by Ellery Kane
“What did you do?”
She answered fast, expelling it all with one breath. “I helped Emma escape.”
CHAPTER TWENTY - SIX
VISITOR
THE NEXT MORNING, we were back in the lab with Carrie rehashing the story of Emma’s escape, as she labored over my mother’s equipment. The sound of a motor idling outside the garage interrupted us. Kneeling on a stool, I peeked through one of the tiny windows.
“It’s String.” There was blatant dread in my voice. My father groaned. After revealing the latest of String’s suspicious behavior, I knew his trust was wearing thin, nearly threadbare. Mine had unraveled long ago.
“String?” Carrie murmured, confused.
“Max’s ex.”
She tried to conceal her surprise with a flattened, “Oh.”
“Among other things,” my father added. “What do you think he wants?”
I shrugged. With String, it was anybody’s guess. Shifting uncomfortably on her stool, Carrie’s stare was fixed on the door. “Don’t worry. I’ll get rid of him.” I slipped outside, hoping it would be that easy.
“Got company?” String asked, gesturing to Carrie’s vehicle parked in the driveway. He was leaning against the side of another car—his, apparently—a sleek black sedan that practically screamed he was up to no good. Familiar dark sunglasses masked his eyes.
“Is that stolen?” I countered, sidestepping his question.
“Borrowed.” One corner of his mouth turned up in an ironic half smile.
“My dad’s friend from the station came over. They’re working on a story together.”
“Working?” String chuckled. “I thought your dad would be running the show after his performance with Quin.”
“You saw it?”
“Who didn’t? Your ex-boyfriend is quite the celebrity.” He perched his sunglasses atop his head, revealing himself—only the parts he wanted me to see. The rest he kept hidden, like his Internet-friend, Peter Radley. “Speaking of ex-boyfriends, have you seen Maximillian?”
“Not since the other day. He’s not staying here anymore. You know that.” He nodded, disappointed. “Besides, he said you were in Santa Cruz.” I studied his newly unveiled eyes for any sign of an impending lie.
“I was.” Didn’t even blink. “Came back yesterday.”
“What were you doing there?” I asked, pushing my luck.
He held out his milky white arms. “Perfecting my tan. Can’t you tell?”
I rolled my eyes at him. “I should probably head back inside. I’ll let you know if I hear from Max.”
His shoulders slumped like a scolded puppy, but his eyes were mischievous. “I guess I no longer warrant an invite inside Fort Knightley. Are you hiding Quin in there?”
I tried not to show it—I knew I was blushing—but his question caught me off guard. With String’s spotlight on me, a sharp realization cut through my discomfort. He wasn’t here looking for Max. “Why do you care?” I asked, my voice harsher than I intended.
He shrugged, then gave my arm a playful punch. “Easy there, killer. I was just teasing.” And for a moment, I almost believed him. “See ya later, Lex.” As he opened the door and crouched down low to swing his lanky legs inside, his sunglasses fell from their perch and landed at my feet.
I retrieved them from the ground, brushing them off with my T-shirt. “I hope you didn’t scratch your man-of-mystery glasses. That would be a real tragedy.” He grinned, taking the glasses and returning them to his face.
He preened a little, then took a quick glance in the mirror. “Lucky for me, my image remains intact.” As the window began its push-buttoned ascent, I spied his other hand on the passenger seat, palm down on his jacket, covering a white label. It was the kind of HELLO, MY NAME IS badge my mother always detested wearing at every conference she attended. I couldn’t really see it through his fingers. Lucky for me—I silently mocked String—I didn’t need to. I knew exactly where it was from.
The first and only time I visited Green Briar Recovery Center was with my mother, their newest and most famous, part-time counselor. Over a year had passed since the bombs exploded in Chicago, then New York, Boston, Los Angeles, Miami, and Dallas. Most of the patients at Green Briar were injured in the L.A. bombings or addicted to Emovere—or both.
After I visited and vowed never to return, the name irked me, nettling at me every time my mother said it aloud. Recovery Center. Green Briar wasn’t the kind of place where anybody recovered. You went there because somebody decided you were beyond recovery. Your pieces were irretrievably broken. When I saw the row of tiny printed redwood trees under String’s finger, I recognized them instantly.
