The wind picks up and howls in our ears again.
“When she died,” I continue, “I never felt more alone in my entire life. Just like that, no more family.”
“I’m sorry,” he says. “I can’t imagine what it would be like to lose Nate. But Dr. Nancy… he’s your father?”
“Not a very good one,” I say.
Father? What kind of father would subject his daughter to what he put me through? What kind of father has a death order out for his own daughter? But I’m no daughter to him; he made that clear.
“Lots of people here don’t have much family. You’ve heard Zoë’s story, haven’t you? And Lazz doesn’t have a family either. His parents died in an electrical explosion that almost killed him, too,” Cliff says.
“But they’re not responsible for their families’ deaths,” I say.
“Who says you are?”
“Me. They wouldn’t have killed my sister if it weren’t for me.”
“You can’t be sure of that.”
“If she wasn’t with me, then they would have spared her. They killed her because they wanted to hurt me, and it worked.”
“That sounds like their fault, not yours. They were the ones who pulled the trigger.”
I shake my head.
“I know what they did, but they did it because of me… So I made it my responsibility to make it up to her, to avenge her.”
“What did you do?” Cliff asks. I can hear in his voice that he’s afraid of what I might say.
What did I do? The break-in at the Cuyahoga Clinic, the tangible dirt… That’s one of those questions I was afraid he would ask, because what I did was unforgiveable…
“I lost it,” I say.
Cliff nods his head, and doesn’t try to ask anything more. It’s something of a blessing that Cliff is the one who’s asking me these questions because he won’t pry the truth out of me. He’s more than happy with ambiguous answers or no answer at all. Right now, that’s all I can handle: someone who doesn’t want to ask questions any more than I want to answer them.
“Are you afraid of me, Cliff?” I ask.
Cliff purses his lips and stares at the sunset. The sun is almost gone now.
“I don’t know,” he says. It’s the most honest answer anyone has given me since I came to Kenyon.
“So why’d you come up here? No offense, but I wasn’t expecting Moton to send you,” I say.
“Zoë and Nate asked me to. They are all busy with the guy in the interrogation room, and it’s not going well. They wanted to see of you were alright, and if so, then they wanted to ask you to help them out.”
“I don’t want to see the interrogation.” I say. I really don’t want to see him.
“You know him, don’t you?”
I bite my lower lip. “Someone from my past.”
“An enemy?”
“He wasn’t always.”
“We’re having trouble finding him on the Finder, do you think you could help us?”
“I don’t think I’ll be of much help, Cliff.”
“Why not?”
“Have you ever poured salt on a wound before?” I ask. I shake my head.
“You never know… it might help,” Cliff says.
“Salt? I don’t think so.”
“No, seeing him. It could… what’s the word Marissa used… empower you. These guys have been hunting you, but now we’ve got leverage. Maybe you should look at him for what he is now,” Cliff says.
What is he now? Leverage? More like a double-edged sword. Maybe Cliff is right, though, and a little empowerment is all I need to get back on my feet.
“Those are pretty strong words, Cliff. Very mature,” I tease.
He blushes.
“I can’t take credit for all of them,” he says.
I smile.
“Nate said you don’t have to talk to him if you don’t want to, but he did come after you, and you deserve to know why,” Cliff says.
I know why… I think.
The Metanites have done so much for me, and they did let me stay on the roof where I’m not allowed. Helping them is the least I could do, and I owe them.
“How can I help?” I ask.
Cliff presses his lips together to stop himself from smiling, but I can see the victory in his eyes.
“Why not you come down and see?”
“Okay,” I say. I push myself away from the edge and stand up. “Are we taking the stairs?”
“We don’t have to,” Cliff says.
He holds his hand out to me, ready to teleport back to the interrogation scene. I take his hand, and the sunset flashes out of sight.
XII: The Walls of Jericho
Tuesday, March 18, 2065; 4:19 p.m.
