Shadow Touch

by Marjorie M. Liu

  “Who do I look like? If you want the tumor to disappear, take it out yourself. If you want him to walk, put strings on his heels and dance him around like a puppet. What I do is a natural process, Doctor. It takes time. He’s not dying anymore, though. That should be all that matters.”

  “We are all dying,” said the doctor, making notes on his clipboard. “Unless you know a way of postponing that as well.”

  “I’m not God,” Elena said.

  “A gift from, perhaps.” The doctor gazed down upon John Burkles’s prone body. “When did you first manifest?”

  “Manifest?”

  “Your gift. Surely you haven’t always been able to do this.”

  “If you say so.”

  The doctor looked startled—a first. “Are you telling me you’ve had access to your abilities for your entire life?”

  “Well, sure. How could I not have access to them?”

  “For most individuals it takes a precise amount of biological stress to manifest their latent gifts. Puberty, usually. The same can be said of certain mental illnesses, which are mere genetic predispositions until certain factors combine to create the perfect circumstances for emergence. How remarkable you were not so handicapped.”

  Yes, very. “You must have studied a lot of people to figure out that much.”

  “Not nearly enough. That is why you are so important. Telekinesis and telepathy are so mundane, you know. So … passé.”

  “Of course,” Elena said. “Because just everyone can do them.”

  “You would be surprised,” said the doctor, this time with some sternness. He put down the clipboard. “I have conducted extensive trials all over the world, utilizing a diversity of test subjects. The most common psi-trait is some form of telepathy. A sixth sense. Knowing when a friend or relative is in trouble, prophetic dreams, déjà vu. All quite common.” The doctor moved close, studying Elena. “You, on the other hand, defy logic. My first assumption was that you used some kind of combined telepathy and telekinesis, but that, I fear, may be an oversimplification.”

  “I always knew I was special,” Elena said, batting her eyelashes at him. The doctor frowned. So did Rictor.

  “Your sense of humor is becoming an annoyance. I do not believe you truly understand the precariousness of your situation.”

  Elena was too tired to care about tact. “I understand that you kidnapped and imprisoned me. I understand that you’re conducting human experiments on myself and others. I understand that you employ deeply disturbed individuals who are just itching to commit murder. Precarious, Doctor? I’m up Shit Creek without a paddle.”

  For once, the doctor was not offended. He leaned against the examining table, brushing up against John Burkles’s body. “Why aren’t you a doctor? Why didn’t you ever train your gift, turn yourself into something more than just a … a faith healer?”

  His voice was gentle, almost kind. Elena did not trust it, although his question took her off guard. Being a doctor was an old dream, one that had been impossible to fulfill—which was her fault and no other’s. At eighteen she had been unable to cope with the idea of going away to school—was too afraid, too uncertain of her ability to hide her gifts. Excuse after excuse, always postponing, always promising her grandfather.

  And then he died. And school, suddenly, did not seem all that important anymore. She was smart. She could educate herself. Who needed a piece of paper to say otherwise? A degree certainly could not keep her from healing.

  Her silence dragged on too long. The doctor said, “The Consortium could give you that education, my dear. The finest schools and teachers. Anything and everything, right at your fingertips. You could help so many.”

  Temptation, the first hook. It was perfect, and the doctor knew it.

  “I was helping people,” Elena said, angry for feeling even a little enticed. “Right up until the moment your Consortium kidnapped me.”

  The doctor waved his hand; a shooing motion. “You were nothing but a child healing children. Earnest, but utterly misguided. You should not be ashamed of that. You do, however, have a responsibility to improve yourself and not waste this great blessing you have been given. Really, my dear. Who do you think you are?”

  The hypocrisy was too much. Elena laughed out loud. “You are so full of it.”

  Rictor briefly closed his eyes. The doctor did not notice. He was too busy staring at Elena. She held her ground, unrepentant and defiant. It was difficult; the old man’s expression flickered to pity. Brief, no more than a ghost. Impossible, a figment of her imagination. This man was not capable of compassion.

