Suspicious Minds (Stranger Things Novels #1)(14)

Outlasting other people’s irritation, their desire to change you: it might not be anyone’s first choice—even hers—but it worked just fine all the same.

“Should’ve brought a wrench. Or a screwdriver,” she murmured, and realized that her tongue felt thick and she’d spoken out loud.

The female doctor’s name was Dr. Parks. She glowed white when she turned to Alice. Dr. Parks had handed Alice a small tab of paper and told her to place it on her tongue…how long ago? Alice didn’t like losing time. The first thing she’d ever taken apart had been her cousin from Toronto’s watch. She’d been six and she wanted to see if Canadian time was different from Indiana time.

“What are you seeing?” the doctor asked. There were two of her, two shimmery white angel selves, and Alice wasn’t sure which one to focus on. The world didn’t fit together right. She closed her eyes but zigzags appeared that confused her even more.

She opened her eyes and stared at the angel on the right. “I want to see inside these machines.”

Dr. Parks absorbed that. She had a controlled way about her, almost like Gloria, but not as nice as Gloria. Alice guessed if you wanted to do medicine or science for a living, you had to be that way—especially if you were a woman. Like how she had to cultivate the grease under her nails and her coveralls so people believed she’d be able to fix their machinery, when that had nothing to do with it. She understood how mechanical things worked. Engines, transmissions, spark plugs, axles…She liked fixing them and she was good at it.

Seeing inside these machines would restore order.

To her surprise, the doctor turned to the orderly lurking in the background. “Get us a screwdriver,” she told him.

Alice knew her glee must’ve shown on her face, because for the first time the woman softened.

“This should be interesting,” Dr. Parks said. “Oh, and tell Dr. Brenner, too. He might want to come by sooner than later.”



* * *



—

Alice stuck the screwdriver into the head of a pulsing, vibrating screw. “Stop moving,” she ordered it.

But then everything around the screw, wires and toothed pieces that fit together, started to thump like a heartbeat. There was only one thing to do. Disassemble this machine entirely. Then she could figure out how it was alive. Or was that the paper they’d put on her tongue? It was probably the paper, but it felt real. The evidence was right in front of her.

The door to the room opened and Alice angled her head to see who came in. It was the main doctor, Martin Brenner of the wavy hair and smile like he’d gone to a finishing school to learn it. “What is it?” he asked, and Dr. Parks pointed in Alice’s direction.

Alice turned back to the machine, which hummed and pulsed at her, trying to get her attention. “Okay, okay,” she said. “Don’t get jealous.”

The nice orderly had brought a tray covered in tools. She exchanged the screwdriver for a set of pliers. They were big and clumsy in her hands and she didn’t like that, but she jabbed them into the heart of the machine and then gently twisted some wires free.

A presence beside her, kneeling.

“What’s she doing to the electrocardiogram?” Brenner asked.

He should have asked her. She was right next to him. “I’m taking it apart to figure out why it’s alive.”

“Interesting,” he said and stood. “Let’s try some electricity. I’m curious how she reacts to it.”

Dr. Parks sounded skeptical. “This was supposed to be a baseline day…I’m not sure.”

“I am,” Dr. Brenner said.

He came to her side. “I’m going to need you to lay back for a few minutes while we add a new…treatment.”

“You want to turn me into a machine,” Alice said. “But I already am one. We all are.”

The orderly took her arm, and a chill passed through Alice. He took the pliers from her fingers and placed them on the table.

“I don’t like this,” Alice said.

“It won’t hurt,” Dr. Brenner said. She didn’t merit one of those smiles this time.

He rolled over another machine. The glowing Dr. Parks had a shadow around her halo now. She attached some wires to Alice, cool sticky circles pressed onto the skin of her temples. Alice should tell them she didn’t want this—

The first jolt turned her into a crack of lightning.

The second sent her far inside herself. Disorienting flashes of light and dark surrounded her, and she couldn’t get her bearings. A crumbling wall in front of her, cracked and overgrown. Spores like tiny tumbleweeds drifted through the air. She tried to catch one, but her fingers closed on nothing. What was this?

Breathe, Alice, breathe. It’s the medicine and the electricity.

The swaying vines and crumbling concrete of the darkly beautiful ruins vanished, replaced by a sky full of moving stars.

She could stay awhile, in this quiet, confusing place in her mind where images tumbled into one another. Walls into stars into grass. She could hide here beneath reality until Dr. Brenner and his bad electricity left her alone.





5.


The rainbow stayed with Terry for a long while, but eventually it faded and in its place: darkness. A pit. Or…no, like the inside of a cloud at night and then brighter. Everything around Terry held possibility. It was within her, it was outside her, it was everywhere. It was everything. Invisible stars pulsing with energy seemed to surround her. What a strange way to think of it, but every thought seemed equally strange…