The Human Experience

Two P, day 28, 3410.

There are four sides in the Voice debate. Some say it’s a neurological disease that leads to misfiring in the auditory cortex, resulting in auditory hallucinations. Others think it’s psychological: mass hysteria that preys on unconscious fears and desires. Others still have turned the problem into a theological and paranormal debate; they argue that the Voices are spirits, demons, and ghosts that whisper to those who have offended the Star-Gods. Then there’s the extraterrestrial explanation – that the Voices are a result of aliens broadcasting into our minds.

As for me, I’ve never thought to pick a side. My job isn’t to find out why or how people get Infected. My job is to eliminate the people who do get Infected.

So I eliminate them.

Delia was right: Lykus had never been good at following rules. He threw off the moth-eaten flannel covering over him and let his legs dangle off the cart’s edge. Weeds tickled his soles as the cart hobbled along the beaten dirt path, his cuts burning despite the antiseptic Del had applied and the silk bandages she’d wrapped about his limbs. Bits of hay clung to his chest bandage, sticky with the blood that had leached through its pores over the hours.

“If you’re going to be a stubborn ass, go pull the cart with them,” Del muttered from the driver’s bench. Only the back of her head was visible over the mounds of hay filling the wagon. Tychon’s morning rays reached to stroke her hair, threading light through the cinnamon waves she wore in a tousled bun.

“I couldn’t breathe,” he said.

“Can I come out, too?” came a muffled voice from the haystacks. Lykus flicked the blanket back and Varali’s head popped out between the bound hay-rolls. She clambered over them to mimic Lykus perched on the cart’s edge, flashing him a lopsided grin.

Delia cracked her whip at the donkeys and the cart jerked forward. “I’m not ready to die for you, Savage. Get back in or I’ll dump the two of you–”

“You don’t think they’ll search the cart at the Vangardian border?”

A pair of trousers and a white cotton tunic hurtled into Lykus’s face. Del threw a bat-like overcoat at Varali next. “Best I could do: dirty laundry from the staff lounge. Remember how Gideon wet himself when Mentalist Herr tried to give him his meds? I think those are the pants Herr was wearing. Picked ’em ’specially for you, Lykus.”

Lykus gave a tentative whiff – no piss. He grinned. Knowing Del, she’d packed the clothes from home for his breakout. The donkey cart, the paralyzing darts she’d just happened to bring to work with no intention of incapacitating any guards – bullshit. Every breath Del took was premeditated.

He began pulling his sack-like smock over his head. Varali shrieked and dove to the back of the cart. “Lykus!” she wailed, slapping her palms over her eyes. “Guh-ross!”

Lykus continued changing. Modesty was just another societal convention like saying all babies are beautiful and asking people how they are when you don’t give a damn. “We were stripped in public when we were brought to the asylum,” he reminded her.

She winced and he remembered that bad memories inspired negative emotions.

The cart jerked to a halt. Del hopped from the driver’s bench. “Go wash your faces. Once we clear the woods it’ll be plains until the border.”

They debarked and crouched over the roadside creek, their gaunt, skeletal faces wavering up at them in the waters. Lykus scrubbed the dried blood from the gash across his cheek, ran wet fingers through his salt-crusted hair until it felt smooth down his back. He frowned beneath his beard. Savage. The name fit, and he did so hate being labelled. Hadn’t Del thought of a blade for shaving, if she was so prepared?

“You’re ugly anyways, Lykus,” she sneered, though Lykus could have sworn he hadn’t voiced the thought aloud. He wondered for how long he’d been frowning at his reflection, and if his time at the asylum had finally gotten to him. Noting his absentmindedness, Del sharply added, “Stop primping and get in the cart already.”

Ah, Delia. The other mentalists had been so prim and proper with him. And they’d tried to kill him. Del insulted him, called him out for what he was – and had saved his life. Of course, she was careful to balance out any favours she did him with displays of open disdain, so he wouldn’t get the wrong idea in thinking she was someone he could push around. Saving his life probably equated to centuries of jabs and snide remarks.

He performed an elaborate bow, straightening with a flourish that revived the burn in a cut beneath his ribs. “At once, Mentalist Alister! The patient is ready to return to his cell.”

