And just like that, I feel June whispering to me, pulling me away. I step back from Cameron. It was a stupid impulse anyway.
The first box is filled with reams of paper, the black ink gone gray, the edges curled and stiff. I try to make sense of what’s written there, but they’re numbers, just lists of numbers, printed out in rows from a computer. Many digits long, grouped together across the page—some in groups of two or three, some more, some on lines all by themselves. I know what the groupings mean, just like I knew what this place was for. The numbers are records in the database, and they’re grouped with their matches. These numbers show groups of lives that have had the same soul. Just a handful of generations—that’s all the data we have. Dominic flips through the entire stack with the beam of his flashlight. “I don’t see any names,” he says.
Just numbers. The numbers aren’t coded to anyone. But some have asterisks beside them. This data alone doesn’t tell us anything we can use, for which I’m both grateful and disappointed. He drops the box and moves to the next one. Another box of paper, another list of numbers without names.
It’s possible for souls to disappear from the database for a generation if parents choose not to get their children screened, though that’s rare. Or if they die while out of the country. Or they can appear out of nowhere if someone born in another country comes here. This database is a national system only, not yet tied to other nations. Some countries refuse to screen at all, claiming it’s not a real science. It’s illegal in some nations. Pointless in others. But here, we’re obsessed with the idea of it. Of what it means.
Is that number all we will ever be? Do our actions in one life influence the next, as some people believe? Are we drawn back together? Is there a reason some souls feel grounded, with roots, and others wander restlessly, searching, yearning, as I am now? Or is it all random—another life, another chance, another try—with no consequence? We’re not even close to a complete understanding. We’ve just touched the surface. The information is dangerous enough as it is. Nobody has been given access since June broke in. It’s too dangerous in the wrong hands.
I stare at those numbers grouped across the page, of the asterisks that sprinkle the paper, and I wonder what it all means. I’m still flipping through them, meaningless as they appear, when everyone else moves to the next boxes.
Boxes three, four, and five hold electronics. Computer parts, hard drives, circuit boards. “What do you think?” Casey asks.
“I think they’re wiped,” Dom says, “Or too old to use. But put them in your pack. We’ll check them out when we get back to the cabin.”
We rifle through the next box, Dominic and Casey pulling out papers and holding up their flashlights while I try to make sense of what I’m seeing. I’m trying to see June here, to see her boxing this up, to see her intention. The rest of the room has been getting darker. Cameron is sitting on a cot, and he’s yawning. Seriously. This last box, I can tell right away, is different—full of blank postcards with numbers scrawled across them, in lists. It’s not June’s handwriting. I’ve seen it enough times to know that, and I feel that stomach flip of hope.
This isn’t her stuff. This is Liam’s. Liam was in charge. Liam printed these lists and wrote these numbers. It was him and him alone, and June was being used like I’ve always wanted to believe.
And then, underneath, there is a notebook. Dominic opens it, and I see June’s handwriting. I know it’s hers in the same way I knew the carving in the tree was a bell—from a lifetime of studying her. Somewhere, I’ve seen her handwriting before, and it’s filed away in my mind under All Things June. And that brief moment of hope—that she had nothing to do with this—bursts, replaced with something sharp and sour.
It’s her handwriting, but it’s still just numbers. No, it’s math. It’s equations. It’s numbers and not words, and they mean nothing to me. Her lines slant across the pages, one after the other, with parts circled in various stages of the equation. Dominic flips the pages back and forth, the flashlight held between us, the numbers meaning nothing.
“Does this mean anything to you?” Dominic asks. “Because it’s sure as hell not computer code.”
“No,” I say. Other than the fact that every number she’s circled is a decimal, such as 0.4 or 0.2. Eventually, there’s a 0.32 circled several times. But it’s all meaningless. I’m not good at this. I haven’t let myself be good at this. This was something June was gifted in, and in my childish rebellion to reject everything and anything associated to her, I have rejected this gift as well.
“Look closer,” Dominic says, shoving the notebook into my lap, like the answer, the meaning, will suddenly appear in my mind—when a piece of paper flutters out of the back pages.
The writing is words. The first words we’ve seen in this place full of numbers.
It’s written, carefully, methodically, in her handwriting, in black marker. The paper is creased, as if it’s been balled up and then flattened out again—now it’s wrinkled through the words, like the writing is trying to shift itself into focus, from past to present.
224081 - Ivory Street - Edmond
“It’s an address,” Dominic says.
It belongs to me.
“The shadow-database location?” Casey asks, ripping it from his hands.
It’s meant for me, and no one else. June left me the coordinates to this place—she left me the bell carved into the tree. She left it for me, and nobody else.
I take the paper from Casey, staring at the numbers, feeling June’s breath on my cheek as she recites the information to me, committing it to memory before I destroy it.
But Dominic seems to sense something has shifted in me, because he takes it back, ripping it in the process—and all that remains in my hand is a torn corner with -mond. Half a town.
I can’t see the details of his face in the darkness, but I watch as his shadow folds the paper and stores it in his wallet.
“Do you see anything else here?” Dominic asks.
Casey’s trying to talk around the flashlight in her mouth as she moves papers aside in the box, but eventually she spits it out. “Damn it!” she says. “We need more light. Did you pack matches?”
“No,” Dominic says. “We’ll bring the boxes up to the surface.” There’s too much to carry back to the cabin. And there’s not enough light down here. I feel suddenly claustrophobic, like I can’t breathe, like possibly we’re running out of air and I’m the only one who’s noticing.
I move the ladder myself, lean it up against the entrance, and start moving. Cameron watches me from the cot, but he says nothing.
“Where are you going?” Dominic’s hand is on my ankle, like a handcuff shackling me to my past, to the person I’m scared I am.
“Up,” I say.
Dominic curses as he looks up. “It’s dark,” he says.
But it’s darker down here. Up there, I see the moon through the tree branches and the stars beyond. I feel the crisp night air—air to breathe. “Okay,” he says, “listen. No need to set up tents. We’ll stay down here for the night. There’s plenty of gear. As soon as it’s light, we’ll bring this all to the surface.”
I don’t move off the ladder. “Come on now,” Dominic says, and his hands rest lightly on my waist, much gentler than I expected. It’s unfamiliar. Unwelcome. I flash back to Genevieve, holding me in her arms while I cried for my mother. It was the last time someone held me like that. I was ten, and I was a child, and children can be held like that. But she’s dead. Dead, because of me. Because she felt too much when she held me.