by Keys, Logan
Jeremy laughs. “It’s all lies, though.”
“Does it matter if they believe it? Besides, I think we can help.”
“How?”
My sudden idea puts me on my toes. “What if you spoke at the dog fights?”
“No way.”
I cross my arms. “Think about it. Put out pamphlets so both sides can come and listen to what you have to say. You said it yourself: they’re asleep. But what if you’re simply targeting the wrong crowd?”
Jeremy’s eyes flick to the side—a nervous movement I’ve never seen him make, even on death row. “I’m not sure that’s wise.”
“Ha!” I punch his shoulder, having stolen the move from Manda. “Who would have thought: Jeremy Writer, a man for the people … an utter and total snob.”
Jeremy grins, rubbing his chin. “Fine. Do it.”
Kiniva’s a lot harder to get ahold of than simply waltzing in, unannounced. He’s currently on a run, and no one’s going to just give me an itinerary of his return.
Today, as I leave the courthouse, a man in a trench coat and hat pulled low emerges from the fog, startling me. He hands me a piece of paper and, tipping his head with a chilling smile, he’s gone again, but not before I’ve noticed a dullness to his eyes. It was the same as the girl’s had been from the black market.
The paper he gave me has an address, and underneath, it reads: X marks the spot. There’s also a number: four.
After dressing more casually before hailing a cab, I head to that part of North Anthem, a side of the city that’s new to me. It’s better paved, aptly lit, and certainly more decorated. The skyscrapers are newly built on this side of the city, most stacked so high they seem impossibly crooked, leaning in like they’re trying to touch each other across the street.
Everyone knows Downtown is no longer the heart of the city; the Authority has built farther in this direction every year. With too many convicts to count and everything being illegal, the lower classes rubbed closer to the “civilized” than was comfortable. There’s an evident gap of city we cross where a remedy for that has been made.
Gregarious showcases of fine goods sparkle through the windows on both my left and right. Diamonds—real diamonds—glitter in tantalizing displays, and although the clothing’s still colorless, it’s better made. The shops near the very heart of Ash City fairly glisten.
And there, amongst them all, is my worst nightmare: the medical plazas.
The cab stops, and I exit on stiff legs to gape upward in astonishment.
Blinding, even in the fog-dimmed sunlight, three buildings stand interconnected by the center monstrosity that’s scraping the smoky clouds. Side structures adjoin it by suspended sky walks. All of these are pristine, too, made mostly of giant windows.
After my fill of this, I approach the walkway toward the entrance.
Down in the courtyard is an electronic display for visitors, and a woman pops up to ask in a robotic yet warm voice: “How can I help you?”
When there’s no reply, she smiles, cocks her head prettily, and says, “Welcome to FLUMC, where professionalism and comfort are the priority of the Authority. Here, at Floridian Medical Center, we host a number of physicians using the latest in technology and medicinal advancements to keep our city the healthiest place in the world. Press the display, and the information for each section of our hospital will be given in a virtual tour.”
I numbly press the left building, and this makes her chirp in pretend happiness, “Cyberoptics: what was once a dream can now be realized.”
On the screen, children with replacement limbs run around on a playground while grinning adults read with robotic eyes. A grey-haired man jogs robustly on a treadmill, most of his body replaced by metal.
“Live longer, live stronger. Our motto.”
My mouth hangs open. In Section, people can’t even get their cavities filled, and here, they offer to make people half robot?
The right building is a common physician’s area, for colds, simple sicknesses, and basic practice. Also the “dreadful flu” is brought up in that guide, with warnings and instructions on how to quarantine yourself once stricken. Of course, first contact the Authority. Symptoms listed are almost exactly as those when becoming a zombie. Go figure.
Lastly, in the center and largest building, it’s apparent what happens there. It’s the testing unit for cancer.
“Here at Floridian, we guarantee your loved ones will be immediately transported, for the best care and protection of our citizens, to one of our lovely facilities on three local islands.”
