“Dad, why did you and Mom break up?”
“Lies catch up with you, honey. Not just what we were hiding from PRI, but what we hid from each other. Or what I hid from her…” Dad’s voice trailed off.
“What is it?”
“I never told her I was one of the second generation children. I convinced myself that it was a security matter. But as the years passed, and Carol became disenchanted with what PRI was doing, I just couldn’t tell her that I was, in your words, ‘someone’s experiment.’” Dad shook his head. “We separated because of that, and because Carol discovered that we were both second generation.”
“That’s why I’m…”
“Yes. Carol didn’t want that. She wanted you to have a normal life. I did my best to help both of you by forging records, and by falsifying the surveillance on Carol the year after she left. I did all I could to keep Prometheus from knowing about your existence. I stayed long after I grew to hate the place, to cover your tracks.”
Dad closed his eyes and shook his head. Allison thought she could see light reflecting off his cheek.
“What is it?” Allison asked. “What’s wrong?”
“I’m sorry. That’s why you never heard from your dad, why you never got any visits, why I missed eleven birthdays, eleven Christmases— I can’t control the surveillance on myself. If I had ever done any of that, I could have led them right to you.”
Allison reached over and squeezed his hand and said, “I forgive you, Dad.”
NINETEEN
NAVARRO COUNTY, TX: Saturday October 30, 1999
6:25 AM
Elroy lay in bed and watched the walls breathe.
He was in one of the Institute’s hospital beds. Occasionally he would overhear doctors talk about activity in his temporal lobe, or limbic system, or talk about the serotonin levels in his brain.
All of it was so much wind, wind that made the walls breathe.
At the moment the walls breathed with a pulsing blue light that vibrated in response to the humming air conditioner. Sometimes the walls were a pale green, sometimes yellow, but right now they were blue. Above him, he watched the acoustic tile advance and recede, distorting the florescent light fixtures. Elroy found it rhythmic and calming, and not at all unusual.
After seeing God, the world had changed.
For a moment, Elroy didn’t know why he had been awakened. There had to be a reason. That was the central revelation, that everything had a purpose. He sees the fall of the sparrow, as his mother said.
Then he saw the angel of fire standing next to his bed. She was a red-haired creature of immaculate beauty, wrapped in the cloak of her swirling mind— but Elroy could see the blackened dead parts of that soul.
“Get thee behind me Satan,” he quoted his mother.
“Cut the crap, Billy,” said the angel, a frown crossing her beatific face. “I need to talk to you.”
“My name in heaven is Elroy—”
“You’re back at the Institute, Billy. You can cut with the code names.”
“Elroy,” he said to the angel. “It was traced on my forehead by the finger of God. Like the mark of Cain on your own.”
“No wonder the doctors are worried about you,” the angel muttered to herself. “Call yourself whatever you want. You should know why I’m here.”
“You are here to tempt me into the lake of fire.”
“You’re starting to piss me off, Billy—”
“Elroy.”
“Whatever.” The angel strode around the bed. In her wake the colors changed into a ruddy red, and the walls behind her melted and flowed as well as breathed. “Just tell me about this girl.”
“He is come again.”
“Cut the theology. Is she a threat to me?”
Elroy looked at the angel of fire and said, “She will cast you into the bottomless pit for a thousand years.”
“You’re a nutcase, Billy. They’re going to lock you up.”
“Elroy.”
The angel of fire made a disgusted nose and slammed the door on her way out.
◆◆◆
Jessica Mason stormed out of Billy Jackson’s room in a foul mood. She had pulled a lot of people’s favors, especially staff favors that shouldn’t be squandered, to get to visit Billy. She should have stayed, a little work and she might have been able to worm something from him, but she felt too unnerved by him.
Jessica didn’t like being unnerved.
Elroy was not Billy. That, Jessica was certain of. There was precious little of the silent little nebbish Billy Jackson left in Elroy’s demeanor. When she looked into Elroy’s eyes, it would almost be easy to believe the kid had seen God.
When she left the Ward building, three people were waiting on the sidewalk for her. All of them were male, and with the exception of twenty-year-old Sean, all were younger than she was. Thad, the youngest and most intelligent of the three, spoke up when she left the building.
“What’s the news, Jess?”
Jessica shook her head, “Billy’s fried beyond recognition.”
“Should I try reading him?” asked Oscar, the last of the trio. He was a black eighteen-year-old whose eyes never stopped moving.
Jessica shook her head. “Even if you could read past the normal interference, whatever his surface thoughts are, they’re mush. And I don’t want to risk you on whatever bad trip he’s on.”
Sean nodded slowly, his brows knotted in thought. Many of his gestures and mannerisms made people think he was mildly retarded. Even though he was slow, and lacked any creativity, as far as Jessica was concerned, he wasn’t terribly stupid. Besides, at six-feet-ten and nearly three hundred pounds, his assets weren’t predominantly mental. “What did Billy say?” he asked.
The pre-dawn darkness had lightened enough for the Institute’s floodlights to begin switching off. A light next to them shut off just as Sean spoke. It made Jessica nervous.
