The Controller (The Securus Trilogy Book 2)

by Anthony Maldonado

  I finally exhale. There would have been little hope for me if it really was rabies because even before the world went to war with itself, the only hope for someone with an infected bite was a painful series of vaccinations that had to be administered immediately. We do not have those vaccinations available in Securus. Even if this does not tell me what Taig’s condition is, at least it tells me one thing it is not. I take some antibiotics from the small medical cabinet to the left of the sink to prevent an infection from the human bite before moving on.

  Removing my concern for rabies helps, but it does not relieve me. We still need to figure out what happened. Until then, it would be prudent to limit the people exposed to the scout team for everyone’s safety. Taig’s illness is unlike anything I have seen in Securus before. It makes me think this disease has to be some toxic exposure. The answer to that may be in his Coden. Both of the men carried a Coden in their packs and were instructed to keep logs of what they learned. Before I go to see Oren, it would be helpful to have a better idea of what they were exposed to.

  One of the research workers brings me Taig’s Coden to review. This is the only one they have since Oren’s Coden remains somewhere in the forest. The researchers did not see anything of significance from their review of the data yet. Hopefully I will find something they overlooked. The first entries in Taig’s Coden seem normal, mostly notes about different trees and the topography of the forest. There are no notations of suspicions plants or other exposures. Scrolling further in there is some mention of an animal encounter, but the entry is vague. Skipping toward the end, he writes about the onset of his rashes and the diarrhea. After that, the entries become indecipherable. It looks like their confusion set in before they realized what was happening.

  Before I finish going through the entries in the Coden, an alarm sounds. The pulsating mechanical cry immediately triggers me to sprint down the hallway. The code blue alarm means someone is dying. The alarm comes from the second isolation room. With how Taig reacted to me I do not know if it is Oren or one of the workers the alarm sounds for.

  When I get there, a research worker has Oren on the gurney. He is perched above him, performing CPR. I come in and move to take over the compressions. Seeing him up close, it is clear he has the same affliction as Taig. Oren is covered in the same blisters, and looks even more dehydrated. As the minutes pass, all color drains from his skin, leaving a mottled pattern behind. He is completely limp, with his lifeless eyes fixed on the ceiling.

  Despite our efforts, it soon becomes obvious Oren is past saving. We continue the CPR, but he does not respond. Whatever the cause of these men’s illness, it has already claimed one life. There is no time for guilt or reflection now because I need to make sure this new disease does not take another.

  I go back the observation area outside Taig’s isolation room. He is right where I left him, and thankfully, his vital signs all remain normal. My arms pensively fold in front of me. I take a deep breath while sitting back down.

  As I watch him, Sayda’s voice calls out from behind me. “What happened? You never came to lunch.”

  “Oren died before I could get to him,” I say with another pang of guild attacking me. “I don’t know what’s going on, but Taig seems stable for the time being at least. We need to hurry up and finish the testing to clear him from isolation. He needs to be moved to the ICU.”

  When the blood test results come back, my suspicions are confirmed. There are no signs of infection or of any contagions. Despite the results, we will take nothing for granted. Both Taig and I need to go through a decontamination chamber before going through Securus to the infirmary. I wheel the gurney into the chamber, which is larger than normal for circumstances like these. Holding onto the gurney for support, I activate the system. As the sweet, burning fog clouds my vision and courses through my lungs, my mind again flashes back to the last day of my Death Detail. The image of Trent injecting me with what he thought was The Agent swirls through my head, causing my heart to pound against my chest. I force the vivid memory out of my thoughts as the mist recedes. There’s no point in dwelling on the past, I remind myself.

