The Test(17)

Tidir is coming closer.

—Close your eyes, Ramzi.

She puts her hand on the window. I put my hand over hers. She’s looking at me with such tenderness, such calm. I want to trade places with her. I would give my life to save hers. I would give anything. But I will not watch my son die in front of me. Neither will she.

—Ramzi. I said close your eyes. Put your hands over your ears and close your eyes. You too, Salma.

—All right, Samaritan. I’m going to count to three . . . ONE!

—Please, sir. Don’t make me do—

—Yeah, yeah. I don’t. I can’t. Blah blah blah. We’ve been through this already. TWO!

Tidir’s eyes are tearing up, but she’s smiling at me. I know she’s scared. I know there’s a part of her that wants to scream, and run, and fight. But she’s not. She won’t. She doesn’t want our kids to see that. She wants to make this easier on them. She’s also thinking of me. She knows part of me will die with her, but there has to be some part of me left for our children.

—TH—

I nod. I close my eyes.

**TAK**

NNNNOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!





7.


DEEP SITS ALONE AT the desk and watches Idir scream and fall to his knees on the big screen in front of him. He smiles. He’s proud of himself. He went where no one had gone before, boldly. That was science. He observed, theorized, then proved a hypothesis. Maximized group dynamics. He won’t say it himself, but he’d like someone else to say his K3 was a work of art. He did it. He’ll make Idir a citizen.

Laura storms back into the control room and turns on the lights.

—Have you lost your fucking mind?

—What?

She is followed by her own supervisor, a balding man in his fifties wearing a beige cardigan over his government-issued grey shirt. The balding man is Tom. He’s been here since the very beginning. He was a tech when it all started, and now he’s responsible for a small army of operators. He was once proud of that. He doesn’t remember ever being as eager, as ambitious as Deep, but he was. Over the years his ambition has made way for an even stronger desire for comfort, peace, and quiet. All Tom really wants is for things to run smoothly. If it were up to him, no operator would ever quit or retire, and the program would never expand. All these things mean new people and new people mean . . .

—You! What’s your name?

—Deep.

—What you just did . . .

Aside from a slew of medical issues—heartburn, high cholesterol, high blood pressure—Tom has some anger issues to deal with. He’s doing his best to breathe in and breathe out, calling on every trick he’s learned in group sessions.

—What you just did . . . is wrong.

—What? What did I do? He passed K3!

Deep rewinds the video to show Idir begging the terrorist to kill him. Tom is well aware of what transpired; he saw it from his office. But watching it again—Idir’s son putting his hands over his ears, Idir’s wife putting her hand on the window, the terrorist firing his gun—Tom realizes how much trouble they’re all in. This isn’t just highly irregular. It isn’t just the kind of thing that gets people fired. This is the kind of thing that gets out. There have been mistakes in the past, plenty of them, but never anything this juicy. This . . . it’s too good not to leak. It’s a bloody piece of meat in shark-infested water. It’ll get out. It’s only a matter of when.

—It’s . . . his family, you gormless git!

Tom regrets using those words. Deep is obviously an idiot, but that’s no reason to be unprofessional. What matters now is containment.

—So what? He passed!

Tom no longer regrets using those words. He’s getting agitated. He can see it all. A minister resigning. The Prime Minister denying everything. They’ll find a patsy, or two, or three. Containment.

—Laura, close the door. No one leaves this room.

Laura gets up and locks everyone inside. Deep resets the big screen to a live view. Idir is on his knees, crying.

—Guys! What’s going on? He passed K3. He volunteered. He volunteered like . . . five times! He was willing to die right there and then! Did you see that?

Tom’s furious.

—You. Stupid. Little. Shit. You can’t use the man’s family!

—He. Passed!

—You can’t do that! You can’t use his family!

—Why?

—Because . . . it’s against the rules.

—No. It’s not! You’re talking about Appendix A, item number four. That doesn’t apply!

If Deep is guilty of anything, not knowing what’s in the manual is not a part of it.

British Values Assessment—Appendix A—General Hostage Parameters.

4. Under no circumstances shall an operator use a person having any personal or professional connection with the subject as a candidate in a kill exercise. To do so would nullify the results.



Tom takes a deep breath.

—Don’t you think that, maybe, being his wife and kid qualifies as “having a connection”?

—Yeah, maybe. But it only talks about one! There’s nothing in there about using two people he knows.

Tom wonders how much more trouble he’d be in if he also beat some sense into this kid.