Delirium

Chapter Twenty-Five

It’s cold when I make my way toward 37 Brooks sometime after midnight, and I have to zip my nylon windbreaker up all the way to my chin. The streets are as dark and still as I’ve ever seen them. There isn’t a whisper of movement anywhere, no curtains twitching in windows, no shadows skating across walls and making me jump, no glittering alley cat eyes or scrabbling rats’ feet or the distant drumbeat of footsteps on the pavement, as the regulators make their rounds. It’s as though everyone is already braced for winter—as though the whole city is in the middle of a deep freeze. It’s a little freaky, actually. I think again of the house that somehow survived the blitz and now stands out there in the Wilds, perfectly preserved but totally uninhabited, with wildflowers growing through all its rooms.

I’m relieved when I turn the corner and see the rusty iron fence that marks 37 Brooks’s periphery, feel a tremendous rush of happiness when I think of Alex squatting in one of the dark rooms, solemnly packing a backpack with blankets and canned food. I haven’t realized until now that at some point over the summer I began to think of 37 Brooks as home. I hitch my own backpack a little higher on my shoulder and jog to the gate.

But something’s wrong with it: I rattle it a few times but it doesn’t open. At first I think it’s stuck. Then I notice that someone has looped a padlock through the gate. It looks new, too. It glitters sharply in the moonlight when I tug it.

37 Brooks is locked.

I’m so surprised, I can’t even be frightened or suspicious. My only thought is of Alex, and where he is, and whether he’s responsible for the lock. Maybe, I think, he locked the property to protect our stuff. Or maybe I’m early, or maybe I’m late. I’m just about to try to swing myself over the fence when Alex materializes from the darkness to my right, stepping silently out of the shadows.

“Alex!” Though we’ve only been apart for a few hours, I’m so happy to see him—soon he’ll be mine, openly and totally—I forget to keep my voice down as I run to him.

“Shhh.” He wraps his arms around me as I practically leap on top of him, and staggers backward a little. But when I tilt my head up to look at him, he’s smiling, and I can tell he’s just as happy as I am. He kisses the tip of my nose. “We’re not safe yet.”

“Yeah, but soon.” I stand on my tiptoes and kiss him softly. As always, the pressure of his lips on mine seems to blot out everything bad in the world. I have to wrench myself away from him, slapping his arm playfully as I do. “Thanks for giving me a key, by the way.”

“A key?” Alex squints, confused.

“For the lock.” I try to squeeze him but he steps away from me, shaking his head, his face suddenly stark white and terrified—and in that second I get it, we both do, and Alex opens his mouth but it seems to take forever, and at the exact moment I realize why I can suddenly see him so clearly, framed in light, frozen like a deer caught in the beams of a truck (the regulators are using floodlights tonight), a voice booms out through the night: “Freeze! Both of you! Hands on your head!” At the same time Alex’s voice finally reaches me, urgent—“Go, Lena, go!” He’s already backpedaling through the darkness, but it takes my feet longer to move and by the time I do, running blindly and without aim down the first street I see, the night has come alive with mobile shadows—grabbing at me, shouting, tearing at my hair—hundreds of them, it seems, pouring down the hill, materializing out of the ground, from trees, from air.

“Get her! Get her!”

My heart is bursting in my chest and I can’t breathe; I’ve never been so scared; I’ll die from fright. More and more shadows turn to people: all of them grabbing, screaming; holding glittering metal weapons, guns and clubs, cans of Mace. I duck and spin past rough hands, make a break for the hill that cuts over to Brandon Road, but it’s no use. A regulator grabs me roughly from behind. I barely shake off his grasp before I’m pinballing off someone wearing a guard’s uniform, feeling another pair of hands snatching at me. The fear is a shadow now, a blanket: smothering me, making it impossible to breathe.

A patrol car springs to life beside me, and the revolving lights illuminate everything starkly but only for a second, and the world around me pulses black, white, black, white, moving forward in bursts, in slow motion.

A face contorted into a terrible scream; a dog leaping from the left, teeth bared; someone shouting, “Take her down! Take her down!”

Can’t breathe, can’t breathe, can’t breathe.

A high whistling sound, a scream; a club frozen momentarily in the air.

A club falling; a dog jumping, snarling; searing pain, straight through me, like heat.

Then blackness.

