by AJ Steiger
Dr. Swan pours more water from the decanter. “Not all of them were killed, however,” he says. “There was one survivor.”
A wire tightens in my chest.
“Pike was a sadist. A man with a streak of creative depravity. And he liked children. He liked to play with them.” He sips. “Steven was kept in a basement for six months. Even with all you’ve seen during your training, all the trauma you’ve witnessed, you cannot imagine the horrors he endured. For half a year, that was his world. What do you suppose that does to a child’s brain? To his soul?” Glass clinks against wood as he sets his water down.
I think about Steven. About his flat, guarded eyes, the restive way he moves, like a wild animal accustomed to being hunted.
“I’m telling you this so you understand the gravity of the situation,” Dr. Swan continues. “You want to help him. I understand that. But trust me when I say this: the sort of help he needs is far beyond what you can give.”
My fingers clench on the arms of the chair. “Then who will help him?”
After a pause, he speaks slowly, as if choosing his words with care. “We’re doing all we can.”
I blink, confused. “Then he’s been here already?” Steven seemed adamant about not contacting IFEN. None of this makes sense. “Is he being treated?”
“That’s all I can say.” He leans forward. “You understand, don’t you? Why it would be a bad idea for you to get involved?”
I promised to meet Steven again. Whatever the facts, I can’t go back on that promise. “I understand,” I say, hoping Dr. Swan will take that as an answer.
“Please realize, I’m only trying to observe your father’s wishes. He entrusted your well-being to me, after all.”
I nod, gaze lowered. An ache flares deep in my bones, in the core of my chest.
“So,” he says, his voice suddenly light, “any plans for tonight?”
“Just studying.”
A smile quirks at the corners of his mouth. “Diligent to a fault. Diligence is an admirable trait. But remember that there’s more to life than textbooks and training.” The smile fades. “I fear, at times, that you’ve grown up too fast. You’re a seventeen-year-old girl. Spend time with friends. Have a few parties. Go out on a date, for God’s sake.” He adds quickly, “With a normal boy. And remember what I said.”
“I’ll remember.”
I take the elevator down to the main floor. Steven’s face flickers through my mind.
Kidnapped. Six months in a basement, held prisoner by a serial killer.
There was pain in his eyes, but something else, too—something in that hard stare, in the set of his jaw, that tells me he’s a survivor. And whatever Dr. Swan says, I don’t believe he’s dangerous—not to me, anyway. I want to help him. Father would have understood.
Grief hits me in the chest, sudden and hard. I flinch. It’s been four years, and still, the pain keeps finding ways to sucker-punch me.
I walk stiffly out of the building and across the parking lot, toward my car.
Sometimes, I imagine that Father’s not actually dead, that the body in the coffin was just a fake, a wax dummy, and he’s out there somewhere in hiding, waiting for me to find him. It’s absurd. I know that. Many grieving people harbor similar fantasies. I’ll never heal and move on until I give up that irrational hope. But a stubborn, childish part of my mind still insists that it can’t be true, that his death is all some kind of mistake.
My house stands at the end of a street in a wealthy subdivision. It’s built from wood and stone, with a traditional peaked roof, and the yard is a sprawling, wild mass of green filled with shade and flowers. Compared to the geometrically precise houses and yards around it, it looks like something out of another time, which it is. It was built before the war.
After Father died, leaving me more or less alone in the world, Dr. Swan offered to let me move in with him. He said living by myself in a house full of memories would be unhealthy for me. But I couldn’t let go of this place. It was—still is—my home, the only one I’ve ever known. In those long, black months, I battled mind-crushing grief while striving to convince Dr. Swan that I was capable of taking care of myself. He finally relented, on the condition that I meet with him regularly and keep him updated on my life. Not difficult, since he’s the one supervising my training. He hired a housekeeper as well, to come in three times a week. More than once, I’ve caught Greta snooping around in my bedroom. I suspect she keeps tabs on me and reports back to Dr. Swan, reassuring him that my drawers aren’t filled with bloodstained razors and illegal drugs.
