The Sentient

by Nadia Afifi

  Sarka let out a howl of rage.

  “It’s childproof,” Singh said in response.

  “Woman.” The voice of Elder Young, though soft, cut through the chorus of his men’s furious retorts. “We’re not here for you, though you are a grievous sinner against the natural order. But if you stand in our way, you’ll meet the sentence you deserve. A terrible retribution of rock and thunder.”

  Singh laughed. Amira had never heard her laugh before. Light and airy, Singh’s high-pitched laughter could not have felt more out of place in this room, at this moment.

  “Let us in, woman.”

  “Where is my subject?” Singh asked. “What have you done with Rozene?” Amira felt a flutter of relief, impressed with the quickness of the lie and the convincing tone of outrage in which Singh delivered it.

  “You tell us, woman,” Elder Young said smoothly. “She was running down this tower with another young female. Why don’t you come out and we can find them together?”

  Amira held her breath, her clenched fists sweaty. To her relief, Rozene also managed to keep silent across the room.

  “We both know I’ll do no such thing,” Singh said. “You have no hope of getting in here with your little toy guns. Why don’t you sit around and wait for the police to come and pick you up? They should be on their way shortly.”

  “We don’t fear your police.”

  “And I don’t fear you.”

  A pause followed. Amira thought back to Rozene’s memory in the desert and the way the girls struggled for air as the sand covered their faces inch by inch. She held her hands in front of her face, feeling the distance between her body and the cold metallic ceiling above her. This is only temporary. This is a moment that will dissolve into memory with each passing day. A story to tell, of the time I nearly died.

  A new series of footsteps, loud and fast, echoed outside, joined by new voices.

  “We found it on Floor 202, just like he said. We looked under the trial drug shelving and found the box, but it was empty. Everything gone.”

  “Gone? Cosmos curse you all!”

  The Tiresia, Amira thought. They wanted it as well, whatever it was, and found the hidden box in the medical stores empty. If she made it out alive, she vowed silently, she would have some questions for Hadrian Wolfe, or Jones. Whoever he truly was.

  “There’s no time now,” another voice interjected, one that was unpleasantly familiar. “We’ll have to get Barlow, he knows the formula.”

  “You!” Valerie Singh shouted, and Amira’s heart sank at the fear and rage in her voice. “How could you, Alistair?”

  “I’m sorry, Valerie,” Alistair Parrish replied, each word heavy with sadness.

  “How long?”

  “Does it matter now?”

  “Did you give them Victor?”

  No response. Amira clenched every muscle in her body to stop herself from shaking. She had not felt this kind of fear since she left the compound on that cool summer night, charging down the rocky hill as the sirens blared. The fear of the impending, the sense of things beginning to unravel.

  It happened quickly; the familiar chime of a card swiping, the slide of the glass door opening.

  “Tell us where they are, woman,” Young said softly.

  “No!”

  “I’m sorry, Valerie,” Parrish said. “It’s for the best.”

  “No!”

  The distinctive, ringing shot of the electromagnetic gun sounded, followed by a soft thud. Amira clamped her hands to her mouth, squeezing her eyes shut. She listened to the slow, methodical footsteps of the men entering the inner morgue.

  “Look!” Sarka cried. “On the wall.”

  “Cowards,” Young said, and Amira realized they were referring to the frozen heads. “Desperate to live again because they doubt the justice of the Conscious Plane. Now they reside in the Neverhaven, which will get a new arrival shortly.”

  “The bitch is still breathing!”

  Young spoke again.

  “Where is the Tiresia, woman?” he asked, louder than before. “Tell us, and we’ll end your pain.”

  Amira could not hear Singh’s response, but what she said made Sarka shout a string of obscenities before firing his gun again.

  “We could have dragged that out,” a new voice said. There was no emotion in the words, merely a statement of fact. Amira wondered if this was Reznik speaking at last; the cold, low timbre of the voice matched his gaunt face.

