The Gardener

  “Laila. Beautiful Laila.”

  All I could do was stare as she continued to hold the girl and repeat her name. Part of me wanted to believe that it was just some trick. The other part wanted to believe that this mysterious girl would no longer be a mystery.

  The girl peered at the author. “You know who I am?”

  “Yes.” Dr. Emerson turned to me. “Does she remember anything?”

  I shook my head.

  “What are you doing with her? How in the world did she end up here?”

  Up to this point, I’d had too little sleep, too much caffeine, and no answers. I rubbed my eyes as I thought about what to tell her. When I dropped my hands, she had already turned back to the girl, who was frowning.

  “I didn’t know her name,” I said.

  “Her name is Laila.” Dr. Emerson lifted the girl’s chin with one hand, her eyes roaming all over. “You look pale. How are you feeling?”

  The girl—it was hard for me to think of her as Laila—just shrugged a bit.

  I was suddenly annoyed and impatient. Dr. Emerson seemed to know so much more than I did, and I wanted to know all of it. But first, I wanted to tell her something she didn’t know.

  “She practically threw me over a wall last night.”

  Once again, Dr. Emerson sized me up, scrutinizing my scar, her eyes widening a little at my size. “Did she really?”

  I nodded.

  Smiling, Dr. Emerson turned back to Laila and spoke very low, but I still heard her. “Thank God they didn’t do it.”

  “Do what?”

  She didn’t answer me. She held the girl’s … Laila’s hand. “I don’t know how you managed to get her here, but thank you. I’ll take good care of her.”

  There was no way I was letting her take Laila. And I still wanted answers. Thrusting my chin upward, I asked, “Did you know her at TroDyn?”

  She turned so fast I jumped. Her forehead creased as she asked, “Why would you ask that?”

  Not sure about how much I wanted to reveal, not sure how much I could trust her, if at all, I said, “I didn’t know anything about her. And she didn’t know anything about where she came from or who she was. But something happened when she saw the lights of TroDyn.”

  Dr. Emerson stood up taller. “We did some medical work there. Case studies.”

  I said, “I thought TroDyn was all about sustainability.”

  Dr. Emerson’s eyes narrowed. “They have research projects in many areas.”

  I muttered, “I’ll bet they do.” Still, I was surprised she’d say anything about TroDyn. I wondered if she’d say more, so I put some fake innocent cheer in my voice. “I’m applying for a summer program there.”

  She started to pull Laila toward the door.

  “What are you doing?” I asked.

  “Listen. What’s your name?”

  “Mason.”

  “Mason.” Dr. Emerson spoke kindly for the first time since I’d met her. “I appreciate your escorting Laila here. You’ll never know what it means to me to see her again. But you know and I know it’s time for me to take over. My guess is that you’re a nice guy, a nice guy who fell into this and, like Alice in the rabbit hole, have no idea what you’re getting into.”

  Laila met my eyes and shook her head slightly. I could tell she still wasn’t sure what to make of this woman. Not that she knew me, either, but I’d pretty much proved in the last twenty-four hours that she could trust me.

  “We don’t know you.” I patted my chest. “All I know is I’m looking out for her. For Laila.”

  The corner of Dr. Emerson’s mouth went up. “Look. I can see the attraction, damsel in distress and all that.”

  She really had no idea how little that helped her case.

  She sighed. “I know you’ve known me for all of two minutes. But you have to trust me. I have Laila’s best interests at heart and you are … you’re a kid. You’re not ready to follow this through.”

  Follow what through? Sticking with Laila until she got her memory back? Until she found her parents? “But I—”

  She cut me off by leaning in close. She had coffee breath. “You have done a great thing. But this leads nowhere good for you. So it’s time for you to just walk away.” She waved her hand a little bit. “Walk away. Pretend you never met this girl.”

  Taking in Laila, her brown eyes, I knew I couldn’t do it. “No. I’m not going anywhere.”

  Laila clutched my hand even tighter.

