I LOST TRACK of how long I’d been in solitary confinement. No one came to see me. No food was provided. There was a jug of dirty water in the corner, a wastebasket for emptying my bladder, a thin, dusty mattress, and a single light hanging from the center of the ceiling.
I’d exhausted all possible escape options, which was quick and easy because after an hour I knew there weren’t any. My captors knew better than to leave anything I could use against them. So I didn’t waste my energy on things I knew wouldn’t manifest. Instead I spent the time reorganizing my memories.
The suddenness of them all had been overwhelming at first. Thousands of childhood moments to reconcile, everything from moments of pleasure and pain to great victories and terrible failures. I relived each one I logged, sitting there cross-legged on the stone floor, meditating on them all. I escaped into myself and let them come at me hard and fast. That was the only way to digest them.
They stirred complex emotions about who I was. Who was I meant to be? On one hand, the voice of reason said I was designed, trained, manipulated to be a product for progress. An instrument wrapped up in flesh. On the other hand, the mothering voice of Olivia said I was more human than tool, that I had the capacity to choose what to do with the abilities I’d been given. The two ideas warred with one another.
Was I Lucy, or was I Number Nine? The question started off simple and became weighted as the time passed. In the moments when my mind wasn’t wrapped up in the war of identity, I thought of Zoe. The part of me that was Lucy cared for her deeply, was afraid that she was hurt or dead. The part of me that was a number saw her only as a distraction from purpose. So more conflict gathered in my psyche.
At some point the door to my prison opened, and Director Hammon entered with his flock of armed agents. I could smell their fear, read it on their faces. All except Hammon. He was confident and steady. I looked up from my seated place in the middle of the room.
“Number Nine,” Hammon said. He used a long black cane, and I wondered if the bullet I’d placed deep in his leg had gone clean through or if they’d had to dig it out. “Leave us,” he said to the galley of men.
They looked at one another. “Sir?” one of them questioned.
“Leave us,” he repeated more firmly. They did as they were told, and the door shut behind them.
Very confident, I thought.
“You aren’t afraid to be alone with me?” I asked.
“No,” he answered.
“Why? The others are.”
“Because I know you, Number Nine. The others just know of you.”
“And knowing me keeps you safe?”
“I’m your commander. You wouldn’t harm me.”
“I shot you.”
He smiled. “That was unintentional. If it had been purposeful, you wouldn’t have missed my femoral artery by millimeters.”
I said nothing. He was right.
“We need to talk about Olivia, Number Nine,” Hammon said.
“You want to know where the hidden files are,” I said.
“Yes.”
“I don’t think I should tell you.”
“Why not?”
“It’s my only leverage for staying alive. There’s no reason you wouldn’t kill me once you have what you want.”
“What if I promise that won’t be the outcome?”
“Then you would be lying.”
Hammon huffed in amusement. “I will resort to much crueler measures if my hand is forced.”
“You can try,” I said.
He knew how fortified I was against torture. That approach would take some time, if it could succeed at all. Anger flashed across his face.
“That makes you upset?” I asked.
“Well, Number Nine, I have pressure coming down from up top to get this job done. And you are currently the only thing standing in my way, so yes, it makes me frustrated.”
“Pressure from the leader of the free world.” I remembered him now. The different versions of him that had come through over the years.
“He is very powerful and impatient,” Hammon said.
“I am very powerful, and patient,” I replied.
He forced an uncomfortable smile. He was losing his temper. I remembered that about him. He didn’t hold his rage well.
“Is it not? It feels like a game to me.”
“If you had any idea what was actually at stake here, you wouldn’t be toying with this information like a child. But you don’t understand. You were created with a flaw. You are broken, so all that power you believe you possess does you no good, because you don’t understand the way the world functions.”
Anger twitched inside my chest.
“That was the part we never could master. Making you human enough to exist outside these walls. Humanity can’t be taught. It either is or isn’t. Something we now know for the future.”
I looked at him with curiosity. Some part of me understood the baiting, but Lucy was ignoring Number Nine’s warning about chomping down.
“You look surprised,” Hammon teased. “Surely with the level of intelligence you possess, you had to assume we would try again. Next time we’ll develop a newer, better version, one that will actually succeed. Without the . . .” He tilted his head, seeming to ponder how to put it, then smiled. “Mistakes.”
That hurt my feelings. The ones I struggled to control. The ones that belonged to the part of me that felt like Lucy. I was still a girl, after all. Wasn’t I?
“That’s why recovering the files is so important. This is greater than you or me. We are talking about creating a safer America, maybe even a better world. And you are standing in the way of a greater version, for what? Your life? Seems selfish.”
I pondered what he was saying. “Don’t I deserve to live?”
“Over progress?” Hammon asked, his eyes drilling into mine. His face turned cold. “No.”
The tick of rage pulsed and spread. He believed his progress was more valuable than my existence. Maybe he’s right, Number Nine thought. Of course he isn’t right, Lucy argued. I was teetering on the edge, sure to fall one way or the other, but unsure which way it would be.
“Tell me where the files are hidden, Number Nine,” Hammon said.
Sweat beads trickled down the left side of his forehead. I could hear his heart rate increasing.
“I will get what I want from you one way or another,” he said.
Still I said nothing, and his breathing increased.
“Olivia told me not to tell you,” I finally replied. “No matter the cost.”
A moment of silence engulfed the room, and again Hammon’s pulse spiked. Then he took a deep breath and regained control of his temper. “I don’t want to have to do this the hard way, but you seem stubbornly resolved.”
Again I said nothing. I knew I could withstand whatever they did to my body.
