Bleak History

by John Shirley

  “You could answer some questions, yourself,” Bleak said, holding her gaze. Not letting her go just yet. “What is happening in the north? Where does the wall come from? What's happening to it?”

  “I can't tell you those things. I took an oath.”

  “How about Facility Twenty-three? It was in the red scribble. That sounds like it'd refer to something of yours—something belonging to CCA.”

  She looked at the sidewalk. “It is CCA's, yes. I haven't been there yet. It's their most clandestine facility.”

  “That where the ShadowComms go?”

  She didn't deny it. “Not just there. But Twenty-three is one of the most...” She shrugged. “Like I say, I haven't been admitted there yet.”

  “But you know who's there?” Bleak took a step closer to her. Could feel the aura of life around her; could feel the outer edges of her mind as if feeling the static electricity in a cat's fur. He realized, all of a sudden, that he wanted to take her in his arms.

  But if he did, she would probably draw back from him—and Shoella might do anything. Might try to kill them both.

  Still, Loraine tolerated him, standing so close; she looked up into his face. And he asked her softly, “Is Sean there? Is my brother in Facility Twenty-three?” He knew, somehow, with the two of them so near each other, that she couldn't keep herself from answering. But he didn't know exactly why that was.

  She swallowed. Then nodded. “I think he probably is.”

  They were standing so close...he could almost—

  “Gabriel,” Shoella said, her voice husky with warning.

  Loraine stepped decisively back. Then she forced a thin smile, a parting nod. “I'll be in touch. I have to go...they'll be looking for me.” She fished in her purse, found a business card and a pen, wrote a number on the back of the card. “That's my personal cell phone.” She gave it to Bleak and turned to walk away, toward the west.

  Yorena squawked, and Shoella glanced at the creature in irritation. “Shut up. You don't know that. You don't know anything. It might go any way at all.”

  Bleak glanced at the familiar. “What did Yorena say?”

  “Lies. Yorena's very emotional. Very pessimistic. Nothing to repeat.” Shoella looked in a pocket for a cell phone. “I'll call a cab.”

  He turned and watched Loraine walk away. He felt a tearing inside. A completely irrational feeling. All this is irrational. Trusting her. Feeling this way as she walks away. Makes no sense.

  “Maybe Yorena is right,” Shoella said softly, watching Loraine narrowly. “Maybe I am making a big mistake, letting her go. I could send Yorena after her, Gabriel. One quick clawing at the woman's neck, in the right spot, tear that big vein, she would probably die.”

  Bleak looked at Shoella in dull shock. Finally he said, “You've got better judgment than that, Shoella. That woman won't betray us.”

  Shoella just shook her head in sullen disgust. Bleak stared after Loraine, then put the card in his wallet, thinking that something monumental, something key and important, had happened tonight... and he had no idea, exactly, what it was.

  And when Loraine walked away, he felt something else: a sinking inside him, a lost feeling, a groping in darkness...as if he were suddenly missing some precious part of himself.

  In your right hand you hold her despair...

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Almost two hours later. Upstate New York. A warm and sticky night. Just outside Facility 23.

  Dying oaks, crumbling inwardly from a blight, stretched out their branches alongside the access road with lugubrious crookedness. As the young soldier drove her up to the facility gate, Loraine told herself there was nothing special, outwardly, about the facility. Surrounded by razor wire, floodlights, and cameras on steel poles, it was just another sprawling, generic government structure, with a cryptic sign but no clear markings. But there was something about it...

  The air conditioner in the government car was broken; the driver had apologized, but there was no time to go to the motor pool for another—she'd received a cell phone call from Dr. Helman summoning her here within minutes of leaving Bleak. Sweat gathered on her brow and blew away in the air washing through the car's open windows. Her clothes chafed her, under the armpits, and at her collar. The young Special Forces driver, a stocky white man in a uniform and black beret, had hardly spoken since she'd got in beside him.

  She stared at the bland facade of Facility 23, thinking, Sean Bleak is in there somewhere. In a place that hummed with frightened desperation.