  Dr. Emerson frowned. “You do know you’ll run out of options. You’ll have to let me take her … eventually.”

  I asked, “Take her where?”

  She sighed. “Haven’t you figured it out? I want to get her where they can’t get their hands on her anymore.”

  I asked, “Who do you mean by they?”

  She looked at me like I was something to scrape off her shoe. “You already know who they are.”

  Had to be TroDyn.

  “I’m not ready to hand her over yet. Not before you tell us everything.” Even then, there was no way I was going to abandon Laila, but Dr. Emerson didn’t need to know that. Yet.

  “I’ll go along with your little mission or whatever,” Dr. Emerson said. She smiled at Laila. “You’re going to be fine.”

  Laila’s forehead wrinkled as she looked up at Dr. Emerson. “I’m remembering things. Just starting to. I was in this place.”

  Dr. Emerson leaned closer to Laila. “What do you remember?”

  Laila looked at me first, then back to her. “A place. There were others, and…” Her eyes went blank again, like before, and I wondered what she was remembering. And then she started to speak in that same detached voice.

  “The monitor and the light. The monitor and the light. That’s all there is. Until…”

  She paused for a moment, frowning. Then she continued, “Until that day, the day the Gardener was not alone. Footsteps, many footsteps … They invaded our place. I wasn’t afraid, just curious. Why were others with the Gardener? But the Gardener’s voice was different that day. I felt a ripple of something make its way toward me. Something I’d never felt before. Something…”

  Dr. Emerson looked puzzled as Laila started to tremble and her breaths became quicker, shorter. Her voice changed, became a whimper. “It started. The shrieks from the end of the row that turned into screams that gradually came closer one by one. It was my turn. And then, I didn’t know them before, fear and pain. But they rolled into one new giant feeling as, for the first time, I felt…”

  “What?” I asked. “What did you feel?”

  Laila looked at me, her eyes wide, and she screamed as she extended an arm toward me. But just as I reached out, her eyes rolled back in her head and she slumped over. I caught her before she fell.

  Her head lolled as her eyes fluttered.

  Just then, a man hurried in, wearing blue overalls and pushing a yellow plastic mop bucket on wheels. “I heard a scream.”

  Scooping Laila up, I brushed past him and the startled expression on his face. In the empty hallway, I hesitated.

  Dr. Emerson was right behind me. “What do you think you’re doing?”

  “We’ve got to get her out of here.” I stopped and turned around. “She needs help.”

  “You have no idea what’s wrong with her.”

  She was right. I had no idea. But I knew what I had seen so far. “She’s been getting weaker ever since we left Haven of Peace. I mean, that was when she seemed the strongest. It’s like she’s gone downhill since then.”

  Dr. Emerson said, “Tell me about her there.”

  The vision of those four sitting on the couch, looking eerie and sedated, was pretty easy to call up. “Well, they just sat—”

  She frowned and held up a hand. “Back up. They? ”

  I nodded. “Yeah, there were four kids, all sitting together on the couch.…” Although I didn’t want to tell her everything I knew, the story of what had happened at the nursing home flowed out before I could sto
p.

  After I was done, Dr. Emerson’s brow wrinkled as she held a hand to her lips and cocked her head.

  “What?”

  She stared at Laila a few seconds more, and then shook her head slightly as she dropped her hand. “I have a car downstairs.”

  My options seemed pretty limited. I could try to get Laila some medical help, but they would ask so many questions, questions I had no idea how to answer. Dr. Emerson had distanced herself from TroDyn for a reason. Maybe, for Laila’s sake, I could take a chance and trust her.

  When Laila came to in the elevator, she was still weak. With an arm around her waist, I held her up as we rode down to the parking garage and followed Dr. Emerson to a blue Prius with rental stickers.

  After we’d buckled in, I said, “Tell me what you know.”

  She shook her head. “I’m not the best city driver, so just wait until we get there.”

  I tried asking her questions, but she held me off, saying she needed to concentrate. After what had happened that morning on the ATV, I was willing to give her the benefit of the doubt.

