by Jo Schneider
“Do you understand me?”
Lys nodded, latching onto the memories like a rescue rope thrown from a raft.
Footsteps sounded behind her and another voice spoke. “Here.”
“I’m sorry, Lys. I didn’t think the dose they gave you at the hospital would wear off so fast.” Mr. Mason tugged Lys into a sitting position. Tremors wracked her body, and Lys kept her hands clasped together. She didn’t dare open her eye.
Ayden placed a cup to her lips. “Drink this. It’ll help.”
The Need still demanded to be fed, but the image of her mother’s face coupled with the good memories kept her from acting. Lys tried to drink. Most of the liquid sloshed down the front of her shirt, the cold biting into her hot skin, but she gulped enough in for a few swallows. The liquid had the same flat, sugary taste as old Sprite—nasty—but within seconds the Need retreated. It didn’t leave, so much as something hit the mute button. Lys could still feel it, but she didn’t have to listen anymore. She took a deep, shuttering breath and let it out, her limbs still trembling. After another, she opened her eye and stared at her hands.
“Better?” Mr. Mason asked. He knelt on the ground next to her.
“Better,” Lys whispered.
“I apologize,” Mr. Mason said. “Usually the inhibitor lasts a bit longer.”
“I could have hurt someone.” She didn’t look up. “I wanted to hurt you.”
“You may not believe me, but it happens all the time.” Ayden said it, and his words held a smile. “We can handle it. Like Mark said, we’ve had much meaner characters than you come through here.” Mr. Mason cleared his throat before silence filled the air. It reminded Lys of times when her parents gave her the “we’ll talk about this later” look.
“Do you think you can stand?” Mr. Mason asked.
Lys didn’t want to stand. She wanted to stay curled up there, in the driveway, safe from the demands of the Need. But she didn’t think that they would let her, so she nodded. “I think so.” Lys allowed Ayden to pull her to her feet—the world tilted and her legs shook. Mr. Mason stepped back and gestured toward the open door again. Lys kept her eye on the stones.
“Come inside and meet the others, then we’ll get you settled in.”
Chapter 3
It was a good thing Ayden went slow because Lys’s legs wouldn’t stop shaking, and she could have sworn that the ground kept pitching back and forth beneath her feet. He led her—half dragging her really—around the vehicle and to the entrance.
With the Need almost breaking free, everything felt more sinister than it had a few minutes before. Lys glanced up at the doors, and instead of standing open and inviting, they now seemed to be a gaping hole, ready to swallow her whole. The sun hit the exterior of the building, shooting rays of hot, white light into her eye. She looked back down at her feet and regarded the cobblestone walkway that led to the doors. The cracks between stones lay like reaching traps that wanted to snatch her as she passed. Part of her conscious knew that she was being irrational, but the other part, the one that had pretty much taken over since all of this started, knew that the ground wanted to suck her down into hell.
Ayden led Lys though the doors. He kept talking, but she couldn’t understand what he was saying. The Need still churned inside, angry at having been denied. Cool, treated air flew in her face, replacing the warm air from outside. She felt like she’d just walked into death. She shivered, chills running through her body.
“Easy,” Ayden said, getting a better grip around her arm. “You’re okay.”
Why did everyone keep saying that? She was not okay.
“Brady is in the waiting room,” Mr. Mason said. “We’ll take Lys there.”
As long as there was a chair. All Lys wanted to do was sit down; she didn’t care much about anything else.
Lucky for her, they didn’t have to go far. Inside the entrance sat a long, deserted desk. They turned left and walked down the hall and through the second open door.
A young man sat in a poufy tan couch, lounging with one foot up on the cushions. Comfortable-looking chairs and another couch surrounded a table that sat in the middle of the room.
“Howdo,” the young man said, jerking his head back in greeting. He had a British accent.
“Hi,” she said, wondering if this kid suffered from the Need, too.
“Lys,” Mr. Mason said, following her and Ayden into the room. “This is Brady Moore. Brady, this is Lysandra Blake.”
“Nice to meet you, Lysandra Blake,” he said, smiling.
