Machinations (7 page)

There's a quiet
Beep!
and then green capital letters flash across the screen:

RHONA LONG RECOGNIZED

ACCESS GRANTED

Both soldiers stand at attention immediately, hands flying to their foreheads in sharp salutes. I smile at them, these two loyal remnants of my former command. “At ease, soldiers,” I say, only a little awkward. Even with some of my memory returning, it's going to take time to slip back into my old routine—that is, if the council accepts my identity as readily as these two have.

I take a deep breath, straighten my blouse. It's hard to believe all that stands between me and Camus now is a pair of blast-proof doors. Compared to dying, that seems inconsequential. I tap my hands against the sides of my pants, deliberating.

I'm not ready.

I am ready.

No, I'm not.

Yes.
Yes, I am.

While my courage holds, I activate the door's mechanism. It slides open in near silence and I slip inside, hoping to attract as little attention as possible.

The war room is fairly large, uncluttered save for some anatomical data displayed on a few of the floor-to-ceiling screens covering every wall. My eyes are quickly drawn to the center of the room, which is dominated by a single round table, like King Arthur's. Just over a dozen swivel chairs surround it. It's rare for all of the seats to be filled at any one time, but tonight it's practically a full house.

I locate Samuel first. He's at the far end of the room, beneath the harsh, unnatural light of the fluorescent bulbs. There's a dark, purplish bruise at the base of his jaw, and his arm is in a cast, supported by a sling. He slumps over the table, looking exhausted. But he's alive, and I'm grateful for that much.

And there, beside him, is Camus, who hasn't seen me yet.

I gawk, unable to help myself. His black hair is longer than the last time I saw him, almost to his shoulders, and curling at the ends. I don't know why that's the first thing I notice, fixating on it as though it holds some significance. Even from the side, his profile is striking, lean and somehow hard, almost like a bird of prey. Handsome and proud.

Samuel says something to him which I can't hear, and Camus's forehead wrinkles in thought, troubled by indecision. His eyes are too dark and far away for me to see the color of them, but I know they're green: the clearest color in my memory. And finally I look at his lips, which last tasted of salt and blood and regret when pressed against mine. They move to words I can't hear as he confers privately with Samuel, until finally the latter spots me.

“Rhona!” Samuel blurts out in surprise.

My presence doesn't go unnoticed after that. Once I'm seen, whispers rush around the table like hot currency that needs to be exchanged. It doesn't bother me. If I were in their position, I'd be curious, too. In the meantime, I wait to be acknowledged by the only person who matters.

Look at me, Camus. Just look at me.

Despite my silent plea, Camus is the last to shift his attention to me, and even then it's brief. Almost a glance. His expression is painfully neutral, and it's much worse than being treated to loathing or horror.

It's as if I'm no one special, not to him. Not any longer.

And when he looks away from me to finish his sentence, I feel sick. Rejected.

I consider slinking back to my holding cell for a moment, but that's not an option. Instead, I take the only available seat, between one “Matsuki” and the more generically named “Jones” (I know their names by their military-style name tapes). The former is kind enough to offer me his water, but the latter leans away uneasily, like I'm somehow contagious. How kind.

“Well,” I begin, interrupting the din of murmurs. My hands are shaking; I conceal them in my lap beneath the table. “Let's get this dog-and-pony show started. I'm sure you all have questions, and I'm sure you all want answers. So do I.”

I sit a little straighter as Camus's eyes settle on me again.

Say something
, I plead with my eyes.

He stands wordlessly, and it's like a wave travels through the table, throwing everyone else to their feet. The only one who doesn't get up is Samuel, who continues to sit there, looking miserable.

“We'll reconvene at a later time,” Camus tells everyone, suppressing his British accent to make him stick out less as the Other in a base manned mostly by Americans.
Former
Americans, I'm forced to remind myself. “Dismissed.”

The room empties, leaving only the three of us.

“That wasn't necessary,” I say, swiveling anxiously in my chair. Some reunion this is turning out to be. I'm still waiting for the other shoe to drop and really kick me while I'm down.

But Camus doesn't say another word. He doesn't chastise me, or scream or yell, or do anything I can respond to with words or assurances. He just walks out. I'm chilled by this indifference. I don't know what to think about it, or about the severe-faced stranger wearing my lover's skin.

Samuel comes and sits down next to me. I didn't hear him get up. We sit for a few minutes, unspeaking. I appreciate how he doesn't force conversation on me, but eventually I can't take the silence anymore. My memories lurk there: old wounds reopening, only now I'm bleeding out from the good ones.

“Now you can apologize to me,” I finally say to Samuel in a voice as small as I feel. “I know you're dying to.”

