by Keith Thomas
“I remember Twenty-Six,” Ashanique said. “My mother always worried about her. She was so slight, such a pale and sickly looking little girl. Who knew she’d be one of the few to make it this far? Twenty-Six was from a warm climate. None of the kids could remember where they came from; electroshock and drugs took care of that. Well, until the machine awoke their memories. But some of their likes and dislikes, those things were hardwired. Electroshock and drugs couldn’t remove them. Twenty-Six had this thing about the color yellow. She just loved it and used to talk about wanting to live in the mountains so she could watch the Aspen trees change color from green to yellow. I wonder if she ever did after they got out?”
Matilda kissed Ashanique’s forehead.
“I’ll be back soon. Then we’re going to get you well.”
58
7:38 P.M.
NOVEMBER 15, 2018
CHICAGO, ILLINOIS
KOJO AND MATILDA rode down Lake Shore Drive in a rented commuter van.
The back was spacious, enough to fit three wheelchairs comfortably.
Outside, the clouds had cleared and the moon was perfect and bright.
Anxious to hear from Ophelia, Kojo phoned the house. It rang five times before he heard his own voice. You’ve reached the Omaboe residence, please—
Kojo tried Ophelia’s cell.
She rarely kept it with her, preferring to have it in her purse because she read somewhere on the Internet that cell phone signals could give you brain cancer. It drove Kojo crazy, but he’d never doubted her commitment. She might be late here and there, and she didn’t always answer the phone, but Brandon was so deeply happy when he was with her. The call went straight to Ophelia’s message. Kojo hung up and slid his cell into his pocket.
“Tell me about your son,” Matilda asked.
Kojo smiled just thinking about him.
“Brandon, his name’s Brandon. He’s twelve going on thirty-five.”
“A handful, huh?”
“Yeah. But not something I can’t handle.”
Matilda glanced at Kojo’s left hand again. Not only was there no wedding ring, there was no evidence of him ever having worn one.
“Twelve is a tricky age for a boy. Lot of changes going on.”
“Brandon lets me know. He’s good about that.” Kojo looked over at Matilda, seeing if she was getting him. She was.
He continued, “If anything, I raised him to be vocal. To speak out, you know? He’s proud and he ain’t shy. Something has him freaked out: he’s going to tell someone. Either me or Ophelia. . . .”
“His mom?”
“No, his mom’s dead. Five years ago. Uterine cancer. No, Ophelia is his nurse. My son’s got Down syndrome. It’s not that— It’s not that he can’t take care of himself. Just the other day I found him in the kitchen making his own version of tacos. He had the beans, the cheese, was using tortilla chips and gluing them together with the bean paste to make a shell. He can take care of himself, but he needs help, you know? He’s got the confidence, just needs the guidance. And, unfortunately, I can’t be around as often as I would like.”
“I’ve worked with a few cops. It’s a tough life. Lot of stress.”
“Stress I’ve got under control. Don’t take me wrong, I don’t sleep well, and I have some anger issues; most of that I chalk up to the job. But, uh, I have my outlets.”
“Okay . . .”
The way Matilda said it, Kojo knew she thought he was drinking or popping pills to see himself through his day. He didn’t blame her. When someone was a shrink, he or she saw the world through that lens. Everyone was screwed up in one way or another. Kojo knew she was programmed to do it. Same way he read people on the street; same way he scanned their eyes, their features, their hands. Maybe he carried a gun and maybe she’s got an advanced degree, but what they did was fundamentally the same. They read and they reacted.
“It’s not like that,” Kojo clarified. “I do woodworking. Have a setup in my garage. I’m not gonna say I’m anything great. I’m no Wendell Castle. I make furniture, mostly end tables and chairs. I don’t sell ’em. Just give them to friends and family. You know, holiday gifts and such. Any weekend I’m off, that’s where you’ll find me, covered in sawdust.”
Matilda laughed.
