Elissa looked down again at the girl. She’d finished the water, and the bottle had rolled out of her limp hand. She was lying with her eyes shut, flushed and damp, her breathing heavy. Her clothes—the torn hooded top and a pair of dark pants—were covered with darker stains from oil and grass, and her hair was filthy, hanging over her face.
She’d never make it as far as Elissa’s house. And she looked like a vagrant—if they passed any police officers, they’d ask for ID for sure.
Elissa would have to leave her here. Once she told her parents, they could come out here in one of their beetle-cars and take her back home.
She cleared her throat. “Listen . . .”
The girl’s eyes opened. They were a little more lucid.
“Listen,” Elissa said again. “I have to go get you some more water. And more meds—I don’t think what I brought you is going to work fast enough.”
“You’re leaving? Now?” The girl’s whole face tightened, as if to meet a blow. The shadows under her eyes showed all at once even darker, as dark as if they, like the marks on her neck and under her jawline, were not just shadows but bruises.
“I have to,” said Elissa.
“Don’t tell anyone.” The words were so urgent, they came out like a shout even though the girl was still speaking in not much above a whisper.
“I—” Elissa stopped. The girl was half-delirious with fever; anything that Elissa could say about how her parents would help her wouldn’t register, would just freak her out even more. “Okay. I just need to get you more water and meds, all right? I’ll leave these meds with you now, though, and I’ll be back in, like, less than an hour.”
The girl’s eyes stayed fixed on her, huge and dark, her face still tight, her cheekbones seeming to stand out even more than they had before. “You’re coming back?”
“Yes. I promise. You don’t need to worry.”
Finally the girl nodded. “I . . . I couldn’t find you. I thought it would be easy, I thought . . . Can you tell me where you live? So this time, if you don’t come back—”
“I’m going to come back.” For an instant the horror-movie thoughts poured back in. Elissa had already said she’d come back. Why did the girl need her address? What was she planning? I don’t know her. I feel as if I’ve grown up with her, but I didn’t. She’s a stranger—a weird, secret-experiment stranger who looks just like me.
Then their eyes met, and after a split second Elissa recognized what lay in the other girl’s eyes. She was afraid. Whatever had driven her to try to find Elissa, it was stronger than Elissa’s own motives for looking for her. And now she was terrified she’d lose Elissa again.
It didn’t seem right, or normal, but then, nothing about this whole situation was normal.
“You don’t need to worry,” she said again. “But of course I’ll tell you how to find me.” She gave instructions, as detailed as she could make them, directing the other girl back across the area around the spaceport and to the right slidewalk junctions.
“Our shelf is Acacia Sixteen. The slidewalks have the codes marked on them—A16. Once you get onto the shelf, we’re apartment twelve, right at the end, on your right. If you go around the side, you’ll be under my window.”
The girl’s lower lip was bloodless where she was biting it. “Okay,” she said.
Elissa hooked the bag back up over her shoulder.
“I won’t be longer than an hour, all right? You won’t need to come and find me.”
“Okay.”
Elissa gave her a half smile, uncertain, wavering, then turned to walk into the shadows of the ditch, looking for the steps that would take her back out.
It was twenty minutes of walking before she found them, but once she was up on the plateau, her journey back across the outskirts of the spaceport was easy.
Her house stood dark and silent, the blankness of a house whose inhabitants were all asleep. Elissa slid noiselessly in, the only sound her own heart beating high up in her ears.
Her parents would have been asleep for ages. And she wouldn’t be just waking them up; she’d be waking them up to tell them this beyond-crazy story. They’d probably think she was having nightmares, brought on by the stress of being pre-op or something. Elissa caught back a half-hysterical giggle and, aware she was putting off the moment when she’d have to wake them, went into the kitchen to refill a few drinking bottles with water and grab a handful of energy bars. Maybe the girl would need something to eat, too, before they even got her home.
She dropped the bottles and bars into her bag and came back out of the kitchen as she began to zip it up. Okay. She’d promised the girl—and I can’t keep thinking of her as “the girl”; she must have some kind of name, mustn’t she?—she’d be back within an hour. She couldn’t put off waking her parents any longer.
As she came out into the entrance hall, the zipper of the bag got stuck. She paused in the shadows of the hall, standing between the bottom of the staircase and the front door, fiddling to free the zipper from the loose thread it had snagged. It came free and she pulled it shut, hitching the bag strap farther up her shoulder.
“Lissa?”
Elissa jumped so violently she bit her tongue. For a moment she couldn’t even think where her mother’s voice was coming from. Then the landing lights snapped on, and Elissa looked up and saw her, standing at the head of the stairs.
“Lissa, what’s going on? What are you doing?”
For a moment Elissa couldn’t make sense of the shock and anger on her mother’s face. Then she realized how she must look, standing here in the middle of the night, bag on her back, face frozen in fright.
And to add to the guilty picture she made, her brain had frozen too. She couldn’t find the right words to even begin to explain. Instead she stared up at her mother, pinned still, caught motionless like a criminal in freeze-beams.
