Grave Intent

by G. K. Lund

  “Some sort of black tendrils of smoke, I saw it,” Peter said with resignation in his voice and eyes.

  “More like a fog.”

  Peter put his hands up in surrender. It could still get a bit much it seemed. “Okay, go on.”

  “He has disappeared on me three times in Cury Square now. Not outside, but somewhere inside the enclosed square itself.”

  “So? Maybe he knew you were following him?”

  “Couldn’t really see me, remember?”

  “Okay, so what do you think?”

  “Where was the first time we met Evy?”

  “Cury Square.”

  “And she had rope burns around her wrists.”

  “Oh man, I didn’t notice that.”

  “I think she escaped them that day. The explosions must have helped her somehow.”

  “And now they’ve taken her back.”

  “I think so, but I don’t know where. I was hoping you could help me narrow it down.”

  Peter tapped his fingers on the kitchen table while considering. I knew him well enough by now to know he was considering the options. He was not a guy who wouldn’t help when he could. “You seem a little less Winter-centric,” he finally said.

  “I haven’t forgotten my goal, but I feel bad about Evy. If I’d taken one second to help her, take her with me, something.”

  “You’re not the only one,” Peter commented, fingers still tapping the table.

  I didn’t understand that. He’d been too far away to do anything in both the times he had seen Evy. Guilt is not a reasonable thing I guess.

  “Okay, then. Let’s see what we can do.” Peter stopped his infernal tapping and pulled out his cell.

  “Don’t you need your laptop for that?” He hardly ever went anywhere without the thing, and always used it unless he was checking news or something on the phone. I knew he didn’t like to work with the small screen on the phone. But he didn’t spend much time searching anything. Instead, he typed something and then put the phone on the table.

  “Not this time. Evy was looking to get help, remember?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, she’s getting it. Through me.”

  I felt the eyes narrow as my suspicions exploded. Fragments of thoughts and information flew inside the head and collided in a realization. There was only one person who would know anything about Evy and her situation.

  “Did you just contact Winter?”

  “Yes.”

  “You’ve talked to him? Had his number this whole time?” The heart was beating faster and I felt the muscles in the fists and the face tighten. Anger rose before Peter confirmed it. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “Because you would have used the information to try and contact him, and it wouldn’t have worked.”

  “You went behind my back?” Suddenly I felt so very human. A flock animal with the need for others in their life. People to trust and rely on. To be relied on. Okay, so maybe I hadn’t lived up to that last one, but still, I had trusted Peter. Assumed he was there to help me, not sneak around and talk to the one person who could help me with my identity, and then not even ask him about it. I was certain he hadn’t done that.

  “You know what? Shut up, Ben.” Peter spat the words out, voice low, probably only a murmur for George in the other room, but he might as well have yelled them at me for the reaction it gave me. I simply did as he said.

  “Yes, I talked to the guy, yelled at him actually. He was being as stupid and thoughtless as you were. Neither of you noticed Evy. When I saw her taken into that car, her situation became more important to me than yours, even if I had only known her a couple of days. So yeah, I made a deal with Winter, so he could help me if we needed it.”

  “But—”

  “No damn buts. If I had given you that number and you had tried anything he would likely have thrown his phone in the river.”

  That was true. I felt blood rushing to the head. Peter was right. Was this what it felt like to be chastised? Blushing, warm, angry at being wrong? I didn’t like it.

  “Honestly – what is most important right now?”

  I could feel the temptation of grabbing Peter’s phone. It was three feet away from me. I wanted that number, but the thought of Evy made me think twice. She belonged to a world I currently had half a foot in. She knew things about living with these unusual abilities. She knew the good and the bad. And she had stayed when I had been hit at Cury Square, despite her need to escape.

  Crap.

  Damn flock animals. Damn human capacity for giving a shit. I was even beginning to think like Peter now.

  “Fine,” I began as his phone buzzed, the vibration against the table surface causing the loud sound to startle us both.

  Peter picked it up and glanced at it before turning it toward me so I could see.

  Cury Square 16C. Strand election campaign headquarters. Go! I’ll send someone.

  Chapter 26

  “You don’t have to be a part of this you know,” I told Peter as we saw Cury Square ahead of us through one of the narrow passageways that led in there.

  “I know. No normal person should do this. And I am one; normal that is. But that doesn’t matter much now, does it? I’m just glad George is cool with this.”

  She didn’t know what we were actually doing and thought Peter was helping me with a more sound matter. He was right. She was easy going and that had helped. With Winter’s message telling us to do something, I figured one of two things. Either he was too far away to act quickly, or he wanted us to die if things turned nasty and then clean up afterward. I honestly wasn’t sure which possibility I believed the most.

  “Shit,” Peter whispered as we neared the open space. “I haven’t been back here since the explosions.”

  “It’s actually messier now,” I said. “After the Flower Shroud, they began working on the reconstruction work.”

  Sure enough, as we came through the passageway we saw the area, quiet and semi-dark, with various construction vehicles and machinery parked all over the place. A few of the façades had even gotten scaffolding raised along them. Almost the entire area had been sealed off with a new tape that replaced the police tape, a small sign things would at some point return to normal. Most importantly – it couldn’t keep us out.