While I drove, my father continued reading Zenigenic’s latest press release, his computer in his lap, cell phone in hand. “‘We are not at liberty to disclose the location of his treatment, but rest assured, Peter Radley is receiving the best care possible.’ That’s a quote from Xander’s spokes-woman, Gina Tan.”
Best care possible. I rolled my eyes.
“You really think he’s at Green Briar?” my father asked. At my insistence, we were on our way there, none of us quite sure who or what we would find.
“Maybe. It might explain why String had a visitor’s pass.”
“Green Briar,” Carrie repeated, almost to herself. “I’ve been trying to figure out why that name sounded so familiar. Wasn’t that little boy taken there? The one who—?”
“Yes.” I cut her off mid-sentence. If I let her finish, I knew I would have to tell them I was there that day. And it was enough to live it once.
I quickly changed the subject. “What was Radley like?” I asked, eyeing Carrie in the rearview mirror. In a mere forty-eight hours, SFTV had discovered his twisted poem on social media, analyzed it, and immortalized it.
“Angry.” Her eyes seemed far away, but she answered instantly, as if she was already thinking it. “But I didn’t know him that well. He was assigned to another specialist. We were told he was one of the first Guardian Force recruits to receive Onyx. He’d been taking it for at least six months when he entered rehab. Truthfully, at the time, I expected worse.”
“Do you know when he left?”
Carrie shook her head. “I didn’t hear anything until Quin’s dad was arrested. That’s when I saw the video of Peter speaking at one of those rallies. And Emma too. I was shocked.” That makes two of us. “I wanted to contact you,” she said, squeezing my shoulder. “I was worried about you—and Quin. But I couldn’t. I was so afraid they were still looking for me.” Her voice was a choked whisper. “Still am.”
“It’s okay,” I assured her. Carrie hadn’t pressed about me and Quin. She approached everything like a scientist—precise, exacting, patient. I liked that about her.
“We’re here,” I told them, slowing the car to a crawl. The entrance to Green Briar was just at the edge of Muir Woods, where the ancient redwoods extended themselves in a perpetual reach toward the sky. The sign was the same—a sleek stone that was intended to camouflage but somehow looked out of place. Just as I had on my first and only visit, Carrie read the inscription aloud:
Like a tree, our branches break, and we grow strong again.
“Sounds promising,” she said with a smirk.
“Uh-oh.” My father pointed to another sign just beyond the entrance. No media allowed. “I’d say they wouldn’t recognize me, but after that interview last night … ”
I laughed. “I think you said goodbye to your anonymity, Dad.”
Nervous, Carrie cleared her throat. “I-I can’t go in. Of course, he’d recognize me, and—”
I kept driving past, then pulled the car off the road, pinecones crackling under the wheels. “I’ll go alone.”
CHAPTER TWENTY - SEVEN
CAGED
THE SMELL OF GREEN BRIAR—bleach and pine needles—knocked me back. Certain places, no matter how dull or how ordinary on the outside, are bewitched. They’re portals to the past. Just one step inside, within the snap of a f
inger, you’re transported back in time. As I closed the door behind me, I felt myself slowly becoming the girl that I was. Then. Before. No matter how much time stretched beyond it, my mother’s death was an indelible line of demarcation.
“May I help you?” The young woman behind the desk addressed me without looking up from her computer tablet. I suppressed a gasp when I saw Quin’s face on the screen. She was watching a video of the interview.
“I’m here to visit a patient.” I hovered at the edge, then dove head first. “Peter Radley.”
She flinched a little, then pressed pause and directed her eyes toward me. “Sorry. I shouldn’t be watching that.” Glancing down, she snickered at me conspiratorially, on the screen a frozen close-up of Quin. “I just wish a guy like that would save my life.”
I smiled back at her. “I know exactly what you mean, Julie.” She looked befuddled as I pointed to her name tag.
Chuckling at herself, she asked, “So who did you say you were here to see?”
There was no going back now. “Peter Radley.”
