The Adjusters Read online

  “Burgundy snails,” Henry said, thinking of his difficulties in French class at Malcorp High. Was this Mallory’s reason for picking the starter? Or was he just reading too much into everything?

  Mallory turned his attention to Blake. “Sit yourself down. You’re late.”

  “Sorry, sir,” Blake said as he took a seat opposite Henry. Wilson melted into the background and they began to eat. Henry had never had snails before and, although the idea of eating something that you might find crawling across a rock in your backyard repulsed him a little, they actually tasted great. Kind of like earthy prawns. As he ate, he caught Mallory casting glances at him and once again felt he was being tested. On the other side of the table, Blake cleared his plate in a mechanical fashion, chewing each mouthful without expression. When they had finished eating, Wilson reappeared and cleared their plates.

  In the break between courses Mallory made small talk about swimming and asked Henry about his last school. Blake sat in silence, neither sullen nor uninterested in the conversation. He was merely blank, as if someone had put him on mute. Mallory was pleasant and seemed genuinely interested in his responses, but Henry couldn’t help feeling the entire thing was leading up to something. That the whole meal…the polite talk…was just a prelude to the real purpose of the evening.

  “We’ll have dessert later,” Mallory informed Wilson as he cleared the main course plates. He patted his stomach. “Give this one some time to settle.”

  “Very good, sir,” the butler said, backing away with the plates.

  Outside, the sun had practically set, casting red light across the floor that softened the straight edges of the room. In the stillness of the evening, Henry thought the place actually seemed inviting – but perhaps that was just the effect of the food. At Mallory’s suggestion, they moved to a set of leather sofas angled to look out over the pool, which was perfectly still and catching the glow of the dying sun. Wilson reappeared and lit candles on a low table in front of them.

  “Very romantic,” Mallory said wryly as the butler disappeared once more. “So, what do you think of my home, Henry?”

  For a moment, Henry wondered if he was asking him about the building or the complex or the whole area, even Newton. Mallory owned everything, after all. “It’s amazing,” he said, looking around the interior.

  There must have been something in his tone that suggested uncertainty, because Mallory added, “But?”

  Henry looked at him and shrugged. “I guess I’m just used to living in the city. Things are a bit less…ordered there.”

  Mallory snorted. “You can say that again. Kids going off the rails on drugs. The effects of vandalism on every street corner. Virtual no-go areas for law-abiding citizens.”

  This was said with such vehemence that Henry didn’t know how to respond. Mallory put a forced smile on his face, but it did nothing to soften the moment.

  “I guess it’s natural,” he went on. “People are weak. They’d rather feed on one another than strike out and make a decent living for themselves. So they turn to crime.”

  Henry frowned. “I’m not sure it’s weakness…”

  “Then what is it?” Mallory snapped back.

  “People have lost their jobs. They’re living in poverty…”

  Mallory waved his cigar-hand at Henry dismissively. “Excuses! My father died when I was six years old, leaving my mom to bring up four kids by herself. Do you think she started thieving? Used her bad luck as an excuse to start taking crack?”

  “No, but—”

  “When I was thirteen years old I dropped out of school and got a job so we wouldn’t be thrown out on the street,” Mallory said. “By the time I was twenty I had a degree in chemical engineering. If I can do it, anyone can.”

  “Not everyone is as strong-willed as you, Mr. Mallory.”

  The man smiled at him and nodded his head, accepting the point. “And that’s the problem, isn’t it?” He turned to Blake, who sat a little straighter in his seat, as if coming to attention. “Roll up your sleeve, Blake. Let’s give Henry a little demonstration of the real power of will.”

  Blake did as he was told without a word. Mallory nodded to one of the candles on the table before them.

  “Hold your arm over it.”

  Henry watched, wide-eyed, as Blake leaned forward, clenched his fist and held his forearm directly over the flame. A smell of singeing filled the air as the hairs on his arm burned away. Blake looked straight ahead throughout, expressionless, eyes unwavering.