She didn’t like being nervous.
“He thinks she’s the second coming. Apparently he saw God.”
Oscar whistled.
“That isn’t uncommon,” Thad said. “The godhead is a common theme both with schizophrenia and with hallucinogenic drugs. There’s a considerable overlap with psi activity.”
“Thank you professor,” Oscar said.
“So Billy goes scitz,” Jessica said. “That doesn’t tell us much about this girl they’re bringing in.”
“Actually,” Thad said. “It speaks volumes.”
All eyes turned to Thad in expectation of an explanation. Thad swelled a little under the scrutiny as he spoke. “This is a lay understanding, but with Billy we had a passive uncontrolled ability— Class I, primarily sensory. External events triggered the chemistry in his brain that allowed him to see people’s auras.”
“You’re getting obtuse Thad,” Oscar said.
Thad ignored Oscar. “Technically, external psi events put Billy into a state of hallucination. Like mescaline or LSD— don’t look at me like that, you’re taking the same classes I am, I just pay attention…”
Jessica did attend the same classes, and she got what Thad was saying. Psi was like a highly specific tab of LSD as far as Billy was concerned. Then Billy had seen something overwhelming enough to put him into a permanent overdose.
Whoever this girl was, she might not be the second coming, but she was trouble.
7:25 AM
Allison spent the rest of the flight staring out the window and trying to think of how she could have done something differently. If she had confronted Mom, would she still be alive? Could she ever forgive herself for being so afraid of the police and the press?
She had failed Mom, she’d failed Dad, she’d failed Macy, and she’d failed herself. She felt wrung out and wretched, worse for the swath of destruction she’d left behind her to no purpose. Three days of running into the hands of the enemy.
And Macy shouldn’t even be here. This had nothing to do with her.
The plane had been flying away from the sunrise all
through the night. The dawn finally caught them as they made an approach to land. Watching through the window, Allison saw no city— only rolling acres of nothing below them.
As the plane banked, she saw a narrow ribbon of access road slide into view across tawny scrubland. As the plane made the final approach, Allison finally saw the Institute. Their destination was a landscape of buildings carved out of red dawn light and mile-long shadows. Allison saw what looked to be two major fences surrounding the complex. The outer one was a double line carved miles out into the badlands, the inner one hugged most of the buildings in the center of the complex.
The place was huge. It reminded Allison of a military base of some sort. Perhaps at one time it was.
It had its own airfield and runway, resting in the no-man’s land between the two fences. There was a single runway, a half-dozen taxiways leading to a dozen hangars. The control tower for it was the tallest structure in sight.
As the plane descended, Allison caught sight of what looked like tract housing between the fences. She lost sight of that behind the central complex as the plane landed. The central area, which sped by Allison’s window now that they were on the ground, could have been any slightly dreary suburban office park, if it wasn’t for the twenty-foot fence surrounding it.
The pilot spoke over the PA. “Welcome Home.”
Welcome home, indeed.
◆◆◆
Despite Allison’s violent objections, they separated her from Dad and Macy when they landed. They pulled her off the plane first, and when she started fighting they threatened to drug her again. She quieted because whatever they’d given her was still interfering with her teek.
Macy was still asleep in one of the seats, and Allison was sure she’d been drugged as well.
She was escorted by Fred and a man with thick glasses he called Dino. They walked her off the tarmac and to a waiting golf cart. They deposited her inside, and stood aside as the cart sped off.
The cart was driven by a uniformed security guard, and in back was a young woman in a white coat. She held a clipboard, and when she looked at Allison her smile was almost sincere.
“Hello, Allison. Welcome to Prometheus—”
With those words, the world around her seemed to rapidly go off-kilter. Allison nodded absently as the woman spoke. “We know transitions are difficult, so I’ve been assigned as your orientation officer. If you have any difficulties, special requests, or you just need to talk to someone, that’s what I’m here for.”
The golf cart sped up to a gate in the inner fence. The fence was plastered with warnings about electrification. Barbed razor wire curled in over the top, arcing inward for at least a yard. Every dozen feet a camera was mounted on a post extending above the fence, panning the interior.
“We do our best to make the students comfortable.”
Guards with automatic rifles scrutinized them before they let them through. The woman blithely talked on, as if this was something normal. Allison was gripped by the urge to run screaming into the desert.
The golf cart trundled in through the gate. “Curfew is from ten pm to seven am except when there’s an announcement otherwise. Any security area will be well marked, but if you’re unsure ask a member of the staff. The cafeteria serves breakfast from seven thirty to ten, lunch from eleven to…”
Allison couldn’t pay attention. Her eyes were on the armed guards, the cameras, the signs on certain buildings that said “absolutely no admittance.”
There are people with guns here. They’ve killed my mother. I’m a prisoner and she’d talking as if this was college admissions.
The incongruity began to get to her. She felt an urge to ask about financial aid. Just the thought almost sent her into giddy laughter that would have been too close to hysterical sobs.
