Astral Tide (The Otherborn Series) (32 page)

Dr. Rand laughed. “Of course, Kitty. I assure you, this is a state of the art facility designed to keep our patients comfortable while they undergo monitoring and…treatment.”

“You mean testing,” London corrected, sitting up.
Or reprocessing.
“Because, as I understand it, you don’t have a treatment yet.”

Dr. Rand’s impish eyes narrowed. “Like I said, we have several promising serums in rotation. Facility Three is currently dosing the most compelling formula of these. I’m sure we’ll have something definite very soon.”

“What about Facility Four?” London asked, taking a gander that it was that facility where Kim had been placed, since his doors had been next to hers.

Dr. Rand was positively squinting with irritation. “Facility Four is none of your business. As I said, all our facilities are delivering promising serums to our patients. We are on the verge of creating an effective vaccine.”

“What about a cure?” London asked. “We already have it so…what can your vaccine do for us? Are you testing cures as well?” They’d come all this way, London wanted some answers before leaving.

“Ms. Moon,” Dr. Rand said, taking a step forward. “I understand your concerns and I can assure you we are addressing all these and more here at the Ward, but you will have to desist with your questioning as there is little more I can tell you at this time. Now, if you will please change, I will have the orderlies gather your old clothes when they come by to deliver your dinner before lights out.”

So that’s where they were, the Ward. A reprocessing plant for human beings. This was the building Rye alluded to, the one being used ‘behind the scenes’. The one near New Eden. Whatever they were doing, they’d done it before. Pauly had said so.
Used to happen all the time.
Probably when they were just getting people situated behind the walls. And now, with a rash of new dreamers, new defectors, they were scrambling to update their facilities, thus the new construction Rye talked about.

London pursed her lips and eyed Dr. Rand’s portable touch-screen. If the good doctor wasn’t going to tell her anything, then that’s what she needed to get her hands on. She glanced back at the white headboard, outfitted with a dozen wires and electrodes. She also noticed the thick straps hanging from the bed frame. Sneaking out at night may prove more difficult than she’d first imagined.

Dr. Rand turned to go, vigorously scrawling notes on the screen with a slender metal stylus. “It’s funny,” she said, turning back. “Jasper put you down as a redhead, but you don’t have red hair at all.”

London swallowed, her heart rate quickening. “If by Jasper, you mean Mr. Spectacles at the kiosk out there, then I’m not surprised. I would have thought him totally blind if he hadn’t been ogling my boobs so much. Sorry, Melbourne.”

Melbourne shrugged and Dr. Rand looked surprised.

“You might want to think about replacing him,” London added. “Aside from having the eyesight of a mole, the man’s kind of a perv.”

“I will, uh, make your complaints known to our supervisors,” Dr. Rand assured them as she stumbled out of the room.

London turned to Melbourne. “Don’t get too comfortable, kid. We’re not sticking around to find out what’s in those serums.”

THE STRAPS PRESSED deep into her arms, cutting across her chest in a way that made it difficult to take deep breaths. London squirmed and scowled at the orderly. “It’s too tight, dumb ass.”

The orderly straightened and tugged at a strap. “Feels okay to me. Dr. Rand warned me about you. We haven’t had a feisty charge since the creepy twins showed up a couple weeks ago.”

Across the room, Melbourne was quietly settled in his bed as his orderly plastered suction cups across his skull.

London glanced at her orderly’s name tag and decided to try a new approach. “Look, Dean, is it? Look, Dean, I’m sorry I didn’t put on the sick wear. I know you told me twice and all. It’s just, have you seen it? It’s not really my shade of green. My skin is very pale and I don’t do pastels.”

A smirk appeared on Dean’s pudgy face, just beneath the pencil thin mustache that dirtied his upper lip. “This is the Ward, not a fashion boutique.”

London looked at Dean’s own white attire. Identical to the patient wear, but without the color and the hazard symbol. “Hey,” she said, perking up. “Maybe you could get me a set like yours? I can do white. It looks good with my dark hair.”

Dean laughed. “No can do, Ms. Moon.”

London sighed. “Call me, Kit. Please.”

