by Krista McGee
“Why?”
“I am a Scientist in training.” Berk shrugs. “I have access to almost everything.”
I can’t speak. Berk turns off the screen and sits back on the edge of my sleeping platform. “But I didn’t know Dr. Loudin was testing on you until you told me. I promise. After I watched Dr. Loudin that day, I tapped into the simulation program. To make sure there weren’t any more he was planning to put you in.”
I drop my arm. Slowly. “This isn’t a simulation?”
“No.”
“None of this has been a simulation?”
Berk holds my face in his hands. “We are not a simulation. What we feel is not a simulation.”
I want to cry and jump and shout. But those thoughts are crowded out by another thought. “Rhen is alive?”
Berk holds my good hand with both of his. “She was taken a few days before Pod C was eliminated. She is sick.”
I remember hearing the strange sound that came from her mouth. The same thing Asta had. I remember trying to hide that from the Monitors, trying to convince her not to tell anyone. With me gone, she must have decided to follow her logic and turn herself in. “What is going to happen to her?”
Berk won’t look at me. I hear what he is saying without him having to say it. Rhen is going to be annihilated.
“No.” I jump out of the sleeping platform, nearly tripping from the weight of my arm. “She can’t have survived the pod’s elimination to be sent here to die. We have to do something. We have to save her.”
“I am trying.” Berk sighs. “I’ve been trying.”
“She’s much smarter than I am.” My voice is loud, but I can’t quiet it. “Convince Dr. Loudin that she is necessary.”
Berk walks to me, then places his hands on my shoulders. “I don’t want to see her annihilated any more than you do.”
“I need to see her.” I pull away, walk toward the door. Berk grabs my dead arm and pulls me back.
“You can’t go there right now.” He rubs my arm. I feel nothing. He realizes that and transfers his hand to my good arm. “You don’t remember her.”
“But the cameras. You said the whole wing was having technical difficulties.”
“Yes, but what if someone sees you walk over there? Or walk back? We can’t take any more risks.”
I know he is right. But I don’t like it. “But it’s Rhen.” I fall into Berk’s arms.
“I know,” he whispers into my ear. “You and she made a great team in Pod C. I am going to advocate to Dr. Loudin that that team remain intact.”
“But how did she survive this long?” Pod C’s termination was over a week ago.
“Testing.” Berk helps me walk to the couch. We both sit. “The Scientists always test those with illnesses. They want to know what caused it and how to prevent that particular malformation in the next generation.”
“Is hers serious?”
“Not at all.” Berk turns to face me, hope lighting his face. “It is very minor. That is why I believe I can make a solid case for her being allowed to remain here and work with you. She was given an antiquated form of medication and is showing almost no signs of illness at all anymore.”
I think of Asta, annihilated for the same “malformation.” Could she have been cured with a medication? Allowed to return back to us? If the solution was that easy, why annihilate her in the first place?
“What are you thinking about?” Berk turns on the couch so he is facing me.
“Asta.” I swallow. I can see her in the simulation. Her curly hair, her bright smile. “If the cure is so simple . . .”
“The Scientists fear illness.” Berk shakes his head. “They can be contagious, wipe out whole pods. Or worse. That’s why they have taken such care to design us without the propensity to get sick.”
“Just like they have designed us without the propensity to feel or question?” I raise my eyebrows at Berk.
“I am not saying I agree.” Berk shrugs.
“When you are one of the Scientists, you can change that.” I hold Berk’s hand. “Right?”
“I will be one of The Ten.” Berk looks down at my fingers laced in his. “I don’t know if I’ll have that kind of power.”
“You have to try.” My voice is getting louder, but I can’t help it. “That could be your purpose. Maybe the Designer has you in this position to save people like Asta.”
I can tell Berk is thinking. And I can also tell that I need to speak of something else, give him time to process this. I release his hand and lean back. “Tell me about my surgery.”
