by Rob Horner
I did one of those classic double-takes, looking at the man, then back into the elevator. It was the guy who’d been standing next to the older woman, speaking to her, when Iz and I entered the room from the stairway. He hadn’t joined us in the elevator, I was sure of it, but there he was, tall and thin except for a protruding belly which his plaid shirt couldn’t quite disguise. He had thinning brown hair with an uneven bald spot spreading out from the crown, and wore thin-framed, round glasses that looked quite fashionable.
Gina laughed good-naturedly at my confusion as the older man stepped around the woman. “I didn’t have a chance to introduce myself before,” he said in a soft, cultured voice. “My name is Jeff Greiser.”
“John Wilson,” I replied, shaking the offered hand. His skin was cool and soft, but his grip was firm. He was a couple of inches taller than me, but he inclined his head when he spoke.
“Tell me, Johnny,” he said, “is it true that you can cure these people down here?”
“Straight to the point as always,” the older woman said.
Behind me, the elevator doors closed, the car on its way back upstairs for the others.
“I find that much more gets accomplished, and more answers are received, when one is direct and forthright with his questions,” Jeff replied.
“Just like a teacher,” the woman said, stepping up beside Jeff, who looked down at the top of her head with a fond expression.
From her features, gray hair pulled back in a bun, laugh lines around her mouth and crows’ feet beside each eye, I placed her age at somewhere around sixty. From my earlier discussion with Iz, I was sure that neither she nor Jeff had any part of this project prior to this week.
“Well, aren’t you going to introduce us?” the woman said, directing her comment at Jeff. He opened his mouth to respond, and she added, “And don’t forget to tell him your blessing. Since you were so interested in asking him about his, it’s only polite to offer yours in return.”
His mouth opened and closed several times as she talked, and I could tell he was literally waiting for her to stop, so that he didn’t interrupt her.
“My--” he started to say, only to have Gina’s sudden yell of anger override him.
“James! What did you do me?”
I looked to the side, where Gina was frantically trying to pat her hair back into some semblance of neatness, staring into the darkly reflective screen of the largest television I’d ever seen, while James stood some distance away, laughing out loud. He held up his right hand, where small sparks danced between his fingers, and I understood. He’d been using his power on Gina while we were in the elevator, subtly charging her so that her hair stood out like a ginger-colored pinecone.
The television, that was one of the differences between this room and the room above. The rest of the room was filled with more metal-backed chairs and couches and low-slung tables. Upstairs, there’d been the double doors leading to the stairs, the doors for the elevator, and a set of doors across the way. The fourth wall had been taken up with the bookshelves. Down here, there were no bookshelves. The fourth wall, which was to the left of the elevator, also featured a set of doors. The television was in the far corner to the left.
The second difference in the room was a small alcove on the wall facing the elevator and to the right of the doors. It was about the size of an oven, a square perhaps three feet on a side. Its purpose wasn’t immediately apparent, and there was no time to ask.
“Ahem,” Jeff said once Gina’s complaints quieted to a low rumble of righteous grumbling, her hands grabbing, pulling, twisting and straightening. She settled for pulling it up into a ponytail. James maintained his smile but appeared to be trying to help her.
“Those two—” the woman said fondly.
“My power is teleportation, as you might have guessed,” Jeff continued. I hadn’t guessed, but I didn’t say anything. “I can move myself and up to two people anywhere I can picture.”
“That’s how he got here ahead of us,” the woman offered, though her eyes remained on Jeff.
“And this is Mrs. Jean Byrum,” he replied. He made a strange gesture, sweeping his right arm toward her, then back to me. “Madame Jean, permettez-moi de vous présenter John Wilson.”
“Call me Miss Jean,” she said, stepping forward and offering her hand. “And that was a nice touch, Jeffrey, doing it in French.”
Jeffrey sketched a mock bow.
