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blooblooded · 3 years

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After the Bombing

KASSIDY

24 hours after the bombings, Kassidy Nguyen believed that the worst of it was over.

There were buildings still collapsing in the Lower Levels. The list of the dead seemed to be updated every hour, and thousands of people were still missing. It wasn’t good, she knew that, and she knew that it would take a long time for Eden to rebuild itself to the way it once was. Maybe it would never be the same as it was before, and maybe things would always be a little harder and a little more sad. But she was safe. Her family was safe. Her friends were all miraculously unharmed. And the relief that she felt, the understanding that she had survived something impossibly terrible, made her feel strong.

Since so much of the metro system had been destroyed and the risk of crumbling buildings was so high, she had spent the night at Casey and Ayda’s house. It all seemed like a blur. Kassidy could not remember much of the day before because she had been so afraid, because her adrenaline had skyrocketed through her body. She could remember calling her mom that night to check in again, and she knew that her brother was in jail. The rumbling and crashes below her was unceasing, everything on TV was upsetting, but she was OK. Everyone was OK.

Not a single bomb had gone off in the Surface Level Residential District. If Kassidy took the time to think about that, she knew that would disturb her. But now it did not matter. What mattered was that she was safe.

So many people were dead and she and all her loved ones were lucky enough to be safe. It was like a dream. Yesterday morning, she had been positive that she was going to get blown up or crushed. Yesterday she had seen her brother get shot in the leg, she had seen broken buildings, she had seen the mangled bodies of strangers dead in the streets like dolls. Today, she had woken up safe and secure at Casey’s house.

The three of them -- she, Casey, and Ayda -- had slept together that night in West Agapama’s large king size bed. Mr. Agapama himself spent the night out assisting in relief efforts, so the girls took his bed. The constant sirens and crashing noises made it hard to sleep, even in the safety of the Surface Levels, and Ayda cried throughout the night, overwhelmed by the wash of fear and pain that all people in Eden were feeling. Casey had slept with her arms around her sister. Even though Kassidy was not the one being held, she felt protected all night long.

9:00 am. Kassidy checked her communication device and saw that her mother had not called to check in on her. It was to be expected though, the work ahead of Dana Nguyen would be staggering, and at some point she would need to bail Kip out of jail. Her mother was busy. And her mother was safe; no bombs had gone off in or around the Capitol Building where she spent 95% of her time. There was no reason to worry.

Not yet anyway.

Casey had taken over making breakfast for everyone and was doing something weird to a bunch of oranges. Casey’s face was bright, almost manic, and her constant motion never ceased. The adrenaline from the day before had not left her either, it was exhausting just to look at her. Short pink braids stood up around her head like a halo.

“You like orange juice, right?” she asked Kassidy, as she started to mash oranges.

“Uh, I think so.”

Casey was behaving very violently towards the oranges. Kassidy checked her phone again. She wished that her mother would hurry up and pay Kip’s bail so that she could make sure he was OK. The Prison District was safe though, and had their own infirmary. They would be taking care of him and making sure that his leg wound was clean and not putting him in any pain.

“I’m never going to stop having nightmares,” Ayda said miserably, beside Kassidy. Her face was pale and scared. Out of all of them, she had come the closest to dying in the street when the metro station had collapsed. She had her arms around herself like she was giving herself a hug. “I wish I wasn’t here. I wish I was with Marty, far away.”

“You’re fine, you baby,” Casey said without thinking, then looked up at her sister. “I mean. None of us got hurt. I know you’re scared.”

“Where are Yura and Emily?” Their strange older adopted siblings were nowhere to be found. The huge house was empty.

“With Dad, they’re looking for people in the rubble down on the Mids.”

Ayda looked so upset that Kassidy felt the urge to reach out and pat her on the back. She didn’t, but the urge was there.

The blender buzzed, producing orange juice. Casey was cooking wearing only her panties and a tank top. It was hard not to stare at her, it didn’t feel right considering that thousands of people were dead or dying. Over the last year, they had grown close, and as oblivious as Kassidy was, she understood Casey’s feelings towards her. Maybe it was the recent near death experience that made her finally understand that. She wondered if she could imagine a life where Casey was more than a friend to her. Did she even deserve someone like that?

Did it matter if she deserved it or not? Amidst the death and destruction of the day before, Casey had been like a light, destructive in her own way but also beautiful. She had always been a light, it was just easier to see it now.

Still, Kassidy didn’t stare at her.

Casey poured glasses of orange juice and pushed them toward Kassidy and her sister. “You talk to Marty?”

“He’s really upset. About Lee.”