Kojo wondered if she pictured him sweaty and shirtless, working the tools. It was a funny image, not something he associated with himself, but he sort of wanted her to picture that. Hearing her laugh, seeing those dimples, Kojo couldn’t help but feel a bit giddy; a lightness in his head, an effervescence. Before meeting Matilda, he hadn’t felt that sensation in a very long time.
“I’d love to see some of your stuff,” Matilda said.
“Sure. I could send you some pics.”
“It’d be nice to see it in person. Just, I don’t know, sometimes it’s hard to tell with furniture unless you’re right there. Able to touch it, feel the wood . . .”
Matilda trailed off. Kojo realized he was staring at her. The moment of silence grew like a bubble around them. Drowning out the traffic and the infinite thrum of the tires on the asphalt. Matilda broke off eye contact first, looked at her lap.
“So, um, how exactly did you pick up woodworking?”
Kojo cleared his throat, turning his attention back to the road.
“My grandfather, back in Ghana, he was a woodworker. Pretty good. Used all the traditional tools and stuff. And, no, he didn’t make spears.”
Kojo shot Matilda a look.
She recoiled.
“No. No, I wouldn’t have—”
Kojo laughed. “Relax, just a joke. People make so many assumptions about me ’cause of my name. They hear my parents were Ghanaians, they think maybe I was raised in a thatch hut. Had goats as playmates. Went hunting lions with long spears. You know, that kinda bullshit. My dad was a doctor. My mom was a teacher. They moved to the States two years before I was born. I’m as American as it gets. How about you? From Chicago?”
“Yeah, native girl. My mom’s had a hard time the last few years, but she was wonderful when I was growing up. Really caring, devoted to me with everything she had. No way I could ever repay her for everything she sacrificed to make sure I turned out halfway decent.”
“I’d say you’re more than halfway decent.”
“Thanks.”
“Not much more,” Kojo jokingly clarified. “But a little. How about your dad?”
“He was never really part of the picture. He and my mom met while she was in grad school. She said he was handsome and collected books. Beyond that, he was pretty much an asshole. Minute he found out she was pregnant after three months of dating, he took off. And not like stopped calling her but basically up and disappeared, moved to a new town and left nothing behind.”
“Asshole.”
“Pretty much exactly right.”
“You ever try to look him up?”
Matilda shrugged. “When I was younger and trying to figure out who I was—you know, the whole early-twenties soul-search thing. But I never got anywhere. After a few months, I stopped trying. I realized I’d have nothing to say to him. But you’re a good dad, I can tell.”
“Thank you. How? I don’t always feel like a very good dad.”
“You’re patient but interested, polite but firm. Maybe it’s the whole woodworking thing that’s blinding me, but I feel like you’ve got what people call an old soul. There’s a sophistication to you, a maturity, that most people rarely achieve. It’s amazing how the slightest thing—a missed appointment, a bounced check, a single ugly glance—can turn some people completely upside down. I’ve worked with patients whose lives have fallen apart, like completely, because of the most trivial thing snowballing into an avalanche. But you, you seem really even-keeled, like you know exactly who you are and you don’t need to prove it. Like I said, that’s the makings, at least in my book, of a good dad and a good person.”
“Thank you. I . . . I try.”
They rode on in silence for a mo
ment before Matilda said, “You could have taken that gun from me anytime, right? Just ripped it out of my hand?”
“Yeah.”
“So why didn’t you?”
Kojo sank back in his seat, cracked his knuckles.
“I can see Brandon in Ashanique. She’s got his same tenacity. And she believes in people, in the goodness of people, the same as him. I believe her. I do. All the memories she says she has. None of it makes sense when Dr. Song talks about it, but Ashanique knows, and I can tell.”
Matilda reached into her purse and pulled out a folded Post-it Note and a pen. She used the window to scribble something on the note, a few words in shorthand.
“I say something that memorable?” Kojo asked.
“No—I mean, no, you just reminded me of something.”
“I saw your office. Wasn’t prying. It was part of the crime scene, right? I noticed the notes taped up everywhere—”
“Hard not to,” Matilda said, a bit embarrassed.
