And so, things were falling into place. And so, the person in black had more planning to do.
Tick tick tick tick tick.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
The next morning, Everly was startled awake by a siren-like noise blasting in her ears. At the same time, all the lights in the room flashed on; she held up a hand against the brightness, struggling into a sitting position. She saw Luca already standing, pulling on a pair of limp gray slippers. He noticed her gaze and nodded in greeting. Everly sat up the rest of the way quickly, tossing off the gifted blankets.
“You’re leaving?” she asked.
“We’re leaving,” Luca said quietly. “Hurry up, we need to get out there while everyone else is headed to roll call. There will be too many people flooding the halls for them to keep track of all the cameras. It’s a good thing you’re still wearing that,” he said, indicating the gray scrubs he had brought her the night before. “It’ll attract less attention if they do happen to see us.”
Everly nodded and hastily got to her feet. Following Luca’s lead, she carefully stepped out into the green hall, and they started off away from his room. It was strange, being surrounded by so much green, after her time spent on gray or black floors. She wondered why it was different here, what the color was meant to signify, if anything.
Everything looked the same to her as they walked from one green hallway to another, and she felt at once the relief in not having to find her way out on her own, certain she would still be wandering around the black floor in the basement if Luca hadn’t found her the night before.
Luca led Everly silently through a series of halls, his movements confident and sure. Every so often, he would pull up short before turning a corner, gesturing for her to wait until some resident or runner had gone on their way. Every time that happened, she could see a vein on the side of his neck pulse. Could see as his breathing became more shallow, more rapid. He’s afraid, she realized. And that, more than getting lost in the building, made her afraid in turn, too. Maybe she hadn’t understood before. Maybe there really was more at stake here than getting caught by Jamie and given a stern talking to. She thought of the white room, covered in blood, and shivered. For all she knew, it could have been her blood in there next, if Luca hadn’t found her.
After ten minutes, they reached a single long corridor with gray carpeted floor that steadily rose uphill. As the incline leveled off, there was a single door set in the wall. Luca reached out a hand and nudged it open.
Stepping through the door, Everly was startled to realize that they were back in the lobby. She spun around to face Luca, a question on her lips, but he winked and closed the door back behind him—a door that she suddenly understood was designed to blend in. Once closed, she could just barely make out its outline in the walled surface of the lobby, only a few feet over from the elevator. She stared at it for another second before remembering why she was in the lobby at all. Everly glanced once around her, making sure that no one besides Sophia was there, and then quickly made for the large glass front doors.
Only when she reached the end of the stone stairs that led away from the Eschatorologic did Everly remember to breathe. She’d made it out—she was free.
There was too much from the past twenty-four hours to process, too much to think through, and right then Everly wanted nothing more than her own bed.
She went home and found that her steps were dragging the closer she got, the farther she made it away from the building. By the time she had gotten inside her house, Everly was too exhausted to even lock the door behind her. She stumbled back toward her room, where she collapsed onto her bed. She didn’t remember her head hitting the pillow, but she was instantly thrown into a deep, muddied sleep.
Someone was at the door. They were yelling, and it had woken Everly up. Rubbing her eyes wearily, she trudged from her room, glancing around from the hall toward the front door, trying to see who it was.
A man was standing in the doorway, but her dad wasn’t letting him in. Everly cowered where she stood, not wanting to be seen, but curious all the same. Her dad was yelling, she realized, and it scared her. Her dad never yelled.
“You have no right to be here,” her dad said to the man at the door. “None. Get out of my house, get off my property, and leave. Now.”
The man held up his hands placatingly. When it became apparent that Everly’s dad would only continue to yell, the man resorted to yelling back.
“As a matter of fact, Jacob, I have every right, and you know that. You know what’s at stake here. Now let me in.”
Everly’s dad scoffed, face curling into a snarl. “You and your messed-up deals. You cost me everything, old man. What more could you possibly want from me? What do you want from us? She is fourteen years old.” His voice cracked. “What do you want?”
Her dad’s words had been rising in both pitch and volume, his face turning a crimson red, veins pulsing on his neck. The man’s complexion turned a similar dark shade as he stepped forward, standing barely a few inches away from her dad.
“You’re running out of time,” the man said in a voice lethally sharp. “Do you know what just happened? It’s chaos. I’ve never seen anything come so close to tearing the whole thing apart.” The man took a ragged breath, then said loudly, clearly, piercing the tension in the air, “The fact of the matter is, the building needs her just as much as she needs it. I know what you’re going to say, what you always say, but it’s the truth. There’s no denying it now.”
All of this stopped her dad short. He had to shake himself before continuing in a hushed voice that Everly had to strain her ears to hear.
“You can’t be sure.” The man didn’t answer immediately, so her dad said again, voice raised slightly, “You can’t be sure that it’s her, Richard. And even if it is . . . you can’t be sure that the same thing will happen to her as—”
“I am certain. If you saw the others, you’d know, too. She’s the spitting image, Jacob. You’re going to have to make some decisions on what you want her life to look like. Maybe not now, not today, but sooner or later you will have to decide. Before it’s too late.”
Her dad shook his head. “We don’t know anything. We don’t know it’ll be the same.”
The man looked at her dad sadly, almost pityingly. “Goodbye, Jacob. You’ll come to see—it really is all for the best.”
And with that, Richard Dubose walked away, and Everly woke up with a start.
Her head was groggy and it was taking all of her effort to be able to string two thoughts together.
The dream, Everly realized thinking back. It had been a dream about her dad. And Richard. It had felt so real, and as Everly shook her head, trying to clear it, she thought that maybe it had been. Maybe it had been less a dream, and more a memory—something she had long ago wanted to forget. If that was the case, then why remember now?
She tried to think back through everything she heard in the dream, but the details were failing her, and the harder she tried to think, the worse her head ached. Her hands clutched at her forehead and she closed her eyes, breathing deeply. It hurt—like someone was repeatedly pounding a pickax into her skull.
Everly slowly pulled herself out of bed and nearly collapsed from a sudden wash of dizziness. Stumbling back to her feet again, she looked around and saw her bedroom tilt, everything around her flashing in and out of focus. Everly rubbed roughly at her eyes, and when she opened them again, everything was calmer. Breathing deeply, she stood back up, but was hit with the same instant dizziness as before, accompanied by a wave of nausea.
She stumbled toward her door, intent on getting out and finding her dad. He was mad at her, she remembered. But he would help her. She would be okay.
Everly looked down at herself and was startled to realize that she was still wearing the too-big gray scrubs that Luca had given her. And then she remembered that her dad wouldn’t be mad at her.
Her dad was dead.
Everly pressed her hands against her forehead, squeezing her eyes closed. What was happening to her? How had she forgotten, if only for an instant, that her dad was gone?
Everly staggered out of her bedroom, but when she reached the living room, she realized that a man was standing at the open front door. At first, she thought it was Richard, and she was certain she had been thrown back into the dream. But then she blinked heavily and saw that it wasn’t Richard at all.
It was Jamie.
