by Rysa Walker
“We vote. The Warren always votes. Not always in person like this, but we vote. We voted on whether to try and escape on our own or wait for you guys to finally arrive and help us. And we vote now.”
So we vote.
The Warren’s commitment to the democratic process apparently doesn’t extend to secret ballots. It also seems that their system is questionable on the issue of individual rights. What if the group decides I should tell Magda? That I should bring my father back here, even though I really don’t want to? Do I have the right to say nope, sorry, not gonna do it?
I guess we’ll cross that bridge if and when we come to it.
Maria has made it halfway around the room, with the result unanimous at seven to zero, when the double doors on the far side of the room fly open with enough force to shake the wall behind my chair. Judging from the noise, I’m pretty sure the lock is broken as well. One of the girls who interrupted me and Aaron in the hallway earlier stands in the doorway, along with Bree Bieler and most of the other younger adepts. Peyton is missing, along with a boy who’s preschool age, and maybe one more, but otherwise it looks like everyone Maria excluded is accounted for.
“No,” Maria says firmly. “Meeting is not for you, Kara. I will explain all to you later.”
Kara shares a knowing look with Bree. She gives impressive side-eye for a kid still in elementary school.
“You’re talking about whether we will fight. And you need us,” Kara says with a defiant toss of her head. “That helicopter didn’t spin around by itself, you know. Just because you’re bigger and older doesn’t mean you’re the strongest.”
Deo snickers softly. “Judge me by my size, do you?”
Maria, who seems flummoxed by the younger adepts’ presence, turns to Stan. He just shrugs philosophically, which leaves me wondering exactly how much information he has about this confrontation they seem to believe is on the horizon. Jaden’s visions only give me one snippet at a time. Stan’s ability must work differently.
“You need us,” Kara repeats, then looks over her shoulder to the back row of chairs. “And if Snoop gets a vote, so do we.”
With that, she drops to the floor and folds her legs, crisscross applesauce. The rest of her crew follows suit, and we now have a pint-sized sit-in on our hands.
Judging from the shared glances between a few of the older kids, some of them are swayed by her argument—although I think many of them would like to exclude both the Lollipop Guild and Snoop.
In one sense, I agree. He combed through my brain—also Aaron’s, Taylor’s, and Deo’s—and passed along bits of information to Graham Cregg.
But he was under Cregg’s control, and the key phrase there is bits of information. There was a lot of information we know that he held back from Cregg, and that’s no easy task. I watched as Cregg forced Deo to turn a gun to his own head. When I processed Molly’s exit dreams, I felt him force her to snip off her own pinky finger with garden shears. The fact that Snoop was able to withhold anything if he was under Cregg’s control is pretty remarkable, and if he hadn’t fought as hard as he did, we might not have managed to rescue the others.
And to the best of my knowledge, Snoop hasn’t been using his ability since he arrived at Sandalford—at least not on us. There’s a telltale sign when he’s scanning for information, a sort of feathery brush across your forehead. I haven’t felt it, and I don’t think any of the others have, either.
He doesn’t need any kind of psychic ability to know what most of the kids think of him, though. I’m not entirely innocent in this regard—I’ll admit I’ve gone out of my way to avoid him the few times I’ve seen him walking down the hall or talking with Deo out on the deck. Many of the adepts don’t even bother to hide their animosity. So he keeps to himself a lot.
“Cregg tested all of us,” Snoop says. “He made all of us do things we didn’t want to . . . well, except maybe Maggie, since she could block him. Kinda wish you could teach me that trick, Mags.”
Snoop’s voice always reminds me of SpongeBob. But the effect is more eerie than comical, because it never fails to take me back to the airport. Snoop sitting on the ground, rocking back and forth, after telling Cregg that Bree and I were hiding in the shadows.
“Volunteer, then, Snoop.” It’s one of the older kids. “They were always looking for volunteers back at The Warren. That’s how half the older wabbits died. I’m sure Magda’s scientists are looking for—”
He breaks off in midsentence. Maria is staring straight at him. Wonder what she has on him to make his face turn so red.
