Strands of Fate

by R F Hurteau

  Eli wasn’t sure what to say, so he didn’t reply. It was a strange, almost alien idea for him.

  Mabel was right, of course. He’d always had their own best interests at heart. Self-preservation was the way of the world.

  No, he realized. Self-preservation is the way of Val Int.

  “You’re right,” he said, understanding at last.

  She smiled again, a deep sigh of relief escaping from her as she closed her eyes, pleased to have finally gotten through to him.

  “These are our people now. We have to look out for each other. Our first order of business is to never harm each other, no matter what.”

  Eli frowned at her, confused and defensive. “I’ve never hurt anyone here.”

  She gave him a knowing look.

  “There are more ways to wound than just the physical. Pushing people away, that hurts, too, you know.”

  Grimacing, Eli nodded.

  “Okay. I get it.”

  She raised an eyebrow. “Promise me, Eli. Promise you’ll give others the same consideration you’ve always given me.”

  He thought about Reggie in the hallway, how it had wrenched at his heart to feel the tiny frame of the boy’s body racked with sobs. How he had wanted to hurt the people who had caused that child to suffer so.

  “I promise,” he told her. “But even so, even if we can join together with the others in solidarity, Mabel, it doesn’t do much good. It may be a small comfort, but we have no real power here. They do what they want with us, when they want. Use us and toss us away. People are going to die here.”

  “Yes. But they don’t have to die here.” Mabel pressed a finger against his chest. “We’ll honor their memories, and make sure they live on in whatever way we can.”

  They talked for a long time, Mabel introducing Eli to the few others who happened to be in the dormitory at the time, and sharing stories about what little she knew about Lydia. It wasn’t much, but it was something.

  When some of them, including his sister, began to yawn and cast hints in his direction about their desire to sleep, Eli excused himself. Returning to room 12, however, he realized that he wasn’t tired at all. He felt energized.

  Glancing around, he found the room much as he had left it. Several of his roommates had dozed off, quiet snores emanating from beneath thin blankets.

  But Linus, who always seemed the most reticent to surrender to sleep, was again propped up on his pillow, reading in the dim light of a table lamp.

  Eli made his decision in an instant. Striding over to Linus, he plopped himself down on the empty cot beside the boy. Linus’ green eyes flashed nervously, avoiding Eli’s gaze.

  “So,” Eli said, realizing with a twinge of guilt that this was the first time he’d ever spoken to Linus directly, “Linus. Tell me about yourself.”

  There was a moment of stunned silence. Linus pushed a stray dreadlock from his face, his brows furrowed in confusion. “

  Sorry?”

  Eli shrugged. “I just realized that I haven’t really gotten to know you, that’s all.”

  Linus looked down at his arm. Eli followed his gaze and was sickened to see a thick scar circling the boy’s wrist, shiny and raised against the otherwise smooth ebony skin.

  Linus held the arm up, and it took Eli a moment to work out that he was not trying to showcase the scar, but the tattoo just beneath it.

  “This is me,” Linus said, his voice tired.

  Eli shook his head. “Who were you before this place?”

  “Before?” Linus said, gazing toward the door, his nose crinkling as he pondered the idea. “I don’t remember a before, really. I mean, it must have happened, I suppose. I think I see bits and pieces of it in my dreams. But it’s fuzzy. It’s hard to tell which parts are real, and which I might have made up.”

  “Well,” Eli said, feeling determined to honor Mabel’s wishes, “maybe I can help. Let’s remember together.”

  Getting to know the others in Ward Three turned out to be a blessing over the next months. Eli found that those he saw every day were from many different backgrounds and had arrived there under varied circumstances. Very few were actually volunteers, but they did exist.

  As Eli progressed through the next stages of treatment, he often awoke in his bed not to silence and despair, but to new friends waiting to comfort and help him. And somehow it seemed easy and natural to do the same for them in return.

