Before She Sleeps

by Bina Shah

  When I’m wrapped in the sheet with only my face and neck uncovered, Bouthain comes over to me, while Mañalac performs the same procedure on Julien. Bouthain holds a pressure syringe in his hand.

  “Now, Sabine, when this starts to work, you’ll fall asleep very quickly, and to the rest of the world, you’ll appear dead. The concentration I’ve made will last four to six hours, and you’ll wake up within that amount of time. It’ll clear your system very quickly—it has a short half-life—so you shouldn’t suffer any residual effects. Not like that awful poison—the Ebrietas. Really, whoever made that should be jailed for life. Now count backward from ten to one, my dear.”

  Bouthain’s hand comes down quickly over my neck, and the syringe emits a high-pitched beep just once—

  Ten, nine, eight …

  And then it’s as if the sandstorm finally breaks through the glass with a ferocity that only I can see. The winds tear through everything in the room, the whirlwind descends over my body, and the last thing I remember—

  seven, six, five …

  is Julien’s face, still and handsome in the moonlight, and—

  four, three, two, one.

  I think: He’ll make such a beautiful corpse—

  Zero.

  The Dream

  She is supposed to be asleep.

  She is supposed to be dead.

  Panic hammers the inside of her chest; she tries to rise from the gurney like a body jerking up in the middle of its own funeral pyre. But she can’t move. The drug has paralyzed her, yet she’s still groggily aware of her surroundings. Bouthain didn’t tell her that it was going to be like this.

  Everything is muffled, as if she’s underwater. She sees dim lights in the corridor as the little procession—the two men wheeling the two gurneys, hers and Julien’s, both of them hidden in the body bags—makes its silent way to the service elevator in the south face of the building. Bouthain whispers instructions to Mañalac, the words sewn together like velvet, not separating into individual sounds she can identify and comprehend.

  There’s a great coldness in her body; she’s become a glacier, her heartbeat so slow it barely registers in her veins, one faint beat every ten seconds or so. Is Julien awake, like her? She tries to move her mouth, but nothing happens. The words bubble up in her head but die on her tongue.

  They’re entering the elevator now, a wide one with space for both the gurneys and the two men. She is slotted in, side by side with Julien. But she can’t look in his direction, because like the rest of her, her eyes won’t move.

  Bouthain reaches down to pull slightly at one end of the material that covers her face, opening small slits cut into the side to let in air and let condensation out. From far away a series of strange bangs and shudders register on her consciousness.

  Bouthain says to Mañalac, “It’s strong.”

  Words make sense to her, just barely. The sandstorm still rages outside.

  “How will I drive in it?”

  “Slowly,” says Bouthain.

  Any moment now the doors will open and a Security array will be standing there with weapons, waiting for them. Or Reuben Faro himself. Just the syllables of his name terrify her, even in her stupor. Beside her, she can sense Bouthain and Mañalac tensing, readying for the fight ahead.

  Like a snake’s slitted pupils widening to take in its victim, the elevator doors slide apart. The shiftless world is waiting for them beyond the light.

  Lin

  Lin lifted her head from the desk reluctantly, unwilling to face the world pushing its way into her consciousness. The device on her desk said that it was three in the morning. Had she fallen asleep for a time, or had her senses simply left her after that ugly moment of epiphany?

  Rupa lay sleeping on the floor, her head bent at a painful angle, one arm underneath it. They’d talked late into the night, Lin asking Rupa over and over again to reveal every detail, every moment of her meetings with Le Birman and Joseph.

  Rupa claimed she’d never slept with Joseph, that he could only think about Sabine. He was obsessed with her. “He didn’t give a damn about me. Le Birman was completely the opposite. Always giving me little gifts and presents. Always talking to me about his work. He didn’t just see me as a comfort; he thought of me as a companion, and he made me feel comfortable, too. That’s why I decided to let him … have me.”

  “And what about Joseph?”

  Rupa gave Lin a shamefaced look and didn’t answer right away. “I told you, Joseph loves Sabine. She doesn’t love him.”

