Free to Fall (28 page)

No!
I tried to say.
Not Tarsus.
But I couldn’t form the words. I felt myself falling, and then I passed out.

28

THERE WAS A DULL ACHING
in my throat. Fighting for consciousness, I tried to swallow and immediately gagged. Someone was trying to choke me. I went to react, to push whoever it was away, but my hands were strapped to something hard.

My feet were free and so I kicked them, thrashing with all the energy I could muster, which wasn’t much. I felt as if I were underwater, swimming for the surface.

I forced open my eyes. I was lying on my back, strapped to a table, or was it a bed? There was a bright fluorescent light above me, so bright it was blinding. Oh, God. Where had she taken me? I squeezed my eyes shut, breathing through my nose, trying not to panic. I realized now there was something
in
my throat. I had to get it out. Where was I? Where was Tarsus?

Stupid, Rory.
As soon as I put the pieces together, that Gnosis and the Few were one and the same, I should’ve realized that Dr. Tarsus would be in that room. Of course she was one of the society’s leaders. She’d been part of the machine from the very beginning. But if she was so high up in the organization, how had I made it as far as I had? Shouldn’t she have been able to keep me out? There was still so much I didn’t know. Things I’d never know unless I made it out of here alive.

It was quiet except for the hum of machines. I did a mental scan of my body. Other than my throat, nothing hurt. I blinked my eyes open again. My vision adjusted to the light now, and I looked around.

It was a hospital room. Through a pale flowered curtain I saw doctors and nurses with tablets. One made eye contact with me and smiled. Her pink scrubs were printed with the words
THEDEN HEALTH CENTER
.
She’s awake,
I saw her mouth. A moment later she was sliding the curtain to the side.

My brain was struggling to keep up. I wasn’t in the society’s tomb. I was at the health center. Dr. Tarsus wasn’t torturing me. Inexplicably, she’d saved my life.

“Hi there,” the nurse said kindly. “You scared us. Let’s get that tube out of your throat.” She gently reached into my mouth to dislodge it. Seconds later it was out. I immediately started coughing. “Your throat will be sore for a few days,” she said, unstrapping the bands around my wrists. “Sorry about these. We couldn’t risk you pulling at the tube.” She went to the sink and filled a cup with water.

“Small sips,” she instructed, and handed the cup to me.

I gulped the water. It burned my throat.

“Small sips,” she said again, and smiled.

I drank the rest slowly then set the empty cup on the tray beside my bed. “How’d I get here?” I asked her hoarsely.

“Your boyfriend brought you in,” she replied. “I’m just glad you had that EpiPen, and that he knew how to use it. It saved your life.”

“My boyfriend?”

The nurse winked at me. “Don’t worry, we won’t report that you were together after curfew,” she said conspiratorially. She went to the sink to refill my water cup. “Any idea what you ate that triggered the reaction? I imagine you’re pretty careful with peanuts. Says in your file you were hospitalized the first time you were exposed.” She handed me the cup and I took another tiny sip.

“A granola bar,” I lied. “I forgot to scan it with Lux.”

I heard a tsk, but it hadn’t come from the nurse. She looked past me toward the door and smiled. “Couldn’t stay away for long, could you?”

“From this girl? Nah.” It was Liam, dressed for class, his hair wet from the shower. He put his hand on my forearm, his lambda tattoo peeking out from the webbing of his fingers. “How are you feeling, babe?”

“Better,” I said, managing a smile. It took effort not to snatch my arm back. It’s just Liam, I told myself. But now that I knew what the society really stood for, even he creeped me out. I saw his eyes drop to my collarbone. Out of habit, I felt for my necklace.

It was gone.

Tarsus must’ve taken it while I was unconscious. But why? Did she know what it really was? I swallowed my panic. There were no files on the pendant anymore. North had taken them off. Still, my heart was pounding. It didn’t help that Liam was staring at me.

“Well, I’ll leave you two lovebirds alone,” the nurse said. “Just press the button on your armrest if you need me.” She stepped outside the curtain and slid it closed behind her.

“Why would you eat a peanut granola bar?” Liam asked when she was gone.

“It wasn’t a peanut granola bar,” I told him, my voice still raspy. “It was chocolate chip. Must’ve been made on shared equipment.”

“Why didn’t you scan it with Lux?”

