Page 37 of I Dream of Danger
She gleamed. She felt all shiny and new.
And she had a shiny and new love. Nick.
Who wasn’t in the bedroom or the ensuite bathroom.
Or downstairs.
Her heart was beating fast now, the beat of imminent danger. The beat of dread. She looked and looked, the drumming of her heart covering the icy silence of the house. Her cheeks were wet as she called Nick’s name. She swiped at her cheeks impatiently, the beating of her heart so loud her ears rang…
Elle started awake, gasping loudly in the silence of the night. Ashamed that once more, she’d woken up with tears in her eyes. She could keep the tears away easily during the day. She’d rather submit to torture than cry. But at night, in her sleep, she was caught with her defenses down and she hated it.
The ringing didn’t stop. It always took a minute or two to come back into herself whether she’d lost herself in a dream or a Dream.
She fumbled for her purse, hands awkward and clumsy, another residue of the dream state. She checked the display and saw the photo of Sophie’s smiling face, hand holding a glass of champagne high, a picture Elle had taken at the reception thrown by Arka for the kickoff to the program.
Elle coughed to loosen her throat so it wouldn’t sound froggy, and thumbed the ‘off image’ button so Sophie wouldn’t see her face with its tear tracks. She’d say she’d just put on a masque.
“Hey, Soph,” she said casually, “What’s?—”
“Elle, listen to me because I don’t have much time. Put me on vid.” Elle clicked and Sophie’s drawn face came on, bobbing up and down as she moved around her bedroom. She was pale, sweating, eyes huge and haunted. Her voice was a low whisper, tone rough with anxiety. She glanced quickly over her shoulder then back into the display. “Joss and Henry aren’t playing hooky. And Isabel has disappeared too. They’ve been captured and…and taken somewhere. I don’t know where but it’s not good, Elle. It’s like we’re being…rounded up!” She was moving frantically, from room to room. “I got a call a quarter of an hour ago from Nancy who got a call from Isabel. It was only a few seconds, but Nancy said men dressed in black were in her house. They were armed. She was hiding out in the closet. Now she’s not answering, her phone is dead. And Isabel, Joss, and Henry are unreachable too. Listen Elle, get out. Get out as fast as you can. I don’t know who they are but it’s not good. And Nancy told Isabel our sensors are tracking devices. I don’t—” She froze. Even Elle heard the sound in the background. Something crashing to the floor.
There wasn’t even a pretense at stealth, which frightened Elle even more.
The image on her phone blurred, shadowy figures appearing suddenly.
“Dig the sensor out, dump your phone and get out!” Sophie screamed and her phone went dead.
Elle held her own phone in her shaking hand—a thin slab of transparent plastic that had inexplicably become as dangerous as a rattlesnake.
She opened her hand and it dropped to the floor. It didn’t break, of course. It was the latest generation and there were videos all over the net of it working after having been shot with a bullet. It was made of the same polymer as the blast-proof vests worn by bomb squads.
It gleamed there, on the floor. She could be tracked through it.
Get out!
Good thinking. Get out, escape. But not if she had something inside her that could let them track her.
No turning the lights on, but it wasn’t necessary. She knew every inch of her home. She rushed to the kitchen, pulled out a small knife she kept razor-sharp, and ran to her en suite bathroom. It didn’t have an outside window, so once she pulled the door shut, no light would betray her if someone was watching outside.
Hurry hurry hurry! She chanted to herself as she doused her left bicep with disinfectant. She pressed her finger on the almost-invisible dent in her skin and felt it—a tiny chip Arka had said was a biosensor. The biosensors were to be surgically removed after a year and the recordings placed on a graph.
It was randomized. Half the staff of volunteers had taken SL-61, the experimental drug, and half placebos. Elle had no idea which camp she was in, but it made no difference if the sensor was also a tracking chip. It had to come out, now.
There was nothing to dull the pain. She had only a rudimentary first aid kit in the bathroom. Above all, she had no time.
Gritting her teeth, she slid the knife into her skin and stopped, brow beaded with sweat, trying to get used to the pain, red-hot, almost electric. There was no getting used to it. There was only getting through it as quickly as possible. She turned the tip of the knife and cut at a right angle then stopped, head bowed over the sink. The pain was so sharp it was nauseating. She waited for the nausea to pass, then lifted the flap of flesh she’d cut out, reaching into the bloody meat of her bicep with thumb and index finger. It was deeper than she thought and she had to actually dig to find it. Twice she had to stop because she was about to pass out.
Finally, finally, her index fingernail touched the edge of the sensor. She was in almost halfway up the first knuckle. She looked up. The mirror showed her a bloodless face, white lips, face drawn in pain. Taking a deep breath, she curled her fingernail under the edge of the chip and pulled.
She screamed, knees buckling. Only her left arm hooked over the bowl stopped her from falling to the floor. That hurt! Magnitudes more than cutting into herself. It felt like electrical wires transmitting pain down to her bone.
God, Sophie had said to hurry! But she couldn’t go anywhere as long as she had this…this thing inside her. There was a keening sound inside the bathroom and it took her a full minute to realize it was her own voice, panting and sobbing with pain.
She couldn’t pull her fingers out from her flesh because she’d never have the nerve to dig them back in. With her right hand she pulled, harder and harder, feeling the resistance of the chip, almost as if it were alive.
This wasn’t working. Was it deeper than she thought? But no, she could feel it. It should have been out by now. With her left hand she pulled a clean washcloth from the counter, stuffed it into her mouth and before she could rethink it, braced her feet and pulled as hard as she could. The washcloth muffled her screams as she bent her head back, incapable of breathing from the pain.
Her head spun, black spots danced before her eyes. She was a whisper from passing out when the chip moved under her finger. She pulled harder, the pain so sharp it felt almost like a living thing, then staggered back when she finally pulled the chip out.
