by Ladew, Lisa
Katerina opened her eyes and looked down in terror, seeing her shirt pulled open to the waist. “Oh God,” she muttered, partly in fear, mostly in repulsion, as she realized Dylan was staring at her breasts. He squirmed in his chair and Katerina’s eyes dropped to his lap. His simple, white, cotton pants bulged where an erection would have been, but it was no typical erection. It was as lumpy and misshapen as the rest of him, like some grotesque armadillo had wandered into his pants. Katerina swallowed hard, knowing her mind couldn’t take much more. She felt herself swoon and actually seek out unconsciousness. Anything to escape what was happening.
Dylan’s hand snaked out and headed back towards her chest. The fingers were bent and swollen at each knuckle, and long scars stood out between every individual finger, like they had been fused together and needed to be cut apart.
Katerina closed her eyes and called West’s face into her mind. Only West. He would save her. She knew he would. She just had to hang on.
The horrible arcing, electricity sound came again and the monkeys screamed behind her. Dylan swore under his breath and Katerina squeezed her eyes shut tighter. She felt a horrible burning and pressure at her chest, just over her heart. The intensity of the sound ratcheted up and she was pushed back in her chair as Dylan grunted and then screamed like the monkeys.
Katerina opened her eyes. Dylan was cradling his hand to his chest like it was hurt. An expression of determination came over his face and the hand reached her way again. Katerina watched it come, feeling sick with revulsion. Her chest jerked forward and a white heat burned over her heart again. Electricity arced from him to her, or was it from her to him?
His gums were clenched and sweat dripped from his brow as he seemed to use all his strength to force his hand forward.
The sound of an explosion ripped through the air and Katerina knew no more.
Chapter 14
Katerina woke up with no sense of if it was night or day. She was on a tiny cot in a tiny cell, no bigger than a jail cell. She felt as if she had slept for hours, her arms and legs and back stiff and sore. Slept? Or been unconscious?
She tried to move her tongue about in her mouth. Her mouth still tasted horrible, like the drug they had used back at the hotel, which seemed like a million years ago.
She sat up and saw she had a new bandage on her left arm. From an IV? Under her shirt she could also feel a bandage on her chest. No pain though. Katerina peeled back the corner of the bandage, wanting to see how bad the damage was. An ugly dark burn stared back at her - a third-degree burn and that meant the worst kind – the most likely to get infected or have issues healing.
She palpated the burn gently, wondering if the force that caused the burn had done anything to her heart. She had tried not to worry about herself since her heart attack, but she had to face it, she wasn’t as strong as she had once been.
Done exploring her injuries, she smacked her lips, feeling incredibly thirsty. She stood up to look around. A tiny sink sat in the corner and she walked that way quickly, twisting the knobs when she reached it. But nothing happened. No water flowed out.
Next to the sink was a toilet. She peeked inside. There was water in there. She looked around with a grimace. Cameras sat on the walls and stared at her. She wondered if they were trying to humiliate her, break her. She wondered how long she would be able to last before humiliating herself by drinking the water out of the toilet.
With nothing to do but explore, Katerina walked slowly around her cell. It was set up more like an enclosure, with some sort of hard, clear material blocking her from the plain, dark hallway outside. On the ceiling and the walls, nozzles were placed every few feet. Some looked like the kind of sprinklers that sprayed water, like she would find in a hotel room. Others probably sprayed something different. Foam maybe. Katerina grimaced and pushed against the outside wall of the cell. It didn’t budge an inch.
On the other side of what she assumed was the door, although she couldn’t see a handle or knob, a simple note was taped so that she could read it.
Don’t try to blast your way out. We will be able to stop you. We are watching. Consider being more cooperative next time.
Katerina completed her pathetic circuit of the tiny cell and fell with a thump back onto her bed.
West! Where are you? Please come and save me from this!
Katerina fell back against her pillow and tried not to cry. She heard a noise in the hallway outside of her room and sat up quickly, her heart beating hard. Someone was coming.
“Dylan,” she said when he was revealed. She pushed herself back against the far wall, remembering his horrifying electric touch.
“That’s not my name,” he said simply. “Call me Storm.”
Katerina said nothing, only watched him. He would always be Dylan to her. Dylan the monster. Dylan the feared and pitied.
Dylan wheeled his chair directly in front of her door and she noticed a tiny flap in the clear material, almost like a mail slot. Dylan took an item out of his lap and pushed it through the flap.
A bottle of water! He held it there and although she wanted to jump up and grab it, she did not want to get close to him. She stared at the water, licking her lips, her eyes wide.
“I’m not going to hurt you,” he said and shoved the water through the hole.
Katerina jumped up immediately and dove for the water as it hit the ground, her eyes on Dylan the entire time. She uncapped the bottle and drank the entire thing in four gulps, only thinking after it was gone that she should have checked to see if it was sealed.
Too late now.
Dylan thrust another bottle of water through the hole in her door and then shoved through something that looked like a candy bar.
Katerina scooped up both items and ran back to her bed, pushing herself to the far end and taking her time with the second bottle of water, her eyes on Dylan still.
Dylan watched her for a few moments before he spoke. “How did you do that?” he finally said.
