The port in my chest is a mute, constant reminder of my helpless suffering in the vault. All I really want to do is kill Berg. Distance from the Onar Clinic has crystalized my resentment into a clear goal. I need to leave the sisters before they call for the reward, but not before I’m strong enough to take care of myself. This means that while they’re out, I practice jimmying the locks of their bedroom doors, adding oil to the workings and the door hinges, so that I’ll be able to get in silently and steal a phone when I need to.
One Friday evening, twelve days after my arrival and two days before their mother is due home, the snowy yard turns the pure, violet color of twilight and beckons me outside. I’m taking a bag of garbage out to the bin at the end of the driveway when a Jeep comes slowly down the road, kicking up felty bits of fresh snow behind its tires. It disappears down the block, but the next time I glance out the window, it’s parked a few yards down the road. The lights are off, but a driver is sitting inside and I know, I just know this is bad.
I say nothing to the sisters, but I take the binoculars from the hook by the door and peer out to the Jeep. Zooming in, I spy the soft fur that lines the driver’s hood and his hawklike nose. His wispy mustache confirms my suspicions.
It’s Ian.
He has found me. He must have been watching for me, but I don’t understand how he knew where to look for me. Did Berg send him?
“What are you looking at?” Portia asks, coming into the kitchen.
“Nothing,” I say.
I lower the binoculars, and Ian takes that moment to start up the Jeep and drive away.
She glances out the window. “Do you know that Jeep?”
“No,” I say.
That night, the Jeep returns to park in the same place, stalking me, and I know it’s time to leave. After the sisters go to sleep, I gently pick Jenny’s lock, sneak into her room, and find her phone where it’s charging next to her bed. I steal it silently, then creep to the downstairs bathroom and close the door to muffle my voice.
I’m paranoid about my Forge email being watched by Berg, but it’s also the most likely way Linus and Burnham would have tried to reach me, so I log in. My inbox has 5,662 emails in it. Impressive. I do a search for Linus and focus in on one likely message.
From: Linus Pitts <[email protected]> To: Rosie Sinclair <[email protected]> Sent: Monday, November 1, 2066, 4:35 PM
Subject: call me
Rosie, if you see this, call me.
314-287-4351
L.
Succinct. Works for me. I jot down the number and his email address on a piece of paper. Next I search for Burnham and find this: From: Burnham Fister <[email protected]> To: Rosie Sinclair <[email protected]> Sent: Friday, December 24, 2066, 11:42 PM
Subject: ho ho
Merry Christmas wherever you are.
I stare at the words so long I can hear them in his voice. He sent it shortly before midnight on Christmas Eve, and I feel a wistful sadness as I think of Burnham in some bough-laden house, surrounded by colored lights, thinking of me. I wish I had a number for him. I’m tempted to write him back, but I’m paranoid enough to suspect my Forge email account isn’t safe. Berg can doubtless check it for activity. I jot down Burnham’s email address and log out.
My heart’s doing odd little skips, because I’m back to staring at Linus’s phone number. I can’t forget that he goaded me into telling all my hard-won secrets to the cameras at Forge, and then he suggested I’d dreamed it all, so that I wavered and doubted myself. It was the absolute worst feeling. Yet later he’d tried to help me, too. He must have believed me, up to a point.
I don’t know what to think about him, but I have this urge to reconnect with him and see what he’ll say. It feels like a risk just calling him, but I come up with a logical reason: maybe he can tell me something I can use to get to Berg.
I dial his number carefully. I press my thumbnail to the gap in my teeth and listen anxiously through two rings.
“Linus here. What’s up?”
I nearly drop the phone. It’s his own voice, with his Welsh vowels and a dose of cranky sleepiness. He sounds impossibly near and familiar. My pulse goes haywire, and I squeeze my eyes shut.
“Hi. It’s me, Rosie,” I say softly.
A shifting noise comes from his end. “Okay, let’s hear it,” he says.
No surprise. No concern. He sounds almost bored. It hurts. “I was calling to see how you’re doing, but if this is a bad time,” I say, uncertain.
“How’d you get this number?”
“From your email, remember? You sent it to me.”
A creak comes over the line, as if he’s switching positions on a noisy bed. “When?”
“Last November.” I’m getting irritated. “What’s going on?”
“Rosie? Is it really you?” he says.
“Who else would I be?”
“I get a lot of prank callers,” he says.
I can tell he doubts me still. Part of me wants to hang up, but instead I try to think of something that will convince him I’m me. “We talked on walkie-hams at night at Forge,” I say. “I stole your swipe pass from your pocket that time you loaned me your jacket.” I think back. “You used to make spaghetti and watch Shakespeare in Love with Otis and Parker when you paid your blood for rent. Do you still?”
“Wow,” he says softly. “Where are you?”
“In Colorado. I’ve been staying with some friends.”
“Someone named Althea?” he asks.
“No. Who’s that?”
He mutters something I can’t hear. Then, “Some girl called me a couple weeks ago. She said she was a friend of Rosie’s. She knew everything about us, even the private things we said to each other at night. Are you sure you don’t know her? Althea?”
“Never heard of her,” I say.
“Then I was right,” he says slowly. “All that stuff I thought I was saying to you, you never heard. Why would she do that?”
I lean back against the sink. “I don’t know who you’re talking about, but I haven’t talked to you since last October, when you were leaving for St. Louis.” When we essentially broke up. “What sort of stuff did you think you were telling me?” I ask.
“It was awkward.”
“But was it nice stuff?” As soon as it’s out, I regret it. “Forget that.”
“I’ve always tried to be nice to you,” he says quietly, and somehow that makes it worse.
I’ve been alone for so long. I thought because he showed up down in the vault that he was on my side after all, but I don’t really know anything for sure where Linus is concerned.
“Remember how you thought I was dreaming it all?” I say. “You made me look like a fool on The Forge Show. That wasn’t particularly nice.”
“I know. I’m sorry. I didn’t understand yet.”
“Did Berg ever mine you?” I ask. “Tell me this. When he had you down in the vault, did he mine your dreams?”
“I don’t know,” he says. “I didn’t feel any different.”
“You don’t feel different at first. At first, you can’t even tell. But then—” I gulp in a big breath. “But after a while, you’re not even really sure who you are anymore.”
“Where are you, Rosie?” he says, sounding both sad and urgent. “Let me come find you. We need to talk in person.”
“I don’t want to be on your show.”
“Of course not,” he says. “I just want to talk.”
But talking to Linus is breaking something inside me, and I don’t want to feel weak. “If you’re so popular and powerful now, why haven’t you done anything to shut down Berg?” I ask.
“That’s not the simplest thing to do,” he says.