Be properly killed.
There’s a sudden flash of blue on the screen. LETHE INITIALIZED, it blinks. In the image, the Driver has placed a breathing tube in Regine’s mouth. Probably how they get Lethe into your body, Seth thinks.
It was going to make her forget. It was going to make her forget him and Tomasz. It was going to wipe all this away from her.
And then it was going to kill her. Just to make the world work.
“The hell you are,” Seth says, pressing LETHE INITIALIZED. A screen pops up beside it. PAUSE INITIALIZATION? YES/NO.
Seth stabs YES. “How do you like them apples, you piece of shit?”
In the image, the Driver turns.
And looks right back into the camera.
As if it’s looking right into Seth’s own eyes.
And then it begins to run.
Seth listens for footsteps. He hears them, approaching fast, from around a corner on the right, some distance away.
Which is where Regine must be.
Seth’s breathing increases, his heart pounding again. He has no weapons. Nothing to fight it with. If it reaches him, there’s no way he can overpower it.
But maybe he can outrun it. He used to be a pretty good runner, after all.
He jumps down from the platform, racing down the rows of coffins. All that matters in these immediate seconds is to keep the Driver away from Regine, away from whatever process is about to kill her. He takes a turn at the far end of the room, heading now in the general direction of the Driver’s running footsteps. He ducks as he sees it turn the corner. Seth stops by a coffin, ready to run wherever the Driver might chase him.
But the Driver isn’t coming for him. It’s moving down the central aisle, past him, not even looking –
Heading for the display screen.
“HEY!” Seth shouts, standing up. “OVER HERE!”
But the Driver keeps on. It reaches the platform and immediately starts pressing the display, no doubt recommencing the process on Regine.
Seth looks around frantically for something, anything to throw at the Driver, anything to even slightly slow it down. But there’s only coffins, stretched wall to wall and around every corner and disappearing into further recesses –
He has a thought. That first coffin he’d opened, now back in place like nothing ever happened –
It’s a caretaker, he thinks. That’s what it does. It cleans up messes.
He reaches down to the coffin he’s leaning against and tries to find the seam, struggling like last time to get his fingers into the lid, forcing all his weight up, straining against its resistance –
And he nearly falls over again as it pops open. A short man is inside, wrapped in bandages, lights sailing through his coffin, doing their mysterious processes. Seth looks over at the Driver.
Which is looking right at him.
It turns back to the screen, its fingers flashing wildly over the display.
The coffin in front of Seth starts to close.
“No!” Seth says, trying to catch it. But it comes down with implacable force, no matter how much he struggles against it. The Driver goes back to programming whatever it needs for Regine.
“Shit!” Seth lets go of the lid. But then he gets an idea. He reaches into the closing coffin and grabs the man’s arm. He drapes it over the lip of the lid and steps back. The lid keeps closing, closing, closing, threatening to crush the man’s arm –
But as soon as it touches the man’s skin, it springs back open.
“Ha!” Seth says, triumphant, and looks up.
The Driver is looking at him again.
And it starts to move toward him.
“Have to fix them all, don’t you?” Seth shouts, scampering away. He stops at another coffin. He’s got a sense of the lid now, and this one pops open easier and faster. It’s an old woman, and he drapes her arm over the lip, too.
He sees the Driver at the coffin of the man, putting him back in place, then pressing a particular spot on top of the coffin that lights up a small display across the metal surface. The coffin closes immediately.
Seth looks down at the coffin next to him and presses the same spot. The display appears on the coffin’s lid. “So that’s how it works,” he says. There’s a box labeled OPEN FOR DIAGNOSTIC? He presses it. The lid lifts, revealing the sleeping body of a middle-aged black man. Seth takes the man’s arm, drapes it over the lip, and runs away as the Driver approaches.
Seth moves fast down rows of coffins, stopping randomly and opening first one, then another, repositioning the inhabitants and moving on. The Driver is behind him, tending to each coffin in turn.
It’s doing it faster than Seth can. It’s catching up.
Seth rushes to the next and opens it. It’s a tiny, pale woman. “I’m so sorry,” Seth breathes to her, and he reaches his arms under her, lifting her out of the coffin and setting her gently onto the floor. Her coffin starts beeping and flashing with warning lights, some of them running along the tubes still attached to her. Seth takes a handful of them and hesitates a moment.
“It’s to save my friend,” he says to the woman’s unconscious form. “You probably won’t remember anything anyway.”
He yanks the tubes on the coffin end. They come out surprisingly easily. Sprays of gels and liquids fly out in a wave as other tubes spark, one of them burning Seth’s hand. He hisses and drops the tube –
And barely avoids the Driver as it arrives next to him, its baton up and blazing, ready to fall –
Seth tumbles out of the way, the baton smashing into the floor and leaving a scorch mark. The Driver stands over him as he moves back, the baton ready again –
But it turns to the woman. She’s now in an increasing puddle as the liquids from the disconnected tubes spill across the floor.
