Veracity (18 page)

The man finishes by saying that anyone other than Candace shouldn't bother going to the hospital. No one else is being permitted entrance for obvious quarantine reasons.

All around me, it's pandemonium.

The early morning traffic is light, as it has been for the last few days. People are staying in where possible. Most of those on the streets are wearing the protective blue masks. I catch them watching me at stoplights. Peeking at me through the windows of their cars. Perhaps it's that I'm godmother to the dying girl and best friend of the absent Alpha mother. Or maybe they're surprised to see me without a mask, breathing the polluted air. It's not bravado, or stupidity. I simply know there is no threat of infection. How I know, I can't explain.

I park my car in the underground garage and walk the few blocks to the Murdon Building. When I make it to National House Square, I notice there are no people waiting outside the prostitutes' quarters and many queued up at the prayer tents.

"Morning, Monitor Adams." Security Guard Jones smiles as I pass through the gate.

"Good morning."

He picks up my satchel and purse from the conveyor belt and slides them over each of my arms, taking his time to adjust them on my shoulders. Head lowered, lips close to my ear, he asks, "Heard anything from Monitor Hillard?"

I shake my head no and he nods, lips rolling back into a frown.

At my office, I put down my things and turn to find my desk covered with dozens of new folders. I pick up the top
one and stare at the two words stamped on its front:
Urgent
and
Confidential
. Slowly, I turn it over, holding my breath. Praying not to see what is indeed stamped there in bright red ink.
Security Class Alpha
.

I put a hand over my mouth.
Jesus, no
.

Something has happened. Last night, sometime after I left, someone left these Alpha class files in a long, sliding pile on top of all my others. I close my eyes.
Have they already killed her?
Without any formal notice, have I already become the Alpha?

Quickly, hands shaking, I gather up a few of the beige folders to take down to Mr. Weigland. I go to push out of my seat and am grabbed by the arm. Before I can see who it is, the files are knocked to the floor and I'm pulled through my cubicle door. Candace is marching us down the rear aisle, her stride long and fast. She doesn't look over as we pass Mr. Weigland's office, but I see him there. His head turns quickly, conveniently, away.

As soon as we're through the door to the women's restroom, Candace pushes me against the marble counter and begins turning on all the hot water taps. I watch her as she works. Her hair is loose and kinked. Not styled as she usually has it, every curl pristine and in its place. Her long nails have been cut and her hands look chafed. She's not wearing a suit. Isn't even wearing her own clothes. I can tell by the way they fit. Her dark blue trousers are too short, ending at the top of black lace-up boots. The straw-colored jacket is a man's, and beneath it there's a beige cotton shirt stretched tight across her chest.

"Sssshhhh." She holds a finger to her lips and points at the fogging mirror. As I watch my reflection thicken and fade, she backs up toward the door and sets a foot along its base.

Letters are forming, condensing on the mirror. Cursive writing that's hard to make out because I've rarely seen it like that, full of loops and connected. With the oil of her skin, Candace has written something inside the obscuring steam.

There is a resistance. There is such a thing as
The Book of Noah.
Inside it are all the answers to all our questions, how we'll win back our lives. It's worth fighting for. Even at this cost
. . .

I look immediately back at Candace, who nods.
Yes
. She was recruited by this resistance.
Yes
. She tried to run.

"Hello!" A woman is banging against the closed door.

There's more writing but no time to read it. The door moves toward us an inch, then recedes. Candace repositions her foot and spreads her arms against the threshold for leverage.

"Just a minute," I say, turning off the hot water and turning on the cold.

I dip some paper towels into the basin and begin wiping at the mirror.

"Hello!
Hello!
Let me in, please!"

"Spilled some water . . . just a minute." I throw away the towel. Use my forearm against the mirror, like a blade.

"Hey!" One heavy push and Candace is knocked sideways.

