Oculus (Oculus #1)

by J. L. Mac

  Leaping from the container I am on to another ten feet away, I make my way over the sweeping security teams back towards the entrance to the hospital basement. I found an old airshaft in my earlier recon that I use now to make my way inside. Once I am into the sub-basement I feel drawn towards the area where the meeting had been held the last time that I was here.

  Slipping over the edges of old walls, I have a good vantage point. The same kids are gathered below. The same kid is standing in front of the group, blissfully ignorant of the fact that security is about to come crashing down on them. Taking a big stone from the wall I throw it at the kid’s chest. I lob it, but he still goes down on his ass. The room exploded in panic and I used the confusion to give them a warning.

  “It’s security! Get out! Get out!” I watch as most of them run towards the guy on the ground and help him up. He moves to the wall and pulls an old cabinet to the side, revealing a hidden opening behind it.

  Well played, kid. Maybe you aren’t as stupid as you seem. No…you probably are. You’re just smart enough to have an escape route.

  I leap from my perch to land among them, not paying attention to the screams my sudden appearance has elicited. I charge through the crowd like they aren’t there. At that moment, to me, they aren’t. I feel her before I see her. Standing with one hand on the wall, trying to avoid the people rushing around her. A chubby guy is about to run into her when I reach her. Straight-arming the charging chublin, I knock him back into the mix of people behind me.

  Sweeping her up into my arms, I am able to see the girl’s face as her hair swings back. It’s her. The girl of my dreams. Here, in this shitty basement, about to be arrested by security. Her arms instinctively wrap around my neck and her hand comes down to stroke the side of my face. When she touches my bare skin I freeze, a feeling of absolute pleasure rips through me. Her fingertips race across my face, tracing the outline of my nose, cheek and jaw.

  “You? How can you be here? You’re not real!” Her voice breaks as she says it and a small sob escapes. Behind me, the Junior Resistance has finally managed to slip through the opening. I can hear the approaching boots of security rushing down the stairs towards us. Wheeling with her in my arms, I leap through the opening behind the cabinet. Then I reach back and slide it into place.

  The corridor we are in is pitch black. I can hear the distant footfalls of the Junior Resistance members retreating from me. Cradling the girl gently to me, I move quickly away. It won’t take the security force long to find the exit we used. I need to get her away from here before they catch up to us. At the turn the rest of our group took, I keep going straight. As I rush down the corridor, the girl in my arms speaks.

  “No! Stop,” she whispers urgently. “You can’t go this way! There is a hole up ahead. It’s seven or eight feet wide. If you don’t turn back, security will corner us.”

  I spot the gap she is talking about. As we near it, I pull her against me tight, enjoying the way she feels, and leap. We clear the hole easily and I keep running. Out of the corridor, up two flights of stairs, along a creek bed, through a storm drain, and out into the forest. I can feel the girl tense against me as we pass beyond the wall but she makes no noise.

  I hold her against me and run as if the two of us weigh nothing. For the first time in my life I feel content. Holding her against me, letting the slightly lavender-scented perfume she’s wearing wrap around me, is intoxicating. There is no plan, no thought put into taking her and running from the compound. I do it purely on instinct. We are several minutes outside the walls, well past the outside patrol, before she speaks again.

  “Stop, please. I need to find my friends.” I slow then stop, setting her down on her feet. She tests the ground with her feet, never letting go of my arm. Her hand on my arm trembles. “We’re outside the wall! Oh, no…” Her breathing increases as she starts to panic. “Take me back! Please, take me back!”

  Her eyes are wide and I have the sudden, sickening realization that something is off. The girl of my dreams, the one I had just run away with, is blind.

  IN MY DREAMS, HE HAS always remained silent, until the last dream I had. I heard him for the first time and it was jarring. He became so much more… more for me simply for having heard his voice, and even that doesn’t compare to what I’m feeling now.

  An awkward silence settles over us, the sounds of our panting the only thing registering. I can sense him looking at me and I feel bared from tip to toe.

  “That’s not fair.”

  “What?”

