’t . . . you can’t . . .”
“I know. I know.” He squeezes his eyes shut. “And I tell myself that a hundred times a day. But then I see you and I—” He reaches out and grasps my hands before I can pull away. “Tave, you have to understand. I was a pawn as much as you were. And even with everything, I chose you. Over everything, everyone. I know that maybe it will take time, but—” He gulps, and I can only stare in horror. “Can’t you see that as soon as I could make the right choice, I did?”
“Benson, please. I—” I’m gripping his hands so tight my fingers are white and they ache, but somehow, he’s still clinging harder.
“I thought it would be enough just to help you—hell, to see you alive! That I could honestly just be happy for you. But I can’t. I have to at least try. I’m not sure I can last in this place without going crazy if I don’t know there’s some kind of chance. A trickle of hope. Something. Please.”
It’s a good thing there’s a table between us, because that’s all that’s keeping me from going to him, and I know I can’t. It wouldn’t be fair. “Ben, I’m with Logan. You know that.”
“I know. I know! And who would understand that better than me?” His hands are still latched onto mine, but he leans forward now, laying his head on his arms, and I want to run my fingers through his waves. “But I didn’t know it would be so hard. When you were in here yesterday, I thought . . . I thought maybe . . .”
I start tugging at my hands now, trying to take them back, but I don’t think he notices.
“Tell me you love him.”
I stop pulling. “What?”
“Logan. Tell me you love him. That he’s everything you could ever want. That he will make you happy every day for the rest of your life, and you’re certain.”
“Certain of what?” My voice is shaking.
“That you’ll never want me again.”
My whole body stills. My throat closes in on itself, and I wonder if this is what anaphylactic shock feels like. I told Logan I loved him last night—why can’t I tell Benson? I love Logan. Say it!
“Set me free,” Benson mumbles into his arms, not noticing my battle.
I try to speak. To say the words. But somehow it’s easier to lie to myself than to Benson.
“This halfway thing—I can’t stand it. I need you to—” He looks up right at me and his voice cuts off and I wonder what he sees. “You don’t. You . . . you’re not sure.”
I close my eyes, turn away. “Of course I’m sure. I have to go.” I walk over and knock on the door for them to let me out, but Benson is right behind me.
“Give me a chance then, Tave. I will show you. I will make sure you never doubt me again, I—”
“Shut up!” I scream, clapping my hands over my ears. “There’s not a chance, Benson. I can’t. I can’t. I—”
“You need to step away, Mr. Ryder.” The tallest security guy is there, and Benson drops his hands and backs up until he hits the wall on the opposite side of the cell.
I slip through the door in front of the guy and nearly run into Logan.
“Logan.” I know the guilt must be shining in my eyes. Practically sloughing off me in waves. “How—how long have you been here?”
“Long enough.” His jaw is tight, but his eyes never leave mine. “Alanna told me she saw you heading down this way. I just came to walk you back. In case you were upset. I was worried.”
“You didn’t trust me.”
“It’s not about trust. I was worried.”
I duck my head and walk past him out of the security wing. I know he’ll follow, but I don’t want to have any more of this conversation in front of the security team. And I really don’t want to have it where I can see Benson out of the corner of my eye.
“I told him I was with you,” I say as soon as we’ve cleared the heavy doors. “You heard me!”
“I heard a lot of things,” he says, jamming his hands into his pockets. “I asked you to please not visit him without me. I thought we agreed on that, but maybe I was wrong.” He turns his back but faces me again two seconds later. “Tavia, you told me he was no one.”
“He wasn’t my boyfriend. Not actually.” But he’s right. I lied.
“He’s just in love with you.”
I have nothing to say to that.
“Are you in love with him?”
I swallow hard. “I was.”
“Are you still?”
I want to say no. Try to force my mouth to form the word. But all that comes out is “I don’t know.”
The sound of his gasp makes me jerk my head up—really look at him. Logan’s hands are buried in his hair, and he seems like he’s trying to physically hold himself together. “You don’t know.” He lets out a wry chuckle that sounds like broken glass. “After everything, you don’t know if you might be in love with someone else. How can you even—he’s a human, Tavia!”
“So?” My indignation finds its voice. “That doesn’t make him less.”
“Yes, yes it does! He is so much less than this. Than us! Than our eternity together. How can you not see that?”
“How about your parents?” I jab back, finally finding the courage to just say it. “Are they less too?” I don’t get it; I know he can feel deeply. The depth of the emotions he feels for me is so cavernous it’s almost frightening. But apparently none of that applies to the people who raised him.
“Yes!” he bursts out, as though it weren’t a shameful confession. “Everything human is less than what we have. You used to understand that. Nothing and no one in the world is more important than what we have together. And you don’t know?” He spits the last two words in disgust. He takes a deep breath and seems to take control of himself as he straightens. “You lied to me. You’re hiding things. The last time we were together—when we were Quinn and Rebecca—we shared everything. The only secret we had between us was your big secret. The one we both agreed was too dangerous for me to know.”
