Chapter 18
It was, Adam reflected as he rose from bed well before Summons, going to be exceedingly difficult to start a revolution when everyone was scared to talk to other people. The threat of getting arrested, and then being sent to the DZ or executed, was very real even when the topic of conversation was entirely innocent. Conversations were closely monitored, as was virtually everything else. The idea of friendship had died around the same time as his grandfather; the institution of the mandatory Counsel Days had seen to that.
The Counsel Days had been instituted as a reaction to what the government had called ‘wide-spread post-traumatic stress disorder’, following the Great Purge. People were assigned to a Counsellor, supposedly to discuss their fears and concerns, but really it was just a kind of mandated weekly interrogation.
Fear and intimidation lay in the gaze of the Counsellors. They examined the smallest detail in a citizen’s bidaily account, and while they couldn’t force you to tell them anything, the Counsellors had been trained to evaluate not only what was said, but what wasn’t. People who said nothing at the Counsel sessions found themselves harassed, even assaulted, by Citizoneprotects. It was easier to simply tell the Counsellors everything. Of course, that often led to friends disappearing because of what had been an innocent comment taken out of context. The result was predictable. People stopped talking to one another for fear that what they said would inadvertently come back to haunt them. Now the Counsellors were the only people anyone ever really spoke to.
Adam had figured a way around that, but it wasn’t effective for anyone but him. His Counsellor’s office was decorated with crude crayon drawings of purple birds and green cats. Letters written in backward capital letters twice as large as the lines they never quite ran along littered the Counsellor’s file on him. He made sure to tell one or two exaggerations or minor lies every few sessions, always cringing and wringing his hands before he told the lie. It was simple manipulation, really. His Counsellors, and he’d been through several, believed that the cringing and wringing of his hands was an indicator of falsehood instead of a calculated ruse to conceal any real lies he had to tell. The premise was simple: provide the Counsellor with what they expected to see, and then keep the body language consistent, and when you had to, you could tell them the sky was green and they would believe you meant it. Patterned behavior, he had realized, could hide a trait as easily as show one. It usually didn’t matter, though. Most of the conversations with his Counsellor revolved around mind-numbing stats of baseball players who had died a century or more before. He repeated himself a lot, too. His Counsellor now tended to use their sessions to catch up on his sleep.
Most people weren’t so lucky.
The first hints of dawn were beginning to creep across the eastern sky as he padded across the room for a quick shower. Summons was always at 7:45 am, so he had at least two hours before he had to arrive at the Yard. The water was cold, as usual, so he kept the shower short. The lack of hot water was more of a benefit than anything, though, as he needed the time before Summons to prepare himself mentally for the day.
The floor was icy, and the chill of the air helped to clear his mind as he knelt down on the floor beside his bed, still damp from the shower. Closing his eyes, he focused on his breathing, feeling his heart beat steadily in his chest. He imagined he could feel the blood coursing through his body, and he let his mind center itself. Slowly, bit by bit, he collected his stray thoughts and mentally directed them into the steady, rhythmic thumping of his heart, envisioning them mingling with his blood and flowing through his body. Once he felt himself reach a state of stillness, he began to construct the character he needed to portray, gradually going over every detail of the Adam McLeod the world outside of his doors knew.
He began with his fears. His fear of being noticed, his fear of being discovered, his fear of the future, his fears from the past... all of these things he embraced in the silence of the room, and each of them he let flow into the core of himself, directing them away from his mind and into his blood, where they flowed away. Adam McLeod, the Simple, did not truly understand fear. He could still feel fear, could react to it, but it didn’t define him; it didn’t dictate his behaviors. The fears never disappeared, they were simply dispersed to be gathered together again later. Next he turned his attention to his hopes and dreams, his ambitions... these, too, he released into the depths of his being, distant thoughts that would remain submerged too deeply to be touched upon during the day. Simple Adam didn’t look to the future, he didn’t look past the immediate present. Next came self-image, self-respect, individualism... all of these things were distant from him during the day. They were concepts Simple Adam did not understand.
He saved his higher thought processes for the end. Once everything else had been released, he turned his attention to his mind itself. One by one, he imagined closing specific doors in his mind, imagined turning a key in each lock. As he drew closer to the end of his meditation, the muscles in his jaw and at the corner of his eyes relaxed. He felt his shoulders slump forward, felt his eyes grow distant and dull. As the last door in his mind swung closed, he imagined hiding the key to the doors in the palm of his hand, buried beneath the skin. He ran his hand across his face and felt the last door lock itself with an inaudible click. His eyes blinked open.
Grinning, Adam McLeod rose to his feet and turned toward the door. The towel that was wrapped around him fell to the ground, and he stared down at it for a moment, perplexed. He blinked a couple of times before he realized that he wasn’t wearing any clothes. He giggled softly. His boss would be angry with him if he showed up without clothes again. He shuffled over to the wardrobe pulled out a pair of pants and some socks. He pulled one sock on, and tried to step into his pants. He got caught in the leg hole and stumbled to the ground, laughing like a small child. Lying on the floor, he struggled into the pants and looked around for his shirt. He found it on the chair and tugged it on. He walked over to the door where his leather jacket hung. He pulled it on and opened the door. He stepped outside and felt the icy, wet cement on his feet. He glanced down to realize that he wasn’t wearing his boots. He slapped his forehead and dashed back inside. It was only after he had tied up his boots that he wondered why he was holding a single sock. Shrugging, he dropped the sock to the ground by the door and lurched outside just as the first notes of Summons chimed.
