Mine (17 page)

Throughout her undergrad years and at the beginning of grad school, she continued trying to contact Joel, several times each month. She always encountered the wall, though, and not once was she able to crack it again. She realized now she’d been able to pass through it that one time only because Joel let her in so he could tell her to leave him alone.

As much as it hurt, she understood why he felt that way. But ultimately it didn’t matter what he wanted. They were linked, and she had to keep trying to find a way back to him.

As a grad student, she shared an apartment off campus with Naomi, who’d become her best friend. It had two bedrooms, with a comfortable living room and a too-small galley kitchen.

Returning home from the library on a cold wet April night, Leah sighed with relief when the warm air of the apartment enveloped her.

“Hey,” Naomi called from the couch where she was curled up, watching TV. “I picked up some of that lentil soup you like. It’s in the fridge.”

“You are my hero.”

Leah shed her jacket and hung it on the rack by the door. She heated up the soup, carried it into the living room, and sat on the sofa next to her friend. As was often the case these days, a show about a real-life criminal investigation was playing. Naomi, who would be starting law school in the fall, couldn’t get enough of them.

During commercial breaks, they filled each other in on their mundane days, and laughed again about the awkward date Naomi had gone on the previous weekend. About an hour after she sat down, Leah washed her dishes and went to her room.

While her days were given over to her school studies, her nights—when those studies didn’t bleed into them—were filled with non-academic research. Since Joel wouldn’t let her back in his head, she’d resorted to looking for him using more traditional methods.

After firing up her laptop, she started as she always did, with a Google search of his name, hoping something new had popped up. But like most nights, the search revealed no new entries, so she moved on, employing targeted data mining programs at various social media sites.

When the screen began to blur, she turned off the computer and pulled out her logbook. Each line on a page represented a different day. She added that day’s date at the end of the list, noting what she had checked and how far she had gone. Under the column labeled
POTENTIALS,
she wrote
0
. There were a lot of zeros.

As she closed the book, she repeated her nightly mantra, “I
will
find you,” and returned the log to the drawer. Donning her nightshirt, she felt an odd sensation on her shoulders. She tugged at the fabric, thinking maybe a loose thread was rubbing against her, and stepped into the bathroom to brush her teeth.

Her mind already half asleep, she went through her routine—upper molars, bottom, outside, in—and then spit into the sink. When she turned on the water to wash off the toothbrush, the sensation returned, only now it was working its way down her back.

Not just any sensation. A tingling.

It can’t be
, she thought. It had been so long since she last had the feeling, she’d almost forgotten it.

The sensation spread until it reached her waist. She pulled up her shirt and turned so she could see her back in the mirror. No red blotches, no spreading rash. Everything looked fine.

She told herself the dream couldn’t be coming. When she used to get the sensation, it had taken hours for it to spread from her shoulders to her back. What she was feeling now had happened in minutes.

And yet, despite the speed, the feeling was the same.

She walked back into her bedroom, apprehensive. If the wall between her and Joel had come down, that would be a great thing, a cause for celebration. But given the way he had banished her, she’d been sure he would never voluntarily let her back in.

Images began slamming into her mind. Joel sprawled at the bottom of a cliff. Joel crumpled in the wreck of a vehicle. Joel lying in a hospital bed, pale and weak. And Joel in a thousand similar near-death scenarios.

What if he’s contacting me to say good-bye?

The tingling intensified, begging her to sleep. She crawled into bed but hesitated before closing her eyes, as if the longer she stayed awake, the longer Joel would stay alive. She was no match for the dream’s pull, however. One moment she was staring at the ceiling, the next she was out.

When the dream world materialized around her, however, she didn’t find herself at the base of a cliff or beside a flipped car or in an antiseptic room filled with beeping machines. Rather, she was standing in the middle of a violent lightning storm, where white-hot electric arcs struck all around her, blinding her.

Flash.

Flash.

Flash.

Flash.

She tried closing her eyes but her lids wouldn’t budge, nor could she move her hands to cover them.

Flash.

Flash.

Flash.

“Stop!” she yelled.

Flash.

“Stop!”

Flash.

“For God’s sake, please stop!”

T
HIRTY-NINE

The Translator

T
HERE WERE TIMES
when the Translator was mostly present and in the solid world. He liked those times. The solid world was where he came from, and where—when he was allowed to dream his own dreams—he wanted to return.

Other times, floating times, he was the box all things flowed through. Information entered his mind, then would be reformed and recalibrated before flying out on its way to the Reclaimer.

::MORE
, the Reclaimer would say. It was her second favorite word, and one of the few he’d heard her speak in his native language.

And more he would give.

The information came from many places, much via those the Translator came in contact with day after day. These sources were the easiest to tap into. They never knew they were being used. The Translator would record their lives, and those of the people they came in contact with, and of the people
they
came in contact with, and so on, and so on, the network growing vast and wide. Before the Translator sent the data to the Reclaimer, he converted it into a form she could more readily understand.

He was her conduit.

It was his sole purpose.

The most prolific source of information was not one of those near the Translator. This person was…somewhere else…and set to report in…automatically. The Translator had been instructed to refer to her as Satellite One. There’d been a second Satellite for a while, but that one had stopped reporting long ago. How long? The Translator wasn’t sure. Time was…hard for him.

The Satellites had different names, real-people names. The Translator knew what they were, but he kept that knowledge locked so deeply in his mind—to prevent the Reclaimer from realizing he remembered—he actually forgot them most of the time.

