Out (24 page)

If I turn to
see who it is, I might fall, or they might shoot me. Would they shoot me if my
back is to them? Not sure. I keep going. One more step. Water to the knee. One
more. Hard to stand.

“Chris!” The
voice is clearer, familiar. I balance with my arms stretched out, a tightrope
walker, and the soggy blanket falls into the water, carried away in the dark. I
turn three-quarters of the way around, and on the bank behind me is Magnus.

But then it’s
too late. A weighted net knocks me into the river and I go under, try to hold
my breath, but the shock of hitting the cold water forces the breath from my
lungs. Which way is up? Where is the air? Choking, I gasp and grasp for the
surface, but I don’t know where it is. Something drags at the net, and I feel
myself being pulled further into the water, and I can’t breathe. Can’t breathe!
The grid of rope pushes my face down, digs into my skin as the net is pulled,
and I grasp at it with my icy fingers, try to break it, but it’s too strong.
Can’t breathe! Please! I thrash with deadened arms against the tightening
cords, and I try to shout, but water fills my mouth.

And then
suddenly I feel warm. Light fills my eyes, and my body relaxes. I smell
violets.

Pain.

It starts as a
small red fish swimming in my leg, pulling against a hook, trying to get free,
but then it moves up the leg, into the hip, becomes a shark, moves into my
lungs, becomes a monster, moves into my head,
throbsthrobsthrobs
,
wants to get out, can’t get out.

I’m in a white
room. White tiles, white floor, white fluorescent light buzzing overhead. I
move my head a quarter inch to the right, and searing hot stabs of pain spear
my cheek. Swallow. My throat is dry, so dry, and feels bruised, like if I tried
to talk nothing would come out but a puff of dust. My hands and feet are bound to
the chair with zip ties. My pants are wet, not from the river, but from pissing
myself. I can smell it.

A whir in the
corner of the room draws my attention, though focusing my eyes brings on a
pounding in my forehead. A camera, black, unblinking. Its lens telescopes
toward me.

A rush of
adrenaline hits my system. Carmen! Where is she? Did they get her? The memory
of the night floods back—Magnus’s ghost-white face in the trees, the drag of
the net, the icy grip of the water… How will I find her in this…place? Wherever
it is.

The door swings
open, and a man in a white coat enters. A doctor? Could I be lucky enough to be
in a hospital? But they don’t zip tie you at a hospital, do they?

The man
consults a clipboard. “Christopher Bryant. Is that your name?” He’s very
efficient. He stays by the door.

I try to
answer, but a croak comes out.

“Please speak
up. Is Christopher Bryant your name or not?”

I nod.

He checks a
box. “Good. Someone will be in with water and a change of clothes.” He clips
his pen to his pocket, and I try to ask him a question, but he leaves before I
can get the words out. The promise of water gives me hope. If they were really
bad people, they wouldn’t give me water, right? Maybe I was rescued and they
just wanted to be sure I didn’t walk away while I was delirious or something.
They probably have Carmen in another room, probably making sure she’s okay.
Maybe they’re with the resistance too. Maybe it’s a secret facility that they
use when things don’t go right.

Minutes pass. I
spend the time trying to wiggle my fingers, which are numb from being strapped
to the arms of the metal chair. The door opens again, and this time a heavyset
blond woman in a khaki uniform comes in. She has a jug of water in one hand and
a bright orange prison jumpsuit in the other.

“I’m going to
cut the ties.” She places the jug and clothes on a table, and takes a utility
knife out of her pocket. “There are armed guards outside the door. Please don’t
run. They’ll shoot you.” She leans over, quickly cuts the zip ties on my arms,
and hands me the water, which I gulp down greedily. “Slow down or you’ll get
sick.”

I keep gulping.
Some of it comes back up, but I don’t care. She sits on a table top opposite
me, just watching as I heave.

 
She sighs, shakes her head as if disappointed,
and then comes over with her knife, swiftly cutting the ties on my legs. “First
thing is a shower. You stink.” Quick as anything, she has a long metal pole
with a loop attached to it, the kind they use on dangerous animals, and the
loop’s around my neck. “Nice and slow. Walk toward the back of the room, toward
that green door.” She nods in the direction she wants me to go. I do what she
says.
 

