The Similars (The Similars #1)(84)
Gravelle grins at the diminutive man—a servant, I assume—and the man bows.
“Wonderful,” Gravelle says in English now, looking from me to Levi with a pleased expression. “Dominic will show you to your accommodations. Dominic?”
Dominic reaches for my hand. Does he think I need help off of the couch? I stand, bewildered, looking to Levi for some guidance. The next thing I know, Dominic’s sliding a needle into my forearm. Suddenly I feel nauseous, like I’m back on that motorboat.
“What are you doing to me?” I manage to ask.
“You requested answers.” Gravelle smiles. “And I aim to please.”
After that, everything goes blank.
*
I wake up disoriented. I’m in a windowless room, so I can’t tell how long I’ve been out. As my mind starts to work again, it occurs to me that I must be in an inner chamber of the compound, in a room like the ones Levi and I searched when we first got here. I’m in a bed with white sheets, and nearly everything around me in this small, impersonal space is white. There are a few machines in the corner, and tubing…lots of tubing. It takes me a moment to realize the tubes are connected to me. I stare at them, not quite processing what I’m seeing. What are they for?
I look down at my body. There’s an IV stuck in my inner arm. Screens and monitors buzz softly around me. Panic builds in my chest. My first instinct is to run. I try to push myself up to a sitting position, but I can’t. I slam back against the bed. It’s like there’s a force field around me. I can’t see or feel this invisible barrier when I reach out to try to touch it, but something is holding me back.
I lie in bed, breathing in and out, trying to conjure the meditation exercises Dr. Delmore taught me from when Dad sent me to therapy after Oliver died. They don’t help. My mind is racing. Where is Levi? Is he being held like this somewhere too?
I fight the invisible barrier again, and I’m slammed down against the bed. My panic morphs into dread. Surely Gravelle won’t keep me in this bed forever—will he? The thought makes my stomach lurch.
There’s a tablet next to me. I can just reach its screen beside my bed, which I know is by design. He wants me to look at it, I tell myself. Gravelle has put it here, with me a captive audience. He knows I’d rather see what he has to show me than lie here with only my thoughts, bleak and desperate as they are.
I reach for the screen, scrolling through the different icons. There are encyclopedias full of information on everything from botany and calculus to politics and languages. I click on “Botany,” and beautiful images of flowers pop up, not on the small screen, but in the air in front of me. They are luscious and three-dimensional, as if the plant is growing right before my eyes. Born of what is obviously the latest in virtual reality technology, the blooms are so vivid that I want to reach out and touch them. But they are just out of my reach.
I continue to flip through the topics on the screen until I notice another folder on the main home page. It’s labeled “Personal.” Inside, I find hundreds of other folders, each one labeled “Memory” with a descriptor beside it. I’ve read about this somewhere—or maybe I heard my father talking about it once with a business associate. The storage of memories through virtual reality technology. It’s not yet widely used, but it’s also not surprising that Gravelle would already have a fully realized version of the technology.
I dig in the back of my brain, trying to remember. Gravelle made his initial fortune starting an augmented reality company nearly twenty years ago. This is his field.
Though there are hundreds of folders, only a few are highlighted. The unhighlighted ones don’t open when I click on them, so I assume I don’t have access. I select the first highlighted folder in the group—“Memory: Early Darkwood.” The room darkens like inside a movie theater. Images swirl around me, not in one static spot, like the flowers, but all over. I’m transported from the bed in this white room to a dorm room, much like my room at school. I take in my surroundings, knowing full well I’m not there, not really. I’m still confined to this bed. Yet this dorm room feels so real. Real, and entirely frightening, because I know in my gut there’s no way out until the memory is over. For the foreseeable future, the past is my very real present.
The Memory
A boy lounges on one of the twin beds, leaning back against the wall, his laptop computer on his knees. The laptop is my first clue that we’re a couple of decades in the past. It’s oversize and clunky, a relic you’d see in a pawn shop. The boy is typing furiously, the grin on his face half-hidden by the long brown bangs that fall in his eyes. He is so wrapped up in his typing that he barely notices when another boy walks in, hesitating awkwardly at the threshold. This second boy carries a beat-up duffel and a weathered paper shopping bag.
“Um, hi?” says the second boy.
The boy on the bed glances up from his laptop, an impish smile still on his face. He’s good-looking. He has an ease about him that’s magnetic, and I’m immediately drawn to him. It’s almost like I know him, but I know that’s silly. This memory probably took place before I was born.
“Hey,” says this boy on the bed. He studies the boy in the doorway, noticing the boy’s too-short khaki pants and threadbare shirt. His clothes are ill-fitting and worn, but they look like they’ve been ironed. There’s not a wrinkle on them.