  “You’re staring.”

  “Yes, I am.”

  Four words. Four words and they have me thinking that his voice is like the soft warmth of my favorite quilt. The one I use only on the coldest of nights because that’s when I need it most. Rations are rations, and power and gas must be used sparingly in the winter months. It’s a Fenra mandate that no one likes much, but no one complains about it, at least not openly. My quilt isn’t perfect. In fact, it’s been mended by me, a blind person, on multiple occasions, but somehow I value it more for enduring years of intermittent use. I value it for having been there in the first place.

  “Say something,” I whisper, too afraid that talking too loudly would scare off this phantom of mine. He’s not here. He’s not real. He can’t be!

  “You’re blind.” The way he says it, so matter-of-fact, forces me to recoil from him. I take a step back and tuck my chin towards my chest.

  “Guilty,” I mutter, feeling shameful of my impairment for the first time in a very long time.

  “You’re real. You’re here. What’s your name?” He moves along quickly, eagerly.

  “Iris Tierney. Who are you?”

  “I’m Sic.”

  “What’s wrong?” I’d be lying if I said that hearing him say he’s sick doesn’t have me feeling a little sick, too. He doesn’t seem ill. Not the way he moved with me up against him, fast and deft and powerful…

  “No. My name is Sicarius. People call me Sic.”

  “Sic,” I try on the feel of his name rolling off my tongue and it feels good. It feels like validation. Validation that somehow, someway, I’ve dreamed of a real person. He’s no phantom at all. He’s muscle, and sweat-slicked skin, and pounding heart and I know him and I don’t. Not truly. “How—why—when—do you have… um…”

  “Dreams? Yes.”

  “How?” I whisper to myself.

  “You need to listen to me closely. You have to come with me. You can’t be here. If they find out who you are. Maybe they already know. Hurry. We’re leaving.” He rattles off quietly, leaving me to scramble aimlessly in his confusing wake.

  “Wait. What are you talking about? I’m not going anywhere! Are you insane?”

  “You have to come with me. You are supposed to be with me. I can explain.”

  “You can’t honestly expect me to just walk off into the woods with someone who shouldn’t even be real! I have a life in there. A new job that I shouldn’t even have been able to get. My father! I’d never leave him behind.”

  “Iris, we were designed to stay together. You have to trust me. Let’s go.”

  “Okay, you need to take me back. I have to go back. Take me back.” I begin to panic, and turn away from him not knowing how in the hell I’m supposed to get back into the compound without being caught. Or maybe that’s what Ingram wanted, for me to get caught.

  The reality of what just played out settles over me and with it comes uninhibited rage. I don’t understand what I did wrong. Why did he dispatch security? I told him I was going to the stupid meeting. I told him I’d give him a full report tomorrow. I told him I’d sleep with him, too, a truth that, in Sic’s presence makes me feel dirty and shameful. I have to get out of here.

  Sic sighs deeply and shifts his stance so quietly that even I have to focus to hear his movements, and it’s no secret that my hearing is as sharp as blade. “Fine. I’ll take you back but you have to listen to me. You have to believe me. You will believe me.”


  “I have to go back. They’ll be looking for me.”

  “Who?”

  “Ingram, my superior. The Chief of Fenra Security. If I don’t show up…” I trail off not wanting to even entertain the thought of what would happen.

  “Stay away from him,” Sic growls in an intimidating tone that I haven’t heard from him.

  “I can’t. I work with—for him.”

  He grunts in response to my explanation then pulls me firmly forward. His breath skates across my skin, forcing thoughts of my last dream to the forefront of my mind.

  “I’m taking you back,” he declares, his grip on me contradicting his words. “…but I won’t leave you there. You’ll come with me and in the meantime you’ll stay away from Ingram.”

  “I told you, I can’t.”

  “Yes, you can and you will or I’ll fix this problem myself,” he pulls me closer. My breasts brush so lightly against him that I wonder if I’m imagining things.

  “And how will you do that?”

  “I’ll kill him. Let’s go.”