I’m losing my mind.
“You’ll have the weekend to get your bearings. If you wish to attend services tomorrow, we have a non-denominational service—”
The woman went on, and on, and on… schedules, services, medical access, and classes. This place was a college. Though, interspersed with their instruction, Allison would be scheduled for examinations by the science staff.
The golf cart finally stopped at something resembling a pre-graffiti housing project. The woman led her into the building and showed her to her room. As far as Allison could tell, the place was a dorm.
Higher education in Hell, Allison thought as the door shut behind her, leaving her alone in the room.
The room did a dorm— or a prison cell— one better by having only one bed and its own separate bathroom. It bore some resemblance to a tiny hotel room, or a private room in a hospital emptied of the medical equipment.
The feeling of shocked numbness which had been growing for days froze her to a spot in front of the door. She didn’t want to take a step into the room, as if taking that step would be some sort of acceptance of what had happened. She felt the jaws of some giant trap that hovered outside the periphery of her vision. If she took a single step, the jaws would snap shut on her, tearing her in half.
When she finally had the courage to move, it was to try to door behind her. The door was unlocked and opened soundlessly into the hall. Somehow, that was the scariest part of all of this, the pretense.
Allison closed the door and stepped into her room.
Her captors were well-organized. In her room she found the backpack Macy had loaned her. Where did they take Macy? Inside, she found Babs and the ill-fitting clothes that Macy had swiped for her. Notably missing was the film can.
Taking the film seemed hypocritical to her, as if removing it could deny the events it portrayed.
The backpack sat on the bed. In the locker-like closet, she found the duffel bag that mom had packed for her. Seeing that, she barely avoided breaking down again. Instead, she zipped the backpack open and began putting clothes away. She organized things, and tried not to think about the implication that she was stuck here.
◆◆◆
A digital clock was mounted permanently on the wall. Occasionally it would emit an irritating beep to alert her to a scrolling message. The latest alert was to tell her the cafeteria was open for lunch. The fact that there was no way to shut the thing off was the most concrete indication that she wasn’t a free person.
The beep had interrupted her in the middle of reading the orientation packet they had left in her room. Her eyes kept misting over at the details, but the text felt like a collage cut from brochures advertising resort hotels, ivy league universities, and high-class drug treatment programs.
The threats to shoot anyone who leaves were buried deeply in the subtext.
The clock beeped again, and Allison looked at it.
A new message swam through the liquid crystal beneath the time, “Participation in fewer than two meals a day is indication of medical or psychological difficulty. If you are in need of assistance, please dial ext…”
“Do you have a camera in here?” she asked the little device. It didn’t answer, but it stopped scrolling. And when I was nine I wanted a big brother.
Her irritation was somewhat mollified by the fact that she was hungry. She still wanted to yell at the thing that of course she had psychological problems after what she’d been through.
She didn’t, because if there were cameras, there might be microphones.
Allison looked up at the empty room and muttered, “But I’m taking a shower first, and I don’t care who’s watching.”
◆◆◆
Showering and putting on her own clothes lent a bizarre sense of normalcy to her situation. The illusion of freedom her captors lent her contributed to the feeling. There was little question in Allison’s mind that the effect was intentional. She had no idea how many kids were here, but it wouldn’t be good for PRI if the majority of them felt like prisoners.
Even if they were.
In her orientation packet was a map of the complex as well as a laminated ID card with her high school picture on it. The
card had a blue border on it, a blue that matched about half of the places on the map. Instructions in the packet told her to wear the id clipped to her at all times, present it on demand, and stay within the areas designated by it.
As she looked on the map for the cafeteria, she noted that none of the blue areas came within a hundred yards of the perimeter fence.
Once she left the dormitory— the “girls’ residence,” according to the map— the sense of entering a world slightly askew returned full force. Teenagers were everywhere. People her own age, many younger, a few older, had accumulated in the courtyard outside. They sat on benches, played basketball and tennis in a large area between the residences, they ran back and forth carrying books and backpacks, rode skateboards…
The sight froze Allison for a moment on the steps to her building. People passed her, going in and out. She got a few stares but nothing more. There were enough people here for a new face not to be extraordinary enough to interrupt the routine.
It looks so normal, Allison thought. The residences, the library, the tennis courts all could have been lifted whole from some private prep school.
But everyone wore a laminated ID tag, the courtyard was dotted with white poles topped by either spotlights or cameras, and Allison knew that barbed wire and armed guards waited just outside the blue area, behind the carefully arranged buildings.
She glanced at the map and realized that the off-limits zones, the barbed wire, the guards, wouldn’t even be visible from anywhere within the blue area.
She looked at her fellow prisoners and wondered what they told themselves. Was this just a special school to some of them? Did some come willingly? Most of her expectations seemed false in the face of the population before her.
She forced herself to remember her mother, and the kid on the film. She tried her teek sense, and couldn’t push through the haze that the drug had made of that part of her mind. These are evil people, and they’ve taken everything I had.
A deep sense of loss gripped her as she wove through the crowd.
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