Anomaly

Katherine was going to change the world. Ambassador to foreign nations. Head of the CIA. First female United States president. The sky was the limit. Or so she believed.

Her stilettos click-clicked on the industrial tile of the compound hallway. She clutched a data pad against her suit jacket, matte rose lips curving into a professional-yet-friendly smile as she passed other agents. She activated the retinal scanner to the double-walled steel entrance into Observation Room C. 

The hydraulic doors hissed shut behind her. Katherine’s footsteps echoed almost obscenely in the silence. The observation room had once been a hangar for aircraft. Now, hundreds of gurneys were lined up in neat rows under the towering steel beams. The quiet breathing of subjects rose and fell in waves of white noise. Other junior agents glided among the rows like corporeal wraiths, tapping data pads and adjusting the straps of equipment bags across their chests.

She moved to the first cot in the first row. Rested her data pad on her forearm, tapped to open the spreadsheet. Subject C4-E719. Topeka, Kansas. Katherine scanned the readout by the young man’s head. 

Fiscal leanings: conservative. 

Environmental concerns: progressive. 

Social justice beliefs: mixed. 

She entered aggregate data in the appropriate columns, then reached to click on “Social justice beliefs,” careful to no more than glance at the young man’s olive-skinned face and dark curls. A subset of data unfurled across the screen. 

Racism index: 7.5

Prison reform: against

Same sex marriage: for

Transgender rights: undecided

Katherine made notes. Across the observation room, cloth rustled and metal scraped against metal. A murmur. A data pad flashed bright green.

An anesthetic resistant subject.

Katherine made it there first, stilettos tapping a woodpecker’s rhythm across the concrete. A young woman thrashed on her cot. Blonde and dressed in matching gray sweats, her crop top read “Stop Staring At My Dick.” She moaned something incomprehensible.

“Shhhh…” Katherine plunged a hand into her equipment bag, watching Sweatshirt’s eyes dart under painted lids.

“Ainsley?” The woman’s eyelids fluttered open.

“Hush,” Katherine whispered, fingers drifting over the bag’s inside pockets. “You’re just having a dream.” 

Sweatshirt blinked at her, gaze unfocused. “Wwwwas innNeverland.”

“I know you were.” Katherine drew out a plastic syringe, fumbled the cap off under the edge of the cot. “Want to go back? I can send you.” 

Sweatshirt blinked. “I told…told Ainsley. Yesterday. Adulting is b-bullshit.” Her words were slurred, fuzzy. “Wanted to…be a kid ‘gain. Then I did. Went…went to Neverland.”

“Yes, you did,” Katherine murmured. Keeping her gaze on the woman, she felt along the IV tube to the port and slid the needle in.  

Sweatshirt blinked up at the ceiling, eyes beginning to focus. She propped herself on an elbow. “Where am I?”

“Nowhere. This is just a dream.” Katherine depressed the plunger.

Sweatshirt started to speak again, something that began like “Ainsley,” but the word drifted away as the drug hit her system. She slumped back onto the cot, messy blonde ponytail splaying across the pillow. Katherine’s heart thundered. 

They should really have more agents monitoring in here.

This woman wouldn’t be the last to show an abnormal resistance to the standard anesthetic. But stats had predicted the percentage of resistant subjects would be small enough that the agency needn’t spend the money to pre-load alternate drugs into every gurney’s monitoring system. Resistant subjects could be dosed on an as-needed basis by junior agents collecting data. 

Katherine’s manicured nails twitched toward the young woman’s forehead. To brush a strand of hair away? Her hand retracted, a spider curling in on itself. She reached up to pat the cornsilk blonde bun atop her own head. Aside from the sweatshirt, this girl could be her. Would be, if Katherine had been born a year later.

This was Project 24. A twenty-four-hour study of every twenty-four-year-old in the United States. The most ambitious operation Katherine had been a part of in her time at the agency. Subjects had been collected without explanation or warning, transported to a series of facilities around the country and outlying islands. They’d be returned to their beds with no memory of the event. Just an unexplained gap in their timelines. A lost day.

Informed consent had been standard practice in scientific research for over a century. But the agency tended to operate outside of standard practice.

The hiss of the pneumatic doors breached the newly fragile silence. Katherine may have startled, if she was the nervous type. Which she was not.

