Daughter of Nothing

by Eric Kent Edstrom

  The air was much cooler in the medical ward, and it had a sharp clinical smell. A short hallway carried her to another corridor, this one leading left and right. To the left was another door. She peered through its window into the familiar open area of the main ward. Empty cots lined the walls.

  She went the other way, where doors opened into small rooms on either side of the hall. The first seven she checked were empty except for cots and cabinets holding medical supplies. In three of the rooms she found wadded-up Scion uniforms.

  As she opened the last door on the left, the faint light from the hall revealed a figure lying on a bed. A heart monitor beeped out the patient’s slow, steady pulse. The dim, green glow of a vital-signs monitor revealed nothing but a sheet-covered form on the bed.

  Jacey stepped inside. “Vaughan?”

  She approached the bed. The figure’s face lay in darkness so she reached for him, touched his brow. “Vaughan?”

  The head turned toward her, and the eyes opened, catching the light from the corridor. Jacey recognized them instantly.

  With a small cry, she bent forward and hugged her friend.

  It was Sarah.

  26

  The Stupid Dog

  “Sarah, are you okay?”

  The girl stared up at Jacey with glassy eyes, her mouth slack.

  “Sarah?”

  Her friend didn’t respond. Jacey flipped the wall switch and harsh, fluorescent light filled the room. Sarah moaned, lifted her arm to cover her eyes. A clear plastic tube taped to her wrist led to an IV bag hanging from a metal stand.

  Jacey remembered having an IV when her tonsils were removed two years prior. She didn’t remember what the clear liquid in the bag was.

  She turned the light off to spare Sarah’s eyes, then took her hand. “Sarah, what happened?”

  Sarah didn’t respond except to let out an unintelligible croak. Jacey decided that the IV bag contained some kind of medicine, a sedative that kept Sarah in a stupor.

  She gripped the tape holding the IV to the back of Sarah’s hand, intent on removing it.

  She pulled her hand away as she realized that moving Sarah would be a mistake.

  Finding Vaughan and searching for the graduates had been her original purpose. She couldn’t do that while dragging Sarah around. There was still more of the medical ward to explore.

  “I’ll be back.” She kissed Sarah’s forehead and slipped out of the room.

  To her left stood a steel door like the one behind Nurse Smith’s desk. She tried the handle, and it opened. Her fingers found a light switch and flipped it. Florescent lights, brighter than those in Sarah’s room, flickered on, forcing Jacey to shield her eyes.

  White tiles covered the floor and walls. The ceiling was of a different kind of tile, also white. Two cots sat in the middle of the room, pushed head to head and encircled by a wide wheel. On one wall was a blank monitor. Other medical equipment stood around the periphery. The air chilled her skin and smelled of bleach.

  Jacey tried a door on the wall to the right and discovered a closet holding a broom, mop, and shelves full of cleaning supplies and latex gloves.

  Medical equipment lay on the few tables and carts standing around the periphery of the room. She didn’t know what any of it was.

  She crossed to another door on the far side of the room. It opened into a small vestibule with yet another door straight ahead. This one was also steel, but it had no window.

  The handle was cold. She twisted it and pushed. A blast of icy air swept past her.

  She turned on the lights.

  The space beyond was bare except for a wooden pallet in the center, on which lay four black bags with zippers down the side. She couldn’t imagine what might be in them. They were long. Longer than she was tall.

  Her breath came out in misty plumes. It was a freezer.

  She knelt by the pallet and unzipped the closest bag. The thick plastic crinkled as she lifted the corner.

  She gasped and fell back onto her hands. Letting out a cry of disgust, she scrambled to her feet, retreated through the door, and slammed it shut.

  Sweat pearled on her forehead despite the chill of the room. Her breath sounded loud in the small vestibule. Steeling herself, she pulled the door open and peered into the freezer.

  A pale dead face stared back at her from inside the black bag. It belonged to a man with salt-and-pepper hair, features so familiar she knew instantly who it was.

  Dante’s father.

  His pale lips and face, drained of blood, gave him a ghostly pallor.

  And there were three more bags.

