WHEN THE WHITE roar withdraws, and I open my eyes, it’s clear there is something not quite right with me. No concussion-fueled dream to blame this time, no excuse for what I see—
The lab. I’m back in that fucking lab.
With its looming shadows, those flickering blue lights, that snakelike web of cables crisscrossing the floor. And mere feet away, those figures: Kyung and Ethan.
Yet I’m wide-awake. This is not a dream.
It was never a dream. Or some doctor’s test. This is real.
No. It’s merely my brain telling me it’s real.
So what is this exactly?
Both Ethan and Kyung look haggard. If figments of one’s imagination can look haggard. And I guess they can. I suppose all of this—the lab, nerds, their glitchy machine—can look any old way my mind decides they should.
Ethan starts toward me, but I don’t want whatever he is to come any closer. I start to back away, and he stops his advance.
But Kyung is undeterred. Takes out her little pack of gum–size device and aims it at my wrist till there’s a BEEP. She peers down at the thing and smiles. “Looks like those latest adjustments Gideon made to the machine did the trick—Bix’s fragging on this jump was minimal,” she says to Ethan. “It’s possible she could still help, go back—”
“No. Not up for discussion. We’ll find another way to deal with the Guest,” Ethan says.
The Guest. Those two words are again arousing such dread and curiosity in me. I need answers. Even if they’re imaginary ones. “Who is the Guest?” I ask.
“The Guest isn’t a who. It’s a what,” Ethan says. “A deadly virus here in 2035.”
“2035?” I ask.
Ethan points to the stacks of black boxes with their glowing blue lights that surround us. “I know it doesn’t look like it, but this is a time machine.”
A time machine.
In the year 2035.
I can feel sweat beginning to prickle up under my plaid dress.
“We used it to send you back to 1954 Virginia,” Kyung says. “So you could track down the doctor—a researcher there who we believe possessed a sample of an earlier strain of the Guest, when it was still just a benign rat virus. Before it mutated…”
I can see the brass pommel of her hunting knife peeking out from the sheath on her belt. Smell the odor of overheated electronics in the stale air. It all seems so goddamn real …
“If we had that rat virus, it’s possible we could develop a cure for the Guest,” Kyung says. “Your mission was to reach the doctor in time and get them to tell you where they hid the sample.”
Sent from the future in a jerry-rigged time machine to get a doctor to part with their rat virus … It’s breathtaking, all the bizarre details my mind has conjured up. “Outlandishly complex”—those were the words Sherman used to describe Lillian’s visions.
Is this some kind of delusional episode? Fuck. “It’s Hanover that’s doing this to me,” I say. “Being in this place is starting to mess with my head.”
There is nothing wrong with you.
“No, no, there is something definitely very wrong with me!” I yell at the voice—
And realize the two figments are watching me argue with myself.
“Listen to her, Kyung,” Ethan says, gesturing to me. “Is that also going to go away with time? You and that machine did this to her.”
“But it’s fixed now,” Kyung says. “There’s a chance if she went back to ’54—”
“No. Bix has sacrificed enough for this mission. I’m ending this now,” Ethan says, and turns to me. “We’ll bring you somewhere safe, where you can get better.”
A “safe” place where I can get better—sounds like my figment wants me in Hanover as well.
“You’re letting your personal feelings cloud your decision, Ethan,” Kyung says.
“Let’s start with your link, Bix,” Ethan says, ignoring her. “Why don’t you hand it to me so we don’t have to worry about it getting triggered again by accident.”
“My link?” I ask.
“What you used to get back here to 2035,” he explains. “It’s a device keyed to your DNA’s unique energy signature via your disc. Works on a delay: the jump happens fifteen seconds after it’s triggered. But once you feel the vibrations, you’re past the fail-safe and you’re going to travel. With your tether cut, it’s the only way you were able to return. The link was in your purse along with the solar recharger. Where is it now?”
I need to get out of here … or just get rid of here. End this.
But I have no idea how. Lillian said her visions would trap her inside them with no way to escape back to the real world.
A cage. And this time I’m the prisoner. Can feel my heart starting to race—
“Is the link in one of those, Bix?” Ethan asks, pointing to the large patch pockets on the front of my dress.
Would the figment like to frisk me? The absurdity of this thought, of this everything, finally just sends me, and all I can do is smile and shake my head. “Dorothy’s the one in control now, I guess.”
“Dorothy?” he asks.