“Just Lys. Like bliss,” she said automatically. He seemed normal enough.
In an attempt to keep from staring at his face, Lys settled on his hands. What looked like a wooden ball lay at the end of each of his arms. She eyed her own wrists and wondered why Mr. Mason had made her give up her restraints—it didn’t seem fair.
“Please, sit down,” Mr. Mason said.
Lys did so, taking it slow. From the outside it may have looked graceful, from the inside she felt like her knees had given out and that she’d narrowly avoided sprawling all over the floor.
Brady watched her with interest. He shook his head back and forth, trying to rid his eyes of his scraggly, dark hair.
Eyes! Lys jerked her gaze down to his chest. Was she stupid? What was she doing looking anywhere near his eyes? And why was he staring at her face?
Then she remembered that she had a bandage over one eye. Duh.
“Since the two of you have arrived so close together, I thought I would only do the orientation once.” Mr. Mason sat down in a chair across from Lys, completing the triangle around the table.
“I’m just glad I get to hang out with a cute girl,” Brady said with a contagious smile. His arms and legs looked longer than the rest of him, and Lys thought he had to be a couple of years younger than her.
“The two of you will join another young man that just arrived,” Mr. Mason said. “It is unusual for us to have so many new guests here at once.”
Three of them? Three people with the Need? Lys wondered if Brady’s hands were bound because he had succeeded where Lys had failed.
“Both of you know about Pop. You’ve both been exposed to it, and without treatment it will eventually start shutting down vital systems of your body.” Lys could feel Mr. Mason looking at her, but she kept her eye on his shirt. “After we get you settled in, we’ll have dinner. You will begin your treatments tonight.”
“How long will this take?” Brady asked.
“It depends.” Mr. Mason shrugged. “For some it takes a few days. For others it may be closer to two weeks.”
“But then we go to your rehab facility?” Lys asked, remembering what he told her before.
“That is correct.”
“Why have us here?” Brady asked. “Why not just send us straight to this facility?”
“Pop is extremely slippery. Trace amounts of it will come out in your sweat, breath, and waste for at least a week after treatment starts. For anyone who wasn’t affected by it in the first place, this is not a concern. However, even those small amounts can—and will—set those trying to recover back days, if not months.”
“Months?” Lys asked.
“For some.” Mr. Mason nodded. “Everyone is different.”
Lys could feel him looking at her again. She studied the candle that sat in the middle of the table. Orange scent, she thought.
“So, what now?” Lys asked.
“The drug to which you are all addicted is one hundred percent deadly. Without help, you will die in withdrawal.” Mr. Mason glanced around. “Each of you has had different side effects from the drug. The staff is here to help. Only you know what the drug has done to you. There is no way to know what it has done to anyone else—how it affects them. The staff is aware of these things, and they are prepared to intervene in any situation that comes up.”
So the effects were different for everyone. Her eye moved to Brady and she wondered again what he’d done. How dif
ferent did it get?
Mr. Mason kept talking. “Please, if you see any of the counselors restraining another guest, keep your distance. One guest may feel the urge to sing at the top of his lungs, while another feels the need to braid your intestines together and another will attack anyone who wears a blue shirt.”
Why couldn’t she have been infected with the urge to sing at the top of her lungs? Not that Lys was a good singer—really, not good at all—but it sounded so much better than the urge to take eyes, or . . . what had he said about intestines?
“We have a few rules to go over before we take you up to your rooms. The first is our you-tell policy.” He turned to meet Lys’s eye. She looked away. “Everyone here, including the staff, has been affected by this drug. The staff knows enough to keep the rest of you safe, but none of the other guests have any idea what the drug did to you. It is considered impolite to ask someone about this. However, there is no way to patrol this, so you are at your own discretion on the matter. If you feel you want to tell someone, that choice is entirely up to you, but you must know that no one is compelled to answer. Keep your own matters as private as you like.”
Lys felt some of her anxiety unwind. She didn’t like to think about what happened with her mom, but if she had to tell some support group about it, Lys thought she might die. Not to mention what people would think of her. Then again, looking at Brady’s hands, maybe everyone here had problems at least as twisted as hers.
