Zhi stepped out of the shadows and rapped his knuckles on the glass to get her attention. Con flinched, hands going to her face to cover her eyes.
“Where’s Tommy?” Zhi asked, impatient to get on the road.
“Are you okay to drive?” Con asked half-heartedly, slipping effortlessly into the memory. She was eager to push on to Raleigh but had to admit Tommy was right: Zhi looked exhausted. They’d played five cities in six days, and they were all burned out. More than a little sick of each other after a week crammed into a van with all their gear. She loved them, but they were all starting to drive each other a little crazy. The way family could. Before the show, the band had voted to drive on to Raleigh rather than spend the night in DC.
It had been Con’s idea, even though the Raleigh show wasn’t for three days. If they drove straight through, she and Zhi would have forty-eight uninterrupted hours to themselves. They hadn’t been alone in nearly two weeks, and her need for him had begun to ache. They were going to hang the “Do Not Disturb” sign on the motel door and not show their faces until it was time for the show. Two whole days in bed with Zhi. She could hardly wait.
Tommy had been the lone holdout, voting to stay and get a proper night’s sleep first. Why the rush? he wanted to know. Majority ruled, however. Band policy. Although, in retrospect, hadn’t Zhi always put up his hand straightaway so that everyone knew his preference? And didn’t Con always vote with him, which meant that Stephie and Hugh almost always did too? That left poor Tommy to be the unwelcome voice of reason in the band.
“Yeah, I’m cool,” Zhi said with a grin. “Stephie and Hugh are getting us some caffeine and snacks for the road. Just gotta find Tommy now.”
“Haven’t seen him,” Con answered despite wanting desperately to warn him that maybe they shouldn’t drive on to Raleigh tonight. But this was a memory, not a new experience, no matter how real it felt. She could only relive it the way it had been lived. There would be no revisions. No way to change the words any more than the outcome.
“Maybe he’s having a smoke,” Zhi said, turning to go. “I’ll check around back.”
“Raleigh!” she called after him. The way she had three years ago, when what she wanted to do now was tell him how Tommy’s parents had paid to fly his body home. How even if she hadn’t been in the hospital, she wouldn’t have dared to show her face at the funeral.
“Raleigh,” he answered with a melancholy half smile and dissolved into the gloom. Con yelled for him to wait and pushed open the lid. Her shirt had done its job after all, and she fell out of the womb, sprawling across the floor. She called for Zhi to come back, but he was gone. Had never really been there despite how real it felt. She shook all over. The gray static returned.
What was happening to her?
She lay there on the floor until her heart stopped trying to fall to its death. Then she rolled gracelessly onto her back and pulled up her pants in the dark. What the hell did she do now? On one hand, she hadn’t been discovered; on the other, she was trapped inside a vault with the ghost of the man she loved.
Wonderful.
Her LFD vibrated in her pocket. An incoming message. She fought with her uncooperative hands to slip it into place behind her ear and toggled open a message window.
It’s Laleh. Sorry about that. Are you okay?
Con struggled to type out an answer on her chest. Thank God for autocorrect. Creeped the hell out. Otherwise, decent. R u coming back?
Can’t. Gabe here is keeping me company until Dr. Fenton arrives, but I should be able to guide you out.
I’m kinda locked in a vault. Apparently she could type pronouns even if saying them felt like she was being dragged across gravel.
The vault door clicked and began to open again.
How about now? Laleh messaged.
Less.
A floor plan appeared in Con’s display. An X marked her current location, and a dotted line showed a path to a door circled in red.
Give me access to your camera, Laleh messaged.
Con toggled her permissions.
Okay, that’s better. Ready?
Is it safe?
No idea. Let’s find out.
It took ten minutes to make it to the circled door because Con froze every time she heard a sound. She felt strangely alienated from her body. As if it were the avatar in a video game, and she didn’t know how to work the controls. Walking in a straight line proved a challenge, as did spatial awareness. She had trouble judging the distance between herself and objects, and bumped into more than one wall like a character out of the old cartoons her grandmother had loved.