Tortured Echoes

by Cody Sisco

  Nearby, a young man held a sleeping infant. His eyes darted toward every sound and then the baby’s face, concerned perhaps that the child would be woken.

  “The rest are through there,” Tosh said, prodding Victor forward with a hand on his back. “I’ll check on you later.”

  Victor let himself be herded into a suite identical to the one he’d spent so much time recovering in after Tosh attacked him. The bed had been moved out and chairs were crammed against the walls.

  Mía rushed over to him as soon as the door had shut behind him. She whispered in his ear, “I found a MeshBit and hid it under the conference table.”

  “Did you send any messages?” Victor asked.

  “No. I—” She scratched at her throat. He noticed her eyes watering, the lines on her face deepened by shameful purple shadows. “It’s difficult for me. I don’t want to be the one who—”

  He understood. She’d run away from Carmichael and brought militia from a nearby town. The situation was hitting too close to home for her.

  Mía’s tears came, and she hid her face. Victor hugged her. “It’s okay,” he said. Her sobs worsened; her body heaved. He ushered her to an empty chair, sat her down, and hugged her. They’d never been this close. He’d never thought of himself as someone who could give comfort. Her body was warm against his. It felt good.

  “Thank you,” she said. “I feel better.”

  “I better check on Florence, and then I’ll try to make contact.”

  Florence’s bed had been moved to the far corner. A sheet was draped between an IV drip stand and a chair, providing a privacy screen. Probably she had insisted on it. Her eyes opened when he approached.

  “I’m not sleeping,” Florence said. “I’m just bored with keeping my eyes open.”

  “How are you feeling?” he asked.

  “Not dead yet. Still waiting on my medicine. If these hooligans kill me, I’ll come back and haunt them. Tell them that.”

  He checked the MeshBit around her wrist. “Your next dose is in a couple hours.”

  “You run along if you’ve got somewhere to be.”

  “Everything’s going to be fine,” he said. He squeezed her wrist gently and turned away.

  “Most certainly is not. The Eastmores don’t do fine. We do death.”

  The skin on Victor’s neck prickled. “Why do you say that?”

  He looked into her glassy eyes. Her wrinkled face resembled tissue paper, thin and creased. She stared back at him.

  “History. Psychology. Didn’t your parents teach you anything?”

  “They never talked about the bad stuff. That’s what my therapists were for.”

  “Maybe they didn’t know,” Florence said. She looked at the wall for a moment. A glossy painting of flowers in a vase reflected the lightstrips’ glow.

  “We lose so much to time,” Florence went on. “Memories. Truths. Sons. Daughters.” Florence closed her eyes. Breath heaved in her chest, slowly, evenly. Victor thought she’d fallen asleep.

  He left the semiprivacy of her corner, pausing to see where the Lifers were. Behind him, Florence said, “Don’t forgive Circe, Victor. She chose to kill him. No one made her do it.”

  Sweat broke out in Victor’s armpits. “What did you say?” he asked, turning.

  Florence looked asleep. Her words hadn’t been in his head, had they?

  He squeezed her hand. “Florence, wake up. What did you say?”

  Her body trembled. The MeshBit around her wrist chimed an alarm.

  “Someone get Alia in here now!”

  ***

  An hour later, Victor walked back out to the patient area. Alia had stabilized Florence, though she remained unconscious.

  “We can’t allow them to dictate what meds we can use,” Alia said, louder than necessary. She wanted to be heard. “If we do, people will die.”

  The Lifers at the door to the hall appeared exhausted, uncertain, as if at any minute they might tire of the poorly written drama and walk off the stage entirely.

  There were some medications in a tub that one of the Lifers had collected for disposal. What a waste. What a stupid, ill-meaning mess of religious doctrine, Victor thought.

  He realized the Lifers didn’t care about these people. They only cared about their principles, which they adopted and jettisoned like trying on clothing. No one could meet their demands. Maybe that was the point. Maybe they didn’t want to be satisfied; they just wanted to be denied. Maybe that felt human to them.

