The Rule of One (The Rule of One #1)(50)

Beneath the weight of my head, my left arm tingles with pins and needles. Gradually, I slide my hand out from under the flimsy pillow and gently hang my stinging limb over the platform bedframe. I peer down at my wristwatch. 4:14 a.m. I lie motionless in the predawn quiet, gazing cross-eyed at the pockmarked ceiling until my arm awakens.

I don’t remember falling asleep, but the residual potency of a forgotten nightmare tells me my slumber was restless. My jaw aches—I must have been clenching my teeth all night—and my ankle throbs from its brief time as a violently mistreated doorstop.

My composure gone, I outstretch my left arm, the blood flow returned, grab a fistful of my side of the covers, and jerk the blanket back over the exhausted lump of my body, where it belongs. I turn my back on my sister and scoot myself parallel to the edge, taking most of the covers with me.

Ava jolts awake. After an extended silence, no doubt searching the room in a panicked alarm, she discovers the disturbance was only me, and plops her head back down on her pillow with an annoyed sigh. Good.

The door suddenly flies open, and I squint at the harsh intrusion of light.

“Get dressed,” Rayla’s silhouette tells us from the doorway. “We’re leaving.”

She tosses a plastic box on the floor near the foot of the bed. New clothes for a new journey, I assume.

Obediently, Ava rises to her elbows and sits up against the mahogany headboard.

“Where are we going?” I ask, remaining exactly where I lie.

“I have tea waiting for you in the living room,” Rayla says. She turns and disappears, leaving the door open behind her.

Lamps from the adjacent room highlight the container. Secondhand shirts and pants spill out its sides, every piece of clothing colored white, beige, or gray. The mattress dips as Ava pushes off the bed and switches on the overhead light. Squatting, she rummages through the pile and digs up a clean pair of khaki pants, shapeless and forgettable.

Where is this woman taking us? This city, this apartment, this room is as promising a hideout as any other likely sanctuary. And staying in this queen bed is a hell of a lot more agreeable than the prospect of returning to life out on the perilous road, with its high probability of once again traversing innumerable miles by the waning power of our own two feet.

I stir from these thoughts and notice Ava is fully dressed and glowering at me beside the door. My reluctance transparent, I hurl the sheets to the ground and move irritably to the box of clothes.

She hovers over me as I crouch to the floor and throw the first shirt I see over my head. I feel her scrutinizing me, judging every choice I make. I pluck a pair of ripped jeans that I know she will hate and try to block her from my sight, flattening my scraggly bangs over my brows, the ends dusting the tips of my lashes. But I still see her through the strands. Kneeling beside me, she reaches out a tentative hand and brushes back my blonde bangs for a clear view of my eyes.

“When I looked at you, I used to see me.” Her voice sounds wistful and homesick. “My reflection.”

She pauses, as if expecting me to look up. I don’t. I can’t. She needs to let go. We both do.

“Now I don’t know what I see,” she whispers.

I lift my eyes and spare Ava a glance. My former mirror image.

“Isn’t that a good thing?” I tell her, and turn back to my futile quest for a decent jacket.

Ava bows her head and stands, smoothing out the wrinkles in her lightweight duster.

“Yes, of course it is,” she mutters, shouldering her rucksack. She detaches herself from my side and moves for the door. “I’ll be in the living room if you need me,” she announces, and I’m left alone, receiving my first solitary moment since the catastrophic night in Trinity Heights that feels like a hundred years ago.

A separate life, lived by someone else.

Ava stands with Rayla behind the rounded glass coffee table. They speak with hushed voices, heads together and bowed over Rayla’s cupped palm.

I swing my rucksack loaded with extra scent-eliminating clothing over my back and weave my way through Rayla’s organized clutter. The wool carpet mutes my approach, and I make it to the ring of furniture encircling the couch before either lifts their gaze to me.

“Mira,” Ava says breathlessly, pointing to the contents in Rayla’s hand. “I can’t believe it.”

I lean over the back of a wing chair and follow Rayla’s open palm. Using a pair of microtweezers, she pinches two tiny objects the size of my fingernail, their metal gleaming in the lamplight, and rests them casually on the glass table, side by side.

Logic, common sense, and a lifetime of conditioning and deception tell me I’m seeing things. Seeing what I want to see, what I’ve lacked and dreamed of my entire nonexistence. But right before me, within my reach, are two counterfeit microchips. One for Ava. One for me.

Impossible.

But then again, so are we.

“How did you acquire these overnight?” I ask, moving closer, the chips’ allure undeniable. “From who?”

Rayla places the tweezers on top of an instrument bag and rolls five latex finger cots over the fingertips of her left hand. Noting her left-handedness, I remember how I also favored my left hand as a child. This problem was promptly remedied, as I was made to adapt to my right and conform to Ava’s development.

“We must hurry,” Rayla says, beckoning to Ava. “You first.”