by Alex Fedyr
She heard Jenna ask, “What kind of disease do you have, Jared?”
Jared responded confidently, “I’m Untouched.”
Jenna laughed. “You have issues if you think being Untouched is a disease.”
Landen saved Jared the trouble of responding, “Of course it is. Name one Untouched man who doesn’t have to fear dying in a car crash, or can withstand the ravages of cancer, or can say with confidence that thirty years from now, he will be every bit the man he is today?” Kalei came back around in time to see Landen step up and address the audience. “You know that saying, ‘If it’s not broken, don’t fix it’?” He paused while several people in the audience nodded. “You know what I say? We are broken, but we can fix it!”
The audience roared in approval.
Landen walked back to his guest and co-host. “Jared, step up and shake Jenna’s hand to find out what it means to be immortal.”
Jared stepped forward, his eyes locked with Jenna’s. She hesitated and started to step back. Kalei dropped an inch.
Landen said, “And don’t forget, if you deny Jared, then you’ll reward Max.”
Kalei cursed as she lost sight of Jenna and Jared, then yelled, “Shut the fuck up, Landen!” The audience laughed. Kalei continued, “Drop me in the cage, Jenna.” The name felt odd on her tongue. “We both know it doesn’t have as much bite as you.” The audience laughed again.
But as the laughter died, one voice continued to ring out in a deep, undulating laugh that steadily rose in pitch until its owner seemed to be crying. The theatre went quiet and as Kalei came back around, she saw Xamic sitting in the center aisle, wiping tears from his eyes.
Landen said, “It wasn’t that funny, Xamic.” The people laughed quietly.
Xamic pulled himself back to his feet and said, loud enough for everyone to hear, “What? The thing Kalei said about the lion?” He gave a short snicker. “That’s not what I was laughing at.”
Landen watched Xamic warily but maintained his composure. He smiled amiably and said, “What’s so funny?”
“What’s so funny?” Xamic replied. Kalei couldn’t see them anymore, but she heard Xamic jump onto the stage. “What’s funny is that you can dangle a girl above a lion, make some comments about the glory of being Estranged, and still call this entertainment. This entire setup is a joke! There’s no edge, no excitement. Little Maxxie over there is a poor substitute for real suspense.”
Kalei glanced down at Max and found him lying in one corner of his enclosure, closest to the crowd. It seemed he had lost interest in her. She watched him for a moment longer before a sudden wave of vertigo forced her to look away.
Landen asked, “Okay, then what would you do?”
Out of the corner of her eye, Kalei saw Xamic wander over to Max as he said, “First,” he pulled several pins out of the joints holding the lion’s cage together, “I would unlock Max’s door and see how long it takes him to figure out he’s free.”
A security guard ran up to tackle Xamic, but the blonde man stopped him with a hand to the guard’s throat. Kalei couldn’t see Xamic’s eyes, but the guard’s eyes were suddenly bulging. Somewhere in the theatre, someone screamed. More guards appeared, guns drawn.
Kalei wondered if the distraction would buy Jenna enough time to get them out of this mess. Kalei hated to admit it, but Jenna was her only ticket out now. There was nothing she could do from her dangling perch. She tried to grab Jenna’s attention, but the young woman’s eyes were still locked on Xamic.
Xamic tsked at the guards and dropped the first guard’s body. Landen signaled his people to lower their weapons.
Landen said, “Xamic, what are you—”
“Then!” Xamic shouted the word to be heard over Landen’s microphone-aided voice. “I would place explosives beneath five of the seats and set them to detonate at random times between, oh, 12:30, 12:45, somewhere thereabouts. But— well, I’ve already done that.”
A hush fell over the theater. No one, except Kalei on her spinning wire, moved. Someone screamed as a small bomb went off in the balcony. The explosion was just large enough to destroy three seats and mangle the people sitting in them.
Xamic shouted, “Here we go!” While panic broke out in the theatre, he jumped over to Landen and snatched the microphone away. “And then, just when I have you all at the edge of your seats, I would remind you not to leave them just yet. Because, ladies and gentlemen—STOP!”