When she heard that name, Kassidy had been taking a sip of orange juice. Her throat suddenly closed and her stomach twisted so painfully that she thought that she might throw up. Forcing herself to swallow, she set down her glass and hunched her shoulders. Stupid. She had been so stupid. They all had been. They had been unable to see Lee Harlan’s true self. Until the moment he pulled the trigger on her brother, wounding his leg, Kassidy had not believed him to be capable of violence.

She had been so wrong. And so stupid. Even though everything was OK, it might not have been.

“That guy is gonna get ripped apart,” said Casey, who took a slab of bacon from the fridge and cut into it with more force than was necessary. “Dad says the streets are crawling with secret police. They’ve been shooting people.”

“Shooting people?” Ayda’s eyes were wide and scared.

“Yeah, people who deserve it. Lee’s little terrorist friends. The UPL-whatever.”

The back of Kassidy’s mind told her that something was very wrong, that her brother had been involved with the UPLF to the point of going to protests with them. She pushed it aside. Kip was in jail. He had been in jail before. Ma was taking care of it.

Far below them, in the Lower Levels or maybe in the Mids, there was a tremendous crash as something else collapsed. The three girls froze. Was it possible for an entire Level to fall in? What would happen to them if the very structures that supported the vast underground Colony had been damaged?

“We’re safe here,” said Casey. She put strips of bacon in a frying pan and the grease popped and sizzled. She pulled herself up onto the countertop to sit and grabbed her own communication device. “They’re starting to release the names of the people who get executed. I’ll let you guys know when Lee Harlan’s brain gets blown out.”

Fair trials were not a right in Eden. They never had been, not for crimes that were considered serious. Sometimes people just disappeared or showed up dead. Sometimes, for the most serious offenses, the Central Committee released reports. The secret police existed for a purpose, and that purpose was to keep the people in Eden safe in the most expedient manner possible. Up until this point, Kassidy had never been bothered by it.

Well, said a quiet voice in the back of her mind. What happens if there’s a crisis and they just start shooting people for no reason?

She pushed the thought away. There was no reason for her to mistrust the power structures of her Colony. She had never been paranoid about that kind of thing, not like Kip. She listened to the bacon sizzle and stole little glances at Casey, who was sitting quite close to her and only wearing her underwear.

The ground beneath them shook almost imperceptibly. Ayda put her face in her hands.

Bad things had happened in Eden before. 60 years ago, a respiratory illness had wiped out hundreds of people. 110 years ago, the Lower Levels had flooded. Riots and fires and economic hardships-- all history, all survivable. They were resilient people. They could grow and heal. They always had.

Kassidy was 17 years old. Her whole life was in front of her. She would get a job, she would move out. She would get a girlfriend. She would live her life and she would be happy. These were all things she knew with a certainty that could not be shaken.

Her happy life would not be ruined by the actions of Lee and his people.

Or that’s what she thought.

The bacon sizzled on the stove and Casey suddenly made a funny little noise in the back of her throat, not so much a squeak as it was the kind of low noise that a newborn kitten makes when it is scared. At first, Kassidy thought that she must have been burned by a bit of oil flying out of the pan, the noise had been so quiet and unremarkable. But when she glanced up, she saw that Casey had slid off the kitchen counter and was now supporting herself with one arm pressed against it, her other hand still holding her phone. Her pretty, upturned eyes had gone wide and looked shiny.

That was funny, Kassidy thought. It almost looked like she was about to cry. But Casey didn’t do that. Casey never cried, it was possible that she was incapable of the act. “What?” she asked.

Casey’s grip on her phone had turned her knuckles white. Her eyes shifted towards Kassidy, expressing something unnatural and alien.

Intuitively, Ayda was the one able to sense the wrongness in her sister’s body language and expression. She could probably feel it emanating off of her like air. “Cassiopeia?” Her voice was high and thin.

The wrongness was not something Kassidy was tuned in to. She had always been bad at reading emotions, exceptionally bad at understanding her own. Something bad had happened. She knew that. No, something bad had already happened, this was something bad that had specifically to do with her. The world began to move in slow motion.

“Don’t look at your phone,” said Casey. Her pulse was visible, beating under the skin of her throat.

“Why?” Instinctively, Kassidy’s hand began to reach for her device.

“If you trust me, you won’t look at your phone.” The corners of Casey’s mouth twitched. She put her own device face down on the kitchen counter. “Please listen to me. Let’s go back to my room.”

Smoke curled into the air between them. The bacon was overcooking.

Whatever emotion that Casey was trying to conceal, Ayda picked up on immediately. Empathy. It was a terrible thing. Ayda was less good at not crying, she sounded like she was trying not to hyperventilate.