  Now what brought that on?she thought. But since her first encounter with Bleak, she'd felt more intuitive, more sensitive, than she ever had before.

  She pondered her sense of deep but indescribable connection to Gabriel Bleak. She'd felt him watching her as she walked away, down Ninety-fifth Street. Felt it as clearly as you'd feel a cool breeze on the back of your neck.

  Maybe all this exposure to the supernatural had her imagining things. Seeing Krasnoff project his visions; seeing Soon Mei open the Hidden. Glimpsing her fate scribbled in red ink. She was seeing the unearthly everywhere.

  No—it was more as if her boundaries had been fractured. Her assumptions about reality had flown to pieces. It was as if hidden doors, secret passages, were everywhere, no matter where you went. As if she had been walking down the corridor of life looking for a door where the walls looked blank, then she'd discovered the doors were there all the time. They were simply invisible, until you learned to see them. She was starting to sense things she'd never sensed before.

  And her newly kindled intuition told her that Facility 23 was one big bad omen.

  Deal with it, she thought, as the sedan drove through the gate to the first checkpoint. The driver spoke to the guards, flashlight beams made Loraine blink, then the car was waved on. It drove along a narrow asphalt road around the building to stop at a nondescript gray metal door in a big, otherwise featureless concrete wall in the back.

  The gray metal door opened, as she got out of the car, and Dr. Helman was waiting for her in its rectangle of cold light, bobblehead nodding. “I apologize in advance,” Helman said, as she walked up to the building's back door. “I should let you read the file of the man you're about to meet, first. But there isn't time. Events press. Time grows short. You must meet him now.”

  She followed him into a building, and down a corridor—for much of its length a blank, doorless corridor, like so many others she'd walked through—Loraine thinking it strange Helman hadn't mentioned her meeting with Bleak. Maybe they didn't have her under surveillance after all. Not all the time. But there was another possibility....

  ***

  SHE KNEW IT WAS him, before Helman introduced the man sitting at the table: “This is Sean Bleak. Sean, Agent Sarikosca.”

  They were in a small, windowless conference room with a large flat-screen TV at one end; a glossy pine-finish, oval conference table with a few chairs, concrete walls painted light green. An opaque glass hemisphere in the center of the ceiling probably held a surveillance camera. Just outside the open door were two guards, alert to a call from Helman. Apparently Helman didn't trust Sean.

  “I don't want to call her Agent Sarikosca,” Sean said as she sat across from him. A peculiar, twisted little smile as he said it; a pettish, whispery voice; ice-chip blue eyes. Long sandy hair. He wore a paramilitary outfit. On him it looked almost like the clothing of an inmate in a military prison.

  Not an identical twin. But much like Gabriel Bleak—and very much unlike him.

  “You'll call her what protocol demands, Sean,” Helman told him, sitting at the end of the table, frowning over a complicated remote control. “General Forsythe wants a structured environment for you. Your privileges are contingent on staying within that structure. That means following protocol.”

  Sean chuckled at that; eyes flicking at Helman with barely concealed contempt. “You invoke Forsythe's name to keep me in line.” She noticed he had a way of talking with his mouth nearly shut. “You k
now he's special; that he's the one I respect. But don't pretend I've got any real freedom.” Sean looked at Loraine, added hastily, “Not that I don't ever leave this place. I've been in places like this most of my life—but there were other places too.” It seemed important to him to tell her that he was more than some lab rat, here. “There was a place up in the mountains, in the trees. I had a nanny, she was a good old girl. I had a tutor who was kind of like a dad to me. In a sort of way. I had play dates with kids, for a while. Till that got weird. I even got taken to Disney World one time. I've got the latest game consoles. Lately I go on what they like to call virtual excursions. We've got some pretty good VR gear. And I've had women—”

  “Sean!” Helman snapped. “Have some respect for the agent.”

  “But it's true—I've had women! Brought in special. Kind of like the ones you'll see here on the TV tonight. That what we're going to see, Dr. Helman? That experiment with Gulcher?” “Yes, yes.”

