The Body Electric - Special Edition (21 page)

thirty-six

I wake with a jerk and throw back the sonic hood. My chest is heaving, and my heart is racing. My eyes are wide, looking at nothing.

I have to consider the very real possibility that I am literally going insane.

I curl up onto my side, drawing my knees to my chest, painfully pressing them against the mechanics of the reverie chair. It’s getting worse. Longer hallucinations, more vivid horrors. More uncontrollable.
Like a storm, a cyclone
. Maybe it wasn’t Representative Belles’s mind that was so chaotic and violent. Maybe
I
was the one who was tainting
his
mind.

What happens when I lose control? What happens when I can’t pull the storms back, when I can’t escape the nightmare?

I stare down at the reverie chair in horror. What if I get stuck in a reverie? I cannot imagine a more perfect hell than being trapped inside my own mind.

“I’m so glad your experience this time was peaceful and calming!” Ms. White’s voice trills through the secondary chamber room. I freeze. I’d been so anxious to just
get out
that I forgot how important this session was.

Representative Belles’s answer is too low for me to make out, but he seems fairly positive about the reverie. I turn on the video feed and see Ms. White is scheduling more appointments for him. I’m seized with anxiety—more appointments means more times for me to go into his reverie, which means more chances for me to get stuck in my nightmares. My skin crawls with the feeling of imaginary bees roiling over my body.

I’m still in the reverie chamber when Ms. White slides open the door. “Ella!” she exclaims. “Oh, you darling girl! What did you discover?”

I dodge the question. “Did Belles have a good reverie?”

Ms. White’s smile falters. “Is there a reason why he shouldn’t have?”

“I had trouble getting into his mind,” I say.

Ms. White sits down heavily beside me. “Nothing unusual on the scans,” she says. “I did notice that during the reverie, the representative moved his hands a lot, like he was trying to swat away bugs.”

Or bees
, I think.

“He was outside with his grandfather in the dreamscape,” I say. “There were bugs there.”

And a hundred million bees.

“Did you discover anything useful?” Ms. White asks. “I think the grandfather reveries are coming from his thoughts on family—understandable, given the circumstances.”

Understandable—but he had a reverie about his grandfather
before
his family was attacked. Were they threatened prior to the android explosion?

“Ms. White?” I ask, searching her eyes. “Are you… are you worried?”

“Worried?”

“That what we’re doing… is it right?”

Ms. White sits down slowly. “I… I’m not sure,” she confesses. “I want to protect our nation, our family, to make sure the Secessionary War never happens again, but…”

But.

She rubs her arm, her cyborg arm, replaced after she lost it in the war. “It was terrible,” she says, her gaze dropping from mine. “The war. I didn’t even see any battles, not really, but I was there when Valetta was bombed, I saw the city sink into the sea.” Her voice cracks, and I see unshed tears in her eyes. “Yes—yes, this is worth it. If we can ensure that a war like that never happens again…”

I bite my lip. “I’m not sure. Maybe some wars are worth fighting.”

Ms. White drops her hand to my knee. “These are the terrorists that killed your father, Ella,” she says. “What greater war could there be but to fight them?”

I nod, but I don’t meet her eyes again. This feels wrong. Jack didn’t seem like a terrorist, and I don’t think he was involved in Dad’s murder.

“Anyway, the reverie,” Ms. White adds, “Remember, reveries can often be symbolic, like dreams. If he had a pressing thought about something, it should show up in the reverie.”

I stare at her blankly. I feel so
drained
. “The reverie started with a storm,” I say.

“A storm?”

I nod. “A cyclone. But seeing as only blood fell from the skies, I’m pretty sure that was linked to how his wife and daughter were killed yesterday.”

“Oh, Ella,” Ms. White says, wrapping her arms around me. “How horrible.” Her cyborg arm squeezes me even tighter, pressing me close to her.

I push her away. I don’t want to be touched. I don’t want to think about the cyclone, the bees, my father. Ms. White looks a little hurt when I distance myself from her, and I feel immediately guilty. Ms. White is here only to help my mom and, after she discovered what I could do, to help the government. It’s not her fault that I’m now starting to question everything, including the government she works for. That
I
work for, I remind myself.

At least for now.

Tonight
, I remind myself. I’ll get answers tonight, when I break into Jack’s mind. My skin tingles, and I remember the sensation of a thousand bees stinging and eating me from the inside out. And suddenly I’m terrified. Maybe I’ve lost whatever skill I had in entering other people’s dreamscapes. Maybe if I go into Jack’s mind, I’ll never be able to leave. I’ll be swallowed alive by the bees.

I will—as Dad said—go mad.

I bite my lip.
Dad
didn’t say anything. It was all a hallucination—including him.

Maybe I’m already crazy.

thirty-seven

I’m usually a bit of a night owl, but I start drinking coffee at ten. I don’t want to slip up in front of Jack because I’m sleepy. By the time midnight rolls around, I’m a jittery bundle of nerves.

I shouldn’t do this. I shouldn’t let a member of the Zunzana into my home, where Mom is, where Reverie is. I should punch in the panic code of my cuff the second I see his face.

I should.

Instead, I climb the short ladder at the end of the hall that leads to the rooftop garden. Mom used to love it here, and filled the terrace with peppers and tomatoes, beans and peas, with climbing yellow roses and sprigs of forget-me-nots tucked into the corners. The garden now isn’t as flourishing as before Mom got sick, but there’s still a few signs of life.

