Nine

by Zach Hines

  File after file popped up on the screen: folders, spreadsheets, photos of dead cats, dead kids, “dump” lists of subjects that went retro and were loaded on buses destined for the Row, video files . . .

  “Wait,” Julian said. He recognized something. “Play this video.”

  “We should just download these and go,” Cody said.

  “Do it,” Julian insisted.

  Cody enlarged the video. It was grainy footage from a poorly focused handheld camera. There was a subtitle on the screen:

  INTERVIEW NUMBER 2

  DEPOSER: DIR. DAVID HAWKSLEY

  SUBJECT: ATTISON PROJECT LEAD LUCY DEX

  Julian’s heart sank. His head spun. His breath gave out.

  “That’s my mom,” he said, his voice small and deflated.

  “And that’s my father,” Nicholas said, now looking over Julian’s shoulder. “What the actual hell is going on here?”

  Cody turned to Julian, still ignoring Nicholas. “Are you sure you want to watch this?”

  Julian had to look.

  He always had to look.

  He grabbed the mouse out from under her hand and clicked play. The date-stamp on the footage indicated it was filmed nine years ago. In the video, Julian’s mother looked up. Director Hawksley studied a piece of paper in front of him.

  Dir. Hawksley: Why did you apply for the lead position at the Attison Project in the first place?

  Lucy Dex: Attison was about fixing retrogression and finding a cure for retrograde and the Wrinkles. I’m a biologist and I wanted to help. And we were helping until you changed the remit.

  Dir. Hawksley: Mrs. Dex, with all due respect, the Attison Project was about fixing rebirth as a whole. It wasn’t just about fixing defects. I would say that the possibility that people may stop coming back to life was a far more pressing issue than dealing with Wrinkles or retrogression. Wouldn’t you agree?

  Lucy Dex: Of course. But this direction you sent us off on . . . Running these experiments on retrogrades? That doesn’t help anything. It’s . . . unethical, to say the least. It’s actually . . . it’s monstrous. I couldn’t in good conscience—

  Dir. Hawksley: There are far too many people using the Lake now, Mrs. Dex. Too many people, too often. This is causing the effects to degrade.

  Lucy Dex: But, Mr. Director, that is just a theory. If we can be free to determine exactly what’s going on here, before we start jumping to predecided conclusions, we could—

  Dir. Hawksley: Mrs. Dex, at the end of the day, you have orders to follow. I expect you to follow them.

  Lucy Dex: I’m sorry, but I draw the line at faking numbers. I saw the reports you issued. You can’t taint my reputation like that. I had nothing to do with that arm of the project. I’m going to tell people the truth.

  Hawksley reached for the camera and the video abruptly ended.

  Julian sat for a mute moment in the blue glow of the screen. Nicholas stood beside him, looking to Julian, his mouth half hanging open in shock.

  Julian opened the next video.

  This one was soundless security footage from a Lake boat. A woman with dark hair was swimming toward it. The Prelate himself was on the boat, and instead of using a pole to pull the woman to safety, he was using it to push her under the waves. When a wave broke, Julian could see the woman’s face.

  It was his mother.

  “He’s killing her,” Julian whispered.

  “Look at the time-stamp,” Cody said. “It’s about thirty minutes after that interview we just saw.”

  Julian hardened his jaw, the realization of what he was witnessing at the edge of his consciousness. It threatened to take hold and terrorize him. But he went on, stoically, to the next video.

  He had to keep looking.

  Julian’s mother was at the table again. Her head was slumped more this time, her gaze cast downward. She was no longer a Six. She was a Seven now. And sitting beside Director Hawksley was Dr. Tazia.

  Dir. Hawksley: Let’s try this again. Why did you apply for the lead position at the Attison Project in the first place?

  Lucy Dex: If rebirth is failing . . . we need to warn everyone. To tell them to stop extinguishing.

  Dir. Hawksley: That’s not my question.

  Lucy Dex: I have kids. My son is almost of age now. His first extinguishment is supposed to be scheduled soon. I have to warn him. You should understand. You have a son, too. You have one, too!

