The Retribution of Mara Dyer

  “What is wrong with you?” Jamie said, hitting her lightly on the shoulder.

  “Sorry! I wanted to get your attention without calling out.”

  “That worked out well for all of us,” he replied.

  Stella looked mostly the way I remembered her, except for the clean mom jeans she wore, along with a weirdly formal silky blouse. I couldn’t imagine her choosing those clothes for herself—I couldn’t imagine anyone choosing them for themselves. But her face was the same—her olive skin healthy, her black hair shiny and brushed. And she wasn’t covered in blood or any other bodily fluids. Of the three of us, I was the mess.

  “My God, Mara. It’s good to see you, but you look—”

  “I know.”

  “No, but, like, really—”

  “I know,” I said. I turned a corner, then another one, trying to follow my faded, faulty memories, but there was no part of me—no conscious part, anyway—that recognized where we were. Jamie was equally clueless.

  But Stella wasn’t. If it weren’t for her, we might never have found it.

  “She brought me back here, once, for some kind of written test,” she said as we stood silently in front of a nondescript door. But this one had an extra little camera thingy above the top right corner of it. A retinal scanner. Just where Jude said it would be.

  “Well?” Jamie asked. “Use the eye.”

  I reached out to hand it to him.

  He backed away, shaking his head. “Nope. I’m squeamish.”

  I looked at Stella.

  “Not a chance.”

  “I need one of you to do this,” I explained. “There’s a map inside, and our files.”

  “So . . . come look with us?”

  I felt a flare of anger and tried to swallow it down. “Haven’t you noticed that one of us is missing?”

  Stella and Jamie exchanged an uncomfortable glance.

  “I can’t be here. I have to find Noah.”

  “Mara,” Stella started to say. “Noah’s not . . .”

  “What?”

  “Alive,” Jamie finished.

  I ignored the word that came before it. “He’s alive,” I said with an intensity that shut both of them up. “Jude said he is. He said he was going to find him, and he found both of you and let you out, didn’t he?” Jamie opened his mouth to speak, but I didn’t wait for him to answer. “I was supposed to come here, to get our files—the real ones, so we can finally understand what the fuck is happening to us and then find the map that will lead us out of this place. But first I need to find Noah.” I struggled to explain what it felt like, knowing he was alive, knowing he was here but not with me. I couldn’t. “So you get the files”—I looked at Stella—“you get the map,” I said to Jamie, “and I’ll find you again.”

  Jamie put a tentative hand on my shoulder and I flinched without meaning to. “Okay,” he said quietly. “Listen. I know you want to find him. But it doesn’t make sense for you to try before you even know where you’re going. So come in, we’ll get the files, get the map, and then get out. Together. We’ll do this together. Okay?”

  I looked at my friend. He had always been on my side, even when he hadn’t agreed with me. He didn’t believe that Noah was alive, but at the moment it didn’t matter. He was right. I would have a better chance of finding Noah if I had the map first.

  So I handed the tape recorder to him and opened my fist. Wayne’s brown eye stared at nothing. I pinched it very carefully between my thumb and forefinger and held it just above my own eyes, like Jude said.

  The door unlocked. We went inside.

  7

  I THINK ALL OF US half-expected to find a swat team armed and waiting for us. Or to be felled by poison darts or something. But when I entered Dr. Kells’s office, with Jamie and Stella flanking each shoulder, the room was dark and silent.

  The room was also practically empty. Distressingly blank. There were no papers on the metal desk, which was really just a worktable, but there was a worn Persian rug beneath it, looking out of place in the sterile room. There were no notebooks, no file folders, not even an office chair—just a little metal stool. It looked nothing like an office, even, except for the wall-to-wall file cabinets, which I prayed weren’t empty.

  “Where do we start?” Stella asked. “And what are we looking for, exactly? Can someone catch me up?”

  I looked at Jude’s watch. Twelve thirty-six. In the morning, I assumed. We had passed no windows, and there was no way to tell whether it was night or day, but I guessed night. It seemed more appropriate.

