“I want to talk to you,” Tate says. For the first time she sounds almost evil, and I’m suddenly reminded how little trouble I used to have equating her with her father.
“If I tell you anything I could lose my job.”
“You could lose much more than your job,” Tate says. I hear the sharp click of a cocking mechanism, and raise my eyebrows. Only very old weapons need to be cocked; most modern ones have built in components that perform the same action when the trigger is pulled. Where would Tate get such an antique, and in working order? I look at Enoch once more, but he simply shakes his head.
“You’re the Doctor’s daughter,” the scientist says, her voice an odd mix of pleading and scornful. “You wouldn’t hurt me.”
“I would,” Tate insists, her voice rising. “And your family as well. So stop testing me.”
I shudder, pulling my arms around my waist, fingers still drumming a sharp tattoo. Tap tap tap tap tap …
“Fine,” the woman says, sounding jumpier by the moment. “Fine. Just lower the gun.”
“Hey!” Tate snaps suddenly. “Hands up! Away from that alarm!”
“All right, all right! Just, please, put it down. What do you want to know?”
“Start with your name.”
“Vaughn. My name is Catherine Vaughn.”
“All right, Catherine. Explain why people in this City are convinced that they are being kidnapped and copies made of them.”
“Because – because they are,” Vaughn responds hesitantly.
“No. Tell me what’s going on. I want to know what the endgame is.”
“The endgame? I’m sorry, even I can’t tell you that. Perhaps you should ask your father about all of this.”
“You know more than you’re letting on,” Tate ignores her, “but so do I. I know you want to create bodies without souls, build yourself some inhuman army of drones. I just want to know how you’re doing it, how close you are to accomplishing your goal.”
After another long pause, Vaughn sighs. “Perhaps it won’t surprise you to know that we’ve had some difficulty with this process.”
Tate waits.
“We started almost a hundred years ago, with some good progress, but the project was abandoned during some … upheaval.”
“The second war, I know. But you’ve started it again. When?”
“Only a few years ago. Under the direction of … ”
“My father.”
“Y – yes.” The woman sounds uncomfortable, perhaps pondering what will happen to her when her boss learns she’s spilled everything to his daughter. I wonder how many security cameras are in there; at least they don’t have audio. I hope.
“But is isn’t working. Why?”
“It’s very hard to keep a soul from a living body. We can make clones easily enough, but enabling them to do useful tasks without a human spirit has thus far proven impossible. They’re either entirely lifeless, or they are … really alive.”
“Why is that a bad thing?”
“I don’t know,” Vaughn responds wearily. “My mandate is to create a responsive body without a will or a mind. I work within the parameters given me.”
She doesn’t know about Terminus. Enoch’s eyes find mine, and I can tell he’s come to the same conclusion.
“So does Doctor Black know about it then?” I whisper in his ear. He shrugs, flapping his hand at me to keep me quiet.
“What was that noise?” Vaughn asks, sounding frightened and suspicious.
“I have no idea,” Tate says coldly, but I hear the reproach in her voice. Enoch looks at me, and I flush with chagrin. “Keep talking, Catherine Vaughn.”
“I really don’t think – ”
“Keep. Talking.”
“Okay, fine. We first tried to make duplicates, using a simple transfer process whereby we created a clone, then placed a facsimile of the original’s thoughts and memories in the new body.”
Amy.
“Why? What was the point?”
“We were testing a theory. If someone was ‘born’ full-grown, with thoughts, memories, hopes and fears intact, downloaded directly from their original, what need would there be for a soul? We thought we could trick the process, and fill the emptiness with our own directives.”
“I didn’t work.”
“No. There was no emptiness, no hole. They were strange, to be sure. Talked like children, seemed confused, but they weren’t soulless.”
“So that didn’t work, and now you have all these worthless copies.” I hear Tate’s disgust at this misuse of real people, real souls. “Then what?”
“We disposed of the bodies. The ones we didn’t have any use for.”
