THE NIGHT IS HALF GONE before Burnham calls again.
“Okay,” he says. “I think I can get us into Berg’s computer if you can put in your peg. Do you need me to dismantle the swipe locks in the dean’s tower?”
I think back to my last trip to the sixth floor. The staircase opened directly into the big room, and I think the elevator did, too. “No,” I say.
“Are you sure about this, Rosie? Linus Pitts called and left me a message. He’s looking for you.”
“Did he say where he is?” I ask.
“No, but he sounded worried.”
I chew on my lip, frowning. Then I shake my head. “It doesn’t matter. I’m going in.”
“Then call me right when you reach Berg’s computer. You have the peg?”
I glance to see it beside my flashlight and other supplies.
“Yes,” I say. “I’m heading there now. Give me about half an hour. I’ll call you soon.”
I don’t tell him that I expect to get caught.
Returning to town, I drive slowly past Linus’s house. Only one lamp is still on in the living room, and I can’t see any action through the windows. I park farther down, near the water tower, and walk the last couple of blocks to the dairy barn. Up on the hill, at Forge, the penthouse apartment is a bright row of windows at the top of the dean’s tower. The rest of the campus is dark and sleepy, illuminated only by streetlamps that make lace of the leafless trees. Deep in my jacket pocket, I carry the syringes I prepared, four of them, one from each vial I stole from Ian, each with its own white cap.
Outside the dairy barn, I pause, noting one car in the lot. I hear the sturdy clanking of the cows even before I enter, and then the penetrating scent of animal bodies fills my nostrils. At the far end of the barn, a farmer is dumping grain into a chute, and I duck low.
Stealthy, keeping an eye toward the farmer, I creep along the far wall past the noses and munching noises of a dozen cows. It’s startling how huge the animals are with their heavy heads. The barn is a long L, with the cows in the long rectangle, and the milk pipes above. I’m searching for a door that matches Thea’s description when I discover an open shaft elevator, large enough to accommodate cargo. Or sleep shells. Beside it is a narrow staircase. When the farmer moves out of sight, I dash for the stairs and sneak down.
Directly opposite the shaft elevator is a large wooden door, just as Thea described. It’s unbolted, and a bit of wood props the door open a crack. I stop, puzzled. Someone has been here recently. They might still be inside. A shiver of fear runs over my skin, and instinct warns me this is a mistake.
But then my reckless heart warms to the idea. What’s the worst that can happen? I’ve already survived the vault of dreamers. I’ll kill before I let that happen to me again, and if I fail at killing, if I still end up being mined, I’ll do what Thea did and escape that way. I flick on my flashlight and venture into the tunnel.
Clingy, ragged webs drape the walls and ceiling, and random leaves crinkle underfoot. This stretch of tunnel is old and decrepit compared to the tunnel I traveled when I was still a student. I cast my flashlight beam before me and hurry up the slope of the tunnel, never looking behind me. When I reach the dusty glass walls at the bottom of the clock tower pit, I breathe a small sigh of relief. Familiar territory. I hurry the last length of the tunnel, to the door that leads to the elevator under the dean’s tower.
There, finally, I stop with my hand on the knob and wait, listening. Stillness expands around me, filling my ears like cotton. I turn off my light, and in the absolute darkness, I slowly open the door. Not even an exit light glows in the landing area. I turn on my flashlight again and scan the elevator, the counter area, the glass that separates me from the vault of dreamers. I know nothing is behind the glass. Thea told me so. Yet I feel images tugging at the corners of my mind: sleep shells glowing with their blue light, and children’s pale, haunting faces under glass domes. This was where Gracie lay dreaming with her teddy bear. I’m a few paces from the room where I was first mined for my dreams, and the dark power of this hangs in the air, making it difficult to breathe.
A shimmer of nightmare draws me irresistibly to the vault’s door, and I’m compelled to open it. I smell the vinegar, and something like tweed, as if Berg was just here. My beam trembles as I cast it around the empty room, and a shifting noise answers. Heart in mouth, I shine my light toward the sound, and a baby mouse runs wildly along the baseboard. It angles through the corner and vanishes into a crack. My light meets the door to the operating room. That’s where it started. That’s the place.
I’ll die if I go in there, I think. What’s left of my brain will liquefy into black silage and run out my nose, and I’ll be dead.
I swallow thickly and back out of the vault. I press the button for the elevator.
“Come,” I whisper.
When a scratching, rubbing noise, as faint as a whisper, comes from the vault behind me, I can’t tell if it’s the mouse or if I imagined it. My lungs contract with fear. The elevator doors open, and I step in gladly, wincing at the brightness. A rush of relief makes it easier to breathe. I push the button for the sixth floor, and my stomach dips as the elevator begins to rise. With a last reflexive shiver, I brush off my jacket and put my flashlight in my pocket. I can do this. I will win.
The doors slick open, and I step into the landing. I peer around the corner to a large, unlit room. This is where the techies work by day. Rows of desks and monitors gleam faintly in the darkness and descend toward the windows. I’ve been here once before, when I eavesdropped on Berg, but now the lowest corner, where Berg sat, is empty, and I tread softly in that direction.
I dial Burnham.
“I’m here,” he says. “Show me.”
It’s pretty dark, and I have a shoddy disposable phone, but I turn the lens to the room so he can see what I’m seeing. I slide into the seat where I once saw Berg working, and I’m hit by misgivings. This computer doesn’t look any different from the others in the room.
“He had special projection pucks when I saw him before,” I say. “I can’t believe I didn’t remember until now.”
“It’s all right,” Burnham says. “Put the peg into the computer before you start it up. We’ll know in a second if it has what we want.”
It’s tricky to find a port in the dark, but I do and slip the peg in. “Okay,” I say, and turn on the computer.
