When we returned to civilization and I saw how cold my mother was, I never wanted to use my psychic abilities ever again. She blames me for my sister’s death, and if I could’ve gouged out my powers with a knife, I would’ve. Wearing the tourmaline stone—and in essence shutting down my abilities—is the next best alternative.
I put the pendant down on a crate, ten feet away. “Let’s try again without the necklace.”
Ryder turns back to the screen, and I lie on the crates once more. The wood scratches my shoulders, and I shift until I find a more comfortable position. I breathe in. And out. In. And out.
This time, when I open my mind, I fall into the corridor like a kitten tumbling into a bucket of cream. Fast, unprepared. And then I’m drowning in the vision.
I am running, running down a corridor. The tiles are pale green, and a darker green stripe bisects the wall…
I run past the wait lounges, the purple amethyst couches, pumping my legs, gasping for breath, past the elevators, through the emergency exit, until I reach the metal door with the purple-light security system.
I stand before the door, certain that I was born to fulfill this destiny. And then the vision fades.
This time, instead of being jerked to consciousness, I open my eyes slowly. Ryder’s already out of the doughnut screen and gawking at me.
“Holy Fates, I felt like I was in there with you.” He swipes an arm across his forehead. “No, I was you. The vision was happening to me.”
I nod, my clothes sticking to me in wet patches. “That’s how it felt when the scientists made me live those memories. Except they weren’t nearly as benign as running through a corridor.”
“No wonder Callie killed herself.” Ryder’s voice is hushed and a little spooked, like he’s seen a ghost from the past. Or maybe a flicker from the future. “She saw those girls moments before Dresden sent them to their execution. Their death was imminent—and Callie felt it. She would’ve done anything to save them—and you.”
I swallow, but I can’t dislodge the mass in my throat, the ache like a hole in my heart. I miss her; that’s always been true. But at this moment, I’m so sad, so sick about what she had to live through. The guilt over a murder she never committed. The responsibility she felt for all those Mediocres in prison. The final inevitability of her choice.
I need to make it up to her. Somehow, some way, I need to make myself worthy of her sacrifice. Maybe it starts with this vision.
“Did you recognize the corridor?” I ask Ryder.
He moves to the terminal. “No. But give me a few minutes. I’ll grab several stills and run them through the system, using Mikey’s security clearance.”
His fingers dance over the keyball, and I pick up my pendant again. Instead of slipping it on, however, I stick the black stone in my pocket.
Something tells me I’m going to need all of my abilities to figure this one out. For better or for worse. I lie on the ground and prop my black high-top hovershoes against the wall. And wait.
Half an hour later, Ryder looks up. “Got it. The corridor’s right here in Eden City.” He pauses. “It’s one of the basement floors of the TechRA building, where the FuMA offices used to be located.”
Of course. The information should be a revelation, but it doesn’t surprise me. It’s like I’ve always known it. Like my name. Like the path down the purple and green corridor. Somehow, I knew this was all connected.
“Now,” I say, “all we have to do is follow that path.”
9
“What if Dresden’s daughter sent you that message?” Ryder whispers the next day as we’re waiting for our turn through TechRA security. “She’s got sick abilities, and no one’s seen her in ages. I’d bet my hoverboard she hasn’t been at some boarding school for the last decade.”
My eyes widen. “You mean Olivia? You think she’s been held captive all these years?”
“Shhh, keep your voice down.” He looks around the glass walls, but there’s no one else in the waiting vestibule. The guy in front of us has already stepped through the security arches.
“It must be because of the vision of genocide,” I say, warming to the theory. “Dresden’s hiding Olivia because she doesn’t want anyone to know about the vision. Maybe Olivia sent me the message as a cry for help.”
“If that’s the case…we should abort,” Ryder says darkly.
“What? No.” My voice rises. “If it is Olivia, she needs our help. We can’t just abandon her.”
“Why not? I thought you said she was a brat.”
“She was six. Think who her mother was. You’d be a pain, too.” I reach into the past. Most of my pre-wilderness memories are a blur, and most of them center on my mom and Callie. But I remember Olivia. “She was my friend.”
“You didn’t even like her!”
“That’s not true. She talked to me, Ryder. She sought me out when all the other girls shunned me. Because of her, I know how it feels to ride on the seesaw pods.” I blink, my eyes suddenly wet, which doesn’t make sense. “Maybe that sounds stupid, but it meant something to me.”
“It doesn’t,” he says, softening. “But that was ten years ago. People change in ten years.”
He’s right. But I can’t shake the image of the little girl I used to know—the big brown eyes and the straight-cut bangs. I keep hearing Dresden’s cold, cruel voice: No daughter of mine is Mediocre.
I know all too well how it feels to be forsaken by your own mother.
“You and I, we know how it feels to lose a parent or two,” I say. “But we had each other, and we formed a new family. If Olivia’s been imprisoned—or worse—then she doesn’t have anybody. How can we ignore her cry for help?”
He sighs, and I know I’ve got him. This is the guy who collected acorns for a squirrel’s afterlife, for Fate’s sake.
We walk through the security arches, and the guard runs a scanner over the chip embedded under my wrist. My identification pops onto the screen, along with a list of locations I’m cleared to visit.
“Bots along the wall. Find one to escort you,” he says in a monotone.
We select the first bot, a squat one with a copper spiral at its belly, and are keying in Mikey’s office when the guard calls us back. “Forget the bot. It says here you have a human escort.”
I exchange a nervous look with Ryder. A human escort? But how? Nobody even knows we’re here.
Wrong.
A few minutes later, a man approaches the guard. He’s broad and good-looking, with eyes that notice everything and a mouth that can either be stern or smiling. His hair is tied back with a piece of rawhide—a leftover habit from our days in the wilderness. Mikey.
We are so busted. Fike, fike, fike.
He gives us a quick, cutting glance and slaps the guard on the back. “I’ll take it from here, Rinaldo.”
Mikey turns and wraps an arm around each of us. The loving father, the trusted friend. How many times can I say screwed?
“I programmed the system to send me an alert when one of your IDs was scanned.” His voice is even and pleasant, as mild as a clear blue sky—that’s about to split wide open. “According to the logs, it seems you’ve visited me dozens of times in the last two months. Too bad I’ve been away at a meeting each of those times.”
I know better than to respond—not out here in the main corridor. In fact, none of us says another word until we walk into Mikey’s office.