Radioactive (3 page)

“Not so loud,” he hisses, looking around anxiously.

I am so happy that I cannot stop smiling. Of course we are all still prisoners of the Legion. But with Zoe and C515 there is hope. However the days of uncertainty are still heavy on my heart.

“Why did you wait so long to contact me? I thought you had abandoned me,” I confess while I follow him through the narrow and winding passages of the sickbay. Abruptly, he stops and turns around to face me.

“I’m not a rebel.” His words are clear, but there is also something apologetic in them. “I keep an eye on things for Zoe.”

While this explains how he knows of Zoe and myself, but not his behavior. When did he decide to help Zoe? He was probably not supposed to speak to her, but I can well imagine that he could not obey this rule for long. I know I couldn’t. For people like us who have never experienced a kind word or a simple smile, when we come across a being like Zoe, bursting with life, we find them fascinating. I suppose he found her charm as intoxicating as I did.

We stop in front of one of the many steel doors and C515 raps his knuckles against it. Two short strokes and one long. That must be the agreed upon signal.

“Clyde?” Zoe’s voice questions from inside. I catch an irritated look on C515.

“It’s a name she gave me,” he says with a shrug. “I’m here,” he hisses.

“Is she there?” Zoe wants to know from the inside. He voice sounds shy. In the weeks and months with the rebels, I felt so close to her. Through the stories of others and especially Finn, she was always part of the group, even if she were not there. I looked at her as a friend, although we spent so little time together in the safety zone.

I clear my throat, embarrassed. “Finn is doing well.”

It remains quiet behind the door and I feel the urge to take her into my arms. She must be missing human contact in this cold place. I grew up without feelings, yet my heart aches with longing.

“He missed you,” I add. I think I hear a sob from her cell.

“Can you open the door?” I urge C515, who is now called Clyde.

He shakes his head apologetically. “Only doctors and Legion commanders can open this door.”

“Why are you here again?” I hear quietly from inside the cell.

“I have a mission to fulfill, I—“

She interrupts me harshly. “You gave up your freedom to serve a mission? You are stupid!”

Her voice is agitated and angry. I can imagine how she blankly stares at the door from her side. I did not expect this reaction. I thought she would stand behind me. Instead she condemns me. Did she think it was an easy decision to leave the rebels? To leave Iris alone? To separate from Finn? But she knows nothing of these things. I would like to tell her everything, but in this moment a Legion commander appears in the hallway. The commander walks straight toward Clyde and me. Their footsteps make so little noise they are barely noticeable. Therefore, we heard them too late. Panicked, I look to Clyde, but he seems just as clueless as I am.

When the Legion commander stops in front of us, I recognize her. It is A350. Rather than arrest us or ask what we are doing, she gives Clyde a benevolent gaze.

“Good work, C515. You have successfully detained D518; I will take over from here.”

Both Clyde and I stare at her in disbelief. Are you serious?

“Follow me,” she tells me and I march down the hall after her in a hurry. I have no choice as she is a Legion commander. Does she really think that Clyde has caught me? How did she know to find me in the sickbay? She was unusually emotional at our last meeting. Is she hiding something? Is she perhaps more than she pretends to be?

She stops in front of one of the many doors. It is one of the few that cannot be opened with a scanner, but rather with an old-fashioned key. It is one of a few such doors in the Legion.

She opens the door and we walk through. When the door slams shut behind us, I look around the small room. It is a kind of treatment room with a desk, two chairs, and a couch. From the ceiling hangs a light bulb, probably the last light bulb in the entire safety zone. But something else strikes me. There are no cameras. I look at A350. He mouth is pinched to an angry line.

“Do not think I don’t know what’s going on.”

My throat suddenly feels dry. But the angry look in A350s eyes is somewhat milder. "But maybe you should know something about the people for whom you are willing to put your life at risk."

I am not exactly sure who she is speaking about. Zoe? The rebels? How much do they really know?

