by Martin Kee
It was hard to watch. The man felt terrible about it and Skyla wanted to reach out and touch his shadow, massage the pain out of it. The chorus of humming vibrated out and all around her.
The machine spoke in her mind, its voice filled with gluttonous joy: Be my eyes.
“He didn’t really mean t—” she said, but was cut off by a loud click from inside the walls.
The man twitched once and then slumped in his chair. His shadow evaporated like air from a popped balloon, gone forever. The figure that sat in the chair was—empty. It was as if she were looking at a husk. There was nothing there.
She flipped the lenses up, gasping. A sick feeling crept down Skyla’s chest as she looked again for a shadow, but found nothing. The man’s eyes stared out at the world, unfocused and stupid.
Oh God, she thought, please let him be alive still. Oh please.
The lights went bright. It hurt her eyes as she blinked it away. Ostermann was up from his seat and staring at the subject. A door opened and several Tinkerers, also wearing white lab coats, gadgets, and belts slung from their shoulders and waists rushed over to the man in the chair.
The subject blinked. Skyla let out a sigh of relief. He was alive, so she thought.
He looked at the men who surrounded him, not with anxiety or recognition. His head turned mechanically from one face to another. His eyes, wide and limpid as a cow’s, glanced at them without recognition. Every movement was automatic. His eyes were vacant.
*
John was standing in a darkened room that gave them a clear view of the test subject and of Skyla, the girl he had traversed the wilderness to find, just to make sure she didn’t end up here. Now he had arrived, late and powerless.
When the wall vanished and the man appeared, he asked Christopher who the subject was. Several clergy gave him irritated looks.
“He’s a bandit,” said the archbishop. “Murdered a soldier in the woods during the Lassimir raid.”
“And what is Skyla supposed to do?”
“Watch and see.”
“Are there others?”
“Oh yes,” the archbishop whispered over the growing vibration from the walls. “We have heretics, bandits, nonbelievers.”
The man sat in the room, confused. He seemed to have been expecting something much worse, an inquisition or a tribunal. They turned Skyla to look at him and when she did—
What did happen exactly?
She said something that John couldn’t quite understand. The next second the man twitched, as if someone had stuck an electric wire in his chest. There was an awed hush from the clergy around him as the man blinked and stared. He appeared almost dead but was clearly still breathing. John stepped closer to the window.
“Born again,” said a voice from behind him.
He turned toward the familiar voice to see Lyle Summers. The man looked lost in a dream.
“What did you say?” asked John.
“He’s born again,” said Lyle. “He’s been given redemption, the chance to make all the right choices now.”
John turned back to the window. The subject blinked and stared, eyes wide and stupid. The Tinkerers who surrounded the man asked him questions, all met with the comprehension of a tree stump.
“He’s—” John began to say dead but that wasn’t quite the right word. The man was clearly alive, but blank. His face was slack, as though he had forgotten how to make any sort of expression.
“Pure,” said Lyle. “He’s pure as God wanted him to be. He is closer to the divine right now than any person in this room. Hallelujah.”
A Tinkerer reached out to help the subject from his chair. The man began to scream, high and feral. It was the keening howl of a caged animal.
“What…” said John, but choked over his own horror. “What have you done to him?”
“Oh, he’ll be fine,” said Lyle, unfazed by the shrieking man in the next room.
John could only stare. A fine line of drool dripped from the man’s mouth as he struggled, eyes wide and blind with fear.
“As you can see,” said a spokesman in the front of the room, “by using a focusing agent we are able to achieve a much cleaner and more thorough burn. We estimate power output will be increased by twenty-percent…”
There was a smattering of applause. John looked around as if in some horrible dream. Outside the window, things were only worse.
Skyla was trembling behind her goggles and staring at the screaming man. John thought he saw something move from the darkest corner of her room. It could have been a tight cluster of insects or maybe a leak of some black liquid. Images of his panicked congregation filled his mind.
“How many people have you done this to?” asked John. My God, he thought. What if they caught James? What if he ends up in that room next?
“Oh, hundreds,” said the spokesman. “In fact, before the accident we were making tremendous progress—”
“Accident?” John gaped.
The archbishop stepped in. “John, let’s take this outside.”
“What accident?” John said.
Laura Stintwell was back in the room with Skyla, consoling her. The Tinkeress seemed confused, unable to understand why the girl was upset.
“What accident?” John said again.
Christopher placed an arm around his shoulder. He began to walk John out and into the hallway.
“John,” said Christopher in his most reasonable voice. “I think maybe you should find a room where you can sit and digest what you’ve seen, come to some reasonable conclusions.”
A door opened and the man stumbled out, propped up under each shoulder by guards. He looked at John with a blank stare, drool staining his chest.
“How long do they live after this?” said John. “How long did the other ones live before they went insane? Did they kill themselves or just wither away?”
The other observers—clergy and tinkerers in the room—had begun to emerge from the darkness, drawn by the argument. Lyle stood off to the side, leaning against the doorway. John turned to face Christopher as they stood in the hall.
