Daughter of Nothing

by Eric Kent Edstrom

  “Me too,” she said and touched his elbow, trying to guide him in into the dining hall. “I guess it’s time for our Birthday feast. Why don’t you go ahead, I need to check on something.”

  “I don’t think so. I’m coming with you to see what Vaughan is up to.”

  He laughed at the look of frustration on her face. She quickly collected herself and opened her mouth to deny it. But she realized she’d lost. It made her face go hot, and apparently red, for Humphrey laughed harder.

  She wanted to kick his shin, but instead marched away toward the bell tower.

  “You want to fill me in?” he asked, trailing several paces behind her.

  “No.”

  As they crossed toward the tower, she distanced herself far enough from Humphrey so that no one could construe that they were alone together.

  As she headed toward the bell tower, she glanced around to make sure no one was watching. She saw the new Dolphin girl Livy sitting in front the burning barrel, stuffed dog in her arms. Belle stood over her, pointing at the dog and then at the barrel. Even from a distance, Jacey could see the girl squeeze the dog tighter and shake her head.

  Jacey swallowed and looked away. There was nothing she could do for Livy, but at least Belle wouldn’t notice the rest of the Sharks were missing from the feast.

  6

  My Name Isn't Jesus Christ

  Jacey didn’t pause at the bell tower archway, though her stomach did a nervous flip as she passed into the cooler air inside. She would be alone with two boys. And not just apart-from-the-crowd alone. This was alone alone.

  If they were discovered . . . Jacey shook off the thought. Listening in on what was happening with the graduates was worth the risk.

  The still air grew warmer the higher Jacey climbed the creaky spiral staircase. Jacey had made the ascent at least once a day during her Dolphin year to ring the hour, and Sensei occasionally made Scions of all ages run it for exercise.

  By the time she and Humphrey got to the top platform, Jacey’s uniform stuck to her damp skin. A welcome breeze cut through the arches that supported the tower’s gabled roof.

  The great black bell hung aslant, clanger resting against its metal side so that the fiercer winds wouldn’t cause it to ring. The pull rope fluttered in the breeze.

  Vaughan sat cross-legged on the weatherworn floorboards, holding one hand to his ear. His eyes lifted as Jacey and Humphrey appeared, and he gave Jacey a tight-lipped smile.

  She made an apologetic shrug for Vaughan’s benefit, but Humphrey noticed it.

  “She couldn’t fool me,” he said. “I saw how cagey Dante looked. You guys have cooked up something good this time, haven’t you?”

  Vaughan lowered his hand, and Jacey saw he held a walkie-talkie.

  “I haven’t heard much so far,” he said to her. “All I know is that they’re waiting for Dr. Carlhagen to come back.”

  “Who is waiting?” Humphrey asked as he took a seat next to Vaughan.

  “Dante and the others,” Jacey said. “We’re going to listen in.”

  Humphrey gaped at the radio and then at Jacey. “And you two were trying to keep this from me?” He turned his eyes back to the radio. “Where did you get that?”

  Vaughan met Humphrey’s hot stare with his usual calm. “Do you remember when Dante lost the radio last year?”

  As if anyone could forget. Every group that left the campus took a radio in case of emergency. A year ago, Dante had lost his, earning him a night in the pit as punishment.

  But if Vaughan had it, then the radio hadn’t been lost.

  “You stole it,” Humphrey said and let out a huge exhalation of disbelief.

  “We kept it,” Vaughan said, his tone suggesting that keeping it was somehow different from stealing it. “We wanted to listen to transmissions from the vehicles during lockdown. Turns out they don’t use radios much. Whoever they are.” He lifted the walkie-talkie and listened again. “Still nothing but static.”

  “What’s Dante transmitting with?” Humphrey asked.

  “He found a broken radio near the Jeep garage right after a lockdown a few months back. The speaker was destroyed, but it was still able to broadcast. Dante has it hidden on him.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me?” Humphrey demanded, a tinge of whine in his voice. “I could have helped. I’ve had way more science than both of you put together.”

  Vaughan blinked, surprised by Humphrey’s injured tone. “Same reason I didn’t want you coming up here now. I didn’t want you getting in trouble.”