“Talk to me about that. All those notes on the walls and doors, is that research stuff? Solving the chemistry of memory? Or is it, I don’t know, like you’re putting your brain on the outside? Just to see it all more clearly? That sounds really stupid, but I think you get what I mean.”
“Doesn’t sound stupid. It’s hard to explain—”
“You don’t have to. Just was asking.”
Matilda reached over and touched Kojo’s shoulder.
A shiver of electricity rippled through his muscles—the comforting power of human touch, the flood of oxytocin and endorphins. Even though he wasn’t normally a touchy person, he found the warmth of that contact instantly soothing. It grounded his thoughts and solidified his feelings.
Kojo slowed the van as they came to a light.
He’d found Matilda attractive at the university but that was reflexive, the sort of double take you do when you see a physique that checks those mental boxes, a muscle memory.
Sitting in the car, just the two of them in their bubble of silence, he found her beautiful. It was her mind. Her words. Her boldness. The way the fading light played in her eyes and the condensation on the window that created a halo around her hair. Kojo was exhausted, he’d broken the law and probably lost his job, but he wanted nothing more than to kiss Matilda.
He didn’t.
“Ashanique puts everything in perspective, doesn’t she?” he said.
“She’s changed my life.”
The light flicked to green and Kojo pressed the pedal down.
59
8:51 P.M.
NOVEMBER 15, 2018
NEW BEGINNINGS REHABILITATION
CHICAGO, ILLINOIS
KOJO PULLED THE VAN up to a loading bay just off the kitchen of the rehab facility.
Childers was there with the three comatose Nulls. They were wrapped in thick coats and propped up in wheelchairs.
“They going to be okay for a while?” Kojo asked Childers as he got out of the van.
“Yeah. They’re just asleep is all. We drive safe, though, okay?”
“Of course.”
As the Nulls were moved to the van, Matilda headed inside. She found Ashanique pale and shaken, sitting in a wheelchair. She hurried over to the girl and kneeled at her side. Dr. Song was nowhere in sight.
“Ashanique, you okay?”
The girl moaned. “My head hurts.”
“Shit,” Matilda said, looking around the room for MetroChime. “Did Dr. Song give you any medication while we were gone? Did you tell him you weren’t well?”
“He knows,” Ashanique said. “Can’t do anything about it now.”
“What do you mean?”
Dr. Song appeared in the doorway. Matilda stroked Ashanique’s hair and then kissed her forehead before she walked over to Dr. Song.
“She’s getting worse. Can’t you do anything for her?”
Dr. Song pulled Matilda into the hallway.
“The condition is progressing more rapidly than I’d expected,” Dr. Song said.
“Why?”
“She’s different from the others. All the Null I’ve seen have been directly involved in the Clarity experiment. The past-life memories flooding their heads are a direct result of exposure to the LINAC. But Ashanique inherited what happened to her. For her, the mutation is inborn like albinism or some regressive gene.”
“You’re saying she can’t be cured?”
“We don’t know that. She’s different. I believe that if the Null could be activated the way they were, then it stands to reason that Ashanique can be deactivated in a similar fashion. It’s merely a matter of reapplying the suppressor system that was already in place. But only the LINAC can do it.”
Matilda stepped to the side and glanced in at Ashanique. The girl seemed to be getting paler, sicker, by the moment. Matilda didn’t want to take any risks.
“She’s not well enough to travel.”
“We don’t have a choice,” Dr. Song said. “I can pump her full of MetroChime but, at this point, I’m not sure what good it will do. If we wait more than a few hours, I think the most logical step is to ease her into a medically induced—”
“No way. You’re not knocking her out.”
Dr. Song shook his head.
“Then she has to go now, the sooner the better.”
“How certain are you that this solution is going to fix everything?”
“Trust me, Matilda.”
“I can’t.”
“Don’t trust me then,” Dr. Song told her. “Trust the science.”
As she looked in at Ashanique, the girl managed a slight smile.
It was enough.
“Let’s go,” Matilda said.
60
9:25 P.M.
