Chapter IX

Already in his unit, James Crow looked at the mirror, seeing a pale, emaciated face and a weary look – a result of his life style. This day was more exhausting than the others and even a cold shower didn't get him back on his feet.

After he finished the shower and put on his casual clothes, he took his PIU unit, which he got as a replacement. James opened it, looked at the amber vials, took one of them and examined it. It was like a promise of a calm night, a night without pain. He remembered the withdrawal all too well and didn't want to experience it again. Although he knew that this kind of response of his system is abnormal, this knowledge wasn't any comfort to him.

James put the vial back into in place and put the PIU against his neck, wrestling with his thoughts. He needed some sleep but, on the other hand, he knew that the night time is the only possible time to skip a dose, since there was no-one to watch him.

He decided to take the risk and skip the dose.

It didn't take long, before the pain struck again. James hissed, but he decided to withstand, hoping that it'll eventually go away. The real and surreal visions – the visualizations of James' subconscious - came as well.

The minutes of pain seemed like hours to him. Biting his pillow and trying to be quiet, in order not to be heard, he was tempted to dose.

Crow didn't know how long it lasted, but eventually his pain started to wane and, after some time, it went away.

Still, he didn't get up from his bed, as if not entirely certain, whether it's all over. Only when he was absolutely sure the symptoms won't return, he lifted himself shakily. He made few unsteady steps towards the window, still shaking, but finally able to walk and finally free from the grasp of Prozium – completely free.

Suddenly, a feelings he couldn't name, flooded his mind.

"What's happening?"

Crow needed air. He opened the window wide, allowing a cool breath of air.

It was dark, but the night was almost completely cloudless. James looked at the sky, observing it with fascination. The stars shone brightly in constellations, creating an illusion of unusual nearness. Outlines of the cityscape, dark but still visible, seemed to be taken from a dream – the high, massive buildings of steel and concrete were now replaced by vague shapes.

Crow's vision started to blur. Puzzled, he wiped his eyes and realized, that his fingers are wet.

"Weird."

He tasted the strange liquid only to state, that it tastes salty.

A sudden surge of fear struck James unawares. It was a fear of someone lost on an unknown territory, left in the dark, where logic failed. That was too much for him. He sat by the wall, overwhelmed by what he felt and buried his face in his hands. Furthermore, a creeping, paranoid feeling that someone saw him in the dark, kept nagging him.

Fortunately for him, the initial storm passed a few moments later. James looked around tentatively and as he found out that the worst is over, he felt enormous relief. He got up from the floor and decided to look out of the window once again.

A breath of cool wind felt strange at first and it made Crow dizzy. He breathed it in greedily, like an animal looking for a trail and looked again at the clear sky.

He wasn't able to describe what he felt when he saw the sky full of stars, but he felt it belongs to those kinds of feelings, which he would want to experience.

"Dizzying heights… and abysmal lows".

Having gone through the latter first, now he started to experience the former. The complete silence and darkness, after bringing him fear, now brought him peace. He realized that for the next few hours no-one will be observing him and no-one will be there to report him to the authorities.

The only thing that really bothered him was the lack of definitions and lack of understanding of what he's going through. It was a beginning of something new and incompatible with his whole life and experiences. James felt he needed guidance which couldn't be provided by the system he served. Mere thought of a next withdrawal filled him with dread and he wasn't sure whether he'll be able to skip the dose ever again, but the experience itself – no matter if positive or negative – was too unusual to be waved aside. James felt the urge to understand.

Still, despite the experiences of this night the tiredness grown, slowly but constantly. He knew he'll have to get up to work, have a new case assigned and, what was most important, find someone who could guide him. Eventually, he fell asleep, not knowing that it still isn't the end.

The subject of dreams didn't belong to those covered during the Librian education, nonetheless Crow was about to experience one.

Libria, the city-state of steel and concrete stood among the wastelands, the same as in reality. It took a while before James noticed a single, but fundamental difference: it was completely abandoned. Not a single Sweeper patrolled the streets, not a single citizen wandered taking care of his matters. Only Father's face could be seen on the screens as usual.

"James Crow, are you going to leave me as well?" Father spoke unexpectedly.

James stirred, surprised.

"Where are the others?" he asked.

"They're gone," Father answered, "Misguided by those who defied my teachings, they left this city to their doom."

James looked around the main square where he stood.

"Do you see? There's no-one".

"But," Crow asked, "Where could they go, when there, outside, there is nothing but the ruins?"

"They didn't leave in the way you think. They are lost for the society, closed in their own worlds, so preoccupied with their emotions that they're unable to contribute. I feared this might happen."

"Fool!" a very familiar voice with a distinct foreign accent interrupted. "It is you who caused that."

"Explain."

"He has chosen an invincible enemy" the man, who turned out to be Martin Stein started. "He wages war with the human nature, imposing such a strict control that people withdrew to the only oasis of freedom they had left – their internal worlds."

"That's the result of feeling." Father interrupted.

"No" Martin disagreed. "Since the beginning of mankind people were feeling. I have lived in the times when we were free to feel. What is happening now is abnormal."

"Free to feel" Crow repeated. "But what about control?"

"It's the part of the process. People somehow had to cope with them without the drug, hadn't they?"

"But how?"

No one answered. The outlines of the buildings started to blur only to fade away few moments later.

James suddenly sprang out of his bed, painfully bashing with his leg against a desk.

"Shit! What was that?"

He found himself again in his room and the pain ensured him that he's back in reality. Still, although he tried, he couldn't figure out what happened a moment earlier.

"Where was I?"

The visions seemed so extremely vivid that they could be regarded as real. The voices seemed real as well. The city was exactly as he remembered, except it was completely deserted.

Crow's heart beat like mad and his thoughts were in complete chaos. As if it wasn't enough for him, he noticed that the sky started turning intensely red.

"Now what!"

Alarmed, he opened the window and ended contemplating the view unable even to catch his breath. Crow, exhausted with endless questions, stood there completely overwhelmed by the sunrise, observing the varying tints of red. The buildings, usually gray, turned orange, which gave the cityscape almost impressionistic quality. Forgetting about his questions, for a moment James forgot about his own existence.

The sensation he felt was impossible to process, but its intensity was beyond words, causing a feeling strangely resembling physical pain.

This night James' self was shattered into pieces and reassembled into a new quality, for the time being completely beyond his comprehension. His mind stopped working as it did before, preparing a place for his newfound, still forming sense of emotions. And he somehow knew it was merely a beginning.

Sarah Ross watched her husband out of the corner of her eye. He came back later than usual and she could swear that something in his behavior was slightly different. She learned to notice such signs, even if she afforded herself to skip the dose only during the night time.

"You're later than usual" she stated flatly.

"Today was a busy day" he replied.

"Come on!" she thought. "I know that something happened, I can see it!"

Andrew didn't say anything else. He preferred to keep the events of this day for himself, still processing what he had heard during his captivity. Against his years of training, something forced him to think about it. It surely wasn't logic. He couldn't pinpoint what caused that he saved Martin's life by misleading the Sweeper. Luckily his mystification worked, since the grunts usually don't ask questions.

Martin Stein… it was the most difficult case, in which Ross participated, not only because Martin was one of the highest ranking officials ever who changed sides, but there was also something in the man himself that bothered him, something in his behavior. Cleric Ross had a nagging impression that this encounter was planned. The fact that he and Crow weren't killed on the spot, that the sense offenders, including their leader, were strangely obedient to the scientist – they weren't to be simply dismissed. Ross noticed that this man was extremely methodical in his sense offence. It wasn't a wallowing in the newfound emotions, but an arduous journey, of a more deliberate nature.

The Cleric took off his coat and headed to the bathroom, intending to go to sleep. After taking the shower he took his PIU that he got as a replacement in order to dose, but he didn't manage to. The injector was stuck.

"Great!"

Ross first thought whether not to use his wife's PIU, but after a moment he hesitated. The damage has been done. Stein's explanation caused an escalation of a deeper, more subtle process which started way earlier. Slowly, imperceptibly but steadily his loyalty eroded. Some kind of internal brakes held him in check within certain borders and now he felt he's dangerously close of crossing them. Could Stein feel that way as well?

"Dose doesn't ensure loyalty and Father is well aware of that" Andrew recalled this statement. There had to be something deeper than emotions, something unaffected by the dose which guided humans. And this very thing told him to skip the dose.

Meanwhile, Sarah skipped her evening dose once again. EPPTs and a presence of a Cleric caused that she didn't want to risk skipping her dose in the daytime.

The nights without the dose brought her an aching feeling of loneliness, despite – or maybe because of – the presence of her husband by her side. But it also brought her dreams – intense and vivid, never experienced under the dose. They caused that every morning she dosed with a hidden, but present reluctance.

As she laid down next to Andrew she felt a strange need to take a risk as she did sometimes. Her husband laid facing her and trying to sleep. She laid on her back pretending that she's sleeping and waited till his breath will become even. Then she faced him and stroked his hair, as gently as she could, fearing that he might wake up and notice. Sarah instinctively took back her hand; to her relief, his breath was still even. Still, this was painfully insufficient for her. She brought her hand closer once again.

"Don't do it, it's crazy!" her self-preservation instinct warned her.

"It's my husband!" her feelings responded.

"He's a Cleric! Touch him and you'll be dead!"

"As if I was alive right now! What kind of life is it? I can sleep with my husband in one bed, but I can't even touch him!"

"Take your dose."

Sarah ignored the warnings and stroked his cheek, not caring anymore for the punishment. A dismal feeling that she would rather end her life in the city furnaces than take her dose or limit herself to her secret night time thoughts and feelings grew stronger every moment.

"Now you're dead."

"Better dead than incomplete."

She felt the texture of his skin and its warmth, trying to capture and to record it. Her heartbeat accelerated, stimulated by her attraction towards Andrew and fear of what might happened any moment.

Suddenly she felt a powerful grip on her wrist, which caused her to hiss with pain.

"He noticed! This was imminent!"

The grip loosened a bit, but Andrew still held her hand. He was now wide awake.

"How long?" he just asked.

"Two months" Sarah answered.

"Impossible. I would have noticed."

"No. During the daytime I was on the dose. Could you let go of my hand now?"

"No" he answered, but there was something highly unusual in his tone.

"What were you trying to do?" he asked.

Sarah felt embarrassed.

"I don't think anyone who's on the dose would understand." She said quickly to gloss over this feeling.

"I think I could," the Cleric answered once again with this different quality in his tone.

Suddenly she felt a weird sensation. She could have sworn that she felt Andrew's hands massaging her wrist.

"What…?" her eyes widened.

"Well, it's a reflex gained by the years of training" he said with his most instructive tone. "And it happens that I forgot for a moment that you're not an armed rebel."

"I'm an unarmed one" she replied.

"True. You have no firearms. But there are weapons which will render helpless even a Cleric" he replied with distinct amusement, putting his left hand on her hip.

Sarah trembled, hardly believing in what's happening.

"How long?" She managed to ask after a while.

"One hour" the Cleric answered seriously. "My PIU unit got stuck."

"Better late than never" she answered, putting her hand back on his cheek. Andrew once again registered this strange, yet pleasant sensation which woke him up.

"Have you tried that before?" he finally asked.

"What do you mean?"

"I mean – within the last two months…"

"Yes…" she said with sadness.

"You knew the risk?"

"Yes."

"Why were you still skipping the doses when you knew the consequences?"

"Let me ask you something" his wife replied, bringing closer to him. "Would you dose now?"

The Cleric closed his eyes, overwhelmed by the intensity of his feelings. What was happening now seemed completely unreal, although his senses assured him that this isn't the case.

"No" he answered.

"Then you know the answer to your question." She nestled into him.

Andrew felt like his every nerve was played like a musical instrument. Not entirely sure what he was doing, he responded to her caresses – uncertainly, clumsily but sincerely.

"I don't understand" he whispered.

"It will come. Formerly people had all of their lives to understand, to learn."

"Then this is my first lesson?" Andrew asked.

"Yes" Sarah stated. "But there are more to come, many of them very painful. Be prepared."

Andrew Ross was to become a very diligent student, but at this time neither he nor anyone else knew about it.