Divided We Fall

by Adam Bender

  “Hey, come on,” said Eve. “I hardly think it’s slutty to get married.”

  “Right,” said Talia, laying on the sarcasm. She didn’t bother to turn from the TV. “Like you’re qualified to say what’s a healthy relationship.”

  Eve couldn’t believe the amount of estrogen she was having to put up with lately. “Excuse me?” she said finally.

  Talia sprung to her feet and pointed accusingly at Eve.

  “Seven told me all about you, how you won’t stop hounding him. You need to get over it. Seven’s moved on.”

  Eve’s cheeks turned red. “It’s…it’s none of your business.”

  “It’s totally my business. Like, I know you found that bra in his room. Maybe you weren’t totally clear on this, but that was mine. I left it. Me.” As if feeling the point was not already clear enough, Talia grabbed her own black spaghetti string top by the neck line and tugged it down to reveal the pink undergarment.

  “What, is that the only bra you own?”

  Talia stuck out her tongue. She let go of the shirt and it sprang back into place.

  Eve could feel her blood boiling. Talia was practically a teenager and she dressed like a boy. What could he possibly see in her?

  “J-Jon,” stammered Eve, “doesn’t know what he’s doing.”

  “For your information, I’m a who, not a what.” She shook her head. “And, like, reality check? Jon’s dead. The sooner you accept that, the easier it’s going to be for the both of you. The two of you are about to work together on what everyone says is a pretty damn important mission. The kind of mission that could bring big changes to people’s lives. But mark my words, if you take all this baggage with you, you’re going to fail.”

  Eve wasn’t about to take this from a goddamned little girl. She stood up and told Talia to go straight to Hell.

  “Is that the best you got?” asked Talia, beating her chest. “Want to take this outside?”

  Eve was flabbergasted. “What? I’m not going to fight you.”

  Talia grinned victoriously and sat back down in front of the TV. “That’s what I thought.”

  Grumbling, Eve reached for another donut. She wasn’t going to let the brat get to her. Things were too far along, much too far along. Jon was hers, and when everything was said and done, she knew she would have him back.

  Eve’s heart beat faster as she led Seven, handcuffed, up the black steel steps to Facility B. The moment had played through her mind a thousand times, but now, finally, it was happening.

  Facility B was a huge complex that most closely resembled a metropolitan hospital. It was only about five stories, but had several mile-long extensions that stretched out from the center like the arms of an octopus. The first time Eve visited this place, she’d gotten hopelessly lost and spent an hour trying to get back to the front entrance.

  A Guard, standing erect outside the door, saluted Eve as they approached. He was a standard-issue soldier–shaved head, broad shoulders, and midnight blue uniform. He licked his lips upon eying her pink button-down top. She wouldn’t normally have worn it on a mission but she considered this home turf.

  “At ease,” Eve said as calmly as she could manage. “I’m Agent Eve Parker.”

  The soldier hid his tongue. “Yes…they’re expecting you.”

  He turned and opened the door.

  Orchestral strings whispered through the lobby. The melody was tense, but the volume was turned down low enough for the piece to work as ambiance. A female Guard sitting behind a granite counter saluted Eve. “Welcome to Facility B, Agent Parker. I’ll let them know that you’re here.”

  After a few minutes, the large elevator doors behind the counter slid open. A middle-aged man in a white lab coat stepped out with a soldier on either side.

  “Hello, Agent Parker,” the doctor said. “My name is Dr. Fitch.”

  Eve grimaced slightly as she got a whiff of Fitch’s coffee breath, but quickly transitioned the expression to a smile. “Nice to meet you.”

  The soldiers grabbed Seven by either arm and led him into the elevator.

  “Hey, watch the shoulder,” protested Seven. But he didn’t resist.

  Eve bit her lip as the silver doors slid shut.

  “They’re taking him to the holding cells,” explained Fitch, laying a hand comfortingly on Eve’s shoulder. The doctor’s smile emphasized his two front teeth, and Eve thought he looked a bit like a mouse. “My team is prepping upstairs for the operation, and we should be able to get under way in about forty-five minutes. Would you like to wait down here until then?”

