Watch Me, page 16
A hand goes up in the group.
Ian nods at the large man in the small chair. “Jing. Yes. Did you have something you wanted to share this morning?”
“The Reestablishment killed my family.”
A murmur goes through the group, people nodding. Ian nods, too, as if this is brand-new information. “You’ve shared that with us before, Jing. Are you ready to talk about what happened?”
Jing shakes his head.
Jing is a liar. Jing claimed he was a soldier serving under the chief commander and regent of Sector 18. He’s claimed twice now that The Reestablishment murdered his entire family, and he further claims to have killed his CCR in an act of insurrection, in the interest of revenge and justice. He claims to have been reformed ever since.
I happen to know that the ex-CCR of 18 is comfortably situated on the Ark, alive and well. Jing thinks this is a joke. I saw him snickering with Aya, the two of them whispering in the hall outside this infernal session.
In my head, I’m making my own lists.
It’s possible that someone here, in this circle, might be the very operative I’m looking for. There might be eyes on me right now, watching my every move. It’s also possible that these idiots are entirely useless. It further occurs to me that there are other, more valuable opportunities in this ring of hell. The Reestablishment would potentially reward information on traitors—those who might be selling secrets to the enemy. I could buy clout back home, exchanging information for security. But when I remember how their family members will pay the price for their treason, the instinct in me goes cold.
Ian clears his throat.
Another hand goes up.
“Yes, Elias,” he says to an older, bearded man. “Do you have something you want to share?”
“I do,” he says with a thick accent. “There is a fungus on my foot. All of my foot is fungus, nails falling off.”
“I see. And is there a reason you wanted to share that with the group?”
“Yes,” he says, and points angrily at Jing. “I hope Jing gets a fungus on his foot, then his legs, then his whole body. I hope his skin rots and falls off his body!”
“I hope you get fungus!” Jing shouts at him.
“I already have fungus!”
“Elias,” says Ian, exhibiting remarkable restraint. “You still seem to be harboring frustration toward Jing after last week’s incident. Let’s solve to resolve this.”
Jing begins to protest, but Ian holds up a hand. “Jing, you’ll have an opportunity to respond in a moment. Elias, go on.”
“He stole my slippers and still denies it!” Elias says, standing. “I have a fungus on my foot! All of my foot is fungus! I hope he gets my foot fungus and dies of fungus!”
Ian nods. “Okay. These kinds of elaborate visualizations can be useful, helping us process anger in the safety of our imaginations. I hope saying it out loud helped exorcise some of that emotion so that we can begin to move past this. Jing,” says Ian, turning. “How does that make you feel?”
“The Reestablishment killed my family!” Jing cries, lunging for Elias.
I sit back in my chair, looking around the room.
If you’re smart enough, the agent had said to me, you’ll see it coming.
The group does not react to Jing’s absurd outburst, making me think it happens with some frequency. As if on cue, Jing’s sponsor appears, conjuring a band of electric light with her hands. She uses this light to lasso Jing, who’s still shouting at Elias, and drags him away on a veritable leash, muttering an apology to Ian. Ian looks tired.
“Anyone else?”
He waits another minute, making eye contact with each of us before finally concluding the interminable session.
There’s a slight lift in mood as the sounds of movement susurrate through the room. Ian is loudly encouraging everyone to journal, talking over the din of dismissal. “Tomorrow we’ll be discussing survivor’s guilt,” he says. “Think about what you want to bring to the group, okay? I’m sure we’ll all have a lot to discuss.”
I drag myself upright, my patience for this spectacle already thinning. I can’t believe I’ll be forced to endure this over and over again. I can’t believe I might, at some point, be forced to participate.
It almost makes me miss my time with Soledad.
In the proceeding moments we gather up our journals and head to our respective sponsors, like children being returned to their parents. The sponsors follow us around everywhere, hovering nearby at all times. Listening. Watching.
I haven’t been assigned a permanent sponsor yet. So far I’ve been shuttled around by an interim attendant named Agatha, a petite woman with a neat Afro and an affinity for turquoise, who sat me down last night and told me that true courage was saying yes to life when it offered you a hug, but if I tried anything with her she’d melt my mouth off with her hands. With a sigh, I scan the room for her, coming up short at the sight of a familiar face.
At once, my body flushes with heat.
It’s automatic, instinctive, and unprecedented. I’m not this kind of person. I have never physically reacted to another human being before, and right now I feel as if someone has flipped a switch inside of me, flooding my veins with light. It’s so foreign a sensation I have the sudden desire to examine it, to search inside myself for the cause and kill it.
James is standing by the exit.
ROSABELLE
CHAPTER 27
He’s leaning against the doorframe in a black T-shirt and technical pants and that’s all it takes for my heart to start racing. It’s the shock, I realize, of his physical presence; there’s something staggering about his beauty. The wry smile on his face makes me irrationally angry. His arms are casually crossed, drawing attention to his muscular build, his strong forearms. His hair is a little wet—darker than usual—as if he might’ve recently taken a shower. His blue eyes are cold, closed off. He doesn’t seem happy to see me, and this disappoints me even as I can’t conjure a single reason why the sight of me should please him. After yesterday, I didn’t think I’d ever see his face again. I thought I was finally done with him.