Senior Agent Abrams crossed the floor in her direction. Dressed as always in a perfectly tailored suit, designer heels, no-nonsense flat-ironed bob, eyeliner winged sharp enough to cut you open. Katherine may not have been the nervous type, but she wasn’t above being impressed by power. Agent Abrams oozed it. 

At her heels trailed Agent Colfer, as forgettable a middle-aged man as you could ask for. 

“Miss Lewis,” Abrams snapped by way of greeting. “Data, please.” 

Katherine held out her data pad. Abrams snatched it, scanned, and frowned. “You’ve only completed one?”

“I’ve just begun, ma’am. I was required to attend preliminary training with Captain O’Keefe this morning.” Katherine had worked hard to clip the soft edges of her Missouri accent, but chose to retain the genteel Southern manners. They charmed hardened superiors, made her seem more approachable. Trustworthy. Less threatening.

Abrams made an irritated noise and thrust the data pad back into Katherine’s hands. “Preliminary training!”  she spat. “The next time O’Keefe wants to waste resources, call me. You’ve done nothing but exemplary work since you began here. Any idiot would see that a fifteen-minute briefing would suffice for you. You’d have been well on your way to the next observation room by now.” 

“Yes, ma’am.” The flicker of pride tasted slightly bitter on Katherine’s tongue. 

Abrams pinned her with a sharp gaze. “Now, if you encounter any anomalies, I want you to contact me immediately.” 

Katherine hesitated. During training, O’Keefe had mentioned the possibility of outliers. But she hadn’t been satisfied with his explanation.

“You don’t mean anesthetic resistant subjects, I presume? I just dosed this one.”

“That’s correct.” Abrams appraised Katherine. “I’m looking for subjects showing atypical cognitive markers.”

It was still a vague explanation. Katherine decided against pushing further.  

“Will do, ma’am.”

“Keep up this level of work, Miss Lewis, and you’ll go far in the agency.” A corner of Abrams’ mouth twitched up in something resembling a smile. “You remind me of myself at your age.”

The phone in the senior agent’s suit pocket buzzed. She snatched it up and held it to her ear with an abrupt, “What?” Her organ-puncturing heels snapped away toward the rear exit.

Agent Colfer gave Katherine a fatherly smile. “Don’t forget to mark this one as resistant.” He tapped a blunt finger on the gurney’s screen and strode after Abrams.

Katherine watched their retreating backs for a moment. She should have been basking in the affirmation Abrams just gave her. But she only felt a vague sense of unease.

Just keep your head down, she told herself. Do your job. Advance. You can’t change the world if you’re not in a position of influence.

She swiped the “stats” menu down from the corner of Sweatshirt’s screen. 

Anesthetic Resistant Subject. Set dosage alerts: every 2 hours.

Is this how Katherine imagined her life would be? As an awkward kid dreaming big dreams behind a 70’s-era public school desk in a one-horse town in the Ozarks? When she’d received a full academic scholarship to an Ivy League college, she hadn’t looked back. Ambition took the place of friends and lovers for a time. Then the agency recruited her. Her lack of social connections, no doubt, was just as attractive as her resume.

Next gurney. Subject C4-F528. Springfield, Illinois.

The agency’s job offer seemed like a natural progression, a payoff for hard work. Even if the duties of the position were a little vague. But Katherine never believed the U.S. government’s activities were all transparent. She wasn’t that naive. Things sometimes happened behind the scenes for the good of the public at large. That’s all this was, she told herself. Objective research. Science. Katherine could get behind science.

Fiscal leanings: moderate. 

Environmental concerns: progressive. 

Social justice beliefs: progressive. 

The agency was supposedly nonpartisan. Unaffiliated, exempt from political or private influence. But with the upcoming presidential election and the nature of the information being mapped from subjects’ minds, Katherine doubted this was entirely true. Organizations with a stake in the election would likely pay well for this type of data.

Katherine tapped her spreadsheet. Gazed back at the blonde woman in the ridiculous sweatshirt. A sour feeling turned her stomach.

That could have been me.

She shut her eyes and looked away.

Two hours and two hundred subjects later, Katherine discovered an anomaly.

Subject C4-N8429. Detroit, Michigan. Round face, dark brown skin, kinky hair done up in two buns. Gold hoop in her left nostril. Denim jacket over a multicolored tee printed with the words “Disabled Rights are Human Rights.” The data pad screen glowed red, reading nothing more than “Subject Anomalous.”

