The Vault of Dreamers (39 page)

“Felt that? Sorry. It should be okay again now,” Dean Berg said. “Are you dizzy at
all, Rosie?”

“No,” I whispered. Fear was making me cold. I was shivering through the limpness of
my muscles.

Dr. Ash dabbed at my eyes again.

I tried to swallow, but my tongue felt thick.

“She’s going,” Dr. Ash said. “See?”

“I know,” Dean Berg said. “It’s a natural defense. I thought this might happen. I
need one more thing, though. If we can tap fear, we can go directly in. Rosie, are
you listening?”

“Yes,” I said.

“This is very important. Look at me,” he said.

I opened my eyes to find his face filling my line of vision. Fine, blond eyelashes
rimmed his eyes, and I could see the individual pores of his nose.

“You’ve been perfect,” he said, smiling. “I want you to know that. Now tell me about
something you’re afraid of. Something small.”

“I’m afraid you’re killing me.”

“We’re not. We’re absolutely not,” he said. “I’d never do that to you. Think of something
else instead. Some small, everyday thing that shouldn’t scare you but does, like maybe
dogs. Do dogs scare you?”

“No.”

“Then what else does? Be truthful now.”

“My stepfather’s belt.”

Dean Berg glanced toward Dr. Ash, then back to me. “Still too big,” he said.

“Big spiders scare me,” I said. “Little ones are okay, but not the big black ones.”

“Spiders,” he said softly. “Spiders will do very well.”

He nodded to Dr. Ash again, and she aimed a screen in front of me, close up. In growing
panic, I tried to look past the screen’s rim to Dean Berg, but it was too late. Together,
they drew the screen so near it cut off any view of the rest of the room.

“You’ll be all right, Rosie. I promise,” the dean said reassuringly. Then a moment
later, “All set, Glyde? On go, give me a big, black spider, up close and hungry. Ready?
Set? Go.”

The spider appeared inches from my face, as big as a dog, snapping and biting. Pure
horror shot into me. It ravaged through me, igniting and escalating my other fears.
Burnham was bleeding to death under my mouth as I tried to breathe into him. My stepfather
raised his belt to lash it down on me. Linus’s perfect head was crushed by a bludgeoning
ax. My sister Dubbs came next, bicycling heedlessly into a rushing train. Wordless
terror took over, nothing but teeth and fury, deep in my darkest core.

36

THE LEAP

I WAKE IN
my coffin.

Why call it anything else? My eyelids are covered with gel. I’m too weak to do more
than twitch my thumb, but even sightless and immobile, I can hear and think. I am
still alive in this world, no matter how tiny my box has become, and my rage has only
intensified through simmering.

The lid of my sleep shell makes a distinctive swish as it is opened.

“I wish they’d clean themselves.” A lisping, tenor voice comes from directly above
me, and I smell a trace of tobacco.

“Careful there.” From the direction of my feet, a second man’s voice comes deep and
smooth. “She’s more fragile than she looks. Ready?”

My sleep shell rolls into motion, and my hope goes haywire. I could plead with the
men to set me free.

Don’t be stupid,
she says.

They could be my way out.

They work here, obviously,
she says.
See what you can learn before you open your mouth
.

She’s right. I concentrate on listening for a clue that I could trust one of these
men, but they aren’t speaking. My sleep shell vibrates with fine tremors. Then it
slows and bumps over a doorsill. Increased light passes through my eyelids, and when
I smell a familiar trace of vinegar, my hope shifts to dread.

“How’s she look?” Dr. Ash asks.

It’s better to have the doctor here than Dean Berg. That’s what I tell myself. But
not by much. I work my tongue around inside my teeth, testing if I’ll be able to form
words.

“Good,” says the first man, the smoky tenor. “All her vitals are regular. Her heartbeat
is up a little. I swear she knows when we’re coming for her.”

“That’s normal,” Dr. Ash says. “Half of them do the same thing. Okay, now. Gently.”

I’m lifted and placed on a new, cooler surface. By the way my stomach sinks inward,
I can feel that I’ve lost weight. My right elbow is no longer sore. I have no clear
way of knowing how long I’ve been living like this, but it’s been more than days.
Weeks maybe.

