Z 2134

by Platt, Sean

  “Yes, well,” Father said, still smiling, “I’m simply gathering background. But if you’re ready to dig into the details now, then so be it.” He leaned closer to Jonah, inches from his face, then whispered, “Is it true? You murdered your wife?”

  “No,” Jonah shook his head, trying to keep his emotions in check.

  Father’s even tone neither rose nor fell, but seemed to mine glee from Jonah’s discomfort. He shrugged, then, as though genuinely curious said, “Then why would City Watch say you did? Weren’t you found guilty?”

  Jonah tried not to growl.

  “Yes, I was found guilty, but that doesn’t mean I did anything.”

  Father Truth looked puzzled. “Are you saying your own people set you up? The esteemed and honorable bastions of justice, City Watch, would set someone up?”

  Jonah wasn’t sure if he could trust Father until he was certain that he was indeed Underground himself. For all Jonah knew, these were operatives of The State, looking to get information from Jonah through an elaborate ruse that included child savages and a dwarf. Jonah couldn’t give up Duncan or any of the others he worked with; otherwise the entire resistance could fall apart.

  “Yes,” Jonah said. “I was set up.”

  “And why were you set up?”

  Jonah couldn’t answer Father, at least not directly. Same with every other question passed back and forth for the next fifteen minutes. Father Truth’s history of interrogation probably wasn’t too different from Jonah’s. He clearly knew when he’d hit a wall. Eventually Father’s smile fell into a frown that tugged at the corners of his mouth, and he shook his head as if disappointed.

  “Just so you know,” he said, “I never prefer doing things this way.”

  Jonah refused to satisfy the dwarf by asking him which way that was, sure he’d find out soon enough. Sure enough, Father reached inside his pants pocket, withdrew a slender strip of leather folded neatly in half, then opened the small pouch and pulled out a syringe. He pulled off the cap and stuck the needle into a small glass cylinder, withdrawing a clear liquid into the needle.

  Father squeezed the air out of the syringe as he met Jonah’s eyes, smiling widely.

  “What’s that?” Jonah asked, hating himself for wanting to know, and even more for asking.

  Father smiled wider, as though he appreciated Jonah’s inquisitive nature. “Oh, nothing much,” he said. “Just a little something to help loosen your lips. I find that this works so much better than the violent ways that your brethren utilize at City Watch.”

  Before he could protest, Father Truth was an inch away. Jonah felt the tip of the needle pinch the flesh of his neck before he’d even had time to register what Father was doing. The man was either deceptively quick or Jonah’s senses were already dulled by whatever they’d given him while he was passed out.

  “You fucker,” Jonah said, glaring at the man for violating him in such a way.

  “Ah, there’s the Watcher charm I remember so well,” Father said sarcastically as he grabbed a chair and sat in front of Jonah.

  “It shan’t be long now,” Father said, twiddling his fingers and whistling.

  And it wasn’t.

  It was only minutes before Jonah felt instantly better. For the first time since the unthinkable became normal, he was almost happy.

  “Wow, this stuff is good,” Jonah said, smiling, despite his efforts not to.

  Father wasted no time.

  “Why were you set up?”

  Jonah longed to say nothing, and tried keeping his lips pressed together to keep his words inside. However, they fell out anyway, slightly out of order, and slurred.

  “I knew they think,” Jonah said, giggling as he heard his words come out wrong.

  “Knew what?”

  Jonah shook his head, almost violently, wanting to say nothing, though the pleasant tickle inside him swore everything was OK, and that there was no reason to keep things inside any longer. An intoxicating happiness glowed in him, warming him up, making him feel as if Father were his most oldest and trusted friend.

  “Wow, so this good,” Jonah said, looking at Father and feeling tears of joy well up in his eyes.

  Whatever the drug was, he wanted more.

  Father leaned in again, whispering in Jonah’s ear.

  “All you have to do is tell the truth. Tell me.”

  Jonah growled, “People who are you?”

  “Who do you think we are?” Father asked, sitting back in his chair and folding his hands.