  They would drift in and out of each others’ dormitories, something Reggie informed him had not been very common in the past. Mabel’s wisdom proved correct in every way. None of these kids wanted to be alone. They were all frightened, all suffering.

  But most of all, they were lonely. When Eli and Mabel had extended their hands in friendship, they had been well received, creating an overwhelmingly grateful response from the others.

  It wasn’t always easy. They lost four more volunteers over the next three months. Shane had offered to look into the circumstances of their disappearance, wanting to give them whatever closure he was able even at risk of stepping out of line. But his efforts had been rebuffed at every turn.

  Whether the others had died, been transferred, or suffered some other yet unknown fate, they might never know.

  But Eli had made a promise to Mabel, and he would keep it.

  Each night he closed his eyes and repeated their names in his head, conjuring up the image of their faces in his mind, remembering the details they’d shared about their lives before Cedar Grove.

  It was all he had to offer.

  It would have to be enough.

  For Eli, the trials came fast and thick now, with little time to recover in between. Though nearly all of the volunteers were involved in the same set of experiments now, they were all at different stages of the process.

  Only Eli and Linus had progressed as far as “step four” as Reggie called it. Mabel was still in limbo somewhere in the second stage, unable to progress. She didn’t have enough information to offer a reason why, though she told Eli that she’d heard several of the technicians discussing something about “incompatibility.”

  Eli was just grateful that she had at least passed the fire chamber. Stage two had involved a sensory deprivation chamber which, while unpleasant, had been much more to Eli’s liking than the excruciating sensation of being burned alive.

  For his part, Eli wasn’t sure what they were doing to him, nor did he much care. His main focus was on surviving. He knew his physical abilities had grown by leaps and bounds. Endurance and stress testing, as well as frequent hand-to-hand sparring matches with Linus, had proven to him that he had surpassed what he had once believed possible. His sensory acuity was now so heightened that whenever he found himself alone in the dorm he would turn out the lights to escape their overwhelming glare. He’d considered complaining to the technicians, letting them know how uncomfortable everyday life had become for him, but thought better of it.

  Eli did not want to risk being segregated from the group, or from his sister. He would endure the discomfort of his newfound abilities just like he endured everything else here.

  Quietly.

  Twice more, Eli had glimpsed the masked figure. When he asked the others about it, however, no one knew what he was talking about. Even Mabel had shrugged him off, suggesting the man was perhaps a figment of his imagination, an effect of the myriad drugs the lab technicians were now pumping through his system.

  “No,” Eli had insisted. “I saw him that first day, when I was in the fire chamber.”

  Mabel shuddered. “How could you see anything during that, Eli? It was unbearable.”

  He bit his lip, for a moment questioning his own memories. “No. I know what I saw.”

  Mabel sighed. “All right, then I believe you. But I don’t know anything about him.”

  Shane had proven equally unhelpful, as seemed to be a running trend with him.

  “Sorry, Eli. I’ve never seen anyone wearing a mask. Unless you’re talking about an Enforcer? But, I ha
ven’t seen many of them here, either. Only when new transports come in.”

  “No, not an Enforcer,” Eli mused. “This was different. It was kind of like a helmet, metal, and it wrapped around his head.”

  “Sounds stuffy,” had been Shane’s simple reply. “And uncomfortable.”

  Eli had all but given up on ever finding out any more about the mysterious masked man. Often times he wondered why he even cared to know more, chalking it up to a desperate desire to have some sort of control over his life.

  Knowledge was precious here, and there was precious little of it to go around as far as the volunteers were concerned.

  He was once again lying in bed, torn between blocking out the world and making an effort to go speak with Linus, who had just returned from one of the labs a little while ago.

  Eli hadn’t bothered to look up to gather this information; he knew by the rhythmic cadence of Linus’ footfalls, and the sterile scent of the lab that lingered on his friend’s clothes and wafted through the dormitory like a distasteful perfume.

