question. “Sully, have you ever seen them use a needle here? A syringe about the length of my palm, and, you know, cylindrical?”
An emotion I can’t read passes through her eye. “Yes.”
I suck in a breath. “When was it? What do you know about it?”
She considers me for a long moment. Blink, blink, blink. “What’s in it for me?”
I’m not so much of a hatchie I don’t know that information doesn’t come for free. There’s only one problem. I don’t have much to bargain with.
“You want my glop?” I ask.
She snorts. “Please.”
“I’m a good listener. I’ll listen to you whenever you want.”
“Even more pathetic. I didn’t say I needed a friend, hatch. And if I did, it wouldn’t be you.”
I want to bang my head against the wall. “What do you want from me?”
“That’s the problem, isn’t it?” She laughs. “You don’t have anything I want.” Humming a tune I don’t recognize, she nudges the brick back into place.
“Wait—” I say, but it’s too late. The conversation’s over.
I run my fingers over the wall. The loose brick doesn’t come out as far as the others. I push against it, but it doesn’t budge. She must’ve braced something against it.
Smart girl, that Sully. The half-inch makes it impossible for me to grasp the brick, giving her absolute control over when to start a conversation.
Sighing, I retreat to the opposite wall. I have to find out about this needle, figure out how my future self gets ahold of it, if only to make sure my present self doesn’t.
But whatever Sully knows remains out of my reach. That is, until I figure out how to give her something she wants.
10
I lie flat on my back, staring at the ceiling, and try to remember everything I learned from the Meditation Core.
Inhale through my nose. Exhale from my mouth. Focus on a single, freeze-frame image from my future memory. Jessa’s hair falls to her shoulders, tangled and unbraided.
To her shoulders. How long does it take for hair to grow three inches?
Long enough. So no need to panic. Not yet. I can figure out my memory. I can stop it from happening.
I inhale. Exhale. Try to get in some kind of zone. I probe my brain, stretching and distorting the memory. Walking through the scene again, I focus on one specific detail: the teddy bear with the red ribbon. I zoom in until all I can see is that bear—its fluffy, white fur; the gleaming, black eyes; the tattered, red ribbon. Then, I change it. I throw all of my mental power into one image: a crisp, blue ribbon. For just a moment, the color flickers from red to blue, but I don’t have time to see which color wins out before I snap out of the vision.
Dear Fate. My limbs feel like spaghetti left too long in the Meal Assembler. I may pass out.
But the FuMA guards have other ideas. A horn blares through the cell block. I bolt upright, just in time to see my gate slide open.
Open. I move to the door and peek out. Are we free to go?
Wishful thinking. Two heavyset guards stand at the end of the corridor, metal rods clamped in their hands. The batons might look less menacing than a whip, but I’ve seen the news footage scrolling across our desk screens. Those rods contain so much energy they can send you flying five feet.
Footsteps shuffle on the concrete, and girls begin to emerge from their cells. As one of my fellow inmates lurches past, I grab her arm. She has pale eyes and translucent lashes. Not Sully. “What’s going on?”
She shrugs, and her arm slides from my grasp. “The Outdoor Core. Half of us go out today, the other half go out next time, since fifteen minutes a week is all we need to maximize our potential.”
My heart leaps. We’re going outside. The sun! I fall in line behind the others, bouncing on my toes. The girl in front of me shakes her head. I smile in return. Fifteen minutes! Fifteen entire minutes to bask in a light I never thought I’d see again.
In the glass-walled intake office, the machines flash their lights. The door to the other room is shut like last time. One of the guards goes up to the entryway. He scans his body, punches in the numeric code, and then we are out.
He leads us to a small courtyard. It is surrounded on four sides by the buildings, but there’s grass and blue