He frowned. Summons meant he was at work. But he wasn’t. He was at home. He tilted his head to one side, trying to understand how he could be at work and be at home at the same time. At last he shrugged and patted the handprint lock on his door. It was only then that he realized it was raining. His eyes widened as he saw all the water gathered on the ground. With a joyful cry, he leaped into the nearest puddle with both feet. It was going to be a good day.
It was nearly forty minutes later when, soaked to the skin and covered with mud, Adam ambled past the security gates that encircled the Yard where he worked. He grinned as a tall man with shockingly red hair, currently plastered against his head by the rain, veered off from where he was going and hustled across the Yard toward him.
“Adam!” the man called out.
“Hiya, Case! It’s raining!”
“No shit, Sherlock. You’re late again, Adam.”
Adam froze, and then he wrung his hands. “I’m not either!” he protested weakly.
“Adam,” Casey Hargreaves cautioned. “You are late, and the boss is looking for you.”
Kicking his foot in the mud, Adam pouted. “Do I hafta go see him, Case? I hate it when I’m late, ‘cause the boss takes me into his office and yells at me and it scares me. I was late this one time, and I swear he turned so purple I thought his head would pop off.” He paused, and then he giggled. “He sure looked funny, with his eyes all bugging out under his eyebrow. I’ve never known a man with one eyebrow before, have you Case? I mean, I’ve heard of them, sure, but I’ve never known one before. I swear, when he gets angry like that, that eyebrow looks like a caterpillar, how it squirms! Do you think it will crawl off his head someday, Case?”
Casey choked back a sharp laugh and looked around nervously. “I don’t think you should mention the eyebrow, Adam. He’s in his office. You need to go and talk to him before his caterpillar starts doing cartwheels.”
Adam laughed so hard he couldn’t speak. The sound, entirely foreign in the Yard, caught the attention of one of the other workers across the Yard. “Hey Case!” the man shouted. “Is that load over there a brick short?”
There was hoarse, mocking laughter from some of the other men that had stopped to stare at Adam.
Adam looked around, frowning. At last he looked at the man who had spoken, his expression confused. “There aren’t any bricks over here, Mister Derris. Do you want me to get bricks? I don’t know where they keep them.”
Derris shook his head, his long, greasy hair dripping, and his perpetual sneer turning dark. “Nevermind, Dummy.” He turned away and began walking back across the Yard.
Adam turned to Casey. “He looks kinda like a gopher, with those big teeth and that...” He paused as Derris spun around and came charging across the yard. “Ah, dang.”
*
His boss was turning purple again.
Adam blinked. Had he been supposed to answer something? He stared hard at his boss, searching for what the man had just said, but all he could see was the bald head growing more and more purple with every second. He looked like a pencil, actually, Adam mused. With a purple eraser.
“Do you hear me?” the balding older man screamed, his voice breaking on the last word.
“Yes sir,” Adam replied dutifully. “You’re shouting.”
For just a moment, Adam was almost certain the man was going to have a heart attack.
“Do you remember a single damn thing I was just saying? Are you totally stupid?”
Adam frowned. “I’m sorry, sir.”
“You’re sorry?” the little man shrieked. “Which part are you sorry for? Being late... again?! Being drenched to the bone and unable to work because you went dancing in puddles? Getting into a fight with the second person you saw? Which part are you sorry for, you stupid fuck?”
Spinning around on his heel, the pencil-man stumped to the window. If he had hair, Adam was absolutely certain he’d be pulling it out right then. He was, Adam realized, actually really angry. People are ugly when they are angry. It changed his boss from looking like a pencil-man to looking like a kettle. He remembered seeing this kettle once, an old fashioned one that you put on the stove and it whistled when it boiled. It was pink, and the whistle of the steam coming out was almost exactly the same pitch as the sound of his boss’ breathing. Adam grinned at the memory, but only for a moment. He blinked and tried to focus on the tea-kettle pencil-man.
“I should fire your ass right now!” he snarled, still facing the window. “But I can’t.” His shoulders suddenly slumped forward and he turned to face Adam again. “The Zone has requested that you have special consideration because you’re...” he hesitated.
Adam stared at him dully, his eyes foggy. “You can’t what, sir?” he asked blankly.
Exhausted, the old man staggered to his chair and sat down heavily. “I can’t fire you, you dumbass. The government won’t let me. But I can’t trust you. Someone might get hurt because you’re too stupid to know what you’re doing. I’m transferring you to another department. I may not be able to fire you, but I can make you someone else’s problem. You’re now working for Citizone Sanitation. Let the trash take out the trash.”
Despite his meditation, despite the facade, Adam couldn’t help but feel a quiver of excitement. Sanitation might seem like the most menial of labour, but of all the occupations in the Citizone, it alone allowed workers unlimited access to any part of any Zone... including the DZ. For someone plotting a revolution, it was as close to a dream job as a he could get. He could go anywhere, and no one would even look twice at him. He could talk to people – not much, perhaps, but anyone who had garbage had to hand him something. Anything could be said in those precious moments, and no one would ever know...
“I’ve never seen someone get excited about joining Sanitation,” his boss murmured in mild wonder. “You really don’t have a clue, do you?”
Adam paused and stared blankly around the room. “A clue, sir?”
Shaking his head, the balding old man leaned back in his chair, slowly collecting himself. “I’m sending Casey to walk you to the new department, okay? The office is just a few blocks up. Don’t come to work here anymore. Do you understand? Go to work there every morning.” He stared hard at Adam, who gazed back at him with dull eyes. “Try to remember that.”
