Broken Mirror

by Cody Sisco

  These are, of course, my personal reflections on the matter. My professional opinions have already been submitted to the Special Inquisitor.

  —Statement by Dr. Laura Tammet, the Eastmore family’s neuroscience advisor (1998)

  Semiautonomous California

  1 March 1991

  The day after Victor’s reclassification appointment, he took the bus to work because he didn’t trust himself to drive. Stumbling, dazed, he contemplated his last week of freedom. A week—only a week!—until they sent him to a ranch to be chipped, and thus locatable by MeshTowers and MeshSats that bathed every square kilometer of the American Union in microwave radiation—unless Karine could help him.

  The passing streetscape of buildings, trees, and people barely registered. A week until he was banished to a farm somewhere in SeCa’s hinterlands. A week until the end of his life as he knew it. And then how long before he would descend into catatonia?

  Good-bye, Victor. Hello, vegetable.

  He looked at his MeshBit. He should call someone—his parents, or maybe Circe, or Elena. He could tell her she’d been wrong, everything would not work out all right. But he couldn’t do it. His mouth felt glued shut. He couldn’t tell them he’d failed.

  Only one person could help him. He had to talk to Karine and get her to intervene in his reclassification.

  Victor stalked through the Gene-Us reception area. The first hints of swelling outrage tingled on his skin. He was good at his job—more than good, he excelled. What would he do on a ranch? Tend cattle? He knew nothing about farm animals or growing crops. It would be a waste of his education and talents. This is where he should be, at the forefront of genomics, making a contribution to science, technology, and progress. He was an Eastmore, after all.

  Walking past the sequencing analysts’ office, with the threat of internment hanging closer than ever, Victor saw his surroundings in a different light, full of sharp edges, harsh chemicals, and heartless people. If Ozie was right, the genetic tests that helped diagnose MRS were run through Gene-Us—now BioScan—sequencers. The company didn’t want to help people like Victor. The company needed people like Victor to be diagnosed to turn a profit.

  He must have resented the company at some point, but he couldn’t remember when. How thick a Personil fog had he been living in to not see what was so clear now? He’d been toiling in the machine that would crush him.

  Victor marched to Karine’s office. He found her reviewing a data table on her vidscreen and sat down across from her desk. He said, “There’s been a problem with my reclassification, and I need your help.”

  Karine sat back silently.

  He tried to read her expression using the color technique. Purplish pride and rust-colored disdain showed in the crooked way she set her lips and the lines around her slightly narrowed eyes. She resembled a character in one of those close-camera melodramas that Dr. Tammet had made Victor watch to learn about social interactions.

  “The doctor said I might be downgraded to Class Two in less than a week. No, it’s worse than that. He sounded almost certain.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that,” she said.

  “He said a positive report from my employer might sway his decision.”

  She crossed her arms. Her bracelets jangled like wind chimes in an earthquake. “Surely you see that I’m in a difficult position.”

  Victor wasn’t sure what she meant.

  “The merger,” she said. “Now that I report to your aunt, it would be an obvious case of nepotism if either of us intervened directly.” She drummed her fingers on the desk. “A pity. This requires a change in plans.”

  He didn’t care about her plans. “It was different yesterday,” he said. “The doctor used a new device, and the questions were different. He told me details about Carmichael.”

  She looked at him with impatience written on her pursed, downturned mouth.

  “Have the mirror resonance syndrome diagnostic protocols been updated?” he asked.

  Her frown deepened. She said, “I can’t discuss that aspect of the Health Board’s business with you.”

  “I have a right to know! The records must be public—”

  “They are not. Not in this matter. I’m sorry but I can’t discuss it.”

  “But something’s changed. My reclassification—”

  “Look, Victor, I have to walk a very careful line. I have BioScan responsibilities, and I have Health Board responsibilities, and I need to keep them separate. And you need to uphold your end of the deal. No more crazy talk.”

  “I’m asking you as a friend of the family.”

