Vox

by Christina Dalcher

  “Morgan—,” I start.

  He doesn’t allow me to finish.

  “You fucking bitch. Fucking cunt.”

  Lorenzo’s jaw tightens, but the words don’t bother me. The syringe, yes, but everything else Morgan has to push is nothing more than jumbled fricatives and velars. I can divorce myself from those.

  But that goddamned syringe. That’s real.

  I take a step forward, very slowly, a sort of time-warp step from an old sci-fi movie.

  “Gianna. No.” Lorenzo sounds as rock steady as his body looks.

  “Gianna? Who the fuck is Gianna?” And as he says my name—my other name—Morgan’s eyes flicker. “Oh. I get it. You two have a little something going on. Man, talk about two birds with one stone.” He’s bordering on giddy now. “Oh man, this is too sweet. The poor, star-crossed, moon-eyed lovers. Tell me, Lorenzo, is she good? Looks kind of old from where I stand. But maybe you like your bitches run hard and put away wet.”

  The muscles in Lorenzo’s left arm tense, and his hand curls into a fist.

  “Ah, ah, ah, Dr. Rossi.” Morgan pushes the needle’s point harder against flesh.

  A pinprick of a red spot appears at the contact point, and a single drop of clear fluid rolls down the side of Lorenzo’s neck. It’s impossible to tell whether it’s sweat or serum.

  “You know,” Morgan says, his voice syrup sweet but still menacing, “I’m not much of a scientist. All that poring over data and running the same fucking experiments over and over again. I hate that shit. But I’m a good reader. A good people reader. And I can read other things. Like that little bottle over there that says ‘Local injection only.’” He knocks his chin toward the spilled contents of the surgical tray without moving his eyes off me. “I saw that, and I had to ask, why? Why local only? What would happen if I pushed this needle in like so—” The needle buries itself a millimeter or two into Lorenzo’s neck, far too close to the jugular vein. “What would happen if I just started pushing down on the plunger? Any ideas?”

  “Go ahead, Morgan,” Lorenzo says. “Gianna, get the hell out of here. There’s a spare key under my car’s fender. Take it and go.”

  “Don’t be so fucking brave.” Morgan’s eyes—those nasty rat eyes—bore into mine. “You move, bitch, and I’ll start pushing the stuff into him.” The eyes shift slightly to the left, over my shoulder. “Go back into the lab.”

  It takes a moment before I realize he’s not talking to me. A firm grip, not as strong as a man’s, but strong enough, tightens on my elbow, turning me slightly.

  Jackie.

  Her head moves in one sharp, defined jerk. Let’s go, it says. In her free hand are Petroski’s keys. They sound like tiny metallic bells in the still of a room where everyone seems to be holding his or her breath.

  “Get Petroski,” I say. “Let’s get this over with.” It takes every part of my human brain to ward off the reptilian instinct to flee.

  “Don’t do anything stupid, Jean,” Morgan threatens.

  “Listen. If you have a human bone left in you, Morgan, you’ll do this right. Have Petroski shoot him. Make it clean. You can always call it an accident later on.”

  There’s a pause while Morgan considers this.

  “Self-defense?” I suggest. “The serum’s going to be harder to explain. We’re talking about a reputable biochemist here, not some schmuck you recruited from grad school. Think about it. Think what you’re going to say when Lorenzo Rossi walks out of this building speaking in tongues. Then think about what the Italian embassy’s going to say.”

  Morgan’s thinking takes an eternity. I spend half of it thinking about guns.

  Like any mechanism, they have parts. The part you put a bullet in, the part the bullet comes out of, and the part that makes the bullet go from one place to another. Easy. Simple. Unchanged for centuries. Lock, stock, and barrel. In one order or another.

  During the other half of Morgan’s thinking time, I consider Sergeant Petroski, the philosophy major turned soldier. Husband. Father. A man whose hand shakes when he draws his service pistol. A man who knows where the safety is and how to disengage it.

  Jackie yanks on my arm again, and I turn to her.

  “What would you do to be free, Jacko? Because right now, I’d do just about anything.”

  She doesn’t say a word, but she does smile.

