Todd Martinique spent sixteen years planted behind a desk. There was nothing about being behind that desk, sitting on the terrible flat wooden chair, which he did not know. He had gotten the job as a young man, with gelled brown hair and a body that he felt some justifiable pride in, having devoted much of his spare time to the gym. They warned him during the interview that the position was a dead end, a clerking job rather than a security position; a day spent checking badges against names on a list, watching pixilated security camera footage, and making a handful of routine reports via email, with no hope for advancement. He hadn’t been concerned at the time, because he hadn’t planned on staying; he intended this job to be a stopgap measure, a small step on the road on his way to better things elsewhere.
It did not turn out that way. Instead, he stayed and read the same names off the same cheap, thin printouts that spooled out of the fax fresh every morning, watched his belly grow and everything else sag and spread out, and felt a tolerable level of malaise. If it wasn’t for the fringe benefits, he might not have stayed.
Todd was doing what he usually did, around three o’clock, when the afternoon stretched out endlessly toward the close of business. Todd was occupied with the feed for camera six, the one that was supposed to focus on, of all things, the employee parking lot. It was almost two years ago that one of the techs had cut in a satellite feed, and now camera six’s monitor never showed anything except muted ESPN. Normally, there were no visitors if there were no names listed, and today, there were no names; so Todd was watching some feature about the US Open, bored out of his mind when the security door opened.
If visitors were rare, then civilians were an abnormality of the highest degree. Yet every inch of this woman, from her faded blue jeans to the chestnut hair that fell haphazardly onto the shoulders of her grey sweatshirt imprinted with the halo of the Anaheim Angel’s logo, screamed civilian. Todd had to admit that she looked all right, even through a half-inch of bulletproof glass. She had warm brown eyes, and when she smiled, he was bizarrely reminded of Mrs. Franklin, a young teacher that he had nursed a crush on all the way through junior high. He did not feel good about the circumstances, though, as she definitely was not on the list, because no one at all was.
“Can I help you, ma’am?”
Todd straightened up quickly, put down his clipboard and did his best to look officious.
“I bet you can,” the woman responded cheerfully, leaning her elbows on the little platform that jutted out in front of the security station. “I need to know if you’re holding someone here.”
“Uh, I’m sorry, ma’am, but can I see your identification, please? This is a secure area…”
“My name is Rebecca Levy,” she said ingratiatingly, “and I don’t have identification, but you don’t need to worry about that.”
Todd felt tremendous relief on hearing this. He had already been envisioning some kind of bureaucratic slipup, and the tiresome paperwork it would generate. It was not how he had planned to spend his evening, and he was happy to avoid the trouble. That this woman, Rebecca, did not need ID made his whole day a lot easier, and he appreciated it. He resolved himself to help her in any way that he could. He felt strongly that it was the least he could do.
“Right,” Todd said, giving the woman his best smile in return. “What can I do for you today, ma’am?”
“I need to know if you’re holding a prisoner here that I’m supposed to collect. A tall woman with black hair; big tattoo with a tree and a Hebrew script all around it on her back. She may have been injured when she arrived, or unconscious, or in an amnesiac state. Sound like anyone you have here?”
Todd started nodding before she even finished her sentence. He had seen what she did to Miguel’s arm, after all, before they carted him off to the hospital, and that hadn’t been easy to forget.
“8B.”
Rebecca frowned shortly.
“Excuse me,” she said, leaning forward, her forehead pressed against the glass so she could see his nametag, “Mr. Martinique.”
“Todd,” he cut-in.
“Todd,” she said, smiling broadly. “Of course. What is ‘8B’?”
“The prisoner you mentioned. The woman with the tree tattoo. We don’t have a name for her, so we use the cell ID number. Let me call the back, and I will have them send you an escort…”
Rebecca shook her head, and Todd’s hand froze on the phone’s keypad.
“That’s okay. I’d really prefer if you took me there yourself.”
Something in the firmness in her tone, the confidence in her sparkling brown eyes, tore him between his eagerness to please and the nagging feeling that something about this was entirely wrong. Technically, he wasn’t allowed in the back, though after a few years smoking cigarettes on break with the guys who worked back there, they had invited him down, strictly off the clock. They would certainly go ape-shit if they saw him back there on shift, and obviously, he couldn’t leave the desk unmanned; beside that, since when did they send civilians to pick up prisoners?
“Ma’am, I’m afraid that’s impossible. Now, if you’ll let me call…”
“Todd,” the woman said, a palm pressed against the bulletproof plastic. “Why don’t you come around and open the door for me? We can’t talk through the glass like this.”
