Control (13 page)

“DYLIA!”
I SHRIEK, RUNNING TO HER.
Everything about her is wrong, so wrong. Her bloom of health is withered beneath a pasty complexion. The slinky clothes and smeared makeup remind me of a dress-up game gone totally wrong, as if a little girl decided to play neurodrug addict instead of tea party.

I’m seeing Dyl’s innocence, the last bit of real goodness in the world, being flayed. And I know, as sure as I need another gasp of air, that it’s all against her will.

“Dyl! Dyl!” I push my way through the crowd, the vision of her half-dead eyes in my head. A large girl shoves me to the wall, irritated that my hands are so desperate to wipe her out of my way. I lose sight of Dyl. The crowd surrounding her slithers farther away, drawn into the room with the pulsating brain. I catch a glimpse of her ratty hair as the door closes.

“Dyl!” I scream again. I throw the door open and frantically scan the room. This one has glowing blue orbs of smoke that float around. An orange-haired girl wearing a chain-mail mini-dress saunters up to the orb bobbing closest to me. She purses her lips, as if kissing the sphere, and it shrinks in size as she inhales it.

“So . . . sweet . . .” she murmurs as she backs away from me, eyes glazing over with contentment.

I push her out of the way, and she laughs hollowly. The room is crowded, and I can’t get past the people right before me. I weave in and out of the blue orbs, refusing to get any of the inhalant in my face. The back of the room is partitioned off by a black wall with an entrance on each side. I start to make my way to the left opening, when a leathery hand pushes my chest.

“This is a private room.” The boy who’s holding me back is tall, wearing an unbuttoned, expensive-looking white shirt. His neck, chest—all of him, really—are covered in a hard, bumpy brown material, only slightly less repellant than a giant scab. His face is covered in a shiny white mask that reveals only his unsmiling lips.

“I need to get back there,” I beg, clutching his hard, scaly hand. It doesn’t budge. He pushes me hard, and I fall onto the ground painfully, skidding against the wall. There’ll be a fresh bruise adorning my hip where I’ve fallen, I’m sure. He laughs, as do the people around me. No sympathy for underdogs here.

“Fine,” I say. I stand up, pretending to walk away, then dash to the other open side of the wall. I get one foot into the room before I crash into a steel-hard pole. No, it’s not a pole, or even a piece of furniture. It’s a squat, muscular boy just under my height. I shelter my ribs where the pain begins to spread and notice that he too is wearing a glossy white mask.

He takes one hand and grabs my neck, not squeezing, just holding me in place. It’s like a metal vise. I scrape and claw the hand, screaming, but he won’t let go.

“Get OFF me!” I kick him hard, only to be rewarded with a throbbing pain in my foot. It feels like I just kicked a boulder. Geez, is this kid wearing steel plates under his clothes?

“Shhh.” A girl’s voice whispers in my ear from behind. “Time for you to check out, darling.” Thin feminine fingers cover my eyes for several seconds. I blink wildly as my world descends into black. My eyes feel like rubber globes, my lids fluttering strangely over them as they search for light, people, anything.

The vise-like grip around my neck is released, and I stagger away with my hands splayed out. The edge of the wall finds my fingertips, and I cling to it. I’ve no confidence that the floor is solid, or that there isn’t a gigantic hole I’m about to step into. Male and female voices murmur, giggle, chortle.

They are laughing at me.

They are laughing at me because I’m completely blind.

• • •

“DYL!” I SEARCH THE ECHOES OF LAUGHTER,
trying to find the thread of her voice. But I can’t find it. She’s gone, and I am worse than helpless. The sick fear of losing her again overwhelms my body and I dry heave, my knees hitting the floor.

I wish Cy were here. I feel my way around the wall to a flat section, pressing my face up against the cold plane to avoid the blue puffballs. I swallow over and over, the saliva pooling in my mouth in reaction to all the retching. I touch my earlobe, hoping my holo is still on. “Someone, please help me. I’m in the Alucinari Room with the brain. I can’t see.” I choke on my words.

“You can’t see because you’ve met Caliga.” A guy’s voice sounds close to my ear, the tone warm and gentle.

“Who’s Caliga?” My words sound slightly garbled with my face pressed against the wall.

“Her talents are pretty wicked. She numbed your optic nerves, but it’ll pass shortly.” A warm hand covers my cold one where it’s splayed against the wall. A buzz of prickly heat emanates from his hand into mine.

