The Nobody People by Bob Proehl (manga ereader TXT) 📕

want me to address ‘issues related to criminality’? You are, each one of you, a crime against God. I am, too.”

He flickers out again, and Fahima understands where she’s been wrong. He doesn’t lack the control to maintain his Hivebody. He’s going back and forth, conscious in the real world and dropping in on this meeting. He’s there while they’re all here.

“What did you do?” she asks.

Adkins ignores her. He puffs up his chest. “Gentlemen,” he says. The word drips with contempt. “You map out the stars and build castles in the clouds. I’ve been doing my goddamn job. I asked the president to call a special session of both houses to introduce my internment bill. The Adkins Act for the Protection of Human Life. It passed the House right around when your towelhead friend here showed up. Passed the Senate just now. One of my pages is going to run it all the way to the president’s desk. Our human colleagues understand the threat. They have shown the bravery to act.”

“Jesus, Frank,” Quinn says. “You set us up?”

“I hope each of you will submit yourselves to the proper authorities as an example to your fellow citizens,” Adkins continues. “I’ve read about the enactment of Executive Order 9066. The resolve of our Japanese citizens to quietly accede to the demands of their government in a time of war gives me hope and strength. We are in a time of war. We should do no less.”

“Who the fuck are you speechifying to?” Fahima asks, grabbing his arm. It burns her hand, and she pulls it back.

“Don’t you fucking touch me.” He smooths the lapels of the suit his Hivebody wears as if it is actual cloth. “I’ve given your names to the Department of Homeland Security,” he says to the other men. “They will be tasked with implementing the Adkins Act. You should each expect a visit soon.”

“Did you out yourself, too?” Lowery asks. “They know what you are, Frank. They saw you on television.”

“I know what I am,” Adkins says, baring his teeth like a cornered animal. “And I’d rather be nothing than be this.” His skin glows blue like the cone flame of a Bunsen burner, and thin wisps of smoke snake from his cuffs and collar. The other congressmen gape, unsure what’s happening. Even Fahima isn’t convinced she could be seeing what she’s seeing, a Hivebody representing what’s happening to its owner’s physical body. Frank Adkins’s face takes on an expression of religious ecstasy as he lets his newborn ability loose, immolating himself in a blaze of azure heat.

Within the hour, there are leaked photos on the Internet of the scorched desk chair in Adkins’s office. A pale pile of ash flecked with the charred remains of bones and teeth rests on the burned leather. It spills onto the floor around the chair, tracing pale runes on the seared Turkish rug.

When Fahima came to Bishop as a fifteen-year-old, she was impressed by the liveliness of the place. It felt like a community, vibrant and engaged. There were cliques and social castes as there are in any high school, but the boundary lines weren’t as thickly drawn. They were permeable. At a level above all of that was an understanding that in this place, they were all on the same side. This is the power of a common enemy.

This morning as she makes her way through the halls, Fahima has the sense that as the threat from the outside grows more concrete, the unity within the academy is breaking down. The students retreat into themselves. They regard one another warily even though the danger won’t come from their classmates. It may be temporary; the shock of the internment law is new, the implications barely understood. The news reports roundups across the country. Facilities were waiting for occupants, equipped with supplies and racks of inhibitor lights. Secure in the rightness of its action, the government released the names of the camps. Topaz Lake in Nevada. Holiday Home in Wisconsin. Alta Mons in Virginia. Half Moon in Massachusetts. Camp Wakpominee upstate. The names sound so innocent. But Dachau and Treblinka were just towns before they became part of a language of genocide. In a hundred years, Resonant kids may hear Holiday Home in a history class and shudder at its implications. If there are any Resonant kids in schools in a hundred years.

And there are camps they don’t talk about. Ones without names.

Even Fahima, who understands her government’s capacity for cruelty because she’s seen it firsthand, held on to a belief that this wouldn’t happen, that it would be stopped either by her efforts or through a grace she was fairly sure didn’t exist. She hopes the students don’t give in to fear and despair, that the individual protective clenched fists will ease open and an instinct toward solidarity will kick in. She’s not convinced they’ll survive if it doesn’t.

The gym doors are locked, and she can hear Patrick’s voice inside, berating the student he’s tutoring. He’s been burning it at both ends, and it’s turning him meaner than usual. He and Kimani dart across the country, trying to help new Resonants whose abilities present a danger to themselves or others. It’s not a matter of ill intent, although there are those problems. It’s a matter of control. Fahima’s made a dozen more inhibitor bracelets for the worst cases. It’s a stopgap. When things calm down, Patrick will help ease these people into their new selves, teach them to rein in what they can now do. But if putting the clamp on some kids’ powers for a couple weeks keeps them from going full Owen Curry, well, there are forms of oppression Fahima’s made herself comfortable with.

There have been accidents. Fahima keeps a list, names of the dead. These are mine, she thinks to herself. These are on my tab. She wonders if Alyssa keeps the same list. She knew immediately