Melancholy: Episode 2

by Charlotte McConaghy

  “The test parameters were thorough. A drug isn’t cleared for administration unless it passes certain checkpoints designed to protect against harm. Citizens are encouraged to monitor their health and report any symptoms.”

  “Right, but mental health hasn’t exactly been a number-one priority for the government, has it?” He lets that hang in the air for a moment, then asks, “Do you experience any side effects, Meredith?”

  “No.”

  “That’s pretty lucky.”

  “No, that’s statistically expected. The cure reacts positively in ninety percent of the populace, Mr Townsend. They’re calmer, happier and healthier.”

  “So let’s talk about the other ten percent. What happens to them?”

  She sighs. “They can have unpredictable emotional responses to stress and stimuli.”

  “And do you think that’s also a likely result of the sadness cure?”

  “It isn’t yet finished.”

  “But the test subjects have all shown such symptoms, haven’t they?”

  No response.

  “How many have you tested so far?”

  No response.

  “I’m pretty sure I heard you say there were at least sixty-six, right?”

  Her eyes are glued to her hands.

  “Here’s the thing, Meredith,” he goes on softly. “There’s a woman outside that door who’s waiting to have her turn with you. She’s not going to be as nice. In fact, I’m sometimes convinced the sole purpose of her life is to inflict pain. If you can tell me the names and ages of all sixty-six of your test subjects, I’ll make sure she doesn’t come in here.”

  Meredith’s eyes dart up to Luke. She’s starting to look frightened now, the idea of the pain seemingly worse than the pain itself. In a slow, small voice she begins to speak names. Sixty-six of them.

  “Jennifer Soyles, fourteen years old. Ben O’Malley, twelve years old. Tony Lin, fourteen years old. Harry Rinks, ten years old. Liza Shircova, eleven years old …”

  And on and on.

  Luke types each one of them into his tablet. It’s the ideal strategy – he has read her perfectly. With each name Meredith falters a little more, her voice grows wearier and by the time she’s finished remembering every child she has ruined, the doctor looks wretched with shame.

  “Thank you,” Luke says.

  “It was to help the many,” she says. “Harm the few to help the many.”

  “How many of these children died?”

  She says a number and then has to clear her throat before she can be heard. “Forty.”

  “You’re going to go through them and mark which ones.” Luke hands her the tablet and she goes through the list, slowly checking them off.

  “How long did you work for Dr Collingsworth in his lab before the anger cure was approved?” Luke asks when she’s finished.

  “Ten years,” Meredith mutters, utterly defeated.

  “During the initial test rounds, what did you do with the failed subjects?”

  She opens her mouth but nothing comes out.

  “Did you report them?”

  She shakes her head.

  “Did you ever see any with bleeding gums and burst blood vessels in their eyes? Did you ever inject a round of subjects with something that stole their humanity completely? Did they grow violent and aggressive? When you played god, Meredith, did you stumble and instead create monsters? What did you do with those monsters afterwards? Did they have to be killed? Or were they quarantined somewhere? Somewhere such as beyond an unbreachable wall?”

  She clenches her hands tightly.

  My heart is pounding.

  Luke leans forward and tilts Meredith’s chin up so that she is forced to look into his face. “Did you and Collingsworth create the Furies and then blame them on the plague?”

  She stares at him, and then finally she whispers, “Yes.”

  I breathe out in a rush.

  “Does the current version of the cure also cause certain patients to become Furies?”

  “Yes.”

  “Is that what happened to Collingsworth?”

  “Yes.”

  “Does Falon Shay know about this?”

  “Yes. It was his idea to put them beyond the wall so no one would be able to leave the city.”

  Luke is so still it seems for a moment that he has turned to stone. Softly he murmurs, “Is the land beyond the wall diseased at all?”

  “No. It’s perfectly habitable. It’s regenerating as we speak.”

  *

  When Luke finally emerges he looks exhausted. “Let’s get a drink,” he suggests.

