A sigh left Cyan’s mouth. “Yeah. We’d better turn round, head back.”
“Then what?”
“Back to the original plan. We find Jonquil ourselves. And hopefully the others too.”
Ruby’s expression was almost a sneer. “Are you serious?” She threw an arm towards the emptiness ahead. “Even if we found them, there’s nowhere to take them.”
“But finding them would be a start, right? We can’t just leave them. And if we find them…” Cyan’s lips moved with his thoughts. “If we find them, they’ll be proof to the other residents of what Dr Haven’s doing. That way, if the orderlies start whipping their tranquilizers out, the residents might put up a fight. Plus we’d have the residents we’ve rescued on our side.”
“Assuming they’re capable of doing anything. Or that they’re even alive.”
Cyan couldn’t bring himself to think about that. He went on, his words coming more rapidly. “And if we find the hidden residents, maybe we can find more tranquilizer needles too. We can use them against the orderlies. Maybe we can force them to take us all off the island. On the hovercraft. To somewhere safe.”
Ruby gawped at him through the falling drizzle. “Have you lost your tiny mind, Cyan? That’s a huge pile of ifs and maybes. Is that what you call a plan?”
Cyan hesitated. “I…think so?”
“That’s not a plan at all. It’s an idiot’s deluded fantasy.”
Cyan’s hands were in the air. “Then what else are we supposed to do? Go back to the sanctuary and pretend nothing ever happened? Take pills and ask Dr Haven to remove our memories, so we can be happy little lab rats again?”
Ruby glared at him. “Actually, right now forgetting doesn’t sound all that bad. Things were better before.”
“Were they really?” Cyan caught himself scowling. He closed his eyes, put his palms to his face and gulped down salty air. When he lowered his hands, he saw that Ruby’s expression had changed. She looked as frightened as he felt.
He reached across from his quad, put his hand on hers. “Ruby. I’m sorry. I get what you’re saying. I honestly do. Things felt better, but they weren’t really, were they? Going by the number of residents Dr Haven’s removed, I’d say we’re all just ticking timebombs, on our way to exploding because of all the stuff we’re holding in. We’re forgetting and we’re evading and it’s hurting us. So, I don’t know about you, Ruby, but I’m done with forgetting.”
Spreading his arms, Cyan twisted on his bike to gesture in a semi-circle. “I’m done with this island. I mean, look around! There’s nothing here. It’s all just sand and salt and bones. I know what Jonquil meant now.”
“Meant by what?”
“It was by the Serenity, just before I…” Cyan grimaced and shook his head. “Before I had her dragged away by Mr Banter. She talked about how there’s no life here on the island; no birds or bugs or animals. No nothing. I used to sense it, I think, but was able to ignore it. But not now. Not since I stopped the pills. This place is…dead.”
Ruby stared blankly at her knee, which was jiggling against her quad bike’s side. “It’s not all bad, Cyan. We’ve had…fun here.” Her knee stopped and she pouted darkly. “Had.”
Cyan wiped some raindrops from his glasses. “I don’t think it was really ever fun, Ruby. It was just…escape.”
“But you shouldn’t forget that,” said Ruby. “You came here to escape something that hurt you. You chose to come here. Remember the oath on your locket – watch it again.”
She took her own locket from her skirt and held it up so it swung on its chain. “We’ve all recorded them, Cyan. We came here to get away from bad things that happened to us.”
Cyan watched Ruby’s locket. He eyed the sanctuary’s emblem on its front – the upside-down anchor in a ring of rope – and thought back to his oath. The video he knew so well replayed itself in his head. Him sitting there, black-haired and red-eyed, hurt and begging to forget.
He shook his head, willing the image away. “But what about the good things, Ruby? It can’t all have been bad. What about the good things we left behind?”
“Like what?”
“Like…” Cyan’s mouth hung open. He closed it slowly before slumping on his bike. His eyelids were prickling again. “I… I don’t remember.”
Blinking the sting away, he rose again. “But that’s the problem here. So much…life is missing. It’s basically limbo. Everything’s so…sometime-somewhere. I mean, how can anyone spend their life here? Can you really imagine growing old at the sanctuary, doing nothing, going nowhere?”
