Monster of the Dark

by KT Belt

  “Don’t worry about it,” the woman said, seeming not to notice the pain.

  Then she beckoned her charge on. Carmen nodded, and they exited the elevator. They were outside in seconds. Carmen couldn’t help closing her eyes and sighing in sheer bliss as the warmth of the sun washed over her. She thought she heard Kali chuckle but wasn’t sure. She didn’t much care either way. After taking a few steps forward that were more like skips, Carmen flew around Kali in lazy circles just off the ground. Kali casually watched her charge but didn’t join in her youthful exuberance.

  “So, are we going to that town?” Carmen asked.

  “You mean the one you flew to yesterday?”

  She soon had enough of flying and once again walked next to her handler. She did wish Kali would walk a little faster, though. “Yeah,” she answered.

  As they slowly approached the concrete wall surrounding the facility, Kali shook her head. “That town wouldn’t be appropriate.”

  Carmen gave her handler a curious look. “What do you mean?”

  “Assets often fly there for their first flight,” Kali explained. “The townspeople are used to Clairvoyants. We will go there for other field trips, but that town will never give you a…realistic example of what you’ll encounter when you’re released from here.”

  Carmen wasn’t really sure what her handler meant by “realistic example,” but she nodded anyway. She figured she find out soon enough. Besides, she had a more important question.

  “When will I be released?”

  “When you’re eighteen,” Kali replied.

  “That’s it? I don’t have to do anything? I don’t have to pass some test? I just turn eighteen and I’m released?” Kali nodded, and Carmen’s eyes shifted rapidly back and forth as she considered the new information. “That means I’m halfway through.”

  Kali glanced at her over her shoulder. “If that is what you like to think.”

  Carmen didn’t see how what she said could be interpreted any other way. She’d arrived when she was six, she was twelve now, and she’d be released when she was eighteen. Sure, in this place, an hour felt like an age and a day an eon, but she could count.

  They were at the wall now, and Carmen stared up at it while Kali talked to the gate guard.

  “Why don’t we just fly over it? Why do they even have a wall?”

  “The wall isn’t meant to keep assets in; it’s meant to keep non-Clairvoyants out,” Kali said without glancing in her direction.

  “Why would they want to come in here?”

  “To harm you or destroy the facility,” she answered nonchalantly. “There have been several protests…some violent.”

  Carmen looked at her handler, not sure if she was being serious. What had she or any other Clairvoyant here done to anyone? Kali had to be exaggerating. She looked at the top of the wall again.

  “Come on, let’s go. This is taking too long,” she said, already levitating in place and ready to bound over the wall with a single thought.

  “Edge!” Kali yelled harshly.

  Before now, her handler had only given her fleeting glances here and there. Now Kali stared at her hard. Carmen couldn’t say the woman was angry, but her feet came back to the ground and stayed there as if she were nailed in place. Kali’s eyes narrowed slightly as a silent period on the matter. Carmen knew she was saying “Don’t challenge me.” The guard Kali had been talking to was as frozen in place as she was, but she noticed his hand hovered over some sort of button. Kali turned her attention back to him and, after letting go a long-held breath, he moved to pick up the papers he had dropped.

  “I apologize for my charge,” she said, her voice returning to its normal soft, caressing tone. “There will be no problems,” she added.

  Other handlers and assets were starting to queue behind them by this point. Carmen even heard a few of them discussing the incident from an instructive standpoint. Her cheeks turned bright red in embarrassment.

  “That’s good,” the guard said, visibly relaxing further. “I don’t think the suppression team could get here fast enough. You’re cleared through.”

  “Thank you,” Kali said. She then looked down at her charge. She wasn’t that much taller than her, but Carmen felt two inches tall anyway. “Edge,” Kali called before stepping through the gate.

  Carmen dutifully followed her handler out of the compound. They appeared to be walking toward a bus, and other assets and handlers also went in the same direction.

