Office of Mercy (9781101606100) (10 page)

When they brought her out, her cheeks were slick with tears. Roy wiped them away with the sleeve of his scrubs.

“Don't worry,” he said. “The meds will be out of your system soon. You'll feel more like yourself.”

“I want to talk to my team.”

“We told them, they're on their way.”

As the nurse had promised, Natasha had just finished dressing in one of the small recovery rooms when a knock came at the door.

“Natasha,” Arthur said, walking into the room with Douglas and Alejandra. Natasha looked past them, expecting Jeffrey—Jeffrey whose face had come to her during what she had believed were the final moments of her life. But Alejandra closed the door behind her, and Natasha forced herself to suppress her disappointment. “We're glad to see you well,” Arthur continued. “The doctor said your results came back fine. Not a molecule out of place.”

But Natasha had no interest in her own health. When Arthur outstretched his hand to her, she gripped it in both of hers.

“Tell me you haven't swept,” she said.

“No.”

Natasha released him. “Thank the Alphas. Listen to me, you have to let the Pines go. They're not the kind of people we thought.”

Arthur's expression was one of consternation. Douglas and Alejandra both glanced at him.

“Please, Natasha, relax for a second,” Arthur said. He led her to the edge of the bed and sat down beside her. “Whatever you've been through, I know it's been a lot. And I have to apologize to you for everything that happened. If I had guessed that there was even the slightest possibility of Tribespeople still in the field, I never would have let anyone out of this settlement.”

“I know, it doesn't matter. I'm glad they took me.”

“So they did take you?”

“Yes. And Arthur, you have to stop the sweeps. I talked to them. Actually
talked
to them. Just like we're talking now.” But her team did not seem to understand, and so Natasha, forcing herself to be patient, started from the beginning. She told them how she had encountered the Tribe dog and how she had chased after it, running blindly into the woods. She openly took the blame for the capture, despite her shame in her own decisions. She told them about the Pines in the cave, even recalling the names she had heard: Axel, Raul, Hesma, Mattias. “The curly-haired man said that he was the chief. Like we thought. And then two men and a woman came and said you were sweeping. And there was another woman too, and she had two children. She was the one who told me how to escape.” But they seemed to be missing her point; and Natasha could not quite manage to capture the essence of her meaning in words. How could she explain the effect of seeing the Pines face-to-face? The way they had ceased to exist for her as desperate animals in want of relief? No matter that they had no settlement and no bioreplacement. No matter how futilely brief their lives were. “I talked to them,” she said, though lamely, understanding that language was only part of it. “I talked to them just like we're talking now.”

“We know they speak English,” Arthur said.

“You do?”

“We heard a couple of them shouting to each other. Right before we found you.” Arthur sighed, he seemed very worried. “You must have been surprised, on top of everything else. But it's not the first time we've engaged with a Tribe that retained the original English language. The vast majority of these people descended from the North American survivors of the Storm. The same group of people who once begot our Alphas. The survivors spoke English and they passed it on, generation to generation.”

“You knew that the Pines spoke English this whole time?”

“No.” Arthur shook his head. “There are hundreds of new dialects. A Tribe that has fully maintained a recognizable grammar and vocabulary is extremely rare. We didn't know until you did.”

“But it was a possibility.”

“That's not a secret, Natasha. Granted we don't generally emphasize it in our education programs, at least not until you've reached advanced standing in the Office of Mercy. We find that an awareness of language overlap makes it more difficult to maintain the Wall.”

Natasha felt the implication of his words, but allowed his reproach to pass her by. The Wall; she could not worry about that now. She felt too confused.

“Do you know what happened to them?” she asked.

“Only the three that Nolan swept,” answered Douglas.

“You did sweep?” Natasha cried.

“If you can call it that,” Arthur said apologetically, misunderstanding her sudden excitement. “Only three. A woman and two juveniles.”

“I told that woman to stay in the caves!” Natasha said. “I didn't want you to hurt her!”

“They won't suffer anymore.”

“I didn't want you to kill them!”

Natasha knew how infantile she sounded, how unethical, but she didn't care. She thought of the man, Raul, who had kissed them goodbye; all she wanted was for it not to be true. Tears came to her eyes, and Douglas and Alejandra both looked away.

“Where's Jeffrey?” Natasha asked. “I want to talk to Jeffrey. He'll understand.”

Was it her imagination, or did all three of them cringe at her words?

“He's busy in the Office right now,” Arthur said. “I'm sure he'll stop by later.”