“Edward! Edward, come here now!” It was a shriek, angry and frightened, the sort of shriek she’d give if Elissa were a caught-in-the-act criminal.
The note in her voice unfroze Elissa. “Mother, don’t. I’m not—it’s completely not what it looks like—”
Her mother didn’t seem to hear. “Edward!” She came fast down the staircase, hand hardly touching the rail, mouth set hard. “How dare you, Elissa. How dare you, when it’s all arranged. Where the hell do you think you’re going to go?”
“Mother, I’m not. I’m not going anywhere. I’m not running away.” It was too crazy to even have to say it. Her mother couldn’t think she’d just take off. Since when had she ever done anything like that?
Mrs. Ivory grabbed her arm. “Don’t you dare think of moving. How can you do this, Elissa?”
Elissa’s father had come down onto the landing, looking half-dazed in the light. He walked down the stairs, tying the belt of his bathrobe tighter. “Laine? What’s going on?”
“Look! Look what she’s doing!” Mrs. Ivory’s hand tightened on Elissa’s arm. “She’s out here with a bag. With her operation in four days’ time!”
“No. Listen to me. I’m not running away.”
Her mother shook her arm. “You little liar, you’ve got a bag with you!”
A flush heated Elissa’s face. She didn’t lie to her parents. She didn’t. And her mother wasn’t even giving her a chance to explain.
“I’m not running away. I went out secretly because I didn’t want you to worry. I found something—”
“Found something? What on earth are you talking about? And what do you mean, went out? You’ve been out already? It’s past midnight!”
“You’re not listening to me!” Elissa raised her voice, the heat from her face flooding into it. “I’m not sick. It’s not hallucinations. There’s a girl—our brains are linked somehow—she looks just like me—”
Her mother’s fingers froze on her arm, biting through her sleeve into her flesh. “What?”
“That dream I had—the dream I told the doctor about. It was real. The fire was real. Mother, li
sten, they’ve been doing awful things to her. She escaped, she came to find me. You have to help her.” She stopped. Her mother’s face had gone utterly still, her lips pressed so tightly together that the blood had gone from where they touched.
“Mother, please. She’s sick. She needs help.”
Her mother’s pale lips opened. “Edward. Call Dr. Brien.”
“Laine, is that really necessary? It’s two o’clock in the morning.”
Mrs. Ivory turned her head to catch her husband’s gaze. A muscle jumped in her jaw. “Call him. He said her condition was already deteriorating, but this is even worse. She’s having a hallucination and she thinks it’s real. He’s going to have to move the operation forward.”
Elissa had thought she was prepared to convince her parents it wasn’t just another vivid dream. She’d known she’d have to explain it—several times, maybe. But she hadn’t been prepared for this, hadn’t been prepared for her mother to completely refuse to believe her, to not even begin to listen, to go straight from accusing her of running away to declaring that she wasn’t in control of what she was seeing.
“No. I’m not hallucinating.”
Mrs. Ivory’s eyes came back to Elissa. They were wide with panic, but it was not only panic that showed on her face. She had the look of someone trying to work something out. The look, Elissa realized suddenly, of someone preparing to lie.
“Elissa.” Her voice was one of forced calm. “You are hallucinating. You’re sick, you have an abnormality. Dr. Brien said—”
Dr. Brien said. Suddenly a puzzle piece fell into alarming place.
“Dr. Brien asked me a load of questions about her! He knew she was real—he was trying to find out where she was going, her clothes—”
“Elissa.” Despite the calm voice, her mother’s hand was still painfully tight on her arm. “He was asking for data about your hallucinations.”
“He was not.” She dragged at her arm. “Let go of me.”
“When you’re in this hysterical state? Absolutely not. Edward, will you call Dr. Brien?”
“Laine, come on now.” Elissa’s father moved forward. “I really don’t think calling Dr. Brien at this time of night is going to help anything. We can call him in the morning.”
“And what are we going to do if she’s gone by morning? Edward, you know what’s at stake here. You know what we signed. If she’s not here for the operation—”
Anger flashed through Elissa, swift and hot. “I’m not even having the operation anymore! I only ever got all that pain because of what they were doing to her. She’s escaped, I’m fine—”
Her mother’s eyes blazed into hers. “You’re not having it? How dare you say that to me! Do you want to be a freak your whole life? I won’t have it, Lissa. Fine, Edward. If you won’t let us call the doctor, come here and help me get her under control.”
Under control? Like I’m a badly behaved animal?
“Let go of me!”
Elissa jerked her arm down, hard enough to break her mother’s grip, and flung herself away toward the door. She hadn’t planned on doing anything so drastic as walking out, but her mother was talking as if they were going to force her to have the operation whether she agreed or not. She’d accused her of running away—well, she damn well would, then. She’d call them tomorrow when they were ready to listen to her—
But then, unbelievably, her father was there, holding her instead, his fingers enclosing her upper arm. She pulled away from him, but while she’d broken out of her mother’s grip, she might as well have tried to escape a handcuff as her father’s hand. For the first time not just anger but fear rose within her. This was her father, he had never hurt her, he wouldn’t—
“Let go,” she said, shrill disbelief sounding in her voice. “Dad, let go.”
