UnWholly (Unwind Dystology #2)(20)

Roberta tells the guards to wait at the door, and she leads Cam into a living room. There are people present: Kenny, and some members of his therapy staff, as well as others whom Cam doesn’t know; professionals of some sort who work behind the scenes of his life. When they see him, they rise from their leather chairs and sofas, alarmed by his presence.

“It’s all right,” Roberta tells them. “Give us a few minutes alone.” They drop whatever they’re doing and scurry out. Cam would ask Roberta who they are, but he already knows. They’re like the guards at his door, and the guards on the rocks, and the man who cleans his messes, and the woman who rubs lotion on his scars. All these people are there to serve him.

Roberta leads him to a full-length mirror against a wall. He can see himself now head to toe. He sheds the hospital gown and stands there in his shorts, looking at himself. The shape of his body is beautiful; he is perfectly proportioned, muscular and trim. For a moment he thinks maybe he is Narcissus after all, absorbed in vanity—but as he steps closer and more into the light, he can see the scars. He knew they were there, but to see them all at once is overwhelming. They are ugly, and they’re everywhere—but nowhere are they more pronounced than on his face.

That face is a nightmare.

Strips of flesh, all different shades, like a living quilt stretched across the bone, muscle and cartilage beneath. Even his head—clean-shaven when he awoke, but now filling in with peach-fuzz hair—has different colors and textures sprouting like uneven fields of clashing crops. His eyes ache from the sight of himself, and tears cloud them.

“Why?” is all he can think to say. He turns from his reflection, trying to disappear into his own shoulder, but Roberta gently touches that shoulder.

“Don’t look away,” she says. “Have the strength to see what I see.”

He forces himself to look again, but all he can see are the scars.

“Monster!” he says. That word comes from so many different bits of memory, he needs no help finding it. “Frankenstein!”

“No,” Roberta says sharply. “Never think that! That monster was made from dead flesh, but you are made of the living! That creature was a violation of all things natural, but you, Cam, you are a new world wonder!”

Now she looks into the mirror with him, pointing out his many miraculous parts. “Your legs belonged to a varsity runner,” she tells him, “and your heart to a boy who could have been an Olympic swimmer, had he not been unwound. Your arms and shoulders once belonged to the best baseball player any harvest camp had ever seen, and your hands? They played guitar with rare and glorious talent!” Then she smiles and catches his gaze in the mirror. “As for your eyes, they came from a boy who could melt a girl’s heart with a single glance.”

There is a certain pride in the way she speaks of him. It’s a pride he cannot yet feel himself.

Roberta puts a finger to his temple. “But the best of it all is right in here!” She moves her finger around the multitextured fuzz of his hair, pointing out different spots on his cranium, like travel destinations on a globe.

“Your left frontal lobe holds the analytical and computational skills of seven kids who tested at the genius level in math and science. Your right frontal lobe combines the creative cores of almost a dozen poets, artists, and musicians. Your occipital lobe holds neuron bundles from countless Unwinds with photographic memories, and your language center is an international hub of nine languages, all waiting to be reawakened.”

She touches his chin, turning him to face her. Her eyes, which seemed so far away in the mirror, are now only inches from his. They are hypnotic and overpowering.

“Anata wa randamu de wa nai, Cam,” she says. “Anata wa interijento ni sekkei sa rete imasu.”

And Cam knows what she’s saying. You are not random, Cam. You are intelligently designed. He has no idea what language it is, but he knows what it means, all the same.

“Every part of you was handpicked from the best and the brightest,” Roberta tells him, “and I was there at each unwinding, so you would see me, hear me, and know me once all the parts were united.” She takes a moment to think about it, and sadly shakes her head. “Those poor kids were too dysfunctional to know how to use the gifts they were given—but now, even divided, they can finally be complete through you!”

Now that she speaks of unwinding, fragments of memories flood him.

Yes, he had seen her!

Standing beside the operating table without as much as a surgical mask to cover her face, because the point, he now realizes, was for her to be seen and remembered. But it wasn’t just one operating room, was it?

An identical memory

from dozens of different places in his mind.

But it’s not his mind, is it?

It’s their minds.

All of them.

Crying out.

Please, please make this stop,

until there is no voice to beg,

no mind to scream.

At that singular moment

When “I am” becomes “I’m not . . .”

He takes a deep, shuddering breath. Those final memories are a part of him now, spliced together, like the skin of his face. The memories are impossible to bear, and yet he bears them. Only now does he realize how strong he truly must be to hold the memory of a hundred unwindings without crumbling to nothing.