“I didn't think it would be like this,” he says. “It doesn't look like they're going to welcome you back as commander just yet. They want assurances first, that you're…well,
you
, and that you can handle the stresses of command again.”

“What kind of
assurances
?”

“Don't worry. It'll just be a few tests to put their minds at ease.”

“A few tests.” I almost laugh. Haven't I been tested enough already?

I shut my eyes and pull myself together for what seems like the hundredth time, breathing out slowly.

“Okay,” I agree.

What else is there to say?

When we're ready, the two soldiers at the door escort Samuel and me back to our individual holding cells. Significantly, his is right next door to mine. It trips my conscience like a switch. I'm responsible for the trouble he must be in, even if I don't know what that is yet. Still, it's comforting to know he'll be close by.

“Good night,” he tells me before we part ways.

“Good night,” I respond mechanically.

Inside my room, I find another surprise waiting for me. Hanna has set up an extra sleeping cot, looking as though she has every intention of spending the night here. She checks her smile when she sees me.

That bad?
she signs. I nod. To be fair, she had warned me not to expect a warm reception. “Sorry. Slumber party?”

“Maybe another time,” I answer, but I'm glad she stays anyway.

I lie down on my bed, wanting to sleep and forget, but I end up doing neither. Instead, my thoughts accumulate as uneven sets of questions and answers, like the broken sticks of a beaver's dam. I struggle to think sensibly about everything, but it's difficult to do when I'm so close to the problem. When I
am
the problem.

Unable to keep my misery to myself any longer, and incapable of sleep, I nudge Hanna's shoulder with my foot. She claps the lights on like in one of those old, kitschy infomercials.

“Does Camus hate me?” I ask.

No
, Hanna signs.
He just really loved her.

The next morning, Samuel's granted permission to start running tests on me under the supervision of another doctor, Matsuki Shigeru. Compared to Samuel, Dr. Shigeru appears short and stocky, though he's really of middling height. His dark-silver hair is thinning, although it's hard to tell whether it's from age or stress. I recognize him as the gentleman from the meeting yesterday who offered me something to drink when everyone else was acting like I was some kind of contagion to be avoided. That earned him brownie points in my book, but it's only when he insists on being called Matt—joke or not—I decide I like him.

We take an elevator down to the medical level, far beneath the earth's ice-encrusted surface. While it has several rooms devoted to research, filled with expensive diagnostic equipment such as X-ray and EKG machines, most of the place has the feeling of a triage center. There are rows of beds with clean linens. Knowing they were once filled to capacity, the site is haunting. More than likely, they'll be servicing the dead and dying again some day in the future. It's a sobering thought. After some basic blood work in the lab, I'm ushered into another room with one enormous, complex-looking machine and very little else.

“Here.” Samuel hands me a thin, crinkly hospital gown. I raise an eyebrow before accepting it grudgingly. It's the same polka-dotted design I remember having to wear back in grade school when I was sick with a rare strain of the flu. Not good times then; not the greatest times now, either. “You'll need to change into this.”

“Oh, Samuel, you always buy me the nicest things,” I tease him.

“Only the best for my best friend,” he replies in kind, smiling without peeking up from his clipboard.

I dress quickly behind a sliding curtain.

First on the agenda is neuroimaging, which involves me getting into yet
another
confined space.

“I don't suppose you could just hook some wires up to my head?” I ask, standing in front of the machine. Matt shakes his head.

Taking a breath to calm my steadily growing claustrophobia, I lie down on the metal tray. A few button presses later, it sucks me inside. The quiet humming the MRI machine makes is frightfully similar to another sound I know. My heartbeat accelerates as my flight instinct kicks in, I want so badly to escape this place. I grip the sides of my gown, lock my jaw. This has to be done. The sooner I prove I'm still me, the sooner I can make things right with Camus. Maybe it's foolish, but I still hope for that. For us.

I can't see what Matt or Samuel are doing, but after a few moments I hear the former's voice buzzing in my ear from a speaker on my right. “You all right in there?” Above, on a little screen, I make out a pixilated version of his face.

“Yeah,” I lie. “Fine. Let's just get this over with.”

“I'll need you to stay as still as you can. Shouldn't be more than a few minutes.” His lips move a fraction of a second after I hear his words.

I start to give him a thumbs-up before I remember I'm not supposed to be moving.

“Right. No moving. Got it.”

The screen clicks off, leaving me alone in the metal coffin. I don't even have my thoughts for company—the buzzing noise has turned into a clunking so loud it drowns them out. My body vibrates, a combination of anxiety and the tremors of the machine. A couple of times Matt reminds me to keep still, and I shut my eyes, willing my body to acquiesce.

