In the dream I was running for a train.

And I was a child, maybe seven years old. But then I was nineteen, and then I was an old woman. Fifty or seventy or twelve. And I was running for the train.

And Robbie was on the train. I had to get to him. I had to save him.

But then it wasn't Robbie. It was Brady.

And Adam was with me, running by my side. He took my hand. We were running for the train. But it was getting away from us—no, we were pushing it away. Like an inner tube floating on still water. The harder we ran, the more waves we created, ripples undulating out into the water. And we were in a lake, drowning.

And Adam's hand slipped out of mine. And he was drowning. And I couldn't save him.

His skin was turning blue, his beautiful green eyes fading to gray and finally to black.

And I was in the pyramid house then. And Kieren climbed in through the window. And I was crying. And he said, "You shouldn't have done it, M. Now look what you've done."

And I said I didn't mean it.

And he said, "Look what you've done to me."

**

When I woke up, the first thing I noticed was pain. A sharp, dull, excruciating pain in my heels. I was lying on a rigid, cold table. Metal. And my heels were pressed hard against that metal—so hard that the circulation was cut off. But now that I was stirring, sensation was pulsating back into my feet and it felt like a floodgate of blood was beating against every nerve ending.

But then the pain in my heels was going to have to wait, because it was competing with the stabbing pinch in my left temple.

I was woozy and weak. I could barely lift my hand, and it seemed to take an eternity to get it all the way up to my head. Or across to my head, really, because I was still lying prone on that table. But I knew, in the split second before my fingers finally found their target, what I would find.

There was a bulge beyond my hairline. A small concave protrusion.

They had implanted my device.

"No," I tried to say, but only a whistling breath escaped.

"Don't try to sit up," a voice ordered. "Give yourself time."

"What did you do?" This time a whisp of sound formed every other word.

"I told you." The voice belonged to Elaheh, who was sitting in a chair watching me. We were in a large, clean white room. Some sort of makeshift operating area. "You can't be here without it. There are rules."

"Amalia told you not to."

"Amalia will understand."

I shivered with cold and weakness. I didn't have the strength to argue. Whatever drugs she had given me to knock me out were still in my system, and I couldn't resist an overwhelming desire to sleep.

"Do you need anything?" I heard her say. "Water?"

But I was already drifting into darkness.

I woke again in the room I had fallen asleep in the night before—a beautifully appointed and quite spacious bedroom, in a lovely four-poster bed with olive and burgundy curtains pulled back on either side. No light entered the room from its one window, draped as it was in a thin white curtain. But I could hear a plaintive cry from a nightingale just outside the house.

I had no idea how much time had passed, hours or days. But I was still wearing the pajama set my aunt had loaned me before bed, just as I had been when Elaheh had implanted my device.

My head still hurt, the pain rippling out into a killer headache. But the rest of me was fine. I turned to my side and found a little dish with pills in it, and a note: "For your headache." The large, looping handwriting belonged to my aunt, and the pills did seem to be ordinary aspirin. So I took them both with the large glass of water sitting next to them.

The note hadn't said anything else. No "Sorry about this," or "I really didn't know." And the reason why was obvious, wasn't it? Amalia had known that Elaheh would implant my device. That she would drug me—when? At dinner?—and do it against my will.

It was my fault for trusting her. If there was one thing I had learned about my aunt since starting school in the fall, it was that she was liar. An actress, playing a part. Had all of it—the house and hosting Robbie's wedding and the afternoon teas—had it all just been a ruse to get me here? Had I been playing into her hands the whole time?

But wait, she couldn't be a liar anymore.

Now that Amalia was on this side of the door, she had my device implanted in her brain. If it really worked the way they said it did, then she wouldn't be capable of lying anymore. I thought about what she'd said at dinner: You said we weren't doing that. And Elaheh had responded: I know.

