“Oh?”
“They got Neevlor, too. They must’ve been scoping out the mansion for a while. How else could they have known?”
“Indeed,” he said, nodding. “How else could they have known?” There was something in his eyes that looked to me like feigned sincerity, as if he actually knew how the Feds had found Neevlor. Perhaps he’d been the rat. I wished Charlie were here. She was the best judge of character I knew. She’d know if the man was being honest.
Gwendolyn sobbed, and Dr. Howey rubbed her arm. “Dr. Harper Neevlor was a good woman,” he said. “She’ll live on forever through her work. The Indigo Report is monumental.”
Not for the first time, I wondered what Phoenix held over their heads to get them to do his dirty work—what it took to get people like Gwendolyn and Dr. Howey to give up their careers and possibly their lives. It didn’t make sense. Phoenix was just a kid, not much older than me. What did he tell these people he would do? What were they getting out of helping him? What kind of sick, twisted desires did Phoenix promise them would come true? There had to be something.
I thought about what Gwendolyn said earlier, about how their work was everything to these people. They had no families. No partners. Nothing else, really. Just their work. Their work was their legacy—the only way they could live on forever. Even Dr. Howey said it about Dr. Neevlor and the Indigo Report.
So that was it: legacy. The chance to have their work turn into legacy was what brought people like Gwendolyn, Dr. Neevlor, and Dr. Howey together. Phoenix promised them that history’s pages would not forget them. By working with him, they’d be assured to live on forever.
Dr. Neevlor had discovered how to engineer a virus—one powerful enough to control most of the free world—and implant it in the Indigo vaccine. By the time the Report was written, she’d already done it. Her discovery was powerful and dangerous—too much so for the government to let it fall into the wrong hands—so they shut it down.
But she’d kept working at it—kept a copy of the original report—and so they had to have her killed. Somehow, however, she escaped and ran into Phoenix, maybe in the slums, maybe in the Skelewick district, and he promised her sanctuary. A single copy of a report wasn’t the sort of thing that left a legacy, but he promised her a revolution—one made possible by her discovery. Together, they could turn the people against the government and begin a new world.
Power and legacy: the kinds of promises that made people like Gwendolyn, Neevlor, and Howey forget who they were in order to find out who they could become, how they would be remembered.
It made me sick.
Dr. Howey led us to his office on the seventh floor. The elevator’s doors closed behind us, and I stared at the black domed cameras lining the halls. A placard on one side of the elevator read “Indigo Reserve Board Offices” in blue letters. I’d heard of the Indigo Reserve Board before. It was the governing organization that determined distribution of Indigo supplies and directed how to manage the continual shortage of vaccines.
Suddenly I realized where I’d recognized Dr. Howey’s face from: he’d been on TV several times since his appointment some odd number of years ago. He was the current chairman of the Indigo Reserve Board—the most influential man in the world when it came to the Indigo vaccines. Only the chancellor’s influence rivaled his when it came to Indigo supply.
He shoved a key into a door at the end of the hall, and the door’s frame glowed a soft white, beckoning like the Daisies in Club 49. The room we entered was also entirely white, populated mostly by a brilliant chandelier several stories long hanging from a vaulted ceiling. Its glass bulbs glowed brightly, and a plush ivory chair rested beneath it in the room’s center. Yet for all its whiteness, the room didn’t seem sterile, but heavenly.
“Please, take a seat,” said Dr. Howey to Gwendolyn. “We can start whenever you’re ready, my dear.”
I threw Phoenix a confused look, but he simply stared at the hanging chandelier as Gwendolyn breathed deeply and lowered herself into the chair, her body shaking and glowing beneath the fixture’s brilliant light.
Dr. Howey pushed a button on the chair’s side and it reclined slowly.
Gwendolyn’s blue eyes shined brightly. “I think I’d like some music.”
Howey shuffled to the wall and pushed a button. A cello’s soft hum echoed in the chambers.
“Thank you,” she said. “That’s lovely.” She shifted in her seat. “What do people usually say, Marvin? What is there to say at a time like this?”
He pulled a syringe from his pocket. “It depends on the person, Gwen.”
What was he doing? I tried to get Phoenix’s attention, but he was still staring at the light. Mila traced her foot against the floor’s marbled lines.
Gwendolyn exhaled slowly. “Will it hurt?”
Dr. Howey searched for a vein. “You’ll just feel a prick.” He plunged the needle into her arm.
She sobbed quietly. “How—how long do I have?”
I felt sick to my stomach. The room’s walls were bending. It was the first time I’d ever been present for a euthanization. When Dad’s time came, he’d gone in with Mom. I stayed in the waiting room with Charlie. She held my hand, rubbed my head, and somehow made my world a bit brighter despite the despair. I wished she were here now.
Dr. Howey rubbed Gwendolyn’s hand. “You’ve only got a few minutes. It was a strong dose. You’ll feel radiating warmth within a minute, and a little euphoria.”
“Th-thank you, Marvin,” she said, the words catching in her throat. “That sounds n-nice.”
Dr. Howey kissed her forehead. “I’ll miss my dear Gwendolyn,” he said. “I’ve missed you a lot these past few months. The Lottery’s new Director just isn’t the same.”
“You should know by now not to call it that,” she said. “It’s no lottery at all. It’s not random, just data and statistics. The Longevity Observation Termination Telesis Operative is well named.” Gwendolyn turned. “Mila?”
Mila kept her head down, but Phoenix muttered, “She’s dying, Meels,” and pushed her forward.
Mila wrapped her hands around Gwendolyn’s, and the smile faded from the dying woman’s lips. “I’m so sorry… This is all disgusting. This whole thing. This whole place. Everything I’ve done. Don’t give me a coffin,” she said. “I’ve already buried myself in regret.”
Mila breathed deeply. “You didn’t know what you were really doing. You couldn’t have known about Sarah, or all the others—they didn’t tell you.”
Gwendolyn stared at the chandelier. “Ah,” she said, “but I think a part of me did know. When I saw the names spit out of the system—saw the results of the physicals, the diagnostic tests, and the reports on lung capacity. I saw them—the children behind the statistics—but I was too afraid to do anything.”
Mila was shaking. She shut her eyes tight. “There aren’t many names that I remember pulling,” Gwendolyn continued, “but your sister’s was one of them. Vachowski is not a common surname. Her initials, S.V., are the consonants in the word “save.” I should’ve put her name back in the system. I should’ve saved the girl.”
“Then why didn’t you? She was too young when it happened.”
A tear rolled down Gwendolyn’s cheek. “I wish I could have. Trust me—I wish all the time that I could have. But her lung capacity was only fifty percent. There are never certainties behind the math, but fifty-percent lung capacity means they’ll almost always be dead by ten—usually eight. Your sister was lucky to have made it to nine.”
Gwendolyn’s breaths were coming in spurts now, like a weight was pressing against her chest. “I th-think it’s time for me to go,” she said. “E-everything’s warm now, and the l-light is s-so brilliant. Maybe I’ll be forgiven for what I’ve done.”