The Vault of Dreamers (19 page)

At lunch, Linus was out on the terrace of the dining hall, serving ice cream for students
with Franny and another staffer. They all wore cheery red bib aprons for the occasion,
and Linus put his arm into the work of scooping. He passed me a big bowl of chocolate-chunk-coffee-cinnamon-swirl
and abandoned his post when I came through the line.

“Where are you going?” Franny asked him.

“Shirking, obviously,” Linus said.

“I can see that,” Franny said. “For how long?”

“Long enough to drive you mad, love,” Linus said, and took a second bowlful for himself.

I caught Franny shaking her head and fighting a smile.

Linus and I strolled over to one of the benches under a tree, where Linus straddled
one end and I sat normally, so I could keep my short skirt decent. Students relaxed
in clusters on the lawn while a campus tour group passed by. The day had warmed up
considerably, and the cool sweetness of the ice cream was pure heaven in my mouth.

“How’s the dizziness?” he asked.

“Gone completely,” I said, and licked my spoon. “I’m fine.”

“What happened?”

“I don’t really want to talk about it.” On camera.

“Right,” he said.

A couple of guys with bongo drums started playing across the quad, which was all the
invitation Paige and a couple other dancers needed to head over and start improvising.
I was happy talking with Linus and watching the lithe figures as they bent and twirled
over the grass. This was what I’d hoped Forge would be like, and in the brightness
of a sunny day, I could almost forget about Dean Berg and my nighttime anxieties.

“Where’s your camera?” Linus asked “Don’t you want to film them?”

I shook my head. “Sometimes its better to live in the moment.”

As we finished eating, he took my bowl and set it with his in the grass.

“That’s my new favorite ice cream,” I said.

“Mine, too.” He leaned near and gave me a coffee-flavored kiss. He touched my waist,
lightly, and then kissed me again. “You taste nice,” he said. “How’d you manage that?”

“Beats me.”

I ran my fingers along his forearm and skimmed a dried drip of ice cream from when
he’d been scooping. When I saw the fine hairs lift in goose bumps along his skin,
I smiled at his sensitivity. I thought we might kiss again, but he held very still,
even when I drew my thumb along the pocket of his tee shirt where a thread was frayed.
The red of his apron did something vivid to his eyes, and his bruise was now almost
completely healed. I leaned shyly away and scanned my gaze around the quad. We had
cameras
and
real people to watch us this time.

“So many witnesses,” I said.

He laughed. “Tell me about it.” He got up from the bench, hitched at his apron, and
reached for our bowls.

I couldn’t wait to talk to him for real, at night.

*   *   *

I lived the rest of that Thursday impatient for bedtime, when my second life could
begin again. It was such a routine by now, faking my pill swallow, that I grew careless
when Orly was checking in my mouth and almost showed her the pill.

Though Orly had overseen the removal of the extra furniture from our dorm the night
of the fifty cuts, she never indicated that she knew about any other activity in our
room at night. I was trying to put together who knew what, without much luck.

Dr. Ash, for certain, knew what was going on at night. The bearded guy who’d given
me intravenous sleep meds had to know, too, and so did Dean Berg. But Mr. DeCoster
and the other teachers, did they know? Did the maintenance staff and the techies?
If they did, then Dean Berg had an entire network of people keeping secrets. It just
didn’t seem possible.

As soon as it was dark enough, I turned on my video camera under my covers and reviewed
my footage from the previous night. It showed me tossing and turning during the time
I’d been listening to my walkie-ham, but the walkie-ham itself never showed. I simply
looked restless, and then I went still. I fast-forwarded through the rest of the night,
but nothing disturbed the dorm room.

No one entered the dorm while we slept. No sleep shells were rolled out. I wasn’t
exactly disappointed, but I wasn’t completely reassured, either. I would have to try
again.

I turned my video camera off, stashed it farther under my quilt, and checked my walkie-ham
to see if it was dialed to channel four. A tiny buzz of static broke for a voice.

“Rosie?” Linus said.

I clicked the button to keep the channel open. “It’s me,” I said, so relieved and
happy to hear him. “Where are you?” I arranged the walkie-ham so I could speak into
it with hardly any voice. I had left my sleep shell lid closed, too.

