Be Thou My Vision (The Population Series)

by Elizabeth, Cori

  “I get it. You’re tired, and I don’t want to make you late for Ruth and James, but we’ll talk more tonight or tomorrow, okay Io?”

  Before I even have a chance to realize what’s happening, he makes a move that I’ve seen coming for years now, but never expected him to actually manage. Just before he steps a few doors down to Anne, Roger, and Frank’s home, Henrick places his hands on either side of my head and leans forward to kiss my forehead. Shock roots me to the spot, but in my peripheral vision, I see a pleased grin flit across his lips, just for a moment before he turns away. I don’t know what impression my lack of reaction just gave him, but some part of me is a little worried. I’m not sure he understood the reason behind my shock.

  When I come back to my senses, I wait a few seconds more, giving the train a chance to pull away before I move again. With one situation temporarily banished to the corners of my mind, I can focus on the more pressing of the two matters: the boy possibly lying unconscious on the ground just a few meters around the corner.

  As much as I hope someone has stopped the guard, I know better than to be optimistic. We may all protect each other here, but once someone has fallen prey to the guards, it’s too late to step in. At that point, it’s better to pretend that you don’t see the bloody scene playing out before your eyes, electing blissful ignorance over the raw pain of empathy that comes from witnessing such violence. But I can’t forget the pink of the eye that met mine and the guard who beat the boy anyway.

  Before I’m in their sight, I drop quietly into the empty monorail track, carefully avoiding the electrified center, and pull myself up on the other side. Figuring we had no reason to cross it anyway, the government, when they tunneled out the mass, kept the monorail track in the middle of the tunnel, separating the homes on one side from the homes on the other. This far back, there is only one level of doors, but closer to the atrium there are as many as three. It’s helpful – less people around make moments like this a little easier to handle.

  I inch forward slowly until the guard and the young man come into view. The fact that he still sits there, watching over his prey, leads me to believe the worst. Not that the poor boy is dead, but that he is unconscious, and the guard is waiting for him to wake up so he can do it all over again. More than ever before, the thought of it makes my stomach heave and I fight off panic. What if I can’t get to the boy before he wakes up? What if this is how he has to die?

  I take a deep breath to clear my head of the thoughts and examine the area around me for anything that might distract the guard. I imagine the insides of the houses, and a single red button comes to mind – the only color present in the homes of regular Plenties. A panic button. If I enter one of the homes and set it off, it is guaranteed, by duty, that the nearest guard will come running to answer the call. As much as they hate the Optics, they can’t risk ignoring an emergency when it could involve a Plenty.

  A few seconds pass before I can compose a plan of action, a few more before I can compose myself, but finally I drop down into the monorail track again, landing silently in my thin, fabric shoes at the bottom. I tread carefully along its length, keeping a hand on the curved wall so I can lean into it, all the more out of the guard’s sight. Another twenty meters and I’m fully past them, but a distant noise catches my ear – an occurrence so commonplace I’d nearly forgotten it. The monorail is returning to the center of the city.

  I would have thought I had more time, that my proximity to the tracks was allowing me to feel the vibrations much sooner than I would on the platform, but a light draws my attention to the channel behind me, where the lumbering mass itself is speeding along the corridor. There are no stops here. It doesn’t need to take its time, which means that right now, I can’t either.

  I pull myself up onto the platform as quickly as I can, oil and dirt from the edges staining the white of my shirt as black as night, and breathe a sigh of relief as the monorail passes, just skimming the edge of my toe. But then I see the end of the train coming and I catch a glimpse of a black uniform through the windows of the last car. The guard and the boy are right there, and the only barrier between us is about to drive away.

  At the limits of my speed I take off, struggling to keep up with the monorail without my frantic footsteps echoing off the walls of the cavernous chamber. If the train gets too far ahead of me, exposing me to the guard’s view, I’ll be forced to return to Ruth and James’ house, probably after a generous beating of my own, thereby abandoning the young man to the mercy of the government. I can’t seem to let my horror at the thought of it go.

