“Does Dragan know about any of this?”
“Dao-Ming wanted to call him but I figured you’d kill me if we told him you got knocked out by security while protesting in Xinzhongzi,” he said. “The doctor said you’d be fine. They just wanted to rule out concussion, and they did.”
“I have to get back,” I said. “Alexei—”
“I called Yun for you. She’s going to stay overnight,” he said. “You can check out as soon as you feel like you’re ready to go, but I’d coast until morning, if I were you. You took a hell of a hit.”
“Yeah…” Whatever they’d given me, it had really floored me.
“You okay?”
“I dreamed of Nix again,” I murmured.
“Yeah?”
I nodded. “I miss him, Vamp.”
“I know.”
“I feel like I should hate him, for lying, but… I miss him.”
He pulled up a chair, and leaned close across the bed.
“You always believed in the haan,” he said.
“Yeah.”
He stroked my hair. “You were the one who convinced me. It seems like you hate them, now.”
I started to contradict him, to say I didn’t, but the words never came. I struggled with them for a while, not exactly sure how I felt.
“You know, in some ways, I still love them,” I said. I smiled, feeling more stupid than happy. “I’ll see a surrogate, out on the street, and it still makes me want to cry. I miss them so bad… but I do hate them a little, too, and…”
Vamp waited for a bit, and when I didn’t continue, he prompted me.
“And?”
“I’m afraid of them, too.”
“Even Nix?”
I pressed my lips together.
“They all lied… even Nix…”
“Sometimes people are afraid to tell the truth,” he said, and even through the fog of painkillers I could see he meant me. “They think people can’t handle the truth.”
“Vamp… it’s more than that.”
“What, then?”
Vamp knew about the burn, and he knew about the haanyo ng, too, but the one thing he didn’t know, the one thing I’d kept from him, and everyone, was just how much I’d come to question not just the haan but everything around us. If the haan could control what we saw, what else did they control? Did they control what we felt? What we heard, smelled, and even tasted? How far could they bend our minds?
“I don’t know what’s real,” I said. A tremor had entered my voice, and Vamp took my hand.
“We’ll figure it out,” he said. “I’ll help you.”
I struggled for something to say, but he just smiled, and changed the subject.
“That nurse really took care of you,” he said.
“Qian?”
“Yeah, I was really worried about you. Some of the people brought in were really bad, but she made sure you didn’t get lost in the shuffle. She said you reminded her of her daughter.”
“Don’t tell me to be quiet!” Dao-Ming’s voice carried from the waiting area. Vamp looked back, worry in his eyes.
“She’s freaking out,” he said. “After you got knocked out, the shooting got worse. She’s talking about arming ourselves.”
“Like… guns?”
“More than just guns. She needs to tone it down. She keeps spouting off like that and security will come after her.” He looked back at me. “Don’t worry about it right now.”
“Okay.” I leaned back, letting my head sink into the pillow. He leaned closer, looking at my forehead. “Is it really that bad?”
“It’s pretty bad.” He watched me for a while, and then something he saw on my face made him crinkle his brow. “What is it?”
“I… thought of something.”
“You thought of something?”
“In my dream.”
“You thought of something in a dream?”
I nodded. “I know what we have to do….”
“Huh?”
I concentrated, trying to keep the slur from my voice. “I know what we have to do.”
“What’s that?”
“We can’t wait anymore. We have to do something.”
“That didn’t go so good tonight.”
“The foreigners can see them,” I said, keeping my voice low. “They send messages, and I hear them in my dreams, they say—”
“Sam, take it easy. Would you listen to yourself?”
“I’m telling you, it’s true. They come in through the mite cluster. You can’t hear them, but I can.”
“Sam…”
“We have to do something. Something real. Come closer.”
He leaned in close and held my hand. “What is it?”
“We have to do something real. No more protests, no more talk…”
Whatever they had me on had begun to really tug at me, trying to pull me back under. Vamp seemed far away.
“Sam, just rest for now. We’ll talk more tomorrow when you’re feeling better.”
“I’ll forget.”
“No, you won’t forget. Just—”
“I know how to get to the haan… I know how we can expose them.”
He glanced back over his shoulder. “Sam, take it easy.”
“We cut the power,” I said.
“What?”
He shot another nervous glance back over his shoulder, and then leaned in close to whisper in my ear.
“Sam, be careful. A lot of people can hear you.”
Struggling to focus through the cloud of narcotics, I crooked my neck, wincing at the pain that managed to peak up over the drugs, and brought up the 3i front end to chat with him privately.
We have to cut the power off, I sent. Cut off their power. Bring down the force field, and whatever tech they use to control what we see.
His expression changed, at that. He looked concerned.
Is that what you believe? he asked. You think they control what we see?
I felt a small panic, and wanted to backpedal but the drugs had me confused, and I felt so tired.
They make us not see.
Not see what?
Them.
His expression of concern grew worse, and the longer he looked at me like that, the more my throat tightened. I felt tears begin to come.
What does that mean? he asked.
The haanyo ng… they weren’t made to look like us. They don’t look like us. Nothing is what we think.
But what does that mean, Sam? Tell me.
Tears ran down my cheeks, one trickling back into my ear.
Kill the power, and you’ll see, I told him. I swear. Please. I don’t know what’s real….
Okay.
Please, Vamp. I know it’s a lot but please….
Okay. He squeezed my hand. Sam, okay.
“Sam,” he said in my ear. “It’s okay.”
Can you do it? I asked him. You and your hacker friends? Could you do it?
He frowned and leaned close.
“I’ll look into it,” he whispered. “Okay?”
“Promise.”
“I promise. Now rest. And don’t say anything more about this, to anyone. Do you understand?”
I reached up and patted his cheek, which in my semilucid state came out as more of an awkward slap.
“Vamp?”
“Yeah, what is it?”
“Thanks.”
“For what?”
“Being here.”
He smoothed my hair back, then leaned forward and kissed me on the lips. I think he intended to just make it a short one, but I kissed him back as best I could and managed to flop one arm up around his neck. He let it linger a little longer, but then broke away and kissed my cheek instead.
“Now you get like this?” he asked. I giggled, and he kissed me once more before he began to pull away.