by Maguire, Ily
“I didn’t-” she shakes her head slowly. Right to left. Left to right. Her voice is slurred. “I took a pill. To help me sleep. I can’t sleep if they’re watching. That’s all.” She points to a vial on the floor. I reach down and pick the bottle up. It was prescribed for insomnia, or at least that’s what it says on the label.
I open it up and pour a few tiny white pills onto my hand.
“Those definitely aren’t sleeping pills.” Pike stands beside me, looking over my shoulder. “Sleeping pills are green. Those are something else.”
I let the pills slide back into the container and I put it in a table drawer. It seems like it’s too dangerous to have around, but if they are something else, we may need to identify them.
“I’m tired,” Dory says, closing her eyes again. “I want to go to sleep.”
I look at Pike who nods. It’s out of her system. I return the blanket to cover her body and it stays pink. I watch her sleep from the bottom of the couch where I’m sitting. Pike sits across from us in one of the chairs. His eyes sag and then close. He opens them, they close again. This time they don’t re-open. He’s tired. And so am I, but I’m too scared to close my eyes. I bring my knees up to my chest and then lower my head onto my sister’s legs. I place a pillow on them to get more comfortable. I’ll stay awake as long as I can, but we all. Need. Sleep.
5
We wake up about the same time the next morning, whatever time that is. Dory is up before me, the pillow flat on the couch where Dory used to be, my body outstretched. It feels good to have gotten some rest.
“Good morning.” Dory’s sing-song voice catches me off-guard and she places a plate on Pike’s lap. He rubs his eyes and moans. Then smiles.
“It smells great.” He picks up a piece of chicken that rests on a bed of vegetables.
“Where’d you get those?” I point to the plate. It resembles my last meal in this house. Before I went to the hospital.
“Up there.” She points to the house above.
“How come it hasn’t spoiled?” I’m confused. There was food in the fridge down here.
“A lot has been freeze-dried. This was one of those meals.” Dory goes back to the kitchen and offers me a plate. I shake my head.
“How can you eat that for breakfast?” I ask. How can you eat anything? Hasn’t everyone been given hunger suppressants?
Dory shrugs and takes her plate back to the couch. Pike wolfs down his food. Finishing, he puts the plate on the armrest and rubs his belly. I haven’t really seen him eat. He looks so content.
Pike gets up from the chair, returns his plate to the kitchen and goes to the back of the cellar, toward the bathroom.
I watch my sister eat. Unlike Pike, she takes small bites. She uses her hands, which I’d never seen her do. Every few bites she wipes her mouth. With her sleeve.
“Dory, do any of these screens access the interweb? Or is it just this house and surrounding property that we can see?”
“Just here.” She takes another bite of chicken, pulling the sinuous tendons away from the bone with her teeth. She’s in a better mood now than before. “Nowhere else.”
I get up and pace the living space.
The bathroom door opens with a billow of steam. A fan sucks it up into a vent and just like that, it’s gone. Pike steps out. His hair is wet and he smells fresh. Good. He always smells good.
“It looks like the first mega-storm and all satellite access would have been denied. Cut off just like that. There’s no information coming in and there’s nothing going out either. Where would your father go?” Pike asks. He must’ve heard us talking. “If he left this place. Dory do you have another safe house that you know of?”
“Uh-uh. Just this place that I know of,” she answers, still chewing.
Dory gasps and her plate falls to the floor. It hits the rug and bounces rather than breaks. She runs to the door.
“What is it?” I ask, following her with my eyes. I’ve stopped pacing.
Dory opens the door and before we can stop her, it shuts and seals. I can’t hear anything beyond this room. Not even the containment room just beyond.
“Look there., Pike points to the screens on the wall. They hum to life all around the living room. Even the one in the kitchen has activated without anyone touching it. Automatic.
“Which one?” I ask. They all show different points of view outside and I can’t tell which one to focus on. I don’t know what I’m supposed to see.
“Just give it a second.” Pike’s patience persists and I move closer to the screen above the sofa. It projects the front door.
The front door opens.
“Dory! Dory, what are you doing?” I yell at the screen.
