“Where?” I asked.
He opened the back. A black leather lounge-style seat was carved into the cargo panel, running across the width. It was shaped so a person would sit back in it with their legs bent. Hyden reached over that and lifted a panel, revealing a mega-computer.
Michael let out a low whistle. “Not just an old Metal detector.”
Okay, it was something. But no cause for celebration.
Hyden cocked his head. “You’re right, Callie, it’s bad. For the Metals. And Redmond. But don’t give up.”
I looked from Hyden to Michael. Their strength grounded me. And gave me a little hope.
We slept in the SUV—Hyden in the front, Michael and I in back. I’d drifted off after what seemed like hours trying to get comfortable with no blanket and no pillow, only to wake up disoriented in the dark. I could hear Hyden’s and Michael’s rhythmic breathing. It was dim, with just some small lights on the dashboard and around the interior of the car, glowing like luminescent bugs in a cave. Through the smoked windows I could see the handwritten Closed sign the scarf lady had propped up at the entrance. This was a permanent market, and many of the vendors had draped towels and rags over their wares. Other spaces were now empty. Several of the sellers slept in their parked cars so they could monitor the market.
As I looked through the window, my eyes focused on the window itself, and my vision became blurry. When it refocused, it was like the window was a screen, and across it played a scene that soon enveloped me. I was in Club Rune, moving across the dance floor, past the glamorous “teens,” mostly Ender renters in donor bodies, the way Helena had rented me. I glided up to the bar and showed the bartender a small holo of a girl. It was Emma, Helena’s missing granddaughter—blond and regal, with Helena’s noble nose and strong chin.
It was another memory of Helena’s playing out before me, a little differently this time, more visually. When she was using my body, she must have gone to Club Rune to ask about Emma. But the bartender looked at the holo and shook his head. I felt this heavy sadness tear at my heart.
Helena’s sadness, a moment preserved from the past, was frozen now in my memory banks. I was not only reliving the memory, I was also feeling it as if it were my own.
The vision ended and I was back in the car, staring at the window, a tear running down my cheek. Helena would have been there over two months ago; that was how old this memory was. And now it was resurfacing.
I had many sad memories of my own since the Spore Wars, but Helena’s dug into me. She had this intense determination, this desperation, this passion to find Emma. To find her answers. She wasn’t giving up. So how could I?
“I had another memory last night,” I said the next morning.
We’d all woken up around the same time, with fuzzy mouths and wrinkled clothes. I was in the back with Michael, leaning on my elbow. Hyden brought his driver’s seat up to its regular position and smoothed his rumpled hair with his hands.
“A memory hit?” Hyden asked.
“Yes. And it made me think about my father.”
Michael put his hand on my shoulder. “It’s hard, Cal,” he said. “We just went through so much loss. You know how it turns everything upside down.”
“I know, but …”
“Callie, remember what we saw in that Hall of Records,” Hyden said.
“It’s just a feeling. I can’t shake it.”
“What do you want to do?” Hyden asked.
I looked at each of them. “I want to go home.”
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Hyden, Michael, and I drove through the neighborhood in the valley north of Los Angeles where Michael and I grew up. Now it was an abandoned suburb. We passed house after boarded-up house with markings on them in red paint. Some said Relocated but Condemned was the most common.
Being here reminded me of how awful it had been as all our parents came down with the disease inflicted by the spores. How the marshals came to take them away to treatment facilities where no treatment waited. They were places people went to wait to die. How the Starters were taken to institutions unless grandparents claimed them. These were the homes of my friends and neighbors, the Surratts and Perrys and Rogers. All empty now, with overgrown lawns of dead grass and Condemned notices stamped on every door. These were the houses where I had trick-or-treated, had barbecues, celebrated birthday parties.
Now it was as if zombies had taken it over.
I touched the back of my head. We passed Michael’s house and he turned around to look back at it. I couldn’t read the expression on his face; I think that was the point.
“Do you want to stop?” I asked.