by Kelli Kimble
He was in my brain, looking at my innermost sensations, right this very moment.
Rage built in me. I grabbed his mental doppelganger and threw it out of my head.
My eyes flew open.
He was smiling – and I wasn’t sure whether that was good or bad.
Chapter 5
The city was off in the distance. For just a moment, the familiarity of it was comforting, but it didn’t last. Anger began to slowly unfurl in my gut. I did my best to tamp it down.
Thanos dropped us to the ground, and the ever-present bubble developed around me. “We walk from here,” he said.
“Why?” Ord complained. He didn’t bother shielding his thoughts from me. “It’s still miles off.”
Thanos shot him a look. Ord nodded and looked away.
“Is it a secret?” I asked.
“No,” Thanos said. “I just shouldn’t have to tell him. He knows the rules.”
“Physical telepathy is not sanctioned in sight of the city, except in experimental locations, blah, blah, blah,” Ord projected in a stiff, falsetto voice.
“You have telepathic abilities?” I asked Ord.
He sniffed. “No.”
“He didn’t make the cut,” Thanos said.
Ord’s face turned red. “You know, it’s just because my mom wouldn’t sign off on it. I would’ve been a good recruit.”
Thanos shrugged. “If you say so.”
Despite myself, I stifled a giggle. Ord was easy to get a rise out of, and Thanos enjoyed doing it as often as possible – so much so that he hardly seemed to care anymore when he succeeded – but he noticed my reaction, and his mouth curled into a tiny, secret smile, which he tried to hide from me by turning away.
The anger still churning in my stomach turned to heavy lead. “If you can’t use telepathic abilities, why am I still in the bubble?” I asked.
It was Ord’s turn to smile. “Yeah, Thanos. Why is she still in the bubble?”
“She’s the only one who can see or feel the bubble – and I like keeping her close.” He winked at me, and a shiver of revulsion ran down my spine. He was constantly making suggestive comments, which made me think his plan for me mostly involved torture of a sexual nature.
He shouldered his pack and started walking towards the city. I had no choice but to follow him. Ord walked behind us. I could feel his eyes on my back. Another shiver.
The inside of the bubble began to get warm. Sweat formed on my forehead, and I swiped it away with my sleeve. A trickle of sweat was soon forming between my shoulder blades, as well. “Wow, when did it get so warm?” I said.
“It didn’t,” Thanos said. “You were shivering, so I warmed up the bubble. Yeah?”
I didn’t know how to respond, and my mouth hung open like a dead fish on the beach.
Thanos laughed. I could feel him trying to change his form, but I wouldn’t let myself see it. Whatever it was, I wouldn’t have liked it. “Hey, you finally did it,” he said. He gave a little nod of approval. The bubble began to feel cooler. “I’ll even give you a little reward for that.”
We reached the city gates just before nightfall. The guard waved Ord and Thanos in. He pointed at me. “You. State your name and business.”
“She’s with us,” Thanos said. “A conquest.”
The guard laughed and opened the gate wider so that we could all pass. “Searchers. Always bringing home the bacon, I tell you.” He laughed again and clanged the gate shut behind us.
Ord puffed out his chest and continued.
Thanos paused. “Any news?”
“I hear the mayor’s going crazy over the weather control. It’s not working like it’s supposed to.” The guard leaned against the station wall. “You know how she is.”
Thanos nodded. “What about the power plant?”
“It’s still running. Barely. She’s going to get us all killed. We need the power plant.” He shifted his gaze to me. “Good thing you brought back someone who can help.”
Crap. The guard knew who I was. I studied him closer. Did I recognize him? He didn’t seem familiar. He was a good decade older than me, and not as old as my parents would’ve been, so I couldn’t imagine having known him when I still lived in the city.
Thanos didn’t respond to the comment. “Thanks for the news. Gotta get her into processing. See ya.”
“Yup.”
