TREES DROPPED their spindly shadows on the hood of the truck as Tom and I drove up the familiar road of the Forge School. One state west, in Colorado, they still had snow, but here in Kansas, spring was early. The trees were fuzzy with buds, and the pasture was green with new grass. On my right, the observatory where I once fell with Burnham aimed its gray dome toward a blue sky, and the lookout tower cast its great lenses over the campus.
Tom and I had slept late at the motel and driven half the day to arrive at Forge by mid-afternoon. I’d checked in with Madeline enough to allay her fears that I was dead on the road somewhere and ask if I had any messages. I didn’t. I didn’t have any on my own phone, either, and by daylight, it was easier to resist calling Linus. What would I tell him, anyway? I couldn’t very well force myself into his life, even if I was visiting his proverbial back yard.
Now Tom and I pulled into the driveway behind the art building and parked before the giant wooden spools. One was still splattered with colorful paint. The other had been painted black and drilled with holes.
I’d had my first kiss by those spools, in the rain, in desperation. I had to wonder where Linus was at this moment.
“It all looks bigger than I guessed from TV,” Tom said, as he locked the car. “Where are the cameras?”
“They’re everywhere. Most of them are small buttons. They blend in.”
“Like that?” he asked, pointing to one on a metal railing.
“Yes.”
I almost told him not to point, which was taboo for students. Even though the cameras weren’t broadcasting me, everywhere I turned I instinctively felt a prickling along my neck.
“Relax,” Tom said, squeezing a hand into my shoulder. “No one’s going to recognize you. They can’t.”
“I know. It’s just weird to be back.”
“We’re simply taking a tour. No big deal.”
I shot him a smile. “Right. Thanks.”
We’d agreed to take a tour of the school and wing it from there. Tom knew that I hoped to learn more about Berg’s research, but he’d pointed out that any real discovery was unlikely, given that I would have no chance to get off stage in broad daylight. I felt, distinctly, that he was indulging me.
I also sensed that he’d withdrawn from me at some level. I couldn’t blame him. Each stop on our road trip was proving how little I resembled Althea. Then again, it was a relief for me to have someone from Althea’s life finally get an up-close look at where I’d come from.
A dozen people were gathered on the steps of the student union, mostly parents and their teenager sons and daughters. In snug yellow pants and a black coat, a big white guy with pale curls stood out from the crowd. A tall, young black woman with hoop earrings idly met my eye, and then gave me a nod. Several others surreptitiously checked out my figure. I felt like my belly was huge. I wasn’t recognizable as Rosie, but I was still conspicuous.
“You were here how long?” Tom asked quietly.
“Two months. A lifetime.”
I could feel a level of eagerness in the way the others fidgeted. Visitors to the campus didn’t merit any special attention, but they each stood a chance of being in the background of a Forge student’s feed. After the tour, visitors could order memento clips of the background footage compiled from various feeds, for a price.
I didn’t want anything to do with that, obviously.
My friend Janice came lightly down the steps of the student union and stopped before us, tucking her short hair back around her ear. I was stunned to realized she was our tour guide. She’d changed her hair from blonde to a burnished, golden-red color that made her eyes look almost purple, and she wore a white jacket with big black buttons over her black jeans and boots.
“Hi, everybody,” she said with a friendly wave. “Welcome to Forge. I’m Janice. I’m a sophomore acting student, and I’ll be your tour guide this afternoon. Before we begin, why don’t each of you perspective students tell me your name and your art? Go ahead.”
They started at the other end with the guy in the yellow pants, who turned out to be a singer. I scrambled to concoct what I was going to say, but when Janice came to me and Tom, she passed right on to the next young person. Startled, I glanced at Tom.
He leaned near to my ear. “I feel incredibly old and unartistic.”
I smiled and nudged his elbow.
“Let’s start with the drama department and work our way around the school, shall we?” Janice said. “If you have any questions, be sure to speak up.”
“Weren’t you friends with Burnham Fister and Rosie Sinclair?” someone asked.
I peeked around the others to see it was the tall black woman who had spoken.
