Eyes Love & Water

by Pamela Foland

  “Excuse me,” With two words the man added politeness to her vocabulary. He started to step around her.

  With a hand lightly placed on his arm, Miranda stopped him. “Are you Benjamin Kindel?” His eyes rose to meet hers, taking her in on their way. She waited for his eyes to reach hers. When their eyes met, she saw her curiosity was mutual. She longed to touch his mind, but given her mission that would be unwise.

  “Yes.” His voice was full and rich.

  “You are marked for death, by The Dark One,” she recited. Without her knowledge, Miranda's hand had retrieved a dagger from a pockets, the left thigh pocket. Un-realizing she raised it for use, all that stopped her were his eyes.

  “Uh, yea, okay, I can see that, and you must be the death he sent.” His voice was calm, level, and so were his eyes. They still held all the things that Dichen and the dark had tried to keep from her. He blinked.

  Miranda awoke from the spell of his eyes, a spell nothing more than real trust. She found the knife in her hand, and it frightened her. Despite her curiosity and feelings, her training had driven her that far, but she could go no farther. She didn't want to kill this stranger; she wouldn't, no matter what it cost her. Her mind raced wildly. She couldn't just refuse. She had to protect herself, to offer some excuse. “Shoot me!”

  “What!? I thought you were supposed to kill me,” bewilderment was obvious on his face.

  “I don't want to, but if I don’t kill you they'll kill me. Now shoot me in the heart!” She growled the words in a near whisper. “Don't hesitate just do it Mr. Kindel!” She searched out his eyes. This time when their eyes met Miranda saw fear in his, but as she looked deeper, the fear faded.

  “ I can’t just shoot you. I’m a police officer. I can help you. Why don’t we talk about it? You can call me Ben. What is your name?”

  “Miranda, now shoot me,” She felt fingers of terror creeping through her, if he didn't do as she asked she would have to kill him. Desperate she reached out to seize control of his mind. It was harder than with any other mind she had ever touched, simultaneously slippery and unyielding. He fought her unconsciously. She avoided touching his thoughts as she forced his arm toward the gun, lifted it and . . . Miranda saw in his eyes that he couldn't believe he was going to do it. She felt his fear and bewilderment, growing in the background, as she used his finger to pull the trigger.

  She was in intense pain, and thought she was hallucinating when a man and a boy casually dressed in jeans took form behind Ben. The boy stared openly at her as she crumpled to the ground. The man placed his hand lightly on Ben's shoulder and all three disappeared. Then Dichen was standing over her, he stepped heavily on her thigh and all faded to black.

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  Chapter 2

  Life in the Blender

  ------------------------------------

  Ben hardly felt the hand on his shoulder; the crowded street and strangely beautiful woman were suddenly gone, in a flash of light. Ben struggled against the clinging sense of nonexistence for the brief moment while it lasted. Then in the space of a blink, he was standing in a wooded park. A smugly blue sky hung overhead and the air was fresh and pollution free. He felt a nauseating touch of motionless motion sickness. A hand weighed heavily on his shoulder. Ben turned to throw it off, and came up short seeing whom it was.

  “Daniel?” Ben took in his surroundings slowly, “How, where?” Ben spotted the boy standing next to Daniel. It was the punk kid, which had identified “Johnny.”

  His mind whirling, Ben sucked in air as he started to black out. “I don't understand,” were his last words before he fainted.

  Ben awoke to a man shining a bright light into one of his eyes. He was strapped to a stretcher, or a lightly padded table. Whatever it was it hurt his head to be strapped tightly against it. When Ben awoke the strange man turned to mumble at someone just outside Ben's ability to focus, which was effectively two feet. Somehow, by squinting his eyes just right, Ben managed to bring the words, at least, into focus.

  “Chief, he'll be all right. It's mostly shock, but he did manage a wallop of a concussion fainting into a rock like that. That's an easy fix,” The man's face came back into focus and he lifted a small instrument and held it to Ben's forehead. Almost instantly, the pain vanished and his vision cleared. “There ya go.”

