India, Unknown Province 2 page

So I handed the tape recorder to him and opened my fist. Wayne’s brown eye stared at nothing. I pinched it very carefully between my thumb and forefinger and held it just above my own eyes, like Jude said.

The door unlocked. We went inside.

I THINK ALL OF US half-expected to find a swat team armed and waiting for us. Or to be felled by poison darts or something. But when I entered Dr. Kells’s office, with Jamie and Stella flanking each shoulder, the room was dark and silent.

The room was also practically empty. Distressingly blank. There were no papers on the metal desk, which was really just a worktable, but there was a worn Persian rug beneath it, looking out of place in the sterile room. There were no notebooks, no file folders, not even an office chair—just a little metal stool. It looked nothing like an office, even, except for the wall-to-wall file cabinets, which I prayed weren’t empty.

“Where do we start?” Stella asked. “And what are we looking for, exactly? Can someone catch me up?”

I looked at Jude’s watch. Twelve thirty-six. In the morning, I assumed. We had passed no windows, and there was no way to tell whether it was night or day, but I guessed night. It seemed more appropriate.

If what Jude had said was true, Kells knew where we were, and she was probably watching us right now, so I played the tape. We listened to Jude’s message together. It sounded even stranger in Kells’s office, somehow, than it had in the room with Wayne, and I noticed things I’d missed the first time. Jude’s voice sounded softer than I remembered it. More earnest. There was no edge to it, no hint of sarcasm or impatience. And he sounded sick. I heard him faintly wheezing between words, and his breath rattled when he coughed.

“He never told us where to find the map,” Stella said when the tape ended. “It could be anywhere. And there’s only one way in and out.” She flicked a nervous glance at the door.

“That we know of,” Jamie added.

They were both right. “But why would Jude help us escape just to trap us in her office, when we were exactly where she wanted us before?”

“Maybe he doesn’t want what she wants anymore,” Stella said. “Maybe . . . ” Her voice drifted off. “When he took us before, I was on my way back to my room, and he just grabbed me. Stuck something into my arm, and I passed out and woke up in the Zen garden, tied up like you saw.”

Jamie picked at his lips. “Same with me. And he never said anything to us, not until you got there. He was just—quiet. Focused.”

Stella closed her eyes, and her thick eyebrows drew together. “Megan woke up, and she was begging him not to hurt her.”

Who’s Megan? I mouthed to Jamie.

“Megan? From Horizons? Who was afraid of everything in Group?”

It didn’t register, and Jamie could tell. He looked worried.

“And then Adam—” Stella began.

“The douchecanoe who always fucked with me,” Jamie added helpfully.

“—wanted to know why Jude was doing this to us, and Jude just looked at him, and then at Megan, and then at Tara, who was passed out. He slit Tara’s throat while she was unconscious, just like that.” Stella snapped her fingers.

“Didn’t say a word till after her blood had already soaked into the sand,” Jamie said. “And then he said that if we didn’t stay quiet, he would do the same to the rest of us, one by one. No diabolical monologue. No explanation. Nothing.” Jamie paused. “That is all to say—he is one seriously sick fuck.”

“I know this.” My voice was firm and clear. “I’ve known Jude longer than I’ve known either of you.”

I thought about telling them about Laurelton, and the asylum, and the scars on my wrists—the things Jude had done to me, the things he’d made me do. I decided I would, but now was not the time.

“I’m not saying I trust him. I’m just saying we don’t have a lot of other options. Can we just look for the map, please, and get Noah and get the fuck out of here?”

Without another word Jamie and Stella began to search. We opened drawer after drawer. They were all empty.

The minutes ticked by, stoking my frustration and my rage. I wanted to knock the file cabinets over, to lift the table and throw it into the wall. I wanted to claw the walls down to their studs. Stella grew visibly nervous, grinding her teeth, winding her fingers around her hair, until finally she said, “We have to get out of here.”

“Do you hear something?” Jamie asked her.

She shook her head. “No. But I want to go.” She tried to turn the door handle. It had locked behind us.

“You can’t get out like that,” I said as Stella let out a whimper. I was on my hands and knees on the rug, under the desk, trying to find anything that could help us. “You need to use the eye.”

