When he says the word she the walls seem to collapse around me. I take a quick step backward, bumping up against a wall. It could be her, I think, and for one horrible, guilty second I’m disappointed. Then I remind myself that she might not be here at all—and in any case, it could have been anyone who escaped, any female sympathizer or agitator. Still, the dizziness does not subside. I’m filled with anxiety and fear and a desperate craving, all at once.
“What’s wrong with her?” Frank asks. His voice sounds distant.
“Air,” I manage to force out. “It’s the air in here.”
Frank laughs again, that unpleasant cackling sound. “You think it’s bad out here,” he says. “It’s paradise compared to the cells.” He seems to take pleasure in this, and it reminds me of a debate I had a few weeks ago with Alex, when he was arguing against the usefulness of the cure. I said that without love, there could also be no hate: without hate, no violence. Hate isn’t the most dangerous thing, he’d said. Indifference is.
Alex starts talking. His voice is low and still casual, but there’s an undertone of force to it: the kind of voice street peddlers lapse into when they are trying to get you to buy a carton of bruised berries or a broken toy. It’s okay, I’ll give you a deal, no problem, trust me. “Listen, just let us in for a minute. That’s all it will take: a minute. You can tell she’s already scared out of her mind. I had to come all the way out here for this, day off and everything, I was going to go to the pier, maybe try out some fishing. Point is, if I bring her home and she’s not straightened out . . . well, you know, chances are I’ll just have to haul out here again. And I only have a couple days off, and summer’s almost over. . . .”
“Why all the trouble?” Frank says, jerking his head in my direction. “If she’s causing problems, there’s an easy way to fix her up.”
Alex smiles tightly. “Her father’s Steven Jones, commissioner at the labs. He doesn’t want to do an early procedure, no trouble, no violence or mess. Looks bad, you know.”
It’s a bold lie. Frank could easily ask to see my ID card, and then Alex and I are screwed. I’m not sure what the punishment would be for infiltrating the Crypts under false pretenses, but it can’t be good.
Frank appears interested in me for the first time. He looks me up and down like I’m a grapefruit he’s evaluating in the supermarket for ripeness, and for a moment he doesn’t say anything.
Then, finally, he stands, slipping the gun onto his shoulder. “Come on,” he says. “Five minutes.”
As he’s fiddling with the keypad, which requires both that he type a code and scan his hand on some kind of fingerprint-matching screen, Alex reaches out and takes my elbow.
“Let’s go,” he says, making his voice gruff, like my little fit has left him impatient. But his touch is gentle, and his hand warm and reassuring. I wish he could keep it there, but after only a second he lets me go again. I can read a plea, loud and clear, in his eyes: Be strong. We’re almost there. Be strong for just a little while longer.
The locks on the door release with a click. Frank leans his shoulder against it, straining, and it slides open just enough for us to squeeze by into the hallway beyond. Alex goes first, then me, then Frank. The passage is so narrow we have to go single file, and it’s even darker than the rest of the Crypts.
But the smell is what really hits me: a horrible, rotting, festering stink, like the Dumpsters by the harbor, the place where all the fish intestines get discarded, on the hottest day. Even Alex curses and coughs, covering his nose with his hand.
Behind me, I can imagine Frank grinning. “Ward Six has its own special perfume,” he says.
As we walk I can hear the barrel of his gun, slapping against his thigh. I’m worried I might faint, and I want to reach out and steady myself against the walls, but they are coated with fungus and moisture. On either side of us, bolted metal cell doors appear at intervals, each outfitted with a single grimy window the size of a dinner plate. Through the walls we can hear low moaning, a constant vibration. It’s worse, somehow, than the screeches and screams of earlier: This is the sound people make when they’ve long ago given up hope that anyone is listening, a reflexive sound, meant just to fill the time and the space and the darkness.
I’m going to be sick. If Alex is correct, my mother is here, behind one of these terrible doors—so close that if I could rearrange the particles and make the stone melt away, I might put my hand out and touch her. Closer than I ever thought I would be to her again.
I am filled with competing thoughts and desires: My mother cannot be here; I would rather she was dead; I want to see her alive. And filled, too, with that other word, pressing itself underneath all my other thoughts: escape, escape, escape. A possibility too fantastic to contemplate. If my mother had been the one to break out, I would have known. She would have come for me.
Ward Six consists of just the one long hallway. As far as I can tell, there are about forty doors, forty separate cells.
“This is it,” Frank says. “The grand tour.” He pounds on one of the very first doors. “Here’s your boy Thomas, if you want to say hello.” Then he laughs again, that awful cackling sound.
I think about what he said when we first entered the vestibule: He’s always here, nowadays.
Ahead of us, Alex does not respond, but I think I see him shudder.
Frank nudges me sharply in the back with the barrel of his gun. “So what do you think?”
“Awful,” I croak out. My throat feels like it has been encircled with barbed wire. Frank seems pleased.
“Better to listen and do as you’re told,” he says. “No use ending up like this guy.”
We’ve paused in front of one of the cells. Frank nods toward the tiny window, and I take a hesitant step forward, pressing my face up to the glass. It’s so grimy it’s practically opaque, but if I squint I can just make out a few shapes in the obscurity of the cell: a single bed with a flimsy, dirty mattress; a toilet; a bucket that looks like it might be the human equivalent of a dog’s water bowl. At first I think there’s a pile of old rags in the corner too, until I realize that this thing is the “guy” Frank was pointing out: a filthy, crouching heap of skin and bones and crazy, tangled hair. He’s motionless, and his skin is so dirty it blends in with the gray of the stone walls behind him. If it weren’t for his eyes, rolling continuously back and forth as though he is checking the air for insects, you would never know he was alive. You would never even know he was human.
The thought flashes again: I would rather she be dead. Not in this place. Anywhere but here.
Alex has continued down the hall, and I hear him draw in his breath sharply. I look up. He is standing perfectly still, and the expression on his face makes me afraid.
“What?” I say.
For a moment he doesn’t answer. He is staring at something I cannot see—some door, presumably, farther down the hall. Then he turns to me abruptly, a quick, convulsive shake.
“Don’t,” he says, his voice a croak, and the fear surges, overwhelms me.
“What is it?” I ask again. I start down the hall toward him. It seems, all of a sudden, that he is very far away, and when Frank speaks up behind me, his voice too sounds distant.