First person
The colorful sunset view vanishes into a small, dark room with dark walls, black carpeting, and a large window looking into the interrogation room. The nine bodies crammed into this room make it warm and stuffy. Nate, Marissa, and Kiaria sit closest together at a long table sitting in front of the window to the interrogation room. They scribble something onto a tablet, oblivious to anyone else in the room.
My eyes travel to the window next. He’s right there. In the white interrogation room, he lounges on a metal chair and stares at his feet. His hands are handcuffed with a short chain connecting them to a silver table positioned between him and the door. I wonder if things had gone differently under the bridge… would this have been my bedroom here?
It’s a distance fallacy, being so close yet so far away. That’s how it feels now. That’s how it felt then, too.
Despite the blinding whiteness of the room, he is as dark as coal. His dark brown-black hair creates a shadow over part of his face; his dark brows are crossed above his grey eyes. He wears the same black suit that he wore when he crashed through the window of Kenyon. But it’s the darkness behind his grey eyes that make his obscurity impermeable.
“Annika!” someone says. I’m recalled to the small, dark room.
“You’re here,” Marissa says… well, more like asks.
I turn to look at her but say nothing. Lucky for me, the door of our room creaks open, and in marches Zoë.
“Annika, glad you’re here,” she says. “So the window in the cafeteria is now totally fixed, and everyone was told that the police came to pick up the intruder. If only we could figure out who this asshole is.”
“… yeah, try that. Maybe you’ll break him,” Nate says to Kiaria.
This must have been what it was like when I first came to Kenyon: trying to figure out who I was, how to soften my impenetrable mind, and then what to do with me. I suppose my circumstances were much different than New-bee’s. They could have guessed who I was just by the scars and abnormalities of my blood and body while I was unconscious in their hospital for five days. Also, I didn’t crash through a window of their home—they found me.
“Alright,” Kiaria says.
She stands up and leaves the room. After a few seconds, we watch the door to the interrogation room open and Kiaria walk in. She starts talking to New-bee, but he’s completely unresponsive. Just as I suspected. There’s no way they can crack him unless they want to use an icepick to his skull, and even then his walls are too strong.
“Marissa and Kia have been going back and forth for the past three hours trying to get him to give us something, but he’s a total wall. It helps that Kiaria reads people’s minds, but his mind… he must have trained it to shield out any interlopers because she can’t even get access to his memories,” Nate says.
He doesn’t have to explain this to me. I’m all too familiar with New-bee’s walls, and not just his mental ones. New-bee was never one to let others in, and I doubt that’s changed in the past twenty-two months. When we were… when I was still living in Dr. Nancy’s factory, he barely opened up to me at all, and when he did it was like a minnow swimming in a creek. He would hide in the murky waters where no one could reach him, then slowly, warily, swim out to the sun
-lit water. But at the first indication of another creature, he would dash back to the murky water and stay as still as a statue.
And no matter what I tried, how I pleaded, comforted, interrogated, and harassed, he always remained that little minnow fleeing back to his darkness. He built a home there—no, a castle—so strong with walls that nothing could break.
“What do you know about Dr. Nancy’s experiments?” Kiaria asks.
New-bee is still unresponsive.
What does he know about the experiments? I’ll tell you what he knows about the experiments: they’re wrong. Immoral. Unethical. Illegal. Appalling. Wrong. He watched Dr. Nancy perform experiment after experiment after experiment. He watched child after child, friend after friend, be subjected to an experiment. He watched them suffer and cry when it happened and after it was over. He even watched some of them die because of the experiments. He watched us suffer and live through the scars. He watched, and I know that he took his turn—willingly, no doubt—with the experiments that gave him inhuman speed and strength. He knows now what it’s like, and I bet he has the scars to prove it.
“What do you know about the children Dr. Nancy experimented on?” Kiaria asks.
Her voice is too sweet. He’s never going to crack. He only responds to threats.