But Kassidy was frozen. “What are you talking about?” she asked, unable to comprehend what was going on, but feeling dread nonetheless. Underneath her feet, the ground was shaking, and she did not know if that was real or in her mind. Her body felt heavy and cold all at once. “What do you mean?”

Without realizing she had done it, she was picking up her phone and bringing it up to her line of vision. Casey lunged across the counter and snatched it out of her hands.

Now she was scared, too scared to even be angry. She started to go numb and very, very still. Kassidy’s mind was trying to go far away. She didn’t want to be here. Whatever this was, she didn’t want to hear it. After everything, after everything that had happened yesterday, this was the thing that was going to really hurt her. She didn’t want it. She didn’t want to know what was making Casey act this way.

From far away, she watched Casey move the pan of bacon from the stove. She watched Casey’s mouth move, telling her something, but couldn’t hear her. That was so funny, why couldn’t she hear her speak? Blood buzzed in her head, all she could understand was her own heartbeat. Vaguely, she was aware that Casey’s cheeks had identical tear tracks on either side; even in crying she was perfect. But why was she crying? It was hard to draw breath. Kassidy wondered if she was about to faint.

Her teeth came down on her own tongue, jolting her back into reality. “What?” she said stupidly. “What did you just say?” Beside her, Ayda was making stupid little choking hiccuping noises and clutching handfuls of her own hair.

“I said I’m gonna call your mom,” said Casey. Casey with her halo of little pink braids and her shiny wet eyes. She was only wearing underwear. This was absurd. This was so absurd. What was she trying to tell her that was so important, when she wasn’t even wearing clothes?

Kassidy was far away. “Why would you call my Ma?”

“So--” Casey shifted like an insect impaled on a pin, her discomfort and pain palpable. “So I don’t have to tell you something, OK? I don’t want to be the one to tell you something. I-- I don’t think I can do this to you. I think we should go to my room and wait for your mom to come get you.” When she blinked, another sparkly tear fell down her face. She was crying. This was crazy.

“I don’t understand. Why would you call my Ma?”

“Listen, I-- I don’t know. I think that’s what I’m supposed to do right now.”

She couldn’t move and couldn’t think. “What don’t you want to tell me?”

Casey twisted her hands in her T-shirt.

Blood buzzed in her head. She already knew. Of course she already knew. There was only one thing this could be, only one thing that could upset Ayda like that, only one thing that could make Casey squirm. One thing Casey wouldn’t want to say out loud. Of course. And it was ironic, wasn’t it? Only minutes before, Casey had planted the seeds of this terrible knowledge in her mind.

Some part of her had already known this. She had known this the second that Lee Harlan turned the gun on her brother: something was about to be lost.

So why didn’t she feel anything? Why was she frozen and numb? When Casey said the words, would it be true? Would she break down then? Would she cry too?

“I don’t want--” Casey took a little step back, then took another one forward so that she was braced against the counter again. Even now, her perpetual motion would not stop.

If Casey could not say it, then she could. “It’s Kip.” It was easy to say. Why was it so easy? “Is it Kip?”

Ayda continued to cry and hiccup. Anger began to stir deep down inside of Kassidy, and wasn’t that better than feeling nothing at all? Why was Ayda crying like that? It wasn’t her brother. Their roles were supposed to be reversed.

The kitchen was very big. Or maybe Kassidy was very small. This wasn’t real. This was a bad dream, that’s why she felt so disconnected, so far away.

“Is he OK?” her voice didn’t sound like her own. “Did something happen to him?” Stupid questions to ask. Stupid. Kassidy stood up and found that her legs were unable to support her so she almost fell. There were pins and needles in her feet.

Still so absurd, so unnatural, Casey said nothing. She walked around the kitchen counter, put out her arms, and embraced Kassidy tightly. Her skin still smelled like oranges. Kassidy shoved her away. “Is Kip OK?” she asked again, like she was dead. Like she was the one who was dead.

“He-- he was implicated in the bombing.”

Kassidy did not know what implicated meant. She stared stupidly at Casey and wondered if she should hit Ayda for crying.

Casey tried again, tried to keep her face together. She looked like she wanted to seize Kassidy, like she wanted to grab her and hold her, like she wanted to hold her and not let her go, as if that would be some form of comfort. If she did that, Kassidy would really try to hurt her. “They said he was in the UPLF.”

“He’s dead?”

Casey did not need to answer. Her expression gave it away. She was trying not to sniffle. It was hard to remember that Casey was also only 17 years old. She was a kid. They were all just kids.