I watched her face flush and her eyes blink, blink, and blink again. She gave a small, almost indiscernible shake of her head and swallowed hard. “We don’t have any patients by that name.”
“Right.” Of course, it wouldn’t be that easy, but at least she was a really bad liar. “Do you usually have visitors sign in?”
She gestured toward the tablet on her desk. “It’s all computerized.”
“Could I take a look?”
With a tap of her finger, Quin’s handsome face disappeared, a far less exciting spreadsheet in its place. “This is from the last few days,” she said. I scanned the thirty or so names one by one until I found it.
9:00 a.m. Max Powers
“Were you here this morning?” I asked her.
She nodded. “ Since 8. Why?”
“I was just wondering if you remembered my friend, Max. He was here around 9 today.” I watched her face carefully, hoping she was as harmless as she seemed.
Her eyes brightened, and I was relieved. “Uh, you mean tall, dark, and gorgeous Max with the great hair?” She pantomimed String’s slick Mohawk perfectly. “He’s quite the charmer.”
I gritted my teeth, grinning through my uneasiness. “He certainly is.”
“We don’t usually have anybody that young here for the tour.” She gestured to a group of adults huddled in the far corner. They weren’t speaking. A few pretended to consider the portrait of Green Briar’s founder looming large on the wall behind them. The others traded vacant stares. “It starts in five minutes, if you’re interested,” she added.
I shrugged, not wanting to seem too eager. “Sure.”
Julie reached into the desk drawer and produced a visitor’s pass. In the white space beneath the row of tiny printed redwood trees, I wrote a name: Emma Markum.
“Welcome to Green Briar.” Hamilton, our middle-aged tour guide, offered a thin, condescending smile, ushering us like a troop of wayward ducklings down the first long hallway toward the elevator. “As I’m sure you all know, Green Briar is the premiere treatment center specializing in emotion-altering medication dependence. We offer several state-of-the-art programs designed to assist in overcoming the effects of Euphoractamine, Emovere, Agitor, and even … ” He lowered his voice to a dramatic whisper. “Onyx.” The woman next to me gasped. She muffled her shock with a hand to her mouth, but Hamilton frowned at her anyway. Her name tag read Jeannie.
“We’ll be visiting the third floor,” Hamilton advised us as we crammed inside. “It’s where most of the action takes place. The treatment and evaluation rooms are there, and I’ll show you an empty model of a patient’s living quarters. Right now, most of our patients are housed on the tenth floor, so don’t expect to see many of them out and about.” Tenth floor. I filed that information away for later. As we traipsed out of the elevator, two by two, Jeannie nudged me.
“Who are you here for?” she asked. I disguised my annoyance with a polite smile.
“A friend,” I murmured, hoping she wouldn’t press for more.
“My daughter’s about your age.” Leave me alone. “She’s why I’m here. Well, her and Emovere.” I nodded, avoiding eye contact. I had purposefully fallen behind the rest of the group, hoping to slip back to the elevator, and I didn’t need company.
With a sidelong glance through the small windows, I surveyed the treatment rooms as we passed. All empty with a circle of chairs at the center. “Keep up, please,” Hamilton scolded. I momentarily increased my pace, but as soon as the rest of the group rounded the corner, I stopped. So did Jeannie.
“Wonder what that’s for.” She pointed to a metal cage secured to the wall with large iron bolts.
I shook off a memory: my panicked mother slamming one just like it shut and locking it, with a boy—the boy—inside. When the police brought him here, she’d told me to wait for her in her office. I wished I’d listened. “It’s called a therapeutic module,” I answered.
Leery, Jeannie ran her hand along the links. The soft clink was the only sound in the eerie quiet. The boy had touched them too, but not like that. He’d grabbed them with the ferocious desperation of a rabid animal. “Do they put people inside it?” Jeannie asked.
“Sometimes.” Emerging from the hallway, Hamilton cleared his throat with intention, and we both jumped. “Sorry,” I said. “We’re coming.”
He stared back at me hard. Then, putting an arm around Jeannie, he guided her back to the group. “Don’t worry. Those are only used in extreme circumstances.” He glanced over his shoulder and narrowed his eyes at me.