  That should be enough time for me to investigate Patriot ID, thought Eve. “Actually, I was hoping you could give me a tour. My superiors asked me to check on the Patriot ID project while I was in the area.”

  Fitch frowned and furrowed his graying brow. “I wasn’t told about that.”

  Eve was afraid she might face questions, but knew what to say. “It was a last-minute assignment,” she lied. “Since I oversaw the pilot run of the surveillance chip, they want me to get up to speed on the countrywide expansion.”

  With a shrug the doctor pulled a phone from his hip and began to dial a number. “Sounds reasonable enough,” he told Eve. “I’m not sure security will like it, but I’ll see what I can do.”

  Fitch stepped away and began to speak in a hushed mumble that Eve couldn’t make out. Finally, he pulled the phone from his ear and clipped it to his belt. “Come with me,” he said.

  Eve looked uncertainly at the small black box in her hand.

  “Open it,” said Dr. Fitch.

  She pulled up the hinged top and a tiny object inside sparkled back at her. “It’s tinier than Jon’s,” she said.

  Fitch smiled. “Yes, in fact it’s about eighty-seven percent smaller. The microchip in Agent Wyle’s head was just a proto-type. Since then we’ve been able to shrink much of the circuitry. At this size the chip requires much less work to attach.”

  The doctor held up an orange gun that looked like a hand drill. “With Jon we had to do surgery. But since the new chip is no bigger than a deer tick, we can actually staple the chip directly onto the user’s skull. You can’t see it beneath someone’s hair. The procedure takes a few seconds, and the program is immediately operational.”

  Eve tilted the chip in the light and held it level with the middle button of her shirt, which was actually the lens of a small video camera. Now she just had to keep him talking about the project.

  “So this little thing has all the same functions as the chip in Jon’s head?” she asked.

  Fitch grinned. “It records audio and uses satellite GPS to track location. The data is sent wirelessly to a computer database in this facility. We have an advanced filtering program here that automatically flags suspicious behavior.”

  “And then what?”

  The scientist shrugged. “That’s for the government to decide. We just build it.”

  Eve could barely contain her objections. Yes, the Guard had long used machines to compile its Watched list, but never had those tools been used to label people as Heretics. With President Drake’s recent order to round up everyone on the Watched list, the government was trying to short circuit the Elites’ careful process for separating real threats from false positives. If implemented, she realized, Patriot ID would hugely increase the number of arrests unchecked by human analysts.

  Expending every ounce of willpower, Eve let the matter drop and changed the subject. “What about the memory blocking function we used for Jon?”

  “Well,” said Fitch, “we didn’t remove it, but of course it’s been turned off. We aren’t looking to create a country full of amnesiacs, obviously.”

  “But it can be turned on once it’s in someone’s head?”

  “Well, yes, technically. But I can’t imagine why we would do that.”

  Smiling, she closed the box and returned it to Fitch. “Are these under production here?”

  “Yes,” he replied. “If you’d like, the f
actory’s about a ten minute walk from the lab. We won’t have to go outside.”

  Eve looked at the thin gold watch on her wrist. They still had almost a half hour until the operation was to begin. “Why not?”

  Eve leaned over the railing and took in the big steel boxes and conveyor belts. She focused on one machine in particular that was cutting up sheet metal into hundreds of tiny squares. She guessed they would become the casing for the chips.

  “So many!” she yelled over the noise of whirring and hammering.

  “We’ve got a big population!” Fitch shouted back.

  Suddenly, Eve was struck by the enormity of what she was doing. The information she was gathering could be catastrophic–the kind of thing the president would never be able to talk his way out of. If the Guard found out Eve was to blame, she’d certainly lose her job. In fact, Eve realized, she’d be lucky if she kept her life.

  It’s not too late to turn back, she thought. The evidence had been recorded but it didn’t have to be saved. She could still destroy it.

