A Long, Long Sleep (6 page)

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Authors: Anna Sheehan

Tags: #Fantasy

BOOK: A Long, Long Sleep
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“Well . . .” Bren thought for a moment. “What if I were to get you transferred into my history class? We just finished the Dark Times. We’re starting now on the Reconstruction. It won’t make much sense if you don’t comm all the details of how bad it was, but it’s less . . . depressing than the Dark Times themselves.

Learning how we put the world back together again and all.”

I looked up at him. His eyes were completely earnest. “Could you do that?”

“Sure I could. I’ll ask my granddad. He can do anything in this school.”

“You’d really do that for me?”

“Of course.”

I couldn’t help it. I flung my arms around him and buried my nose in his neck.

He smelled of sandalwood soap. “Thank you!”

He held me briefly, then put me back. “Don’t mench,” he said. “It’s no big deal.”

“It is,” I said.

He shook his head. “No, this obviously really bothers you. It’s sky. I’ll see to it tonight.”

I hoped it really was sky. I couldn’t bear another dose of Apocalypse Then.

Knowing I might soon be able to transfer out of my history class had no bearing on my nightmares. They were even worse that night. I was walking through corridors, but they were corridors of human corpses, bloated and red and sickly, images of the horrors my history teacher had informed me about. This time, to my own horror, I knew what I was looking for. I was looking for something, or someone, in the walls, one of the thousands upon thousands of dead. And I wasn’t sure, when I found the corpse, if it would truly be dead, or wake up and try to . . . I didn’t know. It didn’t matter. Whatever it tried to do would be horrifying.

I thought at first that every face would be the face of Mom, of Dad, of Xavier, but it wasn’t the case. I made myself stare into the faces of the anguished, dripping corpses, and the smell was terrible, and I started to run through them, looking for somewhere to throw up, but there were only the halls of the dead. I knew Xavier was among them, and I knew I’d never find him.

This time when I woke up, I was crying. Zavier looked up from the foot of the bed and whimpered, his eyes worried. “It’s okay, Zavy,” I told him, patting him on the head. “Good dog.”

I took a deep breath and got up. Zavier groaned but followed docilely at my heels. It was always pointless trying to sleep again once the nightmares started. They always came back. I missed my stass dreams. They never turned dark.

I slipped out the door and across the hall to my studio. The fish tank cast a quiet glow throughout the room. I turned on the lamp above the drafting table and uncovered the chalk drawing I had started that evening. It was a sketch of Bren. I stared at Bren’s green chalk eyes and smiled. Xavier’s eyes had been green. Maybe that was what really drew me to Bren. Bren and Xavier didn’t otherwise look anything alike —from the shape of their eyes to the texture of their hair and the tint of their skin, everything was different. But those eyes of Bren’s reminded me of my Xavier.

I was busy drawing Bren a green shirt that matched his eyes when I heard the noise behind me. I assumed it was Patty or Barry, though I was a little surprised they’d even bothered to come in. It was strange, going from my parents, who scheduled my every move, watched my every action, prevented my every mistake, to Patty and Barry, who barely spoke to me unless I went to them first.

The footsteps behind me were slow and precise. I was about to turn around when a harsh, creaking male voice said, “You are Rosalinda Samantha Fitzroy.

Please turn around for retinal identi fication.”

There was no way that voice was Barry’s.

 

 

 

 

– chapter 7—

 

My hand slipped, marring Bren’s portrait. I whirled, startled, and spilled half a dozen squares of chalk. They shattered on the wooden floor.

The black- haired man who stood behind me seemed unreal. His skin shone in the light of my lamp as if he were made of glass. He stood as straight as a rod.

One hand held a strange circular device with little flashing lights on it. In the other he held a black stick with a red- and- yellow warning beacon on the tip.

He positively terrified me, but I managed to find my voice. “What do you want?”

The man’s head twitched, which did not move his hair at all. “Voice match confirmed,” he said. He looked Asian, but he spoke with a distinct German accent. He sounded monotone, as if he were uttering a prerecorded amalgamation of syllables rather than actual speech. “Please remain still for retinal identification.”

Zavier began to growl behind me. The shiny man had no reaction. Instead he stared into my face and said, “Retinal match confirmed. Target confirmed.”

At the sound of his voice, Zavier lunged, grabbing the man’s leg with a fearsome snarl. I shrieked. I expected the man to kick Zavier away, but he completely ignored the snarling Afghan.

“Rosalinda Samantha Fitzroy. My orders are to retain and return you to the principal. If return proves impossible, my orders are to terminate. Remain still.”

Terminate? I scrambled backward, painfully knocking my hip against the corner of my drafting table. He tried to come at me, but Zavier tore and snapped and snarled. I was surprised at the depth of Zavier’s training. I’d heard that Afghans could be rather meek. Zavier’s teeth had no effect on the man’s skin, but his trouser leg was torn to ribbons.

The man looked down at Zavier. “You are impeding my retrieval. Cease and desist, or you will be eliminated.”

“Zavier! Down!” I cried. But clearly my poor dog hadn’t yet gotten used to his new call name. It had no effect.

“You have been warned,” the man said, and touched Zavier with his stick.

Zavier yelped and stiffened, falling to the ground as lifeless as if he’d been stuffed. “You killed my dog!” I screamed, horri fied. At the sound of my voice, Zavier began to whine faintly, much to my relief, though he still seemed incapable of movement.

My attacker came at me, stepping casually over Zavier. The circular thing in his hand opened, so that it seemed ready to snap shut like a clam. Two nasty-looking electrodes protruded from the back end of it. Suddenly I recognized it.

That was a control collar. The collar disconnected the wearer’s lower brain functions and made all movement subservient to an external force, usually a computer. They were invented for use in medicine, physical rehabilitation, and certain procedures for which the patient’s compliance was imperative. If he got that thing around my neck, I would be forced to go with him, no question about it. So whatever I did, I had to avoid that collar.

My parents had been worried about kidnappers, so they had me drilled in self-defense. It had been a very real danger; they were powerful, highly visible people, and their daughter would have been a prime target. I had never been very good at it —no superhero rescues from me —but I’d picked up the basics.

Run, they’d told me. Fight. Make as much noise as possible. Do everything you can to keep from being put into their power. Once they have you, they can do anything they want with you.

So I ran. Or tried to. My drafting table caught on my waist. I lost my balance and fell, dropping most of my weight on the back end of my table. The table tilted upward, like a seesaw, flinging my entire box of chalks against the wall and knocking down the clock. The clock fell into my fish tank, sending up a streaming flash of water. I went down, cracking my head against my easel, collapsing it under my weight.

Half- dazed from the blow, I reached behind me, scrambling in a drawer. I hoped to come up with an X-Acto blade or a paint knife, but what met my hand was a huge tube of oil paint. It was a start.

I squeezed it at the man’s face, and a splurt of sticky green oil paint splatted into his eyes. He hesitated only a second, reorienting himself. To my horror, he seemed to have no reaction of pain, despite the fact that his open eyes were entirely covered. He didn’t even move to wipe it off. Who was this guy? Or what was he? He seemed entirely inhuman, and I was utterly out of my depth.

And also incredibly lucky. The oil paint mixed with the water on the floor, creating slippery patches of oil over water. Unhurt but blind, my attacker skidded in the oil slick as he reached for me with his stick weapon. He flipped backward and landed with a clatter onto the wooden floor.

I didn’t wait. I launched myself out the door and slammed it shut.

But now that I was out of the room, I didn’t know where to go. Why hadn’t Patty or Barry come running? What if he had killed them? I flung open the door to their bedroom.

Blackness. Their bed was empty. They must not have come home from the theater yet.

Leaving their bedroom door swinging, I fled down the hall, wishing Zavier was beside me. I didn’t know where to go or what to do. Why was that man after me? Where had he come from?

I opened the door to the condo and ran down the corridors toward the lift, fighting my stass fatigue. I wouldn’t be able to run much farther, but when I got to the lift, I balked. What if the shiny man wasn’t alone?

I backed away from the elevator and opened the door to the stairwell. Quietly.

There was no one waiting for me in the harshly lit cement utility stairs. As softly as I could, I crept down them, hoping my bare feet would make no noise.

In the end, I knew there was only one place I’d feel safe.

I crept to the subbasement and picked my way through the debris, the stored remnants of old tenants’ lives. I stubbed my toe on a wooden crate and nearly screamed when a dusty coat-rack lunged at me from the blackness and left a coat now forty years out of fashion grappling at my throat. I escaped these perils, found the old storeroom, and curled into my abandoned stass tube, shaking.

I had a brief thought of turning it on, letting the quiet waves of my colorful stass dreams take me from my nightmares, from the horror of my missing years, from whoever was hunting me. But fear of being captured while stassed kept me from pressing the activation switch. Instead, I curled quietly on the satin- of- silk cushions, wrapped in the dusty coat that I’d thought was attacking me.

The pervasive chill of underground seeped into my bones. I rubbed my cheek against the softness of the cushions and breathed in the perfume of stale stass chemicals. I think they affected me a bit. After the first few moments of shuddering terror, I drifted into semiconsciousness: not stasis itself but the beginning stages of it. What dragged me from my huddled stupor was my cell, beeping shrilly in the darkness. I pulled it from around my neck and pressed the receive button.

It was Patty. Her rigidly trimmed head appeared in a hologram before me, her mouth pursed in distaste. “Where are you?” she demanded. “Do you know what your wretched animal has done? You keep that creature in the pet garden when you go out, or so help me I’ll send it back to where it came from! I didn’t want the stupid thing!”

“What’s wrong with Zavier?”

“He’s a menace! He’s eaten half your green oil paint and completely trashed your studio. That’s my one comfort; at least it wasn’t my living room. You get over here and clean up before school, or contract or no I’ll find some punishment for you.”

“I’ll be right there,” I said, pressing the end button. I disentangled myself from the coat and headed to the lift. My fear had passed. At least the residual stass chemicals were still affecting my fear receptors. If they hadn’t been, I suspect I’d still be gibbering with terror in the basement.

When I got back, Patty was shouting at Zavier, who cowered under my drafting table. My studio was in ruins. Zavier actually must have been responsible for some of it. Dog prints and smudges circled the room, and the tube of paint I’d left on the ground had been chewed, leaving Zavier’s blond fur streaked with green. Water on the floor had mixed with the oily paint, making wavery green archipelagoes on my wood floor. Punctuating this were brightly dissolving sticks of chalk, which were going to be useless after this. Patty kept her fashionable shoes carefully out of the detritus. “There you are!” she said.

“Clean this up before school. And when you go out, take that wretched dog with you. Why on earth did you leave it shut in here?”

“Yes, Patty,” I said obediently. I opened my mouth to tell her about last night, but she was already gone. I wasn’t sure how I would have broached the subject, anyway.

After she left, I tried to coax Zavier out from under the drafting table. At first he wouldn’t come. When he saw that no one else was coming into the room, he gingerly heaved himself to his feet and crept over to me, whining. He was clearly in pain.

I pulled out my cell and pressed the button for the information drone. “I’m Hally, your information operator.” The hologram of the beautiful composite woman asked very politely what she could do for me today. I asked her for the names of local vet clinics.

Of the names the drone rattled off, one had the same name as Zavier’s grooming facility. I asked her to contact them, and within a few moments, the image of an exquisite receptionist appeared before me. “My dog is . . . hurt,” I said.

“Would you like to make an appointment?” she asked.

“I don’t know,” I said, flustered. “I don’t have a lot of time before school. I think he has a regular appointment with your groomers? His name is Freefoot’s Desert Roads.”

“Ah, yes.” The receptionist smiled, her eyes glancing at a screen I couldn’t see.

“Desert Roads is down here as a prestige patient. If you will drop him off on your way to school, we’ll do the rest.”

“What’s a prestige patient?” I asked.

“All of Desert Roads’s care has been prepaid and preap-proved. You just drop him off, and we’ll cell you when we know what’s wrong with him.”

“Thanks,” I said, and disconnected.

I didn’t have time to clean my studio and drop Zavier at the vet’s before school.

After fishing the wall clock out of the fish tank (which miraculously had not electrocuted any of my fish), I locked the door to the studio so that Patty couldn’t see the mess, threw on a uniform, and led Zavier to my limoskiff. I ordered the skiff to the groomers and crept into the back with Zavier.

He got green paint all over the skiff and my uniform, and I didn’t care. I hugged him around the neck. He groaned and whined, but he licked me tenderly.

When I dropped Zavier off at the vet’s, I told them about the paint, but I omitted the story of the shiny man and his weird stick. They reassured me that they’d check his system for toxins as well as give him a thorough grooming. I headed for school feeling a little better about Zavier. I had buried the memory of the shiny man firmly beneath the stass residue, and I wasn’t going to think about it for as long as I could manage.

Bren was waiting for me in the quad. “It’s all sky,” he said, grabbing my notescreen from my hand. I’d forgotten about my new schedule in the horror of last night and the troubles with Zavier. Bren touched my screen a few times and then handed it back to me, showing me my new schedule. “There you are: second period, history, Mr. Collier. We had to change your English class to the Romantics; hope you don’t mind.”

“No, that’s great,” I said. It actually solved two problems at once, as I’d been hard- pressed not to point out to my teacher that these so-called famous turn-of-the-century authors had been literary unknowns. I didn’t want to offend her.

School was only marginally better now that I didn’t have to dread my history class. But I was fortunate to be in class with Bren. He was a delight to watch, wildly animated in class, striking up debates with the other students, surprising the teacher with obscure facts he happened to have read someplace, drawing conclusions from seemingly disconnected details. He did everything I always wished I could do in school. Unfortunately I had never been intelligent enough to manage anything like it.

I really loved watching him. How his hands moved so deftly over his notescreen. True, he’d been using it since kindergarten, while I was new to the personal notescreen touchpads, but still, his long brown fingers seemed to perform a delightful ballet. I found myself wondering what it would feel like to have those fingers on me, touching my skin, holding me close.

I swallowed. No way. No way. That was not right. I didn’t feel that way about Bren. I couldn’t think that way about Bren. I loved Xavier. This weird thing I was feeling wasn’t love, wasn’t anything like what I felt for Xavier. But . . .

When Bren caught my eyes, I blushed and looked down at my screen. I couldn’t meet his eyes. I couldn’t think about him without strange fish swimming through my stomach. Oh, hell!

I left history class in a daze and actually got lost on my way to Chinese. The teacher didn’t scold me when I ducked in five minutes late. I began to suspect that Mr. Guillory had given instructions on that as well.

I couldn’t make heads or tails of the class. About twenty minutes in, my cell beeped, giving me an escape from the incomprehensible vocabulary review. I darted into the hall.

“Your dog seems to be all right, but he’s exhausted himself,” said the vet. “We checked for toxins, but the paint seems to be relatively benign. Did you take him for a long walk yesterday?”

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