The day marches on with half my thoughts on the wooden structure behind the Mess, and the other half on monitoring the Infirmary’s hallway. I’m barely listening to a sound track of status updates in my earpiece and nearly miss a request aimed at me.
Sam isn’t in the Factory when I go to pull one of the girls there so she can get a hit from her asthma inhaler. She isn’t in the Mess during the midday meal. If it hadn’t been for Tildon, I would have assumed that they’d just forgotten about her, or stretched her punishment out another night to drive home their point with a wrecking ball instead of a hammer. Has she eaten anything? Did they bring her water, at least? I come up with a thousand different ways I can ask Olsen about her without actually asking, but none of them work. They all make me seem like I have a heart.
Focus. Computer. Then Sam. I just have to be fast.
I bring each kid I go to collect for their treatment down to the nurse in that same room, counting the minutes it takes for him to finish with them. In those minutes, I look for cameras. In the hallway. Through the doors that swing open. In the room directly across from where I’m standing I have seen not one, but two separate pairings of female nurse and male PSF disappear inside of it. I have heard the door lock behind them. And I have pretended not to notice how winded they always seem when they come out again a short time later. Whatever happens in that room is not being monitored, clearly.
I bring the last kid, 2231, a Green boy, in, open the examination room door, and practically push him inside to where the nurse is waiting. I take two seconds to look both ways down the empty hall and duck through the door opposite me. Fast, I think, just be fast.
My heart slams against my rib cage as I lurch toward the dark computer. The room is a mirror of the one across the hall, with one exception: the PC isn’t already on. I waste two full minutes waiting for it to boot up, my ears straining at every muffled sound bleeding in through the walls. Sure enough, the camera in the upper corner has been all but torn off the wall and has been left dangling there by its rainbow wires.
There. Finally. The log-in screen glides into place and, before I can second-guess myself, I’m typing in the username and password I’d seen Dunn use. The system seems to load pixel by pixel, and it seems like each second is being shaved down to fractions of their former selves. I can’t explain the rush of power I feel when the database finally loads and a blinking cursor appears in the search field.
I type Orfeo and hit Enter.
No results.
I have to look again, because that can’t be possible.
No results.
I go hollow at the core. Pure, helpless anguish rushes in to fill the empty space where hope used to be. She’s not in the system at all? That means—it’s not possible, I won’t—Mia—Mia—
The door slams open behind me, hits the wall, and slams shut again.
“Dammit, dammit, dammit, heartless son of a bitch!”
I’m up and on my feet, whirling around, reaching for a weapon I don’t have. He’s so busy cursing and tearing his hands back through his chestnut hair that he doesn’t even notice me until the stool I’d been sitting on rocks back against the counter and clatters to the floor.
There’s a second where neither of us moves.
“What—oh.” It’s Nurse Dunn.
I can actually feel my heart stop on the next beat. I know what the others feel now, because my head has gone completely dark. I don’t have a thought inside, save for a single word: shit.
How is he already done treating the kid I just brought in?
He’s breathing hard, his pale face flooded with furious color. And just when I need it most, my brain just walks off and abandons me. My body has to rely on instinct to protect it, and instinct is telling it to pick up one of the jars from the counter and—
“Easy—easy—it’s okay,” Dunn says, balking at the way I raise my arm to reach for the glass jar. He seems to remember what I am suddenly and puts his hands out in front of him. “Pal, it’s okay. You just...I didn’t see you in here. What’s—”
His eyes flick between the computer screen and my face. A roar of blood moves between my ears, and I can’t speak, I can’t think of an excuse fast enough. Why did I come in here without thinking of one? Damn, I’m so stupid I didn’t even think to try locking the door.
“Did someone tell you to come in here?” he asks. I can’t read his expression now. His words sound strained. He thinks I’ll hurt him, kill him, burn him—
Maybe I’ll have to.
No. I can’t. Not without setting the room on fire. People with flames racing along their skin don’t just stand still and calmly let their bodies be burned to cinder and bone. He’ll take the whole place down with him. It’s a gruesome thought, one that brings the sickening smell of burnt flesh to mind. My stomach flips over. In what scenario are both of us getting out of this room?
“Okay,” Dunn says when I don’t answer.
My heart is slamming against my ribs. He doesn’t know it wasn’t an order for me to come in here. Not yet. Maybe he won’t think to radio in and ask someone.
Can I scare him into silence? I think so—I take a step forward and he takes a generous one back. The Trainers taught us to fight with fists as well as fire. They wanted strength in body, not strength in mind. But he would know, wouldn’t he? That we aren’t supposed to do anything without orders, that my will has supposedly been crippled. Two issues with that: he can’t be as scared of me as I think, but when he finds out the rules don’t apply to me, he will tell someone. There’s no way he won’t. These adults are all on the same side.