VI
“You don’t think this is going to last,” says Shadrach one day.
“The war?”
“This…” he gestures around us. “You don’t think we’re here because the Forces love us, do you? Whatever power you have, they’ll soon discover how to use it. Twist it.”
None of us had ever spoken to each other about why we were here. It didn’t even occur to me that there might be others with similar ‘talents.’
“I don’t see how they can twist a power to heal.”
Shadrach frowned. “I’m sure someone, right now, somewhere nearby here is working on it. Not to worry.”
I want to doubt him, but away from Aisling’s light, the world has turned out to be a very dark place.
My new sensitivity to others’ emotions has seemingly faded here. The fear and pain of the line hospital was, in retrospect as exhilarating as it was unbearable: perverse but never dull. But here the only persistent fear is death by Bingo. If I have a power to do good, what use am I making of it here? I try to imagine why the Forces don’t want me back at the front healing their soldiers but I can’t come up with a clear answer. And it frightens me.
One day Shadrach disappears. Weeks pass without him and no word comes of where he has gone. The nurses tell me he was sent to another facility for additional testing. I don’t sense any concealment from them; if they are lying, they don’t know it themselves.
News of the war comes in on the wallscreens around the institute. Some new offensive by our Forces has taken up most of the coverage. Several massive explosions have been recorded deep in the Peninsula jungle. From the hints, things don’t seem to be going well. Some of the alternative news stations are reporting massive death by friendly fire – and reports of civilians slaughtered outside of the militarized zones. The reports reek of cover up language. Something went very wrong out there in the bush, and no one seems to really know why.
Two days later, Shadrach returns.
They won’t let me in to see him and he has made no attempt to come out of his room but one of the orderlies gets me in. When we first met, Shad looked to be about mid-fifties. He had salty hair, tanned, taut skin, and corded forearm muscles like someone who had worked with his hands most of his life. For his age, he was in remarkable physical shape. But the man in front of me now can be no younger than eighty. His hair is spotty, growing in wild patches or not at all like a chemotherapy patient. His skin is pitted and sunken, the tone sallow and pale. The robust Lithuanian is gone, replaced by a gaunt old man weighing no more than eighty pounds. I think he is already dead but for the slight rising and falling of his chest.
“What the fuck did they do to you?”
He begins to speak, but I can only hear his lips moving, spittle strung between them, bubbles forming and popping. “I…was like you,” he managed. I can just barely make out the words. They come as if from a great distance, floating out on a weak, insufficient wind. “Could see things. Know things. With my mind. Pictures. Colors.” His breathing comes in shallow gasps now, but I can see a great urgency in his eyes. “Talent. Like me. Like all of. Us. I thought that…” Now he is in real distress. Breathing hard, his eyes full of fear. The med display over his bed pulses a gentle red. The nurses will be coming soon. He looks at me, beckoning me close. “Not much time. Left. There is a machine. A machine. They. Need. Us. To…”
There is a rattle in his throat, and suddenly the monitor pulses a bright red. I hear an alarm sound somewhere in the facility and quickly exit the room. He died minutes later. Within days, his room is cleaned, his things removed, the bed turned out.
And just like that, he’s gone.