“While you are here, you will not leave your room unescorted,” Mr. Mason went on. “If a counselor asks you to do something, you will do it immediately and you will do it without question. You are required to come down to meal times in the private dining room. If you need anything, simply press the call button next to your door and a counselor will assist you.”
He glanced down at his watch. “I’ve got a meeting in a few minutes, so I’ll have you escorted to your rooms.” He pulled a pager off his belt and pressed a button. “Dinner will be at five o’clock. One of the counselors will bring you down.”
A moment later Ayden reappeared accompanied by a woman with short, blond hair. One of them smelled of damp earth.
Mr. Mason stood. Lys and Brady followed suit. “Lys, this is Genni. She will be your counselor during your stay.”
Lys smiled, not looking at the other woman’s face.
“Brady, this is Ayden. Ayden and Mark, whom you’ve met, will be taking care of you and Kamau.”
“Kamau?” Brady asked.
“He is the young man who joined us a few days ago.” Mr. Mason gestured for Lys to follow Genni. “Why don’t the two of you go up to your rooms and get some rest?”
A moment before she’d felt fine, but suddenly Lys could hardly keep her eye open. Gravity seemed to have doubled, and her feet felt like lead weights.
“Come on,” Genni said, stepping forward and gently taking her by the arm. “Let’s get you upstairs.”
Lys allowed herself to be steered toward the door. Each step got harder than the last, and she felt like she could curl up on the floor and go to sleep for a week. Genni tightened her grip on Lys’s arm, and a little bit of the grogginess went away. “You can rest once we’re upstairs,” she promised.
Upstairs? Lys hoped they had an elevator. Her brain started to go fuzzy.
Genni pulled her through the door and into the hall. “So, you’re from the L.A. area?” Genni asked.
Lys nodded. Her brain rallied, grasping for a reasonable response. The best she could come up with was, “Yeah.”
“Have you ever seen the—”
An ear-piercing scream shot down the hall like an arrow, grinding in Lys’s ears. Genni’s head swiveled around and stopped as she said, “Uh-oh.”
Chapter 4
Lys tensed, turning to see what held Genni’s attention. A young man stood in the middle of the hallway, his red hair and freckles a bright contrast to the taupe and white.
“Kenny!” Mr. Mason said, darting around Lys and Genni, heading straight for the young man.
A power Lys couldn’t control seized hold of her gaze and forced it to look up at Kenny’s face. A gasp caught in her throat when she saw his eyes. Swirling, smoky black covered his irises, like those contacts you could get for Halloween, only somehow alive.
The Need battered at the barrier that held it back, frenzied like a wild animal. Lys’s fingers twitched and without meaning to, she took a step forward.
Mr. Mason stopped a dozen feet shy of the young man. “Kenny, what are you doing?”
Kenny reached a trembling hand toward Mr. Mason. “Don’t you see?”
“You know I can’t see what you see,” Mr. Mason said in a calm voice. “Why don’t you stop this and tell me what you see? You know I’ll listen to you.”
So Kenny could see, too? Lys wondered what he saw, and the Need began its assault anew. Lys wiggled her arm, trying to get it out of Genni’s grip.
Brady’s voice came from behind her. “Bloody hell, how did that get in here?”
Lys blinked, distracted by the thought that Brady could see something she couldn’t. She glanced past her shoulder and saw Brady crawling over the back of the couch. The wide-eyed, silent scream on his face made Lys wonder what he could see. Across the room, Ayden snatched something out of a drawer.
Next to her, Genni kept shaking her head and blinking her eyes. “It’s not real,” she muttered to herself.
Everyone could see something she couldn’t. The Need wavered—not sure where to concentrate its focus—until Kenny spoke.
“You don’t understand what you’re doing! You don’t realize what will happen!” Kenny’s voice went up an octave. He looked so desperate, so pleading.
Lys felt Genni’s hand on her arm tighten again. “It’s not real, Lys,” she said. “Don’t be afraid.”
