But what’s it doing here?
He shoved it in his pocket, going hot all over, needled by a fear he couldn’t explain. He turned back to the door, eager to move on. Bryn, where are you? I need you.
He stepped out into the hall. The door clicked shut behind him just as he realized someone stood there in the hallway.
A man in a khaki uniform looked up from the broom he’d been pushing over the tiles.
No, not a man. Someone just a couple of years older than Rett. Someone who gripped the broom with crooked, overlapping fingers.
“Garrick?”
A slow grin spread over the older boy’s face. “Oh, look. It’s the box boy.”
Rett cringed at the nickname. He tried not to recall the feeling of rough wood against his fists, of air going stale, of darkness pressing against his eyes—
“So it’s true.” Garrick looked over Rett’s jumpsuit, his bare feet. “Scatter did make you one of their test subjects. Out of the box and into the echo room, huh?”
Rett pushed on the door at his back, but it had already closed, and he couldn’t open it without a keycard or a code. “The what?”
“They stick you in a room with no one to talk to but yourself. Day after day. Just you and the echo of your own voice. I hear it when I walk down the hallways: people talking to themselves, bored out of their minds.”
“What’re you doing here?”
“What does it look like?” Garrick nodded at his broom. “You think you’re the only orphan Scatter picked up from Walling? At least I didn’t get the science project treatment.”
A burst of radio static told Rett that a security guard loomed just around the corner. “I did a visual check,” came the guard’s voice. “He’s not in the south hallway.”
He means me, Rett thought, heart racing.
Garrick frowned in the direction of the security guard. He looked back at Rett, and realization widened his eyes.
“Don’t say anything,” Rett mouthed. “Please. Don’t tell him I’m here.”
“Tell me one reason I should help you,” Garrick said in a low voice. “I’ll tell you one reason I shouldn’t.” He held up a hand in front of Rett’s face, showing him the broken fingers that had never healed properly.
Rett winced at the sound that went through his mind: the crack of knuckles breaking against a wrench.
But then Bryn’s words came back to him: We do all kinds of things to survive.
I did what I had to do to survive, he told himself.
But how am I going to survive now? Cornered again. He glanced down the hallway and prayed the security guard would go into his office, wouldn’t come this way. “You can have some of the money,” he whispered to Garrick. “When Scatter pays me.”
“You think they’re going to pay you for this?” Garrick scoffed.
“They already did. Fifty thousand dollars. They said I was the first person to—”
“Shut up, you think I believe that?” Garrick crowded him close to the locked door. “Think I don’t know your game?” He jabbed Rett’s chest with his fist. “You always acted like you were better than the rest of us. Always saying someone was going to come take you home. But no one did. We both ended up here, didn’t we?”
Rett glanced down the hall again. The security guard must have heard them by now. He’d come around the corner any minute, find Rett in his obvious white jumpsuit. Take him back to his room before Rett had the chance to find Bryn.
Garrick grabbed the front of Rett’s suit. “Both of us landed here, but you’ll be stuck here like a rat in a lab while Scatter sends me out to one of their depots. I finish my job, go home, never need to sweep another floor in my life.”
Rett could hardly breathe with Garrick’s fist pressing into his chest, with the thought of the security guard rounding the corner at any moment. “You’re going to collect meteorites for Scatter?”
Rett pictured the poster of Scatter’s depot, and then the sun gleaming on the metal shell of Scatter 3. He imagined the hammer of fists on the jammed door, the sight of a corpse sprawled in the dirt …
“Garrick, listen, six years from now, if you hear of someone planning to go back to Scatter’s depots to scavenge their equipment—”
Garrick shoved his fist harder into Rett’s chest. “Are you calling me a thief?”
Rett struggled to breathe. He recalled an image of the man in the depot, the one who had come to scavenge Scatter’s equipment. The one I saw dead, drained by a bug-monster.
Could that have been Garrick? Six years in the future?