“Those children had a father,” Natasha said. “You broke up a family.”

“I know how bad it was, Natasha. You don't have to tell me. The whole situation was very, very far from ideal. But at least, in the end, the pain of one human being is preferable to the pain of four. As bad as it was, it could have been worse.”

“You're wrong,” said Natasha. A heaving, wet breath racked her body.

“You've been through too much,” Arthur said, reaching out to touch her hand. “None of us could have maintained the Wall during such close contact, especially without proper training. But give yourself time to confront your feelings, and I promise you, once the shock has worn off, your perspective will broaden and your ethical understanding will come back to you.”

•   •   •

They did not release her for several more days, and in those days, Natasha found herself subjected to countless physical and psychological evaluations. The doctors finally told her the details of her injuries. She had suffered an eight-centimeter laceration across the back of her head. Apparently, the blow from behind, when the Pines attacked her, had unlocked her helmet and forced the metal ring upward. The fall gave her a slight concussion, hence the necessity of the neurotransmitter replacements. She had also come in with bruises and cuts all over her body, but those they had healed within the first days of her return. Her psychological state they could not describe in such certain terms. Ultimately, they pronounced her brain “Feignimic”—unable to fully process that she had escaped the possibility of further danger—and they gave her a small vial of orange pills that would serve to quiet her anxiety. They had it wrong, though. Or at least Natasha's anxiety had an additional source other than the one they had named. She could not believe, she could not understand, why Jeffrey had not come to see her.

As Natasha had feared, her arrival in the Dining Hall that afternoon caused a bit of a stir. Min-he came sprinting from the serving line and embraced her at the door.

“I've missed you!” she cried. “You have no idea how terrified I was.”

“Everyone's looking at me,” Natasha said quietly.

“Well, of course they are. It's not every day that one of us gets carried off by a herd of Tribespeople.”

“It wasn't a
herd
.”

“I know,” said Min-he, immediately contrite. “We're just happy to have you back, okay?”

Natasha nodded and felt stupid for snapping at Min-he. Especially given how grateful she was that Min-he wasn't fussing over her or acting standoffish.

The two roommates heaped hot sandwiches and salad onto their plates and joined a table of Epsilons. Natasha told the group right away that she was not permitted to give details of the mission, though neither her words nor her persistent evasions dissuaded them from bombarding her with questions. In the breaks in conversation, Natasha had the chance to look around at the other tables. The Betas and Gammas appeared to be avoiding any notice of her, all except for Claudia, who scowled from over an untouched bowl of steaming mushroom soup. At the far corner of the Dining Hall, near the swinging doors to the kitchen, Raj leaned over his table, talking quickly to his group of Delta friends. As she looked at them, feeling that she must be the subject of their conversation, Raj glanced suddenly at her, catching her eye and making her face flush with heat. Several minutes passed before Natasha had the courage to give the Dining Hall another wide look. It was enough to confirm what she had guessed already—that Jeffrey was not here.

She arrived at the Office of Mercy eight minutes before the thirteenth hour, only to face a worse disappointment. At the back cubicle sat Eric and Yasmine, and Natasha would be the third for the day. As Natasha made her way to her computer, a sinking sensation in her middle made her feel both hollow and queasy at once, and the unease she had been suffering from since the mission morphed swiftly into dread. Jeffrey planned out the shifts for their Office team. He must have deliberately taken himself off the afternoonshift. Natasha could not hide from the truth any longer: Jeffrey did not want to see her.

Yasmine seemed pretty happy about getting bumped from the nightshift, and she greeted Natasha warmly. Eric politely acknowledged her return too, though not with his usual cheerfulness. Arthur had asked Yasmine to get Natasha up to speed on their progress with the Pines, and so Natasha drew her chair around to Yasmine's computer.

“They opened up the deadzone since the mission,” Yasmine said. “We didn't see them do it. But we lost sensor RN49 and the next night they took out RN50.”

“They might be moving underground,” Natasha said.

“Yes, we considered that. It's also conceivable that they're using the river to hide, and staying within the most treacherous areas.”

“Our sensors are positioned along the main travel routes—”

“That's right,” Yasmine said. “They weren't built to catch human beings deliberately working to avoid us.”

From around the corner of the cubicle, Eric put on his audioset and Natasha could hear the faint murmurs of music. Was it possible that Eric was mad at her too? Her actions had cut the mission short, after all, and—though she had not thought about it till now—likely the Alphas would not send Epsilons back into the field until well past their thirtieth birthday.

