Page 62 of White Lights
He swallows. “I think your emotions overrode the Vault. I’ve never seen it happen before. It’s not a bad thing, necessarily.” He scratches his head, thinking. “It might have something to do with your vision. I wonder what else you can see.”
“Rafe,howdid Acheron get that footage of my brother? Is it real?”
“It’s real,” he says, meeting her eyes. “If an image or a scene passes through a Lens at any point, it gets saved in the Vault.”
“Who filmed it?”
“Acheron has a vast network—”
“What does that mean? You’re paying some nurse to strap a GoPro on her head?” Dez feels near tears. She’s so confused, and what she just saw seems cruel.
Then Dez has a sickening realization.
“Rafe? Before we got on the plane in Death Valley, and I said I wouldn’t come here unless I could see my brother whenever I wanted …”
Rafe stares at her. He nods.
“Is this what you meant?”
“Dez—” Rafe sighs.
“Is it?”
“This is the closest you’re likely to get.”
“No. No. You told me—”
“The workload here, Dez, you can’t just take a weekend off. You won’t be able to keep up.”
He puts a hand on her shoulder, and she hates herself for wanting to fold into him. He tricked her.
“Everyone here has until November first to complete their first film,” he says. “That isn’t easy. And if you don’t do it, that’s it, it’s over. You’re out, and you’re on your own. We can’t protect you.”
“Acheron was never going to fly me back to see Mo,” Dez says.
“Do you even think that’s what your family wants?” Rafe says, cutting through Dez’s bramble of a heart with the truth.
She was always trapped here. If not by Rafe or by the school, then by her own actions that night at the Dairy Barn. She deserves to not go home.
She sniffs. “I want to meet with the lawyers. Or was that a lie, too?”
“None of it’s a lie. You can meet with our legal counsel anytime.”
“What you’re doing isn’t ethical,” Dez says, waving her hand in the place on the screen where Mo used to be. “That should be private.”
“You’re preaching to the choir,” Rafe says. “And if you’re interested in filmmaking ethics, you should join Jet’s Eye for an Eye club. When I first read Plato’sRepublic, I wanted to tattoo it on my body. Unfortunately, we don’t live in an ethical era.”
“How convenient,” Dez says. “I’m sure no authoritarian has made that claim before.”
“But weren’t you glad,” Rafe asks, “ just for a moment, to get to see Mo?”
A tear slides down Dez’s cheek. She was.
“Okay, Dez,” Rafe says quietly. “Pitch me.”
“Pitch you what?” she mutters, wiping her eyes.
“You want to make a film about your brother,” he says. “What you just did, accessing that footage with your mind before anyone showed you how? You got my attention. Let’s see if you can keep it.”
