I sniff the air. “Smells like bleach.”
Clarissa shrugs. “Well, at least we know the area is clean, right?”
I’m not sure the scent of bleach indicates anything of the sort. Once more, I try to peer into the filthy windows but come up empty. They could be out of business for all I can tell.
“Are we going in or not?”
“I don’t know,” I say hesitantly. “I’m not sure I feel like it anymore.”
Clarissa waves at my gray tunic. “Where’s your sense of adventure? Back with your grandparents?”
I give her a sharp look. That’s dangerous talk and she should know better. “They weren’t adventurous, they were traitors,” I snap automatically, in case a Minder is listening for some random reason.
“Yeah, I know, of course,” Clarissa says, but her lack of concern is obvious, alarming, and strangely exciting. “Come on,” she says, waving two little laminated cards in front of my face. “It’s free. You don’t turn down free stuff, no matter what it is.” She presses one of the thin flexible cards into my hand.
I cup it in my palm, then shrug and kick the sidewalk. “I just…I just don’t know if I want to lie around and think right now. My thoughts aren’t…well, they aren’t being very nice to me right now.”
Clarissa grasps me by the shoulders and gives me a little shake. She squeezes my upper arms until I meet her eyes. “You don’t think while you meditate,” she says kindly.
I blink twice, absorbing her words. “Wait, I get to turn off my brain?”
“That’s basically the whole point.”
“Jeez, Clarissa, you should have told me that from the beginning. I’m gonna meditate so hard, you won’t believe it.” Dangerous as some of her flippant talk may be, I’ve never met another girl my age who’s so exciting, and I really want her to keep paying attention to me.
“I don’t think that’s exactly how it’s supposed to work, but I guess I’ll take it,” she says, snickering and pushing me toward the door.
I grin weakly at her and shove the door inward. Is this what having a friend is? I like it.
The temperature drops about thirty degrees when we step across the threshold. After the bright glare of the sidewalk, it takes my eyes a second to adjust to the dim light and drink in my surroundings.
Tapestries hang on the walls in a wide range of shades. Purple, mauve, gold, bronze, brown. All the earth tones and then some. In the lowlight, I can’t tell if the colors are intentionally muted or if the fabric is just dusty. Though the air is cool, it’s damp and clammy, and I’m reminded of that uncomfortable feeling of trying to redress after weekly shower when the towels are still wet from the group before me.
Music plays from somewhere, and I have no idea what a sitar is or what it looks like, but for some reason, I’m certain that’s what’s making the plucking sounds that permeate the room. I walk along the wall, trailing my fingers against the fabric draperies. I rub my thumb and index finger together. It is dust.
“Hello?” I call out, and almost as soon as the word is off my lips, a woman undulates through a beaded door at the back of the room.
Her hair is a mess of long, brown, spiral curls shot through with gray and her hands are covered with knobby rings, two or three on each finger. Her tunic is multicolored; it’s impossible to tell her caste from her clothing. Is that even legal? How am I supposed to know how to act around her?
“Welcome,” she says in a deep voice. She pauses so long that I think her sentence is finished, but then she finally concludes her greeting. “To the Healing Well. I am Mona.”
“Hi,” I say back, a squeak in my voice as my brain struggles to decide whether to act confident or deferent. With my gray tunic advertising my low status, confident seems like the less advisable alternative. “Um, we have a free trial?” I raise my voice like it’s a question so I don’t appear aggressive or threatening. I glance at the information printed on the card. “For an introductory sound bath?”
“Do you?” Mona challenges me, giving me a supercilious look. “You seem uncertain.” She’s obviously not concerned about appearing aggressive or threatening and for some crazy reason, I feel like she’s testing me. Like she wants me to push back.
“She got it from her supervisor,” I say, stepping closer to Clarissa’s side. “For a job well done.” I wasn’t so sure about this meditation thing when I walked in the door, but now I’m determined to go through with it, and I’m going to be the best freaking meditator this woman has ever seen in her life. I’ll be the essence of illumination. Tibetan monks everywhere will stop what they’re doing, spread their palms wide, and feel the charge in the atmosphere as I approach enlightenment.