  Ben immediately focused on the other face, a woman, the woman, the bogus special agent Angela Daniels. She shook the man's hand, “Thanks Gene, any doctor's orders?”

  “Take it easy on him!” Gene smiled supportively at Ben before retreating from the room.

  There was a slight impasse as both Angela and Ben silently regarded one another. Their eyes fenced for the right to the first move. Strapped to the stretcher Ben was at a slight disadvantage. Angela saw this and chivalrously unstrapped him, then helped him to a seated position.

  Before they decided the challenge, Daniel entered the room breaking the tension with a brisk, “Yo Bennie, are you going to just sit there all day?” Ben just stared at his partner in open shock.

  “Honey, you didn't get a chance to clue him in did you?” Angela asked.

  Daniel turned briskly toward Angela, “No, Darling, he shot a dark assassin and you know that limits one's life expectancy.”

  “Still you could have said, 'Excuse us while we move you into protective custody. By the way this might be a little disorienting.' That takes what, ten seconds?”

  The strangely marital spat between the two, set Ben silently chuckling within himself, until as one the two turned back to him, “And what do you think is so funny, Mr. Faints Like a Girl?”

  “You two are married,” were the only words Ben could manage.

  Daniel smiled at Angela and spoke, “Duh, her name isn't Daniels as in plural. It is Daniel apostrophe 's' as in my property.”

  “Next you're going to tell me she is Angela as in an angel.”

  “No, she's nooo angel,” Daniel smirked, patting her on the butt.

  Angela swatted Daniel's hand and assumed the more businesslike attitude, which Daniel had interrupted, “Detective Kindel, I formally offer you sanctuary here. Having somehow wounded a dark assassin, I would advise you to accept.”

  “Uh, as to that, she told me to do it, and I’m not sure why I did.”

  Daniel and Angela aimed disbelieving stares at him. Angela turned to Daniel and frowned, “She what? You didn't tell me that.”

  “No, 'cause I missed that part. I did tell you that we got there just in time for the trigger pull.”

  “Describe everything that happened,” Angela prompted Ben.

  “She got in my way as I went down the library stairs. She asked if I was me. I said yeah. Then she broke into a speech about my death being ordered, and pulled out a knife. Then she suddenly acted surprised at the knife in her hand and told me to shoot her. I refused, she insisted, I don't know why, but then I did it,” The words sounded flat and meaningless to Ben as he spat them out, and he knew he was holding back his feelings. He had liked her, even if she had started to kill him. “I killed her.” At least those words tasted real, and true though confusing.

  “I wouldn't worry about that. It takes more than a bullet to kill one of them!” Angela said, waving him off, “From the sounds of the matter, it is one of two things; they have some kind of twisted plan in the works, or this girl is some kind of dissenter.”

  “Add a third possibility, Benjamin is a natural Factor and we really could use his talent,” Daniel added. Ben listened with a clear head, churning against half accepted and understood ideas, and shrugged.

  Angela absently regarded her husband as though occupied with a difficult mathematical problem, “That, Dear, I thought, was a given. I think I'll go do some snooping of my own.” Angela turned and briskly left.

  “Yo Bennie, are you going to just sit there all day? Or are you going to get off it to help put the bad guys away today sometime?” Daniel's ambiguously unearthly accent was out in force.


  As surreal as the situation was, Ben cracked a grin, “Yeah, Danny sure.”

  Daniel led the way from the infirmary to an elevator, which took them up through rock to a small garage. Daniel led Ben to an electric vehicle, which sat next to the elevator door. The vehicle was slightly larger than a golf cart, bearing design similarities. Daniel beeped the horn and pulled out onto what looked like a city street.

  Two pedestrian sidewalks bordered the “street,” which was just wide enough for two carts to safely pass one another. Foot traffic dominated the few carts on the street. Small shops and artistically placed garage openings lined the street level. People passed each other stopping to gesture at one another on their way from shop to shop. Ben gawked upward in silence when he noticed a second level of activity above his head. A steel mesh catwalk hung above the sidewalks with glass elevators on each corner providing street access. The upper level looked mostly like access to residential dwellings. Ben took all of this in before Daniel pulled into the empty cart lane.

