I could relate to Alex Chow’s fear as I switched my attention to his monitor, because I’d been cornered by two crazy dogs out at my grandfather’s farm in northern California. I remember thinking they were going to rip me apart before I scaled the metal fence they’d pinned me against and ran away.
Alex Chow, 15
Acute fear: dogs
The green line appeared at the edge of the screen, and, shockingly, it was already halfway to the finish line. Alex had barely even put on the helmet and already he was rounding the bend for home. Bits and pieces from sessions I’d listened to drifted into my mind as I watched Alex. His back was against the wall again, as far away from the dog houses as he could get without running from the room.
You should let your family buy you a dog, Alex. It will help.
No, it won’t.
Of course it will. You had one bad experience a long time ago. Not all dogs are like that.
What about a cat instead? Could we start there? Or a hamster.
A hamster isn’t going to cure you, Alex.
Then I don’t want to be cured.
The word looked so harmless on the screen. Dogs. I imagined or hoped for a toy poodle and a Chihuahua to step out of the dog houses and nip at Alex’s feet, but that was, of course, not to be. These were not small dogs. They were not friendly or eager to be petted. I saw their snouts first, which were accompanied by a black symphony of low, growling sounds. When their heads emerged together, I felt truly sorry for Alex Chow. They were huge animals, their mouths dripping with saliva, their bodies covered in matted hair. When they began to growl and snarl, the monitor switched to Alex in the room, who was clawing at the closed door, trying to escape from the green room. A second later the scene was back on the dogs, which were moving closer, cornering Alex, teeth bared. They attacked together, a mad leap and the sound of the world being torn apart.
And that was it for Alex Chow. The green line was already at the top. He was flooded with fear, the wires dancing over his head. After that, he lay slouched in the corner of the room and the dogs were gone.
Only Connor’s scene remained, and it was about to head into overdrive as I stepped closer. Suddenly, the floor wasn’t just falling slowly away in the helmet; it was racing. It had the unnerving effect of making it feel as if Connor Bloom was rising up in the air at the same time, the distance between the ladder and the bottom of the room growing. Given how scary I knew this must have been for Connor, it was surprising to see that the orange line was only a quarter of the way up the side of the screen.
This guy is tough. Maybe the room can’t break him.
I should have known better. The floor blasted back to where it was with a grinding noise of rocks and metal. The floor had changed while it was away, growing talons and spears reaching up into the middle of the room. The floor stayed only a moment, just long enough for Connor to get a really good look at how things would be when he fell, and then it was falling again. This time one of the four legs of the ladder was left without a solid footing; and in the helmet, the world began to wobble. As if this wasn’t plenty of ammunition to finish off someone afraid of falling, the cable that had once been attached to the ceiling broke free, dangling uselessly from Connor’s belt. Inside the world of the helmet, Connor Bloom had to be thinking: I am no longer connected to anything. It’s just me and a three-legged ladder now.
The scene shifted to the orange room, where the orange line had reached the midway point. Nothing had changed, and I understood once more that life inside the helmet was very different from life outside. What Connor saw was an altered reality, presented by a madman bent on driving irrational fear off a cliff. The room was, simply, the same. The cable was still attached to the ceiling, and the ladder sat firmly on the concrete floor; but Connor had no way of knowing this. The orange line was moving fast now, nearing the top. As my monitor returned to the scene in the helmet, Connor Bloom lost his balance. The ladder tipped, and the orange line found its end. He was falling.
The power of a dual cure left me nervous and upset, a sick adrenaline pumping through my veins; but it wasn’t until the very end that I was finally forced to turn away from the monitors. Connor Bloom’s orange room was back. The ladder lay tipped over on the floor like a dead animal. Connor had fallen, but the cable attached to his belt had held. His arms and legs were splayed out in the air as if he was held up by many wires, and the helmet was still on. All those wires and tubes and the cable—something about seeing him hanging there rigid, as if rigor mortis was already setting in, made me rip the headphones off my head and gasp for air.
I shut my eyes, but the image remained.
When at last I looked back at the wall, Connor Bloom and Alex Chow were gone.
UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE
HarperCollins Publishers
.....................................................................
EDEN 5
MARISA
An hour after Connor Bloom and Alex Chow were cured, Mrs. Goring drove the metal cart down the ramp and I dialed the light off just as she threw open the door to the basement. She was in a foul mood.
“Damn this place and these stupid kids!” she yelled. I got the feeling that she viewed the basement, on occasion, as a place where her deepest frustrations could be expressed in peace. It was a place where she could scream and no one would hear her.
She banged the cart loudly into one of the metal shelves, knocking cans onto the floor. One of them bounced, then rolled in my general direction. There was nothing I could do but stand in the corner of the darkened bomb shelter and hope she didn’t feel compelled to pick up the can. She picked up all the cans but the one, which had rolled all the way to the bomb shelter door. Mrs. Goring was angrily muttering half-formed words as she set each can back on the shelf. I’d cleaned up the room and put my things in my backpack, and I knew the room well enough to move with only the sliver of light from the basement leaking in.
