Elusion(78)

“You okay in there?” Josh calls out.

“Yeah, I’m fine.”

“Great, I’m sending Avery next.”

Oh joy.

I pull my tab out of my bag and initiate its flashlight option, sending a small beam of brightness into the dark room. There’s not much furniture or anything else in here—just a stained carpet and the middle piece of a sectional couch with rips in the upholstery. Looters must have cleared this place out not too long after the tornadoes.

I hear a thump behind me and turn to see Avery going from a crouch position to a statuesque pose. She glances around, her eyes heavy with worry, and takes a few steps until she’s standing in the middle of the room.

“Nora?” she says loudly. “Are you here?”

But there’s no answer.

Josh is the next one through the window, and now that we’re all here, we take off our O2s and move forward, heading down a hall with uneven floorboards that leads toward the remains of the kitchen. Crumbled plaster and small pieces of glass litter the once-beautiful mosaic floor like cookie crumbs.

All of a sudden, we hear a noise. A whimper, maybe? Someone else is in this house.

“Avery, you check the front rooms,” Josh whispers, reaching for his tab and, taking a cue from me, turning on the flashlight function. “Regan, you stay in the back. I’m going up.”

“No, I’ll go up,” Avery says, pulling out a tiny bottle with a miniature spray trigger. “I’ve got mace.”

“Of course you do,” Josh says.

Avery spins around and I watch her gallop down the hall, until she turns a corner on the right. Josh follows, using his tab’s light to give him better visibility, but makes a left at the end of the hallway. I listen to Avery climb the stairs, each step creaking as she places her weight on it. The creaking stops, and I know she’s reached the top. My heart jackhammers inside my chest as I stand here, alone.

Then I hear another muffled cry. But it isn’t coming from upstairs.

I tiptoe over to an open wooden door across from the dining room, which has nothing inside it except for a chandelier that’s dangling from the ceiling by one or two electrical cords. I peer down a flight of dark steps and begin to descend, using the light from my tab as a guide.

“Nora?” I say, my voice cracking a little.

I can still hear Avery moving around on the second floor. I reach the bottom and hold up my light. The floor is granite, regulation material in what were once considered flood zones. And when this house was built, Lake Saint Clair would only have been a block away.

I hear a muffled noise.

Holding my tab in front of me, I whip around. A girl with short brown hair is cowering in the corner of the room. She’s wearing only a T-shirt and underwear, curled up into the fetal position on a very thin mattress, shivering. She doesn’t move. In fact, although her eyes are open, she’s staring straight ahead, as if she doesn’t even know I’m there.

“Regan!” I hear Josh yell from upstairs.

“Josh!” I scream. “In the basement!”

“I’m coming!” he shouts back. Then I hear him yell up to the second floor of the house. “Avery! In the cellar!”

I kneel beside the girl, pulling off my coat and wrapping it around her fragile body. She’s ice cold and barely conscious. I lean over to see if the girl is attached to an Equip, but all I can see from the light of my tab are deep visor imprint marks on her right cheek near her temple.

Josh bounds down the stairs, his strides wide and frantic.

“Is it her?” he asks with a blend of fear and excitement in his voice. He drops to his knees, as he sees her, the hopefulness in his face evaporating, which could only mean one thing.

She’s not Nora.

There’s a short, agonizing silence that neither one of us dares to break. Then Avery’s voice suddenly shatters the quiet.

“Where is she?”

I look up and see Avery hurrying down the basement steps, so fast she nearly trips.

“Where’s Nora?”

“She’s not here,” Josh says, standing.

“What?” Avery stumbles a bit, as if Josh’s words are an actual physical blow.

He tips his head in my direction, and Avery turns to see me holding the girl who, as selfish as it sounds, we all wished was Nora. I watch helplessly as Avery dissolves into tears in front of me, covering her mouth with trembling hands.

“Oh my God” is all she can say, over and over again.

I can’t help but feel sorry for her. When I lost my dad in Elusion—or hallucinated losing him, or whatever—I felt the pain of his death all over again.

The girl in my arms quivers, and as she starts to blink and moan, I run my palm across her arm a bit, hoping to wake her, but she doesn’t rouse.

“We need to get her to a hospital. Now,” I say.

Josh begins typing on his tab. “I’ll call an ambulance.”

“Wait!” Avery shouts at him.

“We can’t wait, Avery. This girl is in trouble,” he replies.

Avery storms over to me and the girl, crouching down with blazing red-rimmed eyes.

“She knows where Nora is. She needs to tell us.”

“I don’t think she’s in any shape to answer your questions,” I say.

“I don’t give two craps what you think!” she snarls.