He studied Garrick’s face. Easy to do with it scowling just inches from his own.
But no, Garrick didn’t look anything like the man from the depot, even if Rett imagined six years added onto Garrick’s age.
Even so, if Garrick were going to work in the wasteland, he’d be working alongside whoever the scavenger was. He could warn him about what would happen if the man came back on that day—could warn him about the bugs that would hunt him down. “Listen—six years from now, there’s going to be a solar storm. It’s going to take down Scatter’s security system.”
Garrick took his hand from Rett’s chest and turned away, uninterested in what must sound to him like ranting.
Rett pressed on. “Someone who works for Scatter is going to break into their depots—”
“He’s over here,” Garrick called.
A man in a black uniform swung around the corner. He locked eyes on Rett and spoke into his radio.
Rett didn’t even hear what the man said. He grabbed at Garrick’s sleeve. “Garrick, listen, you need to know, six years from today—”
He doubled over as Garrick sank an elbow into his stomach. The next moment, a hand locked around his upper arm, and then Rett was scrambling down the hallway, pulled along by not one but two security guards in black Scatter uniforms.
“Check his pockets—what is that?” one of them said at the door to his room. “You go on a little shoplifting spree in the utility room, kid?”
He ripped from Rett’s pocket the small black box, the alarm. A keycard zipped through a slot, and then Rett went stumbling back into his room. But not before he saw what was printed on the inside of the half-finished alarm box in the security guard’s hand, the box that the government would use six years from now …
Scatter’s logo.
The door clicked shut and Rett sank onto the bed, shaking.
Six years from now, Scatter is the government.
8:01 P.M.
They’re lying. Don’t trust them.—Bryn
Rett clutched the paper in his hand, reading the words over and over while he lay on his bed.
More memories had surfaced in the time he’d sat alone on his bed while the light from the window died: Dr. Wells telling him that she’d switched on his mechanism, then explaining she had synced it with that of a girl named Bryn. He remembered spotting the girl in the hallways, in waiting areas, in the garden during exercise hours. Rett had recognized her from Walling, but he didn’t really start paying attention to her at Scatter Labs until the day he’d seen her leaning over a bed of daisies in the garden, struggling to conceal something in her pocket. “Hey,” he’d said, because he wanted to know what she was hiding. Something from the one of the medical rooms maybe—he’d been warned not to try to smuggle extra pain pills, and he could really use them for nights when the pain in his head wouldn’t let him sleep. Maybe she’d share.
The girl had straightened, her expression sharp as glass. And Rett saw what was spilling out of her pockets: a fringe of daisy petals. She had picked flowers and stuffed them into her pockets to take back to her room. “Did you get bored of staring at books you can’t open?” he asked her.
“They won’t give me real books,” she’d replied. “They said reading is too much of a strain for—” She flattened her hair over the spot where Rett thought her scar must be.
“They said it’s too dangerous after, you know, brain surgery.”
“Not to mention every other day,” Rett said, thinking about the comics that went around Walling: zombies and mutant soldiers and, most dangerous of all, ordinary kids rebelling against their captors.
He turned so she could see the scar running along the side of his own head, so she’d stop being self-conscious about her own scar.
“You look like you could use something to read, too,” she said. She pulled a stub of a pencil out of her pocket, along with a piece of paper, and scribbled something.
Rett held out his hand for the paper, but she reached and stuffed it into his pocket just as someone in a uniform came to show her back to her room. Then she was gone, and Rett wondered if he’d ever see her again, or if the mysterious note she’d shoved into his pocket would be all he had to remember her by.
The zip of a keycard called Rett back to the present. He sat up and jammed Bryn’s note into his pocket just as Dr. Wells stepped into the room.
“I heard you were upset,” she said, using her best no-need-to-try-to-escape-again voice.
Rett shifted his gaze to the wall behind her. “No one would agree to play checkers with me.”
She ignored his joke and lowered herself into the armchair. “Rett, I need to tell you something. Bryn decided to leave.”