  Out of all of the other boys in ward, Eli had found himself most drawn to Linus. He had been a tough nut to crack, but after Eli had nudged him into opening up, the stories Linus had told had resonated with him.

  He’d been born in England, the birthplace of Values International. His parents had been high up in administration. When their son began to exhibit signs of a sickly disposition, they’d sought out Cedar Grove’s Advanced Modification program.

  Unfortunately, Linus had not been a good candidate at the time, instead landing in Ward Two. He’d been alone, unable to return home, unable to contact his parents. They’d done terrible things to him, once going so far to remove his entire hand as punishment for an act of what they deemed, ‘willful disobedience.’

  “After a few months,” Linus had told him with grim matter-of-factness, “they returned it. Called it a reward for my ’markedly improved behavior.’”

  He scowled down at his wrist, flexing his fingers one at a time. “They kept the damn thing frozen. I was walking around with a stump instead of a hand while a part of me was sitting in a lab freezer somewhere.”

  He shook his head, still looking down at his palm. “I’m sure they could have done a better job putting it back on. That’s what they do here, isn’t it? Improve things? I think they just didn’t want me to forget why I’d lost it in the first place. As if I ever could.”

  Linus hadn’t told Eli yet what they’d done to make him a candidate for Ward Three, and Eli hadn’t pushed. If the boy wanted him to know, he would share.

  “Eli!”

  Shane burst into the room, looking pale and breathless.

  Eli sat up, feeling his heart pounding in his chest. He knew something was wrong, and his thoughts naturally went to—

  “It’s Reggie,” Shane burst out. “I saw them wheeling him out of the ward. I don’t know what happened, but I overheard them. I think he’s suffered some sort of heart attack or something, Eli. They said something about cardiac arrest.”

  “You have to take me to him,” Eli said at once, already at the door. He doubted he could help, but the thought of little Reggie, frightened and alone, was more than he could bear. “Where is he?”

  “I think...” Shane’s eyes roamed the room wildly as he cringed, “I think they’re taking him down to Ward Two. I’m not sure.”

  “I’ll go with you,” Linus offered, coming up beside Eli.

  Eli shook his head. “We aren’t supposed to leave the ward,” he told Linus. “You’ll get in trouble.”

  Linus raised an eyebrow and offered a half-smile. “What’s the worst that could happen?” he asked wryly, raising his scarred arm in the air.

  “Come on,” Shane said, leading the way.

  A head taller than Eli, the older boy had a long stride, but he was no match for Linus and Eli’s genetically enhanced speed—not anymore.

  Reaching the first set of double doors several agonizingly long seconds before Shane did, Eli tried the handle despite knowing it was locked.

  “Hurry!” he said, frustration and fear fighting for his attention.

  “I really shouldn’t,” Shane muttered, even as he input his access code.

  They burst through together and hurried down one long corridor after another, stopping to confirm Shane’s code at intervals.

  When their next door opened on a wide metal stairwell marked by a small sign stating Ward Two Access, Eli hesitated for the briefest of moments.

  It seemed to him as if an invisible wall existed here, a thick curtain of deep foreboding.

  Linus seemed to sense his reticence.

  “Come on,” he urged. “Reggie’s down there.”

  Eli nodded, forcing himself onto the first landing, then taking the stairs two at a time.

  Reaching the door at the bottom, Shane grimaced.

  “I’m going to get it for this.”

  “We won’t tell,” Linus offered quickly. “We’ll just say we followed you or something. Caught the doors as they were closing. If anyone in Ward Three could pull it off, it would be me and Eli.”

  Shane peered through the small window and, finding the coast clear, pushed open the heavy door. It creaked, and Eli flinched.

  “Which way?” he asked Shane, keeping his voice down.

  “Just keep going straight till the end of the hall. Then head left. There are signs. There’s a room where they deal with emergencies. You won’t be able to go in, but with your crazy hearing I think you can listen at the doors all right. Just...do your best to stay out of sight. Once they catch you, they’re going to send you right back up. Make it worth it, okay?”