  “I was offering you a way out of this place,” said the doctor. “Isn’t your freedom worth a little compromise?”

  “Not when the deal is with the devil,” she said, refusing to go along with him, to pretend acceptance. That would be the smart thing to do. Strategic. Earn their trust, and then get the hell out.

  A nice concept in theory, but Elena sensed the execution would be quite different. No matter what they promised, nothing could be trusted here. Even if the Consortium did follow through, the doctor and the people he worked for would find some other way of imprisoning her, of keeping her bound to them for the remainder of her life.

  No, thanks. Elena knew what slippery slopes looked like, and this one was the holy Montezuma of them all. She wondered if that was how Rictor had lost his soul to the Consortium. Just a little promise, a little carrot on the stick. One step after another, until he had fallen all the way down into hell.

  You are the keeper of monsters, Elena thought at him. What do you think that makes you?

  Rictor ignored her. Elena did not expect anything different. One day of playing captive to his captor had been enough to show her that Rictor had his own game to play. She simply did not understand his motivations. Either way, he was certainly big enough and scary enough to change his circumstances if he really wanted to.

  Elena gestured at John. “What’s going to happen to him?”

  “Why, he’ll be released back into the wild.” The doctor’s smile was bitter, sharp.

  “I suppose the ‘wild’ is where you found him.”

  “You could say that. The desperate are quite willing to subject themselves to anything, for a price. John and his family believe he is the recipient of a new experimental cancer treatment, courtesy of a particular organization which shall yet go unnamed.”

  “You have your fingers dipped in everything,” she said, gazing down into John’s slack face. Cancer, eating him alive. She thought of Olivia. “Just what is it you have planned for me, Doctor? Am I going to be your resource? The experimental therapy of the rich and famous? Elena Baxter, miracle maker?”

  “Questions,” said the doctor.

  “You have a selective distaste for them. All you need to do is not answer. Unless you have a thing for dishing out really good spankings.”

  Again Rictor closed his eyes. The doctor frowned. “You should contemplate better word choices, my dear. That was not ladylike.”

  Elena opened her mouth to tell him just how ladylike she really was, but he said, “We have a great deal planned. You have the potential to make huge contributions to the organization—to the world, even. It is very likely that everything we learn from your abilities will completely revolutionize medical science. You are a walking cure for cancer, after all. And imagine, that is just the beginning of what you can do. The possibilities are endless.”

  “I know my limits,” she said, unnerved by the blistering light in his eyes.

  “Yes,” he said. “But I do not. So we will see just how far beyond those limits a little patience can take us. Time, fortunately, is on my side.”

  Which was about the same as writing I OWN YOU on her face with a big red marker. Yeah. Life did not get much better than this.

  Rictor twitched. The doctor did not seem to notice, but Elena did. Rictor was not the kind of man who made unnecessary movements.

  A moment later a sharp pain in Elen
a’s heart doubled her over. She clutched her chest, gasping. The doctor touched her shoulder. Elena did not try to push him away. The pain dragged her deep; she felt as if she were suffocating, dying—except that was not right, her heart had to be fine, she was too young, too healthy, too full of life, and this was not panic … this was not …

  Artur.

  She felt him—his spirit stretching out across the same line that had bound their dreams—and she reached back, holding tight, sharing the agony as someone killed him, a slow murder, strangling his mind in the same way the Quiet Man had tried to strangle her body: by sheer unrelenting force, by darkness and a cold, hard will.

  Elena plunged through the link, grappling with Artur’s spirit, pulling herself across the distance separating them. She left her body completely, breaking the tether—breaking—and it did not matter because he was dying, suffering, and she could not allow that, not even if it meant her life.

  Darkness—she entered darkness—wriggling across the surface of Artur’s mind like the worm, a glistening sea of shadow, oily and slick. She felt the presence of another, the alien focus of someone strange and horrible, but it was nothing to her fury, and she raised her fists, raised them burning bright, and brought them down hard against the shadow strangling Artur’s mind. The darkness broke. Elena heard a woman cry out.

