Flicker looks exactly the way she did the last time I saw her, which isn’t great considering she’s unconscious in a sensory deprivation tank. When I meet the gazes of the other Cavies, my fear and distrust reflect back, skipping through me at an increasing rate.
“Why isn’t she awake yet?” I ask Madeline.
“It’s been fewer than twelve hours since we started weaning her off the narcotic that’s slowing her brain activity,” Madeline explains in her quiet voice, the one that sounds as though it expects to be smacked upside the head for opening her mouth. “We’ll decrease it further now and reduce the pain medication over the next twelve hours. It’s not a fast process, I’m afraid, and from now on, either Geoff or I will have to stay here to monitor her progress. We’ll need to be available to pull her out of the tank as soon as she wakes up.”
“How long is all of this going to take?” Pollyanna demands.
“It depends on how her body responds to the sudden lack of drugs. I’d guess at least a week until she’s functioning.”
Madeline bustles around the tank, checking wires and explaining them to Geoff under her breath, then she goes to the fridge and pulls out some vials. They tinker with those for a few moments, then do the same with the dials on the monitor connected to the wires on Flicker’s head and chest.
Impatience tightens my throat. “You want to help Geoff watch Flicker and bring her out of that tank, then maybe start her on GRH-18. Why? What’s in it for you?”
Madeline’s confident now, as though she already knows how she’s going to respond before the question falls off my lips. “I want to leave Saint Stephen’s, too.”
“You want to come with us?” Mole asks, aghast.
She nods. “I’ll stay here until Flicker’s well enough to travel, then we’ll all join you where you’ve set up camp.”
“What makes you think we’re going to have a camp for you to join? We don’t have anywhere to go.” Goose’s gaze narrows on her. “We don’t have a plan, either.”
“Let’s just say I have a hunch that y’all will be my best chance.”
“Why should we trust you? I mean, you’re one of them.” Worry and hope whirr through me in equal intensity. I want to believe her motives are personal, but after dealing with Fake Flicker for two weeks, it’s hard.
She’s not one of us. If the couple of months in the real world taught me anything, it’s that people are almost never what they seem. And most of them are more than adequate liars. She might be spying for Chameleon, along just in case we do stop the GRH-18 and they can’t track us.
But maybe that’s all we are, all of us. All we were ever meant to be. My heart sinks at the thought. Can we change what we were bred for, or have we been kidding ourselves this whole time?
“You shouldn’t trust me.” Her dark eyes swim with determination. “Chameleon is crazy, and he’s paranoid, and he probably doesn’t even realize when he’s lying anymore, but he’s not wrong about everything. None of us can trust anyone.”
Her gaze flicks around our little circle, making it clear that she would include each and every one of us in that piece of advice. But it still doesn’t explain why she wants to leave the Olders.
“Okay, fine, then why should we let you come?” Haint’s voice reveals impatience, which is typical of her when people play word games.
“Because I can make sure nothing else happens to Flicker.” She makes a face. “That’s not true. I can make sure she wakes up healthy and be there to administer drugs if she’s in pain, but if she starts ’porting again I won’t be able to do anything except up her dose of GRH-18.”
“We don’t want to take that stuff anymore,” Mole says, his haggard face set in determined lines. “Not until we know more about it.”
“I don’t blame you, in some ways, but for Flicker it might be the only way she’ll ever be able to truly control her abilities.” She motions to the case of vials on the table. “You should take some with you, just in case. If nothing else, Haint needs to be visible and we all know your incident in the cafeteria yesterday was no random occurrence. The GRH-18 offers us a multitude of improvements and has very few negative side effects.”
“Aside from the tracking,” Mole grunts.
“Aside from that. The rest of it, you’re going to need. Particularly the ability to evade the government’s collection of nulls.” She pauses, checking for our understanding. “The agents that are dosed to withstand our abilities.”
I’m not convinced that we should let her help yet. There’s obviously a lot she’s not saying. “You still haven’t told us why you want to help, why you’re so keen on getting out of Saint Stephen’s in the first place.”
Madeline sighs. “What Chameleon said in the graveyard last night, that we all have the choice whether to work with the government on certain occasions?” She glances around, as though she’s worried about being overheard even though the only other Older in the building is Gills. “Not all of us get those same options.”
She doesn’t expand on her point. I have the feeling she wouldn’t even if we asked, but the truth underlying her vagaries seems to point to the fact that she’s not allowed to leave Saint Stephen’s the way the others are. We don’t push her, because even if we can’t trust her, we do need her.
And there’s not a doubt in my mind that she’d walk away before revealing anything more personal.
“I don’t know why we’re standing here acting like we’re not going to accept,” Pollyanna huffs. “Flicker needs her expertise, and if we’re even considering not coming back here, or worried it might happen, we can’t leave one of our own behind with no plan. Y’all know that.”
