Chapter 46—Earth

When I open my eyes, everything is white. Four snowy walls, a smooth, pristine ceiling. A single bed with a single pillow, covered in bright white sheets. Even the blanket folded across the bottom of the bed has no color. The small table near the bed, and the door on the opposite side of the room from the bed, are also painted white. My billowy nightgown, that I certainly didn't put on myself, is white cotton. The porcelain toilet near my bed is also snowy white, and I really need to use it, but I don’t.

Because there’s one thing in this room that isn't white.

A black camera dangles from the ceiling, its eye poised to spy on me no matter where I move. But worse than the endless white, and the camera, and the enclosed space, is the blank hole where knowledge of what happened to my brother would be. I open my mouth to shout at whomever is behind that camera. I want to demand answers to why I’m here, where this is, and where Jesse is.

For a moment, I wonder whether perhaps last night was my first real dream. Perhaps Jesse's still alive. Maybe I had a complete mental break, and now I’m an inpatient.

Please, God, if there is a God, please let me be institutionalized.

Because if I am, maybe Jesse’s still alive.

As I sit, holding my pee in for so long that my kidneys ache, glaring at the black camera, I consider how bad things are that my best case scenario is insanity. Finally, I can't hold it anymore. I take the white table and wedge it underneath the door handle, blocking the locked door, I hope. I toss the neatly folded blanket over the lens of the black camera, and finally, I pee.

I've barely stood up when the door flies open, the small white table clattering across the shiny white tiles of the pristine floor. So much for that idea.

A man dressed entirely in camouflaged fatigues enters the room, both his hands wrapped around a big black gun. He has closely cropped dark hair and eyes so dark they almost look black. His gun is trained on the space right between my eyes. “Put your hands in the air.”

I don't comply. If I'm nuts, that's a tranq gun and I don't care whether he shoots me. If I'm not insane, well, shooting me might be doing me a favor. Unless Jesse miraculously survived. Maybe they resuscitated him.

“Turn and face the wall. Now.”

I do not turn. An awareness I’m accustomed to feeling only on Terra steals over me. The taut, stressed contours of the man’s body, the hard plastic of the table, the cold metal of the gun. I feel them here, on Earth, just as I always have on Terra.

If Terra’s real, and if I can Lift here on Earth, then I’m not crazy. The idea threatens to break me. Because that means. . . “Who are you?”

He lifts the gun slightly and repeats his command. “Turn and face the wall.”

“Why? What have I done?” I'm pretty sure I killed a few men, but I need to hear him confirm that.

“I have orders. Turn and face the wall, kid. I don’t want to do it, but I'll shoot you in the head if I have to.” I focus on the gun. It doesn't have darts in it, it has bullets. I feel them, cold, hard, full of powder. I could Lift the gun, Bind him in place, and walk out the door, but I have no idea what's on the other side.

I need answers, especially now that it seems unlikely I’m in a psych ward. Unless America has changed dramatically, there's not a single hospital where they rush in with guns and threaten to shoot patients.

This is a holding cell, and I’m the enemy.

“You think I'm afraid of being shot? I’m only here because someone who gives you orders wants something from me. Tell me where Jesse is, or better yet, bring him to me, and I'll tell you whatever you want to know.”

The man touches his finger to his ear, walks to the toilet and flushes it, and then backs out of the room, closing the door behind him.

“I would have flushed that,” I say to the camera. “If you hadn’t rushed in before I had the chance.”

I'm not sure how long I sit on the foot of the bed waiting, but eventually the door opens again. A tall man with dark blond hair and icy blue eyes enters, and he's not wearing khaki fatigues. He's wearing jeans and a deep blue polo shirt.

The haircut’s different, but I know the face, and here, even here on Earth, he practically glows.

“Kahn?”

His eyes move up to meet mine slowly, and his entire body freezes, his nostrils flaring, and I know—I’m glowing for him, too.

Bizarre. Yeah, I’m aware.

Kahn's face. Kahn’s body. Kahn's voice.

He doesn’t ask how I know his name, which means he must know about Terra. Unsurprisingly. I mean, last night I destroyed the back of a movie theater and then passed out right after the medics helped me into an ambulance.

I ignore the glow and the weird cosmic pull, and I suppress the overwhelming desire I have to rush across the room and wrap my arms around his waist and press my lips against his. It’s easier to do, since it’s not my first exordium experience. “Why am I here? And what do you want?”

Kahn looks as if he’s fighting his way through a fog.

Oh, boy, I know that feeling.

He crosses the room and gestures at the bed. “Okay if I sit?”

I nod.

“I'm with a group called the Followers of Isis. We're the good guys, I promise. It looks like you've already had some pretty extensive dealings with Amun. I thought I might be able to answer some questions for you.”

“You’re Isis?” On Earth as well as Terra, and he was clearly chosen because someone knows we’re friendly on Terra. They’re trying to manipulate me. They should know better than that—don’t attempt to maneuver a kid who’s been in the system. Seeing through that kind of BS is simpler than singing the ABCs.

He nods. “We clean up a lot of Amun’s messes, and we were happy to discover that you survived last night.” He doesn't mention Jesse. “I'd like to answer all your questions, and then I'm hoping you can help us, too.”

“What do you want?” I ask. “Why am I locked up?”

“We aren't in the habit of detaining people, but when we found you last night. . .well, we need answers. A lot of answers.”

I stand up and put my hands on my hips. It's hard to look tough in a white nightie. “You’re the good guys? You can see where I was confused, what with the peeing on camera and the gun to my head.”

“I'm sorry about all that. There was a misunderstanding up the line that we're working to clear up.”

“Overcharging someone for coffee is a misunderstanding. Washing a red shirt with all your white clothes, that’s a mistake. They’re similar. If you misunderstand or make a mistake, it’s no big deal.”

Kahn swallows.

“A man in fatigues pointing a gun at my head and yelling for me to face the wall is not a misunderstanding.” My fists clench, and I’m tempted to slam him against the wall. But I still need information. Information I’m sick of waiting to get.

“I'm so sorry about everything, Alora. Really, we all are. We're the good guys, I swear.”

He used my name—Alora. Which means he probably knows I’m this stupid Warden. Now I just need to figure out what they plan to do about it. “The good guys don't have to say they're the good guys. They're out there saving people and doing good things. You're locking me in a room and threatening me.”

“You must know me on Terra. Do you think I’m really so different here?”

He’s doing it again, trying to manipulate me into trusting him because of how he treats me on Terra—and I have no way to know whether people really are the same in both places. But Jesse was the same. I’m the same. Devlin sure seems to be the same. So from my extensive sampling of three. . .

I know it’s a ploy, and I don’t trust him, but when I look at him I forget all of that.

His eyes are soft, his lips slightly parted. He’s just as gorgeous here as he is there. He’s just as fit, as clean cut, and as well spoken. Without meaning to, I sway toward him. He inhales quickly, and I want to reach for him. I want to touch his jaw, his shoulder, his arm.

I want him to touch me, too.

Clearly some infuriating force is still trying to hijack my feelings.

And these so-called good guys will take advantage of whatever force is at play, and that angers me most of all. Yet, I still want to believe him. Only my deep-seated distrust and skepticism of everyone and everything, honed from every single important event in my entire life, prevents it.

And the gun to the head. That didn’t help.