Oculus (Oculus #1) Read online

  The smell is what hits me first, a dank mildew mixed with the distinct scent of urine. As my eyes adjust, I see an old mattress near the far wall with a huddled form curled up on top of it. A whimper escapes the figure and I feel a surge of rage. Moving forward slowly, I verify my first impression. The shape on the bed is a young boy. As I approach him, he immediately shrinks away in fear.

  “No! I don’t want to!” Bursting into tears, the boy tries to scurry away from me, but he’s held in place by a collar around his neck that is chained to the ceiling. Putting up my hands as a sign of peace, I speak in a low, firm voice.

  “Quiet, kid. I’m not here to hurt you. Benson is gone, and I’ll get you out of here. But I need to know a few things first. How long does he go between visits?” The boy stops crying and looks up at me in wonder.

  “You’re here to save me?” The hope I see etched on his face pulls at my heartstrings, and I focus on my rage to maintain mental balance. I hate it when emotion interferes with my work.

  “Yes. But first, you need to tell me what I need to know. How long do I have before he comes back?” Sitting up, the boy wipes his face.

  “I don’t know…I just got here today. My mom’s sick. He told me if I went with him, he’d make sure my mother got the medicine she needed. Then he brought me here and…he wanted me to do things…when I said no, he got mad and hit me. He told me that my mother was going to die if I didn’t do what he said. He said he’d give me some time to think about it.”

  I can feel my heart pound in my chest as the fury builds within me. Using my lock pick, I undo the lock on the boy’s collar. Once he is free, I leave the collar on the chain.

  “What’s your name?” I lead him away from the mattress, toward the opening in the back wall.

  “Felix. Felix Miller.” His eyes are red from crying and as he looks at the soiled walls, he seems like he is on the edge of another hysterical fit. I want him to be safe, but I also have a job to do. Slipping my hand into my pocket I pull out a small vial.

  “Night-night, Felix.” I break the vial under his nose and hold my breath as vapor rises from the broken vial. The boy’s eyes widen, and then he slumps bonelessly. I catch him easily before he can hit the ground.

  Sorry, kid. I need to stow you away until I’m done.

  I feel bad for betraying his trust, but I’m left with no alternative. I don’t want to traumatize him, and I’m not assured I’ll have the time to get him safely away before Benson returns. Benson is my objective, everything else is secondary. Besides, The Resistance might even like that a kid saw someone show up to kill this prick.

  Taking the boy outside, I spend a few minutes securing him in the boughs of a tree with some rope from my backpack. The sedative will keep him out until well after midnight, and the rope should keep him safe enough. I don’t want some wild animal coming and dragging him off. After making sure the rope won’t end up around his neck, and that he is out of sight, I return to the shed. Covering the hole, I make the interior as dark as possible. Next, I flip the mattress up, as if the boy is using it to hide behind. Then I wait.

  An hour later, the sound of a key in the locks brings my senses to high alert. I still my breathing as the door opens and closes. Heavy footsteps come through the dark, and then with a small click, I see the beam of a flashlight turn on. The light shines onto the overturned mattress and the person holding it sighs.

  “Oh, Felix. Look at the mess you’ve made. Is this any way to treat your new room?” Mr. Benson speaks softly, with just a trace of disapproval. “Now, I can help your mother, if you’re willing to do what I want.”

  His posture is that of a predator, stalking a defenseless rabbit. Barely able to control my rage, I slip silently up behind him. Raising my hand, I bring my blackjack, a leather wrapped bar of lead, down hard on the back of his head. I let him collapse heavily to the floor, watching for any sign that he’s faking. Sure he’s out, I flip the mattress back in place. Attaching the collar around his neck, I click the lock shut, and then slap him repeatedly until he wakes up to his worst nightmare.

