“Uh-huh.” I’d snagged a couple of extra sodas from the cafeteria at dinner, and now I handed him one.
“Thanks.” He popped the tab and took a long swallow. “My unit is the most recent set of recruits, so we don’t get to work on stuff with the highest security clearance, but we still see a lot. We get passed masses of information and we have to analyze it, look for patterns and meaning, pick up unusual activity and guess, or predict, how and where we think illegal actions might occur. Some of the data comes from spooks on the outside.” He jerked a chin in the direction of the window. “But we also sift through information on cadets and specialists in here.”
“That’s how you know the cameras are not purely for security, and that they’re checking our communications?”
“Yes. Of course, a lot of this is legit. They have to make sure that none of us is an insurgent mole. And we need intelligent information.” He fiddled with the tab on the soda can, twisting it and bending it back on itself.
“But?”
“There’s more. I’ve picked up more. They’re doing —” He broke off as if unsure how to continue. He took another sip of soda then rubbed the back of one hand over his mouth. “We’ve been trained to see patterns and meaning in raw data. And we see what they want us to see, but also what they don’t. Bottom line: I think they’re getting and using the information in ways that they shouldn’t. This country has changed radically, and some people have benefited from it enormously while others have really suffered.”
“What do you mean?”
He downed the rest of his soda and crushed the can between his long fingers as he spoke. “Let me give you an example. I’ve been working on a project to track rat fever patterns in the Southern Sector, in this city in particular. And here’s what I’ve noticed: the business of rat extermination occurs mostly in middle-class suburbia. Why would that be? It’s not because most of the rats are there — if anything, there are more of them in the inner-city slum areas. I think it’s because populations in poor areas are seen as more expendable. There are too many unemployed down there, too many sick, not enough useful, educated citizens. They’re a drain on social funding, and they’re being whittled down, or at least,” he said, reacting to the skepticism I could feel on my face, “allowed to be whittled down by the pestilence.”
“No! No way.”
“So how many ratting expeditions have you been on in the slums?”
I considered that. “None,” I admitted. How had I never registered that before?
“And how many M&Ms have you taken out in suburbia?”
Again, none. I shook my head. This was incredible, unbelievable.
“But isn’t that simply because there are more ill people in the inner city?”
“Perhaps, but that would be in part because there are more rats there, not so? It happens too often, too systematically for it to be pure coincidence. To me, it looks like a kind of social engineering.” He tossed the squashed can into the trashcan beside the door.
“What? That’s absurd.” It sounded like utter paranoia to me. I wanted to laugh, but nothing about this was funny.
“They’re allowing rat fever to run rampant in areas with high populations of suspected illegal immigrants and the poor and unemployed. But they’re making serious efforts to keep it out of middle-class suburbia — in the voting districts that support this government. And they’re keeping the population segments separate.”
I just shook my head.
“Answer this: did you ever go on a Fun outing with groups from another part of the city?”
“No, but that could be because it’s more convenient to collect everybody from one area, surely?”
“Convenient? Of course it’s convenient. But don’t you think the government has a responsibility, even if it’s inconvenient, to make sure that different segments of the population get together?”
He ran his fingers roughly through his hair, leaving it tousled and messy. My fingers longed to smooth the tangles. I forced my mind back from his hair to his argument.
“Quinn, this sounds like some crazy conspiracy theory. Even if there was no plague, and no social program, I’d probably never mix with people from the other side of town anyway.”
“Oh yes, you would. You’d go to college with people from all backgrounds, you’d mix at the workplace and on the bus or metro, or at music concerts. But the way things are now, how would a girl from your neck of the woods even meet a boy from mine?”
“We did,” I pointed out.
“We’re the exception. Almost everyone is only mixing with their own kind, and the status quo is getting entrenched.”
I frowned in confusion, not sure what to believe. If he was right, then it was worse than I could have imagined. He grabbed the other can of soda, popped the tab and lifted it to his lips before seeming to realize what he was doing.
“Sorry, this is yours.”
“It’s fine, you can have it.” He looked like he needed it more than I did. “Say this is all true — and I’m not saying I believe it is — then why? Why would they do it?”
“Well, my brother, Connor, says all history is economic and we have to think about whose interest all of this serves. Who benefits from a population bound by fear of a disease that probably isn’t as infectious as we’ve been led to believe?”
“What are you saying?”
“My brother says that there is a respected section of the medical establishment that believes the plague isn’t transmitted by airborne virus or touch.”
“What? No way!”
“Think about it. No terrorist would engineer a bioweapon that spreads too easily, because within days it would be all around the world, including in their country, killing their own people and their allies. There would be no way to confine it to your enemy.”
Horribly, that made sense.
“And the same specialists say there’s no way you could get it from spiked food or drinks.” He took another long drink from his own. “That’s just an urban legend the government allows to continue circulating. The only way you can get it is from blood and bites. And” — he tilted his head at me, his lips pursed in sympathy — “direct attacks with injections, of course.”
