The bookcases have a little motif carved into the upper section of the frame, like a forested skyline rippling with the points of evergreen trees. It reminds me of the preserved clipping of the cabin in the woods that we found in Ursula Engel’s things at her former workplace.
A sense of certainty settles over me. “This washeroffice. Engel’s.”
Andreas runs his fingers through the dust on the desk. “She owned the property, and this is the nicest workroom we’ve seen so far. She must have run this place.”
“It sounded like she was pretty important to the facility, right? Or at least she used to be? She made a lot of the decisions?”
“Something like that,” Zian says in a low voice, shifting his weight from one foot to the other. “It was hard to tell from the snippets I heard. You don’t think…”
“This is where we started,” Dominic fills in when the larger guy doesn’t go on. “This was the first facility, from when we were too young to remember. We must have moved when we were still really small.”
An uneasy silence settles over us all. What are the chances that his explanationisn’taccurate? The guardians up and moved once before, after our escape attempt. There’s no reason they couldn’t have other times in the past.
Once upon a time, a woman named Ursula Engel bought this property, had this structure built, and held the nicest office. This washerproject.
And she raised six very unusual babies within these walls. Why? Where did we come from?
What did she want from us?
“Did she leave anything at all behind that’s useful?” Jacob asks, pushing into the room. “Zee, check for any compartments in the walls.”
Jacob starts testing the bookshelves for moveable panels. I peek behind the bookcases and then crouch down to peer beneath and behind the desk before checking inside the drawers.
In one of the lower drawers, my groping fingers catch on a small paper wedged right at the back. It tears a little as I tug it free, but when I smooth it out on my lap, it’s still perfectly readable if faded.
My pulse stutters.
“What’s that?” Jacob demands, turning toward me, but my throat has constricted too much for me to immediately answer.
It’s only the size of a post-it note, but I recognize the handwriting from the box of Ursula’s things, a distinctive mix of curly and spiky. And that handwriting has formed my name at the top of the note.
Riva
54 days – 9.5lb – 20.7”
First smile today. Like she was so pleased to see me. Lots of cooing. Lovely to hear.
My fingers tighten around the scrap. Am I imagining the affection in those words?
It sounds like… like she actually cared about me. About how I responded to her.
About whether I was happy enough to smile and coo.
Who was this woman, really? And if she raised us from when we were infants, if we mattered to her… why can’t I remember her?
Twenty-Two
Zian
Andreas sighs and frowns down at the console he’d been prodding. “I still can’t even get the screens to turn on. Any luck over there?”
On the other side of the room, I shake my head and glower at the buttons in front of me as if I can intimidate them into functioning. “The power’s on from the generator. The door opened. There’s got to be some way to get the rest of the system going.”
My gaze slides down from the waist-height controls area across the smooth base of the console that stands it on the floor, where most of the electronic workings must be hidden. “Maybe there’s something inside that needs to be fiddled with. I’ll check if I can make out the problem.”
As I plant myself on the floor so I don’t have to crane my neck, Dominic peeks into the room.
“Still nothing,” Andreas tells him before he has to ask, and lets out a rough breath. “Man. How long do you figure they kept us in this building before we moved to the first one we remember?”