All except Kip.

So this was what it felt like when the whole world crumbled. It felt like nothingness.

When Kip’s birth mom Harry had killed herself, she had been too little to remember much, she had only been 5. The funeral had been sad. Mostly she remembered the way that Kip had screamed his head off, the way he had cried until he threw up. Ma hadn’t cried though. No, Ma had just stared straight ahead. Years later, Kassidy had wondered what was wrong with her, why she hadn’t cried at her own wife’s funeral. Well now she knew.

“K-Kassidy?” Casey was too close. There was not enough space. In this huge kitchen, there was not enough space. Casey’s hands opened and closed, desperate to grab or grasp something, desperate to hold on.

“No.”

“Let’s go to my room, OK, we can go sit down.” She began to reach out again.

The anger twisted it’s way up and out. “If you touch me, I’m gonna hit you!”

Casey cringed back as if she had been struck. Another perfect tear dripped down her perfect nose.

If Kassidy stayed in the kitchen, she knew that something bad was going to happen. The numbness, the nothingness she currently felt was about to turn to blind rage. A black hole is simultaneously destruction and void. If she stayed, if she continued to watch her friends in their sadness, she would start to hate them. She did not want their comfort. She did not want their pity. She did not want to see them cry. All she really wanted was her brother, but in her simplistic understanding of the world, she knew that desire was about to sublimate into something bad.

She was only 17 years old. This was not supposed to happen to her. This was not supposed to happen to people she cared about. This was not supposed to happen to anyone.

Kassidy did the only thing she could think to do. She left.

KIP

36 hours after the bombing, Kip Nguyen found himself in a place he did not recognize.

The last thing he could remember was being in the Infirmary in the Prison District. They had been taking care of the bullet wound in his leg, they had told him that he needed a play put in because the bullet had shattered the bone in his thigh. It had been frightening, and he could hear the bombs going off in the Levels around him, but he had known that it was all over. It was done. He was safe, and what was more important, he had kept his friends all safe. It was all going to be OK. The CO working in the Infirmary had even been relatively nice and told him that she had talked to his Ma on the phone, and that she would be able to bail him out as soon as she could.

Then they had given him medicine so that he could calm down before the prison doctors put the metal plate in his leg, and Kip had fallen asleep peacefully, thinking about how he would see his family soon and that they’d all work things out.

And he woke up somewhere else.

Kip found himself in a little grey room without windows. He was laying on his back on an exam table that was covered in wax paper. His left wrist was handcuffed to a rail.

Why had they moved him to a different room in the Prison Infirmary? Maybe it was for more privacy, or a place to recover after the operation on his leg. The new pain radiating from his leg told him that it had already been operated on, and Kip lifted up the edge of the pale green hospital smock they had made him change into to see that he had fresh bandages and a metal brace that ran from his hip to his knee. It hurt, but he was thankful. After Lee shot him and he had moved around so much, he had been afraid that he might have to lose the leg.

“You’re awake. Good.” There was someone else in the little room, a young man who at only a year or so older than Kip, did not look old enough to be a doctor or a prison guard. He was an Artificial, just perfect enough to be unsettling, and wore a black uniform with a taser on the belt. He put down the tablet that he had been reading on.

Kip sat up and winced at the pain that shot through his leg when he tried to bend his knee.The other young man stood and unlocked the handcuff, then picked up his tablet again. “Has my Ma posted bail yet?” he asked. His mouth was very dry. “Can I get a glass of water?

“No,” said the Artifical. ”I have to process you. You can call me October, I’m in charge of you now.”

October was not a real name. “I’ve already gone through processing, before I went to the Infirmary.”

“This is different,” October said in a curious, mean little voice. He pressed the screen of his tablet. “What’s your full name?”

“Christopher Harris Nguyen. My friends call me Kip.”

“Date of birth?”

“July 28, 857 AR.”

“You’re 18.”

“Yeah. Do you know when my Ma is going to get here?”

October flicked his eyes up to look at Kip. They were glassy and stupid, with bored cruelty. “We can talk about that later, after I call Lady in here. Just answer my questions so I can get this over with. You got any physical issues we need to know about?”

This guy was starting to really piss him off. Kip drilled him right back with a hateful look. “Yeah, my leg is completely fucked, are you blind or stupid or something? You can’t see this big ass brace? Why do you think I’m in the Infirmary? I answered all these questions when I got here, why can’t you just get that paperwork? I’ve been arrested before, I know how this works.”

