Vox: The bestselling gripping dystopian debut of 2018 that everyone’s talking about!. Christina Dalcher

okay, babe. Just let them do this.”

      With his free hand, Thomas produces a small key. It’s like an elevator key, one of those round, single-purpose gizmos that don’t seem to have a reason for being except in an elevator, a device that brings to mind all the other silly little inventions: can openers, lemon zesters, melon ballers. Things that do only one thing. We have so many of them.

      Where do we get this shit? Bridal shower and wedding gifts, stocking stuffers, spur-of-the-moment purchases at Ikea. They’re all so goddamned useless, hidden in the backs of kitchen drawers, taken for granted and never taken out. This is what goes through my mind as Thomas frees me with the high-tech equivalent of a can opener.

      “You can speak now, Dr. McClellan.” Reverend Carl extends a hand toward my living room, like he’s turned magnanimous host.

      It isn’t the only role reversal today. Everything they want is being broadcast on CNN as the story of the president’s brother’s skiing accident unfolds. As further details are reported—posterior left hemisphere, alert but uncommunicative, babbling—I know what else Reverend Carl and his crew want.

      They want me.

      If it were Anna Myers who had skied her way off-piste into a tree, I’d be out the door without a second thought. Although I doubt there would be any SUV-driving men here if it were the president’s wife lying in an intensive care unit.

      “What do you want me to say?” My words come out slowly, tentatively, while I move out of the kitchen, past the television—which I click off—and over to one of the wing chairs. I don’t want to have to share space with any of these people.

      “Hot in here,” Reverend Carl says, glancing toward the fridge with its built-in water and ice dispensers.

      “Yep,” I say.

      One of the other men, not Thomas, coughs.

      I take the cue. “Patrick, why don’t you get our guests a glass of water, hon? Since you’re right there.”

      He does, and neither of us misses the slight shake of Reverend Carl’s head. I’m the wife. I should be the one serving.

      “So?” I say. “Sounds like Bobby Myers might have brain damage. Locus?”

      Reverend Carl arranges himself on the love seat opposite my chair. “You’re the medical man, Patrick. Show her the reports the hospital faxed over this morning.”

      My husband, who is on a first-name basis with the individual who single-handedly put that metal cuff on me, comes into the room with a tray of water glasses and a slim folder. He stops in front of me before passing around the drinks. “I think you’ll be interested in this, Jean.”

      And I am. The first page is all text, and on the second line my eyes find the reason for Reverend Carl’s unexpected visit: lesion in posterior section of STG. Superior temporal gyrus. Left hemisphere. Patient is right-handed, therefore left-brain dominant.

      “Wernicke’s area,” I say, to no one in particular. As I read on, my left arm feels light, and there’s a band of paler skin around my wrist, as if I’d taken off a watch before diving into a pool. One of the Secret Service men—I’m assuming that’s what they are, given Carl Corbin’s presence—rubs his own wrist. He wears a plain gold ring on the fourth finger of his left hand. So he knows. What camp he’s in isn’t clear; like Patrick, they’re all trained to follow along, rather like puppies.

      Reverend Carl nods. “The president is very concerned.”

      Sure he is. I think Mr. President relies on his older brother quite a bit, and he is going to have one hell of a time getting information either to Bobby or from him. Pieces of future conversations play themselves in my mind:

      There’s a situation in Afghanistan, Bobby, the president will say.

      Bobby’s response will sound something like Nice twinkles for your banana flames. His speech will be precise and fluid, each syllable articulated perfectly and without hesitation. What comes out will be absolute gibberish: not code, not broken speech, but the ramblings of what we once called an idiot—in the clinical sense of the word.

      It’s all I can do to keep from smiling. I have to bite the inside of my cheek—hard—to maintain the proper visage of seriousness, of concern, of duty.

      I flip through the other pages. The MRIs, or magnetic resonance images, show a substantial lesion exactly where I expect it, in Brodmann area 22. “This was from a skiing accident?” I say. “No indication of prior damage?”

      Of course they don’t know. Thirty-four-year-old men aren’t in the habit of having brain scans, not unless there’s cause.

      “Did he suffer from headaches?”

      Reverend Carl shrugs.

      “Is that a yes or a no, Reverend?” I say.

      “I don’t have that information.”

      Now I turn to Patrick, but he shakes his head. “You have to understand, Jean, we can’t release the president’s family’s medical history.”

      “But you want me to help.”

      “You’re the country’s leading expert, Dr. McClellan.” Reverend Carl has stepped in, or leaned in across the coffee table. His face, all sharp lines, is inches from my own. There’s something anime about him, but he’s still handsome. He’s still wearing his suit jacket, despite the heat, but under the fabric is a solid frame. I wonder if women like Olivia King are secretly in love with him.

      The chance to correct his tense is too good to miss. “Was,” I say. “I don’t need to tell you I haven’t worked for the past year.”

      Reverend Carl doesn’t react, only sits back and steeples his hands together, his long fingers forming a perfect isosceles triangle. Maybe he practices this in front of a mirror. “Well, that’s why we’re here today.” He pauses, like he used to do during his televised sermons, a bit of extra razzle-dazzle suspense-building effect.

      But I already know what he’s going to say. My eyes wander from his to Patrick’s to the other men in the room.

      “Dr. McClellan, we’d like you on our team.”

TWELVE

      On our team.

      A hundred responses bubble up inside me, ninety-nine of which would mean forced resignation—or worse—for Patrick. But anything approaching agreement or eagerness will never make its way through my brain to my mouth. Instead of excitement, I feel a gut punch of pain, as if Reverend Carl just reached out with a claw instead of words and bored into me. They might need me, but need is different from want. And I don’t trust any of these men.

      “Do I have a choice?” I say. It seems safe.

      Reverend Carl unsteeples his hands, separating them into a saintlike gesture of prayer. I’ve seen him do this before, on television, when he’s asking for help, for more Pure Women and Pure Men and Pure Families to join his fold, for money. Right now, those hands seem more like the sides of a vise ready to squeeze me until I burst.

      “Of course,” he says, his voice overgenerous and falsely kind. “I know how you must feel, how leaving your home and your children to go back into the daily grind must be—” He searches for a word as his eyes search my house. There’s clutter and mess everywhere: three pairs of my shoes where I kicked them off last week, dust on the windowsills, an old coffee spill on the carpet next to his shoes.

      I’ve never been an ace at housekeeping.

      He continues. “We talked to another scientist, Dr. Kwan, in case we need a backup. You know her, I think.”

      “Yes.”

      Lin Kwan is the chair of my old department. Or was, until they