I hoped she wasn’t peering out at me like I’d been able to do with Nicholae by the end of our session—helpless, but aware. It was one thing to be aware and locked within your body for a few seconds, but I’d imagine it would be torture before too long. I hoped she really was sleeping.
Kafka (5)
Eli spotted Oliver’s mother and Desiree’s old history teacher, Mr. Gordon, from his safe vantage point. His mission was to spy on the recovery teams cleaning up the streets of Doria and report back with his findings. This one was in a southwest township called Valencia and it was a particularly good find. There were a number of groups attempting to piece Doria back together, but this one had people he recognized in it, so he knew he was in the right place.
Eli hid in an empty house, at least ten down from where the group was primarily focused, holding a pair of high-powered binoculars up to the window.
I can see you, but you can’t see me, he thought.
He’d hoped to find Oliver within the group. He knew that bastard couldn’t be too far away. Eli had overheard what had happened to Alexandria and the asylum. He was sure they had found Desiree, but hopefully too late. Hopefully, Alexandria had had time to work her magic, like she’d done with Anna, before the rescue party reached her. Returning her home, reset to a time before Oliver, was the real goal. She deserved better than him. But having their relationship erased, with Oliver fighting to get it back, wasn’t too far from karmic justice.
Eli removed from his front pocket a special compass Kafka had given him and typed the coordinates into his cell phone. He knew he couldn’t send the text in this plane, but saved it as a draft so he wouldn’t forget.
The group had their work cut out for them and they would be clearing out this area for a few days. This was a good find, but by no means an emergency.
Eli almost returned to the Ritz Carlton, but remembered Kafka was no longer there. He’d kept the suite under his name, but returned to Provex City, to his penthouse in Lorne Tower. Even though Provex City was not nearly at the level of ruin Doria was in, it was still far from being a fully functioning city. Not many of the roadways were yet cleared. Emergency services continued to work day and night, trying to bring the city back online.
Luckily for Eli, Kafka had set up several masterfully hidden doors around the city to aid in efficient travel. It sure beat walking miles and miles of crumbling city streets. Kafka didn’t want any doors leading up to his penthouse, the closest one tucked within a ground floor janitor’s closet in the building directly across the street from Lorne Tower.
It took Eli four doors to reach the janitor’s closet, like taking several train lines to get across town, and he was glad and a little relieved he remembered the sequence to reach his desired destination.
Lorne Tower had sustained very little damage compared to most of the other buildings in the city. It glowed bright and brilliant, and Eli couldn’t wait to see this royal blue monument dominating the skyline of Los Angeles. Miraculously, construction had already begun, though nothing yet noticeable to the average Angeleno. Kafka had done the subterranean construction himself—pure creation—so by the time the demolition was completed, the ground floor structure could immediately begin. And it would go up fast, Kafka had explained. He wanted to oversee everything and there was no better place than living on the jobsite—or in the case of his penthouse suite—directly above the jobsite with a bird’s-eye view of the progress below.
Kafka took care of his staff. While most of the buildings in the city were indefinitely shut down, Lorne Tower was fully operational. Eli was personally greeted by two impeccably dressed women behind the front desk, and even by a maintenance man buffing the marble floor who stopped briefly to let him pass. Eli carefully stepped over the long cord snaking to the wall outlet and made his way for the penthouse elevator.
The penthouse elevator required a special code to operate—the one Eli had to recite in his head since the elevator had no visible buttons. Only then did it shoot up into the air, rocketing toward the top floors.
Eli still couldn’t believe the view from this glass elevator. Even with half the city lights dark, the view of the city was spectacular, like looking out the window of an airplane as it hovered just above the cluster of skyscrapers. These sublime buildings really did scrape the sky.
A soothing female voice announced his arrival to the imperial penthouse suite and Eli entered a short hallway with one set of double doors directly ahead. Inside he found Kafka in the expansive living room, staring out his wall of glass with his hands behind his back. The dagger that never left his side hung from his right hip. He didn’t stir when Eli entered the room, so Eli cleared his throat as a not-so-subtle announcement.
“I know you’re there, Eli,” Kafka said, without turning around. “I could hear you entering the building.”
“Are you alone?” Eli asked.
“Not anymore.”
Eli strode up to the wall of glass to stand beside his mentor.
“Look past Provex City and down onto the great hype of Los Angeles far below. Do you see it? Do you see its lackluster downtown?”
Eli had to quickly focus his vision. The nearby glowing buildings disappeared, allowing the horizon to open up with no equivalent obstructions. The contrast made the buildings of Los Angeles look so small and unsophisticated.
“Yes, I see it,” Eli replied.
“This is where we belong, on top of the world—above them all.”
Eli didn’t say anything, remaining focused on keeping his home in view.
“What have you found?” Kafka asked, looking over at him for the first time since he’d arrived.
Eli took out his cell phone and read the coordinates aloud. “They’re helping the people of Doria.”
“Good for them,” Kafka said and returned his gaze outside. “I want Nicholae to suffer. I want everything taken from him before I strike the final blow. I want him left with nothing and begging to die. Nothing.” The final word rolled off his tongue like the hiss of a snake.
