by Kelli Kimble
“Thanks,” I said. “I wonder, though, do you have any clothes I could borrow? My things were . . .” I trailed off, not wanting to think about what had happened to my clothes.
“Of course,” she said. She left and came back holding a drawstring bag. She handed it to me. “Standard trainee issue,” she said apologetically. “We don’t have a need for civilian clothes.”
“Right. That’s fine. Thank you.” I took the bag and carefully extracted myself from the blankets, struggling to keep the towel intact. “I’m just going to go get dressed.” I went back to the bathroom and into a toilet stall. There were a few other women in the bathroom. I saw them looking at me in the mirror as I disappeared into the stall. I could feel them trying to sense me. Some of them were good at it; others weren’t.
The bag held undergarments, a long-sleeved black shirt, and plain black pants — the same thing everyone else was wearing. Eneece was a good judge of size; they fit me perfectly. I relished using the toilet for a moment and flushing it, then I emerged from the stall. The others had gone. I washed my hands and threw my dirty towel into the bin. Then, I went back out to Orthos and Eneece.
“Are you hungry?” she asked as I approached. “It’s time to eat. You can join us, if you like.”
“Thank you,” I said. I followed her and Orthos through the room. It seemed all the other occupants had returned. Nobody met my eyes, but I could feel them looking at me, and some trying to sense me. I kept my thoughts as neutral as possible.
Dinner turned out to be an immense amount of food. The experimentals seemed ravenous, and all around me, people inhaled their food, as if they’d been starving a moment before. I wondered how many of them had been deliberately starved to sharpen their abilities. Probably all of them. I cleaned my plate along with them, barely tasting the food. I did refrain from using my finger to lick my plate clean, though. Nobody else was doing it. Besides, in the city, waste was a given for privileged people.
When we were finished, Eneece took Orthos and me around the room and introduced us to everyone. Their names rolled off my back like water off a seal’s pelt. I had no desire to know them; they seemed mostly to be rather arrogant. Knowing Thanos came from this group made sense, but I’d rather hoped he was an anomaly and not the norm.
Eneece led us back to the dormitory after Orthos pointed out we’d had an overwhelming day. I got ready for bed, changing into a nightshirt that had appeared on my bunk while we’d been gone. Its fabric was a much smoother weave than anything I’d had in years, and I nestled into my bed with a sigh.
“Don’t get complacent,” Orthos said to me.
I didn’t look at him. I kept my eyes on the ceiling. “We need a plan. How are we going to get the weather change turned off?”
“I’m working on it,” he said. The springs in his cot creaked as he rolled around. I glanced at him from the corner of my eye. He was plumping his pillow with violent punches. “We’ve got to gain Eneece’s trust,” he said. “If Thanos knew how to deal with the weather change, then she should know, too.”
“I could try to scan her. Look into her thoughts,” I said.
“No. She’s not as powerful as you, but she’ll know.” His cot creaked again as he settled back onto his pillow. “Tomorrow, we’ll ask for a tour. See what she’ll show us. They’re very proud of the program. She might just show us exactly what we want to see.”
Something told me she wasn’t that stupid, but lacking any other plan, I found myself agreeing to go along. I closed my eyes and listened to the sounds of the room dying down. It didn’t take long to drift off to sleep again.
◆◆◆
We passed several days, tagging along with Eneece. She showed us nothing of any value, and I didn’t dare use my abilities to pry further under the covers of what she was allowing us to see. I never saw or felt Thanos present. Orthos didn’t even ask about him — which seemed a little surprising, considering Thanos was his son.
The others were polite but kept their distance. Their names continued to elude me, and I started to wonder if my intuition was keeping them at arm’s length.
By the third morning, I was ready to shake things up. Orthos didn’t seem in any hurry, and he had yet to formulate a plan.
When everyone got up for breakfast, I feigned an upset stomach and loudly told Orthos I would see him later; I probably just needed to move my bowels. The experimentals near us made no attempt to hide their disgust over my statement, and I had to cover my mouth to keep from smiling. It was too easy to rile them.
Eventually, everyone left for breakfast and daily training. I went into the bathroom and shut myself in a stall.
Then, I left my body and made my way around the building. On our various tours, Eneece had very carefully steered us from three distinct rooms, and I wanted to know what was in them.
The first was a training room, complete with a variety of instruments of torture. My stomach clenched, just seeing the things I knew were meant to inflict pain and suffering; thinking those idiots welcomed such treatment only made it clench even more. There weren’t any people in the room, but there were some papers lying around. I glanced through them but found little of interest.
I moved to the next room. This one was like the room I’d been held captive in. It contained a cot and a table. It was lived in, but either the occupant wasn’t around, or whenever the occupant left, nobody had bothered to clean up. A dirty nightshirt was at the foot of the cot, and the blankets were rumpled, as if someone had made the bed, and then taken a nap on top of it. A scraped-clean plate and utensils sat on the table, with a half-empty glass of milk. There was nothing of value there, either.
I imagined moving on to the last room. It was farther from the others, and breakfast was probably wrapping up, so if I was going to avoid being detected, I needed to make it fast. I moved through the door. When I got inside, the first thing I noticed was it was bolted from the inside.
