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Abot unlocked and opened the door to the attic with her manipulating arm. She maneuvered the clamp, still holding me fast, over her head, lifting me a total of five feet in the air. This allowed her legs to navigate the stairs safely. At this point I stopped my thrashing, fearful that one wrong move would tumble me out of Abot's grip, down the stairs to a broken neck. Then, a thought came to me. Unlikely, but worth trying.
“Abot,” I said in my deepest, coldest voice—geared to sound most like Mrs. VanDeer's. “Release, please.”
Nothing happened. I could not foil that voice recognition.
My dread-inflicted paralysis gave way to trembling. We reached the top of the stairs, and Abot turned ninety degrees. Looking down from my near-ceiling altitude through the dimly lit cloud of swirling dust, I beheld the capsule.
It was about seven feet tall, three feet wide, and three feet deep, edges curved all around. It lay in state, leaned into the murkiest corner of the shadowy attic. It was constructed in two pieces, like a vertically hinged Easter egg designed to hold a human body. The bottom portion was of some sturdy, insulating beige polymer that reflected the low light with muted shine. The top half was clear, so that the body placed inside could be observed during its recuperation or passing.
Downstairs I could hear Clint crying and Mrs. VanDeer soothing him. “Foster children are always a problem, statistically,” she said, “never mind the tax breaks you get for having them. What was your father thinking, expecting me to keep an unstable like her? Everyone knows foster children are much more likely to have ADHD, PAD, SDD—”
Ah, yes, the litany of disorders. I'd heard it countless times before.
Abot pressed a button on the capsule with her manipulation arm. As the hinges eased open, I wondered: why couldn't I have been adorably blond like Nancy? Or sharp and calculating enough to pass my trouble to others like Jacki? Or even just a boy like Clint? Instead I was an ugly, hyper, and now violent statistic.
Abot thrust me into the capsule and opened her clamp. I fell in a heap at the capsule's bottom. As I righted myself, my ears rang, and my stomach heaved with dizziness. Abot pushed the lid down, and I pressed my hands against the seam to keep it open, only to be rewarded for my troubles when it closed anyway, biting my fingers. The capsule's seal hissed shut. Fans began pumping in oxygen.
Abot worked some settings while I recovered enough to pound my fists on the transparent resin lid. “Please, Abot, tell Mrs. VanDeer I'll be good! I'll be calm and quiet, and I won't hit anyone. Please!”
My voice seemed amplified in the tight space. I pressed hard against the door, bracing my feet against the capsule's back. The seal was tight. My breath clouded the plassein for a brief second then dissipated. I tightened my arms and smacked my open palms against the window just as a secondary locking device pulled shut with a sssssnnnnick.
A whimper escaped my tightening throat. Panic twinged in my fingers and toes. “Please, Abot! I don't want to die in here like Mr. VanDeer!”
The quality of the air circulating about my cramped cell began to change. My mouth and eyes felt drier by degrees as I watched Abot bumble away. What was that subtle, too-sweet smell?
“Please don't leave me,” I begged of the void, but only with half my heart. The air was now laced with sedatives, automatically dispersed by the capsule. My body became medicinally soothed, but my mind remained agitated, resulting not in sedation but depression.
Tears leaked from the corners of my eyes. The homeostatic drone of the fan filled my ears. I slid into the rounded corner of the capsule, and my eyes drooped shut. First I found myself in the charcoal void of sleep, but children are prone to the imaginations that help them escape the vise-grip of childhood. I began to dream—or hallucinate.
I now shared the capsule with a man wrapped in a brown blanket. He had dark hair streaked with gray. He was thin, and a tube led from the seam of the capsule into his hand. I recognized him, but I could not remember how.
“Why are you here, little girl?” he asked.
After the briefest hesitation, I answered, “I'm being punished.”
“For?” His voice was not unpleasant, but it had an odd rattling quality.
“My foster brother threw a computer at me, and I fought back. Mrs. VanDeer thinks I'm trouble. She doesn't care that Clint always hurts me. She thinks he's perfect because he's her son, and I'm just an at-risk scientific mistake.”
At this, the man sighed sadly, shaking his head. “Poor little girl. I should have made other arrangements for you.”
I didn't understand. All I could do was say, “She hates me.” I began to cry again.
“She resents you. My will said that a percentage of my legacy was to go to the support and care of Jane E, the fifth unclaimed girl from my clinic. I had no idea she would have been so cruel to you...”
I'd heard this story before but not from this point of view. I felt my jaw drop. I was jailed in here with the dead Mr. VanDeer! I tried shrinking further into the corner, but there simply was nowhere else to go. My capsule-mate put his hand on my shoulder. I looked at his fingers. They now were made of putrid, rotting flesh.
I looked up at his face. Suddenly, his eyes were vacant holes. His nostrils had been nibbled away, his lips rotted back. He spoke, and his jaw clacked. “They won't torture you anymore if I bring you with me.”
His one hand remained on my shoulder. The other reached for my throat. I opened my mouth and screamed.
I screamed myself awake. I was alone in the capsule. My clothes were soaked with sweat. My heart thudded against my ears. My throat constricted, but I only screamed more. I kicked and punched against the capsule door.
The light against my window changed. I continued my racket, hoping the change would represent the arrival of salvation, hoping someone would hear and take pity.
“Jane?” A familiar voice called through the speaker. “Jane, it's Ranice. Calm down so I can talk to you!”
My social worker! “Ranice! Ranice, help me!”
I forced myself to quiet down when I saw her face in the window. Her hat and hastily pushed-aside veil were askew, her braids were loosening from the iridescent clip at the side of her head, and her eye makeup was sliding off of her lids, but I'd never seen a more beautiful face in my life.
“Jane,” Ranice said, “is it true that you fought with Clinton? He's scratched and bruised pretty—”
“Ranice, Clint is the one who broke that HR, not me!” I explained, pointing to the swelling scratch on my temple. “He hit me with it, see?”
Ranice pursed her cracked lips, and I could tell she wasn't certain she could believe me. “Your mother says you're a danger to her other children.”
“She's not my mother! I'm not a danger,” I pleaded. “Mr. VanDeer wants to kill me!”
“Jane, you're too young to remember Mr. VanDeer,” she said, exasperated. “He died just after your first birthday.”
“But he was just in here with me, and he wanted to take me with him! Please, let me out!” I kicked against the lid for emphasis.
Ranice anxiously looked at the side of the capsule, reading off of the interface window.
“Zacdil?” she mumbled, her voice tinny from digitization. “This shouldn't be given to children under the age of fourteen. It causes hallucinations, seizures, God knows what else!”
Ranice shook her head and fiddled with something out of the visual range my current perspective allowed. The air being blown against my skin changed again, becoming somehow softer.
“Jane,” Ranice now addressed me, “for your own safety, you need to stay in there until the drugs wear off—”
“No! Ranice, no, please!”
“Believe me, this is for your own good.”
My breathing accelerated. I felt as if my lungs would burst, as if the capsule were closing about me.
“Jane, I'll be back after the Zacdil's had time to get out of your system. You just try to calm yourself.”
In spite of my continued pleas, Ranice left. My head became a balloon, heavy with too much air and swimming with pain. With what strength I had left in my possession, I gave one last cry for help. Then my vision grayed out, froze, crashed.
