I examine the “compound” a little more carefully. There are two main sets of hills. They’re big and they’re covered in trees, so I can’t see what’s behind them. The one on the left is much taller than the one on the right, and it’s got an entrance burrowed into its side that looks like it was cut with an enormous hole punch. The door is round, and as big as three normal doors put together. There’s a doorway into the hill on the right, too. This one is average sized, and it’s the one Corina’s walking to.
She’s almost there when she sees I haven’t left the car. She turns to wait for me. “Jesus. C’mon.”
I jog to catch up.
I haven’t showered or changed my clothes in three days. I sniff at my armpit and cringe at how I must’ve smelled in the car next to Corina.
“You’re fine,” she tells me when I catch up. “Nobody’s getting their noses up in you until you’ve had a chance to take a shower.”
I nod, ready to move on. “This is the door?” I ask as we step up to it. “We’re going into the hill?”
“Not a hill,” she corrects me. “A house that’s built like a hill.”
“Jeffrey Sabazios lives in a hill?”
She turns to look at me, her face suddenly serious. “Alex, Jeffrey Sabazios is a vampire. He can’t live aboveground.”
I don’t know if I should laugh or not. It’s obviously a joke, but with everything else that’s happened . . .
I test out a smile to see if she laughs.
She doesn’t.
“You’re serious?”
Then she laughs. “No.” She gestures up at the hills. “Sabazios is into sustainability and security and he says that this is the best way to live in a large place that doesn’t suck up energy, doesn’t kill the environment, and is nearly impossible to spy on.”
“So he lives in a hill.”
“Yes,” she says. “He does, and so do I.” She opens the door and steps into the hill. “And now, so do you.”
I follow her through the door and stop, facing a long hallway that slopes slightly downward. Corina stops, turns to look at me.
There aren’t any doors or windows.
The light seems to come directly from the bare white walls. The ground is covered by hardwood, with a thin line of carpet running down the middle.
“This is a long hallway,” I comment for lack of anything else to say, buying time to steel myself for moving forward.
“And we call it the Long Hall. Appropriate. Just wait, though,” she says, and as she continues walking, things start to change. The walls on either side of us brighten up and then fade into photographs. At first they just look like people doing regular people things, but then one stops me cold. A young guy just a little older than me, wearing desert fatigues, is standing in a parking lot surrounded by lots of other people. There’s a bus in the background.
The guy in the photo is my brother Pete.
I know the scene—it was the day he shipped out for the first time, but it’s not a picture we took that day—my mom’s hands were shaking so bad that none of the pictures came out. He looks happy, and he looks like he’s looking right at me.
Like he sees me.
Like he loves me.
“What the . . .” I stop walking to stare at it.
“You get used to it. It’s a new use for Live-Tech—connects to your mind just like that pod you’ve got in your ear but without the contact—like Bluetooth.” She motions from my wrist to a photo of a black woman watching us from across a bumpy brick road. “That’s my mom. We were at the riverfront in Portland and I was chasing birds. I was like four or something.”
I shake my head. “That picture of my brother can’t be real.”
“The wall reads our memories.” She points to Pete. “He’s your brother?”
I nod.
She studies me. “Did something happen to him?”
“Yeah.”
She shakes her head. “Sorry. That’s why this version isn’t being sold yet—it’s supposed to only grab happy memories, but a lot of times stronger and more complicated memories get picked up.”
I don’t say anything and I don’t move. I just look at Pete.
She looks from Pete to me. “You’ve been through a lot. I’m really sorry, Alex.” She reaches her hand out to me. Her moves are awkward and tentative, like she’s approaching a strange dog, but when she touches my arm, I lean into it. It’s the first time I’ve been touched since I said goodbye to Mousie, the first contact since I found my parents.
Maybe it’s because of the picture of my brother or just the fact that she’s reaching out to me, but I start losing control a little. I shake my head to try and clear it.
Corina starts to walk again. I stare at Pete for a long moment. Seeing him look at me like that makes me feel small, scared, and lonely.
I walk the rest of the distance trying hard not to look at the walls, focusing instead on the guitars.
The Long Hall ends at another door, which opens up onto an outdoor patio cut out of the back side of one of the hills. It’s huge—maybe half the size of a soccer field—and it’s lined with plants in pots. There’s a fire pit on one side that’s surrounded by chairs and benches. There’s a volleyball net and a workout station, too.