  “Petroski!” Morgan yells.

  Heavy boots echo through the lab. Under them, paper rustles. A sharp crack marks the end of a wayward pair of glasses. The entire world slows as Sergeant Petroski approaches the open door behind me.

  “Sir!” Petroski barks.

  It all happens in the blink of an eye, but I know my mind is recording each image, each still frame of the movie. Maybe one day I’ll be able to slow these images down, replay them in real time. Right now, the sequence is haphazard and choppy, the soundtrack garbled.

  “Shoot this man,” Morgan says.

  Petroski draws his service pistol. The gun is close enough to my ear that I can feel small perturbations in the air beside me, see the shimmer of Petroski’s hand as it tries to steady itself.

  “Safety off?” I say.

  The click is like a shot, automatic and deafening.

  “Now, Jackie.”

  She’s on him. Petroski’s hand slackens. Later, I’ll never know whether he cooperated or whether he was taken by surprise, but I make the move I planned, close my fingers around the grip, and aim a few inches below the blue pin glinting on Morgan’s collar.

  And I squeeze.

  SEVENTY-FOUR

  Morgan falls, and I fall with him, my ears screaming a note in the coloratura style as Jackie tries to catch me under the arms before I hit the ground. She’s strong, or she was once, but gravity wins this game. I hit the floor with a thud I can feel but can’t hear, and realize I’m holding something.

  Lorenzo is at my side, his breath hot in my face. I see his mouth moving as he pries apart my fingers, disentangling the bulky steel from my grip.

  “Relax,” he says. The word comes out like he’s talking underwater, but I can see the individual sounds. He reengages Petroski’s pistol with the flick of his thumb, uses his shirt to wipe the grip and trigger, and hands it back to the soldier, who is leaning over Morgan and watching the blood bloom from his chest. A sickly scarlet puddle stains the white tile floor.

  “Where’d you learn to do that?” I say to Lorenzo. It sounds like Wa ya la ta da tha?

  “Two years in the Italian army.” Then, more seriously: “Can you hear me?”

  I nod. “A little.”

  “You’ll have some ringing in your ears for a while. Maybe an hour. It’ll get better, trust me.”

  “I hurt him, didn’t I?”

  Lorenzo checks over his shoulder to where Morgan lies. “Yeah. You could say that.” The words are still muffled but slightly more intelligible.

  “We need to move him,” I say.

  Jackie’s already thought of this. She’s standing in the doorway with Lin, Isabel, and an armful of suit jackets and lab coats—anything left by the men when they evacuated. She touches my arm, then gestures to the floor where Morgan is lying, points to herself, and makes circling motions with a finger. It’s less elegant than the structured sign language Lin and Lorenzo use, but I get the point. Jackie will take care of the bloody thing in the corner.

  Petroski, slightly recovered from the shock—although I wonder if he’ll ever truly recover—helps Lin and Isabel roll Morgan and swaddle him in cloth while Jackie starts working on wiping down the room. It’s a scene from a slasher movie, blood on the floor and ugly Rorschach-like splatter on the wall behind where Morgan stood, holding Lorenzo at needle point. Lorenzo sees the look on my face and explains.

  “Forty-five caliber, Gianna. You blew a hole in him the size of Virginia.”

  “I kille
d him, didn’t I?” It’s not really a question, more of a processing aid. I killed him. I killed a human being.

  “Yeah,” he says softly. “And we need to go. All of us.”

  Lorenzo and Petroski drag the lifeless body of Morgan LeBron onto the gurney and wheel him out. I watch as the doors of Room 1 slide open, then closed. A minute later they’re back in the main lab, minus one rolling stretcher. The six of us work in silence with bleach and rags, erasing the gore on the walls and floor of the room, tossing one blood-and-bleach-soaked rag after another into a thick plastic bag Lin procured from a storage cabinet. From time to time, she and Isabel sign to each other. I can’t understand it, but what they say looks comforting, hopeful.

  When nothing remains save the stinging odor of chlorine, we file out and scrub what’s left of Morgan from our skin. Lin disappears and comes back with six clean lab coats, which she hands out. It doesn’t take more than a glance down at my own clothes to realize why I need to cover up. Everyone else looks much the same.