I know he’s only concerned about me, trying to be a responsible guardian. But his constant meddling in my life sometimes makes me feel like I’m suffocating.
I’ll be eighteen soon. Of course, I’ll be in training for a while yet, so I’ll still have to answer to him. But when I become an adult, the house will be mine, and I’ll have at least one place where I can hide from his prying eyes.
It’s five o’clock in the afternoon. I sit on my living room couch eating my dinner—a reheated meal from a container, scientifically engineered for optimal nutrition and nearly as bland as the box it came in.
The house is too empty, too silent. I turn on the TV.
On the hovering screen, a woman sits in a hospital bed, gazing lovingly at the newborn in her arms, while a piano plays softly in the background. “A parent already has so many things to worry about,” says a female narrator, her voice gentle and soothing. “We all want to give our children the best possible future. So why gamble with something as precious as your child’s DNA? NewVitro is safe, proven, and guaranteed—”
I change the channel. There’s a war documentary. Somber music drones as the camera pans over grainy shots of rubble and weeping people. I quickly flip to another station.
After finishing my dinner, I head upstairs to my bedroom and sprawl across my bed, stomach-down. The lights are off. Rows of stuffed animals watch me from the shelves, their eyes reflecting the faint glow of moonlight from the window. There’s a teddy bear with an eye patch and a sword, a smiling pink bunny with sharp teeth, and a little green Cthulhu, among others. Nutter, my squirrel, sits on my pillow.
My gaze wanders to a framed picture on the nightstand. Behind the glass, Father beams, brown hair wind-tousled, arms wrapped around me. I’m only three or four, my hair in pigtails, my mouth open in a wide, laughing smile. Above us, the sky shines a brilliant, cloudless blue. I try to remember what it was like to be that happy, that safe.
“Chloe,” I say.
A black cat materializes at the foot of the bed, close to my face. Her tail sways, and her luminous green eyes blink. “Hello, Lain,” says a childlike voice. She stretches—a long, full-body stretch ending with a flick of her tail.
She’s only a hologram, of course. A computer avatar. But the sight of her always makes me smile. “Hello.”
She scratches behind one ear and yawns. “So, what are you looking for today?”
“I need you to access IFEN’s database for me.”
Her eyes glow brighter. “This site requires a password and voice identification.”
“Lain Fisher,” I say. “The password is ‘atonement.’?”
She grooms one paw. Then she blinks, tilting her head back, and two thin beams of light shine from her eyes, projecting a holographic screen into the air about two feet above her head. I touch a small square in the bottom left corner of the screen, which lights up as the computer scans my fingerprint.
Text fills the screen, letters glowing white against a dark background.
IFEN’s database is filled with information on millions of people across the country. Of course, the database is locked to the general public, but as a Mindwalker, I have access to some of the records. Anyone who’s had his brain scanned or been psychologically evaluated at any point—which is around ninety-nine percent of the country—has a file. And they’re all ranked by Type, from One (psychologically stable) to Four (imminent danger to sel
f or others). There’s a Five ranking as well, but it’s reserved for unusual cases.
I sometimes wonder what sociologists from an alien culture would think about our world. They might see it, not inaccurately, as a sort of caste society based not on race or the situation of one’s birth but on psychological health as defined by the dominant caste. Threes and above lose certain legal privileges, and they’re limited in the kind of work they can perform. Most people wouldn’t trust a psychologically unbalanced, potentially violent person in the role of a doctor or politician, naturally, and most of the jobs that are open to the unbalanced tend to be low-paying and menial.
Of course, the system is built on extensive scientific data and designed to protect the public safety. In the past, authorities simply waited until people committed crimes and then locked them in places called prisons. Now we recognize crime and violence as symptoms of mental illness and treat them accordingly. Now we stop tragedies before they happen. Admittedly, some people still manage to hide their violent tendencies for a while before they’re caught, but crime has been dramatically reduced. It’s better this way. Surely.
“Do you need help finding anything in particular?” Chloe asks, distracting me.