“I was, yes,” Janice said. She still smiled, but more tightly. “To be honest, though, I meant questions about the school. I’m not comfortable talking about my friends. If anyone wants to know more about Burnham or Rosie, or safety here at Forge, you can stop by the dean’s office. They’ll be able to answer your questions. Now, the music building, here on your right, was built fifteen years ago.” She continued smoothly on with her tour info.
I was impressed with her aplomb.
“You knew her?” Tom asked me quietly as we moved with the crowd toward the auditorium.
“Yes,” I said. “We’re in the same year.”
“What’s her blip rank?” he asked me.
“You’ll see on the board in the dining hall. Or you could check her profile on your phone.”
Janice led us around the campus, winding over to the dorms and behind the dean’s tower to the sculpture garden. Seeing her in the role of guide, both businesslike and anonymously friendly, made me itch to jolt her out of it, but I had to resist.
“How do you like Mr. DeCoster for a teacher?” I asked politely as we headed into the library. He’d been my favorite.
“He’s brilliant,” she said. “My Media Convergence class meets in the basement here.”
“Could we take a peek?” Tom asked.
The others were interested, too, so Janice led us down the stairs. The Ping-Pong table and the couches by the fireplace were the same, and the boxes of Settlers of Catan and Dominion still occupied the coffee table. Burnham’s computer had a Ping-Pong ball in a paperclip before it, just like the one I’d set there ages ago, after his accident. We didn’t know then if he would recover. It was a horrible time.
I drifted near. Burnham wouldn’t recognize me now if I tried to reach out to him, but I still felt guilty for my part in our accident. I would never be able to apologize to him. He didn’t know I existed. I let my fingers hover over the small white ball. I missed my friend.
“Coming?” Janice asked from the doorway.
I glanced over to see that Tom and I were the last ones in the room.
“Yes. Sorry,” I said.
After a stop in the main library upstairs, we returned to the quad, where Janice gave the history of the clock tower. I gazed up at the motto inscribed near the top: Dream Hard. Work Harder. Shine.
Lies, I thought. It should say Dream Hard So We Can Mine the Best out of You.
“Can we go inside?” I asked.
Janice hesitated. “We’re running short of time.”
“I’d like to go in, just for a second,” I said. “For Rosie’s sake.”
Janice looked at me oddly. “Did you know her?”
“I feel like I did,” I said.
She glanced around toward the others. A few were nodding. I wasn’t on The Forge Show anymore, but Janice still was, and I could practically see her calculating. Her feed was live right now, and viewers who knew Janice and Rosie had been friends were watching her reaction. This could be worth a spike to her blip rank.
Her gaze went distant for a moment. “She used to look for ghosts,” Janice said obscurely. Then she straightened and gestured to the tour group. “Go in if you’d like, but I’ll wait out here.”
She held the door for us, and I led the way into the tall, hushed space. High above, the mechanism of the clock made its distinct ticking, and the chains with their cylindrical weights dropped down through the gloom. The narrow windows shot diagonal streaks of sunlight into the dim air, and dust moats drifted into the light like fairy dust. For me, this was the heart of the campus, a crux of nostalgia and danger. The others came in curiously, stepping softly as if respecting a sacred place. They touched their fingertips to the railing, one by one, and looked down into the pit as I had done the first time I’d been here with Linus.
I lingered with my back to the wall and let the quiet chill of the stones seep into me. Tom stood patiently nearby, saying nothing, and as the last visitor left, he stepped to the railing and peered down.
“I can’t see the bottom,” he said. His voice carried easily in the hollow space.
“No,” I said. “It’s thirty feet down.”
Without warning, I felt a twinge of déjà vu, my first ever in my new body, and I breathed deep. The quirk of familiarity brought me super alive.
“Want to come look?” he said.
I saw myself step forward an instant before I did. I watched myself set my small hand on the black railing, knowing in advance how it would look around the metal. I felt a tug to lean over the railing, an impulse stronger than any déjà vu. I was certain to lose my balance and tumble head first into the black.
I held tight to the railing, leaning back as my heart pounded.
Take me out, I tried to say. But I didn’t speak in real life. My voice couldn’t escape.
Tom turned to me. “Are you all right?”