Mrs. Jean didn’t dress like anyone I knew, preferring loose clothing that flowed around her ankles when she moved, like she wore a mile of silk so artfully draped that it appeared comfortable and warm, yet also gave the impression of coolness and weightlessness. Her hair being up in a bun struck me as a contradiction. Shouldn’t it be down and flowing over her shoulders to go with clothing like that?
There was nothing loose about the way she met my eyes, with a slight up tilt to her head. She hadn’t released my hand yet, either.
Something…happened. The noise of the surrounding conversations became lower in pitch, but not volume, and the words slowed, like someone placed a finger on the edge of a turntable, making a vinyl record made for 45 RPMs run at 33 1/3. There was a light, like a dim nimbus of white, surrounding our hands. But I felt nothing.
I looked back up into her pleasant face and saw…
A living room in a small house, loveseat and a single rocking chair as the only furnishings aside from two end tables and an old, black and white television resting on a third. There is a feeling of cherished memory to the room. Many and more are the happy times this place has seen. The walls are liberally covered with framed photographs and I know, without knowing how I know, who each person is, when the picture was taken, and where it was shot. Three different faces smile out of most of them, a cherished son and two beautiful daughters, progressing from childhood on one wall to adolescence and finally adulthood. There is a picture of a younger but fiercely proud Jean hugging the son, also a John, in his Marine “Charlie” dress uniform, followed by two wedding photos of the daughters, Savannah and Jessica, taken months apart. There is a sadness attached to the photo of John that isn’t present with the girls. Somehow, I know that they have thrived, with loving families, children, and even careers, while John has been lost, though the details of his death are unknown. It is this loss which drove Jean to find Mandatum, following a whisper of a rumor that might be connected to an urban legend based on a myth one soldier heard from another. It is the power the light bestowed upon her four days ago, to find meaning in another’s thoughts, to tie ideas together that seem unrelated, and to unearth secrets long thought buried. With a handshake, she can walk through memory exactly as I just did, and find clues overlooked by the person to whom the memory belongs.
The vision faded as she released my hand. The hubbub of voices resumed normal speed.
“That was—” I began.
“Amazing,” she said. “You and I have a lot to talk about, young man. And I think Bradley should be with us the next time.”
“No, I mean, I saw your home, how you came to be here,” I whispered. I’m not sure why I lowered my voice, but the sudden widening of her eyes told me it had been a good idea.
“Impossible!” she hissed. “I can see into you, but it doesn’t work the other way.”
I didn’t say anything, just waited for her to explain further.
“I’ve had this power for four days now, and I don’t understand it completely. But I’ve read everyone in this building, fighters and Chosen alike, and no one has been able to do what you just claimed.”
Quietly, aware of the elevator descending behind us, I started to describe what I thought was the most personal decoration, the picture of her son. “He even has my name,” I said.
Her eyes closed for a moment, and I recognized the look that came over her face. She took a deep breath, regaining her composure. When her gray eyes opened again, looking up at me, she said, “We really do need to talk more,” and then she turned away.
&nbs
p; Unfortunately, we’d never be able to have that conversation with Bradley.
The ding of the arriving elevator pulled my attention back to that direction. Tiffany, the brunette, and Ricardo, turned toward me at the same moment, stepping in my direction, wanting to separate themselves from the incoming rush of people.
As they took that step, holding hands and looking at each other with that puppy dog grin of young love, something clicked.
Further on, I passed another set of alcoves, one on each side of the passage, another set of bodies, a young Hispanic man, dark-haired, in his twenties, and across from him a pretty brunette, with that fine bone structure that gives the impression of frailty. Both had suffered like the first pair, their lives ended in pain as their bodies hung on meat hooks. Their arms seemed to be reaching for one another across the space between the walls, as though death was just a temporary separation.
