“Proving grounds?” My heart hammers in my chest at the ominous implication of those words. The word smacks of military to me. Of preparations for war. I think about Mina again, about Ollie’s words to her. I think about the launch closures. I think about the suicides.
It is Strega’s turn to shrug. “They have the right equipment for the testing.”
Whether he’s watching or not, I can’t eat another bite. I take my plate to the servette just as Ritter skids into the room and hastily puffs into his tube.
“I’m going to be late,” he panics. “I’m already down a level of function. I can’t lose another!”
I flash on the suicides. My throat closes. “What level are you, Ritter?”
He sees my face and is instantly contrite. “Not that low,” he assures me quickly, grabbing the fruit and yogurt he’s chosen and stuffing them in his messenger bag. He hastily swipes my forehead. “Good luck today,” he says, dashing into the meld hall before I can swipe back. “Bye, Strega!” he calls, and then he’s out the meld and no doubt running for the slide.
Even if I wanted to spend another day floating aimlessly on my rift, there’s no time. It is two days until I’m to meet Lyder for Assimilation, Day One. Today will be taken up with testing, or as Concordia calls it, pre-factoring. I’ve promised Strega I will spend tomorrow going through the portfolio.
In holding, Strega sticks patches to me like we have in hospitals at home. They measure my heart rate, blood pressure, and oxygen saturation levels. I breathe into the BAU, and he sighs.
“These could have been much better,” he mutters darkly, reviewing the projection on the glass wall.
They could have been better if I had taken care of myself, he means. Again, I feel the odd mixture of indignation and guilt.
He has me run on a belt built right into the floor. I am out of breath too quickly. He’s unhappy with me. He tests my flexibility, and I do well there, but he’s right back to displeasure when he tests my weight bearing skills and balance. I’m a klutz and a weakling by Concordia standards, even though I was always average among my peers at home.
I worry about the next part, the mental health exam, because I think he’s going to ask me things I’d rather not answer. Instead, all he does is take out the little fingertip disks and holds them against my temples. Like always, my mind seems to settle and clear when he does it.
He slips the disks into his pocket and pulls a small flat box out of the waist apron he’s wearing today.
“What are those?” I ask, seeing that there are three more sets of disks of varying size in the box.
He pulls the first set of disks out of his pockets again. “Remember the alpha inducers?”
“Yeah.”
He drops them back into his pockets. “Well, this set of disks stimulates other areas of the brain to test general neurological function, specific reflexes, and a variety of behavioral responses.” Gesturing to the rift, he says, “Lie down, please.”
I do as he says.
“You might feel a little dizzy,” he warns.
A little dizzy? The world spins viciously until I almost lose my hearty breakfast.
“Ok,” he soothes, “we’re done with that. Now you might feel a little shaky.”
He is the king of understatements. Every limb, every part of me down to my eyelids suddenly jitters and jumps.
He waits for me to catch my breath. Tears spring to my eyes as he readies another set. I don’t know whether I am still shaking from the last test or from anticipation of the next.
“We’re almost finished,” he assures me. His fingers bypass the final set of disks. Instead, he fishes out and applies the alpha inducers. Relief courses through me. Even if I suspect that the next set will only rile me up again in some way or another, I’m feeling centered again.
I wish he’d warned me about the final set of disks. At first when he places them against my temples, I feel nothing. But then he says,
“It will be easier if you just accept whatever happens.”
I don’t have long to wonder what he means before suddenly I’m standing alone in the Tribunal’s white death room.
“Strega?” I ask, turning in a circle. Empty. I don’t know which way I’m facing. I don’t know where the meld is. No windows. Gravity is the only thing that suggests a floor below me and a ceiling above. Otherwise I might be anywhere in space and time. “Strega!” I shout, trying to hold off the choking sensation, the feeling of not enough air. Blackness seeps into the edge of my vision as my breath thunders in my ears.
