by P A Vasey
“I’m okay really.” I said.
There was another pain higher up on my forearm where I’d blocked meathead’s roundhouse punch. Suddenly the reality of what had just happened kicked in and I was aching all over, like I had the flu.
Stillman took a deep breath. “Want to tell me what happened back there?”
“I’m still trying to figure it out myself.”
“I’ve never seen anything like that,” she said. “You were like a blur. Fast as fuck. Like something out of The Matrix …”
I looked out of the window at the lights of Detroit. High rises and office buildings winked at me, black boxy structures glittering and shining. I caught my reflection, hair plastered to my forehead, dirty sweat dripping down my nose. I rubbed my eyes and brushed my hair back, tucking some strands behind my ears.
“He did something to me,” I said.
“Cain?”
I rested my head back and closed my eyes. “It was like a ‘fight or flight’ reflex but scaled up to the nth degree. Everything was enhanced and speeded up. I felt superhuman. Like I could do anything. See anything. It was … incredible.”
“But look at you now,” she said. “It’s like you’ve run out of gas.”
I nodded slowly. “Like a supercharger on a car. Press the ‘nitro’ button and ‘boom’ off you go at light speed.”
“But you run out of fuel quicker.”
“‘The flame that burns twice as bright, burns half as long’,” I said, quoting Lao Tzu. Where had that come from?
She gave a little laugh in acknowledgement, and then paused a beat. “Why do you think Cain give you this ability? Just so you could kick ass?”
I closed my eyes again, thinking back to the park bench at Arlington. The images that flashed through my mind when Cain touched my face, when he said I have given you what you need. You will know when to use it.
“I’m not sure. But I think there’s more. Something’s been implanted in my head. Something … important.”
“Okay. So how do we get it out?”
I gave a weary shrug. “That’s a good question. The human brain is like a supercomputer – a hundred billion cells with around a thousand links to other neurones – so a total storage capacity of two and a half million gigabytes. Which means in theory we should remember anything and everything. But we lack the capability to recall everything that’s stored there. It’s like it’s locked behind a door. Corralled off from the rest of us, inaccessible without the right key.”
Stillman pursed her lips. “Alright, so we need to find the key. Hey, I could always hypnotize you again?”
I almost smiled. “Tempting. It did seem to work last time.”
“Almost too well. Which puzzles me. Memories hidden behind an embedded mental wall often take multiple sessions to recall. If they ever are. But with you, everything came back straight away. As if it was supposed to.”
I nodded and we sat in silence for a while. My eyes started to close as the exhaustion took over and the adrenaline drained from my system. Just as I was about to give in to it and go to sleep Stillman put a hand on my arm.
“Do you think the Vu-Hak was controlling Navarro when you first met him on the street? And in the Hyatt bar? You know, before he went all crazy on us.”
I thought back to the bar, and then later when Navarro came to the Moynahan. In the bar he was annoying, but nothing struck me as being abnormal, at least not that abnormal.
“I don’t think so. But he must have been, right?”
Stillman shrugged. “I hit on him to try and get your phone. He acted like a dick, but nothing else.”
“Then how did they find us?” I said.
Stillman closed her eyes, thinking back.
“There was a guy entering the bar just as you left. You squeezed past him, remember? Tall, wrapped in a long coat and wearing a baseball hat with sunglasses?”
“Nah, I was too angry. I just wanted to get out.”
“He sat on the barstool next to Navarro. Took off his coat and settled in. I didn’t see him drink but by then I was in Navarro’s face.” She looked at me and smirked. “You know he thought I was a hooker?”
I looked at her, picturing her sauntering up to him in that tight yellow dress, him with his buzz cut and tweed jacket. “I can imagine.”
“Hey …” She playfully punched my arm and gave a lopsided grin. “I’m a Special Agent, remember? Life-long training in interrogation and information gathering. I was just playing a role …”
I gave a sisterly laugh and nodded. She’d put a couple of sodas in the seat pocket so I grabbed them, pulled the tabs and offered one to her. We clinked tins and took a couple of swigs.