“Try to remember what, sir?”
“You have a new job.”
“I do?” A small part of him, a part he had tried to lock away that morning, knew this had to go on for several minutes. He couldn’t be seen to understand too quickly. He never understood things the first time he was told.
His old boss nodded. “Yes, you idiot. You work for Sanitation now.”
Adam grinned and acted excited. The tiny voice in the back of his mind reminded him to keep his lies consistent.
“Casey will take you there, okay?”
Adam nodded. “Yes, sir.”
“And don’t come here tomorrow, Adam.”
“Yes, sir.”
The old man stared at him for several moments and his expression grew tight. “You’re going to come here tomorrow, aren’t you?”
“Yes, sir.”
Adam had to fight to keep from laughing at the way the old man’s face drooped in defeat. He had screamed himself hoarse, and it hadn’t even made a dint in Adam’s facade. He leaned forward and placed both hands flat on the desk, his head hanging down, broken on the rocks of Adam’s idiocy. “Casey!” he shouted.
There was a rustle of motion outside, and the tall red-haired worker opened the door. He studied the tableau for a moment, a tiny smile playing across his lips. “Yes, boss?”
“Take him down to Sanitation.”
Casey frowned. “He knows where Sanitation is, boss. He can get...”
“I said take him down to Sanitation!” the tea kettle squealed in weeping rage. Casey nodded quickly and turned to lead Adam away. Before they could leave, the bald man added, “And Casey, make sure you walk him to work at Sanitation tomorrow... and as often after that as you have to until this idiot knows that’s where he has to go from now on. I don’t want to see his dumb-ass here again. Got it? I’ll make a note in your bidaily.”
Casey glanced at Adam with resigned reproach. If it had been anyone else, Casey would have been ecstatic. Any one of the workers would have been... it was a chance to get out, to walk around with someone for a change. With anyone else, Casey could have imagined he was walking with a friend. With Adam, it would be just a boring walk down monitored streets. With a sigh, he patted Adam on the shoulder, guiding him towards the entrance to the Yard. “Alright, Adam. Looks like it’s just you and me. Let’s go.”
Adam blinked a couple of times, his face creased in a confused expression, as though he was struggling with something. Casey shrugged when Adam didn’t respond, barely noticing the distracted look in his face.
Adam shook his head as a faint buzzing voice rattled in the back of his mind, struggling to break out. It wasn’t time, he thought dully. The buzz never started until he was going home. Still, as he followed Casey towards the entrance to the yard, the buzzing grew insistent, and he stumbled slightly, passing a hand across his face, unlocking the trapped part of himself.
Memories swept across his thoughts as he shuffled after Casey. With tremendous effort, he forced himself to continue as though nothing had happened, but his mind began to race.
*
They had come for his father and Steffi on a Wednesday, in the cold silence of a late winter night. They had kicked down the door, and Adam had heard Steffi scream as the CPs dragged her from their bed in her skimpy white negligee. She had fought them as hard as she could, protesting shrilly that they couldn’t do this to her, that she had been promised safety. Adam’s father hadn’t struggled. He’d known this was coming since his last wife and his step-son had been stolen from him. He hadn’t even glanced at Adam as they led him away, and he made no effort to stop what was happening to Steffi in the next room, ignoring the screams that punctuated the other, more viciously primal sounds.
His father had lost a part of himself when Adam had been shot. The rest of what he could have been was taken when They stole away the rest of his family. His second wife, Andrea, and her son had filled the void of sorrow he had felt when Adam’s birth mother had died. Andrea had been his brother’s wife, but when Adam’s uncle Chaz had been executed only weeks after Adam’s mother had died, she and her infant son had moved in with Adam’s father.
Adam and his step-brother had grown up together, listening to the same crazy stories his grandfather had whispered in the stillness of the night as Andrea worked in the kitchen. The old man would smile at them, and tousle their hair. He always laughed at the contrast between the two of them, Adam with his pale golden hair, and his step-brother with his vibrant, unruly crimson locks.
After They had taken Andrea and his step-brother away, Adam had only seen them again, very briefly, once. The day after his father had been dragged away into the night and Steffi had been left lying naked in her own blood in the living room, Adam had forced himself to stagger to school. It was easier than remaining in the house with the corpse of his second step-mother. While he had never really loved her, she had always been good to him. She had thought, Adam realized, that They would let her stay with him after she had told Them about his father. The idea that They would use her up and throw her away had never occurred to her until the CPs had their way with her and left her to die.
So Adam had become one of the Ghost Kids, stumbling through the next day, his face bloodless and his eyes red with unshed tears. Everyone knew the look of the Ghosts. They had seen it a thousand times on a thousand other kids. The other Ghosts avoided him, trying to escape from the memories his appearance inevitably brought crashing back to the surface of their minds. The rest of the students at his school avoided him as well, not wanting to taint themselves by being seen near him.
Only one child had come and spoken to him, and he hadn’t been one of the kids at the school. He had appeared during the short recess, his red hair wild and his face pale and sad. Adam had recognized him at once, but knew that Simple Adam couldn’t show that recognition to the brother They had stolen. His step-brother had walked across the school yard, ignoring everyone around him. He had walked straight up to Adam and had gripped his arm firmly and looked him at him with startling green eyes glistening with tears he wasn’t afraid to shed. “Be strong, brother,” his step-brother had whispered, pulling Adam close and hugging him tightly before turning and walking quickly away to where a slender, auburn haired woman stared in yearning at Adam from a safe and discreet distance.
