Icons

by Margaret Stohl

  My mother.

  First my family, then the Padre. I wonder if I am only alive, as the Ambassador says, to pay for their deaths.

  I drop the necklace on the metal table in front of me.

  Here, now, where I have no one, I am overwhelmed by my feelings for my parents—for my mother.

  The hundreds and thousands of losses, the things that will never happen between us, writhe around the little cross, around me—until the entire room is full of them.

  I see the baby, howling in the crib. My mother, looking up as the radio falls silent. My father, rolling down the stairs.

  I close my eyes but I see them still. I can’t stop seeing them. My memories have overtaken me; I can’t push them down, no matter how hard I try. Not now. Now they’re pushing me back—and I feel myself breaking.

  I go to the door and begin to pound. I don’t stop until the sides of my hands are sore and bruised and my throat is hoarse from screaming.

  You can’t do this to me You can’t treat me like this I didn’t do anything to you I’m a human being

  The rush of words comes loose from me. I don’t know what I say, only what I feel.

  The plexi slides open beneath my fists and I find myself pounding at the Colonel. His bald head gleams under the harsh lighting, and for a moment, the jagged scar encircling his head looks like a black halo.

  “It’s not necessary to scream. These rooms are wired. We can hear you perfectly clearly, if you use your normal speaking voice.”

  I stare at him blankly. The rooms are wired.

  “I wanted to yell.” It’s all I can manage to spit out. It doesn’t sound like me, but I don’t feel like myself, either.

  I’m too angry.

  “Well, that’s fine, then. Useful data, which is of course why we’re here today. I hope you will cooperate.” He looks at me meaningfully.

  “Useful data? What are you talking about?” I glare uncooperatively.

  “Please, have a seat. There’s no reason to exert yourself. We’ve quite enough data on you, as it is. Thanks to that little display.”

  I want to throw the chair at him, but instead I sit in it.

  “My name is Colonel Catallus. I am the Chief Security Officer, Advisor to the Ambassador.”

  Chief Sympa thug, I think.

  “I will be conducting your inquiry.” The man holds up some kind of sleek tablet, waving it in front of me. “Just a digi-text. Not a torture device.” He smiles and his teeth are artificially white, white as bone. “Now. Tell me about your mother. What little you know. Since she seems to be the trigger.”

  I frown. “Trigger?”

  I don’t like the way he talks. I don’t like his face, either, so I look at his jacket, covered with military emblems. Medals. Stars. Again, the pair of small brass wings.

  “All emotional states have triggers. We pull the trigger and you fire. That’s how this works.”

  He smiles, but it’s not meant to make me feel any better. He wants something—I just can’t tell what.

  Not yet.

  I stare at the wings for what feels like an eternity before I respond. “I’m not a gun.”

  “I didn’t say you were.” He smiles.

  “I don’t have a trigger.”

  “All right. You don’t believe you do; that’s useful too.” He smiles again, tapping on his digi-text, and I want to punch him in the face. “Let’s talk about your necklace.”

  The necklace. I stuff it in my pocket. “No.”

  “It was very kind of the Ambassador to arrange for you to have it, don’t you think?”

  I say nothing.

  “You lost both your parents on The Day. I see that in your file. And this.”

  He flips his digi-text toward me. There, in the ten inches between his hands, he holds a photograph of my home.

  Of what used to be my home.

  In what used to be my neighborhood.

  I have seen photographs of this room. Pictures of large hands holding a small me in the water, a dark-haired, pink-skinned naked baby who looked more like a frog. In this picture, though, there is no baby. No rubber duck. There are no people at all, at least not where you can see them.

  I can only see the edge of the tarp covering the bodies if I look very closely at the black patch at the bottom of the frame. It almost blends in with the dark pattern on the torn blue wallpaper.

  I look away.

  My eyes fill with tears and I hate myself for giving in to them. They burn as they slide down my face.

  “It’s your home, isn’t it? Where you lived with your mother and your father?”

  “And my brothers,” I say automatically. Before I can stop myself.

  Colonel Catallus smiles broadly, so I know I must have said something wrong.

