Inalienable: Book 7 of the Starstruck saga

by S E Anderson

  I hadn’t even realized that my confidentiality would be breached like that. A shiver ran through me. Of course, it would be, dumbass. You got caught taking the law into your own hands.

  “You stopped going to see her,” said Smith. “And, from what I gather, it was quite sudden.”

  I’d gone on a week-long space adventure where Nimien was sacrificed to the sun and Zander “abandoned” me in my kitchen. I needed time to process, and it wasn’t exactly something I could talk about openly with Dr. Lansburgh.

  Except.

  I could tell all of this to Smith. She was impartial—already thought I had lost the plot or was making all this up. She could be the one to give me the help I need.

  Unless she was working for the Agency.

  I let out a heavy breath. “I had just seen Zander again. I didn’t feel able to talk to her for a little while.”

  “Understandable. Faces linked with memories of trauma and loss can oftentimes trigger intense emotion. Tell me about your relationship with his brother. He was a work colleague?”

  “Oh, they’re not brothers,” I said. “Zander’s immortal. It’s the same person.”

  She scrubbed quickly on her notepad. Any faster and it might have caught fire.

  “You told the police he was Lysander Smith’s twin brother—Zander and Xander?”

  “They wouldn’t have believed us,” I said. “We needed an excuse for why we didn’t have a zombie on our hands.”

  “Which he is. A zombie, I mean.”

  “If you adhere to the living-dead definition, sure, but he doesn’t eat brains, if that’s what you’re asking. But don’t worry, I kept him out of trouble. Helped him make friends.”

  “Fascinating.” A smile slid up her lips. But I wasn’t going to stay here long enough for her to get a book deal out of this. “Tell me about how you two met, then.”

  “Well, he was my roommate, at first. We ended up getting hired at the power plant together because my at-the-time boyfriend was trying to impress me with his connections.”

  Which was the least of the truth, but I wasn’t going to mention his plan to lock me in a library for the rest of eternity. I was, however, going to start to bring part of the story into the equation. If I wanted to stay here rather than go to prison, that is.

  “Funny story,” I said without her prompting, “I accidentally ran him over with my car when I was coming back from a party. I wasn’t drunk; he just teleported to the wrong place at the wrong time.”

  She just nodded as if it were the most natural thing in the world for me to say. “And he didn’t carry any resentment about that?”

  “Didn’t faze him in the slightest. It did bother him that it made him lose track of his sister, though. It was the least I could do to invite him to stay in my spare room.”

  How was she taking this? Did she know this was the truth or believe it was only my truth? I tried to gauge her reaction to what I was saying, but she had professional experience in hiding her emotions.

  Dang. Maybe she could teach a class. Definitely a skill I needed.

  “What about his sister? When did you meet her?” she asked, deadpan.

  “The first time was right before the plant blew. But she reemerged into my life about a month ago, living Zander in tow.”

  “Did she give any warning before returning like she did?”

  “No. None.”

  “And what happened after she arrived? Did she ask you for any favors? Money? It was around that time that you had stopped seeing your therapist, if I am correct.”

  “They were in and out of my life,” I said. “To be honest, they were some of the few friends who didn’t ask me for money. I’d lost a lot of trust in people after I somehow inherited Grisham’s fortune.”

  “So, what did they want from you?”

  Another crossroads: truth or fiction? Not that either would be believable. I decided to go with the truth. It’s what she was after, I knew, and if I gave any indication I was lying, it might cost me my safety here.

  “They showed up on your doorstep,” she stated, leaning forward. “What happened next?”

  “Zander promised to take me to another planet, as a thank you for letting him crash at my place.”

  “And did he?”

  “You bet he did. It was amazing. And after a crazy set of events on Da-Duhui—including maggots in pizza and an AI uprising—we accidentally ended up stranded on the wrong side of the galaxy and spent the next week jumping from place to place, trying to find Earth again.”

