Syndrome E

by Franck Thilliez

  “Just imagine soldiers who no longer experience fear, who can kill without remorse, without hesitation, like a single, powerful arm. Obviously, many parameters are still beyond us, especially regarding the most favorable conditions for propagating the impulse from Patient Zero. How much stress should we apply to the others? And what’s the best way to do it? But this will all eventually be figured out, mastered, and described in the protocols. With or without me.”

  Sharko, impatient, kept his eyes riveted on Quinat. His fists clenched compulsively.

  “We found a piece of electrode sheath in Mohamed Abane’s neck. What did you do to him?”

  “Abane had survived Chastel’s ‘glitch,’ and he was a Patient Zero. Before studying his brain, I conducted deep brain stimulation experiments on him. We especially stimulated the pain centers, in order to trace curves and fill out our statistical tables. We had to eliminate him in any case, so let’s just say we got the most out of him first.”

  Lucie sensed that Sharko was on the point of bursting.

  “Why did you steal their eyes?” she asked in a harsh voice.

  Coline Quinat stood up.

  “Come with me.”

  At his wits’ end, Sharko shouldered a path through the group of policemen waiting outside the room. Quinat led them to a large, clean basement. She nodded toward an old gray rug. Lucie understood; she rolled up the rug, revealing a small trapdoor, which she opened. She wrinkled her features: beneath her was pure horror.

  In a minuscule crawl space rested dozens of jars in which pairs of eyeballs floated. Blue, black, and green irises bobbed slowly in formaldehyde. In disgust, Lucie held out a jar to the inspector. Coline Quinat looked carefully at the container. Something baleful shone in her own pupils.

  “Eyes…Light, then the image, then the eye, then the brain, then Syndrome E…It’s all connected—now do you understand? One cannot exist without the other. These eyes are the ones through which Syndrome E was able to spread. They’ve always fascinated me, just as they fascinated Jacques Lacombe and my father. They are such perfect, precious organs. The ones you’re holding belonged to Mohamed Abane. You have in your hands a Patient Zero, miss. Eyes that absorbed the syndrome spontaneously, in a way we might never be able to explain, and that guided it straight to the brain, thereby modifying the brain’s structure. Aren’t eyes like that worth preserving?”

  There was now a kind of madness shining from Quinat’s own eyes that Lucie had trouble defining. A madness born of the dogged determination of people who were willing to do anything in the service of their beliefs. Lucie turned toward Sharko, who was half hidden in the shadows, then grabbed Coline Quinat by the elbow and pulled her toward the men waiting at the top of the steps. Before putting her in the hands of the police, she asked:

  “You’re going to spend the rest of your life in prison. Was all this really worth it?”

  “Of course! You can’t imagine how much it was worth it!”

  She smiled. And at that moment, Lucie understood that no bars could ever contain that kind of smile.

  “Images, young lady. Increasingly violent images are everywhere. Think of your own children, numbed out in front of their computers and video games. Think of all those malleable brains, which the preponderance of images is modifying even in early childhood. None of that existed twenty years ago. If you ever have the chance, read the autopsy reports for Eric Harris, Dylan Klebold, and Charles Whitman, young men who walked into their schools with shotguns and fired on anything that moved. Go have a look at their amygdala, and you’ll see it’s atrophied. You’ll understand that now it’s the entire planet that’s rushing toward its own genocide.”

  She pressed her lips together, then opened them again:

  “Anyone. Syndrome E can strike anyone, in any home. Tomorrow, it might be you or your children. Who’s to say?”

  She added nothing more. The police led her away.

  Chilled to the heart, Lucie went back downstairs alone, without making any noise, as if devoid of energy, exhausted, and with only one wish: to return home, curl up in her daughters’ arms, and get into bed. Sharko was sitting in front of the dozens of eyes that were watching him, still screaming out their final anguish.

  “You coming up?” she murmured in his ear. “Let’s get the hell out of here. I can’t take any more.”

  He looked at her for a long time without answering, then stood up with a deep sigh.