  One other thing was in the room. She hadn't seen it till Sean leaned forward. It was behind him: a suppressor, plugged in and turned on.

  Feeling pity for Sean, thinking he had been raised in places like this and there was no telling what he'd been through, Loraine impulsively said, “You can call me Loraine, Sean, if you like.”

  “Thank you, Loraine,” he said, studying her. He smiled, suddenly, briefly showing yellowed teeth, as if he remembered that it was good to smile broadly but wasn't quite sure how to do it.

  Helman used the remote to turn on the television and clicked through a menu till he got a window on the screen that said PREPARED MATERIAL. “Here we go. This is...” He turned to Loraine, putting on an expression of solemnity. “Well—perhaps I should prepare you.”

  It was funny how socially artificial both of these men seemed, Loraine decided. In different ways, each seemed strikingly insincere. As if they'd learned to interact with people the way a clumsy man learned to dance—by rote.

  “Why don't you turn that suppressor off, Helman,” Sean said suddenly. “You don't need it. And could show Loraine some things.”

  “No, not this time; I don't think so, Sean,” Helman said, with asperity. “I wish to tell her...” He leaned toward Loraine, his manner grave, weighty. “You've seen some hard things, Loraine. Your duty has taken you to some dangerous places. You saw women you'd recruited taken into custody in Syria —and there was nothing you could do for them. You saw a suicide bomb attack in Kabul. You were involved in the debriefing on the Miami attack. You know what the terrorists did there. That is what we're up against—a brutally unstable world.” Helman gently rapped the table to emphasize the next sentence. “We cannot afford to be concerned with every fallen sparrow! We must be willing to do whatever is necessary! Power like this, potential of the kind the CCA contains, and directs...we cannot risk losing control of it. It's like the Manhattan Project in the last century. Sometimes the testing is dangerous. People die. We need to know that you're... capable of dealing with the harsh realities.”

  Loraine shrugged. “It's all been harsh reality, Doctor.” She wasn't thinking of Syria, though that had been bad enough. She was thinking of Krasnoff—and Sean Bleak, sitting across from her. It seemed likely he'd been pried from his parents' hands, raised in an institutional setting. She'd had to work hard on accepting that kind of reality at CCA.

  “To be sure,” Helman said. “But what I am going to show you may shock you anyway. We run tremendous risks here—and to protect the country we must test the forces we work with. Test them on people, on human beings. You must have a spine of steel to proceed with us, Loraine. And if you don't —well.” He glanced at Sean. “One way or another...we will have your help.”

  That one startled her. One way or another?

  “I've had women,” Sean said suddenly, out of left field, almost leering at Loraine, “but nobody with your class.”

  “I'm here as a federal agent, Sean,” Loraine said, forcing herself to smile politely—but feeling her skin crawl. “Let's keep this professional.”

  “Professional?” Sean's eyes looked shiny, as if he were close to tears. His mouth compressed. When he spoke, it was through clenched teeth, and hard to make out. “What profession do I have?”

  It came to her that Sean was stuck in adolescence. He had his brother's penetrating eyes—and a sense about him, as with his brother, that he was always aware of something you couldn't see. Even with the suppressor in the room Sean knew the Hidden was there, in ways she couldn't.

  But he was so different from Gabriel Bleak. Gabriel had a still, strong center to him. You felt that he was ready for anything. You knew you could trust him. He might hold things back, but he wouldn't want to lie to you. It would be unnatural to him.

  But his brother, she suspected, might say anything to get what he wanted. Sean was damaged— and there was no telling how deep the damage went.

  “Your profession, Sean, is to serve the United States of America by helping it control UBEs,” Helman said, using the remote control again, fast-forwarding. Images flickered by on the television screen, too fast to make out. “You even get paid for it, every month. Sometimes you spend the money.”

  Sean sniffed. “Spend the money! EBay purchases. Amazon. Once a month I get to have a bottle of wine.” He sniffed in disgust. “The occasional hired girl. It's how they manage me... control we. “

  The images on the screen slowed, became recognizable: a concrete courtyard, a view from high on a wall, and to one side was General Forsythe with a man she didn't recognize at first, and a group of armed black berets. The man with Forsythe turned, his face caught the light, and she recognized him. “Troy Gulcher!” she blurted.

