She gives me a look like maybe it’s me who needs to be on an exam table.
“Look at him,” she says, turning her eyes to the igua. The igua baby crouches as low as its splayed legs will allow, his body shaking. “He looks miserable.”
“Yeah.” I will the twisting tunnel to stay shut.
“I suppose it’s just what we have to do,” Yaya says.
“What do you mean?”
“How else are we supposed to learn?” she says. “We’re not hurting it, even if it is scared.”
I don’t reply. If she could sense the igua’s fear, I think she’d feel different, and after seeing what I saw of the vasana, everything seems like a horrifying precursor to a looming atrocity.
“You okay?” Rondo whispers.
“I still feel dizzy,” I say.
“The vasana . . . this really is worse than we thought,” he says.
“I know.”
“If the Faloii found out . . .”
“I know.”
The whitecoats are all standing up, their murmurs turning into ordinary voices. I crane my neck to see the procedure room and find it empty. The procedure is finished, the baby igua carted away, hopefully back to its mother.
The whitecoats file out, leaving the four of us alone—four: I can feel that we’re all suddenly aware of Jaquot’s absence again, a hole in our team. We try to fill the void with chatter. Yaya and Alma talk about Yaya’s host family, whether she’ll be going back to her home compound any time soon. I focus on not shrinking to the floor until Dr. Depp rejoins us, his skin a bit glossy from the decontamination regime.
“Thoughts?” he says to us, taking out his slate and studying something on its screen. He doesn’t care about our answers; he’s already on to the next procedure in his mind.
“Very interesting,” Yaya says.
Dr. Depp doesn’t respond, just frowns at his screen, his forehead lined with concentration. I swallow the first small ripples of panic, wondering if somehow he’s receiving word that we left the observation room during the procedure.
“Good,” he says finally, looking up and nodding once before turning back for the door. “I was skeptical about allowing greencoats internships, but I believe the Council was right about the value. If whitecoats are truly invested in this work, they’ll be less likely to leave. Now, I’m going to hand you off to Dr. Wong. He’ll get you back to the prep room so you can get a head start on your assignment.”
“Sorry, leave?” Alma says in her note-taking voice, as if she just wants clarification. But I know her too well and I can hear the edge in her tone like a scalpel.
We’re already following him out into the hall and he’s barely acknowledging us, staring at his tablet instead.
“Yes,” he says, still distracted by whatever is on his screen. Then he looks up and squints. “What? Oh, Dr. Wong, lovely. You’ll take it from here?”
Dr. Wong has appeared from the procedure room with a smile, nodding at Dr. Depp, who doesn’t even wait to hear Dr. Wong’s reply. He’s walking down the hallway, off to his next procedure. Rondo stares after him as if he has a mind to follow, but instead turns on Dr. Wong.
“Dr. Depp was just telling us about why they decided to allow interns,” he says matter-of-factly.
“Why?” Dr. Wong says, a little surprised but not unfriendly. “Well, I’m not positive. But I can see a few reasons for allowing younger scientists into the labs.”
He begins to move down the corridor, motioning for us to follow.
“Greencoats inducted into the labs for internships will get to spend significantly more time learning the fundamentals and getting acquainted with the methodology, for one,” he says. “By the time you’re old enough to be assigned a specialty, you will have lab experience on which to base it. Dr. Albatur is ambitious: he has lofty goals for N’Terra and believes that if we want to achieve them, we need to pursue them aggressively. I think the Council hopes that by training greencoats into our processes sooner, you will be better, more committed whitecoats in the long run.”
“If we don’t start a war first . . . ,” Alma mutters.
Dr. Wong doesn’t hear her. “I wouldn’t question it, if I were you. If I could go back and enter the labs at sixteen, I certainly would!”
Rondo turns to look over his shoulder at me and squints. These aren’t the answers we were looking for. But we all heard Dr. Depp.
My head still throbs and I focus my energy inward. I ignore the white lights and the hard floor under my feet and turn my attention to the core of my brain. I don’t know why I want to reach it: the pain from the vasana is still fresh, the echo of it still floating within me. But I want to know if she’s alive.
Now that I know where the tunnel lives and how to summon it, it’s easier to find. I pinpoint it nestled in my consciousness and nudge it, willing it to open. At first, nothing. My mind is tired. My headache intensifies as I focus on it. But then I feel the prickling, the stirring spiral of the tunnel yawning open. My brain suddenly feels wide and bright.
And then the buzzing. We pass one of the empty windows and even though my eyes tell me nothing is there, I feel a presence. A feeling like sorrow comes crawling out of the tunnel, a damp helplessness. An igua, I think. It’s the mother of the baby igua Dr. Depp just examined: her worry pulses into my brain. The baby has not yet been returned.
We pass door after door; and in passing each one I sense the fear, loneliness, and anger pulsating out from the animals trapped inside. I feel them all, and even smell them: the things that come through the tunnel are various. Some impressions, some sensory details. The familiar scent of the tufali, the sharp smell of an animal I don’t recognize but whose biology I can now hear and feel like a shell I’ve handled while blindfolded. By the time we near the end of the hallway, tears form in the corners of my eyes.
Dr. Wong leads us into the prep room to change out of our lab coats. I keep my head down as we file into the small room.
“A scientist will be in for you in a little while,” he says. “I don’t know if you’ll be viewing any other procedures today. They’ll probably just let you work on your assignments.”
He smiles and then he’s gone, the door sliding shut behind him. Yaya rounds on the three of us, squinting at me where I slump on a stool. I don’t have the energy to conceal my exhaustion.
“Is there something you’re not telling me?” she demands.
I take a long time deciding whether to answer.
“Well?” she says, sniffling against her will. “Is it something about Jaquot? Everything is strange. They couldn’t find his body. Did the Faloii take him? Maybe they set the dirixi on us. Maybe the whitecoats just don’t want to scare us . . . maybe that’s why people are leaving the labs, like Dr. Depp said.”
“He didn’t say leaving the labs,” Alma corrects. “He said leaving. We don’t know what he was referring to.”