by AJ Steiger
Because there’s nothing else to do, I pace the tiny room. The darkness feels close, tangible, like it’s shrinking around me. In a flash, I’m transported back to my time in Area 9, and I have to concentrate on breathing to dispel the weight pressing on my lungs. Back and forth, back and forth I pace, counting my steps.
How do prisoners go to the bathroom in here? Am I just expected to hold it? The thought occurs to me at random. It hardly matters now; maybe it’s just my mind trying to stave off the encroaching panic.
I’m not sure how much time has passed when a dull, metallic clank breaks the silence, and the slot on the door slides open again. I leap to my feet. “Hello?” I call, breathless.
A pair of dark eyes appears in the slot. “I’m here to give you your food. I’m just going to push it through here.”
Shana. My heart sinks. “Does this mean you think I’m a traitor, too?”
“I’m just following orders.”
I doubt I’ll have much luck convincing her to let me out. But I have to try. I take a deep breath and lower my voice. “Shana, listen. I don’t know what Burk told you, but I’m not dangerous and I’m not brainwashed, and I need to get out of here. Now.”
Her eyes narrow. “Why?”
“You heard Rhee’s announcement at the Assembly. IFEN is going to attack us very soon. There might be something I can do, but I need to get to Zebra’s study. I think there’s a message he left for me.”
“A message,” she repeats.
“Yes. I think it might be connected to something that can help us.”
“And why should I believe you?”
“I can’t prove anything. I’m asking you to trust me.” I keep my hands pressed to the door, staring frantically into her eyes. “I know you don’t like me. But please believe me when I say that I want to save the Blackcoats. At least, I want to try. But I can’t do that from inside here.”
There’s a long pause. “You realize that if Burk finds out, it’ll be my ass in the timeout room. Hell, he might just shoot me. He’s gotten a little twitchy since Zebra died.”
“I noticed. But in less than a day, that won’t matter, because if we don’t do something, this place will be rubble, and we’ll all be dead.”
“That’s assuming this attack is even gonna happen.”
“It will. And unless we figure something out, they will wipe us off the face of the Earth. Please, Shana. I’m begging you.”
There’s a pause. “Say that again.”
“I’m begging you,” I repeat, my frustration mounting.
The slot closes, leaving me in total darkness once more. My heart plummets. I should have known better, I think. Why would she want to put herself on the line for me?
Then the door opens, and she’s standing there, arms crossed over her chest, a cellophane-wrapped tray sitting near her feet. “You won’t have much time,” she says. “An hour or two, maybe. Sooner or later he’ll check on you and realize you’re not here. And I can’t help you with whatever you’re planning to do in Zebra’s study. Burk will get suspicious if I don’t report back to him.”
“I understand.” I jog down the hall, then stop, peering over one shoulder. “Shana? Thank you.”
She looks away. “Just get out of here before I change my mind.”
I stride forward, fighting the urge to break into a run. Running will attract attention. My pulse drums in my neck and wrists as I make my way toward Zebra’s study. The silence magnifies and doubles my footsteps. The metal corridors are eerily empty, like a labyrinthine tomb. Everyone must be in training.
Behind me, I hear what might be a footstep, and I spin around. The hall is unoccupied. I exhale, annoyed at my own jumpiness. No one is following me.
When I arrive, the door is unlocked; it slides open automatically at my approach. The back wall is open, revealing Zebra’s empty study. I brace myself and step inside.
His wheelchair sits in the center of the room. Someone has placed a single lily on the seat. It’s a little wilted around the edges. I wonder what the Blackcoats did with his body—if they simply cremated him, or if he’s buried somewhere in the Citadel, sealed inside a vault. Maybe that’s what he would have wanted, to be a part of this place forever. Or maybe not. He spent so much of his life trapped in this room, afraid to venture into the outside world. He was both king and prisoner here. If his spirit still exists somewhere, I hope it’s flying free. Freedom meant so much to him.
