Snake paused in his playing and Sheila thanked him for nourishment.
What about me? Looking around, the room was luxurious. In the last few years, she’d seen her share of odd safe houses, concrete bunkers, mobile homes, and abandoned buildings. This room practically oozed wealth and comfort. Jay continued to sniff the air, her gaze settling upon a tray with covered platters resting on a polished and gleaming half-moon table set against the side wall.
“Bewdy, you’re up. Here,” Snake said, placing Sheila to one side and passing over a large glass of something with bubbles in it.
“Where are we?” Jay asked, rubbing her eyes and making an attempt at conversation. Maybe the food isn’t for me? But I’m starving!
“We’re in a hotel in a city called Rio de Janeiro. Nice, isn’t it? Apparently, this city is having a festival tonight. Doozy of a party, too, if the crowds are any indication. Stanford paid top dollar to even get a room,” Snake explained as Jay gulped down the sweet and citrusy beverage.
Jay sighed gratefully and nodded her thanks as Snake crossed the room and grabbed the tray of food. Oh thank goodness. Snake uncovered the plate with an exaggerated flourish and a mock bow. “He even bought tucker for you. Probably won’t touch the sides.”
Jay’s stomach rumbled audibly and she felt her face heat. She picked up the fork and attacked the meal, taking a second, more careful look around the room.
Pale yellow walls, two beds with patchwork comforters in gold and taupe, a yellow-green sofa and another, less impressive bed on wheels draped in a green blanket, a small writing desk and chair along with the more ornamental half-moon table. Most amazing, the yellow-greenish curtains were open and sunlight streamed freely into the room. Sounds drifted up through the window. Up? Oh wow, we’re in a storied building and the curtains are open? Where are we?
Jay reached outwards with her Gift and felt little bubbles of bright emotion fill the nearby mindscape. Mostly people were asleep in this building, she could tell by the subdued emotional colors. A few brighter spots wandered the halls. She kept reaching downwards, one, two, three, four floors. Four? And overwhelmingly pleasant too—all these little bubbles of happy consciousness.
‡Where’s everyone else? And who is Stanford? And what exactly am I eating? It tastes divine,‡ she broadcast to Snake, since her mouth was full of beans and beef.
Snake laughed. “Feijoada. Good, isn’t it? You shouldn’t broadcast to Stanford when you see him, he’ll have kittens.” Snake shuffled back to the desk and a bright green bottle. “At least this place has good beer, even if it isn’t Aussie.” Jay could feel he was thoroughly enjoying the first respite in their desperate flight.
He took a swig and then continued speaking while Jay shoveled food into her mouth. “He’s the scientist who examined Sheila and figured out we were from an alternate reality. He was in the room when that Royal drone found us. You saved his life. You saved all our lives.”
I wonder if it is enough to convince them not to treat me like a kid anymore. Jay’s eyebrows twitched downwards as she shoveled more food into her mouth. Crap. Half the food is gone already? Why didn’t Stanford buy me two of these?
“Stanford hitched a ride when the base we were being kept in was blown to bits. I don’t think he’s ready for you to broadcast at him. Even Sheila got his undies in a bunch. Kept saying she ‘defied our understanding of physics’ and was ticked off when she started speaking like a person rather than a computer, or—what was it he said? A smart phone? Went on about something called the Turing Test,” the musician shrugged with indifference.
The dimensional transfer unit and harmonic force projector chimed in with digital precision. “Mission protocols indicated I was to simulate a lower level of operational effectiveness. It was a necessary deception. Dr. Ellis considered pointing a laser at my power core. Such a course of action could have overloaded critical systems. My capacity to deceive is what upsets Dr. Ellis,” the device intoned primly.
“Pilot Adder, I request you move me to the window, please. I can harvest the traffic vibrations more efficiently at a closer proximity.”
“Sure thing, Sheila,” Snake responded, doing so after refilling Jay’s glass with the last of the beverage.
