UnWholly (Unwind Dystology #2)(19)

“You’ll be restrained until morning for your outburst,” she tells him. “Your actions have consequences.”

He nods, understanding. He wants to wipe away his tears, but he can’t, for his hands are secured to the bed. Roberta does it for him. “Well, at least we know you’re every bit as strong as we thought you’d be. They weren’t kidding when they said you were a baseball pitcher.”

Immediately Cam’s mind scans his memory for the sport. Had he played it? His mind might be disjointed and fragmented, so finding what it contains is always difficult, but it’s easy to know what memories don’t exist at all.

“Never a pitcher,” he says. “Never.”

“Of course not,” she says calmly. “I don’t know what I was thinking.”

? ? ?

Bit by bit and day by day, as more things fall into place in Cam’s mind, he begins to realize his terrifying uniqueness. It is night now. His physical therapy has left him, for once, feeling more exhilarated than exhausted—but there was something Kenny the therapist had said. . . .

“You’re strong, but your muscle groups don’t work and play well with others.”

Cam knew it was just an offhand joke, but there was a truth to it that stuck in Cam’s craw, the way food often did. The way his throat didn’t always agree to swallow what his tongue was pushing its way.

“Eventually your body will learn the alliances it has to make with itself,” Kenny had said—as if Cam was a factory full of strike-prone workers, or worse, a clutch of slaves forced into unwanted labor.

That night Cam looks at the scars along his wrists, like hairline bracelets, visible now that the bandages have been removed. He looks down to the thick, ropy line stretching down the center of his chest, then forking left and right above his perfectly sculpted abs. Sculpted. Like a piece of marble hewn into human form—an artist’s vision of perfection. This cliffside mansion, Cam now realizes, is nothing more than a gallery, and he is the work on display. Perhaps he should feel special, but all he feels is alone.

He reaches toward his face, which he has been told not to touch. That’s when Roberta comes in. She knows he’s been taking stock of his body, having spied on him through the camera lurking in the corner of the room. She is accompanied by two guards, for they can already tell Cam’s emotions are starting to surge and threaten a tempest.

“What’s wrong, Cam?” asks Roberta. “Tell me. Find the words.”

His fingertips graze his face, which is filled with strange textures, but he’s afraid to truly feel his face, for fear that in his anger he might tear it apart.

Find the words. . . .

“Alice!” he says. “Carol! Alice!” The words are wrong, he knows they’re wrong, but they are the closest he can get to what he wants to say. All he can do is circle, circle, circle the point, lost in orbit around his own mind.

“Alice!” He points to the bathroom. “Carol!”

A guard grins knowingly, but knowing nothing. “Maybe he’s remembering old girlfriends.”

“Quiet!” snaps Roberta. “Go on, Cam.”

He closes his eyes, forcing the thought to take shape, but the only form that comes is the ridiculous shape of—

“Walrus!” His thoughts are useless. Pointless. He despises himself.

But then Roberta says, “. . . and the Carpenter?”

He snaps his eyes to her. “Yes! Yes!” Somehow, as random as those two things are, they make perfect sense.

“ ‘The Walrus and the Carpenter,’ ” says Roberta, “an absurd poem that makes even less sense than you!”

He waits for her to connect at least some of the dots for him.

“It was written by Lewis Carroll. Who also wrote—”

“Alice!”

“Yes, he wrote Alice in Wonderland, and Through the—”

“Looking Glass!” Cam points to the bathroom. “Through the Looking Glass!” But he knows that’s not the word people use for it anymore. The modern word is—

“Mirror!” he shouts. “My face! In the mirror! My face!”

There is not a single mirror anywhere in the mansion, or at least in the rooms he’s allowed in. Not a single reflective surface anywhere. It could not be an accident. “Mirror!” he shouts triumphantly. “I want to look in a mirror. I want to look now! Show me!” It is the clearest statement and the highest level of communication he has yet to achieve. Surely Roberta will reward that!

“Show me now! Ahora! Maintenant! Ima!”

“Enough!” says Roberta, with calculated force in her voice. “Not today. You’re not ready!”

“No!” He touches his face with his fingers, this time hard enough that it begins to hurt. “It’s Dauger in the iron mask, not Narcissus at the pool! Seeing will lighten the load, not break the camel’s back!”

The guards look to Roberta, ready to leap in, to restrain him, to tie him once more to his bed, where he can’t hurt himself. But Roberta does not give the order. She hesitates. Considers. Then she finally says, “Come with me.” She turns and strides out of the room, leaving Cam and his guards to follow.

They leave the wing of the mansion that has been carefully designed for his protection, journeying to places that seem far less clinical. Rooms with warm wooden floors instead of cold linoleum. Framed artwork instead of bare white walls.