  I take Taig to the main infirmary and set him up in the intensive care unit with Adara before going to find Rana. Hopefully she will be able to help because this case is getting frustrating quickly. Not knowing the cause of his illness makes it harder to treat Taig. On top of that, it is impossible to send anyone else back into the forest until we know what we are facing. We have been stuck down in this steel cage for too long. Having another thing impede our escape from it is unacceptable. Our people are growing impatient, so another prolonged delay will not be taken well. With Caelum’s review and the imminent danger it brings, we have no room for error. We cannot afford to have any setbacks. If this goes on too long, the fragile hope of our people could be shattered.

  Chapter 3

  I stand at the door to my exam room. The difficult part for me is it now feels like my old exam room, not my exam room. The area looks the same as before, with an orderly arrangement of equipment on the shelves and a single gurney off to the side, nestled against the bare, sterile walls. Inside, Rana faces away from the door. Her long grey hair conceals all but the rims of her glasses.

  I enter the room. “Hey, Rana. You got a minute?”

  As she turns, Rana adjusts her glasses, regarding me carefully. “You don’t look like you’ve been having a good day, Kagen.” I never could hide my uneasiness from her.

  “That’s an understatement.” My attention turns to Jace, who watches us both. When he sees my folded arms combined with an impatient stare, he makes an excuse to leave.

  “What’s going on?” Rana asks as soon as we are alone.

  “We finally heard from Caelum. They definitely don’t plan on making things easy on us.” The details are better kept quiet for now. “That and the scout team came back this morning. One of them already died.”

  “So that was the code blue. What happened?”

  “That’s the worst part. I don’t know what’s going on with them. Oren died before I could even examine him. Taig is relatively stable for the time being. We cleared him with the infection containment protocol. He’s in the ICU with Adara. I was hoping you’d be able to help me make sense of it.”

  Rana leans over in her chair and tilts her head, waiting for me to finish. I go over all the details from the test results, the two men’s volatile behavior, and their subtle physical exam findings. Rana makes me unwrap my wound for her to make sure there are no hidden injuries and redress it. She knows I already did this, but she worries about me as much as my own mother does. After Rana is satisfied with the wound dressing, she looks down for some time, thinking about the men from the scout team. When she looks back up, a perplexed look covers to her face. This does not elevate my souring mood.

  “There’s something this presentation sounds like, but it shouldn’t be possible,” Rana says.

  Impossible is not the answer I wanted to hear. Rana’s uncertainty with Taig’s diagnosis only adds to my own confusion. Seeing my disappointment, she offers me a hint to her thoughts, like she would when I was her understudy. “Ignore everything you know of Taig before he became ill. What would you think if you didn’t know how long he was gone or what kind of supplies he had?”

  I think about her words and clear my mind while imagining seeing him for the first time, as if he just walked into the infirmary. As before, I eliminate possible infections since they do not fit. I keep going back to an environmental exposure, although the sheer volume of unknown possibilities is maddening. Another thought creeps in through the back of my mind. It has been nagging at me, but I was ignoring the condition because it should be impossible. Now that I actually consider the diagnosis, the diarrhea, confusion, skin lesions, and swollen tongue all fit the profile.

  I turn back to Rana, who watches me expectantly. “Could that even happen? They weren’t gone long enough, and it really shouldn’t matter what supplies they had. How could
a severe vitamin deficiency get this severe so quickly?”

  “I don’t claim to know how it happened, only what this looks like,” Rana admits. “I once read reports of similar cases back in the earlier days of Securus when food was scarce. I do know that with recent events, we need to keep an open mind.”

  “You’re right. I’ll run the tests and administer a replacement infusion to see if he responds. Even if that’s the right diagnosis, this is far from over. Something else has to be going on because a response this severe should have taken months, not weeks,” I say, working things out aloud, knowing she already understands.

  The part we both leave unsaid is the fear this disease may somehow be traced back to someone else in Leadership or Caelum. With the callousness they have shown in the past, it is an all too real possibility, and one I do not want to acknowledge.

