As Jónína tended the plants, I wheeled down the length of the room, curious.
Along one wall stood several large, humming cases with glass doors. The shelves inside were lit with a soft blue light that reminded me of our sleep shells back at Forge, and I peered close. Rows of clear, covered disks filled the interior, each labeled in script too small for me to read. They contained pastel growths of some sort. When I touched the glass door, it was warm.
“Don’t do that. Don’t touch anything,” Jónína called.
“Sorry. I know. I won’t,” I said, and slid my hand away.
I moved to the next case and the next, which were equally full. A door beckoned at the end of the room. I checked over my shoulder for Jónína, who was carefully tipping the long spout of her watering can into a fern, and then I tried the door. When it opened easily, I wheeled into the next room, which was much smaller.
Instantly, a different hush surrounded me, and my pulse rose a notch. The overhead lights stayed off, leaving me to find my way by the diffused light from more cases. A pungent stench of chemicals and cleanser couldn’t mask the putrescence of decay. I moved slowly, careful not to bump anything. Vials, pipettes, and bottles covered the counters in seeming disarray, but two surgical tables, which stood to the side, gleamed clean and cold. I passed a drain in the floor. The far wall was made of stone, and set into it was a strange blue door—an old, arched one with bars over its center window. A dimly lit hallway on the other side led into the old, gingerbread-style section of the building, and the door still had a house number, 6, painted in black at the top.
The blue glow of the nearest case drew me over, and on the outside, a yellow sticky note read: Do not send Sandy any Sinclair 15. Huma’s orders. My heart jolted. “Sandy” was Dean Berg’s first name. I rose out of my wheelchair to see better. Inside, rows of small, opalescent jars shimmered faintly. Their labels were barely decipherable, but I made out that the jars were arranged in alphabetical order, layers deep, and many of the jars had the same name but a different number: Huron 6: 35/65, Lo 15: 28/119, Minaret 17: 7/10, Richards 18: 25/222, Sinclair 15: 29/300. I stopped, staring at my own name. Then I checked the next shelf: Sinclair 15: 39/300, Sinclair 15: 49/300, Sinclair 15: 59/300. The next five shelves contained jars with my name on them, hundreds of them.
Fear spiked along my nerves.
Silently, I opened the case and picked out the topmost jar with my name on it, Sinclair 15: 29/300. It clung with magnetic resistance to the shelf, but once I slid it free, it was surprisingly light and warm in my palm. The jar had a metal bottom but glass sides and a glass lid, and as I held it up close, I saw a murky, gray substance inside that flashed with electric pinpoints of color, like a miniscule lightning storm. It flowed in a thick, viscous manner when I tilted the jar, and I could have sworn I heard thunder crashing inside: tiny, perfect thunder for a miniature world.
Whatever was in those jars, it was derived from my dreams. A keen, powerful resentment stirred in me.
The door opened behind me, and I quickly shoved the jar down the front of my shirt.
“Rosie? Are you in here?” Jónína asked.
With a shock, I realized I’d given her my real name. I spun to face her.
“You shouldn’t be in here,” Jónína said. She stood on the threshold of the first laboratory, still holding her watering can.
“I’m coming,” I said, plopping back in my wheel chair. “Listen, Jónína. Rosie isn’t my real name. I made a mistake saying that.”
“But I wrote it down,” Jónína said. She tucked the watering can under her elbow, reached for her notepad, and flipped it open. “It says it right here: ‘I met Rosie outside the lab.’”
“Can I see?” I asked.
She held the pad tightly. “Nobody sees this.”
I wheeled a little closer. “Can you make a correction in your notes?” I asked. “My real name’s Althea.”
“That makes no sense,” she said. “Why’d you lie to me?”
“It was a mistake, not a lie,” I said. I smiled and tried for lightheartedness. “Haven’t you ever mixed up your own name?”
Jónína stared at me intensely. “No. That’s not funny.”
The stench of the lab suddenly felt stultifyingly close. Like poison.
“Do you have another name?” I asked softly.
She clutched her notepad and her watering can together, as if they could keep her safe, and her gaze shifted sideways. “My name’s Jónína. It’s always been Jónína.” She frowned at me. “You have to leave. Mom’s going to be mad.”
“She doesn’t have to know I was here. I won’t tell anyone,” I said.
“She’ll know. She always knows everything.”
I nodded at her notebook. “Maybe because she reads your journal.”
“It’s not a journal,” she said. “It’s an experiment, and I don’t let her read it.”
A disturbing possibility occurred to me. “Has your mother ever done experiments on you?” I asked.
“No. She saved me,” Jónína said. She cocked her head in alertness as if listening for something.
I listened, too, and heard nothing. “Saved you from what, Jónína?” I asked.
“I was drowning. I don’t quite remember it. I was little. They thought I was dead at the bottom of the lake, but Mom swam down and brought me up.”
“Did she operate on you?” I asked.
She gave me an odd look. “Of course. She’s a doctor. That’s how she saved me.”
“Is that when she started all this? Is it all for you?” I asked.
Jónína opened her notebook a crack and gripped her stubby pencil in tight fingers, ready to write. I took the jostling watering can from under her arm, and she stumbled back a pace.
“Are there bodies here, Jónína? Are there dreamers?” I asked.
Her gaze flicked toward the blue door. “You’re scaring me now,” she said.
“Are they back there? Are they here, in this building?” I asked. I wheeled my chair backward, back toward the blue door, but she shot out a hand and gripped my chair’s wheel. The watering can clattered to the floor.
“I don’t want bodies here,” Jónína said.
Her gaze shifted past my head, and a click behind me made me look over my shoulder.
A thin, motionless man stood on the other side of the blue door, studying us through the glass and bars. His cheeks were sallow and wasted, and soft, brown, boyish hair fell long over his eyes. With his pointy, narrow shoulders and threadbare brown sweater, he seemed both strong and spindly at the same time, as if an unseen wind blew against him and he was only barely managing to stay up.
Then he tilted his head, and a strange, tantalizing flash of familiarity lit up the back of my brain. I’d seen this man before. Not just when he was smoking the day before, but earlier. An old teacher, maybe. I knew him, definitely, from long ago.
My memory shifted. A slim wisp of an idea squeezed past the stony barriers of impossibility and took my breath away.
But it couldn’t be.
“Dad?” I whispered.