“I can’t do anything. I promised I wouldn’t.”
“What, like when you were being tortured?” Dream said. “I’m pretty sure that’s a nonbinding agreement.”
“Still. It could be dangerous for everyone.”
Twinge crossed her arms over her chest. “I for one am not content to see my roomie get run through the ringer and then go on like nothing happened. You hear what I’m saying, girl? I hate this place. Don’t you?”
“I despise everything about it,” she answered. “Well.” She glanced out the corner of her eye. Could she afford to be that honest? “Maybe not my one-on-one sessions with Mark.”
“He is kinda dreamy, isn’t he?” Twinge agreed.
“Mark? Mark Maddox?” Dream said. “The who-traumatized-you-during-your-childhood guy? Eeew.”
“He’s hunky.”
“He’s like not even cute enough for me to talk back to.”
“That’s not what you said before,” Harriet whispered.
Dream appeared outraged. “What are you hallucinating about? I’ve never even mentioned the man.”
“After your first session. You said you’d do him till candy fell out.”
“I did not.”
“You said it on the phone to your friend Valerie at home.”
“You eavesdropped on my conversation?”
Harriet shrugged. “It’s what I do.”
“Your memory is playing tricks on you.”
“No.” Harriet held up a spiral binder. “I put it down in my journal.”
“You keep a journal?”
“Of course she does,” Twinge said. “All morbidly despondent girls keep journals. Right?”
Harriet’s eyes narrowed ever so slightly. “I told you before. I’m just quiet.”
“Well, that’s better than being Little Miss Clinical Depression.”
Aura sat up. “Wait a minute. I thought I was Little Miss Clinical Depression.”
Harriet nodded. “We can share the sash, Aura.”
“Don’t try to change the subject,” Dream said. “You were spying on me.”
“I am not a spy.”
“Give me that.” Dream snatched the journal away. Harriet did not resist.
“Where did you write—” Dream stopped short. “What is this gibberish? Some kind of code?”
“A different language.”
“I’ve seen a lot of languages, girl, and I don’t recognize this one. What language is it?”
“One I invented.”
“You invented a language?”
Harriet shrugged. “I have a lot of spare time here. In my head, I mean.”
“Then we need to channel your mental energy in a different direction. Does everything here bore you?”
“I like hypnotherapy,” Harriet replied.
“Really?” Dream said. “You prefer Dr. Hope of the mammoth mammaries to stubble and dreamy-eyed Mark?” She drew back. “This must be like women’s prison. Everyone goes gay for the stay.”
Another pause. Then more giggling.
“This is getting stupid,” Twinge said, wiping her eyes. “I’m sorry, Aura. We should be ministering to your wounds or something.”
“This is,” she replied, “exactly what I needed.” She said it before she even realized she had thought it.
“For whatever it’s worth,” Dream said, “I like hypnotherapy, too. Very relaxing. I fell asleep during my first session.”
“Get out of here.” Twinge slapped her forehead. “So did I!”
“And me,” Harriet added quietly.
“I think we all did.” She remembered that first session much too well. And what she learned when she explored Dr. Hope’s office. “Afterward, did any of you notice an abrasion around your temples?”
“Mine ached a little,” Twinge said. “Like I’d been stung by a bee. But it didn’t last long. And it only happened the first time I was in there.”
“Nothing happens to this bod of mine without me noticing,” Dream added. “Definite redness at the temples. Thought I was getting zits.”
“That’s creepy,” Twinge said. “Do you think Hope was…doing something to us?”
“I know Hope was doing something to us,” she replied. “I checked out that big padded chair and found some kind of electronic helmet that comes down. And a syringe. I don’t know what was in it. Or what Hope was trying to get.”
“Eeew,” Dream said. “I knew there was something wrong with that woman and those oh-so-nineties scoop-neck blouses. Of course she couldn’t resist the chance to get her hand under my skirt.”
“Let’s not jump to any conclusions.”
Twinge leaned forward. “Aura, do you know what’s going on here?”
“No.” She lowered her voice. How much could she say? They deserved to know as much as she did, little though that was. But she didn’t want to put them in danger. “I think something strange is going on. I think they have a secret agenda—something more than just imprisoning or rehabilitating Shines.”
“You know what?” Dream said. “I think we all need to talk to one another more.”
“What we need,” Twinge said, “is to get the hell out of here. You have any problem with that, Aura?”
She held a finger to her lips.
Dream wrinkled her face, puzzled.
Twinge touched a finger to her nose.
“Are we playing charades?”
Twinge pointed to her eyes, then her ears, then swirled it around in a circle thrust toward the ceiling.
They are watching us. And listening to us. At all times.
Twinge held up a single finger. Okay, charades then. One word.
She exaggerated sneaking toward the door in overblown giant steps.
Escape.
A wave of nausea rushed over her. She had promised not to snoop, not to cause any more trouble. If they got caught trying to escape, her mother would suffer. Everyone would suffer.
But Beverly suffered already. And it would never end if they didn’t do something to stop it. And she never specifically promised not to try to escape. That wasn’t snooping. Exactly…
She’d be damned—literally—if she’d let them keep her mother locked in that cell with those hideous—bugs, or whatever they were, crawling all over and inside her.