I turn in a circle again, hoping for a break in the endlessness. In response, I get Jake Armadice. His eyes are big silver mirrors with reptilian pupils. When he steps toward me, I step back and back and back until there’s nowhere else to go. This time, instead of groping me, he reaches out with hands that end in serpents instead of fingers, three heads on the left, and just one on the right. But the snake heads look like people. On the left, it is the three that make up the local Tribunal. Janat’s head is in the middle, bobbing actively, straining toward me with her fangs bared. Her lackeys on either side move lazily, only their tongues darting out. Lyder is the head on the right, and she weaves like a Cobra, her dance enchanting and repulsing me both at once. I know without being warned that if any of those fangs sink into my skin, I will die.
I knee Jake in the groin, and when he flinches, I duck and run. There’s nowhere to go. All I can do is dodge to one side of the room and then the other. He’s impossibly stupid. I keep making the same moves over and over—knee to the groin, elbow to the gut, the flat of my hand to his nose—and he continues to fall for them as if he has no memory. Maybe he doesn’t. He doesn’t speak at all, just sneers. But I am growing tired, and no matter how stupid, soon he will reach out with those snake hands and one of them, probably Janat, will strike.
My legs fold under me. Janat’s fangs are just about to pierce my neck when I shove my thumbs into Jake’s reptilian eyes, blinding him. The serpentine hands flail, and he vanishes.
The room vanishes, too, replaced with a lush field of green and wildflowers and buzzing insects. The sun is warm, and I’m lolling on a soft blanket at the crest of a hill. I still wonder where Strega’s gone, but before I can shout for him, I see a couple holding hands, hiking up the far side of my hill. As they draw closer, my heart leaps.
“Mom! Dad!” I’m on my feet, running blindly. A bubbly feeling rises in my chest and tickles my throat as they call my name. And then he’s there, right there, my father. I hit his solid chest with all the grace of a runaway train, but he barely stumbles. He pulls me off my feet and we’re spinning, spinning under the golden sun, liquid and free. “You’re really here,” I marvel, touching his jaw, which has several days of stubble. His eyes are lined at the corners and deeply shadowed, but his smile is genuine. “How did you find me?” I ask.
He glances over his shoulder as my mother catches up to us and seizes me much as I’d seized him.
“My baby!” she cries. “Davinney. Oh, Davinney!” Her voice is thick with emotion. All at once the meadow is shifting. I feel like I can touch the vibrant colors. Her words are like cool water over a burn. I taste lemon in the sunlight. There’s music swirling like water around my ankles…a melody. The harmony falls in thick sheets from the sky to join up with it.
What is this? I wonder as the hauntingly beautiful melody rises like floodwater. My parents slick their hair back, droplets of sound flying away from their fingertips. We’re treading in the noise, buoyant. Dad becomes serious.
“Davinney, you have to listen to Lyder. You’re in danger. Listen between the lines.”
“Read,” I correct, straining toward him and my mother as the noise buzzes louder. “Read between the lines.”
“Listen,” he repeats, growing fuzzy and farther away.
“Dad, no! Don’t go!” I cry. But the sound grows sharp and colder. The melodious water is turning, changing. The vibrant colors of the meadow are overcome with a spreading
sheet of ice. I thrash, but my legs become stuck. They’re disappearing down the hill again, and I can’t catch them. The feeling of pins and needles starts in my feet and in my fingertips and rushes up my legs and arms.
What is this? I wonder again, and suddenly the words are in my mouth, and I’m on the rift staring up at Strega hearing my voice echo around me. “What is this?” I ask insistently, gasping. A mist rises up, chasing my words.
Out come the alpha inducers, and my mind goes flat.
“Am I really here?” I ask him. “Am I back, Strega?”
“Are you?” he asks, studying me.
I blink. The room looks exactly like the hold, and I can feel the firm surface of the rift under my searching hands. “I think so, but after all that, I’m not sure I can trust anything anymore.” I sit up. Strega blocks me so that I can’t stand.
“Give it a minute,” he says. “You’re less steady than you think.”
“Were you there?” I ask.
“Was I where?”