  “There’s no time,” Parrish said, his voice etched with agitation. “We need to find Barlow! Something happened to the Tiresia stores. He must have made some preparations to hide it, but he would never destroy it entirely. Those are the last supplies in existence, and you know all too well what it takes to make more of it.”

  “Our deal was two-fold,” Elder Young snarled. “The drug and the girl. I can’t mobilize the compounds without both. I know your cursed wife will have made efforts to protect her abomination. They must be close.”

  Mobilize the compounds? Amira resisted a gasp of shock. He couldn’t mean it.

  “We cannot lose the Tiresia,” Parrish said.

  “The girl matters more to my congregants,” Elder Young said. “They want to see a sinner pay for their crimes, and I’m going to deliver that retribution. Help me, or our deal ends in this room.”

  Parrish cursed.

  “Let’s start in here,” he said.

  Metal clanged as the men tried to open the freezer doors on the far end of the room, without apparent success. Valerie Singh must have locked the entire row of freezers before the men arrived. Sarka unleashed another string of curses, obscene but not blasphemous. Her own parents used to curse in a similar fashion. She was clammy and light-headed with fear, but did her best to keep her body rigid so that the men would not hear her tremble against the freezer’s walls.

  “Parrish, open them!”

  “Valerie would have put in a code.”

  “Don’t test me!” Young snarled. “We’re running out of time.”

  “There are more efficient ways to find out if they’re here,” Parrish said, not masking his contempt when addressing the Elder. “Give me that gun. No, I don’t need the whole damn thing, just pull out the electric coil at the base.”

  And Amira realized what he planned to do. In a single motion, Parrish intended to smoke them out of their hiding places in the worst way possible.

  As quietly as she could manage, she reached into her pocket and found the second syringe she had seized before escaping the ward, still unused. Though the stimulant had worked effectively on Rozene as they made their way around the building, it also had the side effect of dulling senses and pain. Hopefully, it would be enough. She could not reach her arm in the tight confines of the freezer without making a noise, so she pushed the needle into the side of her leg. A rush of warmth pulsed through her body. She placed the cylinder between her teeth and bit down as hard as she could.

  Footsteps again, drawing closer to her side of the room. Parrish would reach her first. The space between each second was agonizing, almost unbearable.

  Parrish struck the freezer doors with the coil. The electric current ran down the wall of metal freezers. She knew it was coming, but the jolt of pain still made her heart stop. Her back arched and twisted, but she did not scream.

  “What are you doing? We need her alive!”

  “This won’t kill her,” Parrish responded as his footsteps trailed away to the other side of the room. “But it will hurt, and we’ll hear them.”

  Amira, still reeling from the shock of electricity, listened apprehensively. Rozene’s stimulant was still in effect, but her condition was undeniably more fragile. Stay silent, she thought desperately.

  Before Parrish swung, a stifled sob echoed from the freezer wall.

  “In there, she’s on the o
ther side!” Sarka cried out excitedly.

  “No!” Rozene cried out, and it sounded as though she were flinging the freezer door open and attempting to climb outside. “It’ll hurt the baby, please don’t.”

  “This is no baby, Rozene!” Young said over the noise of a scuffle, and Rozene began shrieking. “It’s an abomination against God, and I’ll carve it out of you myself if I have to! Parrish, help them! Restrain her and let’s go.”

  “Dr. Parrish, no, they’ll kill me!”

  A loud crash sounded, followed by the noise of glass breaking and water flowing. Rozene’s screams trailed away, until the room was silent again.

  Amira waited, trying to control her shaking. Singh needed help, but the danger had not passed. She pressed her hands, numb with shock, against her lips, silently counting the passing seconds. Ten. Twenty. Thirty.

  More silence. No voices, no screams or footsteps. After several agonizing minutes, Amira reached for the emergency latch. She struggled to find it, almost giving in to panic, when her fingers found the cold metal and the door sprang open.

