Chapter 3: Yellow Brick Road
There are days, up on top of the Space Needle, when the wind is just right. The air, instead of rising, stagnant, from the city and putting the smell of people and coffee rinds in my hair, blows in from the north, and with the chill it also brings the smell of pine trees--of evergreens and fresh air--of sunlight and fresh fruit and money and democracy.
There are times when I get up there at just the right time. Days when Logan is busy at a family function and Cindy is working late and I don't exactly feel like riding my baby around. I get up there just in time for the sky to start turning pink… I can stand there, with my pupils as wide open as they'll go, watching every single shade of pink, each gradation as the entire city sinks into night, I alone to watch.
There was one day, when I had company. The one person who I could trust to share the sky with was with me. Miracle Boy. Wonder Man. The paraplegic who not only can walk, but can practically walk on water. It was wonderful, in a terrifying way, to know there was someone that I trusted so implicitly…
Why do I think about that now?
And why like this?
I don't feel like me… I feel… heavy. Like my skull's being weighed down… And I'm speaking like Logan. I'm not talking in vernacular—hell, I just used the word vernacular!
Then again, it seems kind of pointless… And in a way, it was all an affectation anyway. Just one more way to blend into a crowd. I remember, when I first figured out that being precocious was one thing and being above and beyond a normal child's intelligence was another, struggling to remember to use slang, to use words under two syllables unless absolutely necessary. Trying to confine my mind into a box… I guess I did okay. After I was twelve or so, I never even had to think about it… Even with all the words stored up in my brain after so many years, I always knew which ones were—acceptable.
I'd only started to feel ashamed about it lately. I was enjoying listening to Logan speak a little while ago, the way I usually do, taking comfort in his presence, when he used a word wrong. It was a simple mistake, people do it all the time… But he never bothered to correct himself. As if he never thought I would notice. For some reason, that bothered me…
It's cold in here.
Why is it cold in here?
Dammit, Logan, if it's getting so bad that you can't pay your heating bill, I'll go out and steal something, you don't have to sit here and freeze…
I reach out a hand to touch him, poke him in the shoulder, to insist that he get up and turn on the thermostat because I'm too damn lazy, when something jars against my wrist and I hear a soft clank.
Then I remember, I'm not lazy. The times that I've wanted for energy in my life I can count on one hand. I don't ever sleep next to Logan, either. Not in my recollection, anyway, and I think I would remember finally doing what I had waited for so long to…
My eyes flutter open, and I squint out of them, feeling as though the pressure in my head is going to make my brain spurt out of my eyes if I open them any wider.
No.
The events of the last few hours… days… weeks? I can't keep track anymore, but however long it's been since my world came crashing down, it all comes back to me. Instantaneous realization pours over me like the smell of cheap perfume, and so I shut my eyes again.
I don't want to think this…
Just go away, I tell the world I see outside myself, Just give me another lifetime to sleep it off, and maybe, just maybe, I can deal with this. Send me a friend, a helping hand—who am I kidding, send me a miracle, and I can make something of this. But, until you do, just let me sleep, and dream…
"Good-morning, X5-452!" A cheerful voice interrupts my fervent wishing, and it pierces through my skull, sending a monstrous ache with it. The heaviness topples from my head, and where it was, light, sharp pain fills me, making me take a deep breath. It makes me open my eyes…
It's that blond woman who sounds so cheerful. She must be running the place. The only people I've ever heard sound cheerful in Manticore had money to make from it, so she must be up there.
"I hate you." I manage to mutter, not caring if she hears. My eyes flutter closed again, but not to avoid the world, this time, it's to keep from wincing in pain.
'Lord, how my head aches! What a head have I!
It beats as it would fall in twenty pieces.'
"I'm sorry," she tells me, not sounding very penitent at all, "Is the medicine making you cranky?"
No, the sight of your ugly face is what's turning my stomach, you lousy bitch.
"Huh." I proclaim, not able to get anything else past my dry tongue. I guess one sentence is my quota for the morning. I'll have to think up a really good one for tomorrow…
"I'll just tell them to give you more." She informs me, smiling triumphantly.
"Do you… get off on this?" I manage to croak, "What? Can't… get any?" My tongue feels at least twice its normal size.
Her only response is to widen her sickening smile. Who does she think she's fooling with that Cheshire Cat grin? Anybody who can't tell she's faking it-- is probably exactly the type of person she wants around her, come to think of it.
"So… How do you feel? Your brother Zack would want you to be nice and healthy."
I turn to glare at her. Could she be any more obvious? So they think that suicide is an option, now, do they? It'd be kind of hard, seeing as how I can't get near enough to anything that would make it possible. Besides, it'd be kind of stupid, trying to commit suicide in the middle of a medical ward.
And what a waste…
'Here cracks a noble heart…'
"Peachy-keen." I respond dryly, never meeting her eyes.
