by Jacob Gowans
“Such a pessimistic view,” the Queen said in the fox’s voice. Using her incredible memory, she mimicked the fox’s tones and mannerisms to perfection. The holograph surrounding her duplicated her movements. “I do not think the war is likely to last longer than a few months. Since the attack in San Francisco, we’ve increased clone production, fortified our factories against insurgent attacks, and have crippling offensive strikes planned by the end of next month. The war could be over by the end of May, I think.”
“The NWG forces have shown more resiliency than you initially believed, fox,” the CFO stated flatly. “What makes you think you’re not underestimating the enemy yet again?”
“Let me remind you,” the Queen responded coldly, “that our plans were not built on guesses. You know better. What some of you are experiencing, I think, is unfounded buyer’s remorse. We will win this war if we stay the course. Once we win, the public will be forgiving as we usher in an era of peace, stability, and prosperity unlike anything they have ever seen. Newberry will be re-elected for life, if we wish it. Businesses loyal to our cause will prosper while the rest fall by the wayside.”
Around the table several nodded their heads in agreement. The Queen noted the few who did not. “Meeting adjourned,” she announced.
Despite all her experience with the fox, she had no idea he spent so much time in meetings: meetings with the Council, meetings with the CEO of N Corp, meetings with so many puppets and yes-men that some days they never seemed to end. The fox had transformed himself into nothing more than a shadow, but everyone who knew him was a string attached to his fingers.
Even I was a string.
The Queen deactivated the hologram and stripped from her zero suit. Naked, she left the room and crossed the penthouse. She paused at a mirror to examine her reflection. Her eyes found no wrinkles, no noticeable sag anywhere. Despite her fifty years in age, she looked like a woman in her twenties. More importantly, she felt like a woman in her twenties. She stared closer, making sure her beauty wasn’t a trick of the light.
Turning her back on the mirror, the Queen went to the smallest of the three bedrooms. Voice, thumb, and eye verifications were required to enter. Once it opened, she heard the beeps coming from monitors surrounding a hospital bed. Confined to the bed was a man, talking to himself again, mumbling something she couldn’t quite hear. All she caught was the word parameters.
“Do I need to remove your vocal box too?” she asked in a sweet voice. “It would be a pity. I do so enjoy our conversations.”
The fox’s thighs ended abruptly in short fleshy stubs. Instead of arms, he had a few centimeters of lumpy, pink masses that ended five centimeters beyond the shoulders. The Queen had performed the amputations herself. He had been awake while she did it. He had been given no anesthesia. The surgery had been a glorious event. Liberating and beautiful.
Years ago, he had been her savior, her mentor, her lover. She had adored him with a reverence she’d shown no one else. He’d treated her like a treasure. While all the other Thirteens and Aegis had been made to drink the solution, the Queen had not. He’d given her a unique freedom, and she’d soared like the phoenix she always imagined herself to be. Then she made a single mistake, and he took her freedom away. He made her drink the bitter cup. That act had been unforgivable. She stepped next to the bed and surveyed his pitiful body while his eyes rested on her face, cold in fury, but impotent.
“The meeting went well,” she told him. “A few have doubts, but I set them straight. The war will not end as soon as they hope, but it will not last as long as they fear, either.”
The fox smiled. “Doubts will undermine you, Katie.”
Before he could say another word, the Queen grabbed a scalpel off the bedside table and held it to his face. “Call me Katie again and I’ll do so much carving that you’ll make Diego look handsome.”
“My apologies, but I stand by my statement. Doubts are diseases. You must eradicate them with swift and extreme prejudice.”
“I have taken care of it. The Council is strong.”
“Not without me leading it.”
The Queen laughed. “You are leading it.”
“How long?” the fox asked after a notable pause. Pain filled his eyes. “How much longer will you keep me like this? You don’t wish to kill me, I think, yet you don’t trust me. What options remain?”