An entirely new kind of guilt fills my belly as I remember wondering if I wasn’t protecting him, but myself. And I feel more guilty when I don’t speak up. Even now.
“The one you don’t even know now,” Logan continues, not noticing anything. “And now you’re sneaking around? Lying about your past? What happened to you?”
I feel tears build up in my eyes, and I’m not sure how much is from sadness and how much from anger and hurt.
And shame.
I did lie to him. I knew I was doing it and I did it anyway. He deserved the truth.
He’s waiting for an answer. But I don’t have one. I retreat instead.
I turn and run down the hall, not looking back.
I run from Logan.
I suppose I run from Benson too.
After leaving the security hall I’m not sure where to go. All I know is I can’t face him. Can’t go ba
ck to the room we’ve shared for three days. And three nights.
Can’t go back to that replica of our perfect life as Rebecca and Quinn.
When I reach the stairs that lead down to the gold and red splendor of the main atrium, I pause before descending. For nearly ten at night the atrium is still very much alive. The huge television has extra couches in front of it, and there must be at least fifty people staring at the newest report from the Pacific. The reporter’s words reach me as I draw nearer.
“Responders on the scene of this disaster now believe the death count will exceed two million and possibly be as high as two point five. This on top of the now over a quarter of a million deaths from the still untreatable Kentucky Virus. A number that also continues to grow each day. It’s a scary time in history, Bob.”
As I walk numbly by, it’s hard not to become trapped in the hypnotic tragedy. I think of Logan’s reaction to his family’s deaths—even Benson’s story of his father—and I can’t help but wonder if these other Earthbounds truly feel the loss of human life or if their tears of sorrow and empathy are a learned reaction—what they know they’re supposed to do but not reflective of what they actually feel.
Regardless, I don’t belong here.
Once I’m in a deserted hallway where I can’t hear the sounds from the atrium anymore, I glare at a blank wall and picture a small—almost tiny—room behind a very simple door. I close my eyes, make a wish, and with the last vestiges of energy left inside my body, I push open the plain white door of my creation.
I walk into a replica of my bedroom from my parents’ house in Michigan. A plate of my mother’s homemade ravioli in cream sauce waits for me on the tiny desk I used to do my homework on. It smells just like I remember it, all garlicky and delicious. I breathe it in, savoring the memories of Thanksgiving and Christmas and casual weeknight dinners at home.
And then I close the door to the world of the Earthbound.
TWENTY-THREE
“He’s dead.”
“When?”
“Just a few weeks ago. They made it look like an accident—like he drank himself to death, really. But they helped. I’m sure of it.”
“How are we going to tell her?”
I stand with my back against the wall, eavesdropping, tears running down my face. My partner, my diligo, gone. For this life, anyway. But it feels like forever. And just when I need him so badly. When I came here—to these Curatoriates I don’t trust—it was because I knew the Reduciates were closing in on me, not him.
But apparently I was wrong.
What now? I have more reasons than ever to stay out of the Reduciates’ hands. I fiddle with my necklace, turning it from silver to gold—back and forth. Little bits of practice that don’t terrify me too much. I think back on my last few moments as Greta. In that life, I knew why I was being killed.
But the way they killed me. They were certain it would be forever. But here I am. Changed. Is that what made this happen? It’s the only reasonable explanation I can come up with.
Do the Reduciates have any idea? I know they’ll hunt me forever to keep me quiet, but do they know about my powers too? My strength? They wouldn’t kill me if they did—I’d become their lab rat. I can’t let that happen.
The girl continues to talk with her dad, discussing my future, how to keep me safe. But they don’t know how. They only think they do. I’ve always known this place was temporary at best. I of all people knew better than to think I could stay with Curatoriates.
But what now? It’s been almost two hundred years, and I’m no closer to fixing the problem than I was as Rebecca. Or Greta.
First things first, I have to leave. I’m pretty sure I haven’t left any trace. Any proof.
But that Samantha—the old man’s daughter—she was looking at me funny yesterday.
She’s too smart for her own good. I can’t risk her figuring anything out.
It’s time to run.
Again.
• • •
I jerk straight up in bed, my whole body damp with sweat, heart racing. I’m not sure why; this dream was way less terrifying than the ones I had in Phoenix. But so many names! I feel the clarity of the dream melting away already, so I create a notebook and pencil in my hands and begin scribbling everything I can remember.
Greta, new powers, transforming the necklace, the secret, a change.
When three pages are covered with what I saw, I finally take a breath and force my shoulders to unclench. After flinging the covers back, I get to my feet and start pacing—a nervous habit I’d been forced to give up when my leg was always sore. It feels strange to be glad I can do it again.
