Page 36

Rosabelle

Chapter 36

In my dreams, everything is soft.

The harsh edges of the world are blunted, my face cradled by clouds. My body seems suspended in water, my hair freed from its utilitarian knot, silky lengths cascading down my back. I am a body still becoming, untouched by tragedy. In my dreams I am safe; I have a strong hand to hold; a door to lock against the dark; a trusted ear into which I whisper my fears. In my dreams I am patient and kind; I have room in my heart for more pain than my own. I am not afraid to smile at strangers. I have never witnessed death. In my dreams sunlight glazes my skin; gentle wind caresses my limbs; Clara’s laughter makes me smile.

She is running.

In my dreams, she’s always running.

My heart restarts with an electric jolt.

“Then try it again,” barks Soledad, his voice booming inside of me. “What do you mean there’s no brain activity?”

“Sir, we’ve tried to implant the chip several times now, but we can’t get her to connect—”

“That’s bullshit,” he cries. “Try it again.”

Alarms blare, hands handling me, stripping me. Cold metal and flashes of light.

“We did it exactly as you asked,” says someone nervously. “We tried it again—this year without any anesthetic, just as you instructed—”

“Then why isn’t she moving?” he says. “Shouldn’t she be screaming?”

“Yes, sir. That would be the normal reaction, sir. Yes.”

“What the hell is wrong with her? Is it possible she still has a mutative gene interfering with the process?”

“It’s hard to know. We’ve administered the gene-editing therapy several times now; at this point she should have no residual mutations, had there been any to begin with.”

“This is unbelievable. Billions spent on research, and you can’t give me a solid reason why there’s one person on this island who can’t be brought online?”

Cool water, warm water, more hands on my body.

“It’s been two years of trying,” says Sebastian. “She’s had plenty of time to recover between attempts. I’m sorry, sir—she promised me it would work this time. She promised me it wouldn’t happen again—”

“I’m sick of this,” Soledad says angrily. “It’s been years of bullshit excuses. I want a real explanation—”

“Her body is exhibiting some kind of resistance,” says a voice I don’t recognize. “We’ve tried it a number of different ways now. No matter what we do, by the time we get everything online it just stops working. The tech is being rejected.”

“That’s impossible,” he says. “The program is flawless. It’s been tested in a thousand ways—”

“We don’t know why it’s happening,” says the voice, terrified now. “In order to bring her online, the mind has to be active. For some reason, we can’t get a signal.”

“What the hell does that mean?” Soledad demands. “Her brain just isn’t working?”

“Yes, sir. Her brain waves are nonresponsive.”

“How?” I hear the moment his anger becomes suspicion. I hear it from lifetimes away, as if I’m suspended from the sun. “You’re saying her body assumes a vegetative state at will?”

“Yes, sir. As far as the program is concerned, she appears to be dead inside.”

It occurs to me that I am naked.

My flesh is pressed against cold metal, a coarse sheet pulled up to my neck. My nerves awaken, like antennae unfurling. My skin seems to soften, my bones to harden. Sound returns to me slowly and scattered: the buzz of electricity, the drag of a footstep, the jangle and clatter of steel, the scrape of tools, sharpening.

Then his voice: a miracle.

“I can’t believe she’s really dead. This is crazy. Are you sure there was no heartbeat? Shouldn’t we be absolutely sure before we do this? Because there’s no logical reason why she should be dead right now—”

A woman says, “She suffered a bad blow to the head at some point in the night. Sometimes the symptoms of a brain hemorrhage are hard to spot.”

I’m on a gurney, I realize, wheeling through space. I feel every bump and rattle of the wheels, the cold bite of metal against my skin. Footsteps pound the floor around me, pound in my head. My heart is beating so slowly it seems to drag. I feel ancient, held together by cobwebs.

“Wait,” James is saying. “Hey— Wait— Can you just hang on for a second—”

The gurney comes to a sudden, violent halt. My body sloshes. My teeth rattle.

