by Sara Beaman
Adam doesn’t reply.
“Are you upset about what happened?” I ask.
“With Desmond?” He shakes his head. “A little. I’m just glad you’re alive. Like I said, we weren’t friends.”
“No. With Julian.”
A little furrow appears between Adam’s eyebrows.
“Yes,” he says.
I get the feeling this is a massive understatement.
“Adam…”
“I’d rather not talk about it if that’s all right with you,” he says.
***
I watch the scuffed concrete steps for a while as I climb, feeling the painted metal railing underneath my hand as it slips through my light grip. We’re nearing Mirabel’s office at the top of the building.
I’ve only been to her office once before. At the end of my SpiraCom employee ‘remedial training’, I was brought up to see Mirabel. I left the meeting having been made to believe that we had talked about the weather for twenty-five minutes. And then, on my way down the elevator through the atrium, I caught sight of one of her doubles walking in from the street. And that was when I really and truly understood that something was wrong here at SpiraCom, something greater than their deeply shady corporate policies, something deeper than my fugue states.
“Have any more of your memories returned?” Adam asks.
“Yeah. I remember everything now,” I say. “I have ever since I came back. Since Mnemosyne killed me.”
“She must have decided to restore your memory.”
“You think?”
“I’m not sure why else you’d have gotten your memories back,” he says. “That doesn’t normally happen.”
“I don’t care,” I tell him. “I still hate her.”
“Look, Kate, you know how I feel about her,” he says, “but why do you hate her?”
“She killed me!”
“Well, yeah, but—“
“Isn’t that enough?”
“Are you really any worse off than you were before?”
I look down, thinking. “I mean…”
When I really think about it, before I died, I’d been worse than dead for a while. Even before the Program abducted me and started turning into Mirabel’s clone, even when I was just a grunt working for SpiraCom, I was a complete wreck. I haven’t had anything resembling a life since moving to Atlanta to work for Mirabel. I haven’t had friends, or pets, or a boyfriend, or time to do anything but eat, sleep and work.
If I’m being honest with myself, I have more autonomy now, working for Mnemosyne, then I did even after Adam got me out of the Program. Now I don’t need his blood. I can talk, and I can go wherever I want, as long as I stay out of the sun. Mnemosyne hasn’t given me a direct order since Red Hook. And yet I still hate her.
“I hate being a vampire,” I say, like that’s the reason, but it’s not. “I don’t like the blood thing. I mean—I do like it, but I hate that I like it.”
“Fair,” Adam says. “I felt that way in the beginning, too. I still do, even now, depending on the situation.”
But that isn’t the real reason I hate Mnemosyne, and I know it. The real reason I hate her is that she took Adam away from me.
“Outside the oneiroxis, I’m comatose on a hospital bed somewhere. Half my face is still missing,” Adam says. “It’s probably better that you don’t have to worry about me right now.”
“So where are you?” I ask.
“I don’t know.”
“Your face is still gone?”
He nods. “They tell me the reconstruction will take about a week.”
“Are they going to make you look like this in real life?”
“Like Lucien?” He shrugs. “Right now the plan is that I’ll only see Mirabel in dreams, so… God, I hope they’ll give me back my real face.”
“I hope so too,” I say, a little sheepish. Adam may have just finished declaring his love for me, but still, I worry about how easy it is for me to get stupid about him.
“Stupid?” he asks.
I wince.
“What would be smart, in this context?” he asks.
“I don’t know…”
“Look, Kate, I realize I’m not exactly qualified to give anyone life advice, but there’s more to life than being smart.”
“Yeah,” I say, “but those things aren’t smart.”
“Really?” He lifts an eyebrow. “Where did being smart get me?”
“I don’t know.”
“It got me a job I excelled at but dreaded every moment of,” he says. “A voice in my head insisting I was a fraud. Anxiety so severe I had to drink excessively just to function like a normal human being. And you saw how that turned out.”
“Yeah, but—“
“Where did being smart get you?” he asks.
“I don’t know, Adam,” I say, exasperated.
“It got you here,” he says. “Literally.”
There are no more stairs to climb. We’ve reached the final landing. Adam pulls the door open for me, staring at me as I pass with an unreadable expression.
“Don’t be mad at me,” I say.
“I’m not,” he says. He sighs and stops walking. “Kate, I have led an extremely complicated life since I died, and it was entirely due to trying to be smart. Smarter than everyone else. I had to know better, I had to be more…correct. I have made choices that I loathe, exclusively because I thought I was smart. Don’t…do not fall into that trap.”
I’m not sure what to say in response to this, so I just nod.
Beyond is a short corridor, at the end of which is a door made entirely of frosted glass. I walk up to it and turn the knob. It’s locked.
“Is it?” Adam asks.
I focus, closing my eyes. No. It’s just stuck. I just need to pull harder.
The knob turns. I open the door.