The Reclaimer used the Translator as her pathway to instruct the Satellites to
LEARN
and
REPORT
. And, like always, she would end each contact with her favorite word,
MINE
, and leave the Translator to deal with the collection of data.

The Translator’s connection to the Satellites, however, went beyond merely acting as their link to the Reclaimer.

They were his…friends.

His
good
friends.

His
only
friends.

And he didn’t like how the Reclaimer was using them
.

To her they were only funnels for the information she craved as she learned about…everyone and…everything. Though he could not stop the process, he found over time that he could edit the information that passed through him. This allowed him to protect his friends by preventing the Reclaimer from knowing how her augmentations had changed them.

He had taken things a step further. From the safety of the [
secret place
] he’d created for himself out of sight of the Reclaimer, he showed his friends what they could do with their skills, and, when he could, provided guidance on their journeys.

These [
missions
]—as Satellite One called them—and [
assignments
]—as Satellite Two referred to them—he also kept from the Reclaimer. He knew it was a huge risk, but the altered information packets he did forward from the Satellites never seemed to raise any concerns from the Reclaimer. Of course, it was the [
assignments
] that had resulted in Satellite Two’s disappearance. The Translator had seen what happened on the last one, seen everything.

Horrible. Horrible.

The Translator was glad that Satellite One, whom he now thought of as only the Satellite, was still connected. She and his [
secret place
] were the only things that made life bearable. If he could, he would choose to accept data only from her. But the Reclaimer had made it clear from the beginning that the Translator’s job was to send whatever the Reclaimer wanted whenever the Reclaimer required it.

And as for his [
secret place
], it provided the sanctuary he needed to remember the [
was
] and not think about the [
is
].

Unfortunately, it had become harder for him to go there as of late. The Reclaimer wanted more and more, eating up much of the little time the Translator had previously used for himself. This meant he had to carefully plan his sneakaways to coincide with times when he was sure she wouldn’t suddenly pop into his mind looking for him.

He’d almost been caught once, returning from his hideaway just moments before she came calling. Knowing he could have lost his [
secret place
] forever was enough to make him avoid it for months before he’d felt safe enough to go again.

::I HAVE MATTERS TO ATTEND
, the Reclaimer told him that morning—or was it afternoon?
TRANSLATE ANY PACKETS YOU RECEIVE AND PLACE THEM HERE.

In his head he was presented with the familiar image of a large room filled with empty shelves. All he would have to do is think about the room and he could move the packets there. It was a technique the Reclaimer only used when she would be gone for a while.

Yes, Reclaimer
, he said.

A pause, and then the questions she always asked before she left.

::ARE YOUR CHANNELS OPEN?

Yes.

::ARE YOUR RECEPTORS WORKING?

Yes.

::ARE ALL LINKS INTACT?

Yes.

There were no other words to mark her departure, just a sense of empty space in his mind, letting him know he was alone.

He waited for a minute or an hour, he wasn’t sure which, and then entered his [
secret place
].

F
ORTY

Leah

E
ITHER LEAH’S PLEA
had been heard or she had the best timing in the world—which, given her reaction skills, could very well have been the case—because the lightning suddenly stopped, leaving behind a soft glow bright enough for her to see her surroundings.

Though she knew she was in an enhanced dream, it was different from all the others. She was not in the real world where she had visited Joel, nor was she in the land of ribbons and color that she’d found herself in during her first dreams. She was in…

The Secret Place.

The words, though not spoken, infused the space.

She turned in a circle, taking everything in.

A room no larger than her own living room, and yet gigantic. Regardless of which direction she looked in, no more than fifteen feet separated her from the wall in front of her. Yet out of the corners of her eyes, the room appeared to go on and on and on.

Finite and infinite.

Shelves were everywhere, stuffed to overflowing with items familiar and strange, some moving as if alive. There were no doors or windows, only a wall always in front of her and the forever space to the sides.

A tingle, not like the one preceding a dream but deep in her stomach and chest. Someone was here.

“Hello?” she said.

A shuffle.

“Hello?” she repeated.

Movement in the endless space to her left, at the very edge of her sight. She twisted toward it, but the forever hall turned with her, staying out of direct view. She took a calming breath and focused back on her side vision. More movement. Someone was there for sure, small like a toddler.

She stood very still, hoping whoever it was would come closer. For a moment nothing happened, and then the shape began creeping in her direction from one set of shelves to another. The person grew taller and taller with each step, until his head nearly touched the ceiling.

A man, older than the oldest who had ever lived, stared at her.

“Hi,” she said softly.

He took a step backward, mumbling under his breath.

“I’m not going to hurt you,” she said.

His volume increased, his words coming out in a rush. “Four, three, one, one, one, zero, three, two, zero, four. Seven, one, eight, eight, three, four, one, six, two, zero. Nine, nine, three—”

“Do you have a name?” she asked. “Mine’s—”

Clamping a hand over his mouth, he staggered backward and began to shrink and grow younger again.

“No, please, don’t go,” she said.

“You-you-you should not be,” he told her, each word a struggle. “You should not, should not be here.”

Except for Joel, she had never communicated with anyone in her dreams. And with him it had been different, not as direct.

“My name’s Leah,” she said, as calmly as she could. She could feel his fear, and knew one wrong word would send him running. She desperately didn’t want that to happen. Whoever this man was, she thought he’d have at least some of the answers as to what had happened to her and Joel.

“You…should not…be…here.”

“Where should I be?”