  Lin wondered: Could it be the world really was that simple? Where desire justified everything, no matter how dangerous? She couldn’t believe the naïveté of Rupa’s reasoning, but she had to press on. “What exactly did Le Birman tell you about his work?” she asked cautiously.

  “His company makes drugs.”

  “What kind of drugs?”

  “Cancer drugs. Drugs to make the skin younger. A drug for insomnia.”

  Lin sat up straight. “Insomnia?”

  “Yes, that’s what he said.”

  Lin began to breathe faster, her skin feeling hot. “Did it have a name, this drug?”

  “Yes. I remember the name. Sleep,” said Rupa. “He called it ‘Sleep.’”

  “Did he ever give any to you? Did he ever ask you to try it?”

  “No, never. He said they were still testing it. Because in certain doses, it started to make some people sick … and some women miscarry, if they were pregnant. He said it couldn’t be mixed with alcohol.”

  Alcohol. Reuben had said that about the drug he gave her. But how could he have gotten his hands on a drug that wasn’t yet on the market, a drug that only could be considered as contraband? This wasn’t like procuring cigarettes, which could harm only him. This was taking a risk. And to think he’d actually given it to her! Could it be that he just didn’t know how dangerous this drug was? The drug and Joseph’s drink clearly had done something terrible to Sabine.

  After Rupa had lain down and fallen asleep, exhausted and tearful, Lin went to her desk and stared at her device, too horrified to even cry. She knew at last what Reuben had done. How could he have put them all in danger like that? Or had he decided that the side effects didn’t matter because they weren’t women of Green City, and pregnancy was not their duty? And after all, he’d given the drug to her; he’d had no idea she would use it on Sabine.

  She pressed her thumbs into the pressure points at the corners of her eyes. Then she glanced over at Rupa, asleep, her thick hair in disarray, breath going in and out of her chest in waves. In sleep Rupa was without sin, returned to her primal state of innocence. Lin couldn’t bear to think about how Le Birman had unwrapped this girl, revealing her smooth, lovely youth skin, one inch at a time. That was her fault, too: insisting on rules that drove Rupa to hide her loneliness and vulnerability, to keep her search for tenderness a secret that had taken on such ugly consequences.

  Lin bent over her device to write a message in code to Reuben:

  I know what you’ve done. Bring Sabine back to me.

  She didn’t allow herself to hesitate or reconsider. She sent the message as soon as she’d written the last word, stabbing the device with enough force to bend her fingernail backwards. The pain felt clean and right, a clear light through all the murkiness. There was no more time left to wait, to play games with Reuben. She had to force Reuben’s hand into returning Sabine to the Panah.

  She got up from her desk, stumbled around Rupa, fell into her bed, and sank into limbo.

  “Lin?” Rupa was finally awake, raising herself up in one graceful movement from lying to sitting to standing. She rubbed her eyes and stretched. “I’ll make tea.”

  Lin watched her go out of the room. She knew the others would be keeping vigil, waiting for any news of Sabine. Let Rupa deal with them, she thought wearily to herself.

/>   A light chime sounded from her device. She was instantly alert; she scrambled out of bed, adrenaline pushing the leftover dreams out of her head. Another chime, this one louder, more insistent, was accompanied by a message flashing across the display: Reuben was attempting to initiate a visual conversation with her. He’d never done this before; it was too risky for both of them. The chime kept ringing and ringing as her finger hovered over the device. She couldn’t bear the sight of his face now; she wanted only to know that Sabine was on her way back to the Panah. But he might not contact her again.

  On the tenth chime, she accepted the chat.

  Reuben appeared instantly, but it was not the same man she’d known for so long. His face had always been eye-pleasingly rugged, but this was a haunted man, purple shadows descending from underneath his eyes to the tops of his cheekbones. His jowls sagged, his mouth was drawn downward as if gravity and time had wrought ten years’ damage in a matter of days. The rueful lift of his eyebrows told her that he was only too aware of his transformation.

