“If the police come, they usually want to question me, or my sister, or one of the workers. They don’t care about the kids. And anyway the kids aren’t always good at keeping quiet when you need them to, so everyone’s safer this way. Speaking of that…” Violet pointed to a small light bulb wired to a roof beam. “If that lights up, everyone must lay low and be quiet. It’s for emergencies. Follow me?”
“When do we cross the border?” Ruppert whispered his question, which drew scowls from both Lucia and Violet.
“You’ll cross when it’s time, with everyone else,” Violet said. “And I will thank you not to ask more of those kinds of questions. There’s a washroom downstairs if you need it, but otherwise please stay up here unless somebody comes for you. Are you going to be all right? I have a lot of work this morning.”
“We’re fine,” Lucia said. “Thank you so much.”
“My pleasure.” Violet closed the concealed door after her.
Ruppert looked among the others in the crowded room, smiling awkwardly, thinking of how nobody liked to talk in an elevator. He saw a lot of dull eyes and blank faces, the signs of people who’d experienced unspeakable things. A man in the back corner looked familiar to him, but it took Ruppert a minute to place him. Then he ran over to the man.
“Sully?” he asked.
Sullivan Stone barely resembled the man he’d been a few months earlier. His head was shaved, and scars twisted across his exposed scalp. Splotches of bruised purple and sickly yellow marred his face and arms. A hashwork of scars tattooed the left side of his face, and the eyelid there drooped over a staring, bloodshot eye.
Ruppert recalled what Archer had told him, that it was likely Sully had been sent to a behavior modification clinic.
“Sully, are you okay?”
Sully blinked at him, showing no sign of recognition.
“You know him?” Lucia asked Ruppert.
“Sully. He was the one who was going to…do what I did. It should have been him that you extracted, his house’s memory you deleted instead of mine.”
“That’s Sullivan Stone?” Lucia knelt on the other side of Sully. “Oh. Wow. I see it. How are you?” She took his hand, but Sully pulled it back and folded his arms around himself.
“Sully, look at me close,” Ruppert said.
Sully did look at him, mouth open, appearing to comprehend nothing. Then he said, “Daniel?”
“That’s right. It’s Daniel Ruppert.”
“Oh.” Sully’s gaze drifted away for a few seconds, then fixed back on him. “Is it time to…do a show?”
“No, Sully, no more shows. We’re down to reality now.”
“Yeah.” Sully stared at his own dirty shoes, where the tips of the laces looked chewed. He’d lost a significant amount of muscle mass, leaving him shriveled inside clothes that were too large for him. The clothes themselves were odd choices for Sully: corduroy pants that didn’t reach his ankles, a big t-shirt featuring characters from the kids’ cartoon Dog Soldiers.
“Jesus, Sully,” Ruppert whispered. “What happened to you?”
“Re…programmed.” Sully took a breath and made an effort to speak up. “You were my friend.”
“I am your friend, Sully. It’s good to see you again. I'm sorry you’re hurt like this.”
“Reprogrammed,” Sully said again, “I’m deviant. They made us…they injected us, and they made us do…bad things…'
“I’m sorry,” Ruppert said.
“They asked about you,” Sully said. “They asked if you were, you know, disloyal to the state, and I said no, but then they burned me more, and I said yes. They made me say that about a lot of people. They had cameras recording it. I didn’t mean to.”
“Don’t worry, they’re after me for worse than that. Your friend Archer came and found me. You remember him, don’t you?”
“Did they get him, too?”
“No, he’s fine. I just saw him a few days ago.”
“I did love him,” Sully said. “The doctors said I shouldn’t anymore.”
“It’s all right, Sully.”
“Do you think he’s okay?”
“Yes. I just saw him.”
“Hope he’s okay.”
“The project you planned with him,” Ruppert said. “We did it. It worked. The word’s getting out there.”
“We were supposed to go north together.” Sully looked at his watch. “Now I only have one thing left to do.”
“What’s that?” Ruppert asked.
“Huh?”
“You said you had something to do. What is it?”
“Oh, yeah. Canada. I have to get to Canada. Can you help me to Canada, Daniel?”
“You’re already on the way. How did you get here?”
“They dumped a bunch of us on the street. St. Louis. Or Chicago. Or Minneapolis, I think. They didn’t want to feed us anymore, or something. They said-I don’t remember.”
“What happened then?” Ruppert asked. “Can you remember after that?”
“I went to-I don’t know, Daniel. I can’t keep track. I was in a hotel room with a dog on the wall. A painting of a dog. Some people helped me out with money, and they sent me here. Or some other people sent me here later, from the bar.”
“What kind of people?”
“Just people. This is really hard, Daniel.” The strain of trying to concentrate turned his face red and drew deep furrows in his brow. His right fist opened and closed, opened and closed, as if a muscle inside it were having spasms.
“It’s all right, Sully. We can talk later. Do you need anything? Water?”
Sully shook his head.
'Sully, you were right,' Ruppert said. 'About what I always wanted. You gave it to me. The big story. The truth that changes the world. My old teacher Dr. Gorski would be proud of us. We're journalists now, not reporters.'
Sully blinked a few times, and his lips moved soundlessly. Then he closed his eyes and leaned his head back against the wall.
Ruppert and Lucia sat on the hay-covered floor next to Sully. They remained quiet for a long time. Ruppert didn’t feel like talking. Seeing his friend all but incoherent, his mind broken up into unrecognizable pieces, chilled any comfort Ruppert might have taken in reaching this next step toward freedom.
Later, Violet returned and motioned for Ruppert and Lucia to follow her. She led them back to the main house, into an upstairs sewing room with a small video screen.
“I thought you should see this. It’s been playing on all the newsnets. Don’t worry, my nephew fixed it, or broke it, so nobody can look out through it.” She turned on the screen, accessed a news site (GlobeNet – Salt Lake City), and clicked the blinking TERROR ALERT icon.
Ruppert appeared onscreen in a way he’d never appeared in a newscast-disheveled, tie undone, a growth of stubble on his chin. He looked dirty. A Chinese dragon with a red star on its forehead filled the background behind him. The video effects group had done excellent work.
“It is time we admit the truth,” the digital Ruppert said. “America is weak and broken. America will fall. We must throw ourselves on the mercy of the great nation of China, a society thousands of years older and wiser than ours. They are closer to God than we are. We should adopt the Chinese way of life as our own, and beg China’s forgiveness for the crimes and provocations waged of our own evil, terrorist government.”
“This isn’t really you,” Lucia said.
“No,” Ruppert said. “But it’s on the news, so it must be true, right? I guess we can assume they’ve seen the Westerly interview. So they set up the narrative that I’m an anti-American, terroristic, apparently pro-Chinese,