  If the Lifers expected to get what they wanted through the threat of violence, then that was the best proof yet of their collective insanity. Change doesn’t happen that way, Victor thought, at least not the kind of change they’re looking for.

  Victor wanted to shout these things at the Lifers guarding the door. Instead he chewed his lips.

  Victor had read the Carmichael testimony. He understood how Samuel’s paranoia had twisted logic, where fantasy had intruded on reality, and the horrific consequences. One mind had done that. Here in New Venice, equally bizarre beliefs had solidified into a covenant among the cult’s members and a prescription for nonmembers that would be delivered by force. What if there was a connection?, he mused. What if MRS was a contagion now spreading through a new host population? It was a frustratingly persistent and plausible delusion.

  Victor gathered up supplies: mainly medications, but also patches, syringes, and tubes. He found packets of nutritional supplements and food pastes in a cabinet in the corner and added those, putting everything in a blue translucent box. He wanted to make sure at least some rudimentary supplies didn’t get confiscated.

  A few of the Lifers eyed him curiously. He could tell they wanted to confront him, but they were holding off. Maybe they felt guilty. Maybe now that they’d gone so far down the radical path, they wanted to leave it. He wanted to tell them it was too late. Their participation, passive as it may seem, implicated them irrevocably, fully. It was their fault that the patients would suffer.

  Victor handed off the supplies to Nancy, a recovering stim addict who had come in to detox. She seemed a bit thin and slack underneath her skin. She could carry the lighter tub of medicines.

  An overlarge man who most likely suffered from a metabolic disorder gestured to the box Victor carried.

  “I can take that,” he said. Victor wasn’t sure if he could handle the extra weight and hesitated. “There’s muscle under here too. Otherwise I wouldn’t be able to get around.” He smiled sadly.

  “Okay,” Victor said. It sounded insufficient, though, so he added, “Let me know if you need help.”

  Victor wished Elena were here. She had a way of calming people down, making them see why her way was the right way. She was practical, a problem solver. She didn’t need to analyze what was right; she just knew. An ability like that would be helpful right now.

  He tried channeling her wisdom, trying to figure out what she would do in this situation, but he didn’t think it was clear-cut. Sure, she was practical, but she was also fiercely loyal to the Puros, to the point where she might not care about what happened to anyone else. She might look at the patients and think, “Not my problem.” Or maybe not—she wasn’t that callous. Much of what Victor had learned about empathy came from her. When he’d had trouble making sense of his therapy sessions, he’d gone to her to enlighten him. She usually threw his questions back at him. “What’s the situation? Who’s involved? What will happen if you don’t do anything? Now, what’s the right thing to do?”

  But this was far more complicated. Any action might trigger serious, unintended consequences. “Do no harm” was an appropriate oath in controlled circumstances. Or when everyone had the proper training and skills, when they were up for the challenge.

  Nancy, the large man, and Victor waited, not quite huddled together, sitting on rolling chairs near the door. Nancy was rolling her stress ball on a table, back and forth, pressing her palm down on it, occasionally flexing her fingers over it the way a spider pins it
s prey. Her fingertips disappeared into the red material. She pulsed her hand. It was strange. Normally, she moved, twitched. Her body was constantly in motion. When she played with the stress ball, however, the rest of her stilled, only her hand and forearm activated, as if those parts of her were a conduit for all the mental and physical energy generated by anxiety.

  Nancy held the ball up, smiling. “I can’t be without it for a minute,” she said loudly. “It beats stims. Reusable too.”

  Two of the Lifers turned their heads and masks so they could see each other’s eyes. Victor thought he saw a question pass between them, perhaps, and then a slight nod from the one whose breasts pushed the fabric of the robe forward into a single wide mound. The effect of the costume made her look like a bulky cartoon cloud. She bent on one knee in front of Nancy. Her words were low and quiet. Still, Victor had no trouble making them out.

  The cloud-robed woman said, “Many of us have struggled to be pure.”

  Nancy flushed. She looked as if she might leap at the cloud and try to pull it apart. “I’m not tainted,” she said.

