by Anderson, S
He’s the ghost again.
He’s here to torture me.
He cracks his knuckles, just like he did the day I met him. “Yes, I do.”
I come to with a rush of sights and sounds, screaming as I sit up.
“Calm down, calm down,” a voice keeps saying. “Look at me, Recruit Vincent. Deep breaths.”
I stare into his black eyes, matching my breathing to his instructions.
“What happened?” I stammer. I remember being taken. I remember throwing up. I remember being terrified out of my mind.
“You had a seizure.”
A seizure? He didn’t just say that. I couldn’t have had a seizure. “I’m not epileptic.”
“I know you’re not,” General Zolkov says. I’m a child he’s scolding, and I don’t know why. “You were scared to the brink of losing control, so your body seized.”
Scared to the brink of losing control. “What happened? Did you catch the guys who—?”
My question trails off as I look at him. He’s telling me with his eyes and the set of his lips that it was just a drill.
A test.
I failed.
“Are you really ready for this?”
I don’t know how to answer that question. I think I know what he’s asking, but I don’t know what to say. “You guys made it sound like I would be cracking codes and breaking into computer systems.”
“You can’t crack the kind of codes we’ll need you to crack if you can’t stay alive long enough to crack them.”
“Then I don’t know.”
“You don’t know.”
The room we’re in is quiet other than this continuous beep from a monitor over my head. I don’t know if I’m in a hospital or just the base infirmary. I don’t care. If this is the shit he expects me to put up with then I need to leave.
I knew this was deep shit I was stepping in when I agreed to join the super-secret spy club, but I hadn’t anticipated this.
Zolkov leans his elbows on his knees and stares at me. He reminds me of this hawk that used sit on the lamppost outside my mother’s apartment building. It sat there, day in and day out, watching, waiting. I never saw it catch whatever it was stalking, and sometimes, I wondered if it was waiting for me.
Now he stares through me, slicing down to the part of me he wants me to prove is there. “Can you handle this?”
My defenses go up. I want to slap him. I want to crawl under the bed and hide. For twenty-four hours, I thought I was badass, but now I feel like a dumb kid. “I don’t know.”
“Figure it out,” he says. “Now.”
I throw my hands up in frustration. “What the hell is there to figure out?”
“You wanted a challenge, Recruit Vincent.” I feel like a toddler being asked if she can’t handle going to school or if she should stay in daycare, eating crayons.
It pisses me off. “I don’t know.” I enunciate each word with so much anger I’m shaking.
“That tonight,” he says, waving toward the door. “That was nothing. That was just a taste. So I need to know… can you handle it?”
I clench my hands into fists. I can still taste bile in my mouth. I remember how insane I felt when I woke up with that cover over my head. “Obviously not.”
It’s a pathetic confession. I hang my head.
“Give me a goddamn break.”
I look up as he stands. He starts pacing between the door and the bed, glaring at me with each pass.
“What?” I ask, genuinely confused by his reaction.
“Not too many people can really tick me off,” he says, his voice little more than a growl. “But it seems you have natural knack for it.”
Is he for real? “I’m sorry. My body can’t handle it. I’m too afraid—”
“That’s bullshit,” he shouts, stopping with a finger pointed at me. “Fear is something you can control. Your body is something you can control.”
Why is he being such an asshole? “Why are you being such an asshole?”
I don’t exactly regret saying it, but I do cower back as he rushes the side of the bed.
“Why are you acting so weak?”
“I am weak,” I defend. “I can’t handle it.”
“So that’s it? You give up the first time it gets hard? I didn’t think that was the kind of girl you were when I met you.”
“Clearly, you don’t know shit about me.”
He braces his hands on the side of my bed, leaning forward. He’s so angry I can feel it radiating from his body. His lips curl into a sort of sadistic smile. “Oh, I know everything about you, Penelope. I know that you’re a spoiled little princess who pouts when she doesn’t get her way.”
This Russian son of a bitch. “You—”
“Asshole,” he says, waving his hand like my words are too stupid to hear. “I might be an asshole, but at least I’m not a coward.” That stings. “You want to run home to your mother? You want to go back to your easy life?”
“Easy?” What part of my life is easy? That proves he doesn’t know shit about me.
He nods as his eyes narrow. He’s getting whatever reaction out of me that he wants. “Yes, easy. You had to fabricate Hell in your world, distance yourself from a father who dotes on you so much he would build you a castle just so you could burn it down.”
I laugh. He clearly doesn’t know shit about Hassan, either.
“What you went through last night? People in your father’s country go through every day. Children are kidnapped from their homes at night where I grew up, forced into slavery… forced to do things that your sweet little head would spin from witnessing. Your pride would demand that no one could dare do it to you, and you’re right.” He shoves away from the bed, holding his hands up in mock surrender. “Walk away and fold back into that simple, easy life, and you’ll never know those horrors again.”
I’m confused. Is he trying to bait me into not walking away, or is he trying to sell me on the idea of leaving, because right now leaving sounds like a dream.