Where on Earth did those thoughts just come from? And what’s a Tibetan monk?
My brain feels supercharged, like I’ve never really woken up from a night’s slumber, but today, I did. And I’m getting a free forty-five minute sound bath if it kills me. I couldn’t make John love me, but I can force this shop owner to make good on her card’s promise. I feel like I owe it to Clarissa, which is weird, because until today at the end of shift, she was just a random coworker.
Mona moves her head slowly back and forth, her brown and gray curls swaying disapprovingly. She spears Clarissa with a penetrating gaze. “Your supervisor.” She says the words like they’re coated in something sticky.
“Yes,” Clarissa replies staunchly. “For a job well done, like she said.”
I feel like if Mona were just the slightest bit younger, she’d roll her eyes at Clarissa, but instead she turns away with a swirl of her loose-fitting clothing and points at a row of boxes along the wall. “Put your shoes there. I’ll get two yoga mats.”
“Thank you,” I say, just a tiny bit huffily. Clarissa and I tuck our shoes into cubbies and I try to imagine what yoga might be, but I don’t ask out loud.
Mona rolls out two thin dark gray pads. I wonder if all her mats are dark gray or just the ones they use for people of Clarissa’s and my station. Probably the latter. “Come, lie down,” she says.
The cement is cold enough under my feet that I don’t want the whole surface of my foot to touch the floor. I finally managed to wiggle the last little piece of metal out of the bottom of my foot during today’s ten-minute afternoon restroom break, so my foot is sore but on the mend. I still don’t want to put too much pressure on it, though, so I tiptoe across the room feeling like an idiot who’s trying to sneak up on her yoga mat. Heat rises in my cheeks, and I’m glad for the dim light because I don’t want this meditation woman to see me blush. Again, I’m grateful that I’m too insignificant to have a Minder assigned to my thoughts. With her every-color clothes, this woman could be a lot more important than I think she is.
But if she’s so important, what is she doing running a dusty meditation studio on the outskirts of the sector?
I lower myself to a seated position on the mat, then lie back with my arms at my sides.
I turn my head. Clarissa is stretched out beside me, her head facing mine. She crosses her eyes and sticks her tongue out and I suppress a giggle, my somber mood broken.
The proprietor sweeps around the room, pulling bowls out of cabinets and setting them on the floor above our heads. Mona’s ankles flash in front of my eyes and I crane my neck and count the array of glass and metal bowls in a semicircle above me. Nine so far. Cranking my head backward makes me feel dizzy, though, so I stop watching her and turn to Clarissa again. “I feel ridiculous,” I hiss. “Why did I let you talk me into this?”
“She hasn’t even done anything yet,” Clarissa whispers back. “If you feel stupid now, just wait until she starts chanting.”
I rub my hands over my eyes and moan.
“Ohm,” Clarissa drones.
“Wait a second,” I hiss. “I thought you said you’d never done this before. How do you know what’s going to happen?”
Clarissa’s mouth drops open and I’m not sure in the dim light, but I think her cheeks flush.
“We’ll get started now,” Mona says in her husky voice, but there’s an edge to her tone, like she’s trying hard to muffle her annoyance at our impertinence.
I straighten out, slam my eyes shut, and fold my hands over my chest. If I’m really going to be able to turn off my brain for a few minutes, it’s time to get serious. But of course, the second I close my eyes, the insides of my eyelids become a canvas for John’s face, and I wince involuntarily.
A droning, humming sound starts up near my head. It’s loud but not unpleasant, and for the next few minutes, I try to let my mind wander away from John and toward…what? Work? What else do I have in my life? But seriously, anything else would be welcome, even if it’s just thoughts of my repetitive, monotonous job, but John’s still there, pushing out other ideas that my brain cells try to offer up. I picture him striding around in my mind, squishing individual rogue cells that dare to process thoughts that don’t include him, popping those cells under his thumb like they’re part of a sheet of slimy bubble wrap.
