Delirium - Lauren Oliver [119]
He nods, but I can tell he’s sure he hasn’t made a mistake. He’s sure that my mom is in here—this place, this above-ground tomb—has been there all this time. The idea is overwhelming. I can’t think too much about the possibility that Alex is right. I need to concentrate, focus all my energy on just staying on my feet.
“Come on,” he says. He walks in front of me, like he’s leading me on official business. I keep my eyes trained on the ground. I’m almost glad that the presence of the guards requires Alex to ignore me. I’m not sure I could handle a conversation right now. A thousand feelings swirl through me, a thousand questions whip around my mind, a thousand suppressed hopes and desires, buried long ago—and yet I can’t hold on to anything, not a single theory or explanation that makes any kind of sense.
Alex had refused to tell me more after his declaration last night. “You have to see,” he kept repeating dumbly, as though it was the only thing he knew how to say. “I don’t want to get your hopes up for nothing.” And then he’d told me to meet him at the Crypts. I think I must have been in shock. The whole time I kept congratulating myself for not freaking out, for not screaming or crying or demanding an explanation, but when I got home later I realized I had no memory of the walk at all and hadn’t been keeping an eye out for regulators or patrols. I must have just marched stiffly down the street, blind to everything.
But now I get the point of shock, of numbness. Without the numbness I probably wouldn’t have been able to get up and dressed this morning. I wouldn’t have been able to find my way here, and I wouldn’t be taking careful steps forward now, pausing a respectful distance behind him as Alex shows his ID badge to a guard at a gate and begins gesturing to me.
Alex launches into an explanation he has obviously rehearsed. “There was an . . . incident at her evaluation,” he says, his voice icy. He and the guard are both staring at me: the guard, suspiciously; Alex with as much detachment as he can muster. His eyes are steel, all the warmth drained out of them, and it makes me nervous to know that he can do that so successfully—become someone else, someone who doesn’t have any attachment to me. “Nothing too severe. But her parents and my superiors thought she might benefit from a little reminder about the dangers of disobedience.”
The guard flicks his eyes over me. His face is fat and red, the skin on either side of his eyes protruding and puffy, like he is a mound of dough in the middle of rising. Soon, I fantasize, his eyes will be concealed behind flesh altogether. “What kind of incident?” he says, snapping his gum. He shifts the enormous automatic rifle he is carrying to his other shoulder.
Alex leans forward, so that he and the guard are separated through the gate by only a few inches. He drops his voice, but I can still hear him. “Her favorite color is the color of sunrise,” he says.
The guard stares at me for a split second longer and then waves for us to pass through. “Stand back while I get the gate,” he says. He disappears into a guard hut, similar to the one at the labs where Alex is stationed, and after a few seconds the electronic gates shudder inward. Alex and I start across the courtyard, toward the building entrance. With every step, the hulking silhouette of the Crypts looms a little larger. The wind picks up, whirling bits of dust across the bleak yard, sending a lone plastic bag tumbling and skipping across the grass, and the air is filled with the kind of electricity that always comes before a thunderstorm—the kind of crazed, vibrating energy that makes it seem like something huge could happen at any second, like the whole world could just dissolve into chaos. I would give anything to have Alex turn around, smile at me, and offer me his hand. Of course, he can’t. He strides quickly ahead of me, spine stiff, eyes forward.
I’m not sure how many people are confined