I foresaw myself capsizing down through a black rushing noise until I slammed into the floor and died.
“Thea? Let’s go back out,” Tom said.
A piercing headache spiked between my eyes. I gasped as Tom peeled my fingers off the railing. Blind with pain, I felt his arm come around me. He guided me out of the clock tower, and I blinked at the sunlight through a haze of needles.
The others were waiting in the rose garden, and Janice’s spiel of information broke off sharply. “Is she all right?” Janice asked.
“We’re just going to rest here a bit,” Tom said. “You all go ahead.”
I sank to a bench and leaned my head heavily into my hand.
“I can call the nurse,” Janice said.
“No,” I mumbled.
“It’s okay. She gets a little nauseous sometimes,” Tom said. “We’re fine, really.”
Dimly, I heard them discussing me, but I couldn’t say anything more. My headache was crushing my brain into pulp. One instant it was so bad I thought I was imploding, and the next instant, just as suddenly, the pain vanished, like a vice breaking apart into atoms. Cautiously, I tilted my face back so the sunlight fell on my cheeks. Merciful tingles of pleasure danced down my skin like warm streams of water, and the world returned to focus.
“See? She’s already better,” Tom said.
“I guess,” Janice said uneasily. She pointed to the nearest building. “There’s a bathroom in the dean’s tower if you need it.”
“Thanks,” Tom said. “We’re all good. And thanks for the tour.”
Janice gave us one last look, and then she continued with the others, veering off toward the studio art building.
“What was that about?” Tom said quietly. He sat beside me, and his eyes were lit with concern.
My baby kicked inside me, and I shifted slowly on the bench. “Just some weird spiking headache,” I said. “It’s gone completely.”
“Can I get you something? I can take you to the hospital. Should we call your parents?”
I breathed again, deeply and calmly. “They’ll only worry.”
“Maybe they should. I’m worried.”
“I’m really all right,” I repeated. “See?” I straightened and produced a smile.
Tom shook his head. “Your eyes are strange.”
“Really?”
“They’re dilated.”
I guessed things looked a bit brighter than usual. I rose to my feet, pleased to find that I was completely steady. I brushed my hair back around my ears. “This is my chance,” I said, my voice low. “Wait for me here.”
“You’re not going anywhere.”
“Actually, I’m going to the ladies’ room, and you’re not coming with me. I’m really okay,” I said, and gave him a measured look. “Trust me.”
He got it, finally, and quit arguing. I left him in the rose garden and went alone up the steps to the dean’s tower. That headache was a killer, but it had given me the perfect excuse to go exactly where I wanted.
* * *
The foyer’s gold-leaf dome gleamed above as I entered the cool stillness of the dean’s tower. To my right, the door to the dean’s office was open wide, and I had a familiar glimpse of the thick carpet, white bookshelves, and lush curtains. Congenial voices and the clink of a teacart drifted out, reminding me of the time I’d been summoned to meet the board of trustees.
I crossed in the opposite direction, toward the elevator, and when it came, I pushed the B button and held it, hard. It yielded inward an extra click just as it had once before, and then the elevator began to drop. Instead of slowing at the next level down, it accelerated, falling deeper into the earth. With a thrill, I realized Dean Berg hadn’t altered the secret button since I’d been here before.
Then I wondered why not.
When the elevator slowed to a stop, heaviness lurched in my gut, and then the doors opened on a quiet, dark landing. Cautiously, with one arm bracing the door, I leaned out, expecting a light to come on with a motion sensor. It didn’t. I switched on my phone’s light and cast the white beam before me. To one side stood a kitchenette counter with a dusty coffee machine. Gone were the microwave and minifridge from before. Gone, too, was the table with the vase of flowers.
Before me, through the wall of glass where I had first seen the rows of dreamers, I found the dark of emptiness.
I stepped away from the elevator and let the doors swoosh softly closed behind me. The dark grew more intense, and my phone light seemed pitifully meager. My pulse picked up. I tried the door to the vault, and the handle gave unexpectedly beneath my fingers. Inside, the air was cooler, with a faint, sour tinge. The vinegar of my nightmares. I cast my light before me into a void, left to right. Deep in every direction, the room was bare. The overhead framework that had supported the tubes and wires for the sleep shells was gone. The floor was clear except for a couple of old, dried leaves. But it wasn’t a simple empty space. Nightmares had breeded here. Silent screams had soaked into these walls. Berg didn’t keep his sleepers here anymore, but I could feel their agony calling to me. I’d been one of his captives, too.