  And then she was back in her own body, stretched on the floor with Rictor cradling her head and the doctor standing above them both, ashen-faced.

  “Elena,” Rictor said. His eyes glowed. “Elena, talk to me. I need to know if you’re all there.”

  “I’m there,” she breathed, exhausted. “Or here. Whatever you want me to say.”

  Rictor briefly closed his eyes. “You did it again, Elena. You complicated matters.”

  “Story of my life.”

  The doctor crouched beside them. “What is going on here?”

  “A panic attack,” Rictor said calmly. “You remember, she had one when she first arrived.”

  “I’ve never seen symptoms come on quite this suddenly, though.” He frowned, peering into Elena’s eyes.

  A strange ringing tone suddenly filled the room. Like a phone, but different. The doctor stood and walked over to a plastic case set in the wall. He flipped it open, revealing an intercom. Pushed down a red button.

  “I’m here,” he said. He sounded uneasy, and continued to glance over his shoulder at Elena.

  “We have a problem down in the tank room,” said a woman, breathless. “We did like you asked and brought the African down to see him, but it was too much. The subject went crazy, broke the glass. He refuses to shift, and the weight of his body is crushing him. He’s going to die.”

  “What about the other tank?”

  “It hasn’t arrived yet. We’re pouring water on him manually, but it’s not enough.” Elena heard glass shatter; something hard crashed down to the ground. A man cried out. “He’s fighting us! God … he … he just managed to impale himself—”

  Rictor gazed down into Elena’s eyes, and she saw something in his face—something that looked like hope—and he grabbed her arms and hauled her up. It was hard to stand—she felt dizzy, hot—but Rictor’s hands tightened on her arms, and he looked at the doctor. “We need her down there. She can save his life.”

  “It’s too early,” protested the doctor, his concern striking Elena as unnatural. “She’s not ready.”

  “What is more important?” Rictor tugged on Elena; she staggered against him, but he kept pulling and she got her balance back. The bewildered doctor tried to stop them, but Rictor marched her past and hit the corridor at a run.

  “What is going on?” Elena tried to ask, but she was running so hard the words came out in a garbled mush. She grappled with his hand, trying to keep up. Her legs felt weak; she was certain that at any moment she would fall flat on her face.

  “I just decided to die a little earlier,” he said. “But at this point, one week or two will make no difference at all.”

  “Rictor.”

  “I am forbidden to break the rules,” he said. “Forbidden. But I can bend them. I should have started doing it a long time ago, but I didn’t see a reason or an opportunity. I let her make me weak. I let things go too far.”

  Which made no sense at all, but Elena was willing to roll with whatever he had in mind. She was running too fast to do anything else. Fast, fast—she had never been forced to run so fast in her life—and when Rictor suddenly dug in his heels and staggered to a stop, she ran hard into his shoulder, bounced several steps, and almost fell to her knees. She began to protest—her gut ached; her lungs burned like a dry furnace—but Rictor pulled her backward, silent and quick. Elena did not hear anything behind them, but he whispered, “L’araignée is coming for you.”

  “You told me that would happen.”

  “But now she’s angry.”

  “Can she sense us?” Elena had no idea what the woman was capable of, but if she could rein in someone like the Quiet Man, anything was possible.

  “Only me, but she won’t think of tracking my movements. L’araignée has perfect faith in my obedience. She hasn’t bound you to her yet, so she’ll look for you the old-fashioned way. The lab, first. The doctor will tell her there was an accident, but she won’t go down to level one herself. She’ll send a nurse to find you. That will buy us time.”

  “Can’t she read your mind? With that … that worm?”

  He gave her a hard look. “She’s not controlling me like that. Which is why I am less free than Charles Darling, but have more loopholes than he’ll ever dream of seeing.”

  “Nothing you’re saying makes sense, Rictor. Why are you different?”

  “Blood,” he said, and then made her run. They pounded down the twisting corridors with terrifying abandon. Elena did not know how they could travel so fast without being detected, but Rictor moved with utter confidence. Elena did not share his bravado, but then again, she was no mind reader.

