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“I am halfway human. Literally. The other half . . .” I shrug. It coaxes out a grin.
“Oh, the 12th System is definitely theirs,” he says.
The 12th System? What did that mean exactly? I’m not sure, but I suspect it’s in reference to the eleven normal systems of the human body.
“We found a way to yank them out of Teds’ bodies and . . .” Razor trails off, gives the camera an abashed look. “Anyway, you have to eat. I overheard them talking about a feeding tube.”
“So that’s the official story? Like Wonderland: We’re using their technology against them. And you believe that.”
He leans against the wall, crosses his arms over his chest, and hums “Follow the Yellow Brick Road.” I shake my head. Amazing. It isn’t that the lies are too beautiful to resist. It’s that the truth is too hideous to face.
“Commander Vosch is implanting bombs inside children. He’s turning kids into IEDs,” I tell him. He hums louder. “Little kids. Toddlers. They’re separated when they come in, aren’t they? They were at Camp Haven. Anyone younger than five is carted off and you never see them again. Have you seen any? Where are the children, Razor? Where are they?”
He stops humming long enough to say, “Shut up, Dorothy.”
“And does that make sense: loading up a Dorothy with superior alien technology? If command decided to ‘enhance’ people for the war, do you really think it would pick the crazy ones?”
“I don’t know. They picked you, didn’t they?” He grabs the tray of untouched food and heads for the door.
“Don’t go.”
He turns, surprised. My face is hot. The fever must be spiking. That has to be it.
“Why?” he asks.
“You’re the only honest person I have left to talk to.”
He laughs. It’s a good laugh, authentic, unforced; I like it, but I am feverish. “Who says I’m honest?” he asks. “We’re all enemies in disguise, right?”
“My father used to tell this story about six blind men and an elephant. One man felt the elephant’s leg and said an elephant must look like a pillar. Another felt the trunk and said an elephant must look like a tree branch. Blind guy number three felt the tail and said an elephant is like a rope. Fourth guy feels the belly: The elephant is like a wall. Fifth guy, ear: The elephant is shaped like a fan. Sixth guy, a tusk, so an elephant must be like a pipe.”
Razor stares at me stone-faced for a long moment, then smiles. It’s a good smile; I like it, too.
“That’s a beautiful story. You should tell it at parties.”
“The point is,” I tell him, “from the moment their ship appeared, we’ve all been blind men patting an elephant.”
60
IN THE CONSTANT sterile glow, I measure the days by the uneaten meals he brings. Three meals, one day. Six, two days. On the tenth day, after he sets the tray in front of me, I ask him, “Why do you bother?” My voice like his now, a throaty croak. I’m soaked in sweat, fever spiking, head pounding, heart racing. He doesn’t answer. Razor hasn’t spoken to me in seventeen meals. He seems jittery, distracted, even angry. Claire’s gone silent, too. She comes twice a day to change my IV bag, look into my eyes with an otoscope, test my reflexes, change out the catheter bag, and empty the bedpan. Every sixth meal, I get a sponge bath. One day, she brings a tape measure and wraps it around my biceps, I guess to see how much muscle I’ve lost. I don’t see anyone else. No Mr. White Coat. No Vosch or dead fathers pumped into my head by Vosch. I’m not so out of it that I don’t know what they’re doing: holding vigil, waiting to see if the “enhancement” kills me.
She’s rinsing out the bedpan one morning when Razor comes in with my breakfast, and he waits silently until she’s finished, and then I hear him whisper, “Is she dying?”
Claire shakes her head. Ambivalent: could be no, could be your guess is as good as mine. I wait till she’s gone to say, “You’re wasting your time.”
He glances at the camera mounted in the ceiling. “I just do what they tell me.”
I pick up the tray and hurl it onto the floor. His lips tighten, but he doesn’t say anything. Silently, he cleans up the mess while I lie panting, exhausted from the effort, sweat pouring off me.
“Yeah, pick that up. Make yourself useful.”
When my fever shoots up, something in my mind loosens, and I imagine I can feel the forty-four thousand microbots swarming in my bloodstream and the hub with its delicate lace of tendrils burrowed into every lobe, and I understand what my father felt in his dying hours as he clawed at himself to subdue the imaginary insects crawling beneath his skin.
“Bitch,” I gasp. From the floor, Razor looks up at me, startled. “Leave me, bitch.”
“No problem,” he mutters. On his hands and knees, using a wet rag to mop up the mess, and the tart smell of disinfectant. “Fast as I can.”
He stands up. His ivory cheeks are flushed. Deliriously, I think the color brings out the auburn highlights in his blond hair. “It won’t work,” he tells me. “Starving yourself. So you better think of something else.”