The second thing I noticed was I wasn’t alone. A man was sitting at a desk, in front of a very old computer. I’d never seen one so old that still worked. He didn’t seem to notice my energy in the room, so I approached and looked over his shoulder. The image on the screen was a map of the United States. I recognized it from using Silver’s old tablet. There were strange symbols over the maps; blue, curved lines with semi-circles against one edge were bulging across the country.
The man noted some things on a pad of paper and closed the map view, revealing a chart, displaying columns of numbers. He ran his finger along one row of numbers and noted something else on his pad of paper.
I wondered if he had abilities. If not, he wouldn’t notice me prying in his thoughts. I moved to stand behind him and tentatively reached into his brain. He continued to seem unaware of me, and I pushed further so that I could see his thoughts, which seemed abstract and irrational at first, but then I realized he was doing math. He was adding up a bunch of numbers and dividing them to come up with an average over several different data sets. With each data set, the number went down a little bit. It seemed a strange activity — he could have just gotten the computer to do that — but then, he flipped the monitor screen back to the map, and the numbers made sense.
They were temperatures. He was tracking the average temperature at various locations and noting the downward trend. I willed him to pay attention to the California coast. What was the temperature like there? It was in the mid-20s, far colder than any weather I could remember in the village. The people were surely suffering. Some of the older people may have already died.
He flipped the display again, only this time, the screen wasn’t just displaying data. It had input controls. The man slid one of the controls along an axis, moving it from 45 to 42. Then, he selected a time period of two weeks from a list.
It hit me — the computer was controlling the weather change.
I bit back my excitement. I didn’t want to give the guy any reason to suspect he wasn’t alone, but before I left his thoughts, I wanted to kn
ow how he felt about the weather change.
I imagined asking him whether he thought it was a good idea or not.
It’s not my idea to have, he thought. Just following orders.
Maybe he felt guilty? It was hard to tell. I prodded one more time. This time, I imagined him thinking about all the people outside of the city who would die, just so the city could have a clear path to the power plant’s fuel source.
He firmly tamped down this idea, refusing to acknowledge it in any way.
So, he did feel bad about it. Maybe there were some people in the building who weren’t total jerks, after all.
I needed to know how to turn it off and when I could come back and find the computer unattended. I looked around the room for a posted schedule, or something that would show whether someone would be coming to replace the guy, or what he’d been directed to do when he came in today, but there was nothing on the bulletin board by the door or anywhere on the walls. There were a few sheets of paper on the desk, but none of them were weather-related.
Then, I got an idea.
I imagined Eneece coming in. She strode in with confidence and stopped in front of the desk. “Hey,” her image said to the man. “There’s been a change of plans. We’ve got to back this weather change out; go back to the regular climate. Got it?”
He looked up at her. I could feel his confusion. He licked his lips. “Turn it off?” he finally asked.
“That’s not what I said, but yes, turn it off.”
The man pushed a few buttons. His thoughts were clouded with questions. I couldn’t get a read on what he was thinking. He turned to a panel behind him.
Even though I wasn’t physically there, I instinctively dodged out of his way.
He opened the panel. There were readouts and gauges on it, but what drew my attention were the two flat-screens with hand-shaped stickers on them, one on each side of the panel, too far apart for one person to reach both at the same time.
“You’ll need the other signature,” he said to Eneece’s image. He turned a key above one of the hand-shaped screens, and the screen lit up.
My mind raced. How could I get him to explain?
“Pardon?” Eneece said.
He gestured towards the other hand-screen. “You need Thanos.” He made an exasperated sound. “To turn it off. Eneece, have you been drinking?”
Thanos? That rotten bastard. He’d been one of the people who’d turned it on.
My hands clenched into fists. It took an immense effort not to kill this clown where he stood. I reminded myself he didn’t like the weather-change machine; he didn’t want innocent people to die. I forced my thoughts back to controlling the image of Eneece, who was in danger of disappearing.
“We don’t need that jerk. Just do the override,” Eneece said.
The man became hostile. “Look. I don’t know about any manual override. If you two have been keeping secrets about this stuff, then I think everyone else is gonna want to hear about it.” He stood from the chair and moved towards the door.
I couldn’t let him leave and stir up trouble.
Eneece’s image was in the way. I imagined her hands having force, and she thrust her hands out, palms first, and shoved him in the chest. “Nobody else needs to know about this,” she said. “Let’s just keep this between us.”
He swept a contemptuous look from her head to her feet, then back again. “Who do you think you are? We’re all in this together. You two think you’re so great. Well, you’re just another . . .”
I didn’t hear him finish. Someone was touching my physical form, and my mental self began to snap home. The apparition of Eneece I’d imagined dissolved as I was pulled from the room, straight through the wall.
“Nim.” It was Orthos. “Are you all right?” He had a hand on my shoulder and was shaking me.
Eneece stood behind him, looking down at me. Her eyebrows were knit together in an expression of either be suspicion or concern.
I chose to believe it was the latter.