I knelt down, quietly sliding on the slick concrete and under the cot, until I was as far against the wall as possible. I reached out my hand and grabbed my backpack, pulling it toward me. It was thick in the middle with Clif Bars and water bottles and clothes I’d stuffed inside, so it caught on the metal edge of the cot. The busted wheel on Mrs. Goring’s cart started flopping toward the bomb shelter door. She was moving like a crazy woman in a grocery store mowing down whatever stood in her way. She slammed the cart against the wall outside the door, and it bounced off its wheels.
“Oh, for God’s sake,” she said, having tipped the empty cart over on its side. I pushed up on the old springs and lifted the edge of the cot an inch off the ground, silently sliding my pack in under the cot with me. I was pretty sure she’d be able to see me hiding if the lights were turned on, but there was no place else to go. All I could do was stay still and hope she didn’t ram the cart into the rickety old cot.
It was quiet in the basement—too quiet—and I started to feel claustrophobic. If Mrs. Goring was going to find me, I sure didn’t want to be trapped. I needed to be up on my feet so I could knock her down and run for the exit. I started to slide out from under the cot, but the door to the bomb shelter moved and I froze in place. Light from the basement grew brighter, and Mrs. Goring stepped inside the bomb shelter. I saw her boots, scuffed leather rimmed with black rubber soles. She was staring at the wall of monitors.
I imagined her standing with one can of corn in each hand, prepared to use them as weapons if she needed them; but then I heard her clicking the buttons on the wall, searching for images. There was nothing—the system had gone dead and hadn’t returned after Connor and Alex were cured—and this bothered her.
“I hate this place,” she said, and then I heard a crashing sound that made me wince under the springs. A heavy object hit the concrete floor, bouncing sideways into the bomb shelter door. When it hit the floor again, I saw it for an instant—the heavy can she’d picked up—and then it was flying up and out of my field of vision
. It bounced once more, rolled in my direction. The can didn’t stop until it was resting against my hip.
“I feel much better,” she said. It sounded as if she was still facing the wall of monitors, observing her handy work, and I risked pushing the can so that it rolled back out into the openness of the room. A second passed, maybe two, then her big boot was on the can, kicking it out the door and into the basement. She followed, picked up her cart, and went back to whatever it was she had been doing.
The bomb shelter door was swung wide-open, and I could see Mrs. Goring’s shadow on the floor out there, gathering supplies for something awful she intended to cook for dinner. I stuck my head out from under the cot and looked at the wall: Ben Dugan’s monitor, the one at the top, was filled with a spidery burst of glass. She’d thrown the can right into the wall, smashing one of the seven screens.
It was Mrs. Goring’s habit, I had found, to leave the basement door open if she planned on coming back down again soon. That was the case as she turned off the light, and I listened to her leave.
I have to get out of here or I’ll go crazy, I thought, sliding out from under the cot and throwing on my backpack. I gathered what courage I had, which didn’t feel like enough, and walked through the basement. At the bottom of the ramp leading up into the Bunker, I hesitated, hearing her rattling pots and pans in the kitchen. But I was determined to get free and put one foot in front of the other until, miraculously, I stood at the top of the ramp. Around the corner something began to boil, and I heard the sound of Mrs. Goring humming gruffly, then the sound of her spitting.
So gross, so awful, I thought, glad I wasn’t on the Fort Eden meal plan.
I was losing my nerve, preparing to go back down the ramp to the bomb shelter and wait out another night, when someone knocked at Mrs. Goring’s door.
“Cooking!” she screamed. “Go away!”
The knocking persisted, and she stomped out of the kitchen. My chance had come and I moved quickly, past the pot of boiling water, which appeared to have nothing else in it, and next to the hall that led to the front door.
“What do you want?” Mrs. Goring said.
“They sent me on a mission to find dinner. Everyone’s starving.”
I could tell by the voice that it was Kate Hollander. It was dark in the hall, and I risked creeping from the kitchen to the sitting room; two quick steps and I was safely around the corner.
“Tell your fellow idiots to be patient,” Mrs. Goring said. “Rainsford wants dinner at eight sharp, with the lot of you. Deal with it.”
“That’s like two more hours,” Kate complained. She started to ask for a snack to hold them over, and Mrs. Goring slammed the door in her face.
Trust me, Kate, you don’t want what she’s serving, I thought.
Mrs. Goring was back at the stove swiftly, then grumbling, then heading back down to the basement for something she needed.
By the time she got back to the kitchen I was out the door, across the clearing, and into the woods.
I’d made a decision after watching Connor Bloom’s and Alex Chow’s cure, and I was unwavering about seeing it through. I needed answers, and there was only one person I could think of who might be able to help me find them. As I made my way toward the pond, one thought was at the forefront of my mind.
I’m going to find Davis before he finds me.
“Three nights out here. Impressive.”
Davis was sitting on the dock when I arrived at the pond. He was staring out over the water, the pipe wrench resting at his feet.
“Yeah, well,” I said, staying back far enough that I could run and maybe get away if I needed to. Although really, who was I fooling? Davis was built like a running back. He’d catch me no matter how big a lead I started with.
