Nicknamed The Watercress because it looked like a bundle of zielkithe-reinforced watercress, the Zee Gevangenis Prison stood as a self-sufficient habitat over an underwater canyon halfway within the midnight zone of the North Atlantic Ocean, so deep that only Body Fenglas could withstand the pressures without special suits, and not even the faintest sunlight could grasp those inside. But I was used to lightlessness.

I had always thought Zee Gevangenis would be like a regular maximum-security prison, but it was putrid terror. Vermin nightmares. Wanted to throw up at the water drops and stench that woke me up. Reeked of raw Eugenex. Not as dark as the Bridge, but close enough. And invisible things pricking your skin, sucking your blood every minute. It was raw agony. You wanted to catch them, kill them, but they flickered faster than the light beams of the Bridge. I was fast, but I suppose not as fast as the invisible bloodsuckers. And they even stung your eyes, crept into your nails, your every pore.

But that wasn’t the worst of it. The worse was going insane from trying to catch them. Guess that was the whole point of it. Invisible things whose flap vibrated in your ears, buzzed. But you couldn’t do anything about it. Because you were a prisoner of the steel watercress, a labyrinth of floors connected by stairs whose steps were artificial mounds. So that even marching into your cell tired you. Broke you. So that you would not have peace even marching to your death.

Worse than I had in mind. But I guessed that’s what they wanted. That’s what they thought those inside deserved. Death by drowning. The worst sentence. For the worst kind of criminals. And they had no mercy for those here, those who were in their corrupt hands.

I guessed that was the whole point of the Watercress. Devious bastards. Intelligent savages. So that if you managed to catch one of the invisible pests, whose buzz was torment, you thought you were it, you knew you were it. You knew you were that invisible thing. Worthless. And just as easily as you crushed it with your bare hands, they would crush your body, your soul.

And even revolting critters sliced your veins in your cell. Metaphorically, of course. But also physically. I felt something crawl under my shirt. And not thinking, not wanting to know what it was, must have been a roach of sorts, I hoped, prayed, I just quashed it, as they would quash me. But then it clouted me. Not that I was going to die, not that I had to escape, but something more mundane. Its slimy organs oozing on my torso. I just ripped off a sleeve of my uniform and wiped it off. Not even seeing what I was wiping.

“Is anyone there?” I yelled, so much that it seemed I didn’t even have vocal chords with me anymore. I punched the door, but an electric current strong enough to singe my hand thrust me into the back of the cell. Felt how the bones in my back splintered a tad. But I did not cry. Not because I didn’t feel pain, or even because I didn’t want to, but because I wanted to escape. From the Bridge I knew you could escape. In the Bridge you were in control. In Zee Gevangenis, you depended on others. I guessed that was the worst of it.

I just kept yelling, a yelling I knew was pointless, but that at least made me believe I was doing something. And then I just began to laugh, to laugh not to face the facts, not to face the fact that I could die, that I was going to perish, and that I wouldn’t have been able to fulfill the promise I had made Ellie. To make this a world she’d be happy to open her eyes to.

I sat and closed my eyes, still laughing, but a second later it hit me. And the laugher stopped. Eventually someone was going to open the door to execute me and at that moment I was going to escape. I was certain they weren’t going to let me die in that cell. Those guards, many Enhanceds, and Julius would have salivated at seeing a Natural executed, and if it was a bridger even more, and if it was me, even more.

So I waited, forty days, forty years, it was all the same. For all I knew, it could have been tomorrow, the day after tomorrow, or even yesterday, and not because I had lost the ability to be a human watch, like most bridgers were, but because I just didn’t want to track it. I didn’t want to know how long I had been in that hell, so I did everything in my power not to keep track of time.

That was kind of a funny expression, wasn’t it? To keep track of time, as if time were a train and we were supposed to follow its tracks, or chase its tracks rather. I guessed it was the only thing that is the same for everyone. A minute a minute, and an hour an hour. But now I thought it just seemed funny because I was in prison, in solitary confinement, and I had to distract myself to keep me sane, but not so much that I would lose sight of prayer, the main reason why I didn’t lose my sanity in there.

I paced, stretched, prayed, hopped, exercised, did anything I could to avoid staring at my thoughts, at my doubts, to avoid thinking about those who had perished, to avoid having those gravels irrupt in my mind. They were all alive, they were all alive, they were all alive, despite my thoughts, despite my feelings, despite my—a click then echoed in the cell. The slot opened. And I thought it was going to be a drowsing gas or something like that, but it was a food capsule, a hand that dropped a food capsule. And just then it hit me.

