by Alechia Dow
Morris stands in front of me, swaying as we sing the song. His breath tickles my cheeks. I bend my head back, staring at his lips while he mouths the words. His eyes are on mine. My body shifts closer, and I swallow.
A kiss. Maybe? What would it be like? What if I hate it? Are we there yet? Am I there yet?
But something furry and soft touches the side of my bare leg between my shoes and pants, and I nearly jump out of my skin. The moment’s over.
Guilt washes through me.
“We should go,” I say, hoping I have everything I need to help Morris.
I find a small plastic bag and shove everything inside it. Then we head to the grocery store. Given the smells at the library, the hardware store and the first house we stopped at, I expect gag-worthiness. But it’s mostly just empty and clean, like brand-new clean. We walk up and down the aisles, hoping to find something—anything—but everything’s gone.
“Well there goes that idea.” We walk back toward the exit. “I’m getting hungry. And really thirsty.”
“We’ll find something, don’t worry. I’ll—”
I turn to Morris just as his eyes widen and he drops to the ground, twitching and screaming. The world seems to slow and my heartbeat floods my ears. Ilori rush into the store. The noose feels like it’s tightening around my neck again. I can’t run. I can’t hide. I won’t survive. And I won’t leave Morris. Not when he’s given up everything for me. I fall to my knees beside him and drape an arm across his chest, trying to stay calm and be there for him like he was for me.
Five, Ilori in black coats. Four, a sky gray and cloudless. Three...three. Think of a three, Ellie! Three, Morris.
Through the pain that plagues him, he grabs my wrist. Two, his voice inside my head. I’m sorry. Don’t worry about me. Tell them I kept you a prisoner. We were never friends. I shake my head. I would rather die by the side of a friend than throw him under the bus. Compliance will save your life, Ellie. He touches my face before the light in his eyes darkens and his twitching stops. He’s asleep or dead. I wish I knew which.
“Morris? Morris! Wake up, Morris!” My voice is halfway between a scream and a whisper, shrill and terrified. “Morris, please.” I peer up at the Ilori surrounding us, frozen like statues. “Is he dead? Did you kill him?”
One.
With Morris still in my arms, my vision goes black.
My last thought is that I’m gone and might never come back.
* * *
I wake up in a cell. A small jail cell, furnished with only an uncomfortable bench. The sun shines through a little window above me, the rays of light creating shadows on the gray cinder block walls.
Ilori.
My fingers twitch, and I rub them together until feeling comes back. How long have I been here? My stomach rumbles. As if on cue, a plate of crackers, ham and canned peaches slides under my barred cell door, thanks to an Ilori with pale blue eyes and long blond hair. It also rolls a bottle of water toward me. Then it disappears down a small hallway.
I run toward the food and shove dry crackers into my mouth.
Not too fast, you’ll get sick, I tell myself.
I finish in what feels like seconds. I hope it won’t come back up. If my anxiety kicks in like it always does, I might vomit.
Morris. Is he okay? Will he get into trouble for saving my life, for taking off like he did and protecting me?
Hours pass with me going through my numbers over and over again. Counting the same things. The bench. The blanket. My fingers. At one point, I sing “These Starry Dreams” by the Starry Eyed, the melody stuck in my head, keeping me from counting one more time.
I yell out for someone to let me go to the bathroom. Another hour goes by before an Ilori comes. There’s no point in locking me in chains or securing my arms. I know they could kill me whenever they want. So I silently follow to the bathroom. I splash cold water on my face, and duck my head into the sink to drink from the tap. Although I don’t know where we are, not really, or how good the water is out here, I trust that the Ilori would keep the water systems clean. After all, that’s what Morris said: they like their nature.
When we left New York, it was almost flattened completely. Wherever permanent housing is, I’d bet it’s isolated, in the middle of nowhere. Surrounded by the nature that’s come back all over the Earth. They’ve been here for two years. This world is theirs now.