  Dr. Emerson constantly fidgeted while she drove, reaching up to scratch her cheek or run her fingers through her hair. I was nervous, too, but tried not to show it. At the Hilton, we took the elevator up to her suite and I helped Laila over to a white couch, where she curled up and closed her eyes. I dropped to the floor and leaned back against the couch.

  My stomach rumbled.

  “You’re hungry.” Dr. Emerson stepped over to the desk and tossed me a thick, white book. “Call room service. We may be here for a while.”

  I was starved, but I set the book aside. “Just tell me what is going on.”

  Dr. Emerson walked over to the mini bar, broke the seal, and pulled out a bottle of Pellegrino. “Want anything?”

  I shook my head.

  After pouring herself a glass, she came back and sat on a chair across from me. “I’m telling you, again, to just walk away. If you know what’s best for you.”

  Laila might have been asleep already, but I lowered my voice in case she wasn’t. “I don’t care about what’s best for me right now. I care about her.”

  Dr. Emerson raised her glass to me. “Noble. Very noble, Mason.” She took a drink. “But you don’t even know this girl.” She leaned forward, obviously intending for Laila not to hear what she was saying. “Believe me, she has issues you couldn’t even imagine. Are you really willing to put your entire world on the line for her? Because that’s what you’re doing if you stay here.”

  I crossed my arms. “Spill. Everything. I want to know.”

  Laila coughed a little, then propped herself up on an arm and looked at us. “You’re talking about me.”

  When neither of us said anything, she said, “I want to know. If this is about me, it’s only right.”

  Dr. Emerson set her glass down and ran both hands through her hair. “Laila, you had an accident resulting in head injuries. Your parents chose to put you in an experimental recovery program run by TroDyn. Nothing more.”

  That made no sense. “Then why do you want to keep her from them? The people at TroDyn?”

  She hesitated slightly. “I didn’t agree with some of the … procedures. And I found myself at odds with the director of the program. I’d rather see Laila get help somewhere else.”

  “But don’t you need her parents’ permission to take her out of the program?”

  Again, a small pause. “They’d given up, all the parents. Unless their children came back completely whole, they felt it best to leave them with TroDyn.”

  Laila’s eyes welled up, but I didn’t believe Dr. Emerson for a second. Parents wouldn’t just give up on their children, no matter how injured they were. She was lying about some, if not all, of it. There had to be more. “Why would they come looking for her in Glenwood?”

  Dr. Emerson shrugged. “I’m sure it wouldn’t look good for them to lose her. Think about it. A girl with amnesia turns up, the only thing she knows for sure is she is afraid of TroDyn? The media would catch on, putting TroDyn in a very difficult situation. The parents might pull the kids out of the program.…” She trailed off.

  Her words sounded hollow. I just didn’t believe the past twenty-four hours could all be attributed to a lost test subject.

  I had to get Dr. Emerson to tell me the truth.

  Getting to my feet, I turned toward Laila as I said, “So I might as well take her back.”

  Dr. Emerson’s response was immediate. “You can’t!”

  “Why not?” asked Laila.

  I whirled around. “Yeah, why not? She’s just a test subject, right?”

  Dr. Emerson was on the edge of the chair, her eyes wide. “Right. But—”

  I waited.

  A big sigh came out as she leaned back. “Wrong. That’s not it at all.”

  “Then tell us. Tell us how you know her. Tell us what TroDyn is doing.”

  She didn’t say anything, and I moved to pick up Laila.

  “No, wait. Just … just leave her, okay? I’ll tell you.” Dr. Emerson stood up and began to pace. “I was just through with my PhD in research biology when TroDyn hired me to work on species and sustainability. In my interview, management presented cutting-edge ideas on how to manage food crises around the globe, food shortages, droughts, even the impending problems global warming will cause. As I said in my lecture, the end of food is not far off. I wanted to do something about it, and TroDyn seemed a perfect fit forme.”

