The Retribution of Mara Dyer (3 page)

Wayne moved over to the left, pressing a spot on the mirrored wall with his thumb. Numbers appeared in the glass. Fancy.

“Seventy degrees.”

Kells pressed the back of her hand to my forehead. “She’s hot. And sweating.” She wiped her hand on the blanket.

“Is that . . . normal?”

“It’s atypical,” Kells said. “She hasn’t reacted this way to any of the previous tests.”

Previous tests? How many had there been?

Kells withdrew a penlight from her pocket and said to me, “Don’t squint.”

I didn’t squint. She shined the light into my eyes; I wanted to close them but couldn’t.

“Her pupils are dilated. I don’t understand. The procedure’s over.” Her voice wavered just slightly. “Wayne, the Amylethe, please?”

He withdrew something from the black case. Another needle. But he must have been sweating too, because he fumbled with it. It fell to the floor and rolled.

“Christ,” Kells muttered under her breath.

“Sorry, sorry.” He reached for a new syringe but stopped when the monitor by the bed beeped.

Kells looked over at it. “Her blood pressure’s falling. She’s having some kind of reaction. Could you be any slower?”

I’d never heard her sound anything less than completely composed. But looking at her now, her body was tense. The tendons in her neck were corded. I was probably imagining it, but I could practically smell her fear.

She was terrified. Of me? For me? I didn’t know, but I liked it.

Wayne clenched his jaw shut and unscrewed the cap on
the syringe. He reached for my arm and stabbed my shoulder with the needle.

My vision swam, and my head went thick. “Take her to the examination room,” was the last thing I heard before I blacked out.

4

BEFORE

India, Unknown Province

T
HE DAY AUNTIE DIED, OUR
neighbors watched warily as we walked from the village bearing her body. The air was as dead as she was; the river sickness had taken her just days after Uncle had brought me home. Auntie had been the only reason they’d tolerated him, in his different clothes, always blue, with his different words and different looks. She’d been special, Uncle had told me. When she would assist at a birth, the baby would rush out of its mother’s womb to meet her. Without her we were unprotected. I did not understand what he meant until he died.

Word of us spread from village to village. Wherever we went, plague and death had already struck, and we followed
in its wake. Uncle did his best for the people, sharing remedies, making poultices, but whispers followed in our footsteps.
Mara,
they called us. Demons.

One night Uncle roused us from sleep and told me and Sister to leave at once. We must not ask questions, just obey. We crept from our hut in darkness, and once we set foot in the jungle, we heard his scream.

A column of smoke rose in the air, carrying his cries with it. I wanted to go to him, to fix it, but Sister said that we’d promised not to, that we would suffer the same fate if we did. I had taken nothing but my doll. I would never leave it behind.

My long, tangled hair stuck to my neck and shoulders in the damp nighttime heat as Uncle’s screams were replaced with the sounds of the forest, rising with the moon. We did not sleep that night, and as the sun broke through the clouds and hunger gripped my belly, I thought we would have to beg for bread, like the orphans. But we did not. Sister spoke to the trees, and they gave up their fruit for her. The ground gave up its water. The earth nourished us, sustained us, until we reached the city.

Sister took me straight to the tallest building at the port to see the man with glasses. He called himself Mr. Barbary, and Sister walked straight toward him. We were dirty and tired and looked very much like we did not belong.

“Yes?” he said when we stood before his desk. “What is it you want?”

Sister told him who she was, who her father had been. He saw us with new eyes.

“I did not recognize her. She has grown.”

“Yes,” I said. “I have.”

I had never spoken to him before, or anyone except Sister and Uncle. I had never needed to. But I knew why we were here, and I wanted to impress him.

It worked. His eyes grew wide, and his smile spread beneath the funny bow of hair above his lip. “Why, she talks!”

I could do more than that.

He asked me questions about what had happened to us, and about other things too—what I had learned since I had last seen him, what talents I had developed, whether I had fallen ill. Then he measured how much I’d grown. After, he gave Sister a pouch, and she bowed her head in gratitude.

“I must inform her benefactor of your change in circumstances, you understand,” he explained.