  Just as the train’s end comes level with me, I flatten myself against the wall and hold my breath. Maybe the guard didn’t see me. Maybe he was too absorbed with one of his burning paper sticks to notice the tiny figure racing opposite the tracks. I don’t hear any shouts or footsteps behind me and, accepting that for the moment, I continue inching along the wall once again.

  The first three doors that I try are bolted shut – a sign of an Optic thoroughly compliant with even the government’s most meticulous regulations. I wouldn’t trust their mental resolve to withstand the pressures of the Governors anyway when my own wellbeing, and that of another, are at stake.

  Finally, at the fourth door, the handle gives. I allow my breathing to go shallow, my footsteps light as I slowly push the heavy panel open. It doesn’t creak at all, and as it drags along the plush carpeting of the living area it barely makes a sound. After the rush of the monorail, my ears can’t even pick it up, but someone’s can. Just a few meters away from me sitting on the couch is a young woman, maybe thirty years old, smooth brown hair tied back at the base of her neck. Pink eyes turn in my direction, missing my own by only a few centimeters, and her mouth hangs open in surprise. Sometimes I forget how precise Plenties’ hearing is.

  “Matthew!” she calls down the hall suddenly. When she turns her head away, her eyes, with nothing to lock onto, follow behind. It breaks the illusion of sight that had me frozen in place, and I reach out along the wall, searching by touch for the switch among the woven fabric that coats this segment of the surface. I catch something and the lights go out – wrong one, but useful enough that I don’t seek to correct it. A few centimeters over, my fingers brush up against a tiny lever, this one more resistant to my tug. Footsteps come rushing down the hallway as I pull on it and a red light begins to flash, followed immediately by a redundant, pulsing alarm – loud enough to reach out the door, but not to make it to the homes of the neighboring Plenties. By the time the man makes it to the woman on the couch, I’m already dropping back into the monorail track. From above me echoes her frantic and fearful exclamation, “I think there was someone in here!”

  I cling to the wall of the tracks, using the tiny overhang of the platform as cover as the man, Matthew, sticks his head out the door to search for the intruder. By the time he even thinks to check the tracks, I’ve sidled far enough down that I’m out of his sight. A black shadow flares to my left – the guard jumping over. The countdown has just begun.

  As soon as the guard’s footfalls have passed, I take to a full sprint within the channel, unsure if I even have time to reach the boy before the guard realizes the falsification to which he has been subjected. But reach him I do, and as I pull myself up over the edge of the platform I freeze, not even yet on my feet again.

  He looks like he’s on the edge of death.

  His face is swollen, bloodied and bruised from repeated, concentrated blows, and his hair is matted down to his scalp. Every centimeter of his wrists has turned a hue of purple or darker, so inflamed that I can’t even make out their original shape among the damage. His clothes, more torn now than they were before, hang loose off of his frame, and I’m certain they’re hiding injuries just as severe as those which I can see on the rest of him, if not worse. A shudder in my next inhale seems to stir him back to consciousness and his lost eyes stare off into the distance. With a nervous swallow, I step a little closer and suddenly those lost e
yes find their life again and turn to meet mine.

  I struggle to keep from stumbling back again at the sight of something in his irises that I’ve never seen in any Plenty’s before – the shape of a human hand. Formed out of what I could guess is the original color of his eyes, a sort of blue-green, it decorates his right and part of his left iris. What remains surrounding is the same pink I’m used to, subtle evidence of a much greater horror. This is why the guard was beating him. Half-blinded like this, probably unofficially and unrestrained if he was able to reach up a hand and block the light before it blinded him completely, he’s sure to be a Neither.

  Slow, lethargic footsteps echo down the tunnel, paired with a menacing, whistled tune that pierces ruthlessly through the silence. Only now do I notice that the distant alarm has faded. The guard is returning. I glance again at the boy, but his gaze has fallen back to the floor, his eyes half-closed as his body grows weaker. There is nothing I can do.

  I turn away, prepared to jump back into the monorail track to escape the guard’s sight, until a weak, imploring, almost tearful voice makes it impossible to take another step.

