The Book of Wanda, Volume Two of the Seventeen Trilogy

by Mark D. Diehl

  “Is this what you pray to instead of the One?” someone shouted in English. “This? This is nothing!”

  The toothbrush slammed into the floor among the gears. A foot stomped down four times and broke it into little pieces. The foot stomped three more times, breaking the pieces into little pieces. The toothbrush had been fixable before but now it wasn’t. The toothbrush would never work again. Even most of its parts, which could have been useful for other projects, were now ruined.

  “This is the time we pray to the One.” A face appeared in front of Ernesto. “I love you, Ernesto,” it said. Ernesto compared it to the snapshot memories of faces in his mind. He may have seen this one before. “We all love you, and we so, so want you to be Saved like us. Students!” it called. “Come here, gather around him. We’re going to cast.”

  The students all came right up to Ernesto, crowding in on him. “Demon!” one of them shouted. “We see you inside Ernesto, demon! Get out of him!” It might have been the same face that had spoken or it might have been different. Everywhere Ernesto’s eyes pointed there was another face. The voices overlapped and he couldn’t count them.

  “Be gone, demon!” A hand slapped down across Ernesto’s forehead and shoved him backward. Ernesto screamed and flailed, falling, crashing to the floor among the shattered gears and smashed plastic of the toothbrush. He stood and ran, crossing the room and flinging open the door.

  He ran out, and he kept running and running until he couldn’t hear any of them anymore.

  The Saved Clinic

  The battle had been huge, from what Wanda had been told, though you wouldn’t know it from looking at the clinic. Fiends almost never left any survivors.

  Right now she was standing at the counter in the supply room, waiting for a needle and gut so she could close a gash as long as her forearm across a Saved woman’s back and shoulder. Reni, the new Helper, had started to get it but then turned back to the counter to help Judee first. Judee was level six, while Wanda was still just a three.

  “What do you need, Judee?”

  “A needle and gut, Helper Reni, the One willing.”

  “Sure. Right away.”

  There were no gunshot wounds. Fiends apparently preferred knives.

  Everyone who had been carried here had injuries to the mouth. Most common was a knife wound under the chin, stabbing upward through the tongue. It was apparently a Fiend favorite because it effectively nailed the mouth shut, keeping the victims quiet as the attackers continued cutting elsewhere on their bodies. She’d been told Fiends were made especially violent by that drug they took, Juice. Juice drove them to kill as brutally as possible, gave them a high from torturing their victims to death. Over and over the ones carrying the stretchers had said the same thing: Fiends liked the feel of blood on their hands. They stabbed and cut, but then they often tore at the wounds with their bare fingers, ripping them wider until the victim expired. They had an uncanny sense for knowing precisely when their victims were dead.

  The Fiends used violence to gain control. The Saved used rituals and training, toward the same end. What was the point of any of it, if all anyone could ever be was a gear in some organization that cashed in their humanity for power?

  Judee got her needle and gut and returned to her work. Reni stared at Wanda a moment and then asked, “What did you want again?”

  Wanda gritted her teeth but they were worn down to the point where it caused shocking pain at certain contact points. She couldn’t take it anymore. “You know, Helper, I’m only allowed to treat Saved here,” she said. “While you intentionally ignore and delay me, they sit bleeding and in pain, waiting for my help.”

  Reni nodded, with a big, tight-lipped smile. “It’s truly unfortunate that we are unable to assign all patients to caregivers who are trusted and informed,” she said. “By necessity, some must rely on inferior treatment administered by one who can’t be trusted because she refuses to acknowledge the One’s simple vision of peace and love.” She shrugged. “Maybe if you would open your heart and accept the additional training we offer, the One would help you solve that problem.”

  The front door banged open. Wanda turned and left the storeroom, expecting that more casualties had been brought into the clinic. Instead, she saw the little one-armed boy, Ernesto, pressing himself into a corner of the room, looking terrified and howling between his gasps for breath.

