“God… I don’t know, I’d probably just write you something and stick it in your watch,” I tease, and now I’m smiling too.
“My watch…” Nate says. He sits up quickly and drags himself toward me. “Grab my watch,” he tells me.
“What?”
“There’s something in my watch that can save us.”
“What?! Nate, this is―”
“A long shot. Just trust me, Annika!” he says. He turns his back toward me, and I feel his hands on my shoulder. “There’s a switch on the backside of my watch with a small vial in it. I need you to get it.”
“Okay,” I say.
I sit up and lean my back against his; I search blindly with my hands until I scramble upon Nate’s jittery hands. Our fingers find each other, and I trace over his hands until I feel the hard surface of the watch. The van takes a sharp turn to the right then passes over a series of bumps. I hold onto Nate’s hands until the van steadies and rides over a gravel road. My fingers fumble over the watch, until I find the small lever. I push the lever sideways, and the backside of the watch opens like a sliding door; I’m able to catch the vial― which is about the size of a large pill― before it falls to the floor. Something inside the vial rattles, like tiny metal balls, or something…
“Where do you suppose they’re taking us?” I ask.
“I don’t know… probably somewhere they don’t think anyone will find us.”
“I’ve got it!”
“Great, now hold your palm out for me,” Nate instructs. I do so as he turns around to face my back. The van slows to a stop, and the passengers in the van climb out, slamming the door shut.
“Shit! They’re coming, Nate!” I say.
He leans down and grabs the vial out of my hands with his mouth. The back door cracks then swings open; a blur of blinding flashlights shine in on us. Nate and I are pulled out of the van and dropped into a motorboat with Eva, Bruce, and three other men. Without a word, we ride out into dark, murky water of Lake Erie for what feels like half an hour. Nate sits next to me, his shoulder brushing against mine the only comfort from the powerful wind shooting at us and the five other passengers. As we slow to a stop, Nate spits something out into the water.
“Get up,” Eva says to me. She pulls me to my feet and straps an anchor to my handcuffs.
“No! Wait―” Nate says. He stands up next to me, leans toward me, and locks his lips with mine. It’s a weird sensation, warm and unexpected, and a feeling inside my chest like I’m free falling. With his tongue, he pushes a tiny, metal sphere into my mouth, and then he’s pulled away from me.
“Time’s up, Romeo,” Bruce says, strapping an anchor to Nate’s handcuffs and throwing him overboard.
The water swallows him, splashing icy water into the boat. I shout and struggle away from Eva, but she shoves me over the side of the boat, and I splash into the freezing water.
The glacial water shocks me, and I inhale a gallon of water, swallowing the metal sphere with the ice water. I choke and squirm, desperate to break free from the handcuffs because… because I don’t want to die. A blackness crawls over my vision until the fading yellow light from the motorboat disappears completely.
XXVIII: Here to Help
Friday, April 4, 2065; 5:13 p.m.
First person
When I open my eyes again, I see blurs of yellow and white. I blink, and the bright fog crawls away, and the images are clear. No wonder I nearly blinded myself―I’m staring out a window directly into the sun that is hanging over the dazzling lake. I’m either halfway to heaven or in another hospital with an artificial, cruel view of late afternoon, but… there’s no beeping machines, no needles in my arm, and definitely no singing angels. No, the room I’m in looks like an attic of a small library with white, wooden walls and old furniture. I glance down to my body and see that I’m wrapped in a cocoon of a motley collection of blankets and pillows, some plain, some plaid, and some patterns of seahorses and Star Wars and red, blue, yellow, green, and pink ninja-like warriors called “Power Rangers”. A bowl of water, which I assume was scalding hot several hours ago, with rags in it sits on the floor by my feet. I feel, but cannot see, some soft fabric enclosing my hands and feet; perhaps to heal the hypothermia from the icy―
Water.
No… I was drowning, dying… no one was there, no one was coming… how am I here… alive? I should be dead, I should be underwater― Am I dead? I can feel my fingers and toes―move them, even―and I can feel my head throbbing. I can feel the sun, too. It’s warm and real and… and it feels good.