  Dir. Hawksley: It’s not that simple, Mrs. Dex. If we want a future for our children, one where the Lakes continue to work, then we must follow the schedule and maintain the life score. In fact, we have to speed it up. Dr. Tazia will be taking over your position on the Attison Project, effective immediately.

  “This is the smoking gun,” Cody said, her voice a live wire. She turned to Julian. “Copy everything to the stick and let’s get the hell out of here.”

  But Julian was transfixed by the screen. He opened the next video.

  It was the boat camera again. Julian’s mother was being stabbed at with the Prelate’s pole again. Pushed down under the waves again.

  Julian went to the next clip. More security footage, but this was months later. His mother was running down the hallway of the facility now. Nurses were running after her. She was screaming. Ranting. Julian could not make out anything she was saying, but he saw her neck clearly in one frame—she was on Life Nine.

  He recognized, also, the gown she was wearing. It was the gown she had on when she came home that terrible night, the last night he ever saw her.

  In the video, she burst out the front door and ran into the bus terminal, the guards trailing after her.

  She was coming for him, he realized.

  She was trying to warn him.

  The video cut to a blue screen, like the others.

  She was trying to stop him from burning before he started.

  She was trying to save him.

  Julian’s throat was frozen. Tears welled in his eyes. A cloud of sorrow burst inside his chest. But from inside this storm, a new feeling was born: relief. Blessed relief. It fueled him. It filled him with strength.

  She had been coming to save him . . .

  And he would save Rocky now.

  Julian closed the videos and clicked Export on Glen’s program. All the files were copied to a stick, and then a new prompt appeared on screen. “Execute ‘Cease Order’?”

  He clicked yes, and the program closed. From outside, a siren rang out. Then another, this one much louder, from somewhere closer. Little white emergency lights flickered on overhead, then settled into a flashing rhythm.

  Nicholas looked around. “Okay, you definitely need to tell me what this is.”

  The cease order message came on—“The Lake is closed. Stop all extinguishments immediately, and await further instructions. Repeat. The Lake is closed. Stop all extinguishments immediately.”

  “That’s sent out across all Lakeshore,” Cody said, as the voice looped. “We’re pulling the plug on all this.”

  “And we’re getting my brother. Now,” Julian said, rushing to the window.

  “What’s the fastest way down there, Nicholas?”

  But there was no answer.

  Nicholas was still standing dumbfounded halfway between the terminal and the dead kid in the tank.

  “Nicholas!” Julian shouted. “You need to lead us there.”

  He shook his head, bringing himself out of some strange reverie.

  “Right,” he said. “We were going to take the elevator back, but then you did this, whatever the hell this is, and . . . I don’t know.” A strand of hair fell loose over his forehead. “I don’t know!” he said again, this time shouting.

  The elevator doors dinged. They opened, and two nurses emerged.

  “Stop right there!” one of them shouted.

  The nurses ran for them, and Julian picked up a chair and smashed it into the window, shattering it.

  “It’s only two stories into the sand,” Julian said
. “We’ll jump.”

  Julian climbed up onto the window frame.

  “Come on!” he shouted.

  But Nicholas just stood there, shell-shocked, as the nurses came for him. Cody grabbed a chair and flung it at them, smacking one of them in the chest. She ran over to the smashed window and crawled to the edge.

  Finally, Nicholas snapped out of it. “I’m coming,” he said, hustling to the window.

  One by one, they jumped out.

  Nicholas was the last of them, a pale-blue ghost tumbling through the air, crashing into the sand.

  Chapter 43

  THEY WERE SUPPOSED TO HAVE WALKED RIGHT INTO ATTISON Camp. With the cease order looping, Cody thought they could take advantage of the confusion—keep their heads down, their hoods on, stroll in, grab Rocky, and walk him out, acting like they knew exactly what they were doing.

  But now that they were discovered, they were going to have to improvise.

  Julian pushed himself up out of the sand. There was a sharp pain in his side, and it hurt with every breath he sucked in. Cody was already standing, making her way on shaky feet to Attison Camp up ahead.

