Burn (20 page)

The apartment was the last door on the left. Lona knew where they were going as soon as they turned off the first landing. Here was the Weavers' apartment, which used to smell like garlic. Here was the Pydnowskis', which used to have a welcome mat laid out in front, a scratchy sisal one that Mrs. Pydnowski would get irritated about if anyone actually tried to use it to wipe their feet. Here was the Crofts' apartment. It used to say that, on the outside, in magnetic letters that Maggie had affixed to the door and let Zinedine arrange and play with. THE CROFTS.

The palms of Lona's hands felt damp and clammy. What if this was a trap? What if nothing was inside but an empty cell, barred windows, a waiting prison?

“Are you nervous?” Harm asked.

“No.”

“But you keep swallowing. That's a sign of nervousness. I read it.”

“Is it locked?” She rested her fingertips on the lever handle.
The last time I did this, I was too small to open it. I had to reach above my head to touch the handle
, she thought. And then:
I have never been here before. Those are Zinedine's memories
.

“It's only locked if you're on the inside,” he explained. She didn't let herself think about how once she walked through this door, she would be on the inside.

The woman was slight, an inch or two taller than Lona, and built boyishly, straight up and down. Her hair was still red, or strawberry blonde, with a single streak of white running from her temple back through the bun her hair was gathered in. She'd grown it out of her pixie cut.

Everything else looked the same. Her eyes were blue and bright. Her hands – Lona had seen her hands more than any other part of her body. She had seen them sifting through papers on a desk, and slashing at Warren with a pen. She had seen them pushing open doors, and carefully tapping the side of a syringe to remove air bubbles. Lona could be forgiven for thinking they belonged to a man – her mother's fingers had uneven fingernails and chapped knuckles. The hands of someone for whom work was more important than beauty.

That's how she knew. The hands were what made this woman someone she'd met before. Suddenly her chest ached, like something inside it was swollen and she didn't know whether to cry or laugh.

“Mo—” She couldn't finish the word. “Mom” tasted too strange in her mouth, too foreign. “Zinedine?” she tried again. “Are you Zinedine Croft?”

The woman sat on a single bed, covered in a pink comforter. The desk was white, the lamp had gingham frills around the edges. Except for the poster of Zinedine Zidane, her mother's namesake, it looked like the room of a very young girl. She was in her mother's childhood room. Through the window – though it had bars on it – she would have seen the courtyard where Daisy the German Shepherd chased a soccer ball through the grass.

It took Zinedine several seconds to look up at her. Her reflexes seemed slow. Or, if not slow, then out of practice. Like an athlete recuperating from an injury. Lona wondered if she was drugged.

“I'm Zinedine,” she said finally. She turned to look at Lona, and her eyes were cool and appraising. “But nobody calls me that anymore. Nobody has called me that for a long time.” She turned back away again, her eyes fixed on the soccer poster.

Lona waited for a glimmer of recognition. She had expected – she didn't even know what she had expected. She'd spent so long wondering if this moment was even possible – if her dreams were leading her someplace real or someplace crazy – that she'd never stopped to think about what it would feel like. She didn't know whether she would feel happy or nervous, she didn't know whether she would laugh or cry. She didn't know what expectations to have, or how to tell whether reality met them.

Zinedine moved again, lifting her right arm, and Lona instinctively moved toward her – to shake her hand? To be embraced? – before realizing Zinedine was just removing something from her pocket. A crayon – a slate-colored crayon, worn down to the nub, which Zinedine peeled at with her fingers to work it back into a point. Lona looked back over her shoulder. Harm was gone. Probably part of his experiment. Probably there were hidden cameras in this room, monitoring the mother and daughter reunion, looking to see if they remembered each other, if the shared memories had created some kind of psychic bond.

“Are you going to sit?” Zinedine asked.

There should have been tears
.

That's what was missing. Whatever emotions were felt in this odd reunion, there should have been
some
emotion. Her mother should have hugged her, or stroked her hair, or made a comment about her posture, the way the mother had on the college tour all those weeks ago. There should have been tears.

Her hands tightened into fists.
There should have been tears
. Why wasn't her mother looking at her? Why wasn't she searching Lona's face, the way Lona was searching hers, for similarities? There were some, a few, if she looked close. They had the same eyebrows. They had the same wrist bones, knobby and protruding. Why was her mother playing with a crayon instead of noticing those things?

She lowered herself onto the chair. A gingham-covered cushion that matched the lampshade covered the seat. “What have they called you, if they haven't called you Zinedine?” she finally asked through her teeth.

“Lots of things. I've been a lot of different people. And a lot of different blank slates in between.” She blew the wax particles off the crayon and tucked it back in her pocket, covetously, a prized possession.

