Neverwake

by Amy Plum

  “There’s the Wall!” I yell, spotting it about ten feet away from the watchtower . . . on the other side of the fence.

  “What do we do?” Ant asks Remi.

  “Wait. Why are you even here? You betrayed us! You should be out there with your buddy, the supreme leader,” Sinclair spits.

  Ant ignores him. She watches Remi, waiting for his response.

  “What’s going on?” Fergus asks, looking between Ant and Remi.

  I can see it on Ant’s face: she trusts him. My thoughts are going a million miles an hour. I speak up. “I’m not sure he did betray us. No time to explain, but I think we can trust him . . . at least with this.”

  “I only had a plan up to this point,” Remi says to Ant. He looks toward the camp’s main gate. It’s clogged by men running in and out, weapons drawn.

  “The only choices I see are climbing the barbed wire or digging our way under. Neither of which are actually viable options,” I say.

  “The watchtower,” Remi says, pointing to the hut on stilts. Only one guard remains. He squats low, swinging his rifle around, looking for something to shoot. The Wall extends from the ground all the way up past the trees just ten feet away from him, but he doesn’t seem to see it.

  “What are you suggesting?” I ask Remi.

  “We can get over the fence by climbing the watchtower and jumping down.”

  “This isn’t like the cathedral,” Fergus responds. “There’s nothing we can use to swing through the Wall.”

  “And the Wall’s not close enough to the watchtower to jump through,” I say, “like in the asylum.”

  Remi turns to me, his expression grave. “I meant we’ll have to jump down and then make a run for the Wall.”

  Sinclair laughs incredulously. “That thing’s got to be twenty-five feet tall. We’ll break a leg. Or our feet, if we manage to land on them.”

  “I know,” Remi responds. “I’m scared of heights, remember? But it’s the only solution I can see.”

  “How do we know this isn’t a setup?” Fergus says quietly.

  “What do you mean?” asks Remi, perplexed.

  “How do we know you’re not collaborating with the rebels? And that this isn’t a way to get us all shot?”

  Remi’s face darkens. “Why would I do that?”

  “I don’t know,” says Fergus. “Why would you?”

  “I’ll go if Remi goes first,” Sinclair says.

  Remi gets a trapped look. Then he shrugs and, resigned, admits, “I don’t know what to do about the soldier guarding it.”

  We peer out from behind our hiding place at the guard in the tower. He’s holding the gun sniper-style, studying the jungle surrounding the camp. Gunshots ring out from a distance. All the men seem to be shouting, and the noise adds to the general confusion.

  “We’re not going to send you up there on your own,” Sinclair says. “What if you already have a deal worked out with the guy, and he just shoots us once we’re out in the open?”

  Remi’s face twists in anger. “What is all this talk? Why don’t any of you believe me? Like I said, the only thing I’ve been thinking about is how to keep us . . . all . . . alive.”

  Sinclair looks at me and Fergus, one eyebrow raised. “I’ll be right behind you,” he says to Remi. “Just go.”

  Remi closes his eyes and blows out a few puffs of air, pumping himself up. He darts out from behind our hut, running toward the watchtower. Sinclair follows closely behind, holding his wounded arm carefully. Halfway to the tower, he bends over to scoop something off the ground.

  “What’s he doing?” asks Fergus as we watch, paralyzed in fear.

  The guard is so focused on the imagined foe outside the camp, he doesn’t see Remi arrive at the top of the ladder, or even turn around as Sinclair, using his good arm, aims the pistol he picked up off the ground at the back of the man’s head. The commotion in the camp is so loud that we don’t hear the gunshot. We just watch as the man sinks to the ground like a deflated balloon.

  Remi spins and stares at Sinclair in shock. Sinclair boosts himself inside the watchtower, takes a look around, and then gestures quickly for us to come. When no one budges, he turns to talk to Remi. They are discussing something, pointing at us and then at the Wall.

  My mouth is completely dry. I look at the others. They are as shocked as I am. I can’t believe what just happened.

