Dead Space - Catalyst

When he was young, Jensi Sato had no idea that anything was wrong with his brother. Istvan had always been the way he was-always a little off, obsessed with patterns and numbers, entranced by shifts in light, prone to sudden fits of rage or mental absence. Or he had changed so gradually that Jensi, around him every day, hadn't noticed how different he had become.

As boys, they roamed the projects together, raising hell, heads always aching from breathing the thin, imperfect atmosphere of the dome they lived in on Vindauga. Really, it was Istvan raising hell and Jensi, younger, following along. But Jensi was glad to be included. And even if he didn't always quite understand why Istvan did what he did, he did want to get out of the house, did want to get away from their mother.

By the time he was in his teens, Jensi had begun to see how different Istvan was. His brother wasn't like other people. Most of the time, he didn't know how to talk to other people, and when he did the things he said didn't have the effect he thought they would. He saw how the other boys looked at Istvan strangely, how they drew away from him, then from both of them. Soon Jensi and Istvan were pretty much left to themselves.

It wasn't as easy as saying that Istvan wasn't normal, because in basic ways he was, more or less. He could get by if he had to, could usually make his way through brief and ordinary interactions without a tremor. But the more time you spent around him, the stranger he seemed. He lived in his own world, always getting caught up in the shapes and patterns he saw around him-patterns that Jensi often couldn't see. Istvan grew frustrated with other people quickly. He was less able to pay attention to others. It never occurred to him to care what other people thought of him, and he also wasn't afraid. Really, the only person he ever listened to was Jensi, and he only listened to him sometimes, only reluctantly letting himself be coaxed out of real trouble.

*   *   *

At age twelve, Jensi was out with Istvan, wandering through the compound where they lived, searching for something to do. The Mariner Valley compound was kept separate from the larger domes that comprised the rest of the town by a tube, and it was only later that Jensi realized this was because they lived in low-income housing into which all the undesirables on Vindauga were pushed.

That day, there had been a half dozen children a few years younger than them crouched near the outer wall of the dome, near a place where the inner wall had been cracked and rendered opaque. There was a slow leak there, quickly compensated for by the dome's oxygen protocol. The kids kept daring one another to get close to it. Holding their breath, one of them would run to the dome wall, touch the opaque section, and run back. The others would slap him on the back in congratulation and then would push at another boy until he did it, too.

"What kind of game is that?" asked Istvan, directing the question to none of them and all of them at once.

Most of the boys just ignored him, looking away as if they hadn't heard. One, the biggest, just shrugged. "Just something to do," he said.

"But it's not even dangerous," said Istvan. "How can it be fun pretending something's dangerous when it's not?"

Jensi put his hand on his shoulder. "Come on," he said. "Leave them alone. Let's go."

But Istvan shook the hand off. "Don't you want to play a real game?" he asked them.

Defensive, the leader of the boys said, "It is a real game."

"No," said Istvan. "It's not. You can't just run up close to it and run back. It's calling you to perfect it. That's the game it wants to play. Can't you see the shape is wrong?"

"It?" said one of the boys. "What do you mean?"

Isvtan gestured toward the damaged section of dome. The boys glanced that way and Jensi followed their gaze. What would make the shape of it right or wrong? he wondered. What was Istvan seeing?

"Do you want to see a real game?" asked Istvan.

The boys stayed huddled together, arms crossed, silent.

"Come on," said Jensi again to his brother. "Let's go."

"It doesn't matter if you want to see or not," said Istvan. "It wants to play." He leaned forward, locking his arms behind his back. He pawed the filthy ground with his feet and then, suddenly, screaming, he charged.

The group of kids scattered. But he wasn't aiming at them. He rushed past them without a glance and ran smack into the opaque portion of dome wall, his forehead striking it hard. Jensi felt his heart leap in his throat.