  The cloud woman half stood, though she remained bending forward.

  Nancy sighed. “It would be nice to talk. You all may have some good ideas for me.”

  The cloud woman nodded. “I think we can help.” Her voice reminded Victor of Dr. Tammet. A bit softer than the doctor’s, happier. “We’re here to help.”

  Nancy cocked her head at the cloud woman. “Thank you,” she said. It might have been genuine or a menacing curse; Victor couldn’t tell.

  The cloud woman sniffed and walked back to the nearest robed man. Nancy squeezed her ball rhythmically while the large man’s chest hitched as he tried to stop laughing and coughing at the same time. “We’re here to help,” he mocked. “Laws save us all.”

  Tosh returned and looked around the room. He noticed the supplies piled near the door and the Lifers eyeing the bins uncertainly. “Let them gather whatever they want for now. We’ll take a closer look later.”

  There were some tentative glances between the Lifers. Maybe they saw Tosh’s command as a lapse of doctrine.

  Victor called out, “Can I speak with you?”

  “Watch them,” Tosh said and pointed for the three Lifers to take care of the remaining half dozen hostages. Then he gestured for Victor to follow him to the hall.

  The building was quiet. Sunlight filtered through the windows and doors, illuminating patches of the floor.

  “End this,” Victor said. “There’s no point. You don’t care about the Lifers.”

  “It doesn’t matter whether I do. They’re here now, and they need someone to keep them on track.”

  “But what do you want?” Victor asked.

  “When your enemy loses the advantage, you don’t question it. You press yours.”

  “You don’t know, do you? You’re just figuring it out as you go. That’s… I can’t even say how stupid that is. Does the King even know what’s going on?” Victor asked.

  Tosh held up a MeshBit that looked like a round gray river stone. “We talk.”

  “Let me talk to him.”

  Tosh started to put the MeshBit away.

  “Please! I just want to find a way out of this.”

  “I’ll see what I can do,” Tosh said. He started to push Victor back to the room with the hostages.

  “Wait,” Victor said, “I think I can help them negotiate now. I wasn’t calm before. I understand Wonda. We spent a lot of time together, remember?” He squeezed Tosh’s shoulder hard.

  Tosh smiled. “I do.”

  “Let me try.”

  Tosh escorted Victor back to the conference room. “Any progress?” he asked.

  “What she’s asking for isn’t possible,” Circe said. Her tone was matter-of-fact, assertive. As much as he despised what she’d done, Victor wished he had her poise and patience. Karine was worse off: she seethed visibly and seemed about to blow herself to pieces.

  Wonda said, “‘The realm of the possible has a tendency to expand with an exertion of imagination over time.’ Those are your words. We’ve been thinking of ways forward, and we believe this is workable. Perhaps you need time to consider our demands.”

  “You are a ridiculous person,” Karine said. “The longer you keep us here, the harder the enforcers will come down on you.” Her eyes bored into Tosh. Victor was almost surprised when Tosh didn’t evaporate under her hot glare.

  “I want an amicable resolution to this situation,” Circe said. “My patience, however, can only be stretched so far. You have to work out a more reasonable set of demands, or I will alert the police to this situation.”

  “You’ll do no such thing. We control the timeline,” Tosh said. “We’re going to move you to the drug huts. You’ll be more comfortable there.”

  “This is outrageous,” Karine said. “You can’t keep us overnight.”

  Tosh’s hand dropped to the stunstick at his side, reminding her of the painful wages their disobedience would earn. “In case it wasn’t clear. We’re keeping you indefinitely.”

  Karine laughed loudly. Victor couldn’t believe she was so bold. Had she forgotten that Tosh had been ready to kill her in Amarillo?

  She said, “You’ve just sealed your own fate, mal chien.”

  Tosh ignored her insult. “Take them,” he instructed a follower.

  As she was ushered out the door, Circe turned to Victor. “Do what you can to convince them to back off.”

  Circe and Karine were led away.

  Victor eyed Tosh. He knew how to manipulate him: show him attention; activate his lust.

