“Why?” I said to her. “Why dump this phone here, and go through all of this? Why not just call me.”
“We needed a secure line, Rhone.”
My middle name. I closed my eyes, imagining lazy days near the end, after I’d silenced and embodied the voices. Days when I got to just lie there, Sandra beside me, speaking softly. She’d always said I wasn’t a “Stephen.” That was too common a name.
“My line is secure,” I told her.
“Secure from you, I’m afraid.”
“So you’re working with these men?” I asked, glancing at the two beside the hot dog cart.
“In a way.”
“I need to meet with you, Sandra,” I said. “I’m … I’m not as strong as I was when you left. Things have started to fall apart.”
“I know.”
“You’ve been watching me?”
“No. It happened to me too.”
“Your aspects. Jimmy, Orca, Mason … how are they?”
“Gone.”
It felt like she’d punched me in the stomach.
“I need you to go with these men, Rhone,” she said. “I need you to trust me. They’re working on something that can help you. Has helped me.”
The longer she spoke, the more wrong she sounded. Like she was drugged or something. I lifted the phone from my ear and pointed for the aspects to gather in closer and listen.
“Sandra?” I said. “What happened to your aspects? What’s going on?”
“I gave them away,” she said softly. “For sanity. Come see me, Rhone. It’s … better this way.”
I looked up to Ivy, who nodded curtly. I hit mute on the phone, looking toward the two men. The young one was a soldier, but the older one—now that I got a good look at him—didn’t have the feel of a security officer. A little too pudgy, a little too relaxed in that sport coat, even if I did spot a gun peeking out from an underarm holster. J.C. would be proud of me.
“What have you done to her?” I demanded.
“Rather,” the older man said, “you should ask what she’s chosen to do to herself.”
“Which is?”
“She’s found peace,” the man said. “We can offer it to you too. A simple business arrangement. Your brain—safe within your skull, don’t look at me like that—and our technology. We can make the world a better place, and your world a saner one, all through the power of our proprietary solution.”
“He sounds like a businessman,” Tobias said, “giving a pitch to the board of directors.”
“He’s intrigued by you,” Ivy said, eyes narrowing. “Maybe even amused.”
I lifted the phone to my ear, unmuting it. “Sandra? I want to talk to you in private. Just you and me. No phones. No listeners.”
“And if I ask you for help?”
I felt a sudden need to give back to her. All those years ago, she’d saved my life, and I was desperate to repay our debt. To put us on even footing. Because, deep down, I suspected she’d left because I had been too needy and our relationship had been unbalanced.
She’s playing me. She knows how I feel and she’s playing me. Help. It was such a difficult word to ignore.
I turned away from the two men, speaking more softly into the phone. “Are they holding you? Have they drugged you?”
“If I say yes, will you come?”
“I…”
“I almost came back, you know,” she said. “Two years ago, when it started going badly for me? I came to visit. But I left before speaking with you. Rhone … it’s going to get worse for you. You’re like me, only a few years behind. The brain, it just can’t take the strain. You’re going to start losing them again. Unless you submit.”
“To what?”
“To a perfect world.”
“Well,” Ivy noted beside me, “that’s not ominous.”
“Sandra,” I said. “It’s not supposed to go this way. I’ve imagined … I mean, I pictured…”
“Rhone, Rhone … You should know by now. The two of us are too good at imagining. But when have the daydreams ever played out as we wanted them to? Go with Kyle.”
“But—”
“I’ll see you then. Come.”
She hung up.
And I realized I was weeping. My arm went limp, and I nearly dropped the phone as I turned toward the two men.
“Mr. Legion,” said the older man, who was probably Kyle, “the paradigm you live in can be expanded. Please, let me show you the nature of our work, and let it redefine your vision of what is possible.”
“You’re holding her.”
“You’ll find that we have done nothing outside the moral and ethical bounds of good business.”
I sneered.
