But I also knew just how resourceful the Man in White could be. I didn’t say anything, hoping my face revealed nothing, but I knew that wasn’t the case. The son of a bitch even nodded. He knew. I opened my mouth to say wait, to explain, but the Man in White was one step ahead as always.
“You’re a married man now, aren’t you Chris?”
Shit. Shit. Oh God, oh shit
“…that …that’s none of your business.” It was supposed to sound brave, it was supposed to sound forceful, but all I heard was guilt. I’d broken the rules, and everyone in the room knew it.
“Well, the fact of your marriage isn’t, certainly,” the Man in White said, cocking his head slightly so that some of the wisps of hair on his thin skin fell sideways, “that’s nothing to do with us. Congratulations, by the way. That was unexpected, certainly. But yes, that’s none of our business. It’s only our business… that is, you know. Our business.”
“Wait… wait…” I stammered, holding up a hand, but he just kept talking, all the Man ever did was keep talking, could he not just stop for once and leave me alone?
“A good marriage… what do they all say is the key to a good marriage, eh? Hell, what do they all say is the key to a good relationship, let alone a marriage? Heh, not that we’d really know, right?” He addressed this last part to Klaus, who turned to face White and moved his head in a silent chuckle. The Man in White snapped his fingers gently, then wagged one at Klaus. “Hold on a second, I just thought, goodness me. What was it he called you?” White looked back at me. “What did you call him? I can’t remember. Heinrich? Something like that?” I just gaped at him, not wanting this diversion to end, anything to halt the Man in White’s previous speech, but then he had it. “Klaus!” he cried, laughing openly. “Klaus, that was it! Fantastic, fantastic.” Klaus smiled a little, then turned back to face me. By the time we locked eyes to sunglasses once more, Klaus’ smile was gone.
“Ah, dear,” said the Man in White wistfully, shaking his head with a smile. “Anyway, where was I? Marriage, yes, yes.” He shifted in his wheelchair slightly, then refocused his gaze on me. “Communication,” he said, and I knew for certain that I was utterly doomed. “Communication is key, isn’t it Chris? A couple that talks, works. Am I right?”
I had no words, only a dry mouth and an overpowering sense of time running out.
Karen, oh my God, I tried to protect you but I couldn’t hold it in anymore and now it’s all coming home to roost.
“You remember what we told you at the end of the Process, don’t you Chris? We were very clear about that. You have to remember. I know you remember. Right?”
I opened my mouth to protest, trying wildly to think of excuses, a loophole, but none came. After a few moments of silence, the Man in White spoke again.
“I’ll take that as a yes,” he said, nodding. The smile was completely gone, the blank mask pulled out of his bag of facial tricks and worn with style. “And you have to be wondering how I could know, yes? You have to be wondering how I know you told your wife all about everything you did. Or, perhaps you’re wondering if I know you told your wife all about everything you did. About us.”
I glanced at Klaus, who had stood up.
They promised they wouldn’t do anything. They promised that this was just a talk.
Then the next thought:
They promised that this was just a talk right now.
“Wait…” I said again, my voice breaking loudly now. “Please.”
“Before we go any further, Chris,” the Man in White said with a sigh, looking at the cuffs of his jacket and adjusting them pointlessly, “I’m going to ask you a question. Okay? And I want you to answer it honestly. We may already know the answer, we may not. You don’t have to answer, of course, but that is in itself a form of deceit in our book, and so it will be taken as lying. Okay? Do you understand? Are you ready for the question?”
“You… you have no right to do this,” I whispered from nowhere, but it was pointless. I realized they had me because of Karen. It was all because of her, and because of fear for her. I knew again—right there in that moment and with absolutely crystal clarity and diamond-hard certainty—that I could kill the Man in White.
“Did you tell your wife what you did, Chris?” the Man in White asked. The question was flat and devoid of all inflection. I wondered crazily if the man was a robot, one at the end of its lifecycle, its broken and denaturing circuits showing themselves in the slow decay of the pretend flesh on top.