  Eve didn’t feel like a Heretic, but this Patriot ID program sounded…well…evil. Watching a dissident was one thing, but watching everyone? Casting a net that large went against everything she believed in. If she stood by and let that happen, wouldn’t she be breaking her promise to Uncle Bill?

  The doctor tapped her on the shoulder. “It’s almost time for the operation. You ready to head back?”

  “Yes,” she said. As she followed him to the exit, the sparkling diamond on her finger caught her eye.

  Jon will know what to do, she decided. She reached into her shirt and disabled the camera.

  The nurses tied Seven down to the hospital bed with thick canvas straps. Then they left him alone to wait for the doctor. The bonding restricted most movements, but he could turn his head sideways for a disconcerting gander of scalpels, syringes, and other surgical equipment lying on a metal side table. Beyond that, he could see a large rectangular window spanning the entire wall. A single white door with a vision chart stood just around the corner on the wall closest to Seven’s feet.

  He’d maintained his cool until about a minute ago. Now he was worried. According to the Underground’s plan, Eve should have come to rescue him by now. Where was she?

  The doctor stepped inside, flinging the door back behind him so hard that the eye chart shook. He strode alongside Seven and tied a surgeon’s mask over his mouth. Peering down at a clipboard, he introduced himself as Dr. Fitch.

  Seven didn’t respond; he was focused on the blond woman standing on the other side of the glass.

  The betrayal was in Eve’s eyes. He wondered how he could have been so foolish as to trust her, how they all had been so stupid. He was supposed to be Danny Young’s adviser, but he had failed–barely even tried–to convince the Underground that Eve couldn’t be trusted.

  “Well then,” said Fitch, “looks like we’re finally going to get that chip out of your head.”

  He convulsed involuntarily. The chip had been a curse but he didn’t dare remove it. The contraption was what made him Seven.

  Fitch wiped Seven’s brow with a napkin. “Now, now, no need to get all worked up. This is going to be quick and easy, and if you cooperate, you won’t feel a thing. That gorgeous woman out there–well, she says she loves you. And when you wake up, the two of you will be together again, like none of this ever happened.”

  Seven struggled against the straps. He thought he felt them loosen, but not enough.

  The doctor fit a clear plastic mask over Seven’s face. It was connected by a thin plastic tube to a metal tank on the lower shelf of the bedside table. Fitch leaned over and twisted the knob on the tank, and instantly Seven felt a rush of warm air against his lips.

  Gas. He tried not to breathe.

  “Relax,” commanded Dr. Fitch.

  Still Seven would not take a breath. He pushed harder against his restraints.

  Fitch shook his head. “I told you this would be painless,” said the doctor, balling up a blue-gloved fist, “as long as you cooperated.” On the last word he struck the patient hard in the diaphragm. Seven felt the air shoot out of his lungs. Wheezing painfully, he gulped down the gas. It tasted sweet, like cotton candy.

  But he felt much too drowsy to eat.

  So Joanna and Shaan are going out, he reflected. How did they miss that?

  Agent Eve Parker seemed to be taking it especially hard. It was cute how pathetic she looked, standing there at the bottom of the lighthouse.

  “Hey,” he tried, “I mean, it seemed reasonable at the time they might be trading weaponry, or illegally obtained data…”

  She shook her head. “They were trading spit!”

  The Luna Coast looked beautiful at sunset. As they walked to their cars a gust of wind blew gently through Eve’s golden hair. He found himself admiring her slender hourglass figure, and the confidence with which she walked. Suddenly he felt overcome by a strange sense of longing, and he realized he wasn’t ready to say goodbye. He tried to think of something to say so she wouldn’t go, but everything he could think of sounded like something a stalker would say. And he wasn’t a stalker. He just wanted to see her again, maybe.

  He could feel his heart beating harder. They were getting close to her car. Soon she’d be gone. If he was going to say something, he realized, he had better say it now. But what?

  Eve spoke first. “Well, it was nice working with you, Jon.”

  He realized she was saying goodbye. Jon told himself to stop stalling, but all he could manage to say was “Yeah…”

  Her eyes were on him, and he wondered if she could read his mind. Had he blown his cover so easily?