  If what Jude had said was true, Kells knew where we were, and she was probably watching us right now, so I played the tape. We listened to Jude’s message together. It sounded even stranger in Kells’s office, somehow, than it had in the room with Wayne, and I noticed things I’d missed the first time. Jude’s voice sounded softer than I remembered it. More earnest. There was no edge to it, no hint of sarcasm or impatience. And he sounded sick. I heard him faintly wheezing between words, and his breath rattled when he coughed.

  “He never told us where to find the map,” Stella said when the tape ended. “It could be anywhere. And there’s only one way in and out.” She flicked a nervous glance at the door.

  “That we know of,” Jamie added.

  They were both right. “But why would Jude help us escape just to trap us in her office, when we were exactly where she wanted us before?”

  “Maybe he doesn’t want what she wants anymore,” Stella said. “Maybe . . . ” Her voice drifted off. “When he took us before, I was on my way back to my room, and he just grabbed me. Stuck something into my arm, and I passed out and woke up in the Zen garden, tied up like you saw.”

  Jamie picked at his lips. “Same with me. And he never said anything to us, not until you got there. He was just—quiet. Focused.”

  Stella closed her eyes, and her thick eyebrows drew together. “Megan woke up, and she was begging him not to hurt her.”

  Who’s Megan? I mouthed to Jamie.

  “Megan? From Horizons? Who was afraid of everything in Group?”

  It didn’t register, and Jamie could tell. He looked worried.

  “And then Adam—” Stella began.

  “The douchecanoe who always fucked with me,” Jamie added helpfully.

  “—wanted to know why Jude was doing this to us, and Jude just looked at him, and then at Megan, and then at Tara, who was passed out. He slit Tara’s throat while she was unconscious, just like that.” Stella snapped her fingers.

  “Didn’t say a word till after her blood had already soaked into the sand,” Jamie said. “And then he said that if we didn’t stay quiet, he would do the same to the rest of us, one by one. No diabolical monologue. No explanation. Nothing.” Jamie paused. “That is all to say—he is one seriously sick fuck.”

  “I know this.” My voice was firm and clear. “I’ve known Jude longer than I’ve known either of you.”

  I thought about telling them about Laurelton, and the asylum, and the scars on my wrists—the things Jude had done to me, the things he’d made me do. I decided I would, but now was not the time.

  “I’m not saying I trust him. I’m just saying we don’t have a lot of other options. Can we just look for the map, please, and get Noah and get the fuck out of here?”

  Without another word Jamie and Stella began to search. We opened drawer after drawer. They were all empty.

  The minutes ticked by, stoking my frustration and my rage. I wanted to knock the file cabinets over, to lift the table and throw it into the wall. I wanted to claw the walls down to their studs. Stella grew visibly nervous, grinding her teeth, winding her fingers around her hair, until finally she said, “We have to get out of here.”

  “Do you hear something?” Jamie asked her.

  She shook her head. “No. But I want to go.” She tried to turn the door handle. It had locked behind us.

  “You can’t get out like that,” I said as Stella let out a whimper. I was on
my hands and knees on the rug, under the desk, trying to find anything that could help us. “You need to use the eye.”

  I’d left it on the worktable above me, but as I tried to stand back up to get it, I banged my head. “Ow.”

  Jamie poked his head under the table. “You okay?”

  I shot him a glare. “Do I look okay?”

  “Touché,” he said, kneeling beside me. He patted my head a few times until I threatened to eat him.

  “Hey, Mara, did you see this?” he asked.

  “What?”

  He was staring at a spot on the rug, and reached for it. It was a key.

  Stella’s face split into a smile, showing teeth. “It has to open something!”

  “That is what keys generally do,” I said.

  “And not a drawer,” she said, ignoring me. “None of them were locked.”

  “So maybe a safe or something?” Jamie crossed the room. He leaned one of the empty file cabinets forward, to find only solid wall behind it.

  I rocked back on my heels and plucked the key from Jamie’s fingers. “Where did you find it?”

  “It was right there.” He pointed under the table. “Maybe it was taped under the table, and when you banged your head, it fell?”

  An idea crystallized as I looked at the worn, patterned rug. “Help me move this,” I said, indicating the table. Stella looked unsure and cast a glance at the door before she joined me and Jamie. We lined up on one side of the table.

