Jill’s voice trails away at my shaking head, the frown deepening between her brows. “And why not?” she asks.
“The glasses are set to my DNA. They won’t work for you.”
This would have been such an easy fix if we were in communication with base camp, just switch the security to Jill, whose DNA is already in the system. It was stupid not to have set the glasses to both of us before we started out, but our protocol was so careful. Locals should never experience unfamiliar technology. If someone else put the glasses on right now, they’d just be clear lenses.
But who could have imagined having no signal? And me, the wearer of the glasses, incapacitated in a room inside a mound of rubble that any son of Sean Rodriguez could only characterize as a ritual site? And who could have imagined a city at all, sitting right here, where our scans showed an empty valley? The feeling of wrong hits me again, full force. I don’t want Jill out of my sight. We have to get out of this together. But she’s not going to like it.
Jill has her knees pulled up to her chest, staring at the ceiling and the shaft of light. I tread gently. “Jill, I need you to set my ankle.”
I read the injury first-aid information from the database inside the glasses while she was gone. Not nearly as detailed as what I could have gotten if we were connected to base camp and the Centauri III. But it should be enough. Maybe. Jill is staring at me like I grew another head.
“I can’t do that,” she whispers.
“Yes, you can. I’m going to read the instructions to you.”
She shakes her head. “You need Dr. Lanik … ”
“I don’t have Dr. Lanik. I’ve got you. And we should do it now, before it swells any more, and while the infusion is working.” I really want it to happen while this infusion is working. I might need the other three to get back up that mountain.
Jill is still shaking her head. She wipes her eyes and stands, coming around to look down on my face. Her frown is a deep, straight line between her eyes. I know I’m in trouble.
“You’re not fit to call this one, Beckett. I’m going to hike back to base camp.”
“I don’t think we—”
“I don’t care what you think! You’re not having your way, not this time.”
“Listen to—”
“You listen! I’m not going to set your ankle because I don’t know what I’m doing. I’ll ruin it! And there’s no reason not to wait for the air bikes and Dr. Lanik. So you’re going to lie right there like a good—”
“No!”
The word came out harsh, stopping Jill in her tracks. I hadn’t meant to sound like that.
“Look, I really don’t think we should split up. There’s something … wrong about this place … ” I stare into the empty room and its shadowy columns, trying to think how to explain the feeling without sounding like I’m eight years old. Jillian’s hands go to her hips.
“What do you mean ‘wrong’? Just because the scans weren’t calibrated? There’s no one here. You’re safer where you are than—”
“Jill, the scans don’t need adjusting; they were dead wrong. We don’t know anything about where we are! And we … ” And then I stare harder through the darkness, let the night function pierce the shadows.
“Jill,” I whisper. I sit up and grab her hand, pulling her down to my side.
“What—”
“Shut up.”
“Oh, fine … ” She is so good at cussing, but I don’t have time to admire it.
“Quiet! And don’t move.”
She jerks her hand away. “What is wrong with you?”
“Something moved,” I whisper. “In the other room.”
Why can I never do what’s good for me and just not look? Why can’t I turn around and walk the other way? The yell that came ripping through the darkness a few moments ago—deep, male, and full of pain—has my memories churning. I’m afraid of what’s out there, moving toward me in the ruined streets of this city. And now I’m afraid of what might be happening inside this bizarre hidden place. I found my way through two inner chambers, all dark, windowless, and now this third room is vast, empty, full of a wood dust I can smell, something, someone, waiting at the end of it. And yet here go my feet, moving me through air that is like spilled ink, taking me straight to a fading in the blackness and an open doorway. I put an eye around the edge.
There are two of them, bickering in an accent that is unusually clipped, the girl with the odd hair, and a boy, a young man, lying on the floor in a beam of murky light. He wears the same baggy clothes as the girl, but his hair is black instead of yellow, not nearly as short as hers, the ends curling into his jaw and neck, and where he isn’t dirty his skin is a sunshine brown, like the harvest workers Outside. And I can’t stop looking at him. Because I’ve seen him before.
I never dream. The images that come to me during sleep are reality. Memory. Knowing doesn’t leave room for imagination. But I can remember dreaming, when I was small, before my memories came, hazy, fractured thoughts that reflected what was familiar to me as a baby. And there was one dream, of being swaddled tight in my mother’s arms, of lights so bright they hurt my eyes. And there was a young man, standing far away from us, his clothes a little like what I see now, only dark blue, his hair shorter. He was talking to everyone at once, though the words were muffled, as if I had the blanket wrapped around my ears. And then my mother put her hand on my head, palm covering my skull, bent down close to my cheek and whispered, “You are dreaming.”
But I Know it was his face I saw. The face that is turned to the girl right now. He’s wearing something that reminds me of the magnifiers Uncle Towlend used for doing delicate work on parchment, though these are thinner, lighter. Different. He’s also dusty and bloody, hurt, his foot not where it should be.
The pages of my mind turn instantly to the drawings of “dislocations, legs and ankles” shown to us in the eighteenth recitation of physician training. It must have been his yell I heard earlier. The pain associated with such injuries was described as severe. And while I’m trying to decide if his tibia is actually broken, the boy raises his voice and says, “We don’t know anything about where we are!”
I feel a relief almost as intense as when I put my hand on the wall stones of the city. They’ve Forgotten. They must have come from Outside, escaped the supervisors and the ring of mountains like I did. How often does this sort of thing go on? I don’t understand how his face could have been in my dreams, but I need these two. If they can’t tell me how they Forgot, then I need to study them. And we all need to be hidden before the Council comes.