by Tiffany Tsao
“So . . . what are you going to do with me?” asked Murgatroyd in a small voice.
Suddenly Rosalyn broke into a fit of maniacal laughter. She had left her seat without anyone noticing and was now standing next to one of the many large covered objects in the room. Whisking away the white sheet with her left hand, she answered Murgatroyd’s question: “We shall be conducting . . . scientific tests!”
The apparatus she unveiled was a small monitor and a keyboard on a rolling plastic trolley.
“What does that do?” squeaked Murgatroyd.
“It runs . . . tests,” said Rosalyn ominously before striding to another white sheet and whisking that one away too. Beneath it was a gurney with thick brown leather straps duct-taped to where a patient’s ankles, waist, and wrists would presumably go.
“And that?” squeaked Murgatroyd.
“It holds you in place!” replied Rosalyn.
She continued to dart around the room, unveiling one piece of equipment after another: a small cart with an assortment of rusty scalpels and syringes on it, two wooden tables lined with empty beakers and test tubes, a rolling IV drip stand complete with IV bag, a weighing scale, an enormous metal box covered in buttons and dials, and a bulky computer monitor.
Ann squinted at a sticker on the first apparatus. “LifeTech electrocardiogram machine.”
For monitoring his heart rate?
“Using this state-of-the-art equipment,” announced Hans, “we will study Murgatroyd and create a serum from his CNA—”
“DNA,” corrected Rosalyn.
“. . . DNA that will imbue us with the ability he once had to live in the Known World despite his oddfittingness.”
Murgatroyd quivered in fear. Ann, on the other hand, looked somewhat puzzled. “So, this serum you want to get from Murgatroyd: How exactly are you going to create it?”
Rosalyn scoffed at the stupidity of this question. She pointed again at the first apparatus. “As I said, we have this handy-dandy machine! Not to mention those! And those!” She gestured at the IV drip and the weighing scale.
This was followed by complete silence. This was the first time Rosalyn had presented the newly completed lab to her fellow Anti-Questians, and for almost all of them, this silence was indicative of awe. Pierre, on the other hand, sighed and rubbed his hand over his face.
“Oh dear,” he murmured.
“You have no idea what you’re doing, do you?” asked Ann.
Rosalyn smiled. “I’m afraid we do.” She whipped out something from the inner pocket of her lab coat and tossed it at Ann’s feet. Ann looked at it. It was a tattered, creased comic book. On the cover was an evil scientist, also in a white lab coat, cackling.
“Nutmeg’s right,” murmured Ann. “You’re insane.”
Rosalyn’s grin only became more demented. “That’s exactly what you’re supposed to say!” she said, bending down to retrieve the book. She flipped to a page in the middle and pointed at a scene where the hero was strapped to a gurney like the one near them now. In fact, the room they were in was almost a spitting image of the lab in the book.
“See?” said Rosalyn, stabbing energetically at one of the hero’s speech bubbles and reading it out loud: “‘You’re insane.’”
She turned to Hans and flashed him a thumbs-up. “Everything is going according to plan!” she crowed.
“Will it hurt?” asked Murgatroyd, still ignorant of his captors’ ignorance.
“Probably,” said Rosalyn. “But we’ll try our best to keep you comfortable.”
Murgatroyd swallowed. “If you let the others go, I promise I’ll cooperate.”
“Out of the question for Ann,” declared Hans, “but we will give her a choice.”
“A choice,” Ann repeated wearily.
“Yes. Join us. Or die.”
“Join you or die,” echoed Ann.
“Stop repeating what I say!”
“What you say?” asked Ann innocently before breaking into a low laugh—one that made Murgatroyd’s hair stand on end. “Now, why would I ever choose to join you?”
Hans shook his head in dismay. “Haven’t you been listening to a word I’ve said? The Quest is immoral, unethical. It has to be stopped. Are you so blind? Are your ears so stopped up with all the lies the One’s been feeding you that you can’t recognize the truth when it hits you in the face?”
Ann considered these words. “I feel,” she said finally, “like you’re mixing your metaphors.”
Hans approached her and raised his hand, but Ann refused to flinch.
“Don’t think I don’t know all about you too, An An Hsu,” he hissed, reaching for her chin and holding it firmly in his left hand.
