The Nobody People

by Proehl, Bob

  “There will be specific issues related to criminality,” Lowery says. “Not every new Resonant is going to be an angel.” He turns to Frank Adkins, who has been left out until now. “Frank, I was thinking that with your background as a prosecutor, you’d be uniquely suited to address—”

  “I am no part of your bullshit, Jim,” Adkins says. His Hivebody, a slow strobe a moment ago, solidifies. His face sets into a hard mask. It’s the look that separates true believers like Adkins from opportunists like Jefferson Hargrave. Hargrave saw hatred as something he could market and brand. Adkins has hate in his heart, a seed he cultivates. There are shows of civility required of a man in his position; his hatred has to lie quiet in him. But she can see it in his pained smile when he has to disclaim his hatred publicly and in his dead-eyed glare when he finally can let it come to light.

  “We’re abominations. Damned things,” Adkins says. “You want me to address ‘issues related to criminality’? You are, each one of you, a crime against God. I am, too.”

  He flickers out again, and Fahima understands where she’s been wrong. He doesn’t lack the control to maintain his Hivebody. He’s going back and forth, conscious in the real world and dropping in on this meeting. He’s there while they’re all here.

  “What did you do?” she asks.

  Adkins ignores her. He puffs up his chest. “Gentlemen,” he says. The word drips with contempt. “You map out the stars and build castles in the clouds. I’ve been doing my goddamn job. I asked the president to call a special session of both houses to introduce my internment bill. The Adkins Act for the Protection of Human Life. It passed the House right around when your towelhead friend here showed up. Passed the Senate just now. One of my pages is going to run it all the way to the president’s desk. Our human colleagues understand the threat. They have shown the bravery to act.”

  “Jesus, Frank,” Quinn says. “You set us up?”

  “I hope each of you will submit yourselves to the proper authorities as an example to your fellow citizens,” Adkins continues. “I’ve read about the enactment of Executive Order 9066. The resolve of our Japanese citizens to quietly accede to the demands of their government in a time of war gives me hope and strength. We are in a time of war. We should do no less.”

  “Who the fuck are you speechifying to?” Fahima asks, grabbing his arm. It burns her hand, and she pulls it back.

  “Don’t you fucking touch me.” He smooths the lapels of the suit his Hivebody wears as if it is actual cloth. “I’ve given your names to the Department of Homeland Security,” he says to the other men. “They will be tasked with implementing the Adkins Act. You should each expect a visit soon.”

  “Did you out yourself, too?” Lowery asks. “They know what you are, Frank. They saw you on television.”

  “I know what I am,” Adkins says, baring his teeth like a cornered animal. “And I’d rather be nothing than be this.” His skin glows blue like the cone flame of a Bunsen burner, and thin wisps of smoke snake from his cuffs and collar. The other congressmen gape, unsure what’s happening. Even Fahima isn’t convinced she could be seeing what she’s seeing, a Hivebody representing what’s happening to its owner’s physical body. Frank Adkins’s face takes on an expression of religious ecstasy as he lets his newborn ability loose, immolating himself in a blaze of azure heat.

  Within the hour, there are leaked photos on the Internet of the scorched desk chair in Adkins’s office. A pale pile of ash flecked with the charred remains of bones and teeth rests on the burned leather. It spills onto the floor around the chair, tracing pale runes on the seared Turkish rug.

  When Fahima came to Bishop as a fifteen-year-old, she was impressed by the liveliness of the place. It felt like a community, vibrant and engaged. There were cliques and social castes as there are in any high school, but the boundary lines weren’t as thickly drawn. They were permeable. At a level above all of that was an understanding that in this place, they were all on the same side. This is the power of a common enemy.

  This morning as she makes her way through the halls, Fahima has the sense that as the threat from the outside grows more concrete, the unity within the academy is breaking down. The students retreat into themselves. They regard one another warily even though the danger won’t come from their classmates. It may be temporary; the shock of the internment law is new, the implications barely understood. The news reports roundups across the country. Facilities were waiting for occupants, equipped with supplies and racks of inhibitor lights. Secure in the rightness of its action, the government released the names of the camps. Topaz Lake in Nevada. Holiday Home in Wisconsin. Alta Mons in Virginia. Half Moon in Massachusetts. Camp Wakpominee upstate. The names sound so innocent. But Dachau and Treblinka were just towns before they became part of a language of genocide. In a hundred years, Resonant kids may hear Holiday Home in a history class and shudder at its implications. If there are any Resonant kids in schools in a hundred years.