Katherine’s hand twitched toward the phone in her bag. She’d been given a direct order to call Agent Abrams right away. But she paused. Considered the senior agent’s evasive answers. 

What do they want with these anomalies? 

That sour feeling roiled in her gut again. Her hand went to the gurney’s screen instead of her phone.

She tried scanning the subject data. Access denied. 

She tried the functions menu. Access denied. 

She tried overriding with the administrative code she’d sweet-talked out of the guy in the tech department. Please place iris near retinal scanner.

Katherine cursed softly. Taking a deep breath, she peered out of the corner of her eye toward the other junior agents. They were all on opposite sides of the room. She slid to the left to block Human Rights Tee’s face from the nearest security camera. Her manicured fingers gently tilted the woman’s head toward her and away from the far wall. Then she pulled the IV tube.

Katherine lifted a silent cell phone to her ear and waited. The fast-metabolizing anesthetic didn’t take long to wear off. Human Rights’ eyelids opened a few minutes later.

“Don’t move,” Katherine murmured right away. “Don’t speak. Just listen.”

The woman’s pupils dilated with fear, but thankfully, she remained still. Her eyes darted from Katherine to the endless rows of gurneys surrounding them. 

“You’re in a government facility in Nevada. You and many other young adults were selected for a study.” She declined to tell Human Rights the scope of it. She thought it would alarm her, more than it had already. “Now listen very carefully. You aren’t supposed to know you’re here. You’re supposed to be under anesthesia. I woke you up.”

Human Rights stared at Katherine with huge brown eyes, chest heaving shallow, panicked breaths. 

“I’m going to ask you some questions. When you answer, speak in a whisper. There are other agents in the room who don’t know you’re awake.” She leveled her gaze at the frightened woman. “Does the government have any reason to be suspicious of you?” 

Human Rights was silent for so long Katherine wondered if the anesthetic hadn’t entirely worn off. She opened her mouth to repeat herself when the woman spoke.

“Who’s on the phone? Who’s listening?” Her voice was hushed, breathy with fear.

“No one.” Katherine adjusted the phone, letting the woman see the blank screen. “I’m doing this so anyone watching won’t be suspicious.”

Human Rights’ eyes narrowed. Katherine waited.

“I…I work for a civil rights group in Detroit.” The woman’s words were choked. “In college, I helped organize some marches, some protests. I wrote a couple essays…about voter suppression…criticizing US democracy as exclusionary…but just for class! I never published them on a blog, or…” 

“Did you think about it, though?” Katherine pressed. “Have you been thinking about it?”

Human Rights said nothing. But her lips thinned in a way that said everything. 

Katherine’s jaw tightened.

“They know,” she said. “They can predict it. You’re going to be a leader. You’re going to influence people.” Cold certainty settled over her. She knew what would happen if she called Agent Abrams. The rest of the twenty-four-year-olds would go home tonight. This woman, and any other “anomalies,” would not. 

“I’ve got to get you out of here.”

Human Rights’ eyes narrowed to slits. “And why should I trust you, white girl?”

Katherine blinked at her. “My name is Katherine.”

Human Rights pursed her lips. “Like I said.”

Katherine adjusted her silent phone and shrugged. “Looks like I’m your only option. Unless you want me to hook your IV back up and let the senior agents do whatever they’re going to do to you.”

 The woman’s eyes widened again. She made as if to turn her head.

“’Don’t. Move,” Katherine hissed. “There are security cameras on all four walls. I am blocking only one.”

Human Rights closed her eyes and swore. Then swore again. “Fine.” Her voice was tight. “Do you have a plan?”

“Can you make yourself vomit?”

The woman’s eyes snapped open. “Excuse me?”

 “Can you make—”

“No, I heard you the first time. And the answer is ‘no.’ ”

Katherine sighed through her nose. “I’m going to lean down and act like I’m looking for something. When I do, pretend to heave.”

Human Rights’ brows drew together, but she nodded. Katherine pocketed her phone, set her bag down, and bent her head level with the edge of the cot. She stuck two practiced fingers down her throat. The remains of a protein shake, sautéed egg whites and spinach splashed over the concrete floor.

“Oh. My. God,” Human Rights breathed.

Katherine wiped the corners of her mouth and straightened, pulling her phone out again. “I was a bulimic in high school,” she murmured in explanation.