  Number 16C was situated close to where Peter and I had been sitting before the blasts. It had been a little behind us and to the side, so I hadn’t paid it any attention. I didn’t care about the election. It wasn’t like I was going to be in the city, or anywhere, long enough to care. At least that was the plan.

  The election campaign for the contender to the mayoral seat was placed inside a medium sized building. It had a storefront, but banners and posters advertising and encouraging people to vote for Strand covered the large windows on each side of the door. Most of it was torn and even burnt. The door, which was a metal frame around a large glass plate, had shattered during the blast. The windows seemed to be held together by the posters. I could see that the door had been covered with plywood on the inside.

  “How can he be sure this is where they are?” I whispered to Peter as we rounded the square and kept a good distance to the building.

  “Let’s assume Winter knows more about these people than we do, okay?”

  I thought about it, but he was right. People came to him for help in getting away from Yorov. He likely had some information about them.

  “Watch out,” Peter said as I felt him grab the right arm and pull me back behind a stack of bricks that were halfway covered under a tarp. I peered around the thing to see what had gotten him so riled up when I noticed we were not alone. I had seen other people there the other times I had followed the long-haired man as well, but Peter recognized a blond woman walking across the quiet square.

  “She was with them, Ben. She was there when they took Evy.”

  The woman walked purposefully toward the building we had been told to check out. I saw her walk up to the door until she on
ly became something moving in the shadows. Then there was nothing.

  “Okay then,” I said. “At least we know we’re in the right place.”

  We waited a while to make sure she wasn’t near the door, before moving closer ourselves. Being spotted out in the square was not a big risk as lamps and surveillance cameras had been destroyed by debris or shockwaves. Getting in turned out not to be problematic either. As we reached the door, covered by near darkness now, it became clear the thing was open. That is, the plywood behind it could be pushed inward enough for a person to squeeze through. I pushed at the thing to try and see if the woman or the long-haired man were inside, but something else caught my attention. A silhouette of a person, made visible by a solitary light further behind it, stood in one of the passageways, and I had a strong feeling of being watched. Then, the person moved back and was gone.

  “Something wrong?” Peter whispered as I made no move to go inside. He turned and looked in the same direction as I did, but saw nothing of course.

  “Just thought I saw something,” I said. “Must have been someone wanting to see the square.” It wasn’t like that was unheard of. People were curious and came by every day either to have a look at the place where all the bad things had happened or to put down flowers. They still did the latter despite the Flower Shroud, though not in the square itself anymore. Outside, in the nearby streets, there were still small patches covered with flowers, candles, and cards.

  “Should we keep going?” Peter asked.

  I nodded and pushed at the plywood again. I agreed with Winter on one thing. Someone needed to do something now. Evy had been in the abductors’ hands a few days by this point. She shouldn’t have to be anymore. If we could only sneak in, and then out again without being noticed… well, such a nice dream.

  I pressed past the plywood screen and the door, taking care not to cut the legs on the sharp remnants of the glass window that still was attached to the door.

  “I don’t like this,” Peter whispered as he followed me. “Isn’t that what they say? That it’s no problem getting into a prison – the issue is getting out again?”

  I hoped he was wrong, and though this wasn’t technically a prison, I could see his point. Still, there was no one in the front room, so at least we could get out of there. The room, which had obviously once been a store of sorts, was cool like the outside and it smelled raw and dusty. It was full of rubble and debris from the square. The old storefront had taken a serious hit during the explosions as desks and chairs lay overturned, papers scattered over it all. The election volunteers had been right in the path of the blast zone of the first grenade. From what we heard in the news, no one in here had been killed, but with the close call and the destruction of their workplace, the campaign had moved elsewhere for the rest of the election.

  No outside lighting helped us in there, but a lamp further inside gave us enough to not walk into anything and make noise. We didn’t want to alert Evy’s abductors.

  As we walked further inside it became clear the space was bigger than it looked from the outside as the owners had expanded into the building behind the store. There were many small offices that would likely serve as storage if a store of sorts was ever put in there again. It became clear that the place was too large for four people to guard, and since I suspected Evy had been held there before the explosions, I figured they were not keeping her in the open. Peter agreed and it didn’t take long for us to find an entrance to a basement. It had to be that or some secret entrance through to the rest of the neighboring building. We headed down a pair of concrete stairs that thankfully would never creak; then we heard the first voices. They came from a room down and to the right. It was the only room it seemed in that direction as turning left led into a long hallway that turned right further in. The ceiling was covered with pipes of varying sizes making it clear that down here the ventilation system and heating system was exposed because no one used this space for any work that required a person to be stationary.

  One female voice spoke in an unfamiliar language but was cut off by a male voice telling her to speak so everyone could understand.

  Peter’s eyes were wide as he looked like he wanted to listen and get away at the same time. Instead of any of that, he pointed down the hallway, and we made our way there in silence, away from the abductors.