I’ve been trying not to think about him.
I’ve been trying not to remember the panic in his eyes. The way he’d grabbed my wrists and apologized, over and over, for trying to feed me. I’m suddenly terrified that I’ll never be rid of him; that his voice, like Clara’s, will live on in a loop in my mind forever.
Where’d they take your sister? The asylum, right?
But, like, how do we get there?
“Hey,” he says, tilting his head. “You coming?”
But, like, how do we get there?
I hesitate a moment more, willing my body to cool. The effects of his initial, disorienting impact are beginning to recede, and I’m now becoming painfully aware that seeing him again might be the precursor to something darker. I thought that James, having served his purpose of delivering me to the rebels, was no longer useful. I thought my focus had shifted exclusively to the procurement of the vial.
If you’re smart enough, you’ll see it coming.
Maybe James is more important than I thought. Maybe he’s the one in possession of the vial. And maybe it will soon be my job to kill him—again.
It’s enough to reanimate my limbs.
I cross the room and he steps back as I approach, gesturing for me to precede him down the hall. “Lead the way,” he says.
I come to an abrupt stop.
I stare up at him, something like fear raising goose bumps along my arms. “Lead the way where?”
“To your room,” he says. “Which one is yours?”
Warning bells sound throughout my body.
In response I turn slowly forward, guiding him to my room in silence. The rebels continue to surprise me. Outwit me. I have no idea why he’s here.
To be fair, I’ve been trapped in this facility for less than twenty-four hours, and I’m not sure why I’m here, either. I suppose it’s plausible to assume that after my behavior yesterday they decided I was truly in need of rehabilitation. It’s an unlikely theory, but I can’t rule it out altogether. If the rebels actually think gathering ex-members of The Reestablishment in a room together is a good idea, then I’m dealing with levels of stupidity so astronomical as to astonish. In some ways a stupid adversary is more dangerous than an evil one. I can’t map stupidity. I can’t extrapolate theories from stupidity. I can’t solve for patterns in stupidity.
Then again, maybe that’s the point.
I hear James exhale behind me, the steady hush hush of his pants as he moves. I’m too aware of how close he is to me, how he seems to take up all the allotted space. The dark, musky scent of him is flooding my head with dizzying thoughts I’ve never had before. Never have I felt the absurd compulsion to press my face to a man’s chest and breathe him in.
I certainly won’t start now.
This place feels like a small college, with different wings for classrooms and dormitories. It also appears to be sealed entirely underground, or else the cinder blocks are impressively dense. There are windows out of reach, too high to access, and I need more time to study the light to be certain of its origin. It might be synthetic, or I might simply lack a baseline for this geographical region. Ark Island is located in what would’ve been the Pacific Northwest of The New Republic; but because I was unconscious for the duration of my arrival here, I have no idea where we are relative to my home. I’m still assessing. Mapping. This is without a doubt some kind of prison masquerading as a sanctuary.
Finally, we come to a stop.
“Hiiiiiii, Rosabelle No-last-name,” says Leon, poking his head out of his room. “Hiiiiiii, my beautiful Rosabelle, Rosabelle. I was waiting for you.”
Leon is my neighbor.
Right now he’s grinning at me the way he did yesterday when I arrived, with a fervor that might frighten someone else. He’s tall with golden hair and golden skin and vivid green eyes that rarely blink. He’s handsome and unhinged.
“Rosabelle means beautiful rose,” says Leon, his head still hanging out the door like a dog in a window. “Rosabelle, Rosabelle, Rosabelle, Rosabelle—”
I glance at James, indicating with a nod that we’ve arrived at my bedroom door, and I’m surprised to find that he seems angrier now than he did upon arrival. His expression is stormy as he watches me, and I fumble a little under his silent fury as I search my pockets.
Finally, I procure the ancient brass key.
I enjoy the tactile, classic feeling of a key, but I don’t understand the logic. Why not lock us in our rooms using modern security mechanisms, opening and closing them remotely, regulating our freedom? Why give us the illusion of power?
“Rosabelle,” says Leon, tittering. “My beautiful rose. I can hear you at night. I listened to you all night, Rosabelle, I’ll give you a little earth, Rosabelle, let me look inside you, Rosabelle, Rosabelle, Rosabelle—”
James reaches forward, palms Leon’s face, and physically launches him backward into his room. There’s a strangled cry, a violent crash, and then James pulls Leon’s door shut with a slam.
He turns to look at me, and I’m frozen in shock, my key still stuck in the lock.
“This piece of shit lives next door to you?” he says.
“Yes.”
James turns away and says nothing more. I study the column of his neck, his throat as it bobs.
My right hand shakes slightly as I turn the key, and then we’re entering my room and he’s closing the door behind us, and this simple action cuts the air supply in half.
I back myself up against my dresser as he steps into the small space, heat braising my head. I’m suddenly, irrationally terrified by the idea that he might touch me.
He does not.