“Can I stay and watch?” says the smoky tenor.

“You’ve seen this before,” says Dr. Ash.

“But not with her,” he says. “She’s famous.”

The other man’s voice comes from a distance. “If you don’t need anything else, Dr.
Ash, I want to double check the rest of the order. You know the pickup is scheduled
for four.”

“Of course,” she says.

His footsteps recede as someone lifts my hand and turns it over. I keep my fingers
limp.

“When was she last cleaned?” Dr. Ash asks.

“Two weeks ago,” the man says.

“For heaven’s sake,” Dr. Ash says. “Warm me up some cleanser. Be quick about it.”
She takes a firmer grip on my hand, and a moment later, I feel her trimming my fingernails.

“Why does it matter?” he asks. “She doesn’t know if she’s clean or not.”

“The body knows,” Dr. Ash says. “They rest easier when they’re clean.”

It frustrates me how little I know. Dean Berg mentioned that he was going to move
the dreamers, so I assume we’re no longer at Forge. I don’t know where Dean Berg is,
or what he told my parents, who have to be looking for me despite the contract we
all signed. The dean can’t just keep me drugged and hidden.

Dr. Ash lifts my right hand across my body, and while she’s trimming those fingernails,
I surreptitiously rub my left thumb along my fingertips to feel the new shortness.
The pleasure in touching my own fingertips is immeasurable.

Play dead. How hard can it be?
she says.

You don’t get it. They’re going to mine me again,
I answer.
As soon as they finish cleaning me, they’re going to mine me, and then they’ll put
me under again. I don’t know when I’ll have another chance to try to get out.

It’s safer if they don’t know you’re awake.

I don’t want to be safe. I want to be free.

She abandons words and takes control of us by sending me a swell of brown color. Giant
turtles pile in a black baby carriage that rolls slowly up a hill, and the bizarre
image fills my vision. She’s learned how to cross over the barrier to enter my consciousness.
I can go her direction, too, into subconsciousness, but I prefer my side, where logic
still matters. Where I had free will once.

You could at least send me a dream that will make me happy,
I say.

She obliges by sending me Linus as I first saw him, in his white bib apron, leaning
back against a giant wooden spool, but without his injury or his ice pack. As he aims
his gaze toward the pasture, he is simple, calm, and so familiar it hurts.
Leave him there
, I beg her, but as if she can’t resist, she shifts to my last memory of him lying
in the operating room of the vault.

Stop
, I tell her. My panic rises again.

His table morphs into a black sleep shell and encases Linus like a coffin. When I
rush into the dream to push back the lid, his body swells into a putrid mess, and
maggots crawl out of his ear. They mutate into tiny flies that swarm at my face.

I jerk back.

Stop that!
I say.
We don’t know that!

She tidies up by dissolving Linus entirely. She offers no apology.

My heart’s still racing, but I refuse to accept that my nightmare could be true. As
far as I know, Dean Berg has never actually killed anyone, and untethered fear is
not what I need.

I reassert control and surface into my surroundings again. My body tingles from being
scrubbed, and someone is rubbing a soft towel over and between my toes. It tickles,
and I almost laugh.

“I love that. See her smile?” the man says.

“Like I said. The body knows,” says Dr. Ash.

I feel a hand stroke up my leg, slowly and lightly. That I don’t like. He reaches
my knee and strokes higher.

“Goose bumps,” he says. “See?”

Dr. Ash sets down something with a metallic click. “You’ll treat them with respect,
Ian, or you’re out of a job.”

Her concern strikes me as ironic, considering she’s part of the team that has confined
me here, helpless to defend myself.

“Yes, Doctor,” Ian says. “I was just trying to show you. She’s responsive sometimes,
more than the others.”

“She was never damaged like the rest. That matters,” Dr. Ash says. “The gown, please.
Watch the IV.”

A drape of light cotton settles over my body, and I feel like a giant doll as a big
hand moves my arms, one at a time. I hear snaps near my shoulders. The cloth is given
a final tweak and I’m decent once more.

“What are you going for this time?” Ian asks.

“Same. I want to see how the old gap filled in. It should be regenerated by now, and
our partners are eager for more.”

