The Reset (18 page)

An image of Ms. Black flashed on the
screen as Brigham talked about her involvement in the Reset. “It’s believed
that the Seattle attack was carried out by Ariel Cook, an aerospace engineer
who was employed at Boeing. At this time, it’s still too early to understand
Cook’s involvement in the Reset. Clover is said to be cooperating fully with HA
security forces, and a list of suspects and their profiles is slowly emerging.
Among those suspected in the Reset are…”

The newsroom vanished as the images
flashed on the screen. Their pictures—all
nineteen
of them—flashed by
there. He saw his own photograph and shuddered. The last image coaxed a tiny
sob from someplace deep in his chest. He choked on it.

She had blond hair and a sweet smile and
eyes the color of robin’s eggs.

Coraline.

Brigham droned on about their developing
intelligence. An image of a smiling Mr. Brown, his teacher and best adult friend
growing up, appeared on screen.

“…thought to be their handler, now
suspected of arming the devices that have wrought such destruction and misery
on the American people. Of course, with the explosion in Bend, new information
has been very slow in its development. As Clover continues to speak with
authorities, we’ll keep you updated…”

Ben swallowed the rest of the cider in a
couple of fat swallows and refilled his glass. He watched another two hours of
footage, growing drunker all the while, until finally drifting off.

He’d hoped for darkness—had prayed for a
dreamless sleep. Instead, when he closed his eyes, he found himself back on the
ranch.

~

The
boy was confused.

“Why so many operations?” he said, his
thin arms clamped tightly against his ribcage, secured in place by the warm
blankets piled on his chest. He peered up at the man in the surgical scrubs, a
man called Mr. Brown.

“We want you to be healthy, Ben,” Mr.
Brown replied. He held the boy’s hand beneath the blankets while Mr. Blue
administered the final measure of anesthetic. “We want you to grow up big and
strong, so you can help us with our work.”

“Big and strong,” the boy whispered. His
eyes darted around the operating theater for a moment before fluttering shut.

With a sigh, Brown pulled the mask up
over his mouth and nose. He locked eyes with Mr. Blue, whose response was a
slight shrug of the shoulders. Just part of the job, man.

The door to the theater slid open and
Dr. White strode into the room. “How many today?” he said, the impatience
evident in both tone and manner.

“All of them,” Brown replied. “It’s the
first of the month again, Doctor. We’re just doing upgrades.”

White sighed, wincing at the oversight.
“So it is, Mr. Brown. So it is. Let’s begin then. Sooner begun, sooner done.”

Brown studied the surgeon as he set to
work on the boy. He was a fastidious man with a medium build—fit and well
groomed. He made sharp, precise movements when he operated, selecting
instruments from the tray deliberately and without pause.

White knew his job well, not unlike a
laborer who assembled cars or picked citrus, for he had completed the same
operation hundreds of times over the last six years. There were nineteen
children, and sometimes as many as a dozen upgrades in a given year. Early on,
there had been even more than that.

Brown struggled to understand the man’s
detachment. He watched White open the boy’s chest as easily as if he were going
into his wallet to pick up the dinner check. Brown turned his eyes to Ben’s
fragile body and felt the first pangs of a familiar sorrow.

The things they’d done to the boy! The
things they’d done to all of them.

White had removed the two lowest ribs in
order to make room. The device itself occupied so much space that it was no
wonder the children labored just to run on the playground.

They lacked lung capacity, and therefore
couldn’t enjoy one of the few remaining natural pleasures of youth—running for
the simple joy of it.

White opened the device, stooping to
observe the cultured organ that was growing inside the boy. “Fascinating,” he
whispered, using the side of his scalpel to pin down a flap of tissue. “Do you
see that, Mr. Brown? Self-replicating ATP! I think we’ll be able to cease these
infernal upgrades soon. In fact, this may well be our last operation...well,
for some time at least.”

The implications of the surgeon’s pause
weighed heavily on Brown, but he was excited that the upgrades were finally
taking. They’d been trying to synthesize ATP in the children for almost two
years. Success meant the kids might be able to enjoy something of a normal
childhood. He watched as White grafted tissue cultures to the interior of the
device.

“Very well,” the surgeon said some
twenty minutes later. “Sutures.”

The nurse worked quickly on the boy’s
chest—an angry topography of scar tissue despite the cellular-healing
accelerant—and White turned his attention to Brown and Blue.

“We’ve taken another step forward,
gentlemen,” he said. Brown knew he was smiling behind the cotton mask. “Let’s
keep them coming, Mr. Brown. I think we’ll be finished rather quickly today.”

The men slipped into the adjacent trauma
room.

A small boy with red hair scowled at
them from his bed. He had been crying, and Brown pulled the surgical mask down
to his neck and gave him a smile.

“Hi there, Brian. Are you ready to be
brave for me?”

The boy shook his head. The fear in his
eyes was palpable. Brown found the boy’s hand beneath the blanket. He gave it a
squeeze.

“Why so many operations, Mr. Brown?
Why?”

Brown’s smile dissolved into a frown. “I
know,” he whispered, smoothing the boy’s red hair on his forehead as Blue added
the anesthetic to the IV, “I know, Brian. It’s frustrating, but Dr. White said
that we won’t need so many in the future. He said that...”

The boy blinked his eyes once, twice. He
closed them and offered a tiny snore, his fingers relaxing just a little as
they wheeled him into the operating theater.

Brown felt the weight on his shoulders.
It was still early, and the day would be long.

~

The
children regained consciousness in stages, their surgeries staggered at roughly
forty-minute intervals. Ben was the first to come to.