The answer makes me want to cry. I think achingly of Amy’s still form lying on the metal slats, knowing something was wrong with her but unable to figure out what. Knowing she loved me even though she barely recognized me.
“What else?” Tate asks coldly.
“We tried making the bodies imperfect. Giving them design flaws, if you will.”
“Why would that work?” Tate asks skeptically. “People are born lame or imperfect all the time.”
“Well, that’s the thing,” the scientist says. “Born. Most souls choose their hosts the moment they are born into this world, right? So maybe that means they didn’t know the body wasn’t perfect, because the imperfection hadn’t developed yet. But by then they were stuck with it.”
“That’s an appalling thing to say,” Tate exclaims, losing some of her normal composure. I recall suddenly that her little brother has a limp. “Disabilities don’t make people soulless. How could you possibly think it would work?”
“I didn’t think it up,” Vaughn replies. “Besides, it had a precedent.”
“Yeah? What?”
“The Home Guard.”
Tate is silent for a long moment. My heart hammers, thinking of Pip. What had they done to him? “Explain,” she says finally.
“I shouldn’t be telling you this,” Vaughn says doubtfully, almost to herself.
“Too bad.” I hear her adjust something, probably her shooting arm.
“The – the Marks,” Vaughn says hurriedly, anxious anew. “When bodies are Marked before they’re awoken, souls never settle in them.”
“What? So that’s what happens to children when they’re taken? They … lose their souls?”
“No. You misunderstand me. They don’t lose their souls. Once you have one, you can’t lose it until you die. The Mark doesn’t kill the soul, it contorts it, changes it. It becomes willing to do terrible things, things normal people find horrific. Only one in millions is actually born like that … but the Mark does it every time. To anyone. It would do it to you,” she says to Tate, seeming to find some pleasure in that.
“Fantastic,” Tate mutters. I wonder if the same chill is running up her spine as mine. Enoch looks faintly ill. “Are there different Marks?” she asks then, no doubt thinking of the poor, twisted children in her father’s private lab.
“Different Marks?” Vaughn sounds genuinely puzzled.
“Never mind,” Tate amends. “So then, what happens when you Mark a body before it’s … ”
“Animated?”
“Yes.”
“Nothing. It never comes to life, must be deemed unfit for habitation. The bodies have to be disposed of.”
“Shouldn’t that be a sign?” Tate demands. “A sign that the Marks aren’t meant to be used?”
“A sign?” The voice, though still tense, sounds almost amused now. “From whom?”
“I don’t care from whom,” Tate raps. “If there is a higher power, it clearly disagrees with what you’re doing.”
“Maybe. I don’t know.”
Tate sighs audibly. “We’re getting off track. So Marks don’t work either, but you still have bodies here. I know you’re close to your goal. How?”
“It’s very simple,” Vaughn answers. “All you have to do is convince the body it’s dead. If our research has ta
ught us anything, it’s that souls have one criterion: life.”
There is a long pause. “I don’t understand.”
“We animate a body. Then, mere milliseconds later, we kill it. Drowning, poison, electrocution, it doesn’t matter. Anything to end the life.”
“And that works?” Tate sounds horrified.
“Not yet. But the results have been promising.”
“But how does that accomplish anything? You’ve kept a soul from its body, but the body is dead.”
“For now. We’ve had some luck with rapid resuscitations. The outcome is a living body, but a totally blank mind. It dies quickly, but we’re working on that.”
“You really are almost there,” Tate breathes, sounding almost lost.
“Yes.”
“So what about these bodies?” Tate asks, rustling her earpiece so that the power pack spits a rush of static. “Who are they?”
But the only response is the metallic shriek of an alarm.
TWENTY-THREE
Even worse than the alarm is the subsequent sound of a gunshot.
Immediately I’m up, wrenching the door open once more and pounding up the stairs on the other side.
“Naiya, no!” Enoch’s voice follows me into the stairwell.
“What do you mean, no?” Still running, I can’t even keep my voice down.
“I’ll go,” he insists. “Stay here.”
“Don’t be an idiot! We’re wasting time!”
