Again Carrington stayed quiet as Jesse processed.
“Who is he?” Jesse asked.
“If he were here, he’d say he was just a man,” Carrington said.
Jesse chuckled under his breath and Carrington felt a fresh rush of tears. What was she supposed to do now? Should they go after him, try to save him from the Authority—the same Authority from whom he had saved so many? Would anyone go? Would Wire and Kate tell people what he had done? How could he come back from that? But then, he wouldn’t have to figure it out. She knew—like she’d known he wasn’t with Wire’s group—that Remko wasn’t coming back at all.
“I just didn’t think it was actually real,” Jesse said, breaking the silence.
Carrington turned to see him looking off to the west, watching the sun as it began its descent from the sky. She placed her hand on his shoulder and he glanced at her, surprised, as if he had forgotten she was there. His eyes were filled with worry, his face haunted by whatever was happening in his mind. He looked as if he wanted to say something but instead dropped his eyes and the silence returned.
Carrington wanted to tell him it would be all right, but she couldn’t get the words to form in her mouth because she wasn’t even sure they were true.
26
The room was a sterile white. The walls, the floor, every inch was clean and shimmering white. Remko sat alone on the only object in the room, a hard steel chair that was bolted to the floor. His hands were bound behind his back while his ankles were tied to the chair’s legs. The guards who had led him into this room had taken extra precautions to ensure his restraints were inescapable. Remko had considered telling them there was no need, but he’d remained silent and let them work.
After retrieving him from the camp, they’d tried asking him questions, pumping him for the location of any other Seer members, searching for clues as to why he’d been bound, why he’d been left behind, why he wasn’t fighting back, but Remko had shut them out and remained in his black hole. Eventually they had given up, and the rest of the journey had been conducted in silence.
He wasn’t sure how long he’d been sitting inside the perfectly white room—minutes, hours, or days—when the door slid open behind him. Footsteps echoed off the walls as two guards, carrying another steel chair, appeared and placed the object in front of Remko, facing him.
They left without a word and another moment passed before a softer set of footsteps glided by Remko’s left side. Remko didn’t raise his eyes but saw someone sit in the chair before him. The newcomer crossed his legs and Remko knew from the colorful material that made up the man’s clothes that he was now in the presence of an Authority member.
“They told me you were being very quiet; I see they weren’t exaggerating,” the man said.
Remko didn’t recognize his voice, which meant this man had to be Damien Gold, the new Authority President. The black hole surrounding Remko’s mind threatened to crack. How many Seer executions could be attributed to the man sitting inches from him?
“I must be honest; I assumed you would be quite different. From the way people talk about you, I expected more fight,” Damien said.
Remko kept his eyes trained on the man’s shoes. A small part of his brain began to pulse back to life. Maybe this man had Carrington and Elise; maybe they were alive and being held close by. Maybe he should still be fighting for them. The buzzing in his mind returned but only to remind Remko how useless he was. Even if Carrington and Elise were still alive, an idea that went against every impulse in his body, he wouldn’t be able to do anything to save them. He never really had been able to. All his faith had been a lie. He knew that now. It would be better to die and hope that there was someplace beyond this life where they could all be united together again.
“To tell you the truth, I thought this was going to be much more difficult, but it seems as though something has already broken your spirit, so the transition should happen quite nicely,” Damien said.
Remko looked up to meet Damien’s eyes for the first time. The man was younger than Remko had expected, but his eyes were exactly as he’d pictured: cold, dark, mechanical. This man would be responsible for his death and would never lose a moment’s sleep over it.
Damien gave Remko a small smile and casually folded his hands in his lap. He held Remko’s gaze, his face calm as if he were already sure of how this would end. Remko had once longed for the certainty he saw in Damien’s face; now he only wished for it all to be over.
“I have been waiting for some time to finally meet you,” Damien said. “You have become somewhat of a hero among certain groups. People believe you can save them.”
“They’re wrong,” Remko said.
“Of course they are, but that’s the problem with humanity. People need to believe that the impossible is possible. That somewhere over the horizon there is freedom.”
“I don’t believe in freedom,” Remko said.
Damien gave Remko a curious look that dissolved into a chuckle. “Then what have you been fighting for?”
Remko couldn’t answer, because the truth was he didn’t know.
“I actually believe the two of us are more alike than you think. I’m guessing you no longer believe in freedom because your search for the freedom you so desperately desired has failed you. I too once wondered about freedom, but I learned that the question isn’t whether or not freedom exists; no, the better question, my friend, is whether or not freedom is necessary.”
Damien stood and began to pace. “See, Remko, what I am trying to do is show people that freedom does not have to be a choice. When you eliminate the desire for choice—the human default that says I should be able to choose my own path, that my will should be able to lead—then you eliminate the need for freedom. Without freedom, you have peace and order—true order, not governed by fear and law but rather by people’s biochemical makeup.”