  He slowed, finally; Elena heard male voices.

  “Pretend,” he whispered, and then they turned a corner and came face-to-face with two large men in white. Between them walked Artur.

  Tricky bastard, she thought at Rictor. You planned this.

  Artur was no longer naked. He wore a black jumpsuit that was partially unzipped down his chest. Black gloves covered his hands, which were bound together by plastic restraints. He wore socks. He looked tired, but healthy. Alive. Elena met his gaze and it was like coming home.

  “Come on,” Rictor said, pulling her slowly past the men. Too slowly. She did not miss the way he tilted his chin at Artur, or how the Russian stared back with narrowed, knowing eyes.

  The hall was not that wide. The nurses stepped sideways to accommodate Rictor’s passage. For one brief instant Elena felt the men watch her instead of Artur. A stupid mistake.

  Elena turned her back; she heard the hard thump of flesh, a startled grunt. She whirled and saw one nurse slumped against the wall, unconscious. The other doubled over as Artur slammed a knee into his groin and then delivered one last kick into his face. The man stopped whimpering. Artur’s hands were still bound.

  “What took you so long to make your break?” Rictor moved quickly to the fallen men. Calm, quiet. There was no fear in his voice or face. He had known this would happen—Elena was certain of it. She watched him sling a man over his shoulder. Artur grabbed the other nurse’s ankles. Elena helped him.

  “I was waiting for her,” Artur said, looking at Elena with such intensity her breath caught. “It is good to see you, Elena. I cannot tell you how good.”

  “Ditto,” she said.

  “Hurry.” Rictor led them a short distance to a green unmarked door. It was unlocked; the inside looked remarkably like a broom closet.

  “Yes, Elena. Even evil keeps itself clean.” Rictor dumped his man in the corner; Artur and Elena did the same. “There’s nothing to tie them up with, but I think they’ll stay out for a while. You hit them good.” He grabbed E
lena’s hand, said, “Pretend you’re my prisoners if we see anyone,” and pulled her back out into the corridor. She dug in her heels, but Rictor was inexorable. Nothing made him lose his stride, until Artur slipped in front of him. His gloves were off and stuffed in his jumper pocket. He extended his bound hands and Rictor hesitated.

  “Don’t,” he said. “Don’t touch me.”

  “Let her go,” Artur said. “Let her go and you can keep your secrets.”

  “I would kill you first.”

  “All it takes is one touch. Just one. I am a man of my word, Rictor. You know this.” Artur touched his own forehead. “How much are your secrets worth?”

  “How much are your shape-shifters worth?” Rictor’s voice was hard. “Because the longer we stand here talking, the sooner one of them will die. And when that happens, I won’t be able to help you. You’ll have lost your only ticket out of this shithole.”

  “I do not trust you,” Artur said.

  “Talk to her about it.” Rictor gestured at Elena. “She doesn’t stop thinking about that, ever.”

  “You can’t possibly be surprised by that,” she said. “And besides, mind … -dropping … is totally rude.”

  “Totally,” he drawled, sarcastic. “Now get the fuck moving.”

  Artur, for whatever reason, let that slide. He stepped aside. As Rictor passed him, hauling Elena, Artur reached out and grabbed her other wrist. His hands were warm. Something coiled around her heart, gentle and strong, and she heard, I am here, Elena. I am here.

  Rictor released her. He did not look at them. “Someone’s coming,” he said, and they began moving again, fast. Artur ran easily, with a loose-limbed grace that was utterly natural and effortless. Elena felt him glance at her throat. She wondered what it looked like.

  “Where is Charles Darling?” Artur asked. His voice was low, furious.

  “You don’t have time,” Rictor said. “He’s in another part of the facility. Forget about him.”

  “She will send him after us.”

  “For fuck’s sake. Can’t you just handle one problem at a time? Elena’s alive. She almost killed him. Just leave it at that until you get the hell out of here.”