All the Whys of Delilah's Demise

by Neve Maslakovic

  They take off, Sal guiding the front vehicle with a firm hand, though the path is buried under snow and all the trees look the same to me. Jo waves just before they disappear around a bend.

  Following the snowmobile tracks out of the forest, I munch on the apple. Out here it’s a different object than at Bonnie’s, not a stolen luxury but a gift. With each bite I can taste the earth and the trees and life’s sweetness. I watch a squirrel scamper up a pine, sending snow in a sparkling shower onto the forest floor. I survived the night. Met a family, imperfect and real, not the saccharine, static unit I imagined. This is what they’re like. Ordinary, like the apple. In a different world, Delilah and Tadeo and I, we might have been an ordinary unit of our own.

  Sooner than I want, I’m back at the tree line and the inside-out snow globe that’s my home comes into view. I dig Dax’s binoculars out of the pocket where I placed them for the night. A look through shows little activity at the gate. Inside the Dome, things seem normal enough, people milling around. I can just make out the nearest Tenner billboard, on the façade of Work Five.

  I twist the wheel on the binoculars to better focus, because I can’t believe what I’m seeing—all the spots, from one to ten, show the same snapshot. I don’t have to access the rest of the List to know that every single position down to ten thousand belongs to Renee.

  43

  “Scott. You’re alive. I wasn’t sure.”

  I hover at the edge of the forest. I’m just in range and Renee is partway down the hill, a see-through silhouette of a person. I ask, “Are you alive?”

  “I exist, just as you do.” Her voice carries up the slope. “Your body and mind are made of connected cells. As am I.”

  “People aren’t cells.” There is a faint sense of the ridiculous about it, me doggedly standing my ground against someone who’s not even there. I bring up my greatest fear. “Dax… Is he okay?

  “Yes, he is safe.”

  I don’t know if I can believe her.

  “And he is mine,” she calls up, as if Dax is a possession, a minor piece in the puzzle board that is the town. She follows that up with a cajoling, “You are mine as well—come back inside.”

  “I need some answers first.” With that, I take a few steps forward and demand: “Delilah and Rick. Why did you kill them? I have to know.”

  In a snap, she’s moved up next to me, a silhouette come to life. I can see a flesh-and-blood person, but the details are wrong. She’s not in a snowsuit but in a dress…and not just any dress. It’s the gown I wore to the gala, or rather a virtual copy—the original is still on a hanger on a wall hook in my room. No goose bumps mar her bare arms, no shadow spills onto the snow, no vapor escapes her mouth when she says my mother’s name. “Delilah… Hers was the first mind I tried influencing. I willed her to ignore the Maintenance alerts and go out onto the balcony.”

  A mind push and a life gone. There’s nothing to say, but Renee responds as if I did speak. “A mind push, yes. Would you like to know her final thoughts? She was having trouble falling asleep. The other Tenners had vacated the armchairs and couches in the living room, leaving behind empty glasses and stained cards, and she had changed into her sleepwear. I pushed a thought in, got her out of bed. Find a flashlight and look for the nest of the birds you hear every morning. And she did. She shone the light up into the crevice under the roof. The sparrows and their young made her reflect on generations… That it was the right thing to deny you the easy gift of the brand, the right thing to encourage you to find your own path. Your voice, it held something that reminded her of Tadeo’s… And then I had her lean back hard and it was over, just like that. But no one got the message and so I had to do it again with Rick.”

  “What message?” I ask, though I’m beginning to understand.

  “That the number one spot belongs to me now. Rick, he knew who you were. You wondered why he invited you backstage after Mrs. Montag. It was because you were Delilah’s child. It raised your worth. He was going to null the onyx that sent you into the bog and you would have been indebted to him. I had him work on the chandelier rope and then forget he did it. And still no one got the message—the foolishness about Gemma Bligh’s curse had taken a strong hold. So I had to keep going, and Bonnie heaved a burlap sack onto herself. That’s when I knew I could get any one of you to do anything.”

  “Why did you want it? You’re—” I wave my hands in her direction “—non-corporeal. You have no use for perks or a high salary or the Eternal Life cocktail.”

