Vox(57)

They’ll take me away; that’s certain. I’ll never see my kids again, or Patrick, or Lorenzo.

I try to imagine a life, somewhere on what cons used to call the inside, where I spend every new day watching the mental photographs of everyone fade and silver with time until nothing but the faintest outline is left. Or maybe I won’t have to do that. Maybe my last image will be of the inside of a hood as a noose slips around my neck, or the gel-smeared cap of an electric chair is strapped firmly onto my shaved head, or a needle slides into my vein.

No, it wouldn’t be a needle. That would be too kind.

The clock inside chimes twelve, counting out my heartbeats. There’s no need to count them; I can feel each beat in my ears like a kettledrum.

But I’ve gone this far, so why not a bit further?

I lock the mailbox after taking out its contents, only the single envelope, and go back into the house. Despite the still, warm air inside, a chill runs up and down my arms, raising the flesh into a braille of goose bumps.

We don’t have it as bad as Winston Smith, having to crouch into a blind corner of his one-room flat while Big Brother watches through a screen on the wall, but we do have cameras. There’s one at the front door, one at the back, and one over the garage, aimed at the driveway. I watched them being installed a year ago, on the day Sonia and I were fitted with the wrist counters. No one could possibly monitor every household all the time—there isn’t enough manpower for constant surveillance; nevertheless, I’m careful to keep the manila envelope flat against my body as I turn from the mailbox and slide back through the front door. Then I walk from living room to dining room and toward the half bath at the side of the kitchen. It seems a private enough place.

Inside, I sit on the floor, my back to the wall, and pry up the prongs on the metal clasp.

The cover sheet is there, the same memo I read last evening. Under it are three separate sets of documents, each paper-clipped to a colored cover page, one white, one gold, and one red. I flip the white cover first, revealing an outline of my team’s goals:

Develop, test, and mass-produce anti-Wernicke serum

Behind this page, there are the usual Gantt charts—the project manager’s tool of choice—stipulating deadlines for interim reports and clinical trials. The rest of the packet consists of the team’s CVs. Nothing new here, but I note Morgan’s curriculum vitae is only one page long, while the rest of ours span half a dozen sheets. I flip the pages back, square them, and adjust the paper clip before setting the white batch aside on the bathroom tile.

The gold packet is almost a duplicate of the one for my own team. Under the yellow cover page, the goals read:

Develop, test, and mass-produce Wernicke serum

More Gantt charts and five CVs, all documenting the publication histories and academic positions of various biologists and chemists I don’t know, are also in this set, along with Morgan’s credentials. So they’re doubling up, hedging their bets, it looks like. Hell. It’s typical government. Why have one team when you can pay for two?

The gold set goes on the pile next to me, and I move to the Red team’s packet, expecting another redundancy, but this one is different.

For one, its goal is singular:

Explore water solubility of Wernicke serum

The team members on the following pages—all six of them—are also scientists, all PhDs. Below each name is a military rank and branch. I squeeze my eyes shut to the harsh light above the bathroom’s sink and think back to this afternoon, to all the doors I passed as Poe led me down the fifth-floor corridor toward Morgan’s office.

One of the names—Winters—rings a faint, but clear, bell at the same time the clock in the living room chimes the hour. One o’clock.

Carefully, I assemble the packets as they were: white, gold, and red. Before sliding them back into the envelope, I check the Gantt chart in the white set. The timeline, a color-coded horizontal bar chart of tasks, goes back to the previous year, to November 8, the date our lab equipment was requisitioned.

So I was right. The Wernicke project wasn’t conceived yesterday. It was started seven months ago.

My legs don’t want to stand. They’re disobedient limbs, all cramped and prickly with pins and needles from sitting cross-legged on the floor for so long. I lean against the sink and stretch out my hamstrings.

“Jean?”

The voice on the other side of the bathroom door is muffled, but it’s unmistakably Patrick’s. He knocks once; then the doorknob turns.

I didn’t lock it. I didn’t think I needed to.

Shit. Shit, shit, shit.

Quickly, I turn on the tap, letting the manila envelope slide into the narrow space between the vanity and the wall. When Patrick opens the door, I’m bathing my face in cold water.

“Holy Christ, babe,” he says. “You’re a mess.”

My reflection agrees. Sweat-smudged mascara circles my eyes, the cotton blouse I put on this morning sticks to me like a thin coat of glue, and my hair is either matted down or sticking out in all the wrong places. I twist the tap and towel off, smiling a little sheepishly at Patrick, who seems much less drunk and much more concerned.

“Didn’t feel so hot,” I say. “Must have been the pizza.”

He holds a hand up to my forehead, a cool, clean doctor’s hand, the skin of it pink and scrubbed. For an instant, I think of Lorenzo’s hands and how different they are. I think of how Patrick’s hands might not be as clean as they seem.