Thoughts swirl wildly through my head. Greta. Another name from another life. But she seems to be a key. Whatever happened in Greta’s life is what Sonya thinks led to being able to Transform.
Plus the secret.
My feet jerk to a stop. I was right. Transforming isn’t the secret. Not the one Rebecca had. There’s something else. Could Benson be right and I am immune? But how far back could the virus have possibly existed?
I remember the brief vision I had in Portsmouth of being a tiny, cold child who was shot by Marianna. They were talking about an antidote.
Is it possible? Is my immunity the great secret? That particular short life came right before Rebecca’s—time-wise, it could work that way.
But how would Rebecca have known?
And even if it’s true—if Benson’s right—wouldn’t Daniel be studying me instead of having me develop a new vaccine?
Assuming they could hold me, a voice says in my mind.
That’s right. How could they hold an incredibly powerful Transformist against her will?
Maybe in the grand scheme of things, this way is simpler. And I guess it stands to reason that altering an existing vaccine could be easier than creating a new one—even from someone who’s immune. Taking my blood, studying me, would be a risk. Just fixing a not-quite-perfect vaccine, more of a sure thing.
Plus they get to spy on me while I work for them.
There’s something else I’m missing, and a headache starts in my temples as I try to sort all of the information I have.
Daniel. He’s not a Reduciate. It was the Reduciata I was always running from.
If the true secret is that I’m immune, maybe Daniel doesn’t know.
And everything—everything—is leaning on this dream being a true memory, not just a stress dream. And I have absolutely no way to verify that. I growl and kick a cedar chest at the foot of my bed.
In the end, nothing has changed. Walls and bars don’t trap me the way they do Benson; I have a prison of my own conscience. Even now, having figured all of this out, I know I can’t leave.
If I do, the entire world dies.
I sink down onto my bed. The one that looks like my old home. But it’s all pretend. I’m homeless in this veritable world beneath the desert sands. Homeless and alone and possibly a prisoner.
In the stress of the moment last night, this is what I made. A copy of my old bedroom. Of my old life. It’s not that I’m trying to turn back time, exactly. Or even that I would go back and opt out if I could. It’s that I needed a chance to just be Tavia again. Is that so wrong?
My stomach rumbles, and I create a breakfast of my mom’s buckwheat pancakes, paired with my dad’s fresh-squeezed orange juice. Then I linger. No, I’m putting off the inevitable. Because I’m not sure I’ll ever be able to come back here once I leave. It’s nice to feel like I’m sixteen again. Just for a few minutes. To be a person who hasn’t been betrayed yet. Who didn’t lie to her lover. Who doesn’t have the fate of the world resting on her shoulders. Who isn’t protecting secrets even she doesn’t know. Tears fight their way up my throat, but I shove them away. I won’t cry. Not today.
I spent my tears last night. Today I am strong. I wil
l be strong.
I peek out the door, and when the hallway is clear I step out, transform my door into a plain wall, and then try to figure out exactly where I am. Luckily it doesn’t take too long, and I’m pleased to discover I can get from my room to the lab without having to cross the atrium.
Because the truth is, I don’t want to see anyone this morning.
When I reach the lab I suit up silently and sit in front of the microscope for about fifteen minutes before Daniel joins me.
“I’m sorry,” he says. “They didn’t tell me you’d arrived.”
“It’s my fault.” I can hear the misery in my voice. “I didn’t really check in.”
Daniel looks at me for a long time, and even through the mask over his face his eyes look . . . they look fatherly. I’m not sure I want him to look at me that way. “You don’t seem very well.”
I turn away and scoot my stool closer to the microscope. “I’m ready to work, that’s the most important part.”
But Daniel stops me with a hand on my shoulder. “Did you find out something distressing from Benson?”
“No,” I say, though my entire body stiffens when Daniel says Benson’s name. I hate that he’s twined up in all of this. “I didn’t find out anything, really.” Except that I don’t want to give him up.
“Are you upset over the things Audra told you?” Daniel asks.
“How do you know about that?” I ask, my tone blatantly accusing.
“I know most things that happen here, Tavia,” he says with no inflection. “I’m afraid you’ll have to become accustomed to that.”
My gaze drops from his, because I’m not sure if I should be angry at him. His house, his rules. Including intrusive spying. “I know,” I mumble, avoiding the argument.
“The deaths in the Pacific Islands?”
I shake my head. “I can’t even bring myself to think about what happened there for very long. It’s too much.”
Daniel looks like he’s trying to come up with something else, and I have a feeling if I don’t fess up he’ll start naming other things I should be upset about. I don’t think I can handle that right now. “I—I had a fight with Logan last night.” I try to meet his eyes the entire time, but my courage fails me and I say the last few words to his feet. It’s not completely a lie. But the drama with Logan doesn’t feel nearly as draining this morning as the fact that I had a dream that may or may not be full of answers. And I have to decide what’s true.