It had been the last time he had seen Andrea and his step-brother, his step-brother with the vibrant, crimson hair. His step-brother’s name was Casey. Casey Hargreaves.
It had taken Adam over a decade to relocate Andrea and Casey. They had changed their last name after they had been relocated. Andrea still lived in Zone 6, where They had placed her, but because of a job transfer, Casey had been relocated to work in Zone 8, closer to the Yard where he’d been assigned. It had taken Adam two more years of very subtle manoeuvring to get a job in the same Yard, two years of gentle hints couched in childish frustrations about other jobs left with his Counsellor, but he’d managed to get assigned to the same Work Yard. He’d worked beside his step-brother for a year without ever showing a hint of recognition. The Simple Adam act had been in place even before They had split the family. When Adam had walked into the Yard, Casey had noticed him, but Adam’s apparent lack of recognition had come as no surprise. While Casey had continued to treat him with a degree of respect that was lacking in every other worker, he had made no attempt to reconnect with Adam. There had been no point. The Adam that Casey had known growing up had died the same day as their grandfather, leaving only an empty husk behind to shamble through the days.
*
“Come on, Adam,” Casey muttered. “Stop day-dreaming and let’s go. I need to get back to work before the boss decides to dock me the day for walking you to Sanitation.”
Shaking the last few cobwebs from the corners of his mind, Adam hurried to catch up. He quickened his shuffling pace along the deserted sidewalk, making sure he looked ahead or down at his feet rather than up at the cameras that clung like ugly black beetles from every lamppost. Simple Adam didn’t ever look at the monitor-cameras, even though people were supposed to keep their faces visible at all times. The monitors had been put up years back, and he remembered the announcement that had accompanied them. “While the monitor-cams are designed to observe, they have been designed so as to protect your privacy! There are no listening devises installed on the Zonestreet observation posts.” He hadn’t believed it then any more than he believed it now. He glanced around and found a large puddle in the middle of the deserted street. After a moment of quick thought, he charged out and leaped in the puddle, splashing water everywhere. It was now a conscious effort on his part to continue to act as Simple Adam. He had to carefully consider if his actions remained consistent with what Simple Adam would do. It was frustrating. While he knew that he couldn’t allow this opportunity to pass him by, keeping up the act without his pre-established mental controls in place was going to be extremely difficult. It had to be done, though. This would be one of the only chances he had to approach the one person he was almost absolutely certain he could trust.
Almost certain.
It had been twenty years since his grandfather had died, twenty years since he had begun the Simple Adam act. In that time, Casey could easily have forgotten, could have allowed the fear to crush his own spirit. Unfortunately, there was only one way to know for sure.
He had to trust his instincts, and his instincts told him that he could still trust in family.
“You know,” Casey commented as Adam splashed around in the puddle. “I’m actually going to miss you, Adam. There aren’t a lot of things to laugh about anymore, but you always seem to do something funny." Glancing up and down the empty street, Casey came out to stand at the edge of the puddle. “But we have to go, Adam. You can’t keep this up.”
Adam checked to make sure both his face and Casey’s were out of direct view of the monitor-cams, and he allowed his piercing blue eyes, his grandfather’s eyes, to latch on to Casey’s green ones. “Why not? I’ve managed to keep it up for twenty years,” he whispered, his voice no longer the slow, slurred words of a brain-damaged child. “Who’s going to notice the Simple splashing around in a puddle? The little birdies on the lampposts? Check the field of view, Case. Grampa showed you how to do that, back when They put these bloody things up in the first place. We’re just outside the turning radius of the cameras, and out of range of any recording devices they ‘haven’t been installed’ with, as long as we keep our voices down.”
Casey’s face went slack in shock for just a moment, his jaw dropping before he snapped it shut with an audible click. His eyes widened, and then flickered upwards to check the cameras in an instinctual gesture, his head not moving. With an obvious struggle, he turned his gaze back to Adam, his expression stunned. “Adam?” he whispered.
“I have one word to say to you, Case, but it’s a word that could kill us both. Are you afraid to die, Casey Hargreaves... McLeod?”
With every word, Casey seemed to flinch a little, his eyes never leaving Adam’s face. His face had grown even paler than normal, and his eyes seemed about to leap from his head. Adam stared at his brother, his eyes intense. “You aren’t stupid,” Casey breathed at last, his lips barely moving.
A small smile played across Adam’s lips and he realized that he wasn’t afraid anymore. Someone finally knew him. The smile grew broader as Casey’s expression shifted from shock to wonder. “Do you remember, Casey? It was his word. Do you remember?”
Casey closed his eyes slowly, reeling back slightly. Adam could see the muscles in his brother’s jaw clench, his body stiffen beneath the question. He remembered. It had been twenty years, and in that instant it was as though no time had passed at all.
With a voice as soft as silk, Adam whispered the steely word. “Revolution!”
Adam braced himself and his smile faded. He was committed. If he had guessed wrong, Casey would point and scream ‘Subversive!’, and it would all be over. They would come for him, take him into the dark room again, like They had a few days after his father’s disappearance. This time, however, he would never leave that room. He stared intently at the tall figure with the vibrant red hair plastered to his skull by the rain. Slowly, ever so slowly, Casey opened his green eyes. His face had grown ashen, but he stared at Adam in silence. He seemed to stagger a little under the weight of the word, and then his eyes narrowed slightly and Adam saw the spark hidden there. “I remember,” Casey murmured, his voice almost inaudible.