  “Hello, Lin.” His voice, at least, was the same, colored warm with cigarettes and affection.

  “Where is Sabine?” she said, immediately. But he appeared to not have heard her.

  “Lin? Say something.” There was a glimpse of the familiar tender concern that he always carried for her, but it was an illusion, a trick of the light. Or had he not read her message? She could only stare at the man she had once trusted. Of course he would act as naturally as possible; he didn’t know he had anything to defend or explain. He couldn’t know that his deeds were written on his face.

  She’d play it cool until he came out with it himself. “I’m here.” Her throat constricted and she cleared it several times before the words came out properly. “I’m here. How are you?”

  “I was going to ask you the same question. I got your message, but I didn’t understand it. Are you all right?”

  “I feel as bad as you look.”

  Reuben smiled then, even though his eyes remained clouded. He let out that familiar deep chuckle that had always disarmed her. “Oh, Lin. I love you for your honesty.”

  “You value honesty?”

  “Very much. Especially for a man like me, surrounded by people who only tell me what they think I want to hear. You tell me what I need to hear. Thank you for that.”

  He raised a glass to his mouth and took a long swallow from it. The display cut in and out for a second, with the glass at his mouth and then out of frame. Lin could tell that he had been drinking for a good long while already. His nose was slightly reddened, his mouth a little more slack than normal. Several times he opened his mouth and then closed it again. The small movements of his face, the tic in his left eyelid, made the fear blossom in her anew. “Reuben, tell me. Where is Sabine?”

  Reuben brought his hand to his mouth and ran his fingers across his beard and lips, as if he wanted to keep the words trapped within. She heard the truth in the long pause before he could bring himself to speak.

  “She’s dead, Lin.”

  Lin strained to see his face properly, but his head was bent, shadows obscuring the long upper half of his face. “You’re lying.”

  “Lin, I wish I were.”

  “What do you mean, dead? Did you see her? Did you see her?”

  “I saw her. I’m telling you the truth.”

  “I don’t believe you. You were supposed to keep her safe until she could come home. What did you do to her?”

  “I saw her lying on the ground outside Joseph’s apartment. I knew she was unwell, so I took her to the hospital. They took her in after I dropped her there. Later I went back. I met her doctor and told him to look after her. Just for a few hours. I was going to bring her back to you. I swear it.” Reuben took another swallow from his glass. Lin wished it were poison.

  “She was all right, or so he said. Young man, called Julien Asfour. He was willing to do as I told him.”

  Another sip. He was rambling now, talking in circles to himself. A coldness was invading Lin, cell by cell, vein and artery.

  “There was a sandstorm. Did you hear it?”

  “No.”

  “All the roads were closed. It took me hours to get to the hospital. When I got there, Sabine was gone. So was the doctor. And a senior doctor with them, Rami Bouthain. I knew him from school.”

  “So?”

  “So I went after them.” Reuben’s eyes flicked back to Lin. Reuben the Official was speaking now, the one who spent his days going after traitors and transgressors against the state. Not the man who loved her. “They stole an ambulance, declared a quarantine, and went out into the desert. In a sandstorm. Either they were crazy, or they were trying to escape with her.” The ice clinked in his glass as he lifted it to his mouth and drained the last of the liquid in it. Lin could hear the opening of a bottle and the gurgle of another glass being poured.

  “Did you catch them?” She could only speak in short sentences: she tried to add other words, but they evaporated on her tongue.

  “Eventually, yes. But it took a very long time. We stopped them a few miles short of the border. They were heading for the crematorium. I had the ambulance unsealed. Inside were two funeral pods.”

  Lin breathed in sharply.

  Reuben nodded. “I know,” he said. “It was horrible for me to see her.”

  “Keep going … just tell me everything.”

  He pressed his hand over his face, grotesque on the display. He had the largest hands of anyone she’d ever known, big-boned, broad-palmed. She shuddered to think of them touching her. She felt tainted, as if she’d been with a snake instead of a man.