“You can be so much more,” he says. He’s against the wall by the door now. Damn, the man moves fast. He leans against the beige plaster as he breathes like he just ran a mile. “You can help stop the people who do those evil things to innocent souls.”
I’ve only known this guy for a few days. I don’t know what his deal is, but he takes this shit so serious that it terrifies me almost more than being kidnapped did.
“Huh,” he says once he caught his breath. He doesn’t look at me like he’s dissecting me anymore. Now he’s staring at me like I’m a total stranger. I’m so confused. “I guess I was wrong about you, Penelope. You can’t handle it.”
Tears sting my eyes. I don’t know what to say. I never wanted to be a hero. I don’t want the responsibility of other lives in my hands. I just wanted to crack some codes.
I just wanted to fit somewhere for once.
He storms across the room, catching me off guard in my moment of weakness. His hands are around my throat, squeezing every last miserable breath from my body.
“Fight back,” he says.
I won’t. I can’t.
I’m weak, and I just want it all to end.
His hold tightens. His eyes swell into two swirling black holes. “Fight me.”
I try to shake my head.
He lifts me in the air, tossing me across the room.
The memory shatters as I fall to the floor.
“Fight me,” Nikolai demands, stomping toward me again.
“You never told me to fight you that night,” I say, remaining docile on all fours. “You told me to pack my shit and leave or report for training the next morning.”
He kicks my side, and I choke on my next breath as one of my ribs pokes at my lung.
“You’re not her,” he says, shoving me until I’m lying flat on my back. He rests the bottom of his boot on my throat.
“I don’t think he wants you to kill me,” I say.
“Then fight me.”
I want him to keep it.
I stretch my arms out on either side of me, palms facing up. “Kill me, Nick. Do it.”
He snarls and shoves away, pacing the room like a trapped tiger. “What’s the point of this one?”
He’s not asking me, not asking anyone outside of his own mind. He’s trying to riddle out what mind-fuck Heinrich is playing on him now.
“Rewrite history… he tells me to rewrite history… but you’re not her. You’re too old to be her.”
Rewrite history. The memory flashes make a little more sense to me now. Heinrich is trying to confuse my brain, convince me that Nikolai and I have been working with him this whole time.
“It’s not real,” I say. To me, to him… to the world in general. Nikolai roams around muttering that he doesn’t get the point, and I mumble that none of it is real.
We’re the hottest couple at the loony bin.
“She would fight me,” he says with a decisive nod that makes me laugh.
“I gave up.”
He stands over me with that steely glare that I’m beginning to find endearing more than threatening. “You’re not her.”
“You know why I showed up the next morning?”
He clenches his jaw in response.
“I wanted to learn how to punch so I could hit you in the face.”
I’m not being sarcastic. That was honestly my motivation that morning. I spent the entire night in the infirmary telling myself to quit. I’d become an emancipated minor when I joined the Army. I knew I would be completely free if I just walked away. It was tempting.
And then I thought of what it would feel like to punch that bastard in the face.
I endured every torture he came up with, landed back in the infirmary more times than I can remember, and every day I told myself to get back up so I can hit him back someday.
The corner of his lip twitches. “You’re not her.”
I put my hands behind my head, closing my eyes. “You just keep telling yourself that.”
The door opens and closes. I can smell the chemical stench that clings to Heinrich’s clothes.
“Thank you for your assistance, Subject A,” he says. “That will be all for now.”
I keep my eyes closed, tracking Heinrich’s movements with my other senses. He circles the room a few times once we’re alone. I don’t have to see him to know he’s scheming.
“Why do you continue to fight me, Penelope?”
The worst thing about being mind-fucked is the exhaustion. I’m pretty sure everyone who’s ever given into one has done so because they’ve finally reached the I’m-just-so-fucking-done point. He’s messing with my awareness of time, he’s even confused my hold on reality, but it’s really this shit that gets to me. The ‘why won’t you just be my friend, Penelope’ crap. It pisses me off.
“I’m not your puppet.”
“Do you believe that he is?”
I know what he’s really asking. I think I’ve had three different episodes with Nikolai in this room since I got here. Each time, I get a little closer to finding the Nikolai who was in the motel rooms with me.
And each time, Heinrich swoops in to push me to understand there’s no undoing what he’s done.
“Nope,” I say. “I think you’ve done a great job of convincing him the world is a different place, but a mind can’t be controlled without conscious will. You’ve controlled his world, never his mind.”
I open my eyes then, because I want to see his reaction.
He keeps it under tight lock, I’ll give him that, but I can tell I piss him off just as much as he does me. That’s why he says, “So he was protecting you.”
I don’t understand what he’s talking about, so I keep my mouth shut.
That doesn’t bother him. “When Subject A was turned.” He gives me a look that warns I’m not supposed to argue the validity of that statement. “I told him I wanted to know the name of the smartest person on his team.”
“Nick’s the smartest person I know.”