  She started to close the door again, but stopped herself. She had no choice. She had to check.

  With slow steps, she returned to the pallet and dropped to her knees. Gritting her teeth against the revulsion and fear that gripped her stomach, she zipped Dante’s father’s bag shut and reached across to unzip the next.

  The face that peered out was that of an elderly woman, but it looked so uncannily like Vin that Jacey had to wipe tears away and remind herself that it was not Vin’s body she saw.

  She zipped the bag shut and checked the next. The man inside was ancient, bearing no resemblance to Ping other than the shape of his eyes.

  She went to the final bag. She knew it had to be Sarah’s mother. Tears in her eyes, Jacey unzipped it and pushed back the plastic. Her hand went to her mouth, and her body recoiled at the sight of the white, doughy face that stared back at her.

  The woman had been younger than the others, and she looked almost nothing like Sarah, except for maybe the eyes and the freckle above her lip.

  Jacey hurriedly zipped the bag shut and stood, wiping her hands on her pants. She shook her arms and bounced on her toes to shed a bone-deep chill.

  Rubbing her elbows, she backed out, hurriedly turning off the lights and closing the door behind her.

  That was it. She had searched the whole place, and Vaughan wasn’t there.

  She passed through the white room with the two cots, determined to rouse Sarah and find out what had happened to her and her mother. But as she walked past the cots and the strange wheel machine, she noticed the monitor on the wall. On impulse, she tapped the screen and it flickered to life.

  The monitor was similar to the one at Nurse Smith’s desk, except much larger. It displayed the blurry last frame of a video. Jacey recognized the controls from her reader. She tapped the double arrow to return to the beginning, then pressed play. The video showed a short man in an odd hat, playing with a dog wearing a blue collar. Jacey had never seen a dog in real life, but the white fur looked soft.

  The human made motions with his hands, and the dog responded by performing tricks. He took it through a little routine. First it sat, then it stood on its hind legs, then it lay down and rolled over and stood up again.

  The man made a sharp pointing motion with two fingers and said, “Bang!” Jacey let out a horrified cry as the dog crumpled to its side.

  “He killed it!”

  But then he clapped, and the dog leapt up.

  Jacey sighed with relief. It had been part of the routine.

  Socrates hadn’t often discussed dogs with her, just saying that people once kept them as companions and work animals.

  The man whistled and another, slightly larger dog of the same breed came into the frame. This one wore a red collar. But when the man made all the motions, the new dog ignored him and went to sniff under the other dog’s tail.

  The scene changed. The man with the strange hat carried the disobedient dog to a short bed with a wheel encircling it, just like the arrangement behind her. Next, he placed the dog with the blue collar on the other side and strapped it down. He positioned that bed so that the dogs lay nose to nose inside the wheel.

  The wheel started to spin, picking up speed until it blurred.

  It spun and spun. Jacey fast-forwarded until she got to a point where it had stopped spinning. A man she didn’t recognize came into view and lifted the s
mart dog, but it hung limp from his arms, tongue lolling free. He carried it out of frame.

  The man with the hat returned and lifted the stupid dog from the bed and put it on the floor. Unlike the other dog, this one was alert and lively. And then the man made the hand motions again.

  It sat. It lay down. It rolled over. And then when the human made the motion and said, “Bang,” it collapsed onto its side.

  Jacey watched the trainer continue to make the dog do tricks, and then another human walked into the frame. The angle was so low she could only see this man’s legs. And then something familiar swung into view. She had to back the video up a few frames and pause it to be sure.

  It was the silver tip of Dr. Carlhagen’s cane.

  She pressed play, but the video ended a moment later.

  Jacey turned and studied the machine behind her. It was just like the one they had put the dogs in, although larger and certainly more refined. She walked around it, considering what she had seen. The dog that had not known the tricks suddenly knew them, and the dog that had known the tricks was carried away, dead.

  Knowledge of the tricks had transferred from one dog to the other. The machine in the room was the same design. She’d found a freezer with four dead people in it. . . .

  Jacey ran to Sarah’s room. With trembling hands, she ripped the tape from the girl’s wrist and pulled the IV free.