“So what's our assignment?” Natasha asked. “Are we watching the deadzone perimeter?”

“Ahh—no,” Yasmine said, shifting her gaze. “We're on satellite duty. Weather patterns in the northeast quadrant.”

The sinking feeling in Natasha's middle reached a new depth.

“It's because of me, isn't it?” she asked. “Arthur doesn't trust me to maintain the Wall.”

“Not only you,” Yasmine said. Her eyes flickered over to Eric, and for a moment Natasha dared to wonder if Eric's sour mood had nothing at all to do with her.

The afternoon passed with no sign of the Pines, not at the outer perimeter or at the edges of the deadzone. Wherever they were, whatever they were planning, at least they weren't doing it yet. When Natasha's shift ended, she ate a hurried dinner in the Dining Hall, sitting with a still-subdued Eric and some other Epsilons. Then, instead of spending her leisure hours above ground, she boarded the elephant. She did not return to her own floor, but touched the command for level three, which housed the sleeprooms occupied mostly by generations Gamma and Delta. When the elephant opened, she walked to the outermost of the three concentric hallways, tracing the curving wall until she found Jeffrey's door.

8

H
er heart thudded as she knocked, and louder in the pause that followed. A yellow line of light glowed from under the door and a shadow crossed it; he could not pretend to be sleeping. Part of Natasha wanted to dash away while she still had the chance, but no, she had to at least try to figure out what was going on with him. Whatever Jeffrey had to say to her, it was better than the torture of his silence. Besides, she did not think she could stand it for one more day, this not-knowing. I'm sorry, Natasha thought, as she had thought in the Pines' cave. And now Natasha would tell him in person; she was clinging to the hazy idea that these simple words could set everything right.

She knocked again, only this time the door flew open. Jeffrey stood before her, his mouth firm, his shirt only partly fastened into his prote-pants. Red veins shot through his eyes and the pink burn climbing his neck seemed inflamed, bright and prickling over his flesh. In her surprise, Natasha took a step back.

“What are you doing here?” He had not spoken the words harshly, but the absence of his usual warmth brought a thickness to Natasha's throat. For a moment, she gaped at him, and then he seemed to realize her agony, because he added next, “It's wonderful to see you healed, Natasha. We were all so worried about you.”

He looked away as he spoke, at the row of sleeproom doors behind her.
We were worried
, Natasha thought. He would not say
I was worried
,
but only
we
. She forgot about the Pines; she forgot about the mission. She tried to cover up her distress, especially when the noise of two people approaching became audible from around the bend of the circular hall. Jeffrey started to speak, then seemed to change his mind. With a heavy sigh, and with a glance in the direction of the nearing voices, he stood aside, waving Natasha into the room.

Natasha had not seen the inside of Jeffrey's sleeproom before, or any of the sleeprooms on level three. Its dimensions were only slightly grander than what she and Min-he had, though without a second bed and second wallcomputer, the area felt much larger. The furniture was similar to what she was used to, only a little nicer. The bedframe and table were not made of metal, but of a deep brown, sturdy-looking wood. The lamp had a thick brass base and a glass shade, as opposed to ceramic and paper. The only item that was identical to the one in Natasha and Min-he's sleeproom was Jeffrey's copy of the Ethical Code, which lay open under the light.

Jeffrey sat down on a worn upholstered chair in the corner, which occupied the space where a second bed would have gone in a double. Natasha hesitated, unsure of what to do next, and only finally sat down at the very edge of Jeffrey's bed.

“I'm sorry to bother you like this,” Natasha said, even though she wasn't sorry at all, only desperate to break Jeffrey's silence.

“I understand you're upset,” he replied. “But that can only be expected. You experienced a terrible trauma. Maybe it was a mistake for you to come back to work so soon. To have Tribes on the monitors all around you. I imagine that might be rather frightening.”

Natasha's face burned at his words; they were cold and formal and distant from his true thoughts, whatever those were. Was he really going to pretend that her only problem was the Pines? That he had not been cruelly ignoring her for days?

“It doesn't bother me to see the Tribes,” she said, her voice sharp.

“Really?” His eyebrows peeked over the frame of his glasses, as if she were some mildly interesting puzzle, put forward for his observation.

“No,” she insisted. “And if it did, it wouldn't be because I'm scared. I tried to explain it to Arthur when he came to see me in the medical wing. I told him how the Pines spoke English but that didn't surprise him. Only it wasn't just that. Their speaking English only made it easier to see.”

