by Krista Cairn
He started to choke and collapsed to his knees. Simone suddenly realized what she was doing and pulled her hand back. She was not a killer. He had to be neutralized, captured, and put on trial. Sadly, but the fact that a ghost had caught him would put him in a mental hospital instead of prison. She started laughing, an odd sound from a creature who was ethereal. Even to her, she sounded evil.
“Sit. Stay. Or I will give you more than something to choke on.” She left him sitting on the floor, still gasping a he clutched his throat.
Simone looked around and found the rope she’d pulled off the woman. Moving to stand behind him, she let the light return and tied him up. He didn’t fight back. Her next priority was to go and check the lady in the chair. She was still breathing, but blood was still trickling down the side of her head.
Simone pulled her cell phone out and dialled 911. The whole time, Frank just stared at her as if he didn’t know what to believe. She was tempted to pick the pipe up and smack him with it once, just so he could feel it from the impact side. No point in messing up his fingerprints, though.
She gave the address to the 911 operator but didn’t respond when they asked for her name. If she was going to pretend to be a superhero, maybe she should come up with a different name. Did she really need a third name? Think about that later.
Simone walked over to the man and sat in a squat in front of him, still ghosted.
“Your name is Frank? Or is it Ralph? You look like Frank.”
“Stay away.” The tremor in his voice was gratifying.
“Isn’t that what that lady over there told you? Did you listen?” She made a tsking sound. “Evil is often self-defeating, but sometimes justice needs help.”
He should never forget this. Therapy groups wouldn’t need to waste their time or money. If she could reduce him to a quivering mass of gelatin, that would be enough.
“You hit her here.” She touched him near the temple on the left side of his head. He recoiled with a shriek. Was it fear, or did it hurt? She had no idea. “Where else? Where else did your evil touch her?”
She waited a minute, hoping his fear was still growing. “You hit her here too. How many times?” She pressed her fingers into his ribs. He tried to lurch backward and fell over.
“Did you kill Sid Denners? Was it because of your wife?” His shock was not feigned.
Then he nodded.
When she saw tears, she stood up. It wasn’t pity, but she was done here.
“You should embrace those tears.” She didn’t want to rant, but she had a few things to say. “Straighten up your life. Accept your punishment. I will haunt you, if I have to.”
She swiped at his head and he passed out, falling sideways onto the floor. He’d better remember this. She hadn’t gone near the memory parts of his brain, at least. If he blocked the memory, or changed it, like so many other people, there wasn’t much she could do. But he should remember the
The woman was staring at her now. Maybe it was a good idea to move her to another room. No. Evidence needed to be intact. Simone sighed. She didn’t normally try to talk. For a long time, she didn’t think she could. Probably misconceptions picked up from movies. Her reality was definitely different from their fiction.
“Sorry. I would move you but the police will be here soon, and they need to connect your pain to his actions so he goes to prison.” This ghostly voice of hers was going to take some getting used to.
The woman immediately lost consciousness. Probably from the shock of a ghost talking to her. That solved that problem. She’d be in her chair when the police arrived.
Now, where was the evidence that he was the one who’d killed Sid? She moved from room to room, quickly, but she hoped thoroughly. She needed the location of the knife, or something else that would implicate him. She remembered the shed. That was the logical spot. Most repeat killers had the sense to try to distance themselves from the weapon, even while embracing the crime. That’s why they kept trophies.
Did he keep a trophy? There hadn’t been a memory of him taking one from Sid. That made the knife.
She wasn’t thinking clearly when she left. The sirens were nearing and she had to get out. She gave a quick wipe to the window’s edges, removing her fingerprints, then pushed it shut behind her.
She stood, ghosted, on the edge of the roof. Where should she go? If trouble followed her, she didn’t want it following her home. Mitch’s place seemed right. She wanted to talk about this anyway, and he was the only one that would understand. She was doing the impossible again. He knew what that felt like. Who knew what advanced abilities he was capable of but hadn’t discovered, as well? Could he maybe do lightning? She smirked. That would be cool.
Chapter 15 // Breathe
The next morning, she was startled. Mitch stood near, rubbing her cheek and whispering for her to wake up. She was on his couch.
“Food’s ready,” he said.
How did she wind up at Mitch’s place? She turned and looked up into his face. “Food?”
“In the kitchen. Let’s go,” he nudged her forward.
She could smell it now. Some form of omelette was her guess. The whole situation felt very domestic. Natural. She hadn’t felt this ‘normal’ in years. She breathed in deeply as they neared the kitchen. “That smells amazing.”
She was about to sit down when her phone buzzed. She pulled it out and saw message from Jenna. She would check it later. Right now a chef had made her breakfast, and she was starving. She followed Mitch into the kitchen.
“Where can I find your plates and cutlery?” She asked.
“Guess,” he said as he pulled a casserole dish out of the oven.
She took the opportunity to find out how he organized his cupboards, but she was quick about it. He would be hungry too, she was sure.
