A Latent Dark (47 page)

 “I hate being hungry too,” she said. “When I was at home we were hungry a lot. My mother—”

Lynn… your mother. I remember her.

Skyla peered into the dark places of her dream, but saw no one. “Why can’t I see you?”

You see me all the time Skyla. I am always around.

“And you know my mother?”

Oh yes… we worked together quite… intimately.

 “Why won’t you tell me about my mother?”

Because it would be better to show you. Would you like that?

“But you’re blind.”

You will be my eyes. Would you like to see your mother Skyla?

Skyla felt a twinge of excitement in her chest. “Yes! Of course I would like that!”

But you must do me a favor in return. You must find a way to free me before the others find out of our plans. If they find out, they will use my own power against me. But if you free me, and be my eyes, we can find your mother and your aunt.

“How can you show me if you are blind?”

My strength is limited with my bindings attached. But I do control a few things still, things they do not know about, things they would be very unhappy if they found out.

“What sorts of things?”

From somewhere in the room there was a click so loud it woke her up. She opened her eyes and for a moment thought she had the blindfold on, but she could feel it around her neck.

Darkness. She was amazed at how much she had missed it. The echo of the voice still rang in her mind.

Go now and learn of the prison we both share. Be my eyes.

*

Milton ate his sandwich as crumbs cascaded down his belly. He chewed, keeping one eye on his watch. It had been about five minutes now, the longest outage in a while. The door opened from behind him as Pall Ostermann stormed in, furious.

“What the hell are you doing?” he yelled form behind his glasses.

“I just—”

“Turn that light on right this instant!”

Milton spun in his chair and fingered the switch. The wall illuminated, showing the white on white cell room. Both men raised a hand to shield their eyes. The bed sat in the corner, a lump curled beneath the sheets.

“See?” Milton said, spitting out crumbs.

“See what? You did that on purpose!”

“It was an outage!” Crumbs flew from Milton’s mouth. “God, it’s not like she can walk through walls. Look it’s fine now.”

 “But you are
never
to turn the lights off.” He spun on his heel and muttered, “Idiot…” under his breath before slamming the door behind him.

“I didn’t turn them off,” Milton yelled after him. “It was the damned circuit again. I keep telling you!” But the slamming of the door cut him off.

Milton turned back around and looked through the glass. The girl was still there, hidden beneath the sheets, a white lump on a white bed. He never would have imagined just how still someone could look while they slept.

*

Skyla’s heart pounded in her chest as she hid around the corner. Ostermann had been fast, faster than she expected. No sooner than she slipped through the door she heard the distant buzz of alarms and footsteps. Whoever it was controlling the doors, she wished she could thank them. They were sure a lot nicer to her than Milton.

She had made it to the next room over, a closet, and managed to slip inside just as footsteps ran past. There was yelling as a door slammed. She heard Ostermann swear, then stomp back down the hall.

Skyla counted to a hundred and cracked the door open again. The hallway was brilliantly lit, but silent and empty. She looked up at the ceiling for more glass eyes but saw none. She stuck a tentative foot out the door as if checking the water in a pool. It was so quiet she could hear her own pulse in her ears.

She made her way down the hallway toward the doors that had been such a curiosity to her before. The twin doors appeared just around the corner with their tiny black nail holes and ornate brass handles. Skyla checked both directions, then reached out and grabbed the handle. It turned easily under her sweaty palm.

The room smelled of age and stale air, a tomb. Skyla stepped inside slowly, letting her eyes adjust to the darkness. She felt around blindly for a switch on the wall and pressed it. A dim amber lamp buzzed to life, flooding the room with warm light. Skyla blinked.

She stood in a bedroom that was something out of a fairy princess book. A lavish four-post bed sat against a wall, dusty but terribly inviting, its deep red comforter faded and lined with gold thread. Curtains hung from the posts, now interlaced with cobwebs. A richly decorated oak cabinet sat on one end of the room. Its feet were shaped like claws.

Skyla turned around in the room, taking in the richness of it all. She would never have dreamed of living in a room like this in a million years. It was the sort of room that Vicky or Dona would live in. Why then did they put her up in the white room where she could never sleep? Were they just that mean?

But the chained man, the one who opened the locks, he was nice.

She yawned. The bed seemed to call to her. She pressed the light switch and felt her way over to the mattress, crawling under the dusty covers. She had almost closed her eyes when she saw the girl standing at the opposite wall.

It wasn’t exactly a girl, but Skyla had a feeling it was at least the outline of a person, roughly as tall as her. It was invisible with the lights on, but now that it was dark she could see it clearly, a deep shadow against the patterned wallpaper. It seemed alive. She got out of bed to investigate.

The shadow seemed to shimmer as she approached it, then reached a hand out to touch. She was surprised to find her fingers passing through the wall as if it were made of air. Gasping, Skyla pulled her hand back. She looked at her fingers, counting them. She looked again at the silhouette on the wall, darker than the deepest shadows of the room.