The Queen’s laughter turned into rage. She bared her teeth at him. “Until you learn what it means to be imprisoned. You have no idea what you did to me by making me drink the solution.” She grabbed his nose and twisted it until it nearly broke. “Don’t you get it?”
“Then end it. You’ll never have to worry about me again.” He took a deep breath and sighed as though even living was a chore. “Take the scalpel and draw it across my neck. Do it now.”
The Queen already had a scalpel in hand when she noted his use of voice inflection. Crippled, grotesque, and unable to move anything but his head, the fox could still be persuasive. “You taught me too well to recognize the subtleties of your talent,” she said as she set down the blade.
“It must be torture for you,” the fox continued. “The Anomaly Eleven is different for everyone. For some it makes them mathematical or literary geniuses. Others tactical. For me … it lets me read people and manipulate them to near perfection, I think. But what about you? What does it do for you?”
The Queen did not answer.
“Has Anomaly Eleven restored your ability to feel emotions? If so, what has it been like to feel revulsion, remorse, fear, and joy again for the first time?”
A tear threatened to fall from the Queen’s eye, but she pretended as though she had an itch there, and scratched it away. When the fox noticed this, the corners of his mouth twitched. “Don’t be ashamed of your emotions. They make you stronger. The pain, the fear, the regret …”
“Shut up,” she whispered.
“Embrace the remorse,” the fox said softly. “Listen to your conscience or it will torture you. I have begun to do the same. I’ve realized now that I was drunk with power. Thinking that I could change and save humanity. Let’s end this mad—”
Laughter burst from the Queen’s gut. She hadn’t laughed so hard in weeks. It felt good. She laughed hysterically at the fox and his foolishness. How did I ever think you were anything but a fool?
“You mentioned torture … I can only imagine what torture you’re experiencing,” she told the fox. “Your quality of life is forever diminished. It must be maddening. And to think that it all could have been prevented by simply asking for my forgiveness. Such a thought must be like a splinter in your mind.”
“The cave.” The fox said the two words very simply, but they jarred the Queen’s mind and spirit. Her head jerked back to look at him.
“What cave?”
The fox’s eyes told the Queen that he knew she was lying. Every few nights she dreamed the same dream. She stood at the bottom of a cave at a door made of stiff, rotting flesh. She beat on it, tore at it, but nothing would make it open. No matter how much she or the young girl on the other side of it screamed and shoved, it would never budge.
“You cry out in your sleep,” the fox stated in a perfectly even tone. “Have you been experiencing bad dreams?”
“Are you experiencing phantom pain in your missing limbs?”
“Not at the moment. But I do. Sometimes it becomes so intense that I shiver and tremble because all my mind wants to do is itch and rub the spots, and it can’t. And sometimes, more often than you would think, I forget that I can’t move at all.”
The Queen shivered as she experienced a distant, faint version of what the fox described. A trickle of hot discomfort ran up her spine to her neck. She pulled at her collar. The fox observed this passively.
The pains are getting worse. They had started the day she removed the fox’s arms and legs, a mild but real aching in her own limbs each time she cut and he screamed.
“What is going on in your head?” the
fox asked her. “Tell me. What harm can I do?” He laughed weakly. “I certainly can’t walk away or plug my ears.”
Again he inflected his voice. He did it so masterfully that the Queen wanted to confide in him. Yet he had to know she was aware of this. What game are you playing? He was no stranger to her innermost thoughts, but she recognized the danger of letting him have influence over her. I’ll give him a small amount of information just to see how he uses it.
“I have begun to feel pain again. My body is growing accustomed to it, however.”
“I told you before of the great irony associated with the Anomaly Thirteen. The Thirteens think their resistance to pain and most emotions is a strength, but now you see that is not the case. Your mind must also learn to cope with fear that comes from a realization of mortality.”
“I have no fear,” the Queen responded.
“Perhaps you never will. Who am I to say? I have never been a Thirteen.”