Sister nodded, but her face was a mask. “I understand. But her education has not yet been completed. Please inform him that I will take over for my father, if I am allowed.”

Mr. Barbary nodded and then excused us, and Sister led me out of the building by my hand. I wondered at how she knew the city so well. She had never come with Uncle and me before.

Sister paid a man to find us lodging, and then she bought us clothes, fine clothes, the sort Uncle used to wear. She
purchased a meal for us to eat in our room.

It was like nothing I had ever seen, with tall beds carved from trees that were dressed in linens as soft as feathers. Sister washed me and dressed me, and then we ate.

“We will leave after dark,” she said, scooping up fragrant yellow rice with her bread.

As my belly filled, I began to feel pleasant and drowsy. “Why not stay?” The room was solid, empty of dust and drafts, and the beds looked so clean. I longed to bury myself in one.

“It is better to go unnoticed for as long as we can, until we find a new home.”

I did not argue. I trusted Sister. She had taken care of me when I was little, as she would take care of me until she died.

It happened long after Uncle had been killed, though I don’t know how long. Time held no meaning for me—it was marked only by my visits to Mr. Barbary for inspection. Uncle kept no calendars, and neither did Sister. I did not even know my age. We moved along the outskirts of villages like ghosts, until we were driven even from the fringes. Then we moved to the next.

“Why must we keep moving?” I asked her as we walked. “Why won’t they let us stay?”

It was envy, Sister said. The people we lived among were not gifted like us. They were as ordinary as blades of grass, but we were like flowers, beautiful and rare. They suspected our differences and hated us for it. So we had to pretend to
be what we were not, so we would not be harmed for what we were.

But they harmed us anyway. No matter how hard we tried to remain unseen, someone would always recognize or suspect us. On our third day in the most recent village, they took Sister as night fell, the way they’d taken Uncle. The way they tried to take me.

Arms pinched my flesh and I was grabbed from my mat. Sister was screaming, begging them not to hurt me, swearing to our innocence, our harmlessness, but before I was even properly awake, her words were cut short. A man had smashed a rock into her head. Just once, but it had been enough.

I went slack in the arms of my captor as the same man raised the rock again to hit me with it. I wanted him to die.

His body shuddered, and something ripped inside him, sending a torrent of blood from his nose. He dropped his rock and moaned, backing away from me.

The others backed away as well. I did not speak to them. I did not scream at them. I looked at Sister, her mouth slack, her body limp, her hair glistening with blood, and I wanted.

I wanted them to feel as she felt. I wanted them to never see another sunrise, since she would not either.

I sat beside her, cradling her crushed skull in my lap. The others formed a wide circle around us. Then someone threw a stone.

It missed me. And struck someone else.

Shouts erupted, and the air filled with fear. The village emptied that night as the men—the murderers—fled, taking their women and children with them.

I saw tools but ignored them. I began to scoop dirt with my hands, and buried Sister when I finished digging her shallow grave, right where she had fallen. I slept there until the following day. Even the insects did not disturb me. When I woke, I began walking to Calcutta alone. I passed the scattered bodies of the villagers on my way. The skin above their lips was smeared with blood, but the flies did not touch them. They did not dare.

I avoided people. I bathed in my bloody, simple shift. The forest would not give up its gifts for me, so I skirted villages and stole from them to eat. I was ignorant of everything but my loneliness. I missed Sister, and Uncle, too, in my way. But they were gone now, and all I had left of them and my life with them was ash and dust and the doll Sister had made me, and the words Uncle had given me, taught me, so that I could speak with my benefactor in England someday.

Someday had arrived.

I walked to the port, to Mr. Barbary, unaccompanied for the first time in memory. He took in my stained clothes and my matted hair. I looked like a wild thing, but I spoke as cleanly and crisply as he did, and in his own tongue at that. I told him my education was complete. He sent me to an inn nearby, and would fetch me when my passage to England had been arranged, he said.

I bathed in clean water that night, and scrubbed my body with milled, formed soap, a luxury I had learned of but not experienced. I marveled at the foam on my skin, the lather in my hair, and when I was finished, I climbed into bed naked, and let the air dry my body. I felt as though I had shed my skin like a snake, and this new skin would carry me to my new life.