My mouth worked silently.
He can’t know. He can’t know.
If you tell him the truth, he’ll definitely know.
If you lie, it could be worse.
What. The fuck. Do I—
“Yes,” I heard myself say, my eyes shut tight. “Yes, I told her. I couldn’t help it. I had to. I was dying inside. I tried not to. It just came out. You asked too much of me in the first place, and keeping it a secret was even more than that. I didn’t expect to get…” My eyes opened, and when I spoke again my only thought was of a desperate, desperate love for my wife. “Please. Please. Don’t hurt her.”
“You knew the rules, Chris. We have been as good as our word.”
“You did all this! Fuck you!” I screamed. “You ruined everything, you ruined my life! Fuck you! Fuck you!” I beat at the table with my fists. I snatched up a stapler and threw it at the Man in White, but Klaus moved faster than I could see and caught it. I didn’t even flinch, and carried on screaming. Klaus slowly sat back down, holding the stapler as if he didn’t even know it was there. “Don’t you touch her! Don’t you touch my fucking wife!”
The Man in White cocked his head to one side, drew in a deep breath, let it out. He stared at me as I stood there breathing heavily. In a distant, rational part of my mind, I decided that I could maybe – maybe – if I went around the side of the desk that was away from Klaus, if I was really fast, then I could drive a pencil into White’s throat. It was the slimmest of chances, but I was going to try. I was going to let them think I was beaten, and then I would at least—
“Have we ruined your life, Chris?”
“…what?”
“You said we’d ruined your life. How did we ruin it?” The Man in White’s arms left the rests of the wheelchair for a moment, and folded in front of a chest that no longer filled its shirt the way it once did. I was so confused that I became annoyed. I had enough, e-fucking-nough.
“Jesus, what?” I cried, exasperated beyond endurance. “What is this now? Can’t you just… please…”
“What did you have before, Chris?” White asked, shrugging. “A shitty job with a shitty boss? The same shitty friends that you grew up with, ones that you never had anything in common with in the first place? Where was your ambition? What were your goals? Hell, forget goals and ambition, where was your passion?” An expression I’d never seen before—not even when I’d managed to punch him in the face in that awful building of torture and death many years ago—began to spread across the Man in White’s face. A scowl. Genuine contempt. “What actually mattered to you? What made you alive? What made you any more than a total waste of potential and flesh?”
“That’s none of your fucking business either!” I blurted, and I remember clearly thinking screw it as I began to walk around the table towards White. Klaus stood up and held out a hand, but I gave him the finger. “Fuck y—” I began.
“We’re not going to touch her, Chris,” I heard the Man in White say, hidden behind Klaus’ towering frame. “We’re not going to touch her, and we’re not going to touch you.” My finger lowered, more confused than ever. “It doesn’t really matter if you told your wife anyway. I just wanted you to come clean. Hell, Chris, we expected you to tell her. It was all in your profile.” I looked up into Klaus’ face, as unreadable as an Easter Island statue. He watched me as he moved aside, revealing a now-smiling dying man.
“You… you gave…” I gasped, wanting to say you gave me a chance to come clean, who
the fuck do you think you are but not getting it. I just wanted answers. What the hell was going on? “The… test? The test you made me do at the start of…” I couldn’t say the Process. I wouldn’t.
“You must know that you weren’t picked at random, Chris,” the Man in White said, screwing up his forehead in mild derision. “Surely? I mean, we told you that you were picked because you were ordinary, but you can’t possibly think that was the only reason.” He shook his head. “No, no. Do you think that we would just pick someone ordinary enough out of nowhere and put them through the Process? All off the back of one solitary test that you did at your kitchen table, no matter how insightful and in-depth? We’d watched you for a year before we came to you, Chris.” He raised his eyebrows at me, enjoying my obvious surprise. “All your emails. All your phone calls. All your bullshit social interactions that amounted to nothing. All your ‘friends’ with whom you had no actual connection whatsoever.” He held his hands up. “I don’t mean to be disrespectful Chris, and I’m not saying this to get under your skin. I’m saying it because it’s true. And I think you know this already. You’ve thought about your old life over the years since the Process, haven’t you? Since you came here? You must have.”
