It had been ages since I’d seen so many people all in one place. It wasn’t as busy as I would’ve expected—not like airports in the movies, which always seemed jam-packed with people—but then I wondered if that was due to the early hour. Did things like time of day matter in an airport when the whole point was to connect travelers to other places with other times of day?
Suitcases with wheels seemed to be the norm, filling the brightly lit, cavernous space with a dull buzzing sound. I could smell coffee, which sounded amazing, but I couldn’t see any kind of cafe or restaurant. All of the service people looked to be airline employees or security personnel, not baristas or wait staff. I wasn’t even sure if cafes were a standard feature in airports. I couldn’t recall seeing them in any movies.
My stomach rumbled, triggered by the coffee-centric line of thinking. When was the last time I ate anything? Breakfast, yesterday, I realized. Before the package.
My stomach rumbled again, louder this time. As amazing as a real breakfast with eggs and bacon and toast or maybe even pancakes sounded, I would have settled for pretty much anything at this point.
On a whim, I turned my backpack around and unzipped the smaller front pouch. Any time I left the house, Emi was big on making sure I had three things: a coat, a bottle of water, and a snack. I crossed the first two fingers of my left hand, hoping that this time was no different.
The faintest smile touched my lips when I saw the six granola bars tucked into the pouch, right next to a bottle of water. “Thanks, Emi,” I whispered, pulling one of the granola bars free.
I scarfed it down in three bites, then took out the bottle of water and twisted off the cap, gulping down nearly half in one go.
As I lowered the bottle, I spotted Raiden heading back toward me, a set of keys and a tri-folded bundle of paper in his hand.
“Ready?” he asked as he drew near.
I nodded and stood, resettling the straps of my backpack on my shoulders.
Raiden bent over to pick up his bags, transferring the paperwork into his backpack and putting the new car keys in his jeans pocket. He arranged the straps of his backpack and both of our duffel bags on his broad shoulders, and in no time, we were heading back toward the automatic doors. They slid open as we approached, letting in the chilly morning air.
Raiden looked this way and that, his eyes constantly moving as he led the way across the road toward a separate, smaller parking lot. He was on high alert, and it was making me paranoid. I couldn’t shake the feeling that we were being followed. It made my skin crawl and the hairs on the back of my neck stand on end.
Thankfully, my mostly empty belly provided a much-needed distraction. “Can we get something to eat?” I asked, hunching my shoulders and slipping my hands into my pockets. Now that I’d had a chance to warm up from the boat trip, the morning chill felt downright freezing.
“We’ll get something on the road,” Raiden said, his strides long and quick. With my shorter legs, I practically had to jog to keep up with him.
“Something like McDonalds?” I asked, perking up a bit.
I’d never actually visited the golden arches myself—there were no McDonalds in the San Juan Islands and my mom was anti-fast food—but Raiden had long since made a habit of bringing back a bag whenever he returned from the mainland. I’d come to associate the greasy, addictive fast food with him visiting.
“Yeah, sure,” Raiden said, chuckling softly. His laugh startled me.
I frowned, brow furrowing. It took me a moment to figure out why: this was the first time I’d heard him laugh since he’d returned from the military. My frown deepened.
“Unless you want something else?” Raiden said as we entered the rental lot, and I realized his eyes were on me.
I glanced at him, forcing a smile. “No. McDonalds is perfect.” My smile turned genuine. “Besides, I’ve never had their breakfast, and it always looks so good on the commercials.”
My comment earned me another chuckle from Raiden, plus an amused headshake. Two for two. I was on a roll.
“I think this is us,” Raiden said, slowing his pace as we neared a cluster of SUVs. He retrieved the car keys from his pocket and pressed a button on the key fob.
The tail lights on a compact white SUV two cars away blinked twice. A Toyota RAV4, according to the back of the car, and a newer model, from the looks of it. If the plan was to blend in, Raiden had chosen well. Even on Orcas I saw these things all over the place.