When I open my eyes the world seems to have broken apart into a thousand pieces. All I see are tiny shards of light, fuzzy and swirling like they’ve been shaken up by a kaleidoscope. I blink several times, and slowly the shards resolve and rearrange themselves into a bell-shaped light and a cream-colored ceiling, marred by a large water stain in the shape of an owl. My room. Home. I’m home.

For a second I feel relieved: My body is prickling, like I’ve been stuck with needles all over my skin, and all I want to do is lie back against the softness of my pillows and sink into the darkness and oblivion of sleep, wait for the sharp pain in my head to dissipate. Then I remember: the lock, the attack, the swarming shadows. And Alex.

I don’t know what happened to Alex.

I flail, trying to sit up, but agonizing pain shoots from my head down to my neck and forces me back against the pillows, gasping. I close my eyes and hear the door to my room scrape open: Voices swell suddenly from downstairs. My aunt is talking to someone in the kitchen, a man whose voice I don’t recognize. A regulator, probably.

Footsteps cross the room. I keep my eyes squeezed tight, pretending to sleep, as someone leans across me. I feel a warm breath tickle the side of my neck.

Then more footsteps coming up the stairs, and Jenny’s voice, a hiss, at the door: “What are you doing here? Aunt Carol told you to stay away. Now get downstairs before I tell.”

The weight eases off the bed, and light footsteps patter away, back into the hall. I crack my eyes open, the barest squint, just enough to make out Grace as she ducks around Jenny, who is standing in the doorway. She must have been checking on me. I squeeze my eyes shut again as Jenny takes several tentative steps toward the bed.

Then she pivots abruptly, as though she can’t leave the room fast enough. I hear her call out, “Still asleep!” The door scrapes closed again. But not before I hear, from the kitchen, very clearly: “Who was it? Who infected her?”

This time, I force myself to sit, despite the pain knifing through my head and neck and the terrible sensation of swinging that accompanies every movement I make. I try to stand but find my legs won’t hold me. Instead I sink to the ground and crawl over to the door. Even on my hands and knees the effort is exhausting, and I lie down on the ground, shaking, as the room continues to rock back and forth like some diabolical seesaw.

Fortunately, keeping my head to the ground makes it easier to hear downstairs, and I catch my aunt saying, “You must have at least seen him.” I’ve never heard her sound so hysterical.

“Don’t worry,” the regulator says. “We’ll find him.”

This, at least, is a relief. Alex must have escaped. If the regulators had any idea who had been with me on the street—if they had even a suspicion—they would have him in custody already. I say a silent prayer of gratitude that Alex managed, miraculously, to make it to safety.

“We had no idea,” Carol says, still in that trembling, urgent voice so unlike her regular measured tone. And now I understand; she’s not just hysterical. She’s terrified. “You have to believe that we had no idea she’d been infected. There were no signs. Her appetite was the same. She went to work on time. No mood swings . . .”

“She was probably trying her hardest to conceal the signs,” the regulator cuts in. “The infected often do.” I can practically hear the disgust in his voice when he pronounces the word infected, like he’s actually saying cockroach, or terrorist.

“What do we do now?” Carol’s voice is fainter now. She and the regulator must be passing into the living room.

“We’re putting in calls as fast as we can,” he replies. “With any luck, before the end of the week . . .”

Their voices become indecipherable, a low hum. I rest my forehead on the door for a minute, focusing on inhaling and exhaling, breathing past the pain. Then I get to my feet, carefully. The dizziness is still intense, and I have to brace myself against the wall as soon as I’m standing, trying to sort out my options. I have to find out what, exactly, happened. I need to know how long the regulators had been watching 37 Brooks, and I have to make absolutely positive that Alex is safe. I need to talk to Hana. She’ll help me. She’ll know what to do. I tug on the door handle before realizing that it has been locked from the outside.

Of course. I’m a prisoner now.

As I’m standing there with my hand on the door handle, it begins to rattle and turn. I turn as quickly as I am able and dive back into the bed—even that hurtsjust as the door swings open again and Jenny re-enters.

I don’t shut my eyes fast enough. She calls back into the hallway, “She’s awake now.” She is carrying a glass of water but seems reluctant to come farther into the room. She stays near the doorway, watching me.

I don’t particularly want to talk to Jenny, but I’m absolutely desperate to drink. My throat feels like I’ve been swallowing sandpaper.

“Is that for me?” I say, gesturing to the glass. My voice is a croak.

