“And some other Mara from some other reality started all this, and, somehow, that is your fault—it’s all on you now.”
“Metaphysically speaking, that is the case, according to Mr. Ping. Me and the other Mara are one and the same. I would be doing what she did, if I had been dealt the hand she was dealt, and vice versa.” She paused for a minute, thought about that and said, “You’re sort of in the same boat. You’ve got to figure out how to deal with the hand you’ve been dealt.” After another pause, she added, “It’s not like you have an alternative. It’s not like either of us do.”
“You sound like you are resigned to your fate in all this,” Bohannon said.
She wiped a wet strand of hair off her cheek. “I’ve just spent the last couple hours having a street fight with a dragon and almost killed the kindest man I’ve ever known, so I’m probably not in the best frame of mind to be having a philosophical discussion about fate.”
“So I should stop whining about something as benign as healing people?” Bo asked.
“No, whine all you want, just do it a little louder, if you want to be heard over me.”
They fell into a silence, and, after a few moments, Bohannon broke it. “Exactly what is your ability? Healing, as a concept, I get. But the freezing things, the whole lightning thing and the moving-stuff-with-your-mind thing—what is all that?”
“It’s complicated, and I don’t fully understand it myself. Ping says that I have the ability to alter the elements of reality. For example, Time is an element of reality. That’s the freezing things you’re talking about. I have rolled back Time once before, and, apparently in the future, I’ll have the ability to send someone back in time.”
“Send someone back in time? Who?”
“Hannah. Sam’s daughter. That’s how she got here.”
“She’s his daughter from the future?”
“Exactly.”
“And why did you send her back to this time?”
Mara shrugged. “I have no earthly idea.”
“And there’s more to it than just Time.”
“A lot more,” she said. “That’s just one element of reality. There are three more.”
“How do those work?”
Mara shrugged again. “You’ve seen some of it. Moving things, zapping things, so far that’s been most of it. Part of me feels like a baby still pulling herself up on the furniture. I don’t really think I’ve gotten to the part where I’m actually walking yet, actually accomplishing anything with these abilities. Oh, and there’s the pixelating things. You got a quarter?”
Bohannon furrowed his brow at her but slipped a hand into his pocket and pulled one out. He held it to her on his palm. She didn’t reach for it but narrowed her eyes at it. The quarter blurred. Mara blew on it, and tiny transparent cubes fluttered into the air, fading into nothing as they fell.
“Yeah, I don’t think I’m going to whine anymore about healing,” Bohannon said.
* * *
Ten minutes later, they passed the sliding glass doors leading into the emergency room, which was practically deserted. That struck Mara as odd, considering the events of the evening. She had imagined dozens of injured people stacked up in the hallways, victims of traffic accidents, hysteria and confusion. One little girl was sitting on the edge of a gurney, holding her arm, which was covered by a makeshift bandage. A spot of blood had seeped through, but it didn’t look life threatening, and she was more focused on the television screen mounted near the ceiling in the waiting area across the hall than her injury.
Bohannon paused next to the girl and looked down at her arm. Mara made a point of stepping between them and said, “We don’t have time for a tent meeting, Reverend. Don’t touch the patients. We don’t want to start a stampede, understand?”
The detective held up his hands. “Got it. She looks like she’s not hurt too badly.”
“What time is it? This place looks practically deserted,” Mara said.
Bohannon looked at his watch. “It’s just a little after midnight.”
The injured girl pointed at Mara and yelled, “Hey, that looks like you on the TV!”
Bo and Mara turned to stare at the screen. There was Mara, standing on the overpass, shooting lightning bolts from her hands into the backside of the dragon. A minute later the dragon had backed up and swatted the overpass with its tail, sending Mara tumbling into the air and onto its back. The clip ended with the dragon leaping into the air and flying away with Mara holding on for dear life.
Her face reddening, Mara said, without looking from the screen, “Jeez, that couldn’t be me.” After a talking head appeared on screen, she gave Bohannon a wide-eyed, tight-lipped look and tilted her head toward the end of the hallway. “That must be a scene from a movie.”
He followed her around the corner, where she stopped and turned to him. “How long is it going to take the authorities to figure out who I am?”
“The television stations will figure it out before any authorities do. All they have to do is ask viewers to call in and identify the woman in the video, and someone who recognizes you will dial in for their few minutes of fame. Happens all the time, well, without the lightning bolts and dragons,” he said.
“Is it possible they might think the video is a hoax?”
“I don’t see how. It’s their guys who shot the video. They probably have even more of the dragon chasing them in the air.”
“What am I going to do?”
“Stay out of the waiting rooms. Most everyone else around here has been too sick or too busy to watch. For now, just keep your head down and let’s go check on Mr. Ping.”
Mara craned her neck around. “Where would they have him? I wish I hadn’t burned up Sam’s phone, or I could call him.”
Bohannon handed his phone to her. “You can call him on your mother’s phone. She gave it to him, before she left with the patrol car.”
