We left the room and headed for the elevators. What Minh had shared with me—about Rowen and herself—had brought us a little bit closer, I felt. In addition to my own grief, I was now also mourning Rowen with her, as a lost friend and perhaps something more for Minh that now was never meant to be.
The hotel’s air-conditioner was set on freezing, and the fragrance of some bitter incense permeated the air. There were piles and piles of dried figs on silver plates positioned on chubby decorative stands along the corridor’s walls. I grabbed a few figs and devoured them, without pausing to appreciate the taste. Nothing tasted right following our return from the desert. The shiny apples and gleaming strawberries the oasis gave us were more real than anything I’d eaten since arriving at the hotel. All food since was nourishing but kind of empty—just something my body needed in order to function. The taste of water from the stream was what real water tasted like. Nothing civilization offered could compare.
A muffled conversation wafted from Dad’s room as we passed by. I wondered if he was talking to my mother on the phone again. It didn’t even occur to me to call her. She was so far away, physically and emotionally. Thinking this, I was expecting a pang of guilt, something, anything at all, but I mostly felt nothing. For a moment though, I allowed myself to fantasize that my parents were getting back together and this wasn’t just some temporary truce brought on by my near-death experience. Maybe I should get lost in the desert more often?
As we journeyed to Lori’s room, I kept close to Minh, our shoulders almost brushing. She smelled of cherry blossoms. Her favorite perfume had spilled in her bag during the sandstorm, and everything Minh owned in Dubai was now infused with its heady springtime scent.
The echoing boom of an aggressive conversation greeted us as we approached Lori’s and Luke’s rooms. We paused—and then the sound of a bang followed by a whimper made me break into a run. We never should’ve allowed the tablet to stay with Lori—not after the way she’d been acting in the oasis.
The door to Lori’s room was open. I exchanged a look with Minh as we advanced, our steps suddenly slow and cautious. Amid Lori’s swearing, Luke’s hoarse voice boomed, “Enough of this! It’s draining your brains out!”
I froze in the doorframe, looking in. Disarray. Towels on the floor, a chair on its side. Lori, trapped in a far corner and crouching on the floor. No obvious signs of struggle on her. Her hair was styled into a chic wave and her face was made up to perfection, layers of makeup hiding the sun damage and patchiness of dehydration and exposure. Only her black mascara, already running down her cheeks, disturbed the perfect illusion.
Luke, on the other hand, didn’t look great. Still wearing the clothes he’d been rescued in, his short hair dirty and matted against his scalp, he was standing over Lori. He was gesticulating as he spoke. A familiar object—the tablet, the artifact—was on the floor at Luke’s feet. Lori reached for it, but Luke leaned over her and pushed her away.
I went in and tried to wedge myself between them. “Leave her alone!”
“I’m helping her!” Luke shouted right back. “Can’t you see it’s messing with her head?”
I was close enough now to see the deep frown lines around his mouth, his lips bitten badly and so dry, the skin was peeling off. Had I also aged so visibly over the course of only a few days? I was avoiding looking at myself in the mirror too closely, only catching stray glimpses here and there. Afraid of seeing myself truly. Afraid of how the oasis had changed me.
“What’s going on in here?” Minh asked from the doorway. But we both knew exactly what was going on and what Luke was talking about. Minh was just stalling him, I realized, probably hoping he’d cool down enough to engage in a rational conversation instead of throwing chairs around and hounding Lori into a corner.
“That thing!” Luke pointed at the object on the floor, lying innocently at his feet. Luke’s hand was shaking. “That alien … thing! Lori’s been carrying it around with her this entire time, and it’s messing with her. Didn’t you hear her talking to Rowen, like he’s right in front of her? Well she’s been doing that again—here! I could hear her from next door!”
“Is that true?” I looked at Lori, not really wanting to hear her answer. “Do you really think you see Rowen? Do you talk to him?” Does he talk back? What does he say to you? What promises does he whisper?
“You don’t get it.” Lori’s voice was calm now, free of tears and frustration. “None of you do. Rowen is the reason we’re free. He was our sacrifice to get out of that demonic place. But I can bring him back!”
She launched herself out of her corner and made a grab for the tablet. In one seamless motion, she swept it off the floor and elbowed Luke’s knees. Caught off guard, Luke crumpled down. I spread my arms wide in an attempt to latch onto Lori and take her down, all the while wondering if Minh was still blocking the only way out of the room. We had to stop Lori from hurting herself. At least that’s what my rational mind was telling me. What was lurking deeper inside just wanted the tablet.
Locked in a fight-or-flight mode, I went for it, my fingers brushing the fabric of Lori’s top but not taking hold. She evaded me with almost supernatural ease, jumping over the overturned chair like a pursued gazelle before ramming into Minh and throwing her out of the room and into the corridor. With a muffled oomph, Minh landed on her butt. Ouch. With Luke still down and rubbing at his knees while Minh was also scrambling to get up, I, by virtue of being the last woman standing, took off after Lori.
By the time I exited the room, Lori had already reached the end of the corridor. I was expecting her to call the elevator, but she swerved left, going for the fire stairs instead. I slid into the stairwell after her. “Lori, wait!” I could see her below, hair flying in a blond halo as she raced down the steps. Carrying the tablet was slowing her down—and I could only imagine what it was showing her.