“All I meant is that no one peeked into that man’s head if they could avoid it,” Snoop says. “He kept me out most of the time, but I got a few glimpses. The other Peepers can back me up on this. One minute he’s thinking about lab results or some political fund-raiser or having cancer. The next it’s all severed fingers, remembering his dead mom, and thinking about suicide.”
Snoop pauses at this point, glancing over his shoulder directly at me. I don’t know why. If he picked up my earlier thought about what happened at the airport, I would have felt the spiderweb sensation across my forehead. But I didn’t.
“Suicidal thoughts can be really contagious,” Snoop continues. “Took me a couple days to shake it off both times.”
His tone angers me—or maybe it’s the words. I can’t really pinpoint why, but I want to hurl something at his head. To make him stop talking about dead mothers and suicide, because he was taken in and treated kindly and yes, it really is sharper than a serpent’s tooth to have a thankless child . . .
What?
I shake my head to clear it, unsure where all that came from. My lousy night’s sleep is beginning to catch up with me. Or maybe I need to fortify my walls. There are at least three adepts in this room who can broadcast their thoughts, including Maria.
I don’t think it was Maria sending out that thought, however, because she’s too busy arguing with Kara to look my way. And she’s defending Snoop.
Deo chimes in, too. “Yeah. Not cool. If you’re going to say Jeffrey shouldn’t vote because he was once controlled by Graham Cregg, then I guess I shouldn’t vote either.” He nods toward Bree Bieler. “How about you, Bree? Anna has a tooth-shaped scar on the inside of her wrist from when Cregg took control of you, so . . .”
Bree looks hurt, and I’m not sure it’s entirely fair of Deo to blame her. The kid just turned seven last week. But I guess that’s kind of Deo’s point. If we start blaming everyone Cregg coerced at one point or another, that’s going to seriously winnow down the population with voting rights.
“Fine,” Maria says, throwing up her hands. “You all can vote on if we delay the cure so we can fight. But even if your power is big, you are still little kids. Too young to make decisions on how we fight. You are not velitel, not generals. You are . . .” She pauses, trying to find the word.
“Pawns?” someone near the front suggests, and laughs when the girl seated on his right whacks him on the arm. “Okay, okay. I meant privates.”
Maria frowns. At first, I think it’s disapproval of the kids goofing off, but maybe it’s just concentration because, after a moment, her brow smooths out. “Privates are soldiers. Yes, this is right word.” She says it so confidently that I’m certain she plucked the definition right out of someone’s head. “You are soldiers. Privates. You will follow orders or you will not fight.”
She exchanges another look with Stan, and I’m certain she’s about to add something else. But she bites back whatever she’s thinking and picks up the marker again to continue tallying the vote.
When it’s over, the decision is nearly unanimous in favor of delaying the cure, fighting, and me not telling Magda, or whatever the hell it was we were voting on. Not a single no vote, but we do have one abstention—Ashley. Maria doesn’t comment on the result, just gives a quick nod to Stan.
Which is kind of weird. Did Stan already know how Ashley would vote? And if so, why call her here in the first place? Th
e Sandalford grapevine is truly impressive, but it doesn’t extend to the outpost on Long Point Island. Ashley would never have known we even held a meeting.
Having done their democratic duty, the adepts begin heading for the door, but Maria calls out, “Do not forget to log practice hours. If you meet objective, then try for stretch goals, yes?”
Practice hours? Stretch goals? I seem to be the only one who doesn’t follow her meaning, however, because most of the others are nodding.
And with that, Maria adjourns the meeting. Ashley heads for the exit as well, but Taylor calls out for her to wait. “You’re not just going to let her walk out of here, are you, Maria?”
I’m with Taylor on this one. We’ve seen firsthand the lengths to which Ashley will go to keep her sister and Caleb safe. Ashley was willing to pull the plug on Daniel’s life support. Magda will be back tomorrow or the next day. What’s to stop Ashley from simply telling her about our decision?
