by Leigh Lane
George scratched his head. “Maybe because you’re a deviant?” he guessed with a shrug.
“Fine. Okay.” The deviant stood. “I guess we’re done, then?”
George stayed where he was. “Would you be able to identify any of the other patients?”
“Most of them,” the deviant said, feeling the stubble along his chin.
“Do you remember a woman named Virginia?”
The deviant nodded. “Around your age. Pretty features. I remember her.”
George rolled his eyes. “Why don’t you tell me something about her that you can’t just pull out of your ass?”
The deviant thought for a moment, and George was sure he would simply admit he had been lying and send him on his way. Instead, he took a deep breath and looked George directly in the eyes. “Virginia can’t stand the smell of sweet peppers. Her favorite color is blue. She is a regular card shark in both Blackjack and Poker. Is that enough for you?”
George blinked hard, the blow hitting him nearly as hard and fast as a closed-fisted punch to the face. “How do you know that?”
The deviant crossed his arms. “Well, I’m not a mind reader, you know.”
George sat back for a moment, trying to digest this new scenario without getting sick to his stomach. He still wasn’t over grieving Virginia’s death, and now there was actually a chance that she was still alive. The conflict of information was enough to make his head spin.
“You know, I might even be able to help you find her. Maybe I can help you figure out where she went,” the deviant added.
George’s heart pounded. “What are you saying? Where would she go?”
The deviant shrugged. “I’ve got a fifty thousand-dollar bail order that needs to be filled. Get me out of here, and I’ll tell you anything you want to know.”
George dove across the table, knocking the man to his back, grabbing him by the front of his shirt. He tightened his fist and threatened to punch. “Tell me now—what do you know?”
The deviant cried out, cringing at George’s tight fist. “There was a riot in the room! A few of us got out. I think I remember seeing her run off, but it all happened so fast!” The deviant looked over at the security associate, waiting for some assistance.
The security associate glared back, not looking at all concerned with George’s threats against his prisoner.
“I don’t know anything else!” the deviant cried. “You have to believe me!”
George backed off, straightening his shirt, unsure what to believe anymore. He gave the young man a hateful glare and quietly fled the cold cell, feeling more lost than he had been when he had first come. He weighed the different possibilities in his mind. It was feasible that the deviant was nothing more than a con man looking for someone to bail him out. He could have gotten information about Virginia from somewhere else. George knew better than to trust a deviant, and he definitely didn’t want to believe that his wife could have been transformed in such a way. Still, something told him that the young man had been genuine about his story.
If what he said were true, would Info-Corp willingly withhold such an important detail from the public? Would Info-Corp even be let in on such a dirty secret? The deviant’s story was far too similar to that which William had relayed before, and the more George thought about it, the less he was able to accept it as a simple coincidence. Perhaps he was still in denial over Virginia’s death and he was distorting facts to suit some twisted fantasy in the back of his head.
And then he had to consider another whole new question: if Virginia was alive, would he still want her if she was a deviant? Would Corporate even allow them to stay married? He thought about the kind, generous, beautiful woman he had married, and he decided that if Virginia was still alive, he would find her. He would see for himself whether she was still the woman he loved. He had even more questions now, and he felt as though he might go mad if he didn’t find a way to get all of them answered soon. He had to know now, with the utmost of certainty, whether or not he was being played by hateful and selfish lies, or whether he and his family had been played by some ridiculous Corporate cover-up.
His family. . . .
There was still no sign of Shelley and Kurt at home. George wondered if he may have been a little too hard on both of them as of late, and maybe they decided to stay out past dark to teach him a lesson. Maybe their plan was to make him worry just long enough for him to realize he wasn’t being as much of a team player as he could be. If that was the case, they were succeeding beyond their wildest dreams.
Deciding that he had the scenario completely figured out, he went to his bedroom and packed an overnight bag. Considering the turning weather, he bundled up, putting on a heavy jacket, his warmest boots, and a protective hat. He found a good picture of Virginia and tucked it into his bag, then left a note in the kitchen, telling Shelley to keep an eye on Kurt for the weekend. He said nothing about Virginia in his note, not wanting to get their hopes up, telling them he would explain everything when he returned.
He had no idea where he was going to go, but he felt that initiating a physical search would be a far better use of his time than staying idly where he was. He had the weekend to travel the district, and Shelley was old enough to watch Kurt for a couple of days. He knew that what he was doing was rash, but there was too much at stake for him to do nothing.
He locked up the apartment and took off toward the shuttle garage, hoping that he wasn’t too late to get a quick lift closer to the heart of the district. He ran as a shuttle going northeast was getting ready to begin toward its final trip to the Food-Mart. He boarded the shuttle just in time, and it accelerated out of the garage just as Shelley’s shuttle came in.
* * * *
Shelley hurried to the apartment, positive that she would freeze to death if she didn’t get to a heated space soon. Half of her body felt numb, and everything that wasn’t numb burned from the cold. Her head was so cold she could barely think. She still wasn’t sure what she was going to tell her father about Kurt, as a huge confrontation the moment she stepped through the front door was most likely unavoidable. Still, she had nowhere else left to go but home.