Seth takes his chance, jumping to his feet and starting to run. “I’m sorry!” he shouts back at the woman as the Driver picks her up, places her back into the coffin, already reconnecting tubes and pressing panels with blinding speed –
Seth keeps running. He turns the corner the Driver had come around and slows down, amazed at what he sees.
Stretching in front of him are more coffins than seems possible, so many it’d take him hours to even partially count them. The wide passageways connecting the rooms stretch farther back than he can even see, turning around other corners, too, to delve who knows how much deeper beyond.
He starts running again, scanning right and left, looking for an opened coffin, but all he sees are innumerable closed ones, polished and clean and humming away with their individual lives being lived inside. The Driver clearly did its job with brutal efficiency.
Seth hazards a look back. It hasn’t followed him yet, but it can only be a matter of seconds. Seth nears the end of this second area and is about to cross into a third. He stops and opens another coffin, pressing its pad expertly now, lifting the lid with ease.
There’s a woman inside.
She’s holding a baby.
The woman is bandaged like everyone else, but the baby is wrapped up tight in a blanket that looks made of blue gel. Tubes run from it to the mother, but her arms are around the infant, holding it close, pressing it to her.
Like any mother and baby.
We’re on the threshold of reproduction and childbirth, the woman from the Council had said.
Well, they’d clearly managed to cross that threshold before everything went bad. Conception happening through the tubes, mothers giving birth while they were still sleeping, who knew how it exactly worked?
Children were being born.
Hope for the future, the woman from the Council had said, and here it was.
They’d believed there was a future.
He hears footfalls again.
The Driver is running, somewhere behind him.
Seth takes one last look at the woman and baby and closes their coffin. He opens the next one over. Inside is a chubby teenage boy. Seth yanks out tubes in three or four han
dfuls, then reaches under the boy’s shoulders to pull him out of the coffin –
The sound of footfalls enters the room, and Seth can see the Driver hurtle through the passageway, running fast.
A jolt of adrenaline gets the boy out and onto the floor. Seth sets him upright against the coffin, tearing out a few more tubes for good measure.
“Sorry,” he says to the boy and takes off running again.
As he passes out of this second room, he turns back –
And sees the Driver stop by the teenage boy.
But not go to him.
It keeps on looking at Seth, obviously conflicted.
There’s a terrifying moment when it looks like it may keep on coming –
But then it goes to the boy to put him back. Seth keeps running, thinking that the Driver must somehow be learning, and that next time this trick of taking someone out may not work, that he’s got to find Regine, he’s got to do it quickly, he’s got to –
And then he hears her scream again.
“Regine!” he shouts.
The sound came from the next room after this one, he’s sure of it, down through the wide passageway at the far end. She’s got to be in there. She’s got to be.
He hears the scream again. “No,” he says, sprinting now. “No, no, no, no, no –”
He sails through the passageway. He has no idea now where he is in relation to the surface. This series of rooms seems impossibly big, impossibly deep. His mind keeps telling him that it makes no sense. When was it built? Why was it built here?
She screams once more.
And he sees her.
Off to his right, down a row, nearly to the far wall. Her coffin is open, and he can see her lying there.
See her struggling.
She wasn’t struggling before.
“Regine!”
Unlike everyone else in the coffins, she’s still half-dressed, the bandages wrapped around her upper body and face, but her jeans and shoes still on, as if getting her memory erased was the most important thing, and why wouldn’t it be?
It’s the one thing that makes all this possible, Seth thinks.
But she seems to be fighting it, fighting against the bandages over her eyes, fighting the tube in her mouth, a tube doing nothing to stifle her screams –
“I’m coming!” he shouts.
He reaches her and pulls the tube out. It sends her into a spasm of distressed coughing.
“Regine?” he cries. “Regine, can you hear me?”
She screams, terrifyingly loud. Her hands are frantic, slapping at him, not in any coordinated way, just flailing around, striking wildly at the air.
“Can you hear me?” he shouts again. She jerks away from him, clearly in terror, and screams as loud as before.
“Oh, shit, Regine,” Seth says, distraught. He looks back across the rows of coffins, down the wide central passageway that links this large room to the one he just came out of and onto who knows how many beyond it the other way. No sign of the Driver yet, but there’s no way it can be far behind.
“I’m sorry,” he says, and with one hand he grabs Regine’s wrists, forcing them down. She’s strong and he can barely hold her there, the force just making her more upset. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” he says, and he slips his free hand around her neck, trying to find the end of the bandages.
“You’ll see me! It’ll all make sense. I promise –”
His hand brushes against the rapidly red-blinking light on her neck –
And in an instant, he’s gone from the world.
“You’re nothing,” the man says. “You’re fat. You’re ugly. And too bloody monstrous for any boy to ever look at you.”
“Lots of boys look at me,” she says, but she’s got fear in her stomach. She can see his fists clenched at his side. She’s big, but he’s bigger, and she knows he’s not afraid to use those fists, like he used them on her mother just now, knocking her once across the kitchen table when the tea was too cold, a knock that sent Regine running up the stairs, him roaring after her.