  Karine blinked.

  “Please,” he said. “I need to know what’s going on.”

  She sighed and bit her lip. Victor could see her struggling with the ethics of the situation. Then she straightened her shoulders, seeming to coming to a decision, and said, “After Carmichael, they pursued every possible line of inquiry to understand why Samuel Miller did what he did. They looked at his genes, his brain, his body chemistry and microbiome—he was run through every psychological test that had ever been used, and many that were still experimental. We continue to study him. We’re always learning more.”

  “What does that have to do with me? Or any other person with MRS? He’s a freak. A once-in-a-lifetime oddity.”

  “An oddity who killed hundreds of people.”

  “He did that. Not me. I deserve a normal life.”

  Karine laughed, a surprised short burst. “Whether you deserve one or not, how can you believe that’s possible?”

  “Do you want us all locked up for one man’s crime?” Victor asked hoarsely. “Am I nothing more than my condition?”

  Karine flinched, a hurt look on her face. In a steel-cold voice, she said, “We’ll talk when you’ve calmed down.”

  He left the room. He’d made a mess of it. Someone with better social skills would have found a way to ask the right questions and keep her talking. Instead he’d pushed her away.

  He didn’t feel panic, only a deep sense of resignation, and maybe a little relief too. He’d worried for so many years about losing control and being tossed into a Class One facility that the Class Two ranch would be a relief. He wouldn’t have to worry about fucking up any more. He could be himself.

  Later, at his work station, Victor didn’t even try to begin his daily tasks. He pinged Ozie but got no response. He pinged his auntie, and she initiated a vidfeed session.

  “What’s wrong?” she asked.

  “My reclassification didn’t go well. I’m likely to be downgraded to Class Two by the end of the week.”

  “I think that might be for the best.”

  “It’s like the whole system is rigged against me.”

  “Victor, you know better than—”

  “Did you know about the change in the diagnostic protocols?”

  “Victor, remember your therapy. Are you still taking your medication?”

  “No, and I’m not going to. Not if this is my last week of freedom. I will spend every second I have figuring out what really happened to Granfa.”

  Auntie Circe sat up and leaned toward the screen. “You have to give up this obsession about Father being murdered.”

  “No.” Saying no filled Victor with a mix of pride and stubbornness. If he had only a week left, he wouldn’t go along with what anyone told him to do. It would be his time, moments that no one could denigrate or take away from him.

  Auntie Circe said, “We’ve talked about this.”

  Victor said, “I found traces of radiation on the data egg.”

  “Which he gave to you. I’m so sorry, Victor, but at least he didn’t manage to do you permanent harm.”

  What was she saying? That Granfa Jeff had tried to poison him? Victor gripped the data egg in his pocket. Bile rose in his throat. Was the data egg poison or an answer to his questions? Was Ozie right about there being a conspiracy, or did they share a paranoid delusion?

  Auntie Circe brought her han
ds in prayer to her lips. Then she asked, “Did Father ever explain to you why he cancelled the research at Oak Knoll?”

  Victor squirmed in his seat. “No, he never said why.”

  Circe nodded. “He behaved erratically, almost paranoid, over the past year or so. He almost lost the company in a takeover.” Circe’s face swam closer in the screen. “A lot of what he did is unexplained.”

  Victor’s throat tightened. “You said it was dementia.” The words tasted sour in Victor’s mouth.

  “It was more than that. I know that he was hiding something from me. He was never diagnosed with mirror resonance syndrome, but . . .”

  Shocks. Could Granfa Jeff have been a Broken Mirror?

  “That’s . . .” Victor couldn’t speak past the lump in his throat. He looked up at the ceiling, his mind churning with the implications. Granfa Jeff had had an ideal family life. He was a hero known all over the world as the man who cured cancer. If he had mirror resonance syndrome, it must have been a far milder case than Victor’s. Laws, if it had been known that Jefferson Eastmore was a Broken Mirror, it could have changed how people felt about them all. Was it possible?