You are a non-person. You are not even an entity. You are so low, that you defy any classification of "being" that there is.
'Out of my sight! Thou dost infect mine eyes!'
She nods, as if she expected sarcasm. Who am I kidding? Of course they expected sarcasm. It's probably in their nifty little "reprogramming handbook":
Max Guevara, Type 14 personality.
At three days to a week, expect sarcasm.
From a week to a month, expect violence and wisecracks.
A month to a year, look for her trying to chew off any limbs in a misguided attempt to escape.
One year to four—you should start looking for the body.
Heh. Take that, you bastards… Of course, they'll only think that I've committed suicide—after all, they've already expected so much from me—I'll really be off eating dinner with Logan somewhere. Pasta tricolore, with a little bit of pre-pulse wine… No, let's be realistic, we don't have that kind of money anymore… It'd be a nice Canadian—what do they make up there, anyway? I've never bothered to read about wine, of all things… Chardonnay? Champagne? Eww… I hate champagne… A nice rosé? Who knows… Who cares, so long as I'm drinking it with—
"I'm happy to hear you've been doing so well here… You know, your sister has been looking forward to seeing you."
If looks could kill, she'd have had a coronary. My eyes were throwing daggers as I spat, "I have no sister living in these walls."
Hah. Chew on that. Go ahead and think that I hate her, so that when I escape and drag her with me, you'll be none the wiser.
Please, Logan, get here soon, I miss you already…
"Come on, now, I know better then that." She interjects smoothly, never loosing her composure. I'm gonna rip that smug look right off of her ugly—"You love your sister—what is it that you call her—Brin?" God, this woman is good at being patronizing. She says "Brin" with undisguised affection. As if it weren't threatening to absolutely everything this place stands for.
Am I really in these walls? It's just not possible that I've been here this long and not gone insane already… Do they know that?
"Think whatever you want, Lady." I tell her, my voice breaking in the middle of my sentence. I've never been this exhausted in my entire life—except maybe for last week—month—yesterday—when 'Deck decided to shoot me up trying to keep me from escaping.
"I'll do just that." She tells me, as she rises.
Oh, thank whatever it is that passes for God in this hellhole, you're leaving. Well, don't let the door hit you in the ass on the way out.
"By the way," She pauses as she reaches the door, and I groan inwardly, wanting her to be gone, so I can be alone in my thoughts, the only reality that counts, "I might want to behave for your next visitor, if I were you."
Yeah, and I might want to investigate the pleasures of plastic surgery if I were you—but I'm not, thankyouverymuch.
"I'll be sure to." I mutter ineffectively. The sound barely reaches my own ears, much less hers, but the attempt at resistance cheers me a little.
The door shuts behind her, and I exhale loudly.
So much for you. Huh.
Out of the corner of my eye, I sense movement. The girl who was here earlier—was it yesterday? Last week?—is standing next to the bed, the curtain slowly swinging shut behind her. I can't help admitting to being unnerved. She moved fast enough between me noticing and turning my head to be standing next to me by the time my action was completed.
X6-735 is still beautiful, though, and that makes me terribly angry.
'I beg of you, by my once commended beauty…'
"Back for more?" I croak, looking her straight in the eyes, refusing to relinquish any control.
She only smiles, but her smile is more pleasant then the one that the blond bitch wears—enigmatic instead of blatantly false. If she's being patronizing, she's hiding it well. "I told you," she informs me, her voice smooth and perfectly modulated, "I'm not your enemy here." 735 pulls up her stool—which is now, I notice, on my other side—and sits in one beautiful, elegant movement.
"Do they only call you X6-735?" I find myself asking, genuinely curious. Hell, I'm not getting out of her anytime soon, might as well learn something, right?
Her eyes narrow by a millimeter.
Gotcha.
"Yes." She says smoothly, allowing no time to elapse, "I'm only X6-735." She smiles again, looking friendly until I notice that her canine teeth are ever-so-slightly too sharp for a normal person, "You, however, employ a lovely array of names. Little sister, baby sister, Max, Maxie, Max Guevara…" The corners of her lips twitch, as if she is containing a grin, "May I ask where you got that last name from?"
I stare past her impassively, "I didn't get my name. Someone else got it for me."
"Oh." She pauses, and I can literally see the thoughts tumbling through her head, "So you were named." Her smile fades slightly, as if this is a new and complex idea for her, to receive a name; a name, rather then a barcode. Some semblance of flesh and blood, rather then an echo of the machines we should have been. Somewhere, inside her head, she realizes that I'm not going to answer, "You're being a lot… nicer then you were last I saw you. I'm going to presume you're feeling in better temperament?"
I look her in the eye, "Is that what their calling it these days?"
Her pleasant smile returns, "And what would you call it?" She asks, and the amusement in her voice tells me that she knows she's asking for trouble.
"I'm feeling a bit more… confident." I tell her, flashing her a wide smile that only involves baring my teeth, "After all, you seem content merely to talk me to death."
