by Dan Krokos
But I can’t stay here. If he knows more about me, there’s only one option.
“If I come, will you tell me what happened?”
“I’ll tell you everything,” he says. He steps onto the escalator and descends out of sight.
I could stay here and get no answers, or I could take my chances with the crazy fearless boy.
Not much of a choice at all.
3
The bodies slide into view as the escalator takes us down. Five of them, spaced evenly across the floor. The woman’s beige purse is next to her head, sitting in her halo of blood. The first man who fell, his arm bent under him, bruised face pressed against the floor. None of them stir. The escalator pushes at my heels but I don’t want to move yet. Not until the wash of dizziness passes. A few blinks don’t clear it. Peter keeps walking, scanning the environment like I did when I first came here.
“We just leave them...?” I say, more to myself than him.
Peter sees I’ve stopped and he comes back and grabs my arm gently. I jerk out of his grasp and walk toward the bodies.
He grabs my arm again and lifts it high. “You can’t help them.” He’s wrenching my arm upward, holding me in place. His midsection is exposed; I could hammer him and get away.
His harsh look falls for a split second. His forehead wrinkles and he squeezes his eyes shut, as if the idea of leaving them is physically painful. When he opens them his face is clear, the flicker of emotion so brief I wonder if he felt any of it.
“I’m sorry, but we have to go.”
I nod, unable to speak. Part of me, the cowardly part, is glad he’s pulling me away. The other part hates him for it.
We walk fast through the empty mall.
“So, Peter, who are you, exactly?” I try to make my tone light, but my voice is on the verge of cracking.
“I’m a friend.”
“Yeah, sorry if I don’t buy that right away.”
We break into a light jog. “I think you do buy it,” he says.
“Why?”
He’s pulling ahead. “You’re following me, aren’t you?”
He runs and I match him easily. The storefronts whisk by us, some vacant, some containing refugees that cower and huddle together. I catch glimpses of scratched faces. Hear hushed whimpers. I want to go to them, but Peter will just grab me again. A pang of guilt hits me—if only I could tell them it’s all right. It’s over now. The malignant psychic energy is gone. I step around a teenage boy lying on his side, groaning and clutching his arm.
“Where are we going?” I ask, since my first question got a three word answer.
“Away from here first. One thing at a time.”
I stop running. He makes it a few more steps before turning around and throwing up his hands. “What now?” he says.
“You can’t just expect me to come with you. Tell me where we’re going, or I walk.”
“We’re going home, Miranda. Do you remember where home is?”
“No...”
“I didn’t think so. Now come on.”
Not like staying behind is an option. I blow out a sigh, then hurry to catch up.
We go out through a sporting goods store. As we step into the failing light of the afternoon sun, a police cruiser screeches around the corner, heading right for us.
The parking lot is scattered with people who escaped this way; they mill in between the cars. The man closest to us blinks rapidly and rubs his eyes, squinting at the sky. The rest look like they’re coming out of nightmares, with terrible hangovers.
The cop rams to a stop a few feet away. Of course he picks us to talk to. Maybe standing right next to the entrance has something to do with it.
Peter turns to me, that half-amused, half-deprecating look on his face. “Nice job, North.”
“It was your idea to come this way,” I say.
The cop flings his door open and steps out. I imagine the call for help didn’t give many details, so he doesn’t know I’m the culprit. Still, his hand is on his gun and his back is stiff, feet planted. “Stay right there,” he says, even though we weren’t moving.
He reminds me of my old pal C. Lyle.
“What happened in there?” he says, hand still on the gun.
A nightmare.
Instead of that, I say, “I don’t know. Everybody freaked out and ran away. I think some are still inside.”
“Is anyone hurt?” he says.
Yes. Because of me. And not just hurt—broken. Dead.
It stings, but I keep my face placid. If Peter can do it, so can I.
“I don’t know,” Peter says. “We hid until it was clear. We don’t know what happened.”
The cop nods a couple times, his mouth a thin hard line. “Okay. I want you to wait here. Wait here by my car. I’m going inside to look.”
