Immobility

* * *

IN TIME THE PAIN FADED. He lay there exhausted, panting. Rasmus was pressed against one wall, unhurt, looking down at him but keeping a safe distance. Oleg lay groaning and slumped on the floor, holding his face, blood oozing through the gaps of his fingers. Olaf was unconscious, a dark bruise already starting to show on one side of his face.

“I warned you it would hurt,” said Rasmus in the same tone one might use to scold a child.

“Seems like it might have hurt them almost as much as it hurt me,” said Horkai, trying to keep the pain out of his voice.

“He’s a monster,” whined Oleg, his voice muffled through his hand. “We shouldn’t have woken him.” It was strange for once not having one brother speaking immediately after the other.

“Hush,” said Rasmus. “He didn’t mean anything by it,” he said. “He just didn’t know his own strength. It was the pain that did it, not him. Aren’t I right, Josef?”

“Probably,” said Horkai. He pushed his splayed legs straight, started to drag himself back to the wall.

“There’s no reason to be like that,” said Rasmus. “We’re on your side, Josef.”

“And what side is that?”

“The good guys,” said Rasmus, and offered his toothiest smile. “We’re the good guys.”

Olaf was groaning now. His brother crouched over him, shaking him slightly, dribbling blood on him.

“All for the good of the cause,” said Rasmus, following his gaze. “Though let’s try not to have the same thing happen next injection, hmmm?”

But Horkai didn’t answer. He was busy thinking. When he finally did speak, it was to ask, “If I’m really paralyzed from the waist down, why did I feel that in my legs?”

Rasmus just held his gaze. “You didn’t,” he claimed at last. “You just think you did.”

5

YOU DIDN’T. YOU JUST THINK you did.

They had left him alone in a room with a bed and little else. He was lying there in the dim light, trying but failing to fall asleep. You didn’t. You just think you did. Either Rasmus was telling the truth or he was lying. But he didn’t know Rasmus well enough to be able to read him properly.

If he was lying, it meant that he, Horkai, had actually felt something, that there was some feeling left somewhere in his legs. That might mean the nerves could be repaired, that there was hope he might regain his ability to walk. Or it might simply mean that though the legs were paralyzed, the paralysis was not as extensive as Rasmus had been led to believe, that Rasmus wasn’t so much lying as simply unaware. Which wasn’t to say that Horkai’s immobility wasn’t progressing, that he wouldn’t lose, as Rasmus said, more and more feeling and finally become completely paralyzed. Only that it hadn’t progressed as far as Rasmus believed.

So, one hopeful and one not-so-hopeful possibility. But if Rasmus was right and he hadn’t felt anything, though, it was more discouraging. It meant he couldn’t trust his own senses, couldn’t trust what he was feeling and, by extension, couldn’t trust what was going on in his own mind. The mind is a great deceiver. He might be experiencing a feeling that was real and he might not be—how exactly was he to know? Which ultimately made him wonder if the whole of his reality wasn’t suspect. Was there anything he could know for certain?

Perhaps I’m still in storage, he couldn’t stop himself from thinking. Perhaps something has gone wrong and I’ve begun to thaw and I’m dreaming. Perhaps this is all a dream.

He pushed his thumb against his leg. He felt nothing in the leg itself, only in the thumb. He pinched the skin hard, and then harder still, until the skin was broken and the cut began to seep blood. Still nothing. And so he lay there, staring up at the ceiling, trying to find some reason to believe that the world exists.

* * *

BEFORE THAT, DIRECTLY AFTER THE INJECTION, he was with Rasmus, propped up again on his chair as if nothing had happened. Olaf and Oleg had left, doubtless to seek medical attention. His spine, where the needle had gone in, still throbbed slightly. It was not painful now, more a dull ache.

“Are you wondering why you’re here?” asked Rasmus.

“No,” said Horkai, still irritated. “I don’t much care. You’re the one who woke me. Tell me why or put me back in storage.”

A flicker of irritation passed over Rasmus’s face but was quickly smoothed over, hidden. “Of course,” he said. “Josef, there’s something we need that only you can give.”

“And what might that be?”

“Something’s been stolen from us. A cylinder. We need you to find it and bring it back.”

“Why me?”

“Why you? Because of what you used to be.”

“And what, in your estimation, was I?”

“You don’t remember?” said Rasmus, and shook his head. “Maybe it was a mistake to wake you after all. You were once a fixer,” he said.

“A fixer,” said Horkai.

“Doesn’t ring a bell? It means just what it says,” said Rasmus. “You were called upon when nobody else could solve a problem. You were willing to use any means necessary to make things right.”

Horkai waited for the words to sink in, hoping for memories to return to his mind. But nothing came. “No,” he said. “It doesn’t sound quite right.”

“I only know what my father told me,” said Rasmus quickly. “But why would he lie? You were a fixer, a detective of sorts. You are our last resort. The choice is yours: Either you can lend us a hand for a few days or we can put you back in storage. But if you don’t help us, the chances are good there won’t be anyone left to get you out of storage later on. We’re the ones who can keep you alive, and we’re the ones trying to find your cure. Do you want to risk losing us?”

“I’m listening,” said Horkai.

Rasmus smiled. “That’s all I can ask,” he said. He opened one of the side drawers of the desk, removed a rolled piece of canvas. He unfurled it, spreading it on the desk to reveal a crude map.

“This is us,” he said, pointing at a black circle, the word ovo written over it. “We’re all that’s left of what used to be there, our numbers spread through what’s still standing of some of the university’s research facilities. There’s the lake, just to the west, and the mountains, just to the east. You’ll follow the mountains north about thirty-eight miles, through the ruined towns, and pursue the remains of the freeway across what they used to call the Point of the Mountain. You’ll pass the old state penitentiary and then, near the bottom of the slope, the remnants of the highway. Take that up the canyon eight miles or so, and you’ll find it.”

“Find what?”

“The place where they keep the cylinder.”

“How will I recognize it?”

“The cylinder? Red letters on the side. It’ll almost certainly be kept in a subzero environment. At least let’s hope so. It’s no use to us if it isn’t.”

“No, the place, I mean.”

Rasmus grinned, showing the tips of his teeth. “You’ll recognize it because of the huge hole bored in the side of the mountain.”

“And how do I get in?”

“They don’t know you,” said Rasmus. “The rest of us they’ve seen. But you, you can pass, they’ll be willing to let you get close. They may even invite you in. After that, you’ll have to improvise.”

“What do you mean, improvise?”

Rasmus scratched the back of his skull, shrugged. “People have been murdered,” he said. “That’s what you risk,” he said.

Horkai nodded. “And once I get there, I just find this cylinder and take it?”

“You’re the fixer, Josef. Figure out how to make things right by any means necessary. Kill them if you have