  And there are camps they don’t talk about. Ones without names.

  Even Fahima, who understands her government’s capacity for cruelty because she’s seen it firsthand, held on to a belief that this wouldn’t happen, that it would be stopped either by her efforts or through a grace she was fairly sure didn’t exist. She hopes the students don’t give in to fear and despair, that the individual protective clenched fists will ease open and an instinct toward solidarity will kick in. She’s not convinced they’ll survive if it doesn’t.

  The gym doors are locked, and she can hear Patrick’s voice inside, berating the student he’s tutoring. He’s been burning it at both ends, and it’s turning him meaner than usual. He and Kimani dart across the country, trying to help new Resonants whose abilities present a danger to themselves or others. It’s not a matter of ill intent, although there are those problems. It’s a matter of control. Fahima’s made a dozen more inhibitor bracelets for the worst cases. It’s a stopgap. When things calm down, Patrick will help ease these people into their new selves, teach them to rein in what they can now do. But if putting the clamp on some kids’ powers for a couple weeks keeps them from going full Owen Curry, well, there are forms of oppression Fahima’s made herself comfortable with.

  There have been accidents. Fahima keeps a list, names of the dead. These are mine, she thinks to herself. These are on my tab. She wonders if Alyssa keeps the same list. She knew immediately that the Pulse was Fahima’s fault. Fahima came home that day to find her drunk and sobbing.

  “Why didn’t I change?” Alyssa asked her. “Why didn’t you change me?”

  “It’s not who you are,” Fahima said, half sad and half relieved. It was a good question, though, and one Fahima would want an answer to. Why some and not others? And could she make it happen for the others, too? Could Fahima change everyone? As she patted Alyssa’s shoulder, performing the mechanics of comfort, her mind wandered into permutations of machines, drug treatments, and Emmeline Hirsch.

  In addition to trying to keep new Resonants from blowing their fool selves up, Patrick meets individually with students whose abilities have “offensive potential.” Sarah is unhappy about it. Some of the teachers have lodged protests, saying it’s counter to academy philosophy, whatever that means, and that it reeks of paramilitary training. Sarah’s had no time to deal with it. They all have more than they can handle. The point being, no one has stopped him.

  The gym doors open, and Viola, Emmeline’s roommate, emerges, flushed, hair dry and frizzed. Patches of sweat bloom at her armpits and sternum. She rubs the butt of her hand against her temple.

  Fahima waves, but the girl walks by her, vacant stare directed down the empty hallway.

  “Viola looks broken,” Fahima says. Patrick’s white dress shirt is singed at the shoulder and along his right side. The latter burn is smoking.

  “I’m trying to prepare them,” he says. “They’re soft. They’re too kind to do an
yone any damage.”

  “You can’t think of them like that,” Fahima says. “They’re kids.”

  “You sound like Sarah,” Patrick says.

  “Funny you mention our headmistress,” says Fahima. She picks up a medicine ball that’s half scorched, leaving a crescent moon leaking metal pellets onto the gym floor. “We’ve been called upstairs.”

  “I don’t have time,” Patrick says. He sounds petulant. “I have an hour per student, and even that’s more time than I can spare. A hundred students on my list and I’ve barely met with a third of them.”

  Fahima is impressed that he’s had time even for that. “You want to get a fresh shirt? You look like shit.” It’s not the shirt that’s the problem. Patrick’s eyes are sunken, and his skin looks jaundiced, its usual lily white a thin layer of paint over something sick. She suspects he isn’t sleeping. But then, neither is she. The few hours she spends in bed, Fahima lays awake next to Alyssa and sinks into the Hive, admiring her handiwork.

  “Headaches,” he says, tapping his temple. He pokes at the scorched cloth on his shoulder, and it flakes into ash. “My sister will have to tolerate me looking like shit.”

