He studies our faces to see our reactions. Kara hesitates for only a moment and then smiles, good girl that she is. Whatever he sees on my face, he doesn't like. Or maybe I have lapsed again, losing track of time and space as I often do, drifting to before, sucked back into my dark thoughts.
"Does a visitor disturb you, Locke?"
I'm quick to recover. "No. It's a surprise, is all. A good one. It will be very nice to meet someone new."
"Tired of my company?"
"No." I sit up straighter and smile, at the same time angry with him for making me afraid. I feel like I've been afraid forever, conscious of every step I take, and for the briefest moment, I imagine my hands as enormous and strong and his skull as small and fragile as an egg.
Kara giggles. Do it.
I shoot her a startled glance. Dr. Gatsbro has been nothing but good to us. He's our savior. I remember that. He's the only friend we have now, besides the hired help at the estate. There is Miesha, who is our attendant by day; Cole, who is there for us at night; Hari, who monitors our health and creates activities for us; and Greta, who prepares our meals. As Dr. Gatsbro puts it, we live a life of privilege.
"Who's coming?" I ask, leaning forward, trying to meet his eagerness halfway. I raise my brows and pull back one corner of my mouth in a grin. I know he responds to that facial expression.
He leans back, satisfied, tapping his fingertips together. "First, a little review. I want to make sure you're prepared for our visitor. And, Locke," he says, leaning forward, "I want you to work especially hard on your lapses. Focus. Our visitor might not understand. It's essential that he see how truly exceptional you both are."
Essential?
"Of course," I answer. My lapses are fewer now, but when your mind has grown accustomed to wallowing down endless black corridors for decades, it can't be retrained overnight to move from one present thought to another. Drifting was my default mode and the one I used to survive. I still use it. Lapse is not a dirty word for me. When I lapse, I fall into silence and blank stares, remembering all the befores of my life, the bad and the good, before today, before the darkness, before the accident. Before. The life I once had.
Our review begins. I hope he skips the part about Jenna. It cost him a stitch on his forehead the last time. He took it surprisingly well, was almost pleased, in fact, saying it proved we were still our own persons. I doubt Kara will be so impulsive again. As she gains knowledge, she gains control. I'm always one step behind her, and that's not a safe place to be. I look at her now, as beautiful as ever, and I want to hold her and protect her. If I love her enough, maybe I can make up for everything else.
Chapter 4
I had asked to see them. I needed to know. Dr. Gatsbro brought them from his lab in Manchester. He thought it was good that I asked. He called it closure. It didn't close anything.
"Alone," I told him.
"They're in the box. I'll be in the library." And he left.
I sat in a chair, staring at the box but not ready to look inside. The whole afternoon I stared, remembering,
opening instead of closing,
walking down the dark hallways,
feeling for walls that disappeared,
for ceilings that didn't exist.
I sat there, losing track of time, just the way I did then. Wandering for hours, centuries--maybe only seconds--there was no way of knowing. I couldn't even measure time with my breaths. There were none. No tongue. No fingers. No touch. No sound. Nothing. Only the tick of thoughts.
Tick
Tick
Tick
The darkness I had wandered in became something else, spreading, reaching, becoming more than I thought darkness could be. It was molten metal filling imagined lungs, ears, crevices, and pores. Darkness everywhere, until it had oozed in so deeply it was a part of me and I wondered if there would be room for anything else inside me ever again.
When Jenna disappeared, the only thing that gave me hope was Kara's voice. It was the only light I had. The only air. Even when she screamed. Even when she accused. At least I knew I wasn't alone. And when there were no screams, her thoughts reached into mine, and mine into hers.
Are you there?
Here. Always here. For you.
Are you there?
Locke, I'm here, here, here....
Just a thought that can do nothing. Only know. Whatever hell it was, I knew we had gone there together. I told myself that someday, some way, I would get us both out. That's what I hoped for. But the darkness creeps in there too, until hope is as black as every thought within you.
"Locke, it's getting late," Miesha had said through the door.
"Coming," I called. Her footsteps receded down the hallway, and I walked to the table where the box sat and lifted the lid.
Closure.
In the bottom were two small black cubes no bigger than six inches across. Plain, not impressive, not as endless or frightening as the world inside them. Environments, is what Dr. Gatsbro called them. They were the so-called groundbreaking technology that Matthew Fox abandoned, at least as far as Kara and I were concerned. How could this six-inch cube be called an environment? How could an entire mind be uploaded into it? How could anything survive inside for 260 years?
This is where we were. This is where our minds were uploaded and kept spinning when the rest of the world thought we were dead. I had picked up the one labeled with my name first and held it in both of my hands. I felt sick, angry, and afraid all at once when I touched it, and then, unexpectedly, protective. If I could so easily disappear from this world once, could it happen again?
Then I lifted the other cube from the box and held them side by side, just as they had always been when they were on a forgotten shelf in a warehouse. I stared at the six-inch cube that had contained Kara.
Tick
Tick
Tick
Every bit. Every dark corner. Did they get it all?
That's when Kara walked in, telling me it was time for dinner. She hadn't wanted to see them. She didn't need closure like I did, she told Dr. Gatsbro. Two steps through the door and she spotted them in my hands. She shrugged her shoulders and said, "That's it?" like it was nothing, but I saw her eyes frozen on the black cubes and her chest rising in shallow breaths.
"That's it," I said.
She nudged a few feet closer. Her steps were calculated and cautious.
"There were ten lifetimes in these," I said. "Even if they're empty now, it seems like they deserve more than a box in another storeroom."