“What’s going on?” I say.
“Reuben Faro is coming after us.” He sees my blank look, and starts to explain. “He’s in the Agency. He knows about you, somehow. And the Panah. I think he’s coming to arrest you. And me. He was here, he threatened me in the elevator.”
I begin to tremble and my breath becomes locked in my body.
“Hurry, hurry,” says the older man, throwing a glance at me that sizes me up in an instant. I shrink from his gaze, unsure whether he’s there to prepare me for another operation or to arrest me and take me away.
“Oh, sorry, Sabine, I’m sorry,” says Julien, stretching out a reassuring hand to me. “Sabine, this is Dr. Bouthain, my supervisor. He knows everything. And this is Mañalac. Don’t worry, they’re both on our side. They’re going to help us.” I look down at his hand, which trembles slightly. Waves of nervous energy radiate from him; his lips are clamped together in concentration, his face drawn.
“Help us with what?”
Julien doesn’t answer me. He turns to Bouthain and says, “You’re sure it won’t augment the effects of the first dose? We don’t even know how much it was.”
“It’s out of her system by now. It should be all right,” says Bouthain, in a tone that brooks no argument.
“What are you talking about?”
Bouthain and Julien glance at each other. “She doesn’t know?” says Bouthain.
“I haven’t had the chance to tell her yet.” Julien looks into my eyes and speaks in a low voice. “We think you were given a sedative. One that made you forget what happened to you while you were asleep.” His voice cracks on the last word.
I unpeel myself from the wall and step forward, forcing my voice to remain steady, not to shake or rise in pitch. He can’t bring himself to say it; I know I have to. “Someone gave me that drug on purpose. Without telling me.” My cheeks burn with indignity, but I stare defiantly at them, from one to the other. “So that I wouldn’t remember being raped.”
Only Bouthain meets my eyes directly, displaying no discomfiture at my confession. “I believe you, my dear,” he says, in that rasping voice of his. “Did you ever notice yourself feeling ill, groggy, off balance?”
“All the time. And my thinking was slowed down a lot of the time. As if my head was filled with mud. I thought it was because I couldn’t sleep,” I tell Bouthain.
Julien and Mañalac are fidgeting by the door, the sandstorm battering the windows outside, but Bouthain pulls me aside to the bed and makes me sit down on it. His body shields me from the other two men in the room.
“My dear, did you notice any signs of trauma on your body? Soreness? Bleeding? Bruises?”
“I thought I noticed some pain... sometimes. But I’m not always regular, and I thought...” I’m too embarrassed to continue.
“I understand,” says Bouthain, his gaze never wavering. “Don’t be embarrassed. There’s nothing I haven’t seen. And I’m older than him,” he gestures to Julien, who’s turned his back to us to give us more privacy. “Doctors these days, they don’t know the first thing about women.” He smiles conspiratorially; a little answering grin comes to my own lips.
His demeanor grows serious again. “Chances are, my dear, we may never know who did this to you, but I believe that it happened as you say. And tell me, how have you felt since your surgery? Any problems, any pain? The incision’s healing well?”
I nod. “But why can’t I remember it? Have I gone crazy?”
Bouthain meets my fearful glance with calm reassurance. “This is common in people who have suffered trauma. You may not ever remember, or it may not happen until you feel safe enough to remember. And it may take years. But you are not crazy, my dear. Don’t even think that for a second.”
This gentle man makes me feel as though I could tell him anything without shame or remorse. I wish I could talk to him more; we’ve only been conversing a few minutes, but Julien can’t contain himself any longer. He stands in front of us like a skittish horse, hopping from one foot to the other.
“Sorry, but we have to move. I don’t think there’s any more time left.”
Bouthain says, “You’re right. But first, we have to explain to her what we intend to do.” He speaks more quickly now. “Our objective is to get you out of the hospital. Without detection. And Julien will have to leave with you. You’re both in great danger.”