  “What the hell is this?” Mr. Benson’s voice is thick as if he’s trying to fight his way to full consciousness. I watch his face as he works to clear his addled mind and in doing so, realizes his predicament. That’s when the anger surfaces. “Do you know what the fuck you’ve done, asshole? Do you know who the fuck I am? I will--”

  His threats are cut short as I chop the flat of my hand into his throat in one swift movement. Just enough pressure to silence him, without crushing his windpipe. He wheezes and I feel a surge of adrenaline as the pleasure endorphins kick in. As the predator’s predator, I’m in my element. “That’s better… Yes, Mr. Benson. I know what an important Fenra man you are. I know all about you.”

  His eyes open wide and he sputters a response past bruised vocal cords. “Who are you?” I laugh quietly as I walk to the far side of the room. I’d discovered a toolbox of surgical implements when I searched the building. From the dried blood on them, I could only assume that Benson enjoyed getting rid of the children almost as much as he liked coercing them into performing sex acts.

  “Fate, Mr. Benson. For you, because of the choices you have made, we were fated to meet. You can’t plead with me, or reason with me. There’s nothing you can give me that will stop what I’m about to do. The only thing that you can do is scream.” Taking a rusty saw from the pile of tools and a utility knife I step toward him.

  When my work is complete, I take up a scrap of his clothing, and dip it into his pooling blood. Using it as a crude brush, I write a message in large letters on the wall.

  SO SUFFERS ALL WHO PREY UPON THE INNOCENT.

  Before I leave out the back, I unlock the front door. I’m not sure if Benson held the only key and it doesn’t serve my purposes for him to be locked inside, undiscovered. Retrieving the boy from his hiding spot, I carry him back to the nearby settlement. His eyes flutter open briefly, and when he sees it’s me who is carrying him, he curls against me and drifts off again.

  Leaving him inside the back door of one of the houses, I stay long enough to verify he’s been discovered before returning to Benson’s house of horrors. Slipping past the bodyguard out front, I pull the door open, and then sneak back to the trees. The bodyguard, to his credit, notices the open door almost immediately.

  “Mr. Benson? Mr. Benson?” Cautiously, he approaches the door, pulling a handgun from a holster at his waist. He’s inside for only a moment before he rushes back out and is noisily sick all over the side of the building. The corners of my mouth twitch with satisfaction, and I quietly move away. When I’m far enough from the building, I burst into a full, exalted run.

  I may be a Talpa-made animal designed for violence, but at least I’m damn good at it.

  TIME. THAT’S ALL ANYONE REALLY wants anymore and not just because it’s the intangible thing with which we measure how quickly our lives are passing us by. Time, here within the Fenra compound is our currency, what we work for so naturally, there could never be enough.

  Everyone wants time and more time to make time. Time to buy more, do more. More time to do whatever they like. I’m no different. I want time of my own. If I had my own time, I’d spend it sleeping because that’s where he is.

  Seeing him is painful. That’s what I know above everything else.

  Seeing him is painful.

  Not knowing why only makes it worse. I shouldn’t see him at all. But I do. I see him.

  What’s more, I swear that I know him too. At least, in that way that you think you know someone that you’ve only met once some time ago. An acquaintance? A friend of a friend?

  In my dreams I sense him vividly. I can feel his cheek in my palm, warm and dusted with barely-there stubble that prickles against my palm. I can make out the uneven surface of the scar that descends from his earlobe down to the defined edge of his jaw.

  His hair is chocolate. His eyes are ice. His skin is warmed by the sun. In my dreams he’s walking,
talking though I can’t hear him. He’s eating, dressing for the day, reading, running.

  He runs a lot. In my dreams he runs. Everywhere. I’m not sure where he’s always off to or why he runs at all but my first instinct is that he’s searching. My second instinct is that he’s dangerous and my third and most alarming instinct is that I want to follow him, danger notwithstanding.

  What he’s searching for is anyone’s guess. He’s an enigma for me, a curious figment of my very active imagination that is set on haunting me every time I slip into bed. I just wish I knew why it hurt.