  “Very good,” Sean said, with a kind of nerdy irony. “Our man Gulcher. Who's been bitching continuously since he got here.”

  She saw that Gulcher, in the video, had no restraints, no cuffs. That he was standing with Forsythe in a friendly way. She realized that Gulcher was not just contained—but recruited. A wan like that. A wurderer. Was she really supposed to work beside him?

  Doors opened, in the courtyard. People came through, accompanied by more guards. She recognized Helman, Soon Mei, Krasnoff—and someone she didn't know.

  “Who is that child? He's got cuffs on!”

  “That is just one of the difficult elements I was warning you about,” Helman said. “William John Blunt. Billy Blunt. We purchased him from his parents—” “You purchased him?”

  “Yes. We arranged for them to report him missing and gave them a substantial fee. They were quite happy with the arrangement. He is a casebook psychopath—they were quite afraid of him. He was starting to use his abilities on them. Just coming into them fully, then. He's quite a little government secret. Top secret, as you might imagine.”

  “Like me,” Sean said ruefully. “But uglier and not so talented. Can't play a first-person shooter to save his little ass.”

  “Yes, indeed, just as you say,” Helman said distractedly, watching the screen. “There...you see something interesting...Krasnoff is now projecting his vision.”

  “I don't see it,” she murmured. She could see the light projecting from Krasnoff's eyes and mouth —and a circle on the wall, sparkling around the edges. Nothing inside the circle but concrete wall.

  “Exactly so,” Helman said, with an expert's excitement. “It doesn't show up on this video. Other visions of his have shown up, rather fuzzily. But not this.”

  “It's because it's the Wilderness,” Sean said matter-of-factly. “They don't want you making pictures of them.”

  Loraine was peripherally aware that Sean was looking at her. Specifically, at her breasts. Which was something else he had in common with Helman. “Now these girls...”

  Then Loraine went rigid in her seat as it played out: The three women in blue prison shifts brought in. One of them somehow being influenced by Billy Blunt to attack another. Blood flowing. The woman being attacked with teeth and fingers. Soon Mei summoning ghosts—seen only murkily on the
video. Madness—possession. The boy in the midst of it...

  Loraine forced herself to watch—sure that if she came off as if she couldn't handle it, she'd be in danger of “containment” herself. They wouldn't take any chances. She'd have to pretend to accept this.

  But she couldn't accept it, not really. Not seeing a boy purchased from his parents. Three women held prisoner to be used as experimental subjects. Women deliberately subjected to possession, violence.

  Deep down inside, Loraine knew she'd changed sides. She could pretend she hadn't, for a while. But she couldn't really be part of this.

  And that was it—she had pivoted, internally. She'd shifted the center of gravity of her loyalties. She was still a loyal American. But she was no longer loyal to CCA.

  Then the courtyard footage was over. She stared at the blank television screen.

  “I could have called something to take control—something better than that idiot kid,” Sean was saying.

  Loraine realized that Dr. Helman was watching her closely. “This is a kind of initiation for you, Loraine—almost in the ancient sense of the word. But—the initiated can't always bear the initiation.”

  She had to keep up the facade. She managed a faint smile. “You were right, Doctor,” she said calmly. “It's shocking stuff. But I can...see the potential.”

  “Can you?” Helman looked at her skeptically. “If we could control people with talents like Krasnoff and Soon Mei and Billy, in the outside world...”

  “Anybody's name left off that list?” Sean muttered bitterly.

  Helman pretended not to hear. “We can't control them efficiently, as it stands. We need to establish real, reliable power over them—that's what we were trying to do, through Gulcher...and other possibilities. To control these ShadowComm types—but also so-called spirits that may be of use. You see, those UBEs who could be of use in...in offensive capabilities...they do not cooperate with one another. Or consistently with us. They're rather savage. But we believe they can be forced to cooperate with much greater control. We believe that Gabriel Bleak will give us the means.”