Ruby shrugged. “Never really thought about it.”
“I didn’t either. Not before I stopped taking my pills. And now that you’ve stopped too, I think you will as well.”
Cyan hopped onto the sand and steered his quad to face north. Without a word, Ruby did the same, so that both quads were aimed at the Elsewhere Sanctuary.
After climbing back onto his quad, Cyan spoke again. “And you know what? It’s not just questions that come when you’re off the pills. There’s more.”
“Like what?”
“I didn’t tell you, but when we were searching the staff floor, I started looking for the residents’ files.”
“You did?” Ruby’s damp brow furrowed. “You said they were…next to the room with white tiles, right?”
“It wasn’t just for bearings. It was because I want to remember. Before Dr Haven knocked me out he mentioned my parents. And ever since then – ever since stopping the medication – I’ve been getting sort of a…sense of them.”
“You’re remembering them?”
“No.” Cyan swallowed with his throat still sore. “I don’t know who they are or what they’re like. Nothing like that. It’s more a sense of their…absence, I guess. Of not having them. And it’s getting stronger. I cried out for them this morning, when I woke up. It just flew out of my mouth. I miss them, Ruby. But I don’t know them. It feels so wrong.”
It was Ruby’s turn to put a hand on Cyan’s. He saw how sad she looked, felt a warm ache trembling in his eyelids.
His voice cracked when he went on. “It’s… It’s like I’ve realized how much I’m missing. How much I don’t even know. I think that’s why the bones and Ruth’s note bothered me so much. All that trying to hold on; fighting not forgetting. It must have tapped into this sense of…loss I had but never recognized.”
Ruby spoke softly. Her words were barely audible over the rain. “I’m so sorry, Cyan.”
The pressure in Cyan’s skull made him wince. He rubbed angrily at his face. “But you know what? As much as it hurts, I prefer it.”
“To what?”
“To not hurting. I want to feel. I want…” He flinched and sucked air in through his teeth. Another swell of fiery pressure, right behind his eyes.
Ruby’s hand moved up his arm. “Cyan?”
Cyan pushed a thumb and finger against his closed eyes, so that his glasses rose to his forehead. “When I get off this island,” he said, “I’m going to find my parents, no matter what. I’m going to be somewhere. I’m so sick of being…elsewhere.”
“Are you in pain?”
“It’ll pass.” Cyan put his hand to the ignition. “Come on. Let’s get back to the sanctuary. We need to find Jonquil and the others.”
Ruby shook her head, gave a slow-motion shrug. “But how, Cyan? We can’t go to the staff floor again. You said so yourself: they’ll be on their guard after what happened last night.”
“I’m not so sure Jonquil’s on the staff floor.”
“Then where else could she be? We know all the other floors.”
Cyan’s lips curled inwards. “Something doesn’t add up. There was no white-tiled room on the staff floor. And I remember now…” He closed his eyes, visualizing. “I caught a glimpse of the corridor outside that room, when Dr Haven went to fetch Mr Banter. It was all grimy and stained; nothing like the corridor on the staff floor. Plus there were no residents’ files,
and we checked all the rooms most likely to have them.”
“What about those sheets you saw on the wall?”
Cyan shook his head. “They weren’t the files. My sheet had nothing about my past or my parents. They were more like profiles. Summaries for the orderlies.”
“So what are you thinking?”
“I’m thinking we need to find out – indirectly, somehow, in a low-risk way – exactly where those files are, whether they’re on the staff floor or somewhere we don’t know about. Wherever they are, Jonquil’s a few rooms away. That’s what Dr Haven said.”
“And how do we find out indirectly –” Ruby’s brow dropped cynically – “where the residents’ files are?”
Cyan lifted a finger, but it faltered in the air. “I…don’t know yet. That’s as far as I’ve got. Do you have any ideas?”
A shake of the head.
“Then we’ll have to figure something out. But at least we’ve got something to aim for. A way to narrow things down.”
Ruby groaned. “Lucky us.”