  It was insanely heavy, solid metal, and it took everything we had, which wasn’t very much, to push it off the rug. Panting, we took a moment to catch our breaths before Jamie and I reached for the rug and pulled it up at the same time.

  “Well, heavens to Betsy,” Jamie whispered.

  A rectangle had been cut into the linoleum floor. And at the bottom of it, right in the center, was a keyhole.

  Before Jamie or Stella could say another word, I stuck the key into the hole. The room was so quiet that the three of us heard the tumbler click. I hadn’t noticed before that the alarm had gone silent.

  I pulled back on the key, and the trapdoor lifted with it, surprisingly light. We peered down but couldn’t see anything except the top rungs of a ladder.

  “Jamie, you keep the eye.” Never know when you might need it. I swung my leg over the first rung. Stella tugged at the shoulder of my hospital gown. “Where are you going?”

  “Down.” I picked her fingers off me. The ladder had raised bumps for traction, and they pricked my bare feet. “You have the tape?” I asked Jamie. He nodded. And I still had the scalpel, now tucked into the waistband of my underwear. “You guys can stay here if you want till I come back with the map.”

  “Yeah, no,” Jamie said. “I’ll be right behind you.”

  “Then I’ll see you on the other side,” I said, and disappeared into the darkness.

  8

  THIS WAS WHAT WE HAD been looking for.

  The room we found ourselves in was massive, almost bunker-like. On the wall opposite us a global map stretched from corner to corner. It was dotted with thousands of pins in dozens of colors, connected to one another by string to form a web. By some of the dots there were pictures of people—some smiling, most not—or scribbled-on Post-its, or newspaper clippings in different languages.

  “Is that it?” Stella asked as she hopped down the last rung. She landed softly on the floor in her socked feet. Jamie wasn’t wearing shoes either.

  “Can’t be.” Jamie said what I was thinking. “It’s the world, not Horizons.”

  And then I saw something familiar. A whiteboard easel with writing on it, writing I recognized. The dark blue marker was faded but legible.

  Double-Blind

  S. Benicia, manifested (G1821 carri rigin unknown).

  Side effects(?): anorexia, bulimia, self-harm. Respons administered pharmaceuticals. Contraindications suspec but unknown.

  T. Bur ows, n-carrier, deceas

  M. Ca no, on-carrier, sed

  M. Dyer, manifesting (G1821 carrier, original).

  Side effects: co-occurring PTSD, hallucinations, self-harm, poss. schizophr ia/paranoi subtype. Respon to midazolam. Contraindications: suspected n.e.s.s.?

  J. Roth, manifesting (G1 21 carrier, suspecte original), induced. Side effects: poss. borderline personality disorder, poss. mood disorder. Contrain ations suspected but unknown.

  A. Ken all: non-carrier, decease

  J. L.: artificial manifested, Lenaurd protocol, early induction.

  Side effec : multiple personality disorder (unrespo ), antisocial personality disorder (unre onsive); migraines, extreme aggression (unresponsive). No known contraindications.

  C. L.: artificially manifested, Lenaurd protocol, early induction, deceased.

  P. Reynard: non-carrier, deceased.

  N. Shaw: manifested (G1821 carrier, original).

  Side effects(?): self-harm, poss. oppositiona defiant disorder (unresponsiv ), conduct disorder? (unresponsive); tested: class a barbiturat s (unresponsive), class b (unresponsive), class c (un esponsive); unresponsive to all classes; (test m.a.d.), deceased.

  Generalize side effe ts: nausea, elevated temp., insomnia, night terrors

  Before I could say anything, Jamie began writing giant letters over the words with his index finger.

  F-U-C-K Y-O-U.

  My sentiments exactly.

  I turned my attention to the stacks and piles of papers, notebooks, and files strewn around the room. Books had been haphazardly stacked on open metal kitchen shelving, rolls of paper (maps? charts?) leaned against the walls. A glass globe teetered precariously on a small table, holding what looked like a large metal grain of rice. The place was chaos. Not what I’d expected from Dr. Kells.

  I had a hunch about the rolls of paper and headed for them, skirting the U-shaped desk in the center of the room. But a noise like a burst of television static snapped my head around.

