ZOE STOOD IN the kitchen, coffee mug in hand. A shuffling sound drew her attention, and she turned to see Seeley standing inside the kitchen archway.
“How is she?” he asked.
Zoe took the final swallow from her mug and walked to the sink. “Sleeping.” She rinsed the mug and placed it in the dishwasher.
The two stood in silence for a moment. Before either could say anything, Gina entered. “Is Lucy still resting?” she asked.
Zoe nodded, and Gina crossed her arms. “Let her rest a little longer. The more strength she has, the better.”
“You have to be joking,” Zoe said.
“We can’t stop now,” the doctor continued. “It worked—she recovered something from her past.”
“And nearly stopped breathing,” Zoe fired back.
“Memory recovery is tricky.”
“Tricky, yes, but life-threatening?” Zoe turned to Seeley, pleading with him to hear reason. “There has to be another way.”
Seeley exhaled and gave a slight nod. “What are the chances that happens to her again?”
“There’s no way to know,” Gina said. “But she’ll know what to expect this time. She’ll be better suited to handle her emotions. She was trained for situations like this. She just needs to tap into that.”
“No,” Zoe said. “This is crazy. She stopped breathing. You had to shock her with manual defibrillators to get her back to consciousness. What if that hadn’t worked?”
“It did work, and next time it won’t be as severe. She’ll learn as she goes,” Gina said.
“How can you be sure?”
“Because I have enough understanding of who Lucy is and where she comes from to believe she can handle this. You only see the scared teenage girl that stumbled into your diner. You’re doing her a disservice.”
Zoe almost laid into Gina, but Seeley raised his arms toward her to signal calm. “Everyone wants what is best for the situation here,” he said.
“No, I only want what is best for Lucy,” Zoe said.
“If you really understood what we’re dealing with, you would know that what is best for Lucy is to handle this situation,” Gina said.
“And if you kill her trying to recover memories, who wins then?” Zoe barked.
“She won’t kill me.” Lucy had entered from the opposite side of the kitchen. She looked small and tired, the usual optimism and light drained from her eyes.
“You should be resting,” Zoe said.
“I did.”
Quiet captured the kitchen as the four stood in awkward silence.
Gina cleared her throat. “How are you feeling?”
“Like I almost drowned,” Lucy said.
Zoe glanced over her shoulder and cut her eyes at Seeley, as if to say, She is not ready for more of this. He acknowledged her look and turned his attention to Lucy.
“We all have different ideas about how to proceed.” He took a step toward the girl. “But what do you want to do?”
Lucy dropped her eyes to the floor, her face turning contemplative. A moment stretched into a minute before she drew her eyes upward. “I want to remember. I want to remember all of it.” She looked at Zoe. “No matter the cost.” Then back to Gina. “I’m ready to try again.”
Zoe couldn’t shake the horrid feeling making its home inside her chest. She wanted to be optimistic about the outcome, but her instincts were telling her this path would lead Lucy to more darkness and pain.
“Excellent,” Gina said. “I’ll get everything prepped.” With that she left, heading back out the way she had come.
“I’ll give you guys a minute,” Seeley said.
“Actually,” Lucy said before he could move, “I’d like to have time alone.” She turned to Zoe and gave a half smile. “But you’ll be in there, right?”
“Together,” Zoe said.
Lucy gave a little nod and then, just as Gina had done, left the way she’d entered.
Zoe felt Lucy leave as much as she saw it. Warmth was pulled out of her as the girl walked away. She should rush after her, hold her close, tell her it would be better not to be alone when facing something so heavy. But she stayed in place.
She could feel Seeley behind her. She wondered if he felt the shift in Lucy as well. He claimed to have known her. Was she becoming more like the girl he’d trained? More like herself?
“Did they really do what she’s remembering?” Zoe asked. She turned to face him, to watch his face as he answered.
He didn’t shy away from her stare. He took it head-on and nodded. “Yes, they trained them all to withstand an immense amount of pain.”
“What other terrible things is she going to remember?”
