I inhale deeply and a flood of sensations—his hands on me, the look of his dark eyes, the scent of his T-shirt—hovers around my hands. I sniff again. Cy’s brew, and the essence of him on the vials. They’re all over my palms and treated wrist.
And then, like a sluice gate of an old-world dam, it all rushes in.
Coffee, sweat, rubber, fine linen, blood, spit, anger, happiness, confusion, low blood pressure, dandruff, weakness, orange sherbet, neurodrugs, Italian marble, lemon, wool and silk, waxy lipstick, sick pig, confused pig, dead pig . . . they’re all here, and that’s only a tiny fraction of what’s invading my nose.
Holy shizz. Marka’s pills do work. Thousands of signals overwhelm the synapses of my brain, and I shut my eyes, crumpling into a ball on the floor.
Now I know. I should have taken only one pill.
CHAPTER 30
HOW AM I GOING TO FIND DYL in this swarm of everything?
What I need is a lesson from Marka. But even Marka said she had trouble identifying all the separate chemical signatures she encountered. I don’t have time to learn new things. I have to work with what I know.
And what I know is . . . Cy’s delicious aura. Vera’s baked parsmint squares. The dry, yeasty warmth of the agriplane. The unique, familiar essence of family, the kind that envelops you when a door is opened to a house, signaling that you’re home. My memories. They’re my guide.
Eyes closed, I carefully lift up my nose and let the smells enter me and try to focus. Like index cards, I let them flip by, abandoning one and concentrating on another and another, until I hit something familiar and useful. The first one confuses me.
Neurodrugs. Not like the ones from Ren’s black-stained mouth, but others . . . pink clouds I’ve known from before. And then more, the smell of bodily sweat, but far more than the ten people or so who live in Aureus. Droves of different people. Then alcohol, like the kind we use in the lab, but mixed with exotic, synthesized fruits.
And then one scent flips by so fast, it makes me gasp. I have to squeeze my eyes and zero in on it. It’s faint, as if worn down by time and nearly washed free from the inside of the transport. One more open door of cleansing air, and I might not have caught it.
Persian freesia, mixed with the scent of despair.
Dylia.
Thank goodness Dyl always bought the scents that lasted a month before the program ended. I remember the birthday present of the electronic sliver inserted next to her collarbone when she turned thirteen. She’s smelled like exotic flowers ever since.
Sweat plus alcohol plus neurodrugs plus Dyl. Multiply by the driving heartbeat pounding insistently from the walls of Aureus since I stepped my mutant foot inside this place. The beating is becoming less like a giant, relentless heart and more like a drum. The drumbeat of music.
I have no time. Ren’s finger is cold and may be no good, but I try it anyway. I press it into the pad, carefully and gently, and speak to the transport.
“Alucinari Rooms,” I say. At first nothing happens, and my confidence withers a fraction. I squash Ren’s finger against the pad again, and this time, the transport jerks so fast I almost fall down, holding on to the slick white walls before I lose my balance.
Aureus is below Argent, which is too convenient. Aureus. Au. The shorthand for gold. Gold is directly under silver on the periodic table of elements. And judging from the minutes gone by, it’s about one in the morning, which means the club is in its full hallucinogenic and illegal swing.
The transport opens to the thudding music and a dark hallway snaking before me.
A large guy with a potbelly walks by, smoking cherry-flavored cigarettes.
Ham sandwich for dinner. Vanilla antiperspirant. Fat bubbling in veins. Too much sugar in the blood. Too little happiness.
I step out of the transport, and a tall, willowy girl in a satin mini-dress stares at me with red eyes. Soundlessly, the doors slip closed behind me.
Soap and luxury shampoo. Peppermint swirl cocktail still lingering in her mouth. Blood stinking of neurodrugs. Currently concocting a lie in her mind, probably what she’ll tell her parents when she comes home in the morning.
Her eyes bug out as she sees my green-spotted arms. “Whoa.” She shakes her head, as if the neurodrugs might lose their potency with vigorous head-swishing. The two guys flanking her are amused by her response, waiting for her swaying legs to finally give way. I lean in and whisper out of earshot of her companions.
“I’m a message from your conscience. Go home before you get a disease that will permanently make you ugly.”
She blinks at me, dazed. “Oh. Okay.” Her companions stare on confusedly as she wobbles for the exit down the hallway. I hear a faint “Goin’ home now!” as she disappears.
Well, at least I can say I’ve done one good thing tonight, saving this girl from a resistant STD and a one-night stand she’ll regret.
Before me is the hallway of rooms, each heralded by body part holograms bobbing and beckoning people inside. The tentacled brain, hand, and ear. It’s time for me to concentrate. Tipping my nose in the air, I sway left and right, trying to find Dyl’s scent. I probably look like a dog let out of the house for the first time in months.
There are too many things to sift through. How can you find the tiny grain of diamond within a handful of plain old sand?
“Find what you know,” I say to myself. I concentrate and let the unimportant scents just drift by. It takes me a full five minutes of dodging the half-drugged people swimming around me, but eventually, I find my microscopic diamond.
The freesia. I sniff in short bursts and keep her front and center in my search as I inch my way down the hall. Except for that one girl, no one else cares that my shirt is torn and my bare arms are covered in green splotches. They probably think it’s the latest trend in makeup. Count on Argent to be the perfect place to blend in.
Of course. That’s why Aureus is situated under Argent. It’s the playground of the members. The neurodrugs are the perfect cover. They can come and go as they please, and even if one of them had three heads and seven legs, no one would admit to the police that they saw such a thing, because doing so would land them in detox. Or jail.
My nose pulls me to the left. Ten feet away, there’s a door with the ear doing flips and spins before an orange-framed doorway. The freesia is stronger in here. As I look up to get my bearings, yelps and shouts come from down the hall.
“Ow!”
“Watch it!”
The volume increases. The corridor is packed, as usual, but the crowd divides like a coat being unzipped, separated by someone pushing club-goers roughly aside.
At first, I don’t recognize him, because his eyes and nose are obscured by a white mask, marbled in gray and silver. The mouth is set in a grim line. He scans left and right, pauses when he sees me motionless by the Alucinari ear room. The grim mouth melts into a smile.
Only then do I see the skin, just under his neck. It’s thickened, brown and hard. Tegg has come to find me.
I run into the ear room. I try to breathe through my mouth so the odors in the room won’t overwhelm me. Inside, all I hear is a muffled humming. Some people clutch their heads, as if unable to handle the pleasure of the drug. What drug? I expect fluffy clouds or rivulets of smoke, but the room is devoid of any suspicious pastel-colored clouds.
“It’s coming,” a boy’s voice warns from across the room. Everyone freezes, bracing themselves. For what? I run to the opposite corner, in case “it” means “Tegg” and everyone knows I’m about to get my ass kicked with his impenetrable armor. Tegg walks in just as the boom hits.