I’d left it on the worktable above me, but as I tried to stand back up to get it, I banged my head. “Ow.”

Jamie poked his head under the table. “You okay?”

I shot him a glare. “Do I look okay?”

“Touché,” he said, kneeling beside me. He patted my head a few times until I threatened to eat him.

“Hey, Mara, did you see this?” he asked.

“What?”

He was staring at a spot on the rug, and reached for it. It was a key.

Stella’s face split into a smile, showing teeth. “It has to open something!”

“That is what keys generally do,” I said.

“And not a drawer,” she said, ignoring me. “None of them were locked.”

“So maybe a safe or something?” Jamie crossed the room. He leaned one of the empty file cabinets forward, to find only solid wall behind it.

I rocked back on my heels and plucked the key from Jamie’s fingers. “Where did you find it?”

“It was right there.” He pointed under the table. “Maybe it was taped under the table, and when you banged your head, it fell?”

An idea crystallized as I looked at the worn, patterned rug. “Help me move this,” I said, indicating the table. Stella looked unsure and cast a glance at the door before she joined me and Jamie. We lined up on one side of the table.

It was insanely heavy, solid metal, and it took everything we had, which wasn’t very much, to push it off the rug. Panting, we took a moment to catch our breaths before Jamie and I reached for the rug and pulled it up at the same time.

“Well, heavens to Betsy,” Jamie whispered.

A rectangle had been cut into the linoleum floor. And at the bottom of it, right in the center, was a keyhole.

Before Jamie or Stella could say another word, I stuck the key into the hole. The room was so quiet that the three of us heard the tumbler click. I hadn’t noticed before that the alarm had gone silent.

I pulled back on the key, and the trapdoor lifted with it, surprisingly light. We peered down but couldn’t see anything except the top rungs of a ladder.

“Jamie, you keep the eye.” Never know when you might need it. I swung my leg over the first rung. Stella tugged at the shoulder of my hospital gown. “Where are you going?”

“Down.” I picked her fingers off me. The ladder had raised bumps for traction, and they pricked my bare feet. “You have the tape?” I asked Jamie. He nodded. And I still had the scalpel, now tucked into the waistband of my underwear. “You guys can stay here if you want till I come back with the map.”

“Yeah, no,” Jamie said. “I’ll be right behind you.”

“Then I’ll see you on the other side,” I said, and disappeared into the darkness.

THIS WAS WHAT WE HAD been looking for.

The room we found ourselves in was massive, almost bunker-like. On the wall opposite us a global map stretched from corner to corner. It was dotted with thousands of pins in dozens of colors, connected to one another by string to form a web. By some of the dots there were pictures of people—some smiling, most not—or scribbled-on Post-its, or newspaper clippings in different languages.

“Is that it?” Stella asked as she hopped down the last rung. She landed softly on the floor in her socked feet. Jamie wasn’t wearing shoes either.

“Can’t be.” Jamie said what I was thinking. “It’s the world, not Horizons.”

And then I saw something familiar. A whiteboard easel with writing on it, writing I recognized. The dark blue marker was faded but legible.

Double-Blind

S. Benicia, manifested (G1821 carri rigin unknown).

Side effects(?): anorexia, bulimia, self-harm. Respons administered pharmaceuticals. Contraindications suspec but unknown.

T. Bur ows, n-carrier, deceas

M. Ca no, on-carrier, sed

M. Dyer, manifesting (G1821 carrier, original).

Side effects: co-occurring PTSD, hallucinations, self-harm, poss. schizophr ia/paranoi subtype. Respon to midazolam. Contraindications: suspected n.e.s.s.?

J. Roth, manifesting (G1 21 carrier, suspecte original), induced. Side effects: poss. borderline personality disorder, poss. mood disorder. Contrain ations suspected but unknown.

A. Ken all: non-carrier, decease

J. L.: artificial manifested, Lenaurd protocol, early induction.

Side effec : multiple personality disorder (unrespo ), antisocial personality disorder (unre onsive); migraines, extreme aggression (unresponsive). No known contraindications.