I follow my guard back to my cell. Another plate of food and water awaits me. It’s amazing how fast you adjust to being a prisoner when you have shelter and sustenance. This time I eat slowly and save some water for later. If there is a later.
Cold seeps in through my jacket, and I’m shaking a bit when Morris suddenly appears in front of my cell. His eyes look brighter, his movement less sluggish. He’s been recharged, and has changed into more formal attire with numbers and colors pinned across his jacket. His eyes shine as he takes me in. But he makes no move forward to unlock my cell or touch me.
“Human JQB-305-7-21. Are you well?” His voice is flat, disinterested. There’s no recognition. Just like my dad.
“I’m fine, Morris.” My own voice wobbles. Did they change him? Can they do that? “Did they reset you? Do you even remember me?” Panic sits in the center of my gut. I can’t be forgotten again. What about my family? What does this mean?
“In the morning, you will be delivered to a nearby center for your vaccination. You needn’t worry, this is for your own benefit. What G00287 granteth, Ilori taketh, but we shall not harm you.”
“Morris—” I bolt forward, resting my fingers against the bars. I need a sign, even a small one that he’s still in there. That he has a plan. He pulls away, a look of disgust flashing in his eyes. It hurts.
I warble out a bar of “Raspberry Beret” and he cringes. Physically cringes. The air feels like it cools between us. This isn’t the Morris I know. I want to scream and throw things and fall into a pit of despair.
“Human expression is a transgression, human. If you do that again, I will be forced to take punitive action.”
I nod once before he strides down the hall, and for the first time in days, I feel all alone. I sit back on my bench and, this time, I let my tears fall.
I’m alone.
My mom. My dad. Even Alice. They could all be gone now. The grief that I’ve been denying since I got in that car with Morris washes through me. How long have I been holding it in?
Morris could be acting the way he is to protect me. But I’ve never felt so alone.
The tears are coming in full now, and I can’t stop them. Sobs rack my chest. I don’t care if the Ilori hear me. I’ve lost everything. It’s all catching up to me now: how desperate I’ve been to be happy as the only world I know crumbles around me.
Night falls, and I can’t sleep. I let myself remember my family, Alice, Mrs. Turner, even Erica Schulman.
I remember sitting on the Q train with Mom on our way back to our tiny one-bedroom apartment in Brooklyn. We lived on the wrong side of Flatbush, that’s what Mom would say. I was nine, but I felt older. I looked out the window at the Brooklyn Bridge, in love with what I saw. Mom nudged me with her shoulder.
“You know we aren’t always gonna live like this, right?”
I sank into my seat. I’d heard Mom’s big plans before. Move into a bigger apartment, she and Dad would get jobs that paid more and I would go to a feeder school for an Ivy League or something. We’d live “the good life.” She’d been saying it since I can remember.
“We’ll have a nice apartment where you won’t have to sleep in the living room and you won’t have to worry about mice getting into the little food we have. And all this shit—” she pulled a face in apology for swearing “—all this crap we went through won’t matter anymore. It’ll balance out.” She said this more to herself than to me.
“Mom, I’m happy, and I like it here.”
It was the truth. We’d lived there my entire life, and I had friends. Yeah, the mice raiding our kitchen sucked, but we were good. And there were plenty of mice in Manhattan, too.
“Baby, you live in the right place, you do well in the right schools, and you and your cello can go to Juilliard.” She tucked one of my stray braids behind my ear, her warm brown eyes holding mine.
I made a face, my usual face, when she started talking about the future like that. Even my music teacher told me that music wouldn’t pay the bills, and every other night my parents were complaining about bills. Julliard was a dream. Not reality.
She harrumphed. “Stop worrying. You’re too young to be worried all the damn time. You gotta loosen up. What’s the worst that could happen?” She smiled at me with her eyebrows raised.
