“Tinkering.” Link shuts the door.
The click is soft, but the sound echoes. I’ve been alone with Link multiple times over the past couple months. There’s no reason to feel awkward now. But this isn’t a dream, and well, he’s half-naked. And well built. I blink away from his bare chest. “I found my grandmother.”
“What?”
“She’s highly medicated, but I found her and she recognized me. Do you think you could put on a shirt?”
He grabs one off his floor and pulls it over his head.
I stand and begin a short-routed pace between his bed and a computer tower beside his dresser. “I didn’t know how to awaken her. I was afraid of saying something that would make things harder, or—”
“Wait, wait, wait.” Link holds up his hands as if to slow down my words, then sits on the edge of his bed and pinches the bridge of his nose. “Hold on a second. I’m still waking up here. You found your grandmother?”
“I want to break her out.”
“Does Cap know what you’re up to?”
“He wants me to train for a couple more weeks. And even if he was ready and willing to start a new rescue mission right now, you and I both know that my grandmother would not be included in that mission.” My grandmother is a Fighter. We’re not looking for another Fighter, we’re looking for a Cloak. Cap has never been in the business of making emotional decisions. He has to think logically and strategically, with the safety and good of the entire hub in mind. I’m sure he will see too much danger in rescuing two people at once. But if the plan is already under way and my grandmother is already awakened … well, then. I don’t see how he’ll say no. “I’m not going to Shady Wood without breaking her out. I left her once. I won’t do it again.”
“You think you can unhook her medicine without being detected?”
“Yes.”
“Cap will be livid if we go rogue like this, you know. And we’re going to have to tell him eventually. I mean, we can’t break them out without the whole team.”
“I know. I’m not planning on it. I just need to get it started first.” The question is, is Link crazy enough to get it started with me? “You’ve seen Anna’s cloak with your own eyes. It’s failing every day. It’s only a matter of time before it goes out altogether.”
And then what? How long before we are found? How long before all of us are arrested and thrown into jail, or worse, put into a place like Shady Wood? I imagine myself strapped to a bed, medicine needled into my neck against my will. Luka too. They will put us in isolation. They will convince us that the other doesn’t exist. I remember the feeling all too well—not knowing what’s real and what isn’t, thinking Luka was a figment of my imagination, thinking my grandmother was dead. Thinking I was crazy. I can’t let that happen to me, and I definitely cannot let that happen to Luka. The only way I can pull this off is by convincing Link to help me get the plan rolling. “You saw that man last night. You know how close he is.”
“Yeah. Who is that guy?”
“Nobody good.”
Link rubs his eyes and peers up at me. “You know this will be highly dangerous?”
I nod.
“Anna wasn’t our first mission, she was just our first successful mission.”
“What happened to the others you tried to rescue?”
“They didn’t make it.”
Fear presses against my shoulders, but I stand up straight beneath its weight. I’ve been given a gift unlike any Cap has ever seen. He said so himself. It’s up to me to decide how I will use it. Well, I’ve decided. I’m going to break my grandmother out of Shady Wood and I’m going to give the hub another Cloak. “I can do this, Link. I know I can. But I can’t do it without your help.”
A wicked grin pulls in his cheek. “Count me in.”
Awakened
“I
’m surprised you didn’t ask to train last night,” Cap says as we wait in line for our oatmeal. The comment comes with a healthy dose of suspicion.
Luka hands me a tray, silent but attentive.
I tuck a strand of hair behind my ear. “I assumed you were still teaching me a lesson.”
“I hope the lesson has been learned. If so, we can pick up where we left off.”
I focus my attention on Declan, who doles out a large scoop of steaming oatmeal and another scoop of fresh raspberries—courtesy of the greenhouse—to everyone who passes by in line. I’d rather not look Luka or Cap in the eye when I say what I have to say. Luka, especially. He will see right through me. “I’m going to train with Link tonight.”
The tension that radiates from the boy beside me is instantaneous.
Cap frowns. “Like you trained with him the other night?”
“No, not like that. I need to—um—fine-tune some linking skills.” This is technically the truth. Awakening someone
is
a linking skill I have yet to learn. Who better to practice it on than my grandmother? But the suspicion in Cap’s eyes grows.