“Let it go, James,” says a cold male voice I’ve never heard before. “I want the autopsy performed without delay.”

Autopsy.

I must be in the morgue.

“You’re just going to cut her open?” James is saying. “You’re not even going to try—”

“Look,” the woman says, her voice brisk. “There’s nothing we can do to help her. She’s already dead. We’re thinking she died at least thirty minutes ago. No amount of healing is going to bring her back to—”

My eyes open slowly, the effort like prizing an orange peel from its flesh. My fingers curl by micrometers under the starchy sheet, my lungs expanding a degree at a time.

“ Fucking zombie ,” someone screams.

My eyes tear as light and color flood my vision. I blink several times before my sight settles, images layering and focusing. A man with jet-black eyes and matching hair is looking down at me, gaping.

“Oh my God,” he says, clasping his chest. “She just gave me a heart attack. Oh my God, I can’t breathe—”

Standing beside him is James. Twice.

Two Jameses.

I blink and the images do not reconcile; instead, they sharpen, the differences between them becoming clearer. Different hair, different eyes. One James is older than the other James: his face sharper, harder, fewer laugh lines around his eyes. Same nose, same jawline, no freckles.

I prefer the freckles.

I like the touch of sun on his skin, the way his mouth animates easily, as if he’s always hoping to smile.

Except now.

Right now, neither James looks pleased to see me. In fact, they wear similar expressions of fury. And then, of course, as my mind sorts itself out, it becomes obvious to me that the second James, the one with golden hair and green eyes, isn’t James at all.

This, I realize, must be the older brother.

Aaron Warner Anderson.

Even now, with my senses on simmer, a flash of trepidation moves through me. The stories about the eldest Anderson brother are legendary, even on the Ark.

“Rosabelle?” James says cautiously. “Can you hear me?”

I try to open my mouth, but the effort to unseal my lips is too much. I’ve been dead, I think, for too long.

“I don’t understand,” says the woman just out of my sightline. She sounds breathless with fear. “She had no pulse. There was no heartbeat, no brain activity—”

“I think we should stick her in the fridge,” says the man with the black hair. He has an impish look, somehow charming even as he insults me. “Give her some time to finish dying off.”

James frowns. “What are you talking about?”

“This is probably some kind of glitch, right?” he explains. “This is like when a worm keeps worming even when it’s split in half.”

“Kenji—”

I make a note: the black-haired man is named Kenji.

“What?” he says, gesturing to me. “Look at her. She’s barely even moving. This is, like, actual zombie behavior. I vote we put a bullet through her head just to be safe.”

James, I notice, doesn’t dismiss this suggestion; he only looks resigned. It occurs to me then that I’ve lost even the idea of him. James will never again be a place of rest for me. His eyes will never again warm in my direction.

He sees me now for what I really am.

Your father was weak. Your mother was weak. Your sister was weak.

You’re a disgrace.

The pain of this realization is so acute it draws a tortured sound from my throat.

“Oh, shit,” says Kenji. “I think she’s trying to say something—”

The burst of battered emotion has a counterintuitive effect, the flood of cortisol and epinephrine restarting my body, propelling my heart and lungs, flooding oxygen to my brain.

“Never mind,” Kenji says, waving a hand. “False alarm.”

I manage to lift my head slightly, and three things catch my eye in quick succession: the lab coat hanging from the wall, the vial of earth sitting on a steel counter, and the exit to my right. I settle back down, my mind spinning out scenarios, preparing for eventualities. I make a mental list of the kinds of tools I might find in a morgue, things that might double as weapons: bone saw; chisel; hammer; brain knife; rib shears—

If I’m going to do this, I’ll only have one chance.

“Soooo, what’s the plan?” asks Kenji. “Are we going to just stand here and stare at her? Because I don’t—”

Warner holds up a hand, and the room falls silent.

He inspects me with a lethal calm that sends a pulse of renewed fear through my body. I blink coolly, keeping my face impassive, but he’s looking straight into my eyes when he says, “Lock down the building, she’s going to run—”