Never Sleep

by Cady Vance

  “Alright,” I say with a smile. I can barely believe our plan has worked out this well so far. “Time for the next stage.”

  Florence nods, rubs her hands together and reaches for the breaker box switch. My chest tightens, nerves suddenly rattling my lungs as I breathe in and out. We’re really going to do this. No turning back now.

  Thirty-Three

  Do not force your child into bed at night, as conditioned insomnia can develop when the child associates negative feelings with both beds and nighttime.

  - The Galvanism Handbook for Parents

  We have to move fast.” Florence grips the breaker switch for the cameras. I place my own trembling fingers on the doorknob and wait, barely hearing anything over the pounding in my ears. My skin feels alive, as if it’s moving out of its own accord, and I’m only a puppet of thoughts inside it. An alien to my own body.

  Florence flips the switch, I throw open the door and suddenly we are in the hall again, moving quickly without the stealth from before. We still can’t be seen or its all over, but if we don’t haul ass, we won’t have time for the rest of the plan.

  We hurry down the hall to our rooms, and I’m grateful for the silence caressing my ears instead of an ear-piercing alarm. The three of us split up. There are only five rooms here, but we need to check them all fast. I take the first one while Florence and Lottie move forward. I don’t bother to glance at the folder on the door before I enter. No time for curiosity now.

  There is a curled-up boy no older than ten on the stark bed. My heart hurts at the sight. He’s too young to be here. All of us are, really. This shouldn’t be his life. This shouldn’t be our life. I rush to his bed and barely tap his shoulder. He rolls over and looks up at me with empty, bottomless gray eyes. Lottie told me they’d be like this, but that didn’t prepare me for seeing it myself.

  “Come on,” I say, afraid to reach out and touch his frail form again. He’s so small. I’m afraid the lightest pressure will shatter him. “We need to go outside.”

  I wait for a spark in his eyes, but there is none. He’s too drugged up to care or even understand. A tiny part of me feels bad for taking him from this place without confirmation this is what he wants, but I have to hold on to what I know in my heart is the right thing to do. I can’t leave him here like this.

  He slowly stands from the bed and shuffles after me, the gown hanging loosely on his bony shoulders. We press into the hall. The others have gathered their first two zombie-like insomniacs as well. They stand there dazed and confused, waiting for instructions from us. I sigh and usher the kid toward the other two—a small tween girl and an older boy.

  I wait with the three kids while Florence and Lottie go after the remaining two. I try to think of words to say, but I have nothing. I wonder if I should explain what is happening, but I don’t know if they will register anything that happens.

  I don’t have to wonder for words any longer because Florence and Lottie are back with the two remaining insomniacs. Two teenage girls, so alike with their light brown hair and clear gray eyes and pearly white skin, they could be sisters.

  The urge to find Odin intensifies. I grip the ends of my sleeves and stare down the hall, willing him to appear in front of me. It’s hard to forget what he looked like twitching on the ground. It’s hard to forget the Sleeper proclaiming him dead. But, for once, I pray I was hallucinating. He has to be alive.

  “The front doors are this way,” Lottie mouths, pointing in the direction we haven’t yet explored. I’m relieved we don’t have to go by the nurse’s station again, not for fear of getting caught but for fear of seeing Aiden’s face one more time.

  With eight of us, our footsteps bounce off the walls, echoing a random pitter-patter that bangs against my eardrums. I want to hiss at the others to be quiet, but I know they won’t understand. I know they probably can’t even stop their feet from their shuffle-pat-shuffle-pat in their current state.

  Florence and Lottie take the lead, and I round out the back, glancing behind me for any sign we’ve been spotted. The florescent lights flicker overhead, and I jump, my skin bouncing off my body and up to the ceiling before slamming back down into me like a heavy lead weight.

  Stop being so jumpy, Thora. I roll my eyes at myself, but the lump of coal in my throat is heavier than ever.

  We round the corner, taking the right passageway. A long, empty stretch of white concrete wall is before us, edging off on either side at the end. Only a blinking exit sign hanging over a metal door shows any sign of life.