  “Underground?” Jonah slurred. “Agents Watcher trying to get me to speak? I dunno,” he shook his head, confused.

  Jonah settled into a long silence as Father Truth sat, rocking back and forth, arms across his chest.

  The dwarf looked like a petulant child, and the image sent Jonah into a sudden fit of hysterics. He tried to stop, worried that Father would think he was laughing because of his physical stature, like many City 6 citizens did when passing the broken rabble hunched in the gnarled shadows of The Dark Quarters.

  Then, as suddenly as the laughter had started, Jonah collapsed into an even deeper fit, laughing so hard that he started to choke before sucking a gallon of air into his lungs and slowly returning his breath to its regular rhythm.

  Jonah was desperate to apologize but failed when he tried. “You’re funny!” was all he managed, lifting his arm and wagging his index finger in the man’s face.

  Father Truth smiled, obviously not taking the insult personally. He cleared his throat and said, “Until later then.”

  Father stood, spun on the balls of his feet, and headed toward the door.

  “Don’t leave me alone,” Jonah screamed, suddenly insecure and afraid, surprised by the flurry of emotions ripping through his brain. He yelled louder as Father Truth’s right hand grabbed the doorknob. “Please, come back,” he cried. “I’m sorry!”

  Father Truth turned around, lightly nodded, then came back and stood in front of Jonah, arms folded across his chest again, still no taller than a hunched and sitting Jonah.

  “Tell me,” Father asked, “Were you a good Watcher?”

  “What do you mean?” Jonah said, confused, happy that he able to string coherent words together, though still feeling the effects of the drug.

  “Watchmen come in all sorts, as you must well know. So, what sort of officer were you? Good? Great? Corrupt? Depraved? Tell me, Jonah.”

  “Good,” he said.

  “Do good cops kill their wives?”

  Jonah scowled, then tried not to yell. “I didn’t kill her.”

  “Of course you didn’t,” Father said, placing a small but patronizing hand on the back of Jonah’s head before patting Jonah like a dog.

  He broke down into the first of several heaving sobs, confused by Father’s kind smile and comforting hand at his back. Then he thought about the man’s tiny hands and couldn’t suppress the fresh giggles following thought.

  Father Truth withdrew his hand.

  “What did you give me?” Jonah asked, furious that he had been drugged and suddenly reminded of the night Keller had picked him up with a six-Watcher unit for backup.

  Father ignored his question, so Jonah repeated it with a scream, anger replacing the euphoria he’d been feeling.

  The dwarf remained calm and said, “I already told you, Jonah, I’ve given you something to loosen your lips. It’s harmless, and the side effects, as I’m sure you’ll agree, are quite pleasant. Now, you answer a question: Do you remember a man named Charles Egan?”

  The name was a far-off, painful memory, but quick to rise to the surface once summoned.

  Jonah said nothing.

  “Allow me to jog your memory,” Father said, uncrossing his arms and putting his hands in his pockets, then rocking harder on the balls of his feet, swaying back and forth like a pendulum, inching closer to Jonah. “Ten years ago, I believe this very month, a man named Charles Egan was found guilty of conspiring against The State. Egan was tried and found guilty,
of course, then sent outside The Wall to play in The Darwin Games, which he eventually won. Does any of this ring a bell for you?”

  It did.

  “Of course, I remember Egan,” Jonah said, smiling as he remembered Keller’s disappointed face when Egan won the Final Battle.

  “Why are you smiling?” Father asked.

  Jonah felt a fresh wave of guilt, barely a flutter, until enough seconds passed to shatter the damn. A sudden surge of memories tore through him, and Jonah remembered how the man, Charles Egan, had been found guilty — based almost entirely on Jonah’s falsified eyewitness account placing him at a known Underground meeting place.

  It felt like a million years since Jonah last thought of the man he helped to set up and send outside The Wall. He wondered how he could have excised something so awful from his mind. From nowhere, Jonah felt a second wave of guilt, closer to a tsunami, as he remembered what happened after Egan won.

