Insomnia

35

Esme jolted awake. A bolt of agony shot through her left arm before fading to a dull throb. Her back creaked as she sat up. Splotches of black and purple ran down the aching limb, culminating in a swollen mass around the muscles of her thumb. Esme flexed her arm painfully. It was hard to move her fingers - she hoped that was due to the swelling and not any nerve damage.

She rolled out of bed and staggered into her closet. Esme tossed a small black suitcase onto the floor and began stuffing clothes in it. She might have rescued Minerva, but the WBI would be sending agents over to arrest her any second now. Esme changed out of her pajamas and hailed a car. Her accounts hadn't been frozen yet, it seemed. She knocked back as many pain pills as she could safely consume before stumbling out the front door.

Once she clambered inside, Esme took a deep breath. Her heart was still pounding from her fight with the Knightmare. A draw, at best. But she'd learned so much more about how he operated. How he meddled with his victims. Something about the man was deeply inhuman, even more than she had previously thought. Esme thought herself a talented Psion, with an incredible affinity for dream manipulation and memory absorption. But the Knightmare could replicate other people's entire minds. That kind of skill was beyond her.

And what she'd done at the end. Esme had filtered through memories before but she'd never delved so deep into another person's mind. She'd never - healed, for lack of a better term, a broken mind. Was it possible to do the same for Atticus? Esme didn't know. She barely even understood how she'd done it in the first place.

The car rolled to a stop. Esme stepped outside, hefting her bag onto a cleanly swept sidewalk. Before her stood a tall, three story house, with a fake green lawn out front topped by a few dusty statuettes. One of the nicer neighborhoods in the city - Oz's address. It screamed suburbia.

She would have gone to Atticus's apartment, but that was the first place the WBI would look for her. She called Oz.

"Hey," he mumbled sleepily. What's up?"

"Nice lawn you got there," she said. "Really. It's pretty well kept."

Silence on the other end. She thought she heard a quiet rustling in the background.

"Wait," he said, "are you at my house?"

"I mean, I hope this is your house. Otherwise I'm probably going to freak out some sweet old lady by showing up disheveled and unwashed on her doorstep."

"Okay... " he said. "I'm not actually in right now."

"Really?

"Yeah, yeah, I got called out of town on business. Kind of sudden, I know. Sorry about that."

"Right." An awkward silence. "Well, do you have a spare key or something? I need a place to hide out from the cops."

Esme kept the anxiety out of her voice. Terror was pounding through her lungs right now but he didn't need to know that.

"Wait, what?"

"Look, can we talk about this once I'm indoors? It's kind of cold." A pause. "And I don't really want to be visible on the street for very long."

Another silence.

"There's a retinal scanner next to the door," murmured Oz. "I coded both you and Atticus in a while ago."

"Wow. That's a little creepy."

"Do you want a place to stay or not?"

Esme shook her head.

"I'll take it." She stepped up to the porch and leaned down to put her eye in front of the scanner.

"...you have to press the button first," Oz said.

Esme frowned.

"How'd you know I didn't?"

"Everyone makes that mistake."

She tried again, this time turning the scanner on. It beeped before unlocking the door. Esme pulled it open and stepped inside. The door opened up to a small, marble tiled entryway. She turned on the lights and could see a cozy living room just ahead. She'd never been here before. He'd only given her the address in case of an emergency.

"Okay," Oz continued, "now what's this about the cops?"