Eli felt the very same way about Oliver. He couldn’t remember ever hating someone so much, with that hatred growing inside of him so fast, spreading through and consuming him like a cancer.
“Is this our next move?” Eli asked, holding up the phone with the coordinates he’d entered.
“You’re sure it was them?”
“I didn’t see Nicholae or Oliver, but I saw Helen.”
“Helen,” Kafka said venomously. “Let’s gather the troops.”
11
Cleanup
I didn’t remain with Desiree long, not wanting to arouse too much suspicion. Our barracks were empty, so I made my way to the guarded door into town.
Our travel door was positioned seamlessly into the front door of an empty house, so when I exited, I found myself on a quaint front porch looking out at a street lined with sheet-covered bodies. This wasn’t my first time helping and I was sure it wouldn’t be my last, but I had seen enough dead bodies to last me multiple lifetimes.
I saw Micah and Isolde first. They were at the end of the row of bodies, the last few yet to be covered. Micah touched his sister on the shoulder and began walking away. A white sheet appeared in Isolde’s hands. She shook it out and floated it down over the next body in line.
I hopped down the few porch steps and crossed the overgrown yard. Two large trees in the middle of the lawn were fused and twisted around each other. I pictured more bodies hanging from them like limp branch offshoots. One or more of the people lying in the street may have been retrieved from this very tree.
“Oliver, you made it,” Isolde called from the street. “I was wondering if you were coming out today.”
“Is Logan here?” I asked.
“Yeah, he arrived a little bit ago. He went looking for...for that skinny girl with blonde hair—she was at breakfast.”
“Autumn,” I said.
“That’s right.” Another folded white sheet appeared in her hands and she s
hook it out like the previous one.
I caught the far edge of the fluttering sheet and helped her ease it down over the last body.
“Thanks,” she said, gazing at me with pale blue eyes that reminded me of Anna’s.
“That’s a pretty amazing ability,” I said. I’ve yet to learn how to manifest anything and she seemed to be doing it with ease.
“I’m glad you think so,” she said. “But it’s really nothing.” Isolde smiled shyly, her bangs falling into her face and covering one eye. She brushed them back with nervous fingers.
I saw Mr. Gordon exit the house across the street and told Isolde I needed to talk with him.
“I can come with you,” she said, stepping in line to follow.
“That’s not necessary,” I said and crossed the street ahead of her, calling for Mr. Gordon to wait up.
“Oh, okay,” was the last I heard from the soft voice in my wake.
Mr. Gordon stopped as I reached the front lawn. “Your father finally let you out of your cage? What does he have you working on now?”
“Resisting your freezing power.” I cracked a smirk.
“That’ll come in handy,” he said and glanced down the street. “The newcomers have been a big help today. They’re a great addition to the team. What do you think of Isolde?”
“She seems like a nice kid,” I said.
Mr. Gordon stared at me with one eyebrow raised. “Anyway, we’ve cleared out much of the street. Everyone else is down there.”
I looked in the direction he was pointing and saw my mother, Logan, and the others clustered in the street six or seven houses down. Isolde was now walking toward the group, alone.
“I haven’t seen you much since we arrived,” Mr. Gordon said. “How are you? Your mother told me about Desiree and that you and your father took her home.”
“Yeah,” I said. “It was hard, but what I had to do.”
“It’s better this way. She belongs with her family like you do with yours.”
“Yeah.”
Mom was now walking toward us, just passing Isolde. She looked so different, now dressed in black army fatigues like all the other soldiers, her baggy pants tucked into leather boots, a pistol hanging from her right hip, and her hair pulled back into a thick ponytail. She wasn’t just my mother anymore, but a strong woman not to be trifled with. As she approached, she pulled out a pack of cigarettes from a cargo pocket halfway down her thigh, tapped one out, and brought it to her lips. She snapped her fingers, releasing a small flame from one fingertip and igniting the end of the cigarette.
“Oliver, glad you could make it,” she said, blowing smoke from her nose.
“Nicholae finally let me out of my cage,” I said, glancing at Mr. Gordon for a reaction.
“We’re ready to move to the next street, after we bury these bodies.” She took another drag from her cigarette and then examined it like she wasn’t quite sure what to make of it, like it had gone rotten. “I don’t really have the desire anymore. It’s just a habit now.”
Mr. Gordon plucked the cigarette from her outstretched fingers and stamped it out in the weed-ridden grass. She didn’t object, but removed the pack from her pocket.
“It was filling a void that’s no longer there,” he said.
“You always have been the voice of reason,” Mom said and dropped the pack to the ground. “I wish I didn’t lose all those years.”
Mr. Gordon shrugged. “It was a good decision at the time. We made it together, if you remember.”
“I do.”
Mom left to check in with Nicholae. Mr. Gordon said it was time for a break and joined her, both of them disappearing through the front door in the quiet house across the street.
Sporadic gusts of wind lifted corners and rippled the white sheets covering the long line of bodies in the road. I approached the dead—all people who would still be alive today if it wasn’t for Kafka and his ambitions. I didn’t know any of them personally, but I mourned them all the same.