Footsteps race up a set of stairs and onto the wood floor of the room I’m in. Whatever couch I’m on faces the window, and I can’t see who it is, even when I try to scoot my head around the edge of the couch without disturbing whoever it is. The footsteps stomp to the back of the room, and now I hear plastic and metal, like old DVD cases and tupperware, clanking against each other and some crashing to the floor.
“Ugh… shit,” the mysterious person huffs, slamming something against the ground. I recognize the voice immediately.
“Zoë?” I croak.
Whoa, not expecting my voice to sound so weak and scratchy. All the noise stops as if the alarm of the Metanites’ Base went off. Then, the footsteps race toward the couch, and the figure peeks around the side of the couch by my feet.
“Hey, you’re up,” Zoë smiles.
For the first time―and probably the only time―everything about her is soft. The majority of her blond hair is thrown up in a sloppy bun, and she’s wearing a warm jacket, gloves, a light blue scarf, and black slacks. Her eyes are as warm and gentle as I’ve ever seen them, but they stare at me in a way I cannot exactly describe.
“Zoë,” I say again. “Where―”
“It’s okay,” she says. “We’re in a safe house outside the city. No one can find us here.”
I sigh and search for my voice. “I seem to be making a bad habit of waking up and not knowing where I am.”
She smiles even brighter. “Well, maybe you should stop running-off and nearly getting yourself killed.”
I smile back. “Sorry. I’ll try to stop that.”
“Someone seems in good humor.”
I look out the window. “Happy to be alive, that’s all.”
As soon as I say it, the fear and desperation of last night―or whenever that was―floods me and fills my lungs like the ice cold lake water. Zoë reads my face though, and, lucky for me, I don’t have to ask the question.
“Today is Friday, the fourth. Last night, we traced Nate’s tracker to the bottom of the lake, where we found you. We took you here and revived you as fast as we could.”
“Revived? How?”
“The pill you swallowed―it temporarily shuts down your body and gives you the illusion of death, or so, I think that’s how it works. Technically you were dead for a few hours because your heart stopped and you weren’t breathing. But all we had to do was give you the antidote and keep you warm.”
The pill, Nate, everything… I should be dead, or I should be in the bottom of Lake Erie or locked away in solitary confinement under the tight, crucifying grip of the FBI. I was ready to give up, and then I was ready to die… But Nate stopped me. “He saved me.”
“What?” Zoë asks, leaning in closer to me.
“Nate. He… he saved me. He stopped me from going to the police to turn myself in, then Eva and Bruce were there and took us out on the lake, and then we were tied-up with these chains and weights, and they were going to throw us overboard! But then Nate kissed me and had the mini, metal-like thing in his mouth―it must have been the pill or his tracker, but I didn’t know what it was when he―”
“Whoa, whoa! Stop!” Zoë says.
She comes to the side of the couch and cups her hands over my mouth to silence me. Her eyes are ablaze, as if I’m telling her about a long-lost treasure I might have found while sinking to the bottom of Lake Erie.
“He kissed you?!” Zoë asks.<
br />
I don’t know what to say, since I was more expecting her to be surprised that Bruce and Eva found us or angry that I went to the police to turn myself in.
“You… don’t you know about, about what happened to―” I stutter.
“Oh, I know about everything, or so I thought! He kissed you?!” Zoë’s eyes are as wide as an owl’s, and although she’s sort-of shouting at me, she’s not angry.
“I mean… that’s how he passed me the pill, I guess,” I say.
Zoë leans back and looks at the fuzzy, multi-colored, leopard-print blanket by my feet. She smiles, as if the colorful spots just provided her with the epiphany of a lifetime.
“I don’t get it,” I say. “How do you know about everything that happened?”
Zoë looks back at me. “Same person who left out the little detail that he kissed you.”
“Nate?” I ask.
The thought strikes me that maybe Nate didn’t make it back, that he had given me his only pill, which saved my life, and that he could still be down there, somewhere, in the dark depths of the lake.
“Where is he?”
“He’s downstairs,” Zoë says, “madly searching for a signal for some old Wi-Fi thing I can’t understand.”
I lean my head back and smile. Just as a wave of fearful, anxious emotions sinks back to the sea, another wave crashes into me, carrying with it an array of emotions I didn’t know I could feel. And I know, for certain, that I’m alive.