"It's our new method. We keep talking until you see our side, or until your brain spills out of your ears, whichever comes first."
"I didn't realize that your model was equipped with a sense of humor." I tell her, despite myself slightly surprised. So, they let them have personalities…
"Humor is learned, not simply acquired."
"So they're giving you lessons?" I focus my eyes on a speck of dust on the ceiling. Funny, I would think they'd clean this place better then that….
"No, it's something of a hobby."
It's not a speck of dust, it's the lens of a camera.
Let's play a game of I Spy… I spy Max Guevara, tied to a bed…
Like a hog… Like an animal… Like a mental patient…
If I see you mishandling that gun again, I'll feed you to the gnomlies personally! A soldier is only as good as their gun!
YES SIR!
Maybe I'm not in Manticore. Maybe I always had a regular life, but my boyfriend left me and I snapped and I invented all of this as the reason for all of that pain…
Maybe I'm simply crazy…
…It was just a crow… We didn't even have to kill it… It was just there, it wouldn't have hurt anybody…
I feel warm. Experimentally, I tug at my bindings again.
No dice.
I'm trapped.
Running up the stairs, my heartbeat pounding in my ears, panic making me light headed… "Suicidal" the paper said so, and it was written by an M.D., so it's probably true…
Oh, Logan, please, please let me be wrong. Please don't do this, I'm sorry, I'm so sorry, I'll never leave you again, not for an instant. I need you. Just hold on.
Just hold--
There isn't enough air in here.
Could somebody please open a window?
Somebody please…
"Max? Max?" Her hands are on my shoulder, shaking me, even as her eyes fix on what it was that sent me into this state, "Fuck." She says quietly. And the fact that she knows that word, employs it, and is smart enough to use it only below the range of normal hearing shocks me back into myself. She stares down at me, analyzing, for only a moment before she decides that I wasn't faking it, "Do you need any tryptophan?" Her lips don't move as she asks the question, a trick of ventriloquism that I'd like to learn.
I give my head a minute shake.
No.
She sits back down, and notices a small figure wearing a lab coat who is approaching, presumably attracted by the noise. X6-735 turns to face the approaching figure, "Aha." She murmurs softly, "Max… Meet your protégé, X7-452. X7-452, meet your source."
I stare at the silent little thing for a moment, "You shot me." I state incredulously, trying to have it make some sense, "You little bitch, you shot me!" I cry, trying to rise. Fuck it, when are they going to get me out of these damned restraints!
My clone shrinks back, "It's alright," 735 tells it, "She can't hurt you. Just always remember what happens when you hurt human beings. They like to hurt back, just like the animals. Only humans have better memory. Do you understand now?" X6-735 doesn't speak as if she's talking to a child; rather, she speaks to that monstrosity like she's programming a computer.
The silent little gremlin nods her head and shrinks back, stepping away from me with cautious footfalls.
"Monsters, all of the X7-series." X6-735 admits in that funny voice of hers. With my enhanced ears, I can hear the phlegm rattling around as she speaks without moving her lips, the sound emanating from deep in her throat. She must've just gotten over a cold… "The hive minds make them almost incapable of individual reasoning, the only good point of that is you only have to teach a lesson once." She shrugs, a movement that clearly states she's washed her hands of it.
A part of me dimly wonders why she's telling me all this…
She is not my friend!
'Act the part of the flower,
But be the serpent under it.'
She sits up a little straighter, "Well, I think that's all the time we have for today."
"What?" My voice creaks, I don't even sound like myself. Who is this person using my body, anyway? "Are you my psychiatrist now?"
She grins, and the sight of it fills me with hope. Instantly, I chastise myself. Already I've attached too much of myself to this… person. She's still my enemy, no matter how many times she insists otherwise.
"Something like that…" She turns to go, but seems to think better of leaving me on that note, "I'll be back soon. If there is anything you need, just call, and one of the technicians will handle it."
"What about…?" I make a decent attempt at inclining my head in X7-452's direction.
"Her? I'll make sure she doesn't give you any trouble." She pats me on the shoulder, a friendly gesture, and I almost don't want to bite her hand off for it, "And I'll see what I can do about that, as well." She doesn't turn her head, but she gives a meaningful glance out of the corner of her eye, and I know that camera will be shut off within an hour.
Finally, she turns again to go, "Sleep well." She offers, suddenly, the curtain has swung shut, and I'm alone again.
Curiously, I don't feel quite so bad. Manticore still sucks, nothing will change that… But maybe, I can turn her before she turns me… This X6-735… She might be my enemy now, but something about her…
Maybe she can be an ally later.
…
…Or maybe she's turned me already.
What the fuck am I thinking!? "Maybe she can be an ally"!?!
Yeah, and maybe I can magically sprout wings and fly out of here.
What was I thinking?
I don't know what I was thinking.
That scares me.
'The rest… Is silence.'