“But we all wear masks and gloves, and stay inside, and, and everything revolves around that,” I protested, even as I remembered that neither of the terrorists I’d taken down had worn gloves or masks. Neither had the perpetrators in the bank attack which killed my father.
“Everything revolves around fear. A fearful population is easier to control. Look at the rights we’ve given up, Jinxy, in practice if not officially — freedom of movement, privacy of information, freedom of association, the right to free assembly and birth control. Censorship is up, civil liberties and protections are down. Hell, you don’t even need a search warrant to send a SWAT team into someone’s house if you have ‘reasonable suspicion’ that they might be involved in insurgent activity. And that’s not even to speak of covert black ops.”
It occurred to me that I hadn’t seen, or even been informed of, warrants for the work I’d done. Was I black ops?
“We’ve now got a massive government with all sorts of extended powers. It spies on its citizens, limits our freedoms, and labels whistle-blowers and critics as treasonous,” said Quinn, passionately.
He stood up and stalked over to the window, braced his arm against the glass, and stared into the darkness outside, leaning his forehead on his arm. Beyond the window, thunder growled and wind moaned. A storm was blowing up. I wished I could run out into it, have the wind blow my doubts away, have the coming rain wash away my confusion. But Quinn was still talking, pelting me with facts like hailstones.
“We’ve repatriated hundreds of thousands, perhaps even millions, of foreign residents, refugees and workers. We’ve insulated ourselves, sealed our borders against immigrants and imports and competition. We’re forced to buy local. And as a nation we’ve channeled billions into a defense industry that was sitt
ing idle after the last wars fizzled out. We couldn’t keep invading foreign territories, especially not when they started threatening to nuke us. What better solution than to fight a war on home ground? Connor says we needed a war to keep our economy afloat — war is big business.”
“Big business? You can’t think they’re doing this for money?”
“Connor says that’s exactly the motive.”
“ ‘Connor says, Connor thinks’ — you remind me of Bruce, only he says, ‘Sarge says.’ What do you think?”
With a crack like a rifle, lightning split the darkness beyond the window, flashing pale against Quinn’s features. He sighed and then turned back to me, but I could no longer see his face in the gloom of the room. I switched on the bedside lamp, and Quinn stepped into the circle of its light. He looked sad.
“I think … I think that the people who made the changes to the law and set up all the surveillance and controls probably thought they were doing the right thing for the right reasons. They had good intentions, but they didn’t think it through, didn’t imagine the possible negative consequences. I don’t think it was done in order to profit. But, Jinxy, people have profited — out of our fear and illness.”
Quinn crouched down in front of me and took my hands in his. His stormy eyes were so full of cynicism that he suddenly seemed much older, and I felt like an ignorant little girl.
“Think about all those gloves, masks, disinfectants and sanitizers, the decon units and hot-boxes, new Q-bays and medical facilities and incineration plants, all the money to be made if a pharmaceutical company comes up with a vaccine, the tens of millions of copies of The Game sold every year. And that’s not to mention the money that’s been pumped into arms, ammunition and special training units like this.”
“Are you saying the government wants us to be at war, that there isn’t a threat?” I remembered Bruce telling us Sarge’s opinion that nothing unites a country like a common foe.
“Of course there’s a threat. We were attacked, and many victims lost their lives before we got a grip on this thing. But there are a growing number of people, like me, who think that the threat has been exaggerated because there are factions in government who want to extend its power over the individual, and there are fat cats who want to keep making obscene profits.”
My head was buzzing. I pushed myself off the bed, walked to the bathroom and drank a glass of water, then splashed my face. The girl in the mirror looked like me — sixteen-year-old Jinx James. Friendly, but a bit on the shy side, likes computer games and brownies. Recently developed a love for the color gray. Even more recently got her heart broken. Could I really be a social engineering operative for a covert task team?
I returned to the room, to Quinn. Rain was driving against the window, coursing sideways in rivulets which split and forked off in different directions.
“Well?” Quinn leaned up against the desk, looking at me intently.
“I don’t know what to think. It all sounds so unbelievable. And there’s a part of me that thinks all’s fair in — in war. What they’ve done, Quinn! My father …”
“Let me be absolutely clear. I want the plague ended as much as you. I do not support terrorists. They are murdering criminals, and I think every last one of them should be arrested and brought to trial. But legally. And under the rights guaranteed by our constitution. In fighting the lowest of the low, we shouldn’t become just like them.”
“Your brother — what’s he got to do with all this?”
“Officially, Connor’s with the Civil Libs, but he’s also with … a group that’s working to expose how the government is bending and breaking the law, how lobbyists have too much power and money and are corrupting our elected representatives. His group is collecting information on what’s actually going on, so they can challenge it and turn things around.”
“He’s a …?” I began, but I couldn’t say the word. I knew what people like Sarge and Bruce and Roth would call him. “He’s like a rebel?”
“We need groups like his. Too many people in this nation are too afraid to protest. Or too preoccupied with staying safe and not catching the fever. We’re giving up our liberty in exchange for security.”
