The Girl Who Chases the Wind

Chapter 25: Compromise

I attempted a smile at hearing that. Better words from Feldon. It wasn’t long before the staff started to return and Feldon put on a pleasant face for all of them. With us, he quietly uttered, “I have much to do. But I will do what I must for my arriving guest...probably the last.”

With a solemn nod, I watched him depart for another room. Soon after that, Ada’s voice returned, “Sorry, kid. Guess it was a fool’s errand from the start.” I shook my head and told her, “No. It seems like Feldon finally listened to me. I’ll keep on him though. But…I’m encouraged.” I looked to Lily and Mari, their expressions were subdued, but they nodded back at me.

I relayed Feldon’s words. Kala chirped in a little to offer, “Make super super all sure no copout. See concerns always.”

Kala was right. I’d have to keep persistent. The thought about my article returned to me. I’d waffled between writing it and feeling like it would be pointless. It would be my leverage. There was so much I could say if he reneged on dismantling the control system. It would be a good compromise. Sure, he wouldn’t be able to influence the ‘corrupt and powerful’ but perhaps a version of the Project could keep running, especially for those in dire need like Edgar, all those children, and Mari and Lily. They would all be okay. For the first time in a good while, I let myself really breathe.

Some nurses came in to check up on Mari and Lily. Something like an hour passed but it was hard to tell with only the harsh lights and no windows. I turned away when they removed pieces of the two of them to check the integrity of their joints. I was focused on Feldon beyond the frosted glass. He was probably only doing a half measure. Terminating the entangled connections and perhaps purging that research. Even if that was all he did, then that would be enough.

The nurses were finishing up with Mari and Lily when Feldon finally returned. He looked faintly grim but said only, “The guest just arrived. The main surgical suite has an observation area…if you want to see.”

Mari and Lily both tensed up with Mari tightening her freshly-serviced fists. My first thought was to decline. I’d only heard about the man in history books. That he and his decisions were responsible for what happened to my family still existed as an intangible but nightmarish notion. Lily quickly chirped, “For Dalya…maybe.”

Setting her hand on Lily’s shoulder, Mari muttered, “I don’t see how it’ll do any good…for anyone…for us to be there.”

Feldon dipped his head and acknowledged, “Your choice. I just thought it might offer some closure...”

I reached out for Mari and resolved, “I’m going. And I need you.” I wasn’t sure why I said that. The whole prospect was distasteful. But that vague feeling, not quite memory, maybe some remnant of when I was little more than an infant, did indeed need something like closure. I’d seen photos of the man, a pale shadow of his once propagandized, horseback-riding athleticism. But I needed to see him.

And. besides, if this was the end of Feldon’s secret surgical procedures then it was worth it to my reporter side to at least see how it all went down.

Mari grimaced with displeasure but sighed and agreed to join me.

It wasn’t a long walk to the surgical area, which was already being prepped. Before he left us, I asked Feldon, “How many times have you done this?”

He cast me a curious glance with his hands folded. “This?...First time. But we’ve had thousands of guests through the years.” I raised an eyebrow at that odd phasing but didn’t say anything as he left us.

I turned to Mari and Lily, who found some placed folding chairs towards the front of the observation area. I sat down between them. Mari rubbed her eyes and Lily looked down at her hands. I had to ask, “Are you two going to be okay?”

Mari stretched up and assured me quickly. Lily tried a smile and nodded. I hoped with all my heart Feldon was being genuine. If he wasn’t, then I already knew the article I would write to shame and ruin him. I didn’t want to write it but it felt inevitable.

While the pre-op work continued, I asked both Mari and Lily about their procedures and whether it had been done down here.

They shook their heads. Their conversions had been done in a different area. Mari rubbed her neck and volunteered first, “I was terrified. I felt this crippling chest pain just thinking about it. My entire body, every ounce of my flesh, every piece that made me who I was, would be gone. An artificial construct, a preserved copy, was going to replace it. It was impossible to sleep thinking about it. But it went slow, bit by bit. And I was reassured seeing Lily was the same person I always remembered.”

Lily’s face fluttered with a slight smile as she said, “I was just as scared. But…in a way, it was okay to me if I just stopped existing…because all that time I felt like I was already gone.”

I brought back the story of the Ship of Theseus which Feldon had mentioned and my answer that everyone keeps changing.

Mari nodded and sighed. “It’s something more when you change everything about who you are. I don’t even have a name I feel certain about. All I know is that I’m terrified of not existing…and I’m even more terrified that that’s all which this 'me' can remember of the other me.”

I assured her, “Each you is you. You’ve just been reshaped by life and Memetic Crystalline medicine. You’ve told me so much. You remember everything.”