  Walkway, new Amelix building, still under construction

  “My projects are of sufficient importance to warrant any transfer of personnel I want, Dr. Kessler,” Chelsea said. She liked to listen to her voice when she was alone with her two favorite new assets. She sounded haughty and important, as was appropriate in this situation. “Be thankful you’re still in Regulations at your current post. I could’ve made you my receptionist, instead.”

  “I know, ma’am,” Kessler said.

  “I wanted her, I outrank you, and I took her from you. You should be glad I still let you both play together from time to time, even if it is only when I supervise.”

  As they entered Chelsea’s department, Keiko bowed from behind the reception desk with her palms pressed together and her eyes down.

  “Welcome, Dr. Chelsea, ma’am. Welcome Dr. Kessler, sir.”

  “Hello, Keiko,” Chelsea said. The rat in her lab coat pocket was allowing her a good deal of freedom of movement today, especially in letting her talk and move her head. Chelsea was tired, though, and she felt its small corrections whenever she slouched. She was getting so used to being guided this way that she could often anticipate which variances the rat would allow.

  Kessler muttered something, trying to avoid looking at Keiko. Chelsea was amused by the shame he felt around the girl now. After having conquered her so completely, he had now been claimed the same way, himself. Still, there was no reason for him to fret so. What he’d done with the girl had rendered her incapable of understanding why the situation humiliated him. He should be no more concerned with how he appeared to Keiko than with how he appeared to the furniture.

  “Any news?” Chelsea asked her new receptionist.

  “A man came to see you, ma’am,” Keiko said. She remained frozen, staring down at her fingertips.

  “Did he leave his name?”

  “No, ma’am.”

  “Was he a scientist? Was he upset?”

  Keiko stayed frozen. Chelsea waited a long time for an answer before she realized the silence was her own fault.

  “Was he wearing a white lab coat like I wear?”

  “No, ma’am.”

  “Did he say a lot of scientific stuff you didn’t understand?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  Chelsea paused, thinking it through. Finally she asked, “Was he wearing any lab coat at all?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “But it was different from the one I wear?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Did it have a different name on it than mine does?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  Chelsea tried to raise her hands in a habitual gesture of frustration, but the rat was having none of it. Resentment rose in her, not toward Keiko but toward the rat, and her face felt hot. Instantly, the Thrall’s pleasure completely disappeared. Had it released her?

  She tried to move her hands again and could not. She tried to take a step, but she couldn’t do that, either. She was as much a puppet now as she had ever been, but now there was no warm softness to cushion her mind from the fact, to make it feel like more of a tradeoff. Now the animal’s total control over her was just cold and unfiltered reality. The message was clear: Chelsea could choose to be a puppet in ecstasy or a puppet in misery, depending on her attitude.

  “What was the name you saw on his lab coat?”

  “Gao Jimenez, ma’am.”

  Gao Jimenez was a minor researcher whose work Chelsea’s project had absorbed. Of course he was upset; Chelsea’s move had almost certainly rendered him irrelevant.

  It could not be helped.
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  “Did anything else happen while I was gone, anything that doesn’t happen most other days?”

  “Some people ran out from the lab once, ma’am. They were shouting, and there was an alarm. Someone said there was smoke, but I didn’t see the smoke. Operations came and did something, and then everyone went back into the lab.”

  “Did the Operations people have the word ‘fire’ on their clothes? Or a picture of fire?”

  “Yes, ma’am, they had both the word and a picture of fire.”

  “You may return to work now, Keiko. Good girl.”

  Keiko lowered her hands and returned to her duties, smugly smiling to herself like she did whenever Chelsea told her she was a good girl.

  RickeResourses Building, CBD

  547 could still recognize the man who was speaking to him as Clayton Ricker, even though the Statused man now had the standard blocky Unnamed physique and sported the black suit and sunglasses of the Fold.