He didn’t. When she looked up at him, his face was closed, more distant than it had ever been. No trace of the man who’d come to her room earlier, who’d asked her if she was all right.
She pulled harder, beginning to panic, feeling his fingers motionless and unyielding around her arm. “Dad.” Instinctively, she tried the tactic that—surely—couldn’t help but work. “Dad, stop, you’re hurting me.”
It didn’t work. “Elissa, no. Stop struggling.”
“Let go! Let go!” Her voice went into a shriek. This couldn’t be happening. Her mother, maybe, but not her dad, not her dad. He hadn’t called the doctor when her mother had told him to. He hadn’t said he didn’t believe her. He was on her side. Wasn’t he? Wasn’t he?
“Elissa, come with me.”
She struggled, but she didn’t have a hope. He half-marched, half-dragged her away from the door, up the stairs, and to her bedroom, her mother hurrying behind.
He walked her in front of him into the room, then let her go. She flung away, over to the other side of her bed, clutching her bag to her chest. Her face was wet with tears she hadn’t noticed till this minute.
Her mother followed them in. She shot Elissa a look that could have cut steel. “How dare you cry about this? It’s me who should be crying.”
Elissa stared at her. “What? Because I don’t want an operation I don’t need?”
“You do need it.”
“I don’t! I’m not having it!” She backed away farther, over to the wall next to the window. “I don’t consent! I’m not having it!”
“You are,” said her mother. “And you’re having it tomorrow.”
When Elissa tried to speak, the words would hardly come out, so choked were they with tears and helpless fury. “You can’t have them operate on me against my will!”
“Lissa,” said her father, and she looked at him, still thinking he couldn’t be joining in with this, he couldn’t be. But his face showed nothing but grim agreement with her mother. “There are things you don’t understand. This operation—there are several reasons it’s necessary.”
Elissa’s tears dried up as suddenly as if they’d frozen. She stared at him, icy cold, seeing the familiar face but feeling as if she looked at a stranger. “You can’t,” she said, but her lips had frozen too, and her voice came out not sounding like hers at all. “You can’t make me have an operation I don’t want.”
“We don’t have the choice,” said the stranger standing in her father’s place, not meeting her eyes.
“No.” It came out as a whisper, the sort of horrified whisper that was all she’d been able to manage when she was tiny and had woken in terror from bad dreams. “No, you can’t. You can’t.”
But they weren’t listening anyway. “We’re going to have to lock her in,” said her mother, and her father nodded, a single grim movement.
“But— What? What? You can’t lock me in my room!”
They didn’t even answer. Instead her father went out of the room, and her mother made to follow him.
“No, no.” Elissa scrambled over the bed, went toward them, trying to look past her mother to catch her father’s eyes. She didn’t understand anything of what was going on, but she knew, beyond doubt, that her mother had lied to her. Her father, though . . . “You can’t lock me in all night!”
Her mother put her hand up to the override switch on the wall outside. “For God’s sake, Elissa. This is for your own good. If we don’t secure you now, I’ll have to call the enforcement agents to take you in. You don’t want that, do you?”
The door slid shut in Elissa’s face, and she heard the click of the internal bolts driving home. They’d done it. They’d seriously locked her in.
Driven by shock and fury, she opened her mouth to shriek through the door, then stopped as if an invisible hand had been laid across her lips.
Her mother had lied to her. And Dr. Brien had lied too. Her instinct that morning, not to tell him what the other girl was wearing, had been right.
Which meant . . . What did it mean? That they knew her pictures were real? That they’d known all along? That they . . .
Nausea turned her stomach upside down. “Oh God. Oh no.�
� They’d known what was happening to the other girl? They’d known about the . . . Her mind shied away from the word she needed, but it echoed in her head all the same. Torture. Someone had been torturing that girl, doing some kind of horrific . . . experiments? . . . on her. And people, official people—doctors and ex-medical professionals like her mother and police officers like her father—other people knew about it. And did nothing.
The cold spread all over Elissa’s body. This wasn’t just as simple as some kind of illegal organization that only needed someone to find out about it to get shut down.
The images of the fire came back into her mind. That building—the newscaster had called it a manufacturing plant. People knew about its existence; people knew it was there. So unless its real purpose was unbelievably well-disguised, it must be officially sanctioned . . . by someone.
How far does this go? Is it not illegal at all?
Her stomach turned again, and goose bumps raced all over her body, not just from cold but from a spasm of nausea she had to fight to control.
The other girl, whom Elissa had left still sick and weak, doctored with nothing but some basic pain meds and an antibiotic spray, was in danger. She’d escaped less than twenty-four hours ago, and she didn’t have a hope of staying free much longer. They were going to find her, take her back. And Elissa, who’d promised to return, who’d promised to help her, was trapped till the morning in her freaking bedroom.
She went to the still-open window, and her fingers gripped the ledge. She leaned out, searching the smooth white-plastered wall for nonexistent hand- and footholds. There was nothing. If she tried it, she’d kill herself.
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