Damien stopped pacing and fixed Remko again with his intense gaze. “At some point in the evolutionary process, man began to define his truest inner parts as the soul, that imaginary part of the human mind that gives us the inclination to stand against the pack, against the larger group, in order to assert our own dominance. Instead of serving the pack and the greater whole, we serve ourselves. In this we find rebellion, and as long as the option to rebel exists, humanity can never reach its full capacity. Something or someone always gets in the way of progress. But what if we remove the idea of freedom and the soul altogether?”
Damien moved back to his seat and sat on the edge, his knees nearly scraping against Remko’s. “How is such a thing possible, you are probably wondering. With science. By removing the memories that convince us we have rights, by changing the neural networks that we associate with freedom, we can physically rewrite the way human minds react to situations so that when faced with a choice to rebel and fight for freedom, they won’t.”
“That’s what this is?” Remko asked. He realized for the first time that he wasn’t in the Authority City, as he had assumed; he was in the facility hidden in the valley, the Genesis Compound, where they were experimenting on people. Changing their brains, taking away their souls. The itching that struggled to wake Remko’s mind surged again deep inside the dark fog.
“This,” Damien said, spreading his arms out wide, “is Genesis. A new beginning. A proper beginning.”
“You can’t take away a person’s ability to choose freedom,” Remko said.
Damien sat back in his chair. “Can’t we? Have you not lost your freedom? Have you not realized freedom was a myth to begin with? An idea that your soul created that you can’t actually achieve? Think of those who have suffered for the sake of your supposed freedom. In the name of your rebellion. Have any of you found it?”
The itching began to die off as memories of failures crashed back against Remko’s mind.
“Are you happy that your soul created a false idea that led you through so much pain?” Damien asked.
Remko swallowed and dropped his eye
s to the white floor. The truth in Damien’s words resonated within his chest.
“Wouldn’t it have been better to never believe the lie at all?”
Yes, Remko wanted to say.
Damien leaned forward again, propping his elbows on his knees and dropping his voice. “I can take it away; I can save you from your self-inflicted misery. Aaron may have offered you freedom from the Authority and its laws, but I’m not offering you a fairy tale.”
Remko peered back up at Damien’s cold stare.
“What I’m offering actually exists. I’m offering you a way to never need the idea of choice or freedom again.”
Remko couldn’t ignore the pull toward Damien’s offer. Not that he actually had a choice; he was bound to a chair in a highly secure facility. He knew he would probably need to accept what Damien was offering or accept his own death.
“If it helps,” Damien said, “you won’t remember any of this. The people you fought for, the false ideas you carried—all of it will be gone. You’ll only know peace. Would you like to see?”
Remko stared straight ahead as Damien stood and walked over to the door. He heard the man lightly knock and heard the door slide open. More footsteps joined Damien’s as the man reappeared in Remko’s view with a familiar face. Sam.
The boy stood unharmed, gazing through Remko rather than at him. His face was at ease, his eyes clear. He looked at Damien as if awaiting instruction.
Damien motioned for Sam to sit in the free chair and Sam did.
“Sam, I would like you to meet Remko,” Damien said.
Sam nodded and extended his hand. Remko glanced at his friend’s fingers and then back at his face. No sign of familiarity registered in Sam’s eyes. It was as if he’d never seen Remko’s face before this moment. The itching started again.
“Sam,” Remko said. “Sam, don’t you know me?”
Sam squinted curiously and looked up at Damien. “Should I know him?”
Remko couldn’t believe what he was seeing.
Damien cleared his throat. “Look closely, Sam. You tell me—do you know him?”
Sam turned his gaze back to Remko and searched his face. A moment of silence lingered as Sam surveyed Remko’s features and then huffed. “Sorry, man. If we’ve met, I don’t remember.” He chuckled and offered Remko an apologetic smile.
Remko didn’t know how to react.
“That’s fine, Sam; you can go,” Damien said.
Sam nodded and stood, walking toward the exit.
Damien waited until the door was closed and Sam was gone before sitting back down across from Remko. The itch in Remko’s brain had grown; it didn’t seem possible that Sam could just forget everything they had faced together.
At first Remko sensed anger, and a twinge of it crawled its way through the darkness that still held most of his mind in a numb state. How could they do that to Sam? Take away his memories, change the way he saw the world? But quickly the anger turned to envy. Damien was offering to do the same for him. To help Remko forget the pain and loss. To forget the failure.
Would he be able to do the same in death? Or would his fears just follow him into whatever lay beyond? If freedom really was a lie, then wouldn’t it be better to just forget he needed freedom at all?
“Don’t worry, Remko; I intend to erase your pain and help you walk into the future of humanity,” Damien said, “but before we get started, I do have to ask about something. Aaron. How do we locate him?”
Remko looked up to find Damien’s cold stare boring into his skull.
“We have asked others, of course. Neil—you remember him, the one who gave up your camp? He has proven to be little to no use on the subject.”
So Neil was the reason the camp had been invaded. Remko should have guessed.
“Although he’s going to be very helpful with building a new city,” Damien said.
A new city? What exactly were Damien’s plans? The itching intensified for a moment before the majority of Remko’s mind, the part that was past caring, shut out his curiosity. What did it matter? He wouldn’t remember this anyway; soon he would be free from this reality and its torments.
“What can you tell me about Aaron?” Damien asked again.