A slow, predatory smile crept across Adam’s face.
It had to begin as a whisper.
The Counsel Days had been instituted as a reaction to what the government had called ‘wide-spread post-traumatic stress disorder’, following the Great Purge. People were assigned to a Counsellor, supposedly to discuss their fears and concerns, but really it was just a kind of mandated weekly interrogation.
Fear and intimidation lay in the gaze of the Counsellors. They examined the smallest detail in a citizen’s bidaily account, and while they couldn’t force you to tell them anything, the Counsellors had been trained to evaluate not only what was said, but what wasn’t. People who said nothing at the Counsel sessions found themselves harassed, even assaulted, by Citizoneprotects. It was easier to simply tell the Counsellors everything. Of course, that often led to friends disappearing because of what had been an innocent comment taken out of context. The result was predictable. People stopped talking to one another for fear that what they said would inadvertently come back to haunt them. Now the Counsellors were the only people anyone ever really spoke to.
Adam had figured a way around that, but it wasn’t effective for anyone but him. His Counsellor’s office was decorated with crude crayon drawings of purple birds and green cats. Letters written in backward capital letters twice as large as the lines they never quite ran along littered the Counsellor’s file on him. He made sure to tell one or two exaggerations or minor lies every few sessions, always cringing and wringing his hands before he told the lie. It was simple manipulation, really. His Counsellors, and he’d been through several, believed that the cringing and wringing of his hands was an indicator of falsehood instead of a calculated ruse to conceal any real lies he had to tell. The premise was simple: provide the Counsellor with what they expected to see, and then keep the body language consistent, and when you had to, you could tell them the sky was green and they would believe you meant it. Patterned behavior, he had realized, could hide a trait as easily as show one. It usually didn’t matter, though. Most of the conversations with his Counsellor revolved around mind-numbing stats of baseball players who had died a century or more before. He repeated himself a lot, too. His Counsellor now tended to use their sessions to catch up on his sleep.
Most people weren’t so lucky.
The first hints of dawn were beginning to creep across the eastern sky as he padded across the room for a quick shower. Summons was always at 7:45 am, so he had at least two hours before he had to arrive at the Yard. The water was cold, as usual, so he kept the shower short. The lack of hot water was more of a benefit than anything, though, as he needed the time before Summons to prepare himself mentally for the day.
The floor was icy, and the chill of the air helped to clear his mind as he knelt down on the floor beside his bed, still damp from the shower. Closing his eyes, he focused on his breathing, feeling his heart beat steadily in his chest. He imagined he could feel the blood coursing through his body, and he let his mind center itself. Slowly, bit by bit, he collected his stray thoughts and mentally directed them into the steady, rhythmic thumping of his heart, envisioning them mingling with his blood and flowing through his body. Once he felt himself reach a state of stillness, he began to construct the character he needed to portray, gradually going over every detail of the Adam McLeod the world outside of his doors knew.
He began with his fears. His fear of being noticed, his fear of being discovered, his fear of the future, his fears from the past... all of these things he embraced in the silence of the room, and each of them he let flow into the core of himself, directing them away from his mind and into his blood, where they flowed away. Adam McLeod, the Simple, did not truly understand fear. He could still feel fear, could react to it, but it didn’t define him; it didn’t dictate his behaviors. The fears never disappeared, they were simply dispersed to be gathered together again later. Next he turned his attention to his hopes and dreams, his ambitions... these, too, he released into the depths of his being, distant thoughts that would remain submerged too deeply to be touched upon during the day. Simple Adam didn’t look to the future, he didn’t look past the immediate present. Next came self-image, self-respect, individualism... all of these things were distant from him during the day. They were concepts Simple Adam did not understand.
He saved his higher thought processes for the end. Once everything else had been released, he turned his attention to his mind itself. One by one, he imagined closing specific doors in his mind, imagined turning a key in each lock. As he drew closer to the end of his meditation, the muscles in his jaw and at the corner of his eyes relaxed. He felt his shoulders slump forward, felt his eyes grow distant and dull. As the last door in his mind swung closed, he imagined hiding the key to the doors in the palm of his hand, buried beneath the skin. He ran his hand across his face and felt the last door lock itself with an inaudible click. His eyes blinked open.
Grinning, Adam McLeod rose to his feet and turned toward the door. The towel that was wrapped around him fell to the ground, and he stared down at it for a moment, perplexed. He blinked a couple of times before he realized that he wasn’t wearing any clothes. He giggled softly. His boss would be angry with him if he showed up without clothes again. He shuffled over to the wardrobe pulled out a pair of pants and some socks. He pulled one sock on, and tried to step into his pants. He got caught in the leg hole and stumbled to the ground, laughing like a small child. Lying on the floor, he struggled into the pants and looked around for his shirt. He found it on the chair and tugged it on. He walked over to the door where his leather jacket hung. He pulled it on and opened the door. He stepped outside and felt the icy, wet cement on his feet. He glanced down to realize that he wasn’t wearing his boots. He slapped his forehead and dashed back inside. It was only after he had tied up his boots that he wondered why he was holding a single sock. Shrugging, he dropped the sock to the ground by the door and lurched outside just as the first notes of Summons chimed.
