Burn (9 page)

The flamehaired boy wanted to talk about Hannibal. The Carthaginian general. Hannibal Barca, the man whose last name meant Thunderbolt, the man who wrested control of Italy from the Romans, thousands and thousands of years ago.

“Did you know that he was raised in war?” the flamehaired boy asked. “Did you know that when he was a child, he asked his father, Hamilcar, to take him to Iberian Peninsula, to learn techniques of warfare and domination? His father took him to the sacrificial temple and held him over the open flames, making him swear that he would never be a friend to Rome. That's how Hannibal became one of the greatest generals of all time. He was trained to fear nothing. He was bred for leadership. From childhood.”

His collections of facts had a lovingly curated quality, the sense that they had been repeatedly groomed, taken out to admire. Knowledge gathered by someone who had read stacks of biographies, meticulously dog-earing the pages.

“That's interesting. I didn't know that. It sounds like you know a lot about Hannibal.”

Hypothesis
: If I attempt to befriend the flamehaired boy, he will let me go.

“I think that's why he was so successful. The childhood exposure. The fact that he was raised to think of battle as a normal state of being, and to think of peace as an exception.”

Today the boy sat in a chair. On a chair, rather. He kneeled on the chair, feet tucked under himself. He'd brought the chair in with him, set it across from the one that was always near the desk, as if he wanted to make the area pleasant for a conversation. It was thoughtful of him. He'd brought crackers, too, with slices of cheese. He hadn't eaten any himself, though. Just placed the plate on the desk, with two white paper napkins.

The prisoner took one now, a cracker-cheese combination. The crackers were buttery and flaky, the kind that came in a cylindrical tube of waxed paper. The cheese was neon orange, cut into uneven squares. These were the sorts of snacks that a teenage boy would pick out. How old was the boy? He couldn't have been more than fifteen or sixteen. Despite his interest in ancient warfare. Despite his old, glowing eyes.

“But there have been lots of generals who didn't have childhoods like that,” the prisoner said. “It seems that you have a confirmation bias – using an outcome as evidence, instead of letting the evidence guide your findings. Perhaps Hannibal is the exception rather than the rule.”

“I'd
like
to use the evidence,” he said coldly. “But a means of getting the evidence hasn't been made available.”

“No, I suppose not. It's a little impossible to get in Hannibal Barca's head right now and ask him whether his father holding him over an open pit of flames is what made him one of the best generals in the history of the world.” This was said in a teasing voice. This was meant to deflect the flamehaired boy from the conversation he wanted to have.

“No.” His eyes were blue and glittering, like ice. “But there are other leaders whose heads are more readily accessible. There are other generals whose lives have been recorded since birth.”

Of course there were. LifeCapture had been standard for more than a generation now. If that's what the boy was talking about. He leaned forward now, over the plate. His skin was hot. It was possible to tell that even from a distance. His skin radiated warmth like something removed from an oven.

“There are some people who do very well inhabiting the lives of others,” he said. “There are some people who exhibit undesirable characteristics when they're left on their own. They need  …  help. They need the structure. It doesn't hurt them. It's good for them.”

What a stark difference, the heat of his skin and the ice of his eyes. One would melt the other, eventually. Wouldn't it? Hypothesis
: This boy will destroy himself.

“I'm not sure what you want from me,” the prisoner said. “I'm not sure I can help you.”

“I think you can.”

“I might be able to find someone else who
could
help you, if you let me go.”

“You're the only one who can help me,” he said quietly. “You're my only chance.”

“Was it like that for you?” the prisoner asked. “Are you someone who knows what it's like to feel tempted by behavior that's  …  undesirable?”

“The Julian Path saved my life, Ned,” he said.

The prisoner stiffened at the name. It wasn't fair for the flamehaired boy to use that name. It was too personal. It made all of this too hard.

“It wasn't the right path for me, but it still saved my life,” he continued. “It taught me to be good. I still try to be good. I try very, very hard.”