The bench by the water basin is usually cluttered with a dirty trowel, a few buckets, and a basket I use to collect the vegetables in. Right now, it’s full of Jack. Even though I was expecting him, it feels strange to see him here, this person I associate with terrorism, sitting in the garden on my roof.

A fat bug flies by my ear and I swat it away violently, jumping from the sound. It was nothing more than a beetle, but my heart’s racing.

Bees. Bees, everywhere. Crawling under my skin, chewing through my flesh.

I repress a shudder. “Let’s get this over with,” I say.

Jack stands up. “So… all it’s going to take is me having a reverie, and you’ll believe me again?”

Something like that. “Yeah,” I say.

Jack claps his hands as if he’s just finished building something and is proud of his accomplishment. “Fine! The sooner you start trusting me again, the easier this will be. Although, honestly, I have no idea how you can
not
trust me. I mean, look at me.” He juts his chin out, grinning. “I’ve got a very trust-worthy face, don’t I?”

“Remember that time I punched you in front of my father’s grave?” I ask in a sentimental voice.

“Ye-es,” Jack says warily.

“You looked good with a split lip.”

“Shame it healed. Made me look a bit dangerous, yeah?”

“I can give you another one if you like.”

Jack throws his hands up. “Oh, no, I couldn’t bear to inconvenience you so.”

“It would be my pleasure.”

Jack barks in laughter as we reach the ladder. “Be quiet,” I order.

He raises his eyebrow. “Don’t want anyone to see you sneaking around with such a handsome devil?”

“I don’t want to wake my mom.”

To his credit, Jack sobers immediately. He is silent as he follows me down the ladder. We creep past Mom’s room, through the apartment. The only time Jack shows any reaction at all is when he sees the gaping hole where our interface room once was—the burned-out remains now covered with a tarp.

Jack opens his mouth, but no sound comes out. He just stares at the destruction, until I pull his arm and tug him to the door and then the lift that leads down to the reverie floor of the mental spa.

“So, this reverie…,” he says, a nervous catch to his voice as the lift doors slide open.

“Reveries are easy,” I respond. “As easy as falling asleep.”

“Oh, I know,” Jack says. “I had one before.”

I stare at him incredulously.

“The military has something similar, I mean,” he elaborates.

“No way, this stuff was invented by Mom; she hasn’t sold her formula.”

Jack shrugs. “They had relaxation chambers, for after intense training or skirmishes.”

“This is much different,” I say as we reach the basement floor of the building. “Okay, so, reveries are basically dreaming about memories. I’ll need you to focus your thoughts on memories of me. We have monitors that can indicate whether you’re dreaming about something that really happened or whether you’re making it up.”

“I could always
tell
you I’m dreaming about when I met you, but really dream about something else. Then you won’t know if my dream is real or not.”

I grin at him evilly, opening the door to the reverie chamber. “Oh, I’ll know.”

Jack jumps into the sensory chair as if it were a lounger and holds out his arm for the electrodes. He doesn’t have a proper cuff, so it complicates the reverie process, but it’s not impossible.

I lower the sonic hood over Jack’s head and give him a puff of the bright green reverie drug. As he drifts off, I slip silently out of the sensory chamber and into the control room. I bring up his brain scans, and set up the monitor that shows brain activity to record. I want to know if the memories I’m about to spy on come from truth or imagination.

When I get to the secondary chamber, I work quickly, hooking myself up to the machinery and dosing myself with more reverie drug. It doesn’t matter that I had four cups of coffee—as soon as the green drug hits my system, I’m out.

I’m overwhelmed by the sights-smells-sounds of everything in New Venice. The lights are brighter, the air drips with the smells of pastizzi and honey rings, the blasting horns and sirens are so jarring that I clap my hands over my ears. I cannot think in this cacophony.

In the center of the pandemonium is Reverie—but not quite the Reverie I know. The leaping neon sheep is bigger and shinier, the flashing slogan blinks erratically.

This is Jack’s memory, and to him, New Venice was a swirling mass of chaotic sights and sounds. I wonder how long he’s been in the city at the time of this memory. I wonder if he still thinks New Venice is like this. To me, the city is as comfortable as my apartment.

Jack starts to enter the Reverie Mental Spa, but he hesitates. He seems scared. He pauses by the window, nervously running his fingers through his hair, trying to smooth it down. He’s wearing a wrinkled suit and recently polished shoes. He tries to adjust his tie in the shiny surface of Reverie’s window.

And then—

I walk toward him.

Me.

It’s not me—it’s a memory of me. The memory-me is more perfect than the real me. She’s more of what I wished I looked like than what I really do look like. The memory-me is wearing a black tank top and jeans, sneakers, and my fortune-cookie locket. My hair is in a messy ponytail. I think I’ve been doing yoga in Central Gardens—I used to do that, before Mom got worse. Memory-me is pre-occupied with her cuff, flicking through messages.

I watch, unable to take my eyes off the me of Jack’s memory.

And then Jack looks up from the window, where he’d been fixing his tie, and he sees me.

The entire city disappears.

The dreamscape is gray and empty—not barren, just vacuous. At one moment, the city was there, overbearingly present, and the next second, it’s gone.

It happens so suddenly that I’m left gasping.

It was true then. Jack really did meet me before. And when he saw me for the first time, everything else in his world faded away.

thirty-eight