  Sharko pressed the light switch at the top of the stairs. The eyes of Mohamed Abane shone for a fraction of a second, before going out forever in the darkness of the basement.

  Epilogue

  One month later

  The beach at Les Sables d’Olonne unfurled its great gilded crescent beneath the August sun. Her eyes hidden behind dark shades, Lucie watched Clara and Juliette as they carved elaborate shapes in the sand. Some seagulls spun overhead, and a tepid, calming roar rose from the ocean. All around her people were happy, sharing the slightest square foot of sand. The area was packed.

  For the tenth time in less than an hour, Lucie looked back at the seawall. Sharko would be arriving at any moment. Since Coline Quinat’s arrest, they had seen each other only three times, contriving quick round-trips on the TGV that led to furtive embraces. On the other hand, they called each other nearly every evening. Sometimes they didn’t have that much to say; other times, they talked for hours. Their relationship developed haltingly and with plenty of awkward moments.

  Even though they’d tried to avoid the topic, their last case had left an indelible stamp on their minds. Inner suffering would take time to heal. In the hours following her arrest, Coline Quinat had confessed everything. The names of military top brass, members of the secret service, certain politicians and scientists. An unofficial research and neurosurgery center devoted to Syndrome E and deep brain stimulation had been established in the hidden recesses of the army’s health services, thirty feet belowground. There, they studied the phenomenon, established experimental protocols, and performed surgeries. Slowly but surely, piece by piece, the think tank behind the operation would crumble. The case was far from closed, and the restrictions on military secrets didn’t make it any easier, but those who should pay would soon be made to pay. Supposedly…

  Lucie turned back to her twins, who were sitting in a puddle. Given the crowds, she had ordered them to stay nearby. The girls were playing a few yards away, laughing. Water, sand, and sun—all you needed for happiness. No more video games; Lucie had thrown out all the consoles. To preserve her daughters as much as possible from the world of images, their intrinsic violence, their harmful effects on the mind. Get back to the basics, those old wood or plastic toys, manual activities, paper and paste. Everything was being lost so quickly with technological advances. In some ways, Quinat was right: the world was running headlong into a wall.

  In a week, the holidays would already be over. She’d have to go back to Lille, shut herself up in the apartment, and think. Think about the future, about making a better tomorrow out of a life that moved too fast. Lucie let some sand run between her fingers, telling herself yet again that she couldn’t exist, that she couldn’t reach her full potential if she wasn’t a cop. Her job was like a gene, inextricably attached to her cell structure. It was her profession that made her Lucie Henebelle, that gave her her real identity. At the same time, she knew she could improve, be a better mother, a better daughter too. Deep down, she felt she could do it. It was all a matter of willpower.

  Lucie’s face broke into a wide smile when she heard that particular crunch of sand right behind her. She turned around. Sharko was standing there, in his incomprehensible linen trousers and white short-sleeved shirt, his eyes still behind those patched sunglasses. Lucie stood up and gave him a hug. They kissed. Lucie caressed his cheek with the back of her hand.

  “I missed you so much.”

  Sharko removed his glasses, gave her a simple smile, put his backpack down on the sand, and nodded his chin toward the twins. He was
holding a small package.

  “They’re so beautiful…Did you tell them?”

  “Why don’t you do it yourself? You’re not that shy, are you?”

  “It’s your vacation, for the three of you. I don’t want to horn in on your nightly games of Parcheesi.”

  “Oh, of course I told them. They’re looking forward to welcoming you into our little rented cottage, on one condition.”

  “Name it.”

  Lucie pointed to the package dangling from the inspector’s hand.

  “That you stop bringing them candied chestnuts every time you visit. They can’t stand them!”

  Sharko raised the package as if to give the candies a good once-over.

  “They’re right. These things are disgusting.”

  He walked to a trash can, took one last look at the box of glazed chestnuts, and dropped it into the plastic bag. He put back the lid. No more chestnuts…No more cocktail sauce…

  The two girls saw him and ran up to give him an affectionate hug. He kissed them on the cheeks and gently petted their hair. They wanted to play ball and he promised to come in a few minutes, warning them they’d better practice up before he got there. Then he sat down next to Lucie, rolling up the cuffs of his trousers.