Mirabel’s office is massive, mostly empty, with a mahogany desk of monolithic proportion sitting at its center. In front of the desk is a low table of steel and glass surrounded by leather couches and topped with a black vase full of sunflowers. The back wall is all glass, floor-to-ceiling windows. The sun shines through. It feels weird to be able to stare out at the blue sky.
“Is it like this in real life?” I ask. “With the windows? I can’t remember.”
“I’ve never been here in real life,” Adam says. “But Julian showed me a reconstruction of the place once, an illusion he made based on his memories. He told me she replaced those windows with HD screens just in case she finds herself up here during the day with human associates.”
“How is all this detail coming from my mind? I don’t remember this place well at all.”
“It’s not just coming from you,” Adam says. “The oneiroxis is like the collective subconscious.”
“So we’re getting details from other people’s memories as well?”
“Exactly,” Adam says.
“Mirabel’s memories?”
“Among others.”
“So… can two revenants share a Haunt?” I ask.
“Yes.”
“This place could be Mirabel’s Haunt, too?”
“It could be, but it isn’t,” Adam says. “If it was, she’d show up here now and then. I’d know where to find her.”
“You don’t?”
“No. None of us do. Richard says he hasn’t seen the real Mirabel since a few weeks before I shot you. She’s gone into hiding, even in the oneiroxis. And since the location of her Haunt is a secret…” He shakes his head.
“Sounds like Richard told Mirabel something was about to go down,” I say, narrowing my eyes.
“Believe me, that thought has occurred to me,” Adam says. “But I don’t know. It wouldn’t be like him.”
“But he’s a jackass.”
“He’s also a kiss-ass,” Adam says. “He adores Mnemosyne.”
“All right, then, maybe Mirabel forced him to talk.”
“Maybe.” He sounds dubious. “Come on. Let’s set the ward
s. There are only two doors. It won’t be so bad.”
He takes out a folding knife from his back pocket and hands it to me.
“What’s this for?” I ask.
“The easiest way to set a ward in the Oneiroxis is to saturate a boundary with your blood,” he says. “In this case, the threshold of the door.”
I blink. “So, like… how?”
“Cut your palm,” he says. “Then wipe your hand across the ground.”
I walk towards the door to the waiting room and the elevator, feeling anxious about the idea.
“Your flesh will want to heal itself,” Adam says. “You’ll need to concentrate to keep the wound open.”
“Right.”
I kneel down in front of the door. Taking a deep breath, I flip the knife open and lock it in position. I put the blade against my palm just to see what it feels like, then press down until it starts to really hurt.
“I don’t want to do this,” I say.
Adam puts a hand on my shoulder. “Do you want me to do it for you?”
“Cut me? No thanks.”
“No, I meant do it with my blood. It won’t be as effective, but—“
I shake my head. “I can do it.”
“In my experience, it’s easier if it’s fast,” he says. “Try not to think about it so much.”
“All right,” I say.
I push down as hard as I can and slice the knife across my hand, wincing, tears coming to my eyes. I manage just a shallow cut. I have to concentrate with all my effort to keep it open. Blood flows. I drag my hand across the dense grey carpet, leaving an irregular dark streak behind. I close my hand into a loose fist, stand, and walk over to the other door.
“It’ll be over in just a second,” Adam says, his voice strained.
“You feel this too, don’t you?” I ask as blood collects beneath my fingers.
“Yes.”
I kneel in front of the door to the stairs, wipe my hand across the threshold, and let the wound close up with a sigh of relief.
“That explains a lot,” I say. “So, earlier—you felt all that too?”
No response.
“Adam?” I turn around.
He’s gone.
Superstition
{Adam}
The pain returns. I hear voices talking in urgent, agitated tones. I groan and struggle to open my eyes. My eye. There is still just the one. Bright light hits my retina.
“Dr. Radcliffe?” says a woman by my side.
I can’t reply, can’t make my mouth move. Through her eyes I get glimpses of my own ruined body, grey as death.
“Mr. Stone!” she yells.
Richard's surname.
I hear shuffling. In my blurred vision shapes move and twist. Someone puts a hand on my shoulder.
“Jesus, Adam,” Richard says. “You could at least try to put your shields up.”
You want me to shield my mind? To spare you the pain I’m feeling?
“Not to sound selfish or anything.”
But I can’t talk in this state.
“You don’t need to talk. Here—I’ll knock you out.”
No. Don’t. What’s happening?
“We, uh… we’re moving.”
Where? Why?
“We need to move you to a more secure location.”
Where? I insist.
He drops his defenses against my telepathy just long enough to reply silently.
The old country, he says.
Romania? I ask.
“Yes.”
Why do we need to go all the way to Romania?
“We need to get out of North America. The Wardens know we’re here.”
Where is here?
“Outside Boston.”
How did they find us?
“Adam. They’re Wardens.”
How do we know they know where we are?
Richard clears his throat.
“Visual confirmation,” he says.
They’re outside.
“Yes.”
I try to sit up. Someone throws an arm across my shoulders, restraining me.
“Calm down,” Richard says.
How the hell are we going to get away?