“So what happened next?” I said. “I mean, after you went into the bathroom.”
Stillman took another swig. “There was a back door which I’d scoped earlier. I hung around a back alleyway for ten minutes or so then sneaked back into the bar. Navarro had gone. I grabbed Paulo and bent his ear. I’d already given him a hundred bucks and a couple of promises I’d no intention of keeping.”
She slumped back in the seat and relayed what had happened next. Navarro had gotten another drink and then looked in his jacket pocket for his phone. It wasn’t there. He’d stood up and searched all his pockets and started to panic. His wallet was present and correct, but everywhere he patted down, there was no phone. He looked around his barstool, on the floor, on the bar, but there was no sign of it. Paulo asked him if everything was okay and whether he had lost something, to which Navarro replied that he’d lost his phone and thought he might have dropped it outside. The bartender asked if he maybe should give it a call and see if anyone picks up. Navarro gave him the number and Paulo dialed it from the phone next to the cash register. It went straight to voicemail. Navarro then said that he’d quickly pop outside to see if it was lying on the sidewalk somewhere, and asked Paulo to tell Rachael where he’d gone. Paulo asked who Rachael was, and Navarro had flicked a thumb toward the restrooms. The bartender told him that, as far as he knew, her name was Colleen.
“You gave him your real name?” I said.
Stillman shrugged. “Meh. Paulo wasn’t the sharpest tool in the shed. I doubted there’d be any blowback.”
I smiled. “Then what happened?”
“This is the funny bit. Navarro said to him: ‘Wait … what? She said it was Rachael. That she comes here all the time.’ To which Paulo replied – and I liked this bit – ‘Sorry, but I’ve never seen her before. And believe me, I would have noticed someone that hot …’”
I stifled a giggle and Stillman gave another shrug as if to say ‘Well, it’s true.’ “Navarro made his way to the restrooms at the back of the bar, but by then of course I’d long skedaddled.”
I thought back to when I left the bar through the front exit onto the street. “The guy I passed at the door. I think you’re right – that was the Vu-Hak.”
Stillman looked spooked. “If it was, it ignored you and me and went straight to Navarro. Why?”
“I’ve no idea. Also, it was in human form. Again, why wasn’t it a machine, like Adam? Or Cain?”
“If it was a machine, then we’d all be dead,” Stillman said softly.
“I reckon the Vu-Hak found Navarro in the bar after he’d spoken to me and you. It must have been following Navarro, not us.”
“And Navarro led it to us,” she replied, nodding slowly. “So, what, are they everywhere? Floating and watching?”
I suppressed a shiver. The thought hadn’t occurred to me. If Navarro wasn’t infected when we first met – if ‘infected’ was the right word – then maybe the alien was waiting for the opportunity to get someone close to me. Someone they knew had contact with me previously. I glanced up the aisle at the other passengers, all of whom were now either sleeping or had their heads buried in books or magazines. Were any of them …? No – I couldn’t let my mind go there. Could I? I screwed up my eyes and tried to think.
“Remember when he – the Vu-H
ak – Navarro – whatever, spoke to me in the apartment, and said ‘We’ve found you’? Maybe it just got lucky.”
Stillman looked thoughtful. “We need to know why they’re looking for you. I mean, you’re right – if Adam’s dead why do they care?”
Of all the questions, that was the million-dollar one. What was I to them? I closed my eyes again. So many questions, so many unknowns.
Stillman suddenly jolted out of her seat and grabbed my arm again. “Do we even know if the Vu-Hak died when I killed Navarro? I mean, what if it just ‘jumped’ out of his body and is watching us now?”
I thought about it but then shook my head. “But then how’d we manage to escape? It could’ve just jumped into your body, or mine for that matter?”
“If that’s how it works,” said Stillman.
“No, it can’t work like that,” I said slowly. “I think that when we killed the ‘host’ body – I mean, poor Pete – then we somehow killed the Vu-Hak.”