“I need to get back to the island,” Ashley says. “I won’t tell Magda or Kelsey about this meeting, if that’s what’s worrying you. But I’m not committing Caleb to any sort of battle. If there’s even the slightest chance this Scott Pfeifer guy can help fix what’s been done to these kids, I think you should bring him here immediately. Surely if there is a cure available, this battle Stan says he’s foreseen won’t happen. Right? I mean, I don’t trust Senator Cregg at all. Not after the way he manipulated me into hurting your brother.”
“Well, that’s a fun little euphemism,” Taylor says. “You killed him. And you don’t get off the hook just because he’s better now.”
Ashley ignores Taylor’s outburst. “My point is that once there is a cure, Cregg won’t have any reason to persecute the adepts further. The public will calm down. Things can go back to normal again.”
“That’s really naive,” Aaron says. “We’re in the middle of an election year. What makes you think the Senator wants a return to normal? He’s gone from being an extreme long shot to an actual contender in the past few months, something no third-party candidate has done in decades. He gets tons of free press for both himself and Unify America thanks to the panic over the Delphi program. He’s also done a decent job of obscuring from the public how deeply his companies were involved in creating the very problem that caused the panic in the first place. People were killed in order to maintain that cover. He won’t balk at killing more.”
“We’re talking about children, for God’s sake!” Ashley stops and holds her hands up. I’m pretty sure she’s remembered quite a few of the deaths that can be traced back to Senator Cregg were, in fact, children. “Fine. It doesn’t matter. My point is still the same. Caleb is not going to be a private in your little war. The one and only concern for me is getting a cure for him—the sooner, the better.”
“Do you really think it will be like flipping a switch?” I say as she retreats toward the door. “One second Caleb is a psychic anomaly in a toddler’s body, and the next he’s an average three-year-old, happily building LEGO castles?”
Ashley turns and glares at me. “Listen, my sister is still missing. I’m pretty damn sure she’s dead, and that means Caleb is my responsibility. Right now, we’re living on a freakin’ island, in a tiny hut, with a portable toilet and electric generator. His only hope for a normal life—and mine, for that matter—is if they find a way to reverse this. And that’s true for every single person who’s been affected by the serum.”
And on that note, she storms out, slamming the door behind her.
“Do not worry,” Maria says. “Ashley was telling truth about keeping quiet. I peeked to be sure. And we have to let her go even if she wasn’t. What else should we do? Lock her in closet for next few weeks?”
Stan clears his throat and Maria colors slightly. Another slip. Something else they didn’t intend to tell us. The cloak-and-dagger secrecy between these two is beginning to grate.
Aaron also looks annoyed. “So after Anna has this vision, we just keep quiet, go about our business as usual? No trying to locate Anna’s father or—”
“Oh, no,” Stan says. “You still need to find him. As quickly as possible.”
“And Deo must go, too,” Maria says with a note of regret. “But I need him back repede. Pronto. Wabbits can still train while he is away, but our strategy is kaput without our amp.”
“But . . .” I shake my head, totally confused. “Why? We just decided to wait on a cure, and for me not to tell Magda. I don’t see the point.”
“You still need to find Pfeifer,” Stan repeats. “You just can’t bring him back here. At least not until the other paths close.”
I stare at him incredulously. “What other paths? This isn’t making any sense!”
Stan exhales and turns to Maria. “Show them. It’s easier.”
Then Maria is in my head again, pushing that same scene. The image keeps flipping, flickering, like one of the old movie projectors my hitcher Emily used when she was a teacher. White office building, maybe ten stories high, with tall recessed windows. Construction cones and a barrier emblazoned with the word STOP block off the street.
This time, however, Maria doesn’t pull back, and things get even stranger. I kind of hear the gunshot again and the scream. At the same time, I also kind of hear the sound of a horn and the squeal of brakes. It’s not that I hear all of these things, one on top of each other. It’s more that I hear (and also don’t hear) the gunshot and the scream. And I hear (but also don’t hear) the horn and the tires screeching on the pavement. Two different, mutually exclusive realities.