While I fight John’s specter for dominance of my brain, Mona plays her bowls louder and louder, making different sounds, I assume by rubbing the edges. After a while, Mona begins speaking along with the sounds she coaxes from the bowls. “This frequency speaks to your manipura,” she says in her quiet, deep voice, and her lips must be right next to my ear because I can feel the vibration of her words tickling my earlobe, but I don’t jerk away from it. I don’t move at all.
She’s obviously talking loud enough for us both to hear her because Clarissa makes a joke. “Your mani-pedi?” she says, a snicker in her voice. As if we grays could ever have one of those. I know I should giggle back, as a courtesy, but now that the meditation is underway, I don’t feel like laughing anymore. Actually, I feel kind of weird and woozy, but somehow, not in a bad way.
Mona’s tone doesn’t change at all, but this time I swear her words don’t pass through my eardrum at all; it’s like her voice is a feather stroking my brain.
Oh my god. This woman is a Minder. She’s speaking directly into my thoughts. Which means she can read them too. My heart begins to scud in my chest, but Mona’s mind’s eye voice inside my brain is so soothing and kind, it’s like a lid slams down over the well of terror that’s trying to feed my thoughts. But that’s what they do. They manipulate you. I should be afraid. I want to be afraid. But…I just can’t seem to pull anything out of my personal reservoir of fear right now.
“Manipura,” Mona’s peaceful mental voice says. “The navel chakra. Digesting your life experiences and optimizing your personal authority. You move through the world with confidence, power, and the ability to handle anything.”
I’m a gray caste. Her statement is so far from true, it’s ludicrous. But as my body drinks in the sound of the bowls and the woman’s words, I begin to think and feel differently…dangerously. Thoughts, long stuffed down, rise up to the surface of my brain and pop like the slow-moving bubbles on the top of a vat of boiling resin. They can tell me where I belong, but they’re wrong. I shouldn’t be dressed in gray, winding endless bobbins of fiberglass thread.
Almost like it’s a defense mechanism against these radical ideas, John’s face fights to the top of my mind again. I realize that for a few minutes there, he was gone from my thoughts, something that hasn’t been true for even one second since the moment he tore my heart out. “I’m not in love with you, I know that now,” John’s memory chants, his words banging around in my mind, looking for a hollow area to rattle around in. But now, in my mind’s eye, instead of replaying the events of the evening, I stand up from the table and put my arms in front of me, palms out. “You were a terrible boyfriend,” my mind’s voice says to him, and while it’s definitely my speaking voice, the words feel heavier and more authoritative than any words I’ve ever spoken aloud. It almost feels like someone’s speaking for me, but I don’t care because as the words tumble out of my lips, I believe them. This is me. This is what I really think. I do move through the world with confidence, power, and the ability to handle anything. How could I have ever thought otherwise? “I did all the work in our relationship,” I tell him. “All because I wanted the life you could offer me. Not because I wanted you. I’m lucky to learn so much about what I don’t want from life while I’m still young. I’m happy to let you go.” Mentally, I shove forward with my hands, and John’s memory bursts into a shower of sparkles. An accompanying tone from a new bowl provides a satisfying boom.
“I speak my truth. I live my truth,” Mona drones, her voice mixing with the notes of the bowls. Is she speaking out loud now or is she still inside my brain? I don’t know, but I’m not sure it matters anymore. Colors explode in my mind’s eye and I want to open my eyes to see if someone blasted a hole in the ceiling, but my lids are so heavy, I can’t move them.
Clarissa says something – maybe she laughs, I’m not sure – but I can’t focus on her. I just see the swirl of color before my closed eyelids, spiraling off into infinity.
“Rest your arms at your sides,” Mona commands.
Something’s weird about that instruction, but I can’t put my finger on what. Then I notice that my arms are outthrust from my body, palms out, and I didn’t even realize it. Did I actually shove into thin air and not notice? Robotically, I slide my hands to my sides, laying my palms flat on the ground. It’s like I’m hypnotized, but I know I’m not because I’m still thinking independent thoughts of my own. My mind is somehow exploring areas of my brain that I never knew existed, and now I feel like I’m spinning, up, up, up. I’m looking at myself from a vantage point somewhere near the ceiling.
