Burn (7 page)

Lona woke up. She squeezed her eyes together, keeping them shut, trying to trick her brain into thinking that seeing the red insides of her eyelids meant she was still sleeping. It was too late, though. Lona always woke up. For three days, she had been trying to sleep, concertedly, desperately. But chasing this dream felt like chasing a sheet of paper down the sidewalk. It waited for her until she was almost close enough to touch it, and then it floated away. And always at the same place. Always when the Architect was smirking, when he was about to say something that might actually matter.

It wasn't good for her – she slept without resting and woke up jumpy. The circles under her eyes had grown dark and bruising, and yesterday at the café where she stopped for lunch, she followed a stranger out of the restaurant and halfway to his car because she thought for a minute that he looked like dream Warren. “You look like someone I know,” she'd babbled when he spotted her, and she chastised herself as she ran back into the restaurant.
Warren is in the hospital,
she'd reminded herself
. Warren doesn't look now like he looked in your dream Path
.

She threw off the covers. The bedside clock said 4:07. Almost an hour. She'd wasted almost an hour on a nap that had given her nothing. At least while she slept the mail would have been delivered. She slipped on her boots by the front door.

“Are you heading out?” Fenn looked up from the pile of papers surrounding him on the living room couch. She jumped at the sound of his voice.

“Just  …  mail.”

She knew immediately that there was nothing inside the mailbox, just an empty expanse of cold aluminum. Still, she swept her hand all the way to the back to make sure.

“Anything?” Fenn asked, when she got back inside.

“Nothing.”

“Were you sleeping again?”

“Just a nap.”

“Maybe you're getting sick. Do you have a sore throat? Chills?”

“I don't think so.”

He was so tender with her. So patient with her erratic behavior, now that he thought he knew the cause. He stood and brushed the back of his hand over her forehead, then her cheek. She couldn't lie to him while he was touching her. She ducked out of his grip and thumbed through some of the papers on the table.

“What are you working on?” she asked.

“College stuff.”

“But – we're in. If we want to be. Right? Why are you working on this? We've already been accepted.”

“We still have to finish the applications. As a formality.” Lona looked at the pages of notes, covered in Fenn's neat handwriting. “I don't want to turn in something that makes them regret admitting me,” he explained sheepishly. “Overkill?”

“No. Of course not.” It was very Fenn-like, though, to take such pleasure in something like college applications, and she couldn't help the smile pulling on the corner of her mouth.

“You make fun of me now,” he teased, “but you're glad I'm like this when it's time to plan you a birthday or Christmas. Then my alarming planning skills are useful.”

Christmas. The reference startled her. What day was it? Lona counted backwards. Her birthday had been seven days ago. That meant Christmas was in three, and she hadn't even realized it. She'd been too preoccupied with men who haunted her dreams.

“Is there anything you want, by the way?” he asked.

It took a minute to realize he was still talking about presents. “I thought you were a master planner. I thought you'd already know what to get me. All of your presents are probably already wrapped and hidden under your socks.”

“I do know.” His voice was suddenly serious, and he blushed, looking down at his hands. “I mean, I know the things I'd like to get you. But if there's something you really want – maybe I've been knocking myself out putting together scrap books and really all you want for Christmas is a nice pair of gloves?”

“This house
is
kind of drafty. What are you getting Gamb and Ilyf?”

“No idea. Ilyf probably already has access to all the nuclear war codes and anything else she could possibly want.”

“Maybe that's an argument to get her something really nice.”

“Stay on her good side?” Fenn said. “Go do some recon. Tell me if she gives you any ideas.”

She wandered upstairs to Ilyf's study, which used to be Genevieve's room. It had sat empty for three months after Neve died. For the first few weeks, when the door was opened, the scent of gardenias would drift out, sharp and pungent at first and then more subtly, like a scent memory. When the smell was gone altogether, Ilyf had quietly moved in her computer and work. She hadn't bothered to check with anyone else in the house. It was kinder that way. Fenn would have felt too guilty to consent, but everyone knew it was time to move on.

“I'm supposed to see if there's anything you want for Christmas.” Lona leaned on the doorframe. With some of Ilyf's projects, it was better to wait for an invitation. Ilyf's job seemed grownup and important and kept her locked away for days and weeks at a time.

“A solution to this problem.” She minimized the window on her screen, beckoning Lona inside. “Can you get me that? And then a nap. Or bubble bath. Just get me some bubble bath.”

“What are you working on?”