  “Why aren’t we going to fly to where we’re going?” Carmen asked with muted glee compared to a few minutes before.

  “Flying is too tiring,” Kali replied.

  Carmen nodded as they got on line for the bus. Just then, she heard someone scream.

  “I’m not going again! You can’t make me!” some girl yelled.

  Everyone turned to see what the commotion was about. It was an asset about Carmen’s age. Most of the assets she could see were about her age or a little older. The girl didn’t seem to notice all the attention she was receiving; her focus was fixed on who was presumably her handler.

  “I can’t take it anymore! No more field trips!”

  Confused, Carmen looked at Kali. Field trips didn’t sound too bad from how she’d described them. They sure seemed better than fighting. Her handler didn’t notice her curiosity, though. Instead, her eyes narrowed like they had on Carmen earlier. Even when Kali’s annoyance wasn’t aimed at her, it still gave her pause.

  The girl shrieked in response to something her handler said, but Carmen didn’t hear what it was. “No! No! I’m not going!” she screamed.

  The girl continued screaming, but her words became more and more incoherent. No one moved against her, not even her handler. That seemed to provide no comfort for her as she backed away from everyone. Carmen noticed a suppression team running toward them. The girl didn’t see them coming, nor did she seem to sense their approach as she continued screaming. Now that Carmen thought about it, she couldn’t sense them either.

  The girl turned to face her attackers right before it happened. With no words and no warning, the suppression team hit her with a foam cannon. The sticky, brownish-orange goo hit her in the face first before encasing the rest of her body in muck. A muffled scream could be heard as she fell over. Carmen’s eyes grew wide as she turned to her handler, but Kali showed no apparent concern for the suffocating girl. The foam bulged but refused to give way. They could hear more muffled screams, but no one did anything. Carmen’s nails dug into her palms. A few seconds later, a member of the suppression team freed the girl’s face from the foam while the rest of the team leveled rifles on her. She gulped the air in sharp pants while fresh tears rolled down her face. Carmen let go her breath in a relieved sigh.

  “Thank you. I will take over from here,” the girl’s handler said.

  The leader of the suppression team nodded, and the squad returned to the compound in perfect military order.

  “I hope I never see you behave like that,” Kali said without looking at her. Carmen glanced at her handler, whose eyes were still fixed on the girl. “Clairvoyants are the some of the most powerful beings in the galaxy. They should act like it.” Then she turned to get on the bus. “Come on,” she called.

  Carmen followed her. The bus driver wasn’t a Clairvoyant, and when she looked him in the eye for a brief second, he was near trembling. She could almost taste his fear, and it wasn’t palatable. She did her best to ignore it, but the feeling stuck in her consciousness like an ice pick between her eyes.

  She sat by the window and busied herself with watching the girl. It was as good a distraction as any. She was still mostly encased in the foam as her handler spoke to her. It was impossible to tell what was being said, for what little it mattered.

  “What is that foam made of?” Carmen asked. She well remembered the one time it was used on her.

  “I can’t honestly say,” Kali replied. “Effective, isn’t it, though? It dampens a Clairvoyant’s bioelectric
field, rendering them largely powerless. Binders work the same way. Both were invented by the sortens.”

  As usual, Kali’s words were as abrasive as silk. But Carmen was quite sure she heard some bitterness in her handler’s voice when she mentioned the sortens. She looked at her with a raised eyebrow.

  “The sortens?” she asked.

  “Yes. What of them?” Kali asked as the bus started on its way.

  “Janus told me he was interned with them when he was a kid—before the revolution.”

  “And?” Kali asked.

  Carmen swallowed hard. Perhaps this wasn’t the wisest question to ask. “Were you interned with them?”

  “Every Clairvoyant my age was,” Kali said nonchalantly.

  Carmen nodded. “What was that like? Janus said several of the training methods used on Clairvoyants came from them.”

