“Damn,” Cole said.
“Ssee?”
“You think it’s safe to open it? I mean, if she’s in there?”
“Iss it ssafe not to?”
Cole frowned, then held out his hand. Walter reluctantly placed his stolen pass-card in it.
“I want that back,” Walter told him.
Reaching up, Cole swiped the card through the reader, which made the LCD screen flash green, just as the demo unit had. A faint clicking noise followed. Cole grabbed the handle and gave it a tug; the door snapped open. A thick metal tray slid out slowly, like a robotic tongue.
Neither of them could see what lie on top. Walter hopped as high as he could, over and over. Cole grabbed the edge and put a foot on the lowest handle on the wall. He pulled himself up and peered inside.
The tongue mocked him. The mouth was empty.
••••
Molly felt her face flush with heat after Byrne’s accusation. She couldn’t fib well, even in a simulated world. She thought it would be safe to drag the discussion out into the open: What could possibly hurt me in this make-believe place?
Parsona studied her face, eyes wide and searching. The scrutiny felt torturous, mostly because Byrne had spoken the truth.
“I’m not—” she began, but the world shivered, losing substance.
“I’ll not hear any more of this,” Parsona said flatly. The cabin disappeared. A dark room took its place. Light and noise from behind Molly made her spin around.
It was a play. Characters on a stage danced while a melodious voice carried through the room from some unseen singer.
“Sit down,” someone hissed at her.
Molly spun around and searched for the source of the complaint. Around her, a shapeless crowd shifted and stirred in the darkness. She looked for an escape, but knees walled her off on either side. An empty seat, obviously meant for her, seemed to scoot forward. Her mother and Mr. Byrne glared at her from the next row back.
“Mother, please. Get us out of—”
“Shhhhhhh!” sang a chorus of leaking air.
“Stop it!” Molly yelled at her mother.
The theater descended into a deeper darkness, then a bright light flashed in Molly’s eyes. A stranger in a mask leaned over her. She tried to ask a question, but she couldn’t speak. Molly fought with her arms and legs, but she was strapped down tight, her mouth forced open and tasting of metal.
In the back of her throat, a puddle of her own spit threatened to drown her. She tried to shake her head back and forth, but a padded headrest constrained even that movement. “Nnngh,” she managed.
“Suction, please,” the man said, his blue mask puffing out with the words.
Molly felt more metal in her mouth and heard the slurping sound of her saliva being pulled from under her tongue. Her eyes widened with fear, but relief from the drowning came as the puddle of spit was removed.
“We had such a good dentist on Earth when I was growing up,” she heard her mother say. “I always worried about what we would do for you on Lok. We were going to be here for quite some time, I was sure. Luckily, we have Dr. Daniels in town now.”
Her mother’s voice emanated from beyond her peripheral. Molly couldn’t move her head to see her, to plead with tear-streaked eyes for an end to the torture.
The doctor held his hand in front of her and bent his fingers in a small wave. “Just a routine cleaning, Mollie,” he said. “Nothing to worry about. You girls never have cavities.”
Molly struggled to form words, but gargled and choked on her own spit instead. Somewhere in the back of her mouth, where only she could hear it, she begged them to let her up. The dentist just forced her jaw open wider and reached for something.
Molly could hear Mr. Byrne speaking just as a tooth-scrubber whirred to life, its high-pitched whine filling her ears as it pressed hard against her teeth. She tried to keep her moans of discomfort low. She strained to hear the conversation taking place just a few feet away. But as saliva pooled up beyond her tongue, her head filled with the scream of ground enamel and the dull roar of torturous agony.
Her mother, of course, was perfectly happy.
••••
Cole lowered himself from the empty tray. “You idiot. I told you there was nothing down here.”
“Then what about her name?” Walter asked.
“Maybe her father bought her a spot here for the future. Ever think about that? Look how it’s spelled.” Cole felt kinetic and knew Molly would be as well when she found out he’d let Walter drag him down here. They were probably looking for them right now while that Stanley reported his card stolen.
His stolen card.
Cole slapped his own forehead and turned to Walter. “Gods! I’m the idiot. We’re sitting around waiting on Molly to try some miracle with her mom, and here we are in the very place we needed to get to!” He jerked around to scan nearby compartments. “Her mother must be here somewhere. We can pull the plug ourselves!”
Walter got busy with his computer while Cole went down each column, stooping to look at the bottom drawers and leaping up to check the ones high off the ground. “You find it?”
“Different hallway,” Walter said. “And we have a problem.”
“What’s that?” Cole asked, pausing his search.
Walter held up his screen. It showed a camera feed, revealing the lobby down the hall. A dozen Stanleys could be seen fanning out, pulling out their passcards and swiping them in the various glass partitions.
“Is that live?”
“Yesss,” Walter hissed. “Idiot,” he added under his breath.
Cole wanted to point a finger in his face and remind the boy just who had wanted to come down here and who’d been against it, but he could hear footsteps moving down the hallway. He used his accusatory digit to point upwards, instead.
Walter allowed him to give a boost. One of the boy’s boots kicked at the air, grazing Cole’s nose as he pulled himself up onto the slab. Cole grabbed the lip and hoisted himself after, his feet scrambling for any edge along the wall of doors. He could hear the footsteps squeaking down the hall as they turned to survey another corridor. Cole reached out to pull the door shut, activating the withdrawal of the metal tray.
He turned to Walter, who ducked away from the roof of the mouth as the tongue drew them inside. “Can I shut the door?” he asked.
He could see Walter’s bright silvery eyes in the darkness as the slab pulled him in as well. Walter blinked once.
“I don’t know,” he whispered back.
Drenards, Cole thought. If he left it cracked, they might be spotted. If he closed it, they could be trapped.
