Gods of Anthem Page 3

He finally realizes I’m still here, present, and his pretend gaze meets mine. It wills something to me.

  My peace steals away in an instant. Anger replaces what had been a calm ready to chariot me away to eternal rest.

  I’m trying to die as quickly as I can!

  “You were dead!” Mimi’s standing at my bunk, owl-eyed and pale.

  “I was…? I guess I was.” My voice sounds a thousand years old, and with the blanket over my head to block the light of day, I’m hiding from the living.

  Mimi gulps and leans over to be sure.

  By the gasp she makes, I assume how I feel coincides with how I must look. She probably expects me to turn into a zombie at any moment. It’s unknown what will happen next, but I’m certainly alive, and I’m wondering what to do with myself now.

  My three days of sleeping in the sick bay had been a merciful coma, I’m told. Apparently, I’d died during that time, as well. Flat-lined for four minutes, May said. Why they bothered to perform CPR is beyond me, but they had, and they’d brought me back.

  That place on the other side of the island—the shots, the Pretend Man—evidently, it was all a dream. A very elaborate one, too. Upon waking in the sick bay, when I’d asked about it, the nurses had looked at me strangely. Even May frowned and felt my forehead.

  Mimi said she thought I’d only been at the sick bay. And the look on her face now says it all: Liza is a zombie. She’s certain of it. She’s biting her lip, afraid, but willing to stay close out of loyalty. She’s shaking, though.

  Am I a zombie?

  I’m a really healthy zombie. Not only am I back on my feet, but they stopped me on my way to treatment and told me I didn’t need it.

  Tests show that my cancer is in remission. It was such a surprise that I sat there anyway with all of the others through their dose, arm out.

  Remission. The word is completely foreign. Dying has always been my destination. Recovery is unprecedented.

  I’m allowed to simply go to checkups from now on, they say. No one’s come back from what I have, or from any cancer in the last five years, for that matter, they say.

  They say so many things; my head feels like it’s floating away on their words.

  No use in asking: What now? They wouldn’t know. This is new territory for many of the staff. A patient who doesn’t end up as a pile of ash is so unplanned for.

  Mimi and a few others gape at my smiles and waves from across the cafeteria. I’m in a good mood, and hungry, too. Ravenous. Never been so starved in all of my life.

  There’s already a helping on my plate, but I beg for another, and the food servers dote on me because word’s gotten out that a shrimp-girl with blue eyes was dead, but is now all smiles.

  With a tray full of food and a biscuit in my mouth, I turn to leave. What I see stops me in my tracks. In the corner of the cafeteria stands the doctor from my dream. Pretend Man. And he’s looking right at me.

  I’ve stumbled into the person in front of me, and they catch an elbow to the back while I’m staring in bewilderment across the sea of prisoners.

  A real doctor, not an imaginary one, not a dream at all because … here he is. The shots. The other place. It had been real.

  My mind is still reeling with the possibilities when the prisoner I’d bumped turns around and then stiffens. The sudden stillness forces me to look away from the doctor and turn to find grey eyes locked onto mine.

  The prisoner in front of me stares back with eyes the color of smoke—they go right through me.

  Nothing makes sense, and then everything does. He seems surprised before the grey turmoil turns guilty.

  My sudden recoil dumps my precious food tray onto the floor, but I’m too busy shrinking backwards to care. Panic seizes my senses: He’s alive!

  All of the cafeteria fades away.

  There is only me and him.

  Angry red zigzags of barely healed tissue cross the now-crooked nose. Misshapen lips are severed through by a thick white line, proof of where they’d been split open by the guards. When I’d thought he’d been killed for attacking me in the woods.

  Now, he hesitantly steps forward, hitching awkwardly on a bum leg. One arm hangs limply at his side. Though his expression is a cloud of regret—he’s sorry; that’s obvious—it’s too late for sorry. Much too late for that.

  He reaches for me, and I shake my head.

