Blind the Eyes

Chapter 4: Leftovers

Chapter 4: LeftoversI NEARLY TOPPLE backwards into the elevator car when it arrives. My heart doesn’t slow until the doors close, sealing me safely in.

“Finally,” Cadence says. “Talk about messed up. Who does that guy think he is? Creepy, much?”

“He acted in violation of several regulations.” The memory drives a wave of heat through me. The things he said— “Unacceptable behaviour, even if it was part of the probationary trial.”

“Uh, yeah, unacceptable and weird. You gotta be clear with guys like that. Don’t let them think they can push you around.”

“I—”

“Let ’em know what’s what. You can’t humour them. They won’t get the picture.”

“I didn’t—”

“Wait. It’s not like you, you know, liked him, is it? Ew. Guys like that are no good, Cole.”

The elevator interrupts my sputtering. Floor 20. I step out into the hallway. My knees lock.

What was I thinking? I don’t know how to investigate a broken surveillance system. I have no idea where to even begin figuring out what went wrong. I’m going to fail, and Serovate’s going to mock me and ship me back to Corrections, and I’m never going to get out of there and I’ll probably die and—

“I have to go back. I don’t know how to fix this.” I pluck at the hem of my shirt, my fingers fluttering as fast as my racing heart.

“Obviously. Wasn’t the whole point to get out and explore? Don’t tell me you seriously thought you were coming up here to work?”

Floor 20 is a care ward—declining workers, mostly, waiting out their final years safely ensconced in tiny, separate rooms. Even if I knew how to perform a field investigation, with the space all broken up like this, it would take forever to work my way room by room across the whole floor and figure out what had gone wrong. But I can’t go back now. Either Kistrfyv set me up to fail, or Ravel was telling the truth and it’s his fault I’m here. Either way, I’ll have to figure out what’s wrong with the system before I can go back.

I pause at the first door to my right. There are sounds beyond, a sort of gurgling wheeze. Snoring?

“Now what?” Cadence asks.

One more thing I’d forgotten: there are people behind each door. I’ll have to invade their space to carry out my investigation. Just the thought of it makes me ill.

“There’s someone in there,” I say, by way of explanation.

“Well, duh.”

“I can’t just go in.”

“Cool. Don’t. This place is boring. Let’s go check out a different floor.”

“I can’t.”

“Fine. If you’re gonna be a wimp about it, you can just go back to work and stare at your boring stupid screen some more. Or maybe you just wanna go back and see your boyfriend.”

I gasp, whirl to face her with my hand raised for a swat—but she’s not there. She’s not anywhere. It’s moments like these she feels . . . I don’t know, too close and unfairly far away at the same time.

Before the waters rose and the Mara came, people were made differently. Individually. Gross as it sounds, people apparently got together to make more people. Which is unhealthy and dangerous of course, so Refuge started producing workers in a controlled environment instead. But if I’d been born before, into a family, would it feel like this? Stuck with a bratty little sister to pester me all day and night?

If we weren’t both unsequenced—from production series discontinued after only one iteration; not broken enough to destroy, but not valuable enough to bother making more of—I’d even have thought maybe Cadence was one of my series, another Cole who died before she’d finished growing. Being haunted feels like too much connection, like family and more than family, someone you can never get away from, but eventually it’s so normal to be together you forget anything else.

I lower my hand. I get why she’s annoyed with me. I need to suck it up, push through the awkwardness, get it over with. Instead, I twist my fists tighter in the loose fabric at the sides of my uniform and set off down the hall.

“Now what?” Cadence has been sounding different since we ran into Ravel. Less bratty, more, I don’t know. Snarky? As if she’s somehow getting closer to my age. Can ghosts age?

I push the distraction away and try to focus. “I should start at the other end, work my way back.”

Starting from the far end of the corridor is a great idea. Methodical. Logical. Probably what protocol would dictate, if I actually knew the appropriate steps to take for a field investigation. It’s also the perfect excuse not to open any doors for another minute or two.

Cadence laughs at me all the way down the hall, around the corner, and to the end of that stretch as well. I stare at the last door and roll my shoulders, producing a crackling sound from the joints in my neck. I listen for another moment. Silence. That’s a good sign. I push it open, hoping for a vacant room, despite the sign beside the door that reads: 20-Bell-. Another only. If she were part of a series, her sequence number would be after the second dash, forming her short ID: Bellwan, Belltu, and so on.

As it turns out, I get my wish for another few moments of solitude. Sort of.

The room is miniscule, maybe twice the width of the overturned cot. The air is thick with the heavy sweetness of the protective airborne sedative used in the upper floors of Refuge to protect us from distraction and disobedient thoughts. Its cloying scent is dense in the small space. Probably a good thing, given the circumstances.

The body is unlike any I’ve seen. It’s partly covered by pieces of the overturned cot. The floor and walls around it are fractured. Gritty white powder mixes with congealing blood. It’s as if something ripped through the corpse and right on into the room around it.

The buzzing in my ears mutes Cadence’s shriek. Dark stains seep up the soft toes of my shoes.

The corpse is not fresh. Raw gashes scissor across its body. Its uniform hangs in shreds, exposing purpling shadows closer to the floor, grey-white flesh higher up. During the day on Floor 6, the dead were carted off almost immediately. Mara-taken in the night were another matter—I’ve seen corpses as old as six or even eight hours dead. This one’s joints will be stiff by now. It would be impossible to smooth away its anguished contortion even if I wanted to take pity on it, to wipe away the echo of its pain.

What’s left of the dead woman’s face is twisted in horror. Her bulging eyes are opaque, pearlescent. Mara-taken.

I kneel. There’s a smell below the cloying sweetness of the air: bitter, rotten, sharp. Everything about this death is different than it should be, except for the eyes. What happened to her?

The woman—Bell?—must have been very old. Her skin is lined and sagging. Her close-cropped hair is thin; transparent wisps that don’t seem to be able to soak up the stain of blood. I’ve never seen anyone quite like her. One of the side effects of Noosh; it flattens out our differences. All of them, age included. Until it can’t, and then I guess we end up here on Floor 20.

I drag two gloved fingers through the powder on the floor: gritty from concrete dust, slightly tacky from the blood that spilled when whatever did this went right through her and into the floor below. The Mara don’t leave damage like this. They aren’t physical. They eat dreams. They take only what’s inside, leaving the shell hollow but untouched, except for those pearl-blank eyes. It’s why we’re so carefully controlled, why we have the ritual of submission: to keep us as empty inside as possible.

But if the Mara only hunger after the inner life, what slashed Bell here so deeply it tore through the thin carpet and into concrete?

The buzzing in my head prickles across my scalp, spreading.

This isn’t happening. This forbidden fascination with the dead—the desire know what they knew and feel what they felt, to become someone else for even a moment—the Mara took it away with all the rest of my disobedience. I don’t break regulation any more. I can’t lose everything I’ve worked for. I won’t fail again. Any moment now, I’ll step away, send for help, submit my longing to the Mara.

Instead, I reach out to touch the corpse’s ashen skin.