The torture is over in a matter of minutes, as Samuel promised, and the machine ejects me. I swing my legs off the tray, feet meeting the cold floor with a slap. No sooner have we finished than I'm ushered into a second machine in another room, and after that a third, and finally a fourth. By that last one, I've adapted and climb inside with minimal trepidation.

Meanwhile, Matt and Samuel work from inside a small, soundproof office connected to each room. Between tests, when they're giving me directions to move to the next room, I can see them through a window. Once I catch Samuel literally scratching his head, perplexed by something on a monitor whose screen is turned away from me.

Matt's poker face is much better, and gives nothing away regarding my condition. Occasionally he rubs his eye, squinting, but that's about it. It's probably not even a tell for anything. It probably just means he has something in his eye.

Still, I can't help wondering if something's wrong. Would they even tell me if there was? Either way, there's no sense in worrying about it at the moment. My schedule's clear for the foreseeable future; I'm sure I'll have time for paranoia later.

The rest of the day proceeds in the same manner, although I'm happy no more grinding machinery is involved. I don't trust technology these days; maybe as a result of it trying to kill me so often (and once succeeding). Not all of it's bad, granted. I wouldn't even be here without whatever advanced science and technology it took to clone a human being. But things like computers and technical equipment large enough to eat me if it ever goes rogue make me uneasy.

I felt this way even before the Machinations, and if there's an after, I doubt that'll change.

As Samuel plays chiropractor, testing the elasticity of my joints, gently rotating my arm and identifying weaknesses in my flexibility, I remember the reason I prefer human contact. He's chosen not to wear gloves, and his hands leave my skin warm wherever they touch. While the room is supposedly heated, I'm cold in my wisp of a gown, so the sensation is more pronounced. As always, he's careful with me, as if he's afraid I might break into pieces at the slightest provocation. I want to tell him I'm made of tougher stuff, but I think he needs to rediscover it on his own. Scientists are like that.

We break for lunch at around two o'clock. As Matt brings the food in, I think I notice movement behind a giant mirror positioned high on the wall, near the top of the vaulted ceilings. It's only now I think to ask about it.

“Is that an observation room?”

Matt nods. “There are many within the facility. No secrets kept from command.”

“Is someone from command watching right now?”

“Probably.” He doesn't seem too ruffled about it.

I look up again, thinking about Camus. Was his nonchalance some kind of act for the benefit of the council? Could he have hidden his emotions behind his indifference yesterday, as effectively as someone is now hiding behind that mirror? Then again, maybe that's just wishful thinking on my part.

“Would've been nice to know I'm being monitored.”

“You haven't stopped being monitored since you arrived.” Matt's matter-of-fact tone seems to make light of the issue. “Does that bother you?”

“Yeah, a little.”

“Then you should get used to it. After all, yours is the face the whole world watches.”

My eyebrows pull together. “Okay, that's not creepy at all…”

Suddenly my mouth goes dry as an image of what looks like some sort of media room invades my head: there is a camera in my face, a lot of people standing at the edges of the room, wearing anxious looks, and Camus is tugging on my arm, trying to draw me into a private conversation. It reminds me of the dream—or memory—I had of us on the cliff.

Someone has to do it,
I tell him.

Why does that someone have to be you, of all people?
comes his reply.
It will make you a target. Do you understand that? The machines will make it a priority to eliminate you, just as they have every other man and woman who has tried to be a hero.

Don't treat me as if I'm simple or naive. I know exactly what I'm doing. Exactly what I'm risking. Look around you, Camus. Look at where we are. We're targets already. It can't get much worse.

Maybe not, but if you stretch out your neck, you're only giving them a better angle to cut off your head.

Shaken, I watch Matt squeeze hot sauce onto a piece of raw fish before popping it into his mouth. I'm trying to figure out where to take the conversation when Samuel returns.

“Where'd you get off to?” I ask with a mouthful of food. Not the most ladylike, I'll admit.

“Nowhere,” he says. “What are we having?”

“Sushi for Matt.” Matt holds up his chopsticks, dripping red sauce onto the side of his hand and down his wrist. He quickly licks it off. “Just a PB&J for me, though.”

“Always the traditionalist.” Samuel smiles at me, but there's worry in his dark eyes as he grabs some sushi himself, sans hot sauce.

I decide to give him until the end of the day to tell me everything that's going on, or else I'll confront him. By tonight, I expect to have answers, one way or another.

It's late when Samuel suggests starting the cognitive interview, and I'm already half-asleep after a hearty dinner of bread and clam chowder. I try my best to stay awake, but I'm fooling no one.