My heart began to thud painfully. I crossed to the far wall, to the door that led to the operating room where I’d been mined. The sense of déjà vu hovered near again, as if I was about to see the surgery tools and head cage from before, but when I scanned my light inside, the tables were gone along with every other sign of medical torture. The only thing left was a camera in the upper corner. That was all.
Where are you? I asked my inner voice.
If she was ever going to surface again, it should be here, where Berg had tortured me. He’d asked me questions, clamping my mind on a pivot point where I was both awake and asleep. He’d found a way into me through pure fear. At the memory, sweat broke out along my skin. Somehow, searching for clues to Berg’s research felt like a search for myself.
Can you hear me? I asked. Are you there?
Still nothing. And then I remembered. She had hidden then, too. She had burrowed deep to stay away from Berg. Of course she wouldn’t surface here. This was a dead end.
I turned back to the landing by the elevator, and there I scanned my light around once more. Across from me, another door accessed the tunnel I remembered. It led to the bottom of the clock tower pit, and now that I thought about it, that tunnel extended past the pit, in a direction I’d never followed.
Where did it go? With a trickling of adrenaline, I made a decision: this was my chance to find out.
I tried calling Tom to tell him what I was doing, but my phone had no service this deep underground. I had to hope he would keep waiting for me and not call attention to my absence.
I pushed open the door to the tunnel and a skittering of leaves shifted along the floor. With my phone light aimed before me and my belly in the lead, I walked steadily along between the brick walls, sidestepping spider webs and the desiccated remains of a rodent. Soon I came to a glass-walled, octagonal chamber in the middle of the tunnel, and I knew I’d reached the bottom of the clock tower pit. I was curious to explore it, especially to look for the mechanism that opened the ceiling barrier that separated the glass enclosure from the pit above, but I didn’t have time now.
Instead, I aimed down the tunnel in the direction I’d never explored before, hoping to find a new, hidden way in and out of Forge. The walls changed from brick to stone, and the floor became rougher, descending in a gradual slope that forced me to watch my step. Eventually, I came upon a side door on the left. Wooden, with an arched top, it was thick with undisturbed dust. I ruled it out. What I sought was an exit that had been recently used.
As the tunnel went on, the floor leveled out again. The dusty silence grew oppressive. I was about to give up and go back to the arched door when my light reached the end of the tunnel. Another wooden door shut me in, but the knob was free of dust, and the floor had more dried leaves. A thin sourness laced the air. A faint powdering of light came through the crevice under the door. I tried the knob and pushed hard, but the door didn’t budge.
Frustrated, I turned and rested my back against the door, trying to guess how far I’d come. It was impossible. My back ached and my throat was dry. My phone still had no signal, and its battery was getting low. Not good.
A faint clanking noise came from the other side of the door. I pressed my ear to the wood and listened. A distant, mechanical, repetitive noise was punctuated by another clanking, and then a low mooing noise. A cow.
I laughed in surprise and suddenly recognized that sour smell as a hint of manure. I’d arrived at a barn. There was no barn on the Forge campus, but I recalled at least one in Forgetown. I dug in my pocket for a nub of tissue and wedged it under the door, lodging it to the side near the hinges.
Then I turned around to start back. I trudged the flat length, then started up the slope. I passed the arched, dusty door and the octagonal glass room. I recognized a broken light fixture from before, and I finally opened the door to the landing for the elevator. I was almost out and eager to get back to the sunlight and fresh air. The vault, through the glass on my right, was as dark as before. I pushed the button to call the elevator and brushed myself off as I waited. A slight sound came from behind me.
“Lost?” Dean Berg said.
I spun around.
Berg. Here. He stepped through the door from the vault, and I stumbled back against the wall, unable to speak.
“One of my techies told me a visitor went missing,” Dean Berg said.
“I was looking for the bathroom,” I said hoarsely.
