“Kaĉjo!”

Kaĉjo pulled his eyes from the screen where a recording played, of Deplorable children who had seated themselves in a circle and drew in the sand. Like I draw on the screen. Of course the voice that interrupted him was the voice of Ivan. Who else ever whispered to him? “What is it, Ivan?” Kaĉjo listened for the response, but he turned his eyes back to the children – they stirred some odd sensation in his mind, and he itched to figure out what it was. Besides, Ivan knew better than to stay in Kaĉjo’s dwelling for more than a few kronia. If Kaĉjo had not in a moment of weakness told the younger man about the visions, he would have turn the kid in ages ago.

Not that Kaĉjo really blamed him. After hearing the odd singing himself, it had proven harder to ignore the questions.

First, it had just been a humming tone as an elderly woman stepped out of her dwelling one evening. Next, he had not even known for sure what he was hearing. It seemed to emit from an ANGEL, but like all the humans he knew, Kaĉjo had grown up listening to ANGELs’ songs, and this sounded little like one of them. The tones had pulled him along behind the creature for the length of a dwelling, but he had turned away after hearing only a few lines, afraid of drawing attention to himself.

“Come outside and talk to me.”

Kaĉjo shook his head. “I’m busy.”

“You’d better not be too busy for this.”

Sighing, Kaĉjo switched off the screen, again hating that he couldn’t just ignore his young coworker. Once they had stepped outside and toward the middle of the street, Ivan turned back with raging eyes. “The old man has been talking to me about a hospital,” he murmured.

“A what?” That was definitely different from anything Kaĉjo had imagined.

“A hospital, a place where they take sick people. In our case, they don’t have to be sick. Instead, they collect people there. It’s where they raise the children until they reach majority – somehow I have a vague memory of that. Then, when they need space, if enough people haven’t relented, I think they move them out of the dome and into this hospital. Especially if someone becomes too unpredictable. Remember how Carlos disappeared? And I think I’ve found some reference to it on tablet documents, but they don’t call it a hospital. They call it the Sanitorium.”

Kaĉjo narrowed his eyes. Though he had heard the term in whispers, he had given up its existence when his visions had convinced him of his own insanity. “This is all impossible. Where would they have enough space to ‘collect’ people?”

“Maybe another dome? I mean, they say all the domes are alike, but maybe that’s just true enough to matter, but not 100% true. Maybe they have some other domes that they use for other purposes.”

When he thought about it, the idea held merit. But a “sanitorium”? What did it mean? “What did the old man say about it?”

This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

“Well, he said they took sick people there.”

“There are no sick people in the domes.”

Ivan leveled him a skeptical glare. “I know you’re too smart to believe that. Even I have seen people who fought the Relenting after it was given, and they ended up Broken. Where do they go? The Advocates don’t take them. Maybe the ANGELs do. The ANGELs can’t kill anyone, so where do they go? Plus, my friend seemed to think they brought people from the Dregs in this Sanitorium, too.”

“The Dregs? Impossible. There wouldn’t be enough room in any building.”

“Not in our dome, but I think there’s another dome in our vicinity. The Transit can’t carry live people; it would kill them. So I think the dome is nearby.”

Gritting his teeth, Kaĉjo pressed the thought from his mind. He had enough anxiety with his visions and insanity. “And I think the old man is the broken one. I don’t want to talk about this anymore.”

“Fine,” Ivan shrugged, “but I know you have as many questions about the dome as I do. And I know you’re not happy right now. No one wears that look you’re wearing if they’re happy.”

“What is happy?” Kaĉjo countered, shutting down the conversation by stalking toward the closest clearing to his dwelling. He had his own projects to consider, and they didn’t involve hospitals or missing people or any dome but his own.

His experiments with the chemical levels had at least proven some of his conjecture right – not only had his own unrest increased at night with the lessening of the Sernat, but there had been a slight increase in outbreaks of aggression and Relenting among the people. The chemical affected people’s mood more than any of the other chemicals. An increase in the Lethidine had helped his crazed night visions, but the affect on the rest of the populace – those without his chemical suppressor – had proven less beneficial. There had been an increase in complaints off malaise and headache for days after, and Kaĉjo couldn’t justify doing that to a whole city for his own benefit.

So, how was he going to figure out what was wrong with him?

Something about Ivan sent Kaĉjo into protective mode, wishing more than anything to shut down the kid’s questions. Still, Kaĉjo held as many concerns as his coworker. And apparently another person’s questions spurred on his own. What if there really was a “hospital,” a place where people could go if they weren’t well? What if he could go there and get help for his insane night visions?

If it was connected to his dome, it had to be on the south side – the one with no gate. What kept him from taking a trip over there to look? What kept him was that even with his board, if he skirted around the perimeter, it would take until the middle of the night. There was no direct road around the periphery. Instead, the streets held bends and turns to discourage loitering at the edges of society. He could cut through the center, with the only concern being that he would pass by Benevolence. If any of the other Advocates came out, he would have to provide an explanation he wasn’t willing to share. Dome forbid I run into Channer.

Kaĉjo would try it at some point, though. He would look for the hospital. The visions weighed on him, hovering over his thoughts with the possibility that one day he might mistake the vision for reality, and everyone would know he was broken. He knew how to investigate things – it was what he did every day, monitor and investigate. At least he had a direction for his questions.

Maybe tonight, he decided. Worst that could happen at night was that he might have to provide an explanation to a Mech, and they were much easier to fool than Channer. Maybe he could even throw Channer off when they showed to calibrate the big compressor that night. Willfully calming himself, Kaĉjo suppressed the thought of his plans until he could put them into practice.