Varali rewarded him with a giggle, but Del barely seemed to hear him as she chewed her bottom lip. She clicked at the horses and he had to scramble onto the front bench beside her before the cart jerked forward. Lykus tried to attune himself to the physical manifestations that would unlock the mystery of whatever emotion she was feeling. Knuckles white, hands clutching the reins too tightly; eyes staring unblinkingly ahead; mouth set in a determined line –

“Mistress Delia, why do you look so worried?”

Lykus shot Varali a glance. He would have gotten it in another moment or two, damn her.

“Just...just stay quiet and let me sort this out, both of you. With the beard and that caveman look you’ve perfected, Lykus, there’s a good chance the border guards won’t recognize you. But if they do...”

“I snap their necks?” Lykus suggested airily.

Del’s furrowed brows told him to shut up. “Let’s see how funny it is when they call Orcadis Durant to come pick up his assassin. Or maybe they won’t call Durant at all. Maybe you’ve done in a couple of their Infected family members and they’re not all that eager to see you go back to work. Maybe they’ll line us up, shoot us, and stuff us in unmarked graves next to rapists and terrorists!”

The sentence ended like the sharp crack of a whip. Varali stared wide-eyed at Lykus, and he gave a helpless shrug in return. Del, it seemed, was insisting on ruining any bit of fun they might have today.

When a wall rose on the horizon, running off into the distance on both sides, Lykus straightened on the bench. Last time he’d seen the fortifications separating the colony of Van-Rath from Vangarde, he’d been gagged, drugged, and in a cage with half-a-dozen moaning madmen. Beside him, he could hear Del rehearsing a story for the national security officers under her breath. She tugged the reins to the right and the donkeys clopped onto the deserted cobblestone path to the border crossing. “Not good,” she whispered. “Not. Good.”

Lykus scanned his surroundings, motionless save where tiny specks – sentries – moved along the wall’s parapets. “No line? Looks good to me.”

“The border’s usually packed, you idiot. Something’s wrong.”

They were at the towering gates within the hour. Lykus’s curiosity piqued when half-a-dozen Vangardian soldiers formed a perimeter around the cart, their hydraulic guns aimed.

“State your business,” demanded their commander, squinting into the gun’s eyepiece as he balanced its bulky tankard on his shoulder. “Do you have an access code?”

Del stiffened. “We’re from Little Vangarde – me from Van-Rath and these two from Van-Ferrall. We’ve come to work. We have permits.” She presented him three leafs of paper, but the commander brandished his weapon, making her draw her arm back. Del straightened her spine and tried again. “By regulation of the Colonial Accord, we are citizens of the Vangardian Empire and have the right to work permits in Vangarde itself.”

“Do you have an access code?” he repeated.

“A what?”

“Special permission from the Vangardian Star-King. Unless we get an access code that clears, we’re forbidden to break quarantine.”

“Quarantine?” Del echoed.

“For the mental plague, miss.”

“You can’t mean the Voices!” She dropped the reins, the elevation and stress patterns in her voice denoting disbelief. “You think they’re matter, that they can’t get past a wall? More people are Infected in Vangarde than anywhere else in the world!”

“We’re moving the Infected into isolation, miss. The Voices may be invisible, but physical barriers do seem to stop them. Travel in and out of Vangarde is only permitted with an access code and a comprehensive mental test to prove you’re not Infected.”

Lykus sensed his opportunity. Prickles ran up the back of his neck – the thrill of impulsiveness in dire situations. It was one of the few feelings afforded to him, and it took a lot to get going.

“I’ve got something better than an access code,” he said with a smirk. “Me. I’m Lykus Savage. I believe your Iron Helms are looking for me.”

Varali’s fingers tightened about his wrist.

“You’re...who?”

He sighed. “The ‘Iron Wolf?’”

The commander let the gun’s nozzle droop so he could squint at Lykus with both eyes. “The Wolf’s been missing for three turns.”

“I was captured by Rathian rebels and thrown into an asylum. They kept my stay there hushed up so the Helms wouldn’t find me.”

“He’s unstable,” Del said quickly. “We’ll turn around.”

But before she could tug the reins Lykus yanked down his shirt collar, exposing the ink blotted beneath his right collarbone: a black wolf’s head, two red slits serving as the creature’s eyes. “You want to stop the Voices? I suggest spending more time identifying your allies and less erecting futile walls. Let me inside, let me join with the Helms again and resume my duties to Vangarde by hunting the Voices alongside them.”

Del pinched his side and twisted, making him suck in his next words through the pain. “Lykus, let’s just turn around,” she said through gritted teeth.

