Sleeping Dogs Lie

Chapter Twelve

Freya's blue-jumpsuit-school-lady is super punctual in the morning. She's there at exactly seven forty-five again. I ask her how Freya did yesterday. She says Freya performs above the rest of her age group when she's awake, but that she fell asleep around noon and they just couldn't get her to wake back up again. I guess once they realized that anything but sleep was futile for Freya, they brought her back up to my room around two and put her to bed. It makes me a little uncomfortable to think of her here by herself for two whole hours, but it's not like she was raring around in here anyway, I guess.

And besides, if I'm right, she'll never really be alone again, because that creepy clock will always be here to keep her company.

I ask Blue Jumpsuit if it's okay for them to bring Freya back again today when she falls asleep, and she says it's not a problem. She seems nice, but I keep reminding myself that everyone I will meet in this place works for the same machine that churned out that monster who nearly beat me to death on the day I arrived.

After Freya leaves, inertia pushes me back up onto the bed to work on my nails, which, at this rate, are going to be nothing but bloody nubbins before the week is over. Stare at the clock's mocking face.

What to do?

I rearrange my room. Put the two beds together so Freya and I will have more room to curl up around each other at night.

Get dressed. My jeans fit today after whatever weird electrical magic the doctor did yesterday. There are still bruises on my thigh, but it's lost that hot, tight, feverish look.

Sugar breezes in around nine to give me medicine, but it's a lower dose. Can't wait to be done with that business.

Back up on the bed, peeling away at my nails. Glaring at the odious clock that I know is watching everything I do.

9:30. There's a knock at my door and an unceremonious POP as it unlocks and opens.

It's that angry boy, Aaron, standing in my doorway with a giant chip on his shoulder and an electric tablet in his hand. He looks just as disagreeable as ever. Maybe they have a greenhouse that grows lemons in this joint, and this boy likes to suck on them in his spare time, because he has just that sort of permanently sour look on his face.

"Come over here," he orders from the doorway.

What a righteous ass.

I climb down off the bed and walk over to him, stopping just inside the door.

"No," he says backing up so he's just barely outside in the hallway. "Come here."

"Oh, what the hell!" I say. Maybe he's one of those control freak types. But I remember what Daniel said last night about keeping my head down and playing it quiet, so I grit my teeth and take a couple of steps forward until I'm standing right underneath the doorjamb.

He picks up my right arm and scans my Mark with a laser wand attached to his tablet, then starts entering info into it. While he's doing whatever it is he seems so busy doing, he says in a low voice, "When you're standing right there, and I'm standing right here, neither the camera that's in your room nor the ones in the hallway can get a good, full-on shot of us talking."

"I see," I say. Seems like he's made a study of this. "The one in my room, is it in the clock over my bathroom door?"

He looks up from the tablet and grins this cheeky grin at me. I was right. He is kind of cute. "You got it," he says, and goes back to whatever is so interesting on his tablet.

"Can they hear us?" I ask quietly, alarmed, even though I kind of already knew that this was the case.

" Yep. But the mics aren't very powerful, so you pretty much have to either be yelling or standing right underneath them. They can't hear us now as long as we keep it quiet, in case you're worried. That one in your john doesn't have a mic because of condensation, so as long as you keep your conversation in the shower, they'll never know you're talking about them." He glances up briefly. "Oh, unless I've figured you wrong and it wasn't an actual conversation you were having in there last night."

Little bastard. I'm sure I am blushing from my hair follicles to my toenails right now. "I don't suppose there's anywhere in my room I can go to change in private any more," I say crisply.

"Not unless you fit in the closet," he replies. "But then, you already had that figured out, didn't you?" He grabs my wrist and scans it again. This time, his tablet bleeps cheerfully. "Idris. 21 August '30. Cleared for duty. Come with me." He turns away and starts down the hall.

"Wait... What? What the hell! Where are you taking me?" I ask from the open doorway.

"Oh, didn't I make that perfectly clear?" He gives me a wide-eyed, innocent look. He really is quite the little tool. He walks back over to me. "You've been assigned to me in the Kernel." Now he's back in that sweet spot again. The spot where the cameras won't pick up any more than he wants them to. When he whispers, "Watch your back, Idris."