A350 comes around the desk and pulls a mobile monitor out of the drawer. When she touches the screen, a bluish light illuminates the small room. Before her, many small cubes appear in 3D. They seem so real, almost like you could reach out and touch them.

“You may not remember it, but you were not the only one who was kidnapped by the outcasts.

I remember very well. Not only Iris and myself, but also D276, D456, and D389. I never learned what became of them. But I never asked either. I constantly pushed the thought away. Maybe I did not want to know.

The Legion commander looks at me hesitantly for a moment, the taps a blue cube floating in the room. The boxes dissolve slowly and a new image takes their place.

My breath escapes in pants. I recognize and can feel tears rise to my eyes. In a panic I shake my head. No, this cannot be true.

In front of me are the corpses of the other three prisoners. Their brown suits are dirty and torn, they are still covered in the red sand of the caves. They have all been killed with a single shot to the head. Their eyes are open and staring lifelessly up to the sky. I want to see fear in their eyes, but there is none. For too long I’ve turned a blind eye to this. For too long have I repressed the thought of it.

“This is what the outcasts do to the people they do not deem as being fit,” A350 explains. Her voice is soft and almost considerate. She looks at me seriously. But I cannot believe her words. Automatically I shake my head again. No, the rebels would not do this.

“You do not believe me? What did you think happened to them? Did you ever once see them again during your captivity?”

I am silent.

“If the outcasts released them, they would be here now.”

I start to think about her words. There was always the danger that the Legion would kill me as soon as they saw me in front of the gates. But nothing happened. They took me back in as though nothing had happened. They even left my memories intact. Why should they make an exception for me? I am nothing special for them. They proved that to me when they put me back in the food allocation division. To them, I’m just one of many. But to the rebels, I was something special. To them, Iris and I were different. We were the only ones to feel able, as the rebels pressed it. However, would they really kill the other abductees? When Finn met me at the beginning, there was hatred in his eyes. But now he loves me with all his heart. In the beginning, he could only see the Legion in me. The Legion who had killed his parents and abducted his sister. When we were trapped together in the pit, I knew that if I had fallen into it alone that he would have left me there. He would not come back to save me, as I did for him. There is nothing in Finn’s life that he hates more than the Legion. The sad truth is he would sacrifice every single inhabitant of the safety zone for the freedom of his family. To him, the people here are just soulless robots.

“Do you really want to help those people? Those who would kidnap innocent people and hold them against their will and kill them? People who provoke a war without worrying about the losses? People who do not care how many innocent people die as long as they themselves live?”

I know it’s not true what she is saying about the rebels. Not all of them are like that. But nevertheless, there is a spark of truth in her words. To the rebels, the people in the safety zone did matter.

Suddenly, A350 lays her hand on my arm. In her eyes I read compassion. “I will take you back to your service now, but think about my words. Another mistake on your part will be unacceptable.”

When I fall out of bed early the next morning, the feeling of emptiness returns to my heart. C515 filled me with hope at being able to see Zoe again, but then the Legion commander destroyed this in one fell swoop. It was not even with her words, but the image of the murdered residents of the safety zone. Maybe I suspected the rebels murdered those three and never asked. Would I have been able to fall in love with Finn had I known? I was one of them. Maybe today I would be just as dead if I had remained steadfast. The rebels took advantage of my weakness.

Suddenly the door of my room opens and a woman in a blue suit, the suit of the C-Class, the fighters, walks in.

“Do you have a message for me?” She asks in flat voice.

This is it. The rebel contact. But she comes too late.

“No.”

My answer visibly irritates her. “No? Do you not remember?”

“However, I see more clearly now than ever before.”

Questioningly she looks at me.

“I was wrong. This is my home. I belong here.”

She understands my words but does not want to accept them. “Are you sure this is the message that should be sent?”

“Tell them I am sorry.”

