placebos. Choose wisely.
A timer replaces the text on the screen. One minute has already passed since the gas was administered.
Nina turns back to the tables and lifts each lid carefully, inside each nestles a loaded syringe. A small tag is attached to each. Nina reads then rereads them, her soul sinking inside her. Her father was a near clairvoyant at solving cryptic crossword clues, but she has never been as accomplished. She sounds them out loud.
The first reads: “Unscramble this: O Nontheist.”
The second reads: “English rock band; to well preserve.”
The third reads: “Choose what is inside mothers.”
Nina coughs, her eyes suddenly itchy, her throat beginning to burn. It’s happening. The gas is getting to her already, the hot scratch of it undeniable. The Fire Sermon.
Nina looks over at the screen. Two minutes have passed. The gas is potent and is beginning to hamper her.
She forces herself to focus.
Cryptic crossword clues have a strange system to them. She tries to remember it. They often contain the answer within the clue itself.
The first clue seems to suggest it’s an anagram. Unscramble being the operative word. “Unscramble this: O Nontheist.” Perhaps unscramble the words: O nontheist.
Nina squeezes her eyes shut and tries to concentrate, pushing away the burning itch of her eyes and throat, the letters of the clue scrambling around desperately in her mind, until they burst into order.
Not this one.
That’s the answer. Not this one. That’s what the letters spell out when rearranged; it is that simple if you know the rules. The answer is not in that syringe.
Emboldened, she turns to the next syringe. Three and a half minutes have passed.
The next clue looks to Nina likely to be a double-definition clue. Double-definition clues contain two different definitions of the word that is the answer.
“English rock band; to well preserve.”
So what word is both the name of an English rock band and a way of preserving? The Jam immediately springs to Nina’s mind.
But that doesn’t make sense, does it? Jam?
Not this one is a pretty straightforward clue, but Jam means nothing to her.
No doubt it will make sense in light of the final clue, Nina tells herself. Because only one of the syringes is a real antidote. If she can work what two of the three clues are, the answer will present itself regardless.
The third syringe’s tag reads: “Choose what is inside mothers.”
The word inside gives the third clue away: this is a container clue.
Inside is the operative word: the answer will be literally inside the word mothers.
Mothers.
Others.
So, choose what is inside mothers. Others. Choose others.
The antidote is not in syringe three. Which means whatever Jam means it is the correct clue. Syringe two is the one she needs.
Nina picks up the syringe and looks at it.
“Bathsheba, how do I take it,” she asks, her raised voice cracking and sending her into a sharply painful fit of coughing.
