James Knapp - State of Decay

“Zoe?”

When I tried to swallow, though, my throat was totally dry and my stomach turned over. Maybe this time I really was.

Either way, I needed time to think. Peeking through the hole in the cardboard, I focused on the woman in the cage next to mine until the lights got bright and the glow appeared around her head. After a second I could see it rippling with deep shades of blue, with small flares of red licking out. The patterns were all of sadness and depression and despair, worse than I’d ever seen before. I meant to push and try to make her feel a little better, when I noticed something else: a thin white band, like a little halo circling her head.

“Hey, my next-door neighbor had one of those,” I said without thinking. It was faint, like the ring of a planet, and when I concentrated on it, I felt a kind of resistance. It pushed me back gently, not allowing me to get any closer and not letting me change the other colors.

The woman wiped her eyes.

“You shouldn’t do that,” she said.

“Do what?” I asked, guilty.

“What you just did. They’re watching.”

“Watching?”

She pointed to the electrodes stuck to her head. My brain was moving in slow motion, but I was starting to understand her.

“Wait, you felt that?” I asked.

“I can do it too, Zoe,” she said. “It’s why I’m here. It’s why we’re all here.”

“Other people can do it?”

She gave me a pitying look then, and it was a look I knew well. “Yes,” she said.

“Then my next-door neighbor could do it too the whole time?” I asked myself out loud. “Why was he—”

“Maybe they were getting ready to contact you,” she said, looking away. “Maybe they just wanted to keep an eye on you.”

“Who’s ‘they’?”

“Coming in,” a man’s voice said from somewhere nearby. The woman’s eyelids drooped.

“Don’t fight them,” she said.

“Turning on the light,” the voice said, and there was a loud snap that made me jump as a bright light flooded the room from above. Everything went white and hurt my eyes, making my stomach flip.

“When they start,” she said, holding up the thin white electrode wires while still staring into space, “the person on the other end of these wires is going to try to take control of you.”

“What? Why?”

“Because they’re like us,” she said. “Because they can. Because they’re in even deeper trouble than we are, and they need help. They’re desperate.”

“What?”

Heavy footsteps came closer until a shadow fell over me and I saw two men standing in front of my cell.

“Try to remember that,” Anna said.

“You’re awake,” one of them said. I didn’t recognize either of them, but I could tell right away that they were both revivors, just like the woman Nico brought me to see. They were like dead men or robots or something, with no thoughts to read or influence.

“We’re ready to begin,” one said to the other.

“Begin? Begin what?” I asked. What the hell was going on? What was I doing there?

Please let this be another dream. Please, please let this be another dream….

“The new Patient Nine is awake. Has the template been arranged?” the other one said into a walkie-talkie. It let out a pop of static, and another voice came out of it.

“The probes are in place,” it said. “We’re recording.”

“Open the gate,” the one with the radio said.

“Get ready,” Anna muttered from behind the plastic.

“Get ready for wh—”

The words stuck in my mouth, and I found out.

A GPS appeared in front of my eyes. The floating image jittered at the edges, and a point began to flash. Impulses cracked down the length of my spine. A low electric hum rattled through my brain. It urged me to move toward the point on the map. I’d managed my way back up to street level, where I walked forward blindly.

Is Nico alive? I asked.

I had felt Nico’s presence inside my head. He’d dug down in my mind, deeper and deeper, when something else intruded. The other presence reached in and took control.

Answer me , I urged.

The other presence was still there—I sensed it, though it hadn’t responded. It had referred to itself as Samuel Fawkes. Samuel Fawkes had forced me to kill Nico.

I could still feel Nico’s chest beneath my palm. His skin had been so warm and so full of life. I never meant to do it. Something triggered the blade, and the warmth seeped out. It gushed through my fingers and over my hand. He fell back, spilling onto the concrete floor. Blood bloomed through his white shirt until it turned red. The vibration in my chest grew more urgent. I wanted to go to him. Instead I rifled through each of his pockets. I found the keys that would free me from the chain. With the padlocks undone, I stood and left him.

Please tell me, is he alive? I asked again, but the presence was silent.

The snow had gotten heavy. Flakes sprayed over my face and my mostly bare body. I was still wearing only a button-up shirt that reached the tops of my thighs, but I didn’t feel cold. A man stared as I trudged barefoot down the street, a passenger inside my own body.

This was a mistake , I said. Shanks looked down and shook his head.

No, it wasn’t.

It was.

His eyes narrowed, and he leaned in very close. The warm brown of both his eyes was blotted out as his pupils dilated.

No, it wasn’t , he growled.

The anxiety left me, bleeding away. In its place, I felt relaxed. Happy, even.

This never happened , he said, no longer looking at me. I left you at the door and I never came inside. I have never been inside your apartment.

Those memories weren’t real, I was certain of it. Other memories referenced them as just a dream. I’d shared those dreams with the department psych rep. I was sure that they weren’t real. When Shanks came up to my apartment that night, it had been for the first time.

That man sitting next to you is not your friend….

I shook my head, scattering cold drops and snow. More people were watching me, pointing at me…. I began to walk faster, and then I ran. I darted down a side street. One foot plunged into a puddle of water, splashing slush and flakes of ice. I ran through the dark maze of streets and alleys.

As I ran, I tore frantically through my thoughts, through the gaps in my corrupted memories. Inside so many of them was Doyle Shanks, saying and doing things he had never done.

I should have been terrified. What happened when that blade went into my chest? Between the time my life slipped away from me and the time the warmth first came, what was it, exactly, that I had become? Though I knew my identity was the same, something had changed when I fell into that darkness. I should have felt something, anything, but I did not.

Snow covered everything now. People and cars fell off; then I was alone. I didn’t know where I was. I’d come out in a wide, open drift of snow. Dark structures loomed through the haze in the distance. The GPS point was somewhere up ahead.

I saw a squat, blocky shape some ways away. It poked up from out of the expanse of white. I moved toward it, dragging my feet through the snow. It was a small guard station. The door lay open, and the glass was all smashed. An old, rusted breaker box had been torn down. A shopping cart lay on its side next to it. Just beyond, a ramp descended underground.

Squinting through the snow, I made out a figure. There was a man at the ramp. He wore a long, dark coat, with the hood up over his head.

You …

A thrumming began to swell in the distance. It came from up above me. I turned and shielded my eyes against the snow. There were several black shapes hanging in the air. As they came closer, the thrumming grew louder. It was a formation of helicopters.