The Retribution of Mara Dyer (6 page)

“Well. That’s not good news,” Jamie said, before Stella shushed him.

“Mara doesn’t even always have to be
aware
of these
thoughts, of her intent behind them. If the right mixture of fear and stress is present, her instinctual drives take over. And there’s a Freudian theory that along with the creative instinct—the libido—a death instinct also exists, a destructive urge directed against the world and other organisms. The drug we’ve developed will, we hope, reactivate the barrier between her id and her ego and superego; it’s designed to prevent any negative intent from becoming action. The dose needs to be adjusted, however, and I can’t study Mara on drugs. And she’s too unstable to be studied without them. High doses of another drug we’ve developed should bring about an almost flawless recall, so at some point, when it’s safer for us, Mara should be able to recount exactly what happened at the time of any specific incident, and recount what she was feeling at that moment. Luckily, she is responsive to midazolam, which we’re using to help her forget, so she needn’t relive her traumas on a daily basis.”

The image on-screen warped and flickered, and there was a second voice, distorted, that I couldn’t make out. Then Kells came back, as sharp as before.

“Yes, I tried to study her as noninvasively as I possibly could. That’s why I had her behavior recorded before I took any specific action. We installed fiber optics in her home, to observe and record her behavior before it escalated. But the fact is, I can’t learn how to help her until I fully understand
what’s
wrong
with her. The applications—the benefits—of what we’re doing here outweigh the risks. The treatments we could develop based on what you show us, the applications they could have—” Her voice grew passionate. “They’re far reaching. So far reaching that I don’t even know the extent of them yet. No one should have to suffer the way people have been suffering because of G1821, especially not teenagers. Listen,” she said. “Anemosyne and Amylethe, they corrupt the findings. They change the outcomes of the studies we need to conduct to make sure Mara and the others can be released safely. I need to be able to study someone
without
those drugs, to map a manifested brain with an MRI and CAT scans, to study how it responds to stimuli and fear and stress. The answer isn’t in the blood—it’s in the brain. So blood work, test tubes—they’re not going to give me what I need. I need to study patients while they’re awake, and conscious.”

Dr. Kells leaned forward and ran her hands through her hair. “I need to study
you
.”

“What do you want me to do?” I heard Noah ask, before the screen went black.

9

I
STARED AT THE BLANK
screen, as if just by looking at it, I could make Noah appear. But he didn’t. Nothing did.

“Did you see a date stamp on that video?” Stella asked, looking at both of us. Jamie shook his head. “Mara?”

I hadn’t. I was still staring at the screen. It had been Noah’s voice. He
was
alive. And he was here.

“Okay,” Stella said. She pressed the power button, but nothing happened. “I don’t think we can turn it on or off from here, which means someone somewhere else is doing it.”

“So let’s figure out where somewhere else is,” Jamie said.

That was where Noah would be. Everything in me knew it.

“Jude said there was a map.” I looked around us, at the mess
of papers and files and notebooks, and then remembered the scrolls.

I pointed at them. “Guys, some help?” We began unrolling one after another. There were maps and charts, as I’d suspected, but we didn’t find what we were looking for until we were almost out of scrolls.

“Let’s spread it out over there,” I said, tipping my head toward the desk. Stella stacked notebooks over the corners to hold it open.

We were looking at detailed architectural plans of the Horizons Residential Treatment Center.

Except it wasn’t just a treatment center. It was a compound. The treatment center was just the part we could see. Beneath it, below ground, was a sprawling, windowless structure, segmented off into different areas that together comprised the “Testing Facility.”

“Holy shit,” Jamie whispered.

Stella examined the map and explained what we were looking at. “So I think we’re underground again, in the lowest level of the testing facility. See there?” She pointed to some small shapes within the larger shape. “It looks like these little rooms might be where they were keeping us. You found Jamie on level 2.” She traced her finger to an area labeled
KITCHEN
, not far from where Jamie said we’d entered Kells’s office—the decoy office.

“Level 3 is where we are now—not too far from where we
started, actually. And we’re still on No Name Island, it looks like.”

I narrowed my eyes. “Where else would we be?”

She ran her finger across a long line that ran the length of what seemed to be a tunnel. “There are three other structures. On a completely different island.”

I peered over her shoulder and read the labels:
MAINTENANCE, CONTAINMENT, STORAGE.

“That’s a power line, I think. And there,” she said, squinting at the blueprints, “that’s the power grid. It’s in the maintenance area. That’s where Kells is, probably.”

And Noah, too.

“One way in, one way out,” Jamie said, pointing at the tunnel. It wasn’t far from where we were now, but we’d have to go back up to the fake office to get there. I was already moving toward the ladder.

“Mara, wait—” Stella started.

“For what?” I called out over my shoulder.

“What are we going to do, just walk in there?” Jamie asked.

“Yes?”

Stella made a face. “Shouldn’t we, like, have a plan or something?”

I stopped. “It doesn’t matter what we plan. Kells knows we’re coming. She’s probably watching us right now.”

I looked behind me and scanned the room for a camera. Stella followed my gaze, then stopped and pointed at a tiny little reflective globe suspended from the ceiling, in the far
right corner of the room. I stared at it for a moment, then raised my hand and gave it the finger.

“I thought you were going to give it the District Twelve salute,” Jamie said.

Stella snorted. “Look, maybe we should at least get a weapon?”

I lifted the hem of the hospital gown and withdrew the scalpel from my underwear. “Got one.”

“You’re kind of limited with that, no?”

Wayne hadn’t thought so.

“She wouldn’t have left anything here that we could use against her,” I said.

Stella held up our files. “She left these.” A few papers fluttered to the ground. She bent over, and went very quiet. “Mara,” she said as she picked them up. “I think these are yours.”

