Reclaimed

by Madeleine Roux

  Senna waited until the pain passed, and then she forced herself up and half ran the rest of the distance, huffing and puffing, weak in ways she was constantly discovering. Through the gallery, where the Servitor was setting out identical bowls of soup for Brea, Anju, and Dr. Colbie. They smiled at her with muted curiosity, like she was a passing tram. Han didn’t notice her trot by, enamored of a mountain of pasta drenched in red sauce. Senna smelled the garlic as she sailed by.

  Up the ramp, to the doors. They were crimson, brighter than they were before, as if her two-minute lateness had angered the man inside. Marin and Jonathan sat her down to watch The Wizard of Oz once. “You’re like a newborn baby,” Marin had teased, dusting their popcorn with seaweed flakes in the kitchenette. “You don’t know anything. You haven’t seen anything!”

  Jonathan liked it. “We get to be your tastemakers. We’ll only show you the best stuff.”

  Here was the Great and Terrible Oz, only the curtain was red and Senna had seen his face, while the outside world on Earth and the colonies and the station wondered and speculated, in awe. From their limited interactions, Senna got the impression that he wanted to be seen. Why did he hide from the public? Why choose a moon of Jupiter and not some expansive and lavish lab on the station? He could afford to buy out half a sector if he wanted to. Now was the time to ask, she realized, during this dinner she couldn’t remember wanting.

  The doors swished open, the man behind the curtain would see her now.

  Paxton had changed into a smart blue suit without a tie, the cut of the pants slim and high, showing a sliver of silvery gray socks. When she stood in the open doorway he looked up from where he had been fiddling with his console. His resembled Marin’s, recessed into the surface of his desk, routed through his VIT for convenience, a three-dimensional, projected display hovering inches above where the technology was nested into the wood. Of course, Marin’s desk wasn’t real wood, but Senna assumed his would be something outrageous and imported from Earth. It certainly looked expensive, the desk curved and dominating the back half of the space, darker whorls and knots in the surface giving the flat, glossy plane the look of wind-blown sand.

  “There you are,” he said, making the display vanish and striding toward her with open arms. “Right on time.”

  Senna smiled. She was at least two minutes late.

  “And looking gorgeous. I like the coat, too. Adds, you know, your own spin.” To get to her, he had to walk around a small, obviously temporary black table and chairs, where their meal had been laid out. “May I?” he asked, gesturing toward her jacket.

  Senna trapped her fingers in the too-long sleeves of it and bit down on her lip. “I’d rather keep it on. Chilly.”

  “I can have Genie adjust the temperature in here.”

  Senna shook her head no.

  “Sure! Sure, okay, no problem.” Judging by his expression, it was at least somewhat a problem, but he spun back toward the table with a flourish, and Senna decided to take the seat on the right. The office itself was less grandiose than she expected, with decidedly fewer vanity sculptures. Immense digital frames hung on the walls, cycling through various photos, most of them aerial images of the Dome as it was being constructed. His desk held a variety of smaller frames faced toward the chair, and a statue bust. The only light in the office originated along the back wall, which was a false window like the one on the upper walkway overlooking the gallery. It showed a meadow at sunset, pale grasses stretched to infinity, an obligingly scenic wind rustling the field so that it resembled one massive, pastoral wave breaking against a pre-storm sky.

  “I thought you might want to try your luck with the chicken again,” Paxton said, pulling out her chair. Unnecessarily, in her opinion, but Senna let him do it. It was the first time any man had tried. Her face felt tightly nervous, as if any expression too extreme, good or bad, would crack it. “There’s butter noodles, too. Didn’t know about wine. Are you . . . Do you . . .”

  “You tell me,” said Senna, half joking. Without asking, he spooned a helping of noodles onto her plate. The authentic nonsoy dairy smelled intoxicating. “Do I drink? Seems like you know everything about me.”

  Paxton hid a laugh behind a cough into his fist. “True enough. We like our research. Can you blame us? We’re fiddling around in your head, seems like we should have the lay of things. Hard to navigate a forest blind, and the mind is the densest, strangest forest imaginable.”

  He held up a chilled bottle of white wine and tipped it questioningly toward her.

