Sky Key. James Frey
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You can feel it.
Everything that is good is a facade.
Nothing worthwhile lasts.
If you are hungry, you eat, and you are full, but that fullness just reminds you that you will be hungry again in the future. If you are cold, you make a fire, but that fire will die, and then the coldness creeps back in. If you are lonely, you find someone, but then they get tired of you or you get tired of them and, eventually, there you are—alone again.
Happiness, satisfaction, contentment, all of these create a veil spread thinly but convincingly over suffering. The pain awaits, always, underneath.
Everything the children perceive themselves to be and all that they devote themselves to—food, sex, entertainment, drink, money, adventure, games—exist to insulate them from fear.
Fear is the only constant, which is precisely why we should listen to it.
Embrace it. Keep it. Love it.
Greatness comes from fear, Students. Using it is how we will fight.
Using it is how we will win.
—S
Beep.
SHIVER.
Beep-beep.
SHIVER.
Beep-beep.
SHIVERBLINKSHIVERBLINK.
“CHIYOKO!”
An Liu tries to sit, but he is restrained. At the wrists and the ankles and across SHIVERblinkblink the chest. He glances left and right and left and right. His head is killing him.
Killing.
The pain radiates over his right eye and around his temple and to the back of his skull and down his neck. He can’t remember how he got here. He’s on a gurney. Sees an IV stand, a rolling cart with a heart and respiratory monitor. BLINKshiverblink. White walls. Low gray ceiling. A bright fluorescent light overhead. A framed picture of Queen Elizabeth. An oval door with an iron wheel in the middle. A black four stenciled above it.
He can feel the room shift and hear it blinkblink hear it creak.
A wheel on the door.
The room shifts and creaks in the other direction.
He’s on a boat.
“Ch-Ch-Ch-Chiyoko …” he stammers quietly.
“That’s her name, eh? The one who got flattened?”
A man’s voice. SHIVERblinkSHIVERblinkblinkblink. It comes from above his head, out of eyeshot. An lifts his chin, strains at the straps. Rolls his eyes up until the pain in his head becomes almost unbearable. He still can’t SHIVER he still can’t see the man.
“Chiyoko. I was wondering.” He hears the scratch of a pen on paper. “Thanks for finally telling me. Poor girl just got flattened like a pancake.”
Flattened? What’s SHIVERSHIVER what’s he blinkblinkblink what’s he talking about?
“D-d-d-don’t say—”
“S’matter? Something in your mouth?”
“D-d-d-don’t say her n-n-n-name!”
The man sighs, steps forward a little. An can just make out the top of his head. He is a white man with tan skin and a mop of brown hair, straight thin eyebrows, and deep lines in his forehead. The lines are not from old age but from frowning. From yelling. From squinting. From being British and way too serious.
An already shiverBLINK already knows: British Special Forces.
“W-w-w-where—”SHIVERSHIVERSHIVERblinkSHIVER. It hasn’t SHIVER hasn’t been this bad SHIVERSHIVERSHIVER …
The tremors haven’t been this bad since Chiyoko left him in bed that night. His head whips back and forth and his legs shake and shake.
SHIVERblinkSHIVERblink. He needs to blinkblinkblinkblinkblink to see her. That will calm him down.
“Twitchy lad,” the man says, stepping around to the side of the gurney. “You wanna know where your girlfriend is, that it?”
“Y-y-y-y-y—”
An is stuck on the sound. He keeps saying it, his mind and mouth on a loop.
“Y-y-y-y-y-y-y—”
The man places a hand on An’s arm. The hand is warm. The man is skinnier than An expected. His hands are too big for his body.
“I have questions too. But we can’t talk until you’ve gotten ahold of yourself.” The man turns away. He picks up a syringe from a nearby tray. An catches a glimpse of the label: serum #591566. “Try to breathe easy, lad.” The man pulls up An’s sleeve on his left arm. “It’s just a pinch.”
No!
SHIVERblinkblinkblinkSHIVERSHIVER.
No!
“Breathe easy now.”
An convulses. He feels whatever he’s being injected with move through his arm, into his heart, his neck, his head. The pain disappears. Cool darkness washes into An’s brain, like the waves outside, gently rocking the ship back and forth, back and forth. An feels the drug pull him beneath the surface, down into the dark ocean. He’s suspended. Weightless. He doesn’t shiver. His eyes don’t BLINK. All is quiet and all is dark. Calm. Easy.
“Can you speak?” The man’s voice echoes as if it is in An’s mind.
“Y-yes,” An says without much effort.
“Good. You can call me Charlie. What’s your name, lad?”
An opens his eyes. His sight is fuzzy around the edges, but his senses are strangely acute. He can feel every centimeter of his body. “My name is An Liang,” he says.
“No, it’s not. What’s your name?”
An tries to turn his head but can’t. He’s been restrained further. A strap across his forehead? Or is this the drug?
“Chang Liu,” he tries again.
“No, it’s not. One more lie and I won’t tell you anything about Chiyoko. That’s a promise.”
An begins to speak but the man claps one of his big hands over An’s mouth. “I mean it. Lie to me one more time and we’re done. No more Chiyoko, no more you. Do you understand?”
Since An can’t move his head at all, can’t nod, he widens his eyes. Yes, he understands.
“Good lad. Now, what’s your name?”
“An Liu.”
“Better. How old are you?”
“Seventeen.”
“Where are you from?”
“China.”
“No shit. Where in China?”
“Many places.