We loaded our bags into the backseat, then ourselves into the front. In no time, I was comfy in the passenger seat, butt warmed to perfection and a bag of greasy goodness resting on my lap. I’d let Raiden order for me, having no idea what I might like. The smell of fried food and coffee filled the car, leaving me feeling a surreal sense of contentment. If it weren’t for the mad men chasing us, this could’ve been the beginning of an amazing road tripping adventure, the likes of which I’d only seen in the movies.
I sighed, wishing things were that simple.
“Are we going to eat that food or are did you just want to soak in the smell?” Raiden asked, shooting me a sidelong glance.
My stomach grumbled, and I flashed him an apologetic smile. A big guy like him—with biceps the size of my thighs—was probably even hungrier than I was.
“Sorry,” I said, opening the bag and digging in to the toasty contents. I handed him random things—what looked like a fried potato patty and a “McMuffin” according to the wrapper, which I knew from TV commercials was a breakfast sandwich. “Is that all right?” I asked. “There’s other stuff, if you want—”
“This is fine, for now,” Raiden said around a mouthful of fried potatoes. “Thanks.”
“Mmhmm,” I murmured, reaching into the bag to pull out a fried potato patty of my very own. I sniffed it—it smelled amazing, like French fries, only more fried—then glanced at Raiden. “What is this thing, anyway?”
“Hash browns,” he mumbled, stuffing the remainder of his own hash browns into his mouth. Oh yeah, he was hungry.
I took a tentative bite. It was unlike any kind of hash browns I’d ever eaten, and my mouth exploded with the flavor of salty, golden-fried potatoes. “Oh my God . . .” I swallowed and took another, larger bite. “It’s so good!” I said, talking with my mouth full and not caring at all.
That earned me chuckle number three.
I looked at Raiden, a stupid, close-mouthed grin plastered across my face as I chewed. For a moment, I felt normal. We were just two people on a road trip, sharing a breakfast and shooting the shit. Nobody was chasing us. We weren’t killers. I wasn’t an alien. I wasn’t me. It had to be one of the single greatest moments of my life.
“What?” Raiden said. He grabbed a napkin from the center console and swiped the side of his face self-consciously.
“Nothing,” I told him, contentedly settling back into my seat to finish my meal.
It had taken a full shake-up of pretty much my entire world to shove me out of my existence as an island-bound hermit, but strangely, I wasn’t as upset by everything that had happened over the past day and night as I should have been. And I was pretty sure I wasn’t still in shock. At least, not as deep in shock as I’d been. Maybe running for my life and having to kill to survive was as close to normal as it would ever get for me, and maybe that was all right.
Or, maybe this was just another phase of shock. I didn’t know. And, at the moment, I didn’t care.
I decided to just go with it. To pretend. This taste of normal was more than I had ever hoped for. For now, it was enough.
When the food was gone and we were left with just our Styrofoam cups of coffee, Raiden tossed the paper bag stuffed full of wrappers and greasy napkins into the backseat.
“Can you grab the rental papers from my bag?” he asked. “They should go in the glove box.”
“Yeah, sure.” I turned in my seat and reached for Raiden’s backpack. I unzipped the front pouch and pulled the papers from the rental agency free. Facing for
ward again, I opened the glove box and unfolded the papers, eyes subconsciously skimming the information typed into the fields on the form. And froze.
It was wrong. It was all wrong. The name, the address—everything—was wrong.
I looked at Raiden. “Who’s Michael Greer?” I asked, emphasizing the name. Clearly it was meant to be Raiden. But that wasn’t his name. It wasn’t even close.
Raiden reached across the center console and snatched the papers out of my hands, shoving them into the glove box and slamming it shut. “He’s nobody,” he said. “Just a remnant from another life.” From before, he meant. From his time in the military. “We’ll get you some alternative documentation once we’re in Seattle. It’ll make it easier for us to move around unnoticed.”
Some alternative documentation.