  “Make him stop,” Henry said after almost twenty seconds. A horrible smell of burning skin had begun to spread through the room.

  “Why?” Mallory said. “He doesn’t seem to be in any discomfort.”

  “It’s burning him!”

  Mallory looked at his grandson. “Do you feel the need to stop, Blake?”

  “No, sir,” the kid replied, his voice even.

  Henry looked in disbelief as the skin of Blake’s arm began to blister and blacken. Any normal person would be screaming with pain by this point. Blake’s arm trembled and, for the first time, Henry saw his eyelids flicker.

  “Stay strong!” Mallory snapped.

  “Yes, sir!” There was stress in Blake’s voice now. Almost a full minute had passed…

  Unable to take it any longer, Henry jumped from his seat and pushed Blake’s arm away from the candle. As he did so, his own skin came in contact with the flame and pain shot up his arm. He snatched his hand away. Blake rose from his seat, facing Henry down, fist clenched.

  “Enough!” Mallory ordered, and immediately Blake’s expression softened once more. “Go and find Wilson. Get him to attend to that burn.”

  “Thank you, sir,” Blake said, nodding to his grandfather. “Goodnight, Henry.”

  With that, he simply walked away. Henry shook his head and turned to Mallory. “I’m going home now. I’ve seen enough.”

  “Sit down.” Mallory leaned forward and lit his cigar from the same candle that Blake had used to scorch himself. A smell like burning tyres wafted across the table.

  “I want to leave right now…”

  “Sit your ass down!” There was no nicety to Mallory’s voice this time, just a hard command.

  Henry looked at him, but then did as he was told, seeing little other choice. He was in the man’s home and didn’t even know the way out. Mallory had him where he wanted him. He began to seriously regret not fleeing when he’d had the chance.

  Mallory puffed on his cigar and grinned at him, as if reading his thoughts.

  “Too late to run, kid,” he said. “Now let’s talk turkey.”

  “I thought you gave up smoking,” Henry said. His heart was racing, pumping fear-fuelled adrenaline around his body, but he was determined not to let Mallory see he was scared. Suddenly he felt like he was trapped in the very centre of a great web – with the spider sitting right opposite him. All he could do was keep Mallory talking and look for a way out.

  “That’s just what I tell my doctor,” Mallory replied. He rose from the sofa, moving to the window where it was now dark outside. “Tell me, Henry, what do you understand by the phrase technological singularity?”

  Henry shrugged, remembering an article he’d read in Wired. “It refers to a time in the future when supercomputers will start changing technology so fast, we won’t be able to keep up with things. We’ll all end up living for ever in the brain of some machine, right?”

  Mallory sucked on his cigar and blew smoke at the glass. “Something like that. Typical nerd-head thinking: that we’re all gonna merge with our laptops.” He turned back to Henry. “But they are right about being able to live for ever. Just not through building better machines.”

  Henry could tell the man wanted him to ask the question. “How then?”

  Mallory tapped the side of his head. “By building better brains. Better bodies. Neuroscience is the future, kid. I realized that twenty years ago when I began Malcorp. Re-engineer the human brain, put it in an
enhanced body, and you’ve got something that will always be superior to a computer.”

  “That’s what all this is about, isn’t it?” Henry said. “The kids at Malcorp High. You’ve…been changing them.”

  “We call it adjustment,” Mallory said. “And the change is only for the better, let me assure you.”

  “You’re making them like Blake? Robots that will put their arm in a fire for you at your command?”

  “Sure, they’ll do that,” Mallory answered. “But they can also run a mile at the speed of an Olympic sprinter, without getting out of breath. They can learn a new language overnight with a neural download. They’ll never voluntarily choose to do things that are harmful for them, like take drugs or smash their cars off the side of the road.”

  “Sounds like they don’t have a lot of choice in the matter.”

  Mallory sighed and came back to the sofa, sitting opposite Henry. “My own son died of an overdose at the age of twenty-five. Did you know that?”

