by Pintip Dunn
He smiles smugly. “And I thought you weren’t attracted to scientists.”
I try to speak, but my voice is lost somewhere in the recesses of my heart. When I find it, I can’t be sure it’s the right one. “If you knew it was me, why didn’t you turn me in? Dresden would’ve rewarded you handsomely. Forget the mice. She would’ve gotten you into any uni you wanted.”
He blinks. “If I turned you in, you would’ve been stuck in a lab chair for the next decade. The treaty doesn’t cover lawbreakers.”
“Why do you care?”
“I don’t have to like you to care, Jessa.”
A laugh rattles out my throat, but it tastes like the tears on my lips—hot and aching. “I can’t stand you, either.”
Shakily, I lower the weapon to my side. I haven’t given up on saving Olivia. But I can’t tort Tanner, not now.
Doesn’t matter. I have something else he wants and needs. Something he won’t be able to turn down.
I let the breath flow out of my lungs. What I’m about to offer him crosses a line I never thought I’d approach. I hold up my arm, the inside of my elbow out, so that he can see the purple-blue veins through my skin. “If you get me into that room, I’ll give you my blood.”
His brows crease together. “Why would I want your blood?”
“Your mouse bit me. You saw that on the vids. What you don’t know is I was infected. I developed the same powers as your mice. Someone sent me a vision of a maze, a path I was compelled to run, and I was led here.” My breath hitches. “So it seems you haven’t lost the fifth-generation strand of your virus after all. It’s flowing through my blood. A sample should give the lost data back to you.”
His jaw works, gnawing on nothing. “You destroyed an entire year’s worth of my work. You jeopardized my entrance into uni. And you don’t tell me about the virus in your blood until just now?”
I wince. Of course he’s pissed. I’d be steaming, too. “I couldn’t tell you. I didn’t know if you would turn me in.”
“You’re not the girl I thought,” he says, his voice hard.
“And who was that?” I shoot back. “All you’ve done since we talked at the hoverpark is order me around and insult my intelligence.” I take a deep breath. It sucks that I didn’t tell him. Agreed. But it’s done. Fighting about it isn’t going to help either of us. “It’s a good trade. We both get what we want. The virus worked. I was able to get the vision, even though I’m not a Receiver. Like your mice, I ran the maze. Are you going to walk away from your experiment, just as you’re about to get it back?”
He smiles wryly. “So I guess we’ve finally discovered what we are to each other. Just a means to an end. Is that right, Jessa?”
“We can help each other.” I lick my lips. “That’s better than being enemies.”
“You might change your mind when you go inside that room.”
A chill snakes up my spine. “Why?”
He doesn’t respond. Instead, he steps forward to have his eyes scanned, which is all the answer I need.
Whatever is inside that room, I’ll find out soon enough.
14
Insects flit around my stomach. Not just annoying gnats, either, but giant moths that fly around, crash into one another, and rip up their own wings.
Tanner presses his palm against the sensor and sticks his finger into a machine that takes a prick of his blood. Once his biometrics are verified, the door clicks open.
He steps aside to let me go first, but not out of politeness. Oh, no. His stiff jaw tells me he’s still angry. But there’s something else, too. An alertness to his stance, a readiness in his eyes. As though he wants me to go first so that he can catch me if I fall.
Ridiculous. The only feeling Tanner Callahan has toward me is disgust.
I lift my chin and try to channel Callie. Try to be as brave as she was. As brave as a girl worthy of her sacrifice.
I walk into the room.
The space is dark, with low lights set into the ceiling. I can’t see much at first, but I have the sense of being in a vast room, a massive underground cavern whose walls disappear into the shadows. A slight wind blows against me—an oscillating fan, perhaps, to keep the air moving. I shiver and rub my arms.
And then, my eyes adjust. I see row after row of rectangular pods rising out of the ground. There’s a stretcher in each pod, surrounded by blinking machines. A person lies on each stretcher, but unlike the bodies in the hallway, each chest rises up and down. These people are alive.