“Don’t worry,” he says. “We’ve got an ace in the hole. There are four of us in this unit, yourself included. You just met Janice, our Mutatrix. And then there’s Alice, our precog.”
A precognitive?
“Yes.”
You mean a Daughter of Nemesis?
“If you want to be technical about it.”
What the hell are you thinking?
“What do you mean?”
No wonder the Wardens found us! They’re magnets for disaster. We should leave her.
“Don’t be superstitious.”
It isn’t superstition!
“This isn’t the time to fear Fate, Adam. Alice is preparing to teleport us away as we speak.”
She’s preparing to do what?
“Teleport us away. To a safe location.”
I thought that was a myth…
There is a loud crashing noise just a few yards away.
“Trust me, Dr. Radcliffe, there are things in this world even you aren’t aware of,” Richard says, nonplussed. “But yes, Miss Alice can teleport us to the other side of hell if I ask her nicely enough.”
“You mean if you force me to,” a woman grumbles.
Richard laughs. There is another crash.
“All right,” Richard says. “Time to go. Adam, you really shouldn’t be conscious right now.”
Wait. Can we trust her?
“Of course,” Richard says.
Another crash. It sounds like someone is trying to break a door in.
All right, I tell Richard. Try not to get us killed.
“I’ll try not to,” he says.
I turn my focus inward, toward the spot at the base of my skull, and I fall asleep.
And then I am back in my suite. I go to open my front door, turning my internal compass towards Kate and the door of Mirabel’s office. It won’t budge. That’s right—we warded that door. I think of the revolving door of the atrium instead, and, opening my door, I’m there.
I take the stairs up, two at a time. There’s still too much of Mirabel’s ghost in this place to trust the elevators. I step through the door at the top of the stairs, and I pull the door to the office open. Or try to. It doesn’t budge.
I knock thrice, wait, knock again.
No answer.
AWOL
{Kate}
I wait for Adam to return for what feels like hours. Out of boredom, I look through Mirabel’s entire office, opening drawers which all prove to be empty, looking under couch cushions and bookcases. After a while I start to feel like Adam isn’t coming back. I give up on waiting and force myself awake.
And then I’m back in the suite, lying with my arm draped across my eyes on a couch in the sitting room. I get up, walk around aimlessly for a few minutes, and eventually head out into the labyrinth. I’m not quite sure where I’m going. I’d like to visit the seraglio, but it’s not an option. The only card I have is for Julian’s study. I’m beginning to see why this place felt like a prison to Adam, back when he was first initiated. The halls are too narrow, the ceilings too low. It makes you claustrophobic. Before long the only direction you want to go is Away.
Maybe I should try to find the telltale flaw in the illusion Richard told me to look for. Maybe I can make the labyrinth collapse, and all the available destinations behind each of their unique doors will appear, spread in an array, naked, accessible. If that happened, would I know where I was going?
God. I’m even starting to sound like Adam inside my own head. I’ve got to get out of here.
I walk, ignoring the pull of the study card, taking turns at random. Before long, though I’m not trying to get there, I find myself in front of the double doors to the study. They are closed. I hear voices on the other side. Should I go in? Maybe I shouldn’t—I haven’t be
en invited. But they gave me the card, didn’t they? And it’s not like they told me to stay in the suite.
I pull one of the doors open and slip through, trying to be as quiet as possible. The voices come from deeper in the stacks, somewhere I can’t see. I’m not sure I want to approach.
“Maybe you should stay here,” Jennifer says.
“Without my help, you won’t be able to control her,” Julian argues. “She’s a liability.”
“All of us went through the same thing when we were young,” Jennifer says. “She’ll learn to keep her instincts in check. From what Alan said, she’s already learning.”
“Be that as it may, if you bring her out into the wider world she could very well kill innocent people,” Julian says.
“And that would be terrible,” Jennifer says. “But they wouldn’t be the first bodies I’ve buried.”
“That’s awfully cavalier of you.”
“Frankly, I’m more concerned about you,” she says. “You haven’t been yourself lately.”
“You’re more concerned about my sour mood than you are about the possibility of Katherine committing murder?”
“Julian…”
“What?”
“From what I’ve heard, calling this a sour mood might be an understatement.”
“And what have you heard?”
“I don’t want to go into details.” She sounds anxious, apologetic. “I don’t want to upset you. But… Adam told me what happened.”
Julian is silent for a moment.
“I imagine he painted quite a picture for you,” he says. “But things have improved since I last saw him. I’ve learned a greater degree of control.”
“It’s hard for me to be the judge of that, since it’s only been a few days, but…” Jennifer trails off. “Maybe I should take Haruko to look for Adam and Aya, and you should stay here with Katherine.”
I frown. Why does she think that it’s their decision to make?
“Perhaps,” Julian says. “Yes. That might be for the best.”
“Then it’s settled.”
“Guinevere,” Julian says, “do you really think that Aya has Adam?”
“Either she has him or your mother does,” Jennifer says. “So we might as well follow Aya, since I’m not sure how you’d intend to follow Mnemosyne.”