Astral Tide (The Otherborn Series) (33 page)

London fell into the thick padding of the chair and sighed. Must be nice to be Dr. Rand. Your own clean office, a perfectly sterile life. She had to have been born well to get a doctor’s assignment. And she must have performed well wherever she was stationed before to get the privilege of working on top secret stuff at the Ward. She had to be someone they felt they could trust. All the doctors must be. But also, someone for whom the prize of cushy New Eden living would appeal. Someone a lot like Avery had been—spoiled, greedy, ambitious. A sellout. Someone Avery would have personally chosen, if she really was managing this little experiment for the Tycoons.

Suddenly, London’s mind flickered with understanding. She jumped up and grabbed the touch-screen, punching in
A-v-e-r-y
. The screen faded and brightened again, the glow of a techy welcome emitting through the room. All of Dr. Rand’s files, notes, tests, and research were laid out before her.

London tapped
Patient Data
and typed in the name
Kitty Moon
. Dr. Rand’s scrawlings popped up on screen along with Jasper’s entry form and a connection to the sleep reports being gathered right now. London tapped
Notes
and began reading with great interest, taking a sip of Theresa’s orange juice from the open drink canister. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d had real juice.

Patient displays characteristics of defiance, hostility, and suspicion.

Well, she could certainly say that again. London kept reading.

Refuses to change into patient wear. Appears younger than recorded age of eighteen and is not cohesive with Jasper’s physical assessments. Dark hair, dark eyes, slim build. Unusual facial features…angled eyes, prominent cheekbones, long nose. Exotic.

Wow. Exotic, huh? That could work. Of course, London knew all of that was courtesy of Si’dah’s features warping into her own. She read on.

Possible foreign influence? Descendant of the Algerian Floaters suspected of illegally immigrating to the East Coast a couple decades back? Or maybe the great-granddaughter of one of the refugees from Old Cuba who fled in the Tycoon island takeovers?

Dr. Rand was going to have to think a little farther out than Old Cuba.

Dress is unexpected. Casual but worn, as though traveling. I suspect she is not an original resident of Mesa City, though Jasper records she came in on a Mesa City bus.

Bingo. One for Dr. Rand.

May even be using an alias. Requesting documentation from Mesa City intranet on
Kitty Moon
, or anyone registered for schooling, assignment, or rations under the surname
Moon.

Two for Dr. Rand. London decided this was beginning to suck.

Keeping all records filed under ‘private’.

Come again? Why would Dr. Rand go to the trouble to look all that up if she wasn’t going to turn Kitty in for lying?

Patient will make an excellent test subject. Oppositional personality and behavior is a strong indicator of longtime immunity. Could be one of the first to develop the trait, or possibly even a second-generation immune, since still young, inherited through a turned parent. If any other Moons can be found in the system, will have them picked up and brought in for additional testing of the generational theory.

London nearly choked on her juice. Immune? Not sick. Not infected. Immune. To what?

Sedative Serum Three testing to commence immediately.

London sat the drink canister down. Sedatives? Not vaccines. Not immunizations. Of course. How could she be so stupid as to not have seen it already? The Tycoons weren’t looking for cures or vaccines because this wasn’t an illness and they knew it. And they weren’t literally reprocessing people, though she could see how the rumor would have started. They were looking for new sedatives to repress the population. Just like in the past, when they would have been settling on their original formula.

Whether the Otherborn were responsible, or merely well timed, London couldn’t say. What she did know, thanks to Dr. Rand’s notes, was that a sedative immunity was developing in the population. Was it a spontaneous mutation or a longstanding evolution? Did it matter? Either way, the Tycoons were hot to create a new drug to suppress the soul along with the parts of the brain responsible for dreaming, creating, independence and willfulness. Everything in contact with the Astral.