  As we walked I felt no sign of imminent threat. No sign that someone was going to stop breathing. We were at that point not in any danger of dying and neither were the abductors. And still, the body reacted to the circumstances. The heart was beating fast; every sense was on high alert, especially the hearing and sight. The eyes darted back and forth scanning every nook and cranny for possible threats. Survival instinct I figured, as I knew I wasn’t in mortal danger. That did of course not mean I was not in danger of violence and being taken prisoner myself.

  Excitement mixed with it all as we followed the hallway to the right and saw several doors. One of them was closed while the others had been left open with hoses coming out of them. They were all connected to a large dehumidifier which was again connected to a thick hose that led everything out into one of the many pipes above us.

  You couldn’t very well leave the door open if you had a prisoner, though I did notice none of the doors down here had any visible locks. I pointed, but Peter was ahead of me as he sped up and moved toward the closed door. He wanted to get the hell out of there before we were discovered and I wholeheartedly agreed. We crossed what felt like a great distance before Peter finally reached the door and grabbed the handle. I could feel the body inhale in anticipation as I stepped forward and then remained standing with the mouth open in dumbfounded surprise.

  Chapter 27

  Evy was not there. The room was empty of any living being, though it had clearly held a person until recently.

  “What—” Peter blurted and then stopped himself, lowering his voice. “What the hell?” He shout-whispered. “Where is she?”

  I closed the damn mouth and stepped into the room. White, dull walls. A table by the wall to my right. A mattress in the opposite corner. From the wall next to the mattress hung a small chain. Connect a pair of handcuffs and that was how you solved the problem with unlocked doors. Unless the thick metal gadget in the door and frame was a magnetic locking system. I glanced around. Handcuffs allowed for no movement that would get a prisoner close enough to a small window, or to the table, not that any of that would have helped. The window was too small for even a child to climb through. There was also a metal grate covering it on the outside. It only provided a little light if the lamp hanging from the ceiling was turned off.

  “Oh my God. Ben, look,” Peter said and pointed toward the chain. I did, and it took me a moment to notice the blood on the wall next to the fastening of the chain.

  “Shit,” I said in my best impersonation of Peter. That couldn’t be good. “We should get out of here,” I added. Evy was not there. I felt a sinking feeling in the stomach. She must have been, but not now. Peter nodded and we made to leave, hopefully without being noticed, when a voice stopped us short.

  “What the hell are you doing?”

  I whirled around, expecting the blond woman or the long-haired man, but there was no one down the hall in front of us. I looked at Peter but was only met with confusion and fear.

  “Up here, guys,” the voice came again. It was strained and low, with a hint of anger and fear as well.

  I did as told and it took me a second to notice a pale face among all the pipes up there.

  “Evy?” I blurted, thankfully in a whisper. She didn’t look like herself. Pale didn’t even cover it. She had lost any color on her face. Her lips even looked pale. Her eyes were alert but she seemed to struggle to concentrate. It was sheer will and determined strength that kept her going now. What had happened to her?

  “What are you doing?” she repeated. “You’re going to get caught. You do not want to get caught by them, Ben.”

  The warning was clear. They mig
ht have a use for me, but not for Peter. That didn’t mean they wouldn’t hurt him. I couldn’t let any of them be hurt.

  “We’re here to help you,” I said.

  “I’m doing fine on my own.”

  Peter and I looked up at her a moment. “Okay. There’s no arguing that,” he conceded. “But come down though, we need to—”

  “Hey,” a voice said behind us.

  I turned to see the blond woman staring at us. She was holding a tray with food on it, likely on her way to give it to Evy.

  “Oh, fuck,” Peter whispered so softly it was almost unintelligible. The woman let a smile mix in with her already angry features, making it more like a sneer. She didn’t show the least bit of fear at the sight of intruders near her prisoner’s cell. She put the tray down on the floor, the leather in her jacket creaking at the measured movements. Her long hair was pulled back in a long and tight ponytail that made every feature of her face visible. A face filled with confidence.

  “What do we do?” Peter whispered, looking at me for the answers, as the woman began walking toward us, calm, arms down and palms out to the side.

  “Stop her?” I suggested. I sensed nothing. No one would die… yet. The threat of pain was not tempting. I may have gotten more used to it, but that didn’t mean I wanted it in any way. Nor did I want to be trapped by these people, but this was bad. Peter was not a fighter and I only reacted to whatever knowledge the brain handled when it deigned to come through. Right now, the primal part of the body screamed to attack, so I moved forward. I could see Peter do the same to my side, as that unsettling smile on the woman’s face came closer.

  She raised her arms, almost as if to hit, though she never touched us. A blurry silvery mist struck me, though I realized as I was brutally pushed backward and fell, that it was not a mist, but a shield. Pure energy pulsed from her hands as she turned it toward Peter and did the same. My fall to the floor forced the air out of the lungs. I gasped as I tried getting up, the body trying its best to let me overrule the pain. The woman grabbed Peter and sent a silvery fist to his face before turning to me. The impact hadn’t hurt her hand in the least. I could hear Peter groan in pain as I scrambled to get up. That only made her smile more as she swung her fist at me – and missed as I gave up and fell back a little. I twisted to the side and grabbed her right wrist, tried forcing it away from me. But the silvery shield expanded from her hand, up her arm, and pushed so painfully that I lost the grip.