He nudged her away. “The Star-King has given Greathelm Durant his legislative seal in the settling of any and all matters concerning the plague, if I recall correctly. Do let the Greathelm know that I have arrived. I’m sure he’d be happy to clear me.”

Del opened her mouth to protest, but the border sentries were already in a flurry, rushing into the towers flanking the gates to punch their commander’s orders into information terminals. Lykus raised playful eyebrows at Delia. Her hooded lids said, “Play with your life, Savage – not with mine.”

He knew that because she’d said it before. Several times.

The commander pressed Lykus’s thumb to a computing pad and everyone waited for the print to be transmitted to the Iron Keep for identification. Minutes later, the red light on the commander’s pad finally blinked green and his face mirrored prototypical shock.

“Greathelm Durant has...authorized your entry. Welcome back, Mr. Savage,” he said stiffly. His men melted back to let the cart through as the iron gate rumbled up. “We pray you bring a swift end to the plague.”

Lykus dipped his head in thanks. Sentries led Del and Varali inside a tower for the mental exam while Lykus leaned back on the bench, whistling. He didn’t notice the commander approaching until the man’s fingers bit into his shoulder.

The commander yanked Lykus down to hiss in his ear, “The Star-King may be desperate enough to condone the actions of a glorified criminal, but rest assured the Star-Gods aren’t. You’ll pay for what you’ve done, Wolf. One way or another, you will pay.”

Lykus pulled himself free, straightening his sleeves. “Are you threatening me, or is that just a really bad way of asking for a bribe?”

The commander’s eyes narrowed and he took a step forward just as a duo of soldiers emerged from the gate-side tower with Del and Varali. Jaw tight, the commander stepped away. Lykus grinned and flourished the reins once his companions were on board. The cart bobbed onward, the donkeys’ hooves clacking against the flagstones in a rhythmic clip-clop, clip-clop.

“That man hates you,” Del noted when they’d turned a bend and Lykus could no longer feel the commander’s eyes boring into the back of his head. She shouldered him away and took control of the donkeys.

“Does he? You mentalists really are perceptive. I thought we were starting to be friends.”

“I don’t think he likes the idea of murdering plague victims. Come to think of it, I’m not all that fond of it, either.” She yanked the reins suddenly, making the horses keel and Varali gasp as the cart jolted to a halt. Del swivelled on the bench to face him fully, her cheeks red like flames. “I didn’t free you so you could be the Helms’ hired assassin again! What in Pyrrhus’s Pits did you think you were doing?”

“I have no intention of returning to them. You think I spent turns lopping off the heads of Infected leaders because I liked it? It was just a job. Who likes their job? The Helms took me in and I earned my living with them. I don’t care about stopping the plague and saving humanity. The Voices don’t affect me – that’s all I care about.”

“You’re a fool if you think the Helms will leave you alone. They’ll be looking, Lykus, and with that tattoo you’re branded. And now they know you’re in Vangarde! The cherry on the fucking cake!”

He stifled a grunt as she shifted and her elbow caught him in one of the bandaged cuts. “If an exiled mad scientist can live on the fringes of society without being discovered, how hard can it be?”

“I’ll be damned, Savage. Your planning skills rival a stone’s. We have to get as far away from the border as we can, now.”

She kept the horses at a trot for the next long while, so that Lykus’s behind soon felt the dull ache of being jostled and bumped. Varali snuggled into the crook of his neck, looking up at him with golden eyes that shone in their plum-coloured sockets. “After your operation, you’ll care if the Voices infect me. And I’ll get into trouble all the time so I can see you worried. Your face would look funny worried.” She prodded his mouth, giggling as she pushed the corners up. “You look funny when you smile, too. It...it doesn’t look like you.” She slumped back, everything from her posture to her straight black eyebrows drooping.

Lykus tipped her chin up. “What is it?”

“Will it still be you after the operation?” she asked. “What if I don’t like the new you?”

“I don’t know, Vara. I like to think I’ll be adding to myself, not becoming someone else.”

“But if you want to love me, doesn’t that mean a part of you does already?”

Something wavered in her eyes. Hope, perhaps? He didn’t know how to respond, so he chanced the truth. “Curiosity and intelligence are what make me human. I want to understand. I want to learn. People and their emotions fascinate me.”

“And what if you get Infected after the operation?” Del chimed in. “The Voices feed on emotions. That’s how they enter your mind. You’ll lose your immunity to them.”