Without so much as a surreptitious glance down at the street, he laid Sheila on the wide window sill, propped against the window. Jay wanted to look out the window too, but …
‡You didn’t answer my question. Why aren’t they here?‡ Her grip tightened around the nearly empty bowl. Jay couldn’t sense them, those familiar clouds of emotion and thought, anywhere close. She wanted to press farther through the mindscape, but she still felt like she was running on empty. She could feel the food revitalizing her as the bowl’s contents rapidly disappeared.
“They’re shopping. Some of our gear got left behind, but nothing important. They should be back soon. Sheila’s batteries are so low, I had to either drop a hat in the street and start busking, or stay up here with you and play. So of course I chose to stay up here with my favorite teenager and serenade her as she slept,” Snake blustered with an outrageous grin. “Besides, I sort of let slip that Sarge and China are married.” Snake rubbed the back of his head. “They wanted some time to themselves. They haven’t got their memories back yet, and while I appreciate what you did back there, I haven’t got everything back yet either.”
Jay frowned. I thought I’d given him everything. She set down the fork.
‡You haven’t got everything back? Come here, I’ll—‡
“Oh no you don’t,” Snake interrupted with a wagging finger. “You just woke up from extreme exhaustion after using your Gift. Mack’s orders. I can wait. Besides, Sheila’s been filling me in and some things are starting to come back on their own. Mack gave me strict instructions to feed you high-energy food till you burst. Speaking of which.” He crossed over to her once more, taking the now empty bowl and moving to one side of the room that contained a tiny refrigerator.
Jay had initially glanced over it as it was situated somewhat behind the wheeled bed. Her hopes jumped at the prospect of another lemon fizzy drink and a smile spread across her face.
“Stanford told me something funny. Apparently, there is a version of me in this reality who is a famous musician. Said I should probably stay out of sight as much as possible. Blows the mind, eh? Another version of me running around dating movie starlets and making music. Lucky bastard.” He turned, holding a four-scoop ice cream sundae smothered in caramel, topped with a generous rain of crushed peanuts over a mountain of whipped cream and a spoon sticking out of it at a jaunty angle. “Ta da.”
Jay’s mouth dropped open. Snake cringed as she inadvertently broadcast a mental squeal of delight and the precious bowl teetered alarmingly in his hand. Throwing up a quick mental wall, she vocalized, “Sorry Snake. Ice cream! Oh wow, I haven’t had ice cream in forever.”
Jay reached out and took it from his hands as soon as it was within reach. Ferrying a dripping, heaped spoonful into her mouth, she moaned as the first heavenly bite of creamy vanilla and sticky caramel melted on her tongue.
Snake rolled his head back and forth, and Jay felt guilty as she realized it was to ease the effects of her unintended outburst. That wasn’t even a mental attack anyway. It was just a slip up because I haven’t eaten in who-knows-how-long. And ice cream!
Somewhere around the third spoonful, Jay felt a flicker of precognition. She closed her eyes to better concentrate while savoring a sweet bite of whipped cream and vanilla drizzled with caramel. Four people filing through the doorway, bags in hand, one of them a stranger. As usual, the flicker disappeared almost as quickly as it flashed into existence. The important thing is that they’ll all be back.
“They’ll be back soon,” Jay announced to Snake.
About the time she plunged her spoon into the fourth scoop, a definitive click sounded from the door and four people filed in, including a pudgy, middle-aged stranger that could only be Dr. Ellis.
The
middle-aged man gave her a quick glance and then lowered his eyes to the bags he carried. Jay resisted the temptation to skim his thoughts and emotions. Mom and Dad are particularly keen about my respecting boundaries and other people’s privacy. Which would be so much easier if anyone else bothered to develop mental walls like me. People unintentionally broadcast their thoughts and emotions so often it’s a wonder I don’t pick up everything simply being in the room. Of course, my parents are better about it. Although …
Their relief and the lessening of tension was palpable, like a silk shawl set to drift across the room, as they saw her awake and eating. Like they didn’t even try to stop themselves from projecting. Jay swallowed her latest bite of ice cream and it seemed to fight its way down her throat. Her stomach felt leaden and her fingers cold.
