“All any of us can do is our best,” he said.
Zoe sniffed her tears back and drew her shoulder out from under his hand. She wasn’t sure how she felt about the way his closeness made her skin tingle, so she deflected.
“Where did you get that, a fortune cookie?” she mocked.
He cleared his throat. “I was just trying to offer . . .” He shook his head and chuckled. “I’m not great at pep talks.”
“Phrases like ‘all any of us can do is our best’ aren’t making you any better,” Zoe said.
“Noted.” He smiled, and she returned the gesture.
Immediately she wished she hadn’t. They were connecting and sparking something neither of them had time for. Zoe yanked her eyes away from his and walked past him without looking back. She still didn’t trust him. He was still the enemy.
Wasn’t he?
I OPENED MY eyes, and once more I was sitting on a bench between the sweet neighborhood to my right and the bustling downtown to my left. The thoughts I’d recovered earlier crashed into my brain, and their rumbling fears with them. My heart rate spiked. I could feel beads of sweat collecting at my hairline.
I had to control this. Deep breaths. Internalize the fear. See it, switch it off, stomp it out. I’d been trained to do so. Wasn’t that what Dr. Loveless had said?
“You came back,” the small voice beside me said.
I turned and saw the high ponytail and unicorn shirt. “You lied to me.”
The girl’s face went sour. “Did not.”
“You said you would show me the game.”
“I did. It’s not my fault you lost.”
Lucy, remember, this is your mind. You are safe.
Dr. Loveless’s voice echoed like a whisper in my ears. I had to keep my brain trained on the truth of her words.
“Are there more games like that one?” I asked the child.
“Oh yeah, lots,” she said, her eyes widening.
“Can you show me?”
“Not until you win the first one.”
Fear beat against my heart. I didn’t want to go back into the box.
She turned to look me right in the eye. “Leveling up doesn’t come for free.”
I swallowed hard, and the little girl must have seen the terror cascading down my face.
“You scared?”
I nodded.
The girl slid off the bench and stood at attention before me, eyes serious, jaw set. “Toughen up, buttercup. Level one is easy mode. If you can’t beat this, you might as well not come back.”
I felt smacked, her words punchy and brutal. Then her face softened, and her lips opened to reveal her gap-toothed grin. A giggle escaped her lips, one that sounded both innocent and maddening. I wasn’t sure whether to be reassured or threatened. Without another sound she was off again, racing toward the bustle of bodies, and I knew what following her would mean.
But I couldn’t not. I physically couldn’t stay seated. My mind and heart needed to know, so they carried my limbs without my permission. I was met with meatsuits, same as before. I was crashing through people, desperate to keep up, hoping for a different outcome.
I should have slowed my pace since I knew what waited, but I didn’t and again smacked the hard glass at a dangerous pace. The time before it had all seemed to happen in slow motion as reality crashed in. This time I knew what was coming, and it happened faster than I anticipated. No matter what I tried, the water rose and the fear grew. I couldn’t hear Dr. Loveless’s voice. I lost my grasp on what I knew was true.
This was my mind.
I was safe.
But all I could feel was the desperate need to escape the glass prison as the faceless coats watched me begin to drown. All I could see were the painful flashes of reliving this moment as a child, over and over. My own voice screamed for help, begging for them not to put me back in. My own body tugged against their restraints, bruising under their vicious holds. My mind scratched at the inside of my skull for freedom.
Freedom.
Freedom.
Freedom.
Until I wasn’t breathing, and the shocks against my chest and to my nervous system were the only thing that could bring me back to the reality of lying on the cold table in the barn, sweat-drenched, DOT attached to my head, Zoe and the others surrounding me.
I sprang up from where I was seated, gasping. Oxygen forced its way into my lungs, its reentry painful. My head was pounding, and I felt like I was still soaked from icy waters, even though that had just been happening in my mind.
Tears warmed my cheeks. I wasn’t weeping, but I could feel the urge to collapse into Zoe’s arms. She was close, her hand on my shoulder. I glanced up at her worried face as the noise of the room finally broke past the barrier built in my subconscious.
“Deep breaths,” Dr. Loveless was saying as she carefully disconnected DOT. Unhooking me because I had failed. Again.
“Talk to me, Lucy,” I heard Zoe say.
“Stop,” I whispered.
“It can’t be safe for her heart rate to spike that high,” Zoe said.
I reached up and pushed Dr. Loveless’s hands away from the connecting tubes on the DOT cap. “Stop,” I said louder.
“Lucy,” Zoe said.
“I need to go again.”
“No. She can’t, she needs a break,” she said to the others.
“You don’t speak for me,” I snapped. I could feel something forming inside me. An old sensation of determination that was stronger than anything I’d ever felt. My words were harsher than they needed to be, but I only slightly cared. Something else was happening that was greater than how Zoe felt.
She dropped her hand from my shoulder and inched back. I’d hurt her. I should care. I did, but not enough to stop.
I turned back to Dr. Loveless, who was still on the other side of me. “Can I go again?”
She glanced at Zoe and then Seeley, who was standing near the end of the table. Then back to me. “Your pulse is still unstable. It might be better to take a small break.”
I heard it then, the uneven beeping that represented my heart rate. I zeroed in on the sound, blocking out the rest of the room. I followed it to the sound of my actual pulse, saw it skyrocketing under my skin. With a long exhale, I slowed it. Brought it back into a perfectly normal rhythm. Then returned my focus to the room.
Dr. Loveless and Zoe were watching me in fascination.
“I need to go again,” I said.
“Can I speak with you two alone?” Zoe demanded rather than asked.
The three left the curtained square. They moved out of sight, and I zeroed in on the motion of their footsteps. Four yards across the barn floor. The creaking of wood and metal signaled they were stepping outside. I didn’t need to strain to hear their words. I just tapped into their sound waves. Like a radio. Easy enough.
Zoe: “You can’t seriously be thinking about letting her do this.”
Dr. Loveless: “She seems pretty determined.”
Zoe: “She’s already had two doses of amobarbital, and you want to give her another?”
Seeley: “How much can the body withstand?”
Zoe: “Not this much!”
Dr. Loveless: “I wasn’t aware you had medical experience, Miss Johnson.”
Seeley: “Can Lucy handle another dose?”