But why did the hunting crew attack, and leave him here alone? They should have known better than to break into a house full of Metanites. New-bee would have known better. He would have known this was a failing mission before it started. Then why did he do it? What point are they trying to make… that they can still get to me? No, there’s something deeper to this.
The door creaks open again, and Kiaria returns to the crowded, dark room. I didn’t even notice the interrogation had ended.
“Nothing,” she says. She saunters back to her seat.
“Alright, what’s next?”
“What’s next? Nate, we’ve tried everything!” Marissa says.
“Not everything…” Xander says from the corner of the room.
Marissa shoots him a look and Nate rolls his eyes. Apparently violence and torture is not tolerated here… that’s a shame in this particular case.
“Hey, I’m not suggesting we pound the guy’s head out until he starts talking, but maybe a little psychological torment will do him some good,” Xander says.
“Sure, except we don’t even know what he’s thinking. It’s hard to target his emotions when you don’t know where to aim,” Kiaria says.
“Well, just tell him stuff like, that he only has a few more hours to live unless he starts talking,” Xander says. “Won’t work. He knows we’re not going to touch him,” Elijah says.
“Why?”
“Because we would have done it already.”
“Well, I guess we’ll just have to start a little late.”
“That’s enough. We’re not going to be torturing anyone,” Nate says. He leans back in his chair and sighs.
“Except ourselves… this is torture.”
“We’ll find out who he is, but bitching and moaning isn’t going to make it go faster,” Marissa snaps.
Cliff nudges me with his elbow. I peel my eyes away from the window into the interrogation room and look down at him. Cliff stares at me and jerks his head slightly to the table where Kiaria, Marissa, and Nate sit. I sigh, nod, and then turn back to the window.
“Annika is here to help,” Cliff says.
Okay… kinda thought that was obvious by me being here.
“That’s great,” Zoë says. “Is he the one we saw on St. Patrick’s day in the store?”
I nod. He’s the one from the alley, the bridge, and the bombing on St. Patrick’s Day.
“Well, who is he?” Zoë asks.
I open my mouth, but I can’t find any words.
“Zoë, easy,” Elijah says.
“He didn’t just attack Annika—he went after all of us! Broke into our home.”
“Zoë, please.”
“Right, sorry Annika,” she says.
“Is he connected to the other attacks, too?” Kiaria asks.
“Yeah, I remember seeing him at the bridge. He’s a good fighter,” Nate says.
“Well, I don’t really care how good of a fighter he is; I want to know his goddamn name so we can crack this tool!” Xander says.
“Calm down, X!”
“Sounds like you guys are making progress up there,” Izzi’s voice says from a small microphone on the table.
“Shut-up, Iz.”
“Izzi, not now,” Nate sighs.
“Come-on, you guys,” Kiaria says. “Everyone just needs to stay focused and relaxed. Xander, take it down a notch or take five.”
For the moment, no one speaks. Cliff nudges me again.
Come-on, Nancy—Annika, whatever, I think to myself. Say it.
“Jericho, Jericho Novak,” I say. “That’s his name.”
Everyone stares at me, but I’m still staring at the teenager in the interrogation room. I can almost feel Cliff holding back a grin. None of the Metanites know how to respond, so it’s quiet for a solid five seconds, which is a year for these people.
“You get that, Lazz?” Nate says into the microphone.
“Got it… information surfacing as we speak,” Lazzer’s voice says from the microphone.
“I can’t believe you sent the three of them down there to work the Finder,” Zoë says.
“Who? Lazzer, Abe, and Nickel?”
“Yeah! You wonder why any results weren’t coming up…”
“Nah, they have Izzi and Kono. Besides, his—ah, Jericho’s—fingerprints are unreadable,” Nate says.
“Meaning…”
“Meaning they’ve been deconstructed… changed. Ghostprints.”
Another one of Dr. Nancy’s ideas. He would have used it for himself if it weren’t for the hospitals requiring his fingerprints for standardized testing. Imagine someone with untraceable fingerprints… they’d be a ghost. Untraceable. They’d be kind of like me.
