Monster of the Dark

by KT Belt

  Their journey ended at a bluff overlooking the water she had sensed earlier. Kali stopped walking, but Carmen couldn’t help taking a quick glance over the side. It was a sheer drop to the water below. Waves crashed into the jagged rocks of the bluff, but ignoring that, it was a rather calm precipice. Sea birds hovered on nearby thermals, and the sky was clear, giving a good view of another shore far in the distance. Carmen looked to Kali after parting a lock of hair from her face.

  Her new handler didn’t speak at first. Instead, she took a moment to look over the side, which prompted Carmen to do the same again.

  “You asked me where I was taking you,” Kali finally started. “I told you I don’t know—it’s not up to me. I am merely giving you a choice.”

  She didn’t speak again for a few minutes as she looked at the water below. Her eyes fell, and Carmen was hard-pressed to find that same serene air Kali commanded so confidently before.

  “Clairvoyants lead…interesting and very unique lives,” she said, pausing again as she swallowed hard. “You’ve only had a taste of it, but I’m sure you’ve had your fill,” Kali added with the slightest hint of bitterness. “But there is one thing we can experience that no one else can. We can let it all go, completely and utterly. For a moment, we can know what it’s like to be completely free. What you do with it is up to you, but it’s a choice you have to make. No one—not me, not Janus, no one—will ever be able to take that away from you.”

  Kali looked over the edge more intently. “Jump.” Then she took a few steps back to give Carmen more room.

  “Jump?”

  “That’s the easy part. What happens next may be the hardest, most defining moment of your life.”

  “What did you choose?” Carmen asked.

  Her handler looked away and glanced at the ground, but she said nothing. On the list of traits she didn’t share with Janus, Carmen noted that she had never seen him uncomfortable before.

  Carmen peered back over the edge and took a deep breath. She had no thought or feeling for her next few seconds; she simply closed her eyes and stepped off.

  She figured this was probably the most pleasant sensation she’d experienced in recent memory. Her bonds to gravity were broken, and she didn’t miss them. It was so calm, so peaceful. She suffered no control over anything and thus no burden. She was just a falling projectile with no care or worry for the first time in her life. Only the rising volume of the airstream hinted otherwise. She didn’t worry about that, though. Truthfully, she didn’t care about much of anything for the moment. Not about being brought to this place. Not about being forced to fight. Not about being tricked into killing Mikayla. Not about anything. As the rushing wind grew louder, Carmen felt nothing. She penetrated the air like a bullet, subconsciously moving it aside while leaving enough for her to breathe. There was no more drama in it than in being within a womb. Time seemed to pass in eons. Then she opened her eyes.

  She was far closer to the bottom than she’d thought. Carmen didn’t feel fear. Not at first. She was simply surprised. When Kali told her to jump, she’d never thought she would be falling to her doom. Now that she was faced with it, the reality produced little more than a shrug. She wasn’t scared of dying. Not anymore. She’d been dead too many times already for that. There was no doubt in her mind that there would be no resuscitation from this. The rocks she was hurtling toward would rip her body beyond repair, and that, all things considered, wasn’t so bad. She had nothing to live for, really. She had no friends and no family. She didn’t even have a dog anymore. There was just hope. A small, unspoken hope.

  Kali glanced at her watch. As all Clairvoyants, she lacked any extra sensory perception of time. She could only shake her head when her stopwatch timed out.

  “Too bad,” she muttered to herself.

  She now knew why Janus was so hesitant about bringing her here. Edge had a great deal of potential; that was undeniable. Kali checked her watch again to make sure she’d done the math right and then sighed. Such a pity, she thought, noting that Edge could now be considered a total waste.

  “Oh well,” she muttered.

  Then there was something. Kali had just enough time to notice the hairs on her arm were standing on end before a streak about the size of a twelve-year-old girl zoomed past. Her new charge was soon just a small dot and then nothing. Kali allowed a hint of a smile.

  This will be interesting, she thought, preparing for the wait.

