“Okay,” Davis said doubtfully. “But I’m here when you’re ready. And I’m not going to let anything bad happen to you. Cole was a secret because … I didn’t want to hurt you, or get you in trouble. I was worried I couldn’t trust him. But I should have trusted you. I know better now. No secrets.”
Vera smiled through her tears and nodded at Davis. “No secrets. D.M. plus V.S. equals BFF, right?” She extended her wrist to show Davis that she was wearing the little charm bracelet they’d both worn every single day as kids. Vera’s was a red rope with a heart charm and their secret motto etched in the heart. Davis’s own was blue, and it was home in her jewelry box, where it had lain for most of high school, after they’d grown out of that sort of sentimental thing. It touched her now that Vera had remembered, had cared enough to put it on.
“Remember how we used to scribble it everywhere?” she asked.
“Desks, walls … we got in trouble all the time,” Vera responded, laughing. It had seemed important at the time to write it on every surface, like the message was one everyone should see. They’d been so innocent then, Davis realized. They’d had no idea what was waiting in their futures. A nurse walked by the room and Davis was jolted from her reverie. She glanced at the clock, realizing nearly twenty minutes had passed. Her dad would be back soon to check on her now that it was morning. Vera followed her gaze.
“Security guards were easy to flirt past. Doctors … probably not so much,” she said. “I should go.” Davis nodded, and before she could stop her, Vera had crossed the room and wrapped her in a final hug. “Stay strong,” she told her. “And get yourself a new DirecTalk. We haven’t gone this long without talking in…”
“Ever,” Davis finished. “You stay strong, too, Ver. Chin up.” Vera flashed her a wan smile and was gone before Davis could say anything else.
Davis was alone.
Something about Vera’s memory, her bracelet—the initials, etched in that cheap metal charm—had bothered her. It was sitting in the back of her brain, refusing to be ignored. She fought to think why it was bothering her.
Then she realized, leaping to her feet. The initials.
The Imp orderly had signed initials at the bottom of her birth record: “L.E.” What if that person was still working at the hospital and knew what the error code meant? And if he or she did, maybe she’d also be able to tell Davis why Narxis wasn’t affecting her. Even better, Davis thought, heart pounding as she moved toward the door, maybe the orderly knew enough about it to help her find a cure. But she had to move fast. Her father would be back soon. She stopped herself just before reaching the door; there was no way she’d get past the guards, who had just seen Vera out. Instead she backed away, heading for the window. She had to do it. She didn’t care if her father showed up while she was gone. She didn’t have a choice.
Davis exited through the window again and scaled the wall down to the balcony below. On the balcony was a door she hadn’t noticed before, and she pushed through it, praying it wouldn’t trigger an alarm. Instead, it opened soundlessly to reveal another small staircase leading downward to a second door and a hallway.
Davis slipped through the door and down the hallway, keeping her head low; her palms were sweating and every nerve in her body was on high alert. She did a lap around this floor—the fifteenth—before finding an unattended computer in a tiny office labeled 1531. She entered the username and passcode she’d memorized from before, and sure enough, the screen lit up. It didn’t take long to access the employee directory.
Davis scrolled through hundreds of names, growing more desperate by the minute. She sorted them by “last initial E.” That narrowed it down a little—but there was no one listed with a last name beginning with E whose first name started with an L. Then she realized these listings were of current employees only. Maybe the person who’d checked her in no longer worked there. She clicked on another tab, sorting staff records by year. From there she could access records from previous employees.
She quickly scrolled to the year of her birth. With every second that passed, she felt the window of opportunity closing. Finally, her hands shaking so much she could barely manipulate the system, she found it: the staff profile of a woman named Leslie Eide, who had quit working the very week Davis was born. It could not have been a coincidence. It was her. The directory listed an address in the Slants.
This was it, she realized. This was her only lead, the most promising lead. But what if the address was no longer current? Davis realized it was a long shot, but it was enough to give her hope. It was her one chance to figure out why she hadn’t succumbed to the disease like everyone else. With trembling fingers, she exited the system and moved from the room without looking back.
