by P. S. Lurie
“I will never...” but I stop because I can’t risk animosity right now, not this close. “Tell me why you’re doing this and maybe I’ll understand.”
“I want you to join me in the new world. Not just a part but essential. My interest in you is my Achilles’ heel.”
“Why me?”
“Look at everything you’ve achieved. Look at how much you care about the people you love. Humanity needs that to start again, no divides, just courage.”
“You killed so many people. Your own.”
“I did what was necessary. The planet is only settling down now.”
I sigh and shake my head. There’s only one thing I’m focused on right now rather than trying to interpret President Callister’s cryptic messages. “You just need to believe I’ll be loyal to you and you’ll let me be with Leda?”
“Exactly.”
I think about Maddie and all the others she’s thrown at me. “And you think that’s going to be achieved by making me imagine I’m killing the people I care about?”
“I have a new offer. You don’t have to kill anyone you care about but you do have to kill someone.”
“Never.”
“You may change your mind. It’ll prove I care about you.”
“I don’t understand.”
“This is a gift to you.”
What does that mean, I want to ask, but I don’t have time as two guards push a hobbling man through the door. Even through his battered appearance, he’s much worse off than the last time I saw him at the arena as he gave up my sister to President Callister in exchange for a promotion. I experience so many conflicted emotions in a flash but I find myself rolling my eyes; I may have expected that he would have been given a privileged life for his loyalty to the Upperlanders but he has been treated even worse than I have. If President Callister is expecting a fair fight then I have the upper hand because he can barely stand upright.
The man looks up, using plenty of effort just to raise his head. There are black and blue bruises over his whole face but it does nothing to conceal his snarl. “It’s been a while, Theia Silverdale,” Dr Adam Jefferson says.
Selene
As we walk I’m reminded of the strain on my legs and why I preferred rehabilitation in the pool even with Melissa scolding me for pushing myself too hard because the tension on my muscles was easier in the water. Also, when I wasn’t imagining Nathaniel’s grasp on me, the sensation of floating was pleasant. Besides, the streets hold nothing but unhappy memories. At night, when I need to stretch my hips and I can’t bear to lie on the couch that my mother slept on eighteen months earlier I force myself out of the house and walk through the streets. Nothing and nowhere during those times could console me; all I imagine is the sensation of wearing heat-sensitive glasses and watching the colour drain out of strangers’ bodies. I should have done more that night. I should have worked out about the boats sooner. I should have made it back to Henry’s house quicker than I did.
I should have told my mother I loved her and then left. Would it have made a difference? No, I tell myself, because she would have looked for me harder in the Upperlands and we’d all be dead.
One more regret: I should have killed Nathaniel whilst I had the chance.
I replay the night and the subsequent year over in my head, wishing I could change so much but all I can do now is protect anyone still alive and avenge those that died. I push the pain aside and keep up with the group as we move towards the Fence.
Apart from the few scouts who sneaked into the Upperlands and Dante who lives up this way, none of us neared the boundary until right now. I almost can’t bear to lift my head up to the Fence that must be visible. Melissa told me a few months ago about a different type of profession in the Upperlanders’ hospital, of psychologists and people treating not physical problems but emotional ones. From what she had come to learn, if I wanted to deal with my fears then I would have to confront them, accepting them first in my mind and then building up a tolerance of courage in their presence. I called Melissa a hypocrite for not returning to her own house, which sparked off a shouting match between the two of us, me deflecting the challenge she gave me by implicating her own cowardliness, to which she shouted something about defence mechanisms. When we calmed down, Melissa told me that the process of exposing me to the places I was scared of was called desensitisation. As she left the room she mentioned that the doctor who told her also mentioned light-heartedly that the alternative was to throw the person towards their fear without any build-up. He named this flooding. It would be funny if it wasn’t so unbelievable in our circumstances.
Dante joins us silently, and the ten of us continue onwards as I think of who each of us has to live for. Ruskin and Jack. Samuel and Tess. Ronan is returning to his siblings. Claire and her children. I also have a feeling that there’s something going on between Travis and Claire from the way they look at one another. The only single person is Dante who seems to prefer it that way. Melissa has me.
Nathaniel has me too, in his grasp, even from beyond the grave.
“There’s one thing you need to know. The truth is...”
I shake his voice away but it’s too late because snippets of the life I had with him spring to my mind. It’s not like I miss his apartment but there are times when I crave the luxury: freshwater baths, a stocked fridge, electricity without waiting for a Surge. What I have now is a pittance but I wouldn’t trade it for the lie I lived.
“How are you holding up?” Ronan asks me, although I was too lost in thoughts of vengeance to notice him drop back.
“Alright,” I lie, not telling him I regret the exercises in the pool this morning for fear he’ll order I turn around. They have every right to send me away to the boats with Claire’s children and all of the others because I could jeopardise their mission by slowing them down. To prove it, I speed up a bit and Ronan has to walk quicker to keep up with me; I’ll run faster than any of them if I need to.
“Ruskin told me they gave you the pills too.”
“Last one was the morning of the announcement.” Actually, I vomited another later but I don’t need to complicate matters.
