by Cody Sisco
“His iron levels are becoming toxic,” the nurse said. “If we don’t give him chelaters soon, the damage to his organs will kill him. There’s only so much blood we can take—”
“I know that!” Alia snapped. She wiped tears off her cheeks and glared at the Lifers. “You! Get over here.”
One stayed by the door glowering while the other sheepishly approached her. Wonda’s enforcement hadn’t yet become unbreakable. Victor wondered how long the hostages could count on that.
Alia spoke calmly and insistently to the Lifer. “This man is suffering from severe hemachromatosis. He’s going to die unless we give him medicine.”
“I can’t do anything about it,” the Lifer said. “Wonda—”
“Bring her here. She has to listen to reason.”
The Lifer left and returned a few minutes later with Wonda, Tosh, and two larger, burlier, masked Lifers. Wonda walked up to Alia, grabbed her arm, and hauled her to the door. Alia began to protest, and Wonda smacked her hard in the mouth. She instructed the Lifers to lock her away.
“What are you doing?” Victor said.
“Establishing boundaries,” Wonda said. “Everybody out except him.” She pointed at the man with hemochromatosis.
“Tosh, you can’t let her do this!” Victor said.
Tosh walked over to the patient. He put a hand on his forehead and whispered something. It looked like a benediction.
“Tosh, please,” Victor said.
“Wonda decides questions of doctrine. It’s out of my hands.”
Victor caught a snippet of Wonda’s instructions as she stood outside the room with the sick man. “No one goes in there without my permission under any circumstances. Resist impure temptations. This is going to be a test for all of us.”
Later, after a walk through the gardens to avoid Wonda, Victor returned to the drug hut where Florence was being kept and sat with her while she slept.
Someone tapped on the window. It was Mía. He went over and opened it.
“Why haven’t you contacted anyone?” she asked.
He looked down, failing to think of an excuse that would make sense to her.
“Give me the MeshBit,” she said.
Victor shook his head. “You don’t understand how dangerous Tosh is. If he’s cornered, there’s no telling what he’ll do. People will get hurt. I’ll think of something.”
“I can’t say I’m reassured,” she said coldly.
A guard outside shouted at her and hauled her away.
Victor looked at Florence, hoping she was too weary to understand what was going on. Her eyes were open now, pale blue.
“I need to tell you something, Victor. In case I don’t get another chance.”
“You’re going to be fine. I’ll get your medication, even if I have to take out Wonda to do it.”
“I wouldn’t mind sticking around to see that,” Florence said with a hollow cough that might have been a chuckle. “It’s about Circe, something you need to know.”
Victor pulled up a stool and leaned his elbows on the edge of her bed.
“She’s always wanted more from life that it could offer. Ever since she was very young and she heard the story of Zoë Eastmore.”
“Who?” asked Victor.
“Zoë was my husband’s older sister. His other sister was Albinia. When Zoë was twelve years old, Albinia was six. One day their school took a trip to visit the Caddo reservation. This was before the turn of the century. It was a dry year, during the summer, so the kids had the treat of a real rain dance.”
Florence’s breath wheezed and smelled musty, like a closet that hasn’t been opened for a year.
“At some point, they lost track of Albinia. She wandered off or became separated. The whole town looked for her. They still hadn’t found her when the sun set. Some thought they should start again in the morning when they had more light, but plenty of folk kept looking in the dark, carrying torches.
“One of the search party lost his grip on the torch. When the flames hit the forest floor, the dry grasses lit up. They beat the fire with their shirts, trying to put it out, but it spread. The wind blew it around the top of the mountain. This was before the canals, so there were a few shacks on the mountain that were lost, but luckily they held the line at the crest of the main road, and the town was spared. The fire put itself out in about a day.
“Zoë found Albinia the next day floating in a hot spring. Whether she was driven there by the fire or fell on her own we don’t know. Sulfur. Boiling hot. She had no chance of getting out.”