I swallow hard. “What is this place?”
“TechRA’s best-kept secret. The hot spot of our scientific innovation. We call it ‘the dream lab.’” He places his hand lightly on a bed rail. “This is the place in between, where the people are neither dead nor alive. Their bodies are in a coma, but in this suspended state, their minds work. They dream, floating through an endless, dark night. You wouldn’t believe the number of breakthroughs that have come from studying their minds.”
His words are a sledgehammer to my knees. I stumble forward, my mind shooting in so many directions it can’t form a coherent thought. “These people—oh Fates—trapped here—forever— The mice—fike—this is so much worse than the mice—”
“They volunteered.” He pulls back his hand. “Once it became clear the end was imminent, they signed a directive donating their brains to science. They knew exactly what would happen to their bodies, and they chose to benefit science rather than let their brains go to waste.”
“So who are the people in the hallway?” I whisper.
“TechRA no longer has use for them. Their bodies are in the hallway waiting to be transported to another sector of the building. And then they’ll be…disposed of.”
My eyebrows climb toward the ceiling. “Disposed of? You mean killed.”
“I suppose,” he says. “But I repeat: For the most part, they donated their bodies to science. What else are we supposed to do with them when we’re finished?”
“For the most part? That means at least some of them didn’t have a choice.”
The pause is so long you could stack a row of pods inside.
“Yes,” he finally says.
My nerves turn to rage. Olivia. The only true precog of our generation. Her brain is a gold mine. Rather than letting her live, her mother’s trapped her here this last decade, so that the scientists can excavate her mind, day after day. And when they’re done with her, they’ll dispose of her like last week’s garbage.
Well, not anymore. Not if I have anything to do with it.
“Where is she?” I ask.
He grimaces. “Maybe this isn’t such a good idea after all.”
I round on him. The stun gun’s still in my hand, and I point it at him, as though shooting him is a possibility. The way the anger pulses inside me, maybe it is. “She sent me a message, Tanner. A vision that led me down a purple and green rabbit hole to get me here. That means she’s not dreaming in there. That means, to some extent, she wants out. So tell me now. Where is she?”
He places his hands on my shoulders, and a burst of electricity zips through me, tangling with the anger, leaving me unsettled and confused. Blindly, I grope for the future, searching for something—anything—that will get me back to solid ground again.
The vision crashes over me, almost knocking me down. In the near future, I weep, sobs racking my body. Strong arms wrap around me, pulling me close to a muscled chest covered by a thermal shirt with a tight weave. Tanner’s shirt. Tanner’s chest. Moments from now, Tanner Callahan will hold me as I soak his shirt with my tears.
“No!” Back in the present, I wrench away from Tanner and race down a row of pods, running from him and my vision. I don’t want to be comforted. Don’t have time to cry. I’ve got to find a girl.
I scan the faces in the stretchers, searching for those telltale brown bangs, trying to extrapolate how Olivia might’ve aged in the last ten years. Not a little girl anymore, but a teenager like me.
I fi
nish one row and turn down the next. In my wake, the machines start beeping and flashing.
“Slow down,” Tanner says, jogging behind me. The bastard, he’s not even breathing hard. “These monitors are very sensitive. They detect the slightest change in the vital signs, and you’re making too much noise. The bodies are reacting to your running.”
“So they are aware.”
“In the same way that a plant turns toward the sun. They react, but that doesn’t mean they feel. You’re making the machines go crazy. Stop running.”
“Tell me where she is.” I slow down, but I swivel my head, continuing to search. Olivia’s here, and she’s counting on me. I’m not going to desert her. Not the way I was deserted.
He sighs. Even with the incessant beeping, I hear the soft whisper of air. “Last row. The pod all the way at the end. She was our very first suspension.”
I run to the back of the room and fly down the row, setting off even more alarms. But I don’t care. Because for the first time, I’m about to do something that might make me worthy of my sister’s sacrifice. I’ve waited ten years for this moment. I’m not about to delay it a second longer than necessary.