I quickly ease down from the sink's marble shelf and turn just in time to see the woman come in. It's a Monitor from the south wing. A rustling, broad woman who wears thick glasses that are currently hanging by a string around her neck. She stops when she sees Candace. Her expression of annoyance turns into one of pity. With a nod and a quick turn of her head, the woman trudges down the line of toilets, taking the one at the very far end. She doesn't see the smudged mirror.

Quickly, Candace and I finish wiping away the words. I've barely tossed the last of the paper towels into the trash when, again, the door's pushed inward, this time producing a dark cloud of men. Most of them surround Candace, trapping her inside the tight circle of their bodies. The rest make themselves into a fence neither I nor the heavy Monitor can breach.

"Alpha Sentient Monitor Candace Hillard!" One of the men begins calling her numbers. There are so many, they run
together. "501. 505. 637, 688, 881 . . ." All the worst ones are there. Rape and torture. Numbers reserved for people needing to be made an example of.

I can't see Candace through the blue-clad bodies between us, but I can feel her. The fear and rage that had marked her for all the weeks surrounding BodySpeak is gone. What's left is peace, the fragrant deep purple of forgiveness and finality. Clouds of it are rising off of her. They collect above her like waves of heat and impale her captors with soft, potent tendrils. Some of them are changed by it. Confused, they step away, leaving an opening through which I see a part of her face. Her green-brown eyes. Half a smile. She's ready to go.

At first, I think Candace is being escorted by gunpoint to the bank of elevators. I expect the Blue Coats to take her out of the building and down to the Geddard Building, where the torture will begin. But when the silver elevator doors open, a new group of policemen appear--three of them short and one tall, even taller than Candace. The shorter men are folded into the waiting group as the tall one takes the lead. He walks directly toward Mr. Weigland, who's been trying to penetrate the wall erected around Candace with no success. The tall Blue Coat takes Mr. Weigland by the arm and heads the whole bunch of them down the hall toward the large conference room. I watch from the middle of my group, captive or onlooker, I'm not yet sure.

Candace flashes me a backward glance and my composure is lost.

"No!" I'm screaming. "Stop! Stop this!" I know where they're going, what they're about to do, and cup my hands around my mouth to scream. "Candace! Candace! Candace!"

Just before turning into the meeting conference room, the one we visit Mondays and Wednesdays to go through the latest Red Listed words, she turns around.

"My baby paid for this!" she shouts. Candace has stopped moving of her own accord and is now being dragged along the other way. "Make it worth it!" She's producing tears that
run in perfect lines down both cheeks. "Make it worth it! Make it worth what happened to my baby!"

A Blue Coat begins toward me. He asks, "What was that supposed to mean?" That thing Candace just said.
Does it make sense to me? Is there something he should know?

All I can see of this man are his colors. He's obscured by a cloud of brick-red lust and dark brown self-loathing. I'm stunned when an arm comes through this fog and grabs me by the arm. Like the lens of a camera adjusting, the Blue Coat comes into view. He's short, with scratches scarred into his cheeks and neck. One of his earlobes has been bitten off. These are the signatures of his victims. Wounds he probably considers trophies. It produces in me a rage I'm able to use as cover for my lies.

"I don't know what she was talking about!"
You asshole!
"And I don't have anything else to tell you, so fuck off!"

The man is confused by my seeming lack of fear. He lets go of my arm and steps back. Pulls out a cigarette for our wait.

The other Blue Coats are going through the women's restroom. I hear a summation of their efforts as they pour back out. The only thing found was a spill mopped up with a basketful of wet towels. No sign of messages. No remnants or codes. No utensils that would've been used in their production.

I'm taken to Mr. Weigland's office, where another group of Blue Coats are waiting to question me. Then I'm pushed into a chair and made to regurgitate into a recording device answers that mean nothing. Lies I know damned well will set off alarms upon even the most casual review. But what are my options? Anyone with any sense will see right through me. It's absurd to think that the thing to kill me may very well be my ineffectual ability to lie.

The sound of a gun firing startles us, even the Blue Coats who've been shouting over one another to make sure they each get in their questions.

