Veil

by Eliot Peper

  Zia raised her chai. “To commiseration.”

  “I’ll drink to that.”

  They drained their cups and enjoyed a moment of companionable silence.

  “Hey,” said Zia. “This is fun. Seriously. I miss this.”

  Galang’s smile was melancholic. “Me too, love. I wish I didn’t have to go to the airport.”

  “Go on, then,” Zia shooed him with her hands. “Don’t let me make you fall off your treadmill. There’s a scandal for you to expose. It’s getting late, and I need to get back and figure out who’s going to step in for my supply chain manager who just went on maternity leave.”

  They stood and hugged.

  “You’re an angel,” whispered Galang.

  “And you’re the best kind of devil,” she whispered back.

  They gave each other one last squeeze and then released. Galang retrieved his bag and headed for the door.

  “Don’t forget to tell Aafreen I say hi,” said Zia. “And thanks again for the pizza.”

  Galang looked back over his shoulder. “Don’t forget to cut yourself some slack.”

  Zia settled the bill and decided to walk home. Their “hotel” was more like a barracks and she wanted some time to think before running into Himmat and the rest of her overworked team. The night was hot and humid. The pizza was heavy and awkward to carry. She could taste the mineral funk of soil on the breeze. The gibbous moon shone through a thin sheen of clouds—reminding her, as the moon always did, of sitting beside her father at his beloved shortwave radio set, learning how enthusiasts bounced signals off the lunar surface to communicate across oceans and continents. Beneath the pulsing cricket song, memory’s chorus swelled, serenading her meander down forking paths through the garden of the mind. That was why, despite her security training, it took Zia so long to notice that she was being followed.

  +

  8

  +

  The man was two blocks behind her. Zia wouldn’t have noticed except that she glanced up at a chaotic bundle of electrical lines pirating electricity from the grid and saw movement in her peripheral vision. Maybe he was just another pedestrian walking home after a long day’s work. But the café she and Galang had just left was the last thing open in the village and there was no night life here to speak of.

  Paranoia is your first line of defense, she remembered the friendly smile and hard eyes of the Interstice security coach. Once you second guess yourself, it’s already too late. Acting on a bad vibe might waste a little time. Failing to act might just cost you your life. Tennis. Math. Boarding school. Company events. Security training had been just another hoop her dad was forcing her to jump through.

  Zia turned right at the next corner. It was probably nothing. But better to be sure before reaching the border of town and setting off up the country road to the hotel. She forced herself to slow her breathing. Everything was going to be fine. She was just amped up. Seeing Galang had momentarily revived the emotional rollercoaster of her teenage years.

  She turned right again at the next corner and then doubled back to peer through the drooping foliage of a pepper tree. Nothing. Just an empty street in a sleepy town. Inhale. Exhale. Relax. Far off, she heard the whine of a motorbike over the cricket choir. She’d loop back around the block and continue on to the hotel, maybe join Himmat for a glass of arak and laugh about her little freak-out. The hairs on the back of her neck rose. Through the veil of hanging stems studded with pink peppercorns, she saw a figure jog around the corner after her. Then a second figure appeared from the direction toward which she’d been walking.

  Shit.

  She turned and hurried up the street, heart hammering like it was trying to escape her ribcage. If she had forgotten something at the café and a member of the staff was trying to return it, then who was the second pursuer? Could Galang have been followed, was he trying to set her up? But why? And for what? No. Paranoia was a useful tool, but left unchecked, it would paralyze her. Perhaps the Indian Intelligence Bureau had put her under surveillance, egged on by Governor Rao? Could be. Maybe an organized crime outfit was hoping to hold her for ransom and loosen daddy’s purse strings? Always a possibility. But Occam’s razor would suggest that her stalkers might just be angry young men, embittered by lack of prospects, looking to teach the foreign woman a lesson with a good beating and a side of rape.

