The Prey

by Jenny Foster

  Then the world starts to fade. I can tell that someone is putting me on the floor, so gently, that it doesn’t hurt. A rubber band holds my leather jacket under my head. The last things I see are gray-green eyes, looking at me full of sympathy and something else.

  Then everything turns black, and I feel nothing else.

  Part 2: The Pursuit

  Chapter 1

  Four pairs of eyes are staring at me when I wake up again.

  I recognize Johar’s face which is closest to me. The other ones are blurry behind him. It is a struggle just to keep my eyes open, and all I want to do is to sink back into unconsciousness.

  “She has made it through the worst,” a strange voice mumbles. “If she hadn’t …”

  “Thank you, doctor, that’s enough,” Johar forcefully stops the man from continuing on. “Let’s go, your payment is waiting for you.” Steps fade away, and the men’s voices grow quieter until they are a distant and meaningless mumbling.

  The next time I wake up, I feel mainly one thing: pain. Muted daylight is coming through the drawn curtains, and even the weak light hurts my eyes. My limbs feel as if I have been in a bad fist fight. I try to raise my head to see who is sitting at my bedside, but even that small movement causes pain and dizziness. What in the world happened to me?

  The last thing I remember is Johar’s disappearance. One minute he was right behind me and the next he was gone. Then something happened, but I can only recall bits and pieces of it. There was something in me, and I urgently needed to get rid of it. Hazathel and Shazuul were there. Someone screamed, and then everything went dark around me. In the last few seconds of consciousness, Johar’s eyes were there again.

  I try to sit up again, but more slowly, this time. The rustling of the bedding, and the soft cries I am making from the pain, wake the figure who is slumped in the chair next to me. Johar sits up straight and shakes his head. “Why didn’t you wake me?” His first words to me are an accusation, a gentle one, but an accusation, nonetheless.

  “Because I didn’t want to say anything,” I slur and say the whole thing again, but more slowly and, above all, more clearly. “Because I didn’t want to say anything. Too exhausting.” Even my throat feels raw and sore when speaking. Johar plumps the pillows behind my back and hands me a glass of water. I don’t think I have ever tasted anything as good as that water, and I hold the empty glass out to him. He fills it and watches with a satisfied expression as I empty the second glass in one big gulp, too. I could get used to this, I think with a touch of humor. Someone always by my side, reading my every wish in my eyes.

  Less pleasant is the fact that my bladder is making itself felt and I need to go to the bathroom. We are in the same room we rented when we arrived here, and the distance to the bathroom is not small – at least for someone who doesn’t want to move. I make a move to try to get up, but the cyborg, who understands what I am thinking, lifts me out of bed and carries me the few steps to the bathroom. “I can do the rest myself, thanks,” I ward him off, when he straightens up in front of the toilet. My voice sounds stronger now, thanks to the water, and my dizziness is abating, as well. I am happy when I dry my hands off. Someone has removed the mirror from the bathroom, but that doesn’t bother me all that much. I am sure I look pitiful. I haven’t eaten in what seems like forever. Instead, I slept and fought the illness. I can look in the mirror later. It takes me awhile, but I manage to return to my bed on my own two feet.

  “So, what really happened?” I ask, as I climb back under the covers. “We should have been underway a long time ago, pursuing Cassie.” I can see everything that happened before the incident at the space port. Including that I slept with a cyborg and then erased his memory of it.

  “You caught a strange virus and we had to take you to the doctor first. You would have never made it to the mother ship in your condition, so don’t start making any accusations.” Johar’s voice sounds different than earlier, harder and more merciless, somehow. But he is right. My next question would have been why he didn’t take me to the spaceship that was waiting for us, with its excellent physicians and the sick bay that has every gadget you could think of. I sigh dramatically.

  “How many days did we lose? How long was I unconscious? And what kind of virus was this?”

  “Slow down,” he tells me and sits back down in the chair next to my bed. Now that my vision is improving, I can see him more clearly. It looks like he hasn’t shaved in three days and the circles under his eyes have a purple and unhealthy shimmer.

  “You were out of commission for five days. I made contact with our mother ship and explained the situation to them. So, you don’t need to worry. They are still waiting for us. And your father has been informed, as well.”

  I clear my throat, trying to clear the sudden tightness in it. “What did he say?”

  “Of course, he was not delighted about the delay, and instructed us to start following Cassie Burnett’s trail as soon as possible,” Johar answers, looking everywhere but at me. I can imagine what lurks behind the words “not delighted.” My father probably pressed his lips together, like he always does, and his eyes probably turned cold, while his voice would have been extremely polite. That is the worst way my father expresses his anger: icy politeness that lets me know, more than any temper tantrum could, how disappointed he is in me, again. “How are you feeling?”

  I have to look away, as well, so he can’t see the tears well up in my eyes when faced with this question. “I’m okay,” I say cheerfully. “Better with every passing minute. I think we should be able to leave in an hour or two. Where are the Sethari and Hazathel?”