“We can pick this up tomorrow,” Samuel says. I lift my head from the desk. My chin leaves a red mark on my hands where I've been resting it.

“Are you sure?” I feel obligated to ask, but have no intention of arguing the idea.

He nods. “Between the two of us, we have more than enough data to work through tonight. And probably the better part of tomorrow, too. Go get some sleep.”

In complete agreement, I make for the door, then stop, remembering something. I turn back. “Walk with me?” I ask, innocently enough.

“Uh, sure,” Samuel says, caught off guard by the request.

At the elevator, the soft-spoken soldier from yesterday—he introduces himself as Lieutenant Ortega—is waiting for us. Since neither Samuel nor I are free to walk the base unsupervised—not yet, anyway—a few soldiers are stuck babysitting us in shifts. Earlier, it was Captain Lefevre, the larger half of the war-room guardian post, and before him this morning it was Rankin. For the most part, they don't speak with us. Maybe they're not supposed to. That doesn't stop Rankin from sharing what he insists used to be my favorite dirty joke, nor does it prevent Lefevre from inquiring after our recent experience with the machines in the Alaskan wilderness. Through this discussion, I learn Lefevre has a sister, and both of them were close with Ulrich before his transfer to Brooks. I'm not sure why this surprises me, except that in the short time I'd known him, Ulrich came off as someone who preferred his own company to that of others. Or maybe I just preferred thinking that way. I feel worse now, knowing there are people who miss him.

Ortega lets us inside first, following after. He says, “Command level,” after punching in an authorization code. The doors close, and we begin to ascend.

“So are you going to tell me what the tests show?” I ask Samuel. He gives me an incredulous look, stunned by my candor in the presence of a third party.

We both turn to Ortega, who's busy mastering invisibility behind us.

“What, him?” I hook a thumb toward the guard. “He doesn't mind. Ortega, you don't mind if we talk about this, do you?”

“It's none of my business, Commander,” he answers. I like how he and Lefevre both call me that still.
Commander.
It makes me feel like I have more control than I actually do.

“See?” I say.

Samuel rubs his face. “I should've guessed you weren't just interested in my company.”

“That's not true. I love your company. But you know what else I'd love? Some answers.”

“Rhona,” he says, trying for patience, but sounding mostly weary with me. Or maybe not
me
specifically, but the overall situation, definitely. He glances uneasily at Ortega again. “I haven't even had a chance to properly look the results over. These aren't answers to a multiple-choice test. They're complex medical scans and graphs that require thorough inspection and analysis. At best, all I can do is hazard a few theories…”

“Hazard away,” I encourage him.

“No. I'm sorry. I can't in good conscience make any assessments yet.”

“Samuel—”

“Rhona, please.” He cuts me off in a brittle tone I've never heard him use before. Not with me, anyway. “I'm under enough pressure without you adding to it. Don't you think I would tell you if I knew something?” With this last admonishment, the hurt surfaces in his voice.

“Would you?” It's a knee-jerk response. “Even if the truth was horrible, you would tell me?”

“Yes.”

I don't believe him, and tell him so.

He frowns, looking a little helpless.

“I know you, Samuel. You'll try to spare my feelings. It's what you always do, what you've always done, as far back as I can remember. Admittedly, there are some holes now. But still.”

“Rhona, come on.”

“No. Remember that time in the eighth grade when you lied about receiving an A plus on an exam so I wouldn't feel bad about my C minus?”

“I can't believe you remember that,” Samuel says.

As the car comes to a stop and the doors grind open, I step into the threshold, preventing the elevator from closing behind me. Ortega waits while I whip back around and face down Samuel, anchoring my arms between the doors.

“Earlier, when you disappeared during lunch, where did you go?”

Samuel's lips pucker in resistance. He clearly doesn't want to tell me, but he also doesn't want to be caught out as a liar.

“Camus wanted an update on our progress,” he finally says, relenting. At the mention of his name, I think I stop breathing for a second. Then the pieces come together.

I exhale. “He was in the observation room.”

“He cares about this—about you,” Samuel tells me. His gaze fixes on a spot on the wall, somewhere past my head. “But it's…difficult for him.”

I snort. “Difficult for
him
?” I'd laugh if my chest didn't feel caved in.

“It's not like that for everyone.” I don't know when he stepped closer, but suddenly I'm aware of how he's
right there
and my heart travels to my throat, lodging there, preventing me from speaking. “Nothing's changed for me. I already know who you are. You're Rhona.” The corners of his lips rise in a thin smile. “My friend. I don't need some computer printout to tell me that.”