  Humphrey started to object, but Vaughan charged ahead. “Both of you know that if we get caught, you’ll be as guilty as me for having this radio.”

  Vaughan met Humphrey’s eyes until he got a nod of understanding. He raised an eyebrow at Jacey until she did the same. Jacey’s heart gave an uneven thump as she considered what the punishment might be. She hoped that Sensei was still busy in the medical ward with the graduates and not counting heads in the dining hall.

  Jacey sat on Vaughan’s right. “Turn it up.”

  He held the radio up and thumbed the volume control. The static grew louder.

  They sat in silence for five minutes before a voice broke through the static. “How much longer do you think it’ll be?”

  “That was Sarah’s voice,” Jacey said.

  No one answered Sarah’s question.

  Vaughan caught Jacey’s eye and tapped his temple with his free hand. Jacey understood. He wanted her to memorize what she heard so they could review it in detail later.

  She nodded and took a few calming breaths. In moments she had focused her attention entirely on the speaker static.

  Audio memorization was easier for Jacey than remembering numbers or text. There was a rhythm to it, like dance. But when she memorized audio, she could only focus on the sounds, not the content. If she slipped into comprehension for even a second, she’d lose it all.

  Voices started to come through the static. She knew they were words, but she heard them only as sounds.

  Stahp|PAY|sing|sair|ah

  Wut|do|u|theenk|thuh|sir|prize|iz

  Consonants were percussion. The vowels, tones. Pitch changes, melody.

  Jacey repeated each sound-phrase in her mind as she heard it, visualizing each beat as a point on a continuous line of rising and falling pitches. Those who witnessed her memorizing technique said her lips moved, but she made no sound.

  She wouldn’t know anything about what she’d heard until she had a chance to review it, speaking the syllables as she recalled them. But as her skill had grown, she’d begun to recognize certain patterns. Her body responded by relaxing or tensing depending on the emotions in the conversation.

  The sound stream changed, dropping in pitch.

  A new speaker.

  Jacey’s body began to shake, her breath grew labored. She noted the sensations, attached them to the line.

  She continued until the sounds stopped and the static returned.

  Vaughan turned off the radio and all was silent.

  Other sensations assaulted her then. The scent of the ocean and the island’s vegetation. The force of the breeze against her cheek. The hardness of the plank floor beneath her. They jolted her, the way a sudden bright light hurt eyes adjusted to darkness.

  She opened her eyes, but Vaughan and Humphrey were blurry, as if she saw them through a rain-covered windowpane. She wiped at her face, and her hand came away wet. Her body shook, a sob tore from her chest, and she nearly fell forward. Vaughan caught her and pulled her close.

  Jacey had no idea why she was crying. It wasn’t from sadness. She would have recognized that. The emotion bubbling out of her felt different, like a release of pressure.

  “She doesn’t know what she heard,” Vaughan said.

  Humphrey grunted. “I don’t even know what I heard.”

  Jacey felt suddenly foolish. It was bad enough to cry, worse to be caught blubbering for a reason you didn’t even know.

  “
What’s wrong with me?” She wiped her tears away and looked to Vaughan. His eyes dark, serious, and glistening with unshed tears, showed what she felt.

  Wonder. Happiness.

  She glanced at Humphrey, but he had his hands over his eyes, as if he had to block out all visual sense data to make room in his brain for whatever it was he was thinking.

  “What was it? What happened?”

  Vaughan let her go and folded his hands together, clearly trying to decide where to start. He opened his mouth to begin, but Jacey stopped him.

  “No! Wait. If you say too much, I might lose it. This feels like something I really need to remember. Am I right about that?”

  “Yes.” Vaughan and Humphrey said at the same time.

  “All right. Give me a moment.”

  Jacey lay back on the wooden floor and focused her attention on the bell pull. “I’m going to talk through it now. Don’t interrupt me.”

  Recollection was similar to memorization in that it required intense concentration. The trick with new memories was to always start at the beginning.

  Static. Like the rush of waves or wind through trees.

  Stahp|PAY|sing|sair|ah

  There it was.