I took them from Stella. They were drawings, some resembling people with limbs missing, others that looked like faces, with the eyes scribbled over and blacked out. As I stared, the lines on the paper began to move, arranging themselves in a way that suggested my face. I looked away.

“She probably left them here on purpose.” So I would see them. So they would upset me. “Look, you don’t have to come with,” I said, my voice low. “In fact, you probably shouldn’t.” I crumpled the drawings up and threw them at the wastebasket. I missed.

Jamie and Stella exchanged a look before Jamie rolled his
eyes. “Of course we’re coming with you,” he said, as Stella tucked a few files and notebooks under her arm. I offered him a small smile before climbing up the ladder.

“This doesn’t look like the plans,” Jamie said.

“It doesn’t look like anything.”

We tried to follow what Stella remembered of the blueprints, guided only by harsh auxiliary lights, which made the curving, winding, subterranean structure of the place even more disorienting. None of us could pinpoint exactly when the power had been cut off. The air felt dead and stale as we moved through it.

“I feel like any second there could be a thousand guns pointed at our heads,” Stella said.

“There could be.” I felt my way through the darkness. Our footsteps echoed on the metal walkway. “Well, probably not a thousand.”

Eventually, the walkway parted in a fork. We could go left, right, or down a small set of stairs. I decided down. When we reached the landing, we stood opposite a metal wall; a door had been cut into it, with rounded corners and a biohazard symbol in the center.
CONTAINMENT
, the plans had read. Nowhere to go but in.

“Nope,” Jamie said, shaking his head. “Nope.”

I pressed my ear to the door.

“Is she here yet?”

I sprang back when I heard those words.
Noah
spoke them. He was behind this door. I reached for the handle, but Jamie stopped me.

“Mara,” he said slowly. “Do you know what that symbol means?”

“Yes.”

“Then would you kindly share why you’re ignoring it?”

“Noah’s in there. I just heard him.”

Jamie looked skeptical.

“Listen,” I told him. He pressed his ear to the door too.

“Roth’s here as well, sounds like.”

Jamie looked like he’d been shocked. “Jesus,” he whispered. “Who’s he talking to?”

“Probably Dr. Kells,” Stella said it aloud as I thought it.

I looked at the both of them. Stella looked pale and frightened. Jamie looked determined. Decided.

It was time. Time to split up. I took a deep breath.

“I don’t know what that video meant, or why Kells wanted us to see it. I don’t know why Jude helped us get out or if he was even really helping us at all. I don’t know anything, but I know that I have to open this door. I have to. And if you don’t want to be here for it, you should go.”

“Mara, wait—”

“There was a hatch, somewhere on the blueprints, right?” Stella nodded. “By the Maintenance Area. You should go.
Together. Get to No Name Key however you can. I’ll catch up with you there or I won’t.”

“I think you’re making a mistake,” Jamie said slowly.

Stella raised her hand. “Me too, for what it’s worth.”

I smiled without amusement. “Noted.”

Jamie ran his hand over his scalp, scratching at it. “I don’t want to leave you here by yourself.”

“Then don’t.”

Stella looked back and forth between the two of us, clearly unsure what to do. I reached for the handle again.

“Stop!” Jamie shouted.

“Jamie—”

“Mara, I love you—don’t look at me like that, not in
that
way—but if you are so far gone that you are about to ignore a BIG RED BIOHAZARD symbol, me going in with you isn’t going to help you. I want my innards to stay inner.”

“It’s okay,” I said quietly. “It really is.” I wasn’t offended, or even hurt. I was relieved. I didn’t want to feel responsible for Jamie and Stella. It was enough just being responsible for myself.

“Shit,” Jamie muttered. “Shit.”

“Go, Jamie.”

He grabbed my face in his hands, hard, and smushed my cheeks. “If it’s Ebola, you’re fucked. But if not, just—try not to breathe for as long as you can, okay?”

I nodded. “Go. I’ll give you a head start.”

Jamie kissed me on the cheek. “Good luck,” he whispered, and he and Stella began to climb the stairs. I waited until the sounds of their muted footsteps disappeared, and then I pressed my ear to the door.

“Why won’t she come in?”

Noah again. I closed my eyes. Something wasn’t right. He was alive, obviously, but if he was okay, why wasn’t he opening the door to come to
me
?

Every instinct told me to run, but I turned the handle anyway. The door opened slowly.

The room was white and tiled, like the examination room I’d woken up in. No furniture in this one either, except for a small card table and two chairs. Dr. Kells sat on one of them. The second chair was empty.

“Where’s Noah?” I asked with steel in my voice. My eyes searched the room, but there was nothing to find. “Why did you tell me he was dead?”

Dr. Kells was reaching into a cardboard box by her feet as I spoke. “Because he is.”

She lifted something up, over her head. A gas mask. “I’m sorry,” I heard her say before she lowered it over her face. There was a hissing sound, and by the time I noticed the vents near the ceiling, I had already fallen to the ground.

10

BEFORE

Atlantic Ocean

I
RESTED MY CHEEK AGAINST
the ship’s railing, breathing in air that smelled of salt and rain. It was night; the deck was nearly empty. Two young men jostled and joked with each other as they worked to tie ropes, arrange sails. Sailors—that was it. They paid me no mind, and I watched them out of the corner of my eye. They were familiar with each other, family perhaps. They moved and worked together the way Sister and I had when we’d used to cook. Though she and I were never sisters, which is why I was here and she was dead.

I spent every night wondering why that was, why I was here to stare out at the black sea that seemed to have no end to it, when Sister and Uncle and so many others were rotting
beneath the earth half a world away. I wondered why my benefactor, as he had been called by everyone I ever knew, wanted me enough to provide for me even after his death. I wondered of what value he thought I might be to him.