  “Help.”

  I stop dead, fighting back my own tears and a swell of guilt as powerful as the monorail that blew past just a few minutes ago. I want so desperately to just walk away.

  “Please, help me.” The boy’s voice grows weaker with each word. He’s barely hanging on. If I don’t help him, I’m guaranteeing his death.

  The footsteps pause and quiet muttering drifts around the corner. The guard is talking to someone through whatever communication contraption they use to stay in contact across the length of the city. Now is my only chance.

  A tear actually makes it to my face as I wrap my arm around the young man’s ribcage and struggle to lift him beside me. He weighs next to nothing, malnourished as he must be, but he’s taller than me. With as much grace as I can, I lower him slowly into the monorail track, but he inevitably falls. His broken body folds under its own weight a meter below me, and it kills me that there’s nothing I can do. But as long as he doesn’t hit the electrified part of the rail, he’s still safer than if the guard finds him.

  The guard himself comes around the corner just a few seconds later and I jump down beside the boy, desperately holding him up against the wall below the platform ledge. It takes all my strength, with one arm across his chest, to hold myself up with him. Pain shoots through my fingertips as the nails of my other hand dig into the overhang above.

  The whistling stops abruptly, followed by a few jogging footsteps down the corridor, but the guard seems quick to accept that the boy is gone and continues back the way he came. This was never anything more than morbid entertainment for him anyway.

  I wait until complete silence dominates the entire section of the quadrant before I allow the two of us to sag to the floor. The electrified rail crossing our path buzzes sinisterly, as though aware of my intentions and eager to get in the way of them. But instead of warding me off, the noise only serves to drive me to my feet, all the more ready to be done with it.

  Somehow I manage to get us both across alive and not charred, but by the time I do reach the other side, I no longer have the strength to lift the young man up and put him on the platform, if I ever even had it to start with. It takes everything left in me just to set him down gently before my arms give out. They shake violently, in full rebellion against my commands. With my best efforts I manage to commandeer them just enough to gently shake the boy’s shoulder. He remains unresponsive until I place a hand on his face, desperate now to draw him back to the real world.

  Those unnatural, dichromatic eyes snap open and lock on mine, a sort of wild terror shining through them as his mind struggles to catch up with the world. But when he finally realizes who I am, or more likely who I’m not, his lips part in a tiny smile.

  “I need your help,” I whisper, glancing around warily to ensure our momentary solitude. “I don’t know when a guard will pass again. We need to get onto the platform, but I’m not strong enough to lift you on my own.”

  He nods quickly. It appears his period of unconsciousness, or maybe a burst of adrenaline from my words, has reenergized him, but I fear that it won’t last long. When he speaks his voice is little more than a hoarse whisper – I doubt that he’s capable of anything more.

  “If you can lift me by my feet until my waist is level, I can pull myself up, I think. I just can’t use my arms.”

  Isn’t that going to hurt? I almost say, but I catch myself. If either of us knows his pain, it’s him, and there’s no point reminding him of it.

  Instead, I nod and lace my fingers together in preparation of carrying his weight again, hoping that my arms will still be able to sustain the load. Features set in stone, he draws himself to his feet, though what is still visible of his face goes as white as the walls. Somehow he makes it up there without a sound. When I climb up beside him I can see why. He has passed out again. It makes no difference anyway; we don’t have far to go from here.

  A click, click, click echoes around the corner again. I only have seconds to get the boy inside Ruth and James’ house before the approaching guard finds us. In my panic, I struggle to get the lock on the door to read my thumbprint. I can’t figure out why until I notice a few drops of the boy’s blood on it, now drying there after my fingertip brushed against his face.

  Without thinking, I angrily wipe it on my shirt. When I place my thumb to the scanner again, there comes a click, and the door shifts open a few centimeters under its own weight. I force my way through and close it behind us just as the guard rounds the corner.

  But he won’t come into a Plenty’s house without reason. We’re safe for now.

  The Neither in the Closet

  The same deafening music as earlier still wanders down the hall from James’ room, and to the best of my immediate knowledge, Ruth has not left her bed. I take advantage of the moment to draw the boy out of his unconsciousness again with the same gentle shake as before.