Thanos clamped a hand on my shoulder and moved me away from the station. The bubble was gone, but I didn’t dare try to move away from him.
“I thought you said you weren’t a searcher,” I said, as soon as we were out of earshot.
“You can’t believe everything you hear,” he said.
“You’re going to kill me?”
He didn’t answer. He steered me down the street, towards the center of the city. Some things looked familiar, but there’d been a lot of changes. Many houses along the street had been torn down.
“What happened to all these people?” I asked.
Thanos shrugged. “They moved somewhere else, I guess.”
We caught up to Ord. He was standing at a corner, waiting for us. “Let’s get this over with,” Ord said. “You know I don’t like dealing with the night crew.”
“You go on home,” Thanos said. “We’ll do that in the morning.”
Ord’s face stretched into a leer. His gaze swept from my breasts to my feet and back up again. “You want some alone-time, yeah?” He licked his lips. “I wouldn’t mind a turn when you’re done.”
“I said, go home,” Thanos said.
Ord’s spine stiffened. “Fine – but don’t think I’ll stay quiet if something goes wrong.”
Thanos and Ord locked eyes. Thanos leaned forward slightly. Ord was in pretty good shape, but it was obvious who would be on the receiving end of a beating if they started to fight. Personally, I wouldn’t have minded if they started fighting – it might have offered me the chance to get away – but Ord knew where he stood. He broke his stare and turned, giving a flaccid wave over his shoulder as he walked away. The grip on my shoulder tightened, then relaxed and dropped away completely when Ord turned a corner, out of sight.
“Come on,” Thanos said. He walked away from me.
I glanced around. Where could I run and hide? There was nothing close by.
“You won’t be able to hide from me,” he announced into my brain.
Another beat went by. He was right. If I wanted to get away from him, I’d have to do it when he was incapacitated somehow.
Reluctantly, I followed him. We walked past the special school I’d gone to, for kids without telepathic chips. The windows in the front of the building were broken, and the door was boarded up. He turned down a street, and then another. We were following the route I used to take to go home from school.
I jogged to catch up to him. “Wait,” I said. “Where are we going?”
“Your old house,” he said. “I thought you might like to spend a night there.”
“By now, someone must live there,” I said, “or it’s nearly falling down. Has someone been taking care of it?”
The sun was down, and the shadows were deepening. It was hard to tell whether any of the homes we were passing were in good repair or not. At one time, they would’ve been just this side of habitable, so to see them still standing meant there had been a change in fortune.
“Someone does live there,” he said. “Me.”
“I thought you were well-off,” I said.
“I was – am. I asked to have your house.”
My head began to swim. I tried to put a little physical space between us.
“I told you, Nimisila,” he continued. “I’m ambitious. You and I are easily the two strongest specimens ever turned out by the experiment. We could be partners.”
“Partners?”
“Yep. The two of us could easily get control of the city. It wouldn’t be difficult.”
“I thought you meant to torture me,” I said.
“Only insofar
as it advances your abilities. I know you have more potential. You’re practically limitless, just like me – but I don’t think I have to. You learned how to resist my shifting ability, just in the days we’ve known each other. That tells me you only require motivation. Is getting revenge on the people who did this to you not motivation?”
He paused and turned towards a house. Even in the dark, I knew it was mine, but I couldn’t tell if the porch still sagged, or the yard was well-kept. “Here we are.” He waved towards the house. “Let’s go inside.”
He opened the door, and I followed him in. It smelled the same. I inhaled the scent of boiling pasta and wood ash. Thanos turned on a light, and I was shocked to find all the same furnishings in the living area. The couch no longer sagged, and the fabric wasn’t threadbare, but it looked the same.
I glanced over at Thanos. He was smiling, waiting for my reaction. “I don’t understand,” I said. “You’re hostile to me. I killed your father. It was your job to kill me, and you want me to partner with you? What does that even mean?”