I shake the thoughts off, walk across the room to the bookshelf and run my fingers over the titles, and there it is, just where I remember it: Milton’s epic poem, Paradise Lost. I slide it out. Then I bundle up all my hurt and confusion and fear and misery, stuff them all into a box in the corner of my head, and lock it up tight, focusing all my attention on the object in my hands. Take in every detail. I trace the letters of the title. They’re gold and faintly indented, pressed into the leather, which is dark brown. The first page is blank save for the title and author, centered, in blocky black type.
I flip through the pages, examining each one with a forensic analyst’s eye. The paper is so old; it feels like it might crumble apart under my fingertips.
What was Zebra trying to tell me? What if it’s nothing at all? What if he started hallucinating in his last moments?
No. I don’t believe that. He wouldn’t waste his last words on something meaningless.
Desperate, I hold the open book up to the lamp and flip through again, hoping the light will reveal some secret, but there’s no hidden writing, no messages scribbled in the margins in invisible ink. If there’s a clue buried in here, I’m too exhausted to see it. The words keep blurring and shifting around on the page.
Maybe there’s something in the room itself. I put the book down and check under the desk, in the corners and under the bookshelves. Nothing. My desperation is growing. It won’t be long until Burk figures out I’ve slipped my prison cell, and if he gets his hands on me again, my chance will disappear forever.
The fireplace is empty and dark. I crouch in front of it and run my fingers over the stones of the mantle. I reach over the burned-out logs and ashes, to the cement wall in back, and feel around until my fingertips encounter a rough edge. I pick at it, pry it open, and a square piece slides away to reveal a keypad, the numbers glowing a soft, ghostly green. Yes!
A code. I need a code.
I punch in a few random strings of numbers, just to see what happens. Predictably, nothing does. The code must be hidden in the book.
I sit down and open Paradise Lost. Because I don’t know what else to do, I start speed-reading, hoping something will jump out at me.
Even in my frantic state, it’s hard not to appreciate the beauty of Milton’s poetry. The words have a power undimmed by the centuries. But what always stuck with me most strongly was the character of Lucifer. In Milton’s hands, he’s a tragic, complex figure, poisoned by hatred, yet crafty and determined. His struggle is ultimately, inevitably futile. No one can win against God, after all—the rebellion is doomed from the start. Yet he keeps fighting, driven by some dark inner fire.
Then a particular verse leaps out at me: The mind is its own place, and in itself can make a Heav’n of Hell, a Hell of Heav’n. The quote sounds familiar. My pulse speeds. Zebra spoke those words to me once—I can’t remember the exact circumstances, but I recall his voice reciting them. Could it be? Is this what I was meant to find? But that would mean he intended the code specifically for me. Is that possible?
I try replacing each letter with a corresponding number and key it in. When that doesn’t work, I reverse the order of the numbers, then try a basic Caesar’s cipher. Still nothing. Maybe something simpler, then? Like the book and verse. I type in 1, then 254. When the keypad doesn’t respond, I add the page number.
Finally, something clicks.
A low, grinding rattle fills the room as unseen gears turn. The entire fireplace slides down into the floor like a giant block in a three-dimensional puzzle, disappearing with
a dry snick of stone on metal, revealing an empty rectangle. A doorway. Inside, a sloped cement corridor leads steeply downward, into darkness.
35
For a moment, I just stand there, my breath rapid and fluttering. Fear nails my feet to the floor. I have the inexplicable sense that something terrible awaits me down there, and I wonder if I really want to find out what it is. But of course I’m going down.
Slowly, I pry my feet off the floor and descend. My steps reverberate through the silence, which is so profound it seems to have a tangible weight. At the end of the narrow corridor is another door, an ordinary wooden one, just barely visible in the light filtering down from the room above. When I turn the knob, it clicks open, revealing a room the size of a standard basement. The walls are bare cement, and there are dead screens everywhere—ancient, boxy-looking monitors with glass faces and masses of wires trailing from the back. Other machines line the wall, things I don’t recognize—gray boxes covered with blinking lights.