  The minute Daniel pulled into traffic, he began a running narrative. Daniel's narrative revealed that all of what they saw was little more than a corridor, carved within an asteroid, held safely within a fold of space-time. What looked like sky was in actuality a holographic simulation only three stories above them. As he drove, Daniel talked about the shops and residences they passed. He even pointed out the civic “buildings” such as schools, churches and libraries on the corners of the residential level. They passed from an area resembling Main Street USA to an area more reminiscent of China Town. As the street transitioned, Daniel explained that the population of this place, “Sanctuary,” consisted of refugees from all over the universe.

  “Some are factors, fighting the dark, but mostly they are the families, friends and loved ones of the factors,” Daniel explained, “The ones that aren't out fighting helped to build this place, and have made it a home. Hey, Ben, are you hungry?” Daniel pulled to a stop in front of a restaurant displaying Chinese characters and pictures of food on its sign.

  Daniel's mouth hadn't stopped moving since he had begun the tour. Even so, Ben had begun to get an eerie sense of the quiet of the place. Now that Daniel had stopped talking long enough to wait for Ben's response, the silence was deafening. Parked in front of a restaurant, it frightened Ben to hear nothing but the occasional clatter of silverware on dishes.

  “What's the matter, Ben?”

  “It's so quiet.”

  “No, it isn't, oh wait! You aren't a telepath!” Daniel reached into a little bin on the dash and pulled out a small wireless earphone, “Put this in your ear.”

  Ben followed instructions. The earphone slid in easily, feeling cold and slick against his ear. An electric jolt suddenly filled his mind with all of the missing sounds of people. He could hear and feel the chatter of a healthy city. It was all too loud. He heard a soft mumble next to him and turned to see Daniel's lips move.

  Daniel shook his head and held his hand out. Ben took out the earphone feeling another brief shock, then silence. Daniel selected another earpiece and handed it to Ben. Ben put it in; this time the sound that greeted him was of a more reasonable level.

  “Can you hear me?” Daniel asked clearly. Ben gave Daniel the thumbs up sign. “Good, now let's go have some lunch.”

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  Miranda flinched awake. The wound in her chest burned, as her heart faked a beat. He hadn't missed but it hadn't mattered. Her heart fixed itself, not getting the message she had hoped the bullet would send. Now she would still have to face Dichen, and worse. Fatalistically she thought if they believed she made a mistake they would probably kill her, but if they discovered that she had disobeyed they would torture her then kill her.

  She didn't want to open her eyes, ever. They ignored her and popped open at the sound of a door opening. She was back in the med-center. It looked like the same room. Then again, it might be the only room; she had never seen proof of others. Compassion wasn't really in the vocabulary around here. The same mute orderly entered carrying fresh sheets. This time his mind held no trace of lust in his mind, just awed fear. He was terrified to even brush past her skin. It would be a valid fear if she wanted to be a Djheen. When the orderly saw she had awakened he left the sheets on a chair and fled from the room. Not long afterward Dichen appeared.

  His face was darker and angrier than usual; “You either are a damned fool or allowed this to happen, which would make you a damned fool! I warned you he might be armed. You can't have missed it.”

  “I didn't.”

  “Yet you were wounded and he . . . is now a much bigger problem! I can’t believe you would throw everything away like that. Explain yourself!”

  “I froze?”

  Dichen said nothing. He just looked at her. Miranda's heart still played at beating keeping no particular rhythm. Dichen didn't move he just scowled at her. If she focused, she could feel the muscular contractions of her veins as they kept the blood moving. Dichen tried to look into her mind. She easily evaded his probes without seeming to.

  “I am to bring you to him.”

  Fear released itself within Miranda like a bowstring, flinging deadly projectiles at her reason. She couldn't bear the thought of touching or being touched by the dark one. “No.”

  “All brides are nervous, and despite your failure he still wishes to have you!”