He’s usually slow when he’s drunk, but she’s taken too long to grab her phone and her money, and when she left her bedroom, there he was, blocking the top of the stairs.
“No boy ever looks at you,” he spits at her. “You slut.”
“Let me pass,” she says, clenching her own fists. “Let me pass or I swear to God . . .”
He smirks. That stupid pink face of his, all lit up with ugly, drunk delight, that lank blond hair that always looks dirty, no matter how often he washes it. “Let you pass or you swear to God you’ll what?”
She says nothing, doesn’t move.
He steps back, gesturing grandly with one hand and bowing in a sarcastic way, giving her leave to go down the stairs. “Go on then,” he says. “Be my guest.”
She breathes through her nose, every nerve awake. She just has to get past him, that’s all. Take a slap or duck a punch or maybe nothing at all, maybe as drunk as he is –
She rushes forward suddenly, surprising him. He jerks back at her momentum, exactly what she was hoping for, and she steps around the banister past him, getting a foot on the top step –
“Ugly bitch!” he shouts –
She feels the punch coming before it even lands, feels the air displace behind her –
She tries to duck, but her positioning is all wrong –
His fist connects –
She falls –
She’s falling –
The hard stairs coming up to meet her too fast, too fast, too fast –
And she screams –
“You’re nothing,” the man says. “You’re fat. You’re ugly. And too bloody monstrous for any boy to ever look at you.”
“Lots of boys look at me,” she says, but she’s got fear in her stomach. She can see his fists clenched at his side. She’s big, but he’s bigger, and she knows he’s not afraid to use those fists, like he used them on her mother just now, knocking her once across the kitchen table when the tea was too cold, a knock that sent Regine running up the stairs, him roaring after her.
He’s usually slow when he’s drunk, but she’s taken too long to grab her phone and her money, and when she left her bedroom, there he was, blocking the top of the stairs.
“No boy ever looks at you,” he spits at her. “You slut.”
“Let me pass,” she says, clenching her own fists. “Let me pass or I swear to God . . .”
He smirks. That stupid pink face of his, all lit up with ugly, drunk delight, that lank blond hair that always looks dirty, no matter how often he washes it. “Let you pass or you swear to God you’ll what?”
She says nothing, doesn’t move.
He steps back, gesturing grandly with one hand and bowing in a sarcastic way, giving her leave to go down the stairs. “Go on then,” he says. “Be my guest.”
She breathes through her nose, every nerve awake. She just has to get past him, that’s all. Take a slap or duck a punch or maybe nothing at all, maybe as drunk as he is –
She rushes forward suddenly, surprising him. He jerks back at her momentum, exactly what she was hoping for, and she steps around the banister past him, getting a foot on the top step –
“Ugly bitch!” he shouts –
She feels the punch coming before it even lands, feels the air displace behind her –
She tries to duck, but her positioning is all wrong –
His fist connects –
She falls –
She’s falling –
The hard stairs coming up to meet her too fast, too fast, too fast –
And she screams –
“You’re nothing,” the man says. “You’re fat. You’re ugly. And too bloody monstrous for any boy to ever look at you.”
“Lots of boys look at me,” she says, but she’s got fear in her stomach. She can see his fists clenched at his side. She’s big, but he’s bigger, and she knows he’s not afraid to use those fists, like he used them on her
mother just now, knocking her once across the kitchen table when the tea was too cold, a knock that sent Regine running up the stairs, him roaring after her.
He’s usually slow when he’s drunk, but she’s taken too long to grab her phone and her money, and when she left her bedroom, there he was, blocking the top of the stairs.
“No boy ever looks at you,” he spits at her. “You slut.”
“Let me pass,” she says, clenching her own fists. “Let me pass or I swear to God . . .”
He smirks. That stupid pink face of his, all lit up with ugly, drunk delight, that lank blond hair that always looks dirty, no matter how often he washes it. “Let you pass or you swear to God you’ll –
Seth is suddenly back in the room with the coffins, gasping for breath. Regine’s thrashings have jerked her head away from his hand, breaking their connection.
She screams again.
And no wonder, Seth thinks with horror. She’s caught in some kind of loop, reliving the moment, reliving the worst moment.
She’s dying over and over and over again.
He can still feel her fear, still feel the pain of the punch, the terror of the slipping, the disbelief at the fall –
He’s got to find a way to get her out of there –
“Seth?” she says.
He freezes. Her voice is weak, desperate, afraid. Her head is still bound in the bandages, but she’s stopped struggling.
“Seth, is that you?”
“I’m here,” he says, grabbing her hands so she can feel him. “I’m here, Regine. We’ve got to get you out of here. Now.”
“Where are we? I can’t see. There’s something on my eyes –”
“You’re wrapped up. Here.” He turns her head to grab the seam at the back and starts unwrapping her. “We’re underground. Under the prison.”
“Seth,” she says as he reaches the level of her skin and starts slowly unsticking the bandage from her eyelids. “Seth, I was –”
“I know,” he says. “I saw it. But we’ve got to –”
And then he hears footfalls again. He turns to look. The Driver runs through the entrance to this room.
It sees them.