“What?” Berk was still thinking about his future, I am sure.
“My surgery. I want to know what to expect.”
“Dr. Loudin will go back into your brain and remove the scar tissue.” Berk says this in his Scientist voice.
“What are the risks?”
Berk laughs. “You ask a lot of questions.”
“I thought that was a good thing.”
“It is a good thing.” He leans into me. “Everything about you is good.”
“Stop trying to change the subject.” I smile.
“He’ll be in your brain.” Berk leans forward, his hands on his knees. “It’s delicate.”
“What could happen?”
“I don’t know.” Berk stands. “Hopefully nothing other than removing the scar tissue and restoring the feeling in your arm.”
“But?” I can tell there is more. I know when Berk is holding back information.
“You didn’t respond the way he expected during the first surgery.” Berk is staring at the floor. “But he doesn’t know why.”
“So I might be in danger?”
Berk runs his hands through his hair. “I don’t know.”
Panic rushes through me. “Give me the worst possible scenario.”
Berk shakes his head. “No. I can’t think like that.”
“Do we tell him the first surgery didn’t work?”
Berk looks at me. “If we do, then you won’t be useful anymore. He’ll either annihilate you or use you for even more invasive experiments. We can’t take that chance.”
“Tell me the worst that could happen.” I hold my dead arm against my stomach. “I need to know.”
“You could get worse.” Berk sits back down next to me. “You could lose your eyesight. You could lose feeling in another limb. You could lose memory or motor function.”
I lean back into the couch. “Should I refuse the surgery?”
“You can’t.” Berk holds my hand.
“What can I do?”
“John would say to pray.” Berk squeezes my hand. “That the Designer protected you from the last surgery.”
“And he allowed this to happen.” I look at my left arm. “How much power does he really have?”
“But that”—Berk touches my left arm—“brought you back here. It allowed you to see Rhen.”
“But I can’t talk to her. I can’t help her. I’d rather be back in the pod. We were together every day. Just you and me.”
“John told me that sometimes the Designer puts us in seemingly impossible situations to demonstrate his power.”
“But I wasn’t waiting for a surgery that might turn me into someone else.”
“True,” Berk says.
Do I really trust the Designer? Is John right?
“I’ll be there during your surgery.” Berk holds my right hand with both of his.
“And Rhen?”
The alarm on Berk’s pad begins to scream. “The cameras are being repaired.”
“I guess that means you have to go.”
“I’ll try to make it to Rhen’s room before they finish,” he says, a hand on the door.
“Good. Tell her everything, Berk.”
He leaves and I lean against the door. Berk is real. Rhen is alive. And I am in a nearly impossible situation.
CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR
You need to stay awake throughout the procedure.” Dr. Loudin is standing above m
e. I am strapped to a chair in the operating pod. “Berk here is going to be asking you questions. Answer to the best of your ability.”
“All right.”
Berk is standing behind Dr. Loudin, a Scientist’s smile plastered on his face. “If at any point you feel discomfort, see, hear, or feel anything out of the ordinary, please let me know.”
“Of course.”
Dr. Loudin moves out of my line of sight and Berk moves in.
“I am beginning the procedure now.” Dr. Loudin’s voice sounds strange. Then I realize he is wearing a mask. The clarinet is muffled.
The wall screen in front of me lights up and I see what Dr. Loudin sees: the inside of my brain. Berk is blocking the center. I want him to move so I can watch everything, but Berk purses his lips and I know I cannot ask that. I shouldn’t be that curious.
“What is your name?” Berk asks.
“Thalli.”
“Pod?”
“C.” I am sure Dr. Loudin wrote these questions. Berk would never ask me something so painful.
“Your design?”
“Musician.”
“Age?”
“Seventeen.”
Berk looks above my head and pauses. He nods. Dr. Loudin is communicating something. I wish the screen were a mirror so I could see what it is.