“John, I don’t think this is the time—”
“How many people could you use this on at once?” asked John. He froze as realization began to dawn on his face. He lowered his voice. “How many, Chris?”
“Years ago we were doing quite a few,” said the archbishop, hushed to a near whisper. “We might have been able to turn the tides on the western crusades if we had this device.”
“But it needs a pilot. You can’t just make it work; you need someone who will focus it. That’s what Skyla is for. Otherwise it just fires off indiscriminately, chooses its own targets. That’s why that man in my holding pen fainted.”
It took everything John had in him to keep from grabbing the archbishop and shaking him, forcing some sense into his old friend.
Lyle spoke up. “Father, don’t get all high and mighty on us. You’re out of your league.”
John ignored Lyle. Christopher’s eyes shifted awkwardly. John took a step toward him until their faces were almost touching. A small bead of sweat ran down the archbishop’s temple.
“Skyla’s mother,” said John. “She was a… a ‘focusing agent’ wasn’t she?”
“What would you have us do, John?” said Christopher, disappointed. “You yourself were all about forgiveness of the town witch. Does it look like we are burning them here? I thought you’d be happy about this. At least she’s being taken care of and put to use.”
Instead you are using the witches to burn everyone else, he thought.
John was about to say what was on his mind, but he was cut short when the sound of a gunshot rolled through the hallway like thunder. Heads whipped around to peer down the corridor. Lyle stood up straight, alert and concerned. There was a scream from somewhere in the lab, and then John’s world changed forever.
Chapter 39
“Here?” Gil asked. It was terribly dark, even for someone with two eyes.
�
��Yes,” said the voice. “Open the panel… that’s right. Now take out the fuse… it’s the long glass tube. That’s right.”
Gil did as she was told in the dark, her tiny fingers feeling deftly over the wires and fuses. Little birds told her lots of things, but she had never listened to one who spoke so well, and none of them had ever known so much about electricity. None of them could pick locks either.
She liked tinkering, even if most of the time she had no idea what she was doing. Still, it was something that kept her busy so she wouldn’t have to spend as much time around Mr. Henry.
This however, felt like a much bigger project than simple tinkering. This was like magic, with so many tubes and pipes, cogs and gears. The fuse box was hidden deep in the recesses of a dark tunnel, something she never would have seen if the raven hadn’t shown her.
“Like that?”
“Perfect,” he said. “Wait—”
She held her breath. “What?” she whispered.
“Someone is coming. Hide.”
“But they—”
“Hide. Hide. Hide.”
She ducked into the corner, hidden in the shadows as the bearded man ran by. She waited until he was completely out of view.
“Two more,” said the scratchy voice. “Wait for them.”
A moment later two more men ran by, one of them only a boy. They stormed through the darkness in pursuit, completely ignoring her and her new friend.
“What’s going on?” she whispered.
“Things are about to get interesting,” he said. “Now take that ring… that’s right. Place it there. Now, get ready to run.”
*
After a few nights, James had woken to find himself alone. The man he took as a hostage had led him here, to a darkened cemetery, under the branch of a large oak tree. There they had camped for several days, as James tried to get more information from the man to no avail.
He had given himself one week before he gave up and left for home. If he didn’t see a sign by then, it simply wasn’t meant to be. There was a point where he considered going into the CONFESSIONAL and seeing if he could find answers there, but between the amount of guards and the way in which Axel reacted near them (hitting his own head with a palm and almost screaming) James decided it was best to find an alternate route.
Now he was alone.
Something had clicked nearby and fallen to the ground, waking him. He shuffled his equipment and crawled toward the sound. The gate on the tomb sat unlocked. A long black feather lay on the damp ground next to the thick iron padlock that had recently been on the gate. Pushing the bars slowly, he took a step into the darkness. To his surprise, the tomb had no back wall, just an endless slope of concrete that spiraled down into the depths, ending at a nest of vehicles painted dim red by a single light. There were no other people.
Past the vehicles, James pushed open the doors, wincing at the glare. The corridor was as bright as the sun and stabbed at his temples, making him squint and raise his hand. It seemed to come from everywhere at once.
Though the facility didn’t seem to be at all deserted, James was surprised to find that he stood completely alone until a speaker on the wall squawked, startling him.
“The first piloted demonstration will begin in fifteen minutes,” a female voice said through the speakers, followed by another squawk which terminated the announcement. He heard a low hum from the walls and then a click. James unfolded his gun.
Polished silvery doorknobs lined the hall and he tried one. The first door he opened was equally as white as the hallway. It had rounded corners, a table, and two chairs, nothing else. He closed it and moved to the next. The white on white décor made him feel unbalanced, never quite sure where his feet were landing. There were no shadows.
Two doors down he found a storeroom, concrete and poorly lit. He almost closed the door on it until a brown rucksack caught his eye. He flipped open the flap and saw the crumpled blue school uniform. As he reached for it, the sound of footsteps caught his attention. In one breath, James snatched up the rucksack by the strap and ducked away deeper into the forest of shelves.