  A scream wells inside, but then gets trapped behind my clamped teeth. I step back, and he follows in tandem despite my reaction.

  His hand lifts in slow motion to touch my shoulder, a gesture not meant to be evil. But my body is glass, and he’s a chisel.

  That hand lands on my sleeve, and it’s like being electrocuted—a jolt that raises the hair on my arms before it moves through, shattering me with a roar of sound that’s impossible.

  With my hands wrapped around his arm—the offending appendage that dared to touch me—I’m moving him, somehow, forcing him to the ground. His cry marries my own, calling out in surprise. But I’ve become louder, beyond loud, a hurricane overwhelming the alarms of the small town it devours. That is my strange, new battle cry.

  Beneath my fingers comes a crunch of bone, and that’s my only reality check. He’s on his knees, and I’m pressing further, and further still, grinding him into the earth, trying to send him back into hell. Mr. Grey Eyes splinters in my grip like a piece of dry wood.

  The shock of what I’ve done—what unimaginable things have just occurred, as if I’ve become incredibly strong—forces me to release him.

  Lying on his side, he’s holding a badly angled arm; the bone had snapped clean through. He’s curled around his injury, hiding in a ball … from me.

  Other than the squirming, crying figure at my feet, the cafeteria has gone quiet.

  And then I’m running from the scene before I know what’s next, pausing near Pretend Man before shoving through to race toward my bunk.

  He hadn’t seemed like the rest; surprised, suspicious, and even afraid.

  No. Pretend Man had been smiling.

  “Liza, we’re sending you home.”

  For some reason, I’d known he would sound like this. Speech is normally air rushing past the vocal cords. But when Pretend Man speaks, it’s metallic; a clicking that rounds out into sound. Hard not to imagine the battery aftertaste in his mouth.

  My voice is subdued in comparison. “I have no home.”

  He gives no sign of arguing with the truth of my statement. “Off the island, to the mainland, then.”

  Nothing. I should feel something, but there’s only the sense that I’m being tricked. Freedom is supposed to be a dream come true.

  After my run-in with Mr. Grey Eyes, they’d thrown me into solitary.

  Until he’d come and walked me to the other side of the island again.

  “Do you have any questions?” he asks.

  Pretend Man keeps his quarters in the very corner of the prison, a place I thought I’d never been before. But then again, I’d thought this area was a dream.

  I want to ask him so many things, because I suspect he knows them. He’s watching me now, eyes bluer than any natural blue, as though he gleans that I’ve guessed what he knows is infinite. He seems to find pleasure in this.

  Gift horses and their mouths come to mind, but I have to ask: “Why?”

  His mouth lifts at the corners, as if he can hear my thoughts. “We know who you are, Liza. Now, at least, we know everything.”

  I’m not confused or perplexed. They’ve just figured out who my father is—was. “What does that have to do with sending me back?”

  Pretend Man shifts in his seat, because we humans expect him to, and not for his comfort. He’d most likely remain perfectly still, not even breathing, if he didn’t remind himself to appear this way.

  “Tell me, Liza, what do you think is left of the world? In one word.”

  Three come to mind: Death. Survival. Complacency.

  I volunteer none of these and shrug instead. I’m no
t interested in guessing games.

  His eyes are like mirrors, though not of his soul, but mine. Difficult to look away, yet staring at them is … exhausting.

  “Subsistence,” he says. “It’s like complacency, but not exact.”

  Even though he’d plucked the word “complacent” from my brain, it’ll do no good to let him see my goose bumps.

  Broad face alight with some amusement, he continues, “Maintaining one’s self at the lowest level—not truly an existence, but beneath that. What’s left of our planet … ‘thriving’ is too big a word. People fight for their lives, but what do they live for? The Authority isn’t stupid. They realize that a person’s will to survive is only as strong as what there is to survive for. And again, we know who you are. I’d like to send you to the mainland, where you can live your life and hopefully thrive there. What you bring to it is a real existence again.”

  “But?”

  “No buts. You and your art will find each other. It is your destiny.”