  Eli and Linus both nodded their thanks, following Shane’s instructions.

  There were indeed signs posted at every intersecting hall, and finding the emergency operating room was simple. The halls were deserted, the footsteps of the few technicians that were wandering around gave the two all the warning they needed to duck into an empty room or around a corner to wait until it was safe.

  Eli pressed his ear to the cool metal door, holding his breath.

  Inside, there was a cacophony of sounds. Cold, dispassionate voices called out to one another, issuing orders or reading off numbers that meant nothing to Eli. Beeping and buzzing and a long, high-pitched tone from various medical equipment assaulted him as he struggled to make sense of what was happening without the benefit of sight.

  He watched Linus instead, who was also listening intently, trying to see if the boy who’d had so many terrible experiences down here had any insight into the goings on inside.

  Linus’ face showed no indication that this was the case.

  “I’m calling it,” one of the calm voices said from inside. “Time of death, eleven fifty-two.”

  Time of death.

  No, that couldn’t be right. Linus’ wide eyes mirrored Eli’s own horror. He felt glued to the door now, for the first time in his life hoping with all his might that someone else, anyone else was dead inside.

  Anyone but tiny, bright-eyed little Reggie. He waited for them to call out a name, give some indication of the poor soul’s identity.

  Instead, the sounds of machinery went silent one-by-one as they were disconnected.

  The approach of wheels and footsteps forced Linus into action, grabbing Eli by the wrist and pulling him away from the door.

  But Eli didn’t want to go.

  There was the sound of a latch disengaging, and the door swung out into the hall, nearly hitting Eli, who stood frozen in place.

  “Hey! What are you two doing here?”

  The words were lost on Eli. He was entirely focused on the gurney. A white sheet covered a tiny figure from head to toe, but one small, familiar hand stuck out. The fingers dangled over the edge, as if holding on.

  “Eli,” Linus said urgently, tugging at him.

  “I said, what are you doing here? How did you get out of your ward?”

  Eli felt something inside him snap.
>
  All the instances when he’d done exactly as he’d been told, for Mabel’s sake. All the times he’d let them poke and prod him. No more. The switch had been flipped. He was through listening to these monsters.

  He paid no attention to the orderly’s accusing questions, nor to Linus’ insistent grip.

  Eli turned and ran.

  There were fewer locked doors in Ward Two. Most likely because all of the subjects here spent most of their time incapacitated.

  It didn’t matter. Eli raced down the halls with no sense of where he was heading. He wanted to be sick.

  Reggie was dead. They’d known he wasn’t ready to progress, they’d told the boy as much. But they’d tried again anyway, and now Reggie had paid the price for their stupidity.

  Eli didn’t know where he was going, couldn’t gather the strength to stop and read the signs. He just wanted to get out. He just wanted to escape this awful place, where children suffered and died for the sake of...what? What had Reggie died for?

  Nothing. Nothing at all.

  Eli slammed his whole body against a door that would not yield. He felt a wave of rage coursing up from deep inside, spilling from his mouth in an ear-splitting roar. He grasped the handle of the door and pulled it upward, surprised at how easy it was. Something inside the door’s mechanism cracked and strained as he wrenched at it.

  He could hear someone approaching from behind him, and lost no time in dashing up the now exposed stairwell.

  Reaching the ground floor, he found two exits. One was labelled Ward One Access, the other unmarked. But a sign was unnecessary. He could smell it. The outside. He could smell the air, so different than the sterile, vile scents they were forced to breathe in here.

  He treated this locked door with all the regard he had given the other one, but this time, he tore it clear off its hinges.

  And that was it. He was out of Cedar Grove.

  He stepped from the bright white light of the stairwell into the darkness, marveling at the stillness of the night.

  The cold was intense, but welcome. Eli didn’t want to feel anymore.

  He walked further out into the dark, the chill piercing his flesh but doing nothing to numb the pain in his soul.