He frowned. Summons meant he was at work. But he wasn’t. He was at home. He tilted his head to one side, trying to understand how he could be at work and be at home at the same time. At last he shrugged and patted the handprint lock on his door. It was only then that he realized it was raining. His eyes widened as he saw all the water gathered on the ground. With a joyful cry, he leaped into the nearest puddle with both feet. It was going to be a good day.
It was nearly forty minutes later when, soaked to the skin and covered with mud, Adam ambled past the security gates that encircled the Yard where he worked. He grinned as a tall man with shockingly red hair, currently plastered against his head by the rain, veered off from where he was going and hustled across the Yard toward him.
“Adam!” the man called out.
“Hiya, Case! It’s raining!”
“No shit, Sherlock. You’re late again, Adam.”
Adam froze, and then he wrung his hands. “I’m not either!” he protested weakly.
“Adam,” Casey Hargreaves cautioned. “You are late, and the boss is looking for you.”
Kicking his foot in the mud, Adam pouted. “Do I hafta go see him, Case? I hate it when I’m late, ‘cause the boss takes me into his office and yells at me and it scares me. I was late this one time, and I swear he turned so purple I thought his head would pop off.” He paused, and then he giggled. “He sure looked funny, with his eyes all bugging out under his eyebrow. I’ve never known a man with one eyebrow before, have you Case? I mean, I’ve heard of them, sure, but I’ve never known one before. I swear, when he gets angry like that, that eyebrow looks like a caterpillar, how it squirms! Do you think it will crawl off his head someday, Case?”
Casey choked back a sharp laugh and looked around nervously. “I don’t think you should mention the eyebrow, Adam. He’s in his office. You need to go and talk to him before his caterpillar starts doing cartwheels.”
Adam laughed so hard he couldn’t speak. The sound, entirely foreign in the Yard, caught the attention of one of the other workers across the Yard. “Hey Case!” the man shouted. “Is that load over there a brick short?”
There was hoarse, mocking laughter from some of the other men that had stopped to stare at Adam.
Adam looked around, frowning. At last he looked at the man who had spoken, his expression confused. “There aren’t any bricks over here, Mister Derris. Do you want me to get bricks? I don’t know where they keep them.”
Derris shook his head, his long, greasy hair dripping, and his perpetual sneer turning dark. “Nevermind, Dummy.” He turned away and began walking back across the Yard.
Adam turned to Casey. “He looks kinda like a gopher, with those big teeth and that...” He paused as Derris spun around and came charging across the yard. “Ah, dang.”
*
His boss was turning purple again.
Adam blinked. Had he been supposed to answer something? He stared hard at his boss, searching for what the man had just said, but all he could see was the bald head growing more and more purple with every second. He looked like a pencil, actually, Adam mused. With a purple eraser.
“Do you hear me?” the balding older man screamed, his voice breaking on the last word.
“Yes sir,” Adam replied dutifully. “You’re shouting.”
For just a moment, Adam was almost certain the man was going to have a heart attack.
“Do you remember a single damn thing I was just saying? Are you totally stupid?”
Adam frowned. “I’m sorry, sir.”
“You’re sorry?” the little man shrieked. “Which part are you sorry for? Being late... again?! Being drenched to the bone and unable to work because you went dancing in puddles? Getting into a fight with the second person you saw? Which part are you sorry for, you stupid fuck?”
Spinning around on his heel, the pencil-man stumped to the window. If he had hair, Adam was absolutely certain he’d be pulling it out right then. He was, Adam realized, actually really angry. People are ugly when they are angry. It changed his boss from looking like a pencil-man to looking like a kettle. He remembered seeing this kettle once, an old fashioned one that you put on the stove and it whistled when it boiled. It was pink, and the whistle of the steam coming out was almost exactly the same pitch as the sound of his boss’ breathing. Adam grinned at the memory, but only for a moment. He blinked and tried to focus on the tea-kettle pencil-man.
“I should fire your ass right now!” he snarled, still facing the window. “But I can’t.” His shoulders suddenly slumped forward and he turned to face Adam again. “The Zone has requested that you have special consideration because you’re...” he hesitated.
Adam stared at him dully, his eyes foggy. “You can’t what, sir?” he asked blankly.
Exhausted, the old man staggered to his chair and sat down heavily. “I can’t fire you, you dumbass. The government won’t let me. But I can’t trust you. Someone might get hurt because you’re too stupid to know what you’re doing. I’m transferring you to another department. I may not be able to fire you, but I can make you someone else’s problem. You’re now working for Citizone Sanitation. Let the trash take out the trash.”
Despite his meditation, despite the facade, Adam couldn’t help but feel a quiver of excitement. Sanitation might seem like the most menial of labour, but of all the occupations in the Citizone, it alone allowed workers unlimited access to any part of any Zone... including the DZ. For someone plotting a revolution, it was as close to a dream job as a he could get. He could go anywhere, and no one would even look twice at him. He could talk to people – not much, perhaps, but anyone who had garbage had to hand him something. Anything could be said in those precious moments, and no one would ever know...
“I’ve never seen someone get excited about joining Sanitation,” his boss murmured in mild wonder. “You really don’t have a clue, do you?”
Adam paused and stared blankly around the room. “A clue, sir?”
Shaking his head, the balding old man leaned back in his chair, slowly collecting himself. “I’m sending Casey to walk you to the new department, okay? The office is just a few blocks up. Don’t come to work here anymore. Do you understand? Go to work there every morning.” He stared hard at Adam, who gazed back at him with dull eyes. “Try to remember that.”
“Try to remember what, sir?”
“You have a new job.”