  Wonda looked at Victor with an unidentifiable emotion. It might have been suspicion. “I’m willing to be reasonable.”

  “You’re asking them to go out of business. How is that reasonable?”

  “It’ll take time to change minds. I accept that. In the interim, we can take pleasure in the present. Tonight, I’m making a new proclamation. We’re amending the prohibition against medication.”

  “It’s about time,” Victor said. “I’ll give Florence her pills.”

  Wonda shook her head. “That’s not what I meant. We’re making an exception only for those medicines that help treat communicable diseases. Human life is sacred. Bugs are not. We can celebrate tonight.” She winked and left them.

  Victor stepped toward the window. His shoulder nearly brushed Tosh’s.

  They looked out together at the water. A few boats edged far into the Passage, while more waited for the Little Lock to open. One paddleboat had started the journey across the water after embarking from the opposite shore. Victor wished he was outside, feeling the wind, alone somewhere near the water.

  “She’s crazier than I ever was,” Victor said.

  Tosh scratched the hair poking around his chin. There were a few small grey patches that made him look older than he was.

  “You might not be wrong about that.”

  “Tosh, it’s just a matter of time before there’s a fight, a real one. People will get hurt. You will get hurt.” Victor put a hand on his shoulder. The words of his coach, Dr. Tammet, sounded in his ears. Show empathy. Try to connect. Feel what they’re feeling. “Any minute now Karine is going to lose control and try to peel your face off with her bare hands.”

  Tosh grunted and smiled. “I’d like to see her try.”

  “All their demands. I know you can see how pointless, how utterly effing illogical they are. Circe would never agree to anything they’re asking for. So why keep their pipe dreams alive?”

  “You heard the woman. They’ll stay until they achieve something tangible. Samuel Miller’s release would go a long way toward that. Maybe if that happens, they’ll let go of the rest.”

  “He’s not safe if he leaves BioScan. No one is safe if he leaves BioScan,” Victor said.

  “They see it as a matter of principle.”

  “How do you see it? Aren’t you in charge?”

  “That’s debatable. Come on, I’ll wal
k you myself.”

  “Wait.” Victor gulped, flirting with blankspace. “I need… I need a few minutes. Please? With everything…”

  “I get it. I’ll be back after we move the others.” Tosh left Victor alone.

  Victor found the MeshBit under the conference table.

  He had to send a message, but to whom? The sheriff? That could lead to violence. Lisabella? Media attention wouldn’t do anything to de-escalate the situation.

  Ozie?

  Ozie had resources. He would probably cooperate. Victor just had to figure out what to ask him to do.

  39

  How changed are we by the crucible? How harden our hearts?

  —Ming Pearl’s Now Blossom (1973)

  15 June 1991

  New Venice, The Louisiana Territories

  Victor sat with Florence in a bedroom of one of the drug huts. She’d regained consciousness and complained in a breathy voice of feeling weak.

  “This is the end,” she whispered.

  “It’s not the end,” Victor said. He held her cool hand to his cheek. “You’ll make it through this.”

  The masked Lifers standing by the door spoke to each other in quiet voices. They avoided his stare and acted as if they weren’t slowly killing her.

  Wonda had come in three separate times to announce new dictates. Enforcements, she called them. Hostages must be escorted by a Lifer at all times. Hostages could not speak to each other. Hostages could not speak to Lifers unless they were addressed first. Infractions would be punished.

  Enforcements didn’t apply to Victor. Wonda called him the “Avatar.”

  “The Avatar walks his own path,” she said.

  Part of him felt grateful to be able to move around. The other part felt ashamed of being singled out, and he was embarrassed for her. With the hostages increasingly controlled, it fell more squarely on his shoulders to fix the situation.

  He made the rounds between the drug huts, checking on the other hostages. In the hut at the end of the lane, a crisis was brewing. The bedridden male patient moaned and whimpered. The scent of urine wafted through the room. Victor watched as Alia and a nurse conferred, an infraction, according to Wonda’s rules.