by Stuart Jaffe
“Immensely. As for what I recall, sorry to say it’s not much. Why didn’t you ask me two months ago?”
“We didn’t need to, then.”
“For two months, you’ve waited —”
“Time is an illusion. When you truly start to experience the longevity of immortality, you’ll understand that. Assuming Crystal is a prisoner — she would have contacted us already if that wasn’t the case — we can take our time to find her properly.”
“What the hell? What if she’s being tortured? What if —”
Victoria stood sharply. “I can see this was a poor choice. And I had to give up one of my favorite morning talk shows for this. You can’t help.”
“Of course, I can. I want to. I just —”
“You just want to question and question and question. But that’s not why you’re here. Get up and go to training. Take the photo. Maybe you’ll remember something and care enough to share it, instead of trying to weasel out information.”
Nathan went to PT and muddled through the day. That night, he studied Crystal’s photo. Victoria had been right, of course. He had been trying to pull out more information, but he wanted to help, too. If for no other reason, then to erase the image of Crystal being shot before his eyes.
Day 102
Wake, train, eat, train. Ask a question. Eat. Back to the hotel, see that flickering light under the door of the cinderblock building, shower, eat, Litany of Jennie, think of the night Crystal died, sleep.
Day 135
Nathan progressed fast. Training hard every day for more hours than he wanted to think about did that to a body and a mind. He achieved his black belt in two art forms — Tae Kwon Do and Jujitsu — and had reached the intermediate levels of Kung Fu. At that point, Octavia worked him for fewer hours but more intensely. In the free hours, she instructed him on military tactics of every army throughout history.
“How do you know all this?” he asked at the end of the day.
“Just as it is crucial for you to keep your body in peak shape and conditioning, you must exercise your mind. Never stop learning. To let the mind atrophy is a form of death. Read books, take classes, learn, and you will forever be rich for it. When you’ve lived as long as I have, you’ll be shocked at how much you will have learned.”
He absorbed everything she said. More than she knew. Learning took on many forms for him. Especially, learning the layout of the island and any point of weakness he could find. Soon — he knew he had to act soon — he would find a way out of this mess. He would return to his Jennie, get down on one knee, and propose like he should have done long ago. He knew it wouldn’t be easy for her but his soul was the same. He was the same man deep inside. This imprisonment would not break him. He refused to allow such a thing.
Day 142
Wake, train, eat, train, question, eat, cinderblock, hotel, shower, eat, Jennie, Crystal, sleep.
Day 187
Jennie. That delicate soul. Her beauty, her charm and grace — every night she helped him survive. His love for her grew as the days ticked by and his life drifted further away from any sense of reality. She gave him a goal — freedom, marriage, family.
Real love. That’s what he had for her. Just as his dad had for his mother. His dad had done a good job raising three boys alone, but Nathan felt her absence all the time. She had died before he turned two, but his dad talked of her so often, Nathan thought he knew her as if she had lived. “Greatest woman of my life,” his dad would say. That was real love. It was what he hoped to create with Jennie.
Crystal. The other woman in his head. No feelings of love, though. Instead, he felt guilt. He had awoken in Jake’s body with Crystal right in front of him and did nothing. She lost her second soul and was stolen away by Russo, all because Nathan had failed to act. Well, if Victoria was right about the nature of time, then he would use it to his advantage. Once he found his way free from his prison, he would handle the problems of being in another body, marry Jennie, then find and save Crystal.
Nathan slept little most nights. How could he sleep with these thoughts endlessly looping?
Day 194
Death training. Nathan arrived on the field as usual, but this time Octavia had set an old man strapped to a chair at the far end. She pulled out her weapon — he now knew it was a Colt 1911, the preferred Marine handgun - and pointed it at him.
“You must learn to react quickly when you lose your second soul. When we are on a mission, we cannot afford to dawdle and you cannot afford to die. Remember, when your second soul leaves, you are mortal once more. Everything about you becomes mortal.”
“What do you mean everything?”
“You feel pain more intensely, you suffer fatigue quicker, your reactions are slower, you even age. That last part is most important. You age. At a normal, human pace, but you do age. If it takes you an hour to acquire a new second soul, your body will age an hour. That may seem minor to you, but when you live for centuries and go through several soul changes, those seconds and minutes and hours and, for some, even days or longer, all of it adds up. You can’t get that time back. I’ve met some like us who have aged to the point of being elderly and infirm yet still immortal. A horrible curse, in my opinion.”
“Infirm? I thought our bodies healed after losing the second soul. Doesn’t that include sickness, disease, that kind of thing?”
“Yes. And be thankful. The way Jake had behaved, your body should have every STD known and a few yet to be discovered.”
Nathan didn’t know which he found more disturbing — the revelation about Jake or the idea that Octavia had cracked a joke. She went on to say that the age of the soul in relation to the age of the body mattered. They didn’t know why, but when an aged body had an aged soul, the healing process slowed, then weakened, then stopped entirely. A young soul would heal the old body fine, but the old master soul risked being ejected by the stronger young one.