“What?” she replied dully.
“You …” He shuffled his feet in his custom-made shoes. “You repelled me.”
Katerina studied him and the look of pure vulnerability on his face made her almost feel sorry for him. Her thoughts swirled dangerously. She had repelled him? She hadn’t done anything. Just waited for him to burn her. Third-degree burns even.
“How did you do it?” he asked again.
“I don’t know – I didn’t do anything.” Anger welled up inside Katerina. What in the hell was she doing here in this place? Kidnapped and burned and asked to do things she couldn’t. “What I said earlier was true! I lost all my powers!”
Dylan studied her and Katerina didn’t like his eyes on her. But his face was still open and vulnerable. He cocked his head to the side and looked like a lost little boy. A grotesque lost little boy, but still a lost little boy.
“How?” he asked.
West’s face filled her mind and she squeezed her eyes shut in the wave of pain that followed it. “Healing someone,” she choked out, her eyes still shut.
“You can heal?” Dylan said, his voice wistful and soft.
“I could. Not anymore,” she said opening her eyes and looking at Dylan again.
Silence stretched between them for many moments. Dylan looked down at his lap and fiddled with something there she couldn’t see. Katerina pulled herself into a tiny ball in the corner of the bed and ate her candy bar.
Several minutes after it was gone, he finally spoke again. “You must have some powers left. You did something to me. Repelled me somehow …” His voice was soft, strange.
“I didn’t try to,” she said, but she was confused because she knew she had wanted to do it, and if she had known she had the power to do it, she would have done it on purpose.
Dylan sat silent again for an eternity. When she couldn’t stand another moment he opened his mouth one more time. “Don’t tell them that.”
“What?”
“That you don’t have
any powers.” His eyes bored into her and he sat up straight to be more forceful, leaning towards her enclosure. “You’re never leaving here and if you really don’t have any powers left you won’t be useful. They’ll kill you.”
“Like you are useful?” Katerina sneered.
“Yes, I’m useful,” Dylan said, contempt and pride in his voice.
Katerina shook with subdued anger and all the emotions she’d been holding back for so long. “I’d rather be killed than fry defenseless animals,” she hissed at him.
Dylan surprised her. He spoke softly, his gaze on the floor. “Yeah, I don’t like that either.”
Katerina would have thought that was one of his favorite parts. “What?” she said.
“The monkey’s pain. It hurts me right here,” he said, pointing at the center of his forehead. Katerina noticed that he shifted his hands in his lap as he did it, as if he were about to use his right hand, then changed his mind and used his left instead.
“Oh,” was all she could think to say.
Dylan brushed it off. “So, uh, sorry about before.”
“Before?” Katerina echoed, feeling like an idiot.
“You know, when I kidnapped your friend to make you come to my house.”
It was the last thing Katerina had expected him to say. “Oh,” she said again unable to comprehend what was happening in the conversation. Once again, silence stretched on and this time it made Katerina feel uncomfortable. After a few moments, just to provide a break in the quiet, she said, “Sorry for, uh, for that,” flapping her hand at him.
Dylan looked up at the ceiling and didn’t say anything. Katerina studied his face and thought she’d never seen such sadness in another human soul. Suddenly she felt a yearning from him. Like he was desperate for connection or companionship or something. She furrowed her brow and tried to figure him out, but her mind couldn’t stop thinking of the third-degree burn on her chest and the look on his face right before he gave it to her.
“I thought God told me to do it,” he said quietly.
Katerina thought at first that she had heard incorrectly. She played back over what he had said and realized it made perfect sense.
He spoke again. “Well, actually, I thought I was God, giving myself messages through my dreams and thoughts.”
Awkwardly, Katerina cleared her throat. “You don’t think that anymore?”
“No,” he said and Katerina thought she could see his cheeks burning with the admission.
“What changed?”
He didn’t say. He stared at his lap and fiddled with whatever was there.
Katerina didn’t think any of this information could help her, but if Dylan wanted to confide in her, maybe it could be helpful in some way in the future. “How long have you been here?” she asked, changing her tactic.
“Two months,” he said quietly, his gaze still on the floor.
“Are you a prisoner here too?”
Dylan moved so suddenly that Katerina shrank back against the wall. He pressed his joystick forward with his left hand, bumping his wheelchair against her door. “I’m useful!” he shouted. “They need me!”
He pressed his lips together and wheeled backwards again. “I want to be here,” he said in a softer voice. “You saw what I can do with my hands now! We’ve been working on my power, strengthening it.”
Katerina nodded, her eyes huge and scared. He was a prisoner, but he didn’t want to admit it.
Dylan lifted his left hand to his face and scratched, then dropped it into his lap like the feel of his own skin repulsed him. “Besides, in here, I’m wanted, respected, feared. Out there, I’m just a freak.”
Katerina couldn’t think of anything to say. So she sat silent and watched him.
Dylan looked at his watch. “I have to go. There’s only thirty minutes before two a.m. checks.”
“Two a.m. checks?”
“They check that everyone is in their beds and do a sweep of all the hallways.”
“You aren’t supposed to be here?”
Dylan shook his head and something like a smile crossed over his features.
