Biome Page 7

  “I think so,” I say slowly.

  “Okay, so what’s something they won’t expect?” When I don’t answer, he says, “Break Atkinson out of wherever they’re keeping him, for starters.”

  I can’t help but smile.

  “And I thought I sounded crazy.”

  “No, you don’t. We just need a good plan. And we’ll have to be unpredictable.” He smiles in return, a little boyish. “They brought us to Mars for our brains, didn’t they?”

  A balloon of hope dares to expand inside my chest. The voices of my memories grow a little quieter as if for the first time believing they might be heard.

  Could we really outwit Dosset? Is there a chance we could get Atkinson back and finish whatever he started?

  I can’t believe how easily Noah trusts me. I’d half expected him to call for a doctor the moment I woke him up. But then as I sit back, I catch the way he’s looking at me, just like he did in his memories. And it hits me why.

  He loves me.

  All the relief I just felt evaporates like a breath of freezing air. That’s it. He thinks he loves me. Which means from the moment he woke to find me in his pod, Noah has wanted to believe me. To be the hero and save the girl of his dreams.

  I suddenly feel guilty, and acutely alone. This is why I don’t tell people what I’m thinking. This is why I can’t trust anyone. Because once you let someone in, you’re vulnerable. They can use those feelings against you. Like I just did with Noah. Without even meaning to, I’ve manipulated him. What happens if he gets hurt, or locked up inside the Helix?

  It’ll be all my fault.

  Now I wish I’d never come to his pod at all. But I know I need his help. I can’t meet his gaze as I say, “Chloe will help us, assuming she hasn’t been brainwashed. We’ll have to be smart about how we contact her, but between the three of us, maybe we can make it work.”

  “We’ll just be careful and take it slow,” he says.

  “Not too slow,” I reply. “We’ve only got a week.”

  “A week?”

  I nod, pushing the last of my misgivings away. It’s not as if I had a choice. Noah is the only person I could turn to. “Revisions happen every Sunday night during therapy. If we can’t find Atkinson before then, you and Chloe will have your minds read. Then they’ll know everything, whether we tell them or not.”

  “That gives us… six days,” he says.

  I glance out the porthole and see that a vague glow has begun, casting the dusty rocks in a pallid gray. Even the mild light is enough to sting my eyes. “We should get some sleep.”

  Noah looks surprised.

  “You’re going to sleep here?”

  “Where else?”

  “Oh, uh… I didn’t think about it. Here, you can sleep in my bed.” He starts to rise.

  “No,” I tell him, pushing him back down. “Just give me a blanket and a pillow.”

  He quickly obeys and I wrap myself up like I’m camping, as far from his bed as I can manage. Even in the shadows, I can see his eyes watching me. Now knowing what the look means, my guilt returns in a fresh wave, followed by an erosive sense of helplessness.

  “And can you quit with the staring?” I say sharply. “It’s kind of creeping me out.”

  “Oh. Sorry.”

  He rolls over and I try to get comfortable, burying my feelings for good. Just a couple hours until a new day begins. After that, I’ll figure out what I’m supposed to do next.

  “Hey, Lizzy?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Have there been any other cadets that were on the colony? Like, cadets they erased from our memories?”

  Without even thinking, I know there are. One of them slept in the pod two doors down from Noah—a lanky girl with a dark ponytail and bony arms. And a boy with freckles along his nose and a quirky laugh. He was a Bolo.

  The headache spikes as I recall their faces, making me cringe. Other than hazy memories that haunt the edges of my subconscious, there’s no trace of them. They’ve simply disappeared.

  “No.”

  It’s my first lie to him, but surely not the last. From here on out, the less I have to tell Noah Hartmann, the better.

  Chapter Six

  When I was little I’d have a recurring dream in which something was about to crush me. I’d be in its shadow, something so large I couldn’t even see what it was. And that’s what made it so terrifying—it consumed everything else, bearing down on me with the weight of the entire world. No matter how fast I ran, I could never escape it.

  I’d always wake up screaming.