He watches me throughout the day. Him and Luka both. I don’t ease their misgivings at all when I recommend that Cap and I train in the mat room for the afternoon so Claire and Jose and Sticks can have a turn in the training center. There’s no getting around it though. I need to be exhausted tonight if I’m going to get to sleep, which means I can’t take a three hour nap on a dental chair in the middle of the day. Luka seems slightly mollified when I ask if he’ll join us.
I can’t spar with Cap in the mat room, so he coaches while Luka and I spar. I may be quick and well-trained, but Luka is significantly faster, stronger, and taller. He’s toying with me, I can tell. I work up a sweat. He barely breaks one. But his grin makes it all worth it. It’s been a long time since we’ve had any fun. Once my muscles can go no longer, Luka practices casting his shield. I stand in the center of the room while Cap throws things at me—gloves, five pound dumbbells, a whole bucket of tennis balls—while Luka uses a force field to block every single one. When we’re finished, I head to the weight room and push my exhausted muscles further on the treadmill.
Luka watches from the squat rack.
I increase the incline and keep going. I can only manage two miles.
At dinner, I scrape my plate clean (sorry Rosie). I always have an easier time falling asleep on a full stomach. I play Jillian in several games of mancala, then excuse myself to my room to turn in early. Luka’s hot stare follows me from the couch all the way until I step into the hallway, out of sight. I shower, brush my teeth, get into my pajamas and lay in bed with the composition notebooks, looking for anything I missed, hoping the reading will make me tired. Around midnight, my eyes grow heavy. I set the journals aside and think about Link.
This time there is no Starfleet and there is no Coliseum. Just Link in a generic room, dressed in army fatigues.
“What took you so long?” he asks.
“What do you mean?”
“I’ve been waiting forever. I was beginning to think you were gonna stand me up.”
I scratch my temple, not exactly sure. From my vantage point, I fell asleep and then I found him. Why would he be waiting forever? I quirk my eyebrow at his ensemble. “What’s up with the outfit?”
“We’re going into battle. I thought I should dress appropriately.”
“This isn’t a joke.”
“I know.” He dips his chin and nudges me with his elbow. “But it sure is fun.”
I roll my eyes and grab his hand and pin every ounce of my mental energy on my grandmother. There’s that familiar feeling—a drop in my stomach like I’m falling without really falling at all. When I open my eyes, I’m in the white cloud again with Link’s hand in mine. Only somehow, the white cloud is denser than before.
Link coughs and bats at the vapor. “How could you find anyone in this place?”
“It wasn’t this thick last night.” I tighten my grip on his hand, afraid that if we let go, we won’t be able to find each other again.
“They must have upped her medicine.”
“Why?” But even as I ask it, I know the answer. My grandmother must have done or said something that aroused suspicion. Somebody is on to us. I walk forward, pulling Link along with me, shouting my grandmother’s name. We walk for what feels like an eternity, until finally, Link yanks me to a halt. “Tess, this isn’t going to work.”
“She’s in here somewhere. I know she is.” I call out her name again and stumble over something. It’s her. Curled up into a ball. I bend over and shake her, worried that she’s somehow dead. That I waited too long and now it’s too late. “Elaine!”
I can feel the tug of a doorway. It would be so easy to step through it and unhook her medicine. Make some of this blasted fog disappear. Link must feel it too, because he holds tighter to my hand. “You can’t unhook her medicine. If she starts acting coherent before she knows she’s not supposed to act coherent, then our mission will fail before it begins.”
I grip her shoulder and give her an aggressive shake.
Her head lolls. Her eyes stay closed.
I look up at Link. “What do we do?”
He nudges me aside, grabs my grandmother beneath the arms, and pulls her up into standing. Then he pushes her. Hard.
“Link!”
My grandmother stumbles back. Her eyes fly open. He catches her hand before she falls. “I’m startling her. Because of all the medication, she won’t wake from the dream, but it will make her coherent inside of it.”
Grandma’s eyes begin drooping again. Link gives her another hard push and her eyes open even wider this time. She looks left, then right. Whatever Link did, it worked.