Victor imagined Albinia surrounded by fire, lost, confused. He’d had dreams like that. He’d felt fire burn him to a crisp. The dream-memory of boiling alive came back too. He gripped the cool steel railing of the hospital bed. “That’s horrible,” he said.
“Zoë was haunted by Albinia for the rest of her life, or so she believed. She fled to Asia and got caught up in a mess there. I don’t know the gory details. Something about a massacre when some dynasty or another fell and Zoë was there in the thick of things. Some say she caused it. One cult called her a monster, tracked her for decades in exile. Another started to worship her. Why would someone exalt someone like that, I ask you?”
“I don’t know,” Victor said, feeling as if his feet were on fire.
“Here’s a final piece of crazy. The Lifers here are talking about Emergence. They’re even walking around with that book by Estrella Burgos. That was Zoë Eastmore’s pen name, you know. Circe must have read it a hundred times. She carried it everywhere. If there’s one thing she believes, it’s that she has a destiny as spectacular as Zoë’s. I fear for anyone who counters her. She’s patient, cunning, and utterly mad. I said it before, Victor: Eastmores attract more than their share of pain. But we always deserve it. Now run along,” she said. “I need to rest up for the final sleep.”
The drug hut seemed to tilt as if it were sliding down the hill. He sat on the floor and took off his shoes. The wooden floor soothed him.
Burnt by fire and boiled alive. One Eastmore’s death, the other’s dreams. It was a coincidence. Dreams were just dreams, weren’t they?
40
The twists and turns of fate remain knotted until you become the knife.
—Estrella Burgos’s Theories of Emergence (1906)
17 June 1991
New Venice, The Louisiana Territories
Two days of arguing left everyone in a foul mood, Tosh included, but the rest of the Lifers had the benefit of nightly orgies to keep their spirits up. The couplings took place in the gardens outside the drug huts and had a desperate feel to them, more pain than pleasure, more spectacle than intimacy. Tosh declined to participate. He watched a couple fucking in the dirt long enough to get himself off, spattering the shrubs with his semen. Then he made the rounds of the drug huts to keep tabs on security arrangements for the hostages.
In the morning, the MeshNews feeds showed that drones carrying explosive charges had settled on Ouachita Dam. No demands had been made, it was reported.
Tosh knew that the drones were Ozie’s, sent on orders from the King. Their sole purpose was to distract. The authorities would be so focused on the drones they would miss what else was going on right under their noses. Like a hostage crisis at BioScan.
Tosh reassured the nervous Lifers there was nothing to worry about, and they trusted his assessment. They had no idea how tenuous the situation was becoming. Ozie reported that a European special forces team was inbound to try to neutralize the drones. If they should turn their attention to the BioScan campus…
Time to create another layer of protection. Another layer of lies.
“You have to create a counternarrative,” Ozie told him, “that explains why the hostages—sorry, definitely don’t use that word, that would give it away—why the patients and staff—especially the staff—why they’re not leaving the clinic. The simplest explanation is the best, the most believable: quarantine.”
“Circe told that to the
staff when she dismissed them,” Tosh replied.
“That’s great,” Ozie said. “You have to keep elaborating. A drip feed of plausible lies will do the trick.”
Tosh set up a vidcapper in front of a conference table. One at a time, the hostages were brought into the room and made to record messages to their loved ones or friends wondering what was going on at the shuttered BioScan facility. To those familiar with the company, it would look like a repeat of what had happened at Oak Knoll Hospital, and they would be more right than wrong. Tosh had rigged sleeping gas bombs in the air ducts of every building, including the drug huts, which he controlled with a biometrically locked MeshBit. He was in charge, no matter how much he let Wonda think she was.
Beyond a window, the waters of the Passage and Caddo Lake gleamed. Trees lining the levees of the western shore bordered ordered squares of farms. The Caddo mudflats on the eastern side baked in the sun.
