Video Nasties

by Ralston, Duncan

  I asked the question that had been on my mind since Lex had told me about my visitor. "What are you doing here, Parker?"

  "It's funny." He laughed awkwardly. "You probably wouldn't believe me if I told you."

  "You'd be surprised at what I can believe."

  "Well, okay," he said. "Can we walk and talk?"

  I looked over my shoulder. Lex nodded. We walked, Parker and I side by side. He was taller than me and when I looked up, once we got out from under the silo's shadow, his face was silhouetted by the sun. Lex followed a little ways behind us, always within earshot.

  "I've thought about you a fair bit since you left the house," he began. "I know that sounds weird, you were only twelve--"

  "Thirteen."

  "Which would make you, what now?"

  "I turned sixteen in September" I told him, desperately wishing I was older.

  He nodded soberly. "Right. But... but it wasn't like I thought of you that way, you know? At first I think I was just happy for you. And I wished you would do great things, because it was hope for the rest of us. Or me, at least. Do you ever think about m--" He stopped himself, squinting off at the buildings on the horizon. "--about us? The other foster kids?"

  I nodded, unable to stop my cheeks from turning red. A sly grin briefly crossed his lips.

  "Okay. Okay, good. But here's the weird thing: I started to notice every time I thought about you, my ears would start ringing. You know how they say 'your ears are burning,' and it's supposed to mean someone's talking trash about you?"

  "I kind of always thought it meant you were thinking about each other at the same time," I told him. "Like when you go to call someone and they're already on the other end."

  Parker smiled. "I like that. Let's go with that." The smile faded. "Well, after a while I started to notice the ringing in my ears would be louder, and sometimes it would be quieter, like that game you play where you're looking for something and they tell you whether you're hot or cold? I'd be on my way to work on the subway and the ringing would get so intense I couldn't hear the music on my phone. It kinda drove me nuts," he said, chuckling a little. "But eventually I realized it always happened when I passed this place. So this morning I rode my bike out here, and the ringing all of the sudden just stopped. I went up to the security booth and the security guard told me to go away, but when I told him what happened, you know, why I was here, pretty much desperate for someone to believe me, he didn't laugh at me like I expected. He called up to the main building, and your friend Lex came to talk to me." We both looked back at Lex, who pretended to be studying the clouds. "I thought he was going to send me home, but when he asked me where I grew up and I told him about Ms. O'Shaughnessy, he brought me inside."

  "I'm glad you came," I said, not knowing quite how to respond, since he obviously hadn't known he'd been drawn here by me, nor who or what he would find when he got here. He hadn't come here to visit, in other words, which was what I'd been hoping to hear.

  "I'm not disappointed, if that's what you were wondering. It's real good to see you, Mary." When he put a hand on my shoulder I felt warmth spread from his fingers and radiate through my body. "I'm glad you're okay." He offered a smile, and in that moment I truly was okay.

  Lex had approached us from behind, spoiling the moment. Parker withdrew his hand from me, as if embarrassed. "Marigold, it's time for your lessons," Lex said.

  Parker nodded. "I guess this is goodbye."

  "I guess," I nodded.

  He leaned down and kissed my cheek. "Stay well."

  I said, "Mm-hmm," and frankly it was all I could say. To have him swirl into my life only to be whisked away so quickly, it was startling, to say the least. But as Lex led him back to the door and came to collect me, standing in the sunshine, I thought I understood why they had let me see him.

  "Well, that was a nice visit."

  "Strange," I agreed.

  "How do you think that happened?"

  I shrugged. I had a theory but I wasn't about to let Lex in on it. I wanted Parker out there in the world, to live for both of us. If they'd realized what I had, that Parker must have had some vague empathic abilities even he was unaware of, I was certain they would have locked him up, too. Lex had assumed I'd called him to me somehow, I thought, but his next words made me wonder.

  "You know you can't think about him anymore, don't you." Not a question--it was an imperative. "I don't have to remind you of the danger in that."

  I nodded, glad Lex had his own theory. Let him believe Parker was merely picking up my signal if it spared him from harm. "He won't come back again," I assured him.