I leaped ahead, snatched it, and hauled back its fingers as if trying to bust the door with them. Someone outside grunted—the first time I had heard an Enhanced ever exhibit pain—and slammed the door right at me. And I didn’t know if it was the Enhanced officer busting the door, or its electroshock, or both, but I ended up in the back of the cell, with a gun aimed at my forehead, and a warden ready to shoot me.

But before he could even fire, the adrenaline and the Holy Spirit helped me stand up and sidestep behind him. The bullet ended up plastered on the wall. As I was going to end up if I didn’t do something. But I didn’t think about fleeing, I just elbowed his upper back. And that was when the consequences of my decision hit me, metaphorically and literally. The warden just sneered and elbowed my thorax with the strength of Samson hurling an Atlas stone. And I landed just in front of another warden. And that was when I knew it was going to be my end.

That warden stepped towards me and aimed at my chest, but then glanced at the other one and said, “You know we can’t kill him yet.” He then kicked my ribs. “No matter how much we want to.”

The other warden sighed. “I know.” He then stepped towards me, seized my shirt, and lifted me. “Let’s see if you can survive 4.2 without going insane.”

And before I could even flex my knees, they hurled me in Cell 4.2, where everyone had gone insane in hours. Nicknamed the Watercress Cell, Cell 4.2 reeked of the stench of death, the stench of Zee Gevangenis, the stench of genetically modified watercress. After the first minutes, my vision blurred, my body weakened, my brain fogged, I even tumbled. And that stench pervaded Cell 4.2. Was that what made everyone lose their sanity? That concoction of artificial watercress, cherry, other plants, and insecticide fumes? It didn’t help that cherry, real cherry, was Ashley’s favorite scent.

I closed my eyes for a second and then opened them. There she was—Almyra. I closed and opened them again. She was gone, but someone else emerged, someone I was all too familiar with.

“You stared right at me and told me you only had eyes for me. But now your eyes are for that girl.”

“Ashley, that’s not … Are you even real?”

She smiled. “Are you not happy to see me? Have you forgotten the moments we spent together so quickly? That day by the bay?”

Was I happy to see her? If I was, that meant I was happy to go insane and retreat to my own personal VirtuaNet. But if I wasn’t, that meant I was sane but that I wasn’t happy to see her. How could I not be happy to see the love of my life? The woman I wanted to marry, the woman I had asked to be my wife that day, that New Year’s Eve.

She leaned towards me. “So, are you?”

Love or sanity? Those were my two choices, and, like many things in my head, both seemed right and wrong at once. There had to be another option, but my mind wasn’t clear enough to think.

“You haven’t answered. I guess you have forgotten me by now.” She stared down at her hands, didn’t even look at me, her sight fixated on her bracelet.

I hugged her. I couldn’t bear seeing her like that, even if she wasn’t real. “Just answer me,” I said. “Are you real?”

“Why does that matter? You shouldn’t let other people’s perception of reality affect you. I might be an apparition, or I might be a figment of your mind caused by guilt or the Zee Gevangenis scent.”

I stepped back. That wasn’t the answer I had hoped for. I slid my hand past my face, hoping that maybe she would disappear, but she didn’t. She stood there, with her warm smile.

“What’s important is that you see me and I see you.”

That phrase struck my mind, my heart, my soul. What if she was right? What if it only mattered that I saw her? What if the only thing relevant was that she was real to me? And she certainly felt real, tangible even.

She stepped towards me and held my hand. “After your execution, we’ll finally be able to live together.” She smiled and embraced me.

After my execution … I wasn’t going to die there. Not even Ashley was going to make me die there. She pursed her lips. “You cannot hide your thoughts from me,” she said. “I know you’re thinking about that girl as well.”

“So then I’m imagining you, if you know everything I know.”

“Perhaps, or maybe I know you too well, unlike that girl,” she said. “Who, deep down, you’re happy she died.”

I lurched back and my skin tightened.

She then strolled towards me, squeezed my hand, and gazed into my eyes. “I know you.” She giggled. “You desire to stay with me, here, forever.”

I didn’t know what was going through my mind, but I just held her hand back. And I was about to stay with her, wherever we were. And I was about to clutch her other hand but my guardian angel stopped me. I’m certain that he did. I couldn’t drop everything and die, even if that meant losing Ashley, forever. So I slid my hand from her grasp. “The real Ashley wouldn’t say that. I will save them, despite what you say.”

She smiled and held my hands again. “If you accompany me, Cael, you shall escape your execution,” she said. “But if you leave me, then you shall perish at their hands, and remain alone, without me, for eternity, and not necessarily where you hope to spend your afterlife, Cael.”