  Carmen hurtled upward with no particular destination, care, or concern. Then she let herself fall, giggling the entire way. Her jump off the bluff had been too short. Now, however, she fell for thousands of feet. As the water rushed up to meet her, she could only smile at it. Kali was right. This was a state utterly unique to Clairvoyants and Clairvoyants alone, completely out of control but not powerless. She stopped her descent at the last possible second and then skimmed across the water before shooting upward to do it all over again.

  The air battered her, and it became more and more of an effort to consciously move it aside as her velocity increased. Her inertia, the eternal enemy of every Clairvoyant, fought against her as she playfully tumbled through the sky, even graying her vision when she pushed too hard. Then she let it all go and fell. For some reason she’d probably never know, she felt the overwhelming urge to flip onto her back. She did so without hesitation and calmly watched the sky leave her. Carmen felt a small yet growing anxiety, but she ignored it. As the ground approached, that anxiety redoubled its efforts to be heard. In spite of it, Carmen could only marvel at the sky.

  It had been years since she’d seen it. Pictures did that great ocean no justice; it was far prettier than any static image could convey. It billowed and churned almost like it was alive. Indeed, Carmen could feel its energy, and she had danced among it like she belonged there. But now no longer. She shot across the surface of the water again at the last possible moment, taking no time to correct her orientation and instead allowing a lazy finger to skip along the glassy surface beneath her while she sky-gazed.

  Then, all at once, she became more sensible. After turning right side up, she thought about what she was going to do next. There was no pursuit that she could sense, but that didn’t mean it wouldn’t be coming. For now, though, she was sure she wasn’t being hunted. The distant shore she saw earlier was now less so, and she increased her altitude to get a better look.

  It was no grand metropolis like the one that overlooked the facility. There was no great hustle and bustle that she could see or sense, nor were there great buildings of ingenuity and science rising into the sky. It was just a town, albeit a very large one. Throngs of aerocars scurried between the two population centers, leading her to assume they serviced each other. At any rate, houses dotted the land in front of her and stretched far into the horizon. Streets wove between the buildings, placing everything in neat order. At least, it seemed that way from the air.

  Carmen looked at the city behind her. She’d rather hide there if she could. It would be hard to even find a starship in that mess. To go there would mean she’d have to overfly the facility, though. They certainly had to be looking for her by now, and that would be too big a risk. She looked back at the town.

  “This will do…for a little while,” she said to herself.

  Then she dropped back down to wavetop level and shot across the water. As the shore and town fast approached, a large building, possibly the town hall, caught her eye. There was no one near it that she could sense. Nevertheless, a young girl flying through the air like a bullet was sure to draw attention. She slid to a stop behind the large building and then took a deep breath.

  Her fingers were tingling. This was probably the most exciting moment of her life. She’d done it—she’d finally done it! Carmen had finally managed to escape. This was more than just getting out the gate. Even if the building wasn’t in the way, she doubted she’d be able to even see that hellhole now far in the distance. She had never even dreamed of putting this much space between h
er and that past horror so quickly.

  Now, however, her concern turned to her present surroundings: bushes and trees. She began walking. It wasn’t like she could take refuge in a treehouse. The streets were clear, with just a few parked aerocars here and there. Aerocars also overflew the town high above, but she paid them no mind. There was no way anyone would know who or what she was from way up there. No, Carmen had a different problem. She had dreamed for years about getting out, but now she was acutely aware that she had never considered what she’d do if she ever actually escaped.

  All she could think to do for the moment was to walk aimlessly. It was hard for her to get her bearings; everything looked the same. It wasn’t that every house and every street looked exactly alike, but each fit quite neatly into a few broad categories with only small variations between them. In a way, it kind of reminded her of the empty corridors and boring sameness of the facility. It wasn’t that the town was uninteresting or even dull; it just didn’t live up to her expectations of what the outside world would be.

  She could sense people all around her, even though she couldn’t see them, and that made her nervous. There were so many people that pinpointing one individual took a bit of effort. In that moment, Carmen realized just how exposed she was in the open. As she turned to run behind a nearby house, she was immediately knocked on her back.