I pushed his hand away and groaned, doubling over around my stomach. “I’m fine, it’s just – I think I need to go to the bathroom again.” The blankets were tangled around my legs, and I struggled to stand from the cot and hurry to the bathroom. Hopefully, they would think my clumsiness was because I didn’t feel well and not because I’d been up to something.
In the bathroom, I locked myself in a stall and went about using the toilet — just in case Eneece followed me — but the bathroom was quiet; it was only me. I hunched forward, perching my elbows on my thighs and holding my face in my hands.
Thanos was working with them. This was all some elaborate trick — but for what?
I needed to test how far the fences were. Was I an unwitting prisoner there? Could I leave? What about Orthos? Was he in on it? Did he share the same goals? What were the goals?
There was a tapping near the bathroom door. “Nim? I brought you a tonic. It always helps me when the food here gets to me.” It was Eneece. I could see her feet under the stall door.
“Uh, thanks,” I said. I unrolled some toilet paper to prepare to exit the stall, but she continued.
“I’m going to leave it just over here, on the sink. You take your time.”
I moaned just a little to give my routine some authenticity, but it was too over-the-top. I sensed her prodding into my body, scanning for the problem. Not knowing what else to do, I did something someone who has seen starvation would never do, unless it was necessary: I jammed my fingers into my throat and forced myself to vomit. Since I hadn’t gone to breakfast, there wasn’t much to come up, but something did, and it splattered all over the floor.
Eneece’s feet jumped, and then skittered away from the splash zone. “Yeah, I’m going to just go get a mop. I’ll leave this here, okay?” I heard the glass clatter to the counter, and her footsteps quickly retreated.
Smiling, I wiped my mouth with the wad of toilet paper I’d collected, then threw it into the toilet, flushed it, and carefully stepped over the mess and out of the stall. The glass on the counter contained a thick, dark-green liquid. It did not look appetizing at all. I washed my hands and picked up the glass to sniff it. Even though I had been feeling fine before I gagged myself, the smell of it made me want to vomit for real this time.
An older woman pushing a mop bucket by the handle rounded the corner and saw me sniffing the liquid. She wore a grey jumpsuit; the name badge on her left breast read, “Ingrid”. I should have known the likes of the experimentals wouldn’t clean up their own messes. “If you want to feel better, I wouldn’t recommend that,” she said. She pointed at me, her finger twisted from hard work and arthritis. She pushed the bucket over to the stall and clucked her tongue at the mess. “It’s a shame when food goes to waste.”
“Yes,” I said out loud. “It is.”
She gave me a sharp look at the sound of my smooth voice. “You’re not one of them.”
I shook my head.
She moved closer to me, tipping her head towards mine, as if she meant to whisper, but she still only spoke in my head. “They’ve got bad intentions here. Leave while you can.”
Thrilled to meet someone I might be able to trust, I stuck my hand out to her. “My name is Nimisila,” I said. “They call me Nim.”
Her eyes widened, and she gasped. “You’re the one they’ve been looking for. You’ve got to leave.” She turned me towards the door and pushed. “Get your shoes on and get out of here.”
“They already know I’m here,” I said, turning back to face her. “They think … I think … it’s hard to explain. They’re holding me here, but they think I don’t know that. They think I believe they only wanted Thanos.”
If possible, her eyes widened more, and she clutched at a cross, hanging from her neck. “Don’t say that devil’s name,” she said. “He’s worse than all the others combined.”
“I need your help,” I said. “They killed the mayor. They’re going to try and take over the city. They’re c
hanging the weather to kill off everyone else — innocent people.”
“What can I do?” she asked. Color drained from her face. She released the cross, and instead latched a bony hand on my arm.
“I don’t know yet. Do you live here? In the building?”
“No, I have an apartment not far from here.”
“Can you take me there? When you’re done working today?”
“Of course, but how will you get out? They’ll see you.”
“I’ll meet you on the street. In front of the town hall. When you leave.”
“My shift is over at six,” she said.
“I’ll be there,” I said. “At six.”
Chapter 14
It wasn’t easy to convince Orthos to let me leave by myself, but I made up a sob story — complete with real tears — and he relented. I told him I needed to go and see the home where I’d grown up; I’d been there with Thanos, and it had stirred up a lot of feelings that needed closure. Plus, I argued they could have stashed Thanos there. I watched him carefully when I mentioned that possible theory. If he knew where they’d taken Thanos, he didn’t give any outward sign he did.
At 5:30, I again pretended my stomach was hurting. Everyone left me in the dormitory, as they had at breakfast, and I had no trouble slipping out of the building. That gave me a little bit of pause. If they were working with Thanos, then they knew who I was, right? Orthos was probably in on it, too. So, why was it so easy to leave?
It didn’t take me long to figure out why. It was because someone trailed me. A young girl, maybe 15 years old, emerged from the rear of the experimental headquarters, not more than a minute after I left through the front doors. I kept my pace slow. She was even slower. The street was crowded this time of day, as many people were heading home for dinner. I slipped into a large crowd and ducked into the lobby of an apartment building behind one of the true occupants. I bent over and pretended to fix my shoelaces.
From the corner of my eye, I saw the girl walk by. She didn’t look into the building lobby, thankfully. Her gaze was locked ahead of her, sweeping the crowd for me.