Tosh’s robe was starting to itch. He’d taken to wearing fewer clothes underneath. It had helped at first, but then he started to notice the scratchiness of the fabric. Worse, when he did scratch somewhere, the robe acted like sandpaper. When he checked his arms during a break from filming, he found red spots multiplying on his skin. Not that his discomfort was of any consequence, but it was a nagging distraction when he needed to be focused on enforcing obedience.
He didn’t want to be here. The Lifers were a bunch of trippy loonies looking for the meaning of life in superficial edicts and the faux righteousness of community. He’d seen it all before on the Caddo reservation. When the real things that mattered were stripped from you—history, heritage, dignity, the communal spirit—everything else was a pale reconstruction. The Lifers wanted to matter so badly because they didn’t. Science and medicine were too useful, too fundamental to be done away with. A lot of Lifers probably knew that, deep down, but they were too busy anointing leaders and following charlatans to think too much about what they were doing and why.
Tosh had no illusions about his role. He was a pawn serving the King, helping him entrap the other players. Having established an unshakeable grip over the Organized Western States, the King now amused himself by destabilizing the other nations of the American Union, no doubt planning to one day extend his influence over them.
If the LT council dared to pass the Classification Act, there would soon be thousands of citizens opposing it, inspired by the Lifers. Riots would spread, as they had in the R.O.T. over stims, and demand for the King’s Corps security forces would rise. Or, if the Act didn’t pass, then the stim epidemic would continue to spread, and the King would profit from the drug trade. The plan ensured that no matter the outcome, the King secured a share of the spoils. Pure genius.
Tosh took credit for a job well done, at least thus far. He had the chief and the second chief of BioScan confined, unable to do much of anything, let alone run the company. The clinic operations were paralyzed, and construction had ground to a halt.
All thanks to Tosh’s ability to radicalize the Lifers, who apparently had nothing better to do than take a stand for a vague cause of humanness. So earnest these fools were, Wonda chief among them.
He felt bad that Victor had been so helplessly caught up in the scheme. Every time Tosh looked at Victor, he felt a weird rush of attraction, confusion, loyalty, dismay, and the protective instinct that makes you hurt someone to toughen them up. Victor was strong in some ways and squishy soft in others. He had none of Jefferson’s certainty or drive, though that was probably a good thing, considering how far Jefferson had gone astray.
That was no reason for Jefferson’s daughter to go and off him, if that was what had happened. Tosh was 80 percent sure it was. Still, he wanted to hear her side of it before snapping her neck.
Circe didn’t know Tosh’s history with Jefferson. Victor hadn’t told her. That might be an advantage, but an advantage that could be wiped out by a slip of the tongue was nothing to set plans by.
Enough trophy gazing, he told himself—focus on advancing the ball. He wished keeping hostages was as simple as winning a catch-and-carry game. First things first: he needed to assuage any fears and doubts that might be blossoming among the hostages’ friends and family. Law enforcement too.
It was a gamble, but it wasn’t his money on the table. It would be the Lifers who would suffer in the long run. At best they’d be seen as opportunists taking advantage of a difficult situation—that’s if people believed the quarantine rumor. More likely, once the truth came out, they would be despised for their actions. Wonda was smart to make them wear masks.
The first few vidcaps went as expected. After several takes, coaching from the Lifers, and wearing down the hostages’ reluctance, he coaxed out some good material. Once the first few messages were sent, Tosh started feeling optimistic.
Then Alia refused to cooperate. That was dangerous, given who her fiancé was. He told the Lifers who’d escorted her in to leave. They filed out.
Tosh thought Alia was pretty, smart, and willful. A strong adversary. He had to break her down.
“As soon as Torsten suspects something is wrong, your whole plan will fall apart,” she said.
“Your fiancé is running for office, right?” he asked.
Her eyes narrowed. “Which means he has a platform to completely eviscerate this movement.”