“But you don’t know for sure,” Stillman objected.
“No. There’s very little we know for sure,” I said.
She turned away and was quiet again, and fatigue washed over me like a tsunami. Every muscle appeared to be atrophying and giving in to gravity. I needed a warm bed and a dreamless sleep.
“Eleven hours to NYC. Remind me why we’re going?”
Stillman had closed her eyes. A smile twitched at the corner of her mouth. “Hubert’s holed up there. He may be able to help us.”
“Hubert? I thought you said his memory was wiped?”
The smile widened. “Well we now know how to fix that, don’t we?”
TEN
I must have slept most of the way because it seemed like we pulled into the bus station in downtown NYC only moments later, Stillman gently shaking me awake. After a quick bathroom stop we hustled onto the platform and through the morning commuters up the escalators to 7th Avenue and the entrance by Madison Square Garden. Sunshine reflected from the windows of a tall office building across the street and the noise of the city hit me as taxis and limos honked and wheezed and bumped along at snail’s pace in the rush hour of a weekday morning in the Big Apple. The streets were covered with old snow, dark grey from the pollution of the passing trucks and cars. There was the smell of coffee coming from a street vendor who was also sizzling up what looked like some kind of pastry frisbee. Diesel fumes from a passing truck lingered in the still air. People walked fast, heads down looking at their smartphones or plugged into their favorite music. Impatient commuters dressed in ski or puff jackets frowned at slower walkers navigating the crowd, coffee cups in hand, lost in their own worlds. Tourists, mainly Asians from what I could see, drifted in groups or collectives, peering incomprehensibly at maps and guides as they shuffled around in search for their first point of interest of the day.
I stopped on the sidewalk behind the silver traffic protectors and stared at the dozens of yellow cabs lined up nose to tail. My breath rose before me, and my heart fluttered like a butterfly as another wave of anxiety washed over.
“Ever been to New York?” shouted Stillman into my ear.
“Nope.”
“The Empire State is just a block or two away. Straight down East 34th. Want to go?”
I turned and shook my head, lips tightly compressed.
“We should go,” she continued airily. “It’s only a couple of hundred yards from where we’re going to be anyway.”
“Colleen, I don’t feel safe here,” I said, watching the crowds looking for any giveaway signs of alien possession, whatever they might be. Horns, fangs, whatever.
I thought I heard her sigh. “The population of Manhattan Island is nearly two million. New York City is eight and a half. I think we’ll blend in okay.”
I thought about the Vu-Hak, and what, if anything, they thought of cities like this. Did they once live like us, in concrete towers, where the trees are potted and slotted into specific spaces, where people eat and sleep and work and play according to the ticking clock? I recalled how I felt during my interactions with the Vu-Hak that shared Adam’s machine body. I recalled the coldness, the sheer alienness of the mind that had filled me with dread and terror.
“Let’s get the fuck off the streets,” I said.
Stillman gave me a look then nodded. “Alright, let’s go.” She gestured across to the other sidewalk. “That’s the way: we’re going to the Langham, on 5th. It’ll take us five minutes, tops, if we walk fast.”
We set off at a quick pace, dodging around the tourists like people on a mission, which I guessed we were. I popped my sunglasses on in a vague attempt at disguise, to which Stillman gave a smirk before putting some of her own on. I wondered if we looked like those women on Sex and the City.
As we rounded a corner on 5th avenue past a Pret a Manger, the pink and grey concrete facade of the Langham came into view. A concierge dressed in a dark grey suit was flagging down a cab for some departing guests who were checking their phones, oblivious to the chaos walking past them. The Empire State Building rose majestically above the hubbub further down 5th, towering above the other high-rises. Images of King Kong crawling up its side popped into my head.
“What’s Hubert doing staying here?” I said to Stillman as we hopped across the street just as the lights changed, braving a taxi whose driver didn’t give a shit about red lights or pedestrians actually crossing on green. Perhaps the pedestrian lights were just guidelines, not rules.