“Got it. Don’t let time get away from me.” Looking at the old man, Nathan’s hands turned clammy, and he rubbed them on his pants. “So, what happens now?”
“You die.” She fired, and Nathan saw the barrel kick as the bullet smashed through his head. Before his body hit the grass, she said, “Stay focused. Ignore the pain. Help your body eject the bullet and get your new soul as fast as possible.”
Ignore the pain? Nathan’s head felt as if a burning eighteen-wheeler drove through his skull. He rolled onto his knees, fought back the urge to throw up, and cradled his head.
“Hurry,” Octavia said. “If you don’t get moving in ten seconds, I’ll start shooting at you.”
He looked up at her. “If you kill me again, you’ll kill this body.”
“Oh, you slow-witted boy. I’m going to cause you a lot of pain. Then, I’ll kill you with a shot that will cause slow bleeding. And I move fast. Once your soul leaves that body empty, I can get that old man’s soul inside before it’s too late. So, if you want to remain immortal, you better get moving.” She raised her gun to underline her point.
Nathan concentrated on the center of the pain. He could feel the bullet moving through his skull as his body pushed it out. Much like willing his fingers to tap or his legs to run, his body reacted to his desire to get rid of the bullet. It popped out of his skull and the pain eased.
Octavia shot a new bullet into his shoulder. “Our enemies will not give you this long to live.”
With a slew of curses, Nathan jumped to his feet and tried to run toward his new soul. He felt the wound in his head closing up, but the bullet in his shoulder remained — it had come after the second soul left. More gunshots sent bullets at his feet. He quickened his pace, ignoring the pain coursing through his body, until he sprinted the rest of the way.
When he reached the man in the chair, he looked around for a weapon. But there wasn’t one. No gun. No knife. He glanced back. Octavia walked towards him, her weapon raised as she took aim.
After close to two hundred days, he knew better than to attempt a
debate. No matter his objections, this would always boil down to a simple equation — either kill or face the Darkness. He grabbed the man’s throat. “Sorry this can’t be easier for you.”
He wanted to close his eyes, he had no desire to see the strangled man’s terrified face, but he needed to pay attention. He needed to grab the soul at the first chance he could. When that mist left through the eyes, Nathan had his face up close. He let out a soft sigh as the second soul entered his body.
The burning in his shoulder subsided. He would have to lose the old man’s soul in order to heal the bullet wound, but at least the pain did not stop him from thinking or functioning.
“Good,” Octavia said as she came up beside him. “Now, let’s start the day’s workout.”
That night, Nathan sat cross-legged on his bed, and attempted to go through his Litany of Jennie another time. But each thought in his head crumbled under the weight of the strangled man’s face. All this power, this immortality, and these people want to destroy things. He curled under the sheet and shivered. Who was he that he could kill this man? It didn’t matter that Octavia threatened him as she had done. And why did it feel so satisfying to have that second soul?
Day 231
Another day, another soul. Every morning began with some form of attack, each time requiring Nathan to grab a new soul faster and faster. He never asked where the people came from or what horrible things they had done to deserve this fate. He wanted to know those things but not enough to waste his one question on them.
He wanted to vomit at the thoughts in his head — balancing the value of life to the value of a question. Yet that was prison. It altered the balance of morality. It changed a person, and he knew no matter how much he fought it, prison would win these battles.
But it wouldn’t win the war. That was Jennie. Nothing could stop him from getting her back.
Day 303
Weapons had taken over as the main focus of his training. Swords, staff, improvised weapons, as well as handguns, rifles, automatics, semi-automatics and any other mechanical marvel Octavia decided to throw his way. She taught him all the proper usage and techniques as well as the best ways to fight against each. Endless hours of repeating sword strikes followed endless hours of close combat followed endless hours of shooting targets at the range.
He had to admit that part of him enjoyed the training. His body loved the exertions. He found each day a rush. He never considered himself a physical guy, but once he started being capable of amazing feats, the kind of things he only saw in the movies, he really got excited. Each day, he arrived like a giddy child on Christmas, eager to open his presents.
At night, however, things changed. He knew he had to exercise patience in waiting for his opportunity to escape, but he also had learned much in the art of stealth movement. Perhaps, if he were cautious, he could sneak out of his hotel room and uncover some information that would aid him. Though he had never met with severe punishment, he had never disobeyed Octavia to any serious degree. Leaving his room in the evening might be going too far. But staying every day he remained meant another day further away from his life.
While he understood that they would not harm the body that housed his soul, he equally understood that they would not hesitate to remove him from that body. They would kill him, sending his soul into the afterlife and the Darkness.
These thoughts triggered a recurring question that troubled him — who were they? He had been living on this island for almost a year and he only ever saw Octavia and Victoria. He heard reference to Mr. Larkin but never saw him, and when he used his daily question to ask, Octavia responded that he would learn those answers in time.
