The Calling

by Rachelle Dekker

  “Connor,” Ramses said, splashing water over the man’s face. “Connor, come on; wake up.”

  Kate and Jesse had joined the group by the fire, the rest of the camp gathering around just outside the ring of light the fire cast.

  “I can’t locate the source of bleeding—something’s lodged in his shoulder or chest, I can’t tell,” Wire said, ripping away the portion of Connor’s shirt that was stained.

  “Come on, Connor,” Ramses said, splashing more water over Connor’s face.

  Connor gasped and his eyes fluttered open. A moment of relief filled the group, and then the night was filled with Connor’s groans. His hand moved to his chest, his body lurching in pain as Wire dug around to locate what was causing all the blood.

  “Hold him,” Wire said to Ramses, who clamped down on Connor as Wire worked.

  Connor cried out in pain, his face glistening with sweat. He mumbled something no one could make out.

  “What?” Ramses asked.

  “Connor, I need you to tell me how to get this out,” Wire said. There was desperation in his tone that he was struggling to hide.

  Connor spoke again. “Elise . . .”

  The sound of her daughter’s name snapped Carrington out of her daze and she rushed toward Connor, pushed her way through, and dropped to her knees to look him in the eye. “What about Elise?” she asked.

  Connor’s eyes were drooping, his consciousness slipping.

  “Connor,” Carrington said, taking both of his shoulders in her hands and shaking. “Tell me what you know about Elise.”

  “He’s losing too much blood,” Wire said.

  A fresh wave of tears rocked Carrington’s body. The fog that her mind had instinctively placed over her was gone and only her violent panic and terror remained. “Tell me about my daughter!”

  “Carrington,” Ramses said, gripping her arms, but she shrugged him off and clasped Connor’s face in her hands. She moved herself so that they were only inches apart.

  “Connor, talk to me,” she begged.

  His eyes opened and he saw her face. Tears filled his eyes and Carrington thought she might combust. He moved his lips, speaking softly but audibly.

  “He took her. I tried to stop them.”

  “Who?” Carrington asked. “Who took her?”

  “Neil.”

  Shock hit her like a brick straight across the face, her head ringing from impact. “No—he was taken . . .” She shook her head, her thoughts drifting away.

  “Neil,” Connor said again before gasping in pain.

  “I’m going after them,” Jesse said.

  “I’ll go with you,” Kate said.

  “You’re still injured; you need to stay.”

  “You can’t go alone.”

  Carrington glanced up to meet Jesse’s gaze and he nodded toward her.

  “Stay in camp,” Jesse said to Kate before turning and vanishing into the night.

  “Found something. Hold him,” Wire said.

  Connor’s screams pierced the sky, rattling Carrington’s bones, and Ramses ripped her away as he moved in to secure the patient. Connor’s cries lasted a couple of long moments before he fell completely silent, having passed out from the pain. Wire dug his fingers into the spot on Connor’s chest and yanked out the broken end of a dagger. More blood gushed from the wound and Lesley was there with a wadded cloth. They all worked, trying to save the man’s life, and Carrington again was trapped in slow motion. Her mind tried to wrap itself around Connor’s words.

  Neil.

  Impossible.

  Why?

  He took her.

  He took Elise. Her Elise. While she was sound asleep beside the baby, he had taken her. A man she had trusted, cared for. Connor must be mistaken. He must be confused. How could Neil have escaped, and how could he have found them? And why? It didn’t make sense; he’d been taken with the others. Hadn’t he? Her brain couldn’t make sense of it, couldn’t rationalize why he would do such a thing. What would he gain? She had come to know him. He had warned them, saved them. He wouldn’t . . . but then maybe she’d never known him at all.

  “Carrington,” a voice said beside her, followed by a gentle touch. She turned to see that Kate had moved to her side. Her face was empathetic, filled with sorrow, which was unusual for Kate. The girl was always so strong and if not strong then angry. That was the way she processed emotions. But standing beside Carrington now, she looked like a lost child. The sight brought a comfort Carrington wasn’t expecting and a sob broke from her mouth. She tried to hold her weeping at bay, but she was out of strength. Out of fight.

  She folded forward and down onto her knees, tears rocking her whole body. Kate slid down beside her and folded her into her chest as Carrington cried out into the night. The camp fell away, the fire, the bleeding body, and the rest of her people. All that existed were the arms around her and the anguish of her tears.

  They called them holding rooms, which made sense since they served only one purpose: to hold their prisoners. After finishing his talk with Damien, Remko had been escorted through a long white hallway into another white room that held a single steel medical chair with long, pale restraining straps. Remko didn’t fight as they secured him to the chair and administered a rather painful injection into his lower back.

  Then they escorted him to his own holding room, where a bowl of hot soup and a single glass of water had been placed on the small desk inside the space.

  The room was plain. A bed, a desk, a nightstand, a chair. No windows, light-gray walls, starched white sheets. Nothing felt comforting or warm, but Remko had long ago abandoned warmth and comfort. He spent the first few hours thinking about what warmth and comfort felt like and found he could hardly remember.