An arctic zephyr gusted my veins. To the point I felt them still. My blood the Cumberland Sound in winter. Did she know something I didn’t? That was ridiculous. She could not see the future, right? But what if she was dead? Heaven without Ashley would not have been the same. Unless she was talking about Purgatory. She must have been in Purgatory, right? Certainly. That’s where she was. Most likely. Not anywhere else. Not where … not in the … what did she mean by her words?

An eternity without my love. … I hadn’t given it that much thought until I heard her say the words. Even the thought of it deluged my eyes. Fire tears I could not force inside.

“Are you prepared for never seeing me again?”

I could not think of the right words. My mind a haze I could not dispel. Jumbled words. Incoherent utterances. Semi-conscious ramblings. All came up short for how I felt. I thought I’d have been ready. I thought after what had happened in VirtuaNet I’d have been ready to answer that question. But I was not. Because I feared the answer. Still did. Thought me weak. That I did not want to be with her. Thought me strong. That I did not want to be with her.

She may not have been the real Ashley, but she looked like the perfect clone. Except that she was no clone. And even if she were, she would not have been the same. Not to mention the ethical implications of dating your girlfriend’s clone, of cloning overall, but I had fooled myself thinking the importance of that question paled in comparison to what was happening in my mind.

But my sanity rested on what I answered. Because whether or not I had Gieves Syndrome rested on what I answered. But it coiled my veins, as if a spiked net had hooked itself to my organs, and constricted them all with a slashing embrace. Because I thought it selfish that I was thinking about Ashley, seeing her even, thinking about myself, when a virus threatened to doom the world, and the Harmonists to purge our home of religion and foreigners. My own life at risk.

But then again, if I could not sort out my mind, I could not save everyone else. If I could not save myself, how could I have saved everyone else? Unless God wanted me to live through the pain, until I had the proper time to deal with the gravels, Gieves Syndrome, everything. Was that it?

The Holy Spirit illuminated me.

“I am not prepared to never see you again, Ashley, but I will not go with you either,” I said. “Even if the Naturals think me a traitor, even if the Enhanceds think me an inferior being, I cannot forsake them. That’s not what my family would want. That’s not what God would want.”

She giggled and let go of my hands, but I could still feel her hands’ softness. “Do as you may, Cael,” she said. “But I know you wish to be with me. I sense it deep within your heart and soul.” She then stepped back. “Ponder upon my words.”

“Do not,” a voice said. Almyra’s voice. She emerged in front of me. “Your family is alive.”

“Don’t trust her,” Ashley shot. “You’re just imagining her.”

“I’m imagining both of you.”

“Would you rather trust the girl who betrayed you than the girl you love?”

“I … I …” I winced. “None of you are real.” I placed my hands on my head. Heart pounding strong. “None of this is real. Nothing. I’m not crazy.” I laughed, trying to keep the tears in my eyes. “I’m not crazy. I don’t have Gieves … I’m …”

Almyra clenched my hands. Soft. As if she were tangible. “Live, Cael,” she pleaded. “For your family.”

Ashley hugged my back. “Don’t let that filthy Achroite sway you.” She then caressed my cheek and whispered into my ear, “Your family is dead. So let’s all be together in Heaven, my love.”

But before I could even utter a sound, stillness engulfed us. Everything paralyzed. Not as in the Bridge. Not as in anything I had seen before. Blades of ice sliced my nerves. I was used to the motion of the real world, the darkness of the Bridge, but not the immobility of Cell 4.2. Guessed I needed movement to be at ease. Even my vocal chords did not react. My body, a statue trapped in a silence that was absolute. A tranquility that hacked my soul into icy shards that calmness shattered. Wanting to move, speak. But nothing worked. Only my breath. My heart. My blood flowing. And they grew louder and louder, as they never had before. Never had I been conscious of those things before. Sweat dropped from my head.

And even the sound of sweat striking the floor exploded in my eardrums. Which led motion back into my brain, but not to those around me. Almyra and Ashley, still fragments of my insa … imagination. I would not succumb to Gieves Syndrome. My family was alive. Or perhaps that’s what I wanted to believe. Perhaps, that’s what Almyra meant. Hope. Naïve hope that my family had survived a raw Eugenex blast. Was I delusional? Probably. But even that was better than losing all faith. I hoped. History did not take kindly to naïve optimists.

I paced around the soundproof cell but couldn’t keep balance and tumbled. I stood up but collapsed again. I lay down. My head crashed against the floor. My breath pounded my ears. My blinking hammered my eardrums. The sound of everything, the sound of nothing shattered my ears. I couldn’t even think anymore. And then the gravels began. But that wasn’t thinking. That was obsessing. And there were no distractions, no sounds, nothing. Only the sounds of my own heart, blood, and sweat. And then the images of Ellie, Tim, my parents, the raw Eugenex blast, Wexford, everything, nothing.