  A flatscreen hung from the ceiling, and with another burst of static it came to life. Dr. Kells filled the screen. She was seated at a table in front of a pea-green-and-off-white-striped wall. Her lips moved, but there was no sound. It looked like she was speaking to someone, someone offscreen. She was more animated than I’d ever seen her. The sleeves of her white lab coat were rolled up to her elbows, and her hands moved as she spoke. Then, finally, the audio turned on.

  “G1821 operates in many ways like cancer,” Kells said. “There are environmental and genetic factors that can trigger it, and when triggered, the gene turns on, like a switch, activating an ability in its host. But as you’ve witnessed, the gene also appears to turn off certain switches, like the instinct for self-preservation. Certain thoughts and behaviors can become compulsive, such as the urge to self-harm.”

  A burst of static distorted the image, but we heard Kells speak in fits and starts. “Jude was needed to trigger Mara, to expose her to what she was most afraid of, in order for me to know whether and when she would manifest, and in order for me to study her developed ability—its consequences and its limitations,” she said, taking out a notebook. She wrote out three words, then held them up—but the camera was too far away for me to read what she’d written.

  “If the ego is the organized part of her mind, and the superego plays the moralizing role, allowing her to distinguish between good and evil, then the id is just a bundle of instincts. It strives only to satisfy its own basic needs, like hunger and sex. It knows no judgments and does not distinguish between moral or amoral. In normal people, non-carriers, the ego mediates between the id—what a person wants—and reality. It satisfies a person’s instincts using reason. The superego acts as the conscience; it punishes through feelings of remorse and guilt. These feelings are powerful, and in normal people the ego and the superego dominate the id. As you’ve seen,” Kells continued, “Mara appears to have the ability to convert thought into reality, but her ability is dependent on the presence of fear or stress, as I believe it is for the other carriers. In any case, G182
1 makes Mara’s id reflexive; if she is afraid, or stressed, her ego and superego don’t function. And the consequences, as you’ve seen, can be disastrous. Her ugliest, most destructive thoughts become reality.”

  “Well. That’s not good news,” Jamie said, before Stella shushed him.

  “Mara doesn’t even always have to be aware of these thoughts, of her intent behind them. If the right mixture of fear and stress is present, her instinctual drives take over. And there’s a Freudian theory that along with the creative instinct—the libido—a death instinct also exists, a destructive urge directed against the world and other organisms. The drug we’ve developed will, we hope, reactivate the barrier between her id and her ego and superego; it’s designed to prevent any negative intent from becoming action. The dose needs to be adjusted, however, and I can’t study Mara on drugs. And she’s too unstable to be studied without them. High doses of another drug we’ve developed should bring about an almost flawless recall, so at some point, when it’s safer for us, Mara should be able to recount exactly what happened at the time of any specific incident, and recount what she was feeling at that moment. Luckily, she is responsive to midazolam, which we’re using to help her forget, so she needn’t relive her traumas on a daily basis.”

  The image on-screen warped and flickered, and there was a second voice, distorted, that I couldn’t make out. Then Kells came back, as sharp as before.

  “Yes, I tried to study her as noninvasively as I possibly could. That’s why I had her behavior recorded before I took any specific action. We installed fiber optics in her home, to observe and record her behavior before it escalated. But the fact is, I can’t learn how to help her until I fully understand what’s wrong with her. The applications—the benefits—of what we’re doing here outweigh the risks. The treatments we could develop based on what you show us, the applications they could have—” Her voice grew passionate. “They’re far reaching. So far reaching that I don’t even know the extent of them yet. No one should have to suffer the way people have been suffering because of G1821, especially not teenagers. Listen,” she said. “Anemosyne and Amylethe, they corrupt the findings. They change the outcomes of the studies we need to conduct to make sure Mara and the others can be released safely. I need to be able to study someone without those drugs, to map a manifested brain with an MRI and CAT scans, to study how it responds to stimuli and fear and stress. The answer isn’t in the blood—it’s in the brain. So blood work, test tubes—they’re not going to give me what I need. I need to study patients while they’re awake, and conscious.”