She caught her reflection in the nearest window. She floated sixteen feet above the ground, hovering on a cutaway disc of office floor. Before she could even begin to process her surreal state of being, the blue light of her bracelet faded, the protective egg vanished, and Amanda plummeted to earth.
She met the new world, hand extended. It welcomed her by breaking her wrist.
—
The Salgado van was not a gentle vessel. Every bump on the road jostled her screaming injury. She had no idea where she was or where she was going. From the moment Esis sent her down the rabbit hole, Amanda existed in a raw and tender state of rejection. Only the pain of her fracture kept her tethered to the reality of her situation, such as it was.
She’d woken up forty-two minutes ago in the back of a city ambulance. From inside, Amanda had no idea that the vehicle was flying at second-story altitude or that it was moving at an external clock speed of 312 miles an hour. The only odd thing she’d noticed was the coffin-size device that rested against the opposite wall. An ominous orange sticker brandished a curious warning: THE UNAUTHORIZED USE OF THIS REVIVER IS A FEDERAL FELONY. ALL ILLEGAL REVERSALS ARE INVESTIGATED BY DP—9 AND CAN RESULT IN A MAXIMUM PENALTY OF TEN YEARS IN PRISON AND A FINE OF $200,000.
Upon arriving at the emergency room, a dour young nurse pulled Amanda through a gauntlet of daft and impenetrable questions, asking for her CID, her FIP/N, and eight other alien acronyms. Even stranger were half the conditions on the medical history checklist—Casparitis, Tillman’s Malady, Severe Time Lag. After several blinking nonresponses, the nurse put down her tablet and left the scene. Amanda had little doubt she was calling for a psych consult.
She’d languished in bleary solitude until the curtain opened to a freckle-faced brunette in a green security uniform.
“Are you taking me to the psych ward?” Amanda had asked.
“I don’t work here,” Erin Salgado assured her. “And I don’t think you’re crazy.”
Now after one stop, one girl, and twenty minutes of foreign suburbs, the van weaved its way up a twisty, tree-lined driveway. Erin turned around to her two passengers.
“We’re here.”
Amanda glanced out the window at the looming gray structure, a three-story complex of glass and brushed metal. Though she’d initially processed the building as a corporate office, she noticed derelict gazebos and leaf-strewn tennis courts on the property.
The van rolled to a halt and the Salgados stepped outside. Amanda took a long look at her fellow passenger—a chubby, sweet-faced adolescent. The poor girl wore enough soil on her pajamas to fill a small planter. She looked like she’d crawled out of her own grave.
“I’m sorry,” Amanda offered.
Mia looked up. “What?”
“This whole time I’ve been sitting here in my own world. I never asked if you were all right. I never even asked your name.”
The girl blinked in dazed disorientation. She’d spent the ride in a dull static haze, furrowing her brow at all the alien cars and baffling store signs. Now a loud banshee scream congealed in her throat like an air bubble. She couldn’t move it up or down.
“I’m Mia. Mia Farisi. I’m not hurt, but I don’t know what’s going on. I just want to wake up from all this. I want to see my grandmother again.”
Amanda bit her trembling lip and nodded. “I know, Mia. Believe me, I know what you’re feeling. I wish I could say something to make it better.”
“What’s your name?”
To Amanda’s surprise, the question stung. In all the pain and turmoil, she’d nearly forgotten the shape of her other wound, the one Derek had planted.
I’m actually glad we’re going to different places. What does that say about you?
Now she blew a hot, jagged sigh as old syllables rolled up her throat.
“Given,” she told Mia. “My name’s Amanda Given.”
Erin opened the back doors. “You need help getting out?”
“No,” Amanda said. “We’ll manage.”
As she climbed out of the van, she extended her good arm to Mia.
“Listen, I’m just as scared as you are. I have no idea what’s going to happen. But I’m glad to know I’m not alone. If you don’t mind, I’d really like to hold your hand. Can I?”
After a moment of addled thought, Mia weakly nodded and obliged her.
Hand in hand, the refugees walked together—the widow and the orphan, the woman who fell from the sky and the girl who climbed out of the ground.
Soon they could spy a small crowd of people watching them through the glass of the lobby. Beyond their shadowy heads, Amanda saw a wall engraving in large gold letters. A word. A name. A last name. Pelletier.
SIX
Like uneasy dreamers, Amanda and Mia pushed through the doors and drank in their opulent new surroundings. The lobby was a sweeping chamber of glass and gray marble. Roman columns loomed three stories high while sunshine flooded down through skylights, glinting off every polished surface.
Amanda had to squint through the refractions to study the crowd at the reception desk—eighteen men and one woman, all pasty white and dressed in casual weekend garb. She found them all smart-looking, in a docile sort of way.