I am unable to move or even react. My time in the Ward floods back to me. I would spend days at a time in my room there, living the same bare existence that Baby is living here, drugged and numb. I begin to shake, my limbs no longer under my control. I stare at Baby, who hasn’t bothered to look up at the open door. I feel a hand on my back, Kay’s reassuring touch, and I know I have to push through the pain. I can’t fall apart now, not when I’m so close to saving her.
I step into the room and walk slowly to Baby’s side, pulling off my hood so I don’t scare her. She never used to want to color. The swooshing sound of the crayon across the paper unnerved her. I kneel next to her as she scribbles furiously on the page, oblivious to the noise she is creating. I circle her in my arms and pull her to me.
She’s limp in my embrace. I pull back and examine her.
“Baby . . . it’s me. I’m so glad you’re okay.” When she doesn’t respond, I pet her head. “Baby?”
At last she seems to focus on me, and my heart swells—and then breaks again when she opens her mouth to speak:
“My name is Hannah,” she says. “Who are you?”
Chapter Thirty-eight
She can’t have forgotten me. It’s not possible. I place my hand in hers and sign, It’s me, Amy.
Her hand remains lifeless in mine. Her fingers are freezing, her skin chalky white.
Baby, I try again. I’m here to take you away with me. She still doesn’t respond, so I say aloud, “I’ve come to get you. I’m going to take you away from here.”
For the first time Baby reacts with something other than indifference. “But I want to stay,” she tells me, her face scrunched in worry. She reaches up and twirls a hair around her finger. Before I can stop her, she tugs it free. I move her hair aside gently, revealing a pink bald patch on her scalp, agitated and raw.
“Oh, Baby. I’m so sorry. I should have come sooner. I tried, I really did.” How have I allowed them to turn Baby into this zombie child? I blink hard, battling back tears.
Kay and Dr. Samuels are whispering at the door. Then Kay’s calling to me. “Amy, what’s the holdup? We’ve got to get going.”
“She doesn’t”—I turn to Dr. Samuels, swallowing my emotion—“she doesn’t recognize me.”
“Sunshine, I’m sorry, but you’re going to have to make her come.”
I nod, take hold of Baby under her arms and hoist her to my hip. Her six-year-old frame feels so light, as if I’m holding the shell that used to contain her. Pressed close to me, I can feel her heartbeat, weak and sporadic, through my synth-suit. She appears resigned to being carried until I’ve made it almost to the door, and then she lets out a scream so loud, I nearly drop her. Weak as she is, how can she make so much noise?
She keeps it up. There’s nothing for me to do but take her back into the room. Cradling her head on my shoulder, I get her to quiet down, but when I move to escape with her again, she lets out another heart-wrenching wail.
“You’ve got to leave her,” Kay commands.
“No.” Now that I have Baby in my arms, I’m not letting her go. Not for anything.
“She’s been compromised,” Dr. Samuels explains quietly. “She won’t go willingly.”
“‘Compromised’? What does that mean?”
“She’s . . . She’s not herself.”
I start to ask him again what he’s talking about, but I know. Baby isn’t Baby. Dr. Reynolds has seen to that. I think of the video, and I shudder. They’ve made her into Hannah, New Hope citizen and willing test subject. I hope it’s not too late, that Baby hasn’t completely disappeared. I look into her cold, vacant eyes, and I’m not so sure.
“You can come back for her,” Dr. Samuels says weakly.
Baby’s shoulder cuts into my arm as I squeeze her to me. She’s skin and bones. “By the time we get the chance, she could be dead.”
“We can’t drag a screaming child through the lab,” Kay tells me. “And even if we did manage it, how could we hide you both?”
“We can get some sedatives,” I say desperately. “Dr. Samuels, you must have access.”
“I don’t know how her body would react,” he tells me. “I don’t know what they have her on, and she looks anemic. I don’t think her liver, not to mention her heart, could take anything right now.”
“Amy,” Kay’s voice warns. “We have to go. And Baby can’t come with us.”
I want to tell them to go on without me, just so I can spend a few more moments with Baby. I think of Pam, staying with Mike in their cell until the bitter end, unwilling to leave him to save herself. I have to do what’s best for Baby, though, and her best chance is having me on the outside, working to get her out.
I ease her down into her chair, placing her purple crayon in her ice-cold fingers. “I’m going to leave now, Baby,” I say, surprised at the strength of my voice when my insides feel like gelatin.
“My name is Hannah,” she says, resuming coloring on her paper. “I’m not a baby.”
“Okay, Hannah.” The name sounds so strange in my mouth. “Hannah, I’m going to go now, but I’m going to come back and get you. I’m going to find someplace for us, someplace we can call home.”
She looks up at me, her brown eyes strangely serene.
“I am home.”