  A hand closes over my mouth, and I bite down hard, drawing blood. The metallic taste fills my mouth, sickeningly warm. Someone groans and the hand vanishes. I spew the liquid, trying to get my bearings as an urgent voice speaks in my ear.

  “Lizzy, be quiet or they’ll know you’re in here.”

  I recognize the voice.

  Noah.

  The nightmare ebbs as I blink away the tears, Noah’s pod coming into focus. He cradles his hand, and I see that I’ve bitten him badly, almost tearing off a chunk of skin. Grabbing a shirt, he tightly wraps the wound as blood trickles down his forearm, dripping to the floor.

  “Noah, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to—”

  “It’s okay, just be quiet,” he insists.

  I realize I’m still almost shouting, and lower my voice. “I’m so sorry.”

  “It’s okay,” he repeats. When he pulls away the t-shirt, blood immediately springs forth, ruby red. Like Mars from a distance. “I’ll get some supplies from the Sick Bay. No one’ll know.” I’m shaking, but I nod. “What were you dreaming about?” he asks.

  The question is so unexpected, it actually makes me flinch.

  “I… don’t remember,” I lie, glancing at the door. He’s either bad at reading people or he just trusts me that much, because he doesn’t question my answer.

  “Must’ve been pretty bad.” He picks up a gym bag with his good hand. “I’ve got to get to fitness hour. After the Sick Bay, I mean. Can I bring you anything? Besides food?”

  “Don’t worry about it. I’m not staying.”

  “You’re not?”

  He’s surprised. And a little disappointed.

  “I need to talk to Chloe about our plan, assuming she still remembers me. And there are a few supplies we’ll need if we actually hope to rescue Atkinson,” I say.

  “I could get them for you, so you don’t have to—”

  “No,” I say firmly. “I can handle myself.”

  For a second I wonder if he’ll push back. But he just watches me with those honey-brown eyes of his. In the daylight, emerald flecks ring his pupils. “Well, if I see any doctors running, I’ll be sure to take a few of them out,” he jokes.

  Again I feel a twinge of powerless frustration. But I don’t bother arguing because he’s already walking out the door.

  Once he’s gone, I take time to consider my next move. As much as I’d like to leave Noah and Chloe out of this, I know I can’t do it alone. But what am I trying to do—rescue Atkinson? It sounds crazy now that I’ve had a few hours to sleep on it. Still, I’m not sure what else to do. I have no idea what I’m up against. All I’ve got is a head full of memories that I can hardly keep straight. It would be nice to have someone to look to. Someone who actually knows what they’re doing and has reason to believe I’m right for the task.

  Again I decide to start simple. We need supplies. The kind of stuff to dismantle a lock, tie someone up, or break a camera.

  A maintenance closet will have the basics: rope, wire, scissors, tape, pliers, wrenches, screwdrivers. But I don’t want to take it all from one place, or someone might notice. Better to stop by maintenance closets in each dome, leaving smaller gaps in the resources.

  It crosses my mind that if I’m apprehended I might need some kind of weapon. But the idea of intentionally hurting someone makes me fidgety. And yet, having already been chased by Sarlow and McCallum once, I can’t take chances. I
add a pruning sickle to the list.

  At least I know that if anyone gets hurt, the Sick Bay will be able to patch them up like they did for Chloe.

  Thinking of Chloe, I realize I’d better get going. She’s always the first one done with her duties, usually reaching the kitchen around sixteen hundred hours. That gives me only the morning and early afternoon to work the domes and gather what I need; and since this time around the halls will be lit, it won’t be as simple as last night. I’ll need a disguise.

  I take a look around Noah’s pod and manage to scrounge up a surgical mask, a hat, and a jumpsuit from the back of a cabinet. After tucking my hair up under the cap, I slip the mask over my ears and thrust my hands deep into the pockets of the jumpsuit, zipped over my own. It’s a couple sizes too big for me. But if I need to change quickly, I can just ditch the outer layer. Plus, with a Xeri badge, no one will suspect my identity.

  At least that’s the hope.

  It’s slow going, moving around the domes. My first instinct is to use the Wheel, but compared to the rest of the colony, it’s practically bristling with cameras. Instead, I fall back on the biomes. The habitats take longer to traverse, but there are no cameras inside, likely because they don’t attach well to the cladding panels of the high, gauzy ceiling.