  “Um-hum.” She nodded to herself, flipping another page over. “Jumping? Is that a figure of speech? How exactly did you three travel?”

  “Teleportation. Efficient mode of transportation, though a little temperamental at times. Small price to pay for the universe at your fingertips.”

  “Who came up with the term?”

  “I don’t know. It’s what they called it long before I even met them.”

  “And how does it work?” She looked at me with excitement in her eyes, slipping on her reading glasses to either help her keep up with me or to look smarter and instill confidence. Maybe both.

  “It’s complicated. I don’t even know how to explain it.”

  “Try.”

  “Well … you close your eyes, let yourself dissolve into nothing, then hope that when you open your eyes back up that you’re someplace safe. It’s in us, nothing like a magic watch. No blue box, no phone booth, no huge spinning wheel, no DeLorean. Just us.”

  She jotted something down quickly. “When did you obtain the ability?”

  “I’ve only had it about … two weeks? Damn. Feels like forever.”

  “And the immortality?”

  “At the same time. It’s a package deal.”

  “How did you learn you had these … gifts?”

  “Well, first, I was murdered under a bridge, and then I had jumped over to a mysterious library. In space, of course. It was in our galaxy, though. I haven’t even left the Milky Way yet. Either I’m immortal, or I’m dead, even now. Which I doubt because if this is hell, I’m not impressed, and if this is heaven, it’s nothing like what the good book says.”

  “Have you considered that maybe you believe in your immortality because of your fear of death? Those around you die in horrible ways, which led you to consider that you yourself cannot die?”

  Oh, yes. Come at me girl. Hit me with these deep correlations.

  I shook my head. “I’m not afraid of death. And the deaths of my brother and Matt may have taken me a long time to get over, but I am not lying to myself.”

  “Now, Sally, this might be a hard question,” she said. “I don’t know if you’ll be able to answer. But if Zander and his brother are identical in every way, yet one of them died in the GrishamCorp incident, then how can they—and yourself—be immortal?”

  She’s good at her job, I give her that. I wasn’t going to be able to give her any holes to pick. It would have to be the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the unbelievable truth.

  “They’re the same person. I did say,” I said earnestly. “Zander didn’t die. But since his death was already on record, he couldn’t very well go telling the cops it was a misunderstanding. Saying he was his own identical twin made more sense at the time.”

  “This is fascinating, Sally. So, he went underground for two years after faking his own death and then reappeared in your life for a space adventure?”

  “That’s the gist of it.”

  “And gave you his superpower.”

  “Please don’t say it like that!” I snapped. “It’s my life, not a children’s book. But yes.”

  She put up her hands defensively. “Fine. I’m still trying to fill in the gaps here. What happened after your … excursion?”

  I shrugged. “They left again. In any case, I was too busy with my best friend’s wedding to pay much attention to them. But then, the aliens attacked.”

  “Ah. Yes. The hoax,” she said, shaking her he
ad. “Tell me more about that.”

  “Not much to say there. I realized I was a time traveler when I recognized the ship. I gave Sky People what they wanted—Vasquez—and they left. Simple as that. Then, I rescued Zander and Blayde from a demented ex of mine. It was a really rewarding day.”

  “I’m going to be honest with you, Sally. Many of the patients I have been seeing lately have had some adverse reactions to the hoax.”

  “As well they should have,” I said. “It wasn’t a hoax. They have a right to be traumatized.”

  She shuffled in her seat. “Let’s talk about more pertinent things. Such as your reason for being here. Beyond your reasons for believing these things.”

  “What do you mean? I don’t see why any of this would be what’s wrong with me.”

  “You killed a man, Sally Webber.” She shook her head. “I want to know why.”

  “Look, we told you all this in the hearing. I killed an alien who was trying to suck out my spinal fluid. He’d already gotten four other women that we know of. He—it—had to be stopped.”

  “He was an officer of the law,” she said, “working for the FBI.”