I hesitate.
Maybe this is a bad idea. If Dr. Swan happens to check the log-in records and sees that I’ve been poking around, there’ll be questions. But I have to know whether everything he told me is true. “Steven Bent’s file. Bring it up.”
Lines of glistening green code scroll across her eyes as she searches.
“Found him!” Chloe singsongs.
Steven’s file pops up on the floating screen. Sure enough, he’s a Type Four. I scan through his basic information. Height, weight, age (he’s eighteen), and occupation (student, in his case). I scroll through paragraphs and paragraphs of information. So much. His list of diagnostic labels alone takes up half the screen. Depression, PTSD, generalized anxiety disorder, paranoid personality disorder …
I look away, suddenly uncomfortable. Steven’s my client—sort of—so it’s important that I know his medical background. Why do I feel like I’m betraying him?
“Is something wrong?” Chloe asks, leaning forward. “Not the file you were looking for?” Though she’s just a computer program, she can recognize and analyze body language. At times, it feels almost like talking to a person.
I meet her luminous green gaze. “Chloe, am I being a snoop?”
She blinks a few times. Her ears twitch. “That’s not really a question for a program, is it? Maybe you should ask another human.”
“You’re right, of course.”
“Do you want me to close this file?” she asks.
“Not yet.” I lift a finger and slide it down the floating screen, scrolling until I hit a solid black line of text:
LEVEL 6 SECURITY CLEARANCE REQUIRED. ENTER PASSWORD.
Part of his file is classified. Why?
I run my finger back and forth across my lower lip, thinking. Then my gaze catches on a single phrase near the bottom of the screen.
STATUS: VOLUNTARILY PASSED.
Those words hold my gaze for a full minute, as if by staring at them long enough, I can make them change. My heartbeat fills my ears and thunders in my wrists and fingertips. “This can’t be right,” I whisper. Voluntarily passed means that someone has chosen to take his own life with Somnazol, the legal suicide pill.
“Is something wrong?” Chloe asks.
I shake my head. “Log out,” I murmur.
The screen vanishes. “Do you need anything else?”
I need an explanation for this, but of course, that’s something she can’t give me. “No.”
“In that case, I’ll take a nap.” Chloe curls up at the foot of the bed and disappears.
Those two words burn inside my head, as if etched into my brain by sharp little claws. Voluntarily passed. It sounds so civilized, so peaceful. Father always hated the term. He said it masked the suffering of the people involved, that suicide is suicide, regardless of whether the government approves it or not.
I struggle to control my breathing. Think.
As soon as someone obtains Somnazol from a doctor, his status changes to voluntarily passed—meaning he’s legally dead, even before he takes the pill. That means Steven might still be alive. But if he’s planning to die anyway, why did he approach me? Is he having second thoughts?
In my head, I see the Somnazol ad in the school bathroom. I’ve seen those same ads in mono stations and stores—ads filled with soothing colors, smiling doctors, words like merciful and dignified. Somnazol is an accepted part of society. We learn about it in school. A humane, painless death for people who are too broken to be fixed, a last resort for those who would otherwise just be dangerous burdens on society. That’s what they tell us. I never liked it, never quite believed the line, but the cold reality never hit me so hard until this moment.
That’s why Steven didn’t want to go to IFEN. There’s no way they’ll approve him for neural modification therapy. There’s no way they’ll let me treat him. They’re not even legally allowed to treat someone who’s obtained a Somnazol.
In their eyes, he’s already dead.
When I arrive at Greenborough the next day, there are police cars everywhere. Students huddle outside, bundled in coats and shivering.
An evacuation?
I park my car, get out, and jog toward the crowd, scanning it for a familiar face. Guards prowl around us. They’re all wielding NDs—neural disrupters—resembling small pistols, as well as portable neuroscanners resembling black plastic wands. One of the guards stalks toward me, and I tense. “What’s going on?”
“We’re dealing with a potential threat,” he says. “Hold still.” I flinch back as he waves the scanner in front of my face.
