The Unquiet (23 page)

Someone else shouts: “We're going to find them. We're going to kill them all.” And the crowd cheers.

O
f course
this was going to happen.
Of course
people were going to murder each other in the streets, and gunshots would ring from morning to night, and hospitals would crowd with people who are afraid their sons or daughters are acting strange. They want to know if there is some kind of test for sleepers. Some way of checking, but they are disappointed at the answer. They find it hard to comprehend our world. The idea that we are not disappearing because of anything that can be explained or described; we are just disappearing. Because one of us, one version of us, has to.

In the meantime Cecily and I are running out of food. We've managed as best as we can so far, but if I don't get more, we will be in trouble soon.

“Don't go,” Cecily says, holding my hand. She's barely let go of it since all this started two days ago. We follow each other on every bathroom break and sleep in the same bed. She screams when she wakes, louder than ever. In her dreams she says, “The trees, the trees.”

I smile at her now, the brightest one I can manage. “It'll be fine,” I say. “Don't open the door, no matter what. Not unless I do the knock I taught you, remember?” I do it again on the kitchen counter. “If someone comes, if they force the door open, lock yourself in the bathroom. Then climb out the window, Ceilie. Do you remember where the baker's shop is? Go there. Wait for me there.”

“I'm not that hungry,” she says.

“I know,” I say, and shrug into my coat, pull the hood over my eyes. A gun that she does not see is tucked in behind my jeans. There are two knives in my boots. More guns and knives and poison are in a box under my mattress. Every sleeper has such a box, but I have never needed it until now. “I'll be right back,” I tell her again before I'm gone.

It is for Edith that I go find Gray, but also for him. Because I know I will find him in that apartment. And he will be unshaven, empty, and racked with guilt. I go to him after I go see Jack. Jack has his own guns, and he promises me that he will be safe, but we both know that if something terrible happens, he will die. This is not how it is supposed to be. He is supposed to miss the war. “Well, I just can't catch a break, can I?” he wheezes.

I kiss his forehead. I pour him a cup of water. His nurse ran. The first moment she could, she ran, and she didn't look back. I promise to come back soon, and then I go to Gray. He doesn't come to the door for so long that I am afraid he is dead. Then he is standing there, blinking like he doesn't know who I am. He says nothing.

“Are you going to let me in?” I ask after too long.

“No,” he says.

I nod. “I'm sorry you think that was a question.” I point my gun at him. “Move.” Even though I press the gun to his chest, he just stands there. That's when I'm truly frightened. I shouldn't have come. The devil is in his eyes. Finally it is my other hand, the one not holding the gun to him, that shoves gently at his chest and moves him.

The apartment is worse. It is dark, and there must be all kinds of creatures here now. Roaches, maggots, rats. The same
dirty plates are still piled up. I expected all this but am at a loss for what to do.
Clean, I suppose,
a voice inside my head says. But I left Ceilie alone. Quickly I sweep and throw out the dirty dishes. Afterward I pull a loaf of bread, a piece of cheese, from my bag, though they were meant for me and Cecily. “Eat this,” I say. “And in case you were wondering, that wasn't a question. Maybe shave, too, while you're at it.”

He is watching me when I turn around. I pretend not to be afraid when he follows me to the door. I pretend not to care when he holds it closed with a single hand and stares into my eyes. I am not short, but Gray is taller. “Do you want to kill me, Gray?” I ask after a moment.

He drops his hand for a moment, looks upset, but his eyes go blank just as quickly. “Do you ever feel anything?” he asks, so softly I might have imagined the words.

I flinch. “What?”

Our faces are so close they're almost touching. I lean back.

He doesn't ask again, and I say, “You can't hurt me.”

Gray shakes his head, as if I am stupid. “I'm not trying to hurt you. I just want to know what you're doing here.”

“Edith would have wanted me to help you,” I say.

“Edith is dead because of you,” he says.

I flinch again. He is good at this. “You still think I did it.”

“Julia was her friend,” he says. “She was
my
friend. I
know
Julia.”

Now it's my turn to shake my head. My turn to laugh cynically. “You know better than that. We all can pretend.
Pretend
to be your friend.
Pretend
to like you.
Pretend
to be anything that they have taught us to be.”