“Who is this?” I ask. The hand gathers mine in his as another cradles my back tightly as if I’m in danger of sinking in a black, deep sea.

“You know who I am.”

“Q,” I whisper in the darkness. My statement is affirmed by a hand squeeze. The buzzing feeling intensifies and I yank my hand away. “You’re hurting me.”

“Sorry, I’ll tone that down.” His hand meets mine again, and this time it’s just warmth, no buzzing. What the hell was that? “Come on, let’s get you out of here—”

“No! My sister, I have to—I can’t go.” I push his hands away, trying to find the wall. Something catches my toe and I tumble, flying through nothingness until my palms and knees slam the floor. Before my head follows suit, Q’s arms encircle my waist to pull me off the ground.

“You’re in no state to go anywhere. And anyway, Dylia is gone.”

My heart sinks. “How do you know?”

“This is when they put her down for the night. They’ve been keeping her asleep most of the time.”

“No. No.” It’s all I can manage to say. This can’t be happening. They’re chemically tying her wrists. No wonder she looks so half human.

“Come on, let’s get you out of this room. The neurodrug clouds are everywhere, so forgive me for this.” One warm hand gently molds to the back of my neck, the other rides on my left hip as we walk into the void. He guides my head left, down, and right, so no doses of drugs hit me. Soon, the overwhelming stench of sweat disappears and the sensation of claustrophobia peels away.

“Here, sit down.” He guides me to a soft seat. “Did you come alone?”

“Yes,” I lie. I’m afraid he won’t tell me everything if he knows I’m with the others. I still can’t see much, but a faint patch of midnight blue enters the inky blackness. My deadened retinas are fighting to register every bit of light possible.

“How did you get here?” he asks, but I wave away his questions.

“It doesn’t matter. I came here to find you, and I found Dyl.”
And then I lost her.
I twist my fingers together, squeezing so hard it hurts. “How do you know so much about Dyl? Are you part of Aureus?”

“I’m just hired help there. But I want to help you, Zelia. Your dad saved my life a long time ago. I owe him.”

“You knew him too?” How come everyone got to spend time with him but Dyl and me? Jealousy swells up in me, quickly extinguished by regret and sadness. If only I could ask Dad now. My life is so replete with “if’s.” I mask a sniffle and blink rapidly, wondering if numbed eyes can cry.

“Yes. But he never said anything about Dyl to me. Aureus wants to know more about her gifts, and she says she doesn’t know. You have to tell us about her trait.”

“I don’t know anything!” I shake my head. “I have her holo diary. I’ve listened to some of it—”

“What did she say?”

“Nothing out of the ordinary.”
Nothing but innocent observations of a world and a sister that don’t deserve her.
I sigh. “But I haven’t listened to all of it.”

“Do you have it with you?”

“I left it behind. I didn’t want to lose it.”

“You have to tell me if you find anything. It’s the only way they’ll let her go. They’ll tear her to pieces to find the answer.” I hide my face in my hands, unable to speak. I have no answers. Q wraps an arm around my shoulder, consoling me. “Look, we’ll figure this out together, okay? I’m glad you found me.”

Q’s willingness to help is a better drug than anything Argent could cook up. His patience is solid and calm as he waits beside me. Something brushes by my temple.

“Your hair looks good like this, Zelia.”

My mouth drops open, just a fraction. “So you have seen me before. Was it on the holo?” I ask.

“No. But your new housemates block transmissions so well, it’s a wonder my calls ever got through.”

I frown. “They said it was the tower.”

“They say a lot of things, Zelia.”

I don’t respond, letting his words replay in my mind. Slowly, the patch of dark blue in my vision transitions to smoky gray. There is movement. Blobs of bodies wander in front of me. I put my hand in front of my face, hoping I can see it, when Q touches my fingers and guides them to his cheek instead.

I feel faint stubble, and then his ear with the holo stud there. His hair is so silky.
Boys shouldn’t have hair this soft,
I think.
It’s unfair.
As his hand guides mine closer to his lips, I pull away.

I’m so impatient for my vision to come back that I squeeze my eyes tight, willing them to return to normal. My eyes begin to feel less rubbery. When I finally open them, the light, though dim, is piercing and painful.

Finally, I can see Q’s hair, the caramel tint. I push his shoulder farther away, to get a better look, and he cups his hand over mine, as if to say,
“You can push me away, but I’m not leaving
.
”
Confusion overwhelms me when I see the mischievous grin, the lean torso clad in a shirt of gunmetal gray.

