I brace myself on the lid.
Inside, a pale, blond girl lies with her eyelids covered in translucent gel. She’s five or six. I stare, transfixed. I’ve seen her before, back in the vault under Forge. She had a teddy bear and a fresh wound on her forehead then. Now the wound is healed over. Gracie. That’s what Berg called her. Her lips and skin have turned a chalky gray. She doesn’t seem to be breathing, and then, just barely, her chest moves.
I jolt back as if she’s accusing me of a crime. I can’t take her with me. I can’t! I tried to save her once before at Forge, and now I can barely save myself. I stagger to the tablet at the foot of her sleep shell to find her name: Huron 6. Like the Great Lake, and the six is likely her age. I’ll try to remember. That’s the best I can do. I have to get out!
My muscles have atrophied so badly that each step is a painful jolt, but I make the doorway. Far down the hall to my right, a door is marked EXIT, and a window shows a square of night. To my left, several open doorways are brightly lit. The nearest gives a glimpse of a metal operating table. Holding my breath, I listen for voices, but the hall yields only a vacant hum.
With one hand skimming along the wall for balance, I head toward the exit. I pass one closed door, and then another. The next door is open, revealing a large closet with a dozen wigs in tidy rows, and a large makeup kit. From a hook, an odd, skeletal frame of plastic hangs. It looks like the supports could be hooked behind a person’s back and arms and neck to hold someone in a posed position, like a puppet. It could move a person, too. A layer of sweat breaks out over my entire body.
“What is this place?” I whisper.
A buzzer sounds behind me. I bolt into the closet and close the door. Flipping off the light, I crouch down and wait, my heart charging. The buzzing stops. Nobody comes. I practically taste the fusty smell of wigs in the dark beside me, and then I crack the door open to peer anxiously out. Still nobody comes.
I can’t stay here. I have to take a chance.
I lurch back into the hallway and hurry the last few steps to the exit door, where I lean hard against the release bar. The door doesn’t budge. I try again, using all my puny strength to push the heavy door open a crack, and a couple of snowflakes drift in.
I gape. They’re so fragile and white, and in an instant they melt. I’ve seen snow in person only once before, and it seems magical now, as if this door opens into a completely new world. When another buzz startles me from behind, I slip out into the night and bolt for the nearest shadow.
Cold knifes through me. I’m backed against the building. A trace of cigarette smoke laces the black air. A single lamp illuminates a small parking lot edged by dark trees, and a thin layer of unshoveled snow rests inches before my feet. Slow, isolated snowflakes drop silently into the sole cone of light above the cars. Already I’m shivering in my thin gown. A narrow porch runs around the side of the building, and I scan frantically along it for the red glow of a cigarette. I know someone’s out here. Ian probably, but I see no one.
Below, a smatter of distant lights hints at a valley with civilization, but there’s nothing closer. I was expecting a bigger facility, a hospital maybe, but the cinderblock building has the grudging, municipal air of a dog pound after hours.
A sedan, a Jeep, and a pickup truck are parked a dozen yards away. I’m weighing my next move when approaching headlights crown over the ridge. I hurry barefoot down the cold steps, scramble over the snowy gravel, and hunch down behind the far side of the pickup.
Footsteps sound on the porch, and the scent of cigarette smoke grows stronger. The arriving car noses in by the steps, and the engine cuts dead. Then the car door opens with a rush of radio music that’s quickly terminated.
“Look who’s out smoking. What would your dad think?” says the driver.
I know his voice. He’s another attendant.
“Where’d you go?” Ian says.
“None of your business, Gertrude.”
“Don’t call me that,” Ian snaps. “You were gone more than two hours. What if something had happened here?”
“You’d have handled it.” He sounds dismissive, despite his words.
I stay low, barely breathing, cupping a hand around my mouth in fear that my fog will lift up and catch the light.
“A man shouldn’t be paid for a job he doesn’t do,” Ian says.
“I’ll be sure to remember that, seeing as you’re such a man yourself,” says the other guy. “Did you get in some good time with your little girlfriend?”
“Have you been drinking?” Ian says.
“Give it a rest.”
A jingling noise comes from the car. Then a door slams.
“You should at least take your keys,” Ian said.
I grasp onto this information, hopeful that the guy chucked them in his car. The man’s boots are loud on the steps.
“Doesn’t it ever get to you, what we do here?” the man says.
“It’s a good job. A man’s job,” Ian says. “That’s what my dad says.”
“Your dad’s a regular genius. Where’s he now? Miehana? Snaking for those California babes?”
“None of your business,” Ian says. “I should report you for shirking.”
The guy laughs. “Go ahead, you piece of weasel crap. Then I’ll report how you fraternize with the dreamers. How’d you like that?”
The door to the clinic swings open with a squeak. Next, it closes with a heavy click.
I hold motionless, listening, trying to learn if Ian has gone in, too, or if he’s still on the porch. Silent snow drops into the cone of light. My teeth chatter once, so I open my mouth and jut my jaw out to stop the noise. The trees whisper with a breeze, and the wintry air skims my back through my gown. I lean forward an inch, and then another, scanning the porch where I heard Ian’s voice.
I’m smelling cigarette smoke ever so faintly. I can’t see any movement, though, and finally I can’t wait a moment longer. Any second now, the man inside will discover my empty sleep shell. He’ll ask Ian where I am. They’ll start their search.
I touch my way around the truck, bracing myself for balance and wincing at the snowy gravel beneath my feet. A second more I pause, listening, and then I sprint to the car that has just arrived and yank on the handle. The interior light comes on as I jump inside and close the door. I scramble my hands along the dashboard, over the seat, and down by the pedals until finally I connect with the keys.
Shaking, I locate the biggest one and jab it in the ignition.
The door to the clinic bursts open, and a big man hurtles out to the porch. Ian charges out right behind him. I get one clear flash of Ian’s stunned expression, his mouth the open O of a gasping fish.
“Hey!” the big guy says.
I turn the ignition with a roar and the headlights shine on. I slam the car into reverse and floor it backward in a wide arc.