Lykus leaned back. “Stones like me can’t think that far. What happens, happens.”

“You may think differently when you give a damn about your life and those in it.”

He said nothing, looking out at the sprawling farmland divided into rectangles on both sides of the cart. Del’s sharp tongue had drawn him from the start, but today it was crossing the border from the intriguing and into the realms of the boringly predictable. It was time to disengage.

The largest of the binary stars, Tychon, climbed the early-morning sky, dispersing the dew on the crops. His brother-star skulked below him, belching tongues of fire from his blood-red surface. Finally a cottage took shape by the side of the road. Del pulled over and the three of them climbed down.

Lykus eyed the missing roof shingles and the paint peeling off the cottage’s planks. “Your brain specialist works here?”

“Oh, I forgot to mention: she had her license revoked for refusing to perform lobotomies on Infected people. What we’re doing is illegal.” And Del clanged the brass knocker against the wood.

Good thing Lykus couldn’t feel concern.

“Lykus?” Varali wriggled her fingers between his. He looked down and found her wiping her eyes with the ill-fitting sleeve of her overcoat. “Good luck. I love you.”

He stroked her dirty, limp hair, and smiled. “I don’t know what that means.”

The floorboards shuddered and groaned beneath Lykus’s feet as he moved into the cottage. Wooden beams slanted up into a triangular roof with hay stuffed between the gaps, and the walls were bare save for the gnarled, wart-like knobs peppering the planks.

A trunk of utensils lay open in the corner. It looked like the torture kit Lykus had used to loosen victims’ tongues when he’d worked for the Helms. Not that anybody had given much information about what the Voices were and where they were taking their disappearing victims. Their love for the Voices kept them quiet.

He remembered evenings at the Iron Keep when he’d document the irony of it in his emotion journal:

Love made people strong and weak.

A closer look revealed surgical tools and stoppered bottles filling the trunk. Against the back wall stood a surgical table flanked by machines, their lights winking.

Del remained by the door to take up the formalities he’d discarded. She touched palms in the customary Vangardian way with their host. “I can’t offer much but dirty well water, I’m afraid,” the brain specialist said, a stiff twitch threatening one corner of her mouth. “Last time I went into town for a loaf of bread, I found myself facing an angry mob. Turns out I can’t run quite like I used to.”

Delia scowled. “Damned Iron Helms. Word goes around they don’t like you and you’re done for.”

The woman suppressed a sigh, turning to the window. Del hesitated before looking to Lykus and Varali. “I’d like to present Chirurgeon Jesreal Padon of Vangarde, lead cognitive specialist before the Helms stripped her of her titles. I owe her my training in mentalism, not to mention my job at the asylum.”

“Former job, I’d reckon,” the chirurgeon said dryly.

Del’s cheeks reddened. “I signed up for helping the mentally-ill, not tying them to rocks and drowning them.” She shook her head, then seemed to remember the introduction. “Chirurgeon, this is Fledgling Varali of Van-Ferrall, and her brother – your patient – Lykus Savage.”

The chirurgeon’s eyes found Lykus for the first time. Her upper lip twitched just slightly. “Hello, Wolf,” she said. “No need to thank me.”

“I wasn’t going to,” Lykus answered truthfully.

“Oh, you should. Delia may be averse to killing even your kind, but I assure you it wasn’t human compassion that made her risk her life to bring you here.”

Lykus grinned. “I’m that charming, then?”

“Chirurgeon Padon thinks your pea-sized brain may hold the secret to ending the Voice epidemic,” Del snapped.

“Please, Delia, it’s just Jesreal now. As you said, my title is no longer.” Jesreal turned to Lykus. “I’d like to run a few tests before the operation, if you don’t mind – scan your brain and look at your neural activity. It’s possible your scans could shed light on why the Voices won’t attach to your brain.”

“Have you perfected the emotion generators?” Del asked.

Jesreal stooped by the trunk and rummaged through the vials before withdrawing a box. She lifted the lid to reveal an array of tiny vibrating disks, then picked one up with pincers. Electricity rippled through the hairs streaming from its body.

“Hormone and Emotion Controlling Tool for the Ordering of Responses,” she said. “It reads the information your brain processes in the form of electrical impulses – just like a common neuron – and sends out an appropriate emotional response through a combination of neurotransmitters.”

“How does it determine appropriate?” Lykus wondered.

“It doesn’t. You do. I’ll program it according to your taste.”