  “No, thank you,” she replied, and he poured his own tall, cylindrical glass, visibly disappointed. “It still doesn’t sit well with me. I just never developed a tolerance, Preece wouldn’t allow us to try. Even just aspirin was a big deal. He had to source it himself.”

  “I confess, even with all my vast resources, finding information on your group was a challenge,” Paxton told her, adjusting his glasses. He sipped his wine and watched her listlessly twirl the noodles around her fork. “You’re the only source of knowledge now. The last of your kind.”

  “Nobody needs to know what went on in there,” Senna insisted. If he wanted to get her to eat and drink with him, this wasn’t the way. Any mention of the compound and the brood soured her stomach and hitched a knot in her throat. “I’m already starting to forget some of it. I thought it wouldn’t bother me, but . . . aren’t you worried that if anyone can do this, it will make life less meaningful? If you can just erase anything you want from your past. you’re making it harder for people to grow, aren’t you?”

  “What a shocking thing to say,” Paxton whispered, adjusting in his chair. “No. Absurd. Human beings are not their pain. One unforeseeable misfortune shouldn’t derail a person’s life forever, or even a few years, that time—all time—is precious. LENG is offering choice and control. We curate our lives in every other way—our social circle, our news feeds, our wardrobes, our diets, our skin, our hair, why shouldn’t we curate that which affects us most?” He paused and furrowed his brow, glancing up at her with his chin tilted down, his eyes barely visible behind his spectacles. “Are you having regrets about coming here?”

  “I don’t know,” Senna answered honestly. “I’m beginning to worry I made the easy choice, not the right one.”

  Paxton shook his head. “This is just something new, of course it’s frightening. People are always resistant to change until you prove that it’s inevitable.”

  Senna smirked. “You want to create utopia.”

  “And that’s . . . good?” Paxton sounded hopeful. Clearing his throat, he recited, “Thomas More said something like, ‘Things will never be perfect, until human beings are perfect.’ ” He waited, and Senna only smiled slightly. “Of course from his seminal work Utopia?”

  “I haven’t read it,” she confessed. Although it sounded like something right up Preece’s ally. She assumed his definition of “perfect” differed wildly from Paxton’s, who now gazed at her askew, as if she were very simple or very pitiable, neither option she liked. “It is good, of course it is. Only . . .” Well. She had come for answers; she might as well do her best to get them. More than just the philosophical implications of LENG were on her mind. There were more immediate, practical concerns, too. Senna put down her fork and sighed, rubbing her eye. “Can I ask you something?”

  “Anything.”

  “Did I . . . did I agree to this? I don’t remember you asking, or me agreeing.”

  Paxton snorted into his wine. “Jesus, who do you think I am? Of course I asked.”

  “How did it go?” she asked. “Show me.”

  His thick, dark brows rose almost to his hairline, but after a moment he relented. “You were about to start your session. Dr. Colbie made a joke about you not being able to stomach our chicken last night.” He paused, eyes searching along her face. “She said, ‘Sixteen is going to be inconsolable. It worked under a two-
Michelin-star chef on the station.’ And I suggested you try its chicken again, but not with Han there to make you nervous. Then I invited you to do it here, now, and you said you would.”

  “But how did I say it?” she pressed, watching a line crease itself above his nose.

  “Is this an interrogation?” Paxton chuckled, pouring himself more wine. “Senna, if you don’t believe me, I can show you the security tapes.”

  She hadn’t thought of that. Shaking her head, she exhaled deeply and pointed to her glass. “Okay, maybe a little wine.”

  “Atta girl.”

  It did taste nice, the wine, bubbly and not too sweet, with a strange zing that Paxton told her was its dryness. That made sense, it did zing her tongue in a way that made her thirsty for more of it. After she had tried the noodles, which were superb, and the sous vide chicken, which was odd at first but eventually delicious, Paxton offered her more wine and she declined. The fizzy, blurring effect was beginning to distract her.

  “This is . . . strictly professional, right?” Senna asked. “This dinner? It’s not a date, is it?”

  Paxton shifted in his chair and dumped the last of the bottle into his cup. “I don’t know, is it?”