  Blue liquid covered the floor at the far end of the room, along with a grotesque medley of detached heads, explaining the earlier crashing sound. Sarka had smashed the glass casing carrying the dead, the Trinity’s final assault on the Soma.

  Singh lay on the floor near the autopsy table in a pool of thick blood. Amira knelt beside her. Her fingers found three shots in Singh’s chest and stomach, and one near her temple that spurted blood with each jerk of her head. Her elegant bun was still in place, though streaked in dark red, her features relaxed. Her olive-green eyes had turned glassy and depthless.

  Amira examined the head wound with shaking fingers, overcome with panic.

  “Help,” she said in a low moan, desperately pressing her hands against the bubbling blood. “Somebody help, please!”

  Then, as she crouched in a pool of the dying woman’s blood and sobbed helplessly, something shifted in the air around her. Rust-tinged saliva flooded her mouth, accompanied by a dull ringing in her ears. The hairs on her arms rose like blades of grass at the instinctual sense of being watched, formless eyes boring into the back of her head. Amira left the floor and hovered high above the bloody scene. Below, she could see Valerie Singh and herself, still frantically shouting and trying to stop the bleeding. She floated in the air as though she were submerged in water, tranquil and distant. Images appeared, sights and memories that were not her own, but seen through another’s eyes; the top of a hill where children played with rainbow-colored kites, overlooking the unmistakable skyline of Kolkata, followed by a podium where an old man handed her a diploma, then a young woman, with reddish-brown hair and almond-shaped eyes sitting on a bicycle, smiling over her shoulder. A sense of peace settled within her, as though she were coming home from a long, exhausting trip, and she sank backward into something she could not see, but she did not resist its warm, inviting pull.

  Amira returned to the ground, her bare knees sticky with blood. Figures in black armor surrounded her, the laser lights of their weapons pointed directly at her head. Still dazed, she drew her bloody hands away from Singh’s head wound and looked up at the nearest figure standing over her.

  “Everything will be all right,” she said softly.

  Someone shouted something she couldn’t understand. Her ears rang again. She reached her hand out and stood up.

  Out of nowhere, something large and solid struck at the side of her head, and she fell into black again.

  Chapter Eleven

  Allies

  Amira regained consciousness to the smell of blood and stale coffee. She touched her throbbing forehead, feeling a damp bandage in place. The blood was her own. Her hands strained against tight cuffs as she massaged her temple.

  The room slowly came into focus. The coffee smell traced to the two policemen in the corner. The small, well-lit room contained a table and the chair she occupied.

  She slumped to one side, dizzy. The officers chatted with one another quietly, ignoring her. Both appeared human, which struck her as odd, since robots handled most routine police work. Still in her black dress, Amira had somehow acquired a white lab coat while unconscious. From a blue coat to white, an unprecedented promotion. Perhaps it had been thrown on her as a courtesy in the cold, barren room.

  Noticing her stir, one of the men pressed the door open and called out into the hallway, “She’s up, detective!”

  A man with straw-colored hair entered, a large folder tucked under his arm. His lazy gait revealed a confidence that belied his youth, as he looked no more than a few years older than Amira. His well-polished badge hung loosely around his belt, which emphasized his tall, wiry frame.

  “Amira Valdez,” he said in a low drawl that injected skepticism into every syllable. “I’m Detective Dale Pierson with Westport PD. I apologize for how you got here – you were ordered to put your hands on the ground and you failed to do that. Now, the law in this city prevents me from keeping you handcuffed unless you prove to be a verifiable threat. Can I expect you to cooperate if I remove the bindings?”

  “Where—” Her mouth was parched and fuzzy, as though her cheeks were stuffed with cotton. “Where am I?”

  Ignoring her, he leaned forward and briskly unfastened her cuffs. “I am also legally required to offer you water, food, a bathroom break and a total of ten minutes of personal time, be it prayer, self-reflection or meditation, blah blah etcetera, before the formal process begins. As you are not formally charged yet, but a person of very high interest in a presumed terrorist attack, you do not have a right to an attorney under the 2204 Preservation of North America Act.”