“Of course you were.”

Katherine had never felt more like a walking cliche. Small-town working-class white girl with insecurity issues dreams of changing the world to prove she can change herself. 

She pretended to punch a three digit extension.

“This is Agent Lewis,” Katherine said, loud enough to be heard across the room. Several junior agents glanced in her direction. “I have a subject with an adverse reaction to the anesthetic. I’m going to wheel her down for you to examine.” She paused as if waiting for a response. “And please have a crew sent to Observation Room C to disinfect.”

Katherine kept the phone by her ear. “Close your eyes,” she whispered to Human Rights. “Act unconscious.” The woman hesitated, but obliged. Katherine pocketed the phone and grasped the handle of the gurney. 

“Whurr you tekeng meh?” Human Rights slurred through immobile lips. It was impressive ventriloquism. Almost enough to distract Katherine from the fact that she hadn’t thought through a plan beyond this.

“Hush,” she whispered. She could probably slip the girl through the labyrinthine basement service wings and out the loading dock. But then what? Even if she stashed the gurney somewhere and made it back before anyone grew suspicious, she’d been seen wheeling a subject out of an observation room. An anomalous subject who’d soon be offline. Not to mention all the security cameras.

Her palms started to sweat. She hadn’t thought this through. This was a stupid idea, Katherine. Stupid stupid stupid.

The pneumatic doors hissed open, then her stilettos were tapping down the corridor. The gurney’s casters whirred an ominous hiss. Katherine tried to smile at a pair of passing agents who surveyed Human Rights without a word.

The medical unit was at the end of the hall and to the left. Katherine took a right. 

A service elevator stood at the end of a short annex. Katherine activated the retinal scanner and pushed the gurney into the car as the wide maroon doors slid open. Human Rights hopped down as soon as they closed. 

“Where are you taking me?” she demanded. It was strange to see her upright, kinetic. She was shorter than Katherine expected.

“Through the basement level to the loading docks. They made us run evacuation drills through there as new recruits. In case of terrorist attacks and such.” She wondered if the escape route was too obvious. She wondered how much time they had before someone started looking for them.

The elevator car groaned to a halt. The phone in Katherine’s pocket buzzed. She slipped it out.

Ext. 302: Abrams

She silenced the phone just as Human Rights smashed the button to keep the elevator doors closed. Katherine looked to her in surprise.

“You said this is a government facility in Nevada?” The woman’s eyes were narrow, angry. “You planning to just throw me out the loading dock into the middle of nowhere?”

“No,” Katherine protested. She hadn’t really thought this part through, either. “Transport trucks come and go all the time. We can hide you in one of those.”

Human Rights scoffed. “And what about the rest of those people up there? You just gonna leave them?”

“They’re all being sent home tonight.” It was a lie and Human Rights knew it.

“Bullshit.” The woman braced her hands on her hips. “If I’m not safe, they aren’t either.”

Katherine’s phone vibrated again. Ext. 302: Abrams. They were out of time. She began to panic.  

“I swear, the vast majority are going home tonight. There’s no way—”

“Get me to the server,” Human Rights ordered.

“What?” Katherine’s skin crawled with anxiety.

The woman gestured at the gurney, the IV bag, the red screen announcing: Subject Anomalous. “These are all hooked up to a network, right? I can hack it. Turn all the drips off. Wake everybody up.”

Katherine’s breath caught. There were sixty five thousand anesthetized subjects in this compound alone. If they all woke up at once, the study would be compromised, the facility would be compromised—the entire agency would be exposed. Mass chaos. No wonder they feared what this woman was capable of.

Katherine swallowed and closed her eyes. Tried to think of a different way out. A way to sneak this woman onto a transport truck, a reasonable explanation to give Agent Abrams when it was done. Anything to salvage the house of cards that was her life falling apart around her. She could think of none.

Is this how she imagined her life would be? Katherine wanted to change the world. It had been her dream as long as she could remember. She thought about those rows of gurneys, the still figures lying atop them in the observation room upstairs. One of thousands just like it across the country.

Maybe changing the world didn’t look like she’d thought it would. Maybe it looked more like this woman standing across from her in a denim jacket and human rights tee shirt.

Katherine inhaled a shaky breath. “Okay. Okay. Let’s do it.”

Human Rights relaxed, and smiled.