“I quit the Safe team,” he tells me, changing the subject. “I told my handler.”

Our eyes meet. “You can't quit,” I say after a moment. “You'll die.”

“I quit,” he says again, more adamant this time.

I shake my head. “So what are you going to do now?”

“Finish what she started. Find a way to close the portal. Find a way to stop anybody else from living like this.”
And then die.
That is the part he doesn't say, but it hangs there between us like poison.

It's not something I can talk him out of. He is mad with grief. He shouldn't have loved her like this. He should have stopped the first chance he got. I turn and open the door. Before I leave, I say again, “I didn't kill your sister. I didn't turn you guys in. Don't trust me. But don't trust Julia either, Gray. It will be the dumbest thing you have ever done. I'll come see you again. If you're here.”

A
fter school, a few days later, Cecily turns on the television. Instead of her favorite show, the screen is white. “Mathieu says his television is blank, too,” she tells me, cradling the telephone against her ear. Our move has not affected their love-hate relationship, and she spends the next few minutes reminding Mathieu of the reasons why he's not allowed to have any other best friends at school even though she has left. “Because,” she hisses. “You can't have one until I have one.” Then after a short pause she yells, “Because I said so, that's why!”

She hangs up the phone with a slightly purple face. “Boys
are real stupid,” she announces, sounding like Aunt Imogen.

I can't help my smile.

We fiddle with the buttons on the television for almost an hour. But it stays that way, so we give up. I am helping her with her homework when the screen begins to flicker, except that instead of Cecily's show, an automated voice says, “This is a special broadcast. Your regular programming will resume shortly,” over and over again. After a full minute of this, we see a room filled with about twenty people—men and women and some teenagers about my age. It looks like some kind of news conference.

Then the first man steps forward. He is short and bald. “Hello. I am the alternate of Arthur Laurent.”

He steps back, and a woman steps forward. “Hello. I am the alternate of Clara Dumas.”

I am the alternate of Sacha Denis.

I am the alternate of Zo
é
Masson.

Peter Roche, Alan Gupta, Jama Elk . . .

They all introduce themselves, all twenty of them. They tell us they have something to confess, and I have forgotten how to breathe. Something hot pricks the back of my neck, but my hands hang at my sides. My mouth falls open and stays that way.

They are sleepers.

The moment they start introducing themselves, I know they believe the same things that Edith believed. Still, I am shocked when the first man who introduced himself, Arthur Laurent, steps forward again and says, “We are part of a group that we call the Resistance.”

I am shocked when he tells everyone all we have managed to keep secret for years. “We are from the other Earth,” he says. “We were sent here to replace your people.”

Just like that. Just because he can.

The words are like fire around my ears.

“What's this?” Cecily says, “Some kind of television show?”

“Go and finish your homework in your room,” I snap at her, grabbing the remote control and clicking it off. But as soon as she is gone, I turn it back on and collapse in front of the screen. My whole body begins to vibrate. From fear, from confusion, and from something else I do not recognize.

They sit in front of a long glass table. Behind them is a blank white wall. They do not hide their faces. Their message is clear: They are no longer afraid of the cottages, of their handlers, of what this will do to the world. They are willing to die for whatever they believe.

“There is a protocol in all the cottages,” Arthur Laurent
says. He seems to be their leader. “If we believe that after all our training, sleepers will eventually betray our cause, we hang them before they can even take their final examinations. When they are dead, we tie a ribbon to their wrists as a symbol of their betrayal.”

I wrap a hand around my mouth to keep from screaming. I listen to the man take responsibility for the hangings that have been happening the past few years. It was supposed to be a warning for our people, he says. To stop. To end the cottages. To return us to our world. But they didn't listen.

“It had to come to this,” the man says, his voice never once wavering. “We had no other choice. We thought the hangings would work, but there are more hidden cottages now than ever before, and I am afraid that we have left things too late. That this is our last hope.”

He retrieves a roll of paper and unfolds it into a map. The camera zooms in. The map is marked with several
X
's.

“There are nine portals around the world,” he says, “all of them found in oceans and seas. We have pinpointed the exact locations of these portals, as well as all the cottages we know of.” He points at the marks on his map; he is about to say more. Before he can, there is a commotion. Everyone on the screen begins to scatter. Something explodes, and there
is screaming, smoke, smaller explosions that continue for several seconds.