“General Zolkov was above average intelligence, yes, but it has confused me all of these years. He knew my specific request, and he claimed he was that member of the team. I deemed the …transition too rushed, figured he lost too much of his awareness to complete the tasks I put before him. That was, until President Pishkar’s death.”
“What the hell does that have to—?”
“You, Penelope, have the higher-level thinking this test needs. Your mind can help calibrate all of my work.”
I shake my head. “You’ve either got a hearing or a learning impairment, doctor. Unless you want to do what you did to him and change the world—”
“Whether within or on the outside, the fact still remains, Penelope—”
“Agent Vincent.”
He grits his teeth, but complies. “Agent Vincent, you have to admit that even you could not stop yourself from following my commands if the… context of your reality was altered.”
“I’ll kill myself before I let you use me as a weapon.”
There’s that slimy smile of his. “But how can you trust that you’re actually killing yourself, Agent Vincent?”
Like I said, the exhaustion is what gets you.
“Look,” I say, sitting up. “You’re wasting your breath with me. I’m the rat that will eat the poisoned cheese… get lost down the same wrong corridor of the maze… I’ll even electrocute my brain to feel the orgasm… I’ll turn myself so insane the context won’t matter anymore.”
He looks giddy then. Somehow, I’ve just given him Christmas morning. “Oh, I mourn the years wasted without you here.”
My skin crawls from the way he says it. Probably because he looks like he’s about to make a skin suit out of my body.
The door crashes open, and a big black blur rushes in. Before I can process what’s happening, Heinrich falls over, blood oozing from his chest.
His attacker turns to me. I’m torn between shaking the dude’s hand and defending myself until I look up and find Nikolai standing over me.
“Come on,” he says.
“What’s going…?”
He doesn’t let me finish. He pulls me to my feet, planting a hard kiss on my lips. I’m too stunned to do anything but stand there.
“You okay?” he asks, touching his fingers to the sides of my face.
“What’s going on?”
“I remember.”
He says it with so much sincerity that my muscles give up all at once. Nikolai holds me upright as he explains. “We have to get moving. The guards will figure out I’m not on patrol soon.”
I remember. The words wash over me.
“Can you run, sweetheart?”
I nod, even though I’m pretty sure I can’t. He’s awake. My Nick is awake and here, saving me.
He remembers.
He holds the gun in his hand out to me. “You’re the better shot.”
That strikes me as odd. Nikolai has always been better with handguns. I’m a sniper, not a shooter.
I remember.
“Come on,” he says, moving toward the door.
I stand there, holding the gun, staring down at Heinrich’s limp body.
“What?” Nikolai asks.
“You never forgot me. What did you have to remember?”
He tilts his head. “What they did to me.”
That makes sense on one level, but I still feel off on every other. Nikolai knew he was being used. He knew Heinrich was controlling his mind. He might have given up on fighting it, but he never forgot it.
“So… just like that, you remember?”
“Not just like that,” he says, taking a step back into the room. He’s agitated, anxious. I don’t care if we get caught right now. This isn’t adding up. “Having you here, watching what he’s doing to you.
It… broke the spell. I remember what happened. I know who you are.”
He’s always known who I am.
He’s just never believed it.
That snaps the truth into my head, and I raise the gun, aiming it right at his chest.
“Penelope… what are you—?”
“You’re not him,” I say, pulling the trigger.
The room shifts around me. I’m not standing anymore. I’m lying on a bed, ankles and wrists tied down so I can’t move.
Heinrich’s face is above me. That sleazy smile is on his lips again. “Oh, Penelope, your brain is truly amazing.”
I don’t take that as a compliment. “It's Agent Vincent.”
My throat is scratchy, like I’ve been screaming.
How long have I been in this bed?
He leans closer to me. “Why don’t we just change it to Subject B? Shall we?”
I don’t want to feel it. I fight it with everything left in me.
But the terror grows too strong.
I hear a monitor beep behind me as my body begins to spasm.
As I slip into the darkness, I pray I won’t come back.
13
I don’t die.
God, I want to.
I’ve never wanted it as much as I do right now. I don’t know how much time has passed, or if time has even passed at all. For all I know, this is the only real room I’ve been in at this place.
I’m strapped to a gurney in the middle of what I’m pretty sure is an autopsy room. Ironic, really. I wanted to die, and I woke up in the morgue.
Don’t tease me like that, Death.
Heinrich stands at the foot of my makeshift bed, talking to people that I can’t see. He speaks German to them. I wonder if he knows that I can understand every word he says.
“Prep her and move her into the observation room,” he says in what I’ve decided must be his native language. “I have very important guests here today.”
He pats my ankle, and I want to peel my skin off. “You will be my crowning achievement, Subject B.”
That he says in English.
Dumbass. Do your research. You don’t know shit about me.
A needle shoves through the skin at the bend of my elbow. It’s painless shit, really. I don’t notice any change in my system or my senses. It creeps over me like an invisible skin.