A solitary set of footsteps drew near. Cole didn’t know what to do; he felt paralyzed. Then, trusting Walter for some inexplicable reason—that he’d be able to open it from within—he snapped the hatch shut. Out of the darkness, a soft glow radiated from Walter’s little computer, illuminating the boy’s face and the walls around him.
Both seemed to be made of the same alloy of metal.
The Palan looked down at the screen as he thumbed in some commands.
“That might have been a misstake,” he told Cole.
••••
The wide doors on the service elevator split open, and Molly’s body slid out, feet first. The bag of fluids hanging from the gurney swayed as the Stanleys wheeled her down the hallway. A wireless repeater plugged into Molly’s headgear blinked rapidly with a strong signal. One of the Stanleys walking alongside spoke to the Stanley pushing the cart.
“Hangar six,” he said.
“Of course,” the other Stanley said. “And how long did Mr. Byrne say he would be? We can’t have him tying up a hangar all day long, even if he is a valued client.”
“Busy, busy,” one of the other Stanleys chimed.
“I am to notify him as soon as the young lady is loaded into his ship, so it shouldn’t be over an hour.”
“Excellent,” two of them said at the same time.
The same Stanley told them, “I will stay with her to collect our equipment; the rest of you can return to the rotation.”
They all agreed that this was best.
Busy, busy.
The light by hangar six shone green. Molly’s feet led the group through another set of opening doors and toward a loading ramp beyond.
••••
“What do you mean, that might have been a mistake?” Cole whispered.
Walter’s eyes peered up from his screen. “The doorss aren’t on the network,” he said softly.
Cole held up a hand as the muffled sounds of footsteps went by outside. He felt torn. Part of him wanted to bang at the door and beg for it to be opened. It could be hours or days before another Stanley passed through. The other half of him urged caution, terrified of being discovered. His recent habit of touring the interior of every planet’s prison was one he had hoped to break. While he struggled to decide, the sounds outside faded back the way they came, making his mind up for him.
“What do we do?” he asked Walter.
If Molly really was in danger, they were no longer in a position to help. If she wasn’t, how long before they were found, and what kind of trouble would they get her in?
He could see Walter shrug in the glow of his display. Cole reached over and grabbed the computer, flashing it around the interior of their hiding spot. Walter hissed at him and tried to wrestle it back.
“Hold on,” Cole demanded.
He shone the light on the cables and equipment at the far reaches of the space. It looked like life-support equipment and lots of other complex gizmos.
“Anything we can use?” he asked.
The Palan settled down at the sight of the gear. He took the computer and used it to study the head harness and electrical interfaces. “I’ll try,” he informed Cole, squirming back to fiddle with the gear.
“Could we join Molly’s dream somehow?”
Walter’s eyes flashed at the suggestion. He turned to his computer and started jabbing at it intently. He looked back up at Cole, then grabbed the headgear and worked it onto his head. “I need to download ssomething,” he said with a sneer.
“Fine. Just hurry it up.”
Walter scrunched down and rested his back against the wall of the small space, his hands adjusting the headgear. By the light of the computer, Cole could see his eyes moving below his lids, pushing side to side like orbs searching for a way through his metallic skin.
The boy’s legs twitched several times, and at least two full minutes went by. The odd scene seemed to stretch out into forever. Cole considered breaking the connection, or shaking the boy, but then his eyes popped open on their own.
Wide open.
Cole turned around and tried the door, but it remained locked.
“Anything?” he asked Walter.
“Oh, yesss,” the boy said. “Everything. And I found Molly.” He removed the headgear and brought his computer back up; Cole crawled closer to view the screen. He expected a schematic that he wouldn’t understand, or perhaps some computer code, but he recognized the feed as soon as he saw it. Video. And crystal clear. It showed Molly’s body strapped to a gurney. She looked asleep and was being pushed up a ramp and into a spaceship—but not Parsona.
“What in hyperspace?” he wondered aloud.
“Sstanley 8427,” Walter said.
“Do what?”
“Thiss iss a vissual feed from a Sstanley.”
“You can hack them?”
“Jusst the feedss.”
“So, you can’t control them or anything.”
“If I had their passscode, maybe.”
Poised on his hands and knees, Cole had to fall to one side to free up an arm. He dug in his pocket and brought out the card that had opened their little cage
“What about this guy?” he asked. “Where’s he?”
Walter snatched the card and used the light from his computer to read it. He typed something into the small keyboard and sucked air through his teeth.
“Where is he?” Cole asked again.
Walter looked up from the screen. “I think he’s looking for us.”
27
The spinning pad whined madly, pushing grit between Molly’s teeth and gums. The nerves at the base of her tooth ached; the chalky cleaning substance threatened to choke her. Every now and then, she received a welcomed jet of water, but it just pushed the foul-tasting cleanser to the back of her mouth. She fought to not swallow, to form a barrier at the top of her throat using her tongue, and then the suction would come again and give her relief from one misery, only to start the process all over again.
Each of her teeth had been cleaned at least twice, but the dentist had begun a third round. Molly cursed the feedback loop operating between Parsona’s pleasure circuits and the AI routines. The result was pure torture for her, as this “heaven” didn’t seem to take any feelings into account other than its creator’s. She felt certain that her three hours must be up by now; she should have already woken up in a padded chair, yelling at Stanley to get these restraints the hell off.
The dental tool was only halfway done with one of her molars when it spun to a stop. Molly could hear herself moaning and realized she’d probably been doing that for quite some time. The myriad bits of metal holding her jaw open were removed; she experimented with closing it.
Her jaw ached realistically.
The chair came up and her head moved free from the padding; she looked around for her mother and Mr. Byrne, but he was gone. It was just her mother, smiling.
“Let me see those pretty teeth,” she said.
Molly wiped the saliva away from the corners of her mouth with the back of her hand.