All those patients whose glossy eyes had followed her as she came in today, never getting off their beds, resigned—it seemed—to this new lifestyle in the Tycoons’ lap. They weren’t depressed, or sad, or ill. They were sedated. They were doped up on Sedative Serum Three. They’d probably only been dreaming a week or two. They were the weakest links in the Astral chain, easily suppressed and returned to their docile, dormant state. But London was just what Dr. Rand needed to prove her serum was the strongest. If she could suppress Kitty, the defiant longtime dreamer with a possible family history of immunity, then she could really get the Tycoons’ attention. Here London thought she’d been making the good doctor’s life a little harder. In fact, she was just what the doctor ordered.

London closed the notes and returned to the previous screen. She tapped
Sleep Data
and watched the same series of dots and angles and numbers pop up on screen as she’d seen in the computer room, recording in real time. She didn’t need Dr. Rand getting a peep at that and coming up with any more brilliant ideas for her model patient.

She pressed
Options
in the top right corner and selected
Erase
from the drop-down menu. When prompted, she reentered the command and then chose
Disconnect
to turn off her electrodes. Let Dr. Rand figure this one out.

She was just about to set the touch-screen down with a victorious smirk when the office door swung open and light from the hall flooded over the threshold. Without thinking, she acted. Against the pull of her own body, and the curve of the Astral, she simply did it, never taking the time to even ponder if it were possible. But the pressure…the pressure of it practically caused her to fold in on herself.

“Dr. Rand?” Dean said, looking right at her. “I saw the door wasn’t closed all the way and a light was on. I just wanted to check. Is everything alright?”

London held the image, but could feel the outer edges of it beginning to flicker. She couldn’t do this long. “Fine, Dean. Just checking in on some of the new patients.”

The orderly smiled and London wanted to reach out and slap his piggy face, but she couldn’t, seeing as Dr. Rand would slide right off her features with the slightest movement.

“Alright then. Let me know if you need anything. I was just about to go and do rounds, make sure everyone is tucked away safe and still hooked up.”

“No need,” London said, a little too fast. But Dean didn’t seem to notice. “Already did it. There’s, uh, some promising newbies in there.”

“Newbies?” he repeated, tensing.

Go away, Dean!

“New patients. That’s all. Anyway, everyone should be good until morning. If you would, make sure Kitty Moon gets changed at breakfast.”

Dean grinned and his shoulders relaxed. “Yes, doctor. I’ll be sure.”

Finally, he let the door click closed as he shuffled back across the hall to the lounge. London dropped the shift and crumpled. Her breathing felt irregular and her heart was racing. She didn’t want to push herself anymore, but she needed to find Kim and Tora in Facility Four.

She got up and checked out the window. Coast was all clear. Slipping into the hall, London felt her body begging her to return, the tug much stronger now after laying the shift over her projection. It would be so simple to let go, to float back, and settle into a deep sleep. But simple was never really her thing.

London turned away from herself and pushed the door open into the main room, feeling the effort increase after tapping her energy on the shift. She glanced at the empty kiosks as she passed, breezing by like a ghost. One hall over, the doors to Facility Four were waiting.

HER EYES SEARCHING the kiosks in the dark, London never even saw the person coming. She tripped into someone, head turned over her shoulder, and felt all the air spill out of her lungs as she stumbled back, but they simply passed through, as though she wasn’t even there.

“Watch it,” she hissed on impulse as she reached for the features of Dr. Rand to cover herself, but this time, she was too weak.
Busted.

“London?”

She peered up and barely made out the recognizable slant to the eyes, and the slick black hair framing the smile full of perfect teeth. “Kim?”

A rustle next to her, the sound of rubber soles squeaking against a hard floor as they turned, and the scent of dry leaves in autumn, told her Tora was nearby. “Tora? Is that you?”

“We were just coming to find you! You must have bumped into Tora,” Kim whispered. “I can’t believe you’re already here. This is perfect.”

“I didn’t hit anyone,” Tora murmured.

London started to speak as Kim moved toward the doors to the makeshift tunnel-way outside.

“Come on,” he said before she could get a word out.

“No, Kim—I can’t.”

Kim spun around. “What do you mean
you can’t
? We have to get the hell out of this place. I don’t know what they’re up to here but it doesn’t bode well. Zen and Rye can’t be far. We can find them and hit the road again. Tora’s staying invisible, just in case.”