I thought of my mother. She would happily stay in the prison of our house as long as she thought that would keep her, and us, safe. She followed the rules when it came to being a “responsible citizen”, even going so far as to report our neighbors for a minor violation. We’d once been friends with the Johnsons next door. We’d swum in their pool, had them over for Thanksgiving dinner, and gone trick-or-treating together with their daughter every Halloween. Yet Mom hadn’t hesitated to rat on them. She unquestioningly believed what she was told and did as she was instructed.
Had I been like that?
“And the rebels are growing in number. Connor estimates that they are about 15,000 strong in the Southern Sector alone, and they’ve made contact with similar groups in the Northeast and Mid-and-West sectors. They’re still collecting information and trying to confirm their suspicions, but already they’re planning a big campaign to reveal everything to the public. Next year on Independence Day, stay tuned to your T.V.” A thin smile ghosted across his face.
“Have you been sending your brother information?” A memory of graduation day came to mind. “Sending messages via your little sister?”
He nodded.
“But, Quinn, that’s not right.”
“Why not? He’s not a traitor!” Thunder boomed out in the night, as if to underscore his anger. “He’s fighting greed and corruption and power-mongering. He wants this country to be free again, to be what it was, what it should be. Jinxy, you can love your country without loving your government.”
“And if he gets caught?”
“If he gets caught, he’ll be tried for treason. The only reason they wouldn’t kill him on the spot is because they’d want to interrogate him. Thoroughly. Which,” Quinn said, pulling his phone out of his jeans pocket, “brings me to what I wanted to show you.”
“What’s that?” I asked, pointing to the screen, where a video was loading.
“Proof of what they’re doing, and of what you’re helping them do. Proof that I’m not delusional or paranoid.”
He placed the phone on its side on my bedside table, took me by the hand and pulled me to sit on the bed next to him. My eyes were glued on the screen, which showed the image of a man, gagged and blindfolded, tied to a metal chair in the middle of a small room. A man wearing a sleeveless black vest. A man with a tattoo of unfamiliar writing around his bare upper arm.
“This came in this morning. It’s the recorded footage of the interrogation of a suspected terrorist who was captured in the inner city yesterday,” Quinn said, shooting a quick glance at me then touching the PLAY arrow on the screen.
“How did you get this?” I asked, my voice barely above a whisper.
“This is the kind of stuff that intel goes through to analyze any information that is … extracted.”
There were two men questioning the suspect. Asking the same questions over and over and over.
“I managed to download it. I erased all trace that I’d ever been in the system, I hope.”
Hitting him over and over again.
“We have access to many different databases. And if you know computers, there’s always a way to hack the system. Back doors that bypass the firewalls.”
Doing things to him. To different parts of his body.
“This is what happens, in — what did you call it? — ‘interviewing and debriefing’,” Quinn said, above the sound of thuds and screams and begging. “Officially, these are called enhanced interrogation techniques.”
It went on and on.
“Stop!” Now it was me begging. “Please, I can’t watch anymore.”
Quinn tapped the screen, and the image paused.
I had brought that man in. Me. He was a man who spread the plague, maybe. But he was also a man with a wife and a kid. And a canary. W
as the torture justified if he was planning more death and destruction? How could an individual be both a terrorist killer and deserve to be treated with respect?
“But they’ve done such terrible things.” My eyes were filling and my throat closing.
“Can’t you see, Jinxy? It’s not about them, it’s about us. It’s not just what we’re prepared to allow happen to them, it’s about what we’re prepared to do, who we’re prepared to become.”
Then he pulled into his arms and held me tight while I wept. The sounds and images of the video still turned my stomach. They’d be joining my collection of flashbacks for sure.
“I don’t know what’s right or wrong anymore!”
“Hush there, my sweet,” Quinn said, cradling me against his shoulder.
He kissed my tears, and stroked my hair back from my face, held me until I was calmer. I was so tired, and so tempted just to let go and put the past behind us. I wanted to surrender to his comforting words. I wanted to forget everything I’d seen, everything I knew or feared, and just dissolve into him.
But there were things I needed to say, and it was his turn to listen.
“Don’t you ‘hush’ me,” I said, pulling away from him. “I’ll cry if I want to. I have a right to be upset, given what I’ve just found out.”
“Of course.”
“What I’ve just found out, Quinn. What I never knew before. But what you just assumed I knew. How could you think that I’d be okay with helping bring in targets if I knew it would end in that?” I pointed to the paused video.
“That’s why I was confused when I discovered you were in the sniper unit. I thought you knew what was really going on.”
“You thought wrong. And you didn’t make enough of an effort to check. You just dumped me.”
“You dumped me, too,” he protested.
I held up a hand to stop him. “I’m talking now.”
“Okay,” he said meekly.
“You dumped me. You jumped to conclusions and assumed the worst about me.”
“Jinxy, I’m so sorry.” He sounded it, too.
“You were a jerk, Quinn O’Riley!”
Recoil Page 18