I was gaining on her when she attempted to open the door to the second floor of the hotel, but it was locked against reentry. Lori roared, scratching and banging at the door with her free arm, the tablet pressed against her chest.
“Enough!” I cornered her. Where the hell were Minh and Luke?
Lori faced me, her back to the door. Her pale blue eyes, circled in black mascara smudges, were glowing silver in the fluorescent light. “Stay out of it, Alif!”
“Lori, I don’t want you to hurt yourself! This … this thing is doing something to you. To all of us. You haven’t been yourself since you started carrying it around!”
“You just want the tablet for yourself, just like the rest of them. I know what you’re all planning! I heard Luke talking to Minh. I even saw how Tommy eyes the tablet when he thinks I’m not looking. You all want it! It promised something to each and all of us, but there’s only one tablet and six of us!”
“You mean five, Lori. There are five of us left, not six.”
She didn’t contradict me, but I could tell she really didn’t care what I had to say. Still, I had to try reasoning with her. “Lori, you’re confused by what happened to us … by what happened to Rowen. He died in the oasis. It’s horrible, but it’s what really happened.”
She appeared briefly disoriented, bright eyes clouding with a dreamy haze, her whole body growing slack.
I used the distraction to come closer. “How about we just drop this and go back to your room?”
“I can’t.”
“Why not?”
“Luke wants the tablet. He’ll end up taking it from me one way or another. He wants it for himself. But his dreams are so mundane. Mine are more important. Why can’t you see that?”
“Lori, you’re not making any sense.”
“Oh, stop it, Alif!” She snapped out of her confusion. “Haven’t you figured it out yet?”
In her fidgeting hands, the tablet’s surface was never still, catching the artificial light and reflecting it at peculiar angles. The faintly greenish gleam of it brought memories of my own interactions with the tablet. Seeing my parents laughing, dancing … Me getting a letter of acceptance rather than rejection … Kissing Tommy and being kissed back … What else was there that I didn’t retain—other wishes and promises of fulfillment? With aching clarity, I recalled how gentle Dad had sounded when he was talking to Mom on the phone earlier. Could the tablet really do that? Bring my parents back together? Could it give me other things I wanted? But what did I want? Maybe the tablet knew my deepest desires better than I did. The prospect of that chilled me.
Like Minh said, there was only one way to know. I had to get the tablet away from Lori. Out of the five of us, she seemed the least stable. A decision was made in my head, and without another thought, I went for the tablet. A dim kind of light started to seep from its surface—the tablet was anticipating my approach. It was egging me on. It liked being fought over.
I saw Lori’s eyes widening, pupils shrinking in size, making it look like she had no pupils at all, just whiteness where her eyes should’ve been.
She shifted sideways, my hands meeting hers over the tablet and slipping and tugging and not letting go. Growing colder and colder to the touch, the tablet was now full-on glowing with greenish light—and too slippery to hold on to. Lori grunted in frustration when the tablet slipped out of our hands.
It met the cement floor, breaking in two.
We stood frozen still, staring down in shock and disbelief. There the tablet lay, broken into two uneven pieces.
One piece was bigger, and that’s the one Lori went for the moment she snapped out of our mutual shock. She knelt and swiped the larger piece off the floor. Moving on autopilot, I picked up the other one before she could grab it too, just in time for Minh and Luke to find us crouching on the stairs as they descended from above. I expected the tablet to hit me with visions the moment my skin made contact, but there was only a faint buzz—and even that fizzled out after a few moments. My piece of the tablet was no longer glowing. It was just a rock, rough to the touch now that it had a jagged edge.
“What the hell?” Luke demanded, looking between us, venom in his eyes.
I showed my piece of the tablet to Luke, but not too closely. I was starting to share Lori’s suspicion that Luke was after the tablet.
“It fell,” I said.
Luke stared at the fragment in my hands, and then his gaze slid up to my eyes. “What does this mean? For us?”
The plaintive look on his face confused me—did he mean “us” as in he and I, or “us” as in our group of survivors?
I said, “I’m not sure yet. But we’re taking these pieces to Melbourne with us. We’ll figure out what to do then.”
“And you two have self-nominated to be the guardians of the broken tablet?” he asked, while Minh stood silent by his side.
“You got a better idea?” Lori scoffed, her eyes back to normal.
“We all have to guard it together,” Minh said sternly. “We can take turns. Lori and Alif can take the first few days, so they’re responsible for smuggling the pieces to Melbourne. You all agree?” Out of our group, she appeared the most coolheaded. I wondered if that was because she really didn’t believe in the tablet’s powers. Or was she just pretending not to? I met her eyes, wishing I could see inside her head and read her thoughts, but she remained closed off.
Slowly, I nodded, and so did Lori, but judging from her expression, she had zero intention of giving up her piece of the tablet to anyone. And I knew exactly how she felt. My own piece was slowly returning to life, pulsing in my hands to a rhythm only I could perceive. It was setting roots into my flesh and blood, growing on me and on my will while bending mine to its liking.