Ilyf sighed, leaning one elbow onto her desk, trying to figure out how to explain something Lona knew was far beyond her own comprehension level. “Picture a fun house full of mirrors,” Ilyf began finally. “Only not all of the mirrors reflect back at you. Some of them look like they reflect back at you, but really you can walk through them. And then picture—” She cut herself off. “You know what? Most of this would take me an hour to explain. Basically, I'm trying to save a bunch of junk from a server in California that they think has irreparably crashed.”

“But it hasn't?”

“The content is just hiding. Now I'm trying to find it.”

Lona nodded as if she understood. There was a row of empty glasses on the windowsill by Ilyf's desk. Lona started to stack them, slowly, taking more time than she needed to.

“Ilyf. Can you find other hidden content?”

Ilyf looked confused. “That's what I do every day.”

She put another glass on the top of her stack, then piled them all on a TV tray she found sitting on the floor. “No. I mean  …  If I wanted to find a list of people who had worked for a program, but the program didn't exist anymore, but I knew that the information existed – could you find it?”

Ilyf placed her hands in her lap and swiveled until she was facing Lona. “What are you doing, Lona?”

“Can you help me?”

“Did you ask Talia?”

“It's for Talia.” The lie slid off her tongue like an eel. Easy and slippery. “It's – Talia has lost track of some of the people she used to work with. And I know she misses them. I thought this could be a Christmas present. If I could find the old records from the Julian Path.”

Ilyf frowned. “It would be easier if she just looked for them online, right? I mean, they're going to be on some kind of social network. You don't really need my help for that.”

“She doesn't know their last names.” She hurried on, before Ilyf could think about the logic of caring enough about someone that you would track them down years later, while not even remembering their last name. “Do you think you could do it? I mean, would it even be possible? Maybe through some kind of database of records?”

Ilyf was already entering something into the keyboard. A few seconds later, a familiar table appeared on Ilyf's computer – the same one the reference librarian in the records hall showed Lona a few days ago.

“This is – wow.” Ilyf's face lit up at the wall of information that appeared on her screen. “Did you know there were all of these different offshoots to the Julian Path? Sub-programs, it looks like – or maybe experimental projects that weren't ever put into action?”

Lona tried to stay patient as Ilyf clicked through the files she'd already seen. “This one's weird,” Ilyf said. “This one has a wall built up.” She'd landed on the Julian Compact, the same file that the librarian had commented on, the one that resulted in a blocky gray text box.

“You can't get in that one,” Lona said, willing her to stop wasting time and move on.

“How do you know?”

“Because. It says. Access Denied, right there.”

“It
says
that. But things often
say
that and don't really
mean
it.” She typed in a few more things, and then frowned. “Oh, wait. Hmm.”

Ilyf had done something that made the gray box disappear. But now it was replaced by another box, a narrow strip with a blinking cursor. “It's asking for a password. Eight digits.” Her fingers flew over the keyboard.

“What are you doing?”

“One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight. Sequential numbers. Still the most common combination people use for passwords. Idiotically.” The blank space was replaced with a red stop sign. Ilyf paused, drumming her index fingers against her desk. “People also use dates. Anniversaries. Foundings. I could try the date the Julian Act was passed in Congress. Or I could build—”

“Ilyf.”

“What?”

“Please. Can we just find the names I was looking for?”

“Aren't you curious?”

“I just – I want to focus on one thing at a time.”

“But what do you think it is?”

“I don't know. It's called the Julian Compact. It's probably a bunch of boring bylaws. Like the Mayflower Compact.”

“Rules for children hooked up to machines?”

“Can we focus?”

Ilyf frowned. Lona saw she minimized the window instead of closing it entirely. That was fine. Ilyf could go back again later, test her lock-picking skills. She went back to the original screen, where the list was that contained all of the different Julian Path programs. “Sector 14, I assume, where Talia was?”

“Yes. Can you find them?”

“I'm already finding them.”

“Right now?”

“A spider is finding them. It will keep spinning its web until it traps something in it.”

The metaphor made Lona feel claustrophobic, sticky. The silk of a spider web always looked innocuous. Easily brushed away. But it wasn't, of course. By definition, it wasn't. Lona hated cleaning cobwebs from corners, even with a broom. The way that a few tendrils would always manage to wind themselves between her fingers, more tightly the more frantically she tried to shake them off. The way it felt like there was no way to escape.

“What do we do while we wait?”

