Veracity (26 page)

"Harper?" Mr. Weigland comes over. Puts his big eyes all over me. "What is it?"

"Make them stop."

On the other side of the wall, the old man is shouting. He wants the subject's eyes open. Doesn't matter how.

"This isn't helping!" I rush past Mr. Weigland toward the intercom but don't know which button to push. "How do I talk?" I flip buttons and levers, shouting as if the old man can hear me. "Hello! Hello! Stop it! It's not helping!"

"Harper!" Mr. Weigland wraps his wrists around mine. Pulls me away while whispering in my ear, "What are you doing?"

"I know her," I whisper back. "Help me, please."

Mr. Weigland looks through the window toward the men who're pulling at the woman, extending her. He grits his
teeth and reaches under the panel. "Sergeant, our Monitor would prefer the subject be left . . ." He can't think of the right word and frowns over at me. ". . . unadulterated. If you don't mind."

The Sergeant motions his men off the suspect. Immediately, she ducks her head. "Okay. You've got two minutes. What next?"

"Sergeant, sir . . . Monitor Adams is a part of BodySpeak."

The old man's look of skepticism subsides. He sighs. Scratches his head. "So she can
see
this suspect's answers? Is that right?"

"Something like that, sir."

"Something like that or exactly that?" The Sergeant pushes off the wall. Comes closer so he can frown right into one of the cameras. "We don't have time for bullshit, Manager."

Mr. Weigland looks at me. "Ask your questions, sir. My Monitor will read the woman's answers." He shrugs.
Is this right?

I nod vigorously.

The old Blue Coat motions to the others, who come sulking back over to his side of the room. "We're to shout out our questions first, boys, and give this Monitor here a little time. We'll get to doing it our way soon enough."

The two men are eager. Their questions come out tangled, one on the tail of another.

Lucille has pulled something over her head, a drape of camouflaging energy. It deflects everything. The dark and mirrored walls, the men and their red-black hate. It's a good bit of cover but I'm able to project my way through it anyway. It's as simple as touching the substance with the
thought of a finger. It's aqueous. Ripples outward like the disrupted surface of water. Lucille jolts and the substance splits.
Sentient Lucille
. She recognizes me easily and for a few seconds, we're safe and away from all this death and torture. Then Sergeant starts barking and I'm sucked back into the observing space.

"Does she have the goddamned book or doesn't she?" Sergeant looks into the camera and smiles. "Does she have
The Book of Noah
?"

Mr. Weigland glares at me.
Well?

I'm too fuzzy to speak quite yet. It's too early.

Sergeant yells,
"Goddamnit, Weigland! How long are we going to do this?"

"Harper?" Mr. Weigland is asking gently. Behind him, Sergeant is shouting the same question through the speaker.

I'm sad to the core. Ask thickly, "Can you bring her closer to the camera, please?"

It's what Lucille wants.

Mr. Weigland steps to the speaker and relates the information. In the other room, Sergeant has the two Blue Coats deliver Lucille closer to camera one. She smiles up at me. I've done right.

"Does she have a copy of
The Book of Noah
in her possession?" the Sergeant asks.

I answer, "No."

"Has she read
The Book of Noah
?"

I nod yes. Mr. Weigland relays my answer.

"Does she know where to get a copy of
The Book of Noah
?"

Yes
.

"Is she a part of the resistance?"

Lucille answers this time. "Yes."

"All right, Manager Weigland . . ." I hear Sergeant saying.

But I'm watching Lucille. A ball of electric blue has begun in her chest. It expands past her other colors, envelops them.

I put my hand on the screen where her face is barely visible beneath it. She reaches up and touches the bare metal of the
camera's arm. There's a terrible beauty to what she's doing. I wish Mr. Weigland could see it. And these men.

Mr. Weigland has a hand covering the microphone.
Harper?

In the other room, all three Blue Coats are in the far corner, conferring.

Lucille's hand is firmly on the camera's metal joist. She begins, smiling, " 'Two roads diverged in a wood, and I--I took the one less traveled by, and that has made all the difference.'" She smiles at exactly the place I'm standing, "It's called a po-e . . ."

Poem
. I don't know this word, have never heard it before. But it's there, like those long-ago numbers from Mr. Mitchell's class, suddenly stamped on her energy.
P-O-E-M
has appeared over the territory of her bosom, even before she can get out the final syllable that will set fire to her slate.

The silver explodes, becomes a spark of orange-red, and back goes Lucille's head. The Red Listed word has become a surge of electricity eradicating her voice and rolling up her eyes. It shoots through the camera's metal arm and explodes the bulb, and the fuse beyond. The lights go out and all that's left in the other room are voices.

Mr. Weigland and I sit together in the dark on the floor, not moving. We listen over the open microphone to the people coming and going in the interrogation room. There is the scraping sound of Lucille's body being removed. A hose unwound. Water forced through. The high-pitched hiss of blood
being washed off the concrete. Then the gurgling sound of it being sucked down the drain. Sergeant says there's no fucking way they're going to do this again. No. Fucking. Way.

The announcement of the program's termination is a small relief. Salve on a terminal wound.

"Harper. You okay?" Mr. Weigland asks.

"Sure," I answer. Look what Lucille became. So much more than me.

"Get up." Ezra shoves me on the back. She's standing at the side of my cot wearing garb different from her norm. She's in all earth colors. A beige cotton T-shirt. Canvas pants cow-pattied in greens and browns. "Here." She tosses me a handful of clothes like her own. "Get dressed. Meet me in the back room. Training starts in five minutes."

I'm about to meet my trainer.