  “So you DO remember, then?”

  Jonah nodded.

  “Why did you set Egan up?”

  Though he didn’t want to confess, Jonah’s mouth moved faster than his mind.

  “I was ordered.”

  “By whom?”

  “Keller,” he said. “He said Egan was guilty, but that he’d been too careful. A witness had seen him, but the witness had protected status and couldn’t testify.”

  “Who was the witness?”

  “I don’t know,” Jonah shook his head. “Keller never said. Protected status and all; he didn’t have to.”

  Father stared at Jonah but said nothing for a moment. After he finished studying his face, he asked, “Are you sure?”

  “They didn’t tell me,” Jonah repeated, his voice cracking. He wondered if he would ever be himself again. “I never thought about it, until...”

  “Until when?”

  “Until after the trial, when Egan stared at me as the Watchers were taking him away. The look in his eyes, the anger as he begged and pleaded with me to tell the truth and say it out loud. He screamed his throat raw, swearing that I was a liar. I could hear him screaming even after they led him from the chambers.” Jonah’s voice broke as he started to cry at the memories. “That’s when I first thought that maybe something was wrong.”

  “So, why did you smile when you heard Egan’s name?”

  Jonah smiled again. “Because I remembered him winning The Games, and how pissed Keller was.”

  “And how did you feel when he won?”

  “I thought good on him. He deserved some good news after being set up.”

  “What else did you feel?”

  Jonah was uncertain what Father was asking.

  “I dunno,” he shook his head. “I’m not sure.” He wanted to say more, but his mind wouldn’t make new words.

  “Perhaps relief that the man you set up wasn’t killed in The Games?”

  Jonah nodded.

  “And what about Egan’s family? What happened to them?”

  Jonah shook his head, not wanting to revisit those memories.

  “So you know?”

  Jonah nodded.

  Father held his stare. “That’s all for now,” he said, holding Jonah’s gaze for another half-minute before turning away and heading to the door, even as Jonah screamed behind him, begging him not to go. Jonah wanted to follow, but he was bound, unable to go anywhere.

  “Please,” he cried, wanting anything other than to be left alone, cursing the drugs that turned him so needy. “Please don’t leave, Father!”

  Father’s footsteps faded down the hall until the last lonely echo fell into nothing.

  **

  Jonah wasn’t sure how long it was before he passed out, but euphoria had turned to despair, circling him until he did, forcing him to revisit his every sin and all the pain of the past few months.

  When he woke, he opened his eyes to a girl standing three feet away, staring. He blinked several times to make sure she was really there. It was the girl from the other night, one of the kids who had saved him.

  The one with hate in her eyes.

  He couldn’t speak since his throat was so dry, so he nodded at her hands, filled with bread in one and a cup of something in the other.

  The girl opened her mouth as if to speak, but before she said anything, one of the boys from the night before — the one who had jabbed him — appeared behind her in the doorway.

  “Hurry up,” the boy said.

  The girl turned back, glared, then looked at Jonah.

  “Y’ hungry?” she asked in a weird accent he couldn’t place and was sure he’d never heard before. He wondered, as he had the other night, if it was accent or speech impediment of some sort.

  “Yes,” he managed to push the single word through the desert in his mouth. “Thirstier, though.”

  She brought the cup to his lips, and he swallowed a cool gulp of water. It tasted like the best, cleanest water he’d ever had.

  She then tore a piece from the hunk of bread and shoved it roughly between Jonah’s lips. He slowly chewed, feeling numb, then swallowed and opened his mouth for more. The girl tore another piece of bread of bread from the hunk, her hand now shaking as she brought it closer to his face.

  The boy seemed like he was standing guard behind the girl. Her eyes could barely meet his. Jonah wondered why she was scared.

  “I’m not gonna hurt you,” he said.

  “I know,” she said, her eyes meeting his, burning with the same hate they had the night before when she and the others had saved him. “’Tis you who should be worried about me hurtin’ ya.”