Authority figures generally don’t like it when you mouth off to them, but Kip couldn’t help himself. He had never been able to help himself. It was what got him into trouble, time and time again. Teachers, counselors, people who worked in the Prison District-- they were all the same. They were all taught to control others. They wanted to put him down and subject him, make him low. Lee had been right about that.

Oh. Lee. Kip’s stomach flipped. He felt himself start to tear up and blinked, hoping that he would not cry in front of a stranger. “I want to go home,” he said, miserably. “Can you just ask when my Ma is going to post my bail?”

October waited for him to stop talking, with a contemplative, almost lazy air. Then he struck Kip on the thigh with a closed fist, right above where he had been shot. The pain was not as bad as getting hit with a bullet, but bad enough to make Kip clench his teeth so that he did not make a sound. His skin burned hot as his blood pumped angrily.

This wasn’t right. Even when he had been in Juvie, the CO’s had never hit him. And what kind of uniform was that?

“I want a lawyer,” said Kip, from between his teeth, his eyes burning. “You can’t touch me like that.”

“‘You can’t touch me like that,’” mocked October, mimicking the nasal vowels of Kip’s Lower Level accent. “Don’t mouth off to me, I’m just trying to do my job. How easy is it to answer some questions? Your brain is going to be a milkshake in an hour, but I’ll still pop you one if you act smart.”

Kip couldn’t help himself. He had never been able to just shut his mouth, never been able to behave. And he was angry and scared, still so shaken by almost dying the day before, still filled with adrenaline. “The charter of ethics states that arrested persons—“ October hit his leg again, hard enough for the bandages wrapped around it to turn red. Again, Kip maintained enough self control to keep himself from crying out.

It wasn’t like people hadn’t hurt him or hit him before. Throughout his life, he had gotten into scraps, usually giving as good as he got. Fat little Ben Prospas had tormented him in middle school and had jumped him a handful of times, but Kip had always been able to fight back. In Juvie the other kids had targeted him because he was weird and different, that had been frightening and hurtful, but Kip had always taken care of himself. Whenever he couldn’t defend himself, he had been able to float away in his own mind, spaced out until it was over.

He felt scared now though. This felt new and different and he was completely present. It occurred to him that something really bad was about to happen, something he did not understand. He was in some kind of trouble that extended beyond the criminal justice system, the kind of trouble that other members of the UPLF used to talk about.

Part of him remembered that whatever was happening to him, whatever bad thing it was that he was facing, he deserved it. It was his fault for being so stupid. His fault for being stupid enough to listen to Lee, for getting involved with the bombings.

“You gonna shut up and answer my questions now? This won’t take long if you’re good, then we can get Lady in here.”

Kip nodded and weighed the pros and cons of trying to get a good punch in. Not worth it. Probably not worth it.

He did not recognize exactly how much trouble he was in at this point. If he had, Kip would have fought back harder. He was still under the impression that despite what was happening to him, despite whatever bizarre punishment he was about to face, his Ma would still bail him out at the end of the day.

October, whoever he was, leaned an elbow against the back of the exam table and pressed the screen of his tablet. He was close enough for Kip to smell his expensive cologne. In the months, in the years that would come, that smell would be associated with this young man who had so much control over his life. “Great. No permanent physical issues. You got any psychological problems?”

This was not too out of the ordinary, they had asked him that in Juvie and at school too. It felt shameful to say out loud though. “Attention deficit,” he said. “And they diagnosed me with bipolar when I was 16.”

“You take meds for that?”

“Supposed to.”

“Do you ever take drugs you aren’t prescribed? Or drink alcohol?”

It was better to be truthful with those kinds of questions. Those were the ones that could get you in big trouble when you lied about them. “I sometimes drink at parties. A couple times I’ve taken pills a friend gave me, but only when I was in a bad place, like when I was panicking.”

Again, October’s lazy eyes flicked up to look at Kip. Maybe he was 19, someone in college. But Kip had never heard of a young Artificial working a job as ignominious and low paying as one in corrections. “Drug problem, huh?”

Frustration overtook the fear again. He did not like being accused. “No. It was a sedative, I only took it twice when I needed to calm down. I don’t like drugs, I barely drink.”

“Uh-huh. That’s what they all say. Open your mouth and stick out your tongue. Policy says that we have to do a body cavity search any time an intake answers ‘yes’ to the whole drug question. We can’t have you pulling a baggie full of speed out of your ass in 3 hours when you’re all disoriented.”

Body cavity search? A surge of panic moved up through him and Kip’s head started to get floaty. His vision unfocused for a second. He did not want to be touched like that, even the thought was humiliating. It was too embarrassing, too violating. This did not seem real. This seemed like the kind of situation that other people found themselves in, not him. It was all wrong.