“Just now, in my head. In the white room, in the meadow…were you there?”
“Does it matter?” he searches my face, then puts the BAU to my lips. I exhale into it, but he doesn’t turn to look at the wall.
“Yes,” I nod.
“I was there,” he agrees.
“Did I pass?”
“It’s not a test,” he answers.
“You said it was. You said the disks would test behavioral responses.”
“Test is the wrong word,” he frowns for a second, then brightens. “Measure!” he crows, pleased with himself for finding the Attero word he really wanted.
“You can only know what a measurement is if there’s something you’re measuring against,” I point out. He lifts an eyebrow.
“Then I guess you pass,” he replies, one corner of his mouth lifting a little.
“When is this going to wear off?” I ask.
“What do you mean?”
I push him back so that I can stand up. “I still feel weird.”
“How so?”
“I don’t know, just weird.” It bothers me. My head is light, like I might black out any second. I don’t really feel like I’m inside myself. I glance back at the rift and see my body lying there, my face chalk white face, my lips blue.
I stumble backward, into Strega, and déjà vu washes over me.
“What is this?” I ask, just like I asked him the last time I bumped into him in holding, when I turned and looked back at what I thought was a bed and saw only a pole and some ripples.
“Relax,” he says, fingers pressing against my temples. “Remember what I said? This will be easier if you just accept whatever happens.”
So I turn around and just stare at him.
“Okay,” I say, and wait.
12
THE NEXT THING I am aware of, I’m back on the rift, and the strange feeling is gone. This time I don’t have to ask Strega if I’m back. I know that I am. He’s no longer answering questions with questions, for one thing.
“Are we done?”
“We’re done,” he agrees, handing me a small red chip sealed in a clear bag with no opening. “These are your results. Give them to Lyder when you see her.”
I nod and slip the disk into the pocket of my pants. I stretch. I feel like I’ve slept for a month. “What now?”
“Now we have something to eat. You need to continue rebuilding. When we’re finished you’ll have just enough time to catch the slide to the proving grounds.”
I want to ask him about the tests, what the crazy, dreamlike experiences meant. Whether, as my dream-self asked, he was there. But something in me holds back. I’m not sure I want to know whether he walked around inside my head with me. What if he did and he thinks I’m weird? Or crazy? I’ve been acting crazy enough. I realize that now. I wish Strega hadn’t seen me like that.
“C’mon,” he says. “Food.”
I wish he would talk to me, but we eat in silence and then he walks me to the slide station and hands me my logger.
“I put the stations in for you. Three slides.”
He doesn’t swipe my forehead. He just looks at me flatly. There’s not even concern in his eyes. My lunch feels like a ball of lead in my stomach.
The proving grounds look every bit as military as they sound, down to the razor-wire fence and armed guards at the entrance. I guess Concordia doesn’t completely trust the power of breath chemistry and meld chips to keep people in line and out of restricted areas, after all.
I am led to a staging area full of other people whose faces no doubt mirror my nervousness. No one speaks. Lyder appears in the doorway just as I’m about to sit down.
“Davinney,” her eyes sweep the room, fending off the curious looks, before landing on me. “Come with me.”
I wonder what her intention is in singling me out before the others are called to follow. I feel the weight of their eyes on me as I disappear through the meld behind her.
Almost before we’re through the meldway, she demands my test results. A few seconds after I hand them to her, she stops in front of another meld and says flatly,
“This is the reaction center. When I open the meld, you will see another meld directly across the way. Your goal is simple. Cross the center, pass through the meld. I’ll be waiting.”
As soon as I step over the threshold, the meld closes, hurrying to keep me inside. Or to keep something in it from escaping.
Through the meldway is a large open field. And that other meld? I’m too far away to see the sensor. I can only take Lyder on faith that it is directly across the way.
The shortest distance between two points is a straight line, but I feel terribly exposed just walking across the field. There has to be a trick to this. If these are proving grounds, there’s got to be something to prove besides the fact that I can walk in a straight line. My father’s voice in my head tells me to move at an angle.