I roll out of the cot. Shuck myself like an ear of corn. "Who's training me?" I ask simply. As if I don't care.

Ezra rolls her eyes. "
I'm
your trainer, Adams. Jesus, I'd have thought you'd figured that out by now." She disappears back through the canvas door before I can close my mouth.

I sit limply on my bed. Pull on my socks. The right boot slides on without a fight. The left one needs to have the laces pulled out some, but I don't want to slip it off, go to all the goddamned hassle of working them loose again. So I jam in my foot, yanking on the heel with both hands until my fingers turn white, but it won't go. I pull it off. Slam the boot into the near wall.

When I get to the back room, Ezra's already moved the tables and chairs out of the way. She's sitting on the floor, stretching and smoking a cigarette.

I drop the too-small boot on the floor. Sit down and try again to yank it on. "Are we allowed to smoke down here?"

"
I'm
allowed." Ezra blows a smoke ring my way. "Now listen up. We're going to run through self-defense and ground skills."

"What about weapons?" I ask, taking too much time with the laces. The way Veracity used to do when she didn't want to go anywhere.

"We don't hand out guns to every new recruit." Ezra gives me a long-suffering look. Stubs her cigarette out on a dish brought in from the kitchen. "Have you ever even
seen
a gun?"

"Yes."
I work in the country's capital, drive past the National House all the time. I see guns every day. Hear them as long, tall blips on dead peoples' files. "I don't want one. I was just asking."

"Good." Ezra takes her plate of ashes and sets it on a corner chair. "You know why most Blue Coats don't carry guns?"

"I don't know, Ezra. Tell me." I can't focus on this woman and her sour mood. A haze has begun to rise up from the floor, like heat coming off hot pavement. I watch it float toward the ceiling and try not to notice the walls and how they shake as Ezra talks. This is how my claustrophobia begins. The room falls apart first, then me.

Ezra drones on but I'm lost to her voice.

"Hey! Adams! Have you heard a thing I've said?"

I've been staring vacantly past her. Move my eyes over and nod. "Cops don't like guns because there are more of us than there are of them. Because they can fall into the wrong hands. Because they prefer to torture people. I heard you." It never ceases to amaze me, this other brain I've developed. It keeps me prescient when my first one wants to wander. "Do we have
any
guns?" I've started to sweat. Wipe my head on the hem of my shirt.

"A few. But any weapons you'll be bringing onto the field, you're already wearing. Now put your hands up."

A few people have come out to watch. They stand propped up against the walls. Sit sideways in the chairs.

Ezra moves to the center of the room. Frowns at my stance, my curled-up fingers, my thumbs sticking out over the knuckles. "Did you actually
practice
?"

One delivery from my recruiter was two sheets of dissolving paper showing sixteen basic fighting stances. It took me two hours in the women's locker room to learn just over half of them. By the end of that time, my sweating palms had disintegrated a good part of the edge.

"Yes."
Some
. I didn't have anyone to practice with.

She leans down and takes hold of one of my hamstrings. Digs in with the tip of her thumb.

"What are you doing?" I step away and she pulls me back.

"Hold still." She pokes me on the back. Tricep. Bicep. Delt. Hard. Quick. Punishing.

"Ouch!"

Ezra smiles, just barely. I see the corners of her mouth go up. "I need to know what I'm working with. Take off your shirt."

I've done my time on the wood floor of my bedroom. In my closet doing pull-ups on a bar I installed as if it was just there to hold clothes. Am happy to pull my T-shirt over my head, show off the muscle I've spent months of countless hours making. I throw out my chest. Subtly squeeze my fists to pump a little extra blood into my arms. I'm excited to see how Ezra will react.

She circles me with a frown. Unimpressed, underwhelmed, unhappy with my meager tithe. She shakes her head. "You've been doing
all
your exercises?"

"Yes."

She crosses her arms, looks more closely at my torso. "For how long?"

"Since I decided to break."

A sigh. "Christ, we have some work to do."

"I'm not that bad." I hate that I say it. Wrap my arms one over the other, covering up.

"Uh-huh." Ezra pulls her T-shirt over her head and I'm abashed.

She's all muscle. Every ounce. Abdomen, arms, chest, nothing but shadowed clefts and bundled sinew. Her shoulders are broad, distended away from her collarbone, showing their knobby ends. A line marks the division between her breasts, or where her breasts would be if she had any. Most of her wardrobe is slight of material. It's amazing such physicality doesn't show.

Before I can process it, Ezra's running toward me, her tight white body a blur against the dark walls. She knocks me off center but I don't lose my footing. As I right myself, she uses the backward momentum to spin into a perfect fighting stance. I sidestep so I won't fall. Ball up my hands and raise them in front of my face. There's not going to be a warm-up.

Ezra throws a fist that catches my forearm. The pain is immediate.

"Jesus Christ!" I jerk away, expecting she'll give me leave to nurse my injury, but she doesn't.

Ezra uses the distraction of my pain to punch me repeatedly. Three more crisp, potent jabs. Kidneys. Back. Side.

Christ
.

"Come on, Adams! Fight me!" She doesn't even sound winded.

Ezra steps forward again, drives a fist into my shoulder, twice into my ribs.
God. What if they snap?

I twist away. Offer up my back. She lands more blows on my shoulder, a few close to my spine. One tags me on the hip, right on the bone, and the pain is like fire on an exposed nerve. I step back and gather myself. Sufficiently pissed to finally get in the game.

"Come on!" Ezra shouts, bouncing on the balls of her feet.

I mimic her position. Turn my body sideways to narrow her field of contact and lash out with my left fist. It lands solidly in the cup of her hand. She pitches it away like it was nothing.