“Welcome back to the land of the awake and functional,” Mack said before hurrying over to the bed and giving Jay a huge hug and a swift peck on the cheek.
Jay tore her gaze away from her parents momentarily to smile at Mack, but couldn’t hold onto it. The smile slipped from her face as she realized neither of her parents were moving from the little hall that formed the entry near the door. They’re standing there like Dr. Ellis. Like strangers.
“We hit the target. You saved our bacon back at our original entry point. I hope Snake’s been catching you up on the details,” Mack continued brightly, but to Jay, she leaked emotion. Behind the chipper tone and smile was a level of anxiety sneaking out through the cracks in her concentration.
Mack brushed back the dark hair plastered to the side of Jay’s forehead from where she had slept on it. Mack turned down the brightness of her tone. “But it was a rougher trip than we anticipated. Sheila pulled us through, but we all suffered burns and it took a while for us to heal. Some of us … lost our memories.”
‡Why … why not you and I? And if we got burned, why do we all have hair?‡ Jay broadcast. She didn’t trust her voice right now.
Stanford dropped his bags on his shoes, missing the intended target of the desk. Jay didn’t care whether her broadcasting freaked him out or not, but she winced when her parents flinched as well. She threw up thicker walls and felt the weight of tears gathering at the back of her eyes. This can’t be happening. This can’t be happening.
“Sheila says it was just you vertically challenged people that managed to avoid getting the electroshock treatment,” Snake joked, half-heartedly injecting some humor into the situation. “As for our luscious locks, it must have been that headgear Alex made us wear.”
With a tight rein on her emotions, Jay lowered the walls and delved her mom and dad. The golden-hued warmth of love that usually radiated when they weren’t worried about projecting was absent. They felt—oh no, like that day they burst into the Facility. Except not even that much. I remember.
Its gaping absence felt like a hollow place, a void; there should have been a feeling of something instead of that emotional hole. The uncertainty put her on edge.
‡We’ve still got the pages?‡ Jay broadcast as a distraction.
“Pages?” Mom enquired, furrowing her brow.
The question stung Jay to the quick. The way her mom and dad exchanged vacant glances with each other hurt.
“Yes, we’ve still got the pages of Mycroft’s diary that talk about the first key,” Mack stated softly. “The Americans here didn’t find them. With all my practice with a needle and thread, they didn’t catch where I sewed them into my pack,” she continued, shooting Stanford a glance.
Jay barely heard her. She couldn’t block out the way her mom and dad stood with a veritable chasm between them. From the first time she’d laid eyes on them until now, they’d always moved in tandem and with a constant awareness of each other. Every half a step or a turn of the head was made to protect the other as much as themselves. Not anymore.
This shouldn’t be happening! I already lost one family in the Facility. I’ve already lost my brothers and sisters. Isn’t that enough? Do I have to lose my parents too? Jay’s mental fortifications trembled as she blinked back tears and the tide of her emotions turned to spikes of anger. My walls won’t hold.
“Mom, Dad. Come here,” Jay demanded, setting aside the one lonely remaining half-scoop of melted ice cream covered in a lopsided glaze of caramel and a paltry few nuts. She held out her hands to them imperiously and pressed her lips together.
Mack protested. “No Jay, you just woke up. You’re still weak from dealing with the drone, and the trans—”
“I don’t care! I can’t stand to see them looking at me like that. Like … like I’m a stranger,” Jay interrupted, her voice cracking on the last word. She shook her hands impatiently, blinking away tears. “I’m strong enough to do this, and then I don’t have to feel like I just lost my parents, Mack. Let me help them, please?”
The fact that they hesitated, looking at Jay askance as they shifted their weight, just made Jay angrier. If they don’t take my hands soon, my walls will fail. If Snake thought that I was a banshee during my previous slip-up, he’ll think I’m a hound from hell if I lose it.