C. L.: artificially manifested, Lenaurd protocol, early induction, deceased.

P. Reynard: non-carrier, deceased.

N. Shaw: manifested (G1821 carrier, original).

Side effects(?): self-harm, poss. oppositiona defiant disorder (unresponsiv ), conduct disorder? (unresponsive); tested: class a barbiturat s (unresponsive), class b (unresponsive), class c (un esponsive); unresponsive to all classes; (test m.a.d.), deceased.

Generalize side effe ts: nausea, elevated temp., insomnia, night terrors

Before I could say anything, Jamie began writing giant letters over the words with his index finger.

F-U-C-K Y-O-U.

My sentiments exactly.

I turned my attention to the stacks and piles of papers, notebooks, and files strewn around the room. Books had been haphazardly stacked on open metal kitchen shelving, rolls of paper (maps? charts?) leaned against the walls. A glass globe teetered precariously on a small table, holding what looked like a large metal grain of rice. The place was chaos. Not what I’d expected from Dr. Kells.

I had a hunch about the rolls of paper and headed for them, skirting the U-shaped desk in the center of the room. But a noise like a burst of television static snapped my head around.

A flatscreen hung from the ceiling, and with another burst of static it came to life. Dr. Kells filled the screen. She was seated at a table in front of a pea-green-and-off-white-striped wall. Her lips moved, but there was no sound. It looked like she was speaking to someone, someone offscreen. She was more animated than I’d ever seen her. The sleeves of her white lab coat were rolled up to her elbows, and her hands moved as she spoke. Then, finally, the audio turned on.

“G1821 operates in many ways like cancer,” Kells said. “There are environmental and genetic factors that can trigger it, and when triggered, the gene turns on, like a switch, activating an ability in its host. But as you’ve witnessed, the gene also appears to turn off certain switches, like the instinct for self-preservation. Certain thoughts and behaviors can become compulsive, such as the urge to self-harm.”

A burst of static distorted the image, but we heard Kells speak in fits and starts. “Jude was needed to trigger Mara, to expose her to what she was most afraid of, in order for me to know whether and when she would manifest, and in order for me to study her developed ability—its consequences and its limitations,” she said, taking out a notebook. She wrote out three words, then held them up—but the camera was too far away for me to read what she’d written.

“If the ego is the organized part of her mind, and the superego plays the moralizing role, allowing her to distinguish between good and evil, then the id is just a bundle of instincts. It strives only to satisfy its own basic needs, like hunger and sex. It knows no judgments and does not distinguish between moral or amoral. In normal people, non-carriers, the ego mediates between the id—what a person wants—and reality. It satisfies a person’s instincts using reason. The superego acts as the conscience; it punishes through feelings of remorse and guilt. These feelings are powerful, and in normal people the ego and the superego dominate the id. As you’ve seen,” Kells continued, “Mara appears to have the ability to convert thought into reality, but her ability is dependent on the presence of fear or stress, as I believe it is for the other carriers. In any case, G1821 makes Mara’s id reflexive; if she is afraid, or stressed, her ego and superego don’t function. And the consequences, as you’ve seen, can be disastrous. Her ugliest, most destructive thoughts become reality.”

“Well. That’s not good news,” Jamie said, before Stella shushed him.

“Mara doesn’t even always have to be aware of these thoughts, of her intent behind them. If the right mixture of fear and stress is present, her instinctual drives take over. And there’s a Freudian theory that along with the creative instinct—the libido—a death instinct also exists, a destructive urge directed against the world and other organisms. The drug we’ve developed will, we hope, reactivate the barrier between her id and her ego and superego; it’s designed to prevent any negative intent from becoming action. The dose needs to be adjusted, however, and I can’t study Mara on drugs. And she’s too unstable to be studied without them. High doses of another drug we’ve developed should bring about an almost flawless recall, so at some point, when it’s safer for us, Mara should be able to recount exactly what happened at the time of any specific incident, and recount what she was feeling at that moment. Luckily, she is responsive to midazolam, which we’re using to help her forget, so she needn’t relive her traumas on a daily basis.”

The image on-screen warped and flickered, and there was a second voice, distorted, that I couldn’t make out. Then Kells came back, as sharp as before.