  Lottie cocks her head at the door and mouths to me, “That goes upstairs.”

  I nod, gaze glued to the door that now feels like a portal to Odin. A portal to Lucas. It takes all my willpower to keep moving away from that door, now that I know exactly how to reach them. Once I’m up there, I can find out for sure if my brother is alive. See his pulse beating against his skin. I remind myself I’ll never get either of them out of here if I don’t follow through on this plan with careful precision. So, I continue to move down this empty stretch with the others, though it feels as if I’m leaving a part of me behind here at this door that leads to the other two parts of my heart.

  Lottie motions to the left fork and pauses before she reaches it, waiting for the rest of us to catch up and cluster around her. I keep an eye on the path behind us. We’re still in the all clear. Now that they think they’ve trapped all of us, they must be sleeping off the night’s activities.

  Florence moves ahead of us as a lookout. She edges around the corner and then jerks away, pressing her back up against the wall. She shakes her head and pushes her single earbud further into her ear canal, like the closer the music is to her ears, the better everything will be. I pull on my sleeves, listening as a voice filters toward our ragtag group.

  “Need to…cameras…out. I restarted the system here up front, but the screens are still blank…Can you check the breaker? The doc said I can’t leave my post today on account of those kids they brought in…Thanks, I owe you one.”

  “What do we do now?” I hiss as Florence inches her way to my side.

  “Shit, I thought for sure that would get him away from the door,” Lottie says, dropping her head back against the wall to stare up at the bright florescent lights.

  I shove my hands into my pockets, and an idea begins to form in my head as I pull out the medicine bottle. This is why I picked it up in the first place. Just in case something like this happened.

  “Give me the needles, Florence.”

  “Why?” She cocks her head and hands them over.

  Before I can stop myself from dismissing the crazy plan, I blurt it aloud. “I’ll use the drugs to knock him out. And when the other nurses find him, they’ll know we escaped out the front door. It’s perfect.”

  Lottie frowns, but Florence’s face lights up like Times Square after dark.

  “Genius,” Florence says before her face drops into a scowl. “I doubt you’re as good of an actor as Traitor Aiden, but I’m sure you can pull off little lost insomniac well enough to get close and stab the doorman with that needle?”

  “I’ve spent my whole life pretending I’m normal so I’ve got some acting practice.” I twirl the needle between my fingers. “Plus, I’ve seen a few movies in my spare time.”

  “I don’t like it,” Lottie says. “But I don’t have a better idea.”

  After I add the needle to the syringe, I unscrew the top of the medicine bottle and dip the end of the needle inside, pulling up on the plastic end like I’ve seen nurses do when taking blood. The thick liquid shoots up into the syringe, a light yellow color swirling through the clear plastic. My fingers shake, but I manage to get a healthy dose ready. I have no idea what this will do to the guard, and I hope it doesn’t permanently hurt him, though a part of me doesn’t really care if it does. Just in case, I repeat the motion with a second syringe and slide my new weapons up the sleeve of my shirt.

  “Here goes nothing,” I mutter to my friends before moving
past them to peer around the corner. The front guard is staring blankly at the door before him. He looks bored and lonely, and he has no idea what’s about to hit him. Literally.

  I wander out into the lobby, face blank and hoping my eyes look as glazed as I’m trying to make them appear. I think about the many times I’ve zoned out, how fuzzy my brain usually feels. I know I can’t fake that, but I’m hoping he hasn’t had enough contact with drugged-up insomniacs to tell the difference. He’s not the one who does the check-up rounds on patients. Out of the corner of my eye, I see a movement as if he has finally noticed me and has stood up behind his desk.

  “You need to be in your room,” he says in a gruff, low voice. I can tell he doesn’t think of me as any real threat yet, but I also know he won’t be so dismissive if I get too close to the front door.

  I turn my head in a funny jerk, as if I hear him but don’t quite understand what’s going on. I sweep my eyes in his direction and purposely don’t meet his gaze straight on so that I’m dumbly staring at a dark spot on the wall behind his head. I shuffle, stumbling a little.