  Sinclair waves his hand at us like Come on! Then, giving up on us, he turns and steps over the wooden barrier enclosing the watchtower and balances on the bamboo pole edging the floor.

  He jumps.

  He is midair, flailing his arms to stay upright. He lands and rolls over on his side, hugging his knees up to his chest with his good hand. He stays there for a second, and then slowly, achingly, pushes himself up. He looks our way, his face drawn with pain, and gives a thumbs-up. Then he hobbles toward the Wall, his hair and clothes whipping around in the wind, before disappearing into its blackness.

  I glance around to see if the soldiers noticed, but no one is paying attention to our end of the camp. Remi crouches low and waves for the rest of us to come.

  The second boom rocks the jungle, shaking water loose from the trees so that it seems to be raining. More screams of fear and anger come from the rebels. Several trucks and jeeps barrel off into the jungle.

  “Go!” Fergus yells, and we all move at the same time, dashing across the yard toward the watchtower and scrambling one by one up the ladder.

  From the top, we have a panoramic view of the area, with doll-sized men scrambling around.

  “I don’t know if I can do this,” Ant says, looking green.

  Fergus takes her hand. “I’ll go with you.”

  She presses her lips together doubtfully, but nods. They swing their legs over the side, balancing on the bamboo rod for just a second before Fergus says, “Go!” Then they’re in the air, plummeting toward the ground on the other side of the fence. They land, Fergus on all fours, before he rolls to the side, holding one hand in the other and stifling a scream. Ant lands on her feet, crumpling like a rag doll as soon as she hits and lies there. Fergus forces himself to scramble to his feet and begins to help Ant up.

  My turn.

  I hear the wind whip by me, and try my best to stay upright, but hit the ground on my side and hear my arm crunch beneath me. Blinded by pain and unable to breathe, I lie there for a second before hearing Remi land beside me with a thump and a groan.

  I look up to see Fergus holding Ant to his side with his one good arm. He glances around to see if we made it. Our eyes meet. His are full of pain, but also concern. He’s waiting. For me.

  The wind whips my hair around my face, and the noise is so loud that I take the risk and yell. “Just go!” Fergus nods and pulls an ashen-faced Ant through the Wall.

  I flip onto my stomach and push myself to my knees, using my good hand. Every inch of me feels broken, and tears are streaming down my face even though I can’t feel myself crying. I look over at Remi. He’s upright already, and takes a hop toward me, bending his right foot up behind him. His face is tight with pain.

  “Let’s go!” he urges, and I take a step toward the Wall. But something catches my eye a short distance to our right. I stop in my tracks.

  The soldiers have surrounded someone, and are standing in a circle, guns pointed inward. Just visible between them is Brett. He stands there in his pajamas, but not as Rooster Brett or Corpse Man. He looks like the boy in the mirror, blank-eyed and lost.

  He points at the Wall. He’s showing the soldiers he wants to go that way. They look at where he’s pointing, and I flinch, but they don’t notice me standing off to the side. One of them yells something and, lifting his gun to eye level, points it at Brett’s head.

  “I can’t let them kill him!” Remi shouts and takes off limping in Brett’s direction.

  “Remi! He can’t come into the Void anyway!” I call.

  “Don’t you see? He’s not a monster. Maybe he could make it!”
Remi yells over his shoulder. And then turning, urges, “Go, Cata! You have to get through!”

  “I’m not leaving you!” I yell back. I take a step toward him, then stop as pain shoots through every part of my body.

  “Go, Cata,” Remi says, jaw set and voice determined. “This is all my fault. If only one of us is going to make it out of here, it’s not going to be me.” He has begun hobbling back in Brett’s direction when the third boom comes.

  The wind whips me inward, toward the Wall, and I let myself stumble backward in its direction, refusing to turn away from Remi. With each step, a fiery white tongue of pain sears through me.

  Remi has almost reached the circle of men around Brett, when all of a sudden Brett transforms into his squid state, and a single gunshot rings out. Remi screams, “No!” as Brett collapses to the ground.