The Queen had heard enough from the fox. She left the room and turned off the light. As she closed the door behind her, she stared at the fox, a lump of wasted flesh. A small stitch of pain grew in her chest. She slammed the door shut to the fox’s room. Not again. Go away! Even with her eyes squeezed tightly shut, she saw the faces again in the dark recesses of her mind. Dozens of faces. Thanks to her Anomaly Eleven, she recalled each face perfectly.
She recalled them because she had killed each one. She could even match the faces to the methods of execution she had employed: guns, bombs, knives, acid, drowning, strangulation, electrocution … If she focused on one person too much, the sensations returned.
Yes, her body, her mind, something inside her wanted her to feel this remorse, this empathy, this primitive, pathetic emotion, but she would not. Instead she smiled and pictured herself killing them, reveling in their blood and death.
I am stronger than you think, fox. The Queen gritted her teeth and walked onward. Ignore anything long enough and it will go away.
Work needed to be done. She still had to find Sammy and the resistance before they caused any more problems. Even as she walked away, her thoughts went to the fox; to his wretched body. His mutilated form. The pain started to blossom again. Before it could gain any traction, the Queen found a tube of cream that she kept in a drawer in her bedside table. The tube had only one word printed on it: Fire.
She squeezed some of it onto a gloved hand and applied it to her thighs and calves. Her breaths turned ragged as the warmth crept into her skin, growing in intensity like an electric stovetop. As her legs burned, the emotional torment dissipated. In the height of the agony, she got up and stumbled out of the room. It was time to get back to work. She could not waste precious moments on petty feelings. The fire would purge them from her.
It was almost two hours before the effects of the cream fully wore off, but the Queen’s sense of clarity returned. Sammy. He was the goal. She needed everything on him. Every scrap of data, video, idea, theory, or thought the fox had ever collected on the boy. Nothing could go undetected or overlooked. Where the fox had failed, she would succeed. The amount of data collected on him was impressive.
Know thine enemy.
Hours into the research, her attention went to Sammy’s days in Rio, particularly the days he’d spent in custody, and under the care of the man Sammy had called Stripe. She watched the recordings, paying careful attention to the things he muttered and moaned during his most agonizing moments. Then she viewed them a second time. During one of the pain sessions, there was an interruption. A second Aegis barged into the room talking about how another prisoner was ready for extraction.
Extraction. What does that mean? Why have I never heard it before?
After hours of searching through video and transportation files, she discovered that orders for extraction from Diego were always followed by a delivery to Mexico City. Not to the Mexico City Thirteen cell like she expected, but to a different building.
What are you hiding there, fox? What happened to the prisoners—the anomalies—who were extracted? Was it the fox’s fancy term for death? Did he take their DNA? She tried to shift her focus back to Sammy, but the problem gnawed at her brain. She dug deeper, examined the data closer, but the answers still eluded her.
* * * * *
Thursday, March 13, 2053
Mrs. Hepworth studied Katie with disdain as Katie returned to her classroom after school. Katie tried her best to ignore it and slid into the chair nearest to Mrs. Hepworth’s desk. Hepworth tapped her fingers on the wooden surface in front of her, her lips twisted as though she’d sucked on a lemon.
“So?” she asked with her eyebrows tickling her widow’s peak. “What brilliant plan did you come up with to save your bid for prom queen?”
Katie took a deep breath and began. “Okay, so I wanted to do something that would be meaningful and make a difference to people. You know, like something to change lives, but I didn’t know what to do until I saw Bobby John.”
“Mmm hmm … ” Katie noted the mixture of disbelief and curiosity in her teacher’s tone.
Bobby John was one of the eight kids at school with special needs. Everyone knew Bobby John because of his old, tattered, red Razorbacks cap that he lifted off his head every time he passed a girl in the hall. Sometimes, between classes, he walked to and from class with his hat hovering above his head the whole time, a large smile on his face as he nodded to each girl.
“Bobby John loves you,” he’d say to every girl with whom he made eye contact.
“I asked Bobby John to be my date to prom,” Katie said.
“Ah—” Mrs. Hepworth didn’t finish what she planned to say. Clearly she hadn’t expected this. Her mouth hung open and her eyes wandered over Katie’s face as though they’d never met.