It’s the boy from New Horizons.

“Micah!” I gasp.

“At your service.” He tips his head.

“Q! Your name is Q! Why did you lie?”

“Who says I lied? My name is Micah Kw. K-w.”

“Kw?” I say it like an accusation. I could never have known to search with that spelling.

“Well, lots of words don’t have vowels. Cwm, nth, crwth—”

I impatiently cut him off. “Why didn’t you tell me at New Horizons you were going to help?”

“Everything there is monitored, so I couldn’t say a word. But after your tests, I tried to warn you. They must have known. I got transferred to the north office the second your labs were done.”

“You said you work for Aureus.”

“I do. They pay me to work at New Horizons, to scope out the new talent. I’m the one who sends the samples to them.”

My holo buzzes in my earlobe and Hex’s recorded voice booms at me. “Two-hour alarm, two-hour alarm,
TWO-HOUR ALARM
!”

“I have to go.” I stand up, hesitating. I pivot on my heel and face Micah. The idea spews out of my mouth without thinking. “I should just go with you! We can get Dyl back, working together.”

“No, no. You need to find what you can from Dyl’s diary. Stay there. I’ll be in touch.” He walks me out of the shelter of our room and back into Alucinari corridor.

“That’s not good enough. We have to meet again.” I cling to his hands. “The junkyards. I can meet you there. My holo is too unreliable. You’re the only way I can find out if she’s okay.”

“All right. Next Sunday morning, then,” he acquiesces, embracing me. “Contact me when you get out of Carus,” he says, then quickly messages his number to my holo. He smiles. “See you in a week.”

I can’t believe I’m making promises like this. I might as well tell him I’ll get him a recombinant woolly mammoth too. Micah presses a tender kiss on my cheek, and my cheeks fill with warmth. He pulls away and freezes.

“I thought you said you came alone,” he says.

I turn around. The crowd splits in half as Cy approaches us. Behind his dark, inked mask he’s seething with fury, and he’s wielding a knife as long as his forearm.

“What are you doing?” I blurt out, eyeing the knife.

“Come on, Zelia, we have to go.” He uncurls his other fist toward me. He wants me to take his hand, but I pause.

“Go on, it’s okay,” Micah whispers, his eyes still on Cy. Micah’s hand inches up toward the holo stud of his ear when Cy raises the knife.

“Take out that holo,” Cy orders him, pointing the knife. Micah complies readily. “Chuck it. Far away.”

Micah throws it and it pings against a far wall.

“You have some nerve, Kw.” He keeps the knife directed at Micah’s heart. “You touch her again and I’ll kill you.”

“You’re in no place to make threats,” Micah retorts, but his face doesn’t match his words. He glances at the knife, then gives me a look of helplessness and walks away without glancing back.

One week. Sunday morning,
I tell myself.
We’ll meet at the junkyards and he’ll help me get Dyl back.

“Let’s go,” Cy growls at me. When I don’t move, he yells, “Now! Or I’ll carry you back.”

“Okay, okay!” I say, exasperated. He takes my arm and runs with me down the hallway, stepping over the hallucinating, squirming, beautiful youth of Neia, even stepping on them when they crowd the floors too thickly. Upstairs, Hex, Wilbert, and Vera wait for us by the door, exhausted but happy. They take one glance at Cy’s face and the knife and immediately drop their smiles.

“I guess that means we really have to go, huh?” Vera sulks.

“They know we’re here,” Cy says, and in a second we’re out the door and galloping for the char. We run as fast as we can. At the char, Wilbert knocks his silver buttons askew getting into the backseat. Magically, his extra head pops into view.

“Welcome back.” Hex pats his extra head a little too roughly. Wilbert responds by rolling down the window and puking onto the street.

“What the
hell
is going on?” I yell.

“This was a mistake, is what.” Cy sinks the blade into a sheath tied to his right thigh, which I never noticed until now. I start up the char and drive down the deserted side streets. Cy keeps checking the mirrors.

“Drive faster,” he orders. I respond by stamping my foot on the accelerator and blasting down a back alley.

“Who was it?” Hex asks. When Cy doesn’t answer, Hex snorts. “Oh. Him. Well, it was time to leave anyway . . .”

“What is up with you and Micah?” I ask. I want to defend him, to say that he’s trying to help Dyl, but the less I say, the better.