“Hey,” she heard someone call out behind her. “Hey. Stop!” But she didn’t pause to look back. Instead she ducked her head and ran for the guest elevators. She wasn’t going back to her room. Not when they’d probably lock her up there for good. She was going to the Slants.
* * *
The journey to the Slants wasn’t as difficult, now that she’d been there a few times before. She knew the best dark corners to duck into, and, with her long auburn hair loose and tangled around her face, she felt relatively anonymous. Her clothes were ripped and her skin scratched from where she’d slid in and out of the hospital window, and she was almost certain her face was flushed from exertion. But these things, she reasoned, would work in her favor once she got to the Slants. She crossed the river by motie easily, no longer afraid of the leering old men who had once terrified her so. It was only once she stepped off the vessel to the other side of the water and eyed the ramshackle communities stretching out ahead of her for a mile that she realized how hard it would be to track down Leslie Eide’s house on her own.
She’d have to ask for help. She thought about trying Worsley’s lab, but she didn’t want to waste any time, and there were rows of houses right there in front of her, presumably containing dozens of people who could help. If she made her way to Worsley’s—and it turned out to be out of the way—she’d be wasting time and risking getting caught. Plus, she ran the risk of Worsley trying to convince her to stay for testing. She didn’t want him to sniff after her plan. She needed to do this on her own.
Davis ran her hand through her hair, tousling it so it would be even gnarlier looking than it already was. Then she approached the first fully lit house she saw: a tiny cinder-block structure that looked like it couldn’t contain more than two small rooms. She knocked lightly on the door, and an old man in a dirty wifebeater answered. Davis just barely stopped herself from uttering a sigh of relief—an old man like this might not keep up with the news. Maybe he wouldn’t recognize her.
“Eide,” he said thoughtfully, tugging at his few remaining strands of white hair, which hung lank above his left ear. “Sounds f’miliar. Rae,” he shouted over his shoulder. “Rae-Rae? You know an Eide family? Someone by the name of Leslie?”
“Sure do.” The mature, feminine voice preceded a heavyset woman wearing jeans and a long-sleeved T-shirt. She approached the door and clapped her hands twice as if to rid them of flour or dust. “Who’s asking?” She leaned in, squinting at Davis. “You look familiar,” she said finally. “Do I know you?”
“No,” Davis said. “Well…” She scrambled to think. “I’m Tom Worsley’s cousin. We’ve seen each other around, I’m sure.”
“Yes! Of course.” The woman’s eyes lit up, though they betrayed a lingering hint of confusion. “Tommy’s cousin. Okay then. Why didn’t you just ask Tommy? Well, never mind. The Eides have been over by the band shell for years. I want to say house number ten or twelve. It’s, you know, one of those trailer ones, but it’s green colored, from what I recall. She’s been there for years, and her mother before her.”
“By the band shell?” Davis was relieved to know where that was.
“Yep. Second row in. There are only four rows, five or six houses per row. It’s a small cluster.”
“Thank you,” Davis said. “Thanks a lot.”
“Anything for a cousin of Tommy’s,” the woman said. Her tone was leading, though, like she wanted to ask more. So Davis waved and ran off, hoping desperately she’d be long gone from the Slants before the lady put together where she’d really seen Davis before—on the news channel.
Leslie Eide’s house, assuming it was still the only green one in the cluster, was boarded up. A look at the mailbox near the front door—clearly labeled EIDE—confirmed that she’d found the right place. But it wasn’t good news—it looked like no one had lived there in years. Weeds were growing up over the porch steps, and a tarp hung over one window. Davis peered behind the tarp to see a cracked windowpane and darkness behind it. Her heart sank. The place was abandoned. Decrepit. Davis fought hard not to burst into tears right there. The loss of her only lead was crushing, and she couldn’t think where to go from there.
