Chimera was busy with other patients, and though I was curious about their progress and the different languages I overheard, I was not eager to make friends. I prowled from the atrium on the lower level, with its café and concert piano, to the library on the top floor. I stopped by the kitchen, the MRI room, the library, the chapel, and a small, paneled room called the card parlor. In the boutique gift shop, I peered into cases of jewelry and teddy bears, electronics and logoed bottle openers, skeptical that anyone would want a souvenir from this place, as if it were a fancy cruise ship. I intended to forget my stay here as soon as I could.
One sunny day, about a week after my frustrating phone calls with Linus and my parents, I made a solo trip up to the roof of the clinic. It was a flat, Spartan, snow-dusted area with a tile bench and a dreary pot of sand for cigarette butts. Patients, I guessed, didn’t normally come here, which made it all the more inviting to me. I wheeled over to the wall and breathed deep. The sky soared above, defying the rugged peaks of the mountains, and the waves crashed in shrunken, petulant bursts on the icy rocks below. Far off, the ocean made a clean line of dark gray where it met the sky, and I followed the horizon north, to the bulky shape of Iceland proper with its hulking volcano.
Snow glittered everywhere except on the puny paths and roads that had been plowed. Shading my eyes, I gazed east, into the valley, where a landing strip lay like an ironed ribbon of silver. A dozen private jets were parked along one side, tiny as pocket toys, and as I watched, another one approached from over the ocean and made a gradual descent.
It was weird to think my family owned one of those jets. Althea’s family. Not mine. Keep that straight.
A clinking drew my attention. Below, a man in a lab coat hunched his shoulders and cupped his hands to a cigarette, lighting it. He tossed his head back to exhale a blur of smoke. Lean and dark-haired, maybe forty, he stood in a small, sheltered nook beside an outbuilding. It was a hybrid structure, half concrete and half stone cottage, as mismatched as a shoebox glued to a gingerbread house. I watched absently until the smoker stubbed out his cigarette and went inside, and then it occurred to me: in all my roaming around the Chimera Centre, I’d never seen a lab. Where, exactly, did Dr. Fallon do her research? Not her clinical work on patients, but her basic research. That shoebox suddenly looked promising.
The next morning, very early, while the clinic was still quiet, I dressed in my sweats and slippers, climbed in my wheelchair, and headed down the hall toward the elevator.
“You’re up early,” a nurse said as I passed the desk.
“Couldn’t sleep,” I said.
“Do you need a hand with anything?” she asked. “Coffee? Breakfast?”
“I’m all set. I’m just going up to the library. I think I left my book there yesterday.”
“It should be open. Good luck,” she said.
I took the elevator down to the atrium level, where the fountain was off and the café was dead. My wheels made a faint, smooth sound through the hush as I crossed to the doors. I pushed my way out to the terrace, where the early chill touched my face with welcome freshness and fueled my excitement. Then I started around the building.
Frost lines laced the stone walkway, and my breath came out in foggy puffs that vanished into the pre-dawn gloom. I reached the outbuilding and tried the door. It didn’t budge. Undeterred, I wheeled myself along, peering in the windows, but it was hard to see more than a few black countertops. Where the building ended, a fenced area contained bins for garbage, recycling, and radioactive waste. Cigarettes butts littered the curb.
I pivoted to start back when my wheel went over a lip of concrete into a crevice and stuck. I stood carefully and tugged at my chair, righting it. As soon as I sat, it rolled and wedged in again.
“Hello,” said a girlish voice. “What are you doing back here?”
Behind me, beside a streetlamp, a black-haired teenager straddled an adult tricycle and dangled a helmet from one hand. The shoulder strap of a purse cut diagonally across her gray jacket, and her black-clad legs were as thin as a bird’s.
“I came out to smoke and got stuck,” I said.
“Patients can’t smoke,” she said, her accent light but clear. “One sec. I’ll give you a hand.” She dismounted and chained up her bike. Then she unlocked the nearest door and dumped her helmet and purse inside before she came over to grab my chair.
Wordlessly, she jacked my chair back onto the sidewalk, rocking me side to side in the process.
“Thanks,” I said.
“No problem,” she said. “What’s your name?” she asked.
“Rosie.”
To my surprise, she took a little notebook out of her pocket and jotted in it with a nub of pencil.
“What’s your name?” I asked.
“Jónína,” she said, and headed toward the door.
She was the first regular teenager I’d seen in months, and I was not letting her get away.
“Can I see your lab?” I asked.
She turned back to me, her expression flat. “It’s not mine. I just water the plants.”
“Let me just warm up again before I head back.”
The girl reached for her notepad again, but she didn’t try to stop me as I edged my chair past her and muscled over the bump of the threshold. A vinegar-like, chemical smell bit my nose, and my heart gave an involuntary kick. The scent reminded me of the operating room off the vault of dreamers.
“What are you writing down?” I asked.
“Everything,” she said.
“How come?”
“That way I know it happened. It’s my life experiment. I’m recording it.” She pulled off her jacket and put her notebook and pencil in the pocket of her green cardigan. “Touch anything and you die.”
She started turning on lights and switches in the shoebox section of the building. A circulation system kicked in, and it became easier to breathe. The lab was a large, open room, sectioned off by counters and cabinets into different bays. Jónína put a watering can into a sink and twisted the faucet, and I noted a dozen different plants tucked on the windowsills. They looked none too healthy.
“How many people work here?” I asked over the rush of water.
“I don’t know. Six or seven? We used to have more, but a bunch of people left a couple months ago. We’ll never leave. Mom promised. I don’t like change. Check this out,” she said, and pointed up to a stuffed rodent mounted on a high shelf.
“What is it?” I asked.
“It’s a marmoset. I stuffed it myself,” she said. “I took it to a taxidermist, Mr. Pall, and he taught me how to do it. The eyes are made of glass. Do they look real to you?”
Real enough to be creepy.
“Yes. They’re nice,” I said. “How old are you?”
“Me? Seventeen,” she said, turning off the water with a squeak.
Older than me. Younger than Althea. When she turned her head, I saw a streak of blue in her black hair.
“Is your mom one of the scientists here?” I asked.
“This is her place,” Jónína said. “She’s Huma Fallon.”
Surprised again, I tried to see a resemblance, but Jónína, with her skinny figure and stilted manner, seemed nothing like the doctor.
“Is your dad here, too?” I asked.
“He’s traveling. He’s always traveling.”