  A sound escapes me. Four years ago it might have been a laugh. Now, it’s akin to the crinkling of paper. “You know my destiny?”

  “I have seen it.”

  My core shifts. Just a flutter. And my heart strives to keep pace. “I’m sorry, come again?”

  “I see it,” he says, as would any demented thing that wills fear to override your good sense. “Your future is written all over your face.”

  What can he mean? He wants me to compose music, that part is certain. As for this intended future …

  “And my art? I don’t have that kind of love anymore. You need love to create.”

  Pretend Man nods slowly to himself, ignoring my thoughts this time, though now I feel foolish for thinking he could hear them in the first place. “We need more beauty in the world, Liza. You’re healthy now, it’s all good news. You should be very happy.”

  That fake smile is back, and this time, it’s easy to mimic.

  Perhaps we’re not so different, Pretend Man and I.

  I give in to my curiosity. “When?”

  “Today.”

  And together we say: “Anthem City.”

  I am being molded. Like many others who are in training, I am a human weapon that will be used for the betterment of the Underground. I am becoming something that I never thought possible. I am being molded …

  From the start, the UG forces us to learn this mantra. Now, it’s a skull-numbing chant that repeats in my head as I walk through the dark labs of the Underground’s facility. Specials lie in beds to my left and my right, all in various stages of pain. Hearing men cry like toddlers getting their first shot is deadening.

  Women don’t cry as often, but they also don’t come to C wing on the days we do, as if somehow the segregation of the sexes helps lessen what’s being done to us as subjects.

  I’m here in the labs for more tests to make sure my recent alterations are working. Sweden, frigid Sweden, and the last base we have still standing.

  They’ll treat me like a circus animal for a few hours until they’re certain I’ve run out of tricks. And like the blurry-eyed elephant that arthritically climbs onto the back of another at the crack of the barker’s whip, we too have stopped fighting and have succumbed to the ministrations.

  Telling them everything’s in order doesn’t keep me from being poked with needles and prodded by icy hands that pull my skin, not without pride, to see what they’ve done.

  My brain says: impossible.

  My body says: nothing is anymore.

  In the beginning, we’re all made to say the same thing to replace our will, in order to control their projects against the Authority. But for me, it’s a wall inside my head; a stream playing to block those who might see inside, and there are those who can now.

  The C wing is where the pain begins and likely only ends once you exit. Taking a deep breath, I press through the doors marked with that letter, and to the lowest place in the labs. The smell of blood and cleaning supplies is like getting slapped by a wet hand.

  They let me in right away as an invited guest. One nurse gestures to an empty bed that holds a green gown for the next poor sucker who’ll be jabbed.

  She doesn’t even bother leaving as I pull off my shirt and shove my pants and boxers down. Her eyes stay averted, though not out of modesty; this nurse has been selected for this wing just like the rest, because she’s focused on one thing and one alone: getting results from the subject.

  She has me step on the scale, and when it creaks noisily from strain, it’s the first sign of life from her—an eye that twitches from the display, to me, and back again. She writes down the reading, and I don’t bother to look, because I’m too busy fading out as best I can.

  The nurse leaves, and I sit on the cold table to wait. There’s a mirror across from me, but I avoid the reflection. Whenever I give in and meet the dark eyes, I see someone who’s scared, defeated. And that’s not me. Not the Thomas Ripley-Hatter who used to wear the same button-up shirt every Sunday, and who followed his old man to church on his bike because he didn’t want anyone to know the preacher was his pops.

  Even more chilling is when I see something else looking back.

  Monsters may have taken over the world, but the monster they’ve built inside of me—built inside all of us—to fight back is far worse. What they do, what they’ve already done … Let’s just say their patriotism has no limits.

  In my dreams, I show them the overflowing despair, so dark, so cold … If they find a way past my façade … Sometimes I wonder if I should just let them see.