Like Gina and James, they were two others I’d dreamed about before meeting. Two more who, if the dream held any power of prediction, would die. My mind wanted to add the caveat If I couldn’t stop it, but reason wouldn’t allow it. I’d been beating myself up over that dream since having it, using it as a crutch to explain why losing Crystal and Tanya was inevitable, when the simple truth was that they’d been lost because none of us, myself most of all, knew what we were walking into. I carried enough of the blame for that, pushing to go forward with our little operation despite the growing awareness that there was more to this than just our little corner of the world. But did that mean the dream predicted it?
Regardless of whether the dream predicted anything, how was it possible to dream about people you’d never met? At no time during any of this introspection did I doubt the truth of my memory. Gina and James were not similar to those in my dream, just as Tiffany and Ricardo were not similar. They were the people in the dream, identical in every respect, down to the fade in James’ hair and the high cheekbones on Tiffany’s face.
There were two other people I’d seen, occupying the last set of alcoves, but I hadn’t met anyone who resembled them yet. There hadn’t been a dark-skinned woman standing over six feet tall, and there certainly hadn’t been a blond with Asian features, though I was mentally preparing myself to meet someone who fit either description.
The double doors slid open, and out came the remainder of the group who’d waited upstairs. I had one glimpse of the tall Asian man, Jason, standing in the back of the car, and then he was beside me, dragging a draft in his wake. That brief wind was the only evidence that he’d physically moved from one place to the next, rather than teleporting like Jeff, the middle-aged guy with the bald spot. The carrot-top and Carmen, the pretty Hispanic girl were there, as was the older Black man. The likable young guy, Chris, who could change his skin to any substance, came out last, walking next to another guy with red hair that I didn’t remember seeing during my first pass through the room upstairs. This one was taller, closing in on six feet, and looked a little older. He was also a more stereotypical “ginger” like Gina, with blue eyes and freckles. There was no sign of the guy with the fox-face, Bradley, who’d hung back and hadn’t bothered with introducing himself.
Then Iz was beside me, guiding me to the right side of the room. If we were back upstairs, this direction would open to the stairs that went up to the garage. Once again, he drew his special white card, placing it to the right of the doors.
“Down here, every door is locked,” he said. “For security purposes.”
The doors opened onto a short hallway, white on white on white, ceiling, floors, and walls, like we were stepping from a cozy TV room into a sterile hall in a hospital. Or a mental institution.
There were white doors dotting the hallway, spaced at regular intervals. They had no doorknobs, however, leaving me to assume that a card like the one Iz wore around his neck would be needed to open them. None of the doors had any kind of identifier, either. No name plate or room number.
Iz caught me looking at one and offered, “These are offices, for the most part. The infirmary is here on the left, and there’s a small break room for the guards down here on the right.”
There were eight doors all told, four to a side, with perhaps fifteen feet between them. The hallway ended in another set of double doors with one final door on the left wall. “That door leads back around to the Rec Room,” he said. “And these lead into the Distilling Room.
“Like we be making moonshine!” Chris shouted from behind me. In my curiosity, I’d forgotten why everyone came down with us, and hadn’t even thought to check behind me. Something in the floor dampened sound, so there was no chaos of footsteps and shuffles to announce a large group moving down the hall.
Iz shook his head, but I caught a glimpse of a smile on his face as he continued, “Not that kind of distillery. This is really a little more information than necessary at this point, but some of your powers can be concentrated into objects, which our soldiers can use as needed.”
It made sense. One of the gun barrels I’d seen in use at the carnival shot out a purplish light that had an effect like Ben’s power, stopping Dra’Gal in their tracks and forcing a reversion back to human form.
“We can’t use it as such at the moment, because we’ve been capturing Dra’Gal almost nonstop for three days.”
“How many?” I asked.
“About a hundred right now,” he answered. “For a dozen different reasons, I’m hoping you can help with that.”
At sixteen years old, weary but no more world-wise than most kids my age, the only reason I could think of to help them was the humanitarian one. These people deserved to have their lives back, without a demon puppet master pulling the strings. His comment sparked the question, “What other reasons?”
