their relation. The subjects replied in the affirmative. The subjects are growing closer but have not started showing any signs of second-stage reaction. They remain distinct individuals and do not appear to require separation. How do you want me to proceed?”
Please don’t ask me to kill her parents, she thinks. Dodger is not her favorite person—Dodger is more a useful thing to her, and needs to stay that way, if her plan is to succeed—but that doesn’t mean Erin wants to make her an orphan. The stability of the Rooks has always been questionable. They are violent reactions adrift in a world filled with things for them to clash with, and they require the Jack Daws to keep them from exploding. Killing Dodger’s parents now might drive her away from Roger, and the consequences of that would be dire.
“Continue to observe,” says the voice. “We’ll provide you with further instructions.” The line clicks again as the call terminates.
Erin leans back in the chair and closes her eyes. One more hurdle has been cleared.
This is going to get harder before it gets easier.
BIOLOGY
Timeline: 16:01 PST, December 8, 2008 (not long after).
Roger and Dodger lie on their respective chairs, staring up at off-white ceiling tiles speckled with small, seemingly irregular holes.
“How many?” asks Roger. He’s studiously not looking at the woman beside him, holding the needle that’s jammed into his arm. He asked for this, he knows he asked for this, but that doesn’t make the actual process any more pleasant.
“Tiles or holes?” asks Dodger. Her blood has already been taken. She has a piece of tape holding a cotton ball to the bend of her elbow, and a juice box with a bendy straw. Oh, how he covets that juice box. He hasn’t wanted someone else’s treat so badly since grade school, when Miss Lewis (he will always remember Miss Lewis) would let them bring juice boxes from home for Friday story time.
“Tiles.”
“Sixty-four.”
“Holes.”
Dodger’s eyes dart for an instant, tracing the outlines of four separate tiles before she smiles serenely, sips her juice, and says, “Six thousand, two hundred and eight.”
“Cool.” Roger closes his eyes. His perspective shifts and he’s looking at the ceiling through Dodger. There’s no color to appreciate here; just the cream, and the metal struts holding the tiles in place. “Did Smita tell you why we needed to come back in, or was this a mystery to you, too?”
“Everything’s a mystery.” Dodger turns her face toward him.
Seeing his own body from the outside is always disorienting. The change in focal perspective alone explains so much about why others react to his appearance the ways they do. The woman beside him is pulling out the needle, and his blood is so red, so violently, brilliantly red, that he isn’t sure whether he should be fascinated or disturbed.
“Smita will be right with you,” says the woman, and heads for the door before either of them can ask her anything further.
They are, temporarily, alone. “Hey, Dodge. You know how I’m color-blind?”
“Only because you keep making me look at stuff for you.”
“I like having colors to go with the words for them,” he says. “I was just wondering . . . is there anything funky about your eyes?”
Dodger blinks. “You mean you never noticed?”
“No . . .”
“How far away from me are you right now? Based on what you remember of the room when we arrived, not on visual cues.” She shuts her eyes, taking visual cues out of the equation.
“Okay, I’ll play,” says Roger. He reviews his mental floorplan of the room, and finally says, “About three feet, maybe? Maybe slightly more.”
“Got it.” Dodger opens her eyes, still looking at him. “Now tell me how far.”
Roger watches his body frown. “I . . . I can’t tell.”
“I have poor depth perception,” says Dodger. “It’s why I run my bike into things so damn often. Once I know how big a space is, I’m fine, and I can do all my calculations on the fly. I used to pitch for the school baseball team, and I struck a lot of people out, because I knew the dimensions of the field. In a new space, without someone to feed me the numbers, I need to calculate them manually. It’s the one place where the numbers fail me.”
“Huh,” says Roger.
The door opens before he can say anything else. Smita steps inside, wearing a lab coat and carrying a clipboard. Roger opens his own eyes, leaving Dodger’s perspective behind, and both sit up straighter in