  Speechless and confused and shocked and turned on by the revelation that he’s a real person, I stick close to his side. The short excursion back to the compound goes by in a wordless haze. I’m normally so attuned to everything I can feel, hear, smell, and taste but right now shock has cloaked my brain under a fierce monopoly.

  “My friends are probably in custody. The agents, it sounded like there were a hundred of them.” Sic drags me along with ease, ushering me back to the safety of the compound.

  “They could execute me for this. They probably will,” I mumble numbly.

  “I would never let that happen,” he says as he comes to a stop. He grasps me by both shoulders and speaks with such finality and confidence I don’t doubt him for one second. “Not ever. Do you believe me?”

  “I do,” I confess without thought because for me, it’s true. I do believe him.

  “Sorry about this,” he says as he grabs at my shirt and rips a hole in my sleeve. Leaves and dirt at my feet rustle and then his hand is on my forehead, my cheek… Oh.

  “Find the first person you can and tell them that you got lost, disoriented and ended up outside the wall. Alone. You never saw me.”

  “That part is true.”

  He grunts what sounds like his version of a laugh, causing me to smile despite tonight’s madness and whatever repercussions await me.

  “Go,” he whispers against my ear, clearing the haze and making every one of my senses burst back to life. His breath against my skin, the masculine smell of sweat, the deep and smooth pitch of his voice. His chocolate hair intermingling with mine just before he nudges me forward then disappears without a sound. Just like the phantom in my dreams.

  The moment he’s gone, the moment I can feel he’s gone, that familiar hurt washes over me. He’s real. He’s here. He was here. Where is he going? Will he come back? Do I want him to come back?

  Bones and muscles I hadn’t been aware of even having, begin to tremble. I’m not certain how long I’ve been standing here. I don’t even know where I am. I can hear the nocturnal sounds of the compound around me but I have no mental map to reference so I begin walking in the direction Sic pointed me in.

  “Stop! Fenra Security!” A man barks at me. I instantly raise my hands, my Fenra Corp cuff slipping up my wrist as my hands rise in surrender. Judging by the crunch of his boots on the ground, he’s a large man. A handheld scanner announces my identity to the agent in front of me. “Miss Tierney what are you doing?”

  “I got lost. I don’t know where I am. I just need to get back to my house.”

  I can feel his eyes on me, evaluating the smudges of earth on my cheek and forehead. He picks at the hole in my sleeve.

  “I’ll dispatch a railcar,” he says, resigned to believe the blind woman with evidence of her impairment all over her face and clothing. Lucky me.

  “Thank you,” I say aloud thinking of Sic, not the agent in front of me.

  “You shouldn’t be alone and wandering around the compound. Someone might think you’re up to no good,” he admonishes which spurs my agitation further.

  “I’m blind and not even good at it.” I clip. “Sorry. I’m not up to anything. Just lost.”

  “Get home. Curfew is in fifteen minutes.”

  “Okay.”

  The agent’s pudgy hand grabs my arm and guides me forward 1, 2, 8,10, 27, 36, 41 steps. The rail. The electric buzzing of an approaching railcar grows louder and then dulls to a quiet hum.

  “Fenra. Security. Rail. Car. Please. Enter. Your. Destination,” the bitch in the box drones and right now with frayed nerves I want nothing more than to torch all automation boxes in this entire compound. Every stationary retinal scanner. Every railcar. Every handheld retinal scanner. Every domestic scanner. Every automated ration dispensary. All of it! Maybe the woods have a certain charm to them after all!

  Without any further conversation, the agent deposits me into the car and punches in my address, which he has obviously seen in my Fenra Corp profile on his handy dandy scanner. There in his stupid, thick hand is the summary of my life—or the life I know. How convenient.

  Iris Tierney.

  21 years old

  DOB- 08-28-2042

  Sector 24 Unit 13

  Visually impaired

  Dependant

  Father- Dr. Patrick Tierney

  Mother- Deceased

  “Get home,” he warns and then the door on the car shuts with a subdued sloof!

