JONATHAN

Jonathan had to hand it to the River District security team. He'd barely had time to blink before his father had them slap him in irons and dragged back to their residential unit. It wasn't a kindness that they'd brought him back here rather than the infirmary, no matter what they said when they coordinated for a medic to make a special house call to fix him up yet again. He knew why, it was the same reason he and his father had been sent to the River District colony in the first place. Good old-fashioned damage control.

"How are you feeling?" Captain Singh asked from the doorway and Jonathan had to bite his tongue to avoid making a passive-aggressive comment about the fact that they'd clearly sent in the damage control squad.

"Incredible, never been better." He deadpanned. It always seemed like such a joke to him when they asked him this question. No one actually wanted to know how anyone was feeling, not really. Wasn't the whole point that feelings were too dangerous now?

Singh sighed in the way she did when he was working her final nerve.

"That's no way to speak to your commanding officer, Johnson." She replied evenly.

She was good at concealing her emotions, but Jonathan was better at reading people. The vein in her neck was already twitching which was not a great sign.

"Do you want to tell me, or do I have to tell you why you're in this mess?" Her voice was soft yet there was no sympathy in it.

There were about a hundred things he could have said. There were about a thousand things he wanted to say, but for once he made the smart decision and kept his mouth shut.

"You know why those are there don't you?" Singh said as she came around to perch on the edge of his bed and Jonathan glanced down at his wrists strapped to the bedrails with a pair of silver handcuffs.

"You don't trust me."

"And you don't trust me... or any of us," Captain Singh countered, "You know what I can't understand? In a world of monsters, we, your fellow soldiers, your fellow River District colonists are it. We are it for humanity, the last—"

She must have noticed his eye-roll because she simply squared her shoulders and switched the subject, "You know what the Colonel wants to know."

"Right," Jonathan said, "so why couldn't he ask me himself? He was right here, but oh wait, dear old dad couldn't hang around, could he?"

"Don't test me Johnson, you know the rules as well as I do." Singh said, her irises blazing like tiny embers, "Personal matters are strictly private."

"Emotional matters are private." Jonathan corrected, "And when it comes to him, you don't have to worry. What you really meant to say is that personal matters are avoided, you know, just to keep things nice and comfy for everyone."

Singh sighed and pressed her fingers against her temples as if fighting a headache, "Jonathan, I'm really trying to be patient with you. I know how hard it's been for you since you lost your mom. Everyone copes with loss in their own way, but I understand—"

"No, you don't." Jonathan didn't mean for it to sound so cold, but he couldn't stand the way Singh paraded around pretending to care about him. The words were out of his mouth before he could stop them. "Don't act like we all don't see the way you act when he's around. He's not going to give you a medal or some promotion just because you're nice to me."

Jonathan didn't know for a fact if all of that was true, but by the way the vein in the captain's neck twitched again, it was obvious he'd hit somewhere close to the nerve.

"It's no secret, he's been a Shell since my mom died and you don't have to pretend like he cares—I know he doesn't." He added.

"This is not about your daddy issues Johnson." Singh hissed before quickly recovering her composure, "The Colonel is a good soldier. We need those right now. And if you were a better one, you would tell me what intel you gave the girl and where she went."

Jonathan shrugged and the cuffs around his wrists clanked against the bedrails as his shoulders rose and fell, "I don't know what you're talking about. How would I know where she's going? Probably to look for her family is my guess, and you know what it's a stupid plan anyway because they're probably dead. What do you want from me? I got her trapped in here, so I got her out, that's all."

He leveled his gaze with Singh, daring her to challenge him, "I realized my mistake. I know we can't afford to take on newcomers—we're stretched for resources as it is. If anything, I did you a favour by getting rid of her. What's so important about her anyway? Why do you need to know?"

"This is a matter of security for our entire colony," Singh said, her poker face was starting to slip again as impatience crept into her voice, "You took her to the archives. We know you have a key. Did she take anything? And did she give you any clue as to where she might go?"

"So, what if I took her to the archives?" Jonathan said, "She only ever really needed one piece of information and in all our procedures, we missed the entire point of why Evie—Evelyn was here in the first place! We didn't need to have a tribunal or even the quarantine, all she wanted to know was if her family was here. What's wrong with the fact that I checked, answered that question for her and sent her on her way? We've completely lost sight of what all the procedures here are for in the first place. Isn't our mandate to help—"

"It is to maintain order!" The captain shouted before she could catch herself.