“I want there to be another way too, Zoe.”
She huffed in disbelief and shook her head.
“Those terrible memories are worth her life,” Seeley said. “Because trust me, it’s her memories or her life. The men capable of nearly drowning a little girl over and over are looking for her. What do you think they’ll be willing to do to get what they want from her now?”
Zoe felt a rush of emotion wash over her. Tears sprang to her eyes, and she didn’t fight them. “I don’t know how to protect her.”
Seeley’s face softened, and he walked across the space that separated them. He placed his hand on her shoulder, and his touch quickened her pulse and drew heat back to her chest.
“All any of us can do is our best,” he said.
Zoe sniffed her tears back and drew her shoulder out from under his hand. She wasn’t sure how she felt about the way his closeness made her skin tingle, so she deflected.
“Where did you get that, a fortune cookie?” she mocked.
He cleared his throat. “I was just trying to offer . . .” He shook his head and chuckled. “I’m not great at pep talks.”
“Phrases like ‘all any of us can do is our best’ aren’t making you any better,” Zoe said.
“Noted.” He smiled, and she returned the gesture.
Immediately she wished she hadn’t. They were connecting and sparking something neither of them had time for. Zoe yanked her eyes away from his and walked past him without looking back. She still didn’t trust him. He was still the enemy.
Wasn’t he?
I OPENED MY eyes, and once more I was sitting on a bench between the sweet neighborhood to my right and the bustling downtown to my left. The thoughts I’d recovered earlier crashed into my brain, and their rumbling fears with them. My heart rate spiked. I could feel beads of sweat collecting at my hairline.
I had to control this. Deep breaths. Internalize the fear. See it, switch it off, stomp it out. I’d been trained to do so. Wasn’t that what Dr. Loveless had said?
“You came back,” the small voice beside me said.
I turned and saw the high ponytail and unicorn shirt. “You lied to me.”
The girl’s face went sour. “Did not.”
“You said you would show me the game.”
“I did. It’s not my fault you lost.”
Lucy, remember, this is your mind. You are safe.
Dr. Loveless’s voice echoed like a whisper in my ears. I had to keep my brain trained on the truth of her words.
“Are there more games like that one?” I asked the child.
“Oh yeah, lots,” she said, her eyes widening.
“Can you show me?”
“Not until you win the first one.”
Fear beat against my heart. I didn’t want to go back into the box.
She turned to look me right in the eye. “Leveling up doesn’t come for free.”
I swallowed hard, and the little girl must have seen the terror cascading down my face.
I nodded.
The girl slid off the bench and stood at attention before me, eyes serious, jaw set. “Toughen up, buttercup. Level one is easy mode. If you can’t beat this, you might as well not come back.”
I felt smacked, her words punchy and brutal. Then her face softened, and her lips opened to reveal her gap-toothed grin. A giggle escaped her lips, one that sounded both innocent and maddening. I wasn’t sure whether to be reassured or threatened. Without another sound she was off again, racing toward the bustle of bodies, and I knew what following her would mean.
But I couldn’t not. I physically couldn’t stay seated. My mind and heart needed to know, so they carried my limbs without my permission. I was met with meatsuits, same as before. I was crashing through people, desperate to keep up, hoping for a different outcome.
I should have slowed my pace since I knew what waited, but I didn’t and again smacked the hard glass at a dangerous pace. The time before it had all seemed to happen in slow motion as reality crashed in. This time I knew what was coming, and it happened faster than I anticipated. No matter what I tried, the water rose and the fear grew. I couldn’t hear Dr. Loveless’s voice. I lost my grasp on what I knew was true.
This was my mind.
I was safe.
But all I could feel was the desperate need to escape the glass prison as the faceless coats watched me begin to drown. All I could see were the painful flashes of reliving this moment as a child, over and over. My own voice screamed for help, begging for them not to put me back in. My own body tugged against their restraints, bruising under their vicious holds. My mind scratched at the inside of my skull for freedom.
Freedom.
Freedom.