“Like what?” Jeannie asked.
Hamilton twittered nervously. I watched him flounder in silence, wishing I could speak for him. I wouldn’t give her my mother’s answer. “Therapeutic modules are used for containment,” she’d said. The truth was the cages were for the uncontainable. Like the boy. The one my mother put there on the day the government finally banned Emovere.
“Therapeutic modules are for containment.” Hamilton was obviously well versed in Green Briar dialect. “They’re for the safety of our patients and staff.” Behind his back, I rolled my eyes.
“But they look like … cages.” Jeannie offered the word cautiously.
Exasperated, Hamilton groaned, as if she had personally offended him. “We don’t call them that here. Cages are for animals.” Jeannie looked down at her feet, scolded.
Up ahead of us, the group was crowded just outside an open doorway. “All of our patients have their own room, much like this one,” Hamilton explained. I stood on tiptoe to get a view of the sparse quarters—a twin-sized bed, a small desk, and a single chair. “We find simple living conditions promote success. With EAM addicts, it’s best to reduce stimulation.”
A well-dressed man near the front tapped Hamilton’s shoulder. “How long does it take?” he asked. “Before they get better?” All of their faces stilled, hopeful, hanging on his answer. I felt sorry for them.
“I wish I could tell you.” Hamilton looked sympathetically at the group as their expressions deflated. “But it varies significantly from patient to patient. I’m going to leave that to one of our top-notch doctors.” He shut the door, then pointed to the left, down another long hallway. A tall, gray-haired woman in a white coat stood at the end. “Speaking of which, let’s meet Dr. Henley. She’ll be able to help with any questions you have about the course of treatment.” Led by Jeannie and the well-dressed man, the group hurried toward her. I imagined how she must feel—at once, both powerful and inadequate, just like my mother.
When I watched my mother talk to the boy that day—his ten-year-old eyes a piercing, gun-metal blue—I saw for the first time just how vulnerable she was. That she didn’t have all the answers everyone thought she did, that Emovere was something she’d unleashed on the world and couldn’t take back. After the boy had exhausted himself shaking the cage, he finally spoke to her.
“Can I go home?” His voice more timid
than I’d expected, the Emovere wearing off by then. I was surprised by that. They’d said he injected the entire vial he found hidden in his parents’ bedroom.
“No. You have to stay here.” My mother said nothing more. I’d wondered who would tell him and how. He didn’t have a home to go back to.
“Allow me to introduce my esteemed colleague, Dr. Elizabeth Henley. She was formerly employed by Zenigenic and has been working here with us for the past two years as our EAM expert.” Hamilton’s obnoxious pronouncement jarred me back to the present.
With all eyes on Dr. Henley, I slipped away, skirting back down the corridor and onto the elevator. Ten, I whispered to myself. When the elevator doors parted, I moved with purpose, checking the small name tags affixed to each door: Rouse, Peterson, Marshall, Smith. No, no, no, no again. I glanced over my shoulder, imagining Hamilton standing there shaking his head at me. But there was no one, so I soldiered on. Room after room, name after name, all no.
Then at the third room from the end … yes.
CHAPTER TWENTY - EIGHT
OBLIVION
THE CHAIR WAS THE FIRST THING I saw. Its wooden back to me, the chair faced the curtained window. The room was a deep gray, the color of loneliness.
“Peter?” My voice sounded strange to me. “Is anybody here?” I took another step inside and quieted my breathing. I could see him now, slumped forward in the chair, head in his hands. His reddish-brown hair was matted to his head. He wore a white T-shirt and khaki pants, the standard uniform for Green Briar then and now.
“Are you here to kill me?” He sat up straight, his arms as stiff as rods next to him. There were long, red marks down the length of them.
“No.” He didn’t seem as relieved as I expected. “What happened to your arms?” I asked.
“Agitor withdrawal.” He spoke through gritted teeth rubbing the abrasions with his fingernails. “Can’t. Stop. Scratching.” A line of blood appeared on each arm. I couldn’t stand it. I took another step forward and reached my hand toward him.