Three…?
My stomach drops.
So that’s why Bodega had shrunk; they’d been making more of them. A lump swells in my throat as the screen shows me Camp Bodega. Inmates laugh and walk through the halls, enjoying themselves, drinking coffee, while children are happily learning in schools. They make it seem like your average holiday, a vacation. Even the girls wear wigs, and my eyes close upon the rest of the fiction.
My hands rest upon the receiver without my realizing it. “Did you have a question?” the lady asks.
“It’s a lie,” I say to her smiling face.
People passing by shoot me a glance and speed up their steps.
“It’s a lie!” My clenched fist slams against the screen before I can stop myself. I turn to the nearest stranger. “This thing is lying! We don’t … they … they’re not happy!”
Security strides through the sliding glass doors, and I get a grip on myself before they can weave in my direction.
I shield myself behind a pot of plants, waiting with my head down, for them to leave. My watch reads ten till four. The paper had said four.
After the guards move on, a quick scan of the area reveals an X taped to the ground in the plaza.
Careful to keep from being noticed this time, I sneak over to stand on it.
When the alarms go off, the hospital doors open and people stream from all three buildings, unhurried, certain that it’s a drill. The crowd flows around me where I stand still on the X.
Once the evacuation’s complete, the alarms cut. But before anyone can re-enter, lights in each building begin to go out. One by one, sections turn black, except for in the center building. In that one, a shape defines itself out of the dark-versus-lit windows—a giant grinning skull, too many stories to count begins to form—and the crowd gasps at the skeletal face now looming over the city. The jaw hangs open as if in a laugh … or a scream.
It’s an eerie sight.
Then, a jolt rips through the ground and wind blows my hair back. Windows shatter one by one in a tinkling rain of glass before bright orange-and-red flames flare out through the side of the center building. A bomb. The second deafening blast sprays more glass, and this time, fire consumes the entire section, billowing black smoke into the sky.
The cancer testing and relocation facility is bisected, before it falls like a domino. It crumbles to the earth like it was made out of something fragile and not pounds of concrete, as floors collapse in on themselves, taking the skull, section by section, along with it. Dust and ash coats us as twisted metal accordions in a matter of minutes. The building went from skyscraper to barely a few floors, landing in a billowing heap. The demolition is expert.
Other than their severed sky halls, the two side buildings remain untouched.
I’m grinning from ear to ear like a lunatic, coughing from the smoke, yet smiling, barely keeping myself from dancing in the snowy ash that falls.
Sirens bring me back to my senses. Fire trucks force the crowd back, engines of all grey pull up and guards begin to swarm the area, too.
It’s simple enough to ease into the crowd, and I’m instantly lost in the chaos.
Jeremy meets me just around the corner from my place, face glowing, hair sweaty from whatever he’d been doing. “Liza, did you see?”
He races forward and scoops me into his arms. He’s covered in ash, too, and Jeremy howls as we spin, making me giggle.
/> “Of course I saw! It was amazing!” I wrap my arms around him like it’s the most natural thing in the world.
When he sets me down, I’m embarrassed. My skin tingles from his touch.
Jeremy fixes a stray curl that’s come out from behind my ear. It’s getting so long—for me. He cocks a brow in question, but I’m the first to look away.
He’s more comfortable with this part of our relationship; I’m still in the “I can’t believe my luck” phase. Worry and doubt are my go-to feelings.
Jeremy decides something and grabs my hand. “Come on.”
“Where to?” I ask, though I really couldn’t care less.
“You’ll see.”
With my hand warm in his larger, stronger one, I’d walk off a cliff right this moment … and maybe I am.
“Recruiting time,” he says, and a glimmer of the Jeremy I’ve come to know flickers back—the passionate one who’s on the job, one thousand percent.
I get the feeling that I’m about to see behind the curtain.