Mack’s face went thin-lipped. Behind her closed mouth, her jaw moved, but she remained silent. Nodding, she moved off the bed.
Her parents took a long time to set aside their bags on the desk before stepping forward and sitting on either side of Jay before each taking a hand. With a deep breath, Jay gripped them tightly and closed her eyes, searching for the memories that would best trigger them to remember each other and her. To heal the gaping chasm.
Jay dived into her earliest memories together with her foster parents. She focused on their hands gripping hers as she tried to calm herself from her outburst. If she fully connected her mind to theirs, they’d feel her emotions and that she was angry and upset at their lack of memory. It’s not their fault, she reminded herself and took several calming breaths before she established a connection.
‡I’m going to help you remember everything. You just need to relax and let me. Think of a white sheet hanging on a washing line. It’s rippling gently in the wind, and you need to calm it so it lays flat and motionless.‡ She sent the image to them and felt them take it up and concentrate despite their nerves.
She waited while they tackled the calming mental exercise, skimming their thoughts to make sure they had it while she pondered which memories would be most effective. The bright linen, smelling of the green outside and sunshine, flickered far more in her foster mother’s thoughts. Light tones of pink and gray shadowed her sheet, and Jay sent her calming emotions until her sheet hung pure white and still.
Which memories, though? Then she knew. That summer when she was nine …
Bright sunlight shone down into the apple orchard as the ripe fruit dangled heavy among the short trees, and insects buzzed around like happy comets. Seasonal workers wandered, gypsy-like, between farming communities during the picking season.
The small Rebel family simply joined the throng of caravans and mobile homes that plied their way from one coast to another. Farmers didn’t look too closely at papers when fruit needed to be picked.
For Jay, it was a time of wonder. She’d spent all her life in the Facility and then the hidden base in Florida. Now she was out in the world with her parents and the beauty of this small farm almost overwhelmed her senses at first. She knew she had her parents to thank. It was in the forefront of their minds to give her as normal a childhood as possible, despite the risks involved.
It was a horrible and yet strangely wonderful time after the Facility. She’d put it behind her, and her parents endeavored to do so as well. That single, horrific event brought them together and their shared anger and grief over the destruction of the Facility brought them closer together; though perhaps not all the way. The hole in Jay’s heart at the loss of her siblings had slowly filled with something else. Something deeper. A real family.
Among the apple trees, she played with the children of other pickers, although they gave her some odd looks at first w
hen she didn’t know how to play the games they all enjoyed. She wondered why her life hadn’t always been like this: surrounded by those that loved her, cared for her, and freed her.
At the same time, she still didn’t understand much of this world outside the Facility. She unquestioningly accepted it as only a child can.
An offhand comment about Rebels prompted her to speak up when they had all returned to their small, mobile home after the day’s work.
“Why are we Rebels?” she asked, skimming her parents’ thoughts as she did so. She wanted to know the truth. Out of habit, she peered into their thoughts, watching those as well as their body language as she had been taught.
China looked at her with compassion on his finely angled features. “It’s not because we want to be. It’s because we have to be. Because of what we are.”
“What do you mean?”
Sarge leaned forward, her artificial arm thudding lightly as it contacted the wooden table where they ate their meals. “I’m a Lifer, Jay. You know what that means.”
She nodded, reciting from her lessons at the Facility. “The Fourth Principle. Your parents didn’t plan for you, or weren’t allowed to have you. So you became the property of the realm and belonged to the Monarch in the realm you were born in.”
“Yes,” Sarge nodded. “I never knew my parents, never even saw their faces. I was a slave, but I didn’t even know it. Not until I met your dad. He’s the one who opened my eyes to what I was. A tool of the Royals. An expendable tool. From birth.” Sarge extended a hand across to China.
Jay could feel the strength of their emotions in that moment. Like a woolen tapestry of complicated emotion, the unspoken acknowledgment of all they had shared spread about them, voluminous, thick, and ever so mildly itchy.
Suffrage (World Key Chronicles Book 1) Page 7