Ilyf shrugged. “Eat dinner, wash dishes, play this horribly dumb game Gamb has been threatening me with, go to bed, wake up, eat breakfast. I can't make it go any faster—we just have to wait until it catches something.”

This time, when Lona went to bed, it felt different from any time in the past week. For the first time, she wasn't chasing sleep. It chased her. It consumed her. It came after her with such a voracious appetite that at the last minute she tried to open her eyes again, tried to claw her way out of the gaping, teethy maw.

She couldn't, though. She was sucked into the dream, imploding into herself. It felt like a string was wrapped around her heart, anchoring her to something deep inside her own subconscious.

“Hi, Warren. You found me.”

The Architect smiled. With the corners of his mouth, tucked up like a neatly made bed, but not with his eyes. He was amused by this game of hide and seek.

“Ned. Are you doing a little spring cleaning?” He gestured to the mess on the floor. Comically, like this was a bit they had rehearsed. “Really, you could have asked for help. I would have brought a mop.”

“Just looking for something. It's not important.” Keep it light. Keep your distance. He knows, but he doesn't have to know you know. Start for the door. Casually. Like you were leaving anyway. Like you're heading for the bathroom, or the drinking fountain.

“I think it is important,” Warren said. “Or maybe I only think that because I have it in my pocket.”

He tapped the pocket of his lab coat. A cylindrical bulge.

Ned smiled, played for time. Then he swept his hand over the desk, closing it on a ballpoint pen, wrapping fingers around the smooth white grip. He aimed it toward Warren's eye, raising his hand and jabbing it toward his face. Warren raised his arm just in time, the metal point buried itself in his forearm, blood and ink spurting out of the hole. Warren howled in agony, frozen by the pain, doubling over. Ned grabbed the object from Warren's pocket and then he ran for the door, locking it with the key dangling on the same lanyard as his I.D. badge.

“They'll stop you at the entrance,” Warren shouted, banging at the window from the inside. “I've already called security.”

He looked down at the object in his hands. A syringe, filled with clear liquid. Careful, careful, the liquid inside was flammable, in more ways than one.

Once Ned got to the front door, he would be done for. But the front entrance was still fifty yards away. And that was more than enough time for what he needed to do.

Ilyf woke her. It wasn't morning yet; she could tell by the inky sky outside. Ilyf was stroking her head and saying, “Shhhh. It's a bad dream, Lona. It's just a bad dream.” She looked scared; Lona could feel the unsteadiness of her hand as she continued to pat Lona's hair. “It was really weird, Lona. You were shaking. I was about to call someone. Maybe I should go get Fenn.”

“I'm fine. I'm sorry I scared you. Go back to sleep.”

“I just came in to tell you. It's done,” Ilyf whispered. “It found what you're looking for.”

The records were alphabetical, last name, first name, stacked in a tidy pile. The names were in the first column, followed by a column for sector. Page after page, beginning with Abbott, Beatrice, Sector 8 and Abraham, Yusef, Sector 4. Ilyf hadn't been able to separate out the list by sector, and there was no contact information, no job descriptions.

She hadn't expected so many names. She knew about Monitors and Coping Technicians who were employed by the Path. She knew about the Architect. But these papers probably contained the engineers who designed the equipment and the assemblymen who built it. The marketing people who sold the Julian Path and the lawyers who defended it.

It was good, Lona reminded herself, if Ilyf's net had been cast that wide. But it did make the task more daunting. Two hours later, after she'd been through the list twice, she had three names in front of her, printed painstakingly with a black felt-tip pen.

She wanted these names to mean something. She read through them over and over again. She said them out loud. They were just names, though. They meant nothing. She read through them one last time, committing them to memory.

Was one of these the Ned from her dream? It was such an oafish name, when she thought about it. Ned. A jolly name, a red-faced name, the kind of name belonging to a man who would stay too late in a bar telling bad jokes, and pretend to pull quarters out of the ears of his nephews.

But that wasn't what he was like, she reminded herself. The Ned in her dream had stabbed the Architect with a pen and watched him bleed. When Lona was this man in her dream, she felt anger pumping through her veins, thick and viscous and surging. She felt desperation. She felt like a feral animal, trapped in a cage, like she would chew her way out if she needed to.

Was one of these Neds a man who was capable of doing all of that? Had one of them passed on these feelings, like heirloom rage that came with the dream? She hoped she had finally found him. She dreaded it at the same time.

Ned Hildreth. Edward Mansaria. Edward Lowell.