  *

  After dinner alone in the Leadership hall, I return to my quarters hoping to find Talia. The food was a pleasant surprise with some of the vegetables from the surface garden, but with how this day has turned out, I was in no mood to properly enjoy it. When the door opens, the only thing that greets me is the darkness inside. With a heavy heart, I step inside, leaving the lights off while sitting on the edge of the bed. Not long after, the door opens again, allowing the light back in.

  “How’d you like the dinner menu?” Talia asks as she comes over to give me a hug. A relieved smile breaks though the weariness brought on by the troublesome day.

  “It was the only good surprise of the day.”

  “I was hoping you’d like it.” Talia’s smile disappears when she sees the bandage on my arm. She immediately looks me over for signs of any more injuries. “What happened?”

  “I’m fine,’ I reassure her, pulling my arm from her grasp. I do not want her to see the wound itself because it would only upset her further. Talia has remarkable calmness and grace under stress, but when it comes to me being injured, she loses some of that. She stares at me with stubborn determination, waiting for an explanation. “A delirious patient bit me. It’s no big deal.”

  Talia looks at me, determining whether I am joking or not. When she is satisfied my story was the truth, she looks down and sits on the edge of the bed.

  “What’s on your mind, Talia?” I ask with my head tilted to the side, as if the change in angle would give me more insight.

  “Kagen, I didn’t tell the council everything this morning.” Talia looks up at me with the same subtle agitation she had during the announcements. It appears Caelum’s upcoming review is not the only thing we need to worry about. I reach out to offer my support, holding her hand in mine as she continues. She goes over their whole conversation but my mind becomes fixated on a single sentence. “The Controller is coming to Securus.”

  My head feels too heavy to keep upright. This is not simply another inconvenience forced on us from Caelum. We have never had to deal with anything this dangerous before.

  Afterward we both try to go to sleep. Long after Talia’s breaths deepen in her sleep, I lay in bed with my hands holding the sheets tightly. I attempt in vain to think of something besides Talia’s secret. The only other thoughts that come are almost as bad. Tomorrow we find out if Rana was right about Taig’s illness. If she is, there is no hiding from the likelihood of something deeper going on.

  *

  Moments before my morning alert sounds, I wake up to Talia’s kiss.

  “I set up another meeting today to tell the council about the Controller. Don’t be late,” she says, heading to the door with a confident stride.

  “We need to keep Cale and his cronies from making this worse,” I say while rubbing my tired eyes.

  Talia’s face turns serious as she steps into the hallway. “We think alike. I’m working on that before the meeting.”

  Good, she’s got a plan, I think to myself. I hastily make my way through the morning routine, wanting to get to the infirmary before the Leadership meeting to check on Taig’s results. When I leave my quarters and enter the main hallway, an irritated sigh escapes me when seeing who awaits me. He looks around the corridor, attempting to appear like he is doing something else, but I see him watching from the corner of his eyes. The only thing to do is walk up to him to get it over with.

  “Oh. Hello, Kagen. I didn’t see you there,” Cale says, failing in his attempt to sound surprised. “I was on my way to meet with Talia.”

  I move to the side so he can pass. “Well then, I wouldn’t want to hold you up.”

  “She didn’t say what the meeting was about. Have you two finally come to your senses and are ready to accept our only chance for long term survival?” he asks, ignoring my attempt to avoid him.

  “I have no idea what she wants to speak with you about. And, no, I’m not ready to accept being a slave to Caelum. I can’t understand why you’re so eager to do so.”

  “I’m simply being realistic. What good is freedom if you’re not alive to enjoy it? I’m not the only one who feels this way. Every day, more rational minds are seeing the truth of our situation.” Cale knows I am a logical thinker and appeals to that. He is good at influencing people, but not good enough.

  “The history of mankind is full of people who believed freedom was something worth fighting for, and even dying for. There is a path to freedom. We just have not found the way yet. I would rather give my life trying than concede it to Caelum,” I say.

  “Wishful thinking,” he counters. “History is also full of countless tyrants swallowing peoples’ rights and freedoms, along with the millions of lives they have taken. Win one battle, lose the next. By the way, how’s the scout team doing?”