The building in front of them was square and brick. The bricks looked shabby – sooty and crumbled – but the brass sign near the front door was new. “Josephine Kennedy House,” it said, next to a doorbell grimy from fingerprints. Two men sat on the stoop. She could smell their cigarettes from the property line.

“It didn't say it was an apartment building,” Lona said, momentarily confused by their surroundings. The building wasn't a big one – there couldn't be more than a dozen units inside – but the fact that it wasn't a single family house meant having to knock on more doors to find Ned Hildreth.

The smoke from the man on the left came out of his mouth in a slender snake. The man on the right expelled smoke in big, meaty coughs. Clouds of nicotine appeared above his head like thought bubbles.
Was one of them the man she was looking for
? The one on the left looked too slender, she decided. The Ned of her dream had a rotund belly – it was one of the few physical characteristics she'd been able to discern.
But he could have lost weight,
she reminded herself.

It was possible that one of them was the right man and she wouldn't know it until it was too late. Until they were alone in a room and he was making weapons made out of pens and stabbing them in her arm.

“What if we shouldn't have come here?” she asked Fenn. “What if this is the worst idea I've ever had?”

Fenn swallowed. She knew he wanted to turn back. “Lona, will you ever be happy if we don't go in?” She didn't answer. Fenn traced the length of her arm with the backs of his fingers. Gently, softly, shoulder to hand. It felt good. It felt good, to not lie anymore. It felt good, to be moving toward something – to be moving at all instead of feeling trapped and defenseless. When he reached her hand, he led her up the steps.

The lobby inside was small, painted a butter yellow that had gone gray in spots. The carpet was clean but worn. Off to the right side, a man sat behind a folding card table, reading a thick book. The Bible. He had a pewter cross dangling from his neck.

“Can I help you guys?” he asked. He was forty, forty-five maybe, with flat muscles and a graying ponytail. He reminded Lona of Julian, not only physically, but in the earnest, slightly lost facial expression.

“We're here to see one of your residents?” Fenn said. “Ned Hildreth?”

“Okay, cool, hold on a second.” The man reached into a plastic crate on the floor and started flipping through manila folders. “Here he is. Hildreth, Ned. He's on level three. And level three means—” The man trailed off as he pulled another sheet of paper from the carton, running his index finger down the margin as he scanned the words. Lona was confused. Level three? This was a two-story building. She could tell that from outside.

“Sorry,” the man apologized. “This is only my second day here. I don't want to screw the rules up. You can't get off level one unless you follow the rules. And – yep!” His index finger stopped in the middle of the paper. “Level three means he's allowed to have visitors, as long as he doesn't have them in his room, which is totally not a problem because his schedule says he's on kitchen duty after Just Kidding's Tuesday lunch shift.”

“Just Kidding?” Fenn cocked his head to the side.

“Josephine Kennedy,” Lona guessed. “That must be what residents call it?” she asked the man at the desk. “It's a halfway house?”

“A half-full house is what I like to call it,” the attendant said. “We try to keep optimistic about everything, and we try not to take ourselves too seriously. That's where Just Kidding comes from. We accept the fact that life is sometimes God's little joke on all of us.”

Fenn managed a smile, but Lona couldn't. Now that they were so close to meeting the first candidate, she couldn't think of anything but carrying on.

“Kitchen duty?” she said. “Can you just point us where to go?”

“Sure. End of the hall, last door on the right.

In the end, they hadn't chosen Ned Hildreth as their first visit for alphabetical reasons, but because he was the only one Ilyf could find, after Lona carried on the false narrative of Talia's Christmas present. Or, rather, the only one they could be sure of – his name was unique enough that he was the only person with it in their geographical area. Edward Lowell had turned up dozens of matches – sorting through the pile would take more time. Edward Mansaria couldn't be found at all. It was as if he existed only in the records for the Julian Path.

“Are you ready?” Fenn asked when they reached the end of the hall. He moved his hand over so the backs of his fingers brushed the backs of hers – a light touch just so she would know he was standing beside her.