  "He'd better not." Lex gave me a dark look. "But just to be sure, I've told Garrison to give him a ride home."

  "That was nice of you," I said, painfully aware the sentiment was far from "nice." They would learn where Parker lived, and I would be forced to do whatever they told me to do from then on, no matter how grievous.

  That afternoon in The Eye, before I knew what I was doing and could stop myself, I'd drawn an airliner. The terrified faces of passengers stared out at me from hastily scribbled windows.

  ❚❚

  THE RINGING STOPPED. I know you can't hear it, not over the webcam, but it's gone now. Maybe I was wrong. Maybe I've got time after all. Maybe they haven't found me.

  It's stupid to hope I've gotten away. I know that. All the months I've spent running, they've been so close behind me all along, like shadows. Like an echo.

  I'll never get away from them. With all that I've done, maybe I don't deserve to be free. I am a killer. I've killed. And I will do it again, without hesitation. Nibbles the gerbil bit me because he was cornered. All of their training at The Eye taught me how to bite so hard no one would be stupid enough to bite back.

  But they have to contain me. Not because they're worried I'll go to the papers, not because I'd reveal everything they did to me at The Eye. They have to contain me now because I'm a danger. I'm a wolf in the henhouse. A terror cell in a hoodie and black jeans.

  The government distanced themselves when Project Blue Sky became declassified. You probably heard about it on the news. "A modern-day MK Ultra," CNN said. "Our Nation's children subjected to Guantanamo-like conditions," the headline said in the Washington Post. And my personal favorite, "An Orwellian nightmare," from some newspaper in Canada. The other kids were released back into the world, like domesticated animals into the wild. I read an article recently about one of the older boys having committed suicide, and another who'd tried to kill the couple who'd adopted her. She's currently locked up in a mental hospital. Post-traumatic stress, her court-appointed psychologist claimed.

  Lex disappeared. I'd love to believe he's given up on me but I've felt his frequency too close and far too often not to know he's still on my trail.

  Project Blue Sky didn't end, it just went underground. Off the grid. It's a science experiment beyond the petty concerns of limitations and government sanctions.

  If I hadn't escaped, if I'd waited it out a few more months--and honestly, what's a few months when you've been locked up for five years?--they might have let me go. My participation in Blue Sky might have been explained away as another attempt to awaken dormant psychic and/or empathic abilities in children. They might have forced me to sign non-disclosure agreement in exchange for a massive payoff. They might have threatened my life, and the lives of everyone I cared about--a list growing smaller by the minute.

  But Lex made waiting it out impossible, and I ran the first chance I got. Those black lines in the declassified documents, they're hiding me. I've been redacted.

  I'm just an inconvenient mess to sweep under the rug.

  ❚❚

  ON NEW YEAR'S Eve, 2013, Lex staggered into my room after dinner holding a bottle of champagne. I'd just turned eighteen years old.

  "Maaaaary," he sang, and flopped down drunkenly on my squeaky mattress. Unconsciously, he'd managed to replicate his own frequency on the low note. Or maybe he knew. Another game. Ano
ther tease.

  "The girl already collected my tray," I told him.

  "I'm not here to clean up after you," he said with a long, heaved sigh. He took a pull from the bottle. The sound of his lips withdrawing from the rim reminded me of when he used to muffle the microphone, back when the White Coats weren't quite sure how to deal with me yet. Some of the champagne spattered on my pillow.

  "Celebrating all by yourself?" I asked, standing by the door. I sensed something was wrong, more than just Lex's unrestrained drunkenness, and it made me wary, like a wolf when the zookeeper's come to clean its cage.

  "I'm not by myself," he slurred. "You're here."

  "But I'm not drinking."

  Lex rose groggily from the dampened pillow. He squinted at me drunkenly, and made a come-here gesture with his index finger.

  I glanced up at the camera then. Lex followed my look and grinned stupidly.

  It came to me then, what was wrong. The camera's ever-present whine I'd grown so accustomed to in all the years I'd spent in my small white room--it wasn't there.