“This room, heck, this whole facility, wasn’t built as a prison, and wasn’t designed for holding people against their will. We’ve had to convert an area that serves a valuable purpose into a holding cell, and we don’t have the capability to just move the equipment somewhere else. You’ll see. Plus, it’s very taxing on the two Chosen who had an ability capable of maintaining them in a human state, and with Ben gone…well…” He shook his head. “I doubt Danielle can hold them by herself for long, though she’ll keep at it until she falls over.”
“None of us want that to happen,” a voice I hadn’t heard before said behind me. Turning to look, I received a nod from the older black gentleman. “If she fails, then she’s the first one they’ll attack.”
Iz waved that away as we approached the doors. “The guards would protect her, but the idea of all of those people being killed. It’s sickening. War isn’t supposed to be like this.”
“Is that what this is, sir?” I asked.
“See for yourself,” he replied, once again stretching out his card to touch a spot on the white wall.
The double doors slid aside.
Chapter 6
A diamond in the rough
The room was large, like a cavern the size of a football field hollowed out of the earth, given form by the ubiquitous white walls framing it and lit by uncounted banks of stark-white, fluorescent lights running side by side all along the length and breadth of the ceiling. There were smaller offices set against the side walls, obvious afterthoughts in the design of the place and noticeable as such for the relative thinness of their walls. Each small, square room offered a single door as entry and exit, with a plexiglass window beside it. They marched along the sides, one after the other, their windows dark and their contents invisible.
The center of the space, near where we entered, was set up like an industrial work center, where some machine would be operated by lines of factory employees either feeding it supplies, manning the various dials and gauges, or taking the finished product and packaging it for shipment. The big piece of machinery was there, something I’d never seen before, all white and gleaming, silvery metal, with a recliner on one end placed near a stainless-steel cart that wouldn’t have been out of place in a medical center.
It was draped with a sheet, but my mind had no problem picturing those metal shelves lined with syringes and tubes, gauze, tourniquets, and alcohol swabs.
The machine dominated the space, ten feet tall and twice that wide, and looked like nothing so much as a medicine capsule made enormous, supported on a wide base of the same silvery material as the bottom half of the capsule. Other chairs took up space around it, some facing toward it from this side, and others facing away on the far side.
“The plan was to have three of these distillers up and running by now,” Angelica said. “Fish says we have the parts to make the other two, but we’ve had to commandeer the space.”
I didn’t say anything, still amazed by the size of the space and the strangeness of the machine.
Two of the chairs on the far side were occupied by those I’d come to call soldiers, men with barrel on barrel rifles by their sides, wearing clothes uniform in color and function if not in material, with no badges to specify rank or specialty. I hadn’t seen either of the men before and didn’t take the time to look at them then.
As our group moved around the giant capsule, what occupied the center of the cavernous room grabbed my attention, bringing me to an immediate state of alertness.
If you can imagine a horse corral, split rail fencing that runs in a rough circle with a single gate to allow animals in an out, you’ll get an idea of what the center of the cavern looked like. Make the circle forty feet in diameter with rails ten feet high, then add chain-link fencing over the rails and curled razor wire at the top and fill it with people who looked like they couldn’t believe where they were, and you’ll get a better idea.
The collection of humanity within the fence didn’t have the look of the oppressed. These weren’t ragtag people at the last edge of desperation. These were people possessed by the poisonous minds of the Dra’Gal, and it showed. They might not be able to transform, but that didn’t stop their faces from betraying the monsters trapped within. Lowered eyebrows and snarling mouths twisted faces that ranged in age from the middle teens to men and women in their forties and fifties. For a wonder, only one wore the characteristic Polo shirt of the carnival; the others were dressed like everyday people, from T-shirts and jeans to business suits in black, navy blue, and khaki. There were older women in dresses suitable for a church service standing side by side with younger ladies in silky blouses tucked into skirts so tight they concealed nothing of the shape beneath. Young or old, they didn’t mill about the space or congregate in groups as any other collection of humanity might. There were no small cliques forming within the larger mass.