“It’s back upstairs,” he said.
The elevator doors slid open, and I scrambled inside.
Berg came more slowly. Every instinct in me recoiled from him, and I pressed back into the corner.
Slowly, deliberately, Berg pushed a button on the panel. Then he turned to look me over. His sandy blond hair was as tidy as ever, and he wore his classic jacket with the elbow patches. His pale eyebrows and ruddy cheeks made the picture of boyish good health, but I knew every expression of his, every manner, was a disguise for the blackest heart.
“You’re expecting,” he said, his voice lifting in surprise. “I’m Dean Berg. What’s your name?”
The doors slid closed.
There was no point lying. “Althea Flores.”
The elevator started up.
“I’m normally very good with names, but I can’t quite place you,” he said. “Have we met before?”
“No,” I said.
“Very few people find their way down to the vault,” he said. “Who told you about the elevator button?”
“Nobody. It just got stuck.”
He smiled at me oddly. “Are you sure we haven’t met?”
My heart lurched. It felt like he could see right past my Althea exterior to the depths of me inside.
“I’m sure,” I said.
“I’d like to see your phone, please.”
“It’s dead,” I said. “The battery’s dead.”
“That doesn’t matter. Please.” He held out his hand.
I slowly passed it over, and he smiled as the screen lit up.
“Not so very dead after all,” he said.
He set his phone on top of mine, and the next moment, a barcode came up on the face of my phone. Dean Berg held his a couple of inches over it, so his camera lens lined up on the barcode, and a second later, he was thumbing through my phone.
“What did you do?” I asked. I couldn’t see how he got past my password.
“I’m just checking your recent calls,” he said, frowning. “Tom. Who’s that?”
“My boyfriend. He’s outside. Give me that.”
“Mom. Dad. One unidentified. That’s all your calls.” He took a photo of my call list with his phone, and then glanced up at me. “You clear your history. Smart girl. And no photos. Very, very interesting. New phone?”
“Yes,” I said. “Can I have it back now?”
He handed it to me as the elevator came to a stop. The doors slid open, and I hurried out.
“I’m glad we met, Althea Flores,” he said. He stayed in the elevator, and his gaze rested on my belly again for a moment. He set a hand on the elevator doorway so the bumper jumped and retracted to stay open. “Before you leave, I have a little message for you to convey.”
“What’s that?”
“It’s for whoever told you about the elevator and how to hold the button in.”
“I didn’t do anything special to the button,” I insisted. “It just got stuck.”
He smiled urbanely. “Tell your friend the button still works, but it’s the only thing left. He’ll never find any answers here. He should get on with his life.”
Bewildered, I stared. Berg let go of the elevator doorway, and the doors closed him in with a soft hiss. A shiver lifted along my skin.
Tom entered the foyer from the main door. “Thea, where have you been?” he asked. He did a double take. “You’re filthy.”
“I got lost,” I said.
I was more confused than ever. Could there be other dreamers who came back looking for the vault, like me?
Tom gently took my arm and guided me outside. The sunlight made me wince, and I glanced down at my clothes to see that Tom wasn’t exaggerating. I had brushed myself off while waiting for the elevator, but dirty webs still clung to my sleeves and leggings. With a shudder, I wiped at them, and Tom brushed off my back.
“Are you going to tell me what happened?” he asked.
“Let me think. Can we just go?”
“Of course,” he said, and we made our way to the car.
Berg’s message kept replaying in my mind. Possibly, like me, other dreamers had been aware of the button and how it worked from their own trips down the elevator. Did they really come back looking for answers? I had this image of a horde of us zombie dreamers coming back here, driven by a restlessness we couldn’t resolve.
Would Rosie come? I needed to find her more than ever.
Berg had taken a photo of the phone numbers I’d recently called: Tom’s, Madeline’s, Diego’s, and the unidentified one that belonged to Linus. I nearly dropped my phone.
Berg was going to put it together. He hadn’t recognized my name just now, but I was certain he was going to look up Althea Flores, and then he’d find out that I was connected to Rosie. Whatever advantage I’d had by being unrecognizable would be gone.
“I’m dead,” I said.