Dean sat on the edge of her bed and began sticking electrodes to her head. “Listen, Kit. Let me break it down for you,” he said in a low voice so the other orderly wouldn’t hear. “If you don’t have that patient wear on by morning, Dr. Rand is going to march down here with an army of orderlies and guards to restrain you and put it on for you.”

“And if I fight?” London asked.

Dean sighed. “The woman’s got a fry stick the length of my arm. You don’t want to do that.”

“A
fry stick
? What the hell is that?” London was beginning to feel even more uncomfortable.

“Electro-wand. 700,000 volts, up to half an amp. Enough power to bring you to your knees in a flash, incapacitate you, and render you unconscious if she so chooses. It’s a hell of a way to get dressed if you ask me. Plus, you’ll probably piss your new pants.”

London swallowed as her throat tightened. She needed to get out of this place by morning, but that wasn’t going to be so easy with every inch of her strapped down to her mattress. “God. Why don’t they just sedate us? What’s with the shock option?”

Dean cuffed something around her arm and sighed. “I shouldn’t be telling you this, but truth is, Dr. Rand says medications interfere with the serums. Something about over-sedating? I don’t know. She prefers the fry stick method.”

London arched her brows. “She’s a bigger sadist than I thought, then.”

Dean chuckled. “Dr. Rand just doesn’t like disorder. Do what she says and you’ll be fine. Look at it this way, you’re in the most promising facility. There’s practically a race to secure a vaccine. All the facilities are in competition with each other. Rand’s formula is closest, or so everyone thinks. If she pulls it off, you might be out of here in no time and she’ll be off to live in that fancy, new house the Tycoons have been promising to the lead doctor.”

London shifted under her belts. “What’s all this crap do anyway? Why the straps?”

“Some of the patients get up, even walk around, while in the grip of the sickness. Don’t want anybody getting hurt. The bed monitors your vitals for us, brainwaves. Let’s us know when your symptoms kick in. As soon as the night pictures start, we’ll know.” He said it with a smile, but London wasn’t soothed.

Dean leaned down and gave a little tug against the buckle of her chest strap. “There, I loosened it a tad. Better?”

“Better,” London agreed, though not nearly loose enough.

MELBOURNE’S SOFT SNORES stirred the air and the only light in the room was the tiny red one indicating the door was locked. London blew at a hair that was tickling her face. She hated not having her hands. The main thing was, she couldn’t dare fall asleep. The last thing she needed was an accidental trip to the Astral. Whatever signals those electrodes were picking up, she doubted anybody else’s in Facility Three would read quite like hers. She didn’t need Dr. Rand figuring out she was Otherborn.

She could have warped a giant pair of scissors into the room, but without her hands being free, they wouldn’t have done much good. What she needed was to do what Rye had, to project. Maybe if she could project herself out of the room, she could go and find Dr. Rand’s touch-screen without ever leaving her bed. Then she could sneak into Facility Four and find Kim and Tora.

London closed her eyes and tried to focus. She’d never projected before and she didn’t have Tora, or Hantu, or Elias there with a bundle of nifty instructions to help her out. She was just going to have to manage it on her own. If Rye could do it, she could, too. She was sure of that. But how?

It wouldn’t be like a warp. In a warp, she shaped what she needed within the Astral and brought it into the physical dimension. No. This was nothing like that. Maybe it was more like a shift, like reflecting. Only, instead of using the Astral to reflect whatever image she wanted, she would be using it to push her own image forward. To sort of lengthen herself, her energetic reach, like a lens. She needed to magnify herself.

She took deep breaths to relax. If she wasn’t asleep, would the electrodes still record what she was doing? Probably. Dr. Rand would be all over her by morning, poking and prodding at her like something in a petri dish. But she had to take the chance. She just needed to work fast.

London visualized herself standing right outside the clear panels of her room, cloaked in darkness. She sank deep into herself, curving and thickening the Astral before her, pushing the image of herself, strap free, through it. It took a great and sudden force, a shove, before she felt the slick epoxy under her fingers, a whisper fainter than if she had truly been there, all of her. But within moments, London was looking back through the darkness from the other side of her cell at the red glare shining on her cheek against the pillow of the bed.