“I don’t know. I forgot.” I stared at the Gold on Liam’s wrist. Were there nanobots in his brain right now? Or were society members excluded from that? What about the people like me who’d forgotten to get their flu spray this year, or the ones like North, who always opted out? Then again, with hundreds of millions of people vaccinated and strapped to the Gold, a couple of thousand outliers hardly mattered.

“So you brought me here?” I asked Liam, changing the subject. “I thought I heard Dr. Tarsus’s voice before I passed out.”

He gave me a wary look, as if I knew something I wasn’t supposed to. “She thought it’d be less suspicious if I brought you.”

“And the EpiPen?”

“She carries one.”

“Why? What’s she allergic to?”

“So many questions,” Liam said, not answering me. “I’ve got some for you. Why were you wearing her necklace yesterday?”

I stared at him. “What?”

“She was Upsilon ’13,” he said, watching me closely. “Not your mom. Your mom wasn’t even one of the Few. I checked the roster in the tomb, and her name isn’t on it.”

I opened my mouth to say something, but no sound came out.

“Look, Rory,” Liam said, “whatever you’re playing at—”

“I’m not playing at anything, Liam,” I said, trying not to sound defensive. “My mom left me that necklace. You don’t know for sure that it belongs to Tarsus. Just because it’s her society name doesn’t mean it’s her necklace.” But it
was
hers. I had no doubt. That whole bit about Pythagoras’s letter, virtue and vice. She knew I had it, and she wanted me to know it. But why? And why did she wait until now to take it back?

“Okay, so what about the pattern on your blanket? What’s that about?”

I shifted in my bed. “It’s probably just a coincidence,” I said weakly. “The Few didn’t invent the Fibonacci sequence.”

“Class starts in three minutes,” Lux announced from Liam’s wrist.

“I can’t be late,” Liam said. “But, Rory, I’m serious. I’d be careful if I were you. Tarsus is not someone you want to piss off, believe me. She has the power to keep you out of the Few.”

As if that was my fear.

“Well, thank you,” I said, attempting a smile. My heart was pounding like a drum. “For the advice. And for saving my life. I’m just bummed I missed out on initiation.” I tried to sound disappointed.

“Oh, don’t worry. You’re getting a do-over.”

“That’s great,” I managed, my stomach churning at the thought. “When?”

“Tomorrow night.”

They kept me at the hospital for observation until early evening. By the time I left, I had eleven missed calls and three cryptic but frantic texts from Kate’s phone. North was clearly worried. I didn’t blame him. My line had gone dead last night and he hadn’t heard from me since.

I couldn’t tell him about the Few over the phone. It had to be in person. But as much as I wanted to see him, and more than that to unload everything I’d been holding back, something told me I should play my next moves carefully. If I wanted last night’s hospital visit to seem like an accident, I couldn’t raise any suspicions. I needed to act naturally. Go to dinner in the dining hall. Spend some time with my Theden friends. Be seen by whoever else had been in that room last night. So I sent Kate a
talk later
text and headed back to the dorm to change.

The sun had dropped behind the trees by the time I made it back to Athenian Hall. Izzy was sitting on the bench by the main door, scrolling through her newsfeed on her new Gold, which she was wearing on a studded band. “Hey,” she said when she saw me, glancing up from her screen. “Where have you been all day?”

“I had a weird allergy thing,” I told her, downplaying it. “How are you?”

“Starving,” she replied.

“If you can wait twenty minutes, I’ll go with you to dinner,” I said. “I just want to take a shower first.”

“That’s perfect,” Izzy replied. “Lux says the optimal time to eat isn’t until six anyway. I’ll wait for you here.” She smiled and went back to her Gold.

I felt a wave of nausea.
Lux says.

“Hey, did you get a flu spray this year?” I asked.

She nodded without looking up from her screen. “Yep. Why?”

“No reason,” I said, and walked off.

I let Lux decide what I ate for dinner that night, in part because I was too revved up over my discovery to make my own food choices, but mostly because I knew everyone was wondering how those peanuts had gotten in my system. No one had near-death scares like that anymore. Not with Lux. So I made a show of using the app, for whoever was watching. I needed to look like a girl who was paranoid now, overly cautious about every bite. For all I knew, the person behind the serpent mask was sitting at the faculty table, eyeing me. A plan was forming in my head, and if it had any chance of working, the society had to believe my accident was just an accident, and that I was as eager as ever to take my vows.