  “Ow,” she muttered, but it was more out of shock than any real pain. She looked up to see a hand in front of her.

  “Excuse me, I didn’t see you,” the person said.

  Carmen looked up from the hand and found a man standing over her. He was holding the hand of a little girl who was maybe four or five.

  “Daddy, is that one of those kids from the school?” she asked.

  “I think so,” he said. “She’s dressed like one of them. Let me help her up and we can ask.”

  Carmen glanced at the man’s hand and then scampered away from it without any real thought. It was simply her first instinct. She somehow came to her feet and was running away before she knew it. Distantly, she heard the little girl wonder aloud why she was running away. Carmen didn’t really have a reason herself, but she darted into the next available alley and then hid behind a tree. There was no pursuit that she could see or sense, but it was about then that she realized how idiotic that would be.

  “Stupid,” she said, chastising herself.

  She didn’t think that guy, whoever he was, could help her in any meaningful way. But she’d definitely drawn more attention to herself than she would have liked. She took a quick glance out from the alley. The man and his daughter were just down the street, and it didn’t seem like they were looking for her. She couldn’t sense any concern for herself either. In fact, it seemed like they had no real concern for anything at all as they took a nice walk, hand in hand.

  Carmen paid them no further mind and tried to think about what she’d do next. The first thing was to actually look where she was going next time. Thus, for the moment, her attention was on the alleyway. It was a relatively dark, dank cocoon, and she had no care for it. A few quick steps brought her to the other end, where she stopped short. There was a large number of people here, and she couldn’t help watching such an oddity.

  Their clothes swayed and moved about them freely; belying the drab but highly functional attire she shared with all other assets. Such colorful outer expression would be ripped to shreds in any real fight. Carmen was glad that, for all the indignities she’d suffered, she had yet to fight naked. The movement of these people was heavy and aimless. Not aimless in the way Carmen was—she simply had no idea where she was going—but it was a lack of direction more akin to a leaf in the wind. The stumbles, pauses, pointless starts and stops, and looking one way and then the other for no reason were so common that it reminded her of the background static on the facility’s intercom system. Yet each person’s arms swung about as if they were trying to control the mess. All they seemed to manage with the effort was to throw their bodies off rhythm to their own steps. Carmen had never seen anything like it. She didn’t even know people could be so…uncoordinated.

  She moved out into the crowd, trying her best to not be seen, like the almost imperceptible thrust of a shark gliding through the water. When someone happened to notice her, she darted behind a nearby tree before their eyes could fix on the anomaly. Currently, she hid from one particularly observant little boy. It seemed that awareness was inversely proportional to age. Patience, however, followed the opposite formula. The boy quickly tired of looking for her and soon enough paid her no mind, leaving Carmen to focus on her objective.

  “This is close enough,” she muttered to herself as she eyed the ice cream stand.

  It would turn out that the first thing to come to mind during her great escape was how hungry she was. She remembered ice cream from long ago. That seemingly ancient memory contained no recollection of how it tasted, just that she liked it. A few books she’d read mentioned how it wasn’t very healthy. Nevertheless, she figured she could stand whatever damage it gave her. Besides, she didn’t have many options for what to eat. It was just a matter of how she’d pull it off, as there were a lot of people at the stand.

  She could feel her Dark quietly yet persistently let itself be known. Anxiety washed through her veins, and she made no attempt to stop it. In fact, she used it, embracing its heightened perception and hair-trigger focus. The opportune moment came like an atom bomb, and Carmen flew into action. She telekinetically retrieved the cone from the vendor’s hand, even taking the time to politely pull his fingers from it so he wouldn’t be ripped from his feet. She then disappeared behind a nearby building before anyone could follow the wayward ice cream cone.

  With her prize held triumphantly in hand, Carmen sat on the steps of the house she hid behind. The ice cream was red—whatever flavor that equated to. She hesitantly leaned forward and took the smallest, most glancing lick possible. It wasn’t enough to tell her anything, though. Truth be told, she probably hadn’t even touched the cone and spent the last few seconds pondering the taste of air.