  Holding my head upright is too great a task right now. It falls back to rest against the top of the seat with a thud as the railcar gains speed taking me home, taking me further away from Sic.

  The door closes behind me and I can smell my father before he says a word. “What on earth!” He snaps at me as he gets up from his chair in a hurry, causing the metal legs to screech irksomely across the floor.

  “I’m going to bed,” I announce flatly as I tug the collapsible stick from my back pocket and drop it haphazardly on the small dining table.

  “Oh no you aren’t!”

  “I most definitely am.” I ignore my father’s demands and move to pour myself a glass of liquid fire. The first sip scorches my throat, but lands with cushy warmth in my belly.

  “Iris Tierney!” My father bellows, earning a flinch from me. “You may be an adult, but you are still my daughter, my blind daughter, and you’ve just dragged in two minutes before compound curfew with dirt on you, torn clothes… and you think I’m just going to let you traipse off to your room after you’ve helped yourself to my whiskey cabinet?”

  “Well, that’s what I’m doing, so…” I open my mouth wide and down the last of my drink. My stomach protests the alcohol with a queasy churning, but settles back down as the liquid goes to work. I turn on my heels, ready to trudge up the stairs to my room.

  “You had better be forthcoming with me, right now!” He snaps.

  “Oh. You mean just in the same way that you’re so forth coming with me?” The calm in my voice contradicts the mayhem roiling just beneath the surface.

  “Excuse me? What are you talking about?” He’s affronted by my implied accusation or maybe he’s panicked that I now know something that I shouldn’t. Either way, I’m regretting not listening to Sic more and more as the seconds tick by.

  “Does the name Sicarius mean anything to you?” Part of me wants him to deny knowing anything about a man named Sicarius and part of me wants to barter the lies and deceit if it means that Sic, my phantom, is indeed real.

  “Where did you hear that?” he whispers conspiratorially.

  “Oh, a wild dream I suppose.” My veins tingle and warm pleasantly as my father’s whiskey courses its way through me.

  “Never speak that name again,” he whispers without explanation.

  “Why, father? You don’t want to be forthcoming with me?” There’s an intonation about the way I ask my rhetorical question that I know will rankle the hell out of him.r />
  “This discussion is over.”

  “That’s what I thought. Do as I say not do as I do, isn’t that so, dad?”

  “You know nothing,” he grates out.

  “Yep and that’s no thanks to you! This is useless. I’m going to bed.”

  “Shut your fucking mouth you stupid girl! You have no idea what you’re meddling with! There are bigger things in this world than you, than this compound, than Fenra! They won’t hesitate to kill you.” I halt in my tracks and begin shaking for three reasons. First, he’s never spoken to me this way. Second, I believe him. Third, something deep inside knows that he’s exactly right. I’m disposable just like everyone else here. Fear tightens around my throat. Even whiskey won’t help what I feel right now.

  I can think of only one medicine right now.

  Sic.

  Hattie doesn’t hesitate to answer. “Iris! Oh my god, Iris! I heard what happened. Are you okay?”

  “I’m fine. Where’s Cade? His friends?”

  “Why are you worried about him? I haven’t spoken to him so I wouldn’t know where he is, but I heard my mom say no one was caught during the raid. What were you thinking going there?”

  “Oh, you know, just felt like running for my life! Jesus, Hattie. I didn’t want to go, trust me.”

  “Then why did you go?” The suspicion in her voice isn’t hard to miss, even through the fog of whiskey.

  “Why?”

  “Yeah. Why?”

  “I—I can’t tell you,” I admit, falling back onto my bed in a heap.

  “I see. Well, I hope you’ve learned your lesson,” she says haughtily then ends the call.

  “What the fuck!” I yell with my face buried in my pillow.

  “Iris Tierney, you are hereby under arrest for suspicion of being a Resistance Sympathizer, for suspicion of conspiring against Fenra Corporation, unauthorized furlough from corporate grounds, falsifying statements to a Fenra agent, and extortion of corporate official Chief Dillon Ingram. The Council has convened to hear your case posthaste. Please comply.”