Enoch follows me up the stairs, grabbing my arm. “Naiya, stay. I’ll go. Please.”
“No.” I shake him off as we reach the landing. “I’m not leaving her, and I’m not letting you go in alone!”
“If you die – ”
“I’m the only reason we aren’t dead yet! You, Pip, even Tate! I didn’t ask for this, but I am the best chance she has, and you too! Now shut up.”
I turn around, catching only a faint glimpse of his expression: mutiny, fear and something else. No time to think about it.
We dart up the next set of stairs together, him breathlessly reading out the turns as we approach each corner or intersection of the building. We take the night sentry by surprise, and his reaction time is slow. Before he can reach underneath his desk to retrieve a weapon or trigger a second alarm, Enoch raps him soundly on the temple with the butt of his knife. He crumples without a sound. Mercifully, there are still no guards inside the building.
I watch the numbers next to each door tick upward. It feels like we’ve run for a century, but finally I catch sight of the brushed steel placard that announces Lab 217. I reach for the metal handle and yank, receiving nothing but a nasty shock for my efforts.
“It’s locked,” Enoch pants. “We don’t have the keycard.”
With a sinking feeling, I realize he’s right: Tate has it, and she’s inside. I begin to bang on the door.
“Tate!” I scream, no longer caring who might hear. The alarm is loud enough to drown me out anyway. “Tate!”
I wrench the knife out of my belt, unsure what I plan to do with it. Swinging outward suddenly, the door practically bowls me over.
“Naiya!”
“Thank goodness! I heard a gunshot!”
“Where’s that scientist?” Enoch demands. “Vaughn?”
“Tied her up. I only got her in the shoulder, don’t worry. Bandaged her up, gave her a strong dose of those meds; she won’t remember anything. Let’s get out of here.”
“Right.” As I turn to go, the true strangeness of the situation crashes over me like a wave. “Wait, who are all these people?”
Behind her, clustered in the doorway with varying expressions of confusion and terror, are at least twenty-five people, mostly children. They look ragged and tired, but not empty. Not Hollow.
“I couldn’t just leave them,” Tate explains. “They were in the next room. I didn’t see them at first.”
“What about the others? The bodies?”
“I don’t know,” she says. “They didn’t move. Just … extras, I guess. But these are alive, even if they’re a little drugged. We’ve got to take them with us.”
“Naiya!” A slim form pushes her way to the front of the throng, pulling a smaller shape with her.
It’s Chen.
“What are you doing here?” I ask in disbelief, shouting over the alarm.
“My father,” she explains tearfully, clutching what I now recognize to be her little sister Biyu to her side. “He Disappeared and a few days afterward they – ”
“We’ll have time for this later,” Enoch says roughly. “Let’s go.”
She nods, her face an odd mixture of fear and chagrin. We turn in unison, running down the hall. Though I’ve never seen most of these people before in my life, they follow willingly. Anything must be preferable to where they’ve been up till now.
Running flat out, Tate leads us fearlessly through the turns. I keep waiting for guards to descend on us, but they don’t. No one comes. The night watchman is still out cold. She sprints behind his desk, pulling up his computer screen and tapping desperately at the keys.
“Take them and go,” she orders me.
I balk, paralyzed by indecision. Enoch turns me around bodily and shoves me down the hall the way we came in. From here, I know, it’s only another few turns.
“Left, left, right,” he shouts in my ear. Then, looking at the small crowd, he makes a sweeping gesture with both arms. “Go with her!”
Knowing Enoch won’t budge, I nod encouragingly to them, and start off down the hall once more. They follow, and after a moment the alarm shuts off. Luckily everyone is young and lithe, and we’re able to move quickly. In less time than I would have thought, we’re through the corridors, down several flights of stairs and spilling once more into huge culvert, which now has almost six inches of water gurgling through it.
I pull my old power pack from my jacket, flipping open the screen to produce a faint greenish glow. Pulling the door closed, I turn toward the small assembly, feeling overwhelmed.
“What are we supposed to do?” someone asks, panicked.