“Fine, we resort to drastic measures,” Hammon said. “We go after what has always been your Achilles’ heel. The same problem all of your kind had. It’s humanness, or lack thereof. There’s a fine line between not enough and too much. Too much and you put your own value above the value of your orders, not enough and you murder your entire family. It’s tricky, tricky science. But we put it in you, so we can rip it out. Once you lose your irrational attachment to loyalty and remember nothing is greater than progress, you’ll give me what I want without hesitation. So many messy steps can be avoided if you would just tell me where the files are. Haven’t you suffered enough already?”
I listened to his threats with cold resistance. I would never betray Olivia. I would never give in to his mental games.
“The hard way then,” Hammon said, turning to hobble toward the exit. He glanced back once he reached the door. “Remember I offered a different path and you refused. You chose this, Lucy.”
He spoke to my human side, making her shudder. Whatever was coming next would be more than cruel.
THEY CAME FOR me an hour after Director Hammon left. I didn’t resist when an armed agent handed me a glass of something I knew was more than water. I asked what it was without receiving an answer, then drank it down, knowing there was no alternative.
I woke up in a different place, strapped to another medical bed, naked except for a thin strip of coarse white fabric that ran across my breasts and another that covered my hips. Hundreds of thin cords pierced deep into my skin. There was mild throbbing from where they had been inserted, and any movement made the throbbing worsen.
The rest of the room was utterly dark. I could only see what was slightly illuminated by the large screen that hung above my face. I tried to piece together what was happening but had no recollection of ever being in this room before. I imagined the tiny cords were connected to nerve endings that would be inflicted with pain as Hammon asked me to give up the location of the files, so I prepared my mind for that possibility.
I heard a door slide open and the footsteps of someone entering. I never saw who it was, just the person’s gloved hands as they came at my face from behind and secured a thick, heavy strap across the length of my forehead and another across my chin, holding them down against the bed.
Something buzzed beside either ear, and in my peripherals I could see a small object headed toward my eyes. My heart lurched as the tools, which resembled claws, lowered. The gloved hands attached them to my eyelids and the fleshy bags underneath my eyes. The claws then widened, yanking my eyes open an uncomfortable amount. They started to dry out immediately as the mystery person left, the door sealing shut and the footsteps fading away.
I couldn’t move an inch, every part of me restrained, my eyes forced open. Then the room came to life, the illuminated screen above me so wide it was all I could see. It was static white to begin, then an image came into focus: Olivia standing at the edge of a forest line, her mouth moving but without sound, only static. My heart surged at the sight of her, and as it did the tiny wires connected to my nerve endings tightened.
The pain was excruciating, unlike anything I had ever experienced. As though every molecule in my body was being set on fire. My heartbeat quickened and the pain grew. The movie continued as bullets slammed into Olivia’s chest, and she fell to the forest floor. My pulse flared and the pain increased. Higher and higher until I couldn’t breathe, tears rolling down my cheeks.
The screen went black, and my heart began to mellow, as did the pain. Then the screen came back to life with the same image, the same painful sequence. My heart reacted.
Over and over, my emotional reaction to the same image was followed by pain that I thought would kill me. I tried to practice the methods I’d been taught to withstand the agony, but I couldn’t focus enough to do so. The all-encompassing screen was overwhelming. It consumed my mind, and I couldn’t do anything to shut it out.
As I watched Olivia’s murder again and again, I knew eventually I would become numb to it, but then the images changed. Now Zoe was strapped to a medical bed, being pumped full of electric waves, her screams ringing in my ears. My nerve endings were throttled with pain. My entire body shook in agony.
The images multiplied. Olivia’s death, Zoe’s torture, then more painful memories captured on film. The punishment of other Grantham “numbers.” The others like me. My only friends. Faces I knew, but images of them I hadn’t seen. Physical beatings, screams from their solitary confinement, nights of endless crying and near drowning. Anything that would evoke an emotional response and in turn engage the wires tucked deep within my flesh.
Feeling was reinforced with pain. Pain reinforced with feeling. It was cracking my resolve. On and on. Over and over, my emotions were under siege. The part of me that was Lucy was being attacked. The part named by a woman I cared for. A woman I loved. Now my humanity was being used to manipulate my mind.
Hammon was forcing me to choose between turning it all off or enduring the endless pain. I could feel myself breaking. I could feel the desperation for relief, the dare to feel nothing. My brain was being reprogrammed to associate my humanity with suffering.
I couldn’t let him win. I couldn’t let him take what Olivia had given me. But my heart was numbing and my body was dying. I was losing the battle with my survival instincts.
Hammon was killing Lucy.
TIME LOST ALL of its meaning. All there was, really, was the pain and the momentary escape from it. The natural dulling I couldn’t avoid any longer. I fought as long as I could, but getting glimpses of what could be had become too tempting to refuse. Freedom from the agony, too alluring to deny.
I wanted to be stronger.
But I wasn’t.
Now I longed for the darkness.
No grand gesture or dramatic moment marked the point when my mind exploded and everything changed. No. It was simple. Something that was programmed into me already. Something I was wired to do. Like flipping a light switch. One moment there was pain, and the next there wasn’t. One moment I was Lucy, and the next I wasn’t.
Images flashed and nothing happened. I saw them as clearly as before, but this time I only saw outcomes of situations that were outside of me. Like the insides of a clock, all the small pieces rotated together in perfect harmony. I understood differently than I had before.
The room I was in became brighter. The machine I was hooked up to went silent. People entered, disconnected me from the device, clothed me, and carried me to a cell. My body was numb and broken. It would take a while to heal, my strength depleted from fighting what I now saw as a hopeless war.
Director Hammon came to me. He asked me questions and seemed pleased with my responses. I understood I was betraying Olivia and Lucy. I just didn’t care anymore.
After thanking me, the director administered a shot in my upper left arm, and Lucy died.