  Henry shook his head.

  “He left behind a two-year-old kid and a wife, who was heading the same direction as him – to a life wasted by addiction.” Mallory shook his head slightly, remembering. “My son was the product of a privileged lifestyle. I tried to give him everything I never had: private education, opportunities to travel, the best toys money could buy. It was…a mistake. Do you know what it taught him to be? Dependent. An addictive personality always looking for the next fix – whether it was drugs, or booze, or the next car he could crash. When I took Blake from my no-good daughter-in-law, I vowed that no grandson of mine was going to grow up to be a weak-assed…”

  Mallory’s voice trailed away, lost in the memory. Henry studied him, not knowing how to respond to this revelation. He found himself wondering what happened to Mallory’s no-good daughter-in-law.

  Mallory smiled at Henry. “I should have dealt with you the moment you started poking around my medical centre, son. Do you know why we’re having this conversation right now?”

  “No,” Henry said.

  “Because I see a lot of me in you. You’ve had a tough ride, not like most of the kids around here. And you lost your father, just like I did. Your mom told me all about how—”

  “Don’t talk about him,” Henry said, anger rising.

  Mallory held up his hands. “It’s okay. I know he was stabbed trying to stop a woman being attacked on the subway. He was a hero. Someone who wasn’t afraid to step in when he saw something was wrong.”

  “I don’t need you to tell me that,” Henry said coldly. It had been two years since the cops had come to their apartment with news of his father’s death, but sometimes it felt like just yesterday. An open wound that would never heal. It was one thing to listen to Mallory’s insane ramblings about technological singularity and changing brains and his messed-up family, but it was something completely different to hear him talking about Henry’s own father. It felt obscene. “He did what anyone else would have done. He tried to help someone in trouble.”

  “Trust me, there aren’t many people like that any more.” Mallory leaned towards him, becoming even more intense. “Don’t you see, Henry? You’re like him and that’s why I need you.”

  Henry frowned. “What do you need me for?”

  “You saw it yourself,” Mallory continued, “the day you rescued that kid from the pool. Practically every adjusted kid at Malcorp High can outrun, outswim and out-think you, without breaking a sweat. Their enhanced brains allow them to run their bodies at one hundred per cent efficiency. Give them an order and they’ll follow it to the letter. But put them in an unusual situation…and they shut down. We’ve improved just about every facet of their beings, but there’s one thing we haven’t been able to isolate: initiative. And you’ve got that in spades, Henry. So has your little friend at the coffee shop in Newton…”

  Mallory grinned as Henry started.

  “Yes, we know all about her,” Mallory went on. “And we know all about her plan to bring in some half-assed investigative journalist.” He said this as if they were dirty words. “He isn’t coming, by the way.” Mallory paused to register the effect of his last statement, while Henry struggled to prevent his feelings from showing on his face. “I think it’s time you faced facts, Henry. This thing is too big to fight. The land for fifty kilometres in every direction is owned by Malcorp. There’s nowhere to run. Nowhere to go. The best choice you can make right now is to join us.”

  Henry looked at him in disbelief. “You want me to sign up to be…adjusted?”

  Mallory sat back. “That’s right.”

  Henry’s mind went into overdrive. Mallory didn’t want to kill him. He wanted to adjust him! And to Henry, that sounded like a fate worse than death. Somehow he had to get out of the building, out of the complex and to Fox. If Mallory knew what she’d been up to, it was only a matter of time before he went after her too. His best option was to stall Mallory for as long as possible…keep him talking…maybe get down in that underground garage somehow, grab a bike…

  “I’m waiting for your answer, Henry,” Mallory said. “I’m not going to wait all night.”

  A thought occurred to Henry. “Why?”

  “Why what?”

  “Why are you asking me? You scanned my brain during my first visit to the medical centre, right? Why not just…”

  “Take what we want by force?” Mallory sighed. “We could do that. Believe me, we have done that. For the good of the subject and with full parental consent, you understand.”