  There had been a time with Carrington early on, after they had been married, when fighting against the Authority had felt more like a game than like a prison. He had been comfortable then. Even with the little they’d had, even with the constant running and planning, they had been comfortable. Warm. Nights had been for sleeping and days for surgical attacks that could win them their war.

  He couldn’t place the exact moment when that had changed. It threatened to drive him mad, as he sat against the single bed in his new room, that he couldn’t remember when the world had changed. When the fun had ceased and there had only been danger and when looking at the woman he loved had filled him with worry instead of peace. Maybe it had been after Elise’s birth. After the risks became higher than he’d imagined. He should have felt guilty for bringing an innocent life into a world of torment, but he didn’t know then what he knew now.

  Remko tried to remember the details of the baby’s face. Her nose and eyes and fingers. The longer he thought about her, the less he could see. Damien had warned him that the transition was different for everyone, that it could be painful. He’d been told he would start to forget things that weren’t deemed necessary to the transformation. Was this forgetfulness the injection, or was it his mind shutting out the things that would only cause him pain? Remko didn’t know.

  Time didn’t exist in the holding rooms because he had no way of tracking it. Each moment simply melted into the next. Sometimes his head was filled with thoughts of his past, of what he would never have again, of what he didn’t want to have anymore. Other times his mind was strangely void and dark, filled with the haze that he had become so familiar with.

  They brought him a second tray of food, so maybe a day had passed, or maybe they fed the inmates twice a day. He couldn’t be sure. He stretched out on the single cot and waited for his memories to vanish.

  He tested himself, tried to recall events from his past, and each time he remembered what was supposed to be erased from his mind, he worried that the injection wasn’t working. That was his only salvation anymore. That he would be able to forget and have a different future.

  After food was brought to him a third time, things started to change. His numb state broke, and waves of emotions crashed agains
t him. All at once and then nothing, as if someone were flipping a switch, on and off again. At first he’d just focused on breathing through the raging sea of panic, fear, worry, sorrow, excitement. He’d focused on its passing, his fingers shaking, his heart thundering, his skin shivering. And finally it would, and he’d go back to being numb, staring at the walls, waiting for the memories to fade.

  But when they brought him food for the fourth time, Remko felt his mind starting to break. He could feel the injection scurrying through his body. Like black beetles racing to devour what was his, their little legs itching across his brain as they moved, their teeth gnawing at his mind, their bodies burrowing into the deepest places of his consciousness. It was impossible to hear anything other than the tap, tap, tap of their spindly legs.

  Remko wanted them out. He scraped at his scalp, pacing, trying to recall and focus on memories that would distract him. Carrington, Elise. Dodson, his former boss. Helms, his former partner, murdered by the Authority. Their faces clear but paired with the tap, tap of the demons living inside his brain. Food came a fifth time. Were they feeding him twice a day or once? How long had he been locked in this stone box? He tried to count the minutes between food deliveries, but the itching of memory-erasing insects made it impossible to keep his focus.

  He sat on the edge of the bed, his knee bouncing with the constant tapping of his left foot. His palms moist, his head throbbing.

  “Wow,” a voice came.

  Remko’s head snapped up so quickly that a sliver of pain coursed down his neck. His eyes met a figure lingering in the corner of the room. The body leaned back against the wall, one ankle crossed over the other, his arms folded across his chest. A familiar ease filled his face, a face Remko could have drawn from memory.

  Remko stopped breathing.

  Impossible.

  “You look terrible,” Helms said.

  Remko couldn’t make his lips move. His body felt like stone, frozen except for his itching mind and the twitch that pulled at his cheek. His friend’s dark skin was illuminated by the light-gray walls, his brown eyes filled with life, his smile wide and familiar.

  “The silent treatment, really?” Helms asked. He chuckled and shook his head. The sound was so comforting that Remko could feel tears collecting in his eyes.

  “Should have known without me you’d become a big wuss,” Helms said.

  “You’re dead,” Remko said so quietly it hardly came out as words.

  “Wow,” Helms said, his eyes growing mockingly large. “That was a terrible comeback.”

  Remko felt a laugh leave his throat even though his eyes were full of sorrow. He knew he was hallucinating; somewhere in his mind he understood that this couldn’t be real. But seeing Helms standing only a few feet away, his chest rising and falling with each breath, his face bright and alive, his voice the same, his jokes the same, everything as it had been, Remko couldn’t chase off the hope that this was really happening.

  Or maybe Remko was dead too, and that’s why he could see his old friend so clearly.

  “You aren’t dead,” Helms said, pushing himself off the wall. “You are stupid, though.” Helms took a couple steps and stood tall in the center of the room. He looked around and nodded. “This place could use some color.”

  “What are you doing here?” Remko asked.

  “You tell me, buddy; you’re the one imagining me.”

  Suddenly the familiar pain of loss filled Remko’s chest. He was imagining him. Helms was dead. It was as if Remko’s mind had turned against him and was forcing him to suffer while the little monsters in his head ate away at his brain. He didn’t want to see Helms’s face, didn’t want to imagine the laughs they’d had or the times they’d shared. He wanted to forget it all—the pain, the sorrow, the memories. That’s why he was here. Fury exploded in his body; he wanted Helms out.