“But how?” I ask. “In the middle of this storm? Won’t there be a curfew?” The sandstorm isn’t even hitting the hospital with full force yet, but the windows are shuddering in the gusts of wind that announce its tangled, swirling path.
“Yes. For everyone. Except for medical emergencies. And we are going to disguise both of you as an emergency.”
My hands and feet grow cold as Bouthain describes the plan to me: he’ll inject me and Julien with something to make us look as if we’re dead, and this man and Mañalac will drive us to the crematorium, where we’ll eventually wake up and escape to some place across the border that I’ve never heard of.
“This is mad,” I breathe, saying the words to Bouthain but meaning them for Julien.
“That’s what I thought too, at first,” says Julien. “But what choice do we have?“
I instinctively look at Bouthain who confirms this statement with a grave nod of assent.
Julien goes on: “So that’s why you—and I—must take the drug. Mañalac will put us in the ambulance disguised as victims of the Virus. And then he’ll drive us to the border.”
“And you’re really doing this too?”
Julien nods. “I have to. Faro will certainly come after me. If I don’t disappear with you, I think he’ll kill me too. We have to do this. We have to go now.”
“Go? Go where?” I say, clutching at the sheets on my bed. “I don’t want to go. I want to go back to the Panah.”
With a clatter, Mañalac pushes down the rails of one of the gurneys. That’s when I notice the body bags laid flat on both stretchers. The monitor at my wrist starts to sing, and Julien holds my arm so he can peel it off. He whispers to me while he’s bent over my wrist. “Listen, Sabine. Faro knows everything. About you, about the Panah. He’s the one who found you on the street and brought you here. He won’t let you go back there. He’s scared the Agency will make an example out of him, if he doesn’t take you straight to them.”
“But why? He can just pretend it never happened, look the other way...”
“It doesn’t work that way,” Julien says. “Once you’ve stepped across the lines they’ve drawn, the only thing they can do is punish you. Or kill you.” Julien holds on to my wrist as he talks. “You never spent any time with him, did you? He was never your Client?” He sends a quick, deep look into my eyes, before his own dart away again. I would have called it jealousy, in another time.
“No. I never did.”
“But at least you knew of his existence. He mentioned Lin. Did she ever tell you about him?”
“Not by name. I knew there was someone important who helped us get food and medicines, but she didn’t tell us anything about him.”
“She was protecting you by not telling you. And after meeting him, I can see why. He’s dangerous and power-hungry. Lin was risking all your lives getting involved with him.”
“How do you know he wasn’t the one that drugged me?” I say. “Maybe I just don’t remember it. Maybe that’s why he wants to eliminate me.”
Julien says, “That doesn’t make any sense. He brought you here, remember? He wouldn’t have done that if he’d hurt you.” He pauses, thinks hard. “I think there’s something going on between him and Lin. Maybe they both decided you should be turned in, now that you’re out of the Panah, to protect the rest of them.”
I yank my arm away from his grasp, shaking my head no, no, no. “Lin would never do that. And I’m not doing this. Any of it. Let me go.”
&nbs
p; Julien grasps me firmly by the shoulders. He pulls me up from the bed and walks me over to the window, where he presses his face close to mine. “This might be the only way you can save your life. Please listen to me. You can’t go back to the Panah now.”
Bouthain is waiting patiently. Behind him, Mañalac stands beside the gurneys. The body bags, black and with a dull sheen, are unzipped and spread out on the flat beds, ready to be occupied. I stop struggling. A strange sort of stillness comes over me, the way they say human life is sometimes blessed with calm and resolution before it abruptly ends. Squaring my shoulders and raising my wrists, I turn to Bouthain. “All right.”
Bouthain motions to Julien. “You too. On the gurney, Julien.”
I lift myself up onto the gurney and lower myself inside as Mañalac holds open the sides of the bag like a gaping wound. My stomach twists with the effort, and I break into sweat from the pain.