He hesitated for a moment, then her brown eyes caught him, and he couldn’t remember why he had been troubled. What was there to worry about? It was hard to talk through the glass. He could trust Rebecca, and anyway, he knew what he was doing. There was no one who knew more about being behind that desk than Todd did. This meant opening the door so that Rebecca could explain the situation. He felt the utmost confidence that they would be able to work things out face-to-face.
The magnetic locks gave way with their usual reluctance, snapping to the side and allowing him to swing the steel reinforced door open. Rebecca gave him an appreciative nod and then walked in, looking around the little cubby that was his station with a vague air of distaste, before eventually settling herself on the edge of his rather precarious desk.
“Do you smoke, Todd?”
Todd nodded in the affirmative.
“Good,” she said, pulling a pack from her sweatshirt pocket, along with a red plastic lighter. “You don’t mind, right?”
Todd shook his head, not reaching for his own cigarettes because, of course, it was against the rules to smoke. They had fired one of the other security guys, one who worked the parking lots, for sneaking off to a bathroom for a cigarette. However, he was sure that it was okay for Rebecca.
She lit up, inhaled, and then breathed out with a sigh of relief. Then she made a face and urged him to step closer.
“Come here, Todd. Come over so I can reach you.”
Todd almost fell over himself in his attempt to cross the tiny room, to stand in front of the woman with his hands twitching. She was beautiful, he had decided, with those bewitching brown eyes, and he wanted her with the same urgency that he wanted Mrs. Franklin, back in junior high; he was desperate for her to touch him…
“Ew,” she said, frowning. “Tone it down a little there, big guy.”
His desire disintegrated like smoke in the wind, here and then gone, leaving behind only a small, confused memory. He still adored Rebecca, but now there was something almost familial about it, like she was his mother, or his sister. When she reached for his forehead he closed his eyes automatically, instantly soothed by the feel of her cool hand on his brow.
“Okay. Here’s how it’s going to go. I want to go back to cell 8B, Todd, and you want to take me there. Now, now — don’t get worried. If anybody stops us, I’ll explain things to them, and then they’ll understand. Like you understand me. Okay?”
Todd nodded his agreement, pleased that Rebecca would take responsibility for the situation. He always felt better when somebody else was holding the bag.
“This is important, Todd. This is a big deal to you. On the way, I might need you to do things. I also have some questions for you, and I want you to answer them quickly and honestly. Can you do that for me?”
Again, Todd nodded, as content as a clam in its shell, his eyes closed, waiting for instructions. The part of his mind that was still thinking wondered when he had last felt this secure or confident.
“Alright, then. Lean the way, Todd.”
Todd opened his eyes, smiled at her, and then led her to the sole door that provided entrance to the facility for people who did not have bags tied over their heads. He used his own entrance code, something he almost never did. When he went back, in the evenings, he always used the dummy code that the techs had doped up years ago, so that it would not go on record. He knew that the system would log him opening the door in violation of procedure, but he was certain that Rebecca could fix that, too. He just needed to remember to ask her about it before she left. First, he knew, his priority was to get Rebecca to the cell as efficiently as possible. She was obviously important, and who knew, maybe there was the possibility of a promotion in all of this, even for someone as unimportant as himself, if he was helpful enough. He led her down the short hallway to the elevator, walking purposefully, trying to act as if he did this every day, hoping to make a good impression.
“Hey, Todd?” Rebecca asked, dropping her cigarette casually on the floor and then grinding it out with the toe of her sneaker. “How come you know about the tattoo? You don’t check the prisoners in, right?”
“Uh, no,” Todd said, sweat breaking out on his brow. He pushed the call button for the elevator again, to have something to do. “No, they bring prisoners in through the secured area downstairs.”
“So, what’s up with that?”
Todd continued to hem and haw until the elevator arrived. Once inside, she put a finger on his forehead, and asked him again, and this time, Todd came clean. After all, if he could not trust Rebecca, whom could he trust?
It had all started five years ago, on a cigarette break with a couple of the guards who worked in the back, Miguel and Reggie. They were scary guys, ex-military types with hard faces and curt, ugly laughs, but they had warmed up to Todd over time, particularly after he revealed that he could cover for them when they clocked out early. After a while, they started talking about what went on in the back.
There were rumors, of course, and everyone who worked there knew it was a holding facility for some corporate, quasi-governmental group called Terrie. Todd wasn’t exactly shocked when he found out that Miguel and Reggie were part of a team of interrogators who worked at the facility, or that their job amounted to torture. Initially he was bothered by the way their eyes lit up when they told him stories in hushed voices, descriptions of beatings and water boarding, starvation and humiliation. However, after a short while, he found himself looking forward to the little talks, and imagining the stories while he sat, watching endless hours of ESPN on a jumpy camera monitor. Eventually, he had an opportunity to fix something for Miguel, an unfortunate incident where he had clocked in late and faced termination. Todd saw to it that the report filed that day was incomplete, and suffered a demerit of his own as a result, but earned the gratitude and respect of the entire back room staff. The next day, Miguel invited him down after work, and told him about the dummy code.