He refocused his eyes and saw that October was putting on rubber gloves. Kip’s blood pounded in his ears, he tried to focus on that so that he did not feel like he was floating outside of himself. “I don’t take drugs, you don’t need to do that to me. I’m not hiding anything, they scanned me when I got to the Prison District.”

“It's a policy. Open your mouth and stick out your tongue.”

“No. I’ve already been scanned. And the law says--”

“Do you want me to actually hurt you?” October didn’t move but Kip could see his glassy, stupid eyes looking at him in the same way a kid looks at a one-winged fly. “I know who you are and what you did. Right now, we got people out there hunting down all your terrorist buddies and terminating them. Maybe you should consider yourself lucky. Maybe you should do what I fucking tell you to do.”

Terminating. Terminating them? The faces of his friends who were in the UPLF came to him then, Brently, Omo, and even Lee. Had they all known about the bombs? Even if they had, he had cared about them. The feelings were too complicated. He felt sick, he felt very sick.

And he was very scared. If other UPLF members were being….terminated….that meant that might happen to him too. Suddenly, he realized that he needed to be careful now. He needed to be careful so that he could get home to Ma and Kassidy. Even if it meant allowing himself to be talked down to or embarrassed, mistreated in any way, he had to get back to his family in one piece. He could not imagine how worried they must be about him.

Kip stuck out his tongue, allowed the inside of his mouth to be probed and searched by a gloved finger until he gagged. Usually he would have fantasized about biting down, causing pain, but Kip had already started to detach his own mind from what was happening to his body. The small exam room seemed far away from him.

“Pop those scrubs off and get up off that table, you gotta squat and cough,” October said, bored, as if sensing that all the fight was gone.

“I-- but my leg is hurting me. I can’t stand up.”

“You want me to do it manually?” A threat.

The pain from standing up was excruciating but the alternative was worse. The alternative was invasion. Kip gritted his teeth and did what he was told. The abject humiliation of the whole process would have been unbearable if Kip had not felt so far outside of himself. He was vaguely aware of the pain shooting in his left leg, aware of the vulnerability of being naked and observed by another person, aware that he was being roughly patted down. Soon he would feel like he was going through the motions.

He was stressed, he was scared and upset, but he was separate. Kip knew that he was still in the little exam room, he knew that he was pulling his hospital smock back over his body, he knew that he was numbly responding to the questions that October was asking him. But it was like he was watching it happen to someone else. Not him. Oh no, not Kip. He was safe. He was going to be OK.

This bad stuff was all part of someone else’s stories.

It was all going to be OK.

October was saying something. Kip could see his mouth moving. He shook himself. “What?” he asked.

“I said, that’s all I need to ask you. You can sit tight until Lady gets here. She’s been busy.”

Another mention of the person named Lady, another person without a real name. So peculiar. Kip might have contemplated that, might have put the pieces together if he had not been so spaced out. If he had not been so scared out of his mind that he was not really there. Instead, he just nodded. He felt very slow and dull. “OK, good,” he said. “After that, is my Ma going to be here to bail me out? I-- I just really want to go home. I’m so tired.”

October paused for a moment, then appeared to roll his stupid, glassy eyes. “Yeah,” he answered. “Yeah, you’re going home soon, Kip Nguyen.”

And he would be.

LEE

Only 3 days after the bombings, Lee Harlan got what was coming to him.

He had known it was going to happen, the inevitability of his fate. Names of his executed comrades began to broadcast on his television. Every hour, the inexorable force of Eden’s all-seeing eyes rooted another one out to be exterminated for their crimes. Omo Wilson. Brently Falchion. Sulla Kalis. Christopher Nguyen. The names ran together. If Lee had not been in such a panic, he would have felt bad when he learned what had happened to Kip. Kip had not participated, he had not done anything, he did not deserve to die. But Lee did not have the capacity to think about that. The only thing inside of him was fear.

He did not want to die.

3 days, 3 days he had been holed up inside of his apartment, shaking and so afraid that he bordered on delirious. Outside, buildings that had been damaged by the UPLF’s bombs continued to collapse. Every crash made him jump. The air still smelled like smoke from the electrical fires that would not stop raging. Even inside, he could smell it, acrid and shocking. The air filtration systems in the Lower Levels had not been made to handle something of this magnitude, and far above, he could hear them buzz, falter, and choke.

Then there were the sounds of mourning. The death toll was over 3,000 now and would continue to rise throughout the next week, at the least. His apartment building in the Lower Levels was full of wailing people.