“Would you believe he’s on vacation?”
“What, on his own?”
Stillman shrugged as we squeezed through the rotating door of the main entrance. “He’s career FBI. Two failed marriages and four kids who don’t speak to him much. Real shame. He’s one of the good guys.”
I remembered she had a soft spot for him, and I’d wondered whether there was more to it than that. There was a significant age difference, but hey, no judgment from me.
We crossed the foyer and stopped at the reception desk, a single long rectangular block of granite staffed by a half-dozen black-shirted attendants. A bellboy looked over at us but soon lost interest when it was clear we’d no luggage to give him and therefore no tip.
I pulled Stillman back as she was about to grab one of the check-in staff. “Do you really think this is a good idea? If Hubert’s memory was truly wiped by Cain, we might not have much chance of getting anything useful. Also, what if he’s … you know … one of them?”
She folded her hands and looked at me sternly. “Kate, I think we’ve got to give it a go. Hubert’s got no memory of the interview with Cain but actually, no one officially knows what happened in there, as I told you. I’m the only one who knows shit because I managed to get hold of the video feed.”
“Okay, so …?”
“So … Hubert is ‘certain’ of two things. One, that Adam is dead and two, the invasion was prevented. As far as he’s concerned, the whole Vu-Hak thing has been put to bed and hidden from the public – because officially it ‘didn’t happen’. You know, like Roswell, all over again.”
I frowned. “Roswell was bullshit. Nothing happened there.”
Stillman shot me a sideways look and cracked a half smile. “Are you sure?”
I snorted, wondering if she was kidding. “Does he remember me?” I asked.
She nodded. “Of course. He remembers everything up to and including Cain’s appearance. You need to understand – you disappeared off the map after that. No one had a clue where you went or even why you vanished. Now we know what happened, of course.”
“So, after I went missing, did anyone look for me?”
She gave me a look. “To be honest, there wasn’t much enthusiasm to find you.”
I wasn’t sure how to take that, so I said, “Do you think just seeing me will jog his memory?”
She shook her head. “I think it’s unlikely. I mean look how you managed to go all Jason Bourne on us. It took hypnosis to unlock what happened to you and I’m still not sure why or how
that worked as well as it did.”
“Maybe there was some sort of implanted trigger in my head?” I suggested. “We know Cain definitely put some stuff in there.”
Stillman shrugged. “Wouldn’t put it past him, that’s true. But anyway, regarding Hubert – even if you tell him what happened to you, that’s not why we’re here. There’s more to that Cain interview, remember. We need to know what else happened before Hubert and the others were knocked out and their memories wiped. That information could be vital. It’s those gaps in the tape that have to be relevant.”
“Let’s hope so,” I said.
Stillman turned away and waved to catch the eye of a check-in attendant. I wandered over to the dispenser and poured myself a cup of water flavored with some kind of minty leaf. I leaned back against the wall and checked out my surroundings. A family of four was squeezing through the revolving doors, two little girls laughing playfully as they jammed in together to the amusement and vague annoyance of their parents. Another bellboy followed through a side door with a mountain of their luggage balanced on a golden trolley. The concierge nodded at me and smiled, before picking up his own telephone and dialing a number.
My paranoia started up again, but then Stillman tapped me on the shoulder.
“Fourteenth floor. He’s in.”
The elevator interior was all mahogany, dark mood lighting and floor-to-ceiling mirrors. There was no Muzak. A small TV screen embedded into one of the mirrors advertised the evening menu for the hotel’s restaurant and cycled into an advertisement for some kind of financial broker service. Well, I supposed this was the Langham, after all.
Stillman jabbed a finger on the 14 button and we smoothly started our ascent. I noticed she was tapping her foot nervously. She noticed me noticing and gave a smile.
“I’m fine. Been a hell of a twenty-four hours.”
No argument from me.
I tried to smile back but couldn’t. It was likely we’d only just gotten past the first curve of this particular rollercoaster.