  Lex had turned the camera off.

  He studied the soft rise of my belly beneath my T-shirt, visible because I'd taken to cutting the midriffs out of them, mimicking a style I'd grown up seeing on television and in movies. His ogling made me tug at the frayed edge, pulling it down to the waistband of my pants.

  "You're a shy one, aren't you? Coy." I shrugged, feeling suddenly very vulnerable. With the camera off and the door mag-locked, I was at his mercy. He swung his feet over the edge of the bed. "The government's cut our funding, you know. We're done here. Finished. Kaputnik."

  "Where is everyone?"

  "Big party in the silo," he said, flashing me a cruel look. "One last hurrah on the government's dime."

  He caught my look back at the card reader lock, and laughed. "Cheer up, Marigold. It's New Year's Eve!" Slowly, he staggered to his feet, champagne sloshing in the bottle. "Oh, and guess what. I've made a resolution..." He swallowed an apparently sour burp as he approached me. "Mary. I've decided... that I'm going to kiss you."

  I crossed my arms over my breasts. "What if I don't want to be kissed?"

  "You're a tease," he said, his smile twisting down in a grimace. "You think I don't see you putting on a show for me in front of the camera? You think I don't know when you've been naughty?"

  His implication made me sick. I fell back against the door, reaching back to prop myself up. Lex stopped barely a foot from me, and took another swig from the bottle before offering it to me. "C'mon, Mary. Be nice for me. It's just you and me here. Nobody has to know."

  "They won't see?" I asked, as innocently as I could muster.

  The stupid grin returned. "I shut off the camera."

  I smiled and took the bottle from him. Swigging from it, I let most of the sour, fizzy liquid spill down my chin. His greedy eyes followed the white froth down my throat to my T-shirt, where it soaked to the skin. While he stared at the nipple it revealed, I took a deliberate step toward him.

  My eyes lingered on his small, angry mouth, then shot up to his eyes. His gaze moved from my chest to my parted lips as I pressed myself against him. A little moan escaped him. I felt him begin to stiffen in his jumper, and that's when my teeth clamped down hard on his nose.

  Lex screamed, staggering back, stymieing the flow of blood with his hands. Behind his fingers his eyes were wide with surprise, but anger quickly followed. "You bitch!" he said, his voice muffled by his hands, reminding me again of our first meeting, when he'd referred to me as a what instead of a who. I hoped my teeth had stung him as badly as he'd stung me that day. But just to make sure, I gave him back the bottle.

  It struck him solidly above the ear, making a hollow note as it connected with his skull. The black earpiece fell to the floor and skittered over near the bathroom door. Stunned, bleeding now from his nose and the gash at his temple, Lex scrambled for it on his hands and knees, but I was quicker. I crushed it under my sole before he could snatch for it.

  His eyes grew wide with fear.

  No need to imagine anymore, no need to draw. I simply let the anger flow from me. For all the times he'd tricked me. For all the times he'd gotten the upper hand. For his leering. For Nibbles. For the people he'd made me kill. For the five years of my life he'd kept me locked up in that tiny room, a place I hope I'll never see again.

  On the floor, the emptied bottle resonated a pitch-perfect match to Lex's frequency. The digital bedside clock flashed all 8s. The desk and bed began to rattle, the overhead lights flickering.

  "Mary, don't--" he gasped, his lips drenched in blood from his nose.

  I reached down and tore the keycard from the lanyard around his neck. "What's the code?"

  Lex fell over on his side, grasping at his ears.

  "Tell me the code, or swear to God I'll fucking kill you!"

  "Two-two-five," he sighed, squeezing his eyes tight as a wave of agony struck him. "Two-two-five."

  I punched in the six digit code, giving him points for the reference.

  "You know they won't let you get out of here," he groaned, looking up at me from the floor. "Even if you do make it, you'll be looking over your shoulder the rest of your short, miserable life."

  "Maybe," I said, swiping the card over the reader. The maglock clicked, and the door opened with a gasp of air. "But at least I'll never have to see your ugly face again."

  I backed into the hall.