  “Next door. They are sharing a room.” For the first time since I woke up, a small smile appears on his face. “They have been playing poker non-stop for five days, improving their travel fund, as they call it. I think they have been very close to being kicked out of the inn a few times, but since they started giving the innkeeper ten percent of their winnings, things have been nice and quiet again.” He gets up. “I will pack our things and have our glider readied for departure. We will depart tonight, in six hours. You still have some time to get used to being up and about again.”

  “You still haven’t told me what kind of virus it was,” I remind him. “And I would really like to know where you disappeared to. I was looking for you!” The last sentence sounded accusing. Johar comes back and sits down next to me again. His eyes are serious, much too serious. I mean, I am okay now, right?

  Suddenly I have the feeling that he is keeping something significant from me. This is what it must feel like when your memories have been erased. The thought flies through my head. You know something is there, and you can’t get to it, and you just can’t figure out what it is. It is like an itch that you can never fully scratch, no matter how much you try. It is a short leap from that thought to the next. Something pops up in my memory, and I shiver involuntarily. There was something that was moving under my skin. Something alive.

  The cyborg takes my hand. I pull it away, so I don’t feel even more like someone who is terminally ill. “Just tell me what is going on,” I ask him. “It is much worse not knowing. Am I going to die? Is that it?”

  To my relief, he shakes his head. “Oh no, you will be completely healthy, very soon. The recovery time is one to two days, as soon as the patient has made it through the worst part of the illness. That is what the doctor said, anyway, and he should know. Your father confirmed the diagnosis, if that is any consolation.”

  “Well then it can’t be that bad, can it?” I look at him hopefully. Come on, just tell me that everything is going to be okay, I beg him silently. My heart starts to race when I look in his face. What is he keeping from me? My vision narrows. He leans over me, and the only thing I can concentrate on is what I see mirrored in his gray-green eyes. A figure with tousled hair, dressed in a wrinkled and sweaty t-shirt, looking up at him with a fearful face. But the fear isn’t what makes me scream.

  It is the fact that the
woman – that I, have a face on which the arteries are clearly visible in blue-violet, like a spider’s net.

  Chapter 2

  It takes a while for me to calm down. Johar holds me tight and finally explains what happened to me.

  The virus, which I must have caught during our visit to the bordello, was transmitted by an insect. This insect worked its way through all of the blood vessels in my body, and every artery where it passed, became visible on my body within a day or two. My skin will look white and see-through, and I will have a tattoo of veins. It starts in the face and neck area, Johar explains to me. He has found a mirror somewhere, but still refuses to hand it to me. First, he wants to explain where he disappeared to so suddenly.

  “When you started scratching, I saw the small, blue spots on your skin,” he says apologetically. “It was important for you to be put under a doctor’s care as soon as possible, but” he shrugs, “I know you. You would have argued with me for hours, and by then it would have been too late to save your life. So I found the space port physician and brought him to you, instead.”

  “Am I really that bad?” I ask him. Strange that how I see myself is so different than how Johar sees me. I am thoroughly ashamed. He has been more than nice to me, and how have I thanked him? By erasing his memory.

  “Are you ready?” he asks and hands me the mirror, with the dull side facing me. I reach for it, and turn it around with shaking hands. The first look at my face is shocking. I see nothing but a complex tangle of blue lines, starting on my forehead and going down to my cheeks. I lower the mirror, because I don’t want to look at myself. How will I dare go out from now on? With a hood over my head?

  “You will get used to it,” Johar assures me. It was meant to be comforting, but all it does is make me feel worse. I don’t want to look like Sherri! Everything is spinning in my head, but I cling to one thought: I must have been infected by the whore. I ball my fists and imagine killing her with my own hands, and the madam of the house, too. Shouldn’t a whore house be subjected to regular inspections from the board of health? The two of them will suffer for this!

  “Mara,” Johar interrupts my thoughts, “did you hear anything I said?” It is not easy to push the thoughts about revenge to the back of my mind.

  “I’m sorry. What did you say?”

  “I said that your face is still very beautiful.” He traces a line with his index finger, but I push his hand away.

  “Don’t lie to me,” I blurt out, half-sobbing and half-croaking.

  “Cyborgs cannot lie. Have you forgotten that?”

  It’s true. A cyborg is programmed to always tell the truth. “Even worse,” I snarl at him. “That only shows how twisted your sense of beauty is.” I know that I am not being fair, but he is the only one I can take my anger out on right now. His next words still prove his patience, but I can tell that I crossed a line.

  “Look at your face, Mara. The lines run parallel towards each other on either side of your face. They look like creeping flowers, like gorgeous ornamentation. They emphasize your caramel- colored eyes and make your red lips glow. How can you hate something that is so beautiful?”

  Against my will, I hold the mirror up to my face again. He is right, both halves of my face have been changed in the same way. “But anyone can see that I caught this virus,” I say, although I am more gentle.

  “And that is bad?” Johar shakes his head and laughs. “What do bureaucrats and accountants know about real life? Every single line is proof that you dared to live. They are like scars, or like the metal plate on my face – a sign that you showed courage.”