“You want to go downstairs?” Zoë asks.
“I know I want to get off this couch,” I reply. “I feel like I’m being mummified.”
“Well, we needed to keep you warm,” Zoë says, helping me untangle myself from the mass of pillows and blankets. When my arms are free, she starts to peel off the tape that binds a white, sparkling cloth around my fingers and hands.
“Oh, how pretty,” I tease, twisting my hand to let the sun’s rays reflect and sparkle on the cloth.
“It’s to make sure we didn’t have to decapitate your purple fingers and toes. Don’t worry, they should be a normal color by now. And thank God for global warming! Without it, the lake would probably be frozen over, and you would definitely be dead.”
“Awesome. Can I keep the fabric?”
“Do you always keep souvenirs for near-death experiences?”
“Well, I was technically dead for a few hours, so I think this qualifies as a unique experience.”
“That’s great, Annika, really great,” Zoë teases.
Both my hands are now free, and we pick at the tape around my feet.
“You seem different,” she says to me. “Something about you is definitely changed.”
“I am different.”
“Did you swallow too much lake water or something?”
“No, I’m taking Abe’s advice on humor.”
“Oh, God!” Zoë moans.
We laugh, but soon our thoughts trace back to those back at Kenyon, those friends who came after me and my tangible dirt, thinking that I was the traitor, the mole. Given that I’m not in Kenyon right now, I bet that distrust and resentment is still strong, and with good reason. They are Zoë’s friends too, though― regardless if they are my friends at all― and they are the ones Zoë must have turned on to be here with me, to save me.
“Zoë,” I say, my voice near a whisper. “When you were talking about finding Nate and me, you said ‘we.’”
She nods. “Eli, Marissa, and me. Kia and Abe are with us too, but they’re in Kenyon to help fill us in with what’s going on. And don’t give me that look and tell me I shouldn’t have done it and we shouldn’t be helping you, because without us you would still be at the bottom of the lake or worse!”
“I was going to say I’m sorry,” I say.
“For what?” She sounds completely befuddled that I would have a reason to apologize.
“For not telling you,” I admit. Zoë’s eyes are soft again, soft and sad.
“You don’t have to apologize, Annika.”
“I do!” I exclaim. “I have to tell you, and I should have been honest from the beginning, but I was scared. I was scared of what questions you’d ask; I was scared of what I’ve done and scared that I would hurt one of you.”
“Annika, Annika― it’s okay. I understand. I do. Do you know how long it took me to tell the others about my past and my family, especially since we were involved in the Mafia? It took me forever, and I still don’t talk about it often.”
“Yes, yes, I know, Zoë, I know. But now I have to tell you. I need to tell you, because… because I need to free myself from it. You know?”
“Yeah, I know,” she nods. “You want to start over.”
“Yeah,” I reply.
“Ahh! Christ!!” someone yells from downstairs―it’s Marissa. A sequence of loud crashes follows, and then the sound of an old fire extinguisher shooting frozen, pressurized air follows.
“My bad, I’m sorry,” Elijah says. His voice carries all the way upstairs to Zoë and me.
“Ugh… shit,” Zoë sighs.
“That doesn’t sound good,” I say.
Zoë and I stand up, and I follow her down a winding, metal staircase to see what the commotion is.
Halfway down the steps and still wrapped in a blanket, I stop and examine the small dark space. Unlike the well-light, homey look of the upstairs, below looks like a real safe house. The walls, floor, and ceiling are platinum steel and dark gray, awful for someone with claustrophobia who would feel completely trapped and contained in the long, rectangular room. In the front of the room is a square, metal table with five folding chairs spread around it. Toward the back of the room, there’s a long counter with cabinets, an oven, stove, and microwave against the wall, and on the other side, the same side as the stairs, there’s a much smaller version of the billboard screens and control counter in the Metanites’ Base. There’s a thin door on the back wall, left ajar, revealing a small room with bunk beds… like a bunker on a ship or something.
“What is going on down here?” Zoë shouts.