“I’m Teresa Eckhart,” I say. “Do you remember me?”
“You—you were here before …”
“You said I could come back. You said I could bring a friend. We want to help you.”
She looks at me like my offer to help is a shard of jagged glass that will tear open her skin. I need her to understand what’s going on, but I don’t know how.
Link grabs her by the arms and gives her a violent jolt. “Elaine Eckhart, we are inside your dream.” He waits a couple beats, then gives her another rattle, as if to physically shake the meaning of his words into place.
Her confusion ebbs.
Link doesn’t let go of her. He speaks loud and slow. “You are being medicated.” He gives her another jolt. Her head wobbles like a bobble head. “You are a Fighter.” Another rattle.
She’s staring at him now, almost fully attentive.
“But you are trapped inside a mental facility called Shady Wood.” Another shake. “You cannot trust the doctors or the nurses.” More shaking, harder this time, as if really rattling that truth down deep inside the crevices of her brain. “We are here to help you. We’re here to get you out.”
Shake, shake, shake.
I watch, wondering how in the world Link learned this. If he never met another Linker before him, then how did he figure this out? I have to imagine it took a lot of time and a lot of educated guessing and probably a lot of help from Cap.
“You cannot tell anyone what we are doing.” Shake.
Her eyes are as wide and round as ping pong balls now. My grandmother stares at Link with utter concentration. The cloud is every bit as thick around us.
“We will get you off the medicine.” Shake. “But you have to act like you know nothing. When the doctor comes into your room, pretend you are sleeping.” This time he shakes her so violently, I think her head might snap off.
I take a step forward. Enough is enough.
He holds up his hand to stop me, then slowly lets go of her arms.
She stands on her own without even swaying.
“Do you understand what you have to do?” Link asks her.
She nods.
“Tess, you can go.” He points in the direction of the tugging without breaking eye contact with my grandmother.
I walk toward the doorway, until the tugging is a knock-down-drag-out sensation that is impossible to resist. Taking a deep breath, I close my eyes and step through. When I come out on the other side, I’m standing in the same white room Luka and I broke into months ago. My grandmother sleeps on the bed, constrained by thick leather straps. I spot two needles sitting on the tray beside her IV. One is labeled AM, the other PM. These must be the drugs the nurse injects into her IV to keep her sedated.
Okay Tess, you can do this.
I think about my mother and my father and Pete. I think about how terribly I miss them. I picture seeing them again. Running to them in the light of day and falling into one giant family hug. I imagine the feel of my mother’s happy tears wetting my hair and my father’s strong arms wrapping us all up tight. Emotion swells so strongly that I can barely breathe and just when I think I can contain it no longer, I pick up the syringes. I squirt the liquid medicine into the sink and fill the syringes with saline fluid, which they’ll unknowingly put in her IV tomorrow. I set the needles exactly in the place they were before, then find the doorway back into the dream world.
In and out in under two minutes.
Link and my grandmother are where I left them. He tells her the plan once more, promises we will return soon, then takes my hand and together, we focus on the little we know about Clive DeVant from his file. Age forty-six. Divorced with two sons and no visitation rights. Kicked out of the marines when his OCD and delusions reached their peak. Admitted into Shady Wood a couple years ago.
There’s a shift in the air. Another dropping sensation.
I open my eyes in what appears to be the same white cloud, only my grandmother is no longer there. Instead, a middle-aged man with a square face and hair cut to army-regulation stands at attention in front of us as though he’s been waiting for this very moment for the past two years. While I’m shocked, Link doesn’t miss a beat. He takes the man’s shoulders and does the same thing to him that he did to my grandmother. Clive doesn’t object. In fact, he focuses on Link in a way I’ve never seen anybody focus before—like a soldier trained for combat, one who has prepared his entire life for this very moment.
This time, when I step through the doorway, I’m not alone.
Someone is standing guard.
My sudden presence has that someone looking up with eyes that are completely white. No irises. No pupils. The demon comes at me, but I am well trained. I am stronger. I block his attack and kick him so hard in the chest, he flies through the wall. Positive he will be back any second, I make quick work of emptying the syringes. I fill them with saline and jump back through the doorway.