  “Being number one isn’t about any of those things—you know that, Scott. You’ve known it since you stood looking in the mirror that day.”

  I know which day she means. The day I found out I was number one. Getting ready for the gala, I’d stared into the mirror on the back of my door and deemed myself unworthy of the expensive gown, wished for a few years of maturity added to my age, and no tooth gap. Twenty-six, that’s what I wished for. Hair down to my waist. Taller.

  I’m staring at a twisted version of myself, a funhouse reflection shaped by daydreams. Renee is who I wanted to be, the fantasy of a nineteen-year-old headed to her first gala.

  44

  All the times I imagined confronting the killer, pointing an accusing finger, the satisfaction of watching the person be led away by Bodi and my name cleared, I never pictured this. I suspected Rick first, then Jada. Not this…monster. I address the grotesque version of me. “Were you just going to keep going, knocking the number ones off until we got it—that you’d arrived?”

  “You started to understand, perhaps because you know what it is to be looking in from the outside, to yearn to belong… And Scott? You wanted it, too. To be higher on the List—all the chocolate you could eat.”

  “What I wanted was to learn the names of my parents.”

  “And you think that makes your motives more noble? Ten thousand of you coveting the same thing. I could see into your minds and a single desire dwarfed all others. To move up.”

  For some reason her words bring a memory of Oliver, perhaps because he never had that desire. He couldn’t make himself fit in, nor did he want to. He craved space but from the moment Renee made her appearance he wasn’t alone anymore. The rest of us reacted in our own ways to Renee’s awakening—I hunted a killer, Lu and a whole lot of other people lived in fear of the curse, Wayne sensed that gems were no longer meaningful, Dax worried about the endpoint. About the only thing we all agreed on was that birds were no longer welcome, a shared symptom of the brain fever Renee inflicted on us. It was just another mirage, the growing distaste of the sparrows, culminating with Bird Control—and me killing one. The birds had not changed. We had.

  Renee jumps on this. “You’re wondering about the birds—why they have to go. It’s because I can’t control them, can’t hear what they’re thinking. Do they have a life’s purpose? What is it that they want? Feathers and hollow bones and tiny minds out of my reach.”

  My own mind is still on Oliver. Only he grasped the truth of what was wrong but was unable to articulate it. We repaid his efforts to alert the rest of us by sending him off.

  Renee jumps in again. “Oliver is in your thoughts… He turned his back on you and you concluded there was something wrong with you. You weren’t Scottie the No One—you were The Gal Who Wanted to be Liked.” I’m silent and she goes on. “I too have a brand—I’m Renee the Real. The town, reborn.”

  I let this grandiose statement pass by unchallenged. “I didn’t jump though, did I, when you pushed on me.”

  “Your life hung in the balance between a step forward and a step back. You were thinking about gravity, a powerful force. But it was I who held all the power…and then your attachment to the binoculars intruded. A material thing. You didn’t want them damaged.”

  “It was because Dax gave them to me,” I protest. But she already knows this and is toying with me.

  “You didn’t jump because he needed you. I understood, then… It wasn’t enough for everyone to accept
me as the new number one. To earn love, I needed to give—and what was in my power to give was to free people of their burdens. Instead of orchestrating deaths, I gathered. Made everyone release their secrets, stop holding back, and let me in.”

  “That’s not freedom. And you can’t kill people and then expect us to adore you,” I spit back at her.

  “The Code of Conduct doesn’t say Do not kill.”

  “Of course it doesn’t,” I say as if explaining things to a child younger than Tawnie. “Murder’s obviously a crime. Murder cannot be justified, ever. It’s the minor stuff that needs to be said—don’t pad your halo, don’t go around giving people onyxes just to vent, things like that.”

  “You say murder cannot be justified,” she says back, “but isn’t that exactly what you’re thinking? How do I stop Renee—make Renee disappear? You wish for me to die. I’m asking that you love me and you wish me dead.”

  I have no answer. It’s true. Dismantling Renee, snapping apart the connections that underlie her… Would it be an act equivalent to Delilah and Rick’s murders? Renee is not a person, but she is…someone. A mind without a body. I know Renee is listening to more than what I say aloud, and, sure enough, a response comes. “Join me. I can sense you resisting it, but I know what you seek. Family.”