But he could wait no longer. Almost a year and the training showed no sign of slowing down. If he couldn’t get to Jennie yet, he had to send word. It was going to be a hard enough adjustment for her as it was. Every day longer only made it worse. Perhaps that cinderblock bunker housed their radio and other communications equipment. There was a large metal tower not too far from the building. Even if he was wrong about its purpose, he had to know what was inside. At least then, he could remove that question from his mind.
Leaving his room was no problem. They never bothered to lock him in since they were on an island and they made it clear that he should not leave his room. As Octavia put it, “If you leave without permission, you will lose all privileges. If you cause trouble while AWOL, you will be evicted from your body and you can discover what the afterlife is all about.”
He scurried down the hall, moving fast and silent. Not wanting to alert Victoria with the elevator chimes — he had no idea if she stayed in the building or not — he opted to take the stairs. He had no way to avoid the security cameras, but he considered it a calculated risk. Victoria appeared to be the only other possible resident in the hotel, and he had been a model prisoner for hundreds of days. They probably weren’t even monitoring the feeds. Once outside, to be safe, he stayed off the pathways, keeping to the shadows of the surrounding foliage.
The full moon cast its bright, pale light across the island. He should have thought about that, planned for a moonless night, but he hadn’t been thinking — and now, he stood outside, committed to his actions. No matter. All the training Octavia had subjected him to would now be of great benefit. He knew exactly how to stay unnoticed. At least, he knew in theory. This would be his first field test of all he had learned.
Chapter Seven
Though he could only confirm the existence of two other people on the island — Octavia and Victoria — he had to assume there were others. Somebody had to bring food to the island, cook it all, dispose of trash, maintain the grounds, fix the plumbing, keep the electricity running, deal with heating and air conditioning, repair the machinery, and keep the Internet connection healthy (he learned that the Internet worked fine for Victoria; they only had blocked his access). Octavia spent most of her days as Nathan’s instructor, and he refused to believe that Victoria did all the other jobs by herself. Many of them, sure, but nobody could handle the workload of running an entire island solo. Yet no matter how many people assisted, there could not be too many or Nathan would have encountered at least one or two in passing.
All of which suggested that surveillance cameras and automated systems ruled the island. He would have to be more careful than he had so far. If one camera picked up his movements, that would be the end for him. He pictured the grin on the absent face of the Darkness.
When he reached the large, low building, he walked around its perimeter. Nothing but solid walls. He had hoped to discover a fire exit or a loading dock or any opening that would save him from going through the front door, but he only saw cinderblock upon cinderblock.
The front door it would be.
He crouched behind the broad leaves of a tropical dumb cane and waited. After twenty minutes, he decided there were neither patrolling guards nor autonomous cars that might come by to check on things. Time to move.
He slipped over to the door — blue and wooden with a simple bolt-lock above the knob. While his lock-picking skills still needed much work, something this basic was well within his abilities. It still took him five minutes. Once he heard the click, he opened the door and entered like a cloud silently passing across the sky.
The second he entered, he learned the source of the flickering light. Only a few feet ahead, a large fire burned inside a shallow pit and a wall behind the pit reflected a lot of the light back toward the door. Nathan dashed into the shadows on his right and waited for his eyes to adjust.
Nobody sounded an alarm. Nobody called out to him.
Trailing one hand on the wall to keep his position, Nathan moved deeper into the building. It was an open warehouse, mostly dark, mostly empty — as far as he could see with limited visibility. However, four braziers had been set up in the middle like an ancient temple’s sacrificial alter. Though a sweet cinnamon smell burned off of them, they produced little light. He could see them, and he could see that a stone pil
lar stood behind each one, but that was about it.
He left the wall and worked his way through the darkness, focusing on the burning coals as his only guide. More poor planning — he should have brought a flashlight. He kept expecting to slam his shins into a crate or some other object lying around, but the place appeared to be cleaned out.
When he reached the pillars, however, he discovered massive chains bolted into the stone — one chain into each pillar. He had only seen such enormous metal links once before. He and Jennie had gone on a tour of a battleship, and the tour guide pointed out the anchor chain. In this case, though, the chains all went toward the center of the dark.
Nathan could only make out a dim shape — perhaps a man. A large man. Over six foot tall and slim.
No. Nathan decided he must be mistaken. Then, the man moved.
He turned his head toward Nathan. The chains scraped the floor. The man breathed loud and slow. Nathan heard a low rumble — a chuckle or a groan, he could not tell. For an instant, he saw two round discs flickering orange light. Nothing else. The man remained a figure in the darkness.
But Nathan swore he could feel the man grinning — not an amused grin, but a hungry one — like a predator finally finding a lone and weak animal to devour. He heard more breathing, but this time it was ragged — his own.
Curiosity tossed out the insane idea of moving in closer to get a look at this chained man. After two hesitant steps, however, Nathan halted. He had come here to find out what was inside, and with any luck, access some communication with the outside world. He had failed in the latter and had no desire to see more of the former.
He turned to leave when he heard the clanking of one huge chain lurching through the air. Nathan jumped forward as the chain slammed down, cracking the concrete floor where he had stood only seconds before. He squinted in the dark, trying to see what this thing intended to do, but it stood still as if nothing had happened.