  “What’s your name?”

  He moans dreadfully in response, an afflicted mumble that could carry through the walls just for the pain interlaced through it.

  “Shhhh. I know it hurts, but you have to help me. You have to stay quiet. Please, if you can hear me, tell me your name.”

  “Daniel,” he breathes, and looks up at me again. I can see the consciousness flickering in and out in his eyes like a failing light bulb.

  “Hi, Daniel,” I respond softly. “I’m Io. I’m going to try to help you, but you have to listen to me. Other people live here, people who can’t see, but they can hear better than anyone. You can’t let them find you, Daniel. Even if you’re in pain, you have to stay perfectly silent.”

  He nods so subtly I can barely tell and his eyes fall closed again. I have no idea if he’s hearing a word I’m saying, but for fear of our dwindling time, I continue, “I’m going to move you to the corner of the room, okay? Remember, you have to be quiet. They can’t know you’re here.”

  Without awaiting a response, I shift around behind him, take hold underneath his arms and lift him as gently as I can. His breathing grows ragged from the strain, but not a single sound escapes. Either he’s completely passed out, or he’s just aware enough to actively resist the pain.

  We’ve just about reached the corner when my rising sense of assurance born of his silence makes me stupidly confident. I move too quickly and my grip abruptly shifts and slips. Daniel hits the floor – not hard, but hard enough. Even over James’ music his cry resonates, amplified by the corner that should have been our salvation. I finish the job quickly, struggling not to panic and lose my grip again, but the deed is too far done.

  “Io? Is that you, sweetheart?”

  When I look up, Ruth is standing across the room, staring me down with unseeing eyes. Some part of my brain is still convinced, though, and it’s enough to keep me from breaking eye contact as I slowly take to my feet and step in front of Daniel, hiding him.
/>
  “Yeah, sorry about that.” I swallow hard as my voice catches in my throat. “I shut my hand in the door on the way in.”

  “Are you alright?” She moves toward me, concerned, and I carefully step nearer to the couch, trying to redirect her steps. “You sound like you’re in pain.”

  “No, no. I’m fine. Nothing that won’t fade in a few minutes,” I assure her, not even managing to entirely convince myself.

  Her brow knits in sympathy, in understanding, and she reaches over to rub my arm encouragingly. “That’s my Io. Always a brave one. If you’re sure you’re all right, I’m going to go back to sleep for a while longer. Might as well catch up while I can.”

  “Of course.” I take her arm and walk her back to her bedroom, but I make sure not to stand too close, certain that she’ll somehow hear my heart still pounding against my ribcage. “Sleep well.”

  “I’ll do my best,” she answers, and I close the door behind me.

  As James’ music blasts on, boisterous as ever, I take a moment to catch my breath and rethink the situation. From this side of the room, Daniel is not nearly as concealed as I would have hoped. Though he stands less than a quarter-meter taller than me, he fills the corner completely, a glaring difference in the room that I suspect could even change the way it echoes, a point only Ruth could pick up on, but nevertheless a concern.

  There’s only one other place he could fit in this house, a room Ruth and James almost never enter because I take care of everything there for them: the linen closet. It stands just one meter by two, lined with shelves upon which I deposit almost daily whatever shirts, pants, undergarments, sheets or towels have last been washed and dried in the kitchen. Every day I change the linens, and lay out Ruth and James’ clothes to avoid confusion of ownership, which means that, as far as I am aware, they may never have gone in there. In fact, I’m so certain of the room’s security, it’s the place where I keep the only item in the whole city that I truly own: a tiny scrap of fabric I’ve clung onto for as long as I can remember, brilliantly red with little white shapes arrayed in a pattern across it. I’ve never seen anything like it, which is why I keep it so safe, why I keep it in the linen closet. I hope that the tiny room will serve the same purpose for Daniel. The only problem: it’s at one end of the hall, and Daniel is here at the other. That’s a long way to come with a limp, unconscious person in tow.