The room goes black. I want to jump up, but I cannot. “I can’t see.” I can barely get the words out.
“What?” Dr. Loudin’s muffled voice sounds amplified.
“I. Can’t. See.” I try to speak clearly, try to remain calm. I close my eyes and open them. Nothing.
I feel someone’s breath on my face. Berk. “Her pupils aren’t responding to stimulus, Dr. Loudin.” He is trying to keep the panic out of his voice, but I hear it.
“Interesting.”
I want to scream. I am blind and Dr. Loudin thinks it is interesting?
“She is certainly an anomaly.”
“Can you repair it?” Berk asks.
“Let me see.” I hear Dr. Loudin’s fingers tapping against his pad. What is he doing? What is happening?
“Her heart rate is accelerating.” I feel Berk’s knee touching mine. It is slight but reassuring.
“Thalli.” Dr. Loudin’s voice is clearer now. The mask must be off. “You need to calm down. Your blood flow must be normal for me to do my best work. If you get excited, I will have a hard time completing this repair. Do you understand me?”
“Yes.” I try to will my heart to slow down, my lungs to take in enough air.
“Do you have any other unusual sensations?” Dr. Loudin asks. “Assess your body from your feet to your head. Dr. Berk, help her with that.”
“Of course.” I feel Berk move. His hands are on my feet. He is rubbing them with his fingers, squeezing hope and love into them. “Do you feel this?”
“Yes.” I try to sound clinical and not grateful.
His hands move up to my ankles. “This?”
He continues. Each touch calms me, reassures me.
“This?” His hand is on my arm. My left arm.
“Yes.”
“The scar tissue extraction was successful,” Berk says, his hand still on my arm.
“Excellent,” Dr. Loudin responds, still tapping.
If I could choose, would I rather lose feeling in the one arm than sight in both eyes? But, of course, I don’t get to choose. My status as a project has never been so horrific.
“I think I have found the problem.”
He thinks?
“Continue asking her questions, Dr. Berk. Ask the second set of questions.”
I feel Berk move away. He is tapping on his screen. “The square root of 225.”
Math? I am blind and in brain surgery, and he is asking me to do math? I calculate in my mind. “Fifteen.”
“Single unit of a quanta?”
Science? Is he trying to punish me for rushing through my lessons as a child? “Quantum?”
“Correct.”
“A few more and I should have the exact location,” Dr. Loudin says. I remember the image of my brain, with all the colors. He must be using that again.
Berk drills me on calculus next, then history. Finally, I get a music question. I can answer that easily. He gives me a few more of those. I relax and shoot off the answers without thinking. I wonder if the image of my brain is projecting the treble clef.
And then I see it. My brain, lit up with reds and blues and yellows. “I can see.”
“Excellent,” Dr. Loudin says, the mask off once again. “And the arm?”
Berk touches it and I feel his fingers. “Yes.”
“A complete success then.” He walks around the chair and looks at me. “You are truly unique, Thalli.”
I don’t know what he means, but he is smiling, so I reciprocate.
“I will send some Assistants in to help return her to the recovery cube,” Dr. Loudin tells Berk. “We need to observe her for at least twenty-four hours before we can release her back to her own room.”
“Yes, sir.”
Dr. Loudin turns his face toward me. “Rest today, and tomorrow you should be feeling well. Maybe even well enough to take a return trip to the performance pod. I would very much like another recording.”
“Of course.” The thought thrills me. I lift my arms—both arms—from the chair and sigh.
I am whole. I am safe. I am an anomaly.
CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE
I have been back in my room for a full day and the only one to come in is the Assistant with my food. I haven’t heard from Berk, haven’t dared to walk down to see Rhen or John. I have played my violin, composed some new songs, slept, and worried.
Where is Berk? Dr. Loudin? I feel abandoned. And confined. I want to get out. I have asked the Assistant if I can go to a recreation field and walk, but he says I cannot. Not without Dr. Loudin’s permission. And Dr. Loudin is busy right now and cannot be disturbed.
