Redemption Prep - Samuel Miller Page 0,101

and white-hot pain shot through his brain, starting at the exposed wounds and sizzling to the back of his neck. After a half second, it was gone.

The video was still playing, but felt quieter, duller, slower after the shock. Emma was talking now, but Evan couldn’t pay attention to her. Another shock came, and he lost control of his body, shaking the chair violently with him. It settled back into the video, but less than ten seconds later, there was another shock, brighter and louder.

The video continued for what felt like a lifetime, the shocks getting more and then less consistent, and finally, the tape ran out, the video froze, and the screen turned off.

Dr. Richardson frowned at the computer in front of her. “Your emotional response is . . . very small, in terms of neural activity.” She looked across a few more glowing green charts. Evan could still hear the machine behind him, humming at the ready. “Exactly what I expected. You’re incapable of emotional response.”

Another image of Emma popped up. She was wearing her yellow cardigan, sitting alone, this time in front of Dr. Richardson’s desk. She was scared.

“We’re going to go again, you ready?” Dr. Richardson asked, and marched across the room to another station.

“Wait!” he shouted, and to his surprise, she listened, pausing at the machine. “D-don’t waste me. T-teach me.”

She smiled. “Evan, you’re the furthest thing from a candidate. Your intellect is fine, but physically? Emotionally? You’re primitive.”

“N-no—I’m not—”

“Being good at chess doesn’t make human beings evolved, Evan. Intellect isn’t the only thing the Alohim have mastered; our ability to feel is what drives us forward. You have none of that. You’re completely incapable of empathy. It has to be explained to you, and even then, you can’t internalize it. It’s so impossible for you to grasp, it blocks your speech!”

Evan tried as hard as he could to swallow his stutter. “Yes, I can.”

Dr. Richardson let out a small, pathetic laugh, then turned back to her desk.

She pressed the button, and the video began to play. He tried to think about her, he tried to muster an emotional response. He focused completely on the only image that had occupied his head for the last three months. Though every nerve on his body felt charred with pain, in his hand, he tried to feel Emma’s hand.

“You’ve been obsessing over her.” Dr. Richardson flipped through notes, recordings of their sessions, he was sure. “But you don’t have any emotional reaction to seeing her?”

On the screen, Emma started to cry. She was ducking for cover, shielding herself from whoever was behind the camera. It was the day she’d described in the chapel; the day Dr. Richardson took up torturing her.

“She’s hurting!” Dr. Richardson screamed wickedly. “What kind of person can be so devoted to something, and then completely discard its pain! You’re an ape!”

He stared at her, just as he had the photo in the center of his wall for countless nights, and realized what Zaza had tried to tell him, what Neesha had tried to tell him, what Emma had tried to tell him—he didn’t know the person staring back at him.

She didn’t know him, either, and she didn’t need him. She wasn’t waiting for him or crying out for his help. He’d spent five months thinking she was his route to salvation, and he’d failed, not because he failed to save her, but because the mission was never about her in the first place. The poem wasn’t ever hers. It was just words.

I’ll hold your place next to me, eternally, endlessly. It was just words.

This world was never big enough, but you still tried to make a place for me.

Dr. Richardson was watching him. “Is there something else?”

Evan tried desperately to avoid eye contact.

“Wait,” she said, rushing back over to her clipboard. “Oh, I know.”

She pressed several buttons, and the screens flipped. It was dark, the camera stuttering as it entered a room. It took Evan a moment to realize where they were, light from the window flaring the lens, then settling over a milk-white curtain, a single folding chair, and a bed, with a woman lying in it—a hospital room.

Evan swallowed. The camera took several steps closer, craning around her face and landing just below her chin. It was Mom, and she wasn’t moving. He couldn’t tell if she was breathing.

“There’s some response!” Dr. Richardson clapped a few times.

The first flash of electricity hit him squarely in the temples. His body recoiled.

“Stay present, Mr.