Mr. Gordon had laid a similar sheet over Jeremy’s body before we buried him. He was mangled in ways I didn’t even want to imagine, his body destroyed from the fall. I had enough nightmares. I saw the broken shell of my brother from afar, but Mr. Gordon had shrouded him in white before I got too close. These blanketed bodies before me were destroyed as well, but in far more unnatural ways.
The bulks under the blankets were all different sizes. It was too easy to pick out the children, like a morbid game I would have thought funny at one time, back in my regular life, back before I knew what death really was. The smell of rot never wafted through the television. Realizing these were real people instead of characters from a script changed my emotional response. When Desiree had first seen the horror here; she’d wretched into the grass several times. I didn’t, but I would have been lying if I’d said I didn’t feel sick, a sickness that returned every time the bodies did—the feeling a little less, but still present.
Maybe the day it’s not is the day I should truly be frightened.
The first thunderclap of gunfire didn’t startle me. Somehow it felt like a dream—like another recurring nightmare clawing its way into my waking hours. My attention remained on the bodies before me. It sounded so far away. There were screams, but they were far away, too.
My head rolled slowly, followed by the rest of my body, until I was facing the attack. Not just an attack, but an ambush.
Members of our team were scattering in all directions, with a majority trying to head this way, toward the safety of the door across the street from me. People ducked behind fused trees and junked cars, but the bullets were coming from both sides of the street, from two houses across from each other. The entire group was caught in the crossfire.
“Oliver! Get help!” someone yelled, which I think was Logan, but I couldn’t isolate him in the sudden chaos.
Hearing my name broke me from my pensive daze. My instincts kicked in all at once, causing me to reach for the gun under my armpit and sprint into the fire. I wasn’t listening, just reacting. If I had been listening, I would have run for the door. But my legs seemed to always lead me into danger.
I finally spotted Logan lying down in the grass, crawling on his elbows toward a car parked in a nearby driveway. If he could only get to the far side of the car, he’d be out of the direct line of fire. At least ten people were running toward me like a frantic herd. Other off-spurts of the initial group sought cover in houses farther down the street. Micah seemed to be helping an injured person propped against a tree trunk. Darius did his best to shield a woman from gunfire as they clambered toward safety on unsteady hands and feet.
Gunshots whizzed through the herd barreling toward me, dropping one person to the road.
I skidded to a stop, fell to one knee, and fired back—trying to provide cover for the incoming evacuees. But the bullets were swarming in from multiple directions and I couldn’t even see where. I had to focus and protect myself.
And just as the thought crossed my mind, a blindingly sharp pain ripped through my left shoulder, spinning me a quarter-circle as I crumpled to the concrete, my gun rocketing from my hand with a metallic clang.
I couldn’t hear if I was screaming, all I heard was white noise muffling the rest of the world. I had felt bullets bury themselves into my bulletproof vest, punching me so hard I wanted to vomit. I had removed the vest and dared Nicholae to shoot me without protection, knowing I could will it safely through me or handle the pain. I was wrong on both counts now. And I didn’t think I needed the vest anymore, powerful enough to handle myself without it. Stupid.
The pain radiated from my throbbing shoulder, but shot all through my body like electrical pulses. I rolled onto my back to take the extra pressure off my shoulder, but the ground against the exit wound didn’t provide much relief. My eyes and nose leaked uncontrollably and it hurt too much to breathe. To move. To think. All I could focus on was the pain growing inside me like a malignant tumor.
I couldn’t h
ear gunfire anymore. I saw the legs of people darting by me. But one person stopped and knelt at my side.
“You’re going to be okay,” a sweet voice called from the ether.
I imagined myself back in school, with a screwdriver protruding from my abdomen, sitting in a limp heap against the bottom row of lockers. A number of students were huddled around me, expressing varying levels of concern. It was Desiree’s face that broke through the haze, through the cascading waterfall in front of my eyes.
“Oliver!” the gentle voice called again. “I’m going to apply some pressure, but it will only hurt for a moment.”
“Thank you,” I said to Desiree, somehow knowing that Mr. Gordon would be entering the scene any second now to help me up and drag me away from these awful bullies, like he always did, right on cue.
I felt cold hands, not the soft touch of Desiree’s sweater, on my shoulder. The wound and surrounding skin quickly heated to a boil and then cooled just as fast like it had been dunked in an ice water bath.
But Desiree didn’t remember me and I was no longer at school. I knew these things, but the scene felt so real, like it was happening now—like this was the real experience and my memory a precognition.
When my eyes came back into focus and the shadows of my concerned classmates disappeared, I saw a teenage girl with wavy brown hair gazing down on me. All that was missing were her bright emerald eyes.
The agony radiating from my shoulder and rushing throughout my body was subsiding down to a dull ache, and then not even that. I heard gunshots in the distance again and the panic of more people charging by us.
“We need to go,” Isolde urged. “Can you stand?”
“I think so,” I replied, propped myself on an elbow, and hesitantly pushed up to a fully seated position.
“Let me help you.” Isolde reached for my hand to pull me to my feet when two hands grabbed her small shoulders. Wisps of blonde hair blew onto the side of her face.
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