“It means what you want it to mean,” he said. He dropped his pack beside the door and sat on the couch. He patted the spot next to him. “Have a seat.”
I dropped my pack, too, but I didn’t sit. I started pacing in front of the fireplace, which was scrubbed clean. Three or four logs had been thrown in to look nice, but it clearly hadn’t been burned in quite some time. “I don’t understand at all,” I continued. “You thought I was dead. You said it to my face; you and everyone else thought I was dead. So, why would you go to all this trouble?”
“When the searchers came back, I read their thoughts,” he said. “They couldn’t hide it from me; you weren’t dead. I’m just glad they convinced everyone else. My only worry was you hadn’t survived after they parted ways with you, but you’re a resourceful girl, Nimisila. Just the right person to help me.”
My head whirled through the possibilities. What could he possibly be playing at?
I thought back to the last time I’d been in this house with my parents. It’d been inconsequential, like any other day, really. We’d gone through the morning routine, and I’d left for school.
I glanced around the room. It was both familiar and foreign. None of my mother’s pictures hung on the walls, and though the house didn’t smell like fresh paint, the lack of shadows where the pictures had hung told me Thanos had painted the room since taking over the house.
My gaze shifted to him. He was leaning back on the couch, his arm across the back, one ankle casually crossed over his other leg. He was trying to read my thoughts, but I wouldn’t let him back in. Somehow, that didn’t seem to bother him.
“This is a lot for you to process; I know,” he said, after a long pause. “You’ve got time to think about it, but I can’t let you leave this house. For obvious reasons.”
“What reasons?” I asked.
“For one, if the mayor finds you, they’ll take you right over to the lab for more experiments. I’m sure you don’t want that.”
“I don’t understand. What is it you want from me?”
“I want you to help me overthrow the mayor. We’ll take control of the city, get things back on track. Make the world a better place.”
I stared at him. Was he crazy? He must have been, because he was saying crazy things.
“I’m not crazy,” he said.
I jerked my head up and met his eyes.
He held up his hands in surrender. “Whoa, I didn’t read your thoughts. It was just a guess.” He got up from the couch and motioned for me to follow him. He went down the hall to my room and opened the door. “Your bed is made up. Why don’t you get some rest, and we can talk about it in the morning?”
His body blocked part of the doorway, and I squished myself against the frame to pass into the room without touching him. I kept my eyes on him.
He gave me a sympathetic smile. Then, he opened the closet door, revealing some clothes for me to change into. “Bathroom is stocked, too. The windows don’t open, so don’t try. I’ll see you in the morning.” He left the room and closed the door behind him.
I sat on the bed. The blankets were mine. I recognized the print on the fabric, and there was a stain on one corner where I’d used the blanket to clean up spilled grape juice once, when I was small. I traced the jagged outline of the stain with a finger. I didn’t like the idea Thanos was batting around. I didn’t want to oversee the city; I didn’t want to oversee anything.
I wanted to go back to Red, and my life with him. In my mind’s eye, I pictured him: the way he smiled when I came into a room, the way his hair shimmered in the sun, the way he held my hand when he knew I was nervous.
I’d likely never see him again.
I wondered whether the weather had turned even worse since we’d left. If it had, many of the people in the settlement wouldn’t last. They were too frail to survive much adversity.
My thoughts strayed back to Tabby. She’d acted so oddly. Maybe I’d deserved to be sent away. Maybe I should’ve done something more for Silver. I shouldn’t have let him come with me. I should have insisted he stayed with Tabby, instead of tracking Thanos with me.
A nightshirt was hanging in the closet. I closed the curtains and undressed self-consciously to put it on. The fabric was uncharacteristically soft, and it fit me perfectly. I rubbed my cheek against the collar. I turned out the light and got into bed, pulling the covers up tight around me. A scent from my former life washed over me. My mom didn’t wear perfume – we couldn’t afford something like that – but she did smell like lemons, and the faint acidity of citrus was present in my blankets.