"Order?" Jonathan let out a bitter laugh, "Do you hear yourself? If that's what you think Captain, you are sorely mistaken. Have you even seen the new policy roll-out? First, emotional matters become strictly private and then suddenly all conflicts are mediated by the tribunal. Then, we are only allowed to socialize at designated socials. Then just wait until the next few months when we have to start registering to be in relationships— to get reproductive rights! You know why the Colonel was sent here right? These new policies they have you all sold on are more about control than order."

Singh leveled her steely gaze, "What's the difference? You know as well as I do that our resource situation is dire and people are scared. You know how important it is that emotional matters be policed to keep our people safe. Emotions are dangerous and fear is at an all-time high. Trust me, I wouldn't subscribe to that kind of thinking unless it was necessary. We do what we must to keep our people alive."

"Oh really? How about Ben? What about Martha, huh?" Jonathan's voice was rising as he taunted her, he could feel his emotions starting to get the best of him. It wasn't often he lost his cool but right now the fire in his chest was threatening to burn right through his body and part of him hoped if he went up in flames, it would take the entire colony down with him. "Trust me, I know what's happening here. The kind of place they want all these colonies to be. Some real Last of Us, militarized QZ kind of shit! The Colonel and I both came from there! So, I wonder, did Martha actually kill Ben or were they both just 'collateral damage of the apocalypse?' You know, I still hear those rumors about culling survivors, and it gets harder and harder to call them lies when I've lived them. You all talk about how you feel sorry I lost my mom but here's the thing I didn't lose her. I know exactly where she is. I watched my old man put her in the ground and then watched you all hero-worship him for it."

There was a moment of silence.

"Then how, pray tell, do you suppose we fix things, Johnson?" Singh's voice was unnervingly calm, "If the world is as broken as you say? Our resources are running out and people are scared. What do you suggest huh? See us all become mindless monsters? Join the Serenity Society? Chaos is all around us boy, so forgive me if I don't waste my time on baseless conspiracy theories. We must restore order. You need to wake up and understand that this is the way it must be done. This is how we survive."

"No," Jonathan said coldly, glancing out towards the window where the lightest sprinkle of raindrops had already begun to chase one another across the glass, "This cannot be the only way. We need... something different."

When he turned to face her again, the captain's expression was stony.

"I shouldn't have gotten you all worked up." She whispered, "I'll come back later when you've calmed down."

Singh stood with quiet cat-like agility and briskly walked back to the doorway. The only evidence of her unprofessionalism could be found in the twitch of the vein on her neck.

As she reached the door, she signaled to the medic stationed outside the room to join them. The captain paused a moment, then turned back to consider him. The misleading gentleness was in her dark eyes again.

"You are a soldier, Johnson." She said, "You are not required nor asked to think of something different."

With that, the captain stalked out of the room, closing the door behind her and Jonathan turned his attention to the new medic on shift. They'd sent Sadie or more likely she'd been the only one willing to come. The shadows danced across her olive skin and her dark ponytail swished behind her rhythmically like a metronome as she placed a pitcher of water on the dresser and got to work readying the medicine tray. 

 Jonathan recognized the little white pill as she shook it from its bottle into a small paper cup and placed it on the tray. Sure, he'd missed the mandatory sleeping pills a bit last week whilst he and Evie had camped out at Sunrise Records, but he'd learned something was soothing about just lying in the dark, thinking. It had been less than a day since he and Evelyn had gone their separate ways but watching Sadie place the little pill in the paper cup almost seemed to take away from those moments, he'd spent lying awake watching the rise and fall of Evelyn's sleeping form. The hours he'd spent waiting for her to wake so he could show her the collections of songs he'd been planning all night...

"Figures, they would still enforce curfew even when I'm literally stuck here." Jonathan scoffed lifting his arms and letting the handcuffs clank loudly against the bedrails, tearing his thoughts from the girl who was long gone by now.

"C'mon now, Jon," Sadie said, "It's not the worst thing the General's implemented, is it? Without these little beauties, I don't think I'd ever be able to fall asleep. Just thinking about the state of the world..." She shuddered at the thought, "Terrance says I think about things too much, worry about things too much."

She turned and set the tray down on his lap. Jonathan frowned as he noticed the two blue-green capsules at the bottom of the cup next to the usual sleeping pill.

"To help you relax," Sadie said casually, as she set about filling a glass of water from the pitcher on his dresser.

"Are these those new sedatives?"

Sadie nodded and Jonathan felt an odd lurch in his chest. His body seemed to be fighting two very different feelings. The first was an intense desire to recoil from the tray based on that vague memory of the unsettling sensation he'd felt in the marketplace; the other was an overwhelming urge to take them and slip back into that peaceful, calm feeling of nothingness.

It was strange he couldn't quite remember all of it. He must have passed out or something. Kells must have carried him back to the infirmary because that's where he'd woken up, hours later. It was all still a bit hazy.