  “Of course. You had two brothers, correct? Pepi and…”

  “Angel,” I say, closing my eyes. I can see them, their dirty knees and their uncut hair from the photographs, but I can’t see their faces. Not anymore. Where they should have faces they only have blank, black shadows. Same as the shadow over their heads, over our house, over our city. Same as the shadow over the world, the one that settled upon us one day and never left.

  The shadows overwhelm me. I don’t want to see them anymore. I don’t want to talk about them. I want the Brass Wings Man to stop.

  I have to stop him, I think.

  I have to, and I can.

  I reconsider the man in front of me. I explore him with my mind, pushing past the coldness that comes when I touch him. There’s a wall of pure ice where there should be something alive inside him, and I search for a crack, anything to let me in.

  As I suspected, the ice isn’t real—it’s a facade—and it gives way as soon as I concentrate. One push, and the paper doll his mind has been hiding behind falls like an autumn leaf, a snowflake.

  It blows away and I am left with the ugly truth of an ugly mind. An ugly life.

  I feel my way up and down and past and through him. He is small and afraid and coiled. He is slippery and beige. Inside him, when I reach all the way inside, there is nothing. An empty space with a small pebble rolling around, making a rattling noise where there should have been something else.

  A heart. A soul. There is nothing.

  Except, now, me.

  “What are you doing?” He sounds surprised.

  I don’t answer.

  “Doloria.” His voice is a warning, but I don’t stop. I am doing things I have never done before. I’ve found a new weapon, and I want to use it. I want to hurt him with it.

  I see the faces of his dead mother and father. His cats. He smuggles them soft food from the Blackhole Market.

  A bottle of strong drink. An empty chair.

  There’s more. Come on. Show me, I think. I want to see it all. And then I do.

  “Enough!”

  I open my eyes.

  “There was a girl. You let her die. Why?”

  In my mind, I see the face of the dead girl, her tongue lolling out of her mouth, and I can think of nothing else. She didn’t die the way the Padre did. Quietly, in a chapel. Someone didn’t just take away the beating of her heart. Someone hurt her, on purpose. To make her scream. To be cruel.

  He did. This man. He likes to hurt people, in ways I do not want to imagine. I’ve seen enough already.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” He reaches up with his hand and presses a button on a panel, shutting down the machines in the room and, I’m guessing, cutting us off from the rest of the Embassy.

  Anything can happen now. We are alone, in this room. He could kill me if he wanted to. Still, I don’t stop. I can’t.

  “Who is she? A Skin? An accident?”

  “Nobody,” he says. “Nothing.”

  “Like me?”

  The brass wings glint as Colonel Catallus stands. He is white with rage, shaking so much he almost can’t make the words come out.

  “Stop right now, Doloria. I’m not an Icon Child. I’m not
the one being studied, here.” He takes a breath and smiles with his teeth. That’s what he does with his anger, Colonel Catallus. He smiles. “If you get in my way, I’ll kill you. I have no problem with that.”

  Inwardly, I shiver—because I know he speaks the truth. But I won’t give him the satisfaction of seeing it. “Like you killed the Padre.”

  “You have many triggers, Doloria Maria de la Cruz. But don’t worry. I’m sure we’ll find them all. One way or another.” His mouth twitches. Please don’t smile, I think. “It’ll be a fun game for us, won’t it?”

  I stare at him.

  He sits forward, raising his voice. “Now get out of my mind.”

  “Make me.”

  “Get out. You can’t treat me like this. I’m a human being.” For a moment, he catches me off guard. Then I realize he’s mocking me. He’s saying the words I said, or something like them.

  “Stop.”

  He shrugs. “I don’t know what you think you saw, Doloria, but you will never speak of those things again.”

  “Or what,” I say evenly.

  Colonel Catallus smiles again, and I want to scream. He presses a button at the side of the plexi-door. The wall facing me slides upward, and I see that it is no wall at all but a window.

  On the other side of the window is Ro.

  “Or this.”

  He presses another button, and I see my own face projected on the long window in Ro’s room. I see myself pounding on the doors, screaming a stream of almost unintelligible words.

