Sleeping Dogs Lie

Chapter Twenty-Four

Aaron sends me down to his lair early the next day, but not before he raises an eyebrow at me and scans me knowingly up and down.

My heart leaps into my throat. This is it. This is when he's going to take me aside and tell me that he knows exactly where I was last night and exactly what I was doing.

But all he says is, "You look like hell. Thought you were going to bed early last night."

Well that could mean anything. Is he calling me out or not?

"Can't seem to get caught up," I mumble.

"Hmmph," he says, turning his back on me and the conversation.

Which means, I guess, that he doesn't know what I did last night.

But that doesn't make what I know now any less of a burden.

I make my way down to his lair to see what's on the agenda for his people today. Looks like some of them are working over in Interdepartmental Commerce again, where he was last night, and some of them are going to be down in that hallway under Sector 61.

When I start flipping the feeds for that hallway, my blood begins to boil. I just know they'll all be over there tonight, working in that building without me. Aaron and I don't have plans tonight, so I'm sure he'll be with them. How far have they gotten in that system? Have they found the entrance to that inner Hexagon yet?

It's about this time when I see another one of Aaron's Alice in Wonderland DVDs that he's left for me. When does he even have the time to come down here and make these things? I'm so angry with him that I don't even want to acknowledge it, till I see the note on top. All it says is, "I'm So Sorry."

Curiouser and curiouser.

I smash around on my console and slam the disc into a tray. What kind of a tool leaves a note like "I'm so sorry" on a DVD without any other explanation?

Aaron's video is of the feed into Freya's classroom. Ten quiet little kids sitting at their desks, focused on a woman in a blue jumpsuit who's writing their lesson on the whiteboard up front. The lady who teaches their class is named Sally; all the little kids call her "Miss Sally." They're all so good and quiet, and they only talk when she calls on them. I've watched the feed into Freya's class before, and I always have to wonder if they're drugging those kids somehow, because in my experience, kids aren't naturally that quiet and complacent. Especially when you pack a whole gaggle of them into a room together. Kids like to make mischief. The kids here at the Hex don't make mischief. It's like it's the furthest thing from their minds. There's something wrong with that.

The video plays for a while, and I honestly have to wonder why Aaron left it. It doesn't seem any different from any other feed I've watched of that classroom a hundred other times.

But then, while Sally's in the middle of parsing a simple sentence on the board, a man walks into the classroom and interrupts her. She says something I can't hear and motions at Freya, who comes forward and nods, first at Sally and then at the man, who I've never seen before. Then the man takes Freya with him out of the classroom, and Sally goes back to her parsing.

Aaron did a good job of chasing the feed, so his video breaks there and follows Freya and this strange guy out into the hall. He chases them while they walk all the way from Freya's classroom on Sector 33 across the Hex to the Med Tech Center.

As they walk, the man asks her questions about her life on the road. He asks her if she ever knew her real parents, and she tells him no, that my mom and dad found her when she was so little, she always thought they were her parents, even though she knew for real that they weren't. He asks her if she's ever been sick, and my breath catches in my throat as I wait for her answer. She tells him that, oh yes, she was really, really sick a few years ago. So sick she doesn't even remember it. All she remembers is that she's been super tired ever since she got better. My heart climbs down out of my throat and my breath eases up at her answer, but I still have to wait for this nosey man's response. He seems satisfied with how little she knows, but asks her if she has any idea what made her sick. Freya tells him that she doesn't remember anything about that time, just waking up on the road a long time after.