  Zia accelerated into a jog and catalogued her assets. There wasn’t much. Phone, but no time to call for help. Pizza, but whoever was chasing her probably wouldn’t be won over even by Zachary’s. She threw a glance back over her shoulder and saw the two men emerge from beneath the pepper tree. A few blocks behind them, a headlight tracked across the cinder block buildings as a motorbike turned onto the street.

  Fear curdled in Zia’s gut, and she weaponized it, transmuted it into fury, used it to fuel her churning legs. She was a León. Whoever they were, she wasn’t going to make this easy for them. One more block, and she turned right again, shaking the hair out of her eyes. One last right and she was back where she’d started, banging into the café, shouting a warning at the shocked proprietor, ducking behind the counter and barging back through the kitchen, out the back door, and up the dark alley, squeezing into an alcove in the scarred wall of a mud brick building.

  Had they seen her? Laundry fluttered on lines strung up over the alley, textile ghosts haunting a tropical night. She strained to listen over the throbbing bassline of her heartbeat. Only now did she realize that the kitchen must have had knives. She cursed herself for failing to grab one.

  Shouts out on the street. Maybe her ploy had worked. Maybe they’d give up, decide to try another night. The whine of the motorbike was joined by the roar of a larger engine. Zia laid the pizza box on the ground, opened it, and picked up one aluminum-wrapped half in each hand. The frozen pizza immediately numbed her fingers. She hefted them. Better than nothing. Why had she so adamantly rejected her father’s repeated demands that she accept a personal bodyguard? Was her pride, her perceived autonomy, worth so much? The fierce joy of freedom won crumbled to dust at the prospect of actual violence.

  Zia’s entire body clenched as a shot rang out. Then another one. Guns? What the fuck was going on? Why were they shooting? Who were they shooting at? More shouting. Footsteps pounded up the alley. The beam of a flashlight swung wildly, stabbing at billowing laundry and rotting garbage.

  Zia had to do something. She couldn’t just wait here and get captured. She estimated when the footsteps would reach her hiding place, then heaved one half of the pizza up and over the alley. It thunked into the opposite wall and fell into the dust. The man charging up the alley grunted in surprise, spun to aim his flashlight and pistol at the source of the sound, and yelled, “Stop, don’t move!”

  Zia leapt from her hiding place and brought the other half of the pizza around in a vicious forehand swing. Follow through, her dad yelled at her as they ran drills on the clay court. Seeing that he’d been fooled, the large man turned back toward her just as five pounds of frozen deep dish connected with his face, crushing his nose and snapping his head back. He toppled back into the dust with a heavy thump.

  Her chest rose and fell. Icy adrenaline surged through her veins. In the light of his own flashlight, Zia could see the man was dressed in matte black clothes that definitely weren’t local. For a brief moment she considered stooping down to scoop up his gun. But the man was already writhing on the ground, trying to find his bearings and wipe the blood from his eyes. She needed to move, to get out of here, to find a hole to disappear into until she could figure out what was going on.

  An arm locked around her throat.

  “Gotcha,” a voice rasped in her ear.

  Zia tore at the arm with her fingers, but it just tightened around her neck like a vice. She tried to punch behind her with her elbows but struck only glancing blows.

  “That’s enough,” said the voice. “It’ll go easier for you if you just relax. This should help.”

  Something stabbed Z
ia’s deltoid and a warm feeling spread out to the tips of her fingers and over her scalp and down her legs until her knees turned to Jell-O and she was hanging limply from the crooked arm instead of struggling to escape it.

  A vehicle rumbled up the alley and Zia’s limp body was dragged into the back of a van. She tried to scream, to fight, to flee, but her muscles didn’t respond. Stars sparkled in the narrowing tunnel of her vision. Her assailant helped the injured man up off the ground.

  She should have been terrified, but Zia felt removed from the situation, as if she was looking down on herself from above. Her soul was a still pond, its surface glassy in the gray of impending dawn. This wasn’t the death she had wanted or expected. Maybe her mother had felt like this as her body shut down organ by organ, slain by the very disaster she was hoping to document. Death didn’t conform to human will. There was something oddly comforting in that hard truth.