“No problem,” Peter says.
He steps around us and goes inside. The door sighs shut behind him.
Police sirens wail in the distance, growing louder. We have another twenty seconds, tops, until they arrive. There’s no reason a cruiser would be traveling away from a crime scene another was just called to. But trying to leave on foot is riskier; depending on what the emergency call reported, they may want to stop us.
“You wanna drive?” Peter says.
“Sure, why not,” I say. He doesn’t seem worried at all, so I pretend like I’m not.
We move to either side of the still-running Crown Victoria and climb in. Peter closes the dash-mounted laptop and unplugs the wires from the back.
It smells like old coffee and sweat. I pull the shifter into gear, not positive I remember how to drive until I do, and put my foot on the gas.
We make it out of there okay, looping around the mall and passing the other cops from a distance. Thankfully, none of them peel off in pursuit.
Peter says, “Make a right out of the parking lot,” and I do. We’re south of the city, in a suburb. I try to remember how I made it here from downtown, but I can’t. My shortterm memories aren’t becoming long-term; things seem to float around in my mind, then gradually fade.
Without warning, Peter reaches over and jabs me with a needle, pushing the plunger down halfway. While I’m still driving.
“Ow!”
I take my left hand off the wheel and slap him across the nose, then reach down and pluck the syringe out of my arm, giving the lemonade-colored liquid a full second of my attention. Next second, I drive the needle into his leg and push the plunger. All while adjusting the wheel with my knee and maintaining speed.
“I already had my shot,” he says through hands cupped over his nose.
“What shot?” My voice cracks. I’m more shocked at how I’ve stuck him with the needle while driving. No idea where that came from. It’s another action foreign to me, like when I automatically scanned for escape routes and enemies in the mall. No thought involved, only movement, which is scary when you think about it. I don’t know what it means, or how it’s possible. Or what the hell was in that syringe.
Blood runs down Peter’s wrist.
“You didn’t break my nose,” he says.
“Too bad.”
“No, that’s good,” he says. “Because I would’ve broken yours.”
“You’d hit a girl?”
“We fight all the time.” Peter wipes his bloody palm on my thigh, then rolls his window down and spits a red glob that arcs out and jets behind us at light speed.
“I wanted to get the medicine in you quick, without having an argument. You would’ve argued. And it tastes terrible in a drink.” He wipes his nose again.
“What medicine?” I say, feeling a little bad that I’d hit him. I make a right; I’m not sure why. Traffic is light and the sky is bright blue. It reminds me of the mall skylights, the people flipping over the railing. The little boy’s voice calling for his mom. I focus on the double yellow line instead.
“The kind that helps us remember. I’m like you, Miranda. We’re the same.”
I want to believe him,
but I still don’t know what it means.
After a few minutes of driving and silence, Peter points to an alley between two worn-out buildings. The bricks at street level are stained with years. “There is fine,” he says.
“Fine for what?”
“Fine to pull over.”
I turn the cruiser into the alley, crushing a wet cardboard
box with my right tire. I hope it wasn’t someone’s house. We get out, scraping the doors on the brick. He walks to a rusty ladder bolted to the building.
“Now what?” I say.
“We climb before someone sees us. Then we’ll talk, I promise.”
When I don’t move right away, he grabs one of the rungs up high and leans against it. “Please. If you don’t like what I have to say, we climb back down and go our separate ways. Deal?”
Fair enough. I don’t think my curiosity would let me walk away if I wanted to. If you can call the need to know who you are curiosity.
I meet him at the ladder. He goes first. While I climb, questions bubble up and fight to be asked first, but I can wait a little longer.
The roof is covered in gravel. Vents and ducts poke up. I shield my eyes and look east, see the city in the distance and the lake behind it. Now, away from the action, a familiar calm settles in. I feel safe up here, even though I don’t fully trust Peter.