Our combined silence is as good as agreement, and Madeline’s shoulders slump in relief. “You can leave whenever you’re ready. There’s a car in the barn and the keys—”
“Are in the visor, I know.” I nod.
A surprised smile leaps onto her face and even though the nerves in my stomach are making it hard to think, I can’t help but give her the smallest smirk in return.
It’s nice to know I have a few secrets from the Olders, too.
We pack the GRH-18 Madeline gives us even though we don’t come to an agreement about continuing to take it. Haint and Mole both take doses to counteract whatever stopping it entirely did to them yesterday, but the rest of us refrain. For now.
We don’t speak as we trek toward the barn. There’s no point in talking it to death—we’re leaving, Geoff and Flicker are staying, and we’re relying on Madeline to keep them alive.
Then something occurs to me that makes my blood turn to gazpacho in my veins.
I reach out and grab Mole’s arm, squeezing it through his jacket sleeve as I pull us to a stop. “It sounded like there’s some reason Madeline hasn’t been able to leave before now. If Chameleon doesn’t want to lose her for some reason, they might come after her.”
The others stop too, their eyes big as the implication of my observation sinks in. If they drag her back here, they might do the same to us, for helping her out.
“What makes you think that?” Haint asks, her fingertips and nose starting to come into view.
“She said she’s been waiting for the opportunity to leave. I mean, if they would let her go, why wait until now?”
“And that whole thing about some people not having choices about their lives,” Goose adds, casting me a thoughtful glance. “It could be trouble.”
Stealing someone Chameleon considers a commodity, who he might see as special for some reason, has the stink of disaster on it. We still don’t know what she can do.
Maybe we should have tried harder to make her tell us, but I doubt it would have done any good.
“I mean, obviously he’s not that worried about losing us—maybe there are Olders who can pretty much do what we can do but Madeline’s the only one of her kind.” Athena’s musing makes my stomach hurt.
If Madeline is the only Cavy with her ability—whatever it is—then Chameleon definitely won’t let her go without a fight.
“This doesn’t change anything,” Polly insists. “We need her, and besides, if she wants to leave and we don’t help her, we’re no better than Chameleon and the others. We want to make our own decisions? Well, so does she.”
“Plus, once Flicker’s awake and okay again we can always kick her to the curb,” Haint says, a wicked glint in her voice in response to both Pollyanna’s and my incredulous looks. “What? I’m kidding.”
Mole raises an eyebrow. “Are you?”
“I love you guys,” I say, a grin splitting my cheeks despite the mounds of worry perched on my shoulders.
“Lord have mercy, can we get out of here before Gypsy starts sappy crying? Remind me to never let her get drunk or she’ll go into a hug fest and we’ll all find out the intimate details of our deaths.” Pollyanna rolls her eyes, but the sparkling light in them tells me she’s feeling good about today’s decisions, too. We’re taking control, going to find answers, and it feels right.
“Shut up, Polly.” I almost call her Tate, the name on her birth certificate, but it would only piss her off.
“Both of you shut up and let’s get the car,” Mole says. “I’m driving!”
That makes us all giggle, though our laughter dies off as we enter the barn. The boat of a car is exactly where I left it, but it’s going to be a tight fit. Good thing it’s old enough to have a bench seat in the front.
Haint starts toward the driver’s door, a faint blur in the air now after her double dose of GRH-18, but I put out a hand to stop her. “You’re the only one with a valid driver’s license, but you’re still mostly invisible. That’s going to freak other drivers out. Rightfully so.”
“You’re going to drive?” Mole asks me, fake horror on his face as he clutches his chest.
“Hey, I’m the only one of us who knows where we’re going,” I remind them.
“Yeah, because you’re a big fat sneak,” Pollyanna grumps as she climbs into the front seat. “Shotgun!”
I ignore the comment about my clandestine visits to town, especially because Mole probably suspects I’d gone to see Jude and I don’t want to get into that right now, and slide behind the wheel. “Get in, suckers. I’ll try not to kill us.”
Haint shoves Pollyanna toward the center of the bench and takes the spot by the passenger-side window, leaving the three boys to cram in the back. “For the record, I think this is a really bad idea.”
I give her a rueful smile as we pull onto the bumpy lane, noticing her feet, hands, hair, and ears are almost defined, now. Goose and Athena have to get out and clear away brush from the long, winding driveway more than once, replacing the twigs and such carefully behind us. It’s best if we leave things the way we found them.
We don’t know if we’ll be back, but for everything else it is, Saint Stephen’s is a sanctuary for people like us. There’s more than a slight chance we’ll need just that in the future. None of us wants to be unexpectedly booted the way we were from Darley, and even though we’re more than a little leery of the Olders’ intentions, Saint Stephen’s might become a necessity someday.
The twins get out again to move the heavy iron gate at the front of the property, covered with overgrown vegetation and ivy. I pull the car onto a gravelly and pitted dirt road for a few hundred yards before the paved blacktop of Highway 17 erupts from out of nowhere, ready to carry us into Beaufort.