The Chronicles of Vallanie Sharp: Novice

by Morgan Feldman

Scia conducted my evaluation of Altus, but it fell on hollow ears. She began with my mistakes, as always, saying the very things I knew she would. In the end, she did congratulate me, admitting that it was a very good first consultation, but warning that I shouldn’t let my success go to my head.

  The rest of the day’s consultations returned to normal, with her conducting, and me observing. Only the questions she would ask after each became more specific, such as “Notice how I turned his question back on him at this precise moment?” or “See how I made a diagnosis without a single open-ended question?” So I had only to nod yes, and look contemplative, and I made it through the day without reprimand.

  “You’re a quick learner, Val.” The unexpected compliment during dinner caught me so off guard I almost choked. “I knew I made the right decision choosing you. It won’t be long at all before you’ll be ready for the exam.” Maybe I imagined it, but I could swear her voice softened, as if there was a touch of regret at impeding nostalgia filtering through.

  That night, I couldn’t sleep. I felt like I had done something wrong during the evaluation. I mentally scolded myself. Scia was pleased, and that was what I wanted. Right?

  I kicked at the sheets, but they continued to cling to my skin. The examination replayed over and over in my mind, until I had every word, every look, ingrained in my memory. I looked for something I did wrong, looked for a way I could have turned the conversation so he appeared healthy. If only I hadn’t thought it was a stupid test! If I had known better, maybe I could have helped him.

  Then again, I couldn’t help but feel that part of me knew it wasn’t a test, but I refused to believe it. Even if I had known, even if I tried to twist the conversation to his advantage, he came across as so clearly defective, the result would have been the same. That was another thing that was bothering me: how did he seem so defective in the examination, when he seemed so normal in daily life?

  Scia’s words floated to the surface of my thoughts: you would be surprised at how subtle some symptoms can be—or better yet, how easily some patients can hide them. She was the last person I wanted to hear at the moment.

  I shoved the thought aside. There was still hope for Altus. He wasn’t an emergency patient, so he would be monitored before seeing a secondary examiner, who would have the power to undo my decision, or follow through with it. Even as I thought it, I felt the pulse of hope fade away. No perceiver could be fooled by a case as bad as his.

  And yet, I had been. For months, I had been fooled. I should have seen the signs, but I didn’t.

  After two hours of tossing and turning in the dark, I got up and went to the window. My hand activated the lights on the frame, which glowed a soft blue on either side of me. The light bounced of my face, illuminating my reflection against the darkness. I stared into the colorless eyes before me, holding my breath so it wouldn’t fog up the glass. My hand reached against my reflection, fingers tapping floating fingers, as my mind twisted and turned trying to figure out what was bothering me.

  I closed my eyes and took a deep breath. I knew what it was. The answer had been there all along. I just didn’t want to admit it. I knew my diagnosis had been correct, but some part of me wanted it to be wrong. Altus was nice. He had no malicious intent. He never harmed anyone, and wasn’t planning on it. So, why wasn’t he healthy? Who got to decide what was healthy and what wasn’t? They made us, so they should be able to say when we’re broken. But then how are they any different from Zack? What if they’re wrong? What if we could fix ourselves? What if I had slither?

  My eyelids jumped open. I pulled my hand away in horror as I finally realized the source of my true disturbance. What if I was defective? Everything Altus had said seemed to make sense, though I knew it was wrong. It was all something I’d thought at one time or another, though I’d pushed it away. But now, I couldn’t, because I didn’t know, in all honesty, if I had to examine myself, who would win? The perceiver or the patient? Was I fit to be a perceiver?

  I stumbled back to bed and crawled under the sheets, watching tears drip silently onto the soft folds of my pillow, disappearing instantly as they touched the absorbing fabric. My eyes started stinging and I shut them tight, rubbing my face across the soft folds. I knew what I had to do.

  Grasping the edge of the bed, I pushed myself up and dressed in the dark. My fingers fumbled for my coat in the dark. When it was safely secured in my arms, I walked out.

  Lights flickered to life as I entered the empty hallway. I started walking. I wasn’t sure where I was going. I knew I wanted answers. It was the question that eluded me.