She curled her lip and noted, “But do I remember it because that’s what this body is supposed to do….be a reservoir of the past, of someone who used to exist?”

I slipped an arm over her shoulder. “I don’t know. But you can make new memories. You made new ones yesterday. You tried on your first dress….” Lily jumped in with, “I wish I could’ve seen it!” Mari assured her it wasn’t worth it.

I continued, “…Your life is whatever you want to make it. Both of your lives. And I want with every ounce of ‘myself’ to share those lives with you. You may not have been who you were before. But neither am I. I’ll never be who I was before I came here again. Just like I’ll never be the person I was before I left my other family. Or before I was taken away from my first home. Or before that. But the days to come, however many they are, no matter how they are…I want to grip tightly to each of them with both of you and never let them go.”

In the back of my head, I wanted to add Feldon to that mix. But I didn’t know how I felt about the future with him. For the near-future, I was curious to see him operate. I adjusted the recorder in my pocket and made sure there was still enough recording left till noontime at least.

Though I enjoyed the presence of Lily and Mari, my attention gradually shifted to the people entering the surgical suite. It was clear some of them weren’t with the clinic nursing staff. They were tall and dressed in dark suits. Their eyes scanned all over the room before they said something in a foreign language to one another. I knew they were bodyguards. That dictator I’d interviewed and written about had several. Some of his were clad in camouflage gear but these guys were meant to look like your average lawyer while being able to bench press a person.

Once the crowd of bodyguards had formed a wall around the door, they slowly parted to reveal a man who even I recognized on sight. Barely over five and a half feet tall and looking even smaller with his body slumping in the wheelchair, sat the man who was once the most feared and "respected" in all of the Russian Federation. His hair was reduced to a fuzzy fringe at the back of his head. His broad head was mottled with spots. His neck clenched with ropy veins and muscles. Dark spots blemished his temple. He looked more like some distant relative I’d seen when I was far too young to understand what they were supposed to mean to me, if they meant anything at all.

His lined eyes scanned the room back and forth with his hands folded in his lap. An idle smile crossed his face.

It wasn’t long before the nursing staff led him over to the main operating table. The bodyguards were draped in gowns and masks as the rest of the staff went through limited sterilization procedure. I figured most of it was intended to keep the Crystalline pure for transplantation, but I could only guess at what kind of procedure was going to be done.

As I sat there, I looked to Mari and Lily in turn. They both peered for a long time at the guest. They didn’t smile much. I tried to be as stern as they were but, to be perfectly honest, he didn’t really mean anything to me. He was just some old man who often got mentioned in the news. It didn’t really connect to me that he was responsible for the military forces who led to the wounding and deaths of family members I couldn’t remember. But it was a long chain of orders and it was a long time ago. I was sure that for Feldon this would be quite difficult, but he looked at ease as the room was prepared.    
   
Step by step, everything was set. The injectors were all lined up with the normal surgical equipment. It started about the same as my minor procedure a few days before. I tapped my neck as a reminder of what lay beneath.

The difference here was that so many more steps were involved along with a direct conduit to the brain. It all seemed to be going normally. The guest was carefully restrained so the injections could be precisely placed. Then, Feldon looked me right in the eye behind his face mask. His eyes were still and glossy. I was certain he couldn’t see any of us through the glare of the lamps above and the thick glass but his gaze pierced right through me. Mari instantly sat up in her chair.

Seconds later, the old man started coughing. It was muffled through the glass but still loud, louder than any noise I thought an old man’s throat could make. Feldon leaned close to the old man with that same, still look and seemed to say something. The nurse nearest Feldon appeared unsettled. The bodyguards fidgeted.

Slowly, the coughing stopped. Feldon passed an instrument to a nurse on the other side of the operating table and she gently pressed it against the old man’s head. This time, the screaming began.

If the coughing was loud, then the screaming sounded like it was right next to me. The old man convulsed violently in the restraints. The nurses rushed to hold him down. To his credit, Feldon’s expression of alarm and concern would’ve seemed legitimate to anyone who didn’t notice that he slipped it on a moment too early.

The screams turned into a cacophony as gray fluid began to seep from his eyes, swell through his gurgling mouth, and trickle out his ears. Live Memetic Crystalline. The Crystalline absorbed his eyes into its matrix, converting them into shimmering, icy bumps. His mouth froze in a curled, blank expression of terror. Some excess from his ears fell on the operating table, quickly converting it as well.