“Leeds,” Ngozi said, taking me by the arm. Light flared behind us, and the crowd cheered.
“I don’t know what you’ve done to her,” I said to Kyle. “But I’m not going with you. I’m going to find Sandra. I’m going to free her.”
“And if she doesn’t want your freedom?”
I snarled. “You can’t—”
“Stephen,” Tobias said. “Perhaps you should calm down. Deep breaths, remember? Let me tell you a little more about these fire displays. Listen to my voice. The displays are so beautiful because…”
I breathed in and out, calming myself to the rhythm of Tobias’s words. Kyle and the other man backed off, and I turned to look across the crowd toward the flashes of sparks against the wall. They were beautiful, as Tobias said. I listened to his voice until …
What was that chill?
I looked into the crowd. Most everyone was facing the display, but one nearby figure moved in my direction. I frowned as this person walked right through a couple—as if they weren’t really there. The figure had … had sunken eye sockets and pale, milky eyes with no pupils.
His skin had gone ashen white, even faintly translucent, so you could see the shadows of the skull beneath. But I recognized that face anyway. Armando.
Armando—what was left of him—howled and leaped toward me, slashing with a large knife. I jumped back, but only then realized he wasn’t aiming for me.
Instead, he cut down Tobias midsentence.
SEVEN
Tobias collapsed without a sound, leaving Armando’s knife dripping with blood. Wraithlike, Armando lunged toward me, slashing the blade, reflecting the red-orange light of the performers’ sparks.
I threw my hands up in a panic, stumbling backward and taking a gash in my arm from the attack. It hurt. It seemed to actually bleed.
I crashed into the hot dog cart, barely noticing as the younger of the two men pulled out his weapon. I didn’t care, couldn’t care. Armando had become a nightmare. And Tobias …
No. Please. Not Tobias.
Ivy cried out, kneeling and trying to help Tobias. Ngozi backed away, horrified.
I reeled.
NOT TOBIAS!
Armando came at me again, and I fled. I pushed off the hot dog cart and ran with my bleeding arm cradled against my chest. Warm liquid soaked through my shirt, wetting my skin. I shoved through the crowd, knocking people over in a wild attempt to stay ahead of Armando.
He flowed after me, more ghost than man or aspect. Obstructions didn’t stop him; he passed right through a crowd of people unhindered. He didn’t bother to pretend like the others. He didn’t need to try to preserve my sanity.
I shoved past a family, scrambling, and somehow got to the front of the crowd, right up near the stage. I’d gotten turned around, confused in my flight.
Red sparks splashed against the wall, then flickered and died. I looked over my shoulder. Radiant, inconsistent, dying light illuminated Armando. His eyes were dead, the eyes of a drowned corpse. He followed, inexorable, brandishing the bloody knife.
“I will cut them out of you,” he whispered, voice somehow audible over the sounds of people cheering the show or yelling at me. “I will cut them all out.”
I collided with someone in the crowd, and they shoved me the other
way. My arm protested as I hit another group, and these crushed the wind from me, smashing me between them. Armando flowed through them, his face appearing from someone’s back like a stain seeping through a wall.
I screamed again, pushing people away from me, my arm flaring with pain. I squeezed through the stuffy, sweating, screeching, horrible mass. I squirmed and shouted and scrambled and finally … I burst from the back of the crowd into open air.
Armando slammed into me from behind, hitting me with his shoulder, throwing me to the ground. I hit the concrete sidewalk and gasped at the pain.
“Cut them all out.”
I rolled over, and stared up at Armando—who was backlit by an explosion of sparks in the night. He grinned.
Then a bullet took him in the forehead.
He stumbled, shaking his head. More shots followed, like fireworks. Each took him in the face, with almost no spread. He finally collapsed back to the dusty ground, dropping the knife.
I pulled myself away from the corpse, up onto the sidewalk, then twisted about. Never had I been so happy to see J.C. Still holding his sidearm out before him, he stepped over to me and squatted down. “Yup,” he said, “a part of me knew I’d have to shoot that guy someday.”