  My interest in the ghost of a man from my dreams seems to be centered around the hurt that accompanies my dreams of him versus the sense of pure insanity that envelopes the entire situation.

  I shouldn’t see him. I shouldn’t know what I’m looking at. I have no way to verify that I know what I’m looking at but at the same time I know exactly what I’m seeing.

  Impossible.

  The insanity of it all is made worse only by my feeling, knowing that I’m losing grasp of something central to my existence and yet I haven’t felt alarmed. I have been dreaming of, obsessing over, and longing for this ghost. I sense him in a way that I have never sensed anything else. In the light of day I remain blind, but in my dreams I see him, I feel him, and I run with him. That fact gives traction to the feeling of burgeoning mental collapse and through it all I haven’t cared one iota. I only hurt for the ghost of a dangerous man with a scar that runs from ear to jaw and a penchant for running places.

  Absolute madness.

  My father’s footfalls on the kitchen floor snap me out of my reverie and self-examination.

  “Iris, you’re up early,” he notes in his soft morning voice, slightly raspy from disuse.

  “I couldn’t sleep,” I explain as I make my way to the sink to deposit my empty cup.

  My father breezes past me, the soft fabric of his flannel robe brushing against my leg as it flutters in his wake.

  “What’s wrong? You have that look.”

  “Nothing,” I begin, unsure of what to say and how to say it. If I told my father “hey dad, so I know that it’s impossible and all but I swear I am having these dreams of this stranger that I don’t know at all but I swear that I do and I think he could be a real person because he feels real,” he would click his tongue, his breathing would become a little more audible and he would worry about me more than he already does.

  “It’s nothing,” I affirm, doing my best to sound casual.

  “Well… okay. But if something is wrong, you know you can tell me, right?”

  “Yes, dad.”

  “Are you excited,” he asks with a tone of anticipation in his voice.

  My only answer is a sigh.

  “It’s a great school, Iris.”

  “I know. I just don’t think it’s for me. I just want to go to Fenra Second School with everyone else. Hattie is going—”

  “Hattie isn’t blind,” he interrupts.

  “What?” I mock. “And to think, all this time I thought my very best friend was as blind as me!”

  “That’s not funny. Fenra Second School doesn’t have the type of curriculum or environment that will cater to you, Iris.”

  “Exactly. I don’t want to be catered to at all. Look, if I’m to work for The Corporation one day, I’d at least like to try to get the same education as everyone else who will be my colleagues at some point. Hopefully,” I mutter knowing that me getting a position with The Corp is a long shot.

  “Iris, you won’t have to work for The Corp like everyone else if you don’t want to. Your disability will provide sufficiently and once I’m gone—”

  “I’ve gotta go,” I mumble, unwilling to stay and argue with him. I snag my stick by the back door and set off for the first day at a school that I have no intentions of staying at. The Corporation requires that every child go to Fenra First School until they graduate at the age of twenty. After that, everyone goes to Fenra Second School for a minimum of two years where they take the Propensity Screening, which dictates what career suits them best so that they can serve Fenra in the most efficient way possible. Those with disabilities go to a school that is really just a place to herd all the useless Fenra residents, but I’m not useless. I can work. I’m determined to work. Food, and shelter, and water, and everything else in this compound costs time. Minutes, hours, years, of servitude to The Corporation is our currency. I don’t want to work my father into an early grave so that he can leave me enough time to survive on.

  It’s twenty-eight comfortable paces to Hattie’s front walk. We live in the same sector, only a few units apart. I’m in unit thirteen and Hattie lives in unit fifteen. I take another three steps up, two paces forward and her scanner is to the right. The biometric scanner is warm as always beneath my finger. The device chimes announcing my arrival in its mildly robotic, disembodied voice.

  “Iris. Tierney.”

  The door swings open and the scent of Hattie’s mother, Meryl gusts forward at me.

  “Good morning, Mrs. Brighton.”

  “Good morning, Iris.”