Cyan and Ruby tore in tandem past the lighthouse with its boarded-up panes. The stone piers enveloped them both, and they roared up the ramp to a rain-drenched harbour.
The quads were soon parked. While leaving the hangar, Cyan and Ruby heard muffled bleeps.
“It’s mine,” said Cyan.
“Mine too.”
They took out their lockets, opened them up and frowned in unison.
“Let me guess,” said Cyan. “The good doctor wants you in his office?”
“Yeah. You too?”
“Yup.”
Ruby’s frown deepened. “You think this is something to do with our…little trip just now?”
“I hope so. I’d rather it’s about that than last night.”
“Oh god.”
Cyan took his glasses off to dry them with his blazer. “We’d better move. It’ll look fishy if we don’t go right away.”
When he put his glasses back on he saw that Ruby was bobbing uneasily and gnawing her lip. He touched the tips of her fingers, did his best to smile. “If this is about our trip, we’ve done nothing wrong. There’s no rule against going far out on the sands, is there? So it’ll be fine. Just act normal.”
“Normal,” muttered Ruby.
They headed for the sanctuary’s steps.
With plimsolls squelching and blazers dripping, the pair squeezed past residents milling in the foyer. They plodded into the corridor and Cyan knocked – with what he hoped didn’t sound like too much reluctance – on the director’s door.
“Come in,” came the voice from inside.
The lock buzzed. Cyan pushed the door. “You wanted to see us, Doctor?”
Dr Haven sat with his elbows on the desk and fingertips joined. His coat’s lapels flanked a tie that was grey, immaculate, tight. He smiled genially, gesturing with long fingers at the two empty chairs facing his desk.
With the door clicking shut behind them, Cyan and Ruby took their seats.
The doctor’s eyes glided – in a relaxed, unhurried way – across their faces. He said nothing.
He didn’t even move. Nothing in the room did, and Cyan found himself thinking of the sandscape beyond the sanctuary – of the morning’s monotony among never-ending dunes.
Something in the air turned his stomach. It was the smell of the office, perhaps; the scent of antiseptic, mingled with the damp, cloying smell that rose from his clothes.
The room was so quiet. It was hard to tell whether the doctor was even breathing.
Cyan’s gaze wandered along the butterflies pinned to the walls, before lingering on the clock above the medicine cabinets; a clock with no hands, offering neither tick nor tock to break the silence.
His eyes met Ruby’s for the briefest moment. She cleared her throat and smiled doggedly at the doctor. “You did want to see us, didn’t you, Doctor?”
The director was in no rush to respond. He continued to gaze coolly at them both, then ended the silence with a brisk crack of his knuckles. He leaned back on his chair. “You went out on the quads today.”
Ruby nodded, perhaps too keenly. “Just got back.”
“You went quite far out. Further than you’ve ever been before.”
Ruby turned to Cyan. “Is that the furthest we’ve been?”
Cyan frowned at one of the deep, circular windows, before giving the doctor a confused look. He spoke as innocently as he could. “How do you know how far out we went?”
“That’s irrelevant,” replied the doctor. “May I ask why you ventured so far?”
Ruby looked again at Cyan, who shrugged and answered. “Fancied a change?”
The director’s tongue protruded slightly, before flitting across his lips. “A change…” he repeated.
“I guess,” said Cyan.
“It was spur of the moment,” added Ruby. “Just one of those things.”
The doctor fell silent again.
Cyan’s forehead felt hot beneath a fine film of sweat, but he resisted the urge to wipe it. He could see Ruby at the edge of his vision, sitting on her hands, on the brink of squirming.
“That’s okay, isn’t it?” asked Cyan. “Going for a long quad ride?”
Dr Haven huffed gently through his nostrils. “Of course. It’s perfectly fine. There’s no rule against it. It’s merely a little…unusual. Our residents rarely have urges to stray so far from the sanctuary. We see to that. They also don’t tend to go…fancying changes, as you put it.”
The director leaned forward and returned his elbows to the table. Cyan struggled to meet those narrowing grey eyes, so he looked down at his hands.
“So where were you going?”