I looked back at Armando, lying in an expanding pool of his own blood. J.C. nodded for me to hold my arm out so he could inspect the wound, and I did so, feeling numb.
“So,” J.C. said, pulling a bandage from his pocket, “you going to tell me why you were so eager to keep me away?”
“Wha … what?”
“Leaving me in a slum, running off from the mansion before I could get back to you. Even my car here got caught in traffic.”
“That was real.”
“Still feels like you’re being reckless. On purpose.”
No. I wasn’t. I just … just wanted to get to Sandra. I tried to explain, but then I felt a ripping sensation. Nauseatingly familiar, as it had happened to me earlier today, with Armando. Loss. Information leaving me forever.
This one was much worse. A thunderbolt compared to a twig snapping.
I moaned, huddling into myself, as it left me forever: all the random bits of knowledge that didn’t fit into another aspect’s expertise. The trivia that touched everything I did, everything I had learned, wrapped up in a single wonderful man.
Tobias …
Tobias was gone.
“What?” J.C. asked. “What is that look on your face, Skinny? What happened?”
“He got Tobias,” I croaked.
“Where?” J.C. demanded.
I pointed the way back through the crowd.
J.C. took off running, and I lurched to my feet and followed, leaving Armando’s corpse. I didn’t think it could get up and come after us again … but there was no guarantee. Nightmares didn’t follow the rules.
By now, the real people had opened a space around me, and backed away as I moved. One got used to this sort of thing in a big city, even if I didn’t look like the usual homeless drunk. A few Good Samaritans asked if I needed help, but I managed to brush them off and make my way back toward the hot dog cart.
The two men from earlier had left. Ngozi knelt by Tobias’s body, her arms covered in blood. She’d tried, bless her, to bandage him.
It hadn’t been enough. J.C. was down on one knee beside Tobias, his handgun held limply. Ivy stood nearby, one arm wrapped around herself while she smoked a cigarette with the other hand. Damn. She’d given that up years ago. J.C. rose and walked over to her, and she leaned into him, crying softly on his shoulder.
I just …
I stared at the body.
Tobias had been the very first. A calming, optimistic voice pulled from the shadows and nightmares. I remembered sitting at night in a chair, lights off, surrounded by whispers—and then hearing him for the first time.
He had been my lifeline to sanity.
“What…” Ngozi said. “What do we do now?”
I didn’t know.
“We have to keep moving,” J.C. said, still holding Ivy. He needed the comfort as much as she did. “We’ve drawn attention. Look.”
Though the spark show had ended—and someone was starting to spray down the stage with water—security was making its way past the dispersing crowd. A few people turned toward me, gesturing animatedly.
“We can’t … just leave him,” Ivy said.
“There’s a way out,” I whispered. “A way to fix this. Sandra. She knows.” I stumbled over to the hot dog cart. On the counter was a note and the pouch with the cell phone in it. The note read simply, “We’ll be in touch.”
I grabbed both pouch and note, and—though it pained me to do so—I left Tobias’s remains. It felt wrong. It felt awful. I’d come back for him though. I’d give him a proper burial.
He’ll just lie there, I thought, with people walking through him. Never knowing what they’re treading on. The great man they could never see, could never know.
Had to keep moving.
I limped away, still cradling my cut arm as the security guards called after me. They hurried to catch up, but then I approached my limo, which was still parked at the curb.
Barb opened the door, and the two guards backed off. I’d suddenly moved from “random homeless drunk” to “above my pay grade.”
I climbed in, then used my foot to kick the door back open as Barb tried to close it after me. Ivy, J.C., then Ngozi entered and slumped into seats.
Barb peeked in. “Um, all in?”
“No,” I whispered. “But we can go anyway.”
“Sure thing!” she said, chipper. “Anything I can get you? Some water, or—”
“You can shut up.”