  Her next attempt was bolder. When her tongue retreated back into her mouth, she smiled. She bit into the ice cream and then laughed as she messed her face. It didn’t take much for her to suppress the instinct to telekinetically clean herself. Instead, Carmen took another bite and giggled at her messy result. She licked the ice cream after that. Biting devoured it too quickly.

  It wasn’t long before she got a headache, but she didn’t care. Each lick washed her body in raw pleasure, sinking into every pore and igniting fires within her she didn’t know she had. Her full attention bent to consuming the sugary goodness before her. How or why this was bad, she didn’t know.

  “Excuse me?”

  Carmen leapt to her feet upon hearing the voice behind her. She’d been so enraptured by her cone that she didn’t even notice the door opening. She turned to face whoever it was, and out of reflex raised one of her fists. It was then that she realized how ridiculous she must look. Her face was an ice cream-caked mess, as was her hand which held the now half-melted, half-eaten cone. Her clothes were no better. And here she was, trying to pick a fight.

  “I…umm. I…” she muttered.

  She managed no better than that and, partly out of embarrassment, and partly because she didn’t want to explain what she was doing on the person’s doorstep, Carmen fled to the street. There were still people around, and now she had no way to avoid their interest. She was amazed to note that she didn’t garner too much of it. A few people smiled her direction and a couple others even politely waved, but that was it. There were no nervous stares or hurried steps to get away. It wasn’t like they didn’t know what she was—she could read them well enough to tell that wasn’t the case. But, strangely, that truth brought no drama.

  She turned to the right and saw the ice cream man walking toward her, a hand behind his back. Carmen dropped her cone and stopped just short of assuming a guard. He was on her before she could sens
e what he was holding. He stopped in front of her, and she looked up at him.

  “Why do you guys never ask first?” he said with a chuckle.

  Then he produced another ice cream cone from behind his back. This time, the flavor was vanilla. He handed it to her and, after a short chuckle, messed her hair before walking away. Carmen couldn’t help a bemused smirk as she looked through the hair that fell in front of her face. She’d read enough of his intentions to know the gesture was some small measure of retaliation for stealing the ice cream, but she’d thought she would suffer worse. She shuddered to think what the punishment would be if she stole back at the facility. Of course, she never had any opportunity to.

  Carmen figured she’d keep her punishment for now. Besides, her hair didn’t really get in the way. Even if it did, she didn’t need her eyes to see or navigate. She licked her new ice cream cone and noted that she preferred the red ice cream to vanilla.

  In any event, it was convenient not to have to hide from everyone. It also helped that no one was afraid of her. It was strangely refreshing. This almost seemed to be the normal state of things, even if it was utterly abnormal.

  She walked slowly and enjoyed her ice cream cone in her new peace. She finished it after a few minutes, having savored every morsel. She wasn’t hungry any more, and she still had a slight headache, but that was okay. Carmen’s base problem remained, though. What would she do next? It was so pleasant here. It wasn’t a question she was too keen on answering, at least not immediately.

  Odd as it was, she thought it a fun game to try to be like everyone else—to move like they did. It was difficult. It wasn’t any one singular aspect, but the fact that they seemed to be connected. The stiff action and lack of balance made it challenging for her to concentrate on one without neglecting the other.

  The hardest aspect to copy was how rushed they were. It was haste without any clear purpose or direction. It was rushing to stay in place—sacrilege to any Clairvoyant. There was so much anxiety, so many small inconsequential details that held total sway, and so many boulder-sized observations they never even took note of. It was hard for Carmen to believe such a state was even possible. A man’s hand flew to adjust a loose shirt cuff before he was tripped badly by an unnoticed street curb. A woman eating several candy bars complained loudly about how difficult it was to lose weight. On and on it went. The more she tried to emulate them, the more attention she drew, and it was hard for her to say why.