“Back in the lookout tower,” he said. “This is the only place we seem to get decent
reception. Listen, I’m worried about you. What really happened to you in the observatory
today?”

“It was so, so weird,” I said, and I tried to explain how creepy it had been inside
with the stench and the doves and the dean. “He was talking about the dead astronomer,
and how he’d hanged himself in there. I could practically see the body.”

“That’s strange, all right.”

“I was having this weird déjà vu, too,” I said. “Like I’d been there before.”

“In the observatory?”

“With Dean Berg there,” I said. “He was part of it. At one point, it seemed like he
was offering to show me exactly where they’d found the body, but I’m not really sure
if he said something, or if I just
thought
he did.”

“You couldn’t tell?” Linus said.

“I
thought
he really spoke, but the whole thing was too morbid to make sense,” I said. “Could
I have been hallucinating? Just thinking about it again is kind of freaking me out.”

I heard a faint tapping from his end of the line.

“Okay, I’m just going to throw this out there,” he said, “but maybe you shouldn’t
be skipping your sleeping pills. Maybe it’s messing you up.”

I was shocked. “Linus, I can’t just sleep. This place is dangerous. Somebody has to
find out what’s going on.”

“But it doesn’t have to be you,” Linus said.

I couldn’t believe he was telling me to back off, to follow the rules. “Did Dean Berg
ask you to say this? Did he tell you to tell me to take my pills? Or Dr. Ash?”

“Rosie, no,” Linus said.

But I was doubting him. “Did the dean tell you to meet me, that first day behind the
art building? Did somebody send you out to the spools on purpose to tell me how to
pass the fifty cuts?”

“What are you talking about?” Linus sounded irritated now. “What is this?”

“I don’t understand this place,” I said. “I don’t know what’s happening to me.”

“Nothing’s happening to you. Listen,” he said, and I could hear him making an effort
to speak calmly. “I get that you’re scared. You almost fainted today. But you’re kind
of working yourself up, too. I’m not part of some big, complicated conspiracy here.
Maybe you need to quit eavesdropping on conversations that don’t concern you, and
take your pills, and get your sleep like the other students. You’re hardly giving
this place a chance.”

I felt a screw of worry tightening inside me. “You’re the only one I can talk to,
Linus. If I sleep at night, we can’t talk.”

“We can still talk during the day.”

I let out a laugh. “Like that’s any good.”

He was silent a moment.

“I mean, having ice cream with you was great, of course,” I said.

“Glad to hear it.”

“Linus, I’m sorry. That didn’t come out right. It’s just, I want to be able to really
talk to you.”

“We might have a problem with that,” he said. “Otis has been asking me what I’ve been
up to. He doesn’t want me up on campus at night.”

“Did you tell him I’m staying awake?”

“No, but he’s not dumb. He doesn’t want me to get in trouble, and he doesn’t want
me blamed if
you
get in trouble.”

“We aren’t sneaking out,” I reminded him. “We’re just talking.”

“But is it really doing you any good?” he asked. “I think I’m making it worse for
you. That’s what I’m saying. Maybe you’d be better off if you took your pill.”

I got what he was saying. Sort of.

“Does Otis know anything about what’s happening here at night?” I asked.

“I don’t think so. Do you want me to ask him pointblank?”

I had to think about that. I trusted Linus, more or less, but I was pretty certain
Otis’s loyalties would have to lie with Dean Berg.

“No. Not yet,” I said.

“It’s up to you,” he said.

“Thanks.” I shifted my quilt around my head and the walkie-ham again. “Could we talk
about something else for a while? Something nicer?”

“Like what?”

“Anything.”

“Okay,” he said slowly. “Guess what’s on the repeat cycle of
The Forge Show
right now? I’m watching it on my phone.”

“What time is it?”

“Twelve-thirty,” he said.

The repeat cycle ran twelve hours straight through, so midnight in real life matched
up with noon on the show. On the show he was watching, it had to be just after lunch.
“Ice cream?” I asked.

“Yes. And guess what your blip rank was when you had ice cream with me.”

“I have no idea.”

“Thirty-five. You’ll get decent banner ad money in that range,” he said. “That’s going
to add up.”

It was nice to know I could get a spike during happy times, too, and not just when
I was upset. “My stepfather will be glad to know,” I said.

“What’s he like?” Linus said.