  He follows me to the Den where we raid the pantry for the whisky selection. The people on kitchen duty are all happy to see Luke back from the mission and want to give him hugs and kisses, which he looks pleased about. They don’t talk to me, but that’s because they know I don’t much like them. I don’t much like anyone, really.

  We sit in a corner table and watch the people on dinner duty setting up the meal for later tonight. Afterwards there’s going to be a party to celebrate the homecoming of those who went to the city. We always celebrate when no one comes back dead.

  Luke drinks his whisky in two large gulps then pours himself another. “My skin’s crawling,” he admits. “I wish we didn’t have to tell anyone.”

  “We don’t have to.” He gives me a funny look. “Why? What difference will it make?”

  “It’s a big deal, Raven. People deserve to know the truth. The government created monsters and then built a wall to keep them out. If we can get rid of the monsters, we can get rid of the wall and be free.”

  I nurse my drink, sliding my fingers over the glass. He makes it sound very simple, but there are dangerous people who will kill to keep that wall up. “How did you know she’d react that way?”

  Luke shrugs and takes another swig. “She has a chip on her shoulder. Has rules and standards to live by, and punishes herself if she can’t live up to them. She compartmentalized the kids into numbers so she could deny their humanity. I just gave the kids their names back. Plus she was really tired. That always helps.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “You get used to reading people when it’s your job to lie to them. I’m only guessing anyway.”

  “What about me? What do you read in me?”

  “Not a good idea, Raven.” He shakes his head.

  “Why not?”

  “People don’t like hearing the truth about themselves, and I get in trouble for telling it.”

  “I’m not people. Go on.”

  Sighing, he pours himself a third drink and considers me. “Your personality has been shaped by the deep knowledge that people respond to you or behave the way they do because of your beauty. It’s intrinsically tied to your self-worth and your perspective. You expect to be desired and you hate it when people play into that expectation. You don’t respect anyone because you don’t respect yourself. You enjoy cruelty because it makes you feel strong. You hurt so you want others to hurt too. You take pains to make yourself feel in control of every situation. You’re terrified that anyone will glimpse your terror.”

  Heat flares all over my skin and I think I might vomit.

  “Don’t freak out,” he adds. “We all have our shit. You’re also very smart and you care way more about this place than you let on.

  I want to hurt him. I want to tear the skin from his perfect face with my fingernails and teeth. Instead I smile coldly. “You enjoyed that, didn’t you? I wonder if you can look at yourself with such brutality.”

  “I didn’t mean to be brutal. I’m sorry.”

  “Of course you did. You were trying to hurt me. Do you want to know why?” I pause, finishing my drink and feeling it burn down my throat. I look at him again, hiding the sudden inferno of hatred in my heart behind the words I know will most disturb him. “I might expect people to desire me, but that’s only because I’m very good at reading when they do. And you, Luke Townsend, want me mor
e than anyone in this whole fucking place. You’re just too pathetic to admit it.”

  I leave the Den, my mind working quickly. I have to stop giving him power over me. I have to reclaim it.

  *

  Luke

  Shiiiiiiiiiiiiit. I’m gonna pay for that one.

  I follow her back to her house and enter uninvited. “Raven.”

  She turns and with one mighty swing socks me in the face. It hurts, but not too badly given the whisky I just skulled.

  “There. We’re even.”

  “You think a punch hurts half as much as those words?” she exclaims.

  I blink, surprised. She’s never admitted to being hurt before, never admitted that anything can even touch her. “I really am sorry,” I say again. “I’m not interested in fighting with you, or being your enemy. I want to be your friend.”

  “Friend?” She laughs. “You have enough friends. Everyone in this whole compound is your friend.”

  “Yeah, but you don’t have any.”

  Her eyebrows arch. “This is the cruelest apology I’ve ever heard.”

  “You know it’s true, Raven.”

  “I don’t want friends!” she spits out. “I don’t need friends!”

  “Right.” I head for the door, wishing I hadn’t bothered.

