Key to Fear

by Kristin Cast

  “Possible, but I bet he wanted to talk to you because of how gorgeous and fabulous you are.” Astrid held up her long finger. “Not that I am in any way rooting for or condoning an emotionally romantic liaison.”

  With how much Astrid obsessed over the rules, the thought that she would hope for something as torrid as an emotional liaison never crossed Elodie’s mind. Plus, Elodie wasn’t quite sure what an emotionally romantic liaison would even entail.

  Astrid threw her ponytail over her shoulder. “Actually, if you ever encounter him again, tell him you’re engaged to a Key Corp Major and then turn and run in the opposite direction before he has a chance to attack you with one of those End-of-Life Unit body carving bots.”

  Elodie zipped and unzipped the small front pouch of her backpack. “I don’t think I need to worry about being attacked.”

  Astrid pursed her lips. “You say that now, but when you’re lying face up on an exam table with bots waving their blades overhead and you hear creepy mohawk dude’s maniacal laughter echoing around the room, you’ll remember this conversation and wish that you had listened to me.”

  Comments like that made Elodie question whether or not Astrid had ever read one of the banned books she went on and on about having destroyed.

  They passed by the faded orange Home Depot building stretched next to the freeway like spilled juice. Elodie held her breath. She’d seen a video of some kids who had broken into the abandoned warehouse-sized store not too long ago. It had been fifty years since the Cerberus virus first tore through civilization, yet blood still stained the concrete floors within.

  Elodie drummed her fingertips against her knees. “Another incident happened today too,” she said, changing the subject. She didn’t want to think about Cerberus or let Astrid continue to destroy the only pleasant thing that had happened all day.

  Astrid cocked her head and fingered the top button on her denim jacket. “Another scary real-life convo with a different creepy weirdo?”

  The Pearl maneuvered off the highway and onto the nearly empty four-lane street that led to Elodie’s neighborhood.

  “No,” said Elodie. “Do you think that your dad could use his connections at the MediCenter to get me an update on a patient?”

  Astrid stilled in the way she did whenever she felt Elodie about do something she wouldn’t agree with. “Why don’t you ask for an update yourself?” Astrid said, her voice stony and low.

  “I tried, but Holly still showed this patient as being in my unit.” Elodie adjusted the hair tie around her wrist. “She’d just been transferred, so it might not have updated yet.”

  “Problem solved.” Astrid clapped. “I’m sure Holly will have all the info when you go in tomorrow.”

  Elodie pressed her chin against her backpack. “Yeah, but there was something weird about the whole thing.”

  “Weirder than the guy you met in the basement?” Astrid waggled her sharp brows.

  “Astrid, I’m serious. The transfer team came a lot faster than usual, and they didn’t wait for me to sign off. And when I called their unit director, she said they’d never received the transfer order.”

  Astrid crossed and uncrossed her slender legs. “Then who came and got her?”

  Elodie threw up her hands and glanced out the window, distracted by the holographic blue and orange MAX logo floating in front of the transit center like a human-sized button.

  Astrid’s brows pinched and she shook her head as if brushing away a thought. “I’m sure someone on the transfer team made a mistake and will come find you in the morning and have you sign off. No biggie.”

  The MAX red line pulled into the station and the platform was flooded in hazy purple orbs as the train doors opened and citizens poured into the suburbs of Westfall’s Zone Two.

  Elodie pressed her back into the seat. “It’s against protocol to transfer a patient without a signoff.”

  “Then that person will totally pay for their mistake.” Astrid resumed twirling the ends of her signature pony. “It doesn’t seem like as big of a deal as you’re making it. You’re not the one who’s going to get reprimanded.”

  Elodie let out a breath as she studied the lines of white stitching on the upholstered ceiling. Astrid didn’t get it. People in the MediCenter didn’t make those kinds of mistakes. There were protocols in place to make sure nothing fell through the cracks, certainly not entire patients. They were dealing with people’s lives, not just making sure vehicles found their passengers without requiring them to walk to the curb.