  My hat proves to be another problem. I keep it pulled low so no one can see my face. But that also makes it hard to see where I’m going. It’s already easy to get lost if you aren’t paying attention. The halls are all a uniform, immaculate white. Really, the only color on the colony is the vegetation in the biomes and the door markers.

  Each dome subset is given a wayfinding color code so that we know where we are. Red for Scrubs, yellow for Bolos, blue for Polars, green for Clovers, and orange for Xeris. The markers show in descending order on the doorjambs, with your current location at the top of the archways—currently, orange.

  But this means that in order to see where I’m going, I need to potentially reveal myself to a camera. A risk I can’t really afford to take. So I keep my head down and rely on my hearing.

  It’s an odd experience, only glimpsing a few steps ahead of me. Never seeing who might be moving my direction or what they might be doing. As I trudge down a trail of packed dirt, even just the voices of my fellow cadets stir up memories. Yet I do better here than in the cafeteria. The secret, I realize, is to keep myself focused on something tangible, something real, such as the tightly woven texture of my jumpsuit or the gray pebbles that dot the soil on either side of the path.

  No meltdowns. No freak outs. I simply can’t afford them. For as long as possible I need to keep Dosset thinking I’m stranded on a Martian dune, gasping for my final breath.

  Wire cutters from the Bolos, rope from the Polars, scissors and tape from the Clovers, and a few odds and ends from the Xeris later, I’m headed back toward Noah’s pod. Then, as I pass a portable defibrillator on the wall, the sight causes a memory to surface. Some latent thought from a cadet I’ve never met: Romesh Dean, a Clover.

  Stopping to consider his idea, I look over my shoulder and find an empty hall. Indecision settles in my gut. Usually, I’d just stick to the plan. That’s what I’m good at—knowing my goal and reaching it. I’ve already got what I came for.

  And yet, with these new memories come new perspectives. My lip begins to sting as I chew on the cut from yesterday, wavering. What could it hurt? Someone might notice it missing. But the possibility it represents…

  I make up my mind. After disengaging the alarm, I shove the defibrillator into my pocket and hurry off toward Noah’s pod, heart hammering along the way. I don’t breathe easy again until I’ve locked the door and laid everything out on the floor.

  Before I acknowledge the defibrillator, I examine each item twice. Then I sit back and swallow nervously. My eyes wander to the device.

  Tentatively I cradle it in my hands. No bigger than a fist. Made of smooth, innocuous plastic. I’m being stupid. Cowardly. I scowl at the synthetic cover.

  “Okay, Lizzy,” I finally mutter. “Either Romesh Dean is a genius, or you’re about to give yourself a heart attack—literally.”

  Closing my eyes, I recall the memory in the clearest detail I can manage.

  It’s a simple idea, really. A defibrillator is meant to shock a stilled heart to beating again. But if that person’s heart is already going, the jolt would do the opposite: make it stop. If I can dial down the output so that it’s not fatal, the defibrillator could be turned into a kind of stun gun.

  Easy enough. Just so long as I don’t shock myself in the process.

  Pushing through the discomfort in my head, I focus on Romesh’s thoughts. To begin, I pull apart the plastic casing, carefully laying out each half. Next is a metal sheath that surrounds the electrical components, protecting against energy spikes. That takes a little work, getting the safety valves to release. Then I strip the wire and alter one of the resistors to change the output. Finally, I attempt the tricky part—removing the failsafe, which prevents the device from shocking anyone who still has a pulse.

  I’m amazed at how detailed Romesh’s memories are. As expected, concentrating like this is giving me a titanic headache. The whole process takes longer than I anticipated. By the time I finally sit back and wipe the sweat from my forehead, I feel as if I’m going to throw up again. But it’s done. Somehow I managed to pull it off.

  “Thank you, Romesh,” I murmur, picking up my new weapon. It won’t be very easy to use, since I still have to attach the patches to some part of my victim’s skin. But it’s better than nothing. It strikes me as kind of incredible that the idea of a total stranger has been so helpful to me. Though I guess we’re not really strangers anymore, now that I have his memories. I might even know him better than some of his friends do.