  Slinking into the elevator, I pressed the ground floor button, and scrambled into my coat. My disheveled hair and reddened eyes reflected a hundred times across the mirrored surfaces on all sides, mocking me like a vampire ready to strike the moment I made a mistake. I tried to soften the mess with a finger through the worst of the tangles, until the ground stopped moving and the doors opened.

  I stepped out from the building into the open darkness and took a deep breath of relief. I had made it outside, and now my resolve was doubled. I felt a great sense of calm, almost as if a storm had passed through me and it was only now safe to come out again.

  Closing cafes, blinking advertisements, and teen-packed arcades protected me from the solitude of empty streets with an occasional businessman strolling home late. The air no longer felt light and fresh, but still and heavy, as if it lingered too long in a locked classroom. I went straight to Central and to the second floor. It was dark. Even the secretary wasn’t there. They didn’t do regular consultations during the night, but the floors above glowed with light.

  I frowned. Scia had forbidden me to go to higher floors, but I’d seen apprentices coming down before. And Altus had a point. We diagnosed people, but we never saw what they did with them.

  What happens to a person after they are treated? Why do some of them return to work while others don’t? Why is it that there is supposed to be a three percent deviation in genetic design, when I’d never met anyone who didn’t match his or her chart? These were but a few of the questions that crowded my mind as I stepped onto the base of the escalator with my hands clenched tightly in my coat pocket.

  Slowly, the dark metal waves carried me to floor three, then four. I was about to continue to floor five, but I heard a familiar laugh that could only belong to Mr. Saxton. I looked up to see a group coming down the escalator, and sure enough, Mr. Saxton was there, smiling joyously, showing another perceiver a picture of something on his radix.

  My heart racing, I spun around, praying he hadn’t seen or recognized me.

  Starting forward in uncertainty, I heard the doors to the elevator open. Two perceivers stepped out, and I scrambled inside, relieved as the cold metal separated me from Mr. Saxton and his friends.

  The relief was temporary, replaced by worry as I realized I was trapped in a metal box with three strange healers who could end my career if they found out I wasn’t supposed to be here. However, they were so deeply engaged in a rant on the revised budget that they paid me little attention. One turned to me once, complaining about how money towards the dying industry of physical health was a waste of resources and asking if I agreed. A simple nod was all it took for her to turn away again, exclaiming loudly that I was proof enough she was correct.

  The doors opened on floor ten and I jumped out as fast as I could. One of the healers got off too, scanning her wrist to reveal a hall very different from the lower floors.

  Curious, I stepped inside, slowing my gait until the healer was so far ahead, it would be impossible to start another conversation without shouting.

  Instead of the usual dark drapes, both walls were made of tinted glass, behind which were small cells similar to examination rooms but with extra furniture, including beds and bathrooms, that looked like they belonged in a rather stark hotel. The stranger thing was that there were people living in them.

  I took a cautious step towards the gla
ss to find I was looking in on an old man sleeping with his mouth open, his arms sprawled out above his head. Scia had told me floor ten was for research, not treatment or examination, so why were there people here?

  I took a few steps to the right, only to realize I was now looking into a different cell, this one with a woman dipping her finger into coffee as she used it to paint across the floor. I continued slowly down. Most of the patients resembled the old man—fast asleep in their beds—but the farther I walked, the more exceptions I came across. One man had tied his pillow to the bedpost with a sheet, and was punching it as hard as he possibly could. Another was spread across the floor, crying. A little girl was clinging onto the coat of an older perceiver, bursting into tears as the woman tried to leave.

  When I reached the first corner, I reminded myself why I’d come in the first place. I wanted to see the treatment center, not the research. I turned around to go back, and had taken less than three steps when I heard a loud bang. Startled, I whirled around to see two guards trying to restrain an elder woman in a nearby cell. She lashed out at them, digging her nails into the thick taut fabric of one guard’s vest as the other grabbed her wrists, holding them tight while a healer injected her with something that made her go limp.

  Recognizing the woman as a patient Scia had recently diagnosed, I was curious as to why she was still around, or what had caused her to become so violent. She had seemed fine the previous week, with the exception of her anxiety, which a simple localized reinstallation should have easily fixed. Nevertheless, it was too risky to stick around to find out.

  “Want to keep her here another week?” A female guard asked.

  The healer shook his head, wiping his brow with his sleeve. “Nah, this is the third outburst since treatment. It was clearly incomplete. Retire her.”