“But you think it was seeing your mother that helped?”
“I guess.” I had assumed it was a combination but I wasn’t sure. All I know is that the pills drained me. It would make sense that Ronan wasn’t given them because an army would be useless if they felt the same way so I assume Dr Penn, Nathaniel’s father, prescribed them to me in order to keep me frail and housebound.
“I was convinced Theia was the enemy until I saw her. I can’t explain it but I was trained to hate her. I would have done anything for the Upperlanders.”
“You let the others go from the top of the Fence. Not exactly the loyalty President Callister was after.”
“They broke my ribs for that.”
“Didn’t kill you though. Could have thrown you off the Fence.”
“Being Theia’s brother has its advantages. President Callister will be furious if she believes I’m dead.”
“Since then?”
“They fed me more lies than ever before and I started to believe them again. I was in solitary confinement until recently, except for those sessions with him until they were convinced I hated Theia again.”
“Him?”
“A doctor who brainwashed me.”
“But you managed to deceive them?”
“I did what I had to.” He shudders, and I don’t want to know what that means so don’t pursue how he managed to hold onto his true self; I had the memory of floating in the sea and I wonder what his might have been. I take a different route with my questions. “You said there was a doctor?”
“A few, but not like my mother, not kind like her. They were cruel, emotionless and happy to screw us up without thinking of any repercussions other than for the good of the Upperlands. They believed in what they were doing without needing to be convinced. They weren’t worried about stepping out of line unlike som
e of us. They took pleasure in their roles.”
“You said there was one who was worse than the others.”
Ronan nods, visibly shaken by the mention of him and a terrible thought occurs to me. I’m almost too petrified to ask but then I think of Melissa and not being held back by fear; what had she said, that I could confront what scared me step by step. If I’m going to return to the Upperlands I might as well get used to this feeling. I build up the courage and ask. “Did he have an injury after the second cull?”
Ronan stops. “Yes. His hand was bandaged up. I think he lost his thumb.”
I feel sick. I want to scream but at myself. I let Nathaniel’s father live. I thought he would drown when the Fence detonated but by the time I realised, it was too late. I should have killed him when I had the chance.
“Selene?”
I don’t reply because I notice that everyone else has paused ahead of us. I look past them at what stands in our way. I was too consumed with what Ronan has told me to realise we have reached the Fence. It seems taller than what I remember but a renewed boldness fills my body and I shake away any fear I held onto because I’m ready to surmount any height.
Jack
I grab Ruskin’s hand. “You ok?”
He doesn’t respond. It’s a short distance to the Fence and the spot where his parents were thrown ‘for the good of the society’ and plummeted to their deaths. He thought they’d drowned, that they’d been swallowed up by the sea until their lungs filled with water and weighed down towards the depths of the oceans along with Jason and the rest of the Middlelanders. Instead, they hit the ground, just two more bodies on the heap of so-called traitors that had slowly but surely increased as the year progressed and the monthly executions removed more people from the Upperlands, threatening everyone else to keep in line.
Ruskin wanted to bury them so I offered to retrieve their bodies. At first, I thought it would be impossible because I didn’t know what they looked like but then I realised that they were the most recent to be executed so their bodies would be in better shape, which isn’t to say much. I covered up their disfigurements as best I could before Ruskin saw them and we gave them a funeral.
“That was you?” Dante asks. I follow where his hand points to a rope that runs the whole way up the summit of the Fence. He must have good eyesight because it’s hardly visible compared to the towering structure. Most amazingly, it’s an incredibly long distance to abseil.
“Seemed like the easiest route considering I didn’t know where the tunnel started,” Ronan answers.
“You found a rope that long?” asks Samuel.
“A few. It wasn’t my favourite experience.”
I think of Ruskin’s time in the prison before he found me. He told me about it sometime later, about how he tried to break Erica out of the prison through the windows but it proved impossible. I thought about the bed-sheets that he had tied together for her to descend.
“You really did that?” Melissa asks Ronan.
“It’s nothing compared to what I’ve been prepped for. I can operate any vehicle. Load a gun in a couple of seconds.” He quietens down. “Obtain any information I want from a defector.” Ronan starts up again, not wanting to pursue what he meant, instead instilling dread into us. “If that impresses you then don’t begin to fathom what a few hundred of us could achieve.”
“Lucky for us we know an easier route,” I say. “Let’s get going.” The house that conceals the tunnel is nearby, a few streets back from the Fence, out of sight from the masses of homeless people who wouldn’t have spotted people coming and going, although I’ve always puzzled over whether anyone lived in it and what the neighbours did or didn’t know.
We turn off before the rows of houses stop at the border of a barren area at the base of the Fence, and come to in front of an unassuming house. I know this is from where Ruskin and my family left on the morning before the great cull took part and how our brothers returned that evening. It’s where Melissa, Ruskin and I carried Selene back into the Middlelands when we built up enough courage to find out if the hordes here were friends or foe, not knowing that all along they were our people. They were just as surprised to find out that we were alive as we were about them.