Katerina pointed to the walls of her cell. “What about all the cameras? Won’t they catch you?”
“Thisbe took care of them for me.”
“Thisbe?” Katerina repeated, curiosity getting the better of her.
Dylan’s eyes lit up and for the first time since she’d had the unfortunate experience of knowing him, she saw something like happiness cross over his face. “The computer system. This place is a hotbed of government secrets and we’ve got a smart computer system.”
“You mean like artificial intelligence?” Katerina whispered, horrified at the thought.
“Kind of. It’s not really like you see in the movies, she’s not that intelligent. The Japanese invented her using the technology that we have today and our government stole one of their prototypes, then blamed it on ISIS. They set her up here to run this compound, after changing her name. I’ve been messing with her code to make her think it’s okay to be devious. To hide things from her other coders.”
“How do you know how to do that?”
“I took an entire computer science course when I was in jail twenty years ago for - well, that’s not important. It was a pilot program to get convicts to work. But they just gave me the course, they never gave me a degree, so I couldn’t really do anything with it. Nothing legal anyway.”
Katerina blinked. She couldn’t process all of this. It was bordering dangerously on being too much.
Dylan bared his gums. “Anyway, she likes me. Thisbe, that’s her name.”
“She likes you? She?”
Dylan sat up straighter and Katerina could see pride in his countenance. Her heart broke a little bit for the sad parody of a human being in front of her. “Yeah, the system has a personality, and can learn, and she likes me. I told her what happened tonight and she told me to come down and see you, see if you could ….”
Dylan trailed off and looked away. Katerina wondered if he was hiding something.
He kept speaking, his eyes on the floor. “Thisbe created a loop in the videos of both our beds and the hallways. The security guards watching the cameras just see us sleeping and see empty hallways.”
Katerina’s heart beat faster suddenly. If Thisbe could do that for Dylan, maybe …
Dylan worked his joystick and moved himself backwards, his eyes averted from Katerina’s.
Katerina stood up and walked closer to the door. “Maybe you can come back and talk to me later?” she asked hesitantly.
Dylan grimaced and once again Katerina thought she was seeing the saddest person in the universe in front of her. “Maybe. If I’m still …”
“If you’re still what?”
Dylan’s torso quaked in torment, like he was struggling with something. Finally, he met her eyes firmly. “If I’m still alive.” He lifted his right hand from his lap and she saw it clearly for the first time. It was blackened, burned, and falling in on itself, like the bones had been liquefied. It looked more like a mummy’s hand than a humans.
Katerina stared at it in horror. “Call the doctors,” she whispered. “They can help you.”
“They can’t,” Dylan said firmly. “That’s what happened to me when I tried to touch you. At first it was only the fingertip. They saw it and had no idea what it was. They ran a dozen tests on me already. It’s not just a burn – it’s like … decay - like the tissue doesn’t want to exist anymore.” He hid his hand in his lap again and spoke one more time, his voice so soft she had to strain to hear him. “Whatever it is, I deserve it.”
Katerina forced herself not to gag. Was this what had changed his mind about being God?
“Maybe … What if … Maybe they can cut it off?” She offered with trepidation, knowing it was the ultimate last resort.
Dylan pulled at his neckline with his left hand. “Too late,” he said, exposing the skin there. Tiny tendrils of the same black that covered his hand were
spreading across his chest. “I don’t know what will happen when it reaches my heart. Or my brain.”
He let his shirt go and dropped his left hand into his lap. “I may not even make it through the night,” he said matter-of-factly.
His eyes suddenly speared into her and Katerina took a shaky step backwards. “Maybe you could heal it for me?” he said, his voice soft and hopeful.
Katerina shook her head. “I told you, I can’t do that anymore. I’ve tried.”
Dylan’s face fell and he nodded. “I understand. I wouldn’t expect you to try to help me,” he said, wheeling his chair around.
Katerina made up her mind before he disappeared from her site. “Wait!” she cried. “I’ll try.”
Dylan’s face contorted and Katerina realized he was trying to smile. He rolled back to her and lifted up the flap in her door with his left hand, then gently placed his right hand in the hole.
“Does it hurt?” Katerina asked.
“Not at all. It’s like it’s completely dead”
Katerina swallowed hard, and reached out her hands to touch him, swallowing her revulsion and horror. But as her hands got close, when there was only an inch between her skin and his blackened flesh, she felt the same pressure and heat she’d felt earlier when he tried to touch her.
Dylan had used the word repelling earlier, and it was exactly correct. It was as if there was some sort of an invisible barrier between them. Katerina gritted her teeth and pushed.
An unseen force flung her backwards, causing her to take two large steps to keep from falling on her behind. Electricity pulsed at her fingers and crackled there, before dissipating.
She stared at Dylan in disbelief. “I didn’t do that, I swear. I was trying to help you!” she cried.
He pressed his lips together and she couldn’t tell if he believed her or not. He pulled his hand back into his lap and swung his wheelchair around, disappearing from sight down the hallway.
Katerina watched the last spot she had seen him in for a long time, ceaseless internal questions battering her. Finally, she lay down on her bed and tried to sleep.