She didn’t know how much longer she’d be alive. Or whether she’d ever see Cole again. Davis turned to leave, tears blurring her vision, when something fluttering from around the side of the house, near a small paved alley, caught her eye. She moved closer, and as she rounded the side of the house, she saw a clothesline draped between a window at the Eides’ and a window at the neighboring house. There was a row of freshly laundered shirts hung carefully with clothespins on the cord.
Her heart lifted. There was a fifty-fifty shot that someone lived there after all, had just done their laundry. It might have been the neighbors, but one glance at their house showed darkened, dead rooms. The laundry could very well be Leslie Eide’s. Someone might live there after all, and there was only one way to find out.
Davis ran back around to the front of the house, and with two swift kicks to the flimsy metal door, she forced her way in … only to face down the barrel of a gun pointed directly at her head.
20
DAVIS
“What do you want?” The woman holding the gun looked about thirty. But the creases on her forehead and near her eyes indicated a difficult life. Those eyes were narrowed now, and the hand holding the gun was steady. Davis’s thoughts raced. If she said the wrong thing—any tiny misstep—this woman would shoot her. She knew it as certainly as she knew her own name. Davis lifted her hands slowly, palms out, to show the woman she meant no harm—couldn’t inflict any even if she wanted to.
“I’m not here to cause trouble,” she started.
The woman took a step closer, jabbing the air a few inches from Davis’s chest with the gun. Davis took a breath but didn’t step backward in response. She had to let this woman know she was strong. Still, her whole body felt on the verge of collapse. She was weak, tired. But she had to stay strong—she had no choice. “My name is Davis Morrow,” she said. “My father is Robert Morrow. My mother was Elisabeth Morrow. I’m looking for someone named Leslie Eide, who may have worked at the hospital about sixteen years ago. I just need to ask a couple of questions.”
The woman snorted, lowering the gun only slightly. “Well, sixteen years ago might’ve been a good time to come around,” she said, her tone cold. “My mother’s been dead since they decided Elisabeth Morrow’s—your mother’s—life was more important than my mother’s. I’m Racquelle Eide. Leslie’s daughter.”
“There must be some mistake.” Davis felt confused, foggy. Her thoughts were all mixed together—and with the gun still in her face, she didn’t know how to react. This wasn’t how this was supposed to go at all. “My mother died in childbirth,” she told the gun. “Please? Can you put that down? I’m not going to do anything to hurt you.”
Racquelle stared at her for a long minute before lowering the weapon. Then she gestured to Davis with her chin, and moved toward a tiny wooden table in the corner of the room. A small television—a luxury in the Slants—played on mute behind them.
“Well, come on,” she said. “What are you waiting for?” She pulled out a rickety chair, its woven seating broken and frayed, and gestured for Davis to do the same. “Your father gave my mother a thousand dollars and the promise of her own safety to get Elisabeth safely out of the hospital. All my mother got was a death sentence. She was charged with aiding and abetting.”
Davis felt her face flush. “But surely … I’m sure my dad tried his best…” She trailed off, knowing how inadequate it sounded.
Racquelle stared at her, her face hard.
It hit Davis all at once: Racquelle had spent her whole life blaming Davis for her mother’s death. Her resentment was sixteen years old. “That can’t be right,” Davis insisted. “My father wouldn’t lie to me. What could he have been trying to hide? My father is a good person.”
Racquelle scoffed at that. “Good to the people he cares about,” she told her. Davis recoiled as if stung. “Who knows what he was trying to hide.” Racquelle went on. “I never got the details. But none of it matters. It won’t bring my mother back. And I’m not like my mother. I’m not going to meddle in Prior affairs and wind up dead for it.”
Davis opened her mouth to respond, but nothing came out. Her shock was too overwhelming. Her mother hadn’t died at the hospital? She’d escaped, alive? And her father had let an innocent woman die?
She slumped weakly against her seat, staring up at Racquelle, whose face softened.