  Elodie chewed the inside of her cheek. That wasn’t fair. Astrid worked hard and built tech Elodie could hardly understand how to use, much less create. Plus, Gus had slacked off and not refilled Patient Ninety-Two’s sedation tube. But that wasn’t nearly as big of a mistake as losing the girl completely.

  The Pearl turned down a narrow, sunflower-bordered road, their round yellow-rimmed faces stretched up toward the sun. Elodie envied the simplicity of the flowers. Grow, grow, grow. Bloom. Drink in the light and the early morning rain. Return to the earth. They possessed no curiosity, no want, no need to experience something greater than what was laid out before them.

  “Think about it like this.” Astrid tucked her foot up underneath her and turned to better face Elodie. “What’s the alternative?” She tilted her pointed chin. “That there’s some big conspiracy going on that you know nothing about?” She snorted. “This is what happens when you read even a single page of a banned book. You make up all sorts of crazy shit in your mind instead of channeling that brain power toward productivity.”

  No, Astrid definitely wasn’t reading anything unsanctioned.

  Elodie twirled her finger into her scrub top. “You’re probably right.” She was beginning to feel a little silly. Gus had made a mistake, and so had the person who’d picked up Patient Ninety-Two from the Long-Term Care Unit. People weren’t bots. They couldn’t be expected to do everything flawlessly 100 percent of the time. When she arrived at work the next morning, Aubrey’s chart would be annotated and everything would be completely normal.

  The Pearl turned into Elodie’s neighborhood and maneuvered down the main windy street that connected every cul-de-sac. Fir and big-leaf maple trees skirted the road, nearly hiding the one or two houses tucked back in each cul-de-sac. The original houses in the neighborhood had been built scrunched together with only a few feet and a sliver of yard separating one family from another. That design had died with most of the neighbors. Before Elodie was born, bots had come through and demolished the majority of houses throughout Zone Two and beyond. Now, where there had been four houses, one house remained, with an expansive front yard and backyard. Neither Elodie nor her friends had played outside much as children, but there was plenty of room if they’d made the decision to forego VR and meetup in the real.

  “Now.” Astrid bounced in her seat, jerking Elodie from her thoughts. “I have to tell you all about my VR date with Roxy. She’s the chick from Madrid who I met at that lame worldwide tech ambassadors meeting.”

  “The one with the piercings?” Elodie had a hard time keeping track of all the adoring girlfriends who were as in love with the Fujimoto name as they were with Astrid.

  Astrid shook her head. “That’s Nadia. Roxy is the one whose hair is always a different color.”

  The Pearl stopped in front of Elodie’s house, but she settled into the seat and hugged her backpack like it was a teddy bear and she was at a sleepover. Astrid always had the best VR meetups. Skydiving, creeking, cave diving. It was always something daring and fresh. Elodie didn’t have the guts to try any of those things. What if she splatted against the ground or got stuck in an underwater cave and drowned? Astrid had told her numerous times that dying in virtual reality didn’t mean you’d die in the real, since one was actually happening while the other existed in a computer world, but Elodie didn’t want to try . The word reality was in th
e name, and from what little she’d experienced of the VR update, it was as real as real life.

  “You have to tell me everything,” Elodie squealed. “But first, can we keep driving? I can’t see her—yet—but I can feel Gwen staring at us.”

  Astrid pulled her holopad out from the storage pouch nestled inside the armrest. Her fingers danced over the screen as Elodie’s gaze swept along the house and its ordinary mud-brown siding, brick steps, and flat green lawn. Soon she’d move into a house with Rhett. Into a house just as ordinary as this one.

  The front door swung open and Gwen stepped onto the porch. Her long hair was swept up in a tight coiffure that didn’t budge as she floated down the steps, her fingers dusting the air with each wave.

  “Elodie, dear.” Her practiced cheeriness passed through the window muffled and distorted.

  Elodie’s palms went clammy.

  Astrid rolled down the window, stuck the top half of her body out, and used the door as a seat. The Pearl crept forward as Astrid drummed on the top of the vehicle and shouted, “Sorry, Gwendolyn. Your daughter and me got places to be.”