I tried to stand up but then decided to just lie there and close my eyes. I wanted to sleep, I really did, but the sounds of my heart kept me awake. I tried to pray, but the sounds, the images, the mosquitoes of the mind, which then turned into actual mosquitoes, that felt so real that I even developed a sting on one of my arms.

And that was what zapped me back into reality, not that the images and the sounds and the mosquitoes had vanished, but that I knew they weren’t real. I felt they weren’t real. I could pass my hand right through Almyra’s head. Right through Ashley’s arm. It was just the room. I was not going insane. It was not Gieves Syndrome. It was not Gieves Syndrome. Said it so many times that I got sick of the phrase. But deep down, I guessed I thought that if you tell a lie so many times you’ll eventually start believing it. I wanted to think it was just the silence of the cell, the eeriness of its stillness, but a part of me thought it was Gieves Syndrome. And no amount of convincing would make me think otherwise. Not even repeating a lie a thousand times. Perhaps prayer. I just hoped God answered immediately.

At least with the perception of reality I could pray, despite everything, despite the mosquitoes biting me. And then I began thinking I was in the Bridge saving someone, if only to distract myself. Until they shut the cell’s dim lights and everything stopped working. I began to keep track of time in my head. One second. Two seconds. Three. Four. Or six. Seven? Ten? My nerves stung me. My breath felt louder. My heart beat an explosion. The floor vanished. I thought I had died. This was nothing like the Bridge. Almyra vanished. Ashley disappeared. The cell went darker than the Bridge. But I could cope. I would cope. But then ice glaives speared my veins. Saw flames. Burns. Scars. Wails. I knew it was all fake. All an illusion. I prayed for happiness. Peace. But only anxiety swallowed me. Had I died? Why was I hovering? Was I an Enhanced? Did Eugenex writhe in my veins?

I shook my head. I couldn’t give them the satisfaction. They wouldn’t break me. But the walls were shrinking. My skin itched. So much that blood seeped from my scratches. Lest I was imagining my blood. Was I even bleeding? It felt real. But Ashley had felt real. So had Almyra. Until they didn’t. My lungs shut. Couldn’t breathe. I coughed. Blood. Achroite blood. As if I were an Enhanced. Crystallized. My hands turned to iridescent shards of light red. My arms. Horror. My eyes. Everything blurred. A mass of red in my sight. I was alive. It was not happening. I thought of triumph. Joy. My face peeled off. Pain. Massive. Agony. Could not think. But I was alive. Nothing was happening. Nothing was real. Tears. I just lay down. Fell into the abyss of flames beneath the vanished floor. And hoped for the best. Prayed. God was with me. And the strangest sense of peace engulfed me. Because I was taking the leap, trusting God.

And just after I opened my eyes, I was back in the real world. I could breathe normally. The sounds didn’t explode in my ears. But before I could even raise my arms in victory, Ashley materialized in front of me again. But I knew exactly what to say, before she could even utter a sound.

“I won’t listen to you, whatever you are,” I shot. “The real Ashley wouldn’t call the Achroites filthy. The real Ashley loved everyone. Treated everyone the same, regardless of their blood, regardless of their genetic status.”

I knew I had done the right thing, but I still gazed at her one last time.

She just sneered and embraced me. Felt alive, but I wasn’t going to fall for that, even if my veins twisted and guts writhed. Those were lies, and I was going to believe that those were lies, even if the gravels told me otherwise, even if my heart wanted to be with her. Forever in eternity.

Ashley kissed me. “Good luck on your execution, Cael.” And just like she had appeared, she vanished.

I guessed I had survived. I had succeeded. I had defeated Cell 4.2. Thank God. But it didn’t feel like a victory. Felt hollow inside. That I let Ashley die again. That I didn’t really love her. But I did love her. I loved her. I loved her. Right? I just sat on the floor, gazing at the ceiling. And decided to pray.

Jesus, Brother, I don’t understand what’s going on, whether I’m going insane, or whether I have Gieves Syndrome or not, but please help me conquer this trial. Strengthen my faith. Make it at least the size of a mustard seed. And then I added the part that sometimes I didn’t want to say, or think about, but that I knew had to be said. Let Your Will be done. And then I began to pray the Rosary.

Because regardless of Gieves Syndrome, I would escape my execution, escape Zee Gevangenis. Even if my family had not survived, though deep down I believed they had, I would bring justice to those the Harmonists massacred. I would stop the Harmonists and find the cure. I just prayed I did not lose my sanity in the process. I would not. I would not.

Pointless goal if I died of course, which seemed likely, as three days later some guards opened Cell 4.2’s door. The day of my execution had arrived. And I had no idea how to escape.

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