Jenny nods, her lips stretched into a fine white line. For once, she has nothing to say. She darts forward suddenly, places the glass on the little rickety table next to the bed, then darts away just as quickly. “Aunt Carol said it would help.”

“Help what?” I take a long, grateful sip, and the burning in my throat and head seems to ease up.

Jenny shrugs. “The infection, I guess.”

This explains why she’s staying by the door and doesn’t want to get too close to me. I’m diseased, infected, dirty. She’s worried she’s going to catch it. “You can’t get sick just by being around me, you know,” I tell her.

“I know,” she says quickly, defensively, but stays frozen where she is, watching me warily.

I feel impossibly tired. “What time is it?” I ask Jenny.

“Two thirty,” she says.

This surprises me. Relatively little time has passed since I went to meet Alex. “How long was I out?”

She shrugs again. “You were unconscious when they brought you home,” she says matter-of-factly, as though this is a natural fact of life, or something I did—and not because a bunch of regulators clubbed me on the back of the head. That’s the irony of it. She’s looking at me like I’m the crazy one, the dangerous one. Meanwhile, the guy downstairs who nearly fractured my skull and bled my brains all over the pavement is the savior.

I can’t stand to look at her, so I turn toward the wall. “Where’s Grace?”

“Downstairs,” she says. Some of the normal whine returns to her voice. “We had to set up sleeping bags in the living room.”

Of course they’d want to keep Grace away from me: young, impressionable Grace, safely sheltered from her crazed, sick cousin. I do feel sick too, with anxiety and disgust. I think of the fantasy I had earlier, of burning the whole house down. It’s lucky for Aunt Carol I don’t have any matches. Otherwise I just might do it.

“So who was it?” Jenny’s voice drops to a sinuous whisper, like a little snake forking its tongue in my ear. “Who was it who infected you?”

“Jenny.”

I turn my head, surprised to hear Rachel’s voice. She’s standing in the doorway, watching us, her expression completely unreadable.

“Aunt Carol wants you downstairs,” she says to Jenny, and Jenny scurries eagerly for the door, shooting one last look over her shoulder at me, her face a mixture of fear and fascination. I wonder if that’s how I looked all those years ago when Rachel got the deliria and had to be pinned down on the floor by four regulators before she could be dragged to the labs.

Rachel comes over to the bed, still watching me with that same unreadable expression. “How are you feeling?” she asks.

“Fabulous,” I say sarcastically, but she just blinks at me.

“Take these.” She lays out two white pills on the table.

“What are those? Tranquilizers?”

Her eyelids flutter. “Advil.” Irritation has crept into her voice, and I’m glad of it. I don’t like that she’s standing there, composed and detached, evaluating me like I’m a taxidermy specimen.

“So . . . Carol called you?” I’m debating whether to trust her about the Advil, but decide to risk it. My head is killing me, and at this point I’m not sure how much more damaging a tranquilizer would be. It’s not exactly like I can make a break for the door in this condition, anyway. I swallow the two pills with a large gulp of water.

“Yes. I came right away.” She sits on the bed. “I was sleeping, you know.”

“Sorry to inconvenience you. I didn’t exactly ask to get knocked out and dragged here.” I’ve never spoken to Rachel this way, and I can see it surprises her. She rubs her forehead tiredly, and for a second a glimpse of the Rachel I used to know—my older sister Rachel, the one who tortured me with tickles and braided my hair and complained that I always got bigger scoops of ice cream—flickers through.

Then the blankness is back, like a veil. It’s amazing how I’ve always just accepted it, the way that most cureds seem to walk through the world as though wrapped in a thick cloak of sleep. Maybe it’s because I, too, was sleeping. It wasn’t until Alex woke me up that I could see things clearly.

For a while Rachel doesn’t say anything else. I have nothing to say to her, either, so we just sit there. I close my eyes, waiting for the pain to begin ebbing away, trying to sort out words from the tangle of voices downstairs and the sounds of footsteps and muffled exclamations and the television going in the kitchen, but I can’t make out any specific conversations.

Finally Rachel says, “What happened tonight, Lena?”

When I open my eyes, I see she’s staring at me again. “You think I’ll tell you?”

She gives a minute shake of her head. “I’m your sister.”

“As if that means something to you.”

She recoils slightly, just a fraction of an inch. When she speaks again her voice is flinty. “Who was he? Who infected you?”

