Chapter 1
Six years later she found herself wandering the city of Westfort again, eventually ending up on Stockbridge Boulevard.
Here, in this land of dirty needles, glittering shards of shattered glass and shambling hordes of homeless people, the people were either faceless or turned away, fiddling with pipes or pills or powders, with their backs turned to her.
Some of those that had no features lay motionless on the sidewalk, comatose from the chemicals corroding their brains.
A couple of rapid knocks cracked the sky wide open.
A brief sequence of hard-to-identify noises followed, all of them metallic and heavy, like some steel machine.
Devi’s eyes opened, slowly. All of Stockbridge immediately fell away.
Bright lights took its place, as did the blinding white of the walls of her room.
Home, she thought. It's the present day and I’m back in my room. I’m safe.
“Sorry to wake you,” someone said.
A woman.
Her voice was familiar, although not yet possible to map to any one particular face.
Devi turned around. She rubbed her eyes with her right thumb and index finger. Yawning, she sat up on the stretcher that was her bed.
Her soles touched cold white tiles.
She shrugged.
“How are you feeling?” said the woman.
Dr. Athena Angelopolous, Devi realized now.
The doctor carefully closed the door behind her, as if trespassing. She took a seat right next to Devi on the bed.
Dr. Athena smelled of hand sanitizer and almond shampoo. Her white coat was as immaculately clean and ironed as always, yet for some reason she had dirt underneath her nails.
“I’m okay,” Devi said. “Still a little tired, is all.”
“Good,” Dr. Athena said. “So no migraines or nausea or anything like that?”
“No.”
“Good,” Athena said. “I’m glad to hear that.”
The doctor smiled. Didn’t seem sincere.
“You know, considering what happened yesterday,” the doctor said, “you’re lucky even to be breathing. That dose, that particular concoction, it was completely off. It almost killed you.”
Devi tried to remember but came up practically empty handed, recalling only fragments of yesterday’s visit to the clinic.
She remembered the syringe and the clear liquid inside. She remembered the wave of heat, like a fast-forwarded fever that came out of nowhere and conquered her in seconds.
The last thing she remembered was growing groggy and tired.
Then, eventually, she had found herself back in a past life, walking among the destitute and using.
“It’s okay, doctor,” Devi said. “We all make mistakes.”
“No,” Athena said, her insincere smile completely vanished now, replaced by a troubled look sprinkled with an almost motherly concern. “It’s not okay. Nothing about this is okay. You shouldn’t have to live like… this.”
Athena made an outward sweeping, half-circular gesture, as if showing Devi her cell-like room for the first time.
Devi frowned. She stood up and stepped over to her porcelain sink in the corner of the room, where she washed her face with lukewarm water.
“If you don’t think this is a good place,” Devi said in between two splashes, “maybe you should quit and go work somewhere else. After all, you’re the one pumping me full of this stuff.”
She expected irritation or some snide remark in return, but all Devi got was a sigh and a simple:
“Yes. Yes I am. And yeah, I probably shouldn’t be working here. It’s just that quitting this job, it’s … not as easy as it sounds.”
The doctor stared at her dirty fingernails for a moment. Then she said:
“But I’m gonna set things straight now. I’m going to get you out of here. You want that, don’t you?”
Apart from the occasional dream, such as the one she’d had just now, and spontaneous reminiscences that came out of nowhere, Devi rarely thought of her old life, much less considered ever going back to Westfort.
Why should she? There was nothing there for her.
Only fear.
“You are a prisoner here, after all,” said Athena. “Don’t you want your freedom?”
“I don’t know,” Devi said and shrugged. “I don’t feel imprisoned.”
“But you are!” the doctor said, raising her voice. “You’re a human guinea pig, for chrissakes! Nobody should have to live like this, not when they’re completely innocent.”
Devi dried her hands on a white towel that hung beside the sink.
“With all due respect, Dr. Angelopolous,” she said. “I make my own decisions about how I live my life. Maybe I actually like it here. Did that ever occur to you?”
The doctor sighed and turned her focus to something on the other side of the cramped little room.
Something that, judging by the look in the doctor’s eyes, brought her sorrow and frustration in equal amounts.
“Look,” Athena eventually said, much calmer now. “It’s completely normal to react and think like you do, in a situation like this. You’ve heard of Stockholm syndrome, I’m sure.”
Devi shook her head.
“Never mind,” Athena said. “I’m just saying-”
The speakers out in the corridor crackled to life and bellowed the words of one of the nurses.
“Subject 108, please report to the clinic on level twelve for treatment by Dr. Angelopoulos. Subject 108, please report to the clinic on level twelve.”
Devi glanced at her tattoo, the three little digits that covered up her old puncture wounds.
Athena sprung to her feet. Her muscles tense, there was only worry in her eyes.
“Crap,” she said and glanced at her wristwatch. “It’s already time.”
After a quick peek through the door’s rectangular, eye-level window, she turned once more to Devi and said:
“Look, they’re … I’m going to inject you with a new kind of substance as soon as you get to the clinic. There’s no time to get into details, but if everything goes according to plan, you might not make it back here. Ever.”
The bitch is lying, Devi decided. Dr. John would never let anything like that happen.
There had to be something between Dr. Angelopoulos and Dr. John, some kind of conflict that Athena hoped to win by sowing seeds of suspicion and division, eventually swaying Devi completely.
“Why is it so goddamn important to you that I leave this place, that you go around lying about doctor John like this?”
“Lying?” Athena said, frowning, eyes wide and subtly shaking her head. ”What do you mean…?”
Footsteps echoed out in the corridor, the sound of people coming this way.
“Devi, please,” Athena said. “I’m not lying, I… I want you to get out of here because I can’t go on like this. I can’t live with myself and the things they’d made me do, to you and all the others… Every time I look in the mirror I’m reminded of what I’ve become. What I’ve been complicit in. All that pain I’ve inflicted, I’ve—”
A couple of quick knocks on the rectangular eye-level window cut the doctor short.
Two caretakers, Gus and Murphy, stood outside, peering impatiently into Devi’s room. Both were big and muscular, wearing white tees and both with their hair cut extremely short
Facing Devi one last time, Athena whispered:
“I don’t want to be one of them anymore, Devi. The bad guys, you know. That’s why you’re getting out of here. Whether you want to or not.”