“Can’t you just multiply it once you mine it?” he asks.

“We can. It’s harder to stop once it starts duplicating, though, and that can be just
as dangerous as having too little,” Dr. Ash says. “Apparently, the surgeons get fewer
tumors if they’re working with the raw material.”

“It doesn’t hurt her, does it?”

“Not any more than when I just cut her fingernails,” the doctor says. “A little closer,
please.”

She turns my face to the side, and when I feel a couple of familiar nubs in my ears,
I know exactly what’s happening. I’m not so much horrified this time as agonized.
A stinging prick pinches the skin just beneath my left ear.

This is going to hurt,
I say.

Stay calm
, she says.
If you want to sleep, I can take you there
.

No, I want to listen,
I say.

“See that?” he says. “Is all that activity normal for her? Her auditory is lit up
like the Fourth of July.”

“That is odd,” Dr. Ash says.

I’m startled by the gentle pressure of a hand on my arm.

“Rosie?” Dr. Ash asks quietly. “Can you hear me?”

My heart leaps.

Don’t answer her!
she says.

But my brain scan has betrayed me already. I’m sure.

What do I do?
I ask.

Stupid!
she says, and she washes a calm through me. It’s pure, serene molasses, and I’m compelled
to breathe deeply and evenly. She sends an image of my backyard at home in Doli, when
the sunset glows orange over the ridge across the valley. I smell sage in the warm
dusk. Dubbs comes to sit beside me, leaning her arm against mine. Even though we’re
sitting and not walking, she takes my hand and tugs it down.

“It’s just a dream,” Dr. Ash says. “She might be hearing music. I once mined a bird
watcher who dreamed in birdsong.”

“What happened to him?”

“He’s back there. Stevens Eighteen,” Dr. Ash said. “And, we’re in.”

I feel nothing. Every now and then, I hear a little click, and once I feel the doctor’s
breath on my face when she leans close. I can picture her narrow features and her
straight dark hair. She likes to wear a red sweater.

Then a twinge, like a plucked chord of a guitar, shows me a cupcake with red and white
sprinkles. Another twinge makes me plunge into the wet blue coolness of a swimming
pool, and then it’s gone.

“I bet this dose is going to an old guy, rich as sin,” Ian says.

“It’s for a young woman,” Dr. Ash says. “She had a tragic accident. Her parents have
been keeping her alive, praying for a miracle.”

“Really?” he says. “That’s kind of nice.”

More soft ticking comes from my left while on my right, I hear a soft suction sound,
like a container being opened.

“Sometimes my heart kind of goes out to them, you know,” Ian says. “Especially her.
I used to watch her on
The Forge Show
.”

“We all have a fondness for Rosie.”

I can almost believe her, she sounds so sincere.

“Isn’t Mr. Berg supposed to revive her when she’s eighteen?”

A couple more soft clicks follow.

Are you there?
I ask.
Do you feel this?

My inner voice answers with a feral, skittering noise from the back of a cave.

“When’s her birthday?” Ian asks.

I listen for the doctor’s answer, for a hint to know how much time has passed and
how much longer I’m expected to stay here.

“He is going to wake her up and let her go, right?” he asks. “That was the bargain.”

“I couldn’t say.”

Don’t react,
she warns me.

They’re never going to let me go!

She sends another burst of calming serum through my veins, but I fight against it.

We have to do something!
I say to her.

Another twinge from the doctor brings me an image of my sister Dubbs walking barefoot
along the train tracks with me. We’re seeking blue cornflowers between the railroad
ties, and the green stems stain her palms as she pulls them free. At the same time,
impossible, honeyed strands of light spin between and around us, and when we open
our mouths to taste them, we laugh. The image is so vivid it shimmers, and I’m not
so much remembering or dreaming it as living it right now. “You promised to come home,”
Dubbs says to me. As she reaches out her arms, I lift her up, flowers and all, into
a spinning embrace. Love corkscrews through me like pure radiant power.

Ian’s voice comes to me dimly. “That’s incredible. See those colors?”

“I know,” Dr. Ash answers calmly. “Rosie’s a fighter. She’s more valuable than all
the rest combined.”

“Why’s that?” he asks.