She closed the door, perhaps a little too firmly. I missed Wilson, and …
Oh, hell, Tobias was dead.
I lay down on the seat as J.C. knelt by me and worked on the bandage some more.
“Right,” Ivy said, taking a deep breath. “Right. We need a plan. I can’t believe how much this hurts … but we need a plan. Steve, this can’t happen again.”
The car started. Barb flipped on the intercom. “Are we going anywhere specific?”
“No,” I said. “Just drive. Please.”
Anywhere but here.
EIGHT
I didn’t know what type of phone this was.
I turned it over in my hands as the car pulled onto the freeway. Beside me, Ivy helped Ngozi clean the blood off her hands using the limo’s sink and water bottles.
Why did it matter what kind of phone it was? Because Tobias had known everything about phones. Not just the devices themselves, but all about the companies that made them. The history of technology was just one of his many little quirks. I’d grown used to having that knowledge comfortably in the back of my brain, not really that important, but still … there.
I tried texting Sandra a few times, but she didn’t respond. Finally, at a suggestion from J.C., I texted saying I’d turn the phone back on in an hour—then took out the battery, so I couldn’t be traced using the phone, just in case.
“J.C.,” Ivy said. “Call the mansion.”
He did so, dialing Kalyani, then putting her on speaker.
“Is there news?” she asked immediately.
“We…” Ivy took a deep breath. “We lost Tobias.”
Silence.
“You lost him,” Kalyani finally said. “As in … he ran away?”
“He’s dead,” J.C. said. “Gone.”
Kalyani gasped.
“We need to prevent something like this from happening again,” Ivy said. “I want you to gather all the aspects and get them into the White Room. Let us know if anyone is unaccounted for.”
“Yes. Yes, okay,” Kalyani said. “But … Tobias. Are you sure?”
“Yes, unfortunately.”
“How is Mr. Steve?”
Ivy looked at me. “Not well. Call us back when everyone is together.” She hung up.
I stared straight ahead, numb, feeling only t
he motion of the car on the road.
Get to Sandra.
But would she be able to do anything? Her voice on the line, the way she’d spoken, hadn’t sounded like someone who had the answers. Not the right ones, at least.
It was something to think about other than Tobias. Looking up, I was startled to find my aspects all frozen. Like statues, not moving, not breathing. As I realized it, they jerked into motion again, Ngozi drying her hands and telling J.C. about the two men from the hot dog cart.
I checked my phone, and saw that half an hour had passed while I’d sat there, zoned out, thinking about Sandra and Tobias.
The phone buzzed. It was Kalyani calling me.
“Hello,” I said, switching it to speaker.
“Everyone is accounted for, Mr. Steve,” Kalyani said. “Nobody has vanished. We’re all here. Even Leroy, who just got back.”
That meant no more nightmares. For now.
“What do you want us to do?” Kalyani asked.
I looked at Sandra’s phone. Did we just wait for her, or that Kyle fellow, to “be in touch”? Or did I do something more?
“Options?” I said, looking at my team.
“The older man,” Ivy said, “Kyle, he sounded like he was a business type. Not security. So…”
“So maybe there’s a record of him, and where he works,” I said, nodding. “But we’ll need a way to search him out. Ngozi. How’s your mental image of him?”
“Excellent,” she said.
“Great. Kalyani, you still there?”
“Yup.”
“Grab Turquoise.”
Turquoise was one of my older aspects. He came on, speaking with a weird mix of a Texas accent and a stoner drawl. “Hey, man. This has been crazy, huh?”
“Don’t use that word lightly around me, Turquoise,” I said. “Ngozi is going to describe someone to you. Can you draw him?”
“Sure. Like one of those guys. From those shows.”
“Exactly.”
“Cool.”
I nodded to Ngozi, who started describing Kyle. Round face, thinning hair, big forearms—like he worked out—but not really an athletic build. Big nose.
Legion: The Many Lives of Stephen Leeds Page 23