  “We’re still gathering information.” My jaw clenches. I know he must be fully aware of what happened to Oren. I always had the feeling he wanted the trip to fail, and the reminder that it may have is almost too much to take. Dealing with him would be easier on me if he was bold enough to sabotage the expedition, but he is smarter than that. He knows the one way we could justify removing him from Leadership is if he breaks our laws or shows his loyalty to Caelum over Securus.

  “Well, I must be going before I’m late,” he says with a fabricated smile before continuing down the hall toward Talia’s office.

  I don’t know how she can stand meeting with him, I think to myself while moving on with my morning.

  My mother and my brother, Arluin, wait for me in our breakfast hall. Unlike the night before, today the food is bland and mostly synthetic. After getting my ration and going to their table, a large grin on Arluin’s face greets me.

  “Someone looks happy this morning,” I say while sitting down.

  “He was like this all night,” my mother says, shaking her head at him.

  “So, what’s up?” I ask.

  Arluin can barely answer though his beaming smile. “I’ve been assigned my vocational path. No more general education for me.”

  “And?” I say, prodding him to finish.

  “I’m going to the Electronics Department, and not in the manufacturing division. I’m gonna be in the developmental section.”

  “Well, congratulations lil’ bro,” I tell him with a firm smack on his shoulder. That was the assignment he wanted, and I know he has been lobbying the aptitude testers for it. They probably broke down under his relentless badgering.

  He goes on all through breakfast about how his role will give him the chance to find new ways to impact the lives of our people and help us as we escape our underground confines. It turns out, in his spare time he has been learning advanced electronics development and programming on his own to get a head start. We both like solving complex puzzles, except his will be mechanical while mine are biological. I do not tell him, but his new role could prove to be useful to me. It would be helpful to have someone in Developmental Electronics I implicitly trust.

  After breakfast, I head straight to the infirmary, where Rana is alone watching Taig. His skin appears hardened and cracked. Some of the lesions have turned black
from bleeding beneath the skin. Rana coats the ruptured bullae with an antibiotic cream to prevent an infection before bandaging them. Taig remains oblivious to all of this since he is still sedated.

  “Good morning,” Rana says when she sees me. “We have the results. Taig’s vitamin B3 levels were practically nonexistent. I’m giving the replacement along with some nutrient supplementation through the nasogastric tube.”

  I take a deep breath. “So that was it. Now things get even harder.”

  Rana goes to start her day, leaving me with Taig until Adara arrives. There is enough time to collect a few more samples for follow up testing. I am anxious to hear his story. With his Coden’s logs being incomplete, he may be able to give us more clues to his illness as well as provide the information we need for the expansion settlement. The problem is, with the abnormal progression of his disease, I have no way to know how long it will take for him to improve.

  It is almost time for the Leadership meeting by the time Adara arrives. I give her the new samples to send to the Research Department before excusing myself to the meeting. When I arrive, Talia is talking to a group in the corner of the room. Nyree sits in our usual spot in the back, the scowl on her face tells me she is as happy as usual to be here. On my way to join her, I notice Cale sitting quietly nearby. My legs almost stop in mid-stride from the surprise of his unusual demeanor. I have never seen him silent before one of these meetings.

  “All these people ever do is bicker about useless details,” Nyree says to me as I sit down.

  “Well, that might change when they hear what happened,” I whisper, thinking of Talia’s words from last night.

  She looks at me with a raised eyebrow, waiting for more information. I hold my tongue, knowing it is better to let Talia tell the story. When the group settles down, Talia walks to the front podium. I feel the nervous anticipation through the room. After yesterday’s meeting, no one knows what will come next. Even knowing how well Talia handles the unexpected, it is surprising to see how calm and in control she looks. Especially with the crisis she is about to announce. Talia definitely takes after her father that way. Most people would break under this kind of pressure, but not her.