Machinations (11 page)

Together, the strongest arms begin to lift the beam from across Camus's legs. In their haste, the team upsets the other pylon, nearly bringing down the feeble ceiling on top of themselves. As soon as the area is designated safe enough, the doctors rush forward in a blur of white lab coats, lifesaving equipment in hand. I think I stop breathing, able only to watch and pray.

Camus is limp, unmoving, as they hoist his body from the metal wreckage. He's pale underneath a thin film of dust, with dirt caked around a bloody head wound that looks worse in full light. His eyes are closed, but I think I see a flicker of movement behind the lids as the doctors strap him to a spinal board and equip him with a cervical collar.

All the while, I strain to catch bits and pieces of their harried conversation. They're tossing around words like
pulmonary embolism
and
linear fracture
and
possible
MTBI,
as well as a bunch of other medical jargon that sounds painful and life threatening.

I throw off my shock blanket and rush forward to meet them as they start to take him away. Samuel is unable to stop me. In hindsight, I don't think he actually tries to.

“Is he okay?” I ask in a rush of syllables. “Is he going to be all right?”

“Please, Commander, stand back,” one of the physicians, a woman, tells me.

Camus comes around briefly, eyes meaningfully finding mine. He tries to move the oxygen mask from his face with a weak hand, as if he wants to say something, but another doctor prevents him.

“You're going to be all right, Camus,” I tell him, even though I don't really know that for sure. After another moment, his eyes roll back beneath their lids.

I persist in following the gurney until the female physician breaks off from her fellows, barring me from going any farther.

“Don't let him die,” I say, not only to her, but to the other doctors, too. “You can't let him die! You won't.” An order, as if I have any control over life and death. Then, less forcefully, “Please, tell me you won't let him die.”

“We'll do everything in our power to save him,” she promises. “But you're going to have to trust us with this, ma'am.”

I nod stiffly before she disappears down the same corridor as the rest.

“Rhona,” Samuel says quietly behind me. I turn, swiping at my cheeks. He is all sympathy, and that makes me feel worse. “You really should let the doctors have a better look at you.”

“You're a doctor. Can't you just bandage me up or something?”

“I'm not that kind of…” he begins to say, then changes his mind. “Yeah. I can do that for you.”

I don't remember the walk back to the section of Command partitioned as living quarters, and I think it may be in part due to whatever medication the paramedics gave me earlier. In what seems like no time at all, we materialize in front of my room. Instead of going inside, we idle around the door like vagrants. I finally open it to a dark room filled with ghosts.

“I don't want to be here tonight.”
Alone with the past,
I mentally append. “Can we go to your place instead? I don't snore—I don't think.”

“Uh, sure,” Samuel agrees, looking equal parts surprised and confused. “My quarters are just around the hall here, but are you sure you wouldn't be more comfortable in your own bed?” I shake my head, but offer no reason why. “All right, but I can't say my place has nearly the amount of feng shui as yours.”

“Shut up,” I say, almost laughing at the joke.

“Did I forget to tell you? You were also an interior decorator in your other life,” he adds, continuing to rib me as we head toward his apartment.

“What are you doing?”

“Trying to distract you,” he answers honestly. “Is it working?”

“If I say yes, will you stop teasing me?” I reply, managing a smile even after everything that's happened. Samuel must be a miracle worker.

We reach his room without any more jokes about my decorating prowess. He's not kidding about the lack of feng shui, but then there's very little in the way of furniture at all. The place is as ordinary as could be, not looking the least bit lived in. I know he's been gone for the past two years, but I find myself wondering whose quarters these were before he moved back in. No space goes unused for long in McKinley unless there's a reason.

As Samuel goes to fetch a first-aid kit from the bathroom, I lie down on the bed and curl up on top of the covers. By the time I realize my mistake, I'm already drifting off. I open one eye slightly when a weight settles over me—a blanket, soft and warm and perfect. Without Samuel noticing, I watch him settle in on the couch on the other side of the room.

He rubs his face, exhaling slowly. When his hands finally come away, his eyes are unnaturally pink, rimmed by dark bags. I think it's because he's tired until I notice the thin streaks of tears. He pinches his nose, and wipes his cheek with the palm of his hand.

Feeling like an intruder, I close both eyes again, giving Samuel some privacy, but the image of him crying stays with me into sleep and troubles my dreams.