Cyan’s eyes shot back up to Dr Haven. “Sorry?”
“On the quad bikes today. What sort of destination did you envisage reaching?”
“Destination?”
Ruby jumped in. “No destination. We were just seeing how far we could go.”
The doctor’s eyes were on Ruby. “Is that so?”
“Yeah. Pushing the quads harder. Checking out their mileage.”
“Mileage…” Dr Haven drew out the word, trying it on his tongue. He nodded slowly. His smile was as flat and unreadable as a blank sheet of paper.
The room fell silent. Cyan had to lower his eyes again. He gazed at the edge of the doctor’s desk, wondering about its drawers – about what they might contain; whether they’d be large enough to hold the residents’ files.
His eyes skimmed the office, measuring up the cabinet by the porthole window; the wide drawers at the bottom of the medicine cabinets…
But he was wasting his time. He already knew the files weren’t in the doctor’s office. They were next door to a white-tiled room, and the doctor’s office joined only the foyer and corridor. Plus it was unlikely – impossible, even – that Jonquil was being kept on the communal floor. And—
The director broke his train of thought: “You seem somewhat distracted, Cyan.”
Cyan looked at him squarely. “I do?”
“And not in the way we try to…encourage here. You appear to be admiring my office furniture.”
“I was just checking out your butterflies. I like the way you’ve put them all in groups.” Cyan pointed a finger. “That blue one’s a beauty. Any idea what it’s called?”
The director’s gaze didn’t move to follow Cyan’s finger. It remained firmly on his face.
He inhaled slowly, then cracked his knuckles again. “You can both go now. That’s all.”
Cyan swallowed. “That’s it?”
“Why do you sound so relieved?”
Cyan laughed, and almost winced at the strain in the sound. “Just surprised, that’s all.” He got up with Ruby, gesturing towards the grey vinyl curtain in the corner. “Figured we were due some strobe sessions or something.”
Dr Haven’s eyes were still on Cyan. “No. You’re not scheduled for strobe therapy today. But don’t worry. You’ll both be called when it’s y
our time. We won’t neglect you. We take great pains in ensuring our residents get everything they need.” He picked up his pen and aimed its tip at Cyan. “You know that, don’t you? You know we take care of you.”
Cyan nodded vigorously. “Sure.” He attempted a casual stroll to the door. Ruby tapped the button on the door frame to release its lock, and pushed hard when there was a buzz.
Cyan spun to throw a curt salute – “Sometime-somewhere, Doctor” – and they left as quickly as they could.
When they entered the foyer, Cyan spotted Teal heading towards them, skirting residents with a hand in the air. “Guys! There you are! You wanna hang out now?”
As Cyan bit his bottom lip, Teal gestured towards one of the corridors. “They’ve got bowling in the games room today. You fancy heading over? Or are you scared of getting thrashed again?” He grinned and waggled his eyebrows.
Cyan’s eyes met Ruby’s. “Um. I guess…we could go?”
Teal’s smile shifted into a frown. “What’s up? Why are you both being so weird?”
“Weird?”
“Yeah. Like, on edge.” Teal’s expression darkened while he looked back and forth between them. “What are you up to? Have you still got better stuff to do? Just the two of you?”
Cyan shook his head. “It’s not like that, Teal. It’s—”
Ruby butted in. “We’d love to hang out, Teal, but I think you’re wanted elsewhere.”
Teal smoothed the tape on his glasses. “Oh yeah? And where’s that?”
Ruby was up on her toes, searching the residents who were milling around. Cyan did the same, wondering what she was looking for.
By the far wall, beneath some vivid paintings of coral, someone tinkered on a piano that hadn’t been there the day before. Cyan spotted Ms Ferryman lingering not far away, apparently enjoying the music.
Teal followed Ruby’s gaze, peering around the foyer. “What is it? What’re you looking for?”
“It’s…Pewter,” said Ruby, looking anxious now. “He was looking for you just a minute ago. Said it’s really serious.”
“Wh—” began Cyan, but Ruby stopped him with a discreet kick in the ankle.
The Memory Thieves Page 13