“Ethan,” Kyung calls to him. She’s quietly gotten close, is eyeing my ID band. “Dorothy Frasier’s the name on her patient identification.” Kyung fixes her sharp brown eyes on mine, observing me like Sherman. “You know you’re not her, right?”
“Why would Bix think she’s some woman from 1954?” Ethan asks.
“If you woke there with this kind of neural damage, no memory of your life, where you came from, would your first assumption be that you were a time traveler from the future?” Kyung asks him.
But I don’t hear his answer ’cause the buzzing’s back. I squeeze my head as the painful vibration builds, shut my eyes, let it all wash over me.
Kyung shouting “Shit!” is the last thing I hear before the white roar drags me away—
—back to the bundle of Dorothy Frasier’s police reports in front of me.
To the boy in the Pilgrim hat on the calendar.
To the clock on the wall slowly ticking, its second hand still sweeping past the twelve.
No time has elapsed while I was “away.” None. Like those moments in the far, fucked future never happened. And obviously they didn’t. Obviously I’m … I’m what?
You’re not a mental. Ethan and Kyung exist, and you heard them: Your mission is to find a certain doctor in 1954 before it’s too late. Get the location of the virus sample!
You can’t just ignore—
“Shut the hell up!” I hiss at her.
Then hear a noise behind me.
I turn to find Dr. Sherman in the doorway. Behind him are Miss Campbell and a guilty-looking Lillian. “I’m so sorry, Bix,” she says. “I—”
“You can go back to the ward now, dear. You did the right thing,” Sherman says, giving Lillian a smile-nod. She retreats just as an attendant appears, restraint in hand.
“Seclusion?” he asks Sherman.
I’ve at least got one of the addresses. And a hairpin in my dress hem. Seclusion, with its shitty locks, is exactly what I need. Whatever it is that’s going on in my head will stop once I’m out of Hanover.
But Sherman says, “No, that won’t be necessary,” to the attendant, then whispers something to Miss Campbell.
A couple hours later I’m summoned back to Sherman’s office to “discuss” ward assignment. When I enter, the doctor is leaning against his desk, arms crossed, an expression of studied neutrality on his face. He’s a regular Switzerland this afternoon.
I just want this day over with. Exhausted by that unsettling experience during the file break-in earlier. What the hell was that, anyway?
Focus on what you know: You saw the real Dorothy Frasier on that bus. That you’re not the woman these people want to treat and sterilize.
Don’t forget that part—the part where they clip your tubes.
Get the ward assignment. Get out. Plenty of time to debate what “really” happened earlier once you’re out of Hanover’s reach.
The voice—still mental enough to believe the future is real. But she’s right about this: all that matters is getting free of this place. And once I learn what down-alphabet ward Sherman’s banishing me to, I can adjust my escape plans.
Yes, adaptation. That’s what’ll keep you alive.
That Christmas Concert poster the nurse was hanging said it was for patients from A to F Wards. If you start a fight during it, as long as you’re in one of those wards—
They’ll bring me to A-Ward’s seclusion and their crappy locks. Come sundown, I’d slip out of my restraint, use the stolen hairpin and my barrette to pick the locks, and run like hell.
But only if he assigns you to one of those wards. So keep it together, no matter what.
“Lillian’s worried about you, dear,” Sherman says to me. “It’s why she told me about the plan she heard you discussing, to steal your file, somehow escape. Plans can often be good. They give us goals. Keep us busy. Productive. But you know the problem with plans?”
No doubt you’re going to tell me.
“They can blind us to better plans. Better goals.” Now he’s looking at me expectantly. “What do you think about what I’ve just said, Dorothy?”
That fucking name. “I think you need to stop calling me Dorothy.”
A hint of smug now creeps onto the doctor’s face. “I’d hoped this meeting could wait, that given more time, you’d come to remember on your own, but your recent actions have convinced me it can no longer be put off.” He presses the intercom button. “Send him in,” he says into it, then turns to me. “You have a visitor who I believe will help clarify a great many things for you.”
A visitor?
The door opens, and a man in a gray suit enters. He’s good-looking, about my age, clean-cut, and lean. I can see a strong suggestion of deltoids under his suit jacket. He approaches with a tentative smile, an old shoe box tucked under his arm.
“Dorothy,” he says softly, his hazel eyes locked on mine, like he’s searching them for signs. Answers.
I turn to Sherman for an explanation, and he cheerfully provides, “This is Paul, dear. Your husband.”