He doesn’t touch anything. In fact, James doesn’t even come near me. He keeps the length of the room between us as he inspects it, and I see the small space the way he might: bare white walls, a twin bed with a matching nightstand. There’s an adjoining bathroom with a full-length mirror affixed to the back of the door. He doesn’t move from his spot, but his eyes are trained on my bed.
“Wow,” is the first thing he says. “You make your bed like a soldier. Impressive.”
I look at it: the tight, crisp sheets; the perfect corners; the smooth blanket. The pillows are uncrushed, plump like a pair of eggs.
I stiffen with alarm.
I’d not been expecting an inspection, and perhaps I should have. I didn’t sleep in my bed last night. Instead, I sat with my back against the door, staring into my messenger bag at the bottle of water and the small bag of nuts.
I ate all of them, every single one.
And then I licked the salt off the plastic and drank all the water from the bottle and stared into the dark and fought to breathe. I listened to the quiet, straining my ears for signs of life. I scoured every inch of the bathroom, fished my arm down the toilet, touched my fingers to the mirrors, unscrewed the stopper from the sink. I pulled every drawer out of the dresser and ran my hands down the walls and pressed my ears to the carpet, listening.
Nothing.
Nothing.
Each time, nothing.
It began to drive me wild. The idea that they might allow me to lock myself in my room without a shred of surveillance was driving me wild. I needed to find something, needed to know whether The Reestablishment had found a way to watch me here, and if not, why my enemy hadn’t, either. I finally collapsed in the middle of the room, my heart beating so hard my vision had begun to blur. I never made it to the bed, the sheets of which I’d yet to strip. I lay there, starfished on the floor, my eyesight blearing with fatigue, wondering how I’d ended up there, in that moment. I remembered something my mother used to say to me. When I’d whine for something she couldn’t give me, or when I was frustrated with a problem she couldn’t solve, she’d say—
Rosabelle, when there’s something you want but can’t have, you can either be patient or be creative. Choose a path.
When the bullet in my mother’s gun went off, the path was chosen for me. Nothing could slow the force of a shot that expelled her from her world and me from mine.
In an instant, I stopped being a child.
I had one dark skill for which I’d been trained in the most rudimentary of ways, and it was all I had to barter. Suddenly at ten years old I was a parent, a provider, a student, an idiot—and then, without ceremony, a murderer.
“It’s been two minutes.”
I look up, blinking.
“I counted,” James says, leaning against the wall. He looks at his watch. The straps are made of leather, the style out of place: an anachronism, noted. “It’s been two minutes and thirty-seven seconds since I made a comment about your bed, and instead of responding, you left. It’s like you just walked out of your head.”
I feel it again: heat, threatening to consume me. It flares up my chest, my throat. I don’t like the way he watches me. I don’t like the way he seems to pay attention.
I don’t like it.
I don’t like it.
I don’t—
“Where did you go?” he says.
“Nowhere,” I say quietly. “I’m right here.”
He flashes me a look that borders on amusement. “I’ll be right back,” he says, and leaves the room.
I’m standing in exactly the same position, my head held at exactly the same angle when he reenters the room a few minutes later, this time carrying a chair.
The door slams shut behind him, and I flinch.
He sees this but says nothing. Instead, he pushes the chair up against the far wall and takes a seat, giving me as much space as the room will allow. He nods to the bed.
“Have a seat, Rosabelle.”
“Why? What are you going to do to me?”
His eyes seem to die out, like a guttering flame. “I’m going to talk to you.”
I exhale, but slowly, keeping my body still. This is a relief. Finally, something that makes sense. Something I know how to manage. “You’ve come to interrogate me.”
“No,” he says, leaning forward, arms on his knees. “I’m just going to talk to you.”
My heart rate spikes again. I blink away the sudden rush to my head, backing up against the bed in confusion, my calves knocking against the frame. I draw upon an inner reserve to calm myself, crush myself.
Die.
You’ve been dead inside for years, I remind myself.
You’ve been dead inside for years—
Then, with a force that takes my breath away, I finally understand. In a moment of pure, undiluted panic, I finally understand. This is why I keep making mistakes around him— This is what’s wrong with me— This is why I can’t seem to die and stay dead, why my skin keeps burning, my heart keeps racing, my head keeps spinning—
He is what’s wrong with me.
After so many years being dead inside, James makes me feel alive.
JAMES
CHAPTER 28
She’s so fucking beautiful.
I’d never seen her in normal clothes, and now I wish I never had. She looks even more ethereal in these soft colors and fabrics. Her platinum hair is in a long, messy braid, and she keeps batting loose strands away from her face. Her cheeks are pinker. Her skin and eyes are brighter, more alive. She’s sitting in bed in white socks, knees pulled up to her chin, and she’s both effortlessly stunning and deeply unaware of the havoc she’s wreaking on my nervous system. She doesn’t look capable of hurting a dust mote.
God, this is a nightmare. An actual nightmare.
We’ve been doing this—I check my watch—for two hours now, and I’m already losing my cool. Warner was right. I have several more hours of this to sit through, and I don’t know how I’m going to make it. I wasn’t trained for sitting in rooms and talking about nothing. I’m drowning. If she keeps this up I might just have to leave.
I drop my head, push my hands through my hair.
