he’d worn it. It had given him inklings of something greater than himself, something almost like a grand design of which he could be a part. Where was the harm in that?
Quin had taken the helmet off his head before he’d been able to understand everything it had made him feel. She was right, of course—he shouldn’t be using it until he was completely healed. She’d shown him the instructions his own mother had written out. And yet she’d stopped his thoughts just as they were becoming clear. When he’d worn the focal, he’d begun—just barely begun—to feel himself connected to the world in a way he hadn’t felt since he was a child. He only wanted to finish experiencing that feeling.
He’d told her he wouldn’t put it on. And yet…he’d stopped all the drugs, and he never wanted to start them again. The focal was something else. He could wear it, just for a short time, right now, while Quin was sleeping. And when he took it off, if he fell unconscious, it would be all right. It was nighttime, and he’d be sleeping next to her.
He looked into the bedroom behind him. Quin had fallen back asleep. He could see the line of her profile in the pale light from the window. She was beautiful, and even if she was dreaming again, she was waiting for him to come back to bed. If he crawled back under the covers, they could finally be together…
And they still could be. In a little while. She wouldn’t even know he’d been gone.
He stepped from the bedroom and shut the door behind him. In three quick steps he was in the bathroom. He was tall enough to push open the ceiling panel easily. And there was the focal, sitting atop a neighboring panel, glinting even in the low light. With his foot, he pushed the bathroom door shut. Then he took down the helmet, locked the door, and sat on the bathroom floor.
Before he could talk himself out of it, he pulled the focal onto his head.
20 Years Earlier
“How could anything be in there?” Mariko asked, peering through the metal grating to the dark tunnel beyond. “This place is crawling with tourists. There’s probably not one authentic item left anywhere on the island. It’s like Disneyland.”
“I didn’t realize you’ve been to Disneyland,” Catherine said. She was hunched over the edge of the grating, applying the cutting torch—which she was now very pleased with herself for bringing—to the final thick pin holding the grate in place.
“Of course I’ve never been to Disneyland,” Mariko answered indignantly, as though “Disneyland” were synonymous with “strip club” or “prison.”
“Ha, catch it!”
The metal pin broke in half with a popping sound, and the grate came loose. Catherine grasped one side, and Mariko took hold of the other, and together they lowered it onto the sandy rocks.
“There isn’t anything in here,” Catherine explained, answering Mariko’s earlier question. “If I’m right, we’ll find an empty space, sort of an underground cave. And we’ll learn a little something about my Seeker house.”
Mariko and Catherine were both wearing summer dresses, and Catherine was having a hard time getting used to how they looked. After years on the estate together, in drab training clothing, girlish attire seemed like a costume. Now at sixteen, in these clothes, they both looked pretty and, Catherine thought, frivolous. They looked like two of the tourists Mariko so despised.
They’d been waiting all afternoon, wandering steep streets until the tide receded enough that they might look for the tunnel Catherine was sure lay beneath the sea wall. By sunset, they’d nearly circumnavigated the tiny island’s beaches, when they’d finally found the tunnel’s opening under an old chapel perched high on the island’s southwestern edge.
The entry wasn’t well concealed. It sat only a few feet above the sand, like the mouth of an ancient dungeon. It wasn’t at all inviting, but any curious visitor with the right tools and no fear of arrest could have done what they were doing—removed the grate and entered the dark stone passage behind.
“Now check the beach,” Catherine instructed.
They were somewhat concealed behind a large shoulder of rock that stuck out through the sea wall and reached into the tidal flats. Mariko peered around at the rocky beach beyond. In the distance, groups of island visitors milled about, taking pictures in the last of the day’s light. Most were moving off the wet sand, up the old stone steps to the streets of Mont Saint-Michel