The rest of the world might be confused about what is happening, but all sleepers watching are not.

We have found them. We have killed them.

“Oh my God,” I whisper, holding my chest and trying to catch my breath.
Oh my God, oh my God.
We had protocol. We had a strategy.

The war was not supposed to begin like this.

The television screen goes gray for an hour. I can almost hear the chaos building inside that silence. When broadcasting resumes, sleepers are all anyone will talk about. Analysts voice their opinions, and presidents make speeches from all over the world. But what can they possibly say to reassure their people? They seem just as shell-shocked as the rest of the world.

Only hours after the announcement, soldiers flood the streets and begin rounding up as many “suspicious” people as they can find. Barely twenty-four hours after that, the Australian prime minister announces that they have found the first portal in the ocean.

By then I am sure it is too late. I am sure that every person who could have come from our planet is here now. I am sure
that they are ready to fight. I can already hear the screaming, can already smell the blood. People in the streets begin killing one another aimlessly, senselessly, not ever sure who their true targets are. For hours all I can do is pace our apartment, check our locks, make sure my gun is loaded.

We lock ourselves away for over a week.

I make Cecily wear her headphones all the time, even when she is sleeping, listening to the same songs over and over again until it is her personal soundtrack. She is listening to her music, but I am listening to the world end.

I just don't know which one.

I finally gather the courage to leave the apartment and find that Gray has not eaten the bread or the cheese I left him. Since Cecily refuses to be alone, I bring her with me. All the schools are canceled, and the government is trying to maintain order with curfews, but I would be a fool to feel safe. I am exactly what they are looking for. Yet here we are at Gray's apartment.

I slam the door and set Cecily down at the table, as far from him as possible, and say, “Don't talk to him; don't look at him. Just wait and listen to your music, okay? I have to take care of some things.”

She nods, and I start cleaning. She lasts about two seconds.

“I'm Cecily,” I hear her say.

“Okay.”

“Okay what?”

“Okay, your name is Cecily.”

“Oh. But what's yours?”

“Don't have a name.” And then to me: “Are you leaving anytime soon?”

I turn to Cecily and give her an apologetic look. “His sister died a short time ago,” I say as softly as I can.

“Oh,” Cecily whispers back. Her mouth is as round as each one of her eyes, and then she continues to stare at him. I work as quickly as I can, feet stomping on roaches, broom slapping the ones that get away.

When I turn around, my little sister is hugging him.

“Cecily—” I scream her name, but really I am looking at Gray, eyes boring into his. I am begging him not to hurt her. He can, and not even blink. She could be like any of his targets on those pieces of paper; only she is not. I bend and retrieve the knife in my boot and hold it up, as sure a promise as any. But Gray sits there perfectly still, as if she is the one hurting him with her hug. Before this he did not look eighteen, he looked forty-five. Now he is young again, younger even than me, and he gives me a pleading look.
Get her off me.

He is afraid of her
, I think afterward as we hurry home. Maybe she reminds him of Edith. Maybe he, too, cannot understand why she offers up hugs to strangers and says things like “I'm really sorry about your sister.” Is it possible the little boy from the cottages who risked his life for broken animals is not gone? When we were leaving, Gray gave me a look, as if he knew what I was thinking. It was a worried look. It said: “Don't you dare.”

I bring Cecily again. The next time we come he has shaved, his brown eyes are not nearly as dark. The apartment is cleaner. He doesn't say much, but he sits with her. He answers her questions in all the infuriating ways that make Cecily ask why. Why this, why that, forever why, and she forgets all about the world outside. Visiting his apartment becomes her favorite thing to do. Today, when we are leaving, Gray frowns at the ground. “Do you want to eat here?” he says gruffly. “And then maybe I'll just walk behind you. To make sure you get home safe.”

“Okay,” Cecily says, and sits with him. I am an afterthought. “We can, can't we, Lira?”

I look at him.
I knew it
, I think. I knew there was something about Cecily. Everyone falls under her spell somehow within just moments of meeting her. I stare at the two of
them for days that become weeks. In the end Cecily, not I, saves his life.