  "Don't count on it!" he shouted after me as the door locked between us.

  The hall was empty. As quiet as a museum. I ran, passing more doors like mine, wondering how many children like me were behind those doors, praying for escape. I thought about letting them all go, taking them with me... but the risk was too great. What if they drank the punch? What if they were perfect little obedient killers?

  The rest happened in a blur. Doors flew by, corners, dead ends. The alarm began to blare, flashing red on white. My heart beat so heavily in my ears I could barely hear it. Finally I stood in front of a door, knowing this was the end.

  "GET ON THE GROUND!"

  I turned, a cornered rat. A guard in full body armor had taken up a stance at the bend in the corridor, aiming a huge black machinegun at me. I found his frequency in seconds. The gun began to quiver, its parts rattling. He gritted his teeth, struggling to maintain his grip. Finally the resonance was too much for his tiny mind and his finger flew open, and the gun clattered to the floor as he brought his hands to his ears with a cry of agony, falling to his knees with a heavy thud of armor and gear.

  I swiped the card. The maglock clicked.

  The door opened with a sigh of fresh air.

  I took one last look at those white walls, and stepped out into the clear, crisp night.

  ❚❚

  I'VE BEEN RUNNING ever since. For the first few days, I was terrified of being caught. For about a week after that, when no one seemed to be following me, I was sure I'd gotten away.

  The news broke during the second week. The President came on TV to address the scandal, claiming Project Blue Sky had been officially terminated. The children were freed, some sent back to their parents, others to foster homes. No one seemed to be aware of my participation. He revealed nothing about assassinations, bus accidents or plane crashes.

  Those first few weeks were the most difficult. I'd never lived on my own. I'd never had to fend for myself. I spent two nights on the street, shivering in an ATM vestibule under a blanket I'd salvaged from a dumpster. Once I'd decided I didn't have to worry about Lex anymore, I moved to a women's shelter. I told them I was an orphan, that my husband was abusive and probably looking for me, that he was in law enforcement so I couldn't tell the police. The woman in charge of The Healing Place, a shelter run out of her rambling ranch-style home, was sympathetic when I said I hadn't been able to get at my ID before I ran. She assured me no information would be shared with the police or the public. My "husband" would never find me, she said, despite the resources he would have at
his disposal as an officer of the law.

  Unfortunately, Lex had been granted far greater power to find me.

  I was provided clean clothes and the basics: toothbrush, toothpaste, hair brush, shower gel. They cooked for us and we kept our own small rooms clean. It was The Eye all over again, in that respect. All of these women were running from someone. They had all been through horrific trauma. But none of them had suffered quite the same experience I had. Once again I found myself lonely but never alone. I listened to their stories, and kept tightlipped about mine, only offering a few fake details when it felt necessary to maintain someone's trust. I felt more kinship with their children, and spent much of my time there reading stories to them, babysitting when they weren't in school or daycare and while their mothers attended group sessions, counselling, and social assistance appointments.

  The night the news showed the remaining children escorted by police from The Eye, their faces blurred, I was reading Where the Wild Things Are to the little wide-eyed survivors of abuse and addiction, acting out the voices the way I thought a mother might have to her children. I stopped to listen to the broadcast.

  "Those poor kids," a woman named Elana said, her prematurely gray hair a reminder of the years of physical and mental abuse she'd suffered at the hands of her husband. I saw tears standing in the eyes of some of the other women. It amazed me how much they could feel for someone they didn't know, when their own lives were in such disarray.

  I'd read somewhere that suffering breeds compassion. A Buddhist thing, maybe. I thought about my own life, how selfish I'd been when I'd lived at Ms. O'Shaughnessy's, how all I'd ever cared about was my own little interior world, and whether or not I would ever find someone to love me, to accept me for who--not what--I am.

  At The Eye, all of Lex's training had backfired. I'd actually learned how to care about others while they forced me to kill. Without compassion, I wouldn't have spared his life the night I escaped, to the detriment of my own. As my eyes filled with tears watching the other kids being led out of The Eye with coats and blankets covering their identities from the press, I thought that was something, at least.