The screen seems dangerously bright. I quickly dim it down to the faintest setting. It’s a blank green rectangle, with no text or icons. It doesn’t even have a type box. My heart sinks.
“It’s broken,” I say.
“Just wait. Don’t touch the keyboard or the screen,” he says, and softly, I hear him typing in the background. A minute later, the screen comes alive with a watercolor scene of a dock at a lake. It’s about the last thing I expected. Then I recall that Berg likes to paint.
“Burnham?” I say.
“Hold on.”
I hear more clicking. The image shimmers, and with a reverse-dissolve effect, four icons appear around a silver circle, like the points of a compass.
“Good,” Burnham says. “Pick a direction. Go ahead. You can touch the screen now.”
“West,” I say, and touch the left-hand icon.
Up comes a spreadsheet listing names, ages, blood types, and other medical information. Half the codes I don’t understand, but I can see it’s a ton of information.
“Are you getting this?” I whisper.
“I’m copying it now,” Burnham says. “It’ll take some time. You said you saw maybe sixty dreamers in the vault under the school?”
“Yes.”
“There’s a lot more people listed here,” he says. “A way lot more.”
“Should I wait or can I click back?” I ask.
The screen splits in half, with one half showing a shrunken version of the files he’s copying and the other half showing the main icon compass again.
“Go ahead,” he says.
I try the east icon, which takes me to an informal scratch pad of blue ink handwritten on a white board. Very retro. A bunch of equations with letters, numbers, and honeycomb symbols reminds me of science class. Burnham hums pensively.
“Can you tell what he’s brainstorming?” I ask
“It’s chemical compounds,” Burnham says. “This looks more like he was explaining something to somebody. It’s practically scribbles on a napkin. Let me check something.” His typing goes again, and up comes a new series of equations in another box. “I don’t know what this means,” he says. “He’s got the chemical compound for a common over-the-counter sleeping pill.”
“Does your company sell it?” I ask.
“I’d have to look into it. We sell a ton of different meds,” he says. “See what else is there.”
I try the north icon.
At first, I think I’ve found a color wheel, the kind I’ve used to pick out a hue for a presentation project, but as I scroll over the wheel, different boxes expand upward toward me, and each box shows a different image that is predominantly the color in the wheel. A yellow dragon flies against an orange sky. A black castle melts into a gray sea. A roiling flash flood of blood and bones barrels through a slot canyon. I gasp.
“Do you see this?” I ask.
“Yes. Each file takes over 4G of memory,” he says. “There must be thousands. I can’t possibly copy them all.”
“Are they dreams?” I ask. “Were they all mined?”
“I don’t understand. These look like biological markers,” he mutters. “Let me try something.”
Another screen pops up to show a boy gazing into a campfire. He’s a black kid with big glasses, wearing shorts that let his knees gleam in the firelight, and he looks familiar. A line of statistics flies past, and then still another screen appears in the corner. It’s a headshot picture of Janice. I look back again at the boy by the fire, and my memory jolts. I’ve seen this image before. It was back in Dr. Ash’s office in the Forge infirmary.
“Is that boy you?” I ask.
“Yes,” Burnham says. “It’s from when I was a kid at Camp Pewter, but it’s in Janice’s file. We knew each other there.”
“Was it mined? Is it a dream?”
“I don’t know,” he says. “It’s the sort of thing she might remember, or she might have stashed the image in her subconscious. Berg has recorded it, in any case.” He types a couple times. “I’ve never seen the format of these files before. There’s no way to tell if it’s a real memory or a dream or something she made up.”
I skim over the color wheel again, looking at some of the other boxes. “This looks like a database of images, organized by color,” I say.
“I think you’re right,” he says. “This is mind-blowing, Rosie. I’m trying to save a couple of these, but something’s weird about the files. It’s like they’re dissolving. Give me a sec.”
My screens do a quick fly around, and when they settle, a window in the lower right shows a room with rows of sleep shells, all glowing the soft blue I’ve come to know. I peer closely, thinking it’s an old image of the dream vault under Forge, but the angle is from high up, and I realize the rows go on too far. This is a larger room, with more sleep shells. More dreamers. Dozens more. Over a hundred.
A chill skims my spine. “Burnham,” I whisper.
“I see it,” he says.
“Where are they? Are they real? Is this now?”
“I don’t know where they are,” he says. “I’m trying to sort for the most recent files in the system. What’s this?”
A new image comes up, a close-up of a girl, me, lying asleep. It’s shot in black and a soft, blue-tinted white. I’m resting in profile, so the line of my nose and lips and chin is distinct over the dimpled pillow. My dark hair makes a distinct curve along my forehead and ear, and moonlight falls on my cheek. The angle feels intimate, the effect both ghostly and loving. I’m surprised to discover that I could ever looked so lovely, and then a hand comes into the frame and lightly smooths a tendril of hair back from my temple.
The clip goes dark.
A shiver of dread runs through me. This isn’t some old, photoshopped picture. Someone took that clip of me live.
“When was that taken?” I ask.
“You tell me.”
I grip the desk. “Burnham!” I say. “That looked like last night! But there weren’t any cameras in Linus’s room. I swear there weren’t!” I scramble for any explanation. “Could it be a dream?”
“No,” Burnham says, his voice low. “That one’s a regular .avi file. No question about it. Somebody filmed you in Linus’s bed.”
Not Linus. I refuse to believe he would film me. Especially not without asking. I can’t get over how completely and utterly wrong this is.
“Hasn’t this been a fun evening?” Burnham says dryly.
The computer flickers, and I think Burnham’s doing something new, but then the icon screen vanishes, and instead, I find Berg’s face looking at me.
My fear explodes.
Burham swears.
Berg leans nearer, peering with his eyes narrowed. He’s found me.