“I’m not going to tell anyone I found you,” Davis said. His back was to me, and he kept staring at the water, waiting for me to come closer.
“You didn’t find me,” I said. “I found you.”
“True enough,” he said, and then he glanced over his shoulder and smiled warmly. “I was running out of ideas. You’re a damn good hider, Will Besting.”
“You have no idea,” I offered, thinking of all the times I’d made myself vanish at home or at a mall or at school years ago. I was, I had to agree, a hell of a good hider.
“Doc Stevens is worried about you,” said Davis. “So is Rainsford.”
“What about the rest? I’m guessing they don’t care too much.”
“They’ve got troubles of their own,” Davis said. “You know the drill: the world revolves around you and only you at fifteen.”
I thought about how Davis was only seventeen, how he wasn’t old enough to be saying such things, but I let it pass.
“What’s going on inside?” I asked instead. He had to imagine I knew nothing at all.
“People are getting well. You could be getting well, too. All you gotta do is go through the doorway.”
I was surprised to find that I’d crept awfully close, within a few feet of the dock itself. The cool grass matted under my shoes, and I heard the crows moving overhead, an early autumn chill settling on the pond.
“How do they get cured?” I asked, wanting to trust him and hoping he’d be honest with me.
He looked out over the water again, contemplating something as the sun began to fall below the tree line on the other side of the water.
“I wish I could tell you,” he said. “But the honest-to-god truth is, I have no idea. When I was here awhile back, there were the same number of patients, so there must be something about having just the right number of people together, supporting one another. And I remember Rainsford from the first, thinking that he was old and that he couldn’t be good for much. This guy can barely get up the stairs, how is he going to save me? I thought. I remember that after I met him I started feeling, I don’t know, looser, I guess, like I wasn’t as uptight, you know?”
Yeah, I thought, because he was controlling your mind.
“The cure itself I have no memory of,” he went on, breathing in a big gulp of air and releasing it, as if he was enjoying the view of the pond so much he could barely stand it. “I went down an elevator—that much I recall—but the rest is missing entirely. All I know is, I can jump in this pond and swim all I want.”
“It sounds shifty to me, the way it gets done,” I said. “Like it’s a trick or something worse.”
“I hear you, I really do,” Davis said, getting up and taking a step toward me, which caused me to take a step back toward the gloom of the forest. “Look, Will, it just is what it is. It’s a cure, a real cure. In this case, with the way Rainsford operates, that has to be enough.”
“What if it’s not?”
Davis looked at me sympathetically, and I realized that I’d had a fairly normal conversation with him. I didn’t know him, but I’d been able to talk without losing it. It wasn’t completely unheard of; but he was older and better in ways I never would be, which usually set me off. Like Connor Bloom, Mr. Big Man on Campus, Davis had that look: the kind of person who’d gang up with his pals and stuff me in a locker.
“I will say this much,” he said, settling down on his haunches and picking at the soft grass. “Since I’ve been back, the whole thing does seem a little on the strange side. Just tell me this much—are you safe out here? Can you last another day or two if it takes that long? Because if you can’t, then I gotta take you in. I wouldn’t be able to live with myself if you got hurt.”
I thought about what he’d said as I felt the cold begin to chill my face.
“Give me your word you won’t say anything, and I’ll tell you where I’m hiding.”
Davis got up and reached out his hand. There was a large gap of three or four steps between us, but he didn’t move. He wasn’t going to come any closer and scare me off. I must have looked like a feral cat, slowly coming barely near enough to lean forward and put out my hand.
“I don’t even know if you should go in there,” D
avis said. “It works, but there’s absolutely no doubt about it: it’s weird.”
He shook my hand, promised he wouldn’t tell, and smiled as if he was my big brother. It was so hard not to trust this guy. He’d been through the program; but more than that, he seemed to understand how I felt. I was coming to the end of my rope; and, feeling a deep sense of desperation, I let him in.
“I’ve been staying in the basement of Mrs. Goring bunker,” I blurted.
“No way,” he said, and we both laughed (him first, then me nervously joining in). “You couldn’t pay me enough money to sneak in there. Seriously, impressive.”
“Do me a favor?” I asked.
“Whatever you need.”
“Knock on her front door at a quarter to eight, offer to help carry dinner over through the clearing.”
“So you can get back in?” he asked.
“Yeah, so I can get back in.”
He nodded and laughed again and asked if I needed anything else.
He had no idea about what was down there, no clue whatsoever that I’d watched people being cured. I had a flash of insight, imagining Davis with the helmet on, images of him falling through the ice on a frozen pond. I couldn’t tell him what I knew, but I could at least ask him for a favor before we parted ways.
“Could you check on Marisa for me, let her know I’m doing okay out here?”
He knew instantly that I liked her but didn’t make a big deal out of it.
“I’ll tell everyone you’re fine, just not ready to come in. Rainsford will be the toughest to sell, but it’s cool. As long as he knows you’re not dead or injured, I think it’ll be fine.”
The wind rustled through the trees, and we both looked off at the riffling pond.
“Do you think she can be cured?” I asked. There was a part of me that wanted that for her, no matter how horrible it would be.