Lexicon

blackened, the crevices between them oozing pink fluid. She took Harry’s hand and it hurt but it felt better, too. “When he’s awake, help me get him to a car. We don’t want anyone to see us. You have to get us out of here and not let anyone stop us, understand?”
    “Yes,” said Neiland.
    He made a noise. She peeled one of the white circles from his eyes and then the other. His eyes moved beneath the lids. “Harry, wake up.”
    The door opened. She turned. In the doorway stood a soldier she hadn’t seen before, a young guy with a buzz cut. His eyes were focused and intent.
    “Oh, shit,” she said. “
Vecto brillia masog vat
, don’t let the guy near us.”
    The soldier ran at them and Neiland moved to intercept. They exchanged flat, wordless blows and fell to the floor and Neiland got him in a headlock and began to wind surgical tubing around his throat. Emily was surprised and impressed by Neiland’s badassery. She returned her attention to Harry. He was swimming somewhere beneath consciousness like he was under glass. “Harry, please wake up. You have to wake up. I can’t get you out of here by myself.”
    Neiland and the soldier crashed into a trolley, scattering surgical equipment. The soldier got free of Neiland and his eyes fell on Emily. She abruptly saw that this wasn’t going to work, her whole escape plan; this guy was going to knock out Neiland and throttle her and Harry, or not even that—the noise alone would bring more people than she could handle, people and soldiers and Plath. She felt panic. “Kill him!” she said, because maybe Neiland wasn’t going full throttle. It seemed to make a difference, because Neiland picked herself up and punched the soldier in the throat in a way that dropped him immediately. “Kill everyone who tries to stop us,” Emily said, and something in her mind leaped, and she realized what she’d said.
    She felt undone. She felt the realization sinking into her: that she had finally done it, found a way to screw up so badly there was no way back. She had gotten a star in her eye. There were who knew how many people dead in Broken Hill and Yeats had put instructions in her head and she had carried them out. She couldn’t believe, in her core, that she wasn’t responsible. She had killed people and now there was a star in her eye that wanted her to kill more.
    “I’m sorry,” she told Harry. She began to cry, partly for herself and partly for Harry, who had tried so hard. Neiland and the soldier grunted and gasped. Emily leaned over and kissed Harry on each eye. “I love you.”
    His eyes moved rapidly, as if in REM sleep. She hesitated. “Harry,” she said. She saw a response, a tiny neuroelectrical spark. It reminded her of DC, when she had sought out examples of psychographic segments and tested word fragments on them. Back then she had reverse-engineered entire words.
    Harry was immune. But maybe he was only immune to the words she knew about. Maybe he was nothing more than a slightly different kind of machine, a psychographic segment of one, which the organization hadn’t targeted only because they didn’t know about it.
    “
Ko
,” she said. She watched his eyelids. “
Ka. Toh.
” She knew him very well. She understood which movements were his. “
Kik.
” A muscle above his lip jumped. She almost gasped. Her mind moved with possibilities, sifting conjugations. “
Kik
,” she said again, to be sure.
    The soldier gargled. She glanced down and saw that his face was purple. Neiland was choking the life from him. She returned her attention to Harry, ignoring everything except the forty-eight muscles around his eyes. She fed him sounds. She built her way to an attention word and that was a good start but not enough. She didn’t know how much time was passing. She focused on the words.
    None of this was going to save her. She knew that. It was too late for her, and had been from the moment the door to the paramedic van had bounced open and reflected the bareword. But it was not too late for Harry.
    When she was done, she touched his face. “Harry,” she whispered. “
Kikkhf fkattkx hfkixu zttkcu.
”
    He changed. She had seen people fall under compromise a hundred times but never him and a part of her died to see it, his face slack, his mind open and waiting for instruction, his soul reduced to machinery. She could say
run away with me
and
do everything I ever tell you
and
love me forever
and he would. She would be loved by the thing