  Kali didn’t answer at first. She leaned back in her seat and got a faraway look in her eye. She then closed her eyes for a few seconds and took a deep breath. Carmen was transfixed. She’d never seen her handler—or really any handler—like this.

  “I’ll simply say it was quite horrible,” Kali replied. Carmen opened her mouth to ask another question, but her handler spoke before she had the chance. “Your focus shouldn’t be on me. Relax. Take a deep breath. This will be a long day,” she said gently.

  Carmen nodded but couldn’t help showing concern for her handler. Kali smiled when she saw it but said nothing more. In any case, the trip wasn’t very long; the bus floated to a stop after only a few minutes. Most of the assets and handlers stood to get off. Carmen stood as well.

  “Not here,” Kali said. “This is a Haven City stop. We will eventually go to Haven as well, but for now it will be too overwhelming for you.”

  Carmen had no idea what she meant but sat back down. She nervously rubbed her hands together. She had no idea why field trips were such a big deal. After all, she flew to that other town just yesterday and was none the worse for wear. She’d certainly rather be here than fighting, but perhaps she was just ignorant?

  In short order, the bus was on its way again for another brief trip. Carmen was quick to realize they were just in another part of Haven City, and she didn’t get up to leave this time. She instead marveled at the forest of skyscrapers all around her. She’d never seen anything like it, nor had she ever felt anything like it. Cities had people in them—lots and lots of people. She knew that intellectually. The knowledge of it, however, and the reality of how their mere existence assaulted her Clairvoyant senses was something else entirely. Despite her best efforts to ignore or block out the sensation, it was like someone was constantly screaming in her ear. It was about now that Carmen realized what Kali had meant by the experience being too overwhelming.

  The bus began moving again, and Carmen breathed a sigh of relief as they got farther and farther from the heart of the city. After several minutes, they were well clear of the city and she was able to relax a little, despite the annoying bus driver. He wasn’t as bad, though, now that most of the Clairvoyants were gone. After a time, the bus stopped again. The suburb they had arrived in gave her flashing memories of her own neighborhood, but she could recall little to nothing from that time in her life. She looked at Kali, curious if it was time to get off. Her handler shook her head, though, so Carmen got comfortable again.

  The bus took to the sky, joining the air traffic far overhead. Carmen looked at the ground moving briskly past underneath them. She didn’t think Kali would take her somewhere this far away, but she didn’t know the half of it. Minutes passed—tens of minutes, maybe even a couple hours. Eventually, the bus dove back to ground level and came to a stop.

  “Here?” Carmen asked, dismally wondering if there was yet another leg to their journey.

  Kali nodded. “Yes.”

  The woman and the girl then stood and made their way out of the bus. Carmen noted that other Clairvoyants still had yet to disembark. Where the hell are they going? she wondered as she looked at them. But that was neither here nor there. Carmen looked at the bus driver again. She could still sense fear, but it was mixed with a muted joy, and she was well aware that it was because there were now two fewer Clairvoyants for him to contend with. The bus driver experienced a quick shot of elation as he closed the door behind them, and Carmen wondered why it was such a big deal. They had all sat calmly during the trip. They hadn’t even spoken to him.

  She tried not to think about it as she stood next to her handler and slowly looked around. The bus stop was on a small hill, which gave a good view of the lay of the land. The town wasn’t very big, and the fact that it seemed quite in the middle of nowhere only enhanced that perception. There were no cities to be seen and no other nearby towns. When Carmen looked up, she saw few if any aerocars flying overhead. The most dominating feature wasn’t really the town itself but a large forest nearby that extended far into the horizon like a badly kept blanket. Her parents had never taken her hiking, and woods then and now were of little interest to her. The forest was forgotten after only a few seconds when Carmen looked at her handler.

  She didn’t understand why they were here specifically. She agreed that Haven City was a little overwhelming, although she’d convinced herself that she’d get used to it. But this place? There had to be more squirrels than people here. She could only guess that Kali didn’t have much confidence in her and wanted to start small.