“Hush,” I order harshly. “Does anyone know how to use a weapon?”
A young man, looking uncertain, wades toward me, limping slightly. His feet are bare, and in the cold water must be freezing. He doesn’t complain, just says softly, “I do.”
I hand him my spare blade, gesturing toward the small cement stoop, and he climbs up on it with me. Together we wait, piteously armed against whatever might come through it.
After what seems like an eternity, the door bangs open once more. But it is only Tate and Enoch, both looking harried. Quickly they step apart.
It takes me a second to realize they were holding hands.
* * * * *
Exhaustion weighs on my eyelids, making them droop and itch. I rub them forcefully with both fists, trying to clear my vision, but it’s no use. Instead I take a halfhearted bite of a salted fish sandwich, trying not to think about the precipitous drop in our food supplies.
“I don’t see why we shouldn’t make another run on the food dispensaries,” Enoch says grouchily. I don’t blame him: We’re eating the last of our food now, and it was only yesterday we made our raid.
I glance over my shoulder, where our new “recruits” are scattered around in the gloom of an abandoned park on Deck 2’s western edge. In lieu of the lush green that decorates the parks below, there is an ornate bronze tree at the edge of the landing, silhouetted against the dawn. Huddled together, they make a paltry meal of our rations. I watch affectionately as Chen braids Biyu’s hair, her knees protectively on either side of her little sister.
“Stealing food for thirty people is a very different proposition than stealing it for three,” Tate says evenly. She licks her fingers, taking a swig of her canteen and not looking at Enoch. There is nothing to betray their earlier behavior, nothing that hints at what is really going on.
Maybe they just didn’t want to get separated.
But the imag
e sticks in my mind like an arrow.
“We can’t steal enough to make it worth it. We have to leave,” I avoid Enoch’s eyes as well, turning to Tate instead. “Especially if your father knows we were in his lab.”
“He might not,” she shrugs, setting her canteen down and rewinding her scarf about her neck. “I scrubbed the videos and dosed both the scientist and the guard. I’m not sure what he’ll make of the fact that an entire lab’s worth of subjects have run off, but he may not connect the dots.”
“So why didn’t the guards show up sooner?”
She considers. “We weren’t in there for that long. Even by aircar, it was going to take them several minutes, and I made Vaughn code the incident as a false alarm. It still takes an administrator to shut it off, but at that point they don’t rush.”
“You’re useful,” I say lightly.
“Not as useful as I ought to be,” she grimaces. “I can’t believe I looked away for even a second, gave her the opportunity to pull that alarm. I just wanted to know about those bodies. Stupid.”
I open my mouth to reassure her, but Enoch beats me to it. “It’s not your fault,” he says quickly. “It took guts to talk to her for so long.”
“And to shoot her,” I say, a little too acerbically.
Tate looks at me coolly, as if to say, You’re going to judge me? She says nothing, though.
“Anyway,” I say hastily. “Where’d you get a gun?”
“It was my father’s,” she says, pulling it out and showing us. It is an old-fashioned revolver, made of dark metal with a mother-of-pearl handle. I touch it delicately, like a bomb.
“Wow. I’ve never seen one of those.”
“Me neither,” Enoch adds, taking it. “Where did you get the bullets?”
“He had them made specially,” she shrugs. “Some Collector found the gun. That’s where my father got it, and not too long ago. Maybe your papa sold it to him.”
She directs the words at both of us, and I’m uncomfortably reminded how many people think of Enoch and I as siblings.
Including Enoch.
“So,” I sigh, wanting to change the subject. “Guess it’s time to call it. Mission’s over, right?”
Enoch looks thoughtful, reaching into his jacket and pulling out a small flash drive. Tate and I both watch as he twirls it absently in his fingers. “Well, we know what the Hollow are, but that they haven’t really been created yet. We know what Terminus is, but not how to get to it. We have a computer program we can’t access, but that will tell us where the Portal is if we can open it. The world’s going to hell in a handbasket, but we can’t save it. Am I missing anything?”
Broken Moon Page 22