He was about to tell Sadie that maybe he'd pass on the pills when she said, "I heard you responded really well to them."

"What?" Jonathan asked trying to hide his surprise, "Did Kells tell you that?"

"Cameron?" Sadie said, "Oh yes. Poor Cameron. I heard he had to chase you because you went running from the infirmary for some reason. Was that your first panic attack?"

"Yes." Jonathan lied.

"Those can be scary, I've heard... and definitely much more dangerous now. I think after the drugs kicked in, you fully chilled out. Walked back to the infirmary with him and everything, thank goodness. Terrance was saying he didn't know what Cameron would have done otherwise. Not like he could've carried you back there with those little chicken arms of his." Her eyes sparkled and Jonathan could imagine that beneath her non-medical mask her cupid's bow lips were quirking into that playful little smile that Terrance claimed had been the reason he'd married her.

"So, what exactly are they?" Jonathan asked looking back down at the little blue-green capsules and struggling to remember exactly what had happened during that gap of time between when he'd gone to the infirmary and when he'd gone to find Evie.

"Serenozine." Sadie said, "Well, that's the generic drug name anyway. You'd probably recognize the brand name... it was a NeuroGen thing... what was it called now? I'm sorry, the name is escaping me."

"Tranquilose?" he asked, hoping that she couldn't sense the underlying bitterness in his voice.

Sadie snapped her fingers, "Yes! That was it! Tranquilose."

"Wasn't that supposed to be the cure for Soullessness?" 

Sadie looked off into the distance thoughtfully, "I suppose it was. The brand name drug was showing some promising effects for treating Sigma symptoms so word around the medical community was they had this whole team of scientists working on it to tweak it from just your average antidepressant/anti-anxiety/sedative drug to a real cure but then—"

"The whole world went to shit."

Sadie sighed, "I wouldn't have put it in those words but yes."

Jonathan stared at the little capsules, etched on the side was a combination of numbers and letters. They reminded him of... no, his memory wasn't that good. It couldn't possibly be, the same code on the cover of Evie's father's journal, could it?

"So..." Jonathan said, rattling his wrists against his restraints again, "you going to remove these now?"

"Not so fast buddy, I got specific instructions to make sure you take these first," Sadie said picking up the paper cup of pills and tilting it from side to side, so they clicked together. She leaned forward and he flinched at the touch of her gloved fingers on his chin as she gently tipped his head back.

Once she'd helped him drink and was satisfied that he'd swallowed, she produced the silver key from her pocket to release him from the restraints.

"Piece of advice, Jon." She said as she watched him rub at his newly freed wrists. Above her mask, her eyes were wide and earnest, and Jonathan tried to reign in his annoyance because there it was, as if on cue, the look of pity in her eyes.

"Don't do anything stupid, okay? It's been hard for you, and I can't pretend to know what goes on in that head of yours—I mean, Lord knows where you disappear to in the middle of the day or where you've been the last week— but I know the tribunal has been in talks to bring back orders to stay within the walls since Ben and Martha...just promise me you won't be stupid and get yourself killed."

Jonathan nodded.

"Sleep well okay." She said softly and he watched as she exited the room, clicking off the light as she went. 

Only once he'd heard the tell-tale sound of the apartment door clicking shut did he lift his tongue and spit the pills into his hand. The rain was coming down in torrents now like someone had started a drum circle right outside his window. He reached up and flicked on his bedside lamp. The sleeping pill was starting to dissolve but the capsules were still intact. Carefully he turned them over in hand. 

There. He knew he wasn't just seeing things. There it was etched into the pill. He was right to think that the combination of numbers and letters was familiar, there was no mistaking it. He got to his feet shakily, the new stitches stung, and everything was still sore, but he couldn't just let things lie, not when he'd told Evelyn that there was a snowball's chance in hell that her family was somehow connected to the cure and yet here was all the evidence. The weird interest everyone was showing in her and her whereabouts, her father's journal in the science records, and now this code... He had to be going crazy. He had to be downright insane to be doing this. 

For a moment he glanced down at the pills again. The temptation to put them back in his mouth and let the comforting, carefree numbness wash over him again was nearly overwhelming. Carefully, he opened the drawer to his dresser and dropped the pills inside losing them in the neatly folded rows of clothes.

Not wasting another moment, he threw on a clean pair of jeans and t-shirt from the drawer. He tugged on his utility jacket which had been hung up on the back of the door. As per protocol, his go-bag was already packed and prepped at the foot of his bed. He slung it onto his back and without a second glance exited his room. 

He needed to find Evie.