When I reach the last pod in the row, I freeze. The girl on the stretcher doesn’t have brown bangs. Her face is nothing like the little girl I remember from my memories.
It’s not Olivia Dresden.
When I stare into the girl’s face, I feel like I’m looking in a mirror. The same high cheekbones, the same sparse eyelashes, the same swoop at the end of each eye.
I’m lying on the bed. No, not me. She’s thinner than me and older. Ten years older.
My legs buckle. Deep, deep in my soul, I scream, a scream that started ten years ago and hasn’t let up since.
It’s not me lying on the bed, but my other half. My twin, my sister, my soul.
Callie.
15
Callie. Here. Not dead. Not alive, maybe, but not dead. How is this possible?
My head feels strangely light, like a balloon about to detach from my body. I sway, and the ground rushes up to meet me. Suddenly, I’m on my hands and knees, with no clear idea how I got here. I crawl forward until my hands hit the rectangular pod, until I’m sitting inches below my sister.
My sister.
This can’t be real. It has to be some weird vision, not from the future or the past, but a hallucination created from my dearest wish, my most fantastical desires. The dream lab, Tanner called this room. That’s what this is. A dream.
“She’s not here. She’s not.” But I say the words in a whisper, because no matter what dreamland dimension I’m in, I don’t want to break the spell.
I pull myself to my feet and drink in Callie’s face. The beige skin with the yellow undertones, the barely there lashes. As a kid, I used to watch her experiment with eye tints, but she never bothered with false lashes, and I was glad. Falsies would’ve blocked her eyes. I saw my entire world in those eyes. I’d give anything to see them now.
“She is here,” Tanner says. His voice is gentle, too gentle. Like he’s pushed his anger aside because he feels sorry for me. “Who did you think it was?”
“Olivia.” I can barely get out the syllables. “I thought Dresden had locked her up, and she sent me the vision as a cry for help.”
“No. I thought you’d guessed. Your sister’s always been here. From the day she injected herself ten years ago. She was brought straight to this room and has been here ever since.”
I should be angry with him for not telling me earlier. I should be absolutely furious. But he had no more reason to trust me than I had to trust him. So I guess we’re even, in a twisted sort of way.
Besides, I can’t shake the wonder that my sister is actually alive. A feeding tube trails from her mouth, and an IV plugs into her wrist. Automated metal braces wrap around her limbs in order to move her muscles and prevent them from degenerating. “How did this happen?”
“Somebody rushed in after you escaped. They injected her with the antidote around the two-minute mark. Soon enough to preserve her mind but not in time to save her body. She slipped into a coma and has been in that state ever since.”
“Does this mean…” The words get stuck in my throat. “Does this mean she might someday wake up?”
“There’s no way to know for sure.” His words are noncommittal, but his tone is hesitant—even hopeful.
It’s the hope that does me in.
The ocean roars in my ears, and I collapse onto the floor. My breath rushes in and out, as useless as if I’ve punctured my lungs. No matter how much air I gulp, it’s not enough.
Tanner wraps his arms around me, pulling me off the floor. I am trapped against the wall of his chest, surrounded by the bands of his muscles. I sob. Tears pour out of me, the ones I couldn’t shed as a child. In the year after Callie injected herself, I didn’t cry, not once. I held both my tears and my words inside, close to my chest, even as Logan and Angela and Mikey worried. I didn’t talk, and I refused to cry, and they thought I would never recover from my sister’s death.
They were right. I never recovered. I could never express the deep, deep sorrow of my other half being ripped from me—until now, when she’s been given back.
“Shh…” Tanner whispers against my hair. “It will be okay. I promise it will be okay.”
It’s more than okay. Callie’s not dead. She’s been here, the whole time, in this realm, this dimension. In the same city, for Fate’s sake. Just like the future, all I have to do is reach out and I’ll be able to touch her.