I wanted to say he was wrong. I wanted to say he knew nothing. But not only was he right about my old life—I knew this in the very core of my bones—but he was right about the fact that I’d looked back since the Process. I’d seen a man I didn’t remember, and people that seemed as empty as ghosts, but I’d blamed those thoughts on the Process itself. I only felt that way because of the trauma, I’d always told myself. They had stolen it all from me. It had all been a terrible loss. But as soon as I’d heard the word connection, it had stuck me like the knife I’d jammed into the neck of Olivia MacArthur. Where had my connections been with those past friends, other than the weight of history? Nowhere.
But so fucking what? Therefore, I deserved to be forced to murder someone?
“What… what are you talking about?” I whispered. “What does that have to do with anything?” I threw up my arms, tears coming to my eyes as I reached the breaking point. “Why are you here, why are you here…” It was a moan.
“I’m dying, Chris,” the Man in White said, the grin completely insane against the seriousness of his words. “I think I don’t need to tell you that, am I right?” He actually chuckled at this, his tone that of a man asking hot enough for ya? “Of course I don’t. And there is no employer. There is no one pulling the strings. You’re talking to the man at the top. The Process is my creation and my creation alone.”
In a daze, I looked at Klaus for confirmation of this. He nodded slowly and sagely in return. I found myself nodding back mindlessly, returning the action like a simpleton.
“Participants used to ask so many questions when they knew it was my idea,” White said, sighing as he did so and sounding like someone saying the commute is just such a pain in the ass. “I realized that a much easier way to get on with things was to say hey, don’t blame me, I’m just the messenger, this is the situation and here we go. Same with our outfits. If you look like a movie villain, people accept a crazy situation more easily if it’s something they recognize. Plus, it’s intimidating, the sunglasses hide your face, yadda yadda yadda. Lots of advantages,” he said, waving his hand and dismissing his own point. “Also, you know. Stylish.”
“You don’t think you’re a villain? You really don’t think you’re a villain?” I coughed.
“Oh, I’m a monster. No doubt about it,” the Man in White scoffed, shrugging. “I’m also a man of considerable means, Chris. This you probably also know. I mean it’s obvious. You’ve seen enough of my network to know that, and you’ve seen hardly any of it. I’ve lasted much, much longer than the doctors gave me, certainly, years and years, but I’ve been carrying out this work ever since the diagnosis. And you, and all the people before you, and the ones after you – for of course there were many more after you, many more – were all a part of what I consider to be my life’s work.” My legs gently bumped up against a desk as I listened, my mind hypnotized by the Man in White’s words. I’d never given up on them coming for me, never really given up, and now here they were; not with violence and demands, but answers. I was rapt.
“We have people in Universities looking out for us, Chris. People in places of work,” White continued. “They give us names of people who they think fit the bill, and we watch. And we drill it down, and drill it down, and drill it down, until we have our Candidates. Then we watch, and take in all the information that we can, the same way that we did with you. That test on day one, the one you took in your kitchen… that’s the final, final check to see if someone has the right profile to be an actual Participant. You probably won’t like this, but if you hadn’t scored the way you did that morning, none of this would have happened. We would have walked right out of the door. We would have ended your Process and someone else would have tried to save the girls. We always have alternates. Always.”
My legs nearly gave way, and I think I would have fallen again if not for the desk holding me up.
“I was like you, Chris. I was like you,” White continued. “And I have to say, that isn’t exactly a compliment. Actually, I was worse, because I was wealthy too. Rich and selfish. Two of the prime characteristics that make up the worst examples of humanity. Coasting along, coasting along.” He raised his eyebrows as if to say sound familiar? I didn’t respond, so he shrugged and continued.