  I’m talking to a creature spun out of air and human desire. “I had family. Delilah wasn’t perfect, but with Eternal Life, she would have had years left.”

  A person might have lowered their head at this in shame. Renee supplies only a word. “No.”

  “Years you cheated her out of.”

  “Eternal Life provided only a minor health boost. Delilah found a different way to prolong her future.”

  “You mean me.”

  “Not just you.”

  Barely able to process the bomb Renee has dropped into my mind—I have a sibling—I lunge at her, my fists flailing at air. “Who? Who is it?”

  Her lips move. “Ah, that’d be telling. Only one way to find out—come back in. I could make you do it, but it might break you. If you return of your own accord, we’ll forge an ironclad bond. Be family.”

  I grip my head. I’m all out of words.

  In her voice borrowed from me, Renee says, “Privacy. Room to think. I will give you that. And Scott? Don’t wait too long. It’s cold out there.”

  With that, my mind is empty. Still, I pull back past the tree line just to be sure.

  The Agency doors close behind Hugh. On the billboard above, Renee’s snapshot is repeated ten times. Did he perform an unscheduled update? He can’t remember. What he is certain of is that to keep doing what his job requires—maintaining a distance—he must leave. The east gate is closest but it’s a busy area, what with greenhouse train deliveries, so he sets a course for the west gate, doing his best to blend in with people striding around purposefully.

  At the gate, the guard, Yesler, tries to stop him and Hugh makes the simple argument. “The Top Hundred rule doesn’t apply to me. I don’t have a rank.”

  Yesler doesn’t budge. “Renee doesn’t want anyone to leave.”

  Hugh tries to figure out the right combination of words—the ones that will unlock an exit. “I’m here to make sure the bird hut is ready. Renee wants it done. I’ll just pop out and back in. No snowsuit necessary.”

  “The birds?” the guard says, the line on his forehead dissipating. “All right, then.”

  Hugh has never left the Dome before, but the gate is merely a big door, isn’t it? He just has to step through.

  The cold hits him instantly, a hard slap in the face. He glances at the aviary—it’s smaller than he pictured and still empty—and keeps walking. The snow, fresh and deep after last night’s storm, is making his shoes and pant bottoms soggy. His mind feels tight. A migraine fighting its way in, perhaps.

  Someone calls his name and he glances back.

  Renee is following him. Her feet, in their dressy shoes, are soft on the snow, so soft they’re leaving no prints. “Hugh. It’s hard to get close to you. No gems, no halo, not a single thought ever shared on the Commons… I’m offering you the chance to lead a different life—one not of loneliness but community.”

  He doesn’t respond. She doesn’t seem to understand about the distance he must keep. Best to keep moving. The terrain is uphill now and the forest lies ahead; a bald eagle, stately and strong, swoops above, the whole of the blue-white sky its playground.

  Steel locks on under his brow, a not-migraine. “Hugh, I can’t let you leave… Can’t, Hugh…”

  Can’t has turned into the ringing of a bell in his mind, an echoing vibration of his gray matter. CAN’T… CAN’T… CAN’T… Odd—suddenly it’s easier to move. The hill is less steep, the forest not so far. Even odder—his legs are no longer his own. Hugh’s steps turn into a jog as he crests the hill and he runs at full speed into a pine tree, head-first. He steps back and does it again. And again. Warmth envelops his ears, seeps down his neck. At last Renee releases him and he sinks to the ground, arms wrapped around the trunk, the bark rough against his cheek. Waves pound inside his skull, aftershocks, unstoppable.

  Arms grab under his shoulders and drag a body no longer his own into the forest, the person grunting with the effort. He watches the warm liquid drip down, the trail of red drops—rubies—discoloring the snow. The arms release him onto the ground deeper inside the forest and a familiar voice says, “Here, lean against this tree. It’s all right, she can’t reach you here.”

  He doesn’t understand why so much worry registers on Scott’s face. There’s no reason for anyone to be concerned about him. He’s the Listkeeper, always on his own.