Elijah is standing by the stove with a steaming pan in his hand. Marissa stands next to him with the fire extinguisher in her hands pointing at the pan. A thin line of black smoke fogs the ceiling, and half of the cabinet is blackened.
“I was just trying to cook this―what is this―chicken?” Elijah says. He examines the square piece of meat in his pan.
“Add that to the list of things Eli should never attempt― cooking,” Nate teases. He’s sitting at the chair in front of the screens and control counter and is wrapped in a long navy robe with gloves on his hands and three layers of socks over his feet.
“Eli, what were you thinking? Why didn’t you let Marissa do the cooking?” Zoë asks.
“Because Marissa is a terrible cook!”
“At least I can use an oven!” Marissa argues.
“At least I don’t burn popcorn!” Elijah and Marissa nag at each other, meanwhile, Nate glances at Zoë then his eyes catch me, still standing on the stairs. Elijah and Marissa continue arguing, until Elijah turns to Zoë for support and also notices me.
“Hey! It’s Annika!” Elijah says. Marissa swings her head in my direction, and she immediately smiles.
“Annika!” she exclaims, and she rushes to the stairs and gives me a hug.
“Hi,” I say, and I cringe when she squeezes me around my ribcage.
“Oh! I’m sorry!” she says, and she recoils. “I didn’t hurt you, did I?”
“No, I’m just a little sore still,” I lie.
Looking at her, smiling and concerned for my wellbeing, I feel especially guilty. Here is this person who has gone out of her way to be nice to me―and left Kenyon to support me, no less―and I figured her to be the mole. Then again, I don’t think she’s here for me.
“Come join us; we’re making dinner right now,” she says. She locks our arms together and leads me into the smoke-filled room.
“Good morning!” Elijah proclaims. He s
coops me away from Marissa and gives me a tight, painful hug, spinning me around and around.
“Hi Elijah,” I say, muffled by his chest. He stops spinning and places me on the ground next to Zoë.
“Welcome back,” Nate says. He’s standing behind me. I turn around, and we give each other a long, gentle hug.
“Thank you,” I say.
We pull away from each other and stare into each other’s eyes. This is enough, a silent conversation we share with our eyes―this is enough to give me hope again.
“You’re welcome. Thanks for reminding me,” he responds. “I completely forgot I had those pills in there.”
“Yeah, why did you have those pills in there?” Elijah asks.
“Kia,” Nate replies. “She put them in there for worst-case-scenarios, and she must have put the antidote in Zoë’s watch.”
“So where did those pills come from?”
“I made them,” Nate replies.
“Of course,” Marissa teases. Zoë and Elijah chuckle, and I notice Elijah take Zoë’s hand and squeeze it. She looks up at him, smiles, and keeps laughing.
“Why is that funny?” Nate protests, but even he is smiling.
“Because you’re a genius,” Elijah replies. “Minus the part when you almost forget and would have drowned with the pill still in your watch.”
“And you’ve always got something up your sleeve. Some detail that you conveniently forget to mention,” Zoë says. She raises an eyebrow at him.
“What are you saying, Zo?” Nate asks her.
Zoë gives him a smile. “You know.”
Nate blushes.
“Well, as punishment for not telling us, you get to make dinner,” Marissa concludes, even though she and Elijah completely missed Zoë’s message.
“But he can’t cook either,” Elijah says.
“I can make cereal,” Nate objects.
“You mean, you can pour cereal and milk into the same bowl,” Zoë says. “Honestly, can anyone here cook?!”
“I can,” I offer. “What do we have?”
So I throw away Elijah’s scorched chicken and boil pasta. Pasta, tomato sauce, cans of frozen chicken, multigrain O’s cereal, and carrots. Those are the stock products in this safehouse, add to it the bags of potato chips, pretzels, and cans of flat pop Nate and Elijah brought here when they discovered this place. They said they found it when the two of them, along with Abraham, went water skiing on Abraham’s father’s boat. They never would have found it if Abraham hadn’t launched Izzi’s lucky softball onto the shore―Izzi was Elijah’s girlfriend at the time―forcing them to go searching through the woods on the bank. When Elijah mentions Izzi’s name in the story, he hesitates, quickly finished the story, and falls silent.
The Nancy Experiment Page 28