But how could they plan anything when they were trapped here? How could they escape when they weren’t even free to communicate?
Unless…
She leaned back and rested her head against the pillow. “You know, I’ve always been fascinated by languages.”
Dream blinked. “You have?”
“Harriet—do you think you could teach us your language?” She gave the girl a direct look. “Quietly?”
25
Aura was almost to the cafeteria when Judy interrupted.
The perky floor supervisor wrapped her arms around her, so tightly she wondered if she were being frisked. “Oh my Gandhi, Aura, how are you? I heard about your accident!”
Really. She wondered exactly what she’d heard. Surely this hoover was not a member of Coutant’s inner circle.
“Are you feeling okay? Are you getting enough rest? You know what they say. A good eight-hour rest is the most valuable tool in the glamour girl’s toolkit.”
“I’m feeling fine.”
Judy cradled her face in her hands as if she were a two-year old. “Are you sure, honey? Really?”
“I’m—yeah. Sure.”
“You know what we need? A girl’s night. Girls only.”
Didn’t that define almost every activity here?
“We could make popcorn. Paint each other’s toenails. Play Truth or Dare. Maybe even watch a chick flick.”
“I don’t know…”
“Honey. Baby. Don’t you understand? I want to help you. That’s all anyone here wants. To help.”
Yeah. That’s why she had an appointment with Dr. Hope, where she expected the woman to help herself to parts of her body.
“I app
reciate the offer, Judy. But I’m not in the mood.”
Judy pushed out her lower lip. “You’re being a party pooper. Boo.”
“Sorry. And if you don’t mind—I’m starving.”
She pushed her tray through the cafeteria line. The choices didn’t change much from one day to the next. Not that the food was poor. In fact, the food was light years ahead of what they’d offered at her high school. TYL provided a nice array of options—low-carb choices, steak for the carnivores, salads for the herbivores, fish for those somewhere in between. All well prepared and tasty. But it was the same stuff every day. And after a while, even gourmet excellence lost its glamour. She longed for a really thick greasy completely unhealthy burger.
She took her tray and searched for a vacant seat. She didn’t see any of her roomies. Harriet was supposed to be monitoring incoming messages that might be relevant to their plans. Dream was supposed to be using her interpersonal skills to chat up the girls in 4B (which they had agreed to stop calling LL) and see if they could be trusted. Twinge thought it was a big mistake. To be sure, there was risk involved. The more people who knew about their plans, the more ways it could go wrong. But for this operation, they needed all the skills they could get.
If they didn’t want to end up like Perfume. Or those girls in the underground dungeon.
And she didn’t.
She still remembered every word Perfume told her, in part because she kept reliving the conversation in her nightmares. Even before she arrived here, she’d heard the rumors. That some Shines dropped off the radar before the government could corral them, went dark, formed some sort of pro-Shine group. That was the meaning of their name: Ohm. In the world of physics, ohm is a unit of resistance.
But an enclave of Shines banding together free from the bigotry and oppression of the outside world? Sounded good, but where exactly would such a place be? The North Pole? Deep in the jungles of South America? As far as she knew, every state in the union hunted Shines, and some other nations were starting to get into the act, even the ones that had not yet seen any Shine outbreaks. So where would anyone establish such a colony? Who could finance it? She would love to have hope. She would love to think that if she could get herself and the other girls out of here they could go somewhere safe.
But she didn’t believe it. Perfume was out of her mind. Probably’d been tortured till she was insensible. She mixed fantasy and reality in a way that only made sense in her delusional imagination.
And if they’d been able to do that to Perfume…what must be happening to Beverly?
She dropped her fork, a wave of cold sweat rushing through her body. They were messing with her pregnant mother’s DNA.
And those bugs. Those horrific black bugs.
No one could endure that long, not without becoming completely shattered. Destroyed.
She had to get her mother out of there. No matter what Coutant threatened.
“Mind if I take the empty seat?”
She looked up. Mark Maddox, everyone’s favorite psychotherapist. Looking irritatingly hunky, as usual.
“Um, no. Please do.”
He pulled out the chair and sat beside her. Very close beside her. She could smell him.
She liked it.
“I think I have an appointment with you this afternoon,” he tossed out as a conversation starter.
“Yup. Three p.m.”
“We’ll probably just talk about the recent past. Work through some of your Shine experiences. First time you realized you were different. First time you used your Shine, that sort of thing.”
“Sounds grueling.”
He smiled a little. “I don’t want to turn it into a Shineologue, but sometimes reflection can be useful in recovery. I’ll try to muffle the sting. If you like, we can start now.”
“I think I’d rather just eat.”
“Completely understandable.”
“No offense intended.”
“None taken.”
She tried to check him out without being obvious. He seemed a little awkward. Even nervous. Wasn’t he supposed to be the grownup here?
A new idea flashed through her brain. Was it possible…he liked her? As in, had feelings for her? He had chosen to sit beside her, when there were a dozen empty seats.