“My stepfather? He’s fine,” I said. “He’s had some bad luck with his job, but he’s
tight with the other strikers. What else. He likes to hunt. And read mysteries.”

“You don’t like him,” Linus said.

“I don’t want to complain. You don’t have any parents at all.”

“He must be a total jerk.”

I laughed. “Okay, truthfully? I can’t stand him,” I said. “My mom works two jobs and
still she does all the cleaning and stuff while Larry sits on the couch, scratching
his hairy belly. It drives me crazy. And he’s mean. He’s just ugly mean, for no reason.”

“How mean? Does he hurt you?” Linus asked.

I hesitated. “No.” It felt bad to lie, but I couldn’t tell him.

“I take it you don’t miss home.”

“I miss my mom,” I said. “She’s great. And my little sister Dubbs. She’s great, too.”

“Dubbs is the one you walk along the tracks with?” he asked.

He remembered.

“Yes.”

“What happened to your birth dad? Is he in the picture?”

Long before I walked the tracks with my sister, back when I was little, I used to
walk them with my dad. I could feel his big, calloused hand holding mine as I stretched
my strides to land on each railroad tie. The wood gleamed with old tar under the dust,
and the rails were rusty bright in the sunlight. My sneakers were small and red beside
his boots, step after step. He liked to whistle. That was what I had left of my dad.

“He’s dead,” I said. “I was four when he went MIA in the Greenland War, and he was
declared presumed dead four years after that.”

At that moment, I heard a noise from the hallway. I froze.

“Linus, I have to go,” I said.

“What’s going on?” he asked.

“Someone’s here.”

Before he could reply, I shut off my walkie-ham and stuffed it in my pillowcase. I
scrambled under my quilt for my video camera and turned it on. I didn’t dare pull
it out to capture any video, but the microphone would pick up the audio in the room
if it was loud enough to be heard through my lid. I held super still, trying to breathe
softly.

Brisk but quiet footsteps came in the far end of the room and came on steadily in
my direction. I kept my fingers limp, my shoulders loose, and then I heard a muffled
click nearby. Not a word was said, and then a faint, weighty rolling noise headed
back toward the door. I waited through a long minute of silence. Then I opened my
eyes and shifted just enough to see down the room.

Janice. The space for her sleep shell was empty. This time they’d come for Janice.

17

THE GAME

FOR ONE MOMENT,
I hesitated, full of fear, and then I thought,
Forget this. She’s my friend
. I had to find out where they were taking her.

I slid open my lid, climbed out of bed, and grabbed my video camera. I aimed it briefly
at the empty space where Janice’s sleep shell had been, and then I flew past the others
to the doorway. I peeked out. The upper hallway was dark and empty, the elevator doors
closed. I ran for the steps and raced down in the dark, flight after flight. I heard
no hint to indicate where they’d left the elevator until I reached the basement, where
the heavy click of a closing door sounded clearly.

A service tunnel was most likely where Janice had been taken. I paused to listen for
any more sound, and I lifted my video camera. Through my viewfinder, I saw that the
EXIT signs glowed just enough to illuminate patches of the basement, which meant that
the instant I left the deepest shadows, I would probably be visible to the school
cameras, too. I had to get offstage as quickly as possible.

I hurried past the washers and dryers in the laundry area, and past an elevator, scanning
every wall and corner until I found, around the farthest bend, a solid steel door
with a swipe lock.

A swipe lock. I was stuck. I gave the door an experimental tug. It didn’t budge. I
yanked again harder. It was no good. I couldn’t get any farther. Without a swipe pass,
I couldn’t get through the door.

I would need to get one. That was all.

I hurried back through the basement and up the stairs, filming as I went and dodging
the glows of the EXIT lights as best as I could. At the fourth floor, my dorm level,
I looked up the last flight toward the attic, teetering between caution and the urge
to know more.

On impulse, I climbed up the old, narrow stairs to the attic again. The space under
the eaves was silent tonight, and through my viewfinder, the scene was utterly black
except for the slanting windows. I felt my way cautiously forward, toward the nearest
skylight. A chill came through the rafters, and when I looked out, the stars had an
extra crispness. Across the way, the dean’s tower was dark. Not even the fifth floor
was lit, nor the penthouse. I could find no hint that they’d taken Janice over there.