The house looks like any other from the inside, except for a wardrobe in the middle of the back room, covering a wooden trapdoor in order to stop anyone from secretly breaking through. We agreed that unless the Fence gates were opened or a helicopter roared towards us then no one would be able to attack without warning. Ronan defied our expectation, although he did suggest that this is the only underground route.
“Everyone ready?”
A few grunts of acknowledgement then Travis and Ruskin push the wardrobe into the corner. A musky smell fills the room as Dante lifts the hatch and shines a light down into the depths.
“Me first,” says Selene, who steps through the hole, descends the narrow stairs and disappears once more into the darkness.
12 P.M. – 1 P.M.
Theia
“Do I get a last supper?” Dr Jefferson asks. My own stomach rumbles empty but I don’t feel hungry; whatever the Upperlanders did to Ruskin and Jack and the others in the prison to keep them alive must be what they’re also doing to me. I work through Dr Jefferson’s words. A last supper?
President Callister confirms what he and I both think. “This is your present. To show you that I am on your side.”
Dr Jefferson spits out some blood as he speaks. “I’m the gift that keeps on giving.” He laughs to himself and I almost feel sorry for whatever they must have done to him these past six months. I’ve been holed up for half a year. Leda is over two years old.
“You want me to kill Dr Jefferson?”
“Adam,” he says. “After everything between us don’t you think we should be on first name terms? You can call me dad if you really want. Just like your sister.”
“Shut up.” Although he’s not my greatest threat, wanting Dr Jefferson dead has crossed my mind more than once but I need to think. In all of the hallucinations the Upperlanders have set me against people I cared for or allowed me to choose between either killing or trusting President Callister; never before have I encountered someone I didn’t feel anything towards. I remember what happened with my sister at the arena and a deep hatred builds up inside me like a volcano that has been provoked into erupting.
“Plenty of people have died around you including many you loved,” President Callister says. “Revenge is sweet-tasting.”
I look first at President Callister who holds Leda, sincere in her pleasure of presenting me with the broken version of the doctor that has been a thorn in my side, and then at Adam Jefferson who can barely stand up let alone defend himself if I decide to attack. It would be so easy. Haven’t I wanted this?
I do a mental stock-take of his life. Adam Jefferson, the colleague my mother wanted to leave my father for, the man who may be my sister’s illegitimate father, the doctor who killed innumerable staff and patients to survive, the Middlelander who betrayed me at the announcement and put Leda’s life in danger too, and now betrayed by the people who thought would be his salvation.
“I’m also the man who made your mother happy and saved Leda’s life when you did nothing but prolonged her sickness.”
At first I think this is a slip-up in one more of the Upperlanders’ brainwashing fake-outs but time and time again he’s been able to read my mind. Whether I like it or not, it’s obvious that I’m calculating whether I’m willing to kill him through self defence or otherwise.
I turn my attention to President Callister’s pledge that he’s an offering to me. After what she’s put me through it would take more than that for me to feel enamoured to her but I deduce that tricking me into being loyal to her hasn’t worked so this is a new tactic. Considering she’s the gatekeeper to Leda the decision is obvious.
“You can’t let Leda watch.”
“I’ll hold her head away. The world is changing, the final
pieces aligning into place. There isn’t much time. I need you to trust me, to believe that this is all for you Theia. That if you trust me, then you and Leda and Ronan can be reunited.”
Dr Jefferson laughs. “You believe that bitch?”
No, I think to myself, but what choice do I have? It’s not like I trust Dr Jefferson either. I take in my opponent and know that I could kill him easily but what does that make me? And even without Leda watching she’ll understand what I am. How could I convince her that I’m a good person after this?
“They’re your responsibility now,” I hear my mother say to me. I want to scream at her that I know this but now I have to kill the man she loved and I’m not sure that’s reason enough to murder someone.
“You’ll really let me leave with Leda?”
“Today brings a new dawn and with it all the answers you’ve wanted.”
“Yes or no.”
“Soon, Theia.”
Dr Jefferson is right. I don’t trust her but I know what I have to do: keep fighting, keep pushing closer to President Callister, whether she suspects I’m loyal to her or not. But I also know I can’t kill a pitiful man without prompting him to fight me first. I want him to die knowing that he instigated all of this. But to do that I need to rile him up and I know just the thing that will work.
“Dr Jefferson,” I begin.
“Adam.”
“Adam,” I say for the first and final time. “I’m ready to tell you the truth about what happened to my mother that night.” His head bolts upright and I know I have his attention.
Jack
The air is dank and visibility is low even with Dante’s torch, which is already flickering; batteries are rare and this one has given up on us already. I navigate the staircase, crouching down to avoid hitting my head on the hatch as I follow the rest of our group into the tunnel and descend the depth that equates to about three floors. The makeshift steps are nothing but chippings into the ground so the dusty earth crumbles with each movement and I lose my footing a couple of times. The soil under the Middlelands was rich with seawater and still makes emigrating farther south impossible but during this past year after the flood has receded, the ground has begun to dry out. In this unkempt and little-used tunnel there is nothing to filter fresh air in so it remains heavy and stagnant.