  “If you can move, let’s move,” she said over her shoulder.

  Behind them, Nicholas was trying to pull himself up, moaning. Whenever he tried to put pressure on his left leg, he collapsed onto his knee. His ankle was twisted or broken. His head was hung low, and he was gasping out a long thin whine.

  For a moment, Julian thought he could leave Nicholas behind. Just let him sit there, choking, in the sand. It might even throw the nurses off his tail—they’d come for Nicholas first, while he and Cody made a break for the camp.

  But Nicholas was wailing like a wounded animal.

  And . . .

  They might still need him to find a way out.

  “I have to get him,” Julian said to Cody as he went back for Nicholas.

  Cody held a position in the shadow of the building as Julian hoisted Nicholas up and slung his arm over his shoulder. Together, they hobbled up to where Cody was and down the side of the receiving center to the camp, the cease order still looping on the loudspeaker at an earsplitting volume, a woman’s eerily calm voice requesting everyone to please stop dying.

  “Why don’t they turn it off?” Nicholas asked between gasps.

  “I’m sure they’re trying, but they can’t. It’s a virus,” Cody said.

  On their right, there was a vast, dark, and shimmering presence. The Lake. The boats were coming back to dock, probably triggered by the cease order, little flashing lights streaming steadily toward the shore.

  The camp was just ahead, a large fenced-in field containing about a half dozen buildings. It was alive with activity, with nurses running in and out, rounding the children up to the fence near the front entrance. They were in some kind of lockdown protocol.

  There was a gate on the beach end of the camp that had been left abandoned when the nurses were summoned to the front entrance. Cody ran for it and yanked it open. Julian, with Nicholas’s arm draped over his shoulder, limped them both in. Once they were inside, Nicholas pushed himself off Julian and stood on his own weight.

  “I can manage,” he said, his voice small and cracking. “I can walk. Go get your damn brother. I’ll find some way out.” He leaned against the building, reached into his robe, and pulled out a printout of the blueprint.

  The children had all been grouped up near the front entrance. Cody and Julian kept low, slinking toward them, keeping hidden behind picnic tables where possible. The pain in Julian’s chest stabbed at him with every breath. His head still throbbed. He felt like his body was bursting at the seams, ready to fall apart—but he was also alive with energy. With determination and focus.

  “There!” Julian said in a whispered shout.

  He spotted Rocky at the edge of the crowd. There must have been thirty kids in the group, total. The nurses were keeping them in line with swipes of their batons. Dr. Tazia was shouting some kind of command over the noise.

  “They’ve taken all these kids,” Cody said, distraught. “We can’t let them do this.”

  “You stay back,” Julian said. “Let me get this.”

  He straightened himself up, sucked in a painful breath, and puffed out his chest with an air of assumed confidence. Even as his body screamed in pain, he strode right up to Rocky, acting like he was one of the nurses assisting with lockdown.

  “It’s me, Rock. Just be quiet and come with me,” he whispered.

  Rocky’s eyes lit up, and a huge smile broke on his face.

  “Don’t smile. You’re following my orders.”

  Rocky tried in vain to tamp down his joy, and Julian peeled him off the group and started off back the way they came. He could feel excitement rising in his chest, drowning out the pain—this might actually work.

  “New orders!” a voice shouted. “Take them out to the beach while we wait for the all clear!”

  It was Cody.

  Shit.

  Shit shit shit shit shit.

  What was she thinking?

  Dr. Tazia turned to her. “And who are you?” she demanded. “I didn’t receive those orders.”

  But Cody kept waving the group over.

  “Don’t know why you didn’t get them,” she shouted, her voice dropping into a deeper register, trying to make herself sound older. The nurses looked at her, confused, and then back to Dr. Tazia, who was just as puzzled. “Ah . . . ,” she said, reaching for a walkie-talkie. “Let me check that.”

  Just then, the Prelate and his group of nurses emerged from the main building behind Dr. Tazia. “Get them!” he commanded in a gravelly shout.