  XVIII

  After another hour driving around the suburbs with Astrid, Elodie finally made it back to her house. The entire time they were out, she’d wanted to talk about the beautiful and exciting stranger from the ELU, but could sense that she’d be pushing Astrid past her limit. Her best friend could only handle a certain amount of curiosity before she shut it down completely and started talking about the facts, and facts weren’t as exciting as the stories Elodie made up in her head.

  Now that she was home, she would busy herself with a task more important than obsessing over an encounter with the mohawked mystery guy she would probably never see again, and shouldn’t be thinking about anyway.

  She would catch up with Vi.

  As soon as she was in her room, Elodie tossed her backpack onto her bed, slipped out of her scrubs, and pulled on her comfiest pair of sweats. She folded herself under her weighted blanket and held her breath, listening for her mother’s pealing laughter and staccato footsteps downstairs. Satisfied that Gwen was nowhere near her second-story room, Elodie cracked the spine of her textbook and propped it against her legs.

  Chapter Seven

  Love had always been at the bottom of Violet’s priority list. Hell, if she was being honest, it hadn’t even made the cut. Now, lust had been there, standing rock hard and at attention. But any itches she had, she scratched with her clients—scratched with the kills. That was, until she’d met Zane Cole. He’d made her itch in a way that only he could scratch. At first, she’d hated him—but wasn’t that how all the best love stories started?

  Zane’s hair was black today. The flat, false kind of black that would wash out later, filling the tub with inky water until it disappeared down the drain along with the remnants of whichever character he wore for his most recent job. Finding a partner who understood the world Vi lived in was lucky. Most people in her line of work were terrible assholes. Zane was just terrible. But in a bad-boy-with-a-heart-of-gold clichéd type of way.

  Incoming call from Gwendolyn Benavidez / “Mom.”

  Elodie groaned. The next time she started reading, she would have to remember to turn off her incoming calls.

  “What? ” she said, with a deep sigh and a roll of her eyes, thankful that her mother had opted for the comlink instead of the vidlink.

  “I hope you had fun with your little friend.” Gwen paused, waiting for a response Elodie wasn’t going to provide. “Honestly, Elodie, you take off with Astrid and now you’re giving me an attitude? That is no way to treat your mother, Elodie Grace.”

  Gwen had not only said Elodie’s name twice, she’d added her middle name for emphasis. She was more upset than her tone revealed. Elodie clenched her teeth and drew a breath through her nose as her mother continued.

  “Hopefully you can reclaim your wits enough to tell me what you think of this dress.” Another pause. “The three of us will have to go to the director’s funeral, and I want to make sure we don’t embarrass your father. He’s worked long and hard for his title, and I wouldn’t want us to do anything to put it in jeopardy.”

  Elodie’s stomach soured with the mention of her father, and she closed her textbook. “Mom, there’s no way Dad is going to lose his job because you’re not wearing the right dress.”

  Through her comlink, she heard her mother’s heels clicking against the new marble floor she’d just had installed in the kitchen. Gwen always wore heels. Not because she was unsatisfied with her height (her statuesque figure came in just under five ten), but because, as she always said whenever Elodie had the audacity to lounge around the house in her sweats, You always want to look presentable. You never know who might show up unannounced. Gwen had also told Elodie to wear a pantyliner at all times in case she was ever involved in an accident so that, before help arrived, of course, she could rip it off and throw it away and have pristine undergarments. As a nurse, Elodie wasn’t sure what perceived vaginal hygiene had to do with the type of care one would receive at the MediCenter, but, then again, her mother’s crowning achievement was that she had figured out how to make and bake muffins from scratch in less than ten minutes.

  “Then you won’t mind doing me the favor of putting my mind at ease,” Gwen huffed. “Well, what do you think?”

  Elodie twirled the frayed string of her sweatpants. “Of what?”

  “Of what? The dress, Elodie, the dress. I swear . . .”