She quickly set the table then went back to the kitchen for a serving spoon. They ate the first few bites in silence, more interested in the food than talking.
Simone was trying desperately to remember what happened last night. At least she woke up on the couch fully clothed. Not that she wouldn’t be, but she was starting to wonder about her decision-making processes. Mitch was starting to feel like an exception to her rules.
“This is so good,” she said, “Did you make it?” It was an egg-based casserole, with bacon, hash browns, and marbled cheese.
He nodded. “It’s my mother’s recipe.”
“Ah. You said your aunt lives here in Ember City, but where is the rest of your family?” she wondered. “Too personal?”
“No, it’s fine. My parents are west, over the mountains. I had a brother, but he died a few years ago, before I knew I was toxic to other people.”
So that’s how he knew it was radiation. As she processed what he said, she felt tears slowly rolling down her cheeks. “How did you know I would be safe?”
“I have a portable Geiger counter. You’re so radiation neutral that I thought it was broken.”
“Does anyone else know? You know, that you… literally glow?”
“My parents. They haven’t told anyone and I’ve been hiding it pretty well, until lately.”
“You said we were part of an experiment. Why don’t I remember it?”
“That’s the only theory that’s holding up, so far. We must have ingested something hidden in a mass produced food or drink.”
“That’s illegal!”
“How about you? Where is your family and do they know?”
“None of them know, and now that you mention it, I did have two siblings who passed away shortly before I learned about my changing. We thought they had food poisoning, but the hospital couldn’t save them. There was this restaurant. It’s closed now.”
“Is there any chance you were living out west when this happened?”
“Actually, yes. We were in a small town called High Bridge. I don’t remember what the restaurant was called.”
He was starting to glow softly. Simone got up, closed the curtain, then sat
near him on his side of the table. “I think I know where that is. My dad used to travel a lot, and I think there was a restaurant there that he liked.”
“But no one else in your family was affected?” Sitting in a chair next to him, she took one of his hands.
“No, just me.” He paused for a minute, tapping his fingers on the table. “Wait a minute. What if it wasn’t me that killed Todd. What if he had a bad reaction and it took a month to hurt him?”
“It’s possible. My brothers lasted about that long.”
She could feel him getting angry. Rightly so. All these years he had borne the guilt of his brother’s death, and it might be a matter of a rogue scientist? This is what it felt like when evil came into your life. When her brothers died, she suppressed it but now… Now she could feel it. She thought it was bad food, not evil food.
“But why radiation?” she wondered. She reached for her juice glass and saw it was empty. She refilled Mitch’s glass then her own. Anything to take the edge off this pain. She hoped to God it worked. “I think they know who we are….” She started thinking out loud, looking at their hands, as if for comfort. “What if today was just another in a long string of experiments on you? On us. What if the reasons our abilities have been growing and changing is that we keep walking into preset radiation fields, or something that would test our limits?”
She looked up. He was staring right at her. His expression was fierce. “We need to map out everywhere either of us had an… episode, a reaction to something we thought was a random trigger. If we can get a perimeter, we can track him or her down.” He swallowed his juice in one long gulp and stood up. “I’ll get a map.”
Excited, Simone quickly finished her drink and cleared the table. A minute later he was spreading a city map out across the table. Pulling a thin tip marker out of his back pocket, he put an X in the location where he first noticed a change. He added three more spots, including the theatre. Then handed her the marker.
It was a little harder for her. She ghosted so many times voluntarily these days, that it was hard to tell which ones weren’t her idea.
“Do you have a different colour marker for mine. I think mine have a different kind of trigger.”
“Good thinking.” He pulled a different marker out of his back pocket. She peeked around to his back side and saw several different colours there.
“Not a Boy Scout, eh?”
He just shrugged.
She stared at the map, and was drawn to the areas where she did her courier work.
If she was triggered, that’s when it happened the most. It made sense. Back alley science needed back alleys. She chose moments of change, moments when she changed. There were five spots where, after she had ghosted, she realized the ability had grown. She thought it was efficiency, that she was getting smarter about it.
Mitch picked his marker back up and circled three more spots. They stood back, looking for a pattern. There was an area of concentration just east of the hotel.
“The entertainment district, as it’s called,” Mitch said, tapping the marker as he thought.
Simone snorted, “Right. Entertainment.”
Mitch leaned forward and put his index finger on a building. “This is one of those places where your neighbours don’t ask questions. They put their head down, their hands in their pockets, and hurry past.”
“It’s worth checking out.”
“If light is simply electromagnetic radiation, think about moments where you got the sun momentarily reflected, hitting you. Those could be times when someone was trying to trigger a response from you.”
Simone suddenly needed to sit. She should be dead. Mitch should be dead. They weren’t. What they could do made zero sense to her.
“Hey,” Mitch put a hand on her shoulder and ducked down to see her face. “What’s wrong?”
“How many people have died so someone like us could exist? Why are we still being altered, and what are they making us into? I mean, you’re not electroluminescent. You glow because you’re a radiation collector. I’m ‘empty’ because I filter and neutralize that radiation, safely.”