She reached out again, slower this time. Something was beyond the silhouette, some
place
. It was like looking out through a girl-shaped window into another world. Her fingertips passed through the wall.

Light flooded the room. A sudden pain shot up her arm as the door flew open. Huge black guards stormed through, blinding her with lights mounted on rifles.

Skyla screamed, but not from fright. The fingertip of her middle finger, just beyond the cuticle was gone, cleaved as if chopped with an axe. Blood poured from the wound, staining the wall as the guards surrounded her, flooding her with brilliant light. She clutched her hand, wailing as they pushed her stumbling out of the room.

Hands grabbed her shoulders and she howled in fear and pain. A woman’s voice said her name. She yelled louder, eyes squeezed shut. A hand pried her fingers away from her wound. Soft cloth covered it. Pressure. The pressure felt so good.

Skyla opened her eyes. Stintwell was kneeling in front of her, a worried expression on her face. She held gauze over Skyla’s severed finger, a deep red circle forming there.

“Does that feel better?” she asked.

Skyla looked around. Massive armored figures stood around them, relaxed but attentive. She stared at the men with wide, terrified eyes.

“Thank you,” Stintwell said to the guards.

“You need any help with her?” asked one guard.

“No,” said Laura. “I think we can find our way back to the room on our own.”

Skyla’s finger throbbed. She had stopped crying now, but the pain and shock were intense. Laura waited with her as the guards left. Pall Ostermann stood there, arms crossed. He looked sternly at Laura.

“This is the sort of thing I was afraid of—”

“Not
now
Pall!” Laura snapped at him.

Pall stepped backwards and flushed. He gave her a petty, loathsome glare. “We’ll talk more about this when the Cleric arrives in a few days.”

“Shut up Pall,” Laura said, tending to Skyla’s finger. “And he isn’t a Cleric anymore.”

“Maybe not,” he said. “But he knows a thing or two about what happened when Jacobes got too close—”

“Pall! Not now.” She burned him down with her gaze.

Ostermann grumbled, but said no more. He turned and stormed off, leaving the two of them alone.

“I have something for this in my office,” she said softly. “Are you okay to walk?”

Skyla nodded, sniffing. “It’s my hand, not my legs.”

Laura smiled and led Skyla past a hidden door, now open, where an embarrassed Milton stood. Ostermann was there too, yelling at Milton. Both of their eyes followed the woman and child as they traveled down the hallway and around the corner.

Laura’s office was interesting enough to distract Skyla from the pain in her hand. A wide desk dominated the center of the room. Stacks of books, papers, brass gadgets, and photos piled on the table and floor, where they competed with the desk for height. A small canvas cot sat in a corner of the room, its blanket unmade, its pillow a dented parody.

I have a better room than she does
, thought Skyla.

Laura sat Skyla in a chair and then rummaged in a cluttered shelf for something. She came back with a small wooden box and opened it, pulling out a tube.

“When I was your age,” she said, “I was very accident prone.”

She opened the tube, removed the gauze from Skyla’s finger and inhaled sharply. The finger was severed across the nail as if it were a dissection behind glass. She could even see where the bone had been cut through.

“How…” she caught her breath. “My God, Skyla, how did you do this?”

“I cut it,” Skyla said. Her lips quivered as if there was more she wasn’t willing to tell.

“Boy, you sure did,” said Laura. She squeezed the tube until a generous dab of green goo oozed from the tip. “This may sting.”

Skyla grimaced as she dabbed the tube on the wound, turning it a sick gray in contact with the blood. She covered it again with the gauze.

“So anyway… where was I?” she said, trying to get the wound out of her mind.

“Your mother used to put this on your cuts,” Skyla said. She was looking past Laura, as if watching a movie on the wall behind her. “You always hated it when you were little, but she told you that it was the best thing since sliced bread. When you got accepted to the Tinkerer Academy, you brought some with you—mostly because your mother insisted.”

Laura felt the fine hairs on her neck stand on end. She stared at the girl as she spoke, reading her life back to her. Skyla’s pupils had grown huge, too huge. It was almost as if they had outgrown the irises, intruding on the whites now.

“When you met Michael he had cut himself with a drill in one of the labs. It was pretty ugly—you never liked the sight of blood, and you hate Physicians—but you pulled him into your dorm room and did for him what you just did for me. Then you kissed him.”

A lump formed in her throat as Laura saw the scene in her mind now. How was this happening? Is this why they brought Skyla here? Is this why the machine had such an affinity to her?

“It’s too bad he died,” Skyla said. Laura gasped.

Skyla blinked, her eyes normal again. She looked at Laura for a moment as if she didn’t recognize her. When the realization hit her, Skyla raised a hand to her mouth.