London could see now that Kim had complied like a good little patient, his pale green patient wear faint in the darkness of the unlit main room, where the only light now was what poured through the square windows of the facility doors. “You don’t understand. I can’t come because…well, because—”

“Spit it out,” Kim demanded. “There isn’t time for all this.”

“I’m not really here,” London confessed.

Suddenly, Tora popped into view. She passed the marble back to Kim. “What the hell are you talking about? We’re looking right at you,” she said, taking a step closer to London.

To demonstrate, London held out her hand. Tora reached for it, but her fingers never made contact.

“You see?” London said. “I’m a projection. The real me is still back in my bed in Facility Three.”

“Shit,” Kim muttered.

“How?” was all Tora could say.

“It’s kind of like a shift. Rye showed me. Well, he didn’t
show
me, but he appeared to me. I figured the rest out from there. So, can you spring me? The
real
me, I mean?”

Tora closed her mouth and nodded. “Sure. Let’s go.”

Kim ducked behind an empty kiosk to wait as Tora, back under the influence of his charm, and London peeked through the windows into Facility Three’s well lit hall. London explained about the orderlies. They would need to be quick…and silent. She couldn’t manage another shift on top of the projection.

Tora pushed open the door since London’s strength was waning and they both darted down the hall towards the hazard doors that lead to the patient cells at the other end. Just as they were pushing their way through, London heard the door to the orderly lounge swing open behind them. There was no time now to try to cover or explain. All she could do was hope whoever came out was too full of juice and chips to notice the hazard doors swinging closed.

She and Tora sped past the dark cells and sleeping patients, all tidily strapped down and tucked away in their beds. When they got to her room, Tora simply reached into the door panel and turned a round, recessed knob. The red light switched to green and the door slid open.

“That’s it?” London said.

“It only locks from the inside,” she said, her disembodied voice giving London the chills.

“How anticlimactic,” London mused as they made their way inside.

London stood over her own bed looking down on her resting form. “You’ll have to unstrap me. I disconnected the feed on my vitals already, so no one’s going to notice if I go offline.”

“Okay,” Tora whispered. “But we didn’t do the same for Kim, so we better hurry. I have no idea how long it will take one of those orderlies to notice he’s missing.”

London stood there. The pull was less now, and yet greater at the same time, as though her body sensed her nearness and was eager for the reunion. But that tension, the threat of snapping the connection like a rotten rubber band, was gone.

“Well…get back in,” Tora spat as she went to work on one of the buckles. “What are you waiting for?”

“Right,” London said. “Only…I’m not sure how.”

The clank of the buckle ceased. “You don’t know how?”

London shook her projected head.

“There’s really no time for this, but whatever. Close your eyes, okay? Deep breaths…see yourself rejoining with your body. Release, London. Lay back down and release.”

It seemed weird, like she was just going to sit on herself, but as she lowered her projected self onto the bed, she felt it slide back into her actual body, sinking into the flesh the way a magnet draws a pin to it. The next thing she knew, London was fluttering her eyes, and cursing the pressure of the straps across her.

Tora quickly worked the buckles, letting the straps fall to either side of the bed. The clang of a buckle against the floor woke Melbourne. He watched, looking both fascinated and terrified, as invisible hands plucked at London’s straps, cuffs, and electrodes along with her own.

London sat up. “Melbourne, this is Tora. Tora, Melbourne,” she introduced them.

“Is she imaginary?” he asked with wild eyes.

“Kind of,” London laughed, dropping to his bedside and undoing the first buckle.

“London, what are you doing? We have to go,” Tora was snapping.

“We can’t just leave him here, Tora,” London snapped back. She worked her fingers around the next buckle and the next, until Melbourne was free.

“We can’t take him with us! He’s a kid.” Tora’s voice reverberated through the cell, but there was no fear that anyone else would hear it.

London helped Melbourne up and whirled on Tora. Only, she had no clue where Tora actually was, so she just kind of spun around until she was facing the door. “Think of Reginald,” was all she said, and she knew the Seer would stop complaining.