Melancholy: Book Two of The Cure (Omnibus Edition)

by Charlotte McConaghy

  He does. I sit alone for another few hours, counting the safety alcoves because if I don’t keep my mind focused on something I will go mad. Maybe I’ll just stay on the train when they get off and ride it all the way home. It’d be safer for them. I get up to announce my new plan, but stop when I reach the open carriage door. I can see them all sitting together, and it’s quiet enough that their voices drift back to me.

  “… nicer scope,” Hal says.

  “Nah, it’s too short range,” Luke argues.

  “We don’t do a lot of sniper-ing,” Pace says witheringly. She’s still in a foul mood.

  “Longer range means better aim,” he replies mildly.

  They continue talking about stupid weapons and I feel better about my decision – let them enjoy their happy little gun-wielding gang of psycopaths.

  Then Pace asks moodily, “She having a cry?”

  “You don’t have to be such a cow,” Hal tells her.

  “You gonna ream me for having a go at her?” she asks, and I realize she’s talking to Luke.

  “No. I know why you said it.”

  “Oh yeah?”

  “Same reason Shadow just went and made her feel even worse, I’m betting,” he says. “She’s tougher when she’s angry.”

  Abruptly I am furious. I’m so mad I feel like running over there and punching the lot of them in their smug little faces. That’ll learn ’em for manipulating me.

  Instead I wait a few minutes and then return to my seat to dismantle the guns. I will clean them until my fingers bleed, and then I’ll clean them some more, even though I know it’s playing right into their game. I refuse to be useless.

  *

  February 7th, 2066

  Josephine

  It is mid-afternoon when the train approaches our station. It isn’t going to stop, so we have to jump. I haven’t spoken a word to any of them in about thirty-six hours. It’s not because I’m pissed at them – it’s more because I’m trying to maintain a general level of pissed-ness. Basically, they’re right. My anger formed so much of me over the last ten years of my life, and that wasn’t healthy. But it did focus me to the sharpest edge of a knifepoint, it did make me strong enough to endure almost anything, and most of all it made me wily enough to stay hidden from the Bloods and the cops and the child protection services. Which is exactly what I’ll need to be for the next few days.

  So they might think I’m being a brat. Let them. What I’m trying to be is tough.

  Everyone starts to weapon up, and wordlessly Luke helps me to arm myself with as many weapons as I can conspicuously carry under my coat. Two knives in my shoes, two sewn into the sleeves of my jacket. A pistol in the waistband of my tights, held firm against my lower back. And in my pocket, funnily enough, a canister of pepper spray, since apparently it’s the best way for someone like me to quickly incapacitate someone and get away. The larger weapons go in our backpacks. We are dressed as though coming from the gym, as this is just about the only thing you’re allowed to carry a proper bag for these days. It won’t hold up if we’re searched or scanned, so we have to hope we’re inconspicuous enough to avoid that. I managed to avoid being scanned and searched for about six years, but I was never traveling with five wanted fugitives.

  “Wait for it!” Pace shouts as we line up at the doors and hang out, ready to leap onto the steadily approaching platform. “The second that platform comes level with the start of the train, we jump,” she orders, and I know it’s for my benefit as I’m the only one who hasn’t done the jump before. And Shadow, who’s as much of a novice as I am when it comes to city missions.

  Whoosh goes the opening of the platform and I don’t think – I throw myself forward and try to roll.

  I land hard on my feet and one of my ankles twists painfully with the impact. The next thing I know I’m crashing sideways onto my head and shoulders, tumbling furiously and scraping raw the skin all down my right side.

  With a groan I feel myself come to a stop, and then struggle dizzily to my feet. “Ow.”

  “Can’t even get off a train.” Pace grins. The rest of them are all upright and unharmed, looking at me. Of course. I give her the finger, which only makes her smile widen.

  “Let’s go,” Luke murmurs and we turn for the tunnel.

  As agreed in the train, we wait at the bottom of the stairwell while Luke jogs up to make sure the coast is clear.