“I do?” A small part of him, a part he had tried to lock away that morning, knew this had to go on for several minutes. He couldn’t be seen to understand too quickly. He never understood things the first time he was told.
His old boss nodded. “Yes, you idiot. You work for Sanitation now.”
Adam grinned and acted excited. The tiny voice in the back of his mind reminded him to keep his lies consistent.
“Casey will take you there, okay?”
Adam nodded. “Yes, sir.”
“And don’t come here tomorrow, Adam.”
“Yes, sir.”
The old man stared at him for several moments and his expression grew tight. “You’re going to come here tomorrow, aren’t you?”
“Yes, sir.”
Adam had to fight to keep from laughing at the way the old man’s face drooped in defeat. He had screamed himself hoarse, and it hadn’t even made a dint in Adam’s facade. He leaned forward and placed both hands flat on the desk, his head hanging down, broken on the rocks of Adam’s idiocy. “Casey!” he shouted.
There was a rustle of motion outside, and the tall red-haired worker opened the door. He studied the tableau for a moment, a tiny smile playing across his lips. “Yes, boss?”
“Take him down to Sanitation.”
Casey frowned. “He knows where Sanitation is, boss. He can get...”
“I said take him down to Sanitation!” the tea kettle squealed in weeping rage. Casey nodded quickly and turned to lead Adam away. Before they could leave, the bald man added, “And Casey, make sure you walk him to work at Sanitation tomorrow... and as often after that as you have to until this idiot knows that’s where he has to go from now on. I don’t want to see his dumb-ass here again. Got it? I’ll make a note in your bidaily.”
Casey glanced at Adam with resigned reproach. If it had been anyone else, Casey would have been ecstatic. Any one of the workers would have been... it was a chance to get out, to walk around with someone for a change. With anyone else, Casey could have imagined he was walking with a friend. With Adam, it would be just a boring walk down monitored streets. With a sigh, he patted Adam on the shoulder, guiding him towards the entrance to the Yard. “Alright, Adam. Looks like it’s just you and me. Let’s go.”
Adam blinked a couple of times, his face creased in a confused expression, as though he was struggling with something. Casey shrugged when Adam didn’t respond, barely noticing the distracted look in his face.
Adam shook his head as a faint buzzing voice rattled in the back of his mind, struggling to break out. It wasn’t time, he thought dully. The buzz never started until he was going home. Still, as he followed Casey towards the entrance to the yard, the buzzing grew insistent, and he stumbled slightly, passing a hand across his face, unlocking the trapped part of himself.
Memories swept across his thoughts as he shuffled after Casey. With tremendous effort, he forced himself to continue as though nothing had happened, but his mind began to race.
*
They had come for his father and Steffi on a Wednesday, in the cold silence of a late winter night. They had kicked down the door, and Adam had heard Steffi scream as the CPs dragged her from their bed in her skimpy white negligee. She had fought them as hard as she could, protesting shrilly that they couldn’t do this to her, that she had been promised safety. Adam’s father hadn’t struggled. He’d known this was coming since his last wife and his step-son had been stolen from him. He hadn’t even glanced at Adam as they led him away, and he made no effort to stop what was happening to Steffi in the next room, ignoring the screams that punctuated the other, more viciously primal sounds.
His father had lost a part of himself when Adam had been shot. The rest of what he could have been was taken when They stole away the rest of his family. His second wife, Andrea, and her son had filled the void of sorrow he had felt when Adam’s birth mother had died. Andrea had been his brother’s wife, but when Adam’s uncle Chaz had been executed only weeks after Adam’s mother had died, she and her infant son had moved in with Adam’s father.
Adam and his step-brother had grown up together, listening to the same crazy stories his grandfather had whispered in the stillness of the night as Andrea worked in the kitchen. The old man would smile at them, and tousle their hair. He always laughed at the contrast between the two of them, Adam with his pale golden hair, and his step-brother with his vibrant, unruly crimson locks.
After They had taken Andrea and his step-brother away, Adam had only seen them again, very briefly, once. The day after his father had been dragged away into the night and Steffi had been left lying naked in her own blood in the living room, Adam had forced himself to stagger to school. It was easier than remaining in the house with the corpse of his second step-mother. While he had never really loved her, she had always been good to him. She had thought, Adam realized, that They would let her stay with him after she had told Them about his father. The idea that They would use her up and throw her away had never occurred to her until the CPs had their way with her and left her to die.
So Adam had become one of the Ghost Kids, stumbling through the next day, his face bloodless and his eyes red with unshed tears. Everyone knew the look of the Ghosts. They had seen it a thousand times on a thousand other kids. The other Ghosts avoided him, trying to escape from the memories his appearance inevitably brought crashing back to the surface of their minds. The rest of the students at his school avoided him as well, not wanting to taint themselves by being seen near him.
Only one child had come and spoken to him, and he hadn’t been one of the kids at the school. He had appeared during the short recess, his red hair wild and his face pale and sad. Adam had recognized him at once, but knew that Simple Adam couldn’t show that recognition to the brother They had stolen. His step-brother had walked across the school yard, ignoring everyone around him. He had walked straight up to Adam and had gripped his arm firmly and looked him at him with startling green eyes glistening with tears he wasn’t afraid to shed. “Be strong, brother,” his step-brother had whispered, pulling Adam close and hugging him tightly before turning and walking quickly away to where a slender, auburn haired woman stared in yearning at Adam from a safe and discreet distance.