The stones scrape behind me. Peter sits down, wrists on his knees, back against the three-foot ledge. Half his face glows red in the sun, the other half in shade. He pats the roof beside him with his right hand, posture a little deflated, like he was staying strong to get us out of there, but now the reality of what happened at the mall is sinking in. His shoulders slump, and he presses the first two knuckles of his left hand between his eyes. He blinks a few times and tries to smile at me. Like smiling around a sore tooth.
I shiver and rub my bare arms as a breeze cuts over the roof. I tug my tank top down and walk over to him. When I sit, it’s closer than I intended. I feel his warmth next to me even though we aren’t quite touching. I don’t know how, but I still smell roses when I’m near him.
“What am I?” I say.
He doesn’t sugarcoat it.
“Your brain has been engineered to emit waves powerful enough to affect the brains of people around you. Specifically, the centers responsible for controlling and responding to fear. You are a high-tech version of crowd control. When you were two, a doctor drew your blood. It revealed an abnormality that allows you to survive the gene therapy needed to become a Rose. That’s what we call ourselves, because we don’t have a name.”
My hands are shaking now. I clasp them together and squeeze, but it does nothing. His words bounce around in my he ad—waves powerful enough, crowd control, gene therapy. I should’ve stayed in the mall and let the police take me. I should be in a jail cell, or better yet a dungeon. A place where I can’t hurt anyone ever again. I don’t know what I expected to hear, but it wasn’t this.
Peter reaches over and takes my left hand in both of his, which are warm and dry and a little rough. His callouses tickle, and a chill shoots up my arm and down to my stomach.
He continues speaking in calm, even tones, giving me time to process each idea, even though I can’t. Not the way I want to. I try to accept each idea as fact, but with each one I want to stand up and scream No!
“A side effect of the therapy is memory loss. Our brains have so many more connections, and our axons are thicker than normal. Which means we run hotter than normal people, about a hundred and three degrees at rest. To keep from damaging our memories, we take shots. The medicine protects our cerebrum before all the extra energy flying around can fry it. Now that it’s in your system again, you’ll keep new memories.”
He lets that sit for a spell. The words jumble around in my head, new ones added to the pile. Axons. Cerebrum.
“Will I get the old memories back?” I say softly.
He is silent for a moment. “I don’t know.” Better than No, I guess, but it still leaves me feeling heavy. Another stretch of silence. I can almost hear him wondering if I can handle more.
“Someone tampered with your shots. We know who. Two of us, two of our friends, left. They ran away. We don’t know why. And now they’re gone. Dr. Tycast thought you left with them, but I didn’t believe it. I had a way to track you, and I did it.”
Suddenly it’s too much—gene therapy? Memory medicine? Friends running away, friends I don’t even know, whose faces I can’t recall?—and I have to get up. My hand tears free of Peter’s grip.
“Who is we?” I say. “Who is Dr. Tycast?” They aren’t the only questions I have, but I figure the answers will be the easiest to handle.
“We... we is the four of us. Me and you, Noah and Olive. And the people who teach us. That’s who we are.”
“You know that doesn’t mean anything to me,” I say. I don’t know if I want it to, either. Back in the mall I wanted answers. Now I don’t know what I want.
Below us, cars squeal to a stop at the mouth of the alley. Car doors open and shut. The cops probably tracked the stolen cruiser with GPS. But we’re safe up here, I think. I assume they wouldn’t expect a car thief to climb the building right next to the stolen vehicle. The commotion becomes faraway and unimportant.
“What’s the point?” I say. “Of us. Of everything you’re telling me.”
Peter closes his eyes, like he’s considering his words carefully. “Imagine being dropped into a war zone and scaring everyone into surrender. No death. No bloodshed. With enough of us, you could bring an entire city to its knees.” His own words seem to startle him, like he got them from somewhere else and only now realizes how false they are. No death? No bloodshed?
I stand facing away from him, hands on my hips, that same breeze ruffling the fine hair on my arms. It doesn’t make sense. I saw the panic in the mall. On a larger scale? Death and bloodshed.
Bullets and bombs are the alternative to my power. Which is worse?