“That’s the question of the evening, isn’t it?” I roll away from her, facing the wall, feeling cold. “If you came here to grill me, you’re wasting your time. You might as well go home again.”

“I came here because I’m worried,” she says.

“About what? About the family? About our reputation?” I keep staring stubbornly at the wall, pulling the thin summer blanket all the way to my neck. “Or maybe you’re worried that everyone will think you knew? Maybe you think you’ll get labeled a sympathizer?”

“Don’t be difficult.” She sighs. “I’m worried about you. I care, Lena. I want you to be safe. I want you to be happy.”

I swivel my head to look at her, feeling a rush of anger—and, deeper than that, hatred. I hate her; I hate her for lying to me. I hate her for pretending to care, for even using that word in my presence. “You’re a liar,” I spit out. Then, “You knew about Mom.”

This time the veil drops. She jerks back. “What are you talking about?”

“You knew that she didn’t—that she didn’t really kill herself. You knew that they took her.”

Rachel squints at me. “I really have no idea what you’re talking about, Lena.”

And I can tell, then, that at least I’m wrong about this. Rachel doesn’t know. She never knew. I feel a twin flood of relief and regret.

“Rachel,” I say, more gently. “She was in the Crypts. She’s been in the Crypts this whole time.”

Rachel stares at me for one long second, her mouth falling open. Then she stands abruptly, smoothing down the front of her pants as though brushing away invisible crumbs. “Listen, Lena . . . You got bumped on the head pretty badly.” Again, as though I’ve somehow done it myself. “You’re tired. You’re confused.”

I don’t correct her. There’s no point. It’s too late for Rachel, anyway. She will always exist behind the wall. She will always be asleep.

“You should try to get some sleep,” she says. “I’ll refill your water.” She takes the glass and then moves toward the door, switching off the overhead light as she goes. She pauses in the doorway for a bit with her back turned to me. The light from the hallway looks fuzzy around her, and makes her features blur to black so she looks like a shadow-person, a silhouette.

“You know, Lena,” she says at last, turning back around to face me, “things are going to get better. I know you feel angry. I know you think we don’t understand. But I do understand.” She breaks off, staring down into the empty glass. “I was just like you. I remember: those feelings, that anger and passion, the sense that you can’t live without it, that you’d rather die.” She sighs. “But trust me, Lena. It’s all part of the disease. It’s a sickness. In a few days you’ll see. This will all feel like a dream to you. It was like a dream to me.”

“And you’re happier now? You’re glad you did it?” I ask her.

Maybe she takes my question as a sign that I’m listening and paying attention. In any case, she smiles. “Much,” she says.

“Then you’re not just like me,” I whisper fiercely. “You’re not like me at all.”

Rachel opens her mouth to say something else, but at that moment Carol comes to the door. Her face is flushed and red and her hair is sticking up at strange angles, but when she speaks she sounds calm. “Everything’s all right,” she says in a low voice to Rachel. “Everything’s been settled.”

“Thank God,” Rachel says. Then, grimly: “But she won’t go willingly.”

“Do they ever?” Carol asks drily. Then she disappears again.

Carol’s tone of voice has frightened me. I try to sit up on my elbows, but my arms feel like they’ve been turned to Jell-O. “What’s settled?” I ask, surprised to hear that my voice sounds slurry.

Rachel looks at me for a second. “I told you, we just want you to be safe,” she says flatly.

“What did you settle?” Panic is filling me, made even worse by the simultaneous heaviness that seems to be creeping over me. I have to struggle to keep my eyes open.

“Your procedure.” That’s Carol. She has just stepped back into the room. “We managed to get you in early. You’ll have your cure on Sunday, first thing in the morning. After that, we hope, you’ll be okay.”

“Impossible.” I’m choking. Sunday morning is less than forty-eight hours from now. No time to alert Alex—no time to plan our escape. No time to do anything. “I won’t do it.” My voice doesn’t even sound like my own now: It’s one long groan.

“Someday you’ll understand,” Carol says. Both she and Rachel are advancing toward me, and then I see that they are holding, stretched between them, coils of nylon cord. “Someday you’ll thank us.”

I try to thrash out but my body is impossibly heavy and my vision starts to blur. Clouds roll through my mind; the world goes to fuzz. I think, So she was lying about the Advil—and then I think, That hurts, as something sharp digs deep into my wrists, and then I don’t think anything at all.