  I put my hand on metal surface of his face. I would have never thought that he could be proud to be a cyborg, but he is. When I tell him that, he looks at me wordlessly. We are quiet for quite some time, until he interrupts the silence with a whisper. “Nobody asked me if I wanted to be what I am. But what is done, is done. I can do things no human can do. I am stronger than you and your father, and have lived a hundred lives.”

  “What do you mean by that?” I frown, because I am not sure where this is going.

  “I only mean that I experience enough adventure to last a human life time with every assignment,” he explains. I think about my game of “what-ifs” – and have some sense of what he means. While I have been imagining things, he has been living them.

  I still haven’t come to terms with my new appearance, but it is a start. Just when I have decided that I need to accept my blue lines, Johar puts my hands in his. His thumbs stroke my skin absentmindedly. Already, my skin seems to be one or two shades lighter. His head jerks up, and I suspect that he has not told me everything. I pull my hands away, so I can put them around his and squeeze gently. He understands what I am trying to tell him, and now he shares the rest of the information about the virus.

  It cannot be healed, meaning, I will have the lines for the rest of my life. I can infect others with it, but the results that I have just been admiring in the mirror only appear in women. “It is a sexually transmitted disease,” Johar says and gives me a look I cannot interpret. But then I understand and fall back onto the pillows, suddenly weak. Johar must have given me the virus. I haven’t slept with any man, other than him, in months, in years.

  And now he thinks that I fooled around with another man during his absence in the bordello. He cannot remember that we were together, after all. I saw to that.

  I don’t know what is worse: the irony that I, not Sherri, am responsible for my disfiguration, or the fact that now every man and every woman – starting with the crew members on the space ship – will know that I slept with someone. I can just hear the men’s jokes and the women’s whispering.

  Everyone will know that I had sex, here, on Betania. And each one will wonder whom I infected myself with. Johar looks over at me, and I sigh inside. What else does he have to tell me? Isn’t it enough that my transgressions are written all over my face?

  “The doctor said that the virus can have a few other less annoying side effects, but that it may not.”

  “What kind?” I don’t have the strength to speak in complete sentences.

  “Migraine-like headaches and uncontrollable appetite,” Johar lists them.

  I make a face. “I can live with eating binges,” I remark, relieved. “Headaches are not so great, but it could be worse.”

  “Hhhm,” Johar agrees. “It is also possible that you will have hallucinations, accompanied by a fever. Some infected women have developed strange abilities.”

  “Strange abilities,” I repeat, like I am paralyzed. The thought occurs to me that it is more than unfair, that the virus affects women exclusively, but that it is only dormant in men.

  “But that happens extremely rarely,” Johar tries to assure me, while I try to imagine how I am supposed to continue my work. My life is passing me by, as it was and as it will be. An occasionally hallucinating scientist, who also suffers from headaches and binge eating, is an impossible combination. I grow cold when I realize that my father knows about it.

  Will he still love me, or will I just be useless baggage to him from now on?

  Chapter 3

  It takes a while until I can bring myself to get up.

  I would have loved to just pull the blankets over my head and hide from the world. I even consider sending Johar and his two new best friends back to the mother ship by themselves, so they can go catch Cassie Burnett and her children without me. The thought of being a burden to my father has taken hold in my head, and I feel useless and inferior in every way.

  I grimace and then smile mockingly, telling myself that this will be a whole new experience, and that I will surely benefit from it, sooner or later. Probably later, knowing myself. In the end, my sense of duty wins, and I get dressed. I leave my “fancy” colorful clothes hanging in the closet. I couldn’t bear to put them on again. They remind me of this whole fiasco to which I owe my new face, and they show too much skin. Soon I will look just like Sherri, whose veins are clearly visi
ble all over her body. However, I will not be peddling around with it.

  Johar has disappeared again. I don’t care where he is. The less I see of him, the better. I hear noise coming from the room next door. Judging from the racket, Shazuul and Hazathel are doing all kinds of things, but packing their bags isn’t one of them. When Johar finally shows up, he puts a small jar in my hand without saying anything. “Open it,” he tells me and looks at me, excited. I unscrew the lid and see a skin-colored paste that smells nice, of fresh herbs.

  In the blink of an eye, I am in his arms. I didn’t think about it, even for a second, but just acted on impulse, which is not like me at all. Maybe this is one of the side effects of the virus. It doesn’t matter, because all I can think of is that Johar has saved me from having to run the gauntlet upon our arrival back at the space ship. “Thank you, thank you, thank you,” I whisper and let my tears run freely. He takes my face in his hands, and wipes my tears away with his thumbs.

  “Don’t cry, Mara,” he tells me and I choke back the rest of my salty tears. “Why are you crying?”

  I hug him even tighter. “Because …” I can barely put my feelings into words. “You are being so nice to me,” I say, even if it doesn’t come close to describing the chaos of my feelings. “I don’t understand. Why? I was not especially nice to you.” He bursts out laughing, and I pull back from him, miffed. “What is so funny about that?”

  “Not especially nice? You were a stuck up little pig,” he says, but takes the sting out his words by drawing me into his arms. Does he always have to be so brutally honest? “Maybe I see something in you that nobody else can. And maybe I think that the Mara that is inside you, is worth being tormented over.”