Inches away, Julien is doing the same. I’m aware of every whisper of the body bag as he moves into it, shrugging and squirming as if trying to get comfortable in a too-short bed. His legs are so long that I’m worried he won’t fit. How will we breathe once the bags are closed? They’re a bioplastic of some sort, thin and nearly translucent. My mother was buried in one of these, inside her funeral pod—they’re both biodegradable, the bag and the pod. Then I notice there’s a white cotton sheet inside the bag as well. Mañalac is now pulling it out around me, preparing to wrap me in it, like a mummy.
“If you were really a Virus victim,” he tells me as he works, “we’d use the Category 3 bags. But we don’t want you to suffocate. So I use Category 1 only, but I code you as Category 3. The bags look identical. Hopefully we will fool everyone.” His eyes crinkle above the surgical mask.
When I’m wrapped in the sheet with only my face and neck uncovered, Bouthain comes over to me, while Mañalac performs the same procedure on Julien. Bouthain holds a pressure syringe in his hand.
“Now, Sabine, when this starts to work, you’ll fall asleep very quickly, and to the rest of the world, you’ll appear dead. The concentration I’ve made will last four to six hours, and you’ll wake up within that amount of time. It’ll clear your system very quickly—it has a short half-life—so you shouldn’t suffer any residual effects. Not like that awful poison—the Ebrietas. Really, whoever made that should be jailed for life. Now count backward from ten to one, my dear.”
Bouthain’s hand comes down quickly over my neck, and the syringe emits a high-pitched beep just once—
Ten, nine, eight...
And then it’s as if the sandstorm finally breaks through the glass with a ferocity that only I can see. The winds tear through everything in the room, the whirlwind descends over my body, and the last thing I remember—
seven, six, five...
is Julien’s face, still and handsome in the moonlight, and—
four, three, two, one.
I think: He’ll make such a beautiful corpse—
Zero.
The Dream
She is supposed to be asleep.
She is supposed to be dead.
Panic hammers the inside of her chest; she tries to rise from the gurney like a body jerking up in the middle of its own funeral pyre. But she can’t move. The drug has paralyzed her, yet she’s still groggily aware of her surroundings. Bouthain didn’t tell her that it was going to be like this.
Everything is muffled, as if she’s underwater. She sees dim lights in the corridor as the little procession—the two men wheeling the two gurneys, hers and Julien’s, both of them hidden in the body bags—makes its silent way to the service elevator in the south face of the building. Bouthain whispers instructions to Mañalac, the words sewn together like velvet, not separating into individual sounds she can identify and comprehend.
There’s a great coldness in her body; she’s become a glacier, her heartbeat so slow it barely registers in her veins, one faint beat every ten seconds or so. Is Julien awake, like her? She tries to move her mouth, but nothing happens. The words bubble up in her head but die on her tongue.
They’re entering the elevator now, a wide one with space for both the gurneys and the two men. She is slotted in, side by side with Julien. But she can’t look in his direction, because like the rest of her, her eyes won’t move.
Bouthain reaches down to pull slightly at one end of the material that covers her face, opening small slits cut into the side to let in air and let condensation out. From far away a series of strange bangs and shudders register on her consciousness.
Bouthain says to Mañalac. “It’s strong.”
Words make sense to her, just barely. The sandstorm still rages outside.
“How will I drive in it?”
“Slowly,” says Bouthain.
Any moment now the doors will open and a Security array will be standing there with weapons, waiting for them. Or Reuben Faro himself. Just the syllables of his name terrify her, even in her stupor. Beside her, she can sense Bouthain and Mañalac tensing, readying for the fight ahead.
Like a snake’s slitted pupils widening to take in its victim, the elevator doors slide apart. The shiftless world is waiting for them beyond the light.
Lin
Lin lifted her head from the desk reluctantly, unwilling to face the world pushing its way into her consciousness. The device on her desk said that it was three in the morning. Had she fallen asleep for a time, or had her senses simply left her after that ugly moment of epiphany?
Rupa lay sleeping on the floor, her head bent at a painful angle, one arm underneath it. They’d talked late into the night, Lin asking Rupa over and over again to reveal every detail, every moment of her meetings with Le Birman and Joseph.