  “Lady, he kidnapped me and tied me to a chair.” I shuffled on the sofa. My sweat was making me stick to the leather. “That’s not FBI protocol. When he came at me with a second jaw, I reacted.”

  “So, you were the one to pull the trigger.”

  “I was.”

  Only I wasn’t. Not exactly. Felling had done the deed. Then again, Cross had been parading inside my body, using it as his ticket to immortality, whether I had any say in it or not. The memory of the second consciousness laying over mine, reaching in places it had no right to be …

  When had I started shaking?

  “What were Zander and Blayde doing at the time?” she asked. “Were they in the room where it happened?”

  “No,” I said, closing my fists. “They were trying to find me. I was alone.”

  She nodded, a small smile curling the edge of her lips. I knew instantly that I had royally screwed up. In her eyes, I was the true murderer, and they were just covering for me. I could see it now. Practically watched her write the letters on her legal pad.

  Agency or Earth, whoever she was working for, it wasn’t going to bode well for me.

  She reached over to her desk to pull off a small stack of flash cards.

  “I’m going to show you some images.”

  “Oh, the Rorschach test!”

  “You know it?”

  “Only of it,” I replied. “I’ve seen it in on TV. My other therapists never used it as a tool.”

  She nodded, more for herself than for me. “Do you need me to explain how it works?”

  “You show me the blots, and I tell you what I see. Correct?”

  She held up the first card. A black blob of bold ink lay sprawled across it, covering the white piece of paper with a strange mix of images.

  “Oh! A Downdweller!” I said instantly. My hands flew to cover my mouth. I hadn’t planned on being this forthcoming.

  “What’s that?”

  “On Da-Duhui, the first planet I ever got to visit. They had been living in the undercity for generations.”

  “So, an alien?”

  “In as many words, yes, I see an alien.”

  She jotted down some rapid notes on her clipboard, looking up at me every other second to make sure I wasn’t running off. Finally done, she handed me another card.

  “This is a shark,” I replied.

  She wrote something down.

  Card three: a dragon. Notes. Card four: a cheeseburger. Oh, how I craved a good cheeseburger! More notes. Card five: a very wooly mammoth.

  The sound of a ballpoint pen scratching on paper was very audible through each moment of silence.

  She handed me the last card, and I felt my face flush. A chill traveled through my skin, raising goosebumps on my arms, the hair on the back of my neck erect. I shivered.

  “Are you all right?” the doctor asked with tenderness.

  “I’m—” I stopped myself. My automatic response at this point had always been “fine.” How was the food? Fine. You enjoy the party? It was fine. I am fine. Fine fine fine. never better. Never worse. I was fine.

  But I wasn’t.

  The doctor did well not to open her mouth. She leaned forward slightly, to convey the intimacy of the situation, putting down her stack of inkblot flashcards to give me her full attention. Even her hand had slackened on the constantly scribbling pen.

  “I see Cross’s teeth,” I mumbled. “I see him standing in front of me, his teeth barred—both sets, mind you—ready to kill me.”

  I was glad that she didn’t interrupt. The words were flowing now. No stopping them at this point. Anyone who stood in their way was in danger of losing a body part.

  “He tried to kill me. He didn’t care that I could have just helped him find what he needed. All he wanted was to live forever. I killed him in self-defense. I know that’s supposed to make everything okay, but it really isn’t. Because now I’m a murderer.”

  “If it truly was in self-defense, why didn’t you tell the court?” she said quietly.

  “That court was built up against me. Literally.” I snorted. “And the fact that they had condemned me before hearing me out makes everything even worse.”

  “Now tell me, why would you kill someone in self-defense if you’re immortal?”

  Was she smirking? My respect for the woman was dropping. Rude.

  “Oh, I wasn’t worried for myself. I told you, he was a serial killer. I wasn’t defending myself but others. And I’m … I’m still afraid.”

  She wrote a lot on her pad after this.