Already he’s towing me along, his purple eyes alight with excitement.
It’s hard not to let it bother me, that subtle shift from being the object of his attention, to slightly left of center.
As he pulls me back toward the city, my sigh is long. It was a nice moment while it lasted.
We travel back to the site of the explosion, where Jeremy reluctantly leaves it with a backwards glance. He’s proud of his work. And I’m proud of him.
The Skulls have made their point without hurting anyone. That’s tough to do in times like these.
He’s a passive activist who’s not interested in making innocent people pay for the Authority’s sins. Many times Jeremy’s said that his dream is for them to just give up.
Fitting myself into his ideals is impossible. Dreams of crushing the Authority’s leaders underfoot are constant, and always violent. Reginald and Karma Cromwell—names now to match the faces—hover in the night, smiling softly at me, daring my retribution.
Another secret between us, Jeremy and I—my wanting to hurt them just like what I’d done to the grey-eyed man from the Island. Blood for blood. Not exactly a passive idea.
Jeremy takes us farther into the city, where the richest areas still surprise me. Technology gets better and more deftly used by the wealthier society. Beautiful people glide around us so starkly that they notice my shabbier clothes.
Jeremy supplies that many of the elite are augmented through surgeries to perfect themselves far beyond what we were capable of before the flood.
He says, “Sketch artists draw exactly how you’d like to be, and after a few reworks of your bone structure, things are casted and filled and thinned and permanently transplanted—hair and eyebrows, teeth, even new jaws.”
All too dizzying to imagine.
But not for long.
A mannequin standing at the corner twists its head on a too-smooth neck to grin with lips that ever-so-slightly stretch the poreless skin.
The thing yawns open its mouth to speak. “Excuse me,” it says to us, before striding away in a robotic glide.
Jeremy grabs my elbow and gazes at me knowingly. “They’re pretty scary at first,” he says.
“It … he … didn’t even seem human. I thought it was an ad!”
Still, there are more—they litter the areas near ritzy shops and buildings, smooth faces and movements making me shudder. Now that I’ve seen one, I notice them all over the place.
My stomach growls from smelling local restaurants, and Jeremy chuckles under his breath.
Sizzling meat on the grill fetches memories of old times, making my mouth water. I force myself not to smash my face to the glass panes to see the steaming plates of food and watch the plastic people feed one another. They sit so still in between bites; one speaks animatedly while the other’s frozen, perfectly, not even blinking, before they, too, re-animate to fawn over the other who’s fallen still. It’s almost as if they’re synchronized.
“Why are they so strange?” I ask.
Jeremy’s expression is one of disgust. “The newest rejuvenation programs put them all into deep sleeps for longer periods than a night’s rest. Some go for months at a time. This keeps them young. Instead of a vacation, you go into a tank and sleep in a sort of medically induced coma. It adds years to your life, they say.”
“I’m sorry I asked.”
“You don’t dream either, and when you wake, it’s like nothing’s happened while you were gone. The longest has been almost a year. Anything past nine months is dangerous.”
“Nine months?”
Jeremy’s mouth twists. “Surrogates from Section were the first to be tested for so long.”
“Oh.”
Poor people, birthing children to save the wealthy people’s bodies, probably forced into the coma as part of their job.
He tugs me away from the glass, yet my mind’s still replaying the strange freeze-move-freeze motions of Ash City’s Tinsel Town.
“They make me sick,” Jeremy mutters as we pass a group of carefully rebuilt teenagers.
She’s bustier than any youth has a right be, and he’s got a dimple in an overly large jaw he’ll have to grow into.
It’s getting easier now, identifying fake hairlines and glowy skin sheens.
Jeremy’s sneer says he blames them.
But cancer patients are carted past every class, not just the wealthy. No one from any group has tried to stop people from being shipped off by the millions to modern-day concentration camps. Sending their own children without a fight.
No one’s completely innocent from letting this insanity reign. No one.