  With that realization comes something else—the understanding that these memories are more than just a reason I’m in danger.

  They’re also a tool.

  On the overhead, fourteen hundred hours is announced. Not a moment too soon. The gnawing tooth of hunger has begun to wear into my stomach, and I’ve got a long walk ahead of me. It’s time to find some food and talk to Chloe.

  The trek to the Scrub kitchen takes me back through the stifling desert heat of the Xeri Biome, snaking down the mesa-like switchbacks to the valley floor. Here, the air hangs hottest. I’ve only been in a real desert once, when we drove through Death Valley on our way to the Midwest. Then and now it struck me as incredible how alien the topography can feel, even though deserts make up nearly a fifth of the earth’s landmass.

  At length, I reach the breezy calm of the Clover Biome. There are two halves to this habitat. On one side trellises of herb shelves extend two to three stories high, with pulley systems that lift greenskeepers up to reach them. In contrast to these latticed towers, the other half of the dome is packed with fields of plants and flowers, a patchwork of leafy vegetation. Seeing cadets up to their knees amid the crops, I’m reminded of the farmland near our house in northern Michigan.

  But now the sight also calls up other memories: A view from the crest of a hill in Kentucky, or a hamlet in Poland woven into strips of packed wheat.

  I still haven’t quite gotten used to being “reminded” of things that I’ve never actually experienced.

  The walk is over six kilometers in total, and by the time I’m out of the biomes and nearing the Scrub kitchen, my body has developed a whole new kind of ache. My feet throb. My lips are cracked. My joints move like rusted iron. It occurs to me that I haven’t had anything to eat or drink since the popsicle yesterday. Water is now my top priority.

  That’s when I hear Doctor Hitch’s voice, sharp and commanding.

  “You—stop!”

  I force my dogged steps to halt, and my legs begin to tremble. He’s out of sight, just around the curve of the hallway. How did he see me? Was it the cameras?

  “What?” asks a gruff voice. “I wasn’t doing anything.”

  “That’s not what it
looked like,” Hitch says, the edge in his voice like a piece of broken glass. With a flood of relief, I realize he isn’t talking to me but to another cadet. “I shouldn’t need to remind you that there is absolutely no physical violence on this colony. Got that? We don’t tolerate it. Not under any circumstances.”

  “But I didn’t do anything!” the voice protests in frustration.

  I run twitchy fingers along my stun gun, wondering whether or not I should wait or risk walking by. My mind is made up for me as a group of Scrubs approaches from behind. I tug the defibrillator out of my pocket and power it on, acting preoccupied. It begins to gently whine. Then as the group passes me I slip onto the end, my face bent over the readout.

  The Scrubs, who had been talking quietly, fall silent as we pass Hitch, Sarlow, and two Xeri boys. I glance at their faces, and names come to mind: Caleb and Namir. Seeing Caleb’s brow taut with anger draws a memory of his aggression. I see him seizing the front of my jumpsuit and throwing me back into a wall. It isn’t my memory. Someone else’s.

  I focus on the defibrillator, on keeping my posture natural as I pass.

  At the end of the corridor, the Scrubs peel off toward their biome. Outside the kitchen door is a colony transport cart. I’ve always thought they looked creepy. Like plastic coffins on wheels. I step past it into the long hall of the kitchen.

  Just as I hoped, Chloe is the first one here. Today her hair is woven into an elaborate braid that twists around her head like a crown. Maybe it’s the French in her blood, but Chloe has always harbored a love of fashion. Of course, the colony has certain rules about dress code, but as long as hair is kept healthy and neat, it’s generally considered fair game.

  As I draw closer, I lower my head. I can almost hear the uncertain smile in her voice.

  “Hello,” she calls. Ello. “Can I help you?”

  “Maybe.”

  I raise my head and pull down my surgical mask so she can see my face. Her look of shock and wonder makes me laugh in relief. I know at once, she remembers me. She hurries forward and grabs my hand as if to be sure I’m real.