  I turn to Petroski. “Can you get us out of here and past security?”

  None of the six pairs of ears has heard the intruder, the giant of a man who now stands between us and the exit.

  Oh shit, I think. Maybe I say it out loud, maybe I don’t, but I hear it, clear as a klaxon.

  The man who has silently come into the lab is the last person I want to see, and the one I’ve kept seeing all this week, always when I don’t expect to, as if his sole task is to watch us.

  Poe.

  Now I realize maybe that was his task all along.

  “Leave everything and come with me,” he says.

  Petroski’s hand goes to the .45 on his hip, and I follow Lorenzo’s eyes as he tracks the motion.

  “Don’t be stupid, Dr. Rossi,” Poe says.

  I open my mouth to speak. Nothing comes out.

  Poe looks over the soldier standing between him and the rest of us. It seems as if one eye stays trained on the gun while the other surveys our little cadre of rebels. He steps forward, slides the .45 from its holster, and racks the slide. “Better if I have this for now.” Nodding to Petroski, he says, “You first. Then Dr. Rossi. Ladies, single file, just like in school. And don’t say a word.”

  We line up, and Poe takes the rear, following us through the chimp room. At the doors, he instructs Petroski to open them, and we walk the short distance from the lab to the nearby service elevator.

  It’s already open.

  And inside is a face I recognize like a mother recognizes her own child.

  SEVENTY-FIVE

  The elevator doors might as well be the very mouth of hell, complete with their ominous Abandon all hope warning inscribed where the lighted numbers should be. Still, I step inside, following the others. Hope be damned.

  This is my son.

  Steven slumps toward me, suddenly more boy than man. In two days, he’s grown leaner, and the rippled bones of his ribs rise and fall under my hands as I draw him close. Wherever Poe is taking us, we’re on this trip together.

  Poe interrupts, gently breaking this mother-child embrace. “Time for that later, Dr. McClellan. When we get to the main floor, don’t look up and don’t speak.” He takes three black bands from his hip pocket and passes them to Lorenzo, Petroski, and me. “Put these on.”

  “No way,” Lorenzo says. “No fucking way.”

  Petroski blanches, shaking his head.

  “They’re plastic,” Poe says. “Just do it. Sergeant Petroski can’t get you out of here. But I can. As long as you do what I tell you.”

  I snap the band around my wrist as the elevator doors hiss closed. The men do the same.

  I look a question at Poe.

  “Go ahead.”

  “What’s going on?” I say, bracing myself for the familiar jolt of pain.

  Nothing happens.

  “Trust me,” Poe says. “Keep your heads down and—I don’t know—try to look tired until we get past security.”

  Not one of the people in the elevator—including me, I note, as I catch my reflection in the polished steel wall—needs to be told to look tired. I check Lorenzo’s watch and see that it’s two in the morning, but an entire year might as well have passed since Morgan brought us back here yesterday afternoon.

  Poe presses the button for the main floor. “When we get out, you stay in line and get into the back of the van.”

  The ride up seems to take an hour.

  “Okay,” Poe says. “Ladies first.”

  We file out, Lin, Isabel, Jackie, then me. I feel something press against my back as I leave the elevator, and for a brief irrational moment, I think it’s the barrel of Petroski’s .45, but it’s warm and reassuring. Lorenzo’s hand.

  “I’m right here, Gianna,” he whispers.

  Where there were two soldiers, I now count ten pairs of shined boots. One pair steps forward smartly.

  “Can’t let them leave, sir,” a voice says. “Dr. LeBron’s orders.”

  I’m itching to tell him Dr. LeBron isn’t going to be ordering anything in the near or distant future, although he may be putting in a few requisitions for ice while he burns in hell. I find myself smiling and bite the insides of my cheeks.

  Poe, directly in front of me, waves a familiar-looking envelope. In the upper-right-hand corner is the presidential seal. In the left corner, where a return address would normally go, is a silver embossed capital P.

  “Tell him,” Poe says, handing over the envelope.