“Yes, I tried to study her as noninvasively as I possibly could. That’s why I had her behavior recorded before I took any specific action. We installed fiber optics in her home, to observe and record her behavior before it escalated. But the fact is, I can’t learn how to help her until I fully understand what’s wrong with her. The applications—the benefits—of what we’re doing here outweigh the risks. The treatments we could develop based on what you show us, the applications they could have—” Her voice grew passionate. “They’re far reaching. So far reaching that I don’t even know the extent of them yet. No one should have to suffer the way people have been suffering because of G1821, especially not teenagers. Listen,” she said. “Anemosyne and Amylethe, they corrupt the findings. They change the outcomes of the studies we need to conduct to make sure Mara and the others can be released safely. I need to be able to study someone without those drugs, to map a manifested brain with an MRI and CAT scans, to study how it responds to stimuli and fear and stress. The answer isn’t in the blood—it’s in the brain. So blood work, test tubes—they’re not going to give me what I need. I need to study patients while they’re awake, and conscious.”

Dr. Kells leaned forward and ran her hands through her hair. “I need to study you.”

“What do you want me to do?” I heard Noah ask, before the screen went black.

I STARED AT THE BLANK screen, as if just by looking at it, I could make Noah appear. But he didn’t. Nothing did.

“Did you see a date stamp on that video?” Stella asked, looking at both of us. Jamie shook his head. “Mara?”

I hadn’t. I was still staring at the screen. It had been Noah’s voice. He was alive. And he was here.

“Okay,” Stella said. She pressed the power button, but nothing happened. “I don’t think we can turn it on or off from here, which means someone somewhere else is doing it.”

“So let’s figure out where somewhere else is,” Jamie said.

That was where Noah would be. Everything in me knew it.

“Jude said there was a map.” I looked around us, at the mess of papers and files and notebooks, and then remembered the scrolls.

I pointed at them. “Guys, some help?” We began unrolling one after another. There were maps and charts, as I’d suspected, but we didn’t find what we were looking for until we were almost out of scrolls.

“Let’s spread it out over there,” I said, tipping my head toward the desk. Stella stacked notebooks over the corners to hold it open.

We were looking at detailed architectural plans of the Horizons Residential Treatment Center.

Except it wasn’t just a treatment center. It was a compound. The treatment center was just the part we could see. Beneath it, below ground, was a sprawling, windowless structure, segmented off into different areas that together comprised the “Testing Facility.”

“Holy shit,” Jamie whispered.

Stella examined the map and explained what we were looking at. “So I think we’re underground again, in the lowest level of the testing facility. See there?” She pointed to some small shapes within the larger shape. “It looks like these little rooms might be where they were keeping us. You found Jamie on level 2.” She traced her finger to an area labeled KITCHEN, not far from where Jamie said we’d entered Kells’s office—the decoy office.

“Level 3 is where we are now—not too far from where we started, actually. And we’re still on No Name Island, it looks like.”

I narrowed my eyes. “Where else would we be?”

She ran her finger across a long line that ran the length of what seemed to be a tunnel. “There are three other structures. On a completely different island.”

I peered over her shoulder and read the labels: MAINTENANCE, CONTAINMENT, STORAGE.

“That’s a power line, I think. And there,” she said, squinting at the blueprints, “that’s the power grid. It’s in the maintenance area. That’s where Kells is, probably.”

And Noah, too.

“One way in, one way out,” Jamie said, pointing at the tunnel. It wasn’t far from where we were now, but we’d have to go back up to the fake office to get there. I was already moving toward the ladder.

“Mara, wait—” Stella started.

“For what?” I called out over my shoulder.

“What are we going to do, just walk in there?” Jamie asked.

“Yes?”

Stella made a face. “Shouldn’t we, like, have a plan or something?”

I stopped. “It doesn’t matter what we plan. Kells knows we’re coming. She’s probably watching us right now.”

I looked behind me and scanned the room for a camera. Stella followed my gaze, then stopped and pointed at a tiny little reflective globe suspended from the ceiling, in the far right corner of the room. I stared at it for a moment, then raised my hand and gave it the finger.

“I thought you were going to give it the District Twelve salute,” Jamie said.

Stella snorted. “Look, maybe we should at least get a weapon?”