The theatre went silent again. “People, please, need I remind you, there is a lion in our midst? And look, you’ve disturbed his nap.” Indeed, the lion was up and pacing again, unaware as of yet that he could be free with just a bump against the transparent wall. Everyone watched the lion warily, scared to move a muscle lest they draw his attention.
To a subdued audience, Xamic said, “Just a moment.” They waited. One heartbeat. Two. Then several red lights revealed themselves in the ceiling and started flashing, adding a red, pulsing light to the room. A resounding thunk echoed from all the entrances. Xamic smiled and said, “Then I would activate the security lock-down protocol so that none of you can escape while I chase you down and rip the delicious darkness from your corrupted hearts.” The audience had been still before, but now it was as though everyone had been turned to stone, with eyes that contorted with rage and terror. Xamic threw his arms up and yelled, “Welcome to E-night, bitches!”
Kalei couldn’t see the stage anymore, but she heard a gunshot, immediately followed by something that sounded like a piece of wood snapping. She heard Xamic laugh while members of the audience gasped or cried out.
She came back around in time to see a guard in the third row shoot again, three times. Head-heart-groin. Xamic’s body shook with the impacts, pieces of his flesh bursting out behind him, but he didn’t fall. When the guard was done, Xamic shook his head, splattering blood and gore onto the stage, the hosts behind him, and the side of the lion’s enclosure. He said, “God, that itches,” unzipped his jacket, and reached up under his red shirt to scratch beneath the hole in his clothes.
Another bomb went off in the front row, scattering debris and catching the curtains of fire. The lion threw himself after the fresh blood on his cage and won himself free of his captivity. Landen tackled Xamic, and people screamed and ran for entrances.
Kalei didn’t see what happened next because her attention was focused on the ground that was now rapidly approaching. The cord at her back still held her securely, but she was dropping at a pace far faster than she was comfortable with. All the while, her harness kept spinning, and when her spin brought her back around, she looked up to see Jenna running towards the stage entrance where her wire came from.
Kalei wanted to be excited, she wanted to believe that Jenna had found their ticket out and was working on a plan. But as she watched her sister run into the shadows backstage, Kalei could only see Shenaia running away to save her own hide. It didn’t matter that everyone called them sisters, she couldn’t deny that the young woman over there was her sibling, but she still couldn’t see the Shenaia she knew stepping up to be the Jenna she remembered.
About ten feet above the stage, Kalei’s descent stopped.
The Jenna from her childhood wouldn’t leave her there; she would come back and make sure Kalei got out of the harness. Kalei waited for her spin to bring her back around. Shenaia, on the other hand, would give no fucks. Kalei looked for the backstage entrance where her sibling had disappeared, but the smoke from the curtain was already filling the theatre. The heavy haze caught and amplified the strobes of light from the security beacons, nearly blinding her in the process.
She shielded her eyes, but she couldn’t make out any sign of Shenaia or anyone. And she felt not so much as a twitch from the wire. The entire world around her melted away as the flashing red cloud consumed it all, leaving her abandoned, spinning aimlessly in her own personal corner of hell. Within the smoke, she heard the lion snarl and several choked screams as people died. She wasn’t sure if the victims bel
onged to Max or Xamic.
Taking matters into her own hands, Kalei reached down and started undoing the harness around her legs. When her legs came free, her weight shifted painfully to her chest, and she quickly moved her hands to the straps across her upper body. Her fingers had just found the first metal clasp when the wire above her went slack and Kalei dropped to the ground.
Hitting the stage felt like taking a hammer to every inch of her body at once. The hammer hit her knee and both elbows with particular violence as she threw her arms out before her, then it took a lighter, albeit no less solid smack to her temple.
She lost all sense of focus. Everything grew darker, and as she lay there fighting to remain conscience, like a drowning victim trying to stay afloat, she noticed a bit of black tape stuck to the floor in front of her. It seemed to dance and flash as it reflected the red waves of light, pulsing urgently again and again as though it were trying to remind her of something very important.