Katie took this as an invitation to continue. “And I asked my friends to invite the other special students. I’ve seen those kids get bullied and teased. Hopefully that won’t happen anymore if they’re seen with, you know, my friends. Plus … everyone deserves to go dancing for one night, right?” She flashed Mrs. Hepworth a hopeful smile.
Mrs. Hepworth cleared her throat and turned her face away from Katie and wiped her eyes.
“Are you okay, Mrs. Hepworth?”
“Fine,” the older woman croaked. She cleared her throat a second time and then faced Katie with a smile. “You know why I hated school so much, Katie?”
“Um, homework?”
“No, I actually liked homework. Try again.”
Katie grew braver and ventured the answer she believed to be true. “Your moles?”
Mrs. Hepworth actually laughed. “They didn’t develop until I was in my thirties. It was Marybeth. My little sister. She suffered from Trisomy 21. A very mild case, and she was one of the last to have it before doctors found a cure. But the other students, girls and boys, were so mean to her. So cruel. I could tell you stories, but I won’t. It broke my heart to see my sister smile even while people called her names. That was all she knew to do … smile back. She wouldn’t cry until after we were in bed. She didn’t want our parents to know. And you know what I did, Katie?”
Katie shook her head. No teacher had ever been so personal with her before; she wasn’t sure what to do or say.
“I watched. I stored it all away. And I promised that I’d never let anyone bully or tease one of my students.”
“Okay,” Katie finally said. “So my idea was good or bad?”
“No, Katie,” Mrs. Hepworth responded, dabbing her eyes again. “It’s a wonderful idea. If someone had done that for Marybeth … it might have changed everything.”
That night at dinner, Katie’s mom grabbed Katie’s hand, beaming. “Rachel’s mom told me what you and your friends are planning to do for prom,” her mom said. “I think it’s incredible.”
Katie grinned sheepishly. “Thanks.”
“What gave you the idea?” her dad asked.
Katie’s response was a shrug. The truth, however, was much darker. Five night
s ago she’d had a dream where she’d slapped Bobby John and stuffed his hat into his mouth while he screamed, “Bobby John loves you.” The dream had stuck with her, and she still cringed each time she thought of it. The pain and terror in Bobby John’s eyes made her stomach ache, and seeing him in the hall reminded her of it.
“Won’t it hurt your chances of becoming prom queen?” her dad teased.
“I don’t know. Maybe.”
“What about Mark?” Katie’s mom asked.
“He doesn’t mind.” Mark Newcomer, Katie’s boyfriend, had even agreed to take Meagan Horn, another one of the kids with special needs, although he was less than enthusiastic about the idea.
“All four years,” her dad continued, “that was your goal.”
“It still is. I can take Bobby John to the prom and still win prom queen.”
“Is it safe?” his mother asked. “I mean, is he safe?”
“Gosh, mom.” Katie rolled her eyes. “He’s like the sweetest guy I know. Everything’s already worked out with his parents.”
Katie’s dad put his hand on hers. “I’m speechless, Queen. I really am. I can’t believe you came up with this all on your own.”
“Okay … thanks.” She looked to her mom, not understanding why her dad was making such a big deal out of it. Her mom’s only response was to keep smiling.
“It’s days like this I wish we could have had more kids,” her father said.
Katie got up and began clearing the table. Don’t take the comment as an insult, she told herself. He means it as a compliment.
She turned the water on as hot as she could stand it as she soaked the dishes. Her father’s occasional comments didn’t feel like compliments. They felt like accusations. Like she wasn’t enough for them.
Her father took her hand out of the water and drew her attention to his face. Cupping her chin, he kissed her nose. “Queen, I’m proud of you. You’re great. You’re special. Someday you’re gonna change the world.”
Katie forced herself to smile. “Okay.”
She hurried to finish her chores and then ran upstairs. A message waited for her on her watchphone. The text hovered in the air just above the device. It was from Courtney Marzban: