The loop, p.19
The Loop, page 19
“Fuck.” Brewer hung his head.
Lucy couldn’t stand the idea. She said, “Maybe she thought the device could help him in some way. Or give him an advantage, or…”
“That was one of the main selling points,” said Steve. “The belief was that the connectivity of the Oracle meant that anybody who had the install would be able to access our collective intelligence as easily as their own memories.”
Lucy thought of something she’d read in the Observer when Brady Miller and his mom were found dead. What did their neighbor say?
“They only ever wanted the best for him.”
She could imagine the doctors, leaning forward with a release for Chris’s mother to sign. We can give your son advantages that most of us have never dreamed of. Plus, anyone who helps us with this phase of clinical trials will also receive a substantial stipend. Everyone in that room smart and smiling. True believers all. Opportunity and money on the table. A better future for the one you loved most, there for the taking.
And hadn’t Chris seemed smarter that morning? Hadn’t he been answering the teacher’s questions? Lucy wanted to believe that.
“So it’s possible,” Steve said. “Maybe she thought she was helping him.”
“I don’t know,” said Brewer. “I hung out with Chris when I was younger. He used to boost ramen and eat the noodles raw in the park because his mom already spent her paycheck on cigarettes. Didn’t seem like Mom of the Year material.”
Lucy remembered a time last year when Chris had stolen a brand-new shirt from Bucket’s cubby during art class, and how Bucket knew but didn’t say anything aside from telling Lucy, “It sucks. But he needs it more than me.”
With that memory, she felt Bucket’s absence pulling her down again, because he was gone and their reality only grew worse with each revelation.
What are we dying for, Buck? A stock offering?
She felt fury rising in her, and she knew that if it was unleashed, her first instinct would be to kill the man who’d helped to design the long-suffering world she’d been thrust into. But Steve seemed so sorry, and he knew more than the rest of them about how they might make it all stop, so instead of lashing out, she breathed deep and grabbed Brewer’s hand and crushed it until his knuckles ground together and went white. And he must have understood, because he did not pull away. Once the immediate urge to attack had drained, she said, “Okay, so IMTECH made every greedy, fucking stupid asshole decision they possibly could. I get that. But what do we do now? Is there some way we can get to the IMTECH buildings and shut down the signal? Would that stop them or deactivate the devices?”
“No. First, because I don’t think it’s a local signal these kids are receiving. We were told the device needed to work with a gigahertz frequency instead of megahertz, so we’re dealing with satellite communication. They might have on-ground relays or signal amplifiers around here, but even if we take one of them out, it wouldn’t stop anything. And second, IMTECH is scorched earth. Whoever is really running the Oracle operation must have realized they had an outbreak on their hands, because yesterday evening they sent in a squad of hazmat-suited goons with some kind of sonic weapons, and they started executing staff. Full cleanup. Never heard a single shot fired, only these weird, low rumbles.”
Lucy looked around and confirmed Jake was still out in the store. At some point, he’d woken and crawled his way into a chair, where he sat and swayed, mumbling something to himself. Didn’t his dad work for IMTECH? Hell, half the rich families in town had one parent or the other working for them. Jake seemed fragile right now, and Lucy wasn’t sure he was ready to hear his dad had probably been slaughtered in a military cover-up. Poor guy had already had a really big day.
Steve continued, “Luckily, I’d been organizing samples in a sub-zero storage freezer when they came through our wing. I heard those rumbles and something felt instantly wrong. When I peeked out from storage, I saw two of the goons rounding the hall corner, and behind them I saw my supervisor sprawled in the hall, blood coming from his ears and nose. I stayed low and made it to my office, thinking I could call my wife and kid from the landline and tell them to leave the house and go to a hotel for a day or two without telling me where. But of course the line was dead. So then I ran to warn Dr. Spencer, and when I entered her office, Marisol was on top of her. I have no idea how she got there, but right away I could see that she had… uh… she had chewed out Dr. Spencer’s throat. Dr. Spencer was trying to fight her off, and Marisol was holding her hands down and trying to bite deeper. And I guess she did, because when I finally managed to grab a chair and knock Marisol loose, she had her mouth full, and she tore away more of Dr. Spencer’s throat, and that… that was it for her.
“I turned to hit Marisol with the chair again. At that point, I didn’t even know why she had attacked Dr. Spencer. It was just… chaos.”
Lucy nodded and remembered what had happened to Ashley Jorgensen. You either attacked, or you ran.
Steve continued, “But when I went to hit Marisol with the chair, she didn’t duck or try to hide, or attack me. She only stood there in the corner, staring ahead, twitching. And I noticed her eyes were wrong. She had the dead expression of a dopamine crash for another moment, then suddenly she was crying and trying to back farther into the corner. She said, ‘I didn’t mean to. I didn’t mean to. There was a voice. It said I’d feel better. It said we’d all feel better if we did this.’ ”
Jason was in all of their heads, preaching murder as salvation. And once he was proven right the first time, they knew they needed to get back into the light again, and again, and again.
“I’d never heard of or seen Marisol before, but right away I knew they’d decided to keep testing, and I knew they’d put what I’d helped design inside of her, so Dr. Spencer’s death was on my hands too. I asked Marisol if she thought she could stop herself if that urge struck her again, and she said she didn’t know, and then we heard a rumble and a thump in the hallway, so we hid behind Dr. Spencer’s desk until another of the suited-up killers had passed. Then we ran for it and managed to make it out a shipping door unnoticed. We made our way through a little patch of preserved wetlands behind the lab, then cut back into town, and then Marisol started muttering and making claws, and her tremors became far worse, so I pulled her into Payton’s Drugstore on Greenford and wrapped her head in foil and used some Clorox wipes to clean the blood from her face. It seemed like she was stabilizing. Maybe the fear and stress helped her regulate, or maybe the signal had become weaker. It was awful to see her poking the device, but that seemed to help too. I asked her if she was fighting bad urges, and she said she was, so maybe she’s figured out a way to control what’s happening in her head. But willpower can only stand so long against biochemistry. That’s ingrained in us, to ensure we survive. I don’t really know how she kept from killing me, and I’m not sure that I didn’t deserve that death…”
Steve drifted off, exhausted. Maybe wishing he’d let Marisol kill him.
“You can probably figure the rest. We left the store and worked our way toward downtown, thinking there’d be strength in numbers if we could find some kind of congregation or emergency meeting spot. From there I hoped I might find someone to help me secure the girl until we could figure out what the hell was going on. But there was no one, not until we saw your truck headed our way. I swear, I didn’t realize what Marisol was going to try until I saw her bolt into the street. And now we’re here, and she might be dying, and if I was being totally honest I would tell you I don’t know how to help any of us and all I really want to do at this point is get back to my wife and kid and make sure they’re safe.”
“But even if they’re safe now, how long will that last if this keeps spreading? You have to think. There has to be a way,” said Lucy.
“It’s all guesswork at this point. Maybe the satellite that’s connected to all these kids isn’t in synchronized orbit. If that’s the case, then this could pass soon. Or if this really is a military containment situation, there have to be emergency protocols in place to stop it. If they’ve realized that the device can spread, that it’s multiplying, then they’ll have to contain it like a disease. They’ll have to take action.”
Lucy thought about all that Steve didn’t even know:
First, there was the malicious Handsome Valley broadcast that had laid the town dormant. It was like the nuclear bomb version of the weapons he’d seen the cleanup squad using in the IMTECH slaughter. She wasn’t sure she had the heart to tell him that even if operatives hadn’t been sent to his house, his wife and kid were probably fucked up regardless, babbling propaganda and bleeding in the dull glow of their television.
Next up was the undulating, shiny black mass that Brewer saw hanging from the roof of East Bear Cave, and the way that he had described black spiders spilling from Jason Ward’s mouth before they found themselves at home inside the necks and minds of Turner Falls’ best and brightest young folks.
Last but not least, there was the sizable, gun-heavy military presence blockading the roads out of town, shining sun-bright lights on anything that tried to leave this little high desert paradise.
All of which led Lucy to believe that no cavalry could be expected. They weren’t treating this like an accident. They had quarantined a whole town and made no effort to charge in and wipe out the infection they had knowingly unleashed. And if they weren’t treating this like an accident, that’s because it was something else. But what? An experiment? These weren’t scientists. They had to be military—controlling the environment, observing from a distance. Watching the fallout. Waiting to see the totality of the damage.
Maybe it wasn’t an experiment.
Maybe it’s a fucking weapons test.
And I’m not sure they plan on any of us making it out of here alive. Once it’s all over, they can sell the Handsome Valley story, amplify it from a leak to an explosion to explain away all the death—a national tragedy that we must never allow to happen again. Maybe a nonweaponized version of that message is already being broadcast. Maybe, to the rest of the world, we’re already dead.
The bastards.
Lucy was still mulling over how she might be able to tell this sad, shattered man and the other kind and unwilling test subjects in the room how much worse things really were when Marisol sprang back to life with a message of her own.
chapter thirteen HECTOCOTYLUS
Hungry. So hungry.”
Marisol’s voice was lower than before in a way that felt wrong to Lucy.
It’s changing in her neck.
Judah said, “I’ve got a candy bar up front, unless her blood sugar’s already too fucked up. Should I…”
Marisol moaned low and rolled her head. A seam in her foil hat began to separate.
Judah said, “We’ve got to tighten that up, right? And shouldn’t we put some around that device?”
“No. The Oracle has a latching arm that slides into the base of the skull and then unfurls over the surface of the brain, and all the receiving circuitry is in there,” said Steve. His tone was casual, Lucy thought, like a man who was describing a convenient way to patch drywall rather than the manner in which his untested biotech chimera was violating Marisol’s mind.
“So hungry.” Another moan. Her eyes rolled back, and when they returned to the room, they were distant, clouded.
Worse, both were bright blue.
She opened her mouth wide and a gurgle rolled up from her throat, along with a smell that reminded Lucy of the time she walked by the Sushi Train dumpster on a ninety-degree day.
A third moan. Marisol clenched and unclenched her hands. “You need to get me some food. I’m burning up. I can feel it growing.”
“What’s growing, Marisol?” asked Steve.
“Something in me. Something in here.”
“In this room?”
Marisol looked directly at Steve, her upper lip curling with revulsion.
“No, you cocksucker. In here.” She opened her eyes wide to show him—they’re in my mind. “It’s red. I can see Dr. Spencer. I can taste her. It’s making me hungrier.”
“Are they communicating with you again? Is it Jason?”
“There’s a trickle, but I can’t get back on. And there’s no more Jason. Something hollowed him, and it’s bigger now, in all of us. We can… I can feel it over my left shoulder. It’s growling. It’s in here with us, but it wants out. So hungry.”
“I want to help you, but I don’t think we have anything you should eat.”
“It hurts, though. Everything hurts. They’re doing this on purpose. You have to make it stop. I need a hospital. How close are we to the hospital? I need a real doctor. My belly feels… wrong. I don’t even know where we are. I’m scared. Please.”
She’s trying to manipulate us. She wants to tell them where we are. Can’t they track her signal by now? Or is that foil all that keeps them from seeing a flashing red dot that says “Murder Them Here”?
“I can help you, but I need to ask you a question. Can you see what they see?”
“Not yet. The signal is stronger now, but something is blocking me. It’s worse this way.”
“Why are they blocking you?”
“I don’t… aaaah… my belly. We don’t know. I don’t know. It’s an absence. It hurts here. You made me this way. You have to fix it.” Marisol smiled. “You can fix it, Steve. Put your neck in my mouth. Let me taste you, like Dr. Spencer. You look so sad. I can fix you if you come closer.”
“No. Marisol, you have to fight it. I don’t know what you were doing before, but it was working. You have to do that again. This isn’t you. It’s the device.”
Lucy saw new malice in the girl’s eyes, the way the blue was growing brighter.
Can they see us through her right now? She could be lying. We need to cover her eyes.
Lucy looked around the bay for a loose swatch of fabric or piece of clothing they could use to blind the girl, and was surprised when she looked back to Marisol and saw the girl had already closed her own eyes and was rocking her head back and forth.
“There are messages in here. They barely reach me, but I can see them better like this. They are not smeared across the light anymore. They say… they say the change is coming, and they want you to know that it is too late for me to fight. I’m growing. Soon there will be no more Marisol. And very soon we will find you, Steve, like we found your wife. Like we found your daughter.” Marisol’s head lolled back, but the smile did not leave her face until something caused her to hunch forward and resume moaning.
Steve backed away, breathing fast.
Marisol lifted her head, calmed again. “You made me sick, but they will heal me. They will bring me back in. They’re playing a vision for me, Steve, to ease my pain. There’s a dark gray bedspread, and your wife is on top. She’s wearing a silver necklace with a tiny charm on it. A shooting star with a diamond at its center. Oh, it’s beautiful.”
“No.”
“They have been at your wife with knives, Steve, and opened her up like a flower in bloom. But something’s wrong. Even after they split her ribs, they still could not fit your daughter back inside of her. She’s too big now, and she’s crying, and the noise is awful, but they will stop that soon. They will—”
Toni yelled, “Enough!” and ran behind Marisol and pressed her thumb, hard, again and again, into the grotesquerie pulsing in the back of the girl’s neck. Marisol’s eyes rolled back, and she moaned, but this time the sound was one of deep pleasure rather than pain, and Lucy tried not to think of the lesbian porno she’d watched with Bucket and failed and knew that another part of her mind had been forever corrupted and bent inside the power that had taken control of her world.
Then Toni yelped and jumped backward, watching in shock as a drop of blood welled on her thumb and then rolled down to her elbow, a red streak on white skin.
Marisol looked around the room. The features of her face softened. “You made it stop. Oh god, that’s better.” Her voice was lighter again. Only a girl. She swiveled her head, trying to look for Toni. “Are you hurt? I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry. Why is this fucking happening to me? Please don’t let them back in. I can’t control anything once they’re in my head. They’re getting so much stronger.”
Lucy was nodding, her eyes concerned, seeing that the girl was in there somewhere. She wanted to give some kind of comfort to whatever was left of Marisol in that sick, infected body. “If we keep pressing your neck, do you think that will help?”
“I think so. And don’t stop, all right? I’m so sick. Why am I so sick?” The girl began to cry. She looked over at Steve, who was back against the bay door and staring miles out at nothing. “Do you think it’s true? What they showed me? Maybe it’s not true, Steve.”
He didn’t look at her, and spoke in a flat tone. “It’s true. They knew about the necklace. I bought that for my wife the day I found out I got the job at IMTECH.”
Lucy almost opened her mouth to tell Steve how sorry she was, but then she saw the look on the man’s face and realized he had fallen into a place where her words could not reach him. She returned her attention to Marisol.
“Do they know where we are now?”
“I can’t tell. The connection was weird. Worse than before. Meaner. And I don’t know where we are, anyway. I’m not even from here. I was with my friend Jaelyn at a mall in the ’Couv waiting to see this guy we met online. He was going to pay each of us two thousand bucks to be in a music video, but he never showed, and then I woke up in some lab, and now…” Marisol’s face scrunched up. New tears came. “I only want to go home. I’m so sick. The director at my group home is going to freak if I’m not back soon. They’ll kick me out, I know it. Can you help me?”
Lucy told her the truth. “I don’t know. But I’m sorry this has happened to you.”
“You’re sorry? Sorry.” Marisol’s voice dropped into a lower register again, thick in her throat.