She runs down the steps and across the lawn. A cloud passes overhead, darkening the screen. A murder of crows, obviously agitated, takes flight in the wake of my sister. Dory stops at the edge of the lawn and I follow her onto another screen. I would move my legs to follow her, but they’re frozen. I’m riveted to what I’m watching.
“Pike, what’s she doing?” I turn to him, my back to the screen, when I don’t get an immediate answer.
He’s gone, too.
The door to the containment room is open beyond. I look at the screen and watch as Pike emerges from the house. He stops at the top of the stairs.
“Something’s out there,” I state for no one. He moves down the steps toward my sister who is still across the lawn. I look at the other screen and she sways. Physically moves, back and forth. Back and forth.
Pike runs across the lawn, now, stopping beside my sister.
“No!” I scream. I have to get out there. Something’s out there. I can’t let something happen to them. Then I’d have nothing left. I turn back to the screen one last time and my mouth drops open. There is something out there. Someone. He’s crystal clear.
“Ezekiel.”
I push out of the quarantine cellar and into the containment room. The door is propped open with Pike’s radioactivity counter. I run up the stairs, two at a time. Why is Ezekiel here? I reach down and pick up a shard of glass. What’s broken? Out the front door, I race onto the lawn, following both Pike’s and Dory’s footprints, but faster. Stray crows scatter and take flight. Their ca-caw is incessant. Beady eyes stare with malicious intent and one swoops low, just missing my head.
“What is going on?” Gripping the glass, my real hand starts to bleed. I switch hands and the bionic fingers automatically curl around the tiny piece. I stomp across to where the three of them have gathered. A car is parked in the distance. I stop beside Pike.
“What the –” My mouth gapes. I step past Pike. Ezekiel has Dory. His arms wrapped around her. Embracing her. Her arms are around his waist and her head is pressed against his chest. One of his hands moves up from her back to rub the side of her face, then smoothes hair away from her eyes. Just like Pike did.
“Someone say something!” My voice disturbs another distant bird and it flaps, this one as angry as the first. It dives at me before flying away. I swat at it with my artificial arm, still gripping the shard. I throw the glass to the ground. It bounces, reflecting light for a moment before another cloud passes overhead.
“You knew about this,” I accuse Pike. “About them.”
“No,” he states. “I had no idea.”
I stare at my sister and Ezekiel. They don’t notice me or Pike or the crows that have begun to resettle on the lawn. Branches of a nearby tree are heavy with their weight and there are at least twenty or thirty still roosting. I look around to see if anyone else is here with him, but I don’t see anyone. I can’t even see the neighbors in this secluded neighborhood and I wouldn’t even know if they’re still around or if their houses have suffered a similar fate to ours.
“We better get back inside,” Pike says to me, taking my fake wrist. Electricity surges up my arm and through my shoulder, stronger now than before. Back down my legs. My fingers curl and my hand turns into his. I can’t be angry at him ev
en if he did know. “We better get inside,” he says louder, pulling me up the steps and into the house. I glance back to see Ezekiel take Dory’s hand, so small I can’t even see it. They follow as carefully as we did, up the front steps and inside. I release myself from Pike’s grasp.
“Someone needs to explain something,” I say as soon as Dory and Ezekiel are in front of me.
“Is everyone you were left with okay?” Pike interjects, speaking to Ezekiel. “My mother?”
“She’s fine. They’re all fine. I got them close enough to the safe house to get there without any harm. Where I left them it should only take them a few hours hike. Then I turned around to get here. I had to see her,” he answers, glancing down at Dory. Pike breathes a sigh of relief.
“Rose, this is Ezekiel. Ezekiel, this is my sister Rose,” Dory introduces, smiling. It’s so out of place, the smile. “Rose, have you met Ezekiel? Ezekiel?”
“We know each other, Dory.” I glare at Ezekiel. He never mentioned anything about knowing my sister. “How long have you two-” I point from my sister to Ezekiel and back to my sister.
“Don’t be mad, Rose,” Dory begins. “Please. No one has done anything wrong. I promise.” She smiles and winks Ezekiel’s way.
“Mad? I’m not the one that’s mad, Dory,” I say, but she ignores my attitude.