Sounds came to her ears quietly, as though they had to pass through a wall of cotton to reach her. Somewhere in the distance, she heard someone shouting her name. Then someone roughly lifted her from the ground into a fireman’s carry. Distantly, as though it were happening to another person, she felt the exposed skin on her stomach press into the skin of her rescuer’s shoulders, and the darkness leapt forward to pull and tease at the darkness of the other person. She thought she could feel a high coming on, but she couldn’t be sure. She felt like the world around her was just a dream, and the only shred of reality that remained to her was that scrap of tape. Except her piece of tape had been replaced with tightly stretched blue polyester. It took her a moment to wrap her head around the change in scenery...
Jenna.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Memory Lane
Kalei began to slip in and out of consciousness. She remembered the smoke receding, but the flashing red lights persisted. She remembered awakening to the sounds of screaming and crashes, but her grip on the world slipped again before she could make sense of it.
She floated through a dark, murky haze, somewhere in her mind. There was no up, no down. Eventually, she heard a metallic screeching in the distance. It seemed to be coming closer. It became louder and louder until it seemed to fill her skull with noise, and even then, the sound continued to grow. Kalei launched herself upright, frantically searching for the source of the sound. But before her eyes could focus, she was overwhelmed with a wave of dizziness and nausea. It was all she could do to put her head between her knees.
“Whoa, easy girl.” Jenna’s voice sounded close, and Kalei felt her weight pushed forward, as though they were on a vehicle that was stopping. Kalei took a deep breath and the dizziness abated, but the screaming headache and nausea remained. She opened her eyes.
She was sitting on a plush leather couch, and behind her, to her left, were two matching leather armchairs. Between them was a sleek, metal coffee table. But the walls behind the chairs didn’t make any sense. They were a shining, silver color, a shade that matched the coffee table, but the windows were oblong, and beyond them, she could see the passing grey walls of a tunnel. The screeching brakes, the tunnel out the window; she could have sworn she was on a subway. But she was sitting on a leather couch. Kalei began to wonder if she had taken brain damage from the fall.
Jenna sat in one of the armchairs across from Kalei. She still wore the bikini and shorts, but somewhere along the way, she had picked up a pistol and a pair of black gloves. If anything, the new additions seemed to complete her outfit.
Jenna said, “We’re on Landen’s personal light-rail. He built it between his mansion and the Tusic office.”
That made sense. But if this was Landen’s light-rail... the details started to come back to her in a flash of images and sensations. Kalei jumped off the couch.
Jenna jumped up with her, arms out to catch Kalei if she fell over, and she said, “Ho, easy, sister. You feelin’ a’ight?”
Kalei looked around. “If this is—Where’s Landen? What happened?”
“Don’ know, don’ care. We got out of there, you’re safe, tha’s all tha’ matters. I say fuck everyone else.”
The train gave a final lurch as it stopped. Kalei pitched forward, catching herself on the arm of the couch. Jenna stepped up to help her, but Kalei waved her off. Then, with a click, the power shut down, followed by shouts outside the door.
“Shit, the assholes caught on to us. Quick, out the window. Go. Go!” Kalei ran to the window and pulled the escape release. For a recovering head trauma victim, she felt surprisingly alert. The only pain that lingered was the bite of the darkness running rampant through her body. Oh. Yeah. The darkness had probably finished the recovery process for her.
The shouts had turned to grunts as the guards started to pry the door open behind them. Kalei shoved the windowpane out of the frame and scrambled through, falling haphazardly onto the cement and fresh glass below. Jenna followed; a wave of bullets ripped and exploded through the air above her as she stuck the landing with a perfect tuck and roll. She was already on her feet and running as Kalei finished pulling herself upright.
Jenna fired a couple shots back at the train as she ran, shouting, “Come on! Let’s go!”
Kalei ran after her sister, the guards behind them returning shouts and bullets of their own. The tunnel was completely dark ahead, and soon it was all Kalei could do to make out Jenna’s outline in the fading light. Luckily, the ground was flat and even beneath her feet, or else she was sure she would have tripped.
She caught up to Jenna, and the young woman greeted her with an increase in pace. “I can get us to the surface, but I dunno where we gonna go after that. No way in hell we can use a Tusic safe house now.”
Kalei panted, “You said we’re by the Tusic building, right?”
“Yeah.”