“We’re just the fallout of this mess,” Racquelle said then. “I can tell you didn’t know about any of it. It’s not your fault even if you did. It’s not mine, either. That’s why we need to stay out of it, stop asking questions. It only leads to trouble. You seem like an okay kid,” she started just as an alert appeared on the television behind them. Davis saw Cole’s name flash across the screen in red.
“Turn it up,” she told Racquelle. When the woman didn’t respond right away, Davis reached across the table herself and switched on the volume.
“… was found dead near the Slants. His was positively identified as of eight A.M. this morning, and his remains have been deposited in the morgue, scheduled for cremation tonight. A citywide search is out for Davis Morrow, who disappeared from her hospital room this morning. REPEAT: BREAKING ALERT. Cole Everett, the Imp accused of fraternizing with—and kidnapping—the daughter of CPM candidate Robert Morrow, has been found…”
“No,” Davis whispered. “It can’t be true.”
Recognition registered on Racquelle’s face, and a flicker of fear, too. “You need to go,” Racquelle ordered, rising to her feet. “Right now. Before they come looking for you. I put all this behind me years ago, and now you show up … I’m not going to let you ruin my life for the second time.”
Davis stood, staring, until Racquelle moved toward her, giving her a hard shove. “Get out,” Racquelle said, louder now. “Go!”
Somehow, she found a way to move her feet. She ran blindly out the door and around the side of the house, far away from the center of the town. She took off toward a field, barely able to see the ground in front of her, not caring what she looked like, half wanting to die.
It had to be a lie, all of it: Cole, her father, her mother. Cole. Cole, dead, his body in a morgue. She’d truly believed that with him, nothing else mattered. They’d felt invincible, even when everything was falling apart. She hadn’t realized exactly the extent of her hopes and feelings for him, the way her entire world rested on his existence, on them being together. Now she had nothing. This was what happened. It was her fault for breaking all the rules. She’d loved someone she shouldn’t have. Their love had caused so much pain. If he’d never met her, he’d still be alive.
Her tears obscured her vision, but she kept her feet moving. She had to get away, far away; she didn’t know where. Trees and grass blurred together into one sweep of brown in her periphery, but blinking through it, she could just make out several hulking figures leaping out of their vehicles and running toward her. They were close, so close. She tried to move faster, but her lungs were about to explode, and she didn’t know where she was running to.
When they caught her—jerking her ar
ms painfully behind her back—it was a kind of relief. Now she could die, too. Without him, she had no reason to run.
They dragged her toward their waiting vehicles. One truck rose out from the rest, bigger and more intimidating. They moved her toward it, but all she could see was Cole in her mind. Cole, kissing her tenderly. Promising he’d see her again. Cradling her to him in the cold of the rooftop. They’d known it might be their last night. But she hadn’t known. Not really. There’d always been hope, until now.
“Wait!”
She turned at the sound of a girl’s voice, but the officers didn’t even pause. She blinked tears from her eyes, struggling to make out the girl’s familiar features. She was running toward them, still maybe a city block’s length away. She had waist-length, coal-black hair and dark skin. Her long hair streamed behind her as she ran. Davis fought to place her. She was the Gen girl, the one from the FEUDS who’d been there to see Cole. She’d seemed upset, Davis recalled now. It was definitely her, shouting Davis’s name and waving something in the air—some small scrap, paper, maybe?—as she ran. Davis looked back at her, struggling to dig in her heels to slow the burly men pulling her along, but they shoved her all the more forcefully toward the waiting vehicle. They pushed her up against the side of it. The girl was running hard, she was so close. Davis looked up just in time to see the metallic lettering across the side of the van: QUARANTINE. Then they shoved her headfirst into the vehicle, slamming the door after her.
Davis just managed to struggle to her feet to look out the window and see the girl stop, still a good distance away and half bent over, her palms resting on her thighs as she admitted defeat. Then the van started to move, and the girl and the landscape receded until Davis could no longer see anyone at all.
What had the girl wanted to tell her?
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