  * * *

  —

  When Fahima and Patrick arrive, Sarah is sitting at Bishop’s antique oak desk with Cortex asleep at her feet. She’s trying to look as much like the headmaster of the Bishop Academy as she can. Patrick and Fahima have been in this room enough times that the desk will always be Bishop’s, waiting for him to come back and take it. The once and future headmaster. Sarah looks like a little kid behind daddy’s desk.

  “We need to give ourselves up,” Sarah says.

  “What the fuck?” Fahima says. She’s been expecting this for a few days, but it hurts to hear that Sarah’s ready to capitulate.

  “I’ve been in touch with Louis Hoffman at Homeland.” Sarah once confessed to Fahima that she found Louis Hoffman attractive in a way. She said there was a sad sense of duty in him, creating one of those moments when Fahima felt she would never understand straight people. “He says the facilities in the Northeast are the best. Yuppie summer camps, like the ones we went to as kids. They’re actually using Half Moon in Great Barrington. Do you remember that summer?” Cortex stirs, and Sarah rests her bare foot on his back, rocking gently. “We canoed. You capsized us in Lake Buel.”

  “It’s not sleepaway camp, Sarah,” says Patrick.

  “He says they’re pouring money in to get them ready for colder weather,” Sarah says. “Insulation, new heating systems. It’ll be better than here. I haven’t had a hot shower all week.”

  “Gilded cage is still a cage,” Fahima says.

  “What are we in now?” Sarah asks. “We’re at triple capacity. I can barely staff the cafeteria, much less the classrooms. Today we can go outside. Who knows about tomorrow? If we don’t go, they’re going to keep us holed up in here, and the academy is not equipped—”

  “We need to fight this,” Patrick says. “We hide the students who are too young or whose abilities aren’t useful, put them somewhere safe, and the rest of us line up and fight.”

  “We’d be wiped out,” Fahima says. “We’re not ready.”

  “We have our abilities, and we have the numbers.”

  “We have kids,” says Sarah.

  “I’d rather die here than in my old bunk at fucking Camp Half Moon,” Patrick says.

  “It’d be temporary,” says Sarah. “The ACLU has filed a dozen suits.”

  “They filed suits in Revere,” Fahima says.

  “And people died because they didn’t wait for the results,” says Sarah. “How is this different?”

  “This is our home,” Fahima says. Sarah’s shoulders slump. Cortex lets out an exasperated huff. Technically this is her decision to make, but she won’t override them. Bishop would have. He would have listened to their opinions calmly and done whatever the fuck he wanted. But Sarah isn’t Bishop. “We use our time to get ready,” Fahima says.

  “How long would that take?”

  “If I had another week,” Patrick says, “I’d have enough—” He stops as his phone buzzes in his pocket.

  “Patrick, leave that,” says Sarah.

  Patrick looks at the screen. “It’s Mom.”

  “Why is she calling you?” Sarah asks. She stands up, leaning toward the phone as if she might hear.

  “Calm down, I can’t understand you,” says Patrick. He puts his hand over the phone. “Sarah, turn on the news.”

  CNN runs a split screen. On the left, Senator James Lowery leaves his office in handcuffs. His shoulders hunch when they duck him into the back of a white van. On the right side is a long shot from a view Fahima recognizes. It’s the ridge above Oceanside Way, the enclave in Maine where Sarah and Patrick’s parents live. Homeland vans line the street. Inhibitor lights are rigged to the streetlights, casting a green pallor over the entire street, a miasma that bends the Maine summer sun. Front doors open, and Oceanside Way’s residents are marched out of their homes with their hands on their heads.

  “I see it, Mom,” Patrick says. “Call the lawyer right— Well, then Dad’s doing the right thing. He won’t be able to. The lights. Your abilities won’t— Mom? Mom. We’re going to fight this. For now, I need you to open the door for them and give yourselves up. Don’t do anything stupid. I love you. Sarah and I are going to fix this.”

  “Why would they start with them?” Sarah asks after he’s hung up. “It’s a retirement community. None of those people are a threat.”