“Best not make him too sappy,” Del chimed in, flashing her mirthless grin. “A little cold and aloof will do, so long as he doesn’t go around killing people.”

Lykus scratched at the rough hairs climbing his cheek, looking between the women. “I don’t want to be cold and aloof,” he said. “I want to care, to be invested in people and things. They call me an animal for feeling nothing. I’d rather like to be a person for once.”

Jesreal’s brows knitted together, forming three grooves in her forehead. Lykus studied the expression. He didn’t know it. How many different kinds of anger, loathing, revulsion and fear were there? It must have been one of those. It always was.

“Chirurgeon, have I upset you?”

She hesitated. “No, Mr. Savage. It’s just that...with emotions comes a conscience. Yours will have a thousand deaths weighing on it. I’m afraid that, being so unaccustomed to guilt, you may be driven to...”

“Kill myself?” Lykus finished. A laugh was appropriate here, so he delivered. “Less likely than the chance I take killing myself as I am now, incapable of the basic flight response known to a rat. Only now I run the risk of taking others with me to the grave.”

That did it, as he’d known it would. Remembering that the dog had no muzzle, Jesreal let her face harden again. But Lykus had already stored that curious and unprecedented expression she’d worn.

Varali seized his hand. He wondered at her, the twelve-turn-old who hazarded what most full-grown men would shiver to think of: touching the cool, lifeless skin of the monster whose pulse beat steadily as a pendulum whether he was sleeping or killing.

He smiled at her. No matter his indifference toward her, she would always love him. Maybe she couldn’t learn, either. Like him. Were they so different? Lykus couldn’t learn from physical pain, Varali from emotional.

So would Lykus be trading one learning disability for another?

“I should inform you of the surgery’s repercussions,” Jesreal said, interrupting his thoughts.

Del scoffed. “If you take more than thirty seconds his attention will drift.”

He’d never liked her way of speaking for him like a parent. One day it could make him...what was the word? Angry.

“This implant,” – Jesreal brandished the pincers for all to see – “is a parasite of sorts. Once it latches to your brain, it will begin forming a web of interconnections among the neurons. These hairs will grow, travel, and spread to all areas of the brain to collect the information they need to assemble a unified picture of your mental state. Like roots pushing through soil they will pervade every part of your brain, ultimately becoming one with it. You will no more be able to remove it than peel every vine of ivy from a building it has swallowed.”

“It’s irreversible, then?” Lykus asked.

“Irremovable, yes. Irreversible, no. I can kill the computer in its body and render it helpless. If you’re not happy with the results, I can tweak the intensity of the emotional responses you generate.”

Lykus shook his hand free of Varali’s and, tiring of his stay here, lay down on the operating table. “May we begin?”

“You’re going to have to wash and change into your surgical gown, but yes,” the chirurgeon said. “I’ll do the scans first and then put the implant in through your nose, so you should be on your way as soon as you wake from the anaesthesia.”

Jesreal moved to stand over him, her head blocking out the shafts of light piercing his eyes from the gaps between rafters. The suns must have risen fully now, judging by the shadows lifting from the floor to scale the walls.

The chirurgeon pinned up the chocolate tresses that fell in a straight line to her shoulders, adjusted some dials on her machines, then turned on the monitor that would guide the camera’s progression from his nostril into his brain.

After he’d bathed by the well outside and changed, Lykus returned to the cabin to give the farewells that were expected of him should Jesreal’s hand ‘slip’ while she was poking around in his brain.

The scar tissue running from the corner of Vara’s mouth to her jaw stretched white as her face screwed up in that way that preceded crying. She clung to him, those sobs raking down his spine, until he wearied of her and faced Del.

“I’m not going to cry, Savage, so you’ll have to document the strange water of weakness some other–”

He took her hand and planted a soft kiss upon her knuckles, silencing her. She whipped her hand away, but her freckles disappeared under the blush that spread fiercely to her cheeks. “I’ll try to justify the hope you see in me,” he said, amused by the confession lurking in her scowl.

“One more thing,” Jesreal Padon interrupted. Lykus turned to find her handing him a card. “If any of you gets Infected, your Voice will know where to go, but you won’t. Let it lead you and don’t fight, because you can’t win. Don’t be scared. The Radiant Thinkers will guide you.”

Casting his gaze to the card, Lykus read the slanting scrawl gleaming silver inside a frame of vines and golden blossoms:

‘Grant them their freedom and they’ll grant you yours – join the Exodus.’