  “Why are you here in my office today, boy?”

  “Sir,” 547 said. “You asked for me, sir.”

  “Who am I?”

  Ricker had not gone through the Fold’s training and initiation. Was he not still Clayton Ricker, even if he was wearing the uniform?

  “Your privately held company merged with the Organization Whose Confidence is Kept, sir. Pursuant to that agreement, you were put in charge of all the Organization’s Unnamed. You are our boss, sir.”

  547 knew it was more complicated than that, but to elaborate any further might seem presumptuous. When Ricker’s son Matt had been killed, Ricker had renegotiated his deal with the Organization, offering his company in exchange for leadership of the Organization’s Unnamed. The move had clearly been motivated by his war against Sett’s father’s mercenary house.

  “I’m boss to thousands,” Ricker said. “Why are you here?”

  “I don’t know, sir.”

  “Two medals.” Ricker pointed at 547’s chest with two fingers.

  “Sir?”

  “When I look at you now, through these—” he gestured toward his own eyes and the Unnamed glasses covering them—“I see two virtual medals. First was the prestigious Silver Cert awarded for significant contribution to Organizational success, which you got for stealing a truck from the Williams Gypsum Corporation. And now you’ve been given the Palladium Medal, for saving the Organization’s entire office staff by commandeering train cars before anyone else could get there. When she nominated you, your supervisor, IAg226, cited your insistence that the girl was dangerous, even though she was doing nothing at the time but standing outside the fence with a sign. I must agree with her that your insight was quite exceptional.”

  Ricker paused, then leaned in close. “I have the footage from the diner. I know who you are.”

  “I’m not that person anymore, sir,” IAi547 said.

  “Of course you aren’t,” the man said, smiling in the Accepted way that showed upper and lower teeth at once. “But you know how the Williams punk thinks. You were friends. You were with him, as his friend, the day that waitress killed Matt.”

  “Yes, sir, I did once, but Williams is no longer the same person, either. I want to help you in whatever way I can, sir, but I fear you may expect more than I’m able to give you, sir.”

  “It goes without saying that you’ll do whatever you can to help, boy,” Ricker said. “And also that if you do disappoint me I’ll have you killed.” The smile on Ricker’s face broadened further. “In fact, if it comes to that, I’m going to tell the guy torturing you to death that I’ll be equally disappointed in him if he doesn’t inflict enough agony while you’re still conscious. But only if you disappoint me, you understand.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Good. Now, I know you’ve had other run-ins with Williams as well -- when you stole the truck, for instance. That was after you were abducted and taken to their mines.” Ricker was no longer smiling. “You’ll be going back to that mine.”

  “Yes, sir. Shall I go right away? My team is waiting in the reception area.”

  “No. Unfortunately there’s a pressing matter first. As I’m sure you’re aware, paranoia has overtaken the whole CBD since the Amelix attack. This Organization is not an exception. Even as recently as my company’s merger, the wise businesses were investing in materials. It’s why the Organization was willing to offer so much in exchange for my garbage dump leases. But that was before the bomb dropped. Now everyone worries about another bomb, or worse, whatever the Amelix terrorists may have been trying to get their hands on when they raided the place. Most important now, even more important than the acquisition of additional corporate resources, is the ability to protect against bioterrorism. Every organization needs to have a world-class biotech division, and we’re negotiating to acquire one. We need Unnamed to do the legwork, find out about any dirty details they try to hide from us during negotiations. Your new assignment is to work directly for me, collecting and condensing the information provided by the Fold. Someone’s got to do it, and this way I can keep a close eye on you. If there’s ever a chance to shred your little friend, Lawrence Williams the Seventh, I’ll have you as a handy source of information. That time will come, just not quite yet.”

  “Sir, the Unnamed before you has no such friend. The man before you is friend only to the Fold, as the Lord wills for all those without names. Your will is mine, sir.”

