“Get down, Reeves.” His name felt dirty on her lips. Agnes would have preferred his numerical designation, but Sensitives were psychologically incapable of comprehending their designations — they had to be referred to by the names they had possessed before creation. “This is your last warning.”
Reeves detached his legs from the ceiling and swung back and forth, ignoring her.
“Reeves, the walls of this cell are alive and hungry. Release them or they will devour you.”
Reeves gave a startled yelp and dropped, his naked body tumbling to the floor in a tangle of limbs. Whimpering, he scrambled to his feet, hopping on one leg, then another, trying to keep as much of his flesh away from the floor as possible.
“S-s-so(--)rry. I jus(----)t want(--)ed to b(--)rachiate.” His voice was apologetic and frightened.
“The floor will not eat you if you sit over there,” Agnes said firmly, pointing to a corner of the cell. Reeves, desperate for safety, leapt over and squatted down, drawing his knees up to his chest. As he crouched, Agnes scanned him for any external damage or open wounds.
He was thin, even by Sensitive standards. Ribs protruded from his sunken chest. His hairlessness and his dead-white skin marked him for what he was — the former by institute regulation, the latter by quarantine. Agnes frowned. Reeves had been losing weight steadily. She logged a mental note to have the engineers check the status of his implants and linked the note to a visual of Reeves with a few blinks.
“Chair,” she said crisply.
The floor near Agnes liquefied and a softcell platform slowly ascended to knee-height. In moments, it had solidified into a foamy chair, and Agnes sat down on it, holding in a sigh of relief. She had been making rounds all day, and despite frequent shots, she found herself growing more tired by the end of each shift.
Reeves’ eyes were fixed on the chair, his fear of the floor forgotten. “Can [---] you [--] make [-----] any(--)thing else?” Entranced, he crawled over to the seat and tentatively prodded its surface with his finger. He yanked his finger back as the foam indented at his touch, then, wide-eyed, watched the imprint he had made fill itself in.
Agnes accessed her auditory system and edited the ECCO scrambler from his speech — it enabled her to decipher his words without turning off the ECCO box. “Reeves, say something.”
“Did you bring a pen?” he asked immediately. He had lost all interest in the chair and was looking at her hopefully.
Agnes shook her head, faintly irritated. “All information, case history, record sessions, and commentary —” Agnes called up Procedures onto her eyelids, and her voice became a monotone as words were fed into her mouth, “ — is imprinted in tailored neurons within the brain of the interviewer. At no time is an interviewer to use or permit subjects access to instruments of creation —” She stopped as Reeves crawled back to his corner and curled up into a ball, burying his face in his arms.
“ — no writing instruments are required.” Agnes lowered her voice. “You knew that, yet you continue to ask me. You know all our procedures here. Recovery would be much easier if you would simply absorb what I tell you. Our tests show you’re capable of it —”
Reeves raised his head; folding his arms and mimicking Agnes’ stern expression, he stuck out his tongue. Agnes restrained herself from making a comment. It would just encourage him.
She tried a different track. “Reeves, I came to ask you about the transformation.”
Reeves shrugged. “I know.” He turned away from Agnes and started to press his palms into the softcell floor.
Agnes frowned. “Oh?”
Reeves lifted his palms and watched the floor flow back to its original shape. “It’s what you always come to ask me about.” He rubbed his nose with his finger and glared sullenly at the floor. “You don’t care about me at all.”
Agnes bristled. “That’s not true, Reeves. I care about you and the rest of the Sensitives here at the station. That’s why I need you to tell me about the transformation. Can you do that for me?”
“It’s against the rules.” His eyes darted worriedly at the ceiling. “They kill tattlers here.”
“Reeves, there is no social interaction among the inmates. Your life is governed only by the rules we administer. Now tell me about the transformation and how to stop it.”
Reeves shook his head.
“Why not?”
“Because,” he said flatly, “you’re mean to me.”
“How am I mean to you?”
Reeves shrugged. “You don’t love me. You won’t let me call you anything but 'Doctor’ and that’s not a name at all and you call me by my name all the time. You don’t give me any clothes, you won’t let me leave, and you won’t let me touch you.” Reeves raised his voice. “You’re just using me. You don’t care about me at all.” He tucked his head into the shelter of his arms. “I can see it when I look at you.”
Agnes froze. “What do you mean by that?” She felt her heart race as she called up the cell’s oxygen count. It had decreased twenty parts per million. “What do you mean, ‘when you look at me’?” Reeves continued to sulk, and Agnes braced herself. “Reeves, look at me.”
He peeked out from behind his arms.
“What do you see now?”
Reeves slowly uncurled himself and crawled over to her, stopping in front of her chair. Raising himself to his knees, their eyes met —
an old woman radiant silver gray hair spilling around a face despondency worn with age tracery of lines and wrinkles gathering at the corner of her mouth voice a forgotten song buried
— and Agnes tore herself away, severing the connection. “Oh, no.” Her mind began to race, slipping from her, falling away to fear. “Oh, Reeves.”
Reeves’ mouth was open slightly, showing scarred gums.
“Oh, Reeves. It’s started.”
Frustration tore at Agnes as she ran projections on Reeves’ deterioration. It wouldn’t be long — only a few hours, a day at most. There was no way to stop it, not now. Reeves would make the 35th patient this month, an escalation of —
From the corner of her eye she saw him reach out to touch her. With a swift burst of anger, she slapped his hand away.
“Don’t touch me!” she hissed. “Don’t you ever touch me.”
Reeves’ eyes widened. “Your face fell apart,” he whispered, as if in wonder. Without another word, he crawled back to his corner, staring at her.
The mechanism of the transformation had long eluded the staff. Hundreds of theories had been proposed: neurological decay, suspension of disbelief in the Sensitives themselves, an undiagnosed virus . . . The only thing the theories had in common was a lack of supporting evidence. Agnes felt that the transformation was somehow activated by the Sensitives themselves, perhaps through the sharing of a thought, a memory, a rhythm . . .
But she had no basis for her theory, only intuition. And intuition was not enough to stop it. Thirty-four Sensitives had perished in the last month, manifesting bursts of telepathic communication before they disintegrated. Not a single treatment had proven effective, it was as if without any other means to communicate, their thoughts strengthened, their minds adapted to their new cells to allow . . . expression.
“It’s not your fault,” Reeves said quietly.
Agnes glanced at him.
“I want to go. It’s time, anyway. I don’t want to hurt anyone anymore.” He paused. “I don’t want to hurt you.”
“Reeves, don’t you know what this means? You won’t exist —”