I lifted the hem of the hospital gown and withdrew the scalpel from my underwear. “Got one.”

“You’re kind of limited with that, no?”

Wayne hadn’t thought so.

“She wouldn’t have left anything here that we could use against her,” I said.

Stella held up our files. “She left these.” A few papers fluttered to the ground. She bent over, and went very quiet. “Mara,” she said as she picked them up. “I think these are yours.”

I took them from Stella. They were drawings, some resembling people with limbs missing, others that looked like faces, with the eyes scribbled over and blacked out. As I stared, the lines on the paper began to move, arranging themselves in a way that suggested my face. I looked away.

“She probably left them here on purpose.” So I would see them. So they would upset me. “Look, you don’t have to come with,” I said, my voice low. “In fact, you probably shouldn’t.” I crumpled the drawings up and threw them at the wastebasket. I missed.

Jamie and Stella exchanged a look before Jamie rolled his eyes. “Of course we’re coming with you,” he said, as Stella tucked a few files and notebooks under her arm. I offered him a small smile before climbing up the ladder.

“This doesn’t look like the plans,” Jamie said.

“It doesn’t look like anything.”

We tried to follow what Stella remembered of the blueprints, guided only by harsh auxiliary lights, which made the curving, winding, subterranean structure of the place even more disorienting. None of us could pinpoint exactly when the power had been cut off. The air felt dead and stale as we moved through it.

“I feel like any second there could be a thousand guns pointed at our heads,” Stella said.

“There could be.” I felt my way through the darkness. Our footsteps echoed on the metal walkway. “Well, probably not a thousand.”

Eventually, the walkway parted in a fork. We could go left, right, or down a small set of stairs. I decided down. When we reached the landing, we stood opposite a metal wall; a door had been cut into it, with rounded corners and a biohazard symbol in the center. CONTAINMENT, the plans had read. Nowhere to go but in.

“Nope,” Jamie said, shaking his head. “Nope.”

I pressed my ear to the door.

“Is she here yet?”

I sprang back when I heard those words. Noah spoke them. He was behind this door. I reached for the handle, but Jamie stopped me.

“Mara,” he said slowly. “Do you know what that symbol means?”

“Yes.”

“Then would you kindly share why you’re ignoring it?”

“Noah’s in there. I just heard him.”

Jamie looked skeptical.

“Listen,” I told him. He pressed his ear to the door too.

“Roth’s here as well, sounds like.”

Jamie looked like he’d been shocked. “Jesus,” he whispered. “Who’s he talking to?”

“Probably Dr. Kells,” Stella said it aloud as I thought it.

I looked at the both of them. Stella looked pale and frightened. Jamie looked determined. Decided.

It was time. Time to split up. I took a deep breath.

“I don’t know what that video meant, or why Kells wanted us to see it. I don’t know why Jude helped us get out or if he was even really helping us at all. I don’t know anything, but I know that I have to open this door. I have to. And if you don’t want to be here for it, you should go.”

“Mara, wait—”

“There was a hatch, somewhere on the blueprints, right?” Stella nodded. “By the Maintenance Area. You should go. Together. Get to No Name Key however you can. I’ll catch up with you there or I won’t.”

“I think you’re making a mistake,” Jamie said slowly.

Stella raised her hand. “Me too, for what it’s worth.”

I smiled without amusement. “Noted.”

Jamie ran his hand over his scalp, scratching at it. “I don’t want to leave you here by yourself.”

“Then don’t.”

Stella looked back and forth between the two of us, clearly unsure what to do. I reached for the handle again.

“Stop!” Jamie shouted.

“Jamie—”

“Mara, I love you—don’t look at me like that, not in that way—but if you are so far gone that you are about to ignore a BIG RED BIOHAZARD symbol, me going in with you isn’t going to help you. I want my innards to stay inner.”

“It’s okay,” I said quietly. “It really is.” I wasn’t offended, or even hurt. I was relieved. I didn’t want to feel responsible for Jamie and Stella. It was enough just being responsible for myself.

“Shit,” Jamie muttered. “Shit.”

“Go, Jamie.”