  “We all have our triggers.” Colonel Catallus exhales, apparently feeling like himself again.

  Ro’s face is flushed and sweating.

  “And Doloria? I’m fairly certain he is a gun.”

  Ro’s hands curl into fists.

  A Sympa guard, standing next to the door, looks like he desperately wishes he was outside the room. He’s as armored and padded as I’ve ever seen a person. But I know why he’s there, why he had to be on the inside.

  Within Ro’s reach.

  No.

  Colonel Catallus smiles, pushing the button harder. He’s enjoying this, I can feel it.

  The Doloria in the room with Ro screams louder and louder. Ro covers his ears, rocking back and forth in his chair.

  Ro, don’t. I’m fine. I’m right here.

  The chair goes flying, then the table. Now his hands are around the Sympa’s neck. Now the Sympa is flying. He’s so heavily protected he will be hard to kill. I think it only makes Ro angrier.

  My own window rattles as the Sympa hits it. I wince, but the window holds. Colonel Catallus only smiles more broadly.

  “Stop it. Ro’s going to kill him.”

  “This is science, Doloria. Do you know how long it’s taken us to find you?”

  “No.” I can’t take my eyes off Ro. The rest seems insignificant, right at this moment.

  “You’ve no idea, the valuable research data you and your friend are giving us.”

  A camera, high in the corner of the ceiling, follows Ro as Colonel Catallus speaks. I think he is talking, but I’m not listening. I’m watching the Sympa die. Ro can’t see what he’s doing, and he can’t stop himself from doing it.

  Maybe he is a gun, I think.

  Maybe I am a trigger.

  The Sympa hits the wall again. It shakes so hard I think it will collapse. A spray of blood drips on the glass between us.

  Even Colonel Catallus looks a bit taken aback. “As I was saying. Very valuable. Definitely worth the cost.”

  Ro. In the name of the Lady, get hold of yourself.

  “Please.” I look at Colonel Catallus. “Stop him. I’ll do anything.”

  “Anything?” he asks, with a grim face. I nod. Of course. All he cares about is saving his own skin. He wants to know he has nothing to fear from me.

  “I’ll never speak of your personal life again. I swear, Colonel.”

  He opens the door and I run.

  “Ro!” I scream. The soldier is frozen in the corner of the room, choking on his own spit, though Ro isn’t touching him. He doesn’t have to. I see the red waves coming off him, the energy that pulses through the room.

  “Ro!”

  The Sympa’s eyes roll in my direction. He makes a gurgling noise. Desperate.

  I pull Ro toward me. Blood streams from the Sympa’s eyes.

  “Furo Costas.”

  “Doloria,” he says. He repeats my name like a chant, over and over, focusing the red waves on me.

  I don’t flinch. I never do.

  I take him in my arms, wrapping myself around his raging heart although it burns us both.

  RESEARCH MEMORANDUM: THE HUMANITY PROJECT

  CLASSIFIED TOP SECRET / AMBASSADOR EYES ONLY

  To: Ambassador Amare

  Subject: Icon Children

  Subtopic: Genetics

  Catalogue Assignment: Evidence recovered during raid of Rebellion hideout

  Handwritten notes, transcription follows:

  GENETICS OF EMOTION:

  ALL EMOTION IS CONTROLLED AND MODERATED BY THE LIMBIC SYSTEM OF THE BRAIN.

  BUT OUR BRAIN HAS EVOLVED AND PUT UP SAFEGUARDS, LIMITS.

  SO OUR POWER TO FEEL IS MODERATED, HELD BACK, FOR REASONS THAT ARE NOW OBSOLETE.

  THE BRAIN’S LIMBIC SYSTEM IS DETERMINED BY OUR DNA.

  THE BLUEPRINT.

  IF I CAN ALTER THE DNA, CUSTOMIZE IT TO TWEAK THE LIMBIC SYSTEM, I CAN REMOVE THE MECHANISM THAT IS HOLDING US BACK.

  CUT THE BRAKES. OPEN THE FLOODGATES.

  UNLEASH OUR TRUE POTENTIAL.

  WE MAY NEED IT.