  “I’m sure you look fine, but I can’t actually see you.” Elodie’s pillow slid out from the perfect spot behind her head as she shrugged. “You didn’t use the vid, just the com.”

  “Well, crumb. How do I . . .?” Gwen’s strained words trailed off, and Elodie could picture her mother staring at her call screen, eyes pinched, tongue curled against her upper lip.

  The gray box appeared with a bar of text: Accept vidlink from Gwendolyn Benavidez / “Mom”?

  Elodie smoothed her hair and stiffened a bit before agreeing.

  The box blurred and revealed Gwen. Her straight bangs brushed against her thick brows as she stared, eyes pinched, tongue curled against her expertly lipsticked upper lip.

  Elodie couldn’t help but grin. Her mother was predictable to the point of comforting. “Uh, exactly how fancy is too fancy for a funeral?”

  The black lace dress clung to Gwen’s curves like she’d been poured into it as liquid flesh. She turned in a circle, her coral lips moving.

  Elodie leaned forward instinctually. “I can see you, but I can’t hear you. Did you mute the call?”

  Gwen’s perfectly straight bangs shuffled against her forehead as she repeatedly craned her neck, birdlike. Besides Elodie’s mother’s faux blond hair, looking at her was like looking in a mirror. They both had the same smooth, full cheeks, perpetually pouty lips, square-tipped nose, and bronze skin. The only real difference was their eyes. Not the shape. They shared the same round eyes, the corners turning up like a sly half-smile. But unlike her mother’s crystal blue, Elodie’s were black and endless. Her father often said, Puedo ver el mundo en tus ojos, but Elodie could never remember what it meant.

  Elodie’s own vidlink was still inactive, but she waved her hands in protest. “You don’t have to move your head around like that. There aren’t any options to select anymore. The update made it so that you just think about unmuting, and it’ll unmute. It’s way easier than it’s ever been.”

  Her mom’s cheeks puffed with a sigh, her blue eyes narrowing with frustration. “Elodie, I can’t figure out how to make this damn thing work!” Gwen’s shout carried from the kitchen, up the stairs, and slammed into Elodie’s closed door. “Come help your mother!”

  Damn was as close as Gwen came to cursing, and without fail technological updates pushed her to that point.

  “Gwendolyn.” Determination hardened Elodie’s tone and force
d her to call her mother by her complete first name. “I won’t be living with you forever,” she yelled from her room. “You’re going to have to learn how to do this without me rushing in to save you. Plus, you have Holly. Ask her for a tutorial.”

  For as long as Elodie could remember she’d been telling her mother that she’d have to figure out new tech features on her own, but I won’t live with you forever had always seemed so far away. Then Elodie had been matched to Rhett, and now she was engaged. She’d be married in a few months, and was sure Rhett would not agree to them living in separate homes once they were wed. But living by herself for a little while would give her a chance to finish Death by Violet without being chastised for wearing comfy pants. Elodie shook away the thought, and, for the second time that day, reminded herself that there was no point in thinking about something that would never happen.

  Another shout from downstairs. “I apparently did not do a very good job raising you if you won’t just come down here and help your mother figure this out.”

  With a sigh, Elodie slid her book into her bag and pushed herself out of bed. Repeatedly referring to herself as your mother was another one of Gwen’s annoyed tells.

  “Be right there.” Elodie ended the call.

  The ears on her fuzzy bunny slippers flopped side to side as she descended the stairs. She hadn’t grown that much since her thirteenth birthday, when her father had surprised her with the slippers and an e-vid from the Key announcing that she’d be entering the Long-Term Care Unit’s nursing program. Even though the rest of her wardrobe had matured, and her mother continued to make comments about them, Elodie had kept the slippers. They were a memory wrapped in fuzzy pink fluff, and she wasn’t in the habit of throwing away memories.

  The staircase opened to the kitchen, where Gwen impatiently drummed her fingers as she leaned against the rectangular island in the middle of the vast space. Elodie had to admit that the new flooring did look nice, or expensive, as one of Gwen’s friends had commented. And, according to her mother, expensive was the best compliment one could receive.