  Questions flew through my mind, but I forced myself to stick with basics, leave the tough ones for later. “What kind of project did you work on?”

  Laila asked, “How did you know me?”

  She sighed. “That’s where it gets complicated. I’d been working with these nudibranchs, marine snails that had developed the ability—”

  “To make their own food,” I interrupted.

  Dr. Emerson appeared startled that I knew.

  I shrugged. “I like biology.” I sat down on the floor in front of Laila, my back against the couch.

  Dr. Emerson looked down a moment, gathering her thoughts. “I’d been working with the nudibranchs for a while when one of the scientists approached me about a new experiment related to the snails, but on a much more practical level that could be directly applied to the food crisis.”

  She paused in her pacing and sat down on the ottoman. “This is not going to sound good. And it may be hard for you both to hear. But you must understand I truly was passionate about finding an answer to starvation. I mean, to actually be able to count yourself as one of the scientists who solved a crisis like that? Especially when the future will see all of us struggling for food during climate change.”

  She was already making excuses, coming off as defensive. Why? Rubbing my eyes with both hands, I asked, “What did you do?”

  She shook her head. “No. Don’t take that attitude with me. This started long before I ever showed up at TroDyn. Long before.”

  I nodded. “Go on.”

  “They took me to see the scientist who’d been working on the autotroph project.”

  My eyes widened. “Autotrophs?”

  Laila asked, “What’s that?”

  Dr. Emerson met my gaze. “Self-feeders, organisms that can produce their own food.”

  “You’re talking about snails, right?”

  Dr. Emerson took a long drink. Over the top of the glass, her eyes drifted to Laila.

  I lowered my voice. “Tell me it was snails.” I shut my eyes, and my final plea was only a whisper. “Please tell me it was snails.”

  Laila’s hand grasped mine and squeezed.

  Dr. Emerson said nothing.

  I opened my eyes. “Tell me.” My voice was nearly a shout, and she winced.

  She said, “It wasn’t snails. Mason, it wasn’t snails we were turning into autotrophs.” Her head fell into her hands. “God help me, it wasn’t snails.”

  ELEVEN

  I SHOUTED, “WHAT DOES THAT MEAN?”


  Scrunching her eyes shut, her words all came in a rush. “Laila was part of the second phase of the autotrophs experiment, raised from the time she was a baby to develop the ability to self-feed. The scientists kept them in a room with artificial sunlight that they used to create nutrients. I didn’t know about it until she was nearly ten. They’d already been doing it for a decade.”

  Laila gasped, and I dropped her hand. In a flash, I launched myself away from the couch, scrambling to get away from the girl, from Laila, whatever she was. Smacking my head on the corner of the nightstand, I ended up on the floor, smashed up against the bed. My heart pounded and I couldn’t say anything.

  Laila had covered her face with her hands and was rocking back and forth, saying something I couldn’t hear. Then she curled up, facing away from me. Her breathing evened out until she seemed to be sleeping.

  Dr. Emerson sat next to her, rubbing her back. “You don’t have to be afraid of her. She hasn’t changed, Mason. She is who she is.”

  But she wasn’t … what I thought. Not just a girl. She was something else.

  Words eked out. “How did that happen?”

  Dr. Emerson swallowed. “As I said, it was the second phase. The first phase had … worked out a few kinks, and I came on board with the second phase.” She started to sound more excited. “But with the second phase, we did it. These children actually were able to feed themselves—”

  “Hold on,” I interrupted. “Children?”

  Dr. Emerson’s mouth was a thin line.

  My confusion and bewilderment were overruled as I glared at her. “Where did you get the children?”

  She held both her hands up. “It’s not what you think. They were all children of TroDyn employees, and their parents knew what they were doing. Those who didn’t want to participate were given the chance to leave.”

  I thought back to what Jack had found on the Internet, the similarities between the ex–TroDyn employees, that they’d all had babies within months after leaving. Was that why? They didn’t want their children to be part of the experiment?