  11

  TOGETHER AGAIN

  In the darkness I hear a sound, something knocking at a door. I try to answer, try to just open my eyes, but I cannot.

  It’s the Padre, I think. I’ve slept through my chores. The pigs must be hungry. Then I drift back into the dark, knowing that sometimes even the pigs must wait.

  Ro will do it.

  I can depend on Ro.

  The darkness is thick and soft and warm. It reassures me that I am right, and then I am gone.

  Later, I feel someone shaking me. It must be Bigger. I must be in the way of the stove.

  I open my eyes. I am not in the Mission. I am staring at the door of Examination Facility #9B. I am on the floor, holding on to the air vent with one hand. Ro is on his knees, looking down at me, grabbing me by both arms.

  “Dol, wake up. Are you okay?” He’s dressed, at least in pants, though his hair is standing straight up. He has bruises under his eyes, and his hands are bandaged.

  “They must have given you something. I thought you’d never wake up.”

  He looks stricken. I watch his eyes while he waits for me to remember. The guard and the room and the horrible Colonel Catallus.

  I remember it all.

  I also know something he doesn’t. They didn’t drug me. They didn’t have to. The way I feel now—broken and empty and depleted—this is what happens when I let the feelings come. My hands and mouth and stomach and eyes are burning dry. I try to make my eyes come into sharper focus, but I can only see the wires reconnecting me to the hospital walls once again.

  I turn my head, slowly.

  A tray of food sits on a table next to the bed.

  I lift my hand. Caught between my fingers, I see the delicate gold chain of my mother’s necklace.

  It doesn’t matter.

  I’m not a daughter. Not anymore, and not to the Embassy. I’m a weapon, just like Ro.

  A single tear rolls down from the corner of my eye. I close them so I don’t have to see it fall.

  Then I feel Ro, warm as the lost stove in my lost kitchen, pulling himself down onto the floor beside me, leaning his head against my back.

  “Shh. I’m here, Dol. It’s okay. We’ll get out of this. I’ll find a way to get us home.”

  His big hand curls around my littler one, his thick arm around my thinner one. There is no cake on his face today, no twig in his hair.


  Once again I let myself fade into a faraway world where there are no babies screaming in cribs—no silent radios, no rag-doll fathers, no crossless mothers.

  And all the hearts are beating. Every last one.

  I hear the door click open, and bolt upright.

  I only have a moment to realize Ro is sleeping with his whole arm across my stomach, trapping me with half his body.

  Then the door is open and Lucas is standing over us.

  “Oh. Sorry. I—I didn’t realize I’d be interrupting.” I see his hand gesture, helplessly.

  I rub my eyes. “Lucas? What are you doing here?” I look at him, confused, and then look over to Ro.

  Ro’s snoring, one leg twitching. Probably chasing rabbits or Sympas in his dreams. I can smell the Ro-smell, the sweat and the dirty hair and the brown, tanned skin, from here. No matter how clean he gets, he still smells like mud and grass and the ocean.

  I turn slowly back to Lucas, who is bright red. I don’t want to look him in the eye.

  “You’re not interrupting. We had a hard time sleeping. After—everything.” I can’t bring myself to refer to my conversation with Colonel Catallus any more than that. I can feel my own eyes narrowing. “But I guess you know that.”

  I don’t have to explain. I remind myself Lucas has no reason to care about me, just as I have no reason to care about him.

  Ro turns over, snoring, which doesn’t help things.

  “Right. Obviously. He can’t sleep.” Lucas laughs, but he doesn’t smile.

  I lower my voice. It would not be good for anyone if Ro woke up now. “Can I help you with something, Lucas? Is there a reason you’re here?”

  “I’m sorry. About before.” He sounds anguished. “It’s just, I knew there was no way to stop her—”

  “Don’t.” I hold up my hand. I can’t let him finish.

  “They told me you were quarantined.” He can’t say anything else. That I’ve been trapped and cornered and tested—and failed every part of it all. At least, failed myself and Ro.

  Because I couldn’t keep them from seeing what we do. Not any more than Lucas could stop them from forcing us to do it.

  So I only shrug. “They were probably afraid it was contagious.”