  “I ignored the quarantine, though Bouthain told me it was too dangerous. I had the pods opened.”

  “And?”

  “Sabine was in one and Julien Asfour in the other.”

  “Who?”

  “The doctor. Julien Asfour. The one I’d told to look after Sabine.”

  “Are you sure she was dead?”

  “Yes, Lin. I’m sure. I touched her body. She was cold and stiff to the touch.”

  Her body. Lin couldn’t form the image of Sabine lying there, devoid of life or breath. The barrage of information was too much; she found herself unable to grasp the fact of Sabine having become just a body, no longer a woman living under her protection. She focused on Reuben’s face, flickering on the display, with great effort. “Why were they in quarantine?”

  His voice dropped lower, as if he were about to speak words too profane to be said out loud. “Bouthain said she caught the Virus. That’s why she died.”

  “The Virus? That doctor, too?”

  “No. He killed himself. Because he’d broken a lot of rules to try to save her and he knew he was going to lose everything because of it. Asfour was responsible for Sabine’s death, I’m sure of it. I don’t know who else was involved but I’ll get to the bottom of this, I promise you.”

  Lin glanced around at her room, her beloved sanctuary within the Panah. She stopped listening to Reuben as he droned on; she was overwhelmed with grief. But then, through the anguish a thought occurred to her: that Reuben wasn’t telling her everything; there was more to the story, and that probably he had some hand in the way things turned out for Sabine. “I can’t believe you, Reuben. You’ve lied to me already.”

  “What have I done? How have I lied to you?”

  “Why can I not believe you when you say she’s dead?”

  Reuben swallowed hard. “All right, then maybe you’ll believe this.” His face disappeared, and in its place an image flickered onto the display. Lin stared hard without blinking, trying to absorb what she was seeing: a darkened space that looked like the inside of an ambulance; the prone figure, encased within a funeral pod; the familiar, beloved face, pale and so incredibly and unnaturally still. Lin wanted to hold Sabine, to warm her cold face and hand
s, to see her open her eyes and laugh at the idea that she was dead. It was ludicrous, it was obscene, to witness Sabine as a corpse.

  The image vanished after a minute, and Reuben’s face reappeared. Lin’s eyes snapped to his, red-rimmed and blurry. For the first time she thought it all might be true. That Sabine was really dead. And she realized he hadn’t lied to her. He’d just made a mistake. Just as she had, in giving Sabine the drug to help her sleep.

  “Well, then they lied to you. It wasn’t the Virus that killed her.” She pulled the vial out of a drawer and placed it in front of her as she spoke. She lifted it up so he could see the pills glistening within. “Reuben, why did you never tell me that this was so dangerous?”

  “What?”

  “This drug. The one you gave me. You knew what it does to women, and you still gave it to me. Why?”

  Alarm flashed across his face in the twitch of his eyes, and he swallowed quickly. He took a moment to gather himself, and when he spoke, his voice was low and hoarse. “I didn’t know about the other side effects. Just the ones I told you about. That you can’t take this drug with alcohol.”

  “Well, I gave it to her and I know that she drank with it. I’m guessing that’s probably what killed her. And I am responsible for that part. Imagine if she’d been pregnant.”

  “Lin, I was only trying to help.”

  Lin fell into silence. Reuben leaned back in his chair and looked away, at the ceiling, the floor, anywhere but Lin’s eyes. “You don’t know what it’s like, do you? All my life I’ve worked for this city. Its security has been my entire focus, all my life. And in return, I was given a measure of power and responsibility. It was a fair exchange. Until I met you.

  “Before I met you, I only ever had one mistress. When I first met you, I thought I could be with you, but still stay loyal to Green City. I thought I could keep it all separate. Green City in the day, you in the night. And I thought that even that was part of my job: keeping an eye on you and the Panah, in case it ever got out of hand. I had it all worked out in my mind, how to help if it all went wrong. I’d bring you all in, discreetly, cleanly, and neatly. A few months of reeducation and no harm done: you’d all be put in the system and things would go back to normal.”