Sophie Littlefield - Banished

“I never told you why I left Gypsum,” Prairie said softly. “I never told anyone but Anna. And I lied to you earlier, when I said I never healed someone who died. The truth is that I did. I healed Vincent. I was sixteen and we were in love. We were going to run away together-Alice never knew. We were just waiting until we had enough money to get someplace far enough away that Alice could never find us, and we were going to take Clover with us.”

She walked to Vincent and put a hand to his face. I couldn’t imagine how she could stand to touch him. He didn’t seem to notice.

“We had an accident on prom night,” Prairie said, adjusting the collar of Vincent’s shirt before she stepped away from the bed. “He was thrown from the car, and he died. And unlike you, Hailey, I should have known better. I had been warned about what would happen if I ever tried to bring someone back.”

“How could you…”

“I loved him. I thought I would die without him. I wished it, I actually wished I was dead too, but I didn’t have the courage to make that happen. So I brought him back instead. I think there was a part of me that believed if I prayed hard enough, if I wanted it badly enough, that just this one time it would work, that God would take pity on me and let him live. A real life, not… this. But of course that didn’t happen. And once I realized what I had done… I left. That part was all true. The only thing I didn’t tell you was that I took Vincent with me.”

“How did you get him in here?” I asked, horrified.

“We came to Chicago by bus, on the night of the accident. I had a little money, enough to get a change of clothes and the bus tickets. It was the next day when we finally got there. All night long, all he did was stare ahead, sitting in that bus seat…”

“But what about his parents? When he didn’t come home, didn’t they freak?”

“I’m sure they were upset, Hailey, but unlike Alice, they knew about me and Vincent. They knew he loved me, and he’d told them if they didn’t give their blessing he was leaving with me anyway, as soon as we graduated. They’d argued about it; they wanted him to go to college, not to spend all his time with me, but he wouldn’t listen. I think they-everyone who knew us-just assumed we’d run away together. And I’m sure they looked for us, for a while. But Vincent was eighteen. Legally, there wasn’t anything they could do.”

“They must have been heartbroken,” I said, imagining how his parents must have worried-after all this time, if they were even still alive, they had no idea what had happened to their son. From the misery in Prairie’s eyes I knew it was a thought that haunted her as well. “Where did you go when you got to Chicago?”

“I took him to a hospital, the best in the city. I made sure of that. I spent almost the last of the money for a cab and took him to the emergency room. There was no one there, so I sat him in a chair. I pretended to be there for myself, which wasn’t hard, since I’d been in the accident too, and unlike Vincent, my cuts and bruises weren’t healed. I told them my parents were undocumented and they treated me as an indigent. I stayed around long enough to eavesdrop on what they were doing with Vincent.”

“Wait, so they didn’t know you were together?”

“No, and he couldn’t tell them. He didn’t even look at me once. After that, I kept track of him, which wasn’t easy, since I was trying to find a room and a job, but I found ways. I… learned to be creative. And convincing. One of the doctors on ER rotation was a young resident who studied immune disorders. That’s what they think he has, by the way… after all this time they still think Vincent has some rare immune problem, and they’ve got him on all these clinical trials.”

“They can do that? Just experiment on him like that?”

“Technically, it’s not allowed, since no one ever claimed him, and they never made contact with his family. He’s a John Doe, but he had an ID bracelet with his name engraved on it, so they’ve always called him Vincent. I used to find that… a comfort. Anyway, as you’ll learn yourself someday, when money’s involved, lots of things are possible. The doctor I mentioned-the one who studied immune diseases-had plenty of funding, and arrangements were made.” She shrugged. “They’ve found ways to keep his skin and organs functioning all this time.”

“But how…?”

“The miracles of modern science.” Prairie’s voice was heavy with regret. “It’s ironic. I’ve often wondered what would happen if the doctors here got together with Bryce, what they might be able to accomplish. But I could never tell them about each other. They work at cross-purposes, I guess you could say.”

“What do the doctors here do to him?” I asked, my throat dry.

“They’re doing research into cell regeneration,” she said. “His systems have responded well. I guess I should thank them.”

She didn’t look all that thankful. I didn’t blame her. What must it be like to see someone she loved here, kept alive artificially? I tried to imagine him at Kaz’s age, full of life, laughing, but all I saw was an empty shell made of skin.

“What does he… do?” I asked.

“He’s very good at simple tasks, like sorting beads and solving shape puzzles. But he’s completely nonverbal. They keep hoping. I… don’t know if that’s worse. Here, watch this.”

She stood in front of the bed, in Vincent’s line of vision. “Vincent, clap three times.”

Without any change to his blank expression, the man raised his hands and slowly slapped them together. Once, twice, three times. Then he let his hands fall back on the covers. His eyes never focused.

Watching him sent a chill through me, but I didn’t want Prairie to know how horrified I was. “You can’t blame yourself. You couldn’t have known.”

Prairie shook her head miserably. “I did understand. And I did it anyway. I have to make sure this doesn’t happen again, and that means I have to stop Bryce, no matter what.”

I couldn’t stand to see her this upset. “Don’t worry. If people know what happens when you heal a dead person, they would never do it, not on purpose. Even if Bryce manages to make more Healers, he wouldn’t make-”

“Hailey,” Prairie cut in sharply. “You don’t understand. This is exactly what Bryce wants to make… things like this. He wants to sell them, to the highest bidder. The Healers are just a tool, like an assembly line.”

I looked at Vincent, who was staring at nothing, a faint, shiny bit of drool pooling at the corner of his mouth. I didn’t understand. “What could he possibly want with…”

Prairie’s face darkened. She grabbed my wrist and pulled me to the bedside, until I was standing only a few inches away from Vincent.

“Vincent, hit yourself,” she whispered, and he immediately started to smack himself on one side of his face and then the other, his palms flat and hard, the sounds of flesh on flesh sharp.

Prairie turned to make sure I was watching, and the pain in her eyes was staggering. “Harder,” she whispered, and the thing that used to be Vincent curled his fingers into fists and now each blow caused his head to jerk and roll, but still he kept at it-

“Stop!” I cried. “Please, Vincent, stop, don’t, don’t hurt yourself.” And just like that, the Vincent creature, the zombie that lived in the ruins of his body, put his hands back in his lap. His face bore fresh bruising and a few cuts; his lip was beginning to swell. But there was no sign at all that he noticed, much less cared.

Prairie backed away from him, her eyes shining with unshed tears.

“Why?”

“Because you can send them into battle, Hailey,” she said, her voice cracking with emotion. “You can load them up with explosives and tell them to blow themselves up, tell them to walk into shopping malls or schools, and they’ll never think twice, never blink an eye.”