  “They help fund the school. Cut off the money,” Patrick says. “I expect our accounts are being frozen. They’ll try to starve us out.”

  It’s not the money that worries Fahima. The fact the cameras are there has meaning: Homeland called it in. They wanted an audience. They have no interest in doing this quietly. Fahima wonders if the thought of footage of dead kids in the Bishop lobby will be enough of a deterrent to keep Homeland from breaking down the doors.

  “We’re next,” says Sarah.

  “We don’t know when next is,” Fahima says.

  “I need a week,” Patrick says.

  “Start relocating the younger students to the other schools,” says Sarah, issuing orders to neither of them in particular. “I’m not letting our kids get killed.”

  “There’re some we should keep around,” Patrick says. “I have a list.” He turns to Fahima. “I can’t help thinking Emmeline Hirsch could be an asset.”

  “By asset you mean weapon,” Fahima says.

  “Yes, Fahima, that is what I mean,” he says coldly. Something about the faux casualness of his suggestion puts her off. It sounds like he’s been thinking about Emmeline’s strategic potential for a while. He looks hungry at the prospect of conscripting her.

  “I’ll go talk to her,” Fahima says. “She may not be in the best mental state for battle.”

  “None of us are,” Patrick says.

  * * *

  —

  When Kimani’s door opens on the lab wall, Fahima holds out two six-packs of expensive West Coast IPA like an offering.

  “Someone needs a favor,” Kimani says, taking the beer and inviting her in.

  “I’ve been keeping these in the fridge for just that,” says Fahima. “I didn’t think I’d have to use them both at once.”

  Kimani sets the beers on the table where the silver sculpture used to be and cracks one open.

  “I need you to take Emmeline and hide,” Fahima says, collapsing into the plush chair she thinks of as hers. “Just bring her in here, pull the door in behind you, and sit still for a couple days.”

  “Fahima—”

  “I’m probably wrong,” she says. “But I’d rather be paranoid than be right and…”

  “And what?”

  “A couple days,” Fahima says. “Don’t move or
someone might spot you in the Hive.”

  “We’re not talking about Homeland.”

  “I’m probably wrong,” Fahima says again.

  Kimani takes a long sip of beer. She looks around the room, assessing its size, its potential to house two people for an undetermined string of days. “She’s going to think she’s being punished,” Kimani says.

  “She’s being protected.”

  “She won’t see it that way.”

  “Make her see it that way,” says Fahima, too loud, too sharp. Kimani, never one to be yelled at, glares at her. “Help her see it that way.” Fahima’s struck by how feeble the word help can sound.

  “She needs more than me right now,” Kimani says. “She’s hurt. She needs all of us.”

  “I know,” Fahima says. So much comes down to what Fahima’s willing to do, who she’s willing to hurt. At the end, afterward, she can tell them all it was for their own good. At the end, she won’t need to be forgiven.

  “You’re going to want me here if shit goes south,” Kimani says. “I could drop her somewhere and come right back. Put her somewhere safe.”

  “I don’t want her to be alone,” Fahima says, because this is the limit. Emmeline will have someone with her even if that puts everyone else at risk. Emmeline’s done enough.

  “You need a back door,” Kimani says. “You need a way out.”

  “We won’t,” Fahima says. “One way or another, we walk out the front door.”

  The dorm rooms at Bishop are packed with new students, especially on the first- and second-year floors. Rooms on the sixth and seventh floors house four or five kids each in bunks and on cots. They’ve barely settled in and need to be relocated to schools that don’t yet have their feet under them. It’s a challenge, but Sarah is loved and feared by those she’s installed as the heads of the other schools. They scramble to make arrangements, to keep her happy. The teachers at Bishop line the youngest students up outside the old faculty lounge, and Sarah fires up the Gates. The students walk through in single file to the schools in Chicago and Houston and LA, where teachers they’ve never met are waiting for them. The students’ protests are drowned out by the jet engine roar of the Gates. All the Bishop facilities are one massive school now, hallways linked by Gates that can jump a student across the country in a blink. But the academy is on its own, the flashpoint for whatever comes. The Gates can be shut down with the flick of a switch and will be the second Homeland comes through the front door.