In addition, the video feed, if you can call it that, is split into different layers. Two men in dark suits—one of them vaguely familiar—push a third man toward shelter, but then the group splits into two separate sets of three men. Set number one pushes the man in the center toward a blue shed between the building and a parking lot across the street. My first thought is that it’s a phone booth or the TARDIS. But since neither of those things currently exist in downtown DC, it must be a porta-potty. Set number two dives behind a concrete barrier, which is barely knee high. But before they can reach it, another shot rings out, and the man they’re escorting crumples to the ground.
And that’s not the only detail that seems to be changing. The building and scenery remain constant, but people and vehicles appear to jerk in and out of focus, or split off and go in two or more directions at once. A large, boxy shadow seems to be there but not there as well.
It’s a mind-boggling effect. It makes me queasy.
“Why is everything all . . . wonky?” Deo says. “Things . . . no, it’s more the people . . . are there, and then they’re not. Or they’ve moved.”
Stan nods. “What you’re seeing are different paths sort of layered on top of each other. Have you seen the computer projection models they use to track hurricanes? The ones most likely to happen cluster in the same area, but then you have outliers going off in many directions.”
I look at the others, and their expressions are as clueless as my own. Just as I’m about to ask Stan what hurricane predictions have to do with this, he speaks again.
“That’s how my visions work. I see paths. At the beginning, they’re blurred. Many different layers, many different outcomes. But the closer we get to an event, the more those paths merge. And right now, they’re merging into three different groups, like bundles of wires. In one, a gunman shoots Anna’s father. In another, she saves him from getting shot. And in the final group, he ends up with the Senator’s people out in Nevada. But by that time, he’s . . . not really Scott Pfeifer anymore.”
SHARED JOURNAL
3/16/20
Dr. Kelsey:
Per our discussion yesterday, jot down all odd behaviors you’ve observed when interacting with Anna.
3/16/20
Taylor:
If I take those instructions literally and jot down all odd behaviors, this will be longer than the entire Game of Thrones series, including that one he’s still writing
. So I’ll give some highlights and patterns I’ve noticed.
Most of the weird behavior happens in the morning. She’s slipped by the guards twice in the early morning hours, and tried to get past on several other occasions. I’m usually up early, and I’ve caught her texting several times out on the deck.
She talks different most mornings, too. Has anyone else noticed that? Three times she broke into one of those Shakespeare quotes. Not the iambic pentameter stuff but just little comments I look up later, and sure enough it’s another quote from Old Will himself. “There is no darkness but ignorance” is one she said while we were watching the news one morning. And this one time when we’re all looking on as two of the younger kids—I think it was Kara and Bree—were engaged in an angry pushing match out on the volleyball court, Anna says, “Though she be but little, she is fierce.”
Yes, one of Anna’s former hitchers, that Emily woman, probably knew those quotes. But here’s the thing. We all remember getting the Shakespeare text messages from Cregg last year. Anna knows how much it creeped me out. I didn’t go around with tinfoil on my head because I liked the look. Those messages creeped all of us out, Anna included. So why would she toss out quotes like that? Anna gets on my nerves sometimes, especially when she’s keeping secrets (of course, when isn’t Anna keeping secrets?) but she doesn’t go out of her way to be cruel.
And there was that one morning in mid-January when I got a close enough look at her phone to see her deleting a text conversation from her iCloud. I’m guessing you don’t need a reminder of that occasion, since it’s probably logged under a separate file called Major Freak-Outs rather than Odd Behaviors. I swear to God I didn’t mean to set her off. I didn’t even say anything about it. All I did was glance . . . I don’t know, quizzically? . . . at the phone. Because anyone she might be texting, as far as I know, is right here at Sandalford. Anyway, next thing I know, she’s threatening to do a swan dive off the deck and you’re sedating her.