I take a small, careful step forward. Abruptly, all the screens wink on. I let out a startled shriek. My heart trips in my chest. Holding my breath, I take a cautious step forward and examine the screens. Each one displays grainy security footage of a building. In the center screen, I recognize a familiar, towering shape against the skyline—the silver pyramid of IFEN headquarters. My eyes widen.
The buildings are all treatment facilities. At the bottom of the screen, the name of each is listed, along with the city of its location. Realization sinks in—these are the facilities that house IFEN’s databases.
I take another step forward, staring at the console under the row of screens. Jutting out from the central panel is a large, dark lever. It resembles a joystick I once saw on an ancient videogame controller in a museum—a column fashioned from dull, black metal, with a semi-translucent red orb at the end. Slowly, I reach toward it.
Abruptly, a purple bat appears in a flurry of sparkles and hovers in front of me, wings flapping—Zebra’s holoavatar. “Hello!” a little voice chirps.
I take a startled step back. It takes me a few seconds to remember her name. “Delilah? What are you doing here?”
“Voice identification confirms that you’re Lain Fisher. I will answer any questions you have.”
So Zebra programmed her to respond to me, specifically. Why? Did he suspect something was going to happen to him? “This… place. What is it?”
She flies in a circle around the room. “This is the culmination of all my master’s plans. Hundreds of bombs have been secretly planted in various IFEN facilities. They’re well hidden. Some of them are inside the walls, or buried within the very foundations.” Her cheerful tone never wavers. “These buildings contain the databases for the National Registry of Mental Health. In other words, the backbone of the Type system.”
A thin line of cold runs down my spine. Am I misunderstanding? Is she really saying what I think she’s saying?
“And this lever,” I whisper, “what is it for?”
“When you pull the lever, all the bombs will be simultaneously detonated.”
I’d wondered, before, what a few hundred kids with guns could do against IFEN. But in a situation like that, maybe a few hundred would be enough to shift the balance of power. They could march in and seize control while everyone was still scrambling to figure out what had happened.
So this is what it’s all been building up to. This is why the Citadel exists, why Zebra was training an army here. All the rescue missions were merely to swell his ranks for the coming invasion. Everything the Blackcoats have done up until now has been just a prelude to the real show. “Why didn’t Zebra tell anyone about this? If he had the ability to blow up IFEN at any point, then why didn’t he do it?”
“I’m sorry. I don’t have that information in my databank.”
Suddenly, it’s a struggle to draw breath. This must be what Nicholas was searching for, why he was still in the Citadel. He knew it existed, even if he didn’t know how to find it, and he wanted to make sure those bombs were never set off. This is the answer to everything. Yet now, I find myself terrified to touch the lever. People would undoubtedly be injured or killed by the explosions—innocent civilians as well as IFEN personnel—but that’s not the worst of it. This would plunge the Blackcoats and IFEN into a new civil war. The conflict could spread into Canada, or even further. More violence, more fear, more misery.
Maybe that’s why Zebra couldn’t bring himself to set off the bombs, despite his hatred for IFEN. This wouldn’t just wipe out the Type system. It would destroy the URA. And there’s a good chance that Aaron would be killed, as well, if he happened to be in IFEN headquarters when the bombs went off.
Aaron himself told me that I had to fight back. Or was that just my imagination?
Remember, he said. Remember what these people are capable of. He knew something about IFEN. Of course he couldn’t tell me outright. But maybe the information is already locked in my head, and I just can’t reach it.
“Delilah… did Zebra tell you anything else about this plan? Anything at all?”
“I’ve told you all I know, I’m afraid. My master was a very secretive man.”
Was. So, she understands—in her limited holoavatar way—that Zebra is dead.
“Is there anything else you wish to know?” Delilah asks. “If not, I’ll deactivate myself permanently. Since my master is gone, I no longer have a reason to exist.”
Is that how Zebra programmed her—to self-destruct once she outlived her usefulness to him? It seems so cruel. “Is that what you want?”