A little over a week later, I'm watching prerecorded cartoons on the flat-screen in my room when the picture flickers and clicks over to another image. The abrupt shift from surrealist cartoons to a live camera is disconcerting. This isn't some cheap found footage, made-for-TV movie, either, but a feed from the war room. Samuel and Matt are there, along with the other councilors. Sans Camus, who I haven't been allowed to see since the cave-in.

I'm confused. The time stamp on the footage indicates this meeting took place hours ago, so it has to be a recording. How did I get access to it? I try pressing a few buttons, but nothing happens.

“The subject displays traits characteristic of a trauma patient,” Matt is saying, only now he doesn't sound like
Matt
. Standing there, his face drawn and serious, he feels unfamiliar. One Dr. Shigeru who I don't know, rather than the friendly Matt who offered me a glass of water back when we first met. “Moderate to low-grade amnesia, confusion, heightened awareness of her surroundings…”

“Is she dangerous?” one councilmember asks. There are murmurs of curious wonder.

“No,” Samuel answers immediately.

“Only to the degree that her genetic donor was,” Dr. Shigeru clarifies. “We had an opportunity to test her combat aptitude last week, and she performed quite admirably, given her condition.”
Score!
Until this moment, I wasn't sure how I'd done. Camus stood in stony silence the entire time while I ran around the training room, testing my familiarity with various military hardware, reacting to some routine situations, and responding to fear stimuli—namely machines, under strict local control. “Added to the reports made by Doctor Lewis and Lieutenant Moore concerning the escape from Brooks facility, it seems fair to conclude the subject retained most, if not all, her knowledge of warfare. On the matter of the subject's memory, however, I will defer to my colleague's expertise.”

Samuel nods and utilizes holographic controls on the table to slide graphs and other diagrams onto the wall. Whatever he's showing the council is off camera, however, so I can't see them once he's thrown them up. I think back to my last visit to the war room, of the anatomical image being displayed. Was that me?

“There's no exact medical term for the type of memory loss the subject is suffering from.” I shut my eyes against the word
subject
coming from Samuel, as if I can shut my ears to it. “Calling it amnesia is something of a misnomer. Whatever she can't or doesn't remember isn't because she's forgotten it. It's because the memories were never properly mapped to her neural pathways during the process we call transference. Doctor Shigeru and myself have theorized that as a result of the interruption the brain hastened the executive function of discernment, randomly deciding which memories were important and which were not, on the basis of emotional content.

“To give you some understanding of how memory normally works, everything is processed through the visual, auditory, and olfactory areas of the brain. Even this minute, your brains are selecting information to associate with this meeting. The temperature of the room, the sound of my voice, all these things contribute to what is called episodic memory. You'll remember this meeting as a whole, while certain details—such as the color of my shirt—will be discarded as trivial.

“The subject's mind functions much the same way, except in her case, during transference, the brain received
every
memory as if it were short term. As a result, only—or rather,
mostly
—those memories with powerful emotional ties were passed on to the hippocampus to be kept as long-term memories. What she feels is closely related to what she remembers. It's likely more memories will surface with time, inspired by a smell or taste, but it's impossible to predict.”

This information is a lot to take in—and not just for me. The room grows quiet with thought.

“In your professional opinion, Doctor Lewis,” comes another voice from off camera, “is the subject Rhona Long, or isn't she?”

“I'm not a philosopher, sir,” Samuel says, nervously rolling the skin of his thumb. “I don't feel comfortable making value judgments on what constitutes identity—”

“But you felt comfortable experimenting with the sanctity of life?”

He looks chastised, but recovers quickly. I've stopped breathing, waiting for his answer. My heart is pounding in my ears, insisting
me, me, me.
I'm alive. I'm Rhona.
Tell them, Samuel. Tell them.

“With all due respect, I can't quantify her existence any more than I could yours,” Samuel answers. He's deliberately choosing his words. The atmosphere remains tense. “But I will tell you that the woman I escaped Brooks with has as much heart and soul as the woman who gave her life near Anchorage. She's Rhona Long in all the ways that matter. And if she's given a chance, councilors, I believe she can do just as much good. You want my professional opinion, there it is.”

The council members converse in muted tones of agreement. A few holdouts balk, but in the end, majority rules. I'm going to get a shot at my old life again, with some reasonable restrictions.

I hold off pumping my arm in the air when another council member, a woman, asks, “Is there anything else we should be made aware of, Doctors?”