I wasn’t sure what shocked me more—that Raiden had a false ID legitimate enough that he could use it to rent a car, or that we needed to rent a car under a false name, at all. That we’d had to ditch our car. That I would need a false ID of my own. That our situation was too dangerous for me even to have brought my cell phone, in case someone tapped my line or was tracking my cell. That people were chasing us. That we were on the run. That I’d watched Raiden kill people. That I’d killed people.
That my mom’s wild claims weren’t all that wild, after all. That they were, quite possibly, true.
There was no fooling myself anymore. This was no normal road trip.
I turned to stare out the window, lips pressed firmly together to keep my chin from trembling.
There was nothing normal about our situation. About my life.
And part of me was afraid that there never would be again.
13
Pieces of my life that used to make sense simply didn’t anymore. I spent the car ride from Bellingham to Seattle staring out the window, thinking about how much had changed overnight. And wondering how much still might change, depending on how deep I wanted to dive into the rabbit hole opened up by my mom’s journal.
I was other. Alien or something else. I wasn’t human. I may have started to accept my new reality, but I certainly hadn’t processed it, let alone internalized it.
But there was no avoiding one simple fact: from the moment I first donned the necklace with its strange, antique pendant that seemed to glow in a certain light, my condition had ceased to be an issue. Numerous times, I’d come into contact with both Raiden and Emi, and not once had that contact triggered one of my trademark, debilitating episodes. There hadn’t been any hallucinatory visions. No petit mal seizures. No losses of consciousness.
Touch was suddenly, shockingly benign.
Logic told me the necklace was somehow protecting me—that it was the “Atlantean sunglasses” my mom and Emi had been talking about in that long-suppressed memory. But what was it protecting me from? Psychic powers? Clearly, that was my mom’s theory, and Emi seemed to be on board with it, but I wasn’t so sure.
In my mind, belief in psychic powers required belief in such supernatural things as gods and monsters. In magic. I wasn’t remotely prepared to take the leap into the world of belief. Of faith. I wasn’t even sure that was something I was capable of doing.
As the tall buildings of Seattle came into view, peeking over the treed hills and shorter buildings of the city’s northern outskirts, I turned my head to look at Raiden. Neither of us had said much in the hour and half we’d been on the freeway. I wondered if his thoughts were as twisted and tangled as my own.
“Hey, Raiden?” I said, my voice cutting through the silence.
Raiden grunted, his eyes flicking away from the road and toward me for a fraction of a second.
“Do you believe in God?” I asked.
I didn’t. Or, at least, I thought I didn’t. I’d never really considered the idea of the deity—or deities, depending on who you talked to—as portrayed by the world’s many religions with much seriousness. I supposed that was the result of being raised by my mom and Emi, one a secular humanist, the other an atheist and biologist.
Raiden was quiet for a long moment, considering my question. “I believe in humans,” he said eventually, echoing the philosophy we’d both been raised with.
“What about aliens?” I asked.
He shrugged, amusement tilting the corner of his mouth upward. “Why not?”
I chewed on the inside of my cheek. “Even though there’s no real proof?”
Raiden inhaled and exhaled deeply. “That we know of . . . yet,” he said. “Besides, after everything I’ve seen, I know that believing something just because it’s easier or less scary than the alternative—or because it’s what we’ve been told our whole lives is true—is way more dangerous than being open to unexpected or undesirable possibilities.”
He fell silent again, and I thought he was done, but after a moment, he continued on. “The way I see it is this: God and religion—that’s all, for the most part, based on hearsay. On he-said, she-said, my-mom’s-cousin’s-friend word-of-mouth claims. It’s about feeling. About believing without evidence or reason.”
I frowned, considering his words.
“But the idea that there’s life out there, on some distant planet—that’s based on logic. On statistical probability. On science. It’s a belief based on facts, even if the proof isn’t there.”
“Yet,” I added, a small smile tensing my lips.
Raiden tilted his head in a slight sideways nod. After a few seconds, he turned the question back onto me. “What about you? Where do you lie on the gods-and-aliens spectrum?”