“To put it simply, yes.”
“It’s illegal to take DNA samples without consent. Can you imagine the laws they’re breaking by changing our base DNA?” The thought gave her a chill. She stood up and did a few shoulder shrugs, trying to relax. “Okay, I’ll focus. Sorry. What happens if you take potassium iodide tablets or something like that?”
Mitch walked to the kitchen and brought back a mid-sized tackle box back. Setting it on the table, he flipped the latches up and opened it. “This is a collection of the things I’ve tried. So far, none of them work. The only thing that helps is the full body protective gear, and for some reason that’s not even good enough. They’re all toys compared to what I need.” Simone looked through the items, recognizing iodine tablets mean to release radiation from vital organs, didn’t know what to say. Instead she reached out and took his hand again. He gave a shuddered a sigh, and it almost broke her heart.
“Back to the map,” he said. “If I can find the person doing this, I can stop the traps.
The only thing that should trigger me then is an actual nuclear leak. The active zone, for lack of a better name, seems to be in this area.”
“Good thing we don’t live near a nuclear plant, eh?” she smiled, glad he had some hope. There was no way to understand their DNA changes. The best they could hope for was prevention.
She looked out a window. “It’s still early. Feel like a walk?”
“It is nice out, tonight.” He folded the map up so the active area was showing then handed that with the three markers to Simone. “New colour for new discoveries, old colours for if we remember being somewhere not marked.”
She nodded and went to put her shoes on.
He pulled a small black device out of his tackle box and flipped switch on the side.
“The batteries are good. I’m ready.”
Simone was suddenly excited. Nervous. Scared. Until she looked into his eyes and saw hope. Smiling, she followed him outside and took one of his hands in hers.
Chapter 16 // We Are Bulletproof
Maybe holding hands with Mitch was a bad idea. Yes, he would be safe from the radiation, but she couldn’t hide. If things turned violent, they would be helpless.
“Would it be better to let you build up a bit of a charge, in case we have to defend ourselves?” she leaned and whispered. “I’ll keep an eye on you while you keep an eye on that device.”
He hesitated but let her hand go.
As they turned the last corner before entering the active zone, Simone was startled by the change. She reached up and grabbed Mitch’s arm, causing them to pause a moment.
The streets were little better than alleys, with cardboard houses set up on the sidewalks, run down or abandoned cars parking where ever they stopped running. Paint peeled off every home.
“It looks like a war zone.” Simone said.
Were her friends or other people she knew patrolling this area, not realizing they were getting hit with high levels of radiation? They must be. Every part of the city was on someone’s route. She’d message Jenna and she could spread the word later. She’d forward a copy of the map, too.
Mitch held the Geiger counter out in front, watching the numbers change. Minor changes were just background radiation, from naturally occurring sources. As they approached the spot with the first X, Mitch slowed his pace.
“This is where I was earlier today,” he said.
Simone let his arm go, but kept her hand up, ready. In truth, she didn’t know how a radiation spike would affect her. Not consciously.
A moment later the counter beeped three times and the display changed to orange.
“Walk slowly. Radiation builds and decays slowly. To get a good reading, we’ll need a minute with this detector,” he said as he himself started to glow.
Simone watched Mitch, and he watched the detector. Neither of them sa
w the man half-lying on the sidewalk, propped up against a steel guard rail on a staircase up to a home until Simone needed to sneeze and turned her head. Screaming, she grabbed Mitch, instantly sending out a shock wave of light.
“Careful,” he said.
She nodded and let his arm go. “Sorry. We need to call an ambulance for that guy.”
“May as well call now. We’ll have to wait before we move on anyway. Your shock wave cleared every bit of radiation in the area.” He showed her the display as it sat at zero and changed to show other readings also sat at zero. “I’m curious what they readings here will be in an hour.”
“Did I break your detector? I mean, that’s not possible, is it? Zero radiation can’t happen when the sun causes everything to have radiation to some degree. Even some vegetables are naturally radioactive.” She pulled her phone out and tried to turn it on. It stayed dark. Odd, she’d never killed a phone before, Army surplus or otherwise. Maybe it needed charging.
“Unless you’re around, apparently,” he smiled.
Simone held the map up. “Let’s go to this next X.”
They started walking and Simone pushed her hands down, deep into her jacket pockets.
“Okay, this is as far as your blast went. We should start getting readings again.”
Mitch said a little quicker than usual.
Blast, Simone smiled. More like pulse. At least his confidence was back.
“Onward, then,” she said. “Two blocks until the next X.”
As he predicted, the readings immediately climbed again, but not enough to make the display orange. She hadn’t broken his detector. Simone inwardly sighed relief. A sudden thought made her pull her phone out and hit the power button. It worked. “I don’t understand,” she muttered.
“What’s that?” he asked.
“My phone wouldn’t work back there, but here it’s fine.” Now that she thought about it, she’d never tried to use her phone in an area where she’d done the light pulse. She’d never needed to.