“Okay, so he’s eighteen years old, originally from Croatia, second child to Podravko Novak and Laura Johnson. Parents died when he was five, and he became the ward of Dr. Stefan Nancy, moving him to Cleveland,” Lazzer says.
I remember that day, the day Dr. Nancy brought Jericho home with him. He was asleep when Dr. Nancy carried him in—woke up the next day and nearly tore the house apart, screaming and crying. That was the only time I ever saw him cry, the only time I ever saw Jericho for who he was before the walls were built. How I hated those walls, how I respected them. How I, too, tried to break them, how I pitied him. The walls of Jericho.
“His half-sister Eva Krahe found him when he was eleven when she moved to Cleveland and… it looks like she started working for Dr. Nancy. More importantly, he was involved with the attack at the Statue of Liberty and an unsolved murder in Australia, neither of which he has direct ties to,” Lazzer says.
“But he’s Mr. Mysterious, so I’m going to say guilty on at least two charges,” Abraham says.
“So how do we break him?” Zoë asks.
“Me,” I say. I turn away from the window and look directly at Kiaria. “You have to be mean and cold. And whatever you do, don’t ask him about his family. Ask him about Basia Nancy.”
The room falls silent again, more silent than it was when I gave away the first identity. Kiaria turns to Marissa and Nate, and they nod.
“Okay,” she says, and she leaves the room without another word. But she can read minds, so maybe there was more communication going on than I’m aware of.
As she leaves, I can’t help feeling pleased. It’s not every day the Metanites listen to me, and in this case with Jericho they needed me. What a concept.
Kiaria steps into the interrogation room and stands in front of the table. The door seems to shut with a harsher thud than before.
“So, Jericho Novak,” Kiaria says.
Yes. Her voice is strong this time, even angry. Her tone and the sound of his name grab his
attention, barely. It’s a shift only I notice: his eyes narrow ever so slightly. Kiaria steps closer and sits at the opposite end of the table.
“You’re an elusive character,” she says. “I bet you thought the trick with the fingerprints was impressive. We disagree.”
Jericho is a wall, but I see his fort shaking. An earthquake has hit his fortress, and the walls will soon begin to crack. A single crack is all Kiaria needs to get inside that dark, mysterious mind.
“Tell me about Australia, or better yet, tell me about your involvement with the attack at the Statue of Liberty. Must have been fun for you… taking a crack at our country’s symbol of freedom. Tell me, how free do you feel now?” she says.
Jericho’s lips curl up on one side of his cheeks. A small, but potent crack. This time, everyone in the interrogation room notices the shift, and I can almost hear the six other heartbeats in the room.
“You know what,” Kiaria says, unfolding her arms and holding her hands together on the table. She leans an inch forward. “I’m not really interested in any of that. Tell me about Basia Nancy.”
Then, something incredible happens. Something incredible, wonderful, and horrible. Jericho’s grin vanishes, and he leans over the table toward Kiaria. The chains connecting his handcuffs to the table rattle against the cold metal.
“Why should I talk to you about Basia Nancy?” Jericho says.
Everyone in the small, dark room—everyone except me—sighs and smiles. Kiaria smiles. She’s in. And the walls of Jericho come tumbling down…
“Well, I guess I don’t have to,” Jericho says, realizing what Kiaria’s smile means. Maybe he senses her inside him, too. He leans back in his chair, more relaxed than he was before.
“You’ve known her for a while, practically grew up with her,” Kiaria says. “Tell me, Jericho. How does one go from nearly being family of someone to attacking her three times in one week?”
“Time. My friends call me Jay, by the way.”
“Oh, I don’t think you have much in the way of friends.”
He smiles, wickedly. “I had friends. An old one is standing on the other side of that window I’m not supposed to see through and looking in on us. Too cowardly to say hello, I suppose.”
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