Burn (Pure #3)(121)

Hastings nods.

“Worse than before?”

Hastings nods again.

“Partridge!” El Capitan shouts. “What’d you do to him? Jesus Christ! He’s a friend of yours!”

Hastings says, “Partridge and Pressia are going to talk to you soon. Please stand by.”

Bradwell looks at El Capitan. “Are you ready?”

“Ready for what?” El Capitan says.

“What comes next.”

“What comes next?” Helmud says.





PARTRIDGE





ROOMS




Sun. Curtains warm with it. Lit up. It’s how he felt when he saw the letters and then Lyda herself—as if he had suddenly filled with light, as if the sun were blazing in his own chest.

She didn’t stop loving him. The letters were proof, but she said it herself. “Even though I thought you’d abandoned me, I still loved you. I always will.”

And now here she is with him, wandering this kitchen in the house that Iralene designed, the one she started to talk to Partridge about as if it were a dream, but it was already in the works—for how long now?

Butter glistens in a glass dish. A toaster shines on the counter. A woman stands at the sink, her thin back, her flower-print shirt.

He knows this is an image of his mother. He wants to reach out and touch her shoulder. But he knows there is no shoulder. No woman. He wants her to turn and look at him. But he has no mother.

Lyda reaches out for a milk glass, beading water. Her hand glides through it.

Iralene walks into the room. “Do you like it here?” she asks.

Can he love both of them? His love for Lyda runs deep. But he’s grown to love Iralene. She’s steadfast and true. They all move around the kitchen where his mother—the pale image of her at the sink—reaches into the sudsy water, swirling a white dish, humming to herself. She’s so real he can’t bear to look at her for too long. He wants her to see him there, to treat him as her own—returned.

But does he like it here? Can he answer that? It’s a mirage. It’s not real. Doesn’t Iralene know the difference? He doesn’t tell her any of this. He says, “I do like it here.” It’s a half-truth.

Why is there so much sun? It pours into the windows, fills the room so brightly that it blots the details. Maybe the details aren’t finished.

“How did you do it all?” Partridge asks.

“Purdy and Hoppes have access to all these files. They thought it might convince you. There’s more,” she says. “So much more.”

Lyda isn’t moving. She stands in the sunlight thrown from the fake window. “Birds,” she says. “In the rehabilitation center, they had birds flutter past the fake windows of light just like this.”

“We didn’t have much time!” Iralene says angrily.

“I didn’t like the birds,” Lyda says. “They reminded me I had nowhere to go.”

Lyda told him that Arvin had let it slip that the letters weren’t passed between them, that she thought he’d abandoned her. Partridge explained to her that he wasn’t allowed to see her; Foresteed had taken control of his life. After she confessed to him that she’d always love him, he told her that he wanted to be with her. She said, “I understand.” But what does that mean—I understand? What had he wanted? For her to say that she’d been wrong to let him go the last time and that from now on, they’d always be together?

“Partridge!” It’s Pressia, calling for him down a hall. He follows her voice, passing a bedroom with bunk beds.

He stops, doubles back, and looks inside. There, sleeping in the bottom bunk, is his brother. My God, it’s Sedge—before the enhancements and all the coding. He’s not a Special Forces soldier. He’s just a kid—maybe fifteen or sixteen. He’s sleeping even though the sun is streaming in the window. Partridge wants to wake him up. He wants to hear his brother’s voice. But he knows that this was a rushed job. This is probably all his brother does—he sleeps, as he once did, a boy in a bunk bed. Partridge leans his head against the doorjamb. He says, “Sedge, Sedge. My brother.”

And then Pressia calls for him again.

He pushes himself from the door and walks, unsteadily, into a bedroom. A pink ruffled skirt, a canopy. A stuffed giraffe. A long inlaid mirror on the door of a wardrobe. Pressia stares at herself in the mirror. She pulls her hair back. The crescent scar around her eye isn’t there in the mirror image of her face.

And then she stands back and raises her doll-head fist. But in the reflection, it’s gone. She raises both hands and flexes them—open, closed, open, closed.

She stares at Partridge through the mirror. “Why would anyone make a place like this?”

He doesn’t have an answer.

*

A chorus of voices. Pressia recognizes them. She can tell that Partridge does too. He freezes, and she pushes past him. She feels like her heart has swelled and might explode. She follows a hallway into a parlor. And there, as if waiting for her, are three men. Bradwell, El Capitan, and Helmud. Three separate men. They’re talking, joking. Helmud smooths his hair and rubs his knees. He’s nervous. El Capitan gives Bradwell a slap on the back. They all laugh.

She can’t make out their words. They’re still just voices—the kind heard down a long hallway through the walls and doors. They don’t seem to know she’s standing in front of them either.