  Sarah moaned.

  “I’m getting you out of here,” Jacey said. She tucked an arm under Sarah’s back and helped her sit up.

  “Jacey?” Sarah asked. She mumbled as if her mouth were full. “I can’t believe you’re here. Where are Sylvio and Elizabeth?”

  “Who?”

  Sarah started to cry. “I can’t get her out of my head. Get her out of me. Get her out of me.” She started to flail and scream so loudly that Jacey was sure Nurse Smith would wake up.

  Jacey wrapped her arms around Sarah and squeezed her close. “It’s okay. Just relax.”

  The girl responded, slowly, her panic crumbling into convulsive sobs.

  Jacey guided her back into the hallway and down the short corridor that connected to Nurse Smith’s villa.

  “Stay quiet,” she whispered. “I’m going to take you to Sensei. He’ll know what to do.”

  It was her only option, really. Nurse Smith had obviously known that Sarah was in there and hadn’t done anything about it. But since Sensei wasn’t allowed in, he had no way of knowing.

  Jacey knew the martial arts master had been on the verge of telling her everything. It was obvious he wanted to help. Maybe this would push him over the edge. And maybe, once Sarah calmed down, they could get more information from her.

  At the door to Nurse Smith’s villa, Jacey lowered Sarah to the floor. There was no monitor on this side, so she hoped the latch automatically unlocked it.

  It did.

  She swung the door open and crawled through, helping Sarah along as best she could. Her friend gasped and moaned until Jacey was forced to put her hand over Sarah’s mouth.

  After two minutes of crawling and dragging Sarah along, she got to where the hallway crossed with the one leading to Nurse Smith’s bedroom.

  The lights were still off. Jacey supposed that after Belle’s beating, the woman had taken some heavy pain medicine.

  Jacey helped Sarah to her feet and tried to creep through Nurse Smith’s little living room. Sarah’s steps were unsteady, causing them to stumble into a chair and then a table, nearly overturning a lamp, which Jacey caught at the last second. Even with all that racket, Nurse Smith didn’t wake up.

  Jacey led Sarah out the front door and started across the quad. The rain had stopped, but the grass squished under their bare feet. Jacey wanted to stop and check on Humphrey, but she had to take care of Sarah first.

  Sensei’s villa was directly across from Nurse Smith’s. Jacey climbed the steps and opened the door. “Sensei? Sensei, wake up.”

  He appeared in the bedroom doorway at the back of his villa, wearing nothing but a pair of trunks. He took one glance at Sarah, then motioned them into his bedroom.

  Jacey helped Sarah lie back. Her friend’s sobbing had stopped, but she shivered, and her lips trembled.

  “I found her like this in the medical ward. Dr. Carlhagen had her drugged and strapped to a bed.”

  Sensei took the girl’s hand. “Sarah, what happened to you?”

  Gone was the absent look. Whatever drug Dr. Carlhagen had her on had cleared in the walk to Sensei’s villa. Her eyes darted from Jacey to Sensei. “Who’s Sarah?”

  “You’re Sarah,” Jacey said.

  The girl’s hands went to her head, and she shook it violently. “No, no, my name’s Janicka. It doesn’t feel right. It doesn’t feel right.”

  “What doesn’t feel right?” Sensei asked, his tone comforting.

  Sarah shook her hands and looked at them. “My body. It’s not right. It’s not right.”

  “You better hold her down,” Jacey told Sensei.

  Sarah tried to stand. She swung her arms around, kicked her legs, and started to scream.

  Jacey plugged her ears, but the scream cut off a second later. Sensei had wrapped Sarah in a quick sleeper hold, momentarily cutting off the circulation to her brain. He eased her unconscious form back onto the bed. “I can see why she was strapped down.”

  “Whatever happened to her,” Jacey said, “she doesn’t even know who she is.”

  Sensei looked down at the unconscious girl, face unreadable. “You should have left her.”

  “How could I? She needs us. Nurse Smith and Dr. Carlhagen had her alone in that room, drugged into a stupor, and they never told any of us.”