  “No!” Miranda shoved herself backwards into a sitting position. “No!” She shoved against Dichen, to push him away. “No!” She kicked and screamed as he locked his hands around her forearms. A fortuitously planted kick knocked the wind, and the sense out of Dichen just long enough for her to pull free of him. She sprang from the bed, clueless about what her next step was. Dichen recovered from her kick and angrily dove across the bed at her. As it turned out, her next step was to put her foot in his face with force enough to put him nearly into a coma.

  Miranda backed away from him, unsure of whether or not he was faking. She slid along the wall to the door, and looked at it. No knob or latch, she had no more hope of opening it than she had of opening any of the other doors in the entire complex. Her gaze darted up to the ceiling and dropped quickly to the floor. Along the way, she noted her hospital gown.

  She wouldn't get far dressed in that. She ran to the room's closet and found her Djheen uniform hanging in there. Miranda slipped off the hospital gown and examined her chest. The wound had closed and looked healed, even if her heart couldn't decide which syncopated rhythm to follow. Miranda pulled the uniform on, feeling dirty at the touch of it. She knew which pocket held the disposable bindings that could restrain Dichen. Her fingers fished one out and used it. Then she laid him out on the bed and pushed the call button.

  Soon the orderly meekly entered the room. He didn't know it but he was about to become a key. Miranda grasped his mind tightly and forced him to open the door for her. Mechanically he raised his palm to the sensor, and the door slid open. She only briefly considered releasing his mind and knocking him out, but she still needed him, to get her out of the complex. A deep probe of his mind revealed a short route to the shuttle bay. Purposefully Miranda set off through the halls, with him behind her, save for at doorways, which he opened. Few they passed even glanced at her after seeing her uniform. Deep inside most of them weren't evil in the malignant murderous sense. They just submitted to it and became an unthinking part of it, as she almost had.

  In the shuttle bay, Miranda knocked the lecherous orderly unconscious and climbed inside a tiny pod. Because of her natural ability to teleport, she had very little flight training, but she did know the rudiments of piloting the tiny skip space shuttlepod. For her they were the only sure way out of the folded pocket of space-time in which the complex existed. Without clearance the trip could get rough, and if anything became damaged her landing would qualify more as a crash. She brought the craft online and immediately an extra layer of shielding came up. She would have to use her own abilities t
o augment the teleportation drive, which would make it unlikely she could teleport from the craft in case of a crash. It took a few moments to warm it up and plot coordinates guaranteed to take her out into real-space in a true dimensions, beyond that she didn't care where she landed.

  Dichen burst into the bay with a trio of Djheens just as Miranda activated the controls. His infuriated face faded as the pod pulled itself through the fabric of space and time. Miranda experienced a warping of light and sound as the containment shielding tried to sieve both her and the pod into their molecular components. It took all of her training and abilities to keep that from happening. Then things snapped back to normal as she cleared the shield.

  Almost instantly, all of the warning alarms went off as a wormhole, the trans-dimensional equivalent of a game trail, captured her in its pull. She tried to pull out, but the object that had moved through and around the fabric of space-time on this path was unusually massive. She was stuck until she came to its exit point, unless she could gather herself enough to teleport. Then with an explosive pop she was in real-space, deep in the gravity well of a planet, without so much as time to check to see if she could handle a planetary landing.

  The control panel showed gravitational acceleration but none of the control lights were on. She hammered the panel, kicked, and screamed. Through the view screen, she saw the surface of the planet coming closer and closer. Ahead were a desert and a mountain range. It looked like she would hit between a rock and a hot place. Her heart thudded in her chest, finally in a steady rhythm again. She let out the only words she had been taught were taboo, as the pod plowed into the sand and the impact knocked her out, “Oh, God help me!”

  Miranda wasn't out for long, but her head was spinning. She raised her hand to a sore place and it came away sticky and damp, probably with blood though she couldn't tell for sure in the darkened pod. The air was beginning to go bad; all systems were down. She tapped the emergency hatch release but nothing happened. She kicked the panel in frustration. An emergency indicator light flashed on and a klaxon began to howl, followed by a verbal warning, “Containment Breach, dissolution twenty five seconds.” Miranda twisted and contorted to check gauges as they gave intermittent readings. All of them confirmed the warning.