I really am sorry, from the bottom of my heart. But I cannot work for people who have goals that are different than mine. I know they would like the people of the safety zone to join their fight against the Legion, but I cannot let that happen. Maybe these people are not capable of feeling emotions like the rebels do, but the fact remains that they are people as well. Nobody has the right to take their lives away from them.

I
t is easier to survive the day with one goal in mind. If you know what you’re going to do from the time you get up in the morning, the day has meaning. Earlier, my goal was to achieve a good ranking. While I was kidnapped, my goal was survival. Then when I went back to the Legion, my goal was to help out the rebels as much as I could. But now, I have no more goals. I have turned my backs to the rebels. My job and my life is now to work in the food allocation division. There is no way out of this. No matter how well I do my job, the highest achievement I can receive is to become a supervisor of the department. The only purpose in my life is to distribute food rations, though even this task is unnecessary as the system does not make mistakes. There is nothing that makes my life worth living. I feel trapped inside my own shell.

These thoughts creep in like a fog in my head while sitting in front of the monitor mechanically confirming various residents’ pills and tablets. My vision becomes blurry. That always happens when you stare at a screen too long. My ears begin to itch. How long will it take before I become one of the soulless masses? Days? Weeks? Months? I cannot wait; I hurt with every feeling and every thought.

Even when the signal sounds for the end of my shift, I feel no relief. In the safety zone, the people have no free time. There are no hobbies. No one talks to each other. Of course not, communication is unnecessary.

Although I wanted to adapt to Legion life again, I do not manage to leave the food allotment center in the same deleterious fashion as the other workers. I have to force myself to put one foot in front of the other. I would love to throw myself on the floor and scream, cry, and sob. They would lock me up in the sickbay. It doesn’t matter where they take me, I’m already a prisoner.

I walk with the others through the atrium. The moving images no longer interest me. They are only an illusion. Suddenly someone steps into my path. I raise my head and see Clyde.

“Are you all right?” He asks, worried. People rush around past us on all sides.

“I am functional,” I answer with an emotionless voice. But Clyde seems to be able to look behind the walls I built. He sees the pain and despair I carry in my heart.

“I did not ask about that.” He is silent and we look each other in the eyes. It is an intimate moment. We barely know each other and yet we connect so much.

“I saw you,” he says suddenly and I do not understand what he means.

“Outside.”

Incredulous, tears form in my eyes and I stare at him in horror. How is that possible?

“I was there during the operation, when the rebels discovered the electric wall. You took refuge in the caves. I followed you.”

He was there. He was the C-Class who dropped his gun in front of me. The fighter Finn fought off.

“I recognized you immediately, even though you looked different.”

But the memory of Cleo, the person I was then, brings a tear to my eyes. “What did I look like?”

“Happy.”

The word hovers between us like a cloud. This is what every human being longs for. I am unable to say anything.

“After that I started to talk to Zoe. I wanted to understand you, because you were one of them. I needed to know why you joined the outcasts.”

“They kidnapped me,” I reply sheepishly.

“You stayed with them voluntarily. You fought at their side,” replied Clyde. He’s right. I was a rebel, if only briefly.

I do not say anything and he continues: “Zoe told me about her life. Her parents, her brother, the food, the animals, the plants, and her favorite place, the garden. I never heard someone speak before with such a passion. Her words were like a melody. I cannot get it out of my head. I long to see all of the things she described with my own eyes. I want to taste cakes and feel the wind in my hair. Is it really as beautiful as Zoe says?”

I can feel my hands start to shake. He has already seen the world outside the safety zone as a fighter, yet after meeting Zoe he longs for a different kind of life. Her words awakened a yearning for freedom. A longing that will always remain a dream.

I reach for his hand; it’s as cold as mine. I do not think about the cameras I know that are watching us. I ignore the people around us. To them, we are invisible. They do not care about us. It does not matter what we do.

“It’s beautiful, but the price that freedom costs is too high.”

Irritated, he looks at me. “What kind of money?”