by Kelli Kimble
“Right, of course,” I said. “What happened to the people before?”
“I don’t know. They just didn’t work out,” she said, shrugging. “Mrs. Darit says it’s perfect now, and she was right; it worked on all four of us. She says that’s the best success rate yet, and we might even develop more abilities. We could be higher-functioning than even the telepaths.” Her eyes gleamed when she said it. She was counting on those higher functions.
“So, how did it work? Mrs. Darit did something to us?”
“When we had our plague inoculation series at school, that’s when it started. The four of us received a different shot. But, it didn’t work all by itself. It required a catalyst. Remember how the shots were three weeks apart, and we had to get it three times?”
I nodded, rubbing my upper arm. The shots had been remarkably painful; I remembered saying to Talika that the shots hadn’t been so bad the year before.
“After each shot, they exposed our entire classroom to an inhalant, through the heating system. To most of them, it was harmless. But to us, it activated the shots. Each shot was different; each inhalant was a variation on the previous one. Like building blocks, you see? They built up this chemical imbalance in our brains that could only be corrected by the creation of new neurogenic pathways. Being young and adaptable, that’s what we did.”
“Wow,” I said. “You’re making it sound like our brains made some kind of leap forward in evolution.”
“It sounds like it because that’s what it is. We’re more advanced than any other human has ever been in the history of man—without the aid of an implant, that is.”
“But, we didn’t do it ourselves. This wasn’t a natural progression.”
“Well, no. No, it wasn’t a natural progression. But, we’re still the most advanced humans ever. Doesn’t that make you feel good?” She inhaled deeply and jumped off the exam table. “I feel like I could conquer the world. Do anything at all. I am above all this, and so are you. We’re a new breed, Nim.”
“I guess,” I said. I was unwilling to come out and agree with her. While it did give me a little zing of pride to know I was somehow more than the others, the fact remained that I hadn’t achieved such a level without aid.
“So, here’s what we do,” Talika began. “We follow the rules. What are the rules?”
“Uh, no communication with anyone or anything but you.”
“Good. Yes. That’s right. We follow the rules, and we do the experiments. We help them understand how it works, and how to perfect it, and when that’s done, we’ll be released back into the world in a new position. We’ll go to telepath school, our parents will have mid-level jobs, and everyone will think we’re regular old telepaths. We go about our business; they have their new technology . . .” She gestured at the kimono people. “and nobody ever has to be the wiser.”
I nodded, not sure how to respond.
“You are good with this, right?” she prompted. “You’ll follow through?”
“Sure,” I said. It was a little late to back out now—though the whole thing still made me uncomfortable.
“Good. Then, I’ll take you to our room.” She held out a hand. I grabbed it, and she pulled me from the table. “Let’s go.”
I walked beside her as she exited the room. We walked down a grey, industrial hallway. The walls were made of rough, grey brick, and the ceiling was unfinished. Here and there, a dingy bulb hung from the tangle of pipes and wires to illuminate the even-dingier hallway.
“What about Marve and Elton?” I asked. I let my gaze wander, and she didn’t try to stop me from taking in our surroundings. At the end of the hall, there was a man in a grey kimono, standing with his legs wide and holding a black instrument in his hand. It wasn’t the man who had come to the school, though.
“They’re around,” she said. “We’ll see them soon. When they really get started with the experiments, we’ll spend a lot of time with them.” She pointed to a door on our left. “This is the toilet room. There’s a shower in there, too. Over here is our room.” She pointed to the door across from it. “This is our safe zone. They aren’t allowed to observe us in here. We can do or say whatever we want. Okay?”
Every ounce of my body screamed at me that this was a lie. Whether she knew it was a lie or not, I couldn’t tell. But, a blind person could see that being told we could do or say whatever we wanted was like waving a giant sign with an eyeball on it, and a caption stating, We’re watching you. My trust in her eroded just a bit more.
“Okay, great,” I said. I gave her a giant, fake grin, but she didn’t call me on it.
She opened the door, and we went in. It was a small room about the size of my own bedroom at home. There were two cots, one on either side of the door. They each had a pillow and were made up with a scratchy, green blanket. The walls were the same industrial, grey brick as the ones in the hall, and the floor was made of grey cement. There was a small table with two chairs against the wall opposite the door—and that was it. None of our things were in the room, not even a change of clothes.
“Where’s our stuff?” I asked. I’d expected to at least find her things stashed in here, since they’d cleaned everything her family owned out of her house.
“We don’t need any of that here. It’s all a distraction. They want us to have clean slates, you know?” She sat on the cot to the right. “This one’s mine. That’s yours.”
I sat down on it. The springs made a sagging moan, and the blanket was, indeed, very scratchy. “What about clothes?”
“They’ll issue you something clean every morning. Something like this.” She pinched a bit of fabric from her shirt above her shoulders and lifted it. I’d not noticed it before, but she was wearing a pair of baggy, cotton pants, and a V-neck tunic, both a dirty shade of baby blue. “They call them ‘scrubs’. I’m not sure why.”
I nodded and looked around our room. “How long will these experiments take?”
She cocked her head. “Oh,” she said. “I can ask about that, if you want.”