It took Mara a moment to remember the number, since she was used to just tapping it on her contact list. After one ring Sam answered and said they were wheeling Ping into a room on the second floor. Mara hung up and pointed to a bank of elevators ahead of them at the end of the hall.
* * *
Sam stood outside the elevators when the doors to the car carrying Mara and Bohannon arrived on the second floor. The walls of the alcove were lined with boxy chairs and small end tables, a makeshift waiting room. Paranoid, Mara looked around for a television and locked onto the flat panel mounted on the wall to the left of the elevators. Sam noticed her concern with a smile.
“Oh, you’ve seen the news, I take it,” he said, flopping down into a chair.
“We just saw a clip playing in the waiting room downstairs but didn’t hear what the reporters were saying,” Mara said.
“Don’t worry. You’re getting good press. They are calling you the Milwaukie Dragonslayer. They seem to be really curious about how you throw those lightning bolts though. You might need to issue a press release or something to avoid confusion.”
“Shut up. This isn’t funny.” She looked at the ceiling and took a deep breath. “I’ll worry about that in a minute. How’s Ping?”
“They couldn’t find anything wrong with him, other than missing a bunch of blood, so they gave him a couple units and rolled him into the room. The nurse said he’s still recovering from shock, but it looks like he’s stable and going to be okay.”
“What room is he in?”
“He’s in 217, but the nurse won’t let you in there. We’re not relatives, and it’s the middle of the night.”
Mara rolled her eyes. “I think you can prompt them to let us in the room. I don’t want to stay out here all night.”
“Look, if you want, I’ll prompt the nurse to let you in the room, but there’s no point in staying. He’s out for the night and probably most of tomorrow, according to the nurse,” Sam said.
Mara lowered her voice and said, “What if he turns into the dragon again? One of us needs to be here.”
CHAPTER 39
Late the next morning, Mara sat hunched over a bowl of cereal, a spoon in one hand and a cup of coffee in another, puffy-eyed and pale under an unruly nest of auburn hair. Cam’s head was across from Mara on the table, where a place setting should have been, lying sideways on his left cheek so he wouldn’t roll when he talked. She accidently dropped her spoon, splashing a drop of milk on his nose. Grabbing a napkin, she stood and leaned forward to wipe the mess from his face.
“Sorry about that. I’m not quite awake yet,” she said.
She tossed aside the napkin and glanced around the room. “This arrangement isn’t working for me. I can’t eat with someone’s head staring at me from the table.” She held up a finger and walked from the kitchen, heading in the direction of the living room. A moment later she returned carrying the cast iron coat tree that usually stood next to the front door. She also had a scarf draped over her shoulder.
Sliding the chair behind Cam’s head away from the table, she placed the coat stand in its place. She lifted Cam’s head from the table and wrapped the scarf behind his jaw where his neck should have been, fashioning it into a sling that cradled his head upright. After tying a knot above his head, she slipped the loop over one of the tines of the coat stand. His face was now suspended above the table at the same height as Mara’s.
She took her seat and forced a tired smiled. “How’s that? Can you hear through the scarf okay?”
“Much better. At least we can look at each other while we talk, and I don’t feel like a salt shaker,” he said.
“Excellent. I guess my first order of business, after I check in with Ping, will be to reconnect you to your body,” she said. “I hope you don’t mind waiting just a little while longer, but I need to make sure he’s okay and that the dragon doesn’t start running amok again.”
“I understand. Well, I understand your priorities. I’m still not sure I understand everything that is going on in your life,” Cam said.
“That makes two of us.” She took a deep draw from her coffee mug.
“What exactly are you? I don’t mean to be negative—you seem nice enough—but I’ve been in this place long enough to know that you are not exactly like the other people here. While I recognize that I am a duck out of water too, you are something altogether different,” he said.
“Yeah, I’m different all right, but it’s going to take longer than one breakfast to explain that to you. Let’s just say, I’ve got some quirks and skip all the voodoo for now.”
“Voodoo?”
“You know, all the stuff that doesn’t make sense, the metaphysical stuff.” She took a spoonful of cereal, which was quickly losing its structural integrity, swallowed without chewing and looked back up. “Tell me about Cameron Lee. It would be a nice change of pace to listen to someone’s story instead of trying to explain my own.”
“What do you want to know?”
“Why don’t you start off by telling me why you are a ro—I mean, a synthetic human?” She smiled at him, proud she caught herself before he corrected her.
“Everyone from my realm, as you call it, is transferred into a synthetic body when they turn ten years old. It’s the only way we can continue to live a normal life span,” he said.
“So, you were born with a body like mine, flesh and bones. Is that correct?”
“Yes.”
“And when you turn ten years old, they take your consciousness and transfer it into a mechanical device.”
“Exactly.”
“Your parents also transferred into these synthetic bodies when they were ten?”
“Yes.”
“So how did they have a baby with a biological body?”
“It might be easier if you let me explain and then ask questions after,” he said. “I think it will take less time.”
“Sorry, I tend to do that sometimes. Go ahead.”