  “Why?” Jonah asked, confused.

  The girl brought the cup of water to Jonah’s mouth before he was ready, spilling it past his lips and down his shirt. He choked as he stared into her eyes, glimmering with hate and maybe glee from his choking.

  “Calla!” the boy called out, shocking the girl to attention.

  She yanked the cup back, spilling more water on Jonah, then retreated, leaving the room without another oddly accented word.

  The boy wasn’t guarding the girl from Jonah, he was guarding Jonah from the girl.

  The boy stood there, glaring.

  “What was that about?” Jonah asked.

  “Her name is Calla Egan. And you’re the reason her mother died,” he said.

  CHAPTER 13 — Anastasia Lovecraft

  Twilight threatened darkness as Ana crept through the forest, too scared to slow her pace but too timid to keep from worrying through every other step.

  She inched her way south as Liam had directed, following the Fire Wall and trying to remember how long it ran, racking her brain as she tried to replay the insufferable song of Kirkman’s annoyingly chipper voice from any one of the previous games, where he loudly announced its length.

  Ana felt a stab of guilt for the many times she had enjoyed watching Darwin, especially the parts with the Fire Wall, which she had found especially exciting. The bright blue at the bottom of the seam, where plumes of screaming orange ascended twenty feet into the air. Ana had to admit, the fire was more alluring when watching from the safety of City streets, the comfort of their flat, or even the horrible wall of monitors in Chimney Rock’s TV hall.

  In person, it was nothing more than a hissing promise of death.

  Ana was wondering if the Fire Wall would ever end when she spotted a swath of shadows in the distance, dark enough to make her certain there wasn’t a flame anywhere near it.

  Ana walked faster, nearing the end of the fire and allowing herself to feel suddenly hopeful. She doubled her speed, almost racing toward the end of the seam, running so fast that she nearly crashed into a cluster of zombies swarming between her and the end of the Fire Wall.

  Ana bit her lip hard enough to draw blood but managed to keep the scream inside her mouth. She dropped to her knees, then looked to the cluster, confident that between her speedy drop, the forest’s many shadows, and the zombies’ near-complete stupidity, she was, and would be, free from their
sight so long as she remained careful.

  After a minute of zombie watching, her confidence doubled. Ana rose to her feet and slowly moved to her right, deeper into the woods, to navigate her way around the zombies. She inched through the darkness a tentative step at a time; careful, scared, and half-certain that every foreign sound was the song of a zombie beside her.

  Well past the zombies, and ready to circle back toward the Fire Wall, Ana was startled into a scream too sudden and fierce to hold inside.

  She brushed by a lone zombie standing as still as a tree, almost as if it had been waiting for her to pass. It growled as she screamed, then thrust its arms out, reaching for her. Its fingertips grazed the edge of her arms as it moaned. Ana screamed, somehow managed to get away, and ran as fast as she could, racing blindly into the belly of the woods and farther away from the Fire Wall, hoping like hell she wouldn’t lose the seam that could lead her back to Liam.

  She kept running until the moaning disappeared behind her. Just as she nearly settled into the comfort of quiet, she heard moaning. It was coming from in front of her, behind her, and to her left.

  Shit, shit.

  She moved farther from the seam and spotted a cave to her right.

  No way I’m going in there. Gotta find a way back.

  Moans suddenly multiplied in number and volume, seeming to come from all four directions, pushing her closer to the cave, even as she desperately searched for anywhere else to go.

  Then she saw zombies moving among the shadows. There were at least a dozen of them surrounding her, save for her only path of escape — into the cave.

  She looked around and thought there was a small chance that the zombies had not yet seen her. She prayed the cave would offer a safe harbor until the threat had cleared. She hunched over, trying to make herself as small as possible as she quietly ran toward the cave, ducking her head and crawling into its wide-open mouth.

  She was inside only a handful of seconds before the whoosh of a Network orb followed behind, throwing bright blue light against the black walls. The color screamed loudly enough to alert the zombies outside the cave.

  The orb would get her killed.