Great. She didn’t know. That didn’t seem like a good thing.
She lay down on her cot. It was noticeably more silent than mine, squeaking only when she made the dramatic motion required to heave herself onto her side. She propped an elbow underneath her and leaned her head on her hand. “This is gonna be great. You’ll see. Our dreams are going to come true.”
“Yeah,” I said.
The door opened, and a woman entered, holding a pile of folded items in her arms.
“This is Bea,” Talika said. “She’ll bring us things we need every day: Our clothes; sometimes, meals; anything we need for the experiments.” She paused and shot me a warning look. “Remember: You aren’t supposed to communicate with her.”
I immediately averted my eyes from Bea. It didn’t make sense we’d be given what seemed like a servant, yet we weren’t allowed to talk to her.
“If you need something, you tell me,” Talika instructed, “and then, I’ll tell Bea.”
“Okay,” I said, my face twisting into what I hoped was a compliant smile. The last remaining bit of trust I had in Talika floated away. How on Earth was that fair? I had the uncomfortable realization that I’d allowed myself to become my best friend’s hostage.
Bea handed the stack of things to Talika. They paused for a moment and locked eyes. My neck prickled. Were they talking about me? I remembered Mrs. Darit’s lesson about how we should demand communication on a level we could understand.
“Are you guys talking about me?” I asked.
Talika broke her eyes from Bea and shifted them to me. “Since you can’t communicate with her, I’m doing it for you,” she said. “I’m asking her to bring us dinner later. We’re having stew. You want milk or juice to go with it?”
“Milk,” I said. I looked away, and they resumed their silent discussion. Bea left the room.
“These are for you,” Talika said, handing me the stack. It was a yellow set of scrubs, like the ones
she was wearing.
“Thanks,” I said. “I’m just going to go to the bathroom to change.”
She grabbed my arm as I started to walk away. “It’s nothing personal,” she said. “When we talk using our telepathic abilities, I mean. It’s just how the rules are.”
“Right,” I said. “I get it.”
I did get it, just not the way she wanted me to.
I ducked across the hall and changed into the scrubs. Now that I was taking my clothes off, I realized they’d already been dressing me in the scrubs; I just hadn’t been awake for it. The set I took off was a crisp white and looked brand-new. The yellow set looked worn and scruffy by comparison. But, they were clean and as good as my regular clothes, so I put them on. I scrunched the white scrubs into a ball and clutched them to my chest. There was no hamper, or anything to put the dirty things in, and I’d seen everything there was to see in our room. There was definitely no place to put them in there, either. I crept into the hall and looked both ways. The man at the end of the hall was still there. He didn’t acknowledge me, and I probably wasn’t supposed to talk to him. But, I turned down the hall and approached him anyway.
He didn’t move until I was only a few feet from the end of the hall. Without looking at me, he stepped forward and pressed a button on the wall. An alarm bell sounded, and a gate clattered closed in front of him, confining me to the inside of the hallway and keeping him just beyond it.
I pulled up short so that I didn’t walk into the gate. But, I reached out to touch it. The man still didn’t look at me, but he shook his head. I dropped my hand back to the bundle of clothes and rearranged it in my arms. I craned my neck to see what was beyond the gate, on either side. Ahead of us, there was a wall, but the hallway turned to the left and right. I could only see a few feet down either side, and it was just more of the same grey brick. I glanced back up at the man. His cheek twitched a tiny bit, but he gave no other indication that he saw me there.
Talika had said I was free to go, but that was apparently not true.
I wandered back to our room and went in. She was lying on the bed with her arms bent, and her hands behind her head. “What do I do with these dirty things?” I asked.
She pointed to the corner. “Just throw it there. They’ll pick it up when they come with our meals later.” She turned her head and studied me. “What took you so long?”
“Nothing,” I said. I threw the clothes in the corner, then sat back down on my squawking bed. “Why don’t you tell me more about these experiments? What are they going to do to us?”
She shrugged. “Probably just hook us up to monitors and stuff. Brain scans. They’re looking for changes in our cognitive function.”
That sounded like something an adult had told her. Something she was repeating without really understanding what it meant. “You think that will hurt?”
“Nah. They already scanned me three or four times. You just have to lie really still, is all.”
“Oh. So, Elton and Marve will be there when they do that? We’ll all get scanned?”
“The machine is only big enough for one person,” she said. “They might wait with us, but we’ll each be scanned individually.”
“So, is Marve playing the same role for Elton as you are for me?”
She eyeballed me. “What role.” It should have been a question, but she hadn’t said it like one, and it gave me pause. She was my best friend, and I’d observed her in a lot of situations. She thought she could trick me, but she couldn’t. She didn’t know the answer to my question, and she wanted to distract me from it.
“Never mind,” I said.
She picked at a hangnail. “Okay. So. Did I tell you Mrs. Darit got your parents new jobs? They’re going to be working at the power plant. Isn’t that great?”
“Doing what?” I scoffed. “Cleaning the bathrooms? Or something dangerous?” I knew darn well my parents didn’t meet the education credentials required for the most powerful jobs at the plant.