After about a minute of uneventful jogging, out of the corner of my eye I see a German shepherd, not yet fully grown, loping alongside me about twenty feet away. I can’t help but feel a pang of loneliness, thinking of Shamu. The shepherd turns its head toward me, flashing a doggy grin. I glance ahead. I still can’t see the meld. I flinch hard when a loud yelp pierces the air and the dog drops.
I fall to my knees as I see the arrow sticking out of its right side, the side facing me. A dark stain begins to pool there. The dog whimpers pitifully and tries to rise. Another arrow just misses my face. I drop lower, into a belly crawl. I move toward the dog, a female, my stomach clenching at the sounds she makes.
Injured though she is, she wags as I crawl closer. She lifts her head, the high pitched sounds growing fainter. I’m looking into her eyes as they become fixed, empty. Her whimpering ceases, giving way to my moan.
“No,” I swipe at dampness on my cheek, and the landscape ahead blurs. I put my head down on my arm for a second.
A prickling at my neck has me turning to the right just in time to see another arrow coming. I leapfrog over the dead dog and flatten myself. I feel something ruffle my hair as I breathe in dust and fight the urge to lift my face away from the prickly weeds.
I am afraid to rise and run, but Lyder still waits behind the unseen meld. She hasn’t said so, but since entering the center I’ve assumed that time is a factor in this mystery crossing.
“I’m sorry,” I sob.
I lift the dog, launching myself down the field, using her limp body as a half-assed shield. I hear several thuds, and I shriek with each one. Several other arrows breeze past ahead of and behind me.
The thorny weeds, taller and taller the farther I run, clutch and claw at me, poking me right through the light cloth of my pants. They sting and bite and tear. My legs itch and tingle, my muscles burning. The air grows thin. I’m almost out of breath, and the meld seems just as far away as before.
The sickly wet sounds of arrows piercing my dog shield have slowed. I can’t go much farther, at least not with th
e dog. My arm is twitching, burning, and my neck and shoulder ache from the weight. Just as I drop the dog, my feet splash into water hidden by the dense carpet of weedy growth. Another step and I’m plunged in to waist level as a fresh arrow whizzes by, narrowly missing my nose.
I duck down as far as I dare and creep forward, breathing as deeply as I can. Weeds coat the entire surface of the water, no visible ending just like there was no visible beginning. I turn my head this way and that, trying to figure out the best course of action. A vicious burning at my cheek and the heat of blood rising decide for me. I suck in as much air as I can and dive.
There’s no rising to the surface if I need air. The vegetation seems to grow thicker. The light that shows me which way is up quickly fades as I stroke hard, hoping I’m still on course.
The burn starts gently in my chest. I manage well for a few more strokes, but then the burning swells rapidly until my heart thumps and pulses in my throat, my head, my fingertips…my blood searching every nook and cranny for oxygen. I remember how quickly I became breathless on the treadmill, how dismayed Strega was by it. I wonder if he knew how tiring so easily would affect me.
I look down in the water. The bottom is carpeted with mossy growth, gnarled vines and…
Human skeletons.
I almost inhale at the sight of them, at their creepy, bony hands reaching upward, their empty eye sockets beseeching, eager to pull me down. Logically I know the arms wouldn’t float and sway like underwater vegetation, but I can’t dispute what my eyes are seeing. They are reaching for me.
I force my eyes upward. Something lies ahead near the surface of the water, just beneath the tangled carpet of weeds. There’s a U-shaped light in the murky darkness. I strive toward it, eager, trying to beat the on-rushing inevitability of the heaving gasp I am about to take. My heart creeps upward in my chest, the pressure building. Soon the pressure will burst out of me, leaving a void to fill. An involuntary countdown begins. Four...more strokes, and I will know this light. Three…arm’s lengths to my last chance, my last hope. Two…oh, god, I can’t hold on! One…my hand strikes the U-shaped light, and it is a swinging panel.
Assimilation (Concordia Series Book 1) Page 16