  She stops me, pushing me roughly against it. “Why can’t you just admit that you want me?”

  “Because I don’t.”

  Her black eyes and red lips are very close to my face. “You’re such a liar, Luke Townsend.”

  Abruptly I can smell her desire. It’s red and thick like a cloud in my mind.

  “Your girlfriend is dead,” she says. “There’s no reason to deny yourself.”

  “I’m not interested,” I tell her again.

  “Is it because you like someone else?”

  I shake my head, frustrated. “Can I go?”

  “The spoiled child with the dual eyes?” she asks. “I can’t see how, Luke.”

  “Dual and I are friends, and I’m honestly just not into you.”

  “Then why did you come here?”

  “To apologize. Even though you pushed me into saying what I did.”

  “You’re desperate for everyone to love you. You lie and manipulate people into it.”

  Her nearness is starting to muddle my brain. I feel a weird tingling on the back of my neck and down my spine. Like on the train, I begin to experience things I shouldn’t. Thoughts and sensations and images in my mind and the heavy scent of Raven and heat in my gut and pins and needles in my fingers and –

  Lips against mine.

  The kiss is soft and I feel myself leaning into it.

  But confusion rushes me because it doesn’t feel right, doesn’t taste right, and so I open my eyes and see the wrong person –

  I push Raven away and she smiles slowly as if I have walked into her trap. “You liked that. I felt it.”

  “Temporary insanity,” I snarl. “Don’t come near me again.”

  I wrench the door open to find Josi with her hand raised to knock. She blinks, looks at me, spots Raven looking smug. Her eyes narrow in on my lips and my heart pounds; I’m sure I look guilty too. She’s too smart not to join the dots, even though I have no fucking clue how I wound up kissing a woman I hate. My head feels on fire and I can’t work out what to say.

  Josi’s gaze hardens and she laughs this clipped laugh. “I’m interrupting.”

  “Wait – ”

  “See you round.”

  I watch her stalk away and I feel as though I’m going insane.

  *

  So I tell Dodge. “I feel as though I’m going insane.”

  “Tell me about it,” he implores gently, sitting me in his test-subject chair. But that’s when I see Meredith. She is perched behind the workbench, handcuffed to her chair. Behind her in his cage is Ben, pacing back and forth.

  “I’d rather not have a medical examination with the government pawn listening in,” I say. “Who brought her here?”

  “Don’t mind her,” Dodge says with a wave of his hand. “Quinn wants her working.”

  Meredith watches me, her expression unreadable.

  “What are your symptoms?” Dodge asks.

  I tilt my head, appraising Meredith. I have zero respect for her and everything she stands for, but it can’t be said that she’s irrational or unpredictable – she is calm. She is everything the cure was meant to be.

  I’m too agitated to keep worrying that she’s here, so I turn my eyes back to Dodge. “I see things. Smell things. Feel things. They don’t make sense.”

  “What’s the trigger?”

  I shake my head, trying to work it out. “I don’t know. Adrenalin? I get these rushes of confusion …”

  Dodge takes a vial of my blood and peers at it under his microscope. “Your cells are degenerating at a rapid rate.”

  “I know that. Can you maybe tell me something you haven’t told me a million times before?”

  “What exactly have you experienced?”

  “I just lost all sense of reality for about thirty seconds. There were such intense sensations that I forgot where I was and who I was with.”

  Dodge seems stumped, staring at me helplessly.

  Ben gives a cat-like yowl from his cage.

  And then Meredith asks, “Do you have synesthesia, Mr Townsend?”

  I blink, looking at her. “A mild case.”

  “Were you injected with Zetemaphine at any point in your life?”

  I swallow. Can only manage to nod.

  “It’s intensifying your synesthesia, which is why you’re experiencing sensory confusion each time your brain triggers a rush of adrenalin. Smells cause sights? Sights cause sounds? Sounds cause physical sensations? Hallucinations?”

  I nod again.