  The heads of the two men scrambling into the van seemed to explode, but it must have been an artifact of the brilliant light show that occluded Zia’s vision as time spiraled back on itself and consciousness slipped away like a stray cat.

  +

  9

  +

  Zia stood at the edge of a mesa that towered kilometers above the surrounding rocky plains. It was high noon and the sky was a clear baby blue but rainbows of every conceivable size and angle arched across the landscape in all directions, their multicolored curves doubling and crisscrossing—bolts of lightning writhing between heaven and earth at each point of intersection like ropes between teams playing at tug-of-war. It smelled of roses and ozone. The air was alive with current, burning and buzzing against her skin.

  Looking down at herself, Zia saw that her body was not her own, and that she was surrounded by people, that the top of the mesa was packed with them—Aafreen, Jason, Kodjo, Galang, Li Jie, Daniela, Himmat, Vachan, Tommy, Selai, the BSF officer, the girl Zia had beaten to win her first tennis tournament, Vizzini from The Princess Bride, the volunteers from last week’s training—none of them in their own bodies but somehow identifiable nevertheless, all of them naked, touching, probing, kissing, fighting, flailing, tickling, fucking—backs arched in ecstasy, cheeks streaked with tears, sweat and blood and cum commingling to stain the sunbaked stone.

  One of the bolts of lightning frayed, sending sparking tendrils in search of a new point of connection. It found Zia. Energy flowed into her. The more there was, the more she wanted. Lust. Rage. Transcendence. More bolts wavered, then one by one they snapped home to send their charge coursing through her. She swallowed them all, demanded more, channeled the electricity into everyone around her, her consciousness merging into theirs as their passion became a single pulsing entity all its own.

  Reality’s fabric rippled, ineffable patterns suggesting the shape of the feral gods that hid behind it.

  Seedlings sprouted from the teeming mass of humanity. Vines curled out of ears. Saplings rose from open mouths. Wildflowers bloomed in pubic hair. Rivers flowed from tear ducts. Teeth hardened into crystal. Raised arms ossified into spires of granite, breasts rolling hills, and shoulders mountain ranges. Moss spread across boulders that had once been knuckles. Ribs became sedimentary layers folded by tectonic forces.

  The transition was at once violent and seamless. Nothing had changed and everything had changed. The jungle was a throng. The people were a jungle. Zia stared down at them from among banks of invisible clouds. Déjà vu like the flutter of a moth’s wing. With mounting horror, Zia realized she knew this jungle. She hated this jungle. She feared this jungle more than anything. She thrashed, but could not tear herself away.

  If she pretended it couldn’t happen.

  If she wished hard enough.

  If she summoned an act of will that could rewrite history.

  This time could be different.

  This time would be different.

  Maybe.

  Yes.

  Then there was a flash of movement at the edge of the jungle. Two figures stumbled out from the verdant collage, Gilberto half-carrying Miranda, trying not to lose his footing as they pushed through the solid, impossible heat toward the ragged edge of the village. They crossed the gap in less than thirty seconds, but Zia knew it was already too late. The moment they made it through the door of the first hut, they stumbled out of the jungle again. Jungle. Stumble. Building. Jungle. Stumble. Building. Over and over and over and over and over.

  Stop, Zia screamed, though no voice would come. Stop. Please.

  But it didn’t stop.

  It was always the same.

  Always.

  A single endless loop.

  +

  10

  +

  The first thing Zia did was keep her eyes shut. The second thing she did was keep her body still. The third thing was throttle her brain into overdrive.

  Without the dam of unconsciousness holding them back, memories flooded through her. The moon hanging cold and bright behind a thin patina of clouds. The earthy fragrance of chai. The poignant luxury of getting to see Galang. The glimpse of movement through the drooping foliage of the pepper tree. The ghostly flutter of laundry in the evening breeze. The crunch of cartilage. Gotcha. She had to fight to keep her heart rate and breathing even. If they had hooked her up to biofeedback equipment, she couldn’t afford to give herself away.