  Jacey recited the sounds, repeating every pause, inflection and emphasis of the original speaker. She couldn’t always match pitch, especially with male voices. But people told her she mimicked female voices to near perfection.

  Dante: “Stop pacing, Sarah.”

  Sarah: “What do you think the surprise is?”

  Dante: “How should I know?”

  Sarah: “Are you nervous?”

  Silence.

  Sarah: “How come you don’t look it?”

  Dante: “Because I don’t show people my weaknesses. Haven’t you learned anything here?”

  Ping: “Shut up, guys. Someone’s coming.”

  Rustling and a loud click.

  Dr. Carlhagen: “Graduates, I want to introduce you to your sponsors.”

  Sarah: “Oh!”

  Unknown female: “Hello, Sarah. Wow. You’re pretty!”

  Vin: “What?”

  Two men speaking at the same time. Unintelligible.

  Unknown older male voice: “Well, well, well. A chip off the old block, as they say. Of course, I was never as fit as you. Jesus Christ, you look like you could kill me with your bare hands.”

  Dante: “My name isn’t Jesus Christ. It’s Dante. Who are you?”

  Man: “Oh, of course. You wouldn’t know. Um, call me Mr. Stevens. I’m your sponsor. I can’t tell you how satisfied I am with the work Dr. Carlhagen has done here. Just look at you.”

  Dante: “Thank you. So you sent me here?”

  Mr. Stevens: “Most expensive investment I ever made. And from the looks of it, the best one I ever made. If this works out, I’ll do it again for sure.”

  Dr. Carlhagen: “We must get started. Graduates, Progenitors—I mean, Sponsors—if you please. You’ll find robes in the changing rooms. We need to conduct one more medical test before we release you to the world.”

  Jacey narrated in a long silence from her memory. “Rustling of clothes and a loud shuffling. I think it’s Dante handling the radio transmitter.”

  Dante, much louder: “Vaughan! I hope you’re hearing all this. They’re here. Our sponsors. And I think my sponsor . . . I think he’s my father. We kind of—”

  Jacey fought down a sob. She started again.

  “We kind of look alike. . . .”

  Tears rolled down Jacey’s cheeks, and she took a shuddering breath. She needed several more before she could continue.

  “We kind of look alike, and we’re the same height. Same thing with Sarah’s sponsor, although she’s pretty fat. I don’t know about Ping’s though. He’s really, really old. He’s in a wheelchair. And Vin’s mother . . . It’s eerie. Okay, I have to change into a robe, and there’s no way to hide this thing. Take care. Maybe I’ll see you in a year!”

  That was it. A short conversation that changed the world.

  Jacey wiped tears on her sleeve and sat up. “His father . . .”

  Vaughan sat close to her, arm around her shoulders, his body unmoving, eyes locked somewhere between the bell rope and the sky outside the tower.

  Dante’s revelation turned everything upside down. Dr. Carlhagen had always told them they were orphans, their parents long dead. He’d said that the Scions had been rescued from certain death by sponsors from one of the sanctuaries where people still scraped by.

  “But why . . . “ Jacey trailed off, unable to choose among the thousand questions boiling in her mind.

  Dr. Carlhagen’s oft-repeated words came to her:

  Unfortunately, one cannot choose one’s parents. You’re stuck with whatever random combination of genetic material you get. At the Scion School, we don’t concern ourselves with where you came from. Instead we focus on preparing you for where you are going.

  So their sponsors—their parents, if that’s who they were—must have been in on it. They must have agreed to send their children away. But that meant that they were out there somewhere in the world—a world that Dr. Carlhagen said was fraught with war and disease.

  Tears came again, and this time she recognized the joy in them. She lunged forward to hug Vaughan. “It’s wonderful!”

  His arms squeezed her tighter, but his voice fell. “I . . . I don’t know.”

  Humphrey rubbed his temples. “It feels off to me. It doesn’t fit with what Dr. Carlhagen has told us all our lives. Dante must be—” He cut off when he saw her and Vaughan together.

