I take the needle from him.
And then, the door whooshes open and somebody walks into the room.
49
“Oh, good. I was hoping someone would be here.” A commanding voice floats into the room, colder than the air. Colder, even, than icicles.
I stiffen. My back is to the door, but I don’t need a visual to confirm her identity. Just our luck. Chairwoman Dresden.
“A little help, please? I have an important meeting to attend.”
My heart gallops out of my chest. I exchange a we-are-so-screwed look with Tanner, and then he smooths his fingers over his mustache and shuffles forward.
She’s not focused on me. At least not yet. I walk to the last rack and pretend I’m terribly busy cataloging something. Anything.
Since my face is so similar to Callie’s, she’d recognize me in an instant. Tanner’s got ten additional years and a mustache. He just might survive her scrutiny.
“Are you new?” she demands. “I don’t recognize you.”
Or not.
“Yes, ma’am. Just started last week.” His voice trembles, but that’s to be expected. Dresden would be suspicious if one of her employees wasn’t afraid of her.
“Fine, fine.” I hear, rather than see, her hands waving in the air. “I have a standing order. You’d better get it memorized because I’m not going to put up with your incompetence every week.”
The computer hums, as if Tanner just booted up the terminal.
“You fool.” She’s an entire room’s length away, but I swear I can feel the drops of her spittle spraying my back. “My prescription’s not in the system. What about ‘privacy’ do you not understand? Hmm? How exactly did we hire you?”
She utters a long-suffering sigh. “You there! In the back. Help us out before your friend here loses his job.”
I turn a quarter of the way, showing as little of my face as possible. My heart’s returned to my chest, but it doesn’t do me any good, wheezing about like that. “Yes, Chairwoman?” I ask, my voice faint. “Tell me what you need, and I’ll be happy to get it for you.”
“The amber formula,” she snaps. Each syllable could slice glass. “Row D for Dresden. First rack, first tray. Because it’s me, these syringes are pre-filled. Give me a week’s worth. And if you can’t calculate that in your tiny brain, that’s seven needles.”
“Yes, ma’am.” Tucking my head down, I hurry to the proper row. Oh, fike. How did Tanner operate these racks? Holding my breath, I push the number one on the keypad, and the glass door slides open. Thank Fates. I take out the first tray and remove seven pre-filled syringes.
Now what? Do I just hand her the needles? Put them in some kind of container?
Luckily, Tanner is by my side with a glass rack. He arranges the amber-colored syringes inside with a deftness I wouldn’t have been able to improvise, and hands the rack to Dresden. All without her getting a good look at my face.
I retreat to the end of the dispensary, peeking at Dresden out of the corner of my eye.
She places the rack into a solid carrying case, obviously designed for this very purpose. “Listen. You’re new here, both of you, so it’s worth repeating the rules. Nobody knows I was here. Nobody knows what you gave me. One word to anyone, and your careers, your lives are over. Understand?”
“Yes, Chairwoman,” Tanner says.
She shifts her laser-sharp glance to me, and fear climbs up my throat like magma up a volcano. “Yes, Chairwoman.”
“Good.” She spins on her heels and stalks away.
For a moment, we don’t speak, breathing in the chilled air, giving our hearts a chance to settle down.
“What on earth was that about?” I finally ask. “Why all the secrecy? What were those needles?”
Tanner reads the label underneath the tray. “There’s no description here, just a code. If she’s injecting herself daily and renewing her order every week, she’s got to be treating something. Is Dresden sick?”
“I don’t know.” Even as I say the words, I remember how she walked into the transport tube in my bedroom. I thought it was funny at the time, but maybe she wasn’t just being clumsy. Maybe it has to do with this ailment.
Clearly, something’s going on with Dresden. Something that started ten years ago, in this time. What, I have no idea.
Chances are, however, it has nothing to do with our mission.
“We need to go.” I wrap my hand around the syringe in my pocket. “Before we’re too late.”
He nods. Moving quickly, we walk down the hallways, heading toward a room numbered 522, where my younger self and sister are waiting.
50
Déjà vu hits me the moment we turn onto the right corridor, and it’s no gentle stream. It’s an ocean wave crashing into my legs, almost knocking me down.
The same linoleum tile. The same stinging scent of alcohol. Those IV stands jumbled in the corner, that diamond niche cut into the wall. Even the third panel of lights in the ceiling blinks on and off.
Just like I remember. Just like yesterday.
My palms go slick with sweat. My heart beats in my throat like an extra tonsil. Every muscle in my body screams, Run!
This is where my darkest fears formed. Where I relived memories that weren’t mine. Where they shaped me into the person that I am, for better or for worse. Definitely worse.
Helpless. Worthless. Every “-less” that ever existed.
I sway, and Tanner wraps his arm around my waist, holding me up. Our eyes meet, and I don’t have to say a single word. He knows. Perhaps more than anyone else, he knows exactly what I’m feeling right now.
“They tried to…persuade you here?” he asks gently. Ha. That was their word for it. Persuasion. As if calling it by another name could disguise the torture they were actually performing.
“Yes.” The word is faint, so faint that it fades away into the silence, and I can’t be sure if I’ve actually said it.
“They tried to defeat you back then. But you won’t let them win now.”
It’s the exact right thing to say to bring me back to myself. I’m not six years old anymore. They don’t have control over me the way they used to.
“Okay. Let’s do this.” Squaring my shoulders, I push him into a relief room. “Ten years before our present, a few months before this time, the Underground strategically placed spiders all over the building, which gave them secret access through the air vents. That was how Logan broke Callie out of Limbo.”
“And how you broke into my lab.”
Fike. I hoped he wouldn’t remember. “Well, lucky for us, I have the location of every spider memorized. So my vandalism days were good for something.” I crouch by the toilet and try not to touch anything, even though the entire room is sanitized after every use. “See the panel behind the toilet? That’s our access point.”
He sighs. “Why do all my adventures with you involve crawling through sludge?”
“We won’t go near the sludge. I hope. I’ll go first.” I take a deep breath and crawl straight into a seemingly solid wall, emerging in an air duct on the other side.
I wriggle forward to make room for Tanner, who appears a few seconds later.
“You’re not claustrophobic, are you?” Fates, I should’ve asked earlier. They tortured him for six months. Who knows what other phobias those nightmare memories induced?