Is Berk busy too?
The door opens. I jump up from the couch, but it is only the Assistant with my dinner. “Any word from Dr. Loudin yet?”
“No.” He places the tray beside me.
“What about the other Scientist with him?” I take a deep breath. “Dr. Berk?”
“All the Scientists are engaged right now. They have requested that they not be disturbed.”
The door shuts and I groan. Why do they not want to be disturbed? What is going on? Something doesn’t feel right.
I want to know what is happening with Rhen. There has to be a way to talk to her without being seen. Berk was able to create a technical difficulty in this wing. Could I?
I pick up my pad. It is locked on the learning mode. I can’t get past it.
I remember the stairwell, where Berk and I went so many weeks ago. If I could get Rhen there, we could talk without anyone hearing us. But how do I get her there? Is she locked in? Am I locked in?
I look at my tray. Soup, bread, and grapes. A plan forms.
I take the bread and grapes and stuff them into my pockets. I crack open the door and peer out into the hallway. No one is there. I walk toward Rhen’s room, trying to look confused, like the last time.
I open the door to the room before Rhen’s. No one is there. I rub my head and crane my neck, hoping that if anyone is monitoring the cameras, all they will see is a disoriented patient out for a much-needed walk in the hall.
I open Rhen’s door. She is sitting on her sleeping platform. Her eyes widen and I shake my head. Then I drop a grape on her floor and walk away.
When we were kids, we would play this game. I would hide and leave clues for her by dropping bits of my lunch on the floor.
I keep walking, dropping a piece of bread or a grape every few feet. I try to place them as close to the wall as I can so they will be inconspicuous to Assistants who might happen along. The Sanitation Specialists only work at night, so the mess should not be in danger for several more hours.
I try to recall the way to the stairwell, stop
ping along the way to stretch my arms and roll my neck.
I find the door to the stairwell. A final grape and I am in. I sit against the wall and wait.
In a few minutes, I hear footsteps approaching. I stand and begin running up and down the stairs. If it is a Monitor, I need to look like I am here to exercise, not to meet a doomed friend whom I am not supposed to remember.
But it isn’t a Monitor who opens the door. It is Rhen, her hands full of bread and grapes, her eyes wide.
“Thalli?”
I jump down the stairs and almost knock Rhen over. “Are you all right?”
“My sickness was discovered so I am waiting to be annihilated,” Rhen says, pulling away from me, as logical as ever. “But how are you still alive?”
“It is complicated. But Berk is helping me. And we’re going to help you too.”
“Help me?” Rhen’s blond ponytail shakes. “I cannot be helped. I am malformed. There is no room for me in the State.”
I want to shake her, to tell her everything. But I don’t have time for that. “We can’t stay here long. I just wanted to see you, and to tell you to have hope.”
“Hope?”
The idea is foreign to her. It makes me sad. I forgot that the lack of emotions in her makeup was not malformed. That part works perfectly.
“You are going to live.”
I see the familiar look in Rhen’s eyes, the look she would always give me when I spoke from emotion and she didn’t understand. “I am surprised I have been allowed to live this long, but I suppose the study of my malformation will aid the Scientists in the design of the next generation.”
“You are so much more than a science project, Rhen.” I say this, even though I know she won’t comprehend it. Yet. But I am sure someday she will. The Designer did not spare her so she could be annihilated. I am sure of that.
“We shouldn’t be here.” Rhen looks around. I can only imagine what she thinks of this old stairwell.
“You’re right.” I sigh. “I just wanted to see you. But we should go back before anyone notices us.”
“We are too old for children’s games.” Rhen folds her arms, but I am sure I see a slight smile on her face. She is happy to see me too.
“You should go back first.” I peek out the door. We are still alone. I turn back to Rhen. “If you see me anywhere else, I have to pretend that I don’t know you.”