Matsuki eyes Samuel without turning his head. Samuel rubs the back of his neck.

“The subject's immune system may be compromised,” Samuel admits. “I'm not sure to what extent. Of the laboratory's clones at the time of the attack on the Brooks facility”—
Wait,
there were more of me?
—“hers was the only one to reach a mature stage of development. But she still wasn't ready when the machines arrived. She has chronic nosebleeds, and while that may be attributed to stress, it could be a sign of a more serious problem…”

My first thought is:
He sounds like one of those old allergy commercials, warning of side effects.

My second:
Wait,
I might be dying?

Just then, the feed stutters and cuts out, returning me to my previous programming before I have a chance to find out more.

“No!” I shout at the screen. “No, no, no.”

I try to bring the feed back by frantically pushing buttons, but have no luck resurrecting the footage. I stare blankly at the screen, which has returned to showing cartoons. I think it's a new episode; the heroes are taking on a different villain now.

I don't know how to feel about what I've learned. I wish I could condense the toxic mixture into something with an easy label, like ANGER or FEAR, easily dealt with. Instead I'm rubbed raw by this convoluted tangle of thought and feeling.

Maybe I am a child
, I think scornfully, directing my frustration at the only person present.
I don't know what the hell I'm doing.

Voices swell outside my quarters. The sound of an argument breaking against my door. Even without knowing more, I have to admit I'm grateful for the immediate distraction. I power off the screen and sidle up to the door with a hand cupped around my ear, trying to decipher words from the muffled syllables.

Whatever the cause of the disturbance, I don't find out. The voices move off, and I'm left in the dark, alone behind locked doors.

Two days later, the powers that be finally clear me to visit Camus. With my company and freedom so tightly restricted, it's an opportunity I welcome—and not only because I'm looking to stretch my legs.

His hospital room smells strongly of antiseptic and some lemon-scented detergent used on the linens. I don't find Camus in bed where he's supposed to be. Instead, I find him in an unpadded folding chair beside a holographic window, crutches off to the side. The screen mostly displays an abundance of nature—fields of green grass, some blades yellowed by fall, and trees, with no other discernible landmarks. Really, it could be anywhere, but I think it's somewhere important to him, somewhere in England, maybe.

“It's such a cliché,” he remarks without greeting me. “Longing for the past, for the times we remember as being simpler…when they never were, not really. But it makes the present more bearable, I think, believing we were once happier.”

His thoughts resonate with me more than he knows, more than I can put into words. I think about the past a lot these days. Lately, it seems thinking's all I've been permitted to do. Until that moment, it hadn't occurred to me that Camus must do his fair share of thinking, too.

“Getting sentimental in our old age, are we?” I say.

“I hope not. Humanity can't afford to be run on sentimentality.”

“Says the man staring out at English pastures.”

He turns toward me now, wearing a thin, but not unfriendly smile, and I get a good look at some of the damage. His head wound is stitched, but not completely healed; his bottom lip is still bisected by a dark cut that's just beginning to scab over. At least the bruises no longer feature as prominently, now a much paler gold against his skin. In three days' time, the miracles of modern medicine have managed to heal the worst of his injuries. In a week's time, physically, it could be like this never happened. But it did happen, and we're both lucky to be standing here alive, regardless of how negligible the damage might seem now.

Well. I'm standing, anyway. He's sitting down, his right leg surrounded by layers of gauze where it isn't in a solid cast. The nurses told me the surgery went well and he was lucky he didn't break more bones than the ones in his legs. They told me injections of bone foam would expedite the healing process, but that the treatment was still fairly experimental, and he should still make sure to get plenty of rest, and…Honestly, I stopped listening at that point, eager to get inside the room to see him.

“It's remarkable how alike you are,” he tells me. I watch him drag his thumb across his lower lip thoughtfully. “Right down to the smart remarks.”

“Still singing the same tune, I see.” I don't know what else I was expecting. Maybe I'd hoped the other day would have improved the situation between us. “What's it going to take to convince you that I haven't changed?”

“I don't know,” he answers with surprising candor. “Although the haircut doesn't help.”

“What's wrong with my hair?” I touch the shortened strands defensively.

“You look like you've just stepped out of a cheap sci-fi film.”

I frown. “Now you're just being mean.”

“Sorry,” he apologizes, and I believe he's being sincere. “I suppose I should be thanking you rather than insulting you.”

“That's traditionally how it goes when someone saves your life.”