  Hal is looking very burly in his jogging gear, while Will seems like a tiny aerobics instructor. Shadow is just hilarious and weird in his exercise shorts – I’m so used to seeing him in black combat gear that this is like a sudden intimacy akin to seeing someone in their underwear.

  A soft whistle comes from above and we climb the stairs into the sunshine. I blink until my eyes adjust. The afternoon is quiet. A few drones walk past, heading home from work. All are impeccably dressed and look either distracted or completely zoned out of reality. The buildings that line the roads are all tall, gray and perfectly matching. I never noticed before how gray everything is. Gray is calming, in the right shades. Too dark, and it conjures thoughts of storms. Too pale and it hints at white, which most associate with illness. Everything in this place is designed for calm.

  Too bad most of its inhabitants are anything but.

  We split into our pairs. Shadow and Will, Blue team, head forward and cross to the next block over. Their cover, if asked, is father and son. Behind us Hal and Pace, Red team, move to the other side of the street. Pace has taken the bolt from her nose and donned a blond wig, which actually makes her look pretty in a depressing, Stepford Wives way. Hal’s mohawk has been combed down and he looks like a dapper young sportsman. They are brother and sister for the next few days, which I know Luke decided just to mess with Pace – she was clearly repulsed by the disguise but too embarrassed to say so. It was very amusing. But now I can hardly stand to look at them in their perfect little city outfits. They are colorless, characterless, lifeless.

  Luke and I continue straight together. I didn’t want to be in his team, but he said there was no way under the sun that he was letting me out of his sight for this entire mission. And since he’s the team leader that apparently means he gets to do whatever he pleases. He’s wearing a simple navy hoodie and tracksuit pants, he’s cut his hair to regulation military length, and he looks so relaxed I can’t believe it, until I remember it’s his job to look relaxed when he isn’t.

  I’ve just pulled my black hair into a ponytail and put glasses on so anyone who looks at my face will be distracted from my noticeable eyes. Just a few years ago I would have been able to find colored contact lenses to help me blend in, but now they don’t exist – retinal scanners need to be able to pick up your real eyes at any point. I wonder if the drones care. I wonder if the desire for material accessories and vanity exist as they once did. Motivations have become simpler: eat, sleep, work, fuck.

  One day they will cure us of vanity. I have no doubt they will cure desire, too. Ambition, shame. Amusement. Maybe they will start matching people in a lottery, or matching them depending on their vocation. Maybe people will be assigned vocations. Maybe there will be drugs designed to make us fuck each other and reproduce, like cattle manipulated to breed the best spawn. Maybe.

  It’s what I’d do if I wanted to rule over a city of obedient ghosts.

  We walk past a shopping center. There are a whole lot of drones here, bustling about with almost robotic calmness. They must look pretty freaky to Shadow, who would remember this city very differently. Above us is a moving hologram of the words CALM, HEALTH AND PREVENTION WITH THE CURE.

  It flips to an image of a happy family, grinning from ear to ear and playfully wrestling into the shot. The words beneath them read: Soon there will be no need for sadness. Soon we will be free to love without boundaries … Soon we will be the best versions of ourselves.

  The mother says, out loud over the entire city block, “We’ve never been so connected to each other. There’s no space in our hearts anymore fo
r regret or fear – we’re just happy.”

  It is so vile I want to vomit.

  When we’re free of the emerging shoppers I shake my head. “It seems like madness, this blanket belief that everyone has to be happy all the time.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “It’s just such a misfire. If we have a right to pursue happiness then we should also have a right to frustration – to understanding what we’re deprived of. And then there’s the subjectivity of the notion that they don’t bother taking into account – for some people happiness is caused by cruelty or immorality or perversion or power or masochism or transgression – a million different things they don’t consider valid! And what about our right to unhappiness? To melancholy? Who the hell decided that removing those would result in happiness? It’s this fucking ‘we know what’s best for you’ attitude. I can’t stand it.”

  The street feels abruptly quiet. I need to chill out.