“Ezekiel and I have been acquainted for quite some time. I’ve known him longer than,” she pauses. “Than the crows that litter the lawn.” Her laugh is big and bold and loud. Very loud.
“But no one told me,” I spurt out and turn to Ezekiel, trying to tune out my sister. “All this time and you didn’t tell me.”
“We’ve got to get out of the open,” Pike interjects. I watch crows fight for space on nearby furniture. Chairs that should be in the house. The crows are huge and they linger. A few hop towards us on the lawn. Closer now than before.
“We can talk, but somewhere safe,” Ezekiel states as he looks around.
“To the quarantine room!” Dory yells and pulls Ezekiel along, one arm outstretched in front of her. She’s different. Unafraid and innocent. But the same. Childlike and immature.
Pike lets Dory and Ezekiel go first. Pike stares at Ezekiel, but doesn’t say a thing. He’s wondering how they know each other, too. Unless he lied.
I look back at Pike. Something moves, beyond him, in the distance. A shadow at the far edge of the lawn where low bushes have overgrown into shapeless blobs of sticks and needles and weeds have taken over. My vision is blurry. I can’t focus that far out.
“Rose, what is it? What’s wrong?” Pike asks.
“I-I thought I saw something. It was nothing.” I look past him again, but nothing’s there. This would be a good time to take his hand and show him I’m not crazy, but he just nods and pushes me forward.
“Let’s get downstairs,” he orders.
We walk down the hallway and then down the stairs to the quarantine cellar. I stop mid-way down and Pike, a few steps ahead of me, comes back up.
“It was probably just a crow,” I assert. But what if it wasn’t? I’m paranoid now.
Pike takes my real hand and doesn’t say another word. Electricity warms me, pushing the blur from my mind. He’s all I can think about.
Dory and Ezekiel await us at the bottom of the stairs. The door is closed and then it opens when Pike and I reach them.
As we huddle together in the containment room, the door to outside closes and the one to the quarantine cellar opens. We hurry inside. Dory and Ezekiel move to the couch and Ezekiel waits for Dory to sit before he does. Her arms wrap around his waist and she is curled up next to him. How does she know what to do? How is she not as clueless as I was? As I am?
She smiles.
Pike lets go of my hand and walks into the kitchen. I look at Ezekiel. He stares back and then blinks, looking away, breaking our eye contact.
“What are we going to do?” I whisper, moving toward Pike. He slides away to give me room against the same part of counter he’s leaning on. He crosses his arms over his chest watching Ezekiel and Dory. I wonder what he’s thinking. I hop up onto the counter beside him and cross my ankles. I just want to be near him.
“I don’t really know,” Pike answers.
“Do you think he knows anything about Evie or the rest of my family?” I ask. I don’t want to break him and Dory up. His eyes are closed. So are hers. He whispers something to her. This massive hulk of a human is smaller to me somehow.
“He got here quickly,” I observe. “Do you think they had far to go to get to the safe house?”
Pike doesn’t say anything. He stares out of the kitchen at my sister and his friend.
“Something has him worried,” Pike finally says.
“How can you tell?” I ask. He’s not acting any differently to me. I haven’t seen this soft, sensitive side to him before. It doesn’t strike me as worry, though.
“It’s something in his face,” Pike answers. “The fact that he got here so fast and the way he is with your sister. He’s tired, too.”
I don’t answer. I stare out at Ezekiel. As if by some telepathic connection, he looks back and gets up from the couch.
Ezekiel walks toward us. He pulls over a stool and sits. His arms cross like Pike’s.
“Zeke-” Pike begins.
“I’ve got to be honest.” Ezekiel stares at his arms and then up at Pike. “I’m worried.”
“But the others are okay, right?” Pike asks, moving closer to Ezekiel. Dory lies on the couch. Her hands are tucked beneath her cheek. The blanket covers her from the waist down. I see her shallow breathing and know she’s asleep.
Ezekiel nods his head again. “I’m worried about Dory.” He looks at me. “Your sister has changed.”
6
“How do you know her, Ezekiel?” I ask. We’ve been sitting around the kitchen for almost an hour while Dory sleeps on the couch. We haven’t spoken in more than whispers as not to disturb her.