My legs wobble,
and I barely get to the door without falling over. How long have I been sitting
there? The woman keeps her distance, the length of the metal pole between us.

“Open the door.”

I do.

It’s a cubicle
of white tile with a disc-shaped showerhead the size of a Frisbee. She pushes
me in, leaves the door open, and stamps a button on the floor with her foot. A
stream of ice-cold water gushes from the fixture, and I yelp.
 
“Take off the clothes,” she commands. It’s
tough to do with the loop collar around my neck, but I manage. I shiver, naked
under the icy stream, but it beats sitting in piss on the metal chair.

After a couple
of minutes, she pushes the pedal with her foot again and the water stops. “Forward,”
she says. I move forward slowly, out of the shower stall. “There’s a towel on
the table. Dry off and put on the jumpsuit.” She steers me toward the table
where I dry off, pick up the orange coverall, pull it up, zip it. It’s rough
and scratchy, but clean.

“We’re going to
an intake room,” she tells me. “We’re walking toward that metal door, and on
the other side, two guards will escort us to another room down the hall. Just
walk normally and nothing bad will happen.”

“Can I—” I
start to ask. A sharp, biting electric pain stabs me behind the ear, makes me
stumble.

“No talking.
Just follow directions.” She drags me by the collar toward the metal door.
Jesus, the pain throbs, blurring edges, almost blinding me. “That
pain’ll
pass. But don’t talk.”

I shuffle,
barefoot, through the door. There are guards, just as she said. They wear these
black storm-trooper type outfits, and look so serious I want to laugh, but I’m
afraid I’ll get shot or shocked.

“Keep moving,”
the woman yelps. I do.
 
When we get to
the third door down the corridor, she yanks the collar, and I stop. “Good.
 
Now, just stay still.” She goes around me as
if I might have a contagious disease, then raps on the door quickly, just one
forceful knock.

The door opens,
and she shove me in. There’s an exam table, like in a doctor’s office, and
charts on the wall, a glass cabinet full of bottles and swabs. “Wait here.”

“But—” I croak,
but the door’s already shut. I wish I had more water.

I’m
ridiculously tired, so I curl up on the exam table, my feet up under the cloth
of the orange jumpsuit. Cold, too. White rooms always seem colder. I must fall
asleep because the next thing I know, the metal door slams shut, the overhead
lights are off, and a single glaring spotlight shines into my face from above,
blocking out everything else. I’m flat on my back, arms strapped to my sides,
head strapped down, and the orange jumpsuit is pulled down to my waist.

“Chris Bryant.”
A man’s voice. Not familiar. A shuffling of papers. “David Bryant’s son?”

“Yes,” I
whisper. A shock stabs my chest, takes my breath away. Electrodes are wired to
my neck and chest and head.

“Louder,
please. We’re recording everything you’re saying.” I hear a whisper…must be
more than one person in here with me. I can’t turn my head. “Now, again. Are
you Chris Bryant, son of David Bryant?”

I try to answer
more loudly. “Yes.” No shock. Good.

“We’re going to
ask some questions. Please answer honestly.”

“Where am—”
Shock, bigger than the first, like an electric knife to my heart.

“No questions.
Just answers.” The voices whisper again, and I’m panting, trying to stifle a
scream. “What happened to Mr. McFarland?”

I wet my lips,
dry as sand. “I don’t know.” Electric teeth bite into my skin, rip it from my
bones, Jesus! Make it stop! “I don’t know!”

Footsteps click
on the floor, slowly, coming toward me. A face looms over me, a woman in a
surgical mask, blocking the light above. Her eyes are cruel and brightly blue. “We
know that you were part of a plan to get rid of him,” she says calmly,
soothingly. “You don’t need to hide it. We already know.”

Do they know?
Are they guessing? What is the right answer? Maybe some part of the truth? “He
went out to get the bags and didn’t come back,” I rasp. She stares into my
eyes.

“Why were you
out in the woods?” She asks it as if she’s inquiring about some shopping trip.

“I was looking
for him.” No shock. I guess the woman is the one who decides. If I can convince
her that I was looking for him, maybe…maybe they’ll stop.

“Why would you
think he was in the woods?” She tilts her head, arches her eyebrows. Current
rips through my chest again—pain, pain, electric pain, red, white, sparks,
darkness flooding…

“Stop.”