No one who was put in one of those cells ever left the facility again. Instead, they ended up in the high-temperature furnace that operated on the facility’s lowest level. The prisoners were there to be interrogated, and some of the women were sort of pretty, behind the bruises and terrified expressions. A small circle of guards took advantage of this. The first time, the whole elevator ride down, Todd had thought he would be sick. However, in that claustrophobic cell, stinking of piss and despair, he had felt something else entirely…
Todd was torn from his reverie by a feeling of dread. He knew that Rebecca was glaring at him furiously before he turned to face her. He wanted to explain, but he could not find the words. He felt as if he had been caught masturbating by his mother; shame, fear, and desperate belief that this could not actually be happening.
“Did you hurt her?”
“What? Who?”
“8B,” Rebecca said, through gritted teeth. “Was she one of the ones you ‘visited’?”
“It’s not… It’s not what you think!”
Seeing her face, he raised his hands defensively and pleaded for the opportunity to explain, feeling such tremendous fear and shame that he wet his pants without even realizing it, only noticing that his damp crotch moments later.
They had visited the woman in 8B. She hadn’t spoken a word since she arrived at the facility, and according to the guards who watched her, she lay on the floor of her cell all day without moving. She was a bit freaky looking, with the tattoos and all, tall and too muscular for Todd’s tastes. They hadn’t gotten a new girl in a while, so there was no way he was going to pass up Miguel’s invitation. She had been complacent, even apathetic, when Reggie ordered her to strip.
Then Reggie tried to touch her, and she’d gone after his eyes with her thumbs. The only reason she didn’t blind him was that her fingernails had been removed a few days earlier for exactly that reason. Miguel had stepped in with his baton, and managed to knock her away before she killed Reggie, but in the process, she pinned Miguel’s arm to the wall and then hammered it with her knee, fracturing it at the elbow. Todd intervened in time to prevent them from beating her to death, but it was a near thing. They could have forced the issue, but they all realized that any further struggle might lead to the prisoner’s premature death, and would cause serious consequences. They’d left to take Miguel to the hospital (written up as a classic trip-and-fall, probably the first time this had happened to a member of the staff), pausing on the way out to instruct the guards on duty to deny her food or water until she felt more compliant.
That had been two days ago, and Todd hadn’t been back downstairs since.
He waited for a moment, eyes closed, while the elevator chime dinged to indicate that they had arrived at the holding level. When nothing happened, he cracked his eyes, stealing a glance at Rebecca. She looked impatient and disgusted, but not nearly as threatening as before. She waved him to his feet curtly, and he stood back up quickly, grateful and eager to please.
Todd followed her down the halls, giving occasional directions. They passed through two security checkpoints where the guards were too busy screaming and crying to challenge their passing. He wondered about that, what could have been happening to create such panic in the facility, but keeping up with Rebecca was clearly more important. Occasionally, curious functionaries and roving guards tried to stop them, but Rebecca turned them aside with a few brisk words, at which point they fled down the halls, sobbing hysterically. It took only a few minutes to reach the holding cells.
They were twelve dull metal doors arranged in a rough circle around the chamber. An interrogation platform, strewn with the tools of the trade, sat in the middle of the room, where it could be seen from every cell. They didn’t do any actual work there, Todd explained nervously, but it was effective psychologically as a reminder of the prisoners’ eventual fate.
“Never mind that,” Rebecca snapped, striding past him, walking around the perimeter of the room. He noticed that she trailed her hand along the cell doors as she passed, touching each one, but he could not imagine why. She glanced inside the little observation window inset in the metal door labeled ‘8B’, and then snarled at Todd.
“How do I open this?”
Todd rushed forward, glad to be of use. He keyed the code into the terminal mounted flush with the concrete wall next to the cell, and the magnetic locks clicked open with a sigh. Rebecca stepped inside, wrinkling her nose at the smell, while Todd watched through the partially open door.
Prisoner 8B was lying on the concrete in the corner of the cell, as far as she could get from the hole in the floor that served as the toilet. The sheet draped across her shoulders was torn and dirty, her clothes underneath little more than rags. Rebecca crouched down, brushing the woman’s tangled hair back from her face, revealing black eyes and a bloody nose. For the first time, Todd noticed that the prisoner’s hair was not actually black — there was a half-inch of pure white at the roots, and he stared at it, trying to wrap his mind around it. The woman didn’t look much more than thirty, but her hair was as white as the paint on the walls.
“Oh, poor thing,” Rebecca clucked, cradling the prisoner like a child. She reached into her sweatshirt pocket and came up with a black bandana that she tied around the unconscious woman’s head. “That should protect your little secret, you conceited bitch,” she said, with obvious fondness.