Until I wasn’t breathing, and the shocks against my chest and to my nervous system were the only thing that could bring me back to the reality of lying on the cold table in the barn, sweat-drenched, DOT attached to my head, Zoe and the others surrounding me.
I sprang up from where I was seated, gasping. Oxygen forced its way into my lungs, its reentry painful. My head was pounding, and I felt like I was still soaked from icy waters, even though that had just been happening in my mind.
Tears warmed my cheeks. I wasn’t weeping, but I could feel the urge to collapse into Zoe’s arms. She was close, her hand on my shoulder. I glanced up at her worried face as the noise of the room finally broke past the barrier built in my subconscious.
“Deep breaths,” Dr. Loveless was saying as she carefully disconnected DOT. Unhooking me because I had failed. Again.
“Talk to me, Lucy,” I heard Zoe say.
“Stop,” I whispered.
“It can’t be safe for her heart rate to spike that high,” Zoe said.
I reached up and pushed Dr. Loveless’s hands away from the connecting tubes on the DOT cap. “Stop,” I said louder.
“Lucy,” Zoe said.
“I need to go again.”
“No. She can’t, she needs a break,” she said to the others.
“You don’t speak for me,” I snapped. I could feel something forming inside me. An old sensation of determination that was stronger than anything I’d ever felt. My words were harsher than they needed to be, but I only slightly cared. Something else was happening that was greater than how Zoe felt.
She dropped her hand from my shoulder and inched back. I’d hurt her. I should care. I did, but not enough to stop.
I turned back to Dr. Loveless, who was still on the other side of me. “Can I go again?”
She glanced at Zoe and then Seeley, who was standing near the end of the table. Then back to me. “Your pulse is still unstable. It might be better to take a small break.”
I heard it then, the uneven beeping that represented my heart rate. I zeroed in on the sound, blocking out the rest of the room. I followed it to the sound of my actual pulse, saw it skyrocketing under my skin. With a long exhale, I slowed it. Brought it back into a perfectly normal rhythm. Then returned my focus to the room.
Dr. Loveless and Zoe were watching me in fascination.
“I need to go again,” I said.
“Can I speak with you two alone?” Zoe demanded rather than asked.
The three left the curtained square. They moved out of sight, and I zeroed in on the motion of their footsteps. Four yards across the barn floor. The creaking of wood and metal signaled they were stepping outside. I didn’t need to strain to hear their words. I just tapped into their sound waves. Like a radio. Easy enough.
Zoe: “You can’t seriously be thinking about letting her do this.”
Dr. Loveless: “She seems pretty determined.”
Zoe: “She’s already had two doses of amobarbital, and you want to give her another?”
Seeley: “How much can the body withstand?”
Zoe: “Not this much!”
Dr. Loveless: “I wasn’t aware you had medical experience, Miss Johnson.”
Seeley: “Can Lucy handle another dose?”
A beat of silence passed.
Dr. Loveless: “I could cut it in half. I believe she’ll be able to journey with less now that’s she been before. Her determination will carry her farther than most drugs could. It’s all a mind game at this point.”
Zoe: “A mind game that could kill her.”
Seeley: “In my experience, that is the only kind.”
More silence.
Dr. Loveless: “Are we finished then?” She didn’t wait for a response. Her feet were already moving back toward me. She stepped through the thick white sheet and strode toward me, Seeley a few steps behind her.
Zoe stepped into view but stayed back, her face darkened by worry. Don’t give up on me, I wanted to say, but instead I just held her eyes and hoped her face would soften. It didn’t. I swallowed my own fear as I listened to her heart pounding inside her chest. I could stop, I thought, heed her warning.
Dr. Loveless held out a single blue pill, and I leaned back against the table. “Anchor yourself here,” she said. “The key is to remember what is real and what isn’t. You are in control.”
I nodded at the doctor, then stole a final glance at Zoe. She was scratching her arms, a tic I’d noticed her doing when she was afraid or nervous. I could stop, I thought again as I took the blue pill.
But not yet.