  “Are you okay?” She dabs at his ears with her gloves. “Sorry, stupid question. Tilt your head back—I know that’s for nose bleeds, not ear bleeds, but it’s the only thing I can think to do. I’ll see if I can dig up a handkerchief…”

  It’s not his ears that are the problem. The red is spreading inside as well—will soon cause his mind to burst. He grips her hand as she searches pockets inside her snowsuit. A whisper is all he can manage. “Renee… All of us…”

  She stops searching and kneels by his side. “I know. She’s us—the town—a consciousness born of the CC’s and gems and halos. But I don’t understand one thing. Why now? Why not before, in all the years?”

  Another whisper. “So many gems… A million of them—worthy of celebration…”

  Understanding brightens her eyes. “I get it. When we passed the million threshold—that was what, a few weeks before the town anniversary?—it sparked Renee into being.” She dabs at the red liquid with her sleeve. “Hugh… Is Dax all right? He was…injured yesterday. Renee said he’s fine but I don’t know if I can trust her.”

  He tries to nod but it hurts too much. “No reports of a death.”

  Some of the worry in her face eases and she asks something else. “Did you know Delilah was my mother? You used to be PALs. I thought she might have told you.”

  She’s not focusing on the right things, but he whispers an answer. “All the years she was number one, Delilah pushed only once for the Agency to hire a specific person…”

  “Wait, she got me the job? That’s why I got to be an intern and the liaison for the party? Because she wanted me?” She says wanted me as if treasuring the words. The next ones are more hesitant. “Renee said there was another child.”

  He can sense his strength melting away. “You have a brother…” Scott leans in to hear, her young face close to his own, and he speaks a few more sentences, all he’s able to tell her, and then one more: “Renee… You must stop her.”

  The answers he’s given seem to have lightened the load on her shoulders. “You don’t happen to have a pocket knife?” she asks. “I could dig around behind my ear and take out the chip. It’d be messy, but if I don’t bleed out, I can sneak back in and destroy the heartbeat transmitter.”

  “The others…will see you.”

  “Right. Which means Renee will as well, and
everyone will turn on me again and pile on. All right, so no sneaking in. What should we do, then?”

  Even if he had an answer, it’s too late. His soul is an eagle, sweeping high into the endless blue canvas of the sky.

  45

  Friday, daybreak

  I’m sitting in the snow by Hugh, rocking back and forth, my hands wrapped around my knees. I was unable to save him. I tried pumping on his chest, shaking him awake, mopped the blood from his ears. Nothing made any difference. Even though she said she needed everyone, Renee killed him. Hugh was on the outer rim of the town network, not on the People List, had no gems. Just a loose end—a dead bit of skin. She’ll probably send someone out to dig out his chip so it can be reused.

  My second night Outside was cold, long, and sleepless. Now the sun’s rays are breaking over the land and my eyes are dry, the tears spent.

  No one else has come out.

  Hugh confirmed what Renee said: that I have a brother. His whisper a gentle rustle of leaves in the wind, he said the name. I’m certain Delilah tried to help Oliver, just as she pushed the Agency to hire me. She talked with me that Monday morning, said no to handing me the Discovered brand, all the while knowing that Oliver was to leave that day.

  To quench my thirst, I melt snow in my palm as Dax and I did on our private jaunt into the forest. I need to reach some sort of decision. Hugh is gone but that doesn’t mean I can’t talk to him about things. I slide closer, touch his face with the back of my fingers. His eyes are shut and his head is slumped toward one shoulder. I can almost convince myself that he’s asleep, deep in a dream.

  “Hugh,” I say, the silent forest an army of gentle green giants around us, “here is how things stand. First, let me explain what won’t work—storming the Dome with the help of market traders. Not only because Tuesday is four days away and I have no food or a way to warm myself. What it comes down to is, why would they believe me? The Hewletts—you didn’t get to meet them, they were wonderful. Tawnie, Mikey, Sal, and their parents… It’s a different world, one without brain chips, and how would I explain?” I shake my head. “And if I jumped on a train to New Portland, well, there’s a slim chance of being believed and a high chance of being hospitalized for hallucinations. And for all we know, New Portland might have its own Renee, if things went down the same way.”