  And she knew why. Her mind flashed back to the beds under that wheel. One subject lives, one dies. The one that lives has the knowledge of the one that died.

  “Did you find Vaughan?” he asked.

  “No,” Jacey said. “I looked in every room.”

  He scratched the top of his head, looking more distressed than Jacey had ever seen him. “This puts me in a difficult situation. Dr. Carlhagen specifically ordered me to stay out of the medical ward. I have to take Sarah back.”

  “What? No!”

  “Nurse Smith will discover her missing and she’ll notify Dr. Carlhagen.”

  “So what?” Jacey said. “We’ll just refuse to return her. They can’t do anything to us.”

  Sensei stared at her. “Dr. Carlhagen will ask me to find the girl and return her to the medical ward. And I will do it.”

  “Why? Why can’t you just be on our side? What does Dr. Carlhagen have on you that makes you so weak?”

  Sensei recoiled.

  She squared her shoulders and stepped closer to him. “Tell me.”

  He glanced down at Sarah, who had not reawakened. He pulled the covers over her. Snatching up a shirt, he led Jacey into the kitchen.

  He slipped on the shirt, then began removing items from the cabinets: a can, a plastic scoop, and a round, white paper thing with ruffled sides. “When I was just older than you are now, I began a fighting career. I know it will sound strange to you, but on the outside,” he waved a tiny plastic scoop toward the window, indicating the world beyond St. Vitus, “talented fighters are paid to fight each other. People go in droves, paying high ticket prices to see the bouts.”

  He dug the scoop into the can. “I was very good. I won often, and my fame grew. And with that fame came wealth and a lifestyle that was . . . chaotic.”

  He heaped several scoops of black powder from the can into the paper thing, then set that into the top of a machine with a pitcher nestled into it.

  “One day, after a particularly profitable victory, I woke up in my home to discover a young woman dead in my bathroom. I didn’t know who she was. I didn’t remember meeting her. So I called the authorities, and they conducted their investigation. Seven months later, a judge sentenced me to life in prison.”

  He filled the pitcher from the kitchen faucet and poured the water i
nto the back of the machine.

  “It was a wretched place, filthy. What food we got was often rotten or filled with insects, and the only authority anyone respected was violence. Even with all of my fighting skill, I was no match for those who were armed. In fact, my fame made me a target. Everyone wanted to be the one who took down Mario Rosa.”

  He jabbed a button on the machine and pulled two mugs from the cabinet.

  “Please, sit.” He motioned for Jacey to take a seat in his tiny living room. The lights were off, but enough illumination came in from the outside for Jacey to find the sofa.

  Sensei sat heavily in an armchair and tented his fingers as he continued his story. “I was no good at the politics of prison life. I didn’t make alliances, so I was pressed from all sides by those who wanted me dead. I no longer trained the way I had during my fighting days, so day by day my strength faded. Stupid, really. I should have worked harder. One night, after barely escaping a knife in the ribs, I stood on my bunk with an electrical cord hanging over the light fixture. The other end was tied to the toilet. I looped the loose end around my neck and tied it tight. All I had to do was jump, and my misery would be complete.”

  “Don’t you mean it would be over?” Jacey asked, voice soft so as not to break the spell of his story.

  “Complete. Over. That’s the same thing. I said a prayer and wiped the sweat from my forehead. I tugged on the cord to make sure it didn’t have too much slack,” he said.

  “In my mind I began a countdown. I started at seven. I don’t know why, but I did.”

  “A roar started outside my cell at around five. It grew louder at three. The prisoners were screaming and shouting and rattling stuff against the bars, something they did when a new prisoner was brought in. That, or when the warden gave tours to visitors.

  “I didn’t care either way. I kept counting. Two. One. And then I jumped. Hanging is supposed to break your neck, but I didn’t fall far enough. The cord dug into my neck, cut off blood flow to my head. Choked me.”

  A wonderful smell wafted from the kitchen. Warm and rich, it made Jacey’s stomach growl. Sensei heard it and laughed. “You won’t like how coffee tastes. Not the first time.”