  The second they stepped towards the door, I turned and ran. I made it back to the end of the hall and onto the escalator before the guards had time to come out and notice me. I went down, and down, thinking only of getting back to my bed, until I got to the landing of floor seven.

  The moment I stepped onto stable ground, my curiosity returned. This was my chance—the only one I would likely get during my apprenticeship, if not my entire career—to see the treatment floor. It was the reason I’d come in the first place.

  The doors, less than twenty feet away, were shut tight, requiring a wrist scan to open. I slowed my pace. I wasn’t sure if they would let me in or not. If they wouldn’t, I wasn’t sure if it would it just flash red or set off an alarm.

  I was debating whether or not I should just go back, when a shadow was cast from the escalator. I pulled out my radix in haste and began to type on it, trying to look busy, hoping it was no one I knew.

  Seconds later, a healer walked past, her eyes focused on the doors ahead.

  I began an agonizingly slow stroll towards them, rolling up my sleeve as if I was preparing to raise my arm to the scanner.

  The woman gave a sigh of annoyance and quickened her steps, stepping in front of me to swipe her wrist when I was just three feet away. I kept the joy from showing on my face as the metal separated and she dashed inside, with me trailing slowly in her wake. To anyone watching, I hoped it would look like a mentor with a lagging apprentice.

  She soon disappeared around the corner, and my heart rate began to rise. If I was caught, I wasn’t sure how I could explain myself. Would they believe me if I said I thought this was the second floor? Maybe I could make up some story about how I lost an earring in a consultation room, but I couldn’t remember where. They’d probably know I was too smart to go looking on a secure floor. I tried to act as natural as possible and desperately hoped they didn’t notice anything suspicious.

  A series of small cautious steps brought me to the first door, and I peered quickly in the window.

  It was dark. A single dim light glowed above a white foam table with the impression of a human body in the center. A tall cylindrical machine rested lifelessly next to it along with four large black screens suspended from the ceiling.

  Moving away, I took quick long strides to the end of the hall, wary of the cameras I knew were on me.

  An open doorway to my right led me to a hall different from the one I was in. The ceiling pulsed a low blue as strands of light made to look like tranquil waves twisted and unfolded above my head. Panels of glass replaced the stark white walls, allowing me to glimpse the sparkling chamber of dark metal cells stretched out like coffins on cafeteria tables, nutrients for science. Most had a tranquil white glow around them, while a few slowly turned green, and others, red. I had to lift up on my heels to see through the transparent lids.

  Under them rested bodies, submerged in a thick watery substance, with tubes running from their mouths and noses to the edge of the table, down to a black box beneath. Eyes closed, lips slightly parted, the bodies were still breathing as small dark circles crawled around their foreheads like bugs, sinking beneath the skin and into the brain.

  Healers in blue scrubs stood around various screens, monitoring information. I didn’t want them to see me, so I continued walking forward, eyeing them sideways through the glass. Small screens lined the bottom of each coffin-like unit, identifying the patient.

  I nearly stumbled when I saw Zack Septus. I had to walk forward and look back over my shoulder in order to clearly see his face. There was no doubt about it: it was him.

  Inside a cell emitting a soft white light, he lay like the others, unmoving, twitching every so often. I reminded myself he was unconscious and that this was what it took to heal him, but I wasn’t so sure anymore. None of the videos we’d seen in class had shown anything like this and, throughout all of her ramblings, Scia had never spoken of anything like it.

  I turned away and continued my walk, gaining speed, facing forward. The passage led me back to the main hall on Floor Seven, farther down than I’d intended to go. Thankfully, the halls had a circular layout, so I didn’t need a map to find my way back.

  Two healers were on my right, moving slowly away from me. Walking as fast as I could without causing attention, I started in the opposite direction, focusing all my attention on the clear hall in front of me.

  The entrance was in sight when I heard the sound of automatic doors sliding apart behind me. I redeemed my prior position, intently studying my radix.

  A pair of healers emerged from an outer room. One had streaks of pink in her pale hair, which was braided neatly around a star shaped hairpiece at the back of her head. “—have to find her before she gets into something she shouldn’t.”

  Her voice echoed down the hall and my heart beat faster. Did they know I was here?