“I'm sorry for what I said,” he says, over burned toast one afternoon when Cecily is fast asleep on the couch. “I don't think you had anything to do with Edith.”

I squint at him. “I'm not sorry for the gun business if that's what you're waiting for.” He smiles, but I wait because this is not really the conversation we should be having. We have not visited the flower shop in weeks. We are not doing our jobs. And if the world were not so chaotic right now, we both would be dead.

“It's time, you know,” Gray says as quietly as he can. “They'll want us out there slaughtering them soon. That's our job now. That's what we came here for. The big finale is about to happen.”

“Yes,” I say, but I look down at my hands. “I'm—I'm planning on getting out there. Soon.”

“Me, too,” he says. He drinks from his mug.

I hesitate before speaking again. “They've made a terrible mistake, haven't they?” I ask, not looking up. “They've given us a chance to think for ourselves all this time. What if what we're thinking isn't what they're thinking? What if they haven't created what they think they have?”

Gray says nothing. We sit in silence. I am afraid that he knows something more and he's just not saying it. “You should sleep,” he says eventually. “There's a bed in there, I swear it's clean, and you should sleep because it's obvious you barely do. You'd have to trust me, though. You'd have to believe that I'm not going to hurt you or Cecily.”

“I don't believe that,” I say automatically.

Even though we have been coming here for two weeks now.

He holds out his hands. “Then handcuff me to the table or the sink or something, but sleep.” He frowns. “You're not the only one who owes Edith something.”

I can feel the coldness in my eyes. Can hear it creep into my voice when I stand. “If you hurt her, I will kill you,” I tell him. “I swear it on any and everything worth swearing on.”

“I won't hurt her, Lira,” he says simply. “I won't hurt you, either.”

I untie the laces of my boots but don't take them off.

“You know,” Gray says, “that night at the cottages. You weren't the only one who went to the river. Did you think we would let you go off by yourself in the dark like that? All four of us watched what Madame did to Solomon that night.”

“And yet you guys wanted to stay friends. I don't understand that. Why? Why are we still friends?”

He shrugs. “When we made that promise to be friends, we thought we were going to die. And of everyone there, we chose one another. That meant something.”

“Temporarily,” I say.

“Maybe.” He drums his fingers on the table. “But, Lira, it's been ten years, and it still matters to me whether you're alive or not. It matters whether someone is going to hurt you. You are still my friend. You were Edith's friend, too. When we made that promise, it wasn't the kind of promise that normal people make. We decided on one another, and that was that. For life.”

“I'm not sure I believe in friendships anymore,” I say. “Short-term alliances, maybe.”

He nods. I clench my fist.

I feel like a child trying to explain my stupid point of view to a grown-up who knows better. “If you hold your bleeding hand out in the water, a shark will come,” I say. “It is a proven fact. That applies here. It is how we stay alive, how any world survives. If you put out your hand, someone is almost guaranteed to cut it off.”

“I see. What about the person who might clean your wounds and give you a bandage? Isn't that person worth meeting?”

“Show me one good person who lives, who does it by staying good.” He's silent, and I take this as my proof. “See? Altruism never wins. And I don't want to die, Gray. I have no idea what I want to be alive for, but I don't want to die today or tomorrow, not when I can live.”

I leave him sitting there and curl up next to Cecily on the couch. It is many minutes later, just as I am falling asleep, when I think I hear him say, “I forgot you were from that orphanage in Paris where they groomed children just for this. You're not like the rest of us. You've been a cottage girl all your life
.
” And I almost can't forgive him for saying it out loud. I hate the feeling of pity on my skin. I hate the sound and smell of it and the feel of the blanket that soon covers me and Cecily. But I sleep anyway. For the first time Cecily and I don't go home. I even forget to wake up more than once before morning.

The one time I do wake, Gray is standing at the sink, looking down at nothing. He doesn't hear any of my questions. He doesn't respond to any of the things I say. A single slippery strand of moonlight pushes past a crack into the room. I quietly step out of my boots for the first time since I've been coming here. I pad toward him, and the floor is cool, strange
underneath my feet. “Is everything okay?” I ask when I'm close enough. Again, he doesn't respond.