Someone shot Candace.
I can't believe it. From the deflated looks on the other Blue Coats' faces, neither can they.

"No." I stand up and nobody stops me.

I step toward the hallway and am pushed back by the tall Blue Coat coming through the door. He's disheveled. His brown eyes full of what he's just done.

This man is all business. He pushes me roughly back into my seat and goes directly to Mr. Weigland. Without asking, the Blue Coat frees the handkerchief my Manager keeps neatly tucked in his vest pocket and uses it to wipe off some blood caught on the ridge of his hand. Candace's blood.

"No." It's such a simple recalcitrance, I don't recognize it as being me. "No," I repeat so low, no one even hears.

Mr. Weigland can't meet the man in the eye. He takes back his ruined handkerchief and folds it perfectly between his hands. Tucks it back into the lapel of his suit.

Is this what we've become?
I am lost. This is, finally, beyond what I can comprehend. We now stand for formality over the murder of our loved ones.
Is that who we are? Is that who I am?
This can no longer be the place I live, the place I work, the place I raise my child.
Where am I to go. Where am I to go. Where am I to take Veracity.

"Harper," someone is saying.

I ignore them.
Candace is dead. Killed by a Blue Coat. Worn in Mr. Weigland's right front pocket.

Sharper, spoken in a concerned whisper, "Harper."

Mr. Weigland has come over to look directly in my eyes. In his I see panic. In his voice, I hear stern command. "Harper! Sit down! Now!"

I'm out of my seat, though I don't remember standing.

"Sit down, Harper. Now." Mr. Weigland is acting all business but there are large red veins starting in his eyes.
Play along now.
He's putting on a good show but, like me, is ruined inside.

The tall Blue Coat concurs. "Sit her down, boys," he says, and I'm shoved into my seat.

Mr. Weigland puts both hands on my shoulders and gives me a pointed look.
Stay calm. Stay put. Don't do anything rash.

The tall Blue Coat goes straight to the terminal that's been gathering my answers and inserts a flash drive into a port. After my answers have been dumped onto the fingernail-size chip, he couples the disk to a palm-size machine both he and Mr. Weigland can read. They huddle themselves into a corner, watching and listening as the other men gather around me. I try to catch glimpses of the red waveforms shining from the tall man's hand, but the other Blue Coats fill in the holes between us. I can't see a thing.

Mr. Weigland whispers something into the tall Blue Coat's ear, and that quickly, it's over. The group of men leave. I've been deemed innocent.

I watch them go out the door, then get up and follow them all the way to the elevators, daring them with my proximity and large, questioning eyes. Down buttons are pressed and the tall Blue Coat waits for the elevators with his head bowed over rounded shoulders. Just as the silver doors open, he peeks covertly over a shoulder and looks at me as the other men flow around him. I can't process the nature of his stare. It appears as if he might change his mind. Come back and gather me up. Drag me along with them.

The next day, channel 4 declares a reprieve from panic. The Pandemic has not returned and the threat is over. The blue masks disappear. Lines at the prostitutes' tents reappear.

I go to the hospital, sure they'll finally let me in to visit Hannah, but am too late. I'm told by a pale nurse with wandering eyes that my goddaughter has passed away. Her body is already in transit to some research facility in the south. I can't see her. I should stop shouting.

But I don't stop. I scream the simplest questions until I'm hoisted away.
How? When? Why?
Monosyllabic, ultimately answerable questions. But the pale-skinned nurse and the three Blue Coats who bear me away from her station can't answer a one.

With me hidden on the floorboards of his passenger seat, John Gage drives to the far edge of Bond. To the southern expanse where the square brick homes give up their geometry to the flat terrain of the wastelands. We don't speak on the way. When we're to our destination, Gage stops his car and reaches over to unbuckle my seat belt.

"Ezra has to take you in."

The belt slips off my lap and is sucked back into the car. I watch it go, wincing as the metal head slaps against the passenger window.