“I know a place.” Kalei suggested an abandoned office that wasn’t more than a mile from the Tusic building. Kalei knew it because when she was a cop, she had visited the building several times to bust kids who were breaking in to vandalize the place.
Jenna led Kalei into a narrow service tunnel as she asked, “Untouched kids? What if they show up?”
The shouts of the guards were far behind them now, but the sounds of their boots echoing down the tunnel still put Kalei on edge. “They won’t. They haven’t gone back since one of them was turned Estranged there.”
Jenna nodded and stopped to climb a ladder. Unlike the ladder in the sewers, this one was clean and dry. Kalei appreciated the minor luxury.
They emerged in an empty alley, the sky above them still dark and shining with the few stars they could see from the city. Kalei suddenly realized how conspicuous they looked in their halter-tops and short-shorts, but decided that no one would look twice at a couple of prostitutes slinking around the city at night. She helped Jenna replace the manhole cover, and the two women disappeared into the streets.
A chain-link fence surrounded the building, sagging and peeling away from its posts as though it was losing the energy and the desire to hold on to its life. Kalei and Jenna stepped over a section that had already met the ground and crossed the dirt-packed, weed-strewn yard. Off to their left sprawled an old parking lot, faded and cracked with a pile of garbage collecting at one corner where the wind had blown it. Ahead of them rose the office building, roughly ten stories of bricks, elaborate stonework, and broken glass. Although neglected, it still didn’t look as desolate as the towers in Downtown. The stone moldings on each level of the high-rise sported only a few cracks, and more than half the windows were still intact. From what Kalei remembered, this building hadn’t been abandoned for more than ten years.
Inside, fallen ceiling panels and chunks of plaster were strewn across the floor between scattered walls of misty construction tarp. Kalei and Jenna found a staircase and made their way up to the seventh floor before calling it quits. Kalei sagged into a wadded pile of the plastic sheeting, shaking from head to toe.
After looking out the window to make sure they weren’t followed, Jenna noticed Kalei’s condition and walked over to her. She knelt down and gently took one of Kalei’s hands into her own gloved one. On some fingers, Kalei’s swirls were twisted and contorted, and on others, they were completely gone in a wash of black. “Shit, Kalei,” Jenna said softly. With an effort, she let go and sat back. “Man, I jus’ wanna hug my little sis, but we is showin’ so much skin I’m surprised I ain’t gettin’ a high just by lookin’ at you. You and I are every schoolboy’s wet dream right here.”
Kalei gave a small laugh. “It’s still hard to believe my big sister Jenna is so vulgar. And so little.”
“Little, my ass! I’m still five years older than you!”
“Maybe, but you’ve still got the body of a puny teenage girl. I could break you like a twig.”
“I’ll believe that when I see it!” Jenna laughed.
Kalei gave a weak smile. Then she sighed, leaning her head back against the wall and closing her eyes. It was too much to take in. Shenaia, her sister, Landen, a maniac... the only part she found believable about the last twenty-four hours was the way Xamic had swooped in and started killing people like it was some sort of sick sport. If that was believable, then she really needed to get her head checked.
After a long pause, she heard Jenna’s voice crack as she asked, “What happened?”
Kalei opened her eyes and looked at Jenna. One glove was now off, both hands sitting in her lap as she studied them. The wheels on her hand spun and veered just as haphazardly as Kalei’s own thoughts. “What do you mean?”
“The night Mom and Dad died. How’d it happen?”
Kalei sighed and rubbed her forehead. She didn’t want to go there, not now, not ever again. But if anyone had a right to know, it was Jenna.
“Mom was getting ready to cook dinner. It was Asian night. You were at a friend’s house and I knew rice was your favorite, but I hated the stuff, so I decided that we shouldn’t have Asian night. So I took Mom’s rice cooker and hid with it in the closet.” Kalei smiled. “I hid the rice cooker in a box, I piled shoes on top of my lap, I even put a coat over my head so no one could find me. Mom found out I was missing and it turned into a game of hide and seek. She was laughing and making a big deal about checking behind the couch, threatening to unleash the tickle monster if I didn’t come out.” Kalei laughed. But then, the smile faded.