“What’s happened to her?” he asks instead. There’s a sadness there I haven’t seen before. He’s usually so gruff and rigid.
“We don’t know,” Pike answers. “She was like this when we got here.”
“She said everyone left and she stayed behind to wait for me,” I interrupt. “She said she knew I’d be back. I can’t get any more out of her than my parents fled in one direction and Evie is in the hospital. But I don’t understand, Ezekiel. How do you know her?”
There’s a pause. I hop off the counter and move closer to Pike.
Ezekiel answers, “I met her on the web. It wasn’t anything at first, though she did ask me to keep it all a secret. We never met in person, but we talked all the time. We got to know each other. We liked each other. When I found my way to Aegis, I wasn’t able to talk to her as often as I used to. I was making my life there, so I had to cut off most of our transmissions, but I worried that she’d forget about me so every once in a while I’d connect with her. Sometimes it would be days, other times weeks. At one point, more than a month had gone by before I was able to touch base. And then I found out she was set to be an experimental AR. We started talking again every day. The night you caught me I was transmitting out. I was sending her messages. Telling her you were okay.”
“You were keeping tabs on me.” I remember the night well. By the fountain.
“I knew she was your sister. I had feelings for her. She wanted to know nothing happened to you and I wanted her to know you were alright.” He looks down.
“I didn’t know about this. That Dory was going to be ARd,” I admit, my voice rising. Before I left, I had been content in my solitude. Books were what mattered. Stories of other times and lives. And my teacher, Jenny, who I spend so much time with. I loved her like I loved Dory, but Dory was older and we didn’t need to learn the same things. Dory’s lessons were self-paced and we only saw each other at dinner. If she were set for an artificial replacement, I wouldn’t be informed of it. I wouldn’t have to be. So she informed Ezeki
el.
Dory gets up from the couch and with the blanket around her shoulders, she shuffles up to Ezekiel. She smiles up at him, almost two feet taller, before pulling out a stool and sitting down.
“How come you never told me any of this?” I look at my sister.
“You didn’t need to know. I didn’t want you to know,” she answers.
“But you could’ve confided in me. You could’ve told me you were going to have a replacement. Was it your choice?” I search her face, but her eyes show the same sadness they did in the hospital over a year ago. Then her features turn sharp and she isn’t sad. She’s angry. At me.
“Dad was going to sacrifice me for you.” She glares at me, the anger hot and red on her face. I can’t tell if this is the crazy part of my sister talking or sanity.
“He wouldn’t do that,” I say. I’m confused. Pike and Ezekiel tense and they both straighten up. It’s uncomfortable.
“You didn’t know him, Rose. Just leave it alone. I hardly remember all of the details and I don’t want to share them with you,” she says. Ezekiel’s arm reaches over to touch her. She relaxes. Her face softens and her shoulders sag. She takes a deep breath in through her nose and then out through her mouth, controlling her breath. “I spent time – a lot of time - wiping them out, trying to repress the bad memories of Dad choosing you over me. I had to come to terms with that. I had to forgive him for that.”
Her words stab, like a knife, through my heart. A man we were expected to love and respect because he was our father, chose me over my older sister. “Please tell me, Dory. I need to know how you were going to be sacrificed. I have a right to know.”
“No you don’t, Rose. You don’t have a right to anything! While you’ve been studying in your safe places, in your own little world, things have been happening. In our house, in the real world. I’m not regenerative like you, Rose. If I had been operated on the way our father had intended, I would have died.”
My head spins.
Ezekiel looks at me. “At one time, artificial replacements were intended for medical necessity only. Only those with disabilities or incurable disease could qualify for a replacement. But like everything else, they were misused and then became popular and trendy. Everyone had to have one. There was no oversight or regulation. Replacements were happening so quickly and so often that people were getting them in backyards and back alleys. They started dying from complications and operations gone wrong. The Imperial Bead needed to step in and take control. About ten years ago, your father sat on a committee of the Imperial Bead to oversee the logistics of artificial replacements. To determine necessity of replacement and to refer non-necessary replacements elsewhere.”