A tear slid down my cheek. I really missed her.
Chapter 6
I slept well past noon the next day. Thanos didn’t wake me, and I didn’t hear anybody moving around in the house. My eyes felt pasted shut and heavy, but eventually, I managed to open them and get out of bed. I washed up in the bathroom and put on some clean clothes, before easing my bedroom door open and creeping out of my room.
Thanos didn’t seem to be around, and I felt the tension between my shoulders fade. I went to the kitchen and looked in the fridge for something to eat. At the settlement, we didn’t have the luxury of appliances like this, and I marveled at the chill that oozed out over my bare toes as I leaned in to look around. There wasn’t a lot, but I found a side of roasted meat and some cheese, and when I looked around on the counter, I found a loaf of bread. I sliced a bit of meat and cheese and put it between two slices of bread. Then, I opened a cupboard, found a plate, and dropped my simple lunch onto it. I used the tap to fill a glass of water. These simple things were what I’d really missed about the city – if there was anything that I could honestly say I’d missed.
The dining room table was the same. I sat at it with my plate and glass. I’d just taken a giant bite out of the sandwich when I heard the back door open and shut.
Thanos came into the dining room and cleared his throat. “I didn’t think you were ever going to get out of bed,” he said. “You must’ve really needed the rest.”
I shrugged and continued chewing my sandwich.
He glanced at it. “You like that? I wasn’t sure what you’d like.” He pointed at the sandwich.
“It’s fine,” I said, tucking my next bite of food into my cheek as I said it.
“I know when you were a kid, you often went hungry,” he said.
I wondered if that was a commentary on my manners. I tried to slow down and chew my food thoroughly. Back when I’d first gotten free of the city, hunger was something I couldn’t stand. Near-starvation should’ve made me more tolerant, but it didn’t.
He looked around the room, and then returned his gaze to me. I tried to concentrate on the food, but I was acutely aware of him studying me. “What’re you thinking today?” he asked. “About my plan?”
“You don’t have a plan,” I said.
“You know what I mean.” He turned his attention to his cuticles, faintly s
cowling.
“What’s wrong with the power plant?” I asked. I drained the glass of water, looking at him over the rim.
“It’s running out of fuel.”
I resumed eating my sandwich, hoping he’d say more.
“We’re sending some people to mine more of the fuel,” he continued, “but it’s difficult work; people die from the exposure to radon, and the few who’ve made it back were attacked by outsiders and lost their mining payloads.” He stood up and looked out the window. “That’s why they’ve changed the weather. They want to wipe out the groups who are blocking receipt of the fuel.”
A chunk of food lodged in my throat, and I thumped my fist against my chest to dislodge it. “Hang on,” I said. “The mayor is wiping out all that remains of humanity for a power plant?”
“You get it. I knew you would,” he said. “We’re the only ones who can stop it.”
I narrowed my eyes at him. “What is it you plan to stop?”
“The mayor. I’m going to stop the weather, and we’re going to use a new, pure source of energy. One that won’t create the hazardous waste we bury for future generations. Don’t you see? There can be enough for everyone. We don’t have to take over the world. We can just be here, in the city, and coexist with people like yours.”
If I could have stopped the weather from freezing over the rest of the Earth, I’d love to have done it, but could I trust Thanos to do it with me? “How do I know you aren’t just going to take over and go power-crazed?”
“You don’t,” he said, “but I won’t. I’m worried for the people outside the city.” He paused and turned back to the window so that I couldn’t see his face. “People like your group. People like my dad’s.”
“I thought you said your dad was dead.”
“Officially, he did die, but he’s not dead. He was one of the few who escaped from your facility when you destroyed it. He came to get me – to take me with him – but I wouldn’t go. I thought I knew better than him. I thought he was just being selfish, but he was right – and you were, too. He knew what they were doing to you and your friends. Your families. It’s why he helped them escape.”