“Thank you,” he says, his eyes and voice softer. “Truly.”

“You're welcome.”

I'm not sure whether this means we've reconciled, or if it's utterly insignificant.

His forehead furrows, becoming deep trenches of thought. “You must understand something. This”—he motions between me and himself—“isn't easy for me.”

That's putting it more delicately than the last time we spoke.
Progress. I guess.

After another moment, he goes on. “You have to understand; I loved Rhona with all my heart. I mourned for her. I was still mourning for her when you showed up.”

“I—
she
didn't give you any hint of what she was doing? With the cloning?”

His sliver of a smile sticks between my ribs like a dagger. “No. She didn't deign to let me in on her plans ahead of time.”

I inhale slowly, trying to keep my voice level. “Why do you think that is?” I've searched for an explanation among my shoddy repository of memories, but none has been forthcoming. I know I kept it a secret. Maybe because I feared Camus would shut the project down, or maybe I was ashamed for having started it at all? The ethics of what Samuel and I did remain hazy. Then again, maybe I simply didn't want to get Camus's hopes up, in case our efforts failed to produce results. Whatever the reason, I doubt I'll ever know. My predecessor took her intentions to the grave.

He rubs his face, appearing double his age once his hands come away. “I don't know. Rhona was delirious from the blood loss. I could never have guessed that she'd already gone and done something this…extreme.”

“No. I mean before Anchorage. Why wouldn't I have kept you in the loop?”

“I've asked myself much the same question. I wish I had an answer. Maybe she believed I would stop her.” His shoulders slump. “Maybe I would have.”

“It bothers you, doesn't it?” I say quietly, reading the agony in his eyes. “That she didn't tell you.”

“Yes.”

When he admits this, he isn't looking at me. He's watching an imaginary horizon through a window that doesn't exist. I want to go to him, my heart reaching for what's lost. I want to take away this pain I've caused in both our lives, as easily as he squirreled away a few pictures from my room.

But I doubt any comfort I could offer would be well received. Despite the civility right now, I know things still aren't right between us. They may never be. But, as with his holographic England, I comfort myself with illusions to the contrary. It feels weak, but I can't accept the alternative—not yet, at least.

I decide to take his recommendation to sit down, and pull up a swiveling stool, the only other seating available. “And the council?” I ask. “Some of them must have known.”

“Yes. I suspect one or two of them must have, but I don't have any proof. No one's coming forward, admitting any prior knowledge.”

“Okay. I can accept that, but what about everyone else? I mean, I've been getting strange looks, but no one finds it a little more than odd that I'm suddenly back? Shouldn't they be, I don't know, putting together a mob to burn the witch?”

Camus cracks a smile, and it excites me. The expression seems more natural on his face, deepened by beautiful dimples. He was a man meant to smile. And, as I recall, once upon a time, he used to. “They've been told certain things,” he says. “Enough to satisfy their curiosity.”

“Such as?”

“Enough,” he repeats, evasively.

“Please, Camus. You know how it feels to be left in the dark. Shed a little light for me, huh?”

His smile tightens, the humor going out of it. “Ever the politician,” he says before his face drains of all mirth. “We never told them of Rhona's death, if you must know.”

“What?”

“She was reported as missing in action. Presumed dead, but never confirmed.”

“Why?”

“Because we didn't need another martyr,” he explains. “Humanity already had plenty of faces and memories to avenge. One more death—even Rhona Long's—wouldn't have made a difference in this war. The people needed hope; they needed the belief she was out there somewhere, still fighting on their behalf. However unlikely. It was a palatable lie.” He breathes deeply, half-sighing. “It was easier.”

“And what about a body?” I'm almost afraid to ask.

He won't look at me, raking long fingers through his lengthening curls. I detect his discomfort in that gesture and the way he scratches the facial hair growing in around his mouth, the product of going days without shaving. “There wasn't time.” The words sound rehearsed, as though I'm not the first person he's told this excuse to. And since the circumstances of my death haven't been shared with many outside the council, I think maybe he's been telling it to himself.

“So you left me behind,” I say. This bothers me more than it should. I know it was the right call. But still.

“You were already gone,” he answers after a moment of reflection. Or maybe guilt. It doesn't escape my notice that it's the first time he's referred to me as Rhona, even indirectly. He shrugs. “Perhaps it would have been more romantic to stay, to make my grave with hers. Even in death, not parted. Very
Romeo and Juliet,
wouldn't you agree?”

