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“So the past years have been a delusion of some sort?” She didn’t think so. No hallucination could be that messed up.
Tucking a strand of long, caramel-colored hair behind her ear, Claire looked around sadly.
“Where you are physically hasn’t made much of a difference,” she finally answered with somber reflection. “What’s important is that no matter where you went, no matter the enemies you faced, you were still locked in this cell, alone. You never left it after you realized Gideon had voluntarily left you here.”
She wasn’t going to argue with a spirit, she rather doubted there was much point to it.
Claire smiled a bit wearily. “You’ll deny it to your last breath, though, won’t you, Cat?”
“I’d have to know what I’m denying first,” Cat informed her, shrugging. “Why don’t you take us out of here to somewhere nice. I don’t like talking here.”
It was a dream, she knew it was.
“It’s no dream,” Claire snapped, surprising her. She couldn’t remember a time when Claire had ever
snapped at her. She’d always been far too timid.
“Fine, it’s no dream.” She watched the girl with narrowed eyes now. “Does that mean when I wake up I won’t be at the Reever house sleeping with Graeme?”
She almost smirked back at Claire, but being cruel to the girl just didn’t seem right.
“Don’t play games, Cat, both our lives are riding on this,” Claire demanded firmly. Not angrily or fiercely, simply with a firmness Cat had never sensed in her.
“Our lives are riding on what, Claire?” Cat demanded. “On me admitting that we’re in the research center? Fine, here we are.” She spread her arms out to indicate the cell they sat within. “According to you I never left it. What now?”
Claire rose slowly to her feet. Her image was clad in the jeans and the loose tank top she’d died in. They were dusty, torn; her feet were bare. She looked like the waif Cat knew those who had loved her had seen her as. Frail. Far too gentle for the life she’d been born into.
“You can’t see that a part of you is still locked in this cage, all alone, can you?” Claire whispered.
“Judd was here.” He hadn’t left. She’d always wondered why he hadn’t left, though. He was strong enough, smart enough that he had to have known when Graeme escaped that night. Yet, he’d stayed.
“Why do you think Judd stayed?” Claire turned back to her slowly. “If he could have escaped this hell as well, why didn’t he leave with Gideon?”
“Graeme,” Cat corrected her almost absently, her own thoughts lost in that question for long moments before she finally shrugged. “Judd was as secretive as Graeme. He never told me.”
“And you never asked?” Claire tipped her head to the side as she watched her inquisitively. “That doesn’t seem like you, Cat. You’re so damned nosy nothing ever gets past you. Why would you let Judd get by with not explaining that? I know you would have wondered.”
“I thought Graeme was dead.” She wanted to jump from the cot, wanted to throw herself out of it, desperate to escape the dream, yet she seemed locked in place as she watched Claire. “I guess I just assumed the soldiers assigned to the euthanasia team hadn’t been ordered to take Judd.”
What the hell was going on? What did Claire want from her that required them to be here?
Claire shook her head. “Until you realize you never left this place, until you ask yourself why and answer that question honestly, then you’re risking not just your life, but also Graeme’s.” She sighed. “I always thought I was the coward, Cat, but I’m starting to believe, in ways, you’re just as much a coward as I am.”
“Don’t piss me off, Claire,” Cat warned her, narrowing her eyes on her. “I can still kick your ass. Dream or not.”
Claire smirked. “You can’t come off that cot, Cat. You can’t kick anyone’s ass in this dream. You’re locked there, just as you were the morning those alarms woke you. Alarms that you knew meant an attempted or successful escape.”
Cat shook her own head at this point. “I thought the scientists were trying to trick us . . .”
“Why?” Claire laughed derisively. “Why would they do that, Cat? He was gone. You were smarter than that. Gideon made certain you were smarter than that.”
“Graeme. His fucking name is Graeme,” Cat corrected her, growing angry now. “Stop this, Claire. If you want to talk to me, then do it as you always have. We talk much better when I’m awake.”
Leaning against the steel bars, Claire watched her with such intent somberness that Cat almost feared the other girl would keep her within that dreamscape forever.
“You can leave anytime you want to, Cat,” Claire whispered, her expression never changing. “It’s up to you to wake up, just as it’s up to you to realize it doesn’t matter if you wake up, you’ll still be here.” She waved her arm slowly, encompassing the cells, the life Cat had once lived. “Realize that before it’s too late for both of us.”
She could wake whenever she wanted to? Well, she wanted to wake up now. Right now.