“Of course not,” she said, laughing. But, the laughter was fake. I supposed no matter what it was, it would be a step up. My parents both worked in a factory that spit out a zillion different kinds of plastic things: Forks; pens; yogurt containers. Nothing with much trading power. It was why we were always so hungry.
“That’s great,” I said. I rolled away from her and faced the wall. “I’m just going to take a little nap, if you don’t mind,” I said.
“Sure,” she said. “I’ll leave you alone.” There was a rustle and a click as she left the room and closed the door behind her. The tension in my body released, and I sunk into the mattress. But, even the squawk of the bedsprings recoiling couldn’t cover the audible snick of the deadbolt turning on the door.
I stiffened. My best friend definitely could not be trusted.
◆◆◆
I woke up to the sounds of rustling. I rolled over to look for the source. It was Talika, changing into a pair of pink scrubs. “Hey there, sleepyhead,” she said. “You never woke up from your nap. You must’ve been awful tired.”
“Yeah, I guess I was,” I said. I stretched out, finding someone had draped a scratchy blanket over me. I peeled it back and sat up.
“Here’s your clothes for today,” she said. She dropped a pile of purple-and-green scrubs at the foot of the bed. “I’m going to brush my teeth.” She left the room, leaving the door ajar. The bathroom door opened and shut, and I could hear the sound of water running. I got up and pushed our door closed, then changed into the scrubs. The pants and shirt were two different colors. It annoyed me a little that they didn’t match. I wondered if she’d taken the pink pair for herself because they did match.
The door opened, and she came back in, humming to herself. “You’d better get washed up. We’ve got to report to Lab Two in about 15 minutes, and we still haven’t had breakfast.”
The thought of eating turned my stomach over, despite having missed dinner the night before. But, I obediently went across the hall and splashed some water on my face. There was a new toothbrush and some toothpaste on a tray, labeled with my name. I brushed my teeth, studying my face in the mirror as I did it. I felt like I should be practicing a believable expression of obedience. But, I wasn’t really sure what an obedient expression looked like. I spat my toothpaste out and wiped the gunk from the corners of my mouth.
Talika banged on the bathroom door. “Come on, Nim! They’re going to be waiting for us.”
“Coming,” I said. I left the bathroom, and Talika grabbed hold of my arm and rushed me down the hall. I felt like a disobedient toddler in the market, but I didn’t try to pull away from her.
“There’s no time for breakfast now,” she scolded me. “What were you doing in there?”
I didn’t answer. She didn’t seem to expect me to.
She pushed open a set of double doors, and we went in. It was much smaller than the first room I’d been in, but there were still people in kimonos, bustling around. They were all wearing navy blue, and none of them looked familiar.
Talika locked eyes with a woman who was standing at a desk just inside the door. They had a silent exchange, while I fidgeted in Talika’s grasp. She released me, and I took a few steps away to study the room. There was an exam table at the center, just like in the other room. But, there were a lot more machines and instruments sitting around. The largest machine was like an angel’s halo above the exam table, right about where my head would be if I were sitting up on the table. That must have been the brain scanner.
Someone touched me on the shoulder, and I turned towards them. It was a woman with kind, blue eyes. She smiled and gestured for me to walk to the exam table. I did as she asked and climbed onto the table. She did all the usual vital-sign things: Shining a light in my eyes, then checking my pulse, blood pressure, and temperature. She rubbed a harsh-smelling chemical on the sensitive spot inside my left elbow. Then, she produced a syringe from her pocket. It had a very long needle.
Very long.
&
nbsp; I gasped and writhed away from her on the table. But, she caught my arm with her other hand and gently pulled me back. She smiled and patted my arm, then she pantomimed the sign for “small” by pinching her forefinger and thumb together. I guessed she was saying it wouldn’t hurt much.
I glanced around. Nobody was really paying attention, but it didn’t take an implant engineer to know I wouldn’t get away with resisting. I held out my arm for her, and her smile widened. She gave me a thumbs-up and inserted the needle into my arm. Amazingly, she was right. It didn’t hurt that much. She drew the plunger of the syringe back, filling the chamber with my blood.
When she was done, she put a tiny, cotton ball and a bandage over the spot. She popped the cartridge of blood out of the syringe and put the needle in a bucket marked, Biohazard. She wrote something on the cartridge and set it aside. Then, she started putting strange stickers across my forehead. When she had three in place, she hooked a small device to each sticker. Then, she placed three stickers and their devices across my chest, as well, just below the edge of the V-neck on my scrubs.
Talika finally came over to stand beside me. “They’re preparing you for a brain scan. Those little fobs on the sensor plates send data over to that machine over there.” She pointed to a computer. “The fobs on your head work with this thing to scan your brain.” She indicated the halo device. “The fobs on your chest monitor your vitals. Do I have it right?” She turned to the woman who was preparing me. The woman smiled and nodded.
“I’m an old pro at this,” Talika said, her chest puffed out with pride.
The woman turned to an array of controls and flipped a switch. The halo device started to hum.
“Is it starting? Is this the scan?” I said.
“Not yet,” Talika said. She looked at the woman. “That’s what I thought, too. It’s just warming up. The doctor will do the actual test.”