“Don't be morbid.”

“No, you're right,” he agrees, looking away. “Clearly I've been trapped in this hospital room for too long. I fear I'm turning morose.”

I have to bite my tongue in order to avoid making another of what he called my “smart remarks.”

“I guess we're both going a little stir crazy.”

“Mhm,” he murmurs, sitting back, arching his fingers on the metal arm of the chair. “You know, the council has good reason for wanting to keep you safe.”

“You, too?” I ask quietly.

“Do I what?”

We stare at one another for a few tense seconds before I lose the game of chicken and glance down at my hands. I want to ask him:
Do you want to keep me safe, too?
But I fear the answer I would receive.

“What makes me so special, anyway?” I ask instead, somewhat moodily. His brows come together. “I mean, if they don't include me in the decision-making process anymore, what does it matter if I'm alive or dead?”

“What does it matter?” he repeats, incredulous. It's like the curtain's been drawn back, revealing me for no wizard. His expression of disbelief is so obviously sincere I can't even pretend it's a show for my benefit. I brace myself for more truth. “I'm sorry,” he says, not sounding as much sorry as confused. “I'm trying to understand. You mean—you remember nothing? Not the broadcasts, the ‘signal heard 'round the world?' None of it?”

“Only a little.” That memory I had of the media room makes a little more sense now, as does Matt's remark about my face being the one the world watches. I broadcast a message—but to who, exactly? And what did I say?

At the same time, I wonder why Camus is putting me through the torture of admitting my ignorance when he must know the extent of my memory loss. Someone would have told him by now.

“I remember the room I must have given the broadcast in. And I remember arguing with you about being the one to do it, but that's about it.”

Camus shakes his head. “Unbelievable.”

I expect him to elaborate. When he doesn't, I prompt him by saying, “I don't suppose you'd care to fill me in?”

“Where to begin? You're our figurehead—or Rhona was,” he says, careful to correct himself. I'm learning not to let it bother me. I don't think Camus is actively trying to dehumanize me by separating us into two different people. I think it's just his way of protecting himself from the emotional fallout of the first Rhona's death.

“For the base,” I assume.

“Hardly. Try the world.”

“It's not nice to tease an amnesiac, Camus. I know I managed to fool the people in this base into giving me the title of commander, but come on.” I frown; he must be toying with me. In the old days, maybe he would have. In the old days, when I really was Rhona Long, and he was Camus Forsyth,
my
Camus, and we were playful and in love. But it's not like that nowadays, and it dawns on me that he's unlikely to be anything
but
serious.

“I wish I were joking,” he agrees with a peculiar sadness, “for all our sakes.”

“Well, don't be so ominous about it,” I mumble. I look out across the simple fields, wishing I could somehow escape through the window. I'm not sure where I'd go even if I could, but it doesn't matter. That place is as unreachable as a dream, a refuge accessible only by thought now.

“Perhaps we should start at the beginning,” he says, and then proceeds to give me the abridged version of the last five years, thankfully skipping all the technical bits.

He talks about how we—McKinley base—managed to hijack a derelict satellite running on old technology, forgotten by NASA, overlooked by the machines, and how we decided to send out a message to survivors. I listen raptly, occasionally asking for clarification, which he provides with a stoic patience. I mentally compare what he tells me to the memories I have of that time. It's fuzzy, but the facts sync up in enough places to give credence to his story. He has no reason to lie, I don't think. Not about this.

“Someone had to deliver the message,” he goes on. “Text wasn't sufficient. This was in the second year of the war. The UN was gone, governments all over the world had collapsed, and by now everyone knew what the machines were capable of. They'd lured us into similar traps before, so we knew only a human face was going to be trusted. We needed someone upbeat, who didn't look as though they had been tortured or manipulated by the higher echelon. But there wasn't exactly a run on the banks for the opportunity.”

“Because it meant they'd become a target,” I say. I know this part.

“Precisely. Public enemy number one.”

It's coming back to me again in bits and pieces, just as before. Glimpses of feeling flood my chest, liquid and warm. “I volunteered,” I say, remembering the surge of adrenaline, a life-changing decision made at a moment's notice. “You tried to stop me.”

He smiles faintly, fondly. “Not hard enough, obviously.”

Camus goes on to explain how there was only a brief window of opportunity to broadcast without the machines triangulating our location, and at the time, there was no knowing whether we'd get another chance.