  Remko dropped his eyes to the floor. “Leave me alone.”

  “When have I ever done what you’ve told me to?” Helms said with a snort.

  Remko could feel his hands vibrating at his sides. Panic gripped his heart and made him feel like he was suffocating. He couldn’t be stuck with Helms for hours, tormented by what could never be.

  “Just get out,” Remko said again, louder.

  “Whoa, don’t get mad at me,” Helms said and moved close enough that Remko could hear him breathing. “You chose this, remember?”

  Remko stood to push Helms back, but found his friend was no longer there. Remko searched the room and was alone once again. His breath came in short, hurried gasps, the shaking in his hands now making its way through his entire body.

  The insects were back at work, digging their way deeper into his mind, their gnawing inescapable.

  He stopped resisting them. He wanted the memories gone, and if the insects couldn’t rid him of his pain, then he wanted to die.

  28

  Damien waited as the Scientist watched the screen displaying their newest subject. Nerves prickled his skin, but he ignored the sensation. Finding Remko hadn’t gone exactly as they’d predicted, but they’d found him all the same. Damien wanted the Scientist to be proud of all they’d accomplished. The Genesis injection was working. They had dozens of cases now where the proper neural networks had been erased and the new ones built. Sam was a shining example of progress and success.

  So why the nerves? Why the worry that he would still fail? Had he not succeeded already?

  Damien kept these thoughts to himself. But what he needed was for the Scientist to acknowledge the work he had done here. To recognize that Damien had been the right choice of leader for this new civilization. Damien knew requiring praise was a sign of weakness, that if the Scientist knew the thoughts spinning through his head he would be furious. That didn’t stop him from longing for his mentor’s approval; it only stopped him from expressing that desire.

  The Scientist carefully turned around to face Damien. “How long until the transition is complete?”

  “The results have varied from subject to subject, but we believe based on the rate of his progression that within the next forty-eight hours he should be ready for testing.”

  “And are we prepared for that?”

  Damien nodded, a smirk on his face. “We have what we need.”

  “Good.” The Scientist glanced over his shoulder at the screen where Remko was continuing to mumble to himself. The Seer was transitioning nicely, Damien thought as the Scientist dropped his eyes from the screen and headed toward the door.

  “Things are progressing well,” Damien said. He knew he was fishing, but he didn’t care. He deserved a little acknowledgment.

  The Scientist turned back around, his face devoid of emotion. Damien suddenly wished he’d kept his mouth shut, and from the coldness in the Scientist’s face, clearly he did too.

  “Keep me posted on his progress. For your sake I hope this goes as well as you’ve foolishly assumed it will,” the Scientist said.

  Without another word, the teacher left Damien alone to stew on his own inadequacies.

  The food was bland; it tasted exactly the same each time, as if they had made a large-enough amount to cover a week’s worth of meals, sloshed a helping into a bowl, and reheated it right before bringing it to him. He stopped tasting it after the seventh time it was offered. He simply shoveled it down because he was supposed to.

  He wasn’t sure if the injection was working or if it was merely the time trapped in this plain, dull room that was blurring his memories. He thought about being a child, running and playing with his brother. He couldn’t picture his brother’s face anymore and as he scooped a spoonful of soup into his mouth, he was struck with an odd sensation. Did he even have a brother?

  The question rattled him somewhere deep in his core. He remembered being full of energy, laughing, rolling through the small patch of grass they’d used as a front yard. He even felt like a presence should be with him in his memories, but suddenly he couldn’t remember what that presence was. A sister? A brot
her? His parents?

  Did he have parents? Of course he did—how else could he be here—but who were they? Names, faces, and events were replaced with static inside his head. Then, slowly but somehow all at once, they turned to black. Blotted out, as if he’d imagined them or dreamed them.

  Remko pushed back from the desk and felt a rush of rage course through his chest. He grabbed the bowl and slung it toward the opposite wall. It cracked against the stone and echoed through the room, soup splattering on the wall and running in lines down its surface.

  He couldn’t catch his breath. He didn’t know where he came from. They were stealing his memories.

  You chose this.

  Helms’s words filled the space around his head and Remko spun around to see if the ghost was there to haunt him again. But no one was there. He took several long, deep breaths and found himself staring at the bits of food sliding down the wall across the room.

  He had asked for this. He had asked for this.

  He closed his eyes and tried to ignore the blank moments of his past that were calling for his attention.

  He had asked for this; he wanted to forget the pain, to shove it out.

  Even with the knowledge that he wanted this, he still felt as if he were being robbed.

  Suddenly the weight of it all felt too heavy to carry. Exhaustion overwhelmed his senses, and he took several steps toward the single bed before him. He laid himself down and yanked the starched sheet up over his head. The room was dimly lit anyway, so the sheet, though thin, blocked out enough light to make Remko feel like the darkness in his mind had seeped out into the world around him. He barely had time to wonder if sleep would find him before it did.

  He woke quickly, as if he had only just closed his eyes. Wind rustled across his face and a chill filled his bones. He reached for the sheet to wrap it tighter around his shoulders but found nothing.