He had not known that there had been bombs set in every level of Eden. He had not known that people of every class would be affected. It had been kept from him, in the chaos and fear he had realized that so much had been kept from him.

Yancey had lied. Yancey had lied and now Lee was going to pay for it. At any moment, he knew that the cops would come for him, or worse, the secret police. He would be dragged out and shot, and if he was very lucky he would only be shot in the street like an animal. Stupid. He was so stupid. He was so stupid!

Something in the Mid Levels collapsed far above, and his building trembled like there had been an earthquake. A glass of water crashed from the edge of his table and shattered on the floor. Maybe that was the best-- the explosions had left waste leaking into the water treatment pipes. Lee wondered if he was going to start hyperventilating again. He had not imagined that it would be like this.

It hurt to move. His frantic encounter with Ajax Guttierez and the Prospas kids had left him injured. Not only did he have a purple bruise above his left eye from getting a marble chucked at him, but AJ had beaten him so badly after he had stumbled to the floor that he felt like his ribs were cracked. They probably were, and he was lucky to have gotten off so lightly. Had it not been for the bombs going off, AJ may have stuck around to kill him.

Maybe he would have deserved that.

Regret. It was not a sensation that Lee was overly familiar with. He had always tried to live his life in the moment, he had always tried to do what he believed was best. And for what? The crying and wailing that floated up through his apartment building was starting to get to him. The day before, the news had interviewed Commissioner Nguyen -- pure cruelty-- and when Lee had seen her grey, dead looking expression, he had felt so overcome with regret that he had broken his television.

Nothing. All for nothing.

This was not the glorious revolution that Yancey had promised. No socialist utopia could rise from the ashes of Eden. There were only broken buildings and broken people. Pointless. He had been lied to. In his belief and his stupidity, he had been used to carry out something unimaginable. That’s what it had all been about. Destruction. His hope of creating a better world had blinded him to the fact that Yancey must have wanted to burn it all down.

Why else would have he planted bombs in the Lower Levels? The proletariat were blown to bits in the same way as the bourgeoisie.

This line of thinking may have driven him to suicide. Luckily he did not have to ponder it for long.

At once, there was the presence of someone else in his mind. In a way this had happened before. The only other psychic he knew was Ayda Jay, and her presence had always made him feel like his brain was submerged in a warm bath. The only time that this sensation became unpleasant was when her emotions were running high or when she was intoxicated. Even then, Ayda was too young and too unaware of her own abilities to cause much harm. It was unlikely that she even understood how to, not that Lee could do much better with his tepid charisma. This presence, however? This was real.

Another psychic, a powerful one.

It took a fraction of a second for him to realize that it was all over.

A needle of pain pierced his brain stem, brighter and more white hot than anything he had experienced. Another person’s brutal and uncaring will forced itself into his own. Over the course of his life, Lee was no stranger to invasion, but this was something unfathomably violating. The pain was nothing compared to the understanding that there was now a stranger inside of his mind who had the ability to do whatever they pleased.

The pain and fear lasted only one unbearable moment. His consciousness was forced from his body, as easy as flicking off a light, and Lee’s mind went blank.

When awareness returned to him, the first thing Lee was conscious of was that he was laying on his back, completely immobilized. His clothes were gone. All he could see was the white ceiling above him, a void of nothingness.

Fear and adrenaline flooded his body in an instant. Lee attempted to struggle but found that his wrists and legs had been restrained. An IV had been stuck into his right arm and the substance that flowed through the tube was black. Seeing that filled him with a kind of dread that was primal and completely pure and made him struggle harder. This was wrong. This was not natural. The black substance did not hurt, but it’s viscosity was thicker than his blood and he could see a bruise forming on his skin around the needle. He was weak. When he tried to shout, the panic inside of him was so severe that his breath only whistled in his throat.

It was a mistake not to have taken his own life when the bombs started going off. More stupidity. In his naivety, he had assumed that if Eden’s government had found him, he would have only been killed. No. Of course not. Whatever was happening to him was far worse.

His movement attracted his captor. She stood over him, a woman in her early 40’s wearing a white coat. Her face was as cold and beautiful as marble and her eyes were grey. Red hair tied back severely so that it would not get in the way. Although Lee had never seen her before, he knew her in an instant and his heart sank. So this was the consequence for his actions. Dr. Lily Bellamy was not an Artificial like her freakish children were, she had been born a decade before the first ones were created, but the resemblance in their genetics was unmistakable.

Of course he had not expected this.

She looked at him in the same way that they all did: like he was lower than pond scum. In Lee’s fear, he did not experience the usual humiliation of unfairness that bubbled up when dealing with members of the intelligentsia class.