The prisoner’s eyes fluttered open, and Todd felt a sense of genuine shame for a moment. Then fear reasserted itself.
“Alice? Do you recognize me?”
The prisoner stared blankly for a long while, and then she gave a slow, hesitant nod.
Rebecca smiled and patted her forehead.
“You don’t have to talk, sweetie, I can hear your thoughts just fine. You don’t have to remember anything. My name is Rebecca Levy, and I am your friend. I have been your best friend for years and years, and I am here to take you back to your home, where I can help you get better,” she said softly, her voice so soothing that even Todd felt lulled by it, suppressing an urge to yawn. “Everything is going to be alright, and nothing is going to hurt, I promise. Now, I’m going to put you to sleep, and you aren’t going to dream at all, and when you wake up, you will feel better, okay?”
She didn’t get a response, because the prisoner was already asleep. Rebecca dragged her carefully out of the cell, laying her down on the cleaner floor of the hallway. Todd made a motion to help, but she batted his hand away with a glare so fierce that he shrunk back into the corner, crouched with his hands up protectively.
“You don’t touch her, you bastard,” she hissed, advancing on him with a cold and cruel expression twisting her face. “You should have run away, I might have forgotten about you. Since you didn’t, I have something for you. A gift for what you’ve done to my friend, and all the others.”
Rebecca paused to light another cigarette from her pack. She coughed once, cleared her throat, and then continued in the same sharp, angry tone.
“You see, Todd, this is what I really do. My other job, my day job as it were, is working as a councilor at a school. I even have a degree in psychology for all the good it does me. Over the years, I have seen many lonely, hurt kids. A lot. Some of them I can help, and, some of them,” Rebecca said, with a failed attempt at an indifferent shrug, “I can’t.”
She loomed over him, her shadow seeming to fall down on him from high above. Todd felt as if he were nailed to the ground, his limbs moving in a bizarre pantomime of swimming as he sought enough purchase on the concrete floor to crawl, to scamper away from this terrible woman and her blazing, unforgiving anger. He muttered apologies that were incoherent even to him, begging for mercy that he knew with certainty he would not receive.
“Kids feel things more, you know? And I can’t forget all of it. I wish I could, let me tell you. I would sleep better. What I can do, though, is share them,” Rebecca sneered at him, and he felt as if he were the vilest, smallest thing on Earth. He wished he had not left his. 38 revolver back at the security desk, because then he could have used it to kill himself. “All I needed was someone who deserved it.”
Rebecca pitched her cigarette and it bounced off Todd’s forehead, causing him to cry out in surprise.
“Sometimes it’s overwhelming to live with all of it, even for me. Years worth of trauma, abuse, rejection and despair, extracted from the minds of too many children to count. You’d be surprised what people will do to kids. It’s a sick world. But it amazes me, how tough children are, what they can learn to live with.” Rebecca smiled, and it was the least pleasant smile Todd had ever seen. “I doubt you are as resilient. You can scream, if you want. It turns out that no one ever comes to save you.”
Todd flinched away from her hand, but Rebecca moved faster than he did, and caught him by the wrist, her fingers knotting around his arm. Then he was assailed by emotions, by the echoes of memories that were not his own and yet were firmly embedded in his mind. It was like a yawning void of despair placed directly in his heart, a sense of betrayal and guilt and disappointment so profound that he could not even cry out against it. He could feel the inescapable weight, the violation of trust and confusion and repulsion, and his mind recoiled in the face of it. He felt tiny and naked, shattered in the wake of fear and self-hatred that ate away at the very foundation of his being, eroding his mind away as inevitably as a cliff disintegrating into the sea.
Rebecca shook her head in disgust and walked away from the drooling, whimpering shell of a man. She composed a narrative of the events that had occurred, from the moment she had received the tip about Christopher Feld’s last whereabouts from the remnants of the Society three weeks ago until now, and then thought hard in Alistair’s direction. He must have been looking for her, because the response was almost immediate.
Rebecca? Where the hell have you been?
You’ll have to read it off me. I’m too beat to manage an explanation.
There was a moment of silence, then a brief stinging sensation while Alistair probed her thoughts, absorbing the record of her experiences, and then another delay while he processed the data. Normally, the lag in communication between two telepaths would have been virtually unnoticeable, but she had expended most of her power in the last day and a half of hunting, and had exhausted her reserves implanting terrible memories and emotions in Todd’s shithole of a mind.
I understand. What do you need?
I need an apport. I need a medical team waiting for Alice on arrival. Then I need Xia to come down here and burn this whole fucking place and everyone inside it to ashes.
Are you… certain, Rebecca? What about the other prisoners?
It’s too late, Alistair. There is no one in the building that both deserves and wants to live.