It had been the last time he had seen Andrea and his step-brother, his step-brother with the vibrant, crimson hair. His step-brother’s name was Casey. Casey Hargreaves.
It had taken Adam over a decade to relocate Andrea and Casey. They had changed their last name after they had been relocated. Andrea still lived in Zone 6, where They had placed her, but because of a job transfer, Casey had been relocated to work in Zone 8, closer to the Yard where he’d been assigned. It had taken Adam two more years of very subtle manoeuvring to get a job in the same Yard, two years of gentle hints couched in childish frustrations about other jobs left with his Counsellor, but he’d managed to get assigned to the same Work Yard. He’d worked beside his step-brother for a year without ever showing a hint of recognition. The Simple Adam act had been in place even before They had split the family. When Adam had walked into the Yard, Casey had noticed him, but Adam’s apparent lack of recognition had come as no surprise. While Casey had continued to treat him with a degree of respect that was lacking in every other worker, he had made no attempt to reconnect with Adam. There had been no point. The Adam that Casey had known growing up had died the same day as their grandfather, leaving only an empty husk behind to shamble through the days.
*
“Come on, Adam,” Casey muttered. “Stop day-dreaming and let’s go. I need to get back to work before the boss decides to dock me the day for walking you to Sanitation.”
Shaking the last few cobwebs from the corners of his mind, Adam hurried to catch up. He quickened his shuffling pace along the deserted sidewalk, making sure he looked ahead or down at his feet rather than up at the cameras that clung like ugly black beetles from every lamppost. Simple Adam didn’t ever look at the monitor-cameras, even though people were supposed to keep their faces visible at all times. The monitors had been put up years back, and he remembered the announcement that had accompanied them. “While the monitor-cams are designed to observe, they have been designed so as to protect your privacy! There are no listening devises installed on the Zonestreet observation posts.” He hadn’t believed it then any more than he believed it now. He glanced around and found a large puddle in the middle of the deserted street. After a moment of quick thought, he charged out and leaped in the puddle, splashing water everywhere. It was now a conscious effort on his part to continue to act as Simple Adam. He had to carefully consider if his actions remained consistent with what Simple Adam would do. It was frustrating. While he knew that he couldn’t allow this opportunity to pass him by, keeping up the act without his pre-established mental controls in place was going to be extremely difficult. It had to be done, though. This would be one of the only chances he had to approach the one person he was almost absolutely certain he could trust.
Almost certain.
It had been twenty years since his grandfather had died, twenty years since he had begun the Simple Adam act. In that time, Casey could easily have forgotten, could have allowed the fear to crush his own spirit. Unfortunately, there was only one way to know for sure.
He had to trust his instincts, and his instincts told him that he could still trust in family.
“You know,” Casey commented as Adam splashed around in the puddle. “I’m actually going to miss you, Adam. There aren’t a lot of things to laugh about anymore, but you always seem to do something funny." Glancing up and down the empty street, Casey came out to stand at the edge of the puddle. “But we have to go, Adam. You can’t keep this up.”
Adam checked to make sure both his face and Casey’s were out of direct view of the monitor-cams, and he allowed his piercing blue eyes, his grandfather’s eyes, to latch on to Casey’s green ones. “Why not? I’ve managed to keep it up for twenty years,” he whispered, his voice no longer the slow, slurred words of a brain-damaged child. “Who’s going to notice the Simple splashing around in a puddle? The little birdies on the lampposts? Check the field of view, Case. Grampa showed you how to do that, back when They put these bloody things up in the first place. We’re just outside the turning radius of the cameras, and out of range of any recording devices they ‘haven’t been installed’ with, as long as we keep our voices down.”
Casey’s face went slack in shock for just a moment, his jaw dropping before he snapped it shut with an audible click. His eyes widened, and then flickered upwards to check the cameras in an instinctual gesture, his head not moving. With an obvious struggle, he turned his gaze back to Adam, his expression stunned. “Adam?” he whispered.
“I have one word to say to you, Case, but it’s a word that could kill us both. Are you afraid to die, Casey Hargreaves... McLeod?”
With every word, Casey seemed to flinch a little, his eyes never leaving Adam’s face. His face had grown even paler than normal, and his eyes seemed about to leap from his head. Adam stared at his brother, his eyes intense. “You aren’t stupid,” Casey breathed at last, his lips barely moving.
A small smile played across Adam’s lips and he realized that he wasn’t afraid anymore. Someone finally knew him. The smile grew broader as Casey’s expression shifted from shock to wonder. “Do you remember, Casey? It was his word. Do you remember?”
Casey closed his eyes slowly, reeling back slightly. Adam could see the muscles in his brother’s jaw clench, his body stiffen beneath the question. He remembered. It had been twenty years, and in that instant it was as though no time had passed at all.
With a voice as soft as silk, Adam whispered the steely word. “Revolution!”
Adam braced himself and his smile faded. He was committed. If he had guessed wrong, Casey would point and scream ‘Subversive!’, and it would all be over. They would come for him, take him into the dark room again, like They had a few days after his father’s disappearance. This time, however, he would never leave that room. He stared intently at the tall figure with the vibrant red hair plastered to his skull by the rain. Slowly, ever so slowly, Casey opened his green eyes. His face had grown ashen, but he stared at Adam in silence. He seemed to stagger a little under the weight of the word, and then his eyes narrowed slightly and Adam saw the spark hidden there. “I remember,” Casey murmured, his voice almost inaudible.
A slow, predatory smile crept across Adam’s face.
It had to begin as a whisper.