  “It’s just . . . I think I should focus on my recovery,” Senna told him, the wine making it feel like there were obstacles to navigate in between words. Even her thoughts were weaving. “And I don’t know how to do any of this stuff. Preece didn’t allow it, and it hasn’t come up since I’ve been free.”

  Paxton regarded her over the smudged lip of his glass. “He didn’t allow it?”

  “On the compound there were men I liked and other women, too, but there were strict rules about it. Preece had some passionate ideas about overpopulation.”

  “Really?” Paxton drained the cup, smacked his lips and put his cup down a little harshly on the table. “A guy like that? I figured it was all a sex thing. It always is, in cults. A paternalistic figure, total control, and everyone there to dote on him and make him their idol. Sex always enters into it, why wouldn’t it? For someone like that, it’s the tool of ultimate control.”

  Senna’s toes curled in her shoes, the comment delivering a sobering shock to her solar plexus. Smartest man in the universe he might be, but he certainly didn’t know everything. Not even everything about little old me. “Thank you for dinner,” she murmured.

  “Senna, don’t do that. It wasn’t serious. You know how cults are . . .”

  “Yes, I do.”

  Her first impression freshly onto the grounds was correct, she realized. She didn’t like him. There was something unpleasant about his voice, she was beginning to feel, a subtle yet pervasive whine, like every word was a plea. A plea to like him, a plea to like the so obviously unlikable.

  Look at me, don’t look at me. Love me, wonder about me. Look at me.

  The lights flickered, and Senna pushed back from the table. Maybe one day she would get to finish a meal without cutting it short and storming off, but she refused to feel guilty for this—Paxton had crossed a line. She might not know anything about dating or men or women, but she knew when something made her feel like that, it wasn’t to be ignored. Too many times on the compound she hadn’t listened to that feeling, and let Preece bowl right over her, overrule her, reduce her instincts to childish fears. Some fears were childish, it was true, but not the ones that curled your toes in your shoes.

  Paxton dodged away from her, toward the doors, grumbling to himself. It seemed he wasn’t going to fight her on it, and that at least was a relief. She watched the pictures change in the frames on the wall behind him while he went to open the doors. The ice fields, desolate and untouched; a single rover brave against the threatening expanse; the robotics construction crew breaking ground; the skeletal suggestion of the Dome in its earliest phases; a group shot after facility completion and a half-dozen smiling faces; a silhouette against a cold, white void.

  A shadow.

  “Senna, can we discuss this? It wasn’t meant to be a jab, don’t let this ruin our dinner.”

  In a memory or a nightmare, a voice redolent with malice whispered to her. She stared at the shadow in the frame, but in the next instant, it was gone.

  18

  Han flaked crusted sauce away from his chin and groaned, jamming the heel of his hand into a knot that had formed between his shoulder blades. Beside him on a white plinth, an abstract bust of Paxton Dunn sat at about shoulder height.

  “Just relax your arms, please,” Brea was saying. She had her recording device resting on the palm of her hand, her brown curls pushed back behind her ears with a patterned gray headband. “Try not to fidget.”

  As soon as she said that, his urge to fidget worsened. Han sighed and glanced at his VIT, wondering how long this was going to take. Then his eyes wandered to his right, up the ramp, to the closed, red doors of Paxton’s office. He didn’t like that Senna had gotten invited to dinner with Paxton. That was supposed to be his time with the mogul. What did they even have in common? Han decided it wouldn’t happen again. Tomorrow night, he would be the one picking Paxton’s brain over dan dan noodles. What would Paxton’s private office look like? Cool as hell, he guessed. He had to get inside.

  First, he just had to get Paxton’s attention.

  The artificial sunset dousing the gallery with lavender and ochre light flickered, and Han groaned. Paxton had never lowered the immense shutters encasing the Dome, the storm raging on outside. Cocking her head to the side, Brea waited for the sirens and the darkness, but it was just a flicker.

  “Oh, good.” She brightened. “We can proceed.” As she filmed him, she began to circle, capturing more of the facility and a more dynamic shot as she started up with the questions. This was part of the experience, he told himself. He balled up his hands into fists, hating being on camera. Even when he gamed with his closest buddies, he used a rendered avatar instead of his actual face.