As faint voices mumbled through the door, he inched his way past the shelves lined with trinkets and skullcaps with goggles—identical to the pair Skyla had worn on her head the last time he saw her—to the other end of the room. Another silver knob gleamed against a white wall. James reached out and grabbed it, hearing voices.
“That you Cater?” said a voice, muted behind the door.
“Who wants to know?” said James.
“Stop clowning around,” said the man. “Are you going to relieve me or not? I’m not covering for you again, not with this group of Lassimirites.”
“Sure,” said James, tightening his grip on the gun.
As the door swung open, James found himself face to face with a man dressed in a guard’s outfit, only without the helmet.
“You’re not Cater—” The guard’s eyes flashed towards the rifle, just in time for the butt of it to connect with his forehead.
James stepped over the unconscious man and pushed him into the storage room. He locked the door, turned around, and found himself looking down from a sharp ledge. Below him was a wide square pit filled with dirty, downtrodden people. They stared up at him from their holding cell with grimy faces and curious eyes.
“Can you get us out?” asked one girl in a tattered yellow dress. She had delicate features, her blue eyes a pair of jewels in the dirt and dried tears on her face. Her greasy straight hair hung in golden threads over her shoulders, visible through the rips in her dress.
“How do I do that?” he asked.
Another man spoke up. “A lever up there opens a door. But I think another person has to do the same from the outside.”
“Where’s the other guard?” he asked, looking nervously at the other door.
“Don’t know,” said the man. “They took Baker and we never saw him or the guard again. You’d better hurry whatever you do. No idea how much time we have.”
James looked around the tiled platform where he stood. There was a lever, a dormant light, and another door. He took a tentative look out into the hallway. It was white and empty. The door that led out of the holding pen must have been on a different floor. He ducked back in and went to the ledge.
“Can any of you reach me?” he asked. “I can try and get to the door below, but someone up here has to watch the lever.”
“Sarah can,” said the man. “She’s light.”
James felt his heart thump once in his chest as the girl stepped into the clasped hands of two other men, lifted upward. He gripped her wrist and James’s heart went thump again. Her dark eyes held so much pain—familiar pain.
“Okay,” said James. “Sarah, wait here. I’ll try—”
“Like hell I will,” she said, kneeling back over the ledge. “We have to get them out now.”
“We don’t have a lot of time.”
She shot him a glare. “No, we don’t,” she said, urgency making her voice hoarse. “They’ve been taking us one at a time. Nobody comes back.”
“Do you know where they take them?” he said.
“They call it confessional… but…” she frowned. “I don’t think that’s really what it is.”
Somewhere in the corridor there was a stampede of guard boots. His uncertain gaze shifted between the girl, the hallway, and the people in the pit below. There was a low buzz from the walls, the same buzzing he heard from outside.
“All I know is that they don’t come back,” she said. A tear welled up in her eye.
James shuffled his feet like a scolded boy, fighting the overwhelming urge to reach out, grab her, and run as far away as possible, stealing her away with him. He had never been a man to believe in love at first sight, but he now questioned that assertion.
He took two steps toward the ledge and leaned over.
“Give me your hands,” he said to the people below.
Chapter 40
Har
old Montegut held a revolver in one hand and a black leather case in the other. The gun belonged to him. The leather case and its contents did not. He had no plan. The gears of the machinery that ran his life were stripped and spinning out of control.
“I don’t think this is the right way go about this,” said Arthur. “We really should be notifying the local authorities.”
“The authorities,” hissed Harold, “killed my daughter. You were in the hotel room with me. You saw this.”
He brandished the leather case in his hand like a cross to a vampire. The black cover was worn, with patches of blood on it.
“Promise me we’ll just arrest him,” said Arthur.
“I promise nothing.”
They had seen the burly, bearded man enter through the tomb, at first thinking he was some kind of vagrant. It wasn’t until they saw the ornately crafted rifle that Harold decided he might be worth trailing. They had kept far enough behind him that he didn’t seem to be even the slightest bit aware. The darkness was their camouflage.
They followed the man into a cave, and then into a white-on-white hallway where he disappeared into a room. Further along, they came upon a man and woman wearing white lab coats. They looked at Harold in the same way dodos might have looked at humans for the first time. It was more vague curiosity than alarm.
“I’m looking for Lyle Summers,” he said to them.
They blinked and looked at one another, then looked back at him. Harold pulled the revolver out of his pocket and the man took off at a dead run.
“Who let you in?” asked the woman.
“Take me to Lyle Summers,” Harold said. “Or this will be the last thing you see.”
He strode up to the woman and grabbed her arm, twisting it behind her back. She made a loud grunt, but did not scream. Good. At least she understood what was going on. He held the gun to her back, followed by a very nervous Gansworth down the hallway.
“Are you sure—” said Gansworth.
“Shut up,” he snapped. “You have been a great help to me, Assistant Investigator, and I am eternally grateful, but if you do not stop asking me if I am sure I am doing the right thing, I will shoot you myself.”