4
The cops shout to each other down below. Feet pound the pavement.
“Where are my parents?” I say.
He licks his lips, looks at the gravel around his feet. “They gave you up. For the greater good, I guess. So did mine.”
“Did I know them?”
“No. You were too young.”
For the greater good. I imagine faceless parents handing me over for gene therapy. Like everything so far, it doesn’t make sense. The hollowness inside my chest is back.
“How do you know these people didn’t just take me? They could’ve kidnapped me.”
“You knew this before and you accepted it. You have to again.”
I don’t think I have to do anything; it’s clear anyone, even Peter, would have a hard time forcing me to.
“We’re your family,” he says. “We have been for years. Since we were kids.”
We. The four of us. Family, he says. You don’t forget your family.
I turn away. My eyelash catches a tear and I blink it free. The muscles in my stomach are tight. I put a hand on them and try to relax, breathe through my mouth. It takes a few minutes, but I pull myself back to earth. I have to accept what I hear as truth because I’ve seen proof of it. I saw that mall empty itself. What I felt in my head can’t be coincidence.
“Will I get my memories back?” I ask again.
Peter doesn’t say anything. I turn around to see my answer on his face.
I try to play it off like it’s no big deal, but the gap inside me widens, threatening to swallow me. “I guess I don’t know what I’m missing, right?”
“It’ll be okay, Miranda.”
Exactly what I wanted to hear. If only I could believe it.
His face holds no deception I can see, no clue that will tell me he’s crazy, or I’m crazy, or we’re both crazy. There is only this steady calm, his unflinching eyes.
“Will you come home with me?”
So he asks me.
But, like before, there’
s not much of a choice. Not if I want to know more.
I believe and don’t believe what he says next.
“We’re going to jump across the rooftops.”
I believe it because Idon’t see another way out of here, and I believe it because physically I seem to be pretty capable—but I don’t believe it because, well, it’s insane.
He smiles at my apprehension. “I’ll go first, then.” So he does. He runs to the edge of the roof, plants one foot on the lip, and launches himself over the alley. He skids a few feet on the next roof, then turns and waves me forward. He made it look as easy as jumping across a puddle.
Anything he can do, I can do better. I hope. The only way to find out what happens next is to let go. Swallowing fear and reason, I sprint to the edge of the roof and leap. Keep my eyes forward, feet skating over an invisible pond, wind in my ears, then I’m down, feet planted on the next roof. And I don’t stop.
We run, opening ourselves up. I find it effortless. We leap from rooftop to rooftop, trading the lead, heading in a direction we both seem to know. Any fear and doubt I had before is just a memory, and a faded one at that.
My pulse is in my eyes and ears by the time Peter slows. Some of the crushed rock he kicks up peppers my shins. He skids to a stop and I almost crash into him. I steady myself with a palm on his back. Instantly I want to take my hand away, but he pretends not to notice, and I don’t want to be awkward.
“Here,” he says.
Dusk has fallen, the purple sky milky with thin clouds. I peer over the edge into the alley below. Far, far below. The piled black garbage bags are disgusting M&Ms from this height. “Can you make it?” he asks.
“What do you mean?”
He vaults over the edge and makes contact with the brick wall opposite us, five feet down. His hands and toes touch it, then he pushes off, gliding back to the wall of the building I stand on. He’s barely made contact when he does it again, bouncing back to the other side a few feet lower. I watch him continue back and forth while he grows smaller and smaller.
At the bottom he crashes into a mountain of garbage bags. He rolls off them; one splits open, spilling trash into the alley. He cranes his head back, and I see his white grin from this far away. “Your turn!” he shouts through cupped hands. I sigh. The fear is back, but my guess is it’ll evaporate as soon as I start. Besides, the self-doubt has a new companion—a strange and welcome balance in the bottom of my stomach. I like it. I don’t know who I am, but I might be a badass. I plant my hand on the ledge and toss myself over. I hit the opposite wall like Peter did. Latch on for an instant, then push off and sail back across the alley.