  Vaughan released her and scooted away a few inches. Without his arms around her, the wind chilled her, despite the warmth of the sun. Jacey cleared her throat, embarrassed by her emotional display. Humphrey’s eyes bore into hers, and she had to look away.

  Vaughan’s lips lifted in an odd smile, one that managed to also be a frown. “I would love to meet my father, but . . . Humphrey’s right. Maybe Dante’s seeing what he wants to see, not what’s really there.”

  “Let’s review it again,” Jacey said.

  She clasped her hands and bowed her head and restarted the recitation. When she finished, she met Vaughan’s gaze, saw her own feelings reflected there. Excitement. And certainty.

  “It was definitely his father,” she said. “Chip off the old block . . . I was never as fit as you.’”

  “But he didn’t know Dante’s name,” Humphrey said. “Called him Jesus.”

  Jacey waved that away. “Jesus was an important literary figure. Socrates says his name was often used in the place of curses or expressions of surprise.”

  “Oh.”

  Neither Vaughan nor Humphrey had much literary training.

  “Whatever it meant,” Vaughan said, “he sounded pleased about Dante’s fitness.”

  “What was that thing about investment?” Jacey asked.

  “It’s a financial concept,” Vaughan said. “You buy shares in a company, hoping that its value will increase. Or to receive dividend payments.”

  Vaughan had spent most of his Socrates time working through math and financial lessons. As far as Jacey could tell, Vaughan had never really enjoyed it. Given the state of the world, the knowledge didn’t seem very relevant. Vaughan had theorized that he was being trained to institute more sophisticated financial systems once he graduated.

  He continued, “I don’t see how the notion of investment applies in this context, unless Dante’s father hopes to sell him for a profit.” He laughed the idea off, but cut off abruptly, as if giving it a second thought.

  Jacey had read about money in stories, but she didn’t really understand what Vaughan was talking about. “I don’t think he’s going to sell Dante. Who would buy him?”

  “What was that last thing Dr. Carlhagen said?” Humphrey asked. “‘Before we release you to the world.’ What does that mean?”

  Jacey reviewed the phrase in her mind to make sure Humphrey had quoted Dr. Carlhagen correctly. He had.r />
  The students had always assumed that Scions would be assigned to some task or job in the outside world upon graduating, but “release you to the world” was not the same as “give you your assignments.” Still, there wasn’t enough in the statement to draw a conclusion one way or another.

  Vaughan didn’t respond to the question at all, his mind clearly far down some other path. After a moment, he looked up and said, “They’re all still here.”

  His point didn’t register in Jacey’s brain at first. Of course the graduates and sponsors were all still there. Jacey, Vaughan, and Humphrey had just been listening to them.

  “They are, aren’t they?” Humphrey mused.

  Jacey went to the railing. The red-tile roofs of the campus buildings lay below, surrounding the quad. The medical ward was closest. From her perch at the top of the bell tower, it lay directly below. If she had a stone, she could easily toss it onto the roof.

  So close.

  She could walk right in there and see Dante’s father and Sarah’s mother. She could talk to them, ask them every question that blurred through her mind.

  And then spend a night in the pit. Such a brazen act would enrage Dr. Carlhagen, she was sure.

  “So we have a revelation that begs more questions than it answers,” Humphrey said, his voice so soft that Jacey barely heard it.

  He went on. “If our parents are alive, why did Dr. Carlhagen tell us they were dead?”

  No one knew.

  “At least we know one thing for certain,” Vaughan said. Jacey turned, surprised by Vaughan’s dark tone. Gone was the sad smile. In its place was a look she rarely saw. Hurt.

  Humphrey started for the stairs. “What’s so certain, Vaughan?”

  “Dr. Carlhagen cannot be trusted.”

  Humphrey grunted. “That’s for sure. Are you guys coming for lunch?”

  “I’m not hungry,” Vaughan said.

  “Jacey?” Humphrey asked. He waited at the top of the stairs. “Aren’t you coming?”

  “In a minute. I need to think.”

  Humphrey glanced from her to Vaughan. His twitching jaw muscles belied his smile, which seemed painted on. He cleared his throat. “You shouldn’t be alone together up here.”