  “So, what now?” Carmen asked.

  Kali looked around for a few seconds more before she turned to her charge and shrugged. “I don’t know. You tell me.”

  Carmen was expecting any answer but that. “Me?” she muttered. “I don’t know.”

  Kali looked at her expectantly, but when it was obvious that Carmen had nothing else to say, she shrugged again. “Well, I’m hungry. Let’s get something to eat,” she said as she started walking. “I think it’s this way.”

  “You…don’t know?”

  “I don’t know everything, Edge.”

  “Sure seems like you do,” Carmen uttered under her breath as she began following her handler. Kali heard her and gave a wry smirk.

  The town, at least this part of it, was very quiet. No one was on the streets. There were also no businesses for as far as Carmen could see—just rows and rows of houses. She looked around curiously. It felt to her that they were being watched by unfriendly eyes. When she looked in the window of a house, she saw its drapes sway back and forth. She looked at another house and found the same thing. When her eyes fell on a third, she caught a woman watching her intently. When she noticed Carmen watching her just as intently, she moved out of view like a shot and closed the drapes. They swayed back and forth as their colleagues had in the other houses.

  “People are watching us,” she pointed out.

  Kali looked at her charge over her shoulder. Carmen motioned toward a house with her head where a man watched them from a window. He didn’t shy away, however, when the Clairvoyants glanced at him. Carmen couldn’t sense exactly what he was thinking, but she was completely aware of how anxious he was. He seemed to find some comfort in a cold metal object in one of his hands that she couldn’t see. It had to be a gun.

  “So they are,” Kali replied without the slightest hint of concern.

  “Why?”

  “They aren’t used to seeing Clairvoyants in person. They’re curious.”

  “Curious” wasn’t the word Carmen would use. Her head darted around, and everywhere she looked were dozens of eyes, watching everything they were doing. A few disappeared when she turned in their direction, but she could sense everything they were feeling or thinking. Carmen gave a subconscious shudder.

  The eyes followed the Clairvoyants every step of their way downtown. People driving by stared, and it felt like someone threw a bucket of ice on her each time. A woman across the street gathered her children, who had been playing outside, into her house as the Clairvoyants approached. The children offered no protest as they called to their mother wit
h squeals of panic and terror that the Clairvoyants were getting closer. Carmen shuddered again as their fear washed over her. A man maybe twice her size stood in front of them, trembling. To Carmen, his thoughts were as clear as a fireworks display. His wife’s name was Ella, and he wondered if he would ever see her again. Kali smiled at him and nodded. Carmen looked uncomfortably at the sweat on his brow while she held herself. He gave a loud exhale once they were well clear.

  “There. Let’s try there,” Kali said, pointing.

  Carmen said nothing. Instead, she looked at her handler in utter disbelief, amazed that she seemed unaffected by everything around them.

  She glanced at Carman over her shoulder. “You don’t like it?” she asked.

  Carmen’s eyes grew wide as she stared at her insane handler. Then she subconsciously shook her head. “I…I don’t care.”

  Kali shrugged and then casually motioned for her to walk across the street. Carmen, at a loss, followed. The restaurant was a generic diner. She could barely remember the like from when she was younger. It held none of her focus now, though. She didn’t want to focus on anything. The thoughts and feelings of people she couldn’t see but knew were present whispered in the back of her mind, threatening to drive her mad. She groaned out loud when she saw the restaurant was almost completely full. The people inside looked their way, and it felt like they were throwing daggers.

  Kali stepped forward to get in line behind a young couple. Carmen stayed right beside her. She couldn’t help biting her lip. She knew what was going to happen. She didn’t know how she knew; she just did. Each agonizing second before the inevitable made her teeth grind down harder, to the point that she was almost tasting blood.

  First, the woman slowly turned. Perhaps she realized someone was behind her and was going to offer a polite greeting. If so, the greeting never came—at least not a polite one. The woman looked at Kali and then Carmen and gave a startled shriek.