Eli shakes his head. “Nothing. Never mind. I can help her, but not here. She needs to come with me.”
Gavin raises the gun and aims it at Eli. “I’m not sure if you’re hard of hearing or just dumb, but she’s. Not. Going. With you. Whatever you need to do, you can do it here.”
Eli shakes his head. “You don’t understand. What needs to be done is … quite complicated. I can’t do it here. Believe me, if I could, I would. It’s going to be hard enough as it is.” He looks at me. “I promise you I won’t let anything happen to you. I can help you, but you have to come with me.”
Gavin is about to say something, but I know it’s another argument, so I start talking before he can. “The nanos? Are they what’s making me forget everything?”
Eli hesitates, then nods. “Yes.”
Gavin and Asher look between Eli and me as I say, “And will I get my memories back if you fix them?”
Eli at first doesn’t respond, but then he starts firing questions at me. “Have you been able to recall anything at all?”
“I-I don’t know. I’m not sure.”
“How about any dreams that seem more real than usual?”
I share a glance with Gavin and nod. “Y-Yes.”
Eli makes a hmm-ing noise. “How about hallucinations? Sleepwalking? Sleeptalking? Fugue states?”
I nod quickly, getting more excited with every question. “Yes! Yes, I have. All of those.”
“That’s the major reason we’re here, actually. She’s almost killed herself a couple of times with sleepwalking and the fugue states,” Gavin interjects.
Eli’s eyes widen. “Please explain.”
Gavin tells him the story of me walking into his weapons room and then of me almost drowning myself, while Asher explains about my hallucination in the Outlands.
Eli tilts his head back and forth, obviously considering all of the information. “Yes,” he finally says. “The memories are still there, they’re just blocked. It’s part of their programming for Enforcers. We’ve never tried to get memories back, but I think I can.”
He doesn’t seem confident, but I’ve heard all I need to hear. He can help. Probably. Before I can respond, Gavin asks, “How are you going to get her memories back if you’ve never done it before?”
“Well, we’re going to have to reset the nanites.”
“And how are you going to do that?”
Eli shakes his head. “We don’t have time for explanations right now. It’s not safe here. I’ll explain everything when we get somewhere secure.”
“Then let’s go.” I push past Gavin and Asher.
They grab at my arms, each saying something to try to make me change my mind, but they speak over each other and I can’t understand.
Besides, I don’t want to hear it. Eli says he thinks he can fix my memories. That’s good enough for me. I pull away and step closer to Eli before looking over my shoulder. “I’m going. You can come along if that will make you feel better, or you can wait here with the goo.”
Then I turn back around and start walking toward the Tube station again.
Eli laughs as they run to catch up after a long pause. “Still the same Evelyn, I see. Good. We’ll need that spunk.” Then he steps in front of me, leading the way.
Gavin
I don’t know what to do. I can’t say I’m surprised Evie made us follow Eli, but nothing good is going to come of this. I’m certain of that. I can sense Asher’s unease as he walks behind me, and serves him right. He’s the one who brought us down here. My only comfort is that even if Evie doesn’t remember Father, I remember the way she’d talked about him and how he’d helped her stand up to Mother in the past. If anyone can help her now, it’s probably him.
Of course, that doesn’t mean I completely trust him.
“The train itself is out of service,” Eli explains as we quickly walk through the Tube. “Due in part to a mysterious malfunction that ended up causing the entire tunnel to flood, killing six people.” He gives me a knowing look.
I clear my throat. “And the other part?”
His look doesn’t change, but it darkens. “I’m sure I don’t have to say, but it has something to do with some … failed experiments, and that marvelous substance you were trapped with.”
Asher dances in front of Eli, walking backward to face him. “What was that stuff, anyway?”
Eli shrugs and shakes his head. “We don’t know yet. We’re still studying it. It’s been a bit of a challenge. It resists all our attempts to gather it by somehow mutating anything that touches it into its matrix.”
“And that doesn’t bother you?” I ask, shuddering as I think how close Asher came to “being mutated into its matrix.”
“Of course it does. We’ve had to quarantine Sector Three.” He passes by Asher, shutting down any further questions, while the three of us exchange a look behind his back. Just another reason on the long list of them: murderous experiments, entire floors flooded with seawater, green mutating goo—to get the hell out of here as soon as possible.
When we enter the Tube tunnel, dread hunches my shoulders. I expect the sound of rushing water and the icy chill of the ocean to pour over my head. Mother’d tried to drown Evie and me—not to mention the family that had been unlucky enough to have been in the train with us—the last time. There’s no evidence of any of that now. It doesn’t surprise me that the train—and bodies—are gone. Mother strikes me as nothing if not efficient. Even so, I’m glad Evie doesn’t remember any of it. She doesn’t need any more anguish right now. It’s funny to see her gaping around at the water that surrounds us and the lava flows below us that turn the water orange. She’s the one who grew up here.
Asher is doing the same and I have to wonder if that’s what I looked like when I first came. I hope I didn’t look as stupid as he does, with his mouth hanging wide open. I can’t imagine I did. Evie wouldn’t have tolerated it.
Then again … I chuckle to myself as Eli barks at Asher to stop gawking and keep up. That sounds exactly like what Evie had said to me.
The tunnel slopes upward and for the first hundred or so feet, everything seems to be okay. But then Evie stumbles.
I rush to help her up, but she says, “I’m fine. Just a bit tired.” Her voice is all breathy and her tone confused. She had another hallucination. I know it. I can see it in the way her eyes aren’t completely focused.
Eli looks over her head at me with worried eyes. He turns his attention back to her. “We can rest if you need to, but we really need to get you somewhere safe as soon as possible. You’ll probably experience more and more of your … hallucinations the further we go. Especially back in Sector Two. The more familiar surroundings are likely to act as triggers, and we can’t risk you doing something to endanger yourself.”
I know what he didn’t say, “and us.” Then something he said clicks in my head.
“Wait. If she’ll get her memories back just by being here, why do you even need to do anything?”
“I didn’t say she’d get her memories back by being here. I said here might trigger more hallucinations. And the hallucinations, as you well know, are dangerous. She’s been lucky—mostly because of you—up until now, but there’s no guarantee that she’ll stay lucky. Without my intervention, she could end up injured or worse.” He gives me a steady look until he’s satisfied I understand what he means, then he turns back to Evie. “Again, we can stop if you need to rest, just let me know.”
She must see how worried he is, because she shakes her head. “I’m fine. Let’s just keep going.”
We do, but after another couple hundred feet, she stumbles again. When I reach for her this time, she just leans against me. Her body is shaking, and even through that I can feel her chest heaving with each breath she takes. Whatever she’s seeing, it terrifies her.