“Stop it!” cried Murgatroyd and Nutmeg at the same time.
Carefully, almost tenderly, Hans reached around Ann’s head and removed the band that held Ann’s eye patch in place. Lifting it off her head as if it were a crown, he flung it aside and grinned.
Murgatroyd had never seen Ann without her patch on. She only ever took it off when she went to sleep, and because of this, out of respect, Murgatroyd had always avoided looking at her while she slept. But now, like everyone else in the room, he stared—at the whorls of scar tissue, at the partially closed lid, at the moist pink recess where the eye should have been.
“Stop it!” he screamed, stamping his feet.
“But I’m not finished,” said Hans, petulant—a child being told no. With his right hand, he forced her left eye open using his middle finger and thumb. She was struggling now, trying with all her might to turn her head away.
“Don’t move,” Hans counselled. “Or I might do some real damage.”
Continuing to hold her eye open, he stroked the eyeball gently with his index finger. “I’ve never worn contact lenses before . . . How does this—aha!”
Sweeping his thumb up from the lower lid, across the eyeball, towards his forefinger, he made a pinching motion, and the lens popped out. Ann screamed, though more from shock than pain. Flicking the lens away onto the floor, Hans took a step back.
“There we go. Isn’t that better? No need to hide behind patches or coloured contacts anymore. Doesn’t it feel good to be you?”
“You’re the one living a lie,” growled Ann.
“Oh really? Then why don’t we talk about your mother?”
The wound inflicted by the dream was still fresh. Ann was silent.
Hans continued. “Life with her must have been hell for you to want to leave so badly. She must have hated you, and you must have hated her.”
Ann still remained silent.
“But why speculate when we can find out? After all, you have a file. Every Oddfit does. And it’s easy to find someone’s file if one takes the trouble.”
Hans reached into the inner pocket of his jacket and produced a neatly folded sheet of paper. “Photocopy courtesy of Pierre. Now, you had the honour of being recruited by the One herself, didn’t you? Let’s see what she had to say about her new protégé. ‘Name: An An. Surname: Hsu. Entered in pageants and enrolled in school under the first name “Ann.” Degree of oddfittingness at time of discovery: high. Signs of adaptation: nascent. Other attributes: extremely bright with exceptional physical coordination and unparalleled self-discipline’ . . . blah blah blah . . . Ah, here’s the good part.” He paused for effect. “‘Mother loves her excessively. Loves mother excessively in return.’”
He lowered the sheet.
“The One has a way with words, doesn’t she? Excessive. As if love were a bad thing. But the One has always been a bit inhuman, a bit mechanical, hasn’t she?” He peered into Ann’s face. “And you swapped your loving mother for her?”
“Shut up,” Ann muttered. But Hans’s words had clearly hit their mark. Ann’s face, so bare without its patch—so naked and exposed—shone grief as a full moon shines its light. But still, Hans pressed on.
“And you still believe in the Quest? Think about it. What if you had remained in the Known World? You would h
ave adapted eventually, wouldn’t you? Life wouldn’t have been so bad. And you wouldn’t have had to leave her. The mommy you loved. The mommy who loved you. Do you really believe,” he said scornfully, “that being part of the Quest is better than having that kind of love? Do you really think the Quest is worth what your departure did to her?”
“What would you know about that?” muttered Ann.
“A lot. Would you like me to tell you?”
Ann glanced up sharply. “Tell me what?”
“How your mother fared after you left. I realize you took great pains to forget about her after you joined the Quest, but while you were off with your new mother on all sorts of magical, exciting adventures, weren’t you ever the least bit curious about how your real mother was?”
He let a second go by, then five more for good measure. “After you left, she went mad. Completely stark raving mad. Can you blame her? You were her whole world. Imagine losing your whole world. Being a key suspect in your murder didn’t help either.”
Ann’s heart stopped. “You’re lying,” she gasped. “And I wasn’t murdered.”
“Of course you weren’t. But think about it: a hysterical woman, no witnesses, holding a pair of bloody scissors and her daughter’s eyeball, raving about someone who took her little girl away . . .”
“I had to leave . . .”