Rett’s gaze snapped back to Wells. “She left?”
“This job is more than some people can handle—”
“She wouldn’t have left without saying good-bye.” Rett clenched his fists. Would she? Heat rushed to his head.
“She said it was too painful.” Wells mouth twisted with pity. “She wanted me to tell you that she’s grateful for everything you did for her in the wasteland. But she felt she didn’t have it in her to do any more assignments for Scatter. We gave her the code to stop her mechanism from working and let her leave.”
Rett’s head swam. He didn’t know what to believe, but a twisting in his gut told him that Bryn wouldn’t have wanted to stay in Scatter Labs. She wouldn’t risk another trip to that wasteland.
“I know this is hard,” Wells went on. “I don’t want you to feel like Bryn didn’t care about you.”
Rett sank against the wall.
“I promised Scatter Labs would take good care of you.” Wells clasped her hands together. “The truth is, you’re the one with the unique talent, Rett. Bryn told us that it was thanks to you that both of you were able to find your way into the future.” She beamed at him so that he almost felt proud of himself.
All he really wanted was to see Bryn again.
“I promised you that if you did another assignment for us, I’d make sure both you and your mother were taken care of,” Well continued. “And they won’t be difficult assignments—nothing that puts you in danger. I’ll only ask you to gather information. We’ll start with something simple: You wake up four years from now and find out who the next president will be, then find your way back to this time and tell us.”
An alarm went off in Rett’s head. Is that how Scatter comes into power in the future? They align themselves with the candidate they know will win the next election?
Or do they use time travel to make sure their preferred candidate wins?
He looked down at the floor, trying to hide his feelings. “I could find out if the next president will get rid of the treaty the current guy won’t fight against. The one about the rare metals.” He waited to see if she’d fall into his trap, if she’d prove Scatter’s greed after all.
The garden beyond the window turned to a bank of shadows while the sun set. The leaves were jagged black shapes.
Wells said, “We’re getting ahead of ourselves.”
Maybe I’ve got it wrong, Rett thought. Maybe Scatter really does want to make things better.
Bryn’s note crinkled in his pocket every time he shifted.
“Rett.” Wells sighed. “I know it’s hard to think about Bryn leaving you here. I know you’ve been left behind before.”
Rett felt like he’d been kicked in the chest.
“You’ve had to do a lot of things you didn’t want to do,” Wells said, “because no one ever took care of you like you needed them to.”
Something stirred deep within Rett: a ghost born of bitterness and anger.
“You deserve to be taken care of,” Wells said. “You shouldn’t have to take care of yourself any more. Let us take care of you.”
Rett’s bitterness melted into exhaustion and relief. Would it be so bad to stay here? He wouldn’t have to worry any more about his mother. Scatter would take care of her, would take care of them both.
“You need sleep.” Wells stood and moved to the door. “In the morning, we can talk more. Some of our team want you to debrief them on how you managed the incredible feat you pulled off.”
Rett slumped back against his pillow.
Wells swiped her card, and the door clicked open. She turned back to Rett. “I know this has been hard. But everything’s going to be better now.”
Then the door clicked shut, and Rett was alone.
The light outside the window had gotten so low as to leave Rett in near darkness. The click of the door echoed in his head, loud as the slamming of a box lid.
I’m safe here, he told himself.
So why didn’t he feel that way?
His gaze fell on the bookshelf. The rows of false books. They’re lying. Don’t trust them.
He shot up from the bed. I have to see for myself if Bryn is gone.
How am I supposed to find her?
He tried the door handle, but he knew there was no point. Why did he always seem to come back to this situation? I’m ten years old, trapped in a box, lid shut tight.
He’d waited so long that night, while Garrick held the lid shut, while the stars rushed past somewhere high above. He’d stopped banging on the lid and only prayed for Garrick to get bored and leave.
And then he’d finally remembered the trading cards in his pocket. There’s always something that can help.