Much to her surprise, she opened the door to a cold, dark, empty apartment. She was relieved at first, but when she read George’s note and realized that Kurt was still unaccounted for, she became overtaken with another heavy surge of guilt and worry. She turned the wall heater back on and stood by it for a moment.
Unwilling to face the cold again, she decided to regain her bearings and get a good night’s rest before returning to her search for Kurt. She would get up early and start back at the Corp Education System’s garage, giving his picture to all of the security associates in the area. Hopefully, he just went home with a friend and she could track him down before George got back. Trying to convince herself that she had done the right thing by returning home, that there was nothing more she could have done for him, she tried to get comfortable on the hard kitchen chair.
Not satisfied with how quickly the coils were heating, Shelley decided to take a quick, hot shower. She hurried to the bathroom and turned on the click-light. She looked at her battered face in the mirror, horrified at the sight of her bloodshot eye. Dark bruises were beginning to form all around it, and the swelling still had not let up. Forcing herself to look away, she turned on the shower as hot as her skin could take it. She turned on the water recycler, planning to stay in as long as it took to warm her body clear through. Standing under the heavy jets of water, relishing in finally being warm, she did not hear the telephone ring.
Kurt stood, shaking and chattering, in a phone booth in the Corp Education System’s shuttle garage. He had hidden in the boys’ bathroom earlier, when Shelley had been looking for him, and clearly he had stayed in there for a little too long. The game had ceased to be fun some time ago, and now he just wanted to go home. Shelley had his shuttle pass, and he had been denied passage even on the promise that he would pay later. Security sent him
on another round of hide-and-go-seek, and by the time he emerged from his spot behind the garbage cans, the entire garage had been shut down for the evening. Heavy gates kept him from entering school grounds, and he had no idea as to where any of the pedestrian access halls led.
He realized that his hands and fingers were turning shades of red and blue, and he rubbed them together in attempt to warm them. The motion was painful, despite the fact that most of both hands had gone numb. His face and ears had all gone numb too, and his toes felt like frozen rocks in his shoes. As the area became dark and quiet, he began to imagine monsters in the shadows, and as the time passed, he became increasingly certain that those stalking him were the same monsters that had taken away his mother. While he might have sought aid from the random security associate who passed through every hour or so, he dared not move, lest the Boogieman snatch him out of the darkness and send him into some hellish oblivion. He wished he were in his bedroom, near the dim light of the bathroom click-light, safe at home with his family. He knew running and hiding from Shelley had been a mistake, the repercussions having become far worse than a few harsh words or even a spank on the rear. He wondered if Shelley was now in trouble, too, for having lost him, and he genuinely regretted his childish behavior.
His fingers and toes began to get worse, and he curled up behind the trashcans in attempt to get warm. To his relief he stopped shaking, although his teeth still chattered. He took quick, heavy breaths, the cold air stinging his lungs. His arms and legs became difficult to move, and he stretched periodically to check that his limbs were all still intact. Finally, he tried to get up, only to find that he could not. He stared ahead, watching his frozen breath as it exited his mouth in tiny puffs. Each breath disappeared nearly as soon as it came, and still he became fixated on the tiny clouds. He began to imagine them in fun and different shapes: a star; a heart; a teddy bear; endless ocean waves; his mother’s beautiful, sad, lonely face. . . .
The desire to sleep came on slowly, and then suddenly he had no choice but to close his eyes and rest his heavy head. The chattering stopped and his cold body fell awkwardly limp. His mind slipped to a place where his mother could hold him in a tender, loving embrace, a place where there were no more worries . . . no more monsters, or freezing cold, or crushing despair, just him sitting in his mother’s arms beneath the warm, comforting glow of a slowly fading afternoon sun, lazily picking out the shapes in the drifting clouds.
It was early morning, just before sunrise, when the police associates found the blue, stiff body. His eyes were closed and his face peaceful, his arms tightly locked around his legs.
After a short, restless night, Shelley made her way back through the pedestrian halls. She entered the Corp school shuttle hall just as a Police-Corp shuttle sped in with backup.
A security associate spotted Shelley and ran to intercept her. “I’m sorry, miss, but this tunnel is closed.”
“But I need to get through here,” Shelley said, already suspecting the worst.
“What business do you have going through here during the weekend?” he asked, subtly glancing over at a random work of Graffiti on a nearby wall.
She felt her hands begin to tremble, wondering if the man meant to arrest her. “My brother never came home last night and I was hoping to retrace his steps. I think my dad may have been out all night looking for him and—”
“What does your brother look like?” the associate asked.
Shelley took a deep breath. “He’s seven, brown eyes, sandy blond hair.”
He nodded. “I think you should come with me.”
Shelley fought tears, her throat growing unbearably tight as the man escorted her through the garage. “What’s going on?” she asked, although the answer was evident.
She collapsed to her knees with a shriek as she saw a tiny, blue limb through the small swarm of police associates. Everything went fuzzy, tears blurring her vision. The voices that echoed through the hall became a confusing mass of noise, her own screams adding to the chaos.
A police manager ran up to her and the associate. “What’s this?”
“I think we have an I.D.,” said the associate.