  I fell back down heavily on the soft pillow of the sofa, my feet flopping down on the warm leather. I barely noticed. My mind was elsewhere, miles away, months ago, in a dark and abandoned shopping center standing across from a man who wasn’t actually a man, the cool metal of the laser saber’s grip sending a chill up my spine. The spine that the monster wanted to tap.

  “I’m the one who killed him. It wasn’t Zander. It wasn’t Blayde. It was me. What have I become?”

  The doctor said nothing, but the look in her eyes spoke in her place. You monster, they seemed to say. You create these illusions to stop yourself from getting the blame. You feel guilty? You should. You killed that man. He was no alien. And you are no immortal.

  I shook my head, trying to chase out the dark feeling, the dark thoughts. It wasn’t as easy as that.

  “How do I live with myself now?” I asked the doctor. She didn’t reply. “Please, please tell me.”

  Still no reply.

  She was no help. I was in a mental institution with doctors trained to deal with this sort of thing, and still I was a hopeless case. Never mind the rest of it: coming to terms with the fact I was never going to die, dealing with the transgression that was another consciousness taking my body, or something so basic as telling the truth to my parents.

  I was entirely a hopeless case.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Talk about a head banger

  I take back what I said about the sucky rooms. Sure, they were only a few steps up from prison, but boy was it wonderful to have a place to be alone. At least in here, I didn’t have to worry about being observed. I had to be on my toes in case the Agency had finally found the guts to send someone in to take me, sure, but they weren’t going to pretend to be friendly first.

  So much for ‘being myself’ being the answer. I’d probably just made everything worse for the people I cared about.

  I stretched out, waiting for the nightly screams to return. Focusing on them was a good way to stay awake. Better that than fall asleep and be woken by the sound—or worse. A visit from Zander would be welcome, but his sister had probably gotten to him with her guilt-trip. No adventures outside these four walls tonight.

  A thud resonated through my room, echoing slightly across the walls. My heart might have skipped a beat if
it had still been beating. Old buildings were always so noisy. The way they creaked, the way they moaned. It was more of a nuisance than creepy, even if they insisted on taking you by surprise.

  “Sally,” the walls seemed to say, calling me, pulling me in.

  No. I couldn’t fall asleep. I needed a distraction.

  “Sally,” the walls moaned feebly, lulling me a little further toward sleep.

  Maybe Zander was coming to say hi. I straightened up in bed, trying to peer through the dark, but even my new-and-improved vision wasn’t helping.

  “Sally.”

  I heard it much more clearly now. Maybe it wasn’t the work of a sleep-addled mind.

  “Hello?” I asked. “Who’s there?” My hushed whisper revealed nothing; the walls did not respond.

  “Help me …”

  Okay, so that was most certainly not the walls.

  I sat up instantly. At first, nothing. I had to be imagining things. Slowly, though, the form of a hunched figure came into shape, hiding in the last dark corner of my cell.

  “How did you get …?”

  Zander stumbled to the floor at my feet, landing squarely in the small pool of light. It was all I could do not to scream at the sight. The hair that had hung so perfectly in front of his face fell to the side, the dark shadows and hard light revealing a face contorted in pure, mortal agony.

  “Zander!” I cried out, falling to his side. My hair stood erect on my arms all the way up the back of my neck. “What happened to you?”

  I slid his head into my lap. His breathing was short, raspy. His face covered in a sheen of sweat so dense it looked plastic. His hand was pressed on his stomach, red liquid spilling from the wound he was desperately trying to hide from me.

  And he was in pain.

  Only once before had I seen him in actual pain, when Nimien had drugged him to exact some kind of sick revenge. The sight was no easier the second time around. Tears were welling in my eyes, my chest tightening so much that I was forgetting how to breathe.

  No. Stop. You have to help him. I ripped the sheet off my bed, shoving it against the wound at his stomach, hoping beyond hope that it would be enough. Should I call for help? Who even could call for help?