The trading cards were only cheap bits of paper printed with historical facts, but they were rare currency in a place where you had little to call your own. He’d forced them out under the lid of the firewood box, one by one, until Garrick had hauled himself off the lid of the box to snatch them, and Rett was able to break free …
Rett pressed his ear against the door. Waited.
Finally: footsteps passing. A security guard, or a medic, or who knows.
Rett pulled hundred dollar bills from the zippered pouch and shoved them underneath the door, hard enough to send them zooming into the hallway.
The footsteps stopped.
Then quickened.
A keycard slowly passed through the slot on the other side of the door. Click. The door opened.
A man in a khaki uniform stood there, and Rett suddenly knew he’d been right: the man he met six years in the future, in the depot, wasn’t Garrick.
It was this man.
The man standing in the doorway, eyes wide with surprise under the brim of his black cap.
“You,” Rett said.
Confusion lined the man’s face. Rett imagined him lit by the green glow of a light stick, by muted sunlight coming through Scatter 3’s skylight. “Do I know you?” the man grunted.
“No. But you will.” Rett looked down at the bills in the man’s hand. “Or maybe you won’t.” Maybe the money would be enough to allow the man to leave Scatter’s employ. To avoid the wasteland altogether.
Rett had been hoping for anyone at all to open his door for him, but he was glad this man was the one who had found the money. Much as he recoiled from his memories of the man, he didn’t want him to end up as a bloodless corpse, sprawled in dirt.
“Here.” Rett thrust more bills at him and took the keycard from his hand. “I’m sorry for what happened to you. I hope it doesn’t happen again.”
The man frowned at him, at the money Rett had shoved into his hands. “You’re not trying to get me in trouble, are you?”
“No trouble.
I think we’ve both had enough of that.” He scrambled out of the room before the man could change his mind. I’m coming, Bryn.
He slid the keycard through the slot on the next door over, hoping it was Bryn’s room. Yanked the door open.
The room was larger than his own. Two beds lay along separate walls. Rett crept toward one. A figure lay under the blankets, just visible in the light of the monitor next to the bed. An IV line trailed from the monitor to an arm.
“Bryn?” Rett whispered. He crept closer to the bed, letting the door shut behind him.
But the figure wasn’t Bryn. Propped on pillows lay a boy his age, gray-skinned and unconscious. Wires trailed out from under the blankets to connect to another monitor hooked onto the wall.
Rett recognized the boy from Walling—someone who used to kick soccer balls with him in the yard, who used to scrawl tilted zombies in the pages of Epidemic X—but he almost couldn’t believe this thin wraith was the same boy. He ran a hand over the boy’s forehead, over the sunken cheeks, but the figure didn’t stir.
Rett backed toward the door, stomach twisting. His hand shook so hard, it took three tries to get the keycard through the slot. Then he was in the hallway, fumbling to unlock the next door over.
When he opened the door, a slumped figure looked up at him from the bed.
Bryn.
The next moment, his arms were around her, his heartbeat thundering against hers. “Are you okay?”
She pressed her forehead into his cheek. “They told me you left. They said you took your money and…”
“No way I’d leave without you.” He fought against the image that rose in his mind: the wraithlike boy withering in the room next door. That’s not Bryn—she’s okay.
“They were trying their usual game on us,” Bryn said, “making us think no one else can take care of us but them.”
Rett’s heart sank. How could I have believed that Bryn left? He let go of Bryn so he could sit on the bed next to her and pull the paper out of his pocket. “I got your note.”
“What note?”
He held it out to her. Her fingers brushed his as she took it, and it was all he could do not to pull her to him again. She’s okay. She’s not sick, she’s okay … He couldn’t get the image of the too-thin boy out of his head. He looked Bryn over in the pale light, trying to memorize her profile, to burn it into his mind in place of the terrible visions he’d imagined he’d find when he’d opened her door—
The Echo Room Page 20