“Did you? Did you really? Now think. If you’d just endured things for a little while longer, nobody would have had to get hurt. I mean, it’s all well and good for you. All you lost was an eye. But your poor mother—alone, confused, the one person in the world she loved most snatched from her . . .” And here, Hans began to weep—genuinely weep. Many of the Anti-Questians were also shedding tears. “Don’t you see, Ann? How much pain the Quest has caused? How much sorrow? Can’t you see that it has to end?”
He grabbed her by the shoulders and gazed earnestly into her face. “You can help us, Ann. You’re one of us. You’re a victim. You can help us prevent the Quest from ruining any more lives.”
But all Ann could do was stare dully back.
“I had to leave . . . ,” she repeated.
“I’ll give you a bit more time to think it over,” said Hans, patting her on the cheek.
“You bully,” yelled Nutmeg.
Hans wheeled around. “Ah, yes. I almost forgot about you. I’ve made my decision. You’ll have to go.”
“No!” sobbed Murgatroyd.
Benn turned pale. “What?” he exclaimed, rising to his feet.
“It’s only fair,” said Hans calmly.
“Fair how?” asked Benn. “What are you talking about?”
“You killed Yusuf—the person who would have given this project the greatest chance of success,” Hans reasoned. “I mean, we’ll try to make a go of it with Murgatroyd, but as Ann said, he’s pretty much just a regular Oddfit now. It only seems right for us to take someone important away from you.”
Benn drew his club. At the same time, Pierre drew his, along with a knife.
“Why are you with them?” Nutmeg asked Pierre. “You know they’re crazy. I saw the look on your face when that woman was telling us about the lab equipment.”
“Of course I know they’re crazy,” said Pierre. “But it doesn’t make their mission any less right.”
“Sorry about all this, Nutmeg,” Benn muttered, raising his club. For a moment it looked as if he were about to charge. Then, all of a sudden, he lowered his weapon. “But this is the best chance I have of protecting our people.”
Nutmeg glared at him, eyes filled with scorn. “You have no idea what’s best for ‘our people,’” she sneered.
So this is it, Murgatroyd thought sadly as he watched the lives of his friends and himself crumble around him. This is how it will end.
He had been feeling queasy for some time now, ever since that awful man had removed Ann’s eye patch. And that nausea was now increasing with each passing second. It reminded him of how he used to feel when he had just learned how to transfer—the stomach churning, the mind swimming, the heart aching. He wondered if he might still be able to plead with the Anti-Questians to spare Nutmeg’s life. He wondered if he might be able to somehow convince Ann to accept Hans’s offer, or at least pretend to, so that she could stay alive. With regard to his own welfare, he harboured no hope whatsoever. If they do make a serum from me, at least I’ll be useful, he thought, trying to cheer himself up. Needless to say, this attempt failed spectacularly, but before he could take another stab at thinking positively, a miracle happened. Well, not exactly a miracle. Ann.
Ann happened. Like everyone else in the room, Murgatroyd had assumed that Hans had broken Ann—squashed her spirit between his fingers and wiped the remnants on his trouser leg. To all appearances, he had. For the past few minutes, Ann had been sitting there silent and limp, her gaze downcast. In the absence of her eye patch, her face seemed so vulnerable it was painful to behold. But appearances were always misleading when it came to perceiving what was really going on with Ann—when it came to comprehending the black, viscous mass that constituted her inner life and seethed like boiling tar.
No, Ann was not broken. On the contrary, rage was surging through every artery and vein—the same rage that had driven her to disfigure herself so many years ago. The only other time she had experienced anything close was when she had been trying to convince the One and the Other that Murgatroyd needed rescuing from the Known World. But even that anger had been nothing compared to that first time, and nothing compared to what was coursing through her body now. Without a word and with barely a movement, Ann broke free of her bonds as easily as if they had been single strands of thread. She felled Pierre with a flying kick to the small of his back and picked up his knife and his club. Then she let herself go.
She was not angry at the Anti-Quest per se. Or rather, she was, but they were not the main reason for her fury. Hers was a fury at the cruelty of everything—the Worlds, fate, circumstance, history—and how all these things could conspire to do so much wrong to herself and her mother, to Yusuf and Nutmeg, to Murgatroyd, and even to some extent to Hans and the other Anti-Questians. Nutmeg claimed the one element pervading all existence was pain. At that moment she believed it and felt how terrible it was. The universe seemed to her nothing but an immense, all-encompassing sadist, pressing down on every individual that populated it with its colossal cosmic thumb, inflicting suffering on everyone, no matter what course they chose or how desperately they tried to escape.
