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And there was something about the way Marlowe said it, with the full confidence of his optimism, that buoyed Jericho’s spirits. He recalled the promise he’d made to himself the day before. This was his chance to banish the banal fear that lurked in his depths and prove himself heroic. To live deliberately.
Jericho closed the book. “Yes. I’m ready.”
Marlowe smiled. “Then follow me.”
“Roll up your sleeve, please, and lie down on the table,” Marlowe instructed.
Jericho did as he was told, but his earlier enthusiasm dimmed. The laboratory’s hydraulic table had wrist and ankle restraints. He had a visceral memory of all that had come before—the paralysis, the iron lung, the Daedalus program—which made his heart thud hard and fast. Be your own hero, he thought. Jericho lay perfectly still, blinking up at the surgery lights as Marlowe plunged in the needle, pulling out three vials of blood. To this, he added a milky liquid, which curlicued through the red like the weak tendrils of a young plant trying to take root. Marlowe pressed rubber sealings into the glass tubes and secured them in holes anchored inside a small brass box of a machine. A tiny glass door allowed Jericho to view the proceedings from where he lay.
“Here we go,” Marlowe said. He flipped a series of switches along the front panel, and an accordion pump attached to the side whooshed up and down, faster and faster, squealing with the effort. The machine glowed with increasing warmth. Staticky filaments of blue electricity flickered behind the glass, mesmerizing Jericho. At last, Marlowe shut it down; the machine whined into silence again. Smoke poured out as Marlowe opened the door with a rag. The serum had become an inky blue, a night sky captured in glass.
“What is that stuff?” Jericho asked. He hoped he didn’t sound as nervous as he felt.
Marlowe beamed. “The Future of America.” He came around and buckled the heavy restraints tightly across Jericho’s wrists and ankles. “Just a precaution. The serum could make you a bit rowdy at first. Not to worry.”
Marlowe leaned over Jericho, his face blocking the bright light, and Jericho had a vivid memory of seeing him for the first time. Jericho had been a young, frightened boy lying inside Jake’s iron lung prototype after the infantile paralysis, and the great man had promised to make him walk again. At the time, Jake Marlowe had seemed like an all-powerful god.
“Jericho?”
“Yes?”
The light behind Marlowe threw shadows across his handsome face. “Let’s make history, shall we?”
With that, Marlowe plunged the hypodermic into Jericho’s arm.
Serum rushed through Jericho’s veins, cold at first, but then warm and warmer still. Sweat dotted his forehead and upper lip.
“What do you feel?”
Fear. Confusion. A need to run. “I… uh… Fight or flight,” Jericho said, panting. “I-I want up. Can you let me up?” Jericho’s muscles tensed. The table rattled.
Marlowe’s voice was reassuring. “It’s okay. It’ll pass. Give it a minute.”
A minute? He wouldn’t last five more seconds. It was too warm. It made his heart race. Jericho thought he would crawl out of his skin. He yanked at the restraints, nearly coming off the table.
“Jericho! Fight through it. Come on!” Marlowe shouted.
Fight it how? Be your own hero be your own…But the intensity clawed at his insides, challenging him. He was as restless as that blue electricity inside the machine. He needed to remove the fear. Unclench his thoughts. Calm. What would calm him?
Evie. He thought of Evie. The two of them soaring above the fairgrounds up in Brethren on the Ferris wheel. The late-afternoon autumn light catching the halo of her loose hair as she laughed and leaned forward, never back, as if she could catch the wind in her arms and hold it. Evie. Evie. Evie. The tension in his muscles eased. His fingers flattened. He was a passenger floating down the river of his own body.
“Jericho?”
“Calm. I’m calm.”
“Good. Good.”
The calm edged into exhilaration and euphoria, like the first swoop of that Ferris wheel. He suddenly felt as if he could do anything—chop down forests, build a cabin or three, hunt deer and wear their skins, conquer new worlds, live as a god; all of it felt like a birthright promised him. The exhilaration told him he could pursue this happiness forever and ever, amen. Jericho liked this new sensation. He liked it very much.
“I’m going to loosen the restraints now, Jericho. All right?”
Yes, yes! Let me loose on the world! “Fine,” Jericho said.
Marlowe unbuckled the leather and helped Jericho to a sitting position and bandaged his arm.
“How do you feel?” Marlowe asked, regarding Jericho quizzically.
How did he feel? Like sunshine lighting the tips of summer grass on a June morning. Like a barn dance in full swing or the morning he’d kissed Evie on the roof of the Bennington as dawn clawed its way up the sides of Manhattan’s ambitious skyline. He felt gloriously, completely, marvelously alive.