  The men spin and see Remi. They raise their guns. The wind is so loud that I don’t hear the second gunshot. I just see Remi crumple to the ground as I lean back and let the blackness swallow me.

  Chapter 9

  Jaime

  “CELL PHONE, PLEASE,” SAYS THE RECEPTIONIST, robotically reaching out her hand as I sign back in to the visitors’ book. My name is near the top of the paper-clipped left-hand page marked March 31:

  Jaime Salvator Time In: 6:00 a.m. Time Out: 2:45 p.m.

  I proceed to the next space, halfway down the right-hand page, and write my name again, signing in at three fifteen. Without thinking, I peruse the list of names sandwiched between my two entries. My eyes stop on a name that was entered late this morning: “Lindstrom.” It was scrawled so quickly it was barely legible. There was no “out” time.

  Lindstrom was BethAnn’s last name. Her parents must have rushed to get here when they were notified of her death. They probably followed the funeral attendants out a back exit. Hospitals never bring corpses out the front door.

  The receptionist slips my cell phone into a drawer, and I make my way down the stairwell to the basement laboratory with renewed resolve. I need to figure out if my theory is right. It seems too crazy to be true. But there are two things tipping me off to the fact that all is not as it appears.

  The first is the subjects’ feedback. They keep experiencing periods of heightened . . . and then lowered . . . heart rates, blood pressure, eye movement, and muscle tension. It is the cyclical nature of these periods that makes me suspect something abnormal is going on.

  When I noticed these periods lasted around fifty and twenty minutes, that triggered a memory. The manual said the trial was meant to induce twenty-minute cycles of REM sleep punctuated with fifty-minute periods of NREM. Because of the earthquake, that pattern was never established. But . . . and this is the weird part . . . even after the electrodes were disconnected, it looks like the cycles continued, but in reverse. The feedback read as if they were having twenty-minute periods of NREM and then dreaming for fifty.

  The researchers didn’t pay much attention to this, because the brain waves said they were comatose. They thought the ups and downs were the bodies’ reactions to having the electrical current abruptly interrupted.

  The second big question for me is . . . if they are dreaming, why do the brain waves read delta and theta—states that would make dreaming impossible? Either the system crash caused a bug in the brain-wave feedback machine, or—my previous theory—the subjects’ brain activity is so atypical the machine can’t read it.

  Only one of those theories can be tested. Another machine could be brought in. Or the current one could be rebooted, a plan that Zhu shot down when she said it would mean cutting the electricity again . . . something she’s not prepared to do.

  I need more proof before I say anything else. I need to organize the available feedback better than the rough chart I threw together from estimated times and inconsistent notes.

  I need to access the readouts. Video and audio of each subject is being recorded—I can see it happening on my screen. If I can pinpoint the moment of BethAnn’s death and Fergus’s period of consciousness, I could show it as evidence to Zhu and Vesper. Along with the consistent cycles, maybe it will be enough to convince them to check further into the brain-wave feedback. Or even to consider options that I’m not aware of as a premed student.

  I have to do something, though. I push open the door and see Zhu standing next to Fergus, studying his screens on the Tower. She nods at me, acknowledging my return. “The beta-blockers seem to have done their job. Subject two is stable.”

  Vesper gets off the phone as I take my place in front of my screens at the monitoring station. “Murphy agrees that repeating the electric currents at a higher level is the best option,” he calls to Zhu, who finishes making her rounds. She spends an extra minute beside subject seven, shakes her head, and then comes over to join us.

  “That makes five colleagues in agreement,” she says. “Are you convinced?”

  Vesper pauses. “Well, we haven’t gotten clearance from all of the legal guardians yet, so it’s a nontopic until then.”

  Zhu sighs, then asks, “Would you mind writing this down, Jaime?” Which I take to mean, Write this down so we can cover our asses.

  I get out my pen and open my notebook.