She wiped the stupid notion off her mental slate. Stop flattering yourself. He’s a million years older than you are. He’s like thirty or something. Probably got a wife and three kids and a townhouse in Bel Air. You’re being ridiculous.
But why did he keep glancing at her? When he thought she wasn’t looking.
“Is there something you’d like to talk about?” he asked.
“Actually, yes.” She stared down at the Caesar salad on her plate. “Are they putting stuff in our food?”
“You mean, like nutrients?”
“No. I mean, like drugs.”
“Oh.” Her face went blank for a few moments. “Well, I’ve never heard any mention of it in the staff meetings.”
She read between the lines. “But you’re not ruling it out.”
He cleared his throat. “I think Dr. Coutant gets a lot of directives from the government. President Patterson has made Shine control a central plank in his reelection campaign, as I’m sure you know. That has a trickle-down effect to all branches of government. No one wants—well, you know. Another bad incident.”
She tried not to let him see just how much that stung. “So you think it’s possible they’re putting stuff in our food.”
“I didn’t say that. I just said I couldn’t rule it out. The food they give me seems to come from the same place as yours. What are you thinking? Poison?”
“No. More like…something to suppresses out abilities. Saltpeter for Shines.”
“Have you had trouble tapping your ability?”
“Well now. To answer that positively, I would have to admit that I’ve tried, which might well get me tossed into Mordock.”
“Good point.”
“So I’m not saying yes.” But the answer was yes. She had tried to tap into that neural network, or whatever it was, in tiny ways, to feel the pain of others. And she’d been able to, eventually, but it seemed much harder than before. Like there was a fog in her head, a haze, something that clouded her focus. “I don’t like the idea of anyone tampering with my food without my knowledge.”
“You’re afraid you’ll lose your Shine.”
She didn’t answer.
“Did you ever consider the possibility—that might be a good thing?”
Of course she had. Wouldn’t life be a thousand times simpler if none of this had ever happened? If she didn’t have the government breathing down her neck?
But that wasn’t who she was. Maybe she was delusional or infantile or egomaniacal. But she’d thought about this a long time, especially after she’d endured all that torment from Coutant and her bully squad.
They’d been determined to convince her Shine was a horrible abnormality that had to be eradicated.
And it had just the opposite effect.
Maybe Beverly was right. Maybe she was stubborn and rebellious.
But more and more she became convinced that if she and the others were given these powers—there had to be a reason.
Mark filled the awkward silence. “Maybe that’s something we can discuss during our session today. But Aura.” He turned and for the first time since the conversation began, he looked directly into her eyes. “Don’t do anything foolish, okay?”
“Like what?”
“Like anything. I’m not an idiot. I know you don’t like it here. But believe me, the alternatives are far worse.”
Like what? Mordock? Or did he know about the underground cellblock? Did he know what they’d done to her? She’d tried to cover the bruises with makeup, but she wasn’t sure how well it worked. “Do you believe in Ohm?’
“No. I don’t believe in Oz or Skartaris or Atlantis. Or Ohm. But I believe in you.”
She felt warmth surge thro
ugh her body.
“But you worry me,” he continued. “And now you’re complaining about the food…”
“So you’re afraid I’ll bust out because I’m desperate for an untainted bacon cheeseburger?”
The corner of his lips turned up. “Something like that.” He pushed his chair out. “Take care of yourself. And if there’s anything I can do to help you—anything at all—just ask.” Those bright eyes flickered at her.
Killer eyes. Even if he was kind of a sap. A really ripped sap.
“Thanks. Appreciate that.”
She contemplated whether she wanted another bite of this possibly laced salad—a battle between stubbornness and starvation—when she felt a cold hand on her bare shoulder.
Chill bumps rose on her arms and legs before she even heard Coutant’s voice. “Aura. It’s time.”
26
This time, Aura noticed, Dr. Hope made no pretense that this was hypnotherapy or anything else that might possibly be beneficial to her. The voluptuous doctor just strapped her into the chair and started hacking away at her.
“I’m afraid this is going to hurt more than the usual sessions,” Hope said. She held a syringe large enough to draw blood from an elephant. Good Gandhi, what were they going to do to her now? She’d endured these experiments, as she’d promised she would, but each time it seemed to take longer, be more intrusive, and hurt more. She still had bruises from yesterday’s so-called “epidermal extracts.” This looked as if it might be even worse.
“You’ve already taken my blood. DNA samples from all over my body. Skin samples. Hair from every possible region. You’ve even taken nail clippings. What more is there to take?”
“Bone marrow.”
She felt her heart slip down to the pit of her stomach. When she finally spoke, her voice sounded like the squeak of a mouse. “Why?”
“Bone marrow is the critical component in your body’s lymphatic system.”
“Which is?”
“Your immune system. All Shines appear to have increased resistance to infection.”
She wondered how Hope knew that. How many Shines had they tried to infect? And with what?
“You can’t imagine how many top-notch scientists have been analyzing Shine DNA and tissue samples, trying to find out what makes you tick. What makes you tick differently than everyone else. But so far, all they’ve got is a handful of guesses. No answers.”
Shine: Season One (Shine Season Book 1) Page 12