With a release of the door lock, the elevator rattled open to reveal a dim subterranean corridor. Katherine’s phone buzzed. She silenced it without checking the caller ID.

“Follow me.” 

There was no use putting Human Rights back on the gurney, and she didn’t know how she’d explain the woman’s presence to anyone who stopped them. She just hoped the agency hadn’t put out alerts for them yet. 

Thankfully, the handful of maintenance workers and service staff they passed just nodded polite greetings. Katherine led Human Rights through a series of halls, past the restricted entrance to the server’s data center, to a small office. The sound of an oscillating fan drifted from the open door, the green flannel shirt of the room’s lone occupant just visible behind a huge desktop monitor.

Katherine paused just beyond the threshold and plunged her hand into her equipment bag. “Let me do the talking,” she hissed. Human Rights nodded. Then Katherine stepped through the doorway, one hand loosely fisted by her side, and beamed her best smile. 

“Hey, Maddox.” 

The twenty-something yanked the headphones out of his ears, cheeks flushing pink. “H-hey, Kat!” 

She felt slightly guilty, as she always did, for taking advantage of his crush on her. He was a nice enough guy. But it was wiser to keep the on-site tech officer a pining ally instead of a failed dating partner. 

She glanced toward the desk normally occupied by a bored security guard. “Where’s Tom?”

Maddox grinned unabashedly at her. “Lunch break.” 

Katherine sent up silent thanks to whatever gods were listening.

The tech officer’s smile faltered as he spotted Human Rights. “Who’s this?”

“Oh,” Katherine said. “I’m training a new recruit. Maddox, this is—” Subject C4-N8429? She’d  never asked the woman’s name.

“Celeste.” Human Rights stepped toward the desk and offered a hand. “Nice to meet you.”

Maddox rose from his seat. “Nice to meet—” His greeting cut off with a startled choke as Katherine plunged a syringe of anesthetic into his neck.

“Sorry about this,” she told him, easing his slumping form back into his desk chair.

Human Rights—Celeste—gave a low whistle. “That was cold, Katherine.”

Katherine frowned as she rolled Maddox away from the desk. “How else was I supposed to get you access to the server?”

“Ask him nicely, maybe?” Celeste smirked. “Don’t get me wrong. It was still badass.” She bent over the desk, fingers dancing across the keyboard. 

Katherine paced to the door and back. Her phone vibrated again. Ext. 302: Abrams. 

“Are you almost done?”

Celeste’s brows furrowed. “Jesus. It’s been, like, thirty seconds.”

Katherine silenced her phone and jammed it back in her bag. “I have an admin code. Would that help?”

Celeste turned to her with a withering glare. “You think?” She tapped a few keys. “Enter it.”

Katherine rushed to the desk and typed in the code she’d wheedled out of Maddox a few months back. Lines of binary unfurled across the screen. Celeste moved back to the keyboard and tapped furiously. Scowled. Tapped some more. Katherine paced to the door and peered down the hall.

“Can you hurry up?”

“God, you are not helping!” The flurry of clicks accelerated, faltered, then stopped. A heartbeat of silence. “It’s done.”

Katherine met Celeste’s eye as emergency lights began to flash. Alarms whined an ear-splitting crescendo.

Katherine kicked her stilettos into a corner. “Let’s go.”

Barefoot, she led Celeste back down the maze of corridors at a jog. Maintenance staff poured out of every door, shouting directions, securing entrances and exits. No one paid Katherine and Celeste the slightest attention.

They skidded around a corner, and Katherine spotted the access stairs to the loading dock. She released a breath. They were going to make it.

“Miss Lewis!” A sharp voice from the other end of the corridor.

Katherine turned slowly, heart crashing against her ribs. Emergency lights blinked bright and dark over the cold, motionless form of Agent Abrams. Beside her, two security guards leveled pistols in their direction.

Katherine’s life collapsed in on itself like a dying star. Every dream, every hope, every shed tear, every drop of sweat, every sleepless night condensed to this moment. This decision. 

“I am giving you a direct order.” Abrams’ voice was brittle, significant. “Surrender the subject and turn yourself in.” 

Celeste tensed, edging backward. 

“Miss Lewis,” Abrams said. “You do not want to do this.”

A thought, clear and distinct, cut through the fog of panic. Oh, but I really do.

Katherine reached for Celeste, as resolute as she’d ever been. “Run,” she whispered.

And they did.