  I try make my voice sound dreamy as I say, “I can’t find my bed.”

  “Hmph,” he says, voice still gruff, but I don’t hear any doubt in it either. “I’ll call a nurse to get you back.”

  I continue to stand here dumb and mute as I hear the clicking of a number being dialed. I keep my mouth half-open and slack, but it’s hard when I’m itching to move.

  “Yeah, can you come up front? One of these Somniheads can’t find her room, and she looks like she’s spaced out of her head…Yeah, alright, I’ll keep an eye on her for now.” He huffs, and I hear the clunk of a phone returning to its receiver.

  “Wait there,” he says to me. “Someone’s coming.”

  I cock my head and try to look confused before I make a shuffle-shuffle-stumble move. I reach out at nothing and trip on my own feet until I think I’m actually going to fall flat on my face. It turns out to be the perfect combination. Two strong, thick hands grab me mid-air and plant me back on my feet again.

  “Easy does it.” The gruffness has disappeared, and I feel a twinge of guilt for what I’m about to do. “Hey, why are you dressed in regular clothes?”

  As soon as he lets go of my arms, my eyes snap clear. I yank the shot from my sleeve, flying my hand forward as fast as I can. He blinks and steps back, but the needle catches his arm. I push hard on the back end of the syringe, both feeling and hearing the liquid ooze into his bloodstream.

  “What the hell!” he yells in a gurgled cry.

  “I’m sorry,” I say as his eyes become saucers. His hands fly to where I stabbed him, as if he wants to scratch the medicine out of his skin. The needle drops to the floor and rolls away from our feet. A few seconds pass where he stands staring at me in shock before his eyes start to lose their focus and his knees begin to bend. I hold out a hand to steady him, but he’s too heavy for me to hold, and he crashes down to the floor. His body rolls over, face resting against the tile. His eyelids flutter shut.

  “Do it now, Florence!” I no longer care about being silent.

  I hear a small click and brace myself for the explosion. When nothing happens, I whirl around in surprise. My heart hammers hard and blood rushes through my skull.

  “Why didn’t it go off?” I clutch my hand to my throat. All this, and and we still won’t get Odin. I’ll never know for sure if my brother is alive. I’ll never see Lucas again.

  The other insomniacs are shuffling into the lobby from their hiding place. Lottie is guiding them toward the double-glass front door, and Florence helps to push along the dazed kids.

  “Oh, it went off,” Florence says with her wicked grin. “It’s not a monster bomb, friend. Just big enough to destroy the breaker and make a mess of that room.”

  In response, the ear-splitting alarm I’ve been waiting for squeals into the air like an airstrike attack. Nerves pump through my veins, winding through them like they’re attached to a socket of unchecked electricity. The overhead lights flicker, flicker, flicker before popping out, drenching the room in complete darkness. The alarm goes silent. I hold my breath, the Clinic suddenly silent and still until the unmistakable sound of dozens of footsteps.

  “This is where I say goodbye and good luck,” Lottie says with a salute before grabbing the arms of the insomniacs and dragging them through the front door. They respond, the older ones picking up their pace to follow, as if the alarm has somehow snapped them out of their stupor. They disappear out of the door and into sunlight. The beams hit my face before the door slams shut, dropping darkness onto us once more. I can only hope we’ve timed this right, and if the Sleepers go after any taxis at all, it’s the empty ones. But those insomniacs are out of our hands for now. They’ve got at least one fully sober person with them. A resourceful one.

  Dim lights blink on overhead, and the alarm blares back to life. I glance at Florence, eyes wide.

  “Generator,” she says. “We should be fine as long as we hide in the next, oh, twenty seconds?” Her finger shoots up to point at a door behind the desk. “There perhaps?”

  “Good enough for me.” I fly to the door, fling it open and stumble into deeper darkness. Florence edges in next to me, inside what appears to be a tiny closet. We shut the door, hopefully before anyone has caught sight of us.

  A moment later, we hear footsteps and yelling and lots of frustrated grunts and moans.