She nodded, and they opened the door.

Ned Hildreth reminded Lona of bread. The unbaked kind. His skin was smooth and porcelain-pale; he had dimples in the backs of his elbows that looked like the indentations made by dipping fingers into yeasty dough. He was drying dishes, methodically. He had a procedure. Plates received three long swipes with a terrycloth towel; cups received an efficient circular swab.

Fenn cleared his throat, but the man didn't hear him over the dishes clanking. “Excuse me,” he said finally. “Excuse me. We're looking for Ned Hildreth?”

He turned. He had dimples in his cheeks that matched the ones in his elbows. “You found him,” he said. He stacked the last plate in the cupboard, using his dishtowel to begin wiping off the counter, spraying it first with something that smelled like bleach and overripe oranges. His countertop cleaning method was as neat and thorough as his dish drying; he'd folded the cloth into crisp squares. When each square became dirty, he tucked it back, producing another clean area of the cloth.

Fenn raised his eyebrows and mouthed something.
Is it him?

She didn't know if it was him. It was exactly as she'd feared. Nothing about this man seemed familiar.
But nothing about him seems unfamiliar, either
.
Talk to him,
she instructed herself. That was what she and Fenn had decided. If she didn't immediately know from looking at him, she should keep him talking, wait for some pang of recognition.

“Mr. Hildreth?” she asked. “We were hoping we could ask you a few questions.”

“What about?” He paused, mid-swipe.

His eyes were wide and brown, slightly bugged out, like raisins on a gingerbread man half-baked in the oven. She stared into them, searching for a flicker of recognition. There was nothing. He didn't know her. Or if he did, he did an excellent job of hiding it. “What did you want to talk to me about?” he asked again.

“About your name, actually,” Fenn broke in. “Your last name is really unusual. There are only a few of you in the state.”

“And?”

“And we're part of a genealogy club at the historical society,” Fenn continued. At least Fenn was able to remember the plan, even if she couldn't. “All of us have been assigned to research a name on an old gravestone at the cemetery and see if we can track down their descendants. We were assigned William Hildreth.”

“I don't know him.”

“Well, you wouldn't,” she broke in. “Because he died in 1932. But we thought he might be a great-great grandfather or something.”

“Look.” He finished with the counter, shaking the towel out over a garbage can. “I've never heard of him so I don't know how I can tell you whether I'm related to him.”

“Maybe you can just tell us about yourself, then,” she coaxed him. “Just some basic biographical stuff, so if we find someone else who might be a descendant, we can figure out if you might be related to them.”

“Yeah, I'd rather not.” He looked around for something. “No offense. I just feel like the government has enough information on me already. And I really should get back to my—”

“Are you looking for this?” Fenn produced a broom that was tucked behind the refrigerator and started to sweep the floor with it, corralling bits of dust into a small pile. “Why don't I help you finish cleaning up while you talk to my friend? The information we need is so basic. Probably nothing that the government doesn't already have. Like, where were you born, Mr. Hildreth?”

He looked like he was weighing the cost of answering the question against the benefit of having someone help him with his work. Eventually, he shrugged, wiping down the front of the refrigerator. “Here. Two exits over. In Gaithersburg.”

“And your parents' names?”

“Jerry and Ann. They're dead.” Lona dutifully transcribed the information in her notebook, the way she would have if their ruse was true.

“And they were born where?”

“Here, too.”

“What kind of work do you do, Mr. Hildreth?”

He raised his eyebrows. “What does that have to do with my ancestors?”

“It's not a secret, is it?”

“It's not something that strangers need to know, either.”

“You're right,” she admitted. “What you do for a living doesn't really have anything to do with our project. It's sort of an extra credit question. Maybe there are patterns? Like, if you were a doctor, and it turned out that William Hildreth was a doctor, then that would be interesting.”

“Was he a doctor?”

“I don't know, it was just a for-instance.”

“If you don't know if he was, then how can you compare it to what I am?”

“We're planning to do more research about him.”