“See what?”

“That they're
like
us. The Pines are
like
us. I never expected that, but it's true.” She spoke in an angry rush. His questions felt unfair; he was doubting her without listening first. But if he wanted to discuss the Tribe then, fine, that's what they'd do. She wanted to shock him. “I was scared in the cave,” she said, “I was. But now I don't believe that they ever wanted to hurt me. Because they had the chance and they didn't. They left me alone in the cave rather than kill me.”

“You're projecting. You mean that if
you
had been in
their
situation,
you
would not have caused purposeless harm to another human being.”

“I'm not projecting. I was there. I'm telling you what I saw.”

“Okay, then how about abducting you and terrifying you beyond belief? Is that like us?”

“Oh, I don't know,” Natasha faltered, her voice rising with irritation. “But at least you have to agree that the Pines aren't in the same situation that the Cranes were in. The Cranes were suffering. I can see how they needed our mercy. But these people—I saw it with my own eyes, Jeffrey. They're healthy and strong and they want to keep living.”

“But they can't keep living,” Jeffrey said. “Surely you see that. They don't have bioreplacement. Their bodies decay with no intervention. You've stopped thinking clearly, Natasha. Healthy and strong
now
, for a moment. But it won't last. The human body wasn't built to last—not until our technology changed that.”

“Well, maybe the people outside aren't so obsessed with eternity. Maybe the moment's good enough for them.”

“So what's your point?” Jeffrey asked, suddenly sounding fatigued.

“That we change things!” Natasha said. “That we stop what we're doing in the Office of Mercy.”

There was a crack in his demeanor, a subtle twitch of his mouth. She could see that she was finally getting through to him. At the same time, the Wall had disappeared in her mind, letting forth a wave of other thoughts, new thoughts. Natasha didn't care. She didn't want the Wall. She'd rather remember everything that had happened to her, unfiltered by the Ethical Code.

Jeffrey rubbed the fabric of the chair with his thumbs. He grunted and then he stood and opened a door in the base of his bedside table, removing a green bottle and two waterglasses. He poured a clear, strong-smelling liquid from the bottle, only filling each cup a quarter full.

“That's alcohol,” Natasha said, recognizing the sting of its aroma. “How did you get that?”

“The rules are somewhat more lenient for the older generations,” Jeffrey said. “Try some if you'd like. You've never had this kind before.”

He returned to his seat, taking slow sips. Natasha took the waterglass and brought it to her lips. The liquid burned in her throat but she drank it all. She returned the empty glass to the table with the tingling, grassy taste still in her mouth. Jeffrey's eyes remained fixed on her through all this, though he did not speak.

Natasha glared at him, wiped her mouth with deliberate force, and stood. There were three pictures hanging in a line near the door, and a polished piece of wood, a flute, resting on two large nails above them. On closer inspection, Natasha saw that the pictures were photographs of Outside things: one was of a valley of leaning trees, their branches weighted by ice; the second showed a human shelter of animal skin and sturdy sticks, propped against the base of a vertical cliff; and the third was of the river. Natasha reached up and touched the flute, understanding now that it was not some relic of a childhood pastime, but a genuine artifact from the Outside.

Jeffrey rose from his chair and walked over.

“I don't know why I still have those things,” he said, a note of annoyance in his voice. “I've been meaning to move them to the Archives for years.”

He was close to her, only inches away. The familiar smell of his body, the familiar, low tenor of his voice, the hard symmetry of his muscular shoulders and handsome features, all except—no,
including—
the furious burn—these sensations of his presence impressed themselves upon Natasha with a power that blocked out all the world but him.

He looked down at her and before she could consider the magnitude of what she was doing, Natasha raised one hand and cupped his neck over his scarred flesh, her fingers reaching to trace where the mark rose to a gathering point, the way fire would, just below his ear.

His steady expression gave her no permission, no response, but driven by the momentum of her own mounting passion, Natasha lifted her face to his and kissed him on the mouth. His lips yielded, though he did not make a move to touch her. Her arms wrapped over his shoulders, clasping at the back of his neck. She kissed him hard, determined beyond all else to break through the barricade he had made to keep her out; she kissed him so that he could not ignore her, so as to force his feelings to come raging to the surface.

Their mouths pressed together, and now Jeffrey did touch her, holding her waist, taking against himself the weight of her body. Natasha's hands traveled down to find the first fastening on his second-skin shirt. She removed one and then the other, down to the base, where she fumbled to release his prote-pants too.