And Jeremy’s not exactly the worldly individual he claims to be, if he doesn’t accept the part we play. Yes, he’s a zealot who rails against the Authority. But no, he’s not seeing the entire picture. It’s easy to point fingers at the rich, and it’s easy for Anthem’s wealthier part to blame the lower sides for the tensions. But looking at what bizarre lengths they go to avoid life ? … all of that time asleep to live longer, and for what?
And whatever it is they are slowly turning into … it’s the stuff of nightmares.
The Authority has capitalized on all of our fears—the wealthy people’s of growing old and looking bad, and ours of being sick. But all of the generations have equally placed their faith into the Authority, which led to Anthem.
“If their lives are so perfect, Jeremy, they wouldn’t need all of this.”
“Hmm.”
He sees wealth and indulgence, and at first glance, anyone would. But a second glance shows me a sad and hopeless people—people who are afraid of death more than of thriving; people who don’t want to look in the mirror and see their true selves anymore.
Pretend Man had been right: no one’s enjoying this life; we’re all just trying to get through it.
There may be diamonds, but where is the art?
There may be good food, but where is the expression of one’s self?
We sold out long ago to the government for a cure—hook, line, and sinker. Slaves are rarely enslaved in one day.
“Where are we going?”
Jeremy turns down an empty alleyway, “You’ll see,” and he has that serious expression again, the one that makes me worry about my choice in following.
Wherever we’re headed, he’s not exactly thrilled.
Follow a boy to my doom? A few months ago, that would have been impossible.
We enter a more industrial area on the north side of Ash City, where smoke plumes the air in an ominous black blanket that hangs low. Factory after factory we pass, until we’re in front of an installation that seems almost militant.
The area’s a ghost town, but with walls as thick as these, someone must be inside. Many someones.
Jeremy helps me through a manhole and into a tunnel. I’m able to stand upright, but he has to tip his head at an odd angle as we walk down the drain pipe.
When we get to the other side, he hel
ps me back out and recovers the hole.
Jeremy moves stealthily, leading me to the windows of a warehouse.
Once I’ve gotten my arms hooked and propped to hoist myself up high enough, my brain tries to accept what it sees over the ledge.
Without his telling me, I know what’s happening: the purge. Women and men strung up, attached to machines. They’re suspended by hooks, and from the looks on their faces, all of them are in unending agony.
Even after turning away and clumsily falling off the shelves to put my hands to my knees and focus on my breathing, I still picture mouths and faces, white eyes unseeing as sweat drips in steady streams down their naked bodies. The machines cycle red from them, then back into IV ports implanted into their chests.
They’re filtering out their blood, but why? I’m unable to find my voice to ask. It’s like something out of science fiction, and although the horror of the Authority has always been apparent, this brings it to an entirely new level.
They’ve been making an army out of citizens. For what? And why so many?
Jeremy’s expression is anxiety mixed with anger while he gazes through the window. Wide purple eyes jump from person to person, from machine to machine, with different reactions—memories, no doubt. I wonder if he’s worried he’ll be snagged at any moment and forced to do it all over again. He must be reliving the pain; his face has drained of color and sweat has popped out on his brow. His hands are shaking.
I duck down when a guard strolls in our direction. Jeremy’s feet stay rooted, like he can’t tear himself away from the scene.
“Jeremy,” I say in a loud whisper, yanking his hand. “Get down!”
We run, bent over, along the side of the warehouse and behind some large trucks, where we hide between tarp-covered boxes.
Sitting down, face tight, Jeremy leans back against the wheel of the nearest truck. But I’m busy staring at the strange creases in the giant wall until it occurs to me—
“A gate.”
“To the outside,” Jeremy says, confirming my suspicions.
Beyond it lies the rest of America—abandoned wilds of what was once our great nation. Home is so close. That they’d dare put a weakness into the epic walls of Anthem City seems somehow important.