NOVEMBER 15, 2018
JESSE BROWN VA MEDICAL CENTER
CHICAGO, ILLINOIS
THEY WENT INTO the hospital through the loading bay.
Wearing scrubs, their hair changed, the idea was to avoid anyone scanning the monitors, whether they were normal security or working for the HED. Matilda wasn’t sure if they were distinguishable anyway.
Kojo pulled the van in while Dr. Song and Matilda unloaded the comatose Nulls. It didn’t take long before security showed up: a guard doing the rounds, a flashlight at his hip beside a gun that had likely never been drawn. He rapped a knuckle on the windshield of the van.
“No unloading here, bud,” the guard said. “You need to move.”
Kojo rolled down the window. “Sorry, what?”
The guard, getting pissed, practically stuck his head in the driver’s-side window. “I said . . . ,” he began. He stopped short when Kojo pressed Dr. Song’s Taser into his neck. The guard’s knees buckled, he fell backward, where Childers caught him. She lowered him to the ground and bound him with the rope. She also took his ID badge.
Childers gave a thumbs-up to Kojo.
The badge opened a door to a supply room.
They were in.
Wearing the proper garb and pushing the three comatose patients, Matilda, Kojo, and Childers looked like they belonged. Even with Ashanique trailing behind with Dr. Song, none of the nurses and techs they passed blinked an eye.
“There is an elevator to the left,” Dr. Song directed. “We’ll need my badge.”
Two elevator rides and fifteen hundred feet of hallway later, they approached the doors to the room that housed the HED LINAC machine.
An armed security guard sat at a small desk to the left of the door. He looked up at them, his face illuminated by the tablet in his hands. Recognizing them immediately, the guard jumped up. The tablet clattered to the floor. He drew his weapon and, without a word, began firing.
A window to Kojo’s left exploded. He dived to the ground, pulling his sidearm, as Matilda and Dr. Song guided the comatose Nulls toward the wall. Ashanique scrambled behind Matilda, her heart racing. The sound of the shots reverberated around the hallway like boxed-in explosions.
The guard kept shooting as
he walked fearlessly toward them. A ceiling light burst over Matilda’s head. Hot shards of glass rained down into her hair. Dr. Song cried out as a bullet tore through his left foot. Kojo steadied his weapon and fired once. The bullet screamed into the guard’s forehead, sending him spinning to the tiled floor, where he twitched once before lying still.
Kojo ran over to Matilda and Ashanique. “You okay? Anyone hit?”
Matilda, Childers, and Ashanique were uninjured. Amazingly, Terry, Alice, and Hugh remained unharmed as well. Dr. Song stood and steadied himself, trying not to put weight on his foot. Childers looked the wound over.
“I’ll live,” Dr. Song said. “We need to get inside.”
Kojo shot out a video camera over the guard’s small desk as Dr. Song scanned his badge on the reader next to the door. It beeped but did not unlock. Dr. Song tried it again, but again it failed. He turned back to look at Childers, shaking his head.
“I don’t understand . . . ,” he began.
He stopped when he noticed Ashanique pulling the badge from the dead guard’s belt. She stepped up beside him and calmly held the badge to the reader.
There was a metallic clank as the door unlocked.
They made their way inside quickly. The door closed and locked behind them before Dr. Song flipped on the lights. The LINAC was revealed. Ashanique walked across the room to look closely at the machine. It reminded her of a squat telescope and seemed to hover eight feet over the floor. It was bigger than the ones she’d seen in her mind. Sleeker. Recalling the one her mother had been subjected to, and how loud it was, Ashanique wondered what sort of sound this one was going to make.
“Ashanique,” Dr. Song said. “Please, we don’t have much time.”
He pointed to a whiteboard opposite the LINAC machine before Childers eased him into a chair. As Ashanique walked over to the board, she noticed that Dr. Song had made bloody left shoeprints around the room.
“Can you write it out for us?” Dr. Song said.
Ashanique grabbed a dry-erase marker from the shelf on the whiteboard and took the cap off the marker. As everyone watched, unconsciously holding their breath, Ashanique began to write.