  Julian grabbed Rocky and started to run for the beach.

  But then something struck him in the back. A hard, sharp pain brought him to his knees and knocked his hood off. A hand grabbed him by the hair and yanked him back. A nurse put him in a headlock, the last bits of air that were trapped in his lungs wheezing out of him. He saw Rocky running for him, kicking at the nurse. He wanted to yell “Go!” but he couldn’t say anything. Dr. Tazia was there now, too, grabbing Rocky, pulling him away.

  No!

  Another nurse tackled Cody to the ground and rolled her over, pushing her face into the sand, twisting her arm behind her back.

  The Prelate strode up behind her.

  “I should have just waited for you both to come here,” he said. “Saved myself the trouble.”

  Julian struggled to speak, but the nurse’s arm was twisting tighter and tighter against his throat, a thick cord of muscle like a python. Little blooms of light dotted Julian’s vision. The world seemed to shrink and collapse around him. The looping cease order and the Prelate’s awful croak shrank and shrank in volume until all he heard was the pounding of the blood in his head.

  Then everything seemed to slow: Dr. Tazia pulling on Rocky’s arm, his mouth twisting open in pain. Cody pushing against the nurse to lift her head, spitting sand out of her mouth, each little grain drifting into the air. The Prelate looming behind her, reaching into his robes, pulling out a gun.

  And then there was the cat.

  That black cat with the white patch. Calmly, eerily, sitting among it all.

  It was unbothered by the activity.

  It was looking at Julian, the tip of its tail flicking in the sudden stillness.

  Then there was a voice.

  A low, deep, thunderous growl of a voice.

  call them

  Was it the cat, speaking to him?

  Then louder:

  CALL THEM

  Julian twisted his head to find Rocky. At the sight of his brother wailing, Julian felt something dislodge inside him. Something knock loose and fall free. Some awful little black ball of hatred. Hatred for the Lake, for burning, for the world. He felt it spill out from the core of his being and flood into his bloodstream, fill up every extremity with darkness.

  He grabbed the arm choking him, clawing at it with all his strength, and he screamed. He scream
ed into the night. A horrible, shrill sound from a place in him he didn’t know existed. And yet the sound was somehow familiar. The cat screamed along with him, its fangs glinting in the night.

  That’s when the buzzing began.

  The cicadas emerged from the trees.

  Just a few at first, ricocheting through the Attison Camp, bouncing off the doors, smacking into the nurses. Their number grew and grew until they were a terrible black cloud that whipped through the air, crashing into the nurses, exploding onto Dr. Tazia’s face, and bursting like mortar upon the nurse holding Julian. He tumbled free.

  As the cicadas whipped past them, Julian scrambled for Rocky, pulling him away from Tazia, who was screaming as the insects pummeled her head. He went to Cody next, pulling her up. Julian looked into the heart of the storm. The children cowered in fear, screaming and hiding behind turned-over tables. But they were safe—the cicadas were arcing around them even in their frenzy, leaving them untouched.

  “Cody, get the kids!” he shouted. She took off into the storm, pulled the kids together into a group, and led them like a pied piper through the mess to Julian and Rocky.

  Julian led all of them to cover behind the nearest building as the swarm hammered the camp. He held Rocky to his chest and peeked around the edge.

  There was an awful screech and a massive explosion of white sparks as the cicada swarm exploded into an electrical pole. The blast cracked the pole. It tumbled to the ground, landing with a crash of electricity. Live wires tumbled across the sand, flipping like a sea monster dragged out from the depths.

  All the lights in the camp went off at once. The cease order squealed off midsentence. The lights in the receiving facility went dark, too. The only lights now were the bright blue-white electrical fingers of the downed cables.

  “Run!” Julian shouted.

  And they ran, with Julian, Rocky, and Cody at the head of the group, leading them back out to the gate where they came in, when—

  Blam!

  A gunshot exploded in the sand beside Julian. He turned.

  A figure emerged from the swarm of cicadas behind them, holding a gun.