“Mr. Brown?” he called. He was resting
in recovery and his voice was hoarse. “Are you there Mr. Brown? Please?”

His voice echoed through the monitor
Brown kept clipped to his belt. He put down the book he was reading and quickly
stole through the deserted hallways of the orphanage until he found himself
outside of recovery. He steadied himself, scanned his identification badge and
walked quietly to the boy’s bedside. It was forty minutes to midnight, and the
soft respiration of eighteen sleeping children provided a pleasant backdrop to
the room.

“Hey there, Ben!” he whispered. He took
the seat next to the child’s bed, leaned forward and pulled the boy into a
gentle embrace. “Way to go, Ben! It’s great to hear your voice!”

The boy smiled as Brown ruffled his
hair. “Can I have some water?”

“Of course.” Brown poured him a glass
from the pitcher on the table next to the bed. The boy drained it, panting, and
extended it for a refill. Brown splashed another measure into the glass and Ben
held it against his stomach.

“It’s healing pretty fast,” Ben said. “I
can feel it—it’s itchy.”

Brown nodded. “Guess what?”

“What?”

“Dr. White thinks we might be able to
stop doing so many operations. It seems that you little guys are growing up
faster than he thought you would. How’s that for good news?”

Ben studied the glass of water balanced
in his lap. When he looked up, there was a mixture of awe and hope in his
features. “Really? Do you really mean it, Mr. Brown?”

Brown nodded and Ben put the glass of
water on the table and threw himself forward, arms outstretched, yanking the
man into a fierce hug.

“Hey! Hey!” Brown said, rubbing the
boy’s back. “I’m excited too, but don’t go popping those stitches. You need to
get some rest, Ben. I’ll be back to check on you in just a little while.”

The boy fell back against his pillows,
absently tracing the ridge on his sternum beneath his pajama top. “Okay.
Thanks, Mr. Brown. G’night.”

“Night,” Brown said. He dimmed the
bedside light and crept out of the recovery room. He was almost back to his
room when another meek voice echoed through the monitor clipped to his waist.

“Mr. Brown? Are you out there? I’m
thirsty!” called the voice. It was Angela—little Angela, who despite her size
always seemed to be one of the first to emerge from the post-op stupor.

With a smile, he turned and made his way
back to recovery.

It was late, and it would be a long
night.

~

True
to his word, Dr. White performed fewer operations on the children over the
years. They matured within the confines of the orphanage, growing strong in the
body and wise in their studies.

There were nineteen of them: Ben and
Brian and Angela and Coraline and Damon and Baxter and Ariel and Stuart and
Karl and Sharon and Denise and Neil and Gwenn and Sky and Declan and Alice and
Lewis and Roland and Elizabeth.

They loved each other as siblings, and
although they invariably clustered in pairs, trios and groups of their own
design, they were fiercely protective of one another as a group. They were
brothers and sisters.

Such love was the result of their shared
burden.

On a cool day in autumn, shortly after
they had begun the ninth year of their education, the children took recess on
the secluded campus of the orphanage. The sky was overcast, pregnant with
clouds that threatened rain over the high desert and snow in the mountains.

Ben and Coraline were walking along a
path through the pine barrens, cataloging plants in a journal they were keeping
for biology class, when the first plump raindrops fell from the sky.

“I know a place,” Ben smiled, taking her
hand. Her touch excited him, and he felt a sudden warmth in his chest and in
his cheeks. They left the path, dashing into the woods as the clouds opened
wide. They darted through the trees and down a small embankment to a copse of
granite in the bottom of a steep ravine. “Down there!”

They ducked beneath the rock just as the
storm erupted in earnest, pelting Central Oregon with frigid water. It fell in
torrents, drawing a curtain of water over the entryway to the cave.

“How did you find this place?” Coraline
said. She swiped damp hair her from her eyes, which were a shade of very light
blue. They sparkled in the gray afternoon light, and her lips curled into a
heart-shaped smile. “It’s wonderful!”

“I just stumbled across it while I was
exploring one day, maybe a year ago. I come here sometimes to do my homework.
Dr. White says it’s important that we all find our place in the world.” Ben
looked into her eyes. “Now...well, now I guess it’s our place. Promise you’ll
keep it a secret, Corr.”

“I promise.”

“Good.” Ben smiled at her while they
suffered through an awkward silence, which was mercifully interrupted by an
annoying chime. Bing-bing-BONG.

“Darn,” Coraline muttered.

“Yeah,” Ben agreed, secretly thankful
for something to talk about. “Time for the daily doink.”

They rummaged for their kits. Coraline’s
was the color of her eyes—a pale shade of robin’s egg. She’d decorated it with
sunflower stickers. Ben studied his kit. It was a plain dingy white, scuffed
from years of rough play.

Coraline removed the syringe. With thin,
elegant fingers, she quickly administered the shot. “You too, now,” she
prodded, and Ben followed suit.

When they’d stowed their kits, Ben said,
“Do you ever think about skipping a dose? Just to…just to see what happens?”

Coraline shook her head. “Huh-uh. No
way, Ben. I’m pretty partial to breathing—and to staying upright. Why? Do you?”

Ben shrugged. “Sometimes I do, I guess.
I mean, we always just do everything they say, right? We never disobey. We
never ask questions. Don’t you ever wonder what would happen if we missed the
shot?”

Coraline smirked. “You’re such a boy.”

“Well, you’re such a girl,” he shot
back, cheeks flushed.

“I’m a woman. There’s a big difference.”
An edge had crept into her voice, but she was smiling.

“Is there such a difference?”