  “They sign up to have their kids altered?” Henry asked sceptically. “Just like that?”

  “Oh, you’d be surprised how many parents share our views. And I hand-pick workers for the Malcorp complex based on their family history. You know, problem kids…broken homes… Like you and your mom.”

  Henry bristled at this but didn’t react.

  “These are people who are only too willing to accept a solution to their family problems, whatever the cost,” Mallory continued. “They’ve suffered for too long under the burden of badly behaved and low-achieving children. We offer a way out and they’re only too glad to take it.”

  “Right,” Henry said, casting a glance back in the direction of the stairs to the garage.

  “And once the parents are on board, it’s easy enough to persuade the kids to sign up as well. I mean, what choice do they have, short of running away like your friend Gabrielle? Of course, it’s useful if they fully accept that adjustment is for their own good. Parental pressure and advice from our counsellors usually works in the end. We’ve found that a willing subject…one who consents to the adjustment process of their own volition…has a far higher acceptance rate for the hardware upgrades and greater operational efficiency overall. Naturally, those who won’t consent are still put through the process, with reduced operational parameters unfortunately. It’s still a big improvement on how they were before, even if they have the occasional glitch.”

  The occasional glitch. Henry guessed that explained the kid who had flipped out in the lunch room at school. One of Mallory’s less willing subjects, no doubt.

  “Of course, it’s a complicated process and different subjects have different reactions. Not all of them follow the predicted programme at first, but we’re ironing out the problems.”

  “You’re talking about people like they’re machines,” Henry said and found himself thinking of Christian. Had Mallory’s doctors got inside his head already? Had it been done with his father’s consent? Christian’s father had seemed so disappointed with him… Was he just another parent who was deluded enough to think that letting Mallory mess around with his kid’s brain would give him the son he always wanted?

  “But we are machines, Henry,” Mallory said. “We just haven’t been perfected yet. I want you to consent to adjustment, son. I’ve got great plans for you. You’ve got so much more potential than the average kid that comes here. I’m talking about our next-generation implants – the highest level skill sets i
mplanted to complement your unique talents. You’d be a god among men. Hell, one day we might even be calling you…Mr. President. Just think how proud your mom would be!”

  Henry looked at Mallory, trying to process everything he was saying. “You seriously think I’m going to agree to that?”

  “It’s the only way it’s going to work, Henry. We ain’t putting our new hardware in the head of someone who’s going to fight it.” He gave an annoyed sigh. “Hell, Blake and Steve would tear my arm off for this opportunity. Now Blake’s a good soldier, but he doesn’t have the spark to run our newest upgrades to the full. And Steve, well his reaction’s been a little...shall we say...erratic from the start, but then he was one of the first to be adjusted. We’ve made a few improvements since then.” Mallory seemed to drift off for a moment, but then snapped back to attention and pointed a finger at Henry. “I’m offering this to you. Because you’ve got something I want...unlimited potential.”

  Henry tried to hide his disbelief. Mallory was clearly mad enough to think he would go for his proposal. He decided to change the subject, still playing for time. “Where’s my mother? What have you done with her?”

  “Calm down. She’s having a lovely time in a five-star hotel in Chicago. When she returns in a couple of days, she’s going to find a son she’ll never have to worry about letting out of her sight ever again. Who’ll never get in trouble with the law for vandalizing public property in some pathetic show of teenage rebellion…”

  Henry looked away in disgust, but deep down he was relieved. His mom knew nothing about this. “She’d hate what you’re doing. She’ll be able to tell something’s wrong…”

  Mallory laughed harshly. “Really? Or do you think she’ll just be so happy that you’re starting to fit in, get top grades and make friends that she won’t notice anything at all? You’re a disappointment to her, Henry. Given more time, I’d have persuaded her to sign you up just like all the others – most of them don’t ask too many questions about what we really do. Just as long as it works. But you’ve forced my hand with all your running around and plotting.”