  “Well, uh, it’s still pretty early,” he managed finally. “Do you maybe–I mean, do you have any dinner plans…currently?”

  Her eyes widened. After what felt like hours, her lips curved into a smile. “No, not currently.”

  They were in a restaurant. The red pepper burned his throat, and Eve was laughing at him. On the beach, she drew near and said, “I guess we ended up getting a little action tonight anyway.”

  Suddenly, they were running down a small hill off of the paved park trail. The next thing he knew, they were in the grass and she was straddling his waist. He kissed her hard.

  Then she was off, running through a swirl of orange, yellow, and red leaves. Eve’s soft black jacket vanished behind a tall oak in the distance. He went after her, and soon had Eve trapped against the bark.

  “Hey!” she protested, running a finger down his chest. “You were supposed to count.”

  He let go and dropped to one knee.

  There was a blinding light and he was alone. On the tree where he had held Eve, there was now only a simple engraving of the numeral 7.

  He heard an engine in the distance, and the forest began to glow white. A silver train hurtled toward him. He shut his eyes but the impact never came. When they opened he was sitting inside one of the cars. The locomotive shot out of the forest and carried Seven into a vast city by the sea. The track lifted and a silver skyscraper floated by his window. Suddenly the tower exploded and fire rained down upon the train.

  The other passengers glared at him. Someone shouted, “Heretic!”

  He heard the heavy stomp of a soldier’s boots coming fast down the aisle. The guy sitting next to him, a young man with frizzy black hair and a guitar case, stood up and shouted something at the oncoming Guard. A shot rang out and the musician fell to the floor.

  The Guard was soon upon him. Seven turned to meet the soldier’s gaze and saw Jonathan Wyle staring back. Wyle pressed Seven’s face against the train window and stabbed the barrel of the pistol into his head.

  The other passengers chanted: “Drop him, drop him, drop him…”

  Seven’s foot shot up into Jon’s left kneecap. The Elite Guard loosened his grip on Seven, who took the opportunity to swat the gun away and rise to his feet.

  Jon Wyle roared furiously and lunged at Seven, but Seven
leaned to the side and redirected his attacker’s momentum toward the window. The glass shattered and the Elite’s head went through. Wyle’s face was a bloody mess when he pulled it back inside.

  The train seemed to pick up speed. Seven ran down the aisle and slipped through the emergency portal into the next car. He heard a shot and a ricochet as the doors slid shut behind him.

  A hundred turned heads met him in the next car. He pushed through the crowd, occasionally grabbing hold of the backs of seats for balance. Seven saw, too late, the outstretched leg of a teenager. He tripped and fell crashing to the floor. With his ear to the carpet he could hear the loudening reverberations of his pursuer’s feet.

  Seven picked himself up and ran through car after car until finally he reached the front of the train. There were no more doors to run through. He glanced outside at the burning city and then spun back around. He could see Jonathan Wyle stampeding toward him like a wild animal.

  Wyle burst into the car and pointed his gun at Seven. “End of the line,” he said. “You can’t run from me any longer.”

  “You’re right,” said Seven, suddenly overtaken by a strange sense of calm. “But maybe I don’t have to run. I think, maybe, that you can’t kill me.”

  Jon’s eyes narrowed. “Isn’t that an awfully high risk to take?”

  “You’re my past, but so is all of this,” said Seven, waving out the window at the burning city. “You can restore my old memories, but you can’t take away my new ones.”

  “Wrong!” screamed Agent Jonathan Wyle. He cocked the pistol and pulled the trigger.

  Seven saw the bullet go through his chest but it left no mark. He charged down the aisle and lunged at the other man.

  Eve awoke with a crick in her neck. She was slumped on a scratchy blue couch and didn’t remember falling asleep. Taking only a few moments to compose herself, Eve launched herself onto her feet and strode purposely toward the room where they were holding Jon.

  Dr. Fitch had prohibited Eve from seeing him immediately after the surgery. He said Jon would be too disoriented to see her right away. The nurses moved her fiancé to a room with a comfortable bed and told Eve to wait an hour.