  “So? Your chief?” she asked.

  Sharko’s gaze was riveted on the girls. Lucie had never seen such intensity or such tenderness in a man’s eyes.

  “Finished. He handed in his resignation yesterday to the big boss. Falling apart like that, just eight years before he’s eligible to retire. After all the sacrifices and tough breaks. The job finally got him.”

  “And what about you, your job in Nanterre? The two of us…Did you have a chance…to think about it?”

  He picked up a fistful of sand and carefully watched the grains slip through his fingers.

  “Did you know that a few years ago, I left it all behind to open a toy store in the north? Then I went back to school for criminology. And after that, I—”

  Lucie’s eyes widened.

  “You, in a toy store? Are you kidding me?”

  He rummaged in his bag and took out the miniature O-gauge Ova Hornby locomotive, with its black car for wood and coal. It shone in the sun.

  “The store was called the Little World of Magic. It’s not around anymore—a video games shop took over the space.”

  Lucie felt a lump in her throat. Sharko was speaking from deep emotion.

  “ ‘The Little World of Magic’—it’s nice.”

  He nodded. The horizon now absorbed his attention.

  “I wanted to create an interlude in my life. Take the time to watch my daughter grow up. I wanted to remind myself that I’d once been like her, and that the happiest memories we preserve are of our parents’ faces.”

  He delicately put the train back in his bag.

  “You know, something important happened during our case. I lost someone who used to occupy a very significant place in my life. Someone, I think, who was there for the sole purpose of telling me things I didn’t want to hear.”

  Lucie felt nervous.

  “You’re starting to frighten me.”

  “Don’t worry—that someone is somebody I never want to see again. And there’s only one way to make that happen: keep moving forward. So in a few days, I’m going to go see the big boss myself, and tell him—”

  Juliette ran up and asked if she could get an ice cream, interrupting Sharko. Lucie shot a quick glance at the ice cream man, about ten yards away on the seawall. She tried to stand up to go with her, but Sharko grabbed her by the wrist.

  “Wait, let me finish. This all has to come out now.”

  Lucie handed her daughter some money.

  “Go with Clara, but you come straight back, you hear?”

  Juliette nodded. The two little girls ran off through the crowd of vacationers. Sharko started sifting sand again, while Lucie kept an eye on her children from afar.

  “I was saying, I’m going to write my boss a letter of resignation. That is, if…if you want me. I don’t know if things’ll work out. I’ve got plenty of ingrained habits, and also…I’d need a special room for my trains, and the kids wouldn’t be able to play with them, because—”

  Lucie suddenly leaned toward him and squeezed him against her chest.

  “So is that a yes? You’re moving up north?”

  He pressed his chin into the hollow of Lucie’s shoulder, then let his eyelids drop.

  “A guy can still try out new things at my age, don’t you think? I’m not especially tactful, but I’m not such a bad businessman. And besides…I have a fair amount of cash socked away in my account, and I don’t spend much. Do you think that bar in the old part of town is still for sale?”

  Lucie slid her hands under his shirt and affectionately caressed his back. She adored these moments at his side; she needed to make them last, more and more.

  “Franck…”

  They were silent a few seconds, giving in to the sounds around them. Laughs, shouts, the rustle of the breeze. In this moment of pure happiness and caresses, Lucie glanced over toward the little ice cream wagon. Animated silhouettes constantly crossed her field of vision; the beach was jammed. She craned her neck, could see in the hubbub the five or six people waiting in line for their treat. No sign of her daughters. Lucie raised herself onto her knees, a feather of panic in her throat.

  Sharko stood up quickly then, shielding the sun, his body frozen as he looked at the seawall.

  “Franck, do you see the girls near the ice cream wagon?”

  A breath between them.

  “Franck! Franck, tell me you see them…”

  Wind floated over the waves, carrying distant sounds of laughter.