“About two hundred years ago, an airborne virus developed that causes the systematic breakdown of adult human DNA. Children are immune to it, until they reach puberty. When it became apparent that a cure wasn’t going to be discovered in time to prevent the extinction of the human race, technology was developed to transfer our personalities from our biological bodies to our biomechanical ones. Our original bodies are stored in stasis for a number of purposes, including procreation.”
“So your real body is in a freezer somewhere back in your realm?” Mara asked.
“No, my real body is sitting on a gurney in a parking garage below a hospital,” Cam said.
Mara raised a hand. “Just bear with me. I don’t mean to be offensive. Your biological body, the one you were born with, is stored back in your realm.”
“Yes, but to us, that body is more akin to something we discard as we mature, like an animal might molt or shed its skin. We only keep it around in case we need to extract cells for reproduction or if there is a need to replace the biological engrams used to make our neural nets function.”
“And, with all the advanced technology your people have developed over the last two hundred years, you have never found a cure for this disease?”
“What would be the point?” Cam asked.
“What would be the point? You would be able to stay in your own bodies for heaven’s sakes.”
“Why would we do that? Our synthetic bodies are far superior and less prone to accident and disease, and when accidents do occur, we have the means to replace our bodies. No one with a synthetic body has ever died.”
“Considering you are a bodiless head hanging at the end of a scarf, I’m not so sure how superior you should be feeling.”
“If I had been living with a biological body when that taxi hit me, I don’t think I would be alive in any form.”
“Yeah, about your accident—you have all this technological wiz-bang stuff going on, like wireless communications and invincible hardware, and you get nailed by a taxi? What’s that all about?”
“That’s an interesting story I’m not sure I completely understand. One of the technological wiz-bang things my body has is an automatic threat response program that can subsume my conscious mind and take over the operation of my body. I guess you could call it a fight-or-flight response to a threat that I cannot immediately assess and address with a reasonable course of action.”
“A panic switch.”
“Not very elegant, but I suppose that description is apt.”
“So what made you panic?”
“I’m not sure. I was closing up the art gallery, where my paintings were on display, and this opening appeared. It was like someone had ripped a black hole in the air in the middle of the room. Then there was this sphere that filled the room.”
“Sphere? What kind of sphere?” Mara set down her coffee cup.
“It was a translucent blue, some kind of electricity or electromagnetic field that filled the room.”
Mara leaned forward. “Did you see something or someone inside the bubble?”
“Bubble? I didn’t call it a bubble, but that would be an apt description. Have you seen this blue bubble before?” he asked.
“Answer me. Did you see someone inside it?”
“No. There was just this voice that said it was time to come home. It was a deep voice. And then my fingers started to dissolve into—”
“Into a fluorescent mist.”
“Yeah. How did you know? What was it?”
Mara ignored his question. “What happened after that?”
“My panic switch, as you call it, kicked in, and I apparently ran from the gallery and into the path of that taxi. The next thing I remember is you holding my faceplate in your hands at the hospital. I suppose the threat response program didn’t respond appropriately in the circumstance.”
“Oh, I think it probably responded very appropriately in those circumstances,” Mara said. She wiped
her lips with a napkin, stood up and placed her dishes in the sink. “Why don’t you hang out here—pardon the pun. I’m going to run upstairs to take a shower and then to the hospital and check on Ping, assuming Mom will let me use her car.”
“So that’s it? What about the sphere and the voice?”
“Detective Bohannon and I have been looking into some disappearances of passengers from Flight 559—other people who crossed over like you—but we don’t really know enough yet to do anything. It might be nothing, so I wouldn’t get too worked up yet.”
“Easy for you to say. If that thing shows up again, I don’t have any legs to run away with this time.”
* * *
As Mara walked into her room and approached the dresser, something on her desk caught her eye. The Chronicle of Continuity sat on the center of the desk, open as if someone had been reading it. As far as she could remember, she had left it in her book bag, which was now hanging on the hook on the back of the door. She walked across the room and lightly pushed the door toward its frame. Dangling there was the book bag.
She stepped over to the desk and stood over it. There, in her own handwriting, was a haiku she had not read before:
Quit being a twit.
Prepare like a pastor with
this realm’s Chronicle.
She frowned as she read the passage. At least quit being a twit sounded like something she would write. Of course, if her future self was writing this to her present self, that would make her the twit being referenced. The pastor line reminded her of Bohannon’s comments about his Baptist preacher father and his tent meetings. And “this realm’s Chronicle,” if she was reading this correctly, was in the hands of Abby the Aphotis, who was who-knows-where at the moment.
She slapped the book closed and stared at its back cover. Tilting her head toward the door, she called out, “Hey, Mom. Were you or Sam in my room looking at the little book Hannah brought back from the future?”
“No one’s been in your room. I’ve been the only one upstairs all morning, and I haven’t been in your room,” she said. “Why do you ask?”
“It’s nothing. I probably just moved something around last night, while I was delirious,” Mara said. “Would it be all right for me to borrow your car to run over to the hospital and check on Ping?”
Broken Dragon (The Chronicles of Mara Lantern, Book 3) Page 20