  “It’s always strange how you do that,” Hattie joins us at the door, her perfume mixing with her mother’s. I smile, my useless eyes looking in the direction of the coat tree where Hattie is rustling with her jacket. The weather here at Fenra has already begun to turn chilly uncharacteristically early and Hattie is undoubtedly wearing her favorite jacket.

  “Good luck,” Mrs. Brighton calls after us as we begin down the front walk.

  “Can I drive your car?” I’d been asking Hattie the same question for two months since she got it after we graduated from Fenra First School.

  “Not a chance.”

  “It’s on a rail for crying out loud! I can hardly do damage.”

  “You don’t have an operator’s license. If you get caught driving, the agents will fine my parents. This thing cost them five years as it is. They would strangle me if we got stopped by an agent.”

  I huffed thinking that having an operator’s license is pointless anyway. Every vehicle in the city operates on a rail system erected by The Corp. You tell the computer where you’re going then sit, waiting to be delivered to your destination. You can’t go faster than the computer dictates and you can’t just go wherever you feel like so as far as I’m concerned, I can do no harm. Everything was erected, managed, invented and enforced by The Corp. Even authorized reading material was all written by the same author, O’Rhion C. Pratteo, though I’d more than once heard rumors of books written by other people long since dead. If those books do exist they are contraband and therefore strictly prohibited.

  Things are kept in order thanks to Fenra. There are no variables. Even our day to day compound population is accounted for on the Fenra monitors throughout the compound. When someone dies the number goes down. When someone preauthorized for reproduction has a baby the number goes up, chiming loudly for everyone to hear. Yesterday the monitor near my father’s lab chimed loudly announcing that our population grew from 5,839 to 5,841 just that morning, a rare event for us. Two live births in the same morning. The work camps outside the compound house much larger numbers but it takes a lot of productivity for Fenra to be self-sustaining like we are. We have our own camps for smelting and processing, manufacturing, raw materials and utilities.

  There are no unforeseen incidents and the whole of our society appreciates the safe, tidy order of life within our community, even if they are wage-slaves. There are much worse circumstances.

  The only alternative is the Dark Lands and no one even entertains the idea of venturing beyond the safety of our walls unless you have a death wish… or you’re completely and utterly insane.

  “One day you’ll let me drive it because you love me and I’m your very best friend.”

  Hattie guffaws as she secures her seat restraints and sets us off in the direction of Fenra Second School where I plan on registering for my Propensity Screening.

  My dad always sa
ys that bad things are like legal papers, always in triplicate. I never really understand what he means by that. It’s one of the many antiquated adages that he uses regularly. I can’t understand what he means by “legal papers” but I understand the triple part and it seems that he’s right.

  Or maybe it’s just that people never truly take notice of misfortune until it shows up in various forms all at once. That’s how it happened all those years ago but in truth, there weren’t just three contributing factors to the destruction of the world as it was. It was more like a string of disasters happening so closely together that they blurred into one big event.

  My dad’s stories about how things were before have always amazed me. When I was a kid, I’d curl up against my dad and listen to his stories while I tinkered with the cylindrical pendant on a thin chain around his neck or spin the metal band on his finger round and round. I’d sit and listen and wonder what it would have been like to live during the time of The Great Change. Then I got older and realized that I’m grateful for not having been alive to endure the catastrophe.

  Whispers about how it all began have been circulating my entire life. Everyone has a different spin on things and who knows what the truth is. I wasn’t there for The Great Change and even if I had been alive all those years ago, I would not have been the most ideal witness.

  The religious freaks called it The Reckoning, something from their book of worship. They all congregated in their places of worship for months on end as everything came to a boiling point. Efforts at converting “lost souls” became far more productive than ever. Everyone was looking for a reason for the events that were happening. Turning to religion must have seemed quite practical.

  The political rebels and revolutionists blamed everything on corrupt politicians and a floundering system of government. They said that The Corporations would not have grown so powerful if the U.S. government would have stayed more powerful, wealthier and more equipped than The Corporations.