I returned to chewing on the inside of my cheek, untangling parts of the messy thoughts filling my head. “I don’t know,” I finally admitted.
If we’d had this conversation yesterday, I would have said I believed in aliens for sure, but not so much in God and that kind of thing. Today, belief in aliens carried implications that were far too heavy for comfort. God was easier. But then, that was kind of the whole point of everything he’d just said.
Intrigued by the depth of Raiden’s response, I looked at him sidelong, tilting my head to the side, just a little, and studied his profile.
Raiden was handsome, I supposed, in an unconventional way. His tanned features were bolder than those favored by photographers and Hollywood alike. I’d had a crush on him at various stages throughout my life, but as I grew older and more introspective, I attributed my feelings to the fact that I hadn’t had much interaction with any other boys. Now, I wasn’t so sure about that. The distance that had grown between us allowed me to view him from a new, somewhat objective lens. He was strong and capable, thoughtful and smart.
And wounded. It was clear that his past haunted him, but that only added to his intrigue. To his allure. I felt drawn to him.
Heat suffused my cheeks as I felt a growing desire to touch him. With my hands. No gloves. Full-on, skin-to-skin contact. For the first time ever, such a thing was possible. That realization deepened my blush, making my neck and cheeks burn hotter.
“What?” Raiden said, glancing at me for longer this time.
I froze, feeling like I’d been caught doing something naughty. In a sense, I had. “I—” I bowed my head, neck and cheeks flaming, and returned to staring out the passenger-side window. “Nothing.” I cleared my throat. “Sorry.”
“Hm,” Raiden murmured. He was letting it go, thank God. Or, thank something.
I shoved the feelings—the desire—into a deep, dark corner of my mind. I was terrified of getting my hopes up, then having them dashed away when the inevitable happened. When touch would, once again, trigger an episode. When this remission from my condition—or psychic powers, or whatever it was—showed itself for what it truly was. A fluke. Better not to get too attached to impossible possibilities.
I stared out the window, excitement tempered by the self-imposed reality check. The blush was long gone, replaced by dull disappointment. By acceptance.
It would be better this way, in the long run.
; Maybe five minutes later, we exited the freeway. It wasn’t much longer until Raiden slowed the car and pulled over to park against the curb.
“We’re here,” he announced, exhaustion lending a monotone quality to his voice.
I leaned closer to the window, ducking my head to get a better look. We’d parked in front of a five-story, seventies-era apartment building—our safe house. Or rather, our safe apartment. It didn’t look like much, but then, maybe that was the point.
I sat on the edge of the queen bed tucked away in the apartment’s lone bedroom, my fingers clutching my mom’s journal. I’d been holding it on my lap since taking it out of my backpack. A solid ten minutes had passed.
I was intending to continue the journey into my mom’s past, but I just couldn’t bring myself to unwind the leather cord and open the book. The temptation to read more was strong, but the fear of doing so was stronger. The fear of what other shocking revelations might be hidden on those pages.
With shaking hands, I set the journal on the nightstand, next to my discarded gloves, and scooted back on the bed to lay down on top of the quilt. I curled up on my side and squeezed my eyelids shut, blocking the journal from view. I was exhausted, tired beyond the point of being able to sleep. I felt wired. Alert, but fuzzy-brained. Confused.
I focused on my pulse thrumming in my neck, on the rhythmic beating of my heart, on the gentle whoosh of air in and out of my lungs. I concentrated on my physical body, isolating each set of muscles, starting with those in my face and working down to my feet, not moving on to the next area until the current one was completely relaxed.
The apartment smelled funny, like the ghosts of cigarette smoke, dirty socks, and wet dog. I wondered if the odor was an apartment thing, or just something unique to this unit. I’d never been in an apartment before, and I wasn’t sure what I’d been expecting, but it wasn’t this. Apartments on TV and in movies were always jam-packed with furniture and décor. With signs that people lived in them. This place was sterile, furnished by a few odd pieces of utilitarian furniture and not much else. The walls were bare. The kitchen counters empty. There wasn’t even a television.
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