  “What did they do to John?”

  “They must have gone outside.” Something loud crashes. More curses fill the air.

  “Shit. The Doc is going to kill us,” another one says.

  The next few moments are full of more confused shouts, pounding feet and the squeal of tires on pavement.

  “Two taxis just drove off.”

  “You, take the van and follow them. Now.”

  My lips split into a grin so big, it hurts my face. After some more jumbled footsteps and slamming of doors, the frantic noise falls away. Other than the alarm, the only sound is our quiet breathing. Whoever was in the lobby is gone. It’s time for us to leave this closet of safety, but I can’t bring myself to open the door.

  “Do you think anyone stayed with the doorman?” I whisper to Florence. My eyes still haven’t adjusted to the darkness so I can’t read her face.

  “Doesn’t sound like it, but they’ll be back. Or a nurse will come soon to check on him, I’m sure. We should get going.”

  A hysterical giggle bubbles up inside my throat. “They think we’re gone. They have no idea we’re still here.” I snort and try to tame the giggle, putting a hand over my mouth. It doesn’t help. I’m flying high, on adrenaline and on success.

  I feel Florence smile just as big as I am. “We’re fucking invisible.”

  Thirty-Four

  High-security Clinics are located throughout the world for more troubled patients, though only used in extenuating circumstances.

  - The Galvanism Handbook for Parents

  We creep into the front lobby, and I notice for the first time the comfortable waiting room chairs and the side tables dotted throughout. Highlights magazines adorn the walls in neatly placed magazine racks. It really is a lobby, a waiting room for the sleepless. I shudder and block out the memories, the many times I’ve sat in a room like this, waiting to see a doctor in the Connecticut Clinic, waiting to get pricked and prodded. They try so hard to make it feel welcoming, but to me, it only seems menacing. Another illusion they’ve built to hide the rabid wolf underneath.

  We rush past the unconscious guard, down the hall and toward the emergency exit that will lead us to Lucas and—I hope—Odin. If our plan worked, all the Sleepers and doctors and nurses will be focused on the already-accomplished escape, not on the two of us they don’t know are still here. If our plan worked. If our plan worked. If our plan worked. Everything hinges on those four words.

  We push open the door, metal clanging. I wince, even though I doubt anyone will hear it over the still-sounding a
larm. Thick concrete steps lead up into black. Through the dark haze, I see the dim blinking red of another exit sign at the top of the stairs. I reach out and find the stair railing with a shaking hand and use it to lead me up to the next landing, Florence only a step behind.

  “Here goes nothing,” I say before pushing the door open. It swings out into another dim hallway, overhead lights blinking in time with the alarm. Florence and I look both right and left down identical long stretches. With the blaring alarm, the flashing lights and the abandoned halls, I feel like I’ve been dropped into the middle of a zombie apocalypse film.

  We make our way left first, looking for electronic locks or computer keypads, careful to stay silent in case anyone is still poking around up here. We find ourselves almost to the end of the hall with no sign of either of them. My heart aches at the thought Lottie might be wrong, that Lucas may not be here after all. That they took him somewhere else. That the doctor was lying about Odin.

  “Look,” Florence hisses and points. I follow her finger to see a row of three doors all equipped with electronic keypads. My feet break out into a run. Odin. My heart throttles like a race car straight out of The Fast and the Furious. Our crazy plan worked. They’re here. I throw open the first door I hit and find myself face-to-face with a pair of unbelievably bright blue eyes. They widen. Shock, surprise and happiness shoot through them in the single beat of my heart.

  “Lucas.”

  And suddenly Lucas is here. His arms are around me, snaking around my waist, his fingers reaching up and finding my hair. I dip back my head so I can look at his face. His lips are hungry against mine, and I close my eyes tight, pressing back, wanting, needing, hoping for more.

  I pull away, breathless, and tighten my arms around him.

  “You’re here,” he says, his words a soft whisper against my cheek as he leans down to kiss it. “I had a feeling the alarm was all you. I waited when the power went out.”