literature

The Gifted: Utopia - Chapter Fourteen

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Even though he estimated there had to be around two hundred or more employees and technicians in the complex not including security personnel, the halls were always empty and every footstep seemed to reverberate off the grey concrete walls. Dr. Mann felt as if he was walking the hallways of a long abandoned prison. Every time he had to navigate his way somewhere in the immense building that thought crossed his mind.

The room he stopped at today was one he had never been to before. The sign on the door said simply, Holding & Containment. He knocked twice in quick succession and a sliding view port opened and two dark eyes peered out at him, before finally unlatching the door and allowing him entry.

Inside was a small guard station with four security guards and a bank of monitors, which showed almost every hallway in the building. The dark eyed guard crossed the small claustrophobic room and unlatched a second door opposite of Dr. Mann.

Mann nodded thanks and proceeded through and into a dimly lit hall much like all the rest. The hall was short and lined with small cells with thick Lexan glass doors. All the cells were empty except the last two where Nathan stood in the center of the hallway waiting for him.

A large metal casket packed with ice was resting behind Nathan. Mann knew that he didn’t have long to interview his subject. Victor had assessed their files and only one of them would be moved to the Dallas facility, the other would be ‘liquidated’ and packed off to Hartford, where almost every tissue in his body would be gone over like a genetic Easter egg hunt.

The fact he was allowed to interview the young man who sat in Cell 10 at all was a favor that Jonah had gotten Victor to grant to make Mann feel more like ‘part of the team’.

Mann looked at the other boy in the opposite cell. He was young, fifteen according to his file. Arnie they called him - a telepath. His file said he could read minds and project his own thoughts or words into people’s heads. Of course they’d send him to Dallas; they hoped to augment his ability somehow in an effort to allow him to control people. There was always a military application at the end of the rainbow for all these ‘monsters’ as Jonah called them. With a sigh, Jonah turned to Cell 10.

The Hispanic male that sat huddled on the floor in the corner of that cell was named Hector Sanchez. He wore a prototype helmet that the OSA had made for him wear. He had the strange ability to hear radio waves and other signals in his head and the helmet blocked them out, which kept him cognizant and focused.

Mann leaned up to the speaking port on the Lexan door - a series of twelve tiny holes arranged in a circle. “Sanchez? Hector Sanchez?”

“What do you want?” the boy said with disdain in his voice. “Why is there a priest here?”

“Nevermind him,” Mann began. “I came to ask you some questions. Is your name Hector Manuel Sanchez and are you seventeen years of age and from Alamogordo, New Mexico?”

“Sure, yeah. You all know this already.” The boy seemed frustrated and restless.

“You were diagnosed at thirteen as schizophrenic, is this correct?” Mann was trying to keep this as clinical as possible.

“Yeah, but my voices ain’t in my head, man. They are from out there.” He said pointing out into the air.

“When did you first hear these sounds in your head?”

“Ay dios mio!” Hector extorted. “You’ve all asked me this stuff a dozen times.”

“Well I’m new here, so please bear with me. Tell me when you first recall hearing these sounds in your head?”

“I was ten and it wasn’t just noises… I heard music. The radio was playing in my head and it hasn’t stopped since. It’s only gotten worse. I hear beeps and whistles and conversations and game shows and nonsense.”

“Can you explain to me what it’s like? How does it feel?”

“I can’t explain it, man.” Hector said. “It’s like hearing the voice of god in your head except he isn’t telling you to go kill in his name or anything loony like that. He’s trying to sell you soap or a new car or you’re the next contestant on Million Dollar Challenge… or Britney Spears is singing you to sleep.”

Hector stood up and approached the glass door and continued. “It’s like being in the electronics section of a shopping center and all the televisions are turned to eleven and they are all on different stations. It’s deafening and if not for this helmet you guys gave me, I wouldn’t even be able to concentrate enough to have this conversation with you.”

“Can you focus on just one signal? Pick something out and just stick with it?”

“Yeah, but it’s hard.” He said, pointing to his head. “It makes my head hurt. I have terrible headaches if I try to isolate something or try to block something out.”

“And this helmet you have on, it helps?”

“They told me it blocks radio and satellite signals and yes it does help a great deal, but I still hear things… I think.”

“Explain what you mean, son?”

“It’s like a buzzing at the base of my skull like bees or something and I think it’s being sent to me from space. I can feel it beaming into me from up there.” He pointed to the ceiling.

Mann thought for a minute. Was the kid crazy? Had all the static and clutter in his head fried his brain? No… It made sense now; of course they’d liquidate him. They must be worried he’d eavesdrop on military satellite communications or something equally as compromising. The kid couldn’t focus or control his ability but they sure wouldn’t take a chance on him getting loose and learning how.

“When am I going to get to go home? You’ve guys have had me in here forever.”

