“Er, hi,” I say to the professor, confused. I turn to Wilbert. “Why’d you pick her as your holoprof?”
“I don’t have a holoprof. I’m all bench work now. This is Cy’s other holoprof, his non-medical one.”
“How did Cy know what I looked like?”
“I don’t know. Your dad never talked about you guys. But he did help Cy tinker with both holoprofs. They were down here together quite a lot.” He sniggers. “Then again, maybe your dad had nothing to do with it. Maybe you’re just Cy’s type. Ha. Ha-ha-ha.”
I stare at him hard. I know it’s ridiculous that anyone would find me their type, but the woodpecker giggle is entirely unnecessary.
Wilbert abruptly stops laughing when he sees my face. “Well.” He waves to the holoprofs. “Thank you, professors. That will be all.” They all nod and do that same shimmery disappearing act.
Suddenly, I’m feeling self-conscious. My professor twin makes me feel as pretty as a wad of spit-out chewing gum. “Hey Wilbert, do I have a room? Maybe I could change or something,” I say, showing off my tattered sleeves.
“Sure,” he says. “VERA!” Wilbert yelps at the top of his lungs.
“Geez, Wilbert! Can’t you just show me?”
“It’s Vera’s job, not mine,” he says, bristling. “She’s always making me do her stuff. Calls me her ‘double butler,’ spelled with two t’s.” After yelling for Vera a few more times, he gives up and reluctantly leads me to my new room. None of the hallways, rooms, or stairs have straight edges or right angles. The architect must have used calculus to design this place.
Finally, Wilbert opens a door into an oval room. There’s a bulbous glass window forming part of the wall, with a view of east Neia. Only forty feet above, the agriplane stretches like a ceiling with no end, meeting the earth at the horizon, as if glued together. Plasticleer skylights stud the underside of the agriplane every fifty feet or so, allowing a scant amount of natural evening light through. Irregular rooftops far below vary in shades of putty, but closer to the downtown area, the roofs are more brightly colored.
“Pink to white,” Wilbert orders, and the room begins to glow in a rosy tint in the farthest corners, then brightens slowly. There’s a low bed and a bean-shaped sofa with a lump of something very familiar sitting on it. Dyl’s purse. I grab it and give it an embrace. I can still smell the faint odor of her freesia download. I suddenly miss her so badly that I forget Wilbert’s presence. Out of the corner of my eye, I see him back out the door.
“Oh! Thanks, Wilbert.”
“S’nothing. Say, if you ever get bored in the middle of the night, come hang out,” he offers. “I could use the company. It gets kind of lone—I mean, boring, you know.”
Even offered by a two-brained boy, this invitation is so blessedly normal that I clutch at it with desperation.
“I’d really like that. Okay. Sure.” I smile. Wow. Feels like a hundred years since I last did that. Before he goes, I call after him. “Hey, Wilbert.” I point to my ear. “Do you have any idea why my holo doesn’t work here?”
“Oh, that. It’s our building. They installed a huge energy receiver for the agriplane a few years ago and it always interferes with the holos. You can access your stored data okay, but that’s it. If you need to talk to any of us, just use the wall-coms. If you need outside info, you’ve got this.” He points to a blank wall in my room. “Access main.” A six-foot screen on the wall lights up green, showing a normal entry frame for Visionworks, the holophone carrier in Neia. “Add voice command.” He nods at me. “Say your name.”
“Um, Zelia Benten.”
A disembodied voice answers me. “Welcome, Zelia. Voice command accepted.”
“You’re all set.” Wilbert smiles. “It’s pretty limited—only public channels. No communication allowed, given our status.” He gives me a friendly wave and shuts the door behind him.
I’m still hugging Dyl’s purse, tracing the pink and black lines of the fabric and bio-leather. I hug it to my chest. Is she safe, like me? Learning about her new home? Freaking out? I wish I knew, even though I fear the truth.
A tickling buzz comes from my right earlobe. My holo is calling me. Strange, since it’s not supposed to work here. I touch my stud, and the holo pops up, with the Carus-induced blurry storm of pixels.
Zzzzzz is all I hear.
“Useless,” I mutter. I push a cloud of my dark frizzy hair out of the way to reach my earlobe.
“Zzzzelia.”
My hand freezes. I listen through two whole minutes of static, wondering if I’m imagining things. But then the crackling clears for a moment.
“Are you there?” It’s a guy’s voice, I’m sure. It’s quickly replaced by more static. I run to the window, hoping to get better reception. My head presses against the cold glass, trying to get away from the tower, which is ridiculous, since I’m in it.
“It’szzzzzQ.”
“Q? What did you say? Is that your name?” I wait a whole minute before the static clears again enough for me to piece together the next few phrases.
“Don’t tell anyone about me. Trust no one. Your sister isn’t safe, and neither are you.”
My heart starts drumming fast.
“I don’t understand! What? Why?”
“Dyliazzzzzzzz.”
The holo finally overrides the bad channel and turns to a barely visible news station. Blurred images of the local Neian news whirr by.
“No! Resume transmission.” Nothing. The unwanted images stay stubbornly in place. It changes to national news. A scratchy voice discusses abductions in East York, floodwaters lowering with the new water converters. “Resume prior call!” Still no change. I can’t get the other transmission back. But it doesn’t matter, because I know what the voice said.
I crumple to the floor, head in my hands. All the shreds of normalcy I felt with Wilbert have dissolved.
What am I going to do?
CHAPTER 8
I ROCK BACK AND FORTH ON THE FLOOR, hugging my knees, as the stranger’s voice echoes in my head.
Trust no one.
But why? Who was he?
The name Q is meaningless. It’s a letter, an answerless question. Yet one thing he said feels too true, too real. I’m not safe, and neither is Dyl. I haven’t felt safe since Dad died, and Carus is a shaky sanctuary, even with its needle-stabbing security system and plasma fences. Maybe they’re not truly afraid of invasion. Maybe it’s the inhabitants that need to be kept from the world. And here I am, locked in with them. No one here is trying hard to get Dyl back. No one cares as much as I do.
Her bag lies limp on the floor next to me, as if it’s died in her absence. The dirty orange hue from the fading sunlight retreats from the darkness already blotting out most of Neia. The artificial lights below are a sickly bluish white, and in a few hours they’ll wink out with the curfew.
She’s out there, somewhere. Maybe in Neia, maybe farther away. I can feel the enormity of land and space around me outside of my bubble room. “Out there” is limitless, out of my control.
Normally, when I had a problem I couldn’t solve, I had my lab director. Or Dad. Or my holo. But I have nothing now. I sit there in silence, waiting for the answer to plunk itself onto my dirty lap.
“No one’s coming to help,” I say to nobody. And nobody answers.
Finally, I take a few cleansing breaths, and sit a little straighter against the bean-shaped sofa.