My tears eventually subside, and the physical world seeps back in. Tanner smells like soap, fresh and woodsy, and his shirt brushes against my face. It’s not rough, like I imagined, but baby-soft. The contrast of the texture over his solid chest makes me shiver.
I glance up, and his face is inches away. So close I can see the individual bristles on his chin, the creases like shadows in his lips. I lean forward to get a closer look.
He briefly tightens his hold on me. “I’m not going to kiss you.”
I blink, not understanding. And then the words sink in. “Who says I’d let you?”
“I’ve been with enough girls to know when my kisses are wanted, Jessa.”
“Well, you’re w-wrong,” I sputter, heat flooding my face. “I just found out my sister’s still alive. The last thing I want is to kiss you.”
“I’ve told you before. You’re not my type.” He smiles, still gentle, and smooths my hair back from my face, so carefully that I feel like a precious artifact from the pre-Boom era.
My mouth dries, and my pulse speeds as though it’s approaching the final leg of a race. I wonder if he can hear my heartbeat—but it doesn’t matter. Because none of this is actually about kissing. He’s trying to pull me back from my despair, and he knows he can’t do that by soft words and sympathy. He knows he has to make an outrageous statement to which I’ll react.
Swallowing hard, I turn to the stretcher and Callie. She’s just reappeared in my life, and already, she’s protecting me. Saving me from awkward conversations and confusing emotions.
“What’s wrong with her?” I ask.
He slides his hand down my arm to my waist, his thumb moving in slow circles. “She’s suffering from a condition called Asynchronicity, which means her mind is not lined up in time with her body. It’s the same condition that afflicts time travelers. The main reason they get lost is because their minds don’t stay in the same time as their bodies.”
I struggle to concentrate on his words. “Never heard of it. Is this a new disease?”
“Nah. It’s been around since the beginning of time.” His thumb continues circling, hooking under my shirt and lifting it. All of a sudden, the rough pad of his finger is pressed against my bare skin. I shiver, zips of awareness racing through my entire body. “But back then, when a traveler showed up, claiming to be from a different era, he was dismissed as crazy. It’s been only in the last ten years, since time travel’s been ac
cepted as a possibility, that Asynchronicity was also recognized as a medical condition. There are a few reported cases in the European States, but Callie’s our first patient in North Amerie.”
His thumb keeps moving; the zips keep shooting. Part of me never wants him to stop—and part of me wonders if he’s deliberately trying to distract me. Is he telling me the entire truth, or are there parts he’s continuing to hide?
I move back, and his hand falls from my waist. I don’t know whether to cry or be relieved. “So how do I wake her up?”
“You can’t. Or at least, we haven’t been able to, not for lack of trying. You see, her body’s here, at this fixed moment, but her mind floats through time, skipping from one period to the next, unable to distinguish what is real and now. We need to signal her, somehow, that this is the present, so that her mind knows where to land.” Now that his hands are free, he holds them up, palms out. “That’s the problem. Ten years have passed, and she’s never been present in this time. So how is she supposed to recognize it?”
“But she sent me the vision,” I whisper. “Of running the maze through the purple and green hallway. Did that corridor exist ten years ago?”
He shakes his head. “It was repainted last year. So you’re right. The memory couldn’t have come from a decade ago. Callie leaves this room twice a month, so that the medics can thoroughly examine her. She would’ve traveled along the exact path that you ran.”
My pulse leaps. “That proves, doesn’t it, that she’s more aware of the present than you think?”
“I don’t know,” he says slowly. “Her eyes would have to be at least cracked open. She would’ve had to see the hallway and register it. Maybe it means her mind is starting to become more aware. But even then, it doesn’t mean she recognizes the hallway as the present. She probably sent you that memory because it pops up the most often.”
He pauses, as if he’s not sure if he should continue. “Whatever the explanation, time’s running out. Last week, she took a turn for the worse. With each day that passes, she gets weaker. Her hold on life gets more tenuous. She’s been in a coma for ten years now. She can’t hang on forever.”