“Excuse me,” I say, holding up one arm like a shield. “I haven’t consented to a scan.”
“We don’t need your consent,” he snaps. “An emergency has been declared. Hold still!” I freeze. A green light blinks. “Type One!” he shouts to someone else. “She’s clean.”
More voices raise. “Get in line! Everyone get in line!”
The guards are brandishing their NDs at the students, pushing them into a loose line and scanning them one by one. Many of the students are bunched together, as if for protection. Some of them have been on the wrong end of an ND before. I’ve seen it happen—the twitching, the convulsions, the bloody foam bubbling from bitten tongues and lips.
I spot Ian. With his hairstyle and trademark black leather jacket with fishnet sleeves, he’s easy to pick out of a crowd. I run toward him, calling his name.
He turns. There’s an odd, unfocused look in his eyes, as if he’s not quite there. “Lain …”
I jog to a halt, panting. “Are you all right?”
“Yeah. Yeah, I’m okay.” Sweat shines on his forehead. He rubs his hand over the fuzzy stripe of ginger hair on his scalp. Then he leans in, lowering his voice. “Be careful. They’re really riled up. They’re itching to use those NDs.”
“What’s going on? Did someone find a weapon?”
He shakes his head. “You won’t believe it.” A tiny, wry smile curves one corner of his mouth, though the glassy look doesn’t quite leave his eyes. “They’re here because someone found a sticky note on the inside of a bathroom stall. And of course, because the stalls are the only places that don’t have cameras, they can’t tell who it was.”
“A note? What did it say?”
“ ‘Burn it all down.’ They’re treating it as an arson threat. Personally, I think the administration did it, just to have an excuse to raid, since there hasn’t been one for a few weeks—”
I clamp a hand over his mouth and hiss, “Ian! Be careful!”
He rolls his eyes. When I lower my hand, he says, “They already scanned me. They know I’m not a threat.” Despite his words, there’s an edginess in his voice and posture that I’ve never seen before. His large brown eyes dart back and forth. T
hey usually remind me of a hound’s, but right now, they look more like a fox’s. Did he place the note? No, that’s absurd. Ian’s always had a bit of a rebellious streak, but he wouldn’t go that far.
“You know,” a boy nearby says in a hushed tone, “after this, I bet they’ll try to put cameras in the stalls, too.”
“Yeah,” another says. “Those pervs just want to watch us poop.”
Muffled snickers greet this remark.
“After that, they’ll be putting cameras in the toilets,” a girl says in that same hushed tone.
“Yeah, you never know, we might be smuggling something up there.”
More laughter. But they keep glancing furtively around to make sure none of the guards are listening.
I scan the crowd, looking for Steven’s pale blond hair.
“Hey, you okay?” Ian asks.
“Fine. Mostly.”
His face softens, and for a moment, he looks more like himself. “Don’t worry. This’ll all blow over in an hour, and we can get on with our lives.”
I smile, but it takes an effort.
Sure enough, within an hour, the police give the all clear, but I see them haul off a struggling boy. His hair is dark, not blond. I don’t know whether or not to feel relieved. I don’t want Steven to be locked in a treatment facility, but if that boy were him, it would at least mean he was still alive.
“Poor bastard,” Ian says.
Steven’s not dead, I tell myself. We’re supposed to meet today. He wouldn’t take the pill before then, would he?
They shove the thrashing boy into a police car.
“How can they be sure he was the one who wrote the note?” I ask.
“I don’t think they’re too concerned with proving who did it,” he says. “As long as they catch someone, people will feel like it’s been dealt with.”
I look at him uneasily from the corner of my eye.
The car drives away, taking the boy with it. Suddenly, I feel cold. Without thinking, I put my arms around Ian, leaning against his shoulder for comfort. To my surprise, he tenses and pulls away. I look up, brows knitted. “Sorry,” he mutters, rubbing his palms over his face. His hands are shaking. “I just—I don’t want to be touched. Not now.” He clutches his arms. His pulse flutters in his long, skinny throat.