  “Can you say your name for me, please?” Brea asked, firm but friendly. Her voice was low and had a rasp to it, and an accent that might have been Spanish. Mostly he just knew the flat, boring station accent, although one of his gaming squaddies had grown up in Australia for a while before transferring to Tokyo Bliss. Han was always jealous of his cool voice and the way he said reckon instead of think.

  “Han Jun,” he said, flinching when he had to look into the camera apparatus. “But everyone just calls me Han.”

  “How old are you, Han?” Brea prompted, pointing to her mouth with her free hand and giving an exaggerated grin. Smile.

  His voice sounded dumb when he talked and smiled but he did it anyway, just to make it all end quicker. “I’m fourteen.”

  “What are your impressions of the facility so far?”

  “I haven’t done much yet, but so far it’s the best thing ever. I was the first person to test the new LENG tech here, so that was pretty stellar.”

  “That sounds very stellar,” Brea corrected, slightly scolding. “What was it like meeting your hero, Paxton Dunn?”

  Now that was a question he didn’t mind answering. “He’s nicer than I expected, way nicer, and—”

  The light flickered again. This time the storm won, and harsh red light speared through the gallery. Emergency indicators flared on the ground alongside the walls, and Brea muttered something unintelligible. Diligently, she kept the camera fixed on Han while he cowered against the statue pedestal.

  He still didn’t feel one hundred percent after his first session, and the sudden sirens and flashing lights made him want to curl up into a ball. Finally, Brea gave up, storming off as Genie’s voice flooded the echoing hall. “Please remain calm,” he instructed. “The facility is detecting abnormal wind activity. Please remain calm and follow instructions.”

  “Abnormal? Stay here,” Brea snapped at him, clicking away swiftly in her heels, vanishing through the lab door behind Han. After thei
r meal, Dr. Colbie had gone that way, too, while Anju disappeared up the ramp toward Paxton’s office, then took a left toward Zone 6, which the map labeled staff-only areas, housing for them and R & D labs. Brea would probably just go consult Dr. Colbie and only be gone a minute or two. Nobody emerged from Paxton’s office.

  Han covered his ears, wincing as another burst of Technicolor pain came with the piercing red lights. Something warm flashed across his hand, then again, an insistent pulse. When he lowered his right hand to observe it, he watched what looked like the reflection off a VIT or spectacles bounce to the floor. It danced back toward him, hovering over his foot, then zipped a few inches across the floor, just in front of him. He took a small step toward the uneven, pale circle, and it moved on, but waited for him. Looking around for the source of it, he couldn’t imagine any of the ferociously bright sirens making that kind of reflection, a glimmer he would expect to see in the middle of the day, not a darkened crisis-alert mode.

  “Updated alert: Abnormal debris detected outside facility. All-staff call, severity level nine. Please remain calm and follow instructions,” Genie boomed again.

  “Nine?” Han repeated. That didn’t sound good. “Genie? What am I supposed to do?”

  The assistant’s voice shimmered up from Han’s VIT monitor. “Remain in place, a staff member will direct you shortly.”

  The insistent little light hovered over his shoe, then away from him again, as if egging him on. Han squinted, trying to pass his hand over whatever would project the light, but he couldn’t find the source.

  “Weird,” he muttered. “Where is that coming from?”

  A memory tugged at him, of a long-ago day, bright, a pleasant, grassy scent on the air, his fingertips dipping into cool water. A pool. He had seen little reflections like the one dancing around his shoe at the koi pond. It was by the university and the botanical garden. Distorted laughter; orange-and-silver shapes moving beneath the glassy water surface; reeds pushed by artificial wind; a university student fluttering a throaty shakuhachi, ancient music echoing in a cavernous space station sector. For just an instant Han almost forgot about the alert, because he knew it was strange that he would have gone to the koi ponds alone, but he couldn’t remember who had gone with him. There had to be someone . . . He preferred staying in his room as much as possible, so someone must have convinced him to leave the condo. There were things he had memorized, core truths that weren’t facts but something deeper. There were facts you learned and facts that lived in the body, aspects of life that weren’t true so much as innate. You needed those innate things to stand up, to keep standing, but something had come loose.