  I am being molded …

  Pain tolerance is the only thing I’ve ever had tested in C wing. They begin by checking my bone density with this thing that closes onto my arms and legs until something breaks. Don’t worry, they say, they have a way to fix it.

  On lucky days, I get to have them actually chip at the bone, right where I can see the metallic white hidden inside the folds of muscle, still wet with blood.

  You’d think with us being soldiers, we’d defect. But the Underground controls two things: one is the mind, and the other is time.

  The Authority won the Americas by default, sure. But despite their firm hold on Anthem, it’s anybody’s game right now. They’d used the Underground as their scapegoat; the UG had made zombies, yes, and it was their fault that these projects were loosed upon the world, but what the Authority didn’t admit was the two had been inseparable by then; a snake eating its tail. Ripping them apart had only caused more damage.

  And now, we wait, across the water, homesick and not sure when we’ll return. The Underground had blown out the bridges upon arrival so that our ships could use the canals and dock right up against the buildings. It’s half-frozen, but they have boats to break the ice, and so the sound is a constant cracking like giant cubes in a glass.

  The UG is gearing up to fight for Anthem City, the last standing city. Here, there is only one base and one lab. But there, they’ve rebuilt an actual place to make a life. UG has the greater weapons this time, and the zeal, but more than that, they now have us.

  And they’ve had the time to tame their largest enemy, too. No, not the Authority. The clock itself. Control the laws of the planet, control everything.

  As much as I want to admonish the UG for this desire to turn back time, I understand it, too. I have my own reasons for them to do it; I’ve made so many mistakes. Best of all, though, I wouldn’t be plagued by this dark intruder within.

  I’d change that now, if I could. Hide from both sides until things blew over. But regrets are about as good as dreams in this new life.

  Time … it’s better than gold these days.

  In rare moments of self-torture, I’ll fixate on a certain point in my past, then follow that line straight to an alternate ending. That first grade class with Miss Patterson, for example, when I’d met Daisy, ’cause she was kicking my chair. She’d just wanted someone to notice her patent leather shoes, the type of thing her parents could rare
ly afford.

  I’d spun around and yelled at her.

  And now her wilted expression won’t leave my mind.

  But Daisy had been resilient. She’d bugged me up until our teen years, and when I’d toyed with her affections, used them when I was lonely, she’d never seemed to mind. I did it not ‘cause I truly appreciated what she’d given so openly, so sweetly.

  I’d told her she wasn’t good enough, that I’d never marry some small-town girl with nothing but babies on the brain. I had the idea in my head that someone more sophisticated waited for me elsewhere. Someone with high heels and pinned-up hair, someone who drank wine from a bottle, not a box. Someone like my mother, who’d learned more than just agriculture and would prettily ask, “What’s cow tipping?” A girl who didn’t use cuss words like Daisy did whenever her mom wasn’t around.

  Daisy had always had dirty feet from running around barefoot, and I’d let a silly thing like that bother me. I’d let a girl with the most beautiful auburn hair, gorgeously tanned skin from swimming naked in my pond, get away. And that’s the reason I rarely feel sorry for myself, even now, when the pain is making me pass out.

  I barely flinch when they shove a needle into my spine—again.

  I cough and gag just once when they make me swallow another giant pill.

  My eyes water, but it’s not ’cause of the testing.

  When a girl as pretty as Daisy loves you right off, you can’t imagine how quick you start to look further, for better.

  The nurse says something now, but my eyes are blurry and my head’s throbbing.

  Today’s testing is like a thousand angry hornets stinging my body.

  “Can you feel this, Hatter?”

  Of course I feel that … you’ve just cut me deep enough to scar.

  I’m ignoring her question, trying to focus on my memories.

  I relax into the darkness that beckons.

  “I’m sorry, Daisy,” I whisper.

  “What?” says the nurse. “Hatter, can you hear me?”

  Tears stream down my face, and I sink further into the darkness. Daisy’s sweet face is there, turned up, while she’s laid out on the ground for her skin to be kissed by the old yellow sun.