  A man’s voice replied, “She shouldn’t be hard to find. Did you call in a trace?”

  “Marcus said he would.”

  The man yawned. “It’s shouldn’t be long then.”

  The pink haired girl shook her head. “I swear, if Marcus lets that dog out one more time, I’m locking him in the cage.”

  My pulse slowed. They walked right past me and through the double doors without a second glance.

  I looked longingly at the doors, and then back to the room the healers had come from. Summoning up the last of my courage, I ran back to it. The door was locked, guarded by another scanner that I didn’t dare risk. Instead, I maintained a safe distance and peered in through the round window.

  The room was identical to the one I had seen before, except there was an occupant in the chair. A pale-faced woman with fragile eyes stared out into the distance, unmoving. I recognized her as the old woman from the viewing room, the one who was being sedated.

  I watched as a blue tarp descended from the ceiling, melding to the woman’s body as she lay there in silence, without moving a muscle.

  It took me a moment before I began to suspect she was dead. I’d never seen a human dead before. We were told we couldn’t die, not of natural causes: science had surpassed nature and, until nature caught up, we could s
afely live long happy lives. Of course, we still aged, still grew clumsy and senile. That was why we had to be retired, sent to a place where we would be safe from the unintentional harm of the young.

  But what I saw denied all that. The tarp glowed black and smoldered, sending thick trails of smoke into the air. The glass in front of me began to fog up, casting a gray murky appearance to the horror behind the door. At last, the tarp fell, deflated, against the folds of an empty chair. Dead or alive, the woman had been incinerated, and I had seen it.

  The screen behind flashed in molten red letters, “Retirement Successful.” I took a cautious step back, and another, before I turned from the door and dragged my heavy body down the hall.

  The elevator opened just before I got to it. Two healers stepped out, escorting a little girl who was crying for her mother. One healer told her soothingly that it would only be a quick operation, and it wouldn’t hurt a bit. They led her towards the empty room across the hall.

  I hurried inside, letting out a sigh of relief as the thick sheets of metal closed around me, blocking out the horrors of the floor.

  “Tough night?”

  I looked over to see the other passenger was a middle-aged perceiver with thick dark hair and a round face that would have looked friendly if it weren’t for the permanent frown.

  “Yeah,” I said, looking away, hoping to avoid any further conversation. I pressed the button to the ground floor.

  “You’d have had better luck with the escalators.”

  “What?” I looked up quickly, half expecting him to handcuff me and half expecting a squadron of guards to come flying through the door and arrest me that very instant.

  He lifted a finger, pointing to the ceiling. “We’re going up.”

  “Oh.” Instinctively, I reached my hand over my heart to ensure it hadn’t shot through my chest from beating so hard. Realizing I was being watched, I moved to adjust the collar of my coat.

  “There’s no need to be nervous,” he said in a way that was not at all reassuring, “I’m not going to give you a pop quiz or anything.” He made a funny expression which I think was supposed to be a smile, but looked more like the corners of his mouth itched. “What has gotten into you apprentices these days?”

  I didn’t know how to answer, so I simply stared at him, but tried my best not to. It was then that I realized his ID card read “Armand Cecil.” It was a good thing my nerves were already prepped for shock or I’d have panicked. I was finally standing face to face with the president of perceivers, and I was breaking more rules than I had during my entire apprenticeship so far.

  The door opened and he slipped out without so much a backward glance in my direction. Thankful they closed without admitting any other passengers, I pressed the ground floor once more for reassurance.

  The instant I reached it, I took long controlled strides back to the main entrance and into the darkness. Once I turned the corner, I ran. I ran back to my hotel, up to my room, and into my bed.

  Pulling the covers over my head, I tried to steady my breathing. I was nauseous. The room was spinning. When I closed my eyes, I could hear my heart pounding in my ears. I saw lifeless skin burning and blistering, over and over again.

  I pried my eyes apart and rolled over, telling myself it was just a dream: that I’d just imagined the whole thing: that I hadn’t left the room at all: that it was just a bad movie I had watched before bed, or a story Sid had told to scare me. None of it helped, because I knew it wasn’t true, but it calmed my heart enough that my eyes grew heavy and I drifted at last into a deep dreamless sleep.

  Chapter 11: Clint