  Circe continued, “Before his delusions overcame him, we think he came close to a cure.”

  Victor’s attention snapped back to Circe, and he hung on her words like a lifeline. “A cure?”

  Circe said, “We don’t have a lot to go on. His self-destruction was well crafted and nuanced. I’ve looked through what records are left in our network, so I know that there was a compound called XSCT, but he had a head start destroying his work, deleting files, and moving people around. I’m not sure we can ever reconstruct all of it. But some things were saved. Victor, we might be able to get your cure back on track.”

  Victor felt the blood drain out of his head and neck with one beat, then come rushing back the next. “Really?” he squeaked.

  “I’m sorting through a lot of documents and testimony, but I think the puzzle will eventually become clear. I’m going to need your help, though. Can I count on you?”

  “I’ll do anything.”

  “You know what you need to do. Take your Personil.”

  “I’ll take my Personil,” Victor said. “After I go to Oak Knoll. To see if there’s anything left.”

  “It’s been emptied. I can’t see what good—”

  “I have to do this. If I don’t find anything, I promise I’ll go back on Personil.”

  His auntie’s eyes lit up with compassion and relief. “You’re a strong and brave young man, Victor. I’m very impressed. It’ll be a new start.”

  She terminated the feed.

  ***

  That afternoon, after a full day of work, Victor made his way back to his apartment and consumed three vials of fumewort tincture. He drove to the shuttered Oak Knoll Hospital, got out of his car, walked to the hastily erected mesh-wire fence, and squeezed through a gap. Technically he wasn’t trespassing, since his employer owned the property. All the same, it felt wrong to be sneaking in.

  He walked past an unmanned security checkpoint and a few low-slung concrete buildings. After a few minutes he arrived at the main hospital building: four wings ten stories high that looked like a collection of enormous cinderblocks standing on end. For all the hospital meant to him, this had been a place of healing and a leading genetics research facility in the American Union. Now it was a husk, emptied of people and of purpose. Disused. Abandoned. A waste.

  The entrance was covered up by aluminum sheeting affixed to the facade by metal pins the size of large fingers. He couldn’t go in there.

  Images from his time in the building haunted him. The echoing hallways, the small square rooms where he gave blood and submitted to countless psychological tests, the waiting areas with glass windows looking out toward the bay—wherever he was, his memories of the place were never far away.

  Victor looked for another way to get inside. He walked next to the southern wall. The windows, more than a meter beyond his reach, were too high to be of use unless he could find something to stack underneath them.

  Around the corner, he found a narrow concrete stairwell leading down. Maybe he should have asked for Circe to find someone to accompany him. It wasn’t that he was afraid, but he might have to carry away boxes of records. Unless she was right, and there was really nothing left.

  He didn’t have time to hesitate, not with Dr. Santos’s deadline hanging over him. He climbed down the stairs.

  At the bottom, he tugged at a metal-banded door, but it wouldn’t budge. From his pocket he took his contraband Japanese army knife. The door’s mechanism was a simple latch. One swipe with the knife’s blade cleared the curved spring-tongue from the catch. The door opened halfway with a painful metal-on-cement shriek, then seized and wouldn’t open further. He squeezed through.

  Glittering dust cascaded through the narrow shaft of light at the threshold, illuminating a thin slice of the interior gloom. A low-ceilinged corridor stretched ahead between ductwork, pipes, and machinery: hot water heaters, chillers, and electrical cabinets. The basement looked as if it hadn’t been touched since the hospital was closed.

  Victor took a few steps and allowed his eyes to adjust to the dim light. If he could find the stairs leading into the main building, he could search for files and data cores in the research unit’s laboratory.

  A lump formed in Victor’s throat. His career, his life’s ambition, his destiny—to help people through science and medicine, to continue the Eastmore legacy of healing and progress—it should all be playing out in the rooms above him. Instead he was searching around the dark basement like a blind man. He explored the perimeter of the room by touch. A lightstrip activation panel did nothing when he pressed it.