Afraid of what?
“Kenny!” Mr. Mason said. “Remember what you know. You can fight this.” He took a tentative step forward. “Stop using it.”
Kenny started to twitch before he doubled over on himself. Mr. Mason rushed forward, trying to catch Kenny, but the young man screamed again—a sound brought straight up from hell—and pushed Mr. Mason away.
“You don’t understand!” Kenny said, spittle flying from his mouth. “Everything will be destroyed!” He turned away from Mr. Mason, who was picking himself up off the floor, and looked straight at Lys.
“You can see it,” he said, pointing at her. “You’ll see it all.”
See it all? Just what the Need wanted. Kenny’s words felt like an invitation, and Lys pulled hard against Genni’s hold.
Before she could get away, Mark appeared next to Kenny. A brief flash came from his hands, and Kenny jerked back, his whole body wracking with a spasm. Ayden ran in from behind Lys and plunged a needle into Kenny’s neck.
Lys stared, her mouth hanging open. Needles? Shocks? Those eyes? What was this place?
“Is he out?” Genni asked, keeping her grasp on Lys’s arm.
Ayden lowered Kenny to the floor and pulled one of his eyelids open. “He’s out.”
“Sorry about that,” Mark said, addressing his words to Mr. Mason. “That was the strongest attack I’ve seen in a while.”
Mr. Mason looked more concerned than annoyed. “I’m surprised he reverted so far.”
Ayden looked up at Genni and Lys. “You okay?”
Genni nodded and squeezed Lys’s arm. “It’s okay; there is nothing here that is going to hurt you.”
Hurt her? Lys felt like she’d missed something. She was the one who wanted to hurt people.
Brady stumbled out of the waiting room, sweating and pale. “Where did the dragon go?” he asked.
“Dragon?” Lys asked, checking behind her.
“You didn’t see the dragon?” Brady asked.
“Uh, no.” Lys said.
Mr. Mason left Mark with Kenny and stood. “You saw nothing out of the ordinary?” he asked Lys.
“Just his eyes,” Lys said, trying not to thin
k about how much the Need wanted them. “They were black. Sort of.”
Mr. Mason studied her for a moment. “You’re lucky. The inhibitor we just gave you saved you from the effects.”
“What just happened?” Brady asked. “I saw a dragon, and it was about to have me for lunch.”
Mr. Mason held up his hands. “Pop is very potent. Remember what I said about trace amounts of the drug coming from you? Kenny came in and got a whiff of what the two of you have left in your systems. He escalated off that, and you escalated off him.”
“But it was so real,” Brady said, glancing around.
“A hallucination. Nothing more,” Mr. Mason said.
“Hallucinations don’t smell like fire.”
Mr. Mason’s lips spread into a grin. “That depends on how powerful the hallucination is.”
Up in her room, and after a brief nap, Lys still didn’t know if she believed Mr. Mason’s explanation. Brady swore he saw a dragon, and Genni had seen something as well, but all Lys saw were Kenny’s black, swirling eyes.
She pushed herself off the bed and walked over to the window. Pulling the thick, green curtains to one side, Lys saw the sun on its way to meet the hills beyond the trees. Lys could still make out a group of three people walking on a path below. The scene reminded her of a postcard, but with the beauty came the seclusion. And with the seclusion came feelings of despair and fear. Lys tried to suppress them, but with nothing else to think about, and the drugs from the psych ward wearing off, her emotions ran wild. Thoughts of her parents pained her, wondering about school and her friends depressed her, and trying to figure out if her life would ever be normal again was agonizingly futile.
The curtains fell back as Lys turned around. The simple room consisted of a bed, a dresser with a mirror, a rocking chair, and a window. Lys glanced at the door. Genni, the counselor, had bolted it shut on her way out.
“If you have any problems, just press the button. One of the counselors will be close by.” Lys shook her head. The creepy feeling from when she’d first arrived had not abated. It was probably all those ghost hunting shows she’d watched on television; gloom wafted through the halls like fog. Most of it was probably hers.