There was a hiss, and the cracks worsened, the shape of the opaque section expanding, but the plate, luckily, did not give. Istvan, though, did give, collapsing in a heap, his forehead smeared with blood. The scattered boys re-formed and stood huddled at a distance. Jensi ran quickly forward, knelt beside his brother.

"Istvan?" he said, shaking him. "Istvan? Why would you do that?"

Blood dripped slowly from his forehead. For a moment Istvan's eyes were glazed and loose in the sockets, and then they slowly focused on his brother. And then he smiled and let his gaze drift back to the opaque part of the wall. "There," he said. "Now the shape is right. Now we know what's really there."

*   *   *

Jensi had tried to ask him about it later, but Istvan had been unable to explain in a way that Jensi could follow. Istvan's brain was always hunting for patterns, always making connections that Jensi had a hard time seeing himself. Istvan had seen the crack in the dome and had known, he claimed, what he needed to do. The crack had called to him. He knew what it wanted him to do and what it would take to make it whole.

"What the hell's that supposed to mean? Make it whole?"

Istvan had tried to explain, but he just couldn't. His attempts at making sense of his thinking for Jensi just led him further and further into confusion until Jensi finally stopped him.

"Look," he finally said. "You sound crazy. You shouldn't tell anybody this."

And for once his brother listened, and stopped talking. Which made it so that any hope that Jensi had of figuring out what Istvan meant was drastically reduced.

*   *   *

When Jensi was fourteen, a group of girls chalked on the ground an old game one of them had read about in the vid library: a series of numbered squares, all connected, that you had to hop through, skipping squares according to a predetermined pattern. The girls were standing around the game, arguing about how you knew which squares you had to skip. Istvan, though, had been drawn by the numbers in the squares, his head rapidly swiveling from one to the next. He had simply walked through the group of girls, almost as if he didn't notice them. He knocked one of them down, scattering the handful of rocks they had gathered, crushing the chalk. The girls were yelling at him, the one on the ground crying and holding up her skinned elbow accusingly, but Istvan was now standing over the squares. Gingerly, he stepped into one, then leaped into another, then leaped back, following a complex pattern that only he could see until with a final leap he came to the top of the game and stepped carefully out again.

Once out, he stopped as if paralyzed. He stared at the uneven ground past the game. Jensi, not knowing what else to do, went to him.

"That was mean," he said.

But Istvan didn't answer. Instead he squatted and brushed his finger along the ground, tracing an irregular shape on it.

Angrily, Jensi batted his brother's shoulder. "Hey," he said. "Why did you have to be so mean to them?"

"Don't you see it?" said Istvan. "How they drew the right pattern and then it led me here?" He traced the shape again, his eyes gleaming. Jensi, squinting, could barely make out what Istvan was looking at, an unevenness in the ground, a tusk-shaped discoloration that made the ground just slightly different. "It's perfect," said Istvan, and reached down to stroke it again.

"Istvan," said Jensi. "What's wrong with you? It's just the ground."

"Huh?" said Istvan. "What?" It was like he was coming out of a trance. Quickly he stood up. Then he turned and looked back at the girls. They stood with their hands on their hips, still angry, though no longer yelling. "What's wrong with them?" he asked.

"You ruined their game."

"I did?" said Istvan. He seemed genuinely puzzled, as if he really didn't remember. He stayed staring at them a moment, then his features grew hard. "They didn't know what they were playing," he claimed. "I'm the only one who knows."

*   *   *

Jensi thought of the many times he had woken up in their bedroom late at night to hear his brother. Istvan would be mumbling, talking in his sleep, but the same pattern of words would be repeated over and over again, endlessly. Or he would be sitting on the edge of his bed, somewhere between sleep and wakefulness, rocking back and forth, rattling about a sequence of numbers, his voice almost worshipful. He was like that; he loved numbers and patterns, could get lost in them. They were almost like people to him, but people were less interesting. He also seemed to pick up things naturally about computers, had been hacking since he was nine, and had taught Jensi how to do the same. But here it was numbers, mumbled,...