He grabbed my face in his hands, hard, and smushed my cheeks. “If it’s Ebola, you’re fucked. But if not, just—try not to breathe for as long as you can, okay?”

I nodded. “Go. I’ll give you a head start.”

Jamie kissed me on the cheek. “Good luck,” he whispered, and he and Stella began to climb the stairs. I waited until the sounds of their muted footsteps disappeared, and then I pressed my ear to the door.

“Why won’t she come in?”

Noah again. I closed my eyes. Something wasn’t right. He was alive, obviously, but if he was okay, why wasn’t he opening the door to come to me?

Every instinct told me to run, but I turned the handle anyway. The door opened slowly.

The room was white and tiled, like the examination room I’d woken up in. No furniture in this one either, except for a small card table and two chairs. Dr. Kells sat on one of them. The second chair was empty.

“Where’s Noah?” I asked with steel in my voice. My eyes searched the room, but there was nothing to find. “Why did you tell me he was dead?”

Dr. Kells was reaching into a cardboard box by her feet as I spoke. “Because he is.”

She lifted something up, over her head. A gas mask. “I’m sorry,” I heard her say before she lowered it over her face. There was a hissing sound, and by the time I noticed the vents near the ceiling, I had already fallen to the ground.

BEFORE

Atlantic Ocean

I RESTED MY CHEEK AGAINST the ship’s railing, breathing in air that smelled of salt and rain. It was night; the deck was nearly empty. Two young men jostled and joked with each other as they worked to tie ropes, arrange sails. Sailors—that was it. They paid me no mind, and I watched them out of the corner of my eye. They were familiar with each other, family perhaps. They moved and worked together the way Sister and I had when we’d used to cook. Though she and I were never sisters, which is why I was here and she was dead.

I spent every night wondering why that was, why I was here to stare out at the black sea that seemed to have no end to it, when Sister and Uncle and so many others were rotting beneath the earth half a world away. I wondered why my benefactor, as he had been called by everyone I ever knew, wanted me enough to provide for me even after his death. I wondered of what value he thought I might be to him.

It was my final night at sea, and I was too restless to spend it belowdecks. I hardly ever spent time in my quarters, preferring to watch as sailors strung the ropes from the masts into a giant web, to watch the sails breathe with wind. On past nights, when my presence had been noticed and I was chased below by a man with spectacles like Mr. Barbary’s and shiny gold buttons on his coat, I would creep along the corridors, sneak behind doors, listen to conversations no one guessed I could understand.

But that morning I watched as dawn broke, crisp and clear over the horizon, before a dark cloud enveloped us as the sea narrowed into a river. Iron smoke swallowed every scrap of blue sky, and when the ship docked, I was jostled aside as it crawled with people the way the waters below it teemed with fish.

The river was clotted with other ships, the banks crowded by docks, and buildings with domes and arches and spires that scraped the sky. Pipes spit black smoke into the air, and my ears filled with the sounds of the city, with shouting and whistling and chiming and creaking and other sounds so foreign I could not even name them.

I went back to my quarters to fetch my things, only to find that someone was waiting for me.

The man wore black clothing to match his dark eyes, which crinkled at the corners. His face was kind, his voice rich and deep. “I am Mr. Grimsby,” the man said. “I believe we have a mutual connection through Mr. Barbary?”

I did not answer.

“He sent word to my mistress that I should escort you to the London home. Are you ready, miss?”

I was.

He lifted my trunk from the ground, and I stiffened. He noticed. “May I take your things?”

No, I wanted to say. I nodded instead.

I followed Mr. Grimsby off the ship, watching the way my trunk bobbed with his steps. From the sounds of hooves and wheels and canes and feet, I picked out the clop, clop of my new shoes on the stone street. I counted my steps to calm myself.

The air clawed at my too-thin dress, and I huddled into it as Mr. Grimsby wound his way to a grand carriage that awaited us. The ink-black horse shied at my approach.

“Whoa, girl,” the driver said, patting her neck.

I took a cautious step forward, and the horse snorted and stamped. I didn’t understand. I had a way with animals; my mind was filled with hazy memories of feeding monkeys from the palm of my hand, of riding an elephant with Sister as it swam across a river.

Date: 2015-12-17; view: 414