  “It’s not fatal. Just very confusing. Avoid situations that cause your heart rate to rise and trigger adrenalin emissions and you’ll reduce its effects.”

  “Oh, that’ll be easy. What about the degeneration of cells?”

  “That’s unavoidable,” she says. “I watched seventeen children die of rapid cell degeneration. There’s no antidote for Zetemaphine.”

  “Actually,” I say, standing up. “There is. Your boss worked it out. And I reckon if you want to remain unharmed you should start doing the same.”

  *

  Josephine

  I’m back in my chair. It’s still sitting beside the same bed, but this time Shadow is the one sleeping in the infirmary. In my hands is a battered old copy of Jane Eyre. It agitates me to pain that the skyline over there is ever our limit.

  I close my eyes, letting the book rest in my lap.

  “What stirs that weary head of yours?”

  I open my eyes to see Shadow watching me. “Dissatisfaction.”

  “With what?”

  “This world and how it is.”

  “So rectify it.”

  I sit forward and take his hand with the one of mine that isn’t in a cast. I feel the weathered lines of his, look at the dirty fingernails, the callouses on the edge of every finger. “Have you killed anyone?”

  He searches my face. “Yes.”

  “Does it haunt you?”

  “No.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because I am haunted already, and there isn’t enough space for that many ghosts.”

  “Who are you haunted by?”

  “My wife and daughter.”

  “How did they die?”

  “Plague.”

  My thumb moves over his thumb. “I used to change. I used to become a monster, and I used to kill people.”

  He watches me, waiting.

  “The only thing that kept me sane, I think, was the fact that I didn’t have a choice in it, and hardly any memories.” I meet his eyes. “Three days ago I murdered someone in cold blood. I decided to do it and I did it, and now I remember every detail of it.”

  “Yes.”

  I stare at Shadow. “That’s
it?”

  “What do you want me to say, kid? Do you want me to absolve you?”

  “No.”

  “Do you want me to punish you?”

  I swallow.

  “I won’t do either.” He squeezes my hand painfully tight. Then he says, “Sometimes we are sweet. Sometimes we are brutal. Some days we will be gentle. Other days we will be ugly.”

  “But …” I swallow, my heart swollen and sluggish in my chest. “What’s it supposed to mean?”

  “Nothing. It’s not supposed to mean anything.”

  “Is that grief talking?”

  “I’ve believed that since the day I was born.”

  I rest my forehead against the back of his hand. “I’m glad you didn’t die. Even though you’re a cranky old thing and you make me punch the bag without telling me how.”

  He moves his hand to stroke through my hair.

  “I’m getting a new trainer, by the way.” I look up to see the corner of his mouth curve. “Are you offended?”

  He shakes his head, smiling more fully.

  “It’s probably a mistake,” I afford.

  “Gravity,” is all he says.

  Kissing him quickly on the forehead, I walk for the door. “Parties to attend,” I sigh. “People to charm. The glamorous life.”

  *

  My next stop is to check in on Claire and Tobias in their new place. They were given the smallest one bedroom in the whole compound, which was a battle for Luke to achieve, given the resistors didn’t like it one bit that we’d brought cured people into their camp. He had a very good argument for their safety, though – one Quinn couldn’t ignore. In the cells with everyone else, there’s no telling what could happen.

  Luke answers the door. “Hey, pal. Should I call you pal? How about buddy? Amigo? Comrade?”

  I roll my eyes. “Your folks okay?”

  He nods and gestures me in. I can feel how sheepish he is, but neither one of us brings up the fact that he was definitely making out with Raven the last time I saw him. I could throttle him for it, though I’d have no right to.

  Luke’s parents are sitting on the small couch in the living room, and I sink onto the floor opposite.

  “Hi, sweetheart,” Claire says.

  “Hey. You guys alright?”

  They both nod.

  “Anyone giving you a hard time? ’Cause I’ll get these babies lined up and ready.” I kiss my knuckles, making Claire laugh. “But seriously, are they?”