He stopped her then—an abrupt and startling halt—releasing her body so that she stumbled. He turned away and quickly redid the fastenings, leaving her stunned and staring at the large square of his back.

When she finally spoke, her voice was hoarse.

“You didn't want that to happen?” she asked.

He was silent.

“Well?” she asked, more forcibly now.

“This is not appropriate, Natasha. You know as well as I do what the Alphas advise. A well thought-out, committed partnership is one thing. But for lustful feelings, there are other ways, the Pretends—”

He turned around, striving to appear tidy and put together, like nothing had happened.

“I don't care,” she said loudly, as if to drown out her own embarrassment. “It's not like other people follow those ridiculous rules.”

“Well, I do care. And as your teamleader, I cannot in good conscience engage in this type of action with you. My work means too much to me. I know the Office of Mercy means a great deal to you too. Besides,” he said, with a small and infuriating smile, “we're not even of the same generation. You'd be better off with someone like Eric, or one of the other Epsilon men—”

“Oh, stop it, Jeffrey,” Natasha said, cutting him off. “I'm really sick of how you've been treating me. You've been a real jerk and it's just getting worse.”

He paused, considering this accusation. “You mean since the mission.”

“Of course that's what I mean,” Natasha answered, completely exasperated. “What else would I be talking about?”

He retrieved his waterglass from the bedside table, his expression thoughtful and cold. In the course of just minutes, he had managed to banish the whole, amazing moment of their kiss and return them right back to where they'd been before, when Natasha had first entered his sleeproom. He took a sip, regarding her from over the top of the glass.

“I'm extremely disappointed in you, Natasha. You're aware of that, right?”

Of all the terrible things she had imagined him saying, she had not prepared herself for this. The words hit her with material force.

“What do you mean?”

“Not, not this.” He waved his hand at where they'd been standing. “I'm talking about the mission.”

Natasha shook her head, unable to speak.

“I went to the Alphas,” he continued. “I vouched for you. I put my own reputation on the line. I told them that I'd never seen a young member of the Office of Mercy with more promise. That you had more than lived up to your scores on the Office of Mercy entrance exam. So how do you thank me? First you refused to listen to me—everyone refused to listen to me—when I said that the mission had changed. Then in the field you go gallivanting off on your own despite my warnings. And then . . . then you fail to maintain the Wall at the most crucial moment. And not even in the face of a human being, but for a dog! Never consulting with me or Arthur, never stopping to think how suspicious it was, that a Tribe dog just happened to find you. You ran right into their trap!”

“Fine.” Natasha blinked, fighting to hide her emotion. “Fine, I understand.”

“I'm not done yet,” Jeffrey said. “At the very least, you could try to make up for it now. Instead, you go spouting nonsense to Arthur, the head of your Office. You come running to me in my sleeproom during my leisure hours. . . . Did you know I have Claudia going behind my back, talking to the Alphas? If it were up to her, she'd get both of us transferred.”

His tirade seemed to exhaust itself here, but it was too late, because Natasha felt she would collapse if he made her listen to more. Amazed that her legs could carry her, she got up and walked out of the room. Three people passed her in the corridor but she did not dare look up or return their singsong hellos. She jammed the button for the elephant until the slow, stupid thing arrived; and, by the power of will alone, she managed to keep the explosion of tears at bay until the doors had closed.

Her own sleeproom was mercifully empty. On her bed, someone had left a bag of freshly laundered clothes, the clothes that she had worn on the morning of the mission. Beside the lamp on the bedside table stood a waterglass with three daisies and, tucked beneath the glass, a note from Min-he:
Welcome home!
Natasha sniffed and inhaled a shuddering breath. That was kind. Min-he must have snatched the daisies from the Garden when no one was looking, as the private use of Department of Agriculture flowers was not allowed. Natasha pulled off her shoes and lay facedown on her bed, letting her own misery overwhelm her as Jeffrey's terrible words echoed through her body in painful waves. Was it possible? Natasha wondered. Had she really misunderstood him so completely? All her life, Jeffrey had distinguished her from the group, had made her his confidante, his apprentice, his favorite. It was simply impossible to believe his indifference. She could not believe it! And yet. The facts spoke for themselves: she had kissed him and he had stopped her. The memory of it was excruciating, and Natasha pressed her face down until the air was hot and she could hardly breathe. She felt humiliated and she sobbed, hating Jeffrey and hating the world.