“Yes,” Delilah replies calmly. She smiles, showing tiny, sharp teeth. Her eyes glow a soft yellow. “That is what I wish. I would be greatly relieved if you would grant me permission.”
A lump rises unexpectedly into my throat. Practically speaking, I should probably keep Delilah around, just in case, but I doubt there’s anything more she can tell me. And if this is truly her desire, it seems unfair to deny her that much. “Go ahead.”
“Thank you, Lain Fisher.” She spreads her wings, tilts her head back, and fades into the air. A few purple sparkles remain, floating in emptiness, then they twinkle out as well, like a firework melting into the sky, leaving me alone with the row of screens.
I stand motionless, lost in a mental haze. Why do these choices keep finding their way to me? No one should have this kind of power.
I start to reach out, then stop, fingertips quivering a few inches from the lever. My arm drops to my side. I can’t do this, not now. I need time. I need to think—
Behind me, there’s a rustle of movement. I spin around, and Steven is there, staring at me with an unreadable expression. “Steven,” I blurt out. Did he follow me? “I—I thought you were in training.” My heart bangs in my chest. “How much did you hear?”
“Enough.” He slowly approaches the row of screens in back. He studies the lever, then turns to me. “So. All we have to do is pull this.”
My mouth is dry. I swallow. “Let’s just stop and think about this for a minute.”
“There’s nothing to think about.” His voice is a low monotone, like someone under hypnosis. His eyes are fixed on me, but they don’t seem to see me.
I struggle to keep my voice calm. “We need to tell Rhee and the others before we do anything. We can use this. We can bargain with IFEN.”
“They won’t bargain with terrorists.”
“You don’t know that.”
He looks through me, his face a mask.
“Listen to me,” I say, my tone low and urgent. “If we set off those bombs, the URA will tear itself apart. The death toll will be astronomical.”
He doesn’t respond.
I search his eyes with mine. I feel like I’m casting ropes down into a deep hole, waiting for the tug that tells me someone is still alive at the bottom. “Do you even hear me?”
“I hear you.” He turns his face away. “There’s no other way, Lain. Back home, people who try
to fight back or escape the country are being slaughtered, and it’ll keep happening until we do something. The Cognitive Rights Act failed. IFEN stopped it dead in its tracks. As long as they exist, there’s no chance. None.”
My mind races. I can’t just stand back and let him do it—I can’t. “If we’re willing to kill innocent people to get what we want, how are we any better than Dr. Swan?”
He flinches. The muscles in his face tighten, and I wish immediately that I hadn’t said that. I don’t really believe that it’s the same. But it’s too late to take the words back.
He lets out a flat, harsh laugh. “Maybe you’re right. Maybe it makes me as bad as them. But I don’t care. If I have to become a mass-murderer to stop them, then that’s what I’ll do.” I see his expression closing down, see him retreating from me again. When he speaks again, his voice is soft, almost gentle. “After this, if you never want to see me again… I don’t blame you.”
Steven reaches for the lever.
He seems to be moving in slow motion. Terror blazes through me—and in an instant, I understand what a selfish person I am. Because the thought looming inside me at this moment is not that countless people will get hurt or killed, but that if Steven pulls this lever, I’ll never get him back. This will transform him into someone else, and I’ll lose him forever. I’ve already lost him once. I won’t let it happen again.
I tackle him from behind and drag him back, away from the control panel. He freezes up for a moment, stunned, then starts to struggle. “Let go!” he growls.
But I don’t let go.
He thrashes harder, and I tighten my grip, pinning his arms to his sides. I’m stronger now than I was. He lurches to one side, then the other, and my shoulder bangs against the wall, and still, I won’t let go. We stagger across the room and crash into one of the control panels. Sparks leap and crackle. Steven loses his balance and topples to the floor, taking me with him. I land on top of him. He tries to get up, but I grab his wrists and pin him to the floor. My sweat drips down onto his face. Cords of muscle in his neck stand out as he struggles, bucking, his eyes rolling and flashing white like a panicked horse’s.