  A pair of double doors in one corner seemed promising. Each had a small window at eye level and blackness on the other side. The doors wouldn’t budge. Maybe he could repeat his knife trick to open the door.

  A high-pitched scream shot through the dark.

  Victor jumped and fell against the wall, breathing heavily. That sound—what was it? A dying wail, a murder? He might be next.

  Another scream came from maybe ten meters away, back toward the entrance. Victor strained to see in the blackness. His heartbeat reverberated in his limbs.

  A third scream ripped through the room, painfully loud.

  The tide of adrenaline receded, and Victor realized the sound wasn’t a scream. It was metal screeching on the concrete floor. The outer door was being pushed open.

  He straightened and listened. He heard grunting and breathing. He wasn’t alone. He edged backward along the wall.

  A beam of light flashed on, sweeping the room. Victor ducked to a crouch behind a large storage cabinet on wheels. The beam moved toward him.

  He was trapped.

  A male voice called out, “Who’s there?”

  Victor’s pulse raced.

  “I know someone’s here,” the man said. “The perimeter sensor tripped.” The voice waited a few breaths in silence. The man sighed. “I know you’re still in here. Show yourself!”

  Who was he? Probably not a police officer, Victor reasoned. Maybe private security, assigned to watch the shuttered hospital, but who would bother with that? And wouldn’t Circe have known and warned him about it? Whoever the man was, he must have been monitoring the property from nearby to get here so quickly.

  Clip. Clop. Clip. The man walked further into the room. “I don’t like hide-and-seek, so why don’t you come out? What are you doing down here anyway? There’s nothing left.”

  Victor weighed his chances of survival and escape if the man became hostile. He might be able to knock him out with a pipe or a wrench, if he could find one.

  But not if the man was armed. Victor wasn’t trained for knife fighting, and in the dark there was too much to bump into and trip over.

  Or the man might have a sonic grenade, deafening in such close quarters, or a stunstick, a sleep jabber, fire grenades, or any number of o
ther exotic weapons. Victor’s skin burned, remembering the people who died when their houses exploded.

  The man took a few steps closer. “Come out where I can see you,” he said. He kicked away some bits of metal with his shoes.

  Each skittering clinking sound made Victor’s chest shudder. He crawled on his elbows, trying his best to remain quiet, like a mouse hiding from an owl.

  The light beam moved toward other parts of the room. Victor got up and took a few crouched steps. The beam of light flashed back. A bright glare in his face blinded him, and he jerked back into hiding. Tricky. Time to try something different.

  “Just checking things out,” Victor said in a deep voice, trying to sound authoritative. Then he slunk to the ground and used his elbows to pull himself forward. His only way out was deeper into the basement.

  “I could just gas you to sleep,” the man called out. “My guess is you don’t have a mask, do you?”

  Adrenaline flooded through Victor. He sprinted to the double doors and worked on the latch with his knife. It clicked just as the man’s light found him. Victor yanked a door open with a grunt and stumbled forward into a hallway that was empty and lined with closed doors on either side. The man’s lightstick beam followed Victor as he ran. He found a stairwell door unlocked and flew up the stairs.

  He climbed three floors, hoping to exhaust his pursuer, and whirled down a hallway on the floor designated for long-term patients. He had been here many times to visit Alik.

  Victor sprinted toward the end of the corridor. He could take the other stairwell down and escape from a first-floor window. Something caught his foot. He almost fell. Arms spinning wildly, he regained his balance.

  Hissing surrounded him, and a fog cloud arose. Fatigue sapped his muscles. Victor slumped to the floor and drifted to unconsciousness.

  ***

  Victor woke, confused by the sensation of his body hanging by his armpits. He opened his eyes. A man was holding him up without seeming to strain. In his late thirties or early forties, the man had grizzled, dark-honey-colored skin, a jutting jaw, and wide-spaced eyes on a narrow face. A black knit cap sat snugly on his head.