“Victoria.” His fingers gripped the air and tightened into fists. I hated the cat-vomit-colored circles that spread out from his eyelids. “You’re drunk.”
“I didn’t have anything to drink except—” A moment of clarity wormed its way through my foggy brain. Knox. I closed my eyes for a moment too long, and the earth took off spinning. My eyelids snapped open, and I used the bed to steady myself. “I’m fine,” I insisted. My arms felt as though someone had filled their veins with cement. How much of that drink did I have? I tried to remember backward. All of it. I was pretty sure I drank all of it.
Adam closed his eyes and for a second lay very still.
I dropped to my knees and shook him. “Adam? I’m sorry.” I clutched his hand. “But I think the game drained you faster than normal.”
He stared up at the ceiling. My thoughts felt as if they were swimming through molasses. I could figure this out. I would figure this out.
I stood up and nearly fell back down. My surroundings spiraled, and I struggled to reorient myself to begin taking stock of the master suite.
There was a large walk-in closet with fancy, sliding racks for shoes and little else. I opened up drawers and found sachets, dried fruits and herbs tied up in bows to make rich people’s socks smell floral. I shoved each drawer shut with my hip. There was nothing in here I could use.
I stumbled and grabbed for the nearest thing to keep me from falling. It was a fur coat, and it drooped onto the carpet. I left it there.
When I returned to the main room, Adam’s eyes had rolled back into the sockets. “Adam?” I slapped his cheek. He didn’t wake up. I considered dousing him with a cup of water but kept looking instead. Where was a generator when you needed it?
Under the bed, in the nightstands, nothing. Finally, I turned my attention to the bathroom. I’d never seen a tub that wasn’t also part of the shower before. Again, there was the siren call of a place to nap. I resisted. Instead, staggering, I rummaged through the vanity and other drawers until I found the first thing with a cord: a hair dryer.
I turned it over, feeling the weight in my hands like a gun. I looked at the dryer, then at the bathtub, then again at the dryer. The plan was simple, which in this case was a nice way of saying dumb. But it was science.
I plugged the drain and twisted the knob. Water began pouring into the bath. Next, I went to the clock radio on top of one of the nightstands. The numbers blinked from red to nothing when I tore the wires out of the back. I carried my bouquet of red, yellow, and green wires back to the bathroom.
I pushed my thumbs into my eye sockets. The back of my throat turned slimy with mucus. My hands shook and my insides turned seasick. I couldn’t think about what would happen if I was too late. So I focused on getting him undressed, pulling off his jeans and jersey until he was stripped to his boxers. Stitches framed the cavity in his chest that masked his metal plate, and the electrocution scars formed white tree branches across his chest.
“Adam, we have to get you up. We have to get you into the…” My eyelashes fluttered and I swayed. “The tub.” I hooked his arm over my shoulders and together we crawled and dragged him to the bathtub. He collapsed inside, and his pupils stared up at the ceiling. Crossing myself, I poured four shakes of expensive bath salts into the water in an attempt to replicate brine.
I attached each of the wires, per my usual routine, to the rings left open in the conductor plate. Steam billowed into the air and caked the mirrors with fog. I saw Adam, sliced and cabled, for the first time aboveground, and he looked even more grotesque in this position than usual. Almost inhuman. Like a creature stolen from the lab. I wanted to look away. But instead, I switched on the hair dryer, held it over the bath, and dropped it.
THIRTY-ONE
It was only on Owen’s suggestion that I thought to look into the power of suggestion as a possible source for the subject’s “memories.” The power of suggestion is a process by which one person’s thoughts or feelings are guided by the allusions made by another person. This psychological process can be so strong as to create false memories. Think of people who confess to murders after a grueling interrogation only to be proved innocent later. However, I’ve been able to pinpoint no potential sources of allusion that could be creating these memories in Adam’s head.
*
The lights blinked off, swallowing the room in black ink. Orange and yellow sparks burst from the socket and died midstream. There was a thrashing in the tub, like a shark churning up water. Skin flapped on porcelain, thick thwacks of suction-cupped flesh. The music stopped cold. Muffled shrieks and squeals trickled through the walls. In the bathroom, where I stood motionless, the noises stopped. I held the air in my lungs and could still hear the shallow pulls of someone else drawing in oxygen.
I fumbled for the light switch and flicked it on. Nothing happened. I must have shot the circuit breaker.