I nodded. “Okay, Mom.” But I wasn’t the loose type. My worries kept me safe, and my feet on the ground. When we finally moved, by chance, and started living “the good life,” I was the only one who saw what was going on around us. All the overreaching, trying to get somewhere and be something we weren’t, put us in the crosshairs of a new world filled with old hate. Dad was just trying to keep up, and Mom was just trying to fit in. And me? I was trying to make a home out of a place that didn’t welcome us; a place that slowly tore us apart with its microaggressions and clutched pearls before it sent us crawling to wherever they thought we belonged. I was scared what would be left of us when that happened.
Now, lying in this cell, I’m still scared. There’s no home anymore. Tears stain my cheeks and drop onto the stone bench beneath me.
I remember my dad, too. “You know, sweetie. I don’t think humans are going to win this war,” he told me, while turning the lights out in our apartment. Outside our window we saw a mob of humans with guns and bats surrounding just one Ilori. Our building was already occupied by then, but humans were being rounded up and pushed out of their hiding places. A tall Ilori put out a hand, and the attackers flew in the air, their bodies soon crunching against the pavement. Blood splattered and pooled in the pockets of the sidewalks. My blood ran cold. “If your mom and I don’t make it—”
“Dad, I can’t—”
“Ellie, listen, okay? I know it’s not what you want to hear, but you need to hear it. Your mom and I, we might not make it through this. If we get separated and you have to choose between life and joining us, choose life, okay? Live. Live for us. Breathe for us. Survive for us. You are our greatest achievement. You are our dream come true.”
“Daddy,” I sobbed. “I can’t.”
“You have to, honey. Because they’re going to take me and at some point, they will take your mama. And then it’ll be only you. You’re going to be alone. You’re going to want to give up. Please, Ellie. Please don’t. Even thinking about it—” My dad held my face in his hands and put his forehead against mine. His tears fell onto my cheeks, and soon I felt my own mix with them. We didn’t sob or say how unfair all of this was. We held each other and cried.
A little over a week later, they gave him a form of the vaccine that didn’t kill him, but stripped a big part of him away, lost, maybe forever. Not too long after, Mom started spiraling harder and faster.
Live for us. Breathe for us. Survive for us.
Sorry, Mom and Dad, but I made unwise decisions. I trusted an alien boy with cute eyes and a love of music. Now I’m surrounded by Ilori and making my last living memories in a jail cell. I’m not sure it’s much better than getting the vaccine in the center, surrounded by people I used to know as we face oblivion together.
It’s still dark when the door opens and Morris, accompanied by another alien, comes for me. I stand, my legs stiff and back sore, and follow the alien I don’t know down the hall with Morris at the rear. They take me in a nondescript car like the first one we traveled in, and I’m loaded into the back seat beside the bag of books and music.
The alien says something to Morris in their language.
“No, it will remain quiet. Yes, human?” He says it to me in English, and my eyebrows furrow. He doesn’t wait for an answer.
Maybe real Morris didn’t betray me, but this one is different. He’s pretending. He has to be. I’d like to believe that more than anything else. Or...maybe they changed him back to the way he is supposed to be through conditioning or...or the Hive.
I think about the stories I told him. I need to figure out if he’s on my side or not. “Are you just volunteering for Prim, are you Katniss-ing?”
The alien turns to Morris and asks something; probably what or who is Prim. Morris responds in English. For my benefit?
“The human is questioning my loyalty and undoubtedly worries about the occupants of Center 11408-H. I gained the human’s trust by stating I had saved its family.”
The alien makes a small noise.
“I told the human I couldn’t connect to Il-0CoM to give proof of their well-being because it was too dangerous.” Morris sounds lifeless. “The center was completed. All viable husks were vaccinated. I’ve been traveling with this human to find an adequate solution for our current situation as discussed. It has aided me in gaining trust and finding hidden locations of their kind.”
The other alien nods in approval, its clicking and beeping language hanging in the air like a tangible thing I can’t grasp.