“You've been different people? How? Have you – have you been on a different Path?” In spite of her annoyance, her curiosity was piqued. Is that something they had in common? If her mother had worked in the lab for the Julian Path then had she made a guinea pig of herself?

Zinedine looked over Lona's shoulder, toward the door.
I'm sorry for boring you
, Lona wanted to say.
I'm sorry that it's not as interesting for you to meet your daughter as you might have liked.

“A different path?” Her eyes finally drifted back to Lona's. “I've been on lots of different paths. For years. I've been lots of people's test tube lab rats. The months that I've been in here have been the first period of time in a long, long while that they've wanted me to be me. But you already know that, don't you?”

“Why would I know all that?
Why would I know all that
?” she repeated louder when it didn't look like Zinedine was going to answer her question.

“Is that redheaded boy coming back soon?” Zinedine asked instead. “We were talking before about something that I think was important. I think I was about to have a breakthrough.”

You weren't about to have a breakthrough. I had the breakthrough. I came here. I found you.
“Why would I know about all of the Paths you had been on?” she asked again. “I just met you.” Was there more that Zinedine was supposed to transmit to Lona? Was she supposed to have been dreaming about other people's lives as well? How many people was Lona supposed to be able to fit inside her own head?

“Aren't you with him?” Zinedine asked. For the first time, her eyes locked on Lona's; she seemed to actually be seeing her. “The redheaded boy – don't you work with him?”

Lona shook her head slowly back and forth. “I don't work with him. I just got here. I came to see you.”

“I'm sorry,” Zinedine apologized. She waved her hand in front of her face, and for a moment Lona saw a hint of Maggie. It was the kind of gesture Zinedine's mother would have made, though she would have intended it to be self-deprecating and Zinedine just looked like she couldn't be bothered. “I just assumed you did – you came in with him. Have we met before? My memory is full of holes. I assumed you worked with the redhaired boy.”

“I don't work with Harm. Like I said. I came to see you.”

She didn't want to be the one to say any of this. She wasn't the one who was good with words. That was Fenn. She was the one who was good at acting, not talking.

“Zinedine,” she said. “I'm your daughter.”

Now is when the tears would come. Now is when Zinedine would rise from the bed and wrap her arms around Lona, commenting on how tall she was, asking where she'd been, talking about how many nights she'd spent dreaming of this moment.

Zinedine looked at her again, shaking her head back and forth. “No,” she said, and while her voice wasn't unkind, it was firm. “No, I don't think I have a daughter.”

“Lona?”

She didn't know how long Harm had been standing in the doorway, or how much he'd witnessed, or if he noticed how much her mother's words had hurt.

“What, Harm?”

“Would you like to come on a tour? I thought I could show you around.”

Zinedine was listening; Lona could tell by the way her head was bowed low but tilted in their direction. “Are you going to show her what you showed me?” Her voice was sharp. “I don't think that's a good idea.”

“No. Something new,” Harm said. “Something that wasn't ready before.”

Lona didn't want a tour. She also didn't want to stay in the room with this disinterested woman who was supposed to be her mother but didn't even know who she was. The fact that Zinedine seemed to
not
want her to go is what made her decision.

“Fine. Take me on the tour.”

***

They walked back down the hallway in the direction they'd come from earlier. This time, Lona noticed changes she'd been too preoccupied to notice before: cracks and dust and dinginess that hadn't been in Zinedine's memories.

“The university was going to tear it down – it hadn't been used in a while,” Harm explained proudly. “We got to assume control.”

“That's nice.”

His smile deflated at her indifference; he didn't say anything else until they were almost to the stairwell. “How did it go?” he asked. “Was it what you expected?”

“No.”

“Isn't that what you warned everyone about living Off Path?” It took her a few beats to register what he was talking about. “Didn't you warn all the Pathers that nothing was going to turn out as they expected?”

Was that a warning? A threat? It was always so hard to tell what was behind Harm's words. When she'd lived with him at Julian's house six months ago, the only thing preventing her from being completely terrified of him was the sense that they were – as much as they could be – on the same side. Was that still true now?
No
, her inner voice told her, but she tried to ignore it.

When they reached the main landing, Harm kept going, down toward the basement laundry room. Except when he pushed open the door, it wasn't a laundry room anymore.

Breathe
, she told herself, but the air was caught in her lungs and wouldn't go down. The washing machines had been replaced. Instead there were pods. More advanced than the ones from the Julian Path – sleeker, rounder, fewer pointed edges. They were also bigger than any she'd ever seen, because the people in them were adults. Twenty of them, maybe – the room was dim and narrow but they were organized five a row.

She shrank back; her breath was coming out more quickly than it should and she couldn't control it; she was going to start hyperventilating. What if the trials Harm had talked about involved more pods, more monitors, more losing of her own identity? What if he was going to put her in there? She wouldn't – she would refuse. She would fight, she would—

“This isn't what I wanted to show you.” Harm's breath on her neck felt hot, and closer than she'd expected, but she felt relief at the words. “Follow me.”

She did, past the rows of pods and through a door into some kind of break room, with a laminate table and a soda machine. Harm passed through this room, too – the basement was more labyrinthine than she ever would have expected. Through the next door was a room that was nearly empty. The light in here was fluorescent; she squinted to adjust after the dim of the laundry area. A glass partition separated the entryway from the rest of the room. On the other side was just a clean white floor and, in the middle, a plain folding chair.

A woman sat on it. She was young, maybe just a few years older than Lona, her light brown hair pulled back tightly into a French braid, and she was wearing camouflage pants and heavy black boots, and a long-sleeved tan T-shirt. A chunky black thing – a heart rate monitor? – was strapped to her arm.

“What is this?” Lona asked.

“It's the first test,” Harm said. “It's the first test in the new phase.”

“What is the new phase?”

He raised his eyebrows in surprise. “The Julian Compact.” He raised one finger to his lips and then pointed to the girl in the chair.
Watch. It's starting
.

Anders appeared from the other door in the back. He carried a small, black case, and if he noticed Lona and Harm standing in the corner, he didn't acknowledge them. The case made a cloying, peeling sound as he unzipped it, and when Lona saw what he removed, she recoiled the way she had when she saw the rows and rows of pods. A syringe, filled with something clear, like the one she'd only seen in her dream.

Harm's eyes were glowing, just a little; he had almost imperceptibly leaned in closer to the scene in front of him. “Katie volunteered.”

The girl named Katie nodded at something Anders told her, then rolled her sleeve up past her elbow, baring a taut, sinewy bicep. She took the syringe from him and, biting her lip in concentration, slowly plunged it into her own flesh.

“That's smart,” Harm whispered. “If she feels like she's making it a part of her, instead of something being done to her.”

Lona couldn't peel her eyes away from the girl. Her eyes had fluttered closed.
Maybe it was just a sedative
, Lona told herself. Maybe it was just something to put Katie to sleep, maybe she would start to quietly snore, maybe she would be fine, just fine, maybe all of this was still a dream, maybe Lona was trapped in Zinedine's brain and she had never woken up.

Anders walked around the glass partition, standing next to Lona, watching the girl.

It wasn't a sedative. Katie's jaw clenched together, then dropped to her chest. Lona could see the veins popping in her neck, blue and pulsing with blood, and in her arms, too, as she clutched the sides of the chair with both hands.

“Help her,” Lona whispered. Beside her, Harm and Anders were silent. “Help her!” she said louder. She moved to do it herself – to hold the girl's hand, at least, or make sure she didn't hurt herself – when a claw clamped around her bicep. Anders grunted in irritation at her distraction. “Harm, why aren't you helping her?”

A sound was coming from between Katie's teeth – enamel grinding – and it was joined by another noise, a grunting, an animalistic sound coming from deep in the back of the girl's throat. Spittle dripped down her chin, and then the frothy mixture turned pink. She'd bitten something inside her mouth and now blood was dribbling out, and there was a coughing sound too, in her throat – a full, wet sound that it took Lona a second to place.

“She's choking.” She was hysterical now as she tried again to pull away. “She's not going to be able to breathe.”

“You can't, Lona,” Harm said softly. “She has to finish it.”

Finish it how? Finish it dead? Is that what was going to happen to this girl with the long French braid, the girl who now had sweat pouring from her forehead and quivering muscles? Lona forced her eyes to stay open, even while she wanted to squeeze them shut, to cover her ears. She would watch this to the end.

But then the end didn't come, not the bloody one Lona had feared. The horrible growling noise quieted and then stopped; her breathing went from a hiss to a shudder, and finally to a steady inhale. As the girl's eyes blinked open, Anders loosened his grip on Lona's arm, and she knew he'd left five perfect bruises. He jogged quickly over to Katie, producing a small pen light, which he shined into her pupils, and then pulling a tissue from his shirt pocket. He reached for the blood on her chin, but she took the tissue from him and did it herself.

I'm fine.
Lona still couldn't hear her well, but she thought she could make out some of the words on her lips.
I can do it.

Anders pulled out a notebook. “He's asking her some questions now,” Harm explained. “This is where we keep getting stuck. The experiences while people are in the Compact are as intense as they're supposed to be, but the memories aren't sticking. People come out of it and don't remember what they saw. Anders is seeing if she can tell him certain details from the Path.”

Anders stood up, looked toward Lona and Harm, and very deliberately drew one finger across his neck, shaking his head and frowning.

“It didn't work,” Harm said, his voice sinking. “She still doesn't remember.”

That's what the gesture had meant, but it looked like it meant something else too:
You are in trouble. I will make sure you pay.