  “You’re being quite intimidating right now,” Luke comments and I laugh. “Maybe you should take your own advice, Miss I Want the Sadness Cure.”

  This wipes the smile from my lips.

  “They seem to reckon they can make complicated things simple with brute force,” Luke adds more gently.

  “You got it,” I mutter. “Thanks to the esteemed Harold Connolly, author of the handbook on anger.”

  “Aw, I love that book.”

  “Yeah it’s my favorite.”

  At the time when all this started, people were too frightened of the epidemic that had wiped out most of the world. They didn’t care about mental health or psychology. They wanted safety from the outside, from beyond the wall and the disease that was running rampant. They wanted physical health, and when the inoculation came with calm and an end to anger, they ate it up. They didn’t know they were being silenced, controlled, caged. Now we are free of disease, and steadily becoming free of our feelings.

  “Have you met any of them?” I ask. “The Ministers?” The ones who decided to take advantage of six billion deaths and live like kings with dominion over the survivors.

  He nods. “Once. They limit contact with outsiders. They have their own little society with their spouses and children and their pretty little dogs. They do the unfortunate business of dealing with the drones through Jean and her Bloods.”

  “So how did you meet them?”

  He doesn’t seem to want to tell me, exuding unease. “At an award ceremony.”

  “What kind of award?”

  “The medal of honor.”

  “Who got that?”

  “I did.”

  I stare at him, eyebrows arched. “What did you do?”

  “Don’t ask questions you don’t want the answers to, Josephine.”

  “Tell me,” I insist.

  He breathes out, shaking his head. “I took out a cell of resistors who were trying to free a holding facility of uncured teenagers.”

  The air leaves my chest quickly.

  “I was promoted to Gray for it – the highest rank of Blood there is. It’s rare enough that they had a ceremony for it. And I met them all, including Prime Minister Falon Shay.”

  Luke looks at me. I don’t know how to respond, but he speaks again, forestalling me. There’s a very violent thing in his voice as he says, “I didn’t know it then, but I know it now. I’m going to kill him before I die.”

  We walk in silence from then on, and I think about how deeply you have to hate someone to truly want them dead.

  *

  At the end of Ben’s street our pairs reconvene. It is dusk, and the sky is deepening to an inky blue. The shadows are long and every noise I hear causes me to jump. Being in the city makes me miss Anthony with an unbearable pang, even though I mostly hated the guy while I was here. All that time we spent together … we wasted so much of it distrusting each other.

  Crouching in the bushes feels silly to me, but we do it anyway.

  “Shadow and Will, scout the back of the block,” Luke says. “There’s an alley that runs behind his house. Take positions there. Hal and Pace, you two keep watch out here. I want intermittent scouts of this whole street, and I want you to keep eyes in every window of every house that has a possible view of our point of entry.”

  They all nod and head off to do their jobs.

  Luke turns to me. “We’re looking for anything out of the ordinary. Trip wires, sensors, alarm triggers, explosives. We don’t go in until we have the all-clear from both Red and Blue teams that there’s no one inside.”

  “I’m coming in with you?”

  “I told you I’m not letting you out of my sight. You’re a walking hazard.”

  Amazing. He’s really letting me partake in the most dangerous part of the job! Along with a pretty hefty insult there, but whatever. I’m still chuffed.

  “What if there are people in there?”

  “Then we don’t go in.”

  “But we need to go in.”

  “So we’d better hope it’s empty.”

  He’s infuriatingly logical, as usual.

  In his hand is the walkie-talkie. Will – who is surprisingly technically skilled – wired it to make sure it’s invisible to the Blood radio network and can’t be interfered with.

  About half an hour later it crackles and Hal’s voice comes through. “All clear. No visible movement from within, no visible signs of surveillance. Over.”

  “Copy, Red. Report, Blue. Over,” Luke says.

  “No visible movement from within, no visible signs of surveillance. Over,” says Will cheerfully. Then adds, “This is fun, over.”

  “Hood up,” Luke tells me, and we draw our hoods. “Weapons check.”