“Thank you for your praise.” Morris settles back in his seat as I try to wrap my mind around what he is saying. None of this is real. He told me about the true Ilori, about the labmades and their panels. He shared with me. And he said he saved my family. I know him. He wouldn’t betray me. He’s lying. Am I supposed to play along?
I try to catch his attention through the reflections in the windowpane. I look for any sign he’s trying to give me, to tell me that I need to sit back here and pretend, just like him. But he doesn’t look my way.
Morris turns to the other Ilori. “This center we travel to, how many humans does it house? All primed for the vaccine?”
The Ilori responds.
“Yes, speaking English seems to keep the human quiet. I have noticed that they tend to be overwrought when they do not understand what is being said.” He sniffs before continuing in a clipped tone. “Are there enough supplies in the center? When I produced the final formula, we were prepared for instant administration. It’s important we move quickly.”
I ignore the Ilori’s response as my mind wraps around what Morris just said. He produced the formula? Morris...he’s the mastermind behind the vaccine? “It was you? You created the vaccine?”
“Every Ilori contributes their gift,” Morris answers, as if that’s an acceptable response. “It was my purpose. I am a humble servant of my empire.”
“You’re lying,” I whisper, a lump lodging in my throat.
“You are only human, JQB-305-7-21.” He says human like it’s a dirty, disgusting thing and it pains him to even speak the word. “I do not expect you to understand the complexities and dedication needed to serve a greater purpose. Nor the discomfort of emulating an inferior being to gain insight on how to manipulate your kind.”
My blood runs cold. What if he’s not lying? What if Morris was using me? How well do I really know him, and how do I know he wasn’t just saying what I wanted to hear? I did help him find more humans... On the side of the road. What did he say to the other Ilori to get them to back down? There’s no way they would have let those humans go after killing one of them. He’s been keeping secrets the whole time.
I helped him.
He knows me. He knew my weaknesses, my books, my family, and he exploited them. He probably lied about the music just to forge a connection. And I’m an easy target. The girl sitting alone at the party, willing to do whatever it takes to save her books and family. He saved me, but maybe that was part of his manipulative plan.
I used to be smarter than this.
“I didn’t know you at all.” I want to punch
the window and feel pain worse than what I feel now. I hate myself for being so naive.
The Ilori beeps.
“I remain unperturbed by it. I am certain it will stop being a nuisance as it finally comprehends the reality of its situation. I have been quite clear about my motivations. How much farther?” Morris doesn’t even glance my way, as if my presence means nothing to him. I tighten my fists, my fingernails digging into the palms of my hands to keep myself from breaking into sobs or smashing the window open and jumping out.
The other Ilori answers, but I’m too enraged to listen. Morris created the vaccine. Morris killed Alice and my parents. Morris, the alien boy I held hands with, and I fell asleep on. The alien boy who I thought about kissing, hoped to kiss. I sang, I laughed. I planned on saving him, I told him stories. I found music for him. I gave him Mrs. Turner’s personal belongings.
“I hate you.” There is no shaking in my voice, no wavering. I mean every syllable when I say it to him.
Morris turns in his seat and regards me with curiosity. I flinch but maintain eye contact. I still don’t understand why he did everything he did. Maybe I never will. My eyelids suddenly feel heavy, and my shoulders relax on their own.
The other alien chirps.
“Yes. I’ve been carrying the contraband with me, gaining the human’s trust. I even suggested I found the contraband entertaining for her benefit. I do not wish to transfer it to another center. I will incinerate it now. Thank you for reminding me.”
“No!” I shake my head. He can’t do that. He won’t.
Morris’s gaze flicks to mine before it lands on the bag carrying all of my books, my memories, the only remnants of a life with my parents. It disintegrates into a small, gray pile of ash. There is no sound, no fire, nothing to mark the end of my world. My lips tremble until I let out an anguished sob, startling us all. Tears drip down my cheeks.
I hope Morris sees this look on my face. I hope he sees my hate. He’s good at reading humans, right? I hope he reads that. Suddenly, under his gaze, my brain begins to shut down.