“I don’t know what we’ll do with it. Corporate hasn’t sent over any work orders yet,” said the manager.
Shelley looked up at the two men, then back over at the body. Needing to get a closer look, just to be sure, she forced herself to her feet and ran to it.
“Hey!” The security associate tried to stop her, but she darted past him.
Shelley began to sob hysterically, pushing through the small crowd, as she recognized Kurt’s face.
The police manager tried to pull her back. “I’m going to have to ask you to go with—”
“That’s my brother!” she cried, yanking her arm from his grasp. She went limp as a couple of associates moved in to help the manager pull her from the scene. “Kurt!”
Their voices faded into the din as they spoke:
“We’ll have to detain you if you don’t calm down.”
“I can wait with her for a work order if you want.”
“I think we need to get higher management involved in this one.”
“Mine’s not on call.”
“Neither is mine.”
“We’ll just have to wait then.”
The associates stopped dragging her, seemingly intent on keeping her contained at the furthest tunnel connection.
“We’re going to need to ask you a few questions,” one of them told her.
Shelley thought to respond, but instead she sat, silently weeping, unable to take her eyes away from the body’s location. She watched for breaks in the mass of workers . . . waiting for another morbid glimpse of his frozen leg.
“Miss? Miss?”
Chapter Twenty
VIRGINIA startled awake with a horrified gasp, and she quickly sat up in her cot. Sleep had thrust upon her mind a terrible nightmare, but what the nightmare had been about she could no longer recall. She took a moment to become reoriented with her new surroundings, having forgotten that she had dozed off in the basement room after the Conrads had retired for the night. Staring at the dark, dreary walls, she felt a sudden, intense longing to be home with her family, missing them now more than ever.
She stood up, shaking off the cold sweat that covered her body. She looked over to the other cot, noticing that Nadine was not there. She slowly went up the stairs, and then quietly opened the door to the foyer. Seeing and hearing no one, Virginia crossed to the kitchen. There was a service light on over the sink, and Virginia saw that there were two used wine glasses sitting on the counter beside an open bottle of Merlot.
Knowing that Mr. and Mrs. Conrad would have rang the bell if they had wanted wine, and Nadine would have cleaned the glasses immediately if she had somehow heard the call and served them without waking Virginia, she wondered if perhaps Nadine was just as much the thief as the girl she had just fired. There was a commotion in the storeroom as a few canned goods fell from a shelf.
She tiptoed over to the storeroom, hoping to see something she could use to put that bossy woman in her place. As she peeked through the doorway, however, she found Nadine and Mr. Conrad together on the floor. He had his undergarments down to his ankles, and she was on her back with her legs wrapped around his wrinkled, fat, gyrating body. Neither expected the intrusion, and both were oblivious to Virginia’s presence.
She hurried back downstairs, deciding to feign ignorance over the matter for at least the time being. She returned to her cot, but found herself too restless to fall back to sleep. The longer she lay there, the harder she found it to get comfortable. Nadine came downstairs after a short while, and Virginia held her eyes closed, falling still and silent. She listened as Nadine quietly slipped back to her cot and quickly fell to sleep.
Virginia told herself she would be extra loud when she cleaned out the pans in the morning if Nadine woke with a hangover. She shuddered at the thought of a man as undesirable as Mr. Conrad maki
ng a pass at her, and wondered why a pretty young thing like Nadine would give in to his advances like that. Virginia would just as soon quit than add Mr. Conrad to her list of responsibilities, she told herself, disgusted with just the thought of ever seeing that man naked again. Seeing Nadine with him like that took her already diminished respect for the girl down even a few more notches.
Nadine began to snore and Virginia lay awake, wishing the day would just come so she could get it over with all the sooner. The hours passed by slowly, however, and by the time morning came, Virginia had dark circles under her tired, puffy eyes. She dragged herself off of the cot as the morning bell rang, perking ever so slightly as she saw Nadine wince at the light and hold her aching head.
“Time to make breakfast?” Virginia asked.
“We have fifteen minutes to put ourselves together,” Nadine mumbled. “If you brew us a fresh pot of coffee, I’ll owe you whatever favor you want.”
“I’m going to hold you to that.” Virginia started a pot of coffee in their tiny, downstairs coffee maker, and then turned to the sink to wash her face. She looked at herself in their small bathroom mirror. With her blue eyes and tired face, she could barely recognize the reflection that stared back at her. She quickly turned away before the image had a chance to induce another untimely surge of emotion.
The basement room filled with the aroma of fresh coffee, a luxury Virginia had not enjoyed for a while. She found two clean mugs and poured a generous serving of coffee for each of them. Seeing no sugar or creamer, she handed Nadine her mug and sat back down on her cot. The coffee tasted rich and bittersweet. Virginia lost herself in the comforting liquid as she slowly sipped at it, reality going on hold until her mug came close to empty.
“We should get to the kitchen,” Nadine said, putting on her apron and slipping into her shoes.
Virginia followed suit, getting dressed and combing her hair with her fingers as she followed Nadine to the kitchen. There wasn’t any trace of the wine bottle, nor the glasses from the previous night.