Dissolution

Chapter 12 - Lie to Me

"Madeline!" I heard him shout, and I wanted to curse him. Shut up! The stacks whirled around me like a maze. Surely there was another exit . . . something . . .

I was lost, and he was on familiar terrain. His footsteps faded behind me, but then, as I reached the end of a stack, he stepped out from the other end and grabbed me. I almost shrieked and wrenched away, but he enfolded me in a hug. My brain short-circuited.

"Madeline," he said, and his voice was hoarse with something that immediately made me quiet. He pulled back and looked at me. "What's going on?"

I opened my mouth and found myself croaking in a voice made harsh by the river: "How . . . how did you know it was me?"

He swallowed and didn't answer. Instead he reached forward, tracing the curve of my cheek gently. Pain shivered along the end of that touch. I didn't care. I leaned forward into his hand with a choked sob. I hadn't realized how much I'd been aching for human contact that I wasn't afraid of. Now that he'd taken my hand and looked at me with those bright, blazing eyes, the fear that he'd sell me out drifted into ash. This was Jake. Jake. The boy who had seen my face among thousands on the agency listings and reached out to me. The boy who hadn't charged me for our first five dates, even when he could have—he should have, given the difference in our salaries. The boy who'd grown into this man in front of me, with his tender eyes, who searched for the stars in an empty sky. I looked up at him now and tried not to weep.

"I can't . . ." I swallowed. "I can't pay you anything right now, but . . ."

He looked at me as if I was insane. "Just tell me what's going on," he said, his voice low, and suddenly I was back at the morning before my Auctioning. Had it only been a day? It felt like a lifetime. They'd be mad not to buy you. Love you. Good luck.

I swallowed. "I'll tell you," I said. "But not here. Is there somewhere safe?"

He paused for a moment, then nodded. He took my hand. And I followed him.

I had never seen his office before.

"It's not much," he said sheepishly, reaching up to rub his shoulder. "There's no window, and the walls are so thin you can hear everyone babbling in the corridor, and . . ."

I gave him a look and he refocused. "Sorry. It's enough that we can talk in here quietly." Something seized in his face. "What happened yesterday? You weren't online. I got so worried I passed by your house, but no one was there. Not even your parents! And then, I saw the announcement . . ."

I didn't want to hear about the announcement. "Shut up and I'll tell you," I said.

He did, after glancing at my face and passing me a Nutritub.

I told him everything in broken sentences shaped around mouthfuls of his lunch and gulps of water. Without my implants and the program, the food tasted like sand, but I was hungry enough that I didn't care. I started with the extra injection Dr. Yulisa had given me. Then I told him about the Auctioning. He stopped me at the river, eyes ablaze.

"You jumped in?" he hissed. "Are you crazy?"

I scraped the bottom of the Nutritub, but there was nothing left. I wished he'd packed more. "It was that or give up and become a cadaver," I hissed back. "And I thought I'd survive."

I stopped at that, struck. I hadn't realized it until I said it. But yes. Somewhere, subconsciously, I had thought that I'd had a chance of surviving. Even when I had been petrified out of my mind, my body had known something I hadn't.