Tears. Piss. My
breath is trapped in my chest, afraid to come out.

“Now, Chris,”
the woman whispers, crouching near my face. “We both want the same thing. You
want me to make this stop. I want to stop it. All you have to do is help me. Do
you want to help me?”

I nod. Yes.
Yes. I want to help.

“Doctor
Castleman
,” a voice from behind her says, then a man clears
his throat. “A word.”

She stares at
me, touches my nose with her latex-gloved finger. “Be right back,” she says, as
if we’re playing a game of checkers.

This cannot be
worth whatever they are going to do to me. I am not a hero. I am the wrong
person for this. I will tell them everything they want to know…I’ll make things
up if I have to. Would they know? I have to get out. Maybe Dad. If they know
who I am, who he is, that might help me. I could make up a story that I didn’t
know anything about it, that I saw some guy in the woods and I’d never seen him
before, and—

Carmen.

Oh, if it was
just me. Just me. I could do all of this, get out, beg, plead. I can’t leave
her here …what if she’s here? The thought of them doing this to her…or worse…my
stomach hurts. Jesus. How can I save both of us? I can’t even acknowledge that
I know her.

The doctor is
back. She blocks the light again, her giant face hovering above me. “Well,
Chris. Seems you come from a very important family, hmm? You father is coming
to pick you up.” The metal bands at my head and feet and hands snap open. To
one of the other people, she says, “Get him fresh clothes. Not the jumpsuit.
Put him in the waiting room.” She turns to me again, pulls the mask down, and
smiles. She doesn’t look evil at all. “I’m still not sure I believe you, dear,
but eventually I’ll find out. And don’t worry…if you’ve been doing things
against God and nature, eventually, it catches up to you. It’s just God’s way.”
 

I’m numb. They
march me out, put me in a room without tying me up or having a lasso around my
neck. Suddenly I’m not a criminal, I’m a guest. A set of clothes (my clothes!
clean!) sits on a chair. I put them on, look in a chipped mirror. I’m pale,
sick-looking, tired. What will I tell David?

Lying on the
chair is my bracelet, still wrapped in red yarn. They took it off with my
clothes. I pick it up delicately, as if it might crumble like sand in my
fingers, and fasten it around my wrist.

 
I sit and wait.

I’m in what
they call “the waiting room.”
 
It’s nice,
like a dentist’s office or something, muted blues and greens, soft, practical
furniture. I’ve been sitting in here for what seems like hours, with no human
contact at all. I try the door once, but it’s locked.

 
I wait for something to happen—a shock, poison
gas, something. But nothing. I thought David was coming. I tap my feet. Pace.
Count the magazines on the wooden coffee table. Mostly Parallel-based
evangelical stuff.

I pick up a
kid’s book: Bible Stories. We had one like this when I was little. I flip to
David and Goliath, my favorite. I loved how David married Goliath, and then
when Goliath got too powerful and turned away from God, David
smited
him. Smote him? The story of Daniel and the lions is
here too…how Daniel refused to deny his belief in the Parallel God, and he was
killed for it, tossed to hungry lions while everyone watched.

God was so
present then. Where is God now? And why does he hate Perpendiculars? I can’t
find anything in here that talks about it. Now that I think of it, it’s just
something we were told…and when you’re a kid, you just believe what you’re
told. These people all just believe what they’re told.

Carmen crosses
my mind again. My heart feels like it’s ripping in two. I’m not strong, not
like David in the bible story, not like David my father, not like Carmen.

“Chris Bryant?”
A pretty woman in a green dress opens the door and smiles at me. “Your visitors
are here. Come with me, please.”
 
I
follow her down a long hallway, very industrial-looking, into a larger,
prettier area carpeted and painted more like the waiting room. “Conference room
two,” the woman says, gesturing toward a door. I notice that guards stand at
the entrance to this area, wearing gray security uniforms.
 
Maybe they don’t want anyone to know what
they’re doing here.

David and
Warren are sitting in the conference room, in two big swivel chairs behind a
long black table. “Chris!’ Warren jumps up, runs over and squeezes me so tight
I think I might break. It sends shooting pains through my chest where the
electric shocks burnt the skin, but I don’t let go.