  Kidnapping was just so… cliché. It echoed teenage boasts whispered after curfew as snow swirled outside the chateau. The FBI briefed my family before Thanksgiving because we are high value targets. Oh yeah? We have a full-time white hat team at our family office because Russia-sponsored hackers keep trying to crack our files. Well, my uncle was assassinated last year. Sad, lonely, astoundingly privileged children trying to ward off corrosive insecurities by bragging about how they were so important that the world was out to get them. Being born into power bought you opportunity and illuminated your flaws in stark relief. Kidnapping was the ultimate vanity daydream for the entitled, to be torn from your life so that your loved ones would have to prove once and for all just how much they cared, moving heaven and earth to get back the child they’d ignored for so long. It was deeply embarrassing to Zia that she’d once indulged such fantasies, all the more so now that they were coming true.

  Time to take stock.

  She was lying in a bed, her head resting on a pillow. Not her bed. Not her pillow. It smelled wrong. This wasn’t Chhattisgarh. Her secret wish that everything would prove to be nothing more than a bad dream faded. No sounds except for her own breathing and the gentle rasp of sheet against skin as her chest rose and fell. She varied the pace of her inhalations and exhalations ever so slightly just in case they were in sync with the breathing of someone standing guard, but if someone was in the room with her, they were being extremely quiet. The air was cool and dry from AC and tasted clean, so if she was in a torture chamber it was a top-shelf torture chamber. Ever so slowly, she twisted her wrists and ankles. No restraints. They knew they had her. When she relaxed again, she felt a gentle tug against her right forearm and realized she must be hooked up to an IV or some kind of sensor. That meant it was possible that her micro movements had already given her away, so she lay still and counted to ninety-nine.

  Nothing.

  Well, the room might be monitored remotely, but she couldn’t just lie here forever. She cracked her eyelids, letting her eyes adjust to the light before opening them completely. Mahogany beams lined the high ceiling. Sunlight poured in through the shutter slats of wide windows. Historical photographs of rainbow-colored reefs overflowing with marine life hung on the walls. She couldn’t identify any cameras or surveillance devices, but that only meant that they might be going for subtle. An IV did indeed run from her right arm up to a bag hanging from a stand next to the bed. The door to an en suite bathroom stood open. The door to what was probably a hallway was closed. It might be a boutique hotel, or maybe a villa. But a plush cell was still a cell.

  In a flash, terror subsumed her. She had never
wanted more badly to be back in her cramped room in India, woken up by the rooster’s crow and the murmur of her colleagues’ good-natured bickering filtering through the thin walls. These sumptuous surroundings were far more disturbing than a dank basement would be. This wasn’t the kind of everyday crime that filled the headlines. These weren’t local hoodlums trying to scare her off. Her abductors had resources and their gambit must have some larger game behind it. She was not just a victim but a pawn.

  And there was nothing, absolutely nothing, that Zia hated more than being controlled.

  Zia tore off the sheets and sat up. Her head swam and her temples thrummed like gongs under a monk’s mallet. Breathe. Breathe. Okay. The longer she stayed here, the more likely it was that her captors would check in on her. Right now, she had an opening. How many victims had sealed their own fates by procrastinating escape or resistance in the vain hope that the situation might improve? She would get out of here and when she did, she would find out who had done this and make them pay.

  Peeling the medical tape from her forearm, she gently removed the IV. Then she knotted the plastic line to stop the flow and yanked off the needle. It wasn’t much of a weapon, but it was something. She looked down at herself. They had dressed her in a loose-fitting linen tunic and pants that split the difference between resort wear and hospital gown. At least the pants had pockets into which she could slip her needle. Careful to move more slowly this time, she swung her legs off the bed and donned the waiting slippers. Nothing on the bedside table except for an extravagant Guzmania in full bloom. The drawers were empty.

  Zia stood, steadying herself with a hand on the bed. She could do this. She must do this. It might be her only chance. She just had to give her body enough time to pull itself together.