“Once I got my diagnosis, I met people, Chris. Obviously, I had the best doctors in the world, but …along the way I met the people who didn’t have the money for that kind of thing, didn’t have the money to buy help. The people who relied on the people that gave. The people who relied on the volunteers.” He lifted his head slightly and looked at the ceiling, and for the first time ever I thought he sounded truly sincere. “The volunteers… the ones that make a difference. And all because of nothing but their own kindness.”
He sighed, and appeared to forget that anybody else was there for a moment. When he eventually looked back at me, his brow was furrowed behind his sunglasses. “And therein lay the problem Chris,” the Man in White said, his voice weary for once. “It drove me insane thinking about it. I mean I’d lie awake night after night… anyway, anyway. The point is this: yes, there are people out there that will always volunteer, people who were born with the good of their fellow man on their minds. But there are never enough and there never will be. Do you understand? You can pay people to do it — and I do — but that’s not the same. You’ll never get that level of care, that level of personal commitment, the level of desire that truly makes the difference. And even pay won’t attract enough people to dirty jobs in dangerous areas. Unless someone is born to be one of those naturally gifted carers, they will never become one. There will only ever be so many… unless someone creates them.” He stared at me, and as the smile slowly crept back onto his face, a funny thing happened. Even now, I feel disgusted at the thought of it, but this is how it happened. Nothing more.
Despite my confusion, despite my anger, I felt a kind of… lifting sensation. As his words resonated with me, something began to move inside me, something that just didn’t make any true sense yet absolutely did, a Magic Because that was absolutely and totally insane and yet it was something, something…
There was a reason for all of this, a reason, a reason, a reason…
ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME? HAVE YOU SUDDENLY FORGOTTEN WHAT THEY DID?
It was madness. These men were monsters. I thought of the work I’d done and the lives I’d touched already and the man I’d become and there was still so much more to do, so much more I wanted to do, and I didn’t know what to say.
“Why are you here?” I whispered, the confusion inside too much to deal with.
“We don’t call it the Process because we get people to commit murder, Chris,” the Man in White said, and the smile that had seemed so punchable, so hateful, suddenly seemed as
if it had been partially filtered. It didn’t have quite the same poisonous effect. My hands left the desk and clenched into fists, unclenched, clenched. “We call it the Process because it’s ongoing. And it doesn’t end with someone dying. That’s when the Process begins. That’s when the mental transmogrification starts, and a higher reasoning and understanding is achieved. And that’s when the work begins.”
“You’re insane,” I whispered, but it was barely audible. The Man in White chuckled quietly in response.
“I can’t deny that there’s a very strong possibility you’re right there,” he said, cocking his corpse’s skull to one side in a whimsical manner. “It’s not exactly the most regular recruitment plan in the world, I grant you. And hey, there are probably many other ways of doing it. But this is the way that I feel is best, and that is the way I have executed my will. And you know all about that line of thinking, don’t you?” He nodded as if I’d agreed with him. “Anyway, the results speak for themselves. I’ve had to start more projects like this,” he said, gesturing around himself to the classroom that currently housed the three of us, “than you might think. It’s the knock-on effect, Chris. Each one of you usually creates another, you know. Wait, I don’t mean…” He formed two bony fingers into a gun and mimed a gunshot. “Not that. No, I mean you tend to inspire. Have you done that yet?” I hadn’t. I felt ashamed… then remembered again that I should feel angry and tried to cling to that. It was more difficult now though, slippery to the touch. As if reading my mind, the Man in White waved his own words away. “Not yet. You haven’t yet. Of course not. But you will.”
“You started this centre?” I asked, feeling like a rat in a maze.
“It wasn’t coincidence that you heard about the organization, Chris,” White said. “We always make sure of that. There are ways to push you towards us. Of course, you can volunteer elsewhere, and that’s still great, but we prefer you, our Participants, to end up with us.”
“You ruined my life…” I muttered again, but it was weak, for the Man in White’s words were already repeating themselves in my head:
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