I shook my head, mad at myself for not putting it together sooner. They never actually said they wouldn't put this thing in my head, just that they had talked about not doing it. So apparently, this device that I had invented worked quite literally. I would have to be careful of that...from now on.

So if I couldn't trust Amalia, and I certainly couldn't trust Elaheh, then there was only one person in this house who might tell me the truth. I had to find him. Now. Before they all realized I was awake.

I slid out of the bed, cautious not to make a sound. But when my foot hit the wood floor, the plank creaked slightly. I froze, and tried moving my foot a few inches over. I ended up sneaking out of the room on tip-toe, carefully trying out each footfall before committing to it.

My door was not locked, and to my relief, I discovered that the long cavernous hallway was carpeted in ancient-looking rugs, providing a nice quiet padding for my bare feet. Only the dimmest yellow light from a lamp on a small table lit my way.

At the first bedroom I approached, a pair of slipper-like shoes sat near the closed door. They were small and well-worn, with a yellow stain on the left one that could have been saffron or mustard. That girl Layla worked in the kitchen. And they matched the dress she was wearing at dinner.

I kept walking until I found another bedroom door at the end of the hall, this one with two sets of women's shoes. I could hear light snoring beyond the door, and I could only presume the room belonged to Amalia and Elaheh. Sneaking past it, I held my breath, terrified of making any sound.

Finally, around the bend, there was one more bedroom. This one had only one set of slippers—large and newer. Still clean. Certainly a man's. A surge of sweat covered my palms, and I wasn't sure if it was nerves or the after effects of the anesthesia working its way through my system.

But I pushed the door open anyway.

I made out Brady's profile immediately in the dim light of his bedroom, the blinking red sensor barely visible beneath his hairline. He was sleeping in a large bed, very similar to my own, but with no curtains draped from the posts. His limbs were splayed out like an octopus, churning the bedsheets into a mess of waves.

I hated the thought of waking him. He looked so peaceful, snoring lightly. And yet I crept closer. I knelt down by his side, reaching out to stroke his hair. But my fingers didn't make it there before I noticed that he had company in the bed.

Layla had been hidden beneath all those sheets and pillows, but now she stirred. Her hand draped possessively over his torso, and even in his sleep he pulled her closer.

I started to back away, praying that I could make it to the door without waking either of them. But I had no such luck. Layla's eyes opened, assessing me in the darkness like a cheetah. I knew then that she had been awake since I walked in the door. She was just waiting for me to come closer.

My hands balled up into themselves, caught. There was nothing to do but nod to her and walk back out of the room.

Once in the hallway, I really didn't know what I was supposed to do next. The situation felt impossible. My head still ached from the surgery, and my fingers rubbed impulsively over the protruding sensor that would now be a permanent fixture in my head. Elaheh would never remove it, I knew that. And after a while, it would be as entwined in my brain as it was in all of theirs.

Would I be stuck here then? How would I ever go home? If I did go home, how would I explain this thing in my head, this abomination that shouldn't even exist?

And how would I ever find Adam again?

The panic attack started before I could implement any of my tricks—the breathing and the hand movements. I tried them anyway. I can control my hands. I control my feet. I am free.

But no, I wasn't free. I was trapped now. A rabbit in a snare. There was no way out.

And that's when the door to Brady's room opened, and Layla stepped out.

She stood over me where I had collapsed, leaning against the wall, my knees up to my chest. Hyperventilating.

Her face changed then, turning softer. And she kneeled down by my side and put a hand on my knee. "Breathe," she said. "Just breathe. It'll pass."

I followed her instructions, keeping my eyes locked on hers. And the breath did come back to me, as she said it would. And my hands unfurled. And I could breathe.

"Come with me," she said, standing again.

And not knowing what else to do, I followed her through the sleeping house and into the dawning sunlight of the courtyard.

****

Taking bets as to what year humanity will actually implant our smartphones into our heads. I'm thinking 20 years from now. Anyone else? (Someone screen shot this so if I'm right people will say I was a genius! LOL)