Everyone around the table had retreated to the edges of the suite, pressing themselves against the walls. They crawled over fallen surgical equipment, some wailing and weeping. Several bodyguards drew their weapons, trained them on Feldon, and yelled something I couldn’t understand. Feldon raised his hands and kept them there. I watched him turn from the guards to look at me. He gave a faint, serene smile and started to close his eyes.

Beside me, I heard Mari growl, “No…”

I wasn’t quite sure what happened at first, but my ears popped at least once with the force of a violent gale. I caught a blur as I realized later Mari had seized her chair and hurled it at the window in front of us. The entire pane crumpled with lighting-streaked patterns of frost. Just as I managed to figure out what she’d done, she threw herself against the cracked glass and pushed through. Lily made my ear pop on the other side. She was a blur chasing after her.

The glass sliced through Mari, leaving bloodless fissures all over. But she didn’t stop. She ran, blowing aside stray surgical equipment and whipping at the clothes of everyone she passed. It all happened too fast to realize in the moment, but she tripped Feldon to the ground as the nearest bodyguard squeezed on his trigger.

Another blast of wind followed her as she elbowed the gun out of his hands. It spat out a single bullet which lodged in the ceiling. The bodyguard's hands twisted back unnaturally and he howled in pain. Mari though, was already on to the next.

Guns sailed across the room. Men cracked their faces on the floor. The last bodyguard was quick on the draw, pointing his gun right at Mari’s head. He didn’t notice Lily on the other side of him with a brutal knee to his chin. Still, he got off one shot which severed Mari’s left pointer finger and came to rest near the other bullet in the ceiling.

It took a long moment of silence before the shock returned to screams.

I scrambled to my feet and used my chair to wedge open the fissure in the glass so I could push through as well. While I only scratched my wrist, it wore a long string of blood. The glass crunched under my feet as I made my way to Feldon. Mari and Lily had pushed all the guns into a corner. The nurses edged away from them like they were a bed of vipers.

The bodyguards were beginning to come to their senses but none were able to get to their feet. I crouched over Feldon. With a wave of air, Mari and Lily were right next to me. Mari ordered sharply, “Go! Now!”

Somehow, she was able to haul Feldon to his feet with Lily’s help. I hustled after through a side door and into a darkened hallway. Before long, Feldon was able to keep pace without assistance. It wasn’t until we’d crossed through several corridors and into a storage room with some loose supply crates that I was able to assess everything.

Feldon had a blood-stained gash along the side of his head. He cupped it with his hands. Lily’s left foot looked sliced on the side and crumpled, not as bad as Mari’s accident yesterday but still bad enough to make me wonder how she could walk.

Mari had the worst of it though. She was cut up all along her arms and legs. Her left hand was missing just one finger but it was also bent back and looked difficult to move. She took a long, fake breath, glared at Feldon, and said, “You asshole…”

Mari balled her better hand up into a fist but didn’t swing. Feldon looked over at her and sighed, muttering, “I know.”

I took a step closer. My voice broke even though I wanted to strong and angry as I said, “What…the hell did you just do?”

Sniffling, Feldon leaned against the nearest supply crate and answered, “What I should’ve done long ago.”

I shook my head. “How?”

Dipping his head, Feldon smirked as he noted, “I’ve always known the full…lethal capabilities of Memetic Crystalline, despite Kala’s best efforts to keep them from me.”

Mari pressed her fist into her leg and growled, “You murdered him. For what?”

In the crate, Feldon found some saline and gauze bandages. He handed them first to me. Begrudgingly, I took them and attended to my bleeding. Satisfied, he began to attend to his own wound as he answered, “Justice too long delayed. Not just for Dalya, Aura, or …May. But for all of those whose blood is on his hands.” As Feldon wiped, the gauze left a red hue on his palms which stayed there.

Lily wept those special tears and said, “They would never want this. Never. That was wrong. That was horrible…”

Looking down at the crimson-toned gauze in his hands, Feldon told her, “He was a cancer on the body of humankind.”

Mari scoffed, “Disgusting…May would’ve been disgusted…”

Flatly, Feldon said, “May is dead. And so is the man responsible for her death. But he’s not the only one who deserves it. There are so many others.”

I tensed up. “No. You promised! You showed all the ways you claim to be a doctor, a healer. And then you killed a man just because you could. It ends right now!”

Feldon gave an ominous smile. “There is a list in the system. Not all the names but those irredeemable men and women who deserve the same as him. I thought I could reform them, but it was not enough. Over two thousand people who have come here and left thinking they’ll live forever…”

I held my hands out, nearly yelling, “No! It’s over. You’re not going to kill anyone else.”

His eyes were so hard and still as he looked up at me.

Calmly, Feldon stated, “I already did it half an hour ago.”