  Amira rubbed her wrists where the cuffs imprinted red marks. Her head cleared and the events of the night came back into focus. D’Arcy, clutching at her opened throat. Dr. Singh, lying in a pool of blood. And Rozene….

  A string of questions spilled from her mouth.

  “What happened? Did you stop them? Is D’Arcy alive? Where’s Rozene?”

  “That’s what you’re here to help me with.”

  “I don’t understand. Dr. Singh, did she – did she survive?”

  Pierson’s mouth twitched and his eyes, the color of faded brown brick, flickered briefly with amusement.

  “She is alive, actually,” he said. “It’s pretty incredible. I was sure she was gone but those Aldwych doctors can pretty much bring you back from the dead these days. But the doc told me that the skull fractures from the gunshot did some serious damage to her – what was it again – temporal lobe and cerebellum. He said that signals to her something or other were shut off for so long, that—”

  “She won’t recover,” Amira finished. “She’ll be in a coma for the rest of her life.”

  “Figured you’d come to that understanding, being an educated lady and all that. Profile says you’re a student at the famous Dunning Academy by the Riverfront. Not bad for a runaway cult member.”

  “Listen,” she said, searching desperately in his eyes for some understanding. “They will hurt Rozene and the baby if we don’t find them quickly. They must have something planned or they would have just killed her right away. They could be back in the Trinity Compound before long—”

  “So you know which compound they operate in,” Pierson said triumphantly. “And your old home is something different, according to your file. Here it is – Children of the New Covenant. So how did they reach out to you?”

  “How did they…what are you talking about?”

  “The Academy assigned you to the Pandora project over three months ago. Were you supporting your compound friends before then, or did they contact you after you got access to the Soma?”

  Amira stared back in disbelief. In the space of a few hours, the worst possible outcome had transpired. Valerie Singh was comatose, likely lost forever. Rozene was missing, dead, or worse. And Amira, as a former com
pound resident, was Westport PD’s natural suspect.

  “You have to listen to me,” Amira said in a low voice. “I had nothing to do with the Trinity’s actions. Or any compound’s actions, for that matter. But you’re right: they didn’t act alone. Alistair Parrish was there, he helped them escape. I heard him, when they came for Rozene. He let them shoot Valerie Singh! His former wife, and mother of his child.”

  The two police officers by the door laughed but Pierson narrowed his eyes, irritated.

  “Why would Alistair Parrish sabotage his own project?” he asked. “It makes no sense. Unless someone else can vouch for what you’re saying—”

  “The only other person who can is in a coma,” Amira said heatedly. “But she can still talk to us. Give her a holomentic reading and get someone to tap into her recent memories. Trust me, it won’t be easy but they can be extracted before she deteriorates further. You have to be quick and find Parrish now before he disappears!”

  A man strode into the room and whispered in Pierson’s ear. The detective made a gesture for Amira to pause and followed the man into the hall. Several seconds later, Pierson’s voice exploded from the hallway.

  “Why does everything have to be a fucking jurisdiction battle?” he shouted. “I’m sick of these turf wars. She’s in our custody, this happened in Westport and we’re dealing with it! The Aldwych Council can have her once we’ve filed our own charges and finished our own fucking police work. Tell them no!”

  The Aldwych Council. Parrish sat on the Council, the governing body that determined most of Aldwych’s internal affairs, to the irritation of many in Greater Westport. If the Council wanted her in their custody, Amira guessed that the reason was nothing advantageous for her.

  “What do you mean fucking NASH wants her, too?” Pierson howled. “What does NASH have to do with anything?”

  “This attack is connected to a crime we believe happened on one of the stations,” a familiar voice stated glibly. “We just have a few questions for her, and then you can keep her. I have my warrant right here.”