  The clinic

  Wanda hurried towards the boy. He didn’t appear to be injured, so why was he here? As soon as he saw Wanda, he slid down the wall to the floor and clutched his knees with his one arm.

  Ernesto’s desperate, howling wail softened and slowed as she approached him. His eyes remained directed at the floor as she knelt down quietly next to him. She made no attempt to touch him.

  Wanda sat with him for several minutes, whispering softly, wondering how best to help him. Suddenly it became clear what she had to do. “Stay here for a minute, Ernesto,” she said. “I will be right back.”

  Her cot was at the back of the clinic’s most secluded section. The area had once been the storeroom but now served as a kind of intensive care unit. From behind a wall panel with hooks holding various lengths of tubing, she snatched up the pink bundle of fabric holding all her possessions. The fact that she still minced as she scurried back to the boy the way she’d been trained during the Coach V days didn’t bother her, for once.

  She extended her hand to help him up, but she knew better than to grab at him. Wanda had never seen him willingly touch anyone, but it felt right to make the gesture, even if he refused it. She was about to turn away and ask him to follow her when, to her great surprise, he placed his hand in hers. He even made fleeting eye contact as she gently raised him to his feet.

  “C’mon,” she said. Together they hustled toward the door.

  “Wanda!” someone called. She didn’t even turn her head.

  Out they went, moving away from the clinic down a wide street. Wanda realized that she would fight anyone who tried to stop her, just as automatically as she’d made the decision to run with Ernesto now. In a world where no solo practitioners survived, she was going to become a solo practitioner, and help this boy grow up.

  Somehow.

  She didn’t know her way around this part of the Zone. Since she’d Departed, she’d really only seen a few streets, a couple of cheap hotels, and the inside of the clinic. It didn’t matter. If she or Ernesto were ever going to exist as cognizant, individual beings that were free of external programming and abuse, they had to get away from the Saved.

  She turned left at the first intersection, then a right at the next, winding her way through the omnipresent crowd of Saved. She alternated left and right like that, for three turns in all, before she heard it, first far away, then repeated more closely.

  “ALL STAND AGAINST YOU!”

  Her heart stopped. The Saved had adopted this defense because it was all they knew to do, most of them having come from the Horde.

  W
ere they doing this to keep her at the clinic? There were no fingers pointed anywhere from the people here yet. The targeted threat had been close, but not right here.

  “ALL STAND AGAINST YOU!” another wave came, this one closer. The Saved on the street all looked quickly from side to side, seeking the right direction to point when it was their turn.

  One saw something around a corner and pointed in that direction as the wave hit. “ALL STAND AGAINST YOU!” the crowd roared, all pointing where the first had. Wanda pointed her finger too, so as not to draw the crowd’s attention. Ernesto did not follow suit, instead collapsing on the ground with his one arm up over his head, apparently overcome by the sudden and brutal commotion and noise.

  “FIEND RAID! FIEND RAID!” the Saved shouted. The Saved ran off in the direction their fingers had been pointed, and more ran in behind them. Wanda crouched down and tried to cover Ernesto, to protect him from being trampled.

  Underground tunnel, below where Rus had killed the Gargbageman

  “Shit.” Rus said. That woman running with the little one-armed kid was one of the doctors he was supposed to capture. He nudged Perks, the Rounder next to him. “We need that one. Take it from here while I go after her, right?”

  “Yessir,” Perks said without taking his eyes from the street. He’d been rolling his vial of Juice between his thumb and fingers, but now the grab for the clinic was beginning. He undid the cap and drank.

  Rus followed the woman and kid. When the tunnels were empty, it was relatively easy to follow someone who was moving above ground. It was just a matter of seeing which direction they were headed and then scrambling toward the next opening that would provide a view. With two Rounds packed in it took more maneuvering before he was able to move to the next place, though.

  “Back up this Round,” he said to the Element on his other side. “Pass it on. Back up and into the next tube at your four, facing me.”