Remko refocused his mind on Aaron. The man who couldn’t be killed. The man who insisted that freedom was within reach. The man who had led them all astray.
“Aaron won’t be a problem,” Remko said.
“Oh? And why is that?” Damien asked.
“Because Aaron needs freedom to exist in order to lead people out of the city. Take away the need for freedom and you ruin the man’s charade.”
Damien looked at Remko for a long second before a smile played over his lips. “Just as I said, you and I aren’t that different at all.”
27
Carrington sat up from the mat where she had been sleeping. The sky was dark around her, still and silent. Sweat made her top cling to her skin and her hair stick to the sides of her face. The air around her head felt thick and thin at the same time, and she struggled to breathe. Something was wrong.
She’d gone to bed early. The day had been exhausting. Word of what Remko had done—or tried to do—to Aaron had spread, and people had been looking at her differently. As if she had been the one pulling the trigger that hadn’t released a bullet. They talked to her with pity in their voices as if afraid that saying the wrong thing would send her off the edge.
Wire and Kate would hardly look at her, whether from anger or shame she couldn’t be sure. Jesse was the only person who spoke to her like she was still human, but he mostly kept to himself. Lost in thought, putting distance between him and the group as they traveled.
Ramses was desperately trying to remain focused. The news of Remko’s actions and capture had hit him harder than he was letting on. Lesley walked around like a mouse searching for cheese, frantic to make sure everyone was okay, trying to keep everything in order.
When they’d finally decided to stop for the night, Carrington had taken her leave with Elise. No one was saying anything to her, but she knew they were all thinking about her; she could hear their thoughts screaming.
Carrington glanced around. She’d been having a nightmare—at least she thought she had. She couldn’t remember, but there was a slight shake in her fingers and her heart was racing. Something had been happening in the depths of her mind that had stirred her awake. She clamped her eyes shut and focused on getting air in and out of her lungs. One inhale and one exhale at a time. She felt a soothing sensation begin to erase the panic. It had just been a nightmare.
She turned to search for the soft touch of Elise’s skin. The warm and comforting contact that helped Carrington find strength in all the darkness of the life around her. Her hand felt the spot where Elise should have been and found nothing. It was hard to see in the dark, but the baby must have rolled. Panic opened in her chest and she carefully rummaged through the assortment of blankets they were using as a bed. Nothing.
The panic rose through her chest and detonated in her mind. “Elise,” she said, then called louder. “Elise!”
Someone stirred to her left. Lesley. “Carrington?” Lesley asked through the sleepy fog in her voice.
“Elise! Elise!” Carrington shot up and yanked the blankets clear of the space on the ground they had claimed.
“Carrington, what is it?” Lesley asked. She was also standing now, and Carrington registered the movement of several others around them. Her fear and panic threatened to make her head explode as she searched madly around her.
“Elise—where is Elise?” Carrington asked.
“Elise?” Lesley asked, worry creeping into her words. “I don’t—”
“Elise!” Carrington yelled.
“Oh no, no, no,” Lesley whispered and started moving about camp, asking people if they had seen the baby.
Jesse stumbled into Carrington’s sights as she pulled away from those trying to help, her mind focused only on finding her daughter. A familia
r sense of loss filled her gut and she ignored the tears moistening her face. It was the same feeling she’d had when Remko hadn’t shown up with the others, the same way she’d felt when Larkin had been captured. It was the same dread that let her know, before the reality hit, that nothing was going to be the same.
Elise had been by her side when she’d fallen asleep. She wasn’t even four months old; she couldn’t have left on her own. The thought made the panic rage into anger and she felt heat spread down her back. The entire camp was stirring now, people asking what had happened, some up and searching.
“Help!” someone called from the night, and several others moved toward the cry. Everything seemed to move quickly yet caught up in slow motion all at once. Carrington stared at the empty pile of blankets where Elise should have been and tried to see past the blaring proof that was in front of her. Elise couldn’t be missing. Carrington couldn’t survive that.
“Get him close to the fire,” Ramses said.
Carrington saw her brother-in-law materialize out of the dark shadows, Wire on the opposite side of the body they were carrying. The body was slumped forward, head hanging toward the ground, feet dragging through the dirt, creating lines behind them. Ramses carefully lowered the figure and the firelight caught its face. Connor. He was pale even in the dim light. Lesley moved forward to help, but Carrington just stared. She too was caught in slow motion; the world halted in a haze that she couldn’t get through.
The top left corner of Connor’s shirt was soaked through with blood and he had sustained a massive wound to his forehead. He was unconscious, but his shoulders convulsed as the group tried to rouse him. The flames in the fire to his right flickered up into the darkness and Carrington watched them dance, such a brilliant contrast against the night. Fear and panic were pounding on the steel door that her mind had forged to protect her from the truth. The sound echoed through the nothingness filling her brain and she felt tears drip off her chin.
She should be shouting like a crazy woman, rushing around, screaming into the sky, demanding that the universe give her back all she had lost. Refusing to believe what was standing in front of her, having a mental break of a different kind, instead of standing like a statue, lost to sorrow.
The Calling Page 26