Mann had a quick flash of a gruesome image - Hector Sanchez laid out on an autopsy table, scientists and technicians peeling him away into nothingness. Skin samples, blood samples, hair, teeth… brain matter. He shuddered at the thought, even though he knew that was the kid’s inevitable fate. And then a voice popped into his head.

“You’re going to kill him?” the voice seemed to come from inside him, but it wasn’t his own. The question itself didn’t seem fearful, only inquisitive. Mann looked back toward the other cell at Arnie, who was pressed against his door watching with wide eyes.

“I know why you’re here. I saw it just now in your head and I saw it in the priests head earlier.”

“I don’t want to… but…” Mann thought to himself.

“He’s not a bad guy. He’s my friend. I talk to him. The helmet doesn’t stop me.”

“Are you going to tell him why I’m here?” Mann asked internally.

“No.” Arnie said. “Would it make it any easier on him? No.”

“I guess not.”

“Hey are you spacing out?” Sanchez said and Mann snapped back to attention. “You looked like I felt when they gave me those shots.”

“What? No… just thinking.” He glanced back one last time at Arnie, who shook his head and returned to his bunk. “What shots? No injections are mentioned in your file.”

“Well they haven’t given me any in a long while, but they were dosing me with something every day the first few months after I got brought here.”

“A sedative?” Mann pondered out loud.

“No, I don’t think so. It really amped up the noise in my head and I got nosebleeds from it.”

“Did they inject your friend over here?” Mann said pointing over his shoulder to the other cell.

“I don’t think so.” He stepped up to the door and yelled out. “Hey Arn, have they injected you with anything?”

He paused for a minute. “Arn says they’ve taken blood, but no injections.”

“Okay.”

“So what’s wrong with me? No one will tell me. Am I crazy?”

“You’re special, Hector.”

“Yeah, they’ve told me that, but no one will tell me what that means. So what does ‘special’ mean?”

Dr. Mann sighed and dropped his head. “It means people fear you and what you could do.”

Sanchez looked confused. “I ain’t going to do anything. I just want all this noise out of my head. Isn’t that what this helmet is about?”

Nathan stood stiff as ever, his hands crossed in front of him - eyes staring straight ahead, just like a soldier at attention. If Arnie had made a plea to him as well inside his mind, it didn’t faze him in the least from what Mann could tell.

“Do you have family?” Mann asked, trying to prolong his visit and Hector’s life.

“Yeah, my mother and some aunts and uncles, why am I going to be allowed visitors?”

“Any siblings?” Mann continued to quiz the boy.

“I had a sister but she got sick and died when she was seven.”

“I’m sorry to hear that. And you’re father?”

“I didn’t know him very well. He ran off when I was nine or ten. I heard he died of cancer or something three years ago in Sacramento.”

“Did you know your grandparents?”

“What does this have to do with anything?” Hector said getting antsy from the barrage of questions.

“Just answer the question, please?”

“Only my grandmother on my mother’s side; my dad’s parents lived far away and I never got to meet them before they passed away.”

“Do you think the diagnosis of schizophrenia was accurate or do you believe the radio signal theory we’ve explained to you?” Mann continued to ask questions. He could tell Nathan knew he was stalling and wasting time, but the priestly garbed man never twitched or said a word.

“I don’t think I have schizophrenia. I’ve known all along I was hearing the radio or broadcast television or cellphones, but no one believed me.” Hector said. “I know it makes no sense, but that’s what is happening up here.” He pointed to his head.

“The only thing that has ever even quieted it has been this helmet.” He continued. “Without you guys coming and getting me I’d probably be really be crazy by now. I’d be out on the street somewhere begging for change. I’d be one of those smelly guys you pass by that talk to themselves.”

Dr. Mann knew he was out of questions and his interview was over. He just stood there looking at the floor. He glanced once at Nathan. The man hadn’t budged, it was as if he was made of stone and had been placed there to stand for all eternity.

“So when can I go home? No one will tell me.” Hector asked. “Since the helmet is working I can go home, right?”

Mann refused to meet the boys gaze. “You’ll be going home today, Hector.” He answered and then turned and walked down the hall.

Behind him he could hear the large glass door being swung open and then a small scuffle. When he got to the door that would allow him passage back into the guard station he stopped and listened. Silence - and then one sharp thick snapping noise like the breaking of the wishbone at Thanksgiving followed by the heavy thud of a body hitting the floor.

He turned to look back down the hallway. Nathan emerged from the cell and immediately went to his knees. Did the small Hispanic put up a fight? Did he hurt the hulking priest? No. Nathan was clutching his rosary and saying a prayer in Latin. Mann was sure he heard the Latin word ‘Daemonum’, which he was sure was some reference or other to demons, as well as a few other words about damnation and sin.

After a minute or more, Nathan stood and rolled the ice-filled casket into the cell and Dr. Mann turned and knocked on the door. The same dark eyes peered out at him and then opened the door.
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