And because she could not harm the universe, because she could not plunge her knife into it or break its neck or slash open its belly or smash in its skull, she applied herself instead to her captors.
Murgatroyd and Nutmeg could only watch in horror as they witnessed Ann in full battle frenzy. Rosalyn was dead at the end of it, and Martin—and Benn as well, his right arm nearly severed, his head a shapeless pulpy mass. The rest were screaming in pain, except for Hans. His left leg was bent at an impossible angle, but he was silent as Ann pressed the rusty scalpel against the flesh of his neck.
“Last words?” Ann snarled.
Hans stared at her, wild eyed. “It can’t be.”
“What can’t be?”
“The good guys are supposed to win. The bad guys are supposed to lose.”
At this, Ann almost dropped the scalpel, but just as quickly, she regained her grip. “Don’t you get it?” she hissed. “You’re the bad guys.”
“Impossible,” whispered Hans.
“The person who designed your lab modelled it on an evil scientist’s lair!”
Hans wasn’t listening. His eyes darted about the room, taking in the ruins, taking in the slaughter. He spoke again. “Let us die.”
“I will if you keep talking,” said Ann.
But Hans shook his head, and a thin line materialized on his neck just beneath the blade, as harmless looking as the errant swipe of a red pen. “No, let us go home to die. There is nothing left for us here. Murgatroyd was our last hope.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Let us go home,” he repeated, pointing somewhere behind Ann.
Murgatroyd thought he understood. “Ann, I think he means the Known World.”
Ann drew the blade away from the skin ever so slightly, and Hans nodded.
“Fine,” she said after some contemplation.
“But you can’t!” exclaimed Murgatroyd, to even his surprise. “You said it yourself. The Known World will react immediately. It will kill you!”
“Yes,” said Hans wearily. “That’s the point.”
Hans gazed into the eyes of the person whom he had pinned so much hope on and in whom Yusuf had placed so much faith and trust. And as Murgatroyd met that gaze, the nausea he had been feeling for some time now spiked.
“I just want to go home,” Hans insisted again. And to Murgatroyd’s astonishment, Hans shattered into pieces. Murgatroyd blinked. No, that wasn’t what happened. Hans hadn’t broken apart—he had multiplied. There were hundreds of him, no, thousands. And yet there was only one. It was like that day long ago when Ann had first taught him how to access the More Known World and the field they were sitting in unfolded before his eyes. Hans was unfolded. Unfurled. And at the core of his multiple selves, which were arranged in a circular pattern like petals on a rose, was a little boy, plump cheeked and big eyed, in a blue romper, clutching a plush dog toy.
“Home,” the boy said plaintively. And the sight made Murgatroyd so sad that tears began to roll down his cheeks.
Yusuf had been mostly right about Murgatroyd. And the brief, seemingly contentless message he had written to Murgatroyd in his last seconds of life actually did convey the main gist of what he would have told him directly if given the chance: “Love.” For it was this capacity for unconditional and complete love that Yusuf had correctly discerned in eight-year-old Murgatroyd, and it was this capacity that had convinced the Known World to tolerate Murgatroyd’s presence for so long, despite his unabatedly high levels of oddfittingness.
It was also this capacity that Yusuf believed would bring healing to those whom the Quest had inadvertently harmed: those like the Anti-Questians, and others as well, including Questians who weren’t fully aware of the damage done to them—like Ann and the Other, not to mention the One. Yusuf’s plan had been this: in conjunction with the ability to perceive the extent of others’ pain, which Murgatroyd would learn from another extraordinary young child named Nutmeg, Murgatroyd’s compassion would be able to unfold, of all things, human beings—those incomparably dense organisms whose countless complexities and layers Yusuf sensed whenever transferring someone from one Territory to another, but which otherwise remained as impenetrable to him as the contents of a book whose pages had been glued shut. In this sense, small, unassuming Murgatroyd would be the ultimate Oddfit—capable of doing to people what Oddfits did to Territories, opening up their nooks and crannies and seeing all facets of the human heart.