Rupa claimed she’d never slept with Joseph, that he could only think about Sabine. He was obsessed with her. “He didn’t give a damn about me. Le Birman was completely the opposite. Always giving me little gifts and presents. Always talking to me about his work. He didn’t just see me as a comfort; he thought of me as a companion, and he made me feel comfortable too. That’s why I decided to let him... have me.”
“And what about Joseph?”
Rupa gave Lin a shamefaced look and didn’t answer right away. “I told you, Joseph loves Sabine. She doesn’t love him.”
Lin wondered: could it be the world really was that simple? Where desire justified everything, no matter how dangerous? She couldn’t believe the naïveté of Rupa’s reasoning, but she had to press on. “What exactly did Le Birman tell you about his work?” she asked cautiously.
“His company makes drugs.”
“What kind of drugs?”
“Cancer drugs. Drugs to make the skin younger. A drug for insomnia.”
Lin sat up straight. “Insomnia?”
“Yes, that’s what he said.”
Lin began to breathe faster, her skin feeling hot. “Did it have a name, this drug?”
“Yes. I remember the name. Sleep,” said Rupa. “He called it ‘Sleep’.”
“Did he ever give any to you? Did he ever ask you to try it?”
“No, never. He said they were still testing it. Because in certain doses, it started to make some people sick... and some women miscarry, if they were pregnant. He said it couldn’t be mixed with alcohol.”
Alcohol. Reuben had said that about the drug he gave her. But how could he have gotten his hands on a drug that wasn’t yet on the market, a drug that only could be considered as contraband? This wasn’t like procuring cigarettes, which could harm only him. This was taking a risk. And to think he’d actually given it to her! Could it be that he just didn’t know how dangerous this drug was? The drug and Joseph’s drink clearly had done something terrible to Sabine.
After Rupa had lain down and fallen asleep, exhausted and tearful, Lin went to her desk and stared at her device, too horrified to even cry. She knew at last
what Reuben had done. How could he have put them all in danger like that? Or had he decided that the side effects didn’t matter because they weren’t women of Green City, and pregnancy was not their duty? And after all, he’d given the drug to her; he’d had no idea she would use it on Sabine.
She pressed her thumbs into the pressure points at the corners of her eyes. Then she glanced over at Rupa, asleep, her thick hair in disarray, breath going in and out of her chest in waves. In sleep Rupa was without sin, returned to her primal state of innocence. Lin couldn’t bear to think about how Le Birman had unwrapped this girl, revealing her smooth, lovely youth skin, one inch at a time. That was her fault too: insisting on rules that drove Rupa to hide her loneliness and vulnerability, to keep her search for tenderness a secret that had taken on such ugly consequences.
Lin bent over her device to write a message in code to Reuben:
I know what you’ve done. Bring Sabine back to me.
She didn’t allow herself to hesitate or reconsider. She sent the message as soon as she’d written the last word, stabbing the device with enough force to bend her fingernail backwards. The pain felt clean and right, a clear light through all the murkiness. There was no more time left to wait, to play games with Reuben. She had to force Reuben’s hand into returning Sabine to the Panah.
She got up from her desk, stumbled around Rupa, fell into her bed, and sank into limbo.
“Lin?” Rupa was finally awake, raising herself up in one graceful movement from lying to sitting to standing. She rubbed her eyes and stretched. “I’ll make tea.”
Lin watched her go out of the room. She knew the others would be keeping vigil, waiting for any news of Sabine. Let Rupa deal with them, she thought wearily to herself.
A light chime sounded from her device. She was instantly alert; she scrambled out of bed, adrenaline pushing the leftover dreams out of her head. Another chime, this one louder, more insistent, was accompanied by a message flashing across the display: Reuben was attempting to initiate a visual conversation with her. He’d never done this before; it was too risky for both of them. The chime kept ringing and ringing as her finger hovered over the device. She couldn’t bear the sight of his face now; she wanted only to know that Sabine was on her way back to the Panah. But he might not contact her again.
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