  “BethAnn died of a heart attack. We won’t know why until a full autopsy is carried out. Fergus almost died of the same thing. We are wondering if a contributing factor is the fact that their bodies seem to be wearing down, considering the wild fluctuations of their vitals that they have experienced in the last eight hours. Because of this, it appears that waiting for them to wake up on their own is not the best solution.

  “Everyone, including our director, Mr. Osterman, agrees that the best plan for moving forward is proceeding with another round of electroshock, this one at a higher intensity than last time. Using laymen’s terms, the hope is to bump their brains out of the rut they seem to have gotten stuck in. The technique has been demonstrated successfully with test animals. Never with humans, which is why we haven’t acted so far. But time is of the essence.”

  She had mentioned the ups and downs in their vital signs. Now was my chance to push the matter further. “Just so I can understand what you’re talking about . . . for my notes . . . is there any way I can see what you mean about the fluctuation of the vitals?”

  She nods and comes over to my desk. Leaning over me, she opens a window on the fancy lab computer and types in a password. “This accesses our internal server.”

  She clicks through a few screens, and then stops on a list of links labeled one through seven. She clicks the top one. A page entitled “Beta subject one, Catalina Cordova” pops up. It has several subwindows, one of which is the image on my monitoring screen: a real-time video of Cata lying on the bed. The time ticks away in seconds beneath her image. The rest of the windows show diagrams of the feedback that is being monitored: heart rate, blood pressure, eye movement, muscle tension, brain waves.

  Zhu pulls the scroll bar under the “heart rate” window, showing the zigzags of Cata’s heartbeats moving in reverse.

  “You can see the history of each subjects’ feedback on their individual page. Once the trial is over, we pull all of them together into one chart to analyze overall individual feedback, giving us a better picture of how they reacted throughout the trial. We can also layer one subject’s vitals over another’s to analyze their reactions and draw comparative data. However, while the feedback is still being collected, you can only study one at a time.”

  That isn’t going to be good enough. I notice a printer icon in the corner of each window. “Can I print?”

  Zhu nods at a large-format printer in a corner of the room. “Knock yourself out,” she says. “Right now we’re on hold, trying to get in touch with all of the parents.”

  She reassures me that I’m logged in as a guest, so I can’t accidentally delete or change data, then goes back to her chair. I sit there for a moment, jotting down my thoughts to form my strategy.

  And then, one by one, I click into each
subject’s file and print out the history of their heart rate monitor. When I’m done, I collect the long strips of horizontally printed paper off the printer and bring them back to my desk. I begin by lining them up one on top of the other, and then realize the paper is so thin that if I layer one graph atop another, I can see through to the one underneath. I take my pen and trace the bottom graph onto the top one, and then label the new line “subject two.”

  Opening the desk drawer, I find an assortment of pens and pencils. Perfect. Using a different color of ink for each subject, I trace them one by one onto the graph until I have a picture of the entire group’s heart rate feedback from the beginning of the experiment until now.

  Across the bottom of the graph, the seconds, minutes, and hours are printed, starting with :00 at the beginning and ending at 7:20:05, which, though it was an hour ago (the timer on my screen currently reads 8:26:33), gives me more than seven hours of data. That should be enough to draw a conclusion.

  Satisfied with my work, I start on the next category of feedback: eye movement. And glancing over my shoulder at the teenagers lying on the beds, I think, Hold on. We’re all doing everything we can.

  Chapter 10

  Ant

  PAIN. SO MUCH PAIN. I’VE NEVER BROKEN A BONE in my life. But when I jumped out of the watchtower and hit the ground, my body felt like it was made of porcelain, exploding upon impact.

  How could I move? I was a pile of shattered shards. But Fergus scooped me up, and, even though his left arm was hanging limp by his side, he carried me toward the Wall.

  My body hurt so bad it was like a fire blazed behind my eyes. The world around me was one big bright spot: Even the black emptiness of the Wall seemed to dance with orange banners of light.

  I would have doubted that I was even conscious, but I glanced back to see Cata and Remi throw themselves off the tower too. Once I knew they were behind us, I let go of any attempt at control and let Fergus save me.