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I did, and she held the device over me, tapped the screen with her finger, and began to rotate graphics on the surface. The blue glow grew stronger, and she frowned as the readings began to jump around on the screen.
She knitted her eyebrows together tighter and pursed her lips. She grumbled under her breath and tapped her device harder. “Fuck, I can’t get a reading on you.”
I stepped closer and held out my other arm. An arc of purple light sparked out of the device and connected to each one of my hands. I yelped and tried to pull back, but it locked my hands into the current, and I was trapped. It wasn’t painful, but it didn’t feel good. It was like an overload of static electricity buildup, my arms vibrated, and the fine hairs along my skin stood straight up on end.
“What are you doing?” I asked and wiggled my hands again.
“I think the question is, what are you?” she asked, and her eyes flitted up to lock on mine. “You’re not from here, are you?”
“What the fuck does that mean?” Harlow asked. “Of course, she’s from Crimson, as much as I am.”
“No, I mean from here, this world,” the doctor replied, her eyes wide with surprise. “Your frequency isn’t vibrating on the right wavelength. You’re not from this universe.”
The air left the room, and pressure exploded in my head as she twisted her fingers on the screen and hit me with a massive charge.
CHAPTER10
“Couldsomebody please tell me what the fuck is going on?” Rome asked, throwing his hands up in frustration.
“I’d like to know,” Alexander said. He wanted to use his Upper power, I could see it in how he clenched his jaw, but he had no power here. “None of this makes any fucking sense.”
“Of course, it doesn’t,” the doctor replied, pressing the screen and releasing my hands in one last short, sharp zap of purple-tinted electricity. “None of it makes sense when you don’t have to understand how this world works. Why do you think you Uppers need us Lowers so desperately? Why do you think we Lowers attend our ceremonies? It’s all an exchange of energy, we harvest the electrical currents coming off nodes in the earth’s lay lines, and Uppers harvest the power they need off our bodies. It’s the way the world has run since the Uprising over a hundred years ago, where Uppers broke away from the consolidated community.”
“Why don’t they teach us this in school?” I asked, rubbing my hands. I watched as she ran the device across Luke’s face again, and miraculously he did seem to be getting better.
“They don’t want you to know that you need us,” she said and motioned for Alexander to give her his hand. She hooked the device up to him, and it strobed a brilliant, beautiful blue light as she ran it back and forth across Luke’s body. “This is going to heal him. That you would do this for him means a lot to me and even warms the icy depths of my cynical heart.”
“We have to get him back to Crimson, but can I come to see you again?” I asked her as she worked her magic, or what looked like magic to me. I was mesmerized by the exchange of energy from Alexander’s body to Luke’s and how it helped his healing process.
“Yes, I think you should,” she said and looked up at me. “I want to know where you come from, there are others like you as well, but I’ve never seen this in an Upper.”
We fell silent after that, each lost in our thoughts as the doctor did her work. After Luke was stabilized and vastly improved, she hooked her machine to Rome and ran it over Harlow. Harlow didn’t glow and heal as well as I had, but I assumed my treatments drew on greater power reserves to accommodate the needs of the Uppers who used them. Harlow was much better by the time we left, though. Her cheeks had filled out, and she had a healthy glow instead of a grey, dull sheen that had clung to her flesh. She moved better, too, less like an old crone and more like the energetic hell raiser she was at heart.
We helped Luke walk to the SUV and got him situated in the middle, with me on one side and Rome on the other. As we navigated our way out of the underground maze beneath the Upper city, Luke started to wake up and even began to talk.
“I saw her in there,” he told us, his voice a harsh whisper from where he’d been kicked in the throat.
“Your sister?” I asked.
He nodded. “Marianne. I saw her.”
“Was she in the jail?” I asked. “Was she in there with you?”
“No,” he replied and closed his eyes. He dropped his head back against the seat and rested for a moment. Then he opened them, looked at me, and shook himself as if to clear the confusion. “I mean, maybe? I don’t know where I saw her, but I did see her somewhere since they dragged my ass off campus.”
“You must have imagined it,” I told him gently. “You were really roughed up when we got you back. I don’t know when they beat you that badly, but I’m sure it caused some brain trauma.”
“Brain trauma?” Rome said. “Shit, I’m surprised you can still walk after what they did to you. I had no idea how horrible your life was as a Lower.”
“You didn’t know because you didn’t want to know,” Harlow said from the front seat. “You could have learned all of this years ago or taken the time to listen to us, but you never did. Neither one of you did. Not until Willow had some sense knocked into her head did you pay attention.”
Alexander cleared his throat, and Rome didn’t reply. Neither one of them did. The silence was enough. It was weighted with the complacency of their positions.
We finally got back to the campus after midnight, and Alexander was stopped at the gatehouse when we pulled up. A single guard demanded to know why he was coming in so late, and he gave some lame excuse about doing research for a class. Again, the power of Uppers, the Lower guard waved him past and pushed a button to open the wide iron gates.
“I don’t know why I thought we’d get in trouble,” Harlow said when Alexander parked the SUV. I was prepared for one more acerbic rant about class inequalities from her, but she simply sighed and fell silent again. At that point, it felt like we were all tired of talking about it. We wanted to move along with our lives and get back to the rhythm of living.
Alexander and Rome helped Alexander back to the men’s side of the campus, and I walked slowly with Harlow, not wanting this night to end. It wasn’t that I wanted to prolong Luke’s pain or Harlow’s obvious discomfort. It was more that I didn’t want to wind up alone again. I couldn’t bear to sleep in my bed without somebody near me. I couldn’t stand the thought of waking up alone in the dark. I felt like I was dissolving with each step, and I had to blink twice at one point because my hand wavered and blurred before me.