Preoccupied with my performance, I nearly choked on my risotto when Tarsus approached our table. “I imagine it’s been quite a day for you,” she said, laying a hand on my shoulder. “No simulation can prepare you for an experience like that.”

An experience like what? The allergic reaction or the creepy ritual in which my classmates pledged their allegiance to a group of people who believe they’re wiser than
God
, people who were using technology to manipulate free will?

“It was . . . instructive” was my reply. My eyes went to her collar. No pendant, only a single strand of pearls.

Dr. Tarsus smiled. “Let’s be careful going forward, shall we?”

“I’ll do my best,” I said.

“We need to schedule a make-up session,” she said then, her eyes boring into mine. “For the simulation you missed this morning. Will you be ready tomorrow night?”

I knew instantly that she wasn’t really talking about practicum. The make-up session she was referring to was the society’s initiation ritual, and the implied offer for more time was a test to see if I would try to get out of it.

“Definitely,” I said, and smiled. No hesitation. Surprise flickered in her eyes.

Dr. Tarsus held my gaze for a moment then returned the smile. “Excellent,” she said. “Tomorrow night it is.”

“She creeps me out,” Izzy said when she was gone. “I’m so glad I don’t have her.”

“Really? I think she’s badass,” Rachel said, and turned to me. “Don’t you?” I’d forgotten until that moment that she was in the room last night. She was one of the Few now. She had to know that I’d been there too. I imagined they’d pulled back my hood as soon as I’d passed out.

“Yeah,” I said vacantly, distracted by what Tarsus had just said.
Let’s be careful going forward.
It was impossible to decipher what she meant. Had she seen me eat that peanut? Maybe I hadn’t fooled anyone. Maybe the society leaders knew all about my stunt. I shivered at the prospect. Now they were expecting me in the tomb the next night, and I had no way of knowing what lay in store. I felt a flutter of fear in my chest. What had I gotten myself into? Better question: How was I going to get out of it?

“Earth to Rory,” I heard Izzy say.

My eyes refocused. “What?”

“I asked when you were planning to leave the dark ages,” she said, pointing at my Gemini. The three of them were wearing Golds.

“Oh. I kind of like the old one,” I said, averting Rachel’s gaze.

“Yeah, but do you like it better than Lux?”

“Huh?”

“Gnosis is discontinuing the old version of Lux,” Izzy said. “And you can only get the new version on the Gold. So if you want to keep using Lux, you’ll have to say good-bye to the clunker.”
The clunker.
Two days ago it was the smallest handheld on the market. Now it was obsolete.

Just then, my phone rang.

KATE—CELL

“Yep. I guess I will,” I told Rachel, already standing up. “Hey, I’ll catch up with you guys later.” I answered the call as soon as I stepped away from the table, keeping my voice low as I passed a group of faculty members by the frozen-yogurt machine.

“Where have you been?” North demanded as soon as the call connected. “I’ve been calling you all day. When I lost you last night, I called right back, but it went straight to voicemail.”

“A lot has happened,” I said quietly. “I don’t want to talk about it over the phone. Can I meet you at your place in ten minutes?”

“Of course. I’m there now. Are you okay?”

“I will be,” I told him, and hung up. Then I slipped my Gemini under the napkin on my tray and dumped both into the trash.

“They think they’re
gods
?” North’s voice was incredulous. “Actual deities?”

“‘Gods among men’ was what the serpent said. He didn’t get into technicalities.”

“And they think they’re re-creating Eden?”

“Their version of it, anyway. A society where they decide what’s best for everyone.
The Eden
. A.k.a. Theden. This didn’t start with SynOx, North. They’ve been at this for
centuries
. Hyperion is just their endgame.”

North rubbed at his eyes. “This is seriously messed up, Rory. And your
mom
was one of these people?”

I shook my head. “I thought she was, but Liam checked their roster and her name’s not on it.”

“So she was trying to expose them.”

I nodded. “That’s the only thing that makes sense. Those files on the necklace were her evidence. But someone found out what she was doing and she got scared. I think that’s why she left Theden.”

“But why not tell Griffin? If she needed to disappear, he could’ve gone with her.”