Chris Jordan - Torn

Planning and execution. Which, in this case, are inextricably linked.

“Vash?”

Lover boy is busy at his desk, scrolling through the video archives, looking for evidence of how Wendall Weems is managing to move around the community undetected. He looks up from the screens, his handsome face bathed in the light from below. “Yes?”

“Irene has her instructions. She’ll take care of the boy.”

He shrugs, absently stroking the wings of his mustache with his left thumb. “Good.”

“Any sign of Mr. Nobody and the miracle mom?”

“Not yet. They’ll show.”

“No doubt,” she says with a tiny, cutting smile. “Probably when we least expect it.”

“Could happen, yes.”

He waits, knowing there’s more.

“I’ve been thinking, Vash.”

“Ah,” he says, his expression unreadable.

Evangeline plants her hip on the edge of his desk. She’s excited by her new idea. Even in the middle of a long winter night it makes her feel wide-awake, zoomed with the perfection of her plan.

“When Arthur passes, we enter a new age,” she begins. “Everything will change, and yet we must have continuity. The organization cannot be allowed to splinter. We must continue to speak with one voice. Even more important, we must shape the truth.”

“Shape truth?”

Evangeline sees that she finally has his attention. Bagrat Kavashi is familiar with the notion of a malleable truth.

“Let’s assume that we can expect a visit from the Feds, sometime very soon. Within the next day or so. Do we agree that’s likely, whether or not this man Shane pays us a visit here personally?”

“Very likely. Hundred percent.”

“Okay, given that we’ll be taking a hit, exposing ourselves to the outside world, the questions is, what do they find?”

“Not boy,” he says firmly.

“Not alive, no. He’s a smart little thing, who knows what he might tell them? But what if the Feds find something that leads them to the boy, and away from us? What if they find Wendy and his followers?”

Kavashi perks up, interested. “Blame the boy on Weems?” He nods, liking the idea. “The mother, too.”

“Why not? I’ve been thinking that Wendall might be a morbid individual, drawn to death. It happens in some organizations. Remember the folks from Heaven’s Gate. No? They believed they would rendezvous with an alien spacecraft after death, and be taken to a better place. An express ride to heaven, more or less. Mostly less, as it turned out. But their example might be useful.”

“Explain.”

“What if Wendy and the gang do a Hale-Bopp? Remember that comet that signaled the end for Heaven’s Gate? When the comet passed by they all took poison or something.”

Kavashi looks up. “Yes. Very useful example.”

“Yes. And we’ll make sure there are documents on Wendy’s computer, explaining everything he did because of some signal to go to the next world.”

“Ah,” says Vash. “But what is Weems’s signal?”

Evangeline sits on his big strong knee, very pleased with herself. “Arthur dying,” she says brightly. “That’s their signal.”

The boy sleeps with a night-light. The light is a gift from his teacher, Mrs. Irene Delancey, and despite the fact that he no longer trusts her, he still loves the night-light, even though it’s probably meant for little kids, not ten-year-olds. It’s called a Twilight Turtle and it projects constellations on the walls and ceiling. Eight different constellations, to be exact, plus a whole bunch of other stars. The turtle-shaped night-light glows comfortably on the bureau in his new bedroom, a room with no windows and only one exit, which is always locked.

They call it a bedroom but Noah understands that he is, in fact, their prisoner. And when he wakes up in the middle of the night, that’s the first thing he thinks about: how to escape. He’s heard stories of other kids who got snatched and then made friends with the ones who snatched them. As if they never really tried to get away? That’s not for Noah. No matter what they tell him about being the One True Voice, and all the neat stuff he’ll learn by listening to recordings of his grandfather droning on and on, and how special he’ll be when he grows up, with thousands of people hanging on his every word, Noah has no intention of staying.

No way will he ever forget about his mom, a suggestion actually put forward by Mrs. Delancey recently, who said that after a while his memories of his mother will fade away and he won’t miss her because his life will be so full of learning about the Rule of One that he won’t have room for anything else.

No freaking way! His mom doesn’t let him use the word freaking, because she says it’s a substitute for an even worse word, but in this situation Noah thinks it would be allowed. If he listens inside his head he can even imagine Mom with her hands on her hips, going No freaking way, Noah, don’t listen to them, don’t ever forget me, don’t ever forget who you really are.

Freaking never. He’s never ever going to forget. Not in a million years. Not if Mrs. Delancey makes him listen to the stupid headphones until he’s a hundred years old. And when he wakes up with his eyes wet from crying in his dream, he knows exactly who to blame. Mrs. Freaking Delancey, that’s who.

Mrs. Delancey who pretended to be his friend, who pretended to care, who pretended to help him with math and taught him about prime numbers, and who let Noah believe she was the second-most-beautiful-and-special person in the whole wide world. All pretend. All a lie. All so he’d trust her enough to go under the bleachers and hide in the ventilation duct. Which is where they grabbed him, just the way she planned, and put the stinky cloth over his face and made him go to sleep.

Everything she says is a lie, including the part about Mom being killed in the explosion. At first he thought it was true and then right away he overheard people saying stuff, lowering their voices if they noticed him listening, but he has really good ears, not to mention a really good brain that can figure out if they’re still talking about his mother, as if they’re worried about what she might do, then Mom must still be alive.

Noah clings to the idea of Mommy alive. Mommy alive gets him through the day, and helps him at night when he’s so alone that it hurts inside, as though his whole body is being squeezed by a giant fist.

His mind races with thoughts about what really happened to his mom, the need to escape, to find the truth, the soothing voices in his headphones, until he’s so exhausted he can’t think anymore.

He’s almost back asleep when something wakes him. Footsteps, ever so quiet, approaching his bed. Despite being afraid, he forces himself to open his eyes, and sees Mrs. Delancey, bathed in the stars from his night-light.

“Come with me,” she whispers urgently. “We have to hide.”

The thing about being scared is, after a while you get used to it. Numb to it. It’s as if there’s a faint, high-pitched scream in your head, and it never stops, but you learn to ignore it, like sirens in the city. Ruler Weems-why do I keep wanting to call him Reverend?-thinks I’m making a big mistake. Stay with me, he urges, keep safe for your child, and a big part of me wants to do just that. But I keep thinking Noah will be scared when some big guy he’s never met tries to snatch him from his bed. Which gets me worrying about where he’s been sleeping, and does he have a nice bedroom, and does he know I’m alive or have they been filling his head with lies? Because if he knows his mother is alive he’ll be wondering why she hasn’t come to get him, and if he thinks I’m dead then in his head he’s an orphan, alone in the world. Unless he thinks of Mrs. Delancey as his new mom. Which come to think of it must be what the Rulers had in mind, taking him away from everything he knows. Isolate the child, make him feel so alone and terrified that he’ll bond with the one familiar person in his new world, the teacher who he trusted and admired. Who, to be frank, he had a crush on.