Siberia was nearly empty, just three occupants.
Grace stood still at the door, letting her breathing slow down so it was in rhythm with the rolling sounds, imagining she was standing on the shore, listening to the sea. She was glad that Mal wasn’t in one of those beds. She’d been the only person at his funeral.
Sometimes, she could still feel his hand in hers.
Once the investigation began into what had been going on at Janus, it wasn’t long before Conrad was arrested. It was what Grace expected. Someone had to take the fall and the minister had made sure that Conrad’s version was dismissed out of hand. Grace felt relieved he was gone, along with his unscrupulous ways, but also a little sorry for him. She hoped they were kind to him, wherever he was now.
Conrad had always known her Achilles heel.
Dan had been surprised when she told him that she was returning to work at the Tier System, but it seemed the best way to clear her name and to get back to doing what she loved, what gave her life meaning. Sometimes it was worth getting back into the fight to get what you wanted.
Gracie knew that.
She’d spoken to Dan occasionally while he was healing physically and mentally from the attack, but that part of her life was over and she rarely spoke to him now.
The new psychiatrist would be in at two o’clock. She’d smile and give him the tour, show him the ropes. She’d teach him, like Abigail had once taught her, how the clinic worked, but now, instead of Aversion Therapy built on fear, there was something kinder in its place.
It was her treatment, but she didn’t feel jealous or resentful or possessive. She didn’t care who was in charge, as long as they used her new treatment.
She just didn’t want to be at the Janus clinic any more. Too many bad memories.
The minister from the Department of Justice had been in charge of the investigation. He’d called her into Conrad’s office and they’d struck a deal. Grace would remain silent about Siberia if she could run the Agrarian and choose the right people to run the new therapy.
She would be Shannon’s replacement.
When her friend came to mind, she felt her heart clench. It was still so painfully raw, even after four months. It had taken a while to settle into Shannon’s house on the Compound. Grace found herself standing in various rooms at different times crying. She’d cried with loss after Shannon’s sister had come up from London to collect the children and she’d found a toy left behind. She’d cried with guilt seeing Shuggie through a window out in the fields looking bereft. She’d cried when Remy left the Agrarian, the night after Shannon’s funeral. She wondered if he’d gone because he too couldn’t look Shuggie in the eye.
She’d probably see Remy again someday, wouldn’t she? She had lost so much, a hollow victory.
Who knew what the future held? But for now it was enough to know that she was back where she should be. Helping, healing, rehabilitating.
This was the last time she would come to this ward before it was closed for good. She wanted to see with her own eyes the three people who had caused her so much trouble, who had changed her life so drastically.
Bizzy was in the first bed she came to, lying prone, inert, innocuous.
Her skin crawled.
Moving along the ward to the next bed, Grace looked down at Sarge, the powerful, unused body wrapped tightly in the white sheet, his damaged lower face hidden by medical dressings, the scar on his arm looking almost maroon under the soft lights.
And in the corner, there was Abigail.
The ward would be shut down in a few days, just as soon as the minister had made a decision about their fate. Who knew what would happen to them then? Grace tried not to think about it. It wouldn’t be her problem any more. But the minister had agreed to her demand that this was where the three should be kept until then.
She walked over to Abigail’s bed and stared for a while – all her strawberry red hair gone, her bone-white skin, the marmalade eyes hidden behind the headset.
How could Grace not have seen the signs? She reassured herself that anyone could fall for a psychopath’s manipulation. She was only human.
On the wall above their beds she could see projected the reels that were being pumped into their brains. They were getting the whole hit. Everything they’d done to others they now experienced being done to them. All the crimes they’d organised and carried out, with the added ingredient of synthetic empathy to really drive it home.
Grace wasn’t sure if she believed in Hell. But maybe this was the closest it came.
She couldn’t save everyone. She knew that now. You couldn’t always cure people with kindness, but sometimes people needed to be punished before they could move on, to come to terms with what they’d done so that they might face redemption.
Before she turned away and left the ward for good, Grace pulled something out of her pocket and placed it into Abigail’s limp hand, wrapping the long, pale fingers around it – a brightly coloured plastic keyring photo frame, the word FUNLAND, each letter a different colour, an image of two children, Grace and Remy, on a rollercoaster ride, the pair of them laughing, really laughing.