Text-scan translation follows.
8
Doc
“Dol, wake up. You drifted off.” I turn to see Lucas, his face framed by the water, rough on every side.
“Where’s Ro?” I turn to look for him, but all I can see is Lucas. His eyes, and broad swaths of sand and sea.
“He’s fine. It’s you I’m worried about.” He pushes up his sleeve and holds out his naked wrist. “I want you to feel better, Dol.” Four dots. Four blue dots.
The blood is gone now. So is his shirt.
Lucas puts his hands inside the bottom of my sweater, tugging at it. He looks at me, questioningly, before gently pulling it over my head. I shiver.
Lucas doesn’t seem to notice. He takes my cold, bare arm in his hands. Unties my binding and pulls it loose, letting it hang halfway off my arm, undone. Where his hand runs over my skin, I have goose bumps.
“Say something.” Now Lucas slips his fingers through mine. “I’ve been waiting for you, all this time. I know you feel it too.”
He begins to wrap the cloth around our arms. As he works the cloth, our elbows touch, then our forearms. Our wrists. He laces our fingers together, more tightly. His fingers dig into the back of my hand, inching closer …
Until I ball up my hand. Because I can’t let him do it.
There are only millimeters of air between our markings but it might as well be miles.
I can’t let go. I can’t do it to my best friend, the only person I have ever let feel how it is to be me.
And now it isn’t Lucas who is holding my hand, but Ro. And we’re back underneath the bluff again, in the cave. I can hear the waves, all around us.
Ro leans closer to me, looking at my mouth, and suddenly all I can taste is pomegranate—
I wake up staring at pomegranate seeds.
No.
They’re not pomegranate seeds. They’re ceiling tiles, with hundreds of tiny dots on them. And the waves aren’t waves. They don’t crash, they only hum. Evenly and endlessly.
Machines. It’s machine noise.
I close and open my eyes again. I don’t know where I am, at first. I know I’m not wearing my clothes. The white cloth robe is thick and plush, and I think I am still dreaming. I want to sleep again, but I can’t. I am caught somewhere in between. My eyes are heavy-lidded and my body slow and thick.
I am so tired. A wave of nausea washes over me and my head pounds. Then I close my eyes and force myself to remember.
The Padre. The Tracks. The Merk. Ro. Lucas.
I open my eyes, blushing, remembering my dream. Remembering the feel of his fingers on my skin, the way his dirty gold hair hung in his eyes. Then I remember the rest, the part that isn’t a dream.
The Embassy Chopper. Santa Catalina Island. The Embassy.
The realization of where I am makes me sit up in my cot. Because I’m not at the Mission; I’m at the Embassy on Santa Catalina Island. Hours away from anywhere I’ve ever been before, and the heart of the Occupation, as far as the Hole is concerned. The Hole and everyone in and around it. I might as well have spent the night in the House of Lords itself.
I try to remember the details. In my mind, I trace my way from the Chopper to the room. The foggy ride to the island, holding back the urge to vomit from the turbulence. Santa Catalina coming into view through the low mist that hangs over the water. The Embassy walls rising up from the rocks, the windows rising higher above them.
What came after the rocks and the walls?
The docks, swarming with uniformed Sympas? The building-sized poster of the Ambassador in her crimson military jacket, the one she wears in all the pictures?
The doctors. They must have shot me up with something, because that’s where the memories fade.
Ro’s gone. That’s the last thing I remember. Ro’s hand being twisted out of mine. I can’t feel him anywhere. They must have taken him away, to a different prison cell, or a different hospital room.
I look at my hands. Some sort of restraints—cuffs, I think—have left deep, red grooves, but I’m not cuffed now. And my binding—I’m not wearing it. I try not to panic, but I feel naked without it.
As I lie back against the soft pillow, I am almost certain this is not a prison. At least, not officially. The room is plain, military looking. A large gray rectangle. Rows of tall windows line one wall, with stripes of horizontal shades that keep me from seeing what is outside. Gray and white, gray and white. There don’t seem to be any other colors here—except for the beeping, flashing lights on the walls. Beyond that, there are places for many more cots—I count at least three, judging by the marks on the walls. But there is only one cot in the room, and I am in it.
Finally, I see my clothes are neatly folded in a pile on a chair. More of a relief, my worn leather chestpack sits next to it on the floor. It’s unsettling to see it lying there, exposed, instead of hidden beneath my clothes as it normally is. The small pile is everything that belongs to me in the world.
Almost.
Someone has taken them off me. Someone has wrapped me in this robe. Someone has also tagged me like a troublemaking coyote: a wire clamps down on the tip of my middle finger. I wiggle it; the wire connects to a small machine that beeps pleasantly. Screens light up on the walls, all around me, like beating hearts encased in plastic skins. It only takes me a second to realize that these particular flashing lights—the white ones—correspond with the movements of my own wired finger.
The Embassy knows when I move so much as a finger.
I think of the string of lights that Ro got me for my birthday. How afraid the Padre was that we’d be seen.
How right he was to fear them.
I wag my fingers again, but when the wall lights up, I see something more troubling. Beneath the wire tag, my right wrist is covered with a bandage.
As I examine my arm, the machine hum grows louder—
“The Medics did not touch your marker, if that is what you are worried about. You seem worried.”
The voice comes from behind me. I whirl around in my cot, but there’s no one there.
“It was just a routine procedure. Standard Embassy protocol, DNA sampling. Everything went as expected.”
I scramble to stand up. The floor is cold on my feet.
“I am sorry. I did not mean to surprise you. I have been waiting for an appropriate time to introduce myself, as you were so busy with REM sleep.”
I back toward the door, pulling the tag from my finger, ripping the bandage off my skin. My arm appears to be fine, only a small bloody smudge next to my marking. I exhale.
I scan the room, but there is no sign of where the voice could be coming from. Then I see a small, round grating rattling next to me, on the wall.
“Lucas has already taken issue with me twice this morning on the subject.” I start at the name. “Allow me to clarify: I was not watching you sleep. I was monitoring your sleep. For diagnostic purposes. Would you like me to explain the difference?”
I remember my dream. “No.” My own voice sounds wrong here. I clear my throat. “Thank you, Room.”
I