Mona comes close to me and bends over. She removes the tattered piece of silk in my right earlobe that keeps my caste piercing open, and she places a metal stud in my ear. What? I haven’t been tagged – for any reason – in years. Why did she do that? This has gone too far. I try to rise, but I can’t move my arms or legs. Mona glides around me with a benign expression on her face like what she just did is totally normal, then she dots a drop of oil on my forehead.
I know I’m still in my body because when Mona touches the oil drop on my forehead I feel pressure between my eyes and I inhale sharply. Ugh, lavender. I hate that scent. But somehow I’m also up in the ceiling of the room, watching everything that’s happening.
Mona’s lips don’t move, and yet she speaks directly into my brain again. “This is your ajna, the transparent lotus, center of intuition and vision. I’m going to play a B flat. Let’s see how you handle that, Heidi.”
I never told her my name. Down below, on my body, my lips part, but before I can say anything, a note resonates through the room, and I gulp one more time, a gasping heave of a breath. Then everything goes black.
3
The Studio
“So she is gifted,” Clarissa says, a note of pride in her voice. “I knew it.”
“You did well,” Mona says. “I placed a transponder in her ear. She must have Jumped outside the building or I’d be able to hear her thoughts. I imagine they’re rather disheveled right now. But” – she cocks her head – “nothing. I’ll track her coordinates and see where she ended up. I’ll need you to collect her, obviously, and possibly transport her to her placement. You’ll be receiving your bounty bonus, of course.”
Clarissa dimples prettily. “I don’t mind. She actually seems all right, you know, for a gray.”
“Well, she’s not really a gray, is she? I looked inside her mind,” Mona says with a slight smile. “I like her.”
Mona crosses to the front door of the meditation studio and double-checks the lock. Mona flips the sign in the window to “Closed” and she leads the way to the back of the building. Clarissa follows.
Mona settles herself behind a console. “You need to work on your cover story, Clarissa. A supervisor would never give a gray anything as a reward for a job assignment. Factory grays produce high quality work or they’re repurposed as domestics. I can’t believe that A, you didn’t know that, a
nd B, a factory gray like Heidi believed you.”
The smile erases itself from Clarissa’s face, replaced by a sullen expression. She breaks eye contact with Mona and stares at the ground. “Noted,” she mutters. “It was my faculty advisor’s suggestion.”
“I’d counsel you to draw from your own real world experiences going forward,” Mona says mildly. “Your professors, skilled though they may be in Lumen matters, often have very little practical life knowledge when it comes to the lower castes.”
Clarissa chews on her lip. “Why would they?”
Mona arches an eyebrow. “If they’re sending you undercover to pursue a thesis, you’d think they’d do a little groundwork first.” She waits a beat for a response, but it’s clear Clarissa has nothing more to say. Mona shrugs a shoulder. “I’ll prepare a chit transfer to your account, but first I’ll get you the coordinates for Heidi’s pickup location.”
She clicks her mouse a few times, opening up several windows. She taps a few keys. Her eyes narrow. “What the…?” She clicks and taps through another set of commands. “This can’t be right.”
She closes her programs and restarts them.
“What’s the problem?” Clarissa asks.
“Shh,” Mona hisses. “Don’t interrupt me.”
She taps and clicks again, her hands beginning to shake. She stares at the screen for several long seconds. Then she grabs a satellite phone off the top of her desk and jabs at it frantically. She presses the phone to the side of her face. “Darius, where are you?” She listens intently for a moment. “Good. I’m in Sector Seven, old town Seattle, and I need you here immediately.” She listens again. “Well, you’re going to have to cut your meeting short because we have an issue. A big, scatting issue with an untested novitiate.”
Her eyes roll up to the heavens as if the response on the other end is testing her patience to the limit. “Yes, of course I used an encrypted line.”
She listens intently for a moment, and a flustered expression twists across her face. “No, she’s not going to wait here for you. That’s part of the bigger problem.”
Destination Unknown (Lumen Academy Book 1) Page 2
