“They’re all in one room?” Gretyl said.
“No, the safe-room is a complex: two entrances, one through the house and the other via a tunnel that leads to the exterior. There are three rooms, besides the tunneclass="underline" a vestibule, the room they’re using as a control-center, and Natalie’s room. Natalie’s room has its own sealing doors and independent air and power – it’s meant to be the impregnable safe, defense-in-depth. There’s a toilet in Natalie’s room, and a chem toilet in the control room with a jury-rigged screen around it. The gofer empties it – it’s got a cartridge that slides out. I see her swapping it a couple times a day, and she pulls epic faces, though the others give her gears about it and insist it’s odor free. Everyone thinks their shit doesn’t stink.”
“What are they doing with Iceweasel?” Tam asked, because Gretyl was still taking this in, trying to picture it in her mind’s eye. She thought she should ask Remote for a set of photos and plans, then imagined seeing a picture of Iceweasel – Natalie! – thin and drugged and her stomach did another slow roll.
“I think that Dad’s plan was to bring someone in to brainwash her – there’s supplies and dope stockpiled that fits that hypothesis. Based on conversations he’s had with wifey in the control room, she vetoed it, though Dad’s not happy and has set some ultimatum. I don’t have details, because they don’t talk about it in front of the help, and there’s nowhere for the help to go except Natalie’s room. This is the stuff they hiss at each other in spare moments.
“Mommy Dearest visits every day, so does sis, but they go on their own. Mommy has breakfast with Natalie, talks with her about the old days, telling stories that Natalie is either indifferent or hostile to. The old lady keeps up a brave face but I can get her respiration and pulse and Natalie’s getting her goat. She’s good at it. Lots of practice.
“Sis does better, getting Natalie to tell walkaway stories, being nonjudgmental-ish” – Seth snorted – “commiserating about how terrible Mommy and Daddy are.”
“What about escape?” Gretyl said – the question she’d been bursting to ask.
“What about it?”
Gretyl made a choked sound. It felt like Dis was jerking her around, but was she, really? She wasn’t the person Gretyl had known – maybe she wasn’t a person at all. She had been through a dramatic experience – killed, brought back, forked and ramified and simulated – and existed in a programatically constrained state to prevent her from thinking certain thoughts. Who knew what other emotions were choked off because they co-occurred with existential crises? Maybe angst and empathy were entangled particles, and extinguishing one extinguished both.
“What about helping her to escape from her family and come back here?”
“Oh.”
“Well?”
“I’ve talked with her about it. She’d like to, but views it as a remote possibility. I can unlock the safe-room, even lock the rest of them out of it while she uses the tunnel. But getting from Toronto back to somewhere outside of her parents’ reach? That’s black ops exfiltration, not running away from home.”
Gretyl forced deep breaths and pushed down despair. This was why she hadn’t asked, because she’d already figured this out.
“But you can get her out – I mean, out of the house?”
“Yes. She’s got clothes, and her sister has the same size feet. Assuming she could get her sister’s shoes, she could get free, though she’d be pretty goddamned cold. No way to get her a winter coat.”
Local chimed in, deep voiced, “Too bad we can’t get her a space-suit.”
Remote paused and Gretyl had the sense that she and Local were exchanging data. “That’d be perfect. Wishful thinking.”
Tam cut in: “Never mind. Knowing what’s possible is important, knowing what’s impossible tells us what we have to work on next.”
“Hope,” said Seth.
“Treading water.” Tam squeezed Gretyl’s hand.
“Oh!” Remote said, then, “Shit.”
“What?”
“Another fight with her father. One of his visits. He was trying to convince her walkaways were like him, greedy and shitty. Naturally, she told him to fuck off, and he started in about Limpopo. He knows a lot about her, stuff in her background I’d never heard, some of it ugly. Natalie bore it well, but she’s brittle, and he kept pushing until she snapped and came at him, physically, and he used his compliance button—”
“What?”
“They’ve got her in a pain cuff; less-lethal stuff they use in prison psych wards and asylum-seeker detentions. Melt-your-face stuff. It’s got good anti-tamper. There’s a whole box of them in the safe-room’s stores, which is creepy as fuck.”
“No kidding,” Tam said. “Why would you need compliance weapons in a safe-room that only your family was supposed to know about?”
Seth shook his head. “I’ve met the guy. I bet he’s got lifeboat captain fantasies about having to keep everyone else in line for their own good, you know, like on ‘Farnham.’”
“Ugh, I hated that show.”
“Everyone hates that show.”
“Not zottas.” Seth snapped off a sharp salute. “Yes sir, Farnham, sir, and may I thank you, sir, for helping us survive this terrible disaster through your superhuman judgment and special snowflakiness!”
Gretyl lost her breathing. She hadn’t seen a compliance bracelet, but she’d been hit by a compliance weapon, during a wildcat adjuncts’ strike at Cornell, when campus cops rolled into the quad with M.R.A.P.s, kettled everyone, and started sniping anyone they took for a leader. Gretyl hadn’t been on the picket, but she’d stopped to discuss it with a boi who’d been one of her grad students, because they had always had good instincts for picking their battles, and she wanted to hear them out.
She supposed for campus cops, anyone with graying hair was a ringleader – she was the oldest person in the quad by at least ten years – and she’d been hit. The pain came in two waves, first a sharp, stinging sensation all over her body like being shocked by a loose wire. It hurt, but it wasn’t debilitating. Later, she found out this was the “honeymoon stage” of the weapon, and it was supposed to stop perps in their tracks, but leave them coherent enough to understand the orders being shouted at them.
She stopped talking, looked wildly for her pain’s source, saw a visored cop in an M.R.A.P. turret, one eye covered with a bulging magnifier/scope, lower half of her face impassive as she played her wand over Gretyl’s body. It auto-tracked targets, shaping the pulse to keep it center-mass as the perp jerked and writhed.
No one shouted orders at her. Seconds later, pain blossomed like a thousand razors bursting out of her skin all over, all at once. There were no words for it. It didn’t let up at all. Pain got as bad as it could get, got worse. It was unimaginable. The boi immediately understood what was happening and dumped their backpack, seizing a sheet and snapping it over her. The pain had sizzled off/on-off/on, then stopped, leaving her twitching.
(The chivalry cost the poor boi their own safety – they were the sniper’s next target and it took Gretyl an eternity before she was recovered enough to get the blanket over them.)
The thought of Iceweasel with one of those cuffs – her father’s finger on the button – made her want to cry as memories of that day flooded back.
Gradually, Seth and Tam became aware of her upset and stopped bantering. “Hey,” Tam said. “Be strong. We’ll sort this out.”