Ned Hildreth grunted. “I'm sort of between jobs right now.”

She couldn't tell if the answer was honest or deliberately evasive. Either way, she felt like they were circling.

“What did you do before?”

“I worked for a small government agency,” he said. “It's not in operation anymore.”

A sharp rap on the doorframe made Lona jump. It was one of the men from the stoop, the cloudy cigarette smoker. “Hey man.” His eyes darted back and forth between Fenn and Lona, before deciding to ignore them. “I'm supposed to come get you for group. It's almost three.”

Mr. Hildreth nodded. “I'm coming down. Two minutes.”

Mr. Hildreth began loading the cleaning supplies into a crate on the ground. He took the broom from Fenn; Lona watched as the tendons in his hands tightened just a little before he relinquished his grip. “Well,” Mr. Hildreth said. “You heard. I'm supposed to go down now. I guess you guys can find your way—”

“Mr. Hildreth, was the government program called the Julian Path?”

The air in the room. It was charged. She could feel it as soon as the words left her mouth. It felt like electricity in here. Fenn's eyes widened in horror at what she'd said. But she had to. They were going nowhere.

“Who are you?” Mr. Hildreth said. His gingerbread man eyes narrowed into slits. “Why are you here?”

“I know that it was the Julian Path.” She pushed on, despite the warning in Fenn's eyes, despite the frantic warnings of her own subconscious that this was a terrible idea. “I just need to ask you some questions about—”

“Get out of here.” He took a step toward her, an unsteady one. His shin knocked a bucket; water sloshed to the ground as he righted himself, spilling over the floor he'd just worked so hard to clean. “Get out of here now.”

“Lona. Maybe we should go.” Fenn reached toward her, beckoning toward the door. “I think we've made Mr. Hildreth upset.” She ignored him. They couldn't leave now, because Ned Hildreth was upset. That was a reason to stay.

“Mr. Hildreth, do I look familiar to you?” she persisted. “Do you know who I am?”

He stopped in his tracks. Lona saw a bulb flicker behind his eyes.
He knows.

“This is one of those shows,” he hissed.
Those shows
. She didn't know what he was talking about, but the idea made him furious. “This is one of those cheap shows where you come in and try to trap someone into saying they did something wrong.”

“No!” Lona started.

“Lying now?” He snarled. His lip curled into a snarl. He took a step closer to her, and then another one. Instinctively, she stepped back to get away. “You come and ask me questions about my personal life but you don't tell me who you are. I already talked to the investigators when they shut that program down. I already told them I left a long time before those kids died
. I didn't know anything was wrong
.”

“I'm not saying you did,” she said, but his raisin-colored eyes had gone black. The broom looked like a twig in his doughy hands. Her heel stopped against something. The wall of cupboards by the sink. Now she was trapped in the corner – the only path out was through him.

“I was a janitor,” he said. “That's what I did. I cleaned the floor in the room with the pods. I washed the windows. I was just a janitor. I didn't know. I didn't know!”

She tried stepping to one side, to clear a path to the open space of the kitchen, but he saw her move and mirrored it, blocking off the path with his body and stepping another foot closer. He could grab her from here, if he wanted. She shrunk back, leaning against the stove.

Behind him, a metallic clinking and a flicker of motion. Fenn. Fenn had a piece of silverware from the drying rack wrapped in his fist. He was creeping closer, raising his arm above his head.

No.
She willed him to read her mind.
No, Fenn, don't try anything. It would only upset him more. No, Fenn, you'll get hurt.

Ned Hildreth must have seen the warning in her eyes. He whirled around, and saw the shiny object in Fenn's hand. It was a kitchen knife, Lona realized. That's what Fenn had to defend himself. A dull, useless butter knife.

“Stop!” she yelled as Ned swung the broom handle toward Fenn's face. The wooden handle sliced through the air, and passed just centimeters away from Fenn's cheekbone. She moaned with relief, but it was shortlived; she saw that Ned was already moving his arm back again. He wouldn't miss this time.