Lexicon

yielded slightly, just enough to detect. She sat back on her haunches and thought about this.
    “Now your right elbow, please, Jessica.”
    She crawled across the floor until she reached a wall and followed that to her pile of video cameras. She dragged one back to the box. It was probably catching glimpses of her. She confirmed the contours of the box, the plastic bubble that seemed to encase whatever was inside, and got to her feet and hefted the camera by its tripod.
    “Take off your
sshoesssssch
.”
    She raised the camera.
Like golf
, she thought. She swung and there was a glass explosion that told her she had missed the plastic. She adjusted her grip and tried again. This time she received a more satisfying sound. She put down the tripod and groped at the plastic, seeking damage.
    “Sssssit down.”
    A scratch. A minor deformation. Not big enough to work with. But it was something. It was proof of concept. She got to her feet and raised the tripod again.
    “Put your foot in your mouth as far as it will go.”
    She swung and swung until her arms ached and sweat ran down her face. She dropped the tripod, sure that she would find nothing but shattered plastic, but it didn’t feel as ruined as she’d expected. Her hands moved over sharp plastic edges like rough knives. She began to pry these apart and force her hand between them.
    “You want to run through the protocols again?” the speaker muttered. Then: “Okay. I’ll finish.”
    Her middle finger touched something cool but she couldn’t grip it. She pressed and it bit. “Ow,” she said. “Ow, ow.” It was sharp. Thicker than she expected. Irregularly shaped. She had been thinking
paper
, maybe
cardboard
, material on which a word could be inscribed, but this was neither. She began to work it out between the plastic knives.
    “Jessschica, come over to the walkie-talkie. To where my voice is coming from.”
    The thing got stuck on the broken plastic mouth and she waggled it back and forth. She couldn’t figure out what it was. And yet it felt familiar. She pulled with all her strength and heard a tearing, a ripping that she hoped mightily was plastic and not some vital part of whatever she was withdrawing. Then it popped free. She clutched it, panting.
    “The speaker here has a compartment on the underside. Open this. There are four red pills inside. These are cyanide pills. If you eat them, you will die. It’s important that you know this. If you understand that eating the pills will kill you, nod.”
    She shrugged her denim jacket and wrapped it carefully around the thing. It probably would have been smart to keep track of which way it had been facing, in case it had a good side and a bad side—she was thinking of words written on paper again—but it was too late for that. When she was sure no part of it was showing, she opened her eyes. She was surprised by the room’s size. In her imagination, it had grown enormous.
    “Swallow all the pills.”
    Behind her was the box. Empty, she hoped, of whatever had been going to take away her mind and leave her amenable to the speaker’s terrible instructions. But she was not going to test that theory. She looked at the bundle of jacket. It took an effort to do that. The thing seemed roughly book-shaped, but irregular and heavy. She stole a hand into the jacket and probed at its surface. Freezing. Like metal. She found a little protuberance with vicious edges, and realized this must be what had cut her, so at least she knew which way it faced.
    The door bolts fired. She was out of time. Her fingers traced grooves, rough indentations in a smooth surface, and when her mind tried to piece these together, something thickened there and she withdrew her hand with a gasp. Nausea crashed over her. She felt herself beginning to faint and fought it, because that would be the end.
Here
, she told herself.
I’m right here.
    The room filled with light. A shadow appeared, bisecting the brightness. “Oh, God,” said someone. The tech. She heard footsteps.
    She began to unwrap the jacket. Years ago, in a hidden library at the school, she had read tales of mass enthrallment. Of towers and the splintering of language. Myths, she’d thought. Everything they’d taught her said there was no way to compromise everyone at once. The organization’s words were keyed to particular psychographic segments; that was how they worked. And they did not push a p-graph flat. They did not trigger synapsis. Something that could