  I reach down to check my knives, then I remove my pistol and check that it’s loaded and the safety is turned on, then I make sure they’re all covered up. “Done!”

  “Sweet. Calm and normal, got it?”

  “Calm and normal.”

  We walk to the front door. My heart is pounding as Luke rings the bell. My eyes scan for anything out of the ordinary. It’s a small, red-brick house with curtained and barred windows. The security door is heavy iron, with multiple padlocks. Ben Collingsworth was a man who endured a hell of a lot of attacks in the days when people still protested the cure.

  “Above me,” Luke says softly, “are two small cameras. Stay where you are and don’t look at them.” He edges casually sideways until he is out of view, then reaches up and pulls free the tiny, tiny little black dots that have been placed in the gutter. How the hell did he spot them?

  Luke removes his kit from his waistband and starts to work the locks on the door, while I block him from view. He has to unpick them physically as well as digitally – and overriding the PNR security system is no easy feat.

  “There were so many clues,” I say faintly. “That first day you picked my lock to get into my apartment.”

  “That was not an apartment,” he mutters. “That was a bubonic-plague-infested hovel.”

  “And when we stole from the police – how did I honestly think you were doing that? No one normal can do that. I don’t even know how I explained it to myself. I was really blind, wasn’t I?”

  “No. I was good at my job. There’s no shame in being fooled by a professional liar.” He picks away, moving onto the second lock. “And the big factor to remember, as I have told you a thousand times, is that you never would have suspected the lie because I buried it in truth.”

  I swallow and lick my lips. “You’ve never told me that.”

  “Jose,” he says softly, gently, “I need to concentrate.”

  I shut my mouth with a snap.

  It’s being back in the city, I think. I’m pondering and philosophizing and reasoning and trying to understand things. I’m questioning again, and I feel alive for the first time since last September, since the day before the blood moon.

  Never stop questioning. Anthony told me that once, in a rare moment of truth. I remember thinking it a miracle, and I remember p
erfectly the look that passed through his eyes, as if he had shocked himself most of all. I remember it because I remember everything. And in this moment I wish I could forget him. I think killing him has made me into an entirely new person. One who doesn’t question, who doesn’t smile or laugh, one who is lazy and morose and sees the worst in everyone and everything. I think killing Anthony Harwood has cured me, as the cure cannot.

  “We’re in,” Luke says and I turn around, banishing it all and forcing myself to concentrate.

  He peers into the dark hallway without stepping over the threshold. The care he takes is impressive and I find myself taking more notice of everything. My eyes move down over the carpet, the walls of the hallway, trying to pick out anything unusual in the darkness.

  “Any visual indiscretions?” he asks me.

  “Nope.”

  “Me neither. I’ll enter. You wait sixty seconds before following me.”

  He steps inside and goes still again, measuring his weight on the floor. We wait the sixty seconds, but nothing happens, and he nods for me to enter. Scanning the ceilings and skirting boards for any more cameras or alarms, we move through the dark house. When we’ve determined that it’s all clear we go to Ben’s computer.

  “It’s probably got an alarm set to trigger if this turns on,” Luke warns.

  “Do we have any choice?”

  “Nope.” He turns it on. The enormous clear screen powers up and then Ben’s computer is projected over the wall of his living room. Luke touches and flicks the images and words around until he has a blank screen that fills with coding. It’s full computer-nerd time, so I wander around the room, looking at all the little knick-knacks that belonged to the man who decided to experiment on me as a child and ruin my life.

  A secret part of me whispers that maybe what he actually did was save it.

  Ben has photos all over the mantelpiece, framed moving images of him and his wife, who died many years before he did. I look at the young couple. It is a rare moment of perfection because the captured video footage is not like the disgustingly ‘perfect’ family with their boundless love and free, happy hearts – instead Ben and his wife Adele are utterly awkward in front of the camera. They fidget uncomfortably and then glance at each other, and when they laugh it’s not the carefree laugh of the actors, it is the embarrassed laugh of normal people who don’t particularly want to be filmed.