Her eyes were like hard stones. There was no color in her face, no hatred, only cool disdain. For the first time, Lee understood how a rat in a laboratory views people. It was not the last time.

Dr. Bellamy touched his arm where the IV plunged into it. Her skin was icy through the thin rubber gloves that covered her hands. “You’re awake,” she said, and her voice had the same contemplative patrician inflection as her daughter’s did. “You shouldn’t move.”

“What are you doing to me?” Lee’s own voice came out like a whine, as he was reduced by a childlike state by his helplessness and nudity.

“I wanted to take this opportunity to elevate you beyond the circumstances of your birth.” She was unsmiling and she used two fingers to press down on the needle, making his arm jerk in pain. “You would not be alive now if I had not called in a favor. I don’t think you should be thanking me, though.”

“What are you doing to me?” The question rose in pitch.

She took a clear vial and drew its contents up into a syringe, then injected it into the plastic bag that contained the thick black liquid flowing down his IV. Lee twisted his head to watch this, unable to stop it.

If she wanted him dead, he would be dead. This was worse, whatever this was, it was far worse. He didn’t deserve this.

Unable to stop himself, he began to babble. “I didn’t do anything!” Lee said breathlessly. Somebody had taken his glasses and the world around him was a blur, save for the woman with the cold face. “I didn’t do it. I didn’t kill anyone, I didn’t hurt anyone! The bombs-- the bomb in the School District, it didn’t go off! You have it all wrong, it wasn’t me! I’ll give you names-- I can give you names! But I didn’t do anything, I was a part of it, but I didn’t do anything!”

Dr. Bellamy’s lips tightened. “You think I care about the bombings.”

Lee’s heart pounded in his chest. He felt very small.

“You’ve been alone with my children. Esther gave me your name. She told me she was scared of you.”

“No, I never--”

“It’s impossible for someone like you to understand what I would do for my children, how long it took me to perfect them. You jeopardized their safety. You--” For a second, high points of color rose to her cheeks, betraying her anger beneath the facade. “--You hit Eddie, you could have broken his nose. You, a submental genetic waste. You were alone with them, drinking. You scared them all, none of them wanted to tell me. You put them all in danger.”

“I didn’t--”

Dr. Bellamy squeezed the bag of dark fluid that led to his IV. The pressure made it travel faster into the needle. Lee’s vision declined and his body felt as heavy as if his blood had been replaced by jello. His breath slowed, and whatever she had injected into the fluid slowed his heart rate as well.

Poison. He was being poisoned. He was going to fall asleep and then this woman was going to do something to him, maybe cut him open, maybe remove parts of his body. He didn’t deserve this.

“My family is worth a lot to me,” she said. “But so is my work-- this of course, is just a side project of mine. An associate of mine informed me that you have sub-level psychic abilities. I thought that was interesting. I wonder if you’ll survive. None of my other subjects have.”

At this point there was no shame in begging. Lee had his pride, but he had begged before. He had begged in foster care, he had begged in prison, and he had begged when it came to Yancey. He looked up into her marble face and stoney eyes. He knew that he must look pathetic, naked, unable to move, half-blind without his glasses, weakened by whatever poison was being pumped into him. This was a mother, there must be some kind of nurturing part of her spirit. There must be some merciful part.

“Please,” he said, “Please don’t hurt me. I’m sorry!”

There was no mercy in someone who believed that he was less than human. As ever, members of the Intelligentsia class were incapable of empathy for those they deemed lower life-forms. Dr. Bellamy, with her white face and white coat and hair like blood was impassable. Again, she squeezed the bag of plastic attached to his IV to speed up the process. “I’m not an animal,” she said, in that terrible, Surface Level accent so different from his own. “You’ll be fully anesthetized by the time I drill into your frontal lobe. It’s important that you don’t move; I need to inject this substance directly into your hippocampus. I would never risk damaging you before the ichor takes effect on your brain.”

Lee had enough time to process the terror of knowing that his skull was about to be sliced open and his brain invaded yet again before the sedative drugs took effect. The helplessness was unlike anything he had felt before and it consumed him.

In the end, it was not Marty who had gotten him. For all his bravado, Marty had not followed through with his threats-- either because he had not been able to or because deep down, he had not wanted to. This was his own fault. Lee’s end was the result of his own hubris, his inability to see into a future where there were consequences for his actions. He had failed to see the intricate connections of the world around him and was now paying for it-- not with his life, no, but with his sanity.

This was the last time Lee Harlan was truly himself. The monstrous thing that he would soon be shaped into was only chaotic nothingness.

#writing

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