  There’s an anxious rustle of paper as it’s torn open and the letter inside is unfolded.

  “Fort Meade,” the soldier says. “I see. All right, then, you know where to go.” Then, in a gruffer voice, “Stand aside, men. Let them through.”

  Whispers circulate around me. “Isn’t that the doctor?” “Hey—he’s the kid on television last night.” “I think I know her from somewhere.” “Damn, seven today.”

  Burke’s quote comes back to me, the same one Steven paraphrased when the men came for Julia King: “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.”

  As we pass by the rows of boots, as I hear the whispers and murmurs of these men, I can’t decide whether I feel disgust or pity.

  Maybe it’s a mixture of both.

  Lorenzo is the last to climb into the van and takes a place next to me on the bench. Before Poe closes us in, I note an uncomfortable absence of windows, or of an interior handle on the rear doors. Terror creeps under my skin as the engine fires up, and I wonder if I’ve—we’ve—just been played.

  “Everyone okay?” a voice says. It’s male, soft, and low. I recognize it but can’t place the timbre. “Turning lights on now, Christopher.”

  That voice. It’s so damned familiar.

  When the lights flicker on, illuminating not seven, but nine faces, I see why. Del and Sharon are in the back of the van with us. I reach out to take Sharon’s hand, squeezing it. She squeezes back and I almost want to fling myself into the arms of this woman I barely know.

  “Time for that later,” she says.

  “Sharon, honey, you get to work on those bracelets,” Del says, pointing to Jackie’s, Lin’s, and Isabel’s wrists. “You remember how to do it?”

  Sharon rolls her eyes. “I did our girls, didn’t I?” Then, addressing me, she adds, “Men. They all think they’re the only experts.” She plants a kiss full on her husband’s lips. “Don’t you worry, honey. I’ll love you ’til you’re dead. Maybe a while after that.”

  She works with the same steadiness on Jackie’s counter as Lin did when trepanning the chimpanzee. “You might get a little buzz, girl, but don’t say a word unless you want both of us knocked on our asses. Del’s good, but his key isn’t the same one those goons who put this on you used. Okay. Ready?”

  Jackie nods, then looks directly at me.

/>   “There!” Sharon says, a note of triumph in her voice, and moves on to Lin.

  The first words out of Jackie’s mouth are exactly what I expect.

  “Holy fuck. That was worse than that fucking meditation retreat I went on twenty years ago.”

  Same old Jacko, I think, and talk to her—really talk to her—for the first time in two decades.

  SEVENTY-SIX

  By the time we turn in to the Rays’ dirt track that passes for a driveway, Del and Sharon have sketched out everything: Poe’s successful undercover work, Del’s staged arrest, and Steven’s rescue.

  “That part was easy,” Sharon says. “He was one floor below the lab. Along with a few army guys who thought they could take over the building. Didn’t work. Those boys have more brawn than brains.” She looks over at Petroski, who’s staring blankly at the air in front of him. “Sorry. I don’t mean you, soldier.”

  By the way her eyes move up and to the left, it’s clear this is exactly what she means.

  “He did just fine, Sharon,” I say, watching a glimmer of confidence brighten Petroski’s eyes.

  Poe cuts the engine and circles around to let us out. When he helps Lin down, her tiny hand disappears into his. The two of them together make a ridiculous sort of King Kong tableau. Lorenzo hops out and reaches up for me with both arms.

  “Jean?”

  Patrick’s voice cuts through the still night air at the same time I let myself fall against Lorenzo. I break away and walk across the dirt road to my husband, feeling a pull in both directions, sensing that I’m being ripped in two.

  “Thank god, babe,” Patrick says, folding himself around me. When Steven appears, the three of us stand in a three-way embrace until Poe has to break it up.

  “Later,” Poe says. “Some of us have a long night.”

  My long night begins with a quick check on the three sleeping bodies tucked up on an air mattress in Sharon Ray’s living room. It ends with me collapsing face-first on the empty space beside Sonia. The last thing I feel before sleep hits is her tiny chest rising and falling under my arm. The last thing I hear is Poe, in the Rays’ kitchen, laying out the plans for my escape.