The next day Mr. Barbary appeared at the door to inform me that my benefactor had died the previous week, but not to worry as he had provided for me in the event of his death. His widow had been informed of my existence and had agreed to take me in, as he would have someday. Mr. Barbary had booked my passage on the first available ship. It would leave the following week, and I was to entertain myself until then.

And I did. He left me a purse with my own coins, and I bought new clothes and food I did not have to prepare. My body softened after a week in the city, after stuffing myself whenever I wanted with glistening, steaming sweet and spicy foods.

The night before I was to leave, I laid my new things in my new small trunk with great care. I took out my doll from beneath my pillow, where I hid her during the day. I ran my fingers over her seams, touched the spot of Sister’s blood that marked her wrist, and wondered what shape my new life without Sister would take.

“Why does the white man pay for me?” I had once asked Uncle, after a trip to Calcutta for my inspection. The coins jingled with his steps.

“Because he believes you are valuable. And when you go to him, you will be.”

I took this in. “When will I go?”

“When you become,” Uncle said.

“Become what?”

“Yourself.”

But if I am not myself yet, then who am I?
I thought.

5

T
HE FIRST THING I NOTICED
when I woke up was that I was covered in blood.

The second thing I noticed was that this didn’t bother me the way it should have.

I didn’t feel the urge to scream or speak, to beg for help, or even to wonder where I was. Those instincts were dead, and I was calm as my wet fingers slid up the tiled wall, groping for a light switch. I found one without even having to stand. Four lights slammed on above me, one after the other, illuminating the dead body on the floor just a few feet away.

My mind processed the facts first. Male. Heavy. He was lying facedown in a wide, red puddle that spread out from
beneath him. The tips of his curly black hair were wet with it. There was something in his hand.

The fluorescent lights in the white room flickered and buzzed and hummed. I moved to get a better view of the body. Its eyes were closed. It might have been only asleep, really, if it weren’t for the blood. There was so much of it. And by one of the hands the blood was smeared into a weird pattern.

No. Not a pattern. Words.

PLAY ME.

My gaze flicked to the hand. The fist was curled around a small tape recorder. I moved the fingers—still warm—and pressed play. A male voice started to speak.

“Do I have your attention?” the voice asked.

I knew that voice. But I couldn’t believe I was hearing it.

“Noah’s alive,” Jude said.

He had my attention now.

“And you don’t have much time. You probably recognize the dead man on the floor as Wayne Flowers. I’m the one who killed him, in case you were wondering. The good news is that he’s one of two people with access to Dr. Kells’s office—the other one being Dr. Kells. The bad news is that in order for you to get that access, and get out of this room, you’re going to need to cut out his left eye.”

What
was
this? A trick? A trap?

“I would’ve done it for you but there wasn’t time. I switched the syringe, the one they shot you with before your spinal tap.
That’s why you had a . . . reaction . . . when they examined you, which—that was really freaky, by the way. Anyway, whatever. There’s a retinal scanner above her office door, top right corner, just like there is above this one. All the doors in this place auto-lock. When you have the eye, hold it a few inches above where yours are—he was taller than you. There
is
a video camera—they’re everywhere, can’t help that, she’ll see you, but she’ll see you wherever you are. Wherever you are, except in this room. There are no records made of anything that happens in this room. That’s why I dosed you before she took you in here, slipped in before Wayne could get out. I would’ve taken you too but you wouldn’t let me near you. Anyway, once you’re in Kells’s office, the door will lock behind you. You can get out using Wayne’s eye.

“In her office should be everything you’re looking for. Your files—the real ones, not the bullshit cover-their-ass fake stuff. There’s stuff about your friends; they’re here too, by the way. I’m getting them out while you’re listening to this. Once the tape ends, get to Kells’s office, grab what you need, and get out. The map in there will show you how to get off the island. Kells will either already be gone or— I—I—had to let her go. I’m sorry. But you should have enough time to get out before she can manually set the lockdown. I’ll get your friends out. Noah will be waiting for you.” He coughed hard. “Also, I left my watch for you. It’s in Wayne’s other hand. Get it before you—before you go.