“Platforms can be unstable. Is Torsten a friend of BioScan?”
“He’s a good man.” Alia crossed her arms and turned to look out the window, but not before eyeing him up and down.
“Good or bad, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder. Look, I understand we’re making your job a bit difficult, but it’s in your best interest to cooperate. We’re taking good care of everyone here. The best thing you can do to help Torsten is to keep him out of our way. Sure, there’s a small, a very small chance that he could ride to the rescue and come out on top. But there’s so many ways for this to end badly. A botched rescue attempt. The public siding with us. Controversy over his ties to the Eastmores.”
“They’re not fools.”
“The Eastmores? They’re an odd bunch, but they’re not fools, no.”
“No, I mean the public. You can’t attack people, sick people, and expect to get away with it.”
“We’re not attacking anyone.”
“You’re holding us hostage!”
“We’re keeping you safe from the protesters, for your own protection!” Tosh smiled. It felt like playing a role—the tired arguments, the solipsistic thinking, everyone getting so agitated over a situation they didn’t really understand. This wasn’t about Lifers versus BioScan. The Lifers were a convenient cover. This was about a revenge so drawn out, so meticulously crafted, that he could retire on it, confident he’d never achieve anything as worthwhile again. Circe and her company would go down in flames. This was just laying the groundwork. The one tricky thing Tosh hadn’t quite figured out yet was how to extricate Victor so he didn’t crash and burn with the rest of the Eastmores.
He said, “You should think of me as an ally. I can protect you from Wonda. Regardless of our difference of opinion, it really is important that you cooperate.”
“Go fuck yourself.”
Tosh reached into his pocket and pulled a small pill container out. He held it up, with the label facing Alia. She refused to look at first, but he held it steady, waiting for her with a patience only the truly committed know. As he knew she would, after a minute or so, she relented and read the label. Digitalis.
“We know a certain patient who by now is missing her treatment.”
Alia looked as if she wanted to come at him with her nails out and scratch his face off. Good. She would be easier to manipulate when she was angry.
Tosh’s voice was soft, gentle. Still, she seemed to flinch when he said, “Record the message, and you can give this to Florence Eastmore.”
“No.”
Alia stared at him with wide, innocent, begging-to-be-bleeding-for-justice eyes. She had no idea how violent To
sh could be, how his mood could turn on a dime from charmer to sadist, how quickly the wolf shed his disguise.
“You should know how far Wonda is willing to take this. The other patient is dead.”
Alia blinked. Her eyes welled with tears.
“I grew up here, you know,” Tosh said. He pointed to the Caddo mudflats.
She looked at him with malice. “You disgrace your tribe.”
“Wrong. I share their disgrace. A man without pride has no boundaries. Remember that.”
She looked at him with chin raised, defiant.
“Look,” he said, “I don’t want anyone to get hurt. I wouldn’t have to resort to threats if you would cooperate. It’s your decision. You decide whether Florence suffers. This is very difficult for me. I love the Eastmores. I think you do too.”
She wouldn’t look at him. Probably from shame, being forced to choose between her principles. Hesitation—that was the sign of a weak moral system. Tosh pressed the button to start the recording.
“Tell Torsten that you’re fine, you miss him, you just have to keep working on some cases with unfamiliar symptoms. Short and simple.”
Alia glared at him. Then she sighed, looked down at the table and wiped her cheeks. Her weariness was apparent.
Eventually she looked up at the recorder. “Hi, sweetie. Sorry I didn’t call earlier. There’s a case... We’ve got some patients here that aren’t doing well. I need to stay with them. It’s really touch and go. And I—I miss you.” Her voice cracked. She took a moment to compose herself. “I’ll be home as soon as I can.”
“Do it again,” Tosh said.
Alia repeated the message. He made her do it twice more. He’d have to splice sections together and share only the audio feed, but it would sound genuine. Alia left the room with the small bottle of pills in her hand. An escort would take her to Florence.