The far edge of the patio has a glass wall that’s taller than me by quite a bit. There’s a beautiful view of water and hills on the other side of it, with just the tops of the buildings of downtown Seattle visible in the distance. “Is that the ocean?” I ask.
She tells me that it’s not, that it’s a lake.
She leads me toward a set of glass doors built into a wall on the far side of the patio.
“It’s not cold here.”
She shakes her head. “We’re inside.” She points to the glass wall. “No sense in a big outdoor patio in Seattle. Follow the curve—it goes all the way over.”
I look where she’s pointing. It takes a few seconds for my eyes to see it, but it’s true—the glass wall continues up, over, almost impossible to detect.
She opens the double doors. “The common room,” she explains.
There’s a pool table, Ping-Pong, air hockey, a short row of VR consoles against one wall, and tall shelves with books and games. The other side is dominated by a TV pit surrounded by couches.
Corina gestures to a couch that faces the TV. “Have a seat,” she says. “You want a soda?”
I tell her I’m fine and she looks at me like my mom does when she doesn’t believe me.
Like my mom used to look at me.
I reach into my pocket for the key chain. I don’t want to pull it out in front of Corina, but touching it makes me feel better.
I settle onto the couch.
“You going to be okay for a minute?”
I nod.
“I’ll be right back.” She steps out another door and disappears.
I turn on the TV.
A kids’ cartoon I haven’t watched in years rises up out of the floor. I think about changing the channel, but instead I just turn the projection base so I’m looking at the faces instead of the backs of the characters. I turn the channel to see what else is on, but stop when it gets to the news. There’s nothing about my parents because this is Seattle and that’s Los Angeles, but I watch anyway, hoping. Instead they talk about President Castle’s push to get Live-Tech regulated. He says we shouldn’t have tools that can read our minds because it’s not moral, that only God should know our innermost thoughts, but the spokesman for Live-Tech says Castle doesn’t like Live-Tech because Sabazios donates to the other party’s candidates.
The whole thing makes me think about the Incursion and I switch back to the first channel.
I try and focus, suck in a breath and push it out, but it’s no use.
I’m so spun I can’t even track a cartoon.
I turn the TV off, wait for the images to descend back into the projector’s base, and go inside myself to find my Voice. Ever since the time at my house when she screamed at me to run, it’s been easier and easier to get down to where she is.
My Voice is right there on the edge of my regular mind like she’s expecting me:
“I’m your secret, scared boy.” She doesn’t sound like a regular human—her voice is too hollow and ghostly—but even so, right now she feels like a friend, and hearing her fills me with relief.
WAIT! I shout inside. WHO ARE YOU?
“Who am I?” she asks me back. “I’m your secret. Your girl Sly. Your friend in the Silly Juice.”
I DON’T UNDERSTAND.
“You will, scared boy.” She doesn’t get any quieter. “I’m your secret Sly Girl, on the sly, runaway. Don’t go telling people about me, boy—snitches and stitches.”
I’M NOT A SNITCH!
Silence. Her calling me a snitch pisses me off and I feel myself slipping back up to the surface against my will. When I return, Corina’s there. She’s standing over me, holding a pile of clothes and some bathroom stuff. “You alright?”
I’m your secret. I nod. “I think I’m just tired. It’s been a weird few days.” I can’t tell what I do when I’m down under the drain. I might make faces or talk out loud or something—I just don’t know.
Snitches and stitches . . .
I’m suddenly nervous I’ve given something away. “Why?”
She shrugs. “Because I wasn’t alright when I got here, and you’ve had more shit happen to you than I ever have.” She hands me a pile of clothes. “Here. The bathroom’s down that way on your right.”
“Towel?” I ask.
“On the counter. Go get cleaned up and then we’ll get you started.”
“Started on what?”
“You got a job to do, Alex Mata—just like me.” She raises an eyebrow. “So get your ass on it.” She smiles and gestures with her chin toward the door she just came through.
Her smile makes me feel better instantly.
I walk out and down a hallway. When I’m through the door I turn back to Corina. She’s looking at something on her hand. From here she looks like a little kid who should be watching cartoons with me. When I first saw her, I didn’t think about how old she was, but now I can see that she’s my age or maybe a little bit older than me.