There was a pull, a faint tug to return. Like before, with the shift, her own life force seemed to understand the split was unnatural, and it dragged at her to reunite. But it wasn’t strong enough to restrain her, or even weary her, not yet. It was simply an annoyance, like an incessant itch.

Turning away from herself, she felt the itch grow a little stronger, but there was a lot of slack in the line between her and her body, and she was determined to use it. Her steps were soundless as she proceeded between the cells, and in the dark, no one could have seen her anyhow. London felt a little thrill of freedom, like a voyeur who could watch unseen from the shadows. She reveled in her own sense of touch, though it felt like having gloves on, knowing it could not be reciprocated. But it was short lived. She needed to get to Kim and Tora, and if she could, she needed to find something that would help her understand what was really going on here at the Ward.

London felt one of the double doors to the hall she’d entered through sway beneath the pressure of her hand, but she could sense that she had to push a little harder than if she’d actually been there. Projection had its limits. Some things were simply more difficult, but others were sure to be impossible. Beyond the hazard doors, the white hall glowed as if nothing had changed, as if day was eternal. She was completely exposed in the light, but there was no one about at the moment. She needed to move fast and careful, or she’d be seen.

Darting to the first door, London stretched up on her toes to peek inside the slitted window. A dim, empty room with an examination table was behind it. The next door offered the same, and the one after that. These must be the exam rooms where they administered the drug for Facility Three and did testing. A fourth room proved to be a well-equipped lab. That could be useful, but what London really needed was information: files, documents, something that would tell her what was going on. She could look through a million test tubes and have no clue what she was seeing.

The fifth door appeared to be a computer room. The brain of Facility Three. She could see the dainty spikes of data as they filled the numerous screens, recording everything that happened in every cell throughout the night for Dr. Rand to look over tomorrow. Against one screen, a green series of dots were blinking, row upon row upon row. Only, one set of dots was moving much more rapidly, winking in and out at a pace that far exceeded the rest. London took a breath and lowered herself, biting at her lip. It was her own row. It had to be.

She moved to the next door, just outside the main rooms and its kiosks, and peeked in. This room was larger, filled with four or five round tables with chairs, a couple of sofas, two televisions and a long L-shaped counter with cabinets underneath and a sink and appliances on top. It wasn’t the benign furnishings that alarmed her. It was the white, pressed fabric uniforms of the orderlies, chatting at the tables, feet kicked up on the sofas, pulling snacks from the cabinets. A lounge. And it was full.

London ducked down and sprinted across the hall. This was the last room to check. The farther she moved from her own body, the more the tug to return pulled at her, but she still felt like she had a ways to go before the pull got so strong she risked being jerked back or breaking with herself.

The window revealed an empty office with a single desk lamp on. Surely, this was Dr. Rand’s personal headquarters. A papery hat was wadded on the desk beside an open drink canister. But more importantly, the doctor’s touch-screen lay lifeless and waiting on the desktop. London tried the knob, turning it slowly and with a little more effort than she was used to. She felt the door give as she pressed it inward, slipping into the office, letting the door drift back on its hinges behind her.

She made her way to the desk and tapped the touch-screen. It flared to life under her projected fingertips. The opening screen read,
Facility Three Passcode:_________
.

London deflated. Of course there would be a passcode. Orderly Dean said the four facilities were practically in competition with one another. No doubt the prized new house was situated comfortably among the sparkling gardens of New Eden.

She sighed and tried to think. What would beady-eyed Dr. Rand keep as her passcode? London typed in
vaccine
,
immunization
, and
serum
. She tried
sleeping sickness
as one word and two words. She typed
hazard
,
dreams
, and even
plague
. Nothing. Finally, out of desperation, she typed
facility three
. That too was a bust.

She sifted through a desk drawer to look for something personal of Dr. Rand’s. Something that might allude to her passcode. She found her first name on an envelope and tried that:
Theresa
. No luck. She didn’t remember a wedding ring on the doctor’s finger, so that would mean no spouse and no kids, whose names always made good passcodes.