“So what did you do?” I asked.
“I just kept walking, telling myself that I was imagining it. But every time I looked back, she was there. So anyway, I told you about the 'summit' that we all had.”
“Yes.”
“Well, more of us showed up than I ever could have imagined. We consumed the entire top level of that Mexican restaurant on 78th. There was a group there from Iran. Only one of them spoke English and was constantly translating. There was a family of three from Norway. A man from China, a couple from England, another family from Czechoslovakia... But the two that interested me the most were from right here.”
“Which state?”
“Maryland. They were this young couple. They had obviously just graduated from high school.”
“How could you tell that? Were they still wearing their caps and gowns?”
He gave me a jocular glare of scorn. I chuckled softly to myself.
“No, smart-ass, they just looked so young. They said they had traveled for two days to get to us. I asked where their parents were. I asked if their parents would be worried. And the girl kind of shut off, looked away from me, didn't really say anything else. And the boy took a long time to respond. When he finally did, he said, 'It's just us now.' I prodded him a little further, trying to get him to tell me what had happened. You can guess the rest.”
“The same thing you saw?”
“A few differences. Theirs was mutated even more than mine; besides arms, legs, a torso, and a head, there was no way that it had ever been human. Mine still had some qualities about it that made me believe that it might have been a human, do you understand?”
“I do. Well, what exactly convinced you that it wasn't a human? What made you start questioning that?”
“Besides the huge slash in its face where the mouth was supposed to be and the pointed teeth, I knew by the way it felt. It's hard to explain it. It was just... evil, you know?”
I nodded, studying him.
“Synchronicity... You and those kids.” I muttered and he murmured his agreement.
“Alright. Your turn.” He told me after a minute of quiet ensued.
“What are you talking about?” I had just closed my eyes but opened them again at the sound of his voice.
“You have to tell me something.”
“Something strange?”
“With you, I'm sure it's going to be strange whether I ask for it or not.”
“Indeed.” I grinned. “Well, since we're on the subject of the impending apocalypse...”
“Is there really any other subject to discuss?”
“No,” I replied, “Not when it's this close. I haven't told you this because I've been too afraid to tell anyone.”
“Well, that's an intriguing start to the story. So it turns out Brynna Olivier does fear things.”
“Only sometimes.” I rolled my eyes.
“You feel something other than disdain.”
“Do you want to hear this story or not?” I asked him, losing my patience with his constant psychoanalysis of me. As I acknowledged the annoyance in my mind, I immediately realized how hypocritical I was for thinking it. At the same time he was trying to analyze me in order to be able to communicate, I was doing the same to him in order to reach whatever small level of trust could be achieved between us.
“I do.” He told me, “Genuinely, I do.”
“Alright, then. Well, obviously you know who my parents are. You know my mom is a senator. You know my dad works for the news.”
“Your dad runs the news.”
“One more interruption and I lapse back into my thoughtful silence, James Maxwell.” I snapped at him and he held his hands up in surrender. “Well, I'm sure you remember the rather sudden deaths of Michael West and Rachel Lilien.”
“Yeah, I remember that. Those two were from that news website, weren't they?”
“Indeed. I don't agree with my mother on a lot of political issues strictly because she is who she is. I feel that any opinion she holds surely can't be the moral option amongst her choices. These people felt the same way about her and the people like her. They also hated my dad and said he was running the news so that it would work in the favor of the current administration. Manipulation of stories and facts is nothing new, as I'm sure you know.”
“I didn't know that.”
“Well, now you do. I've always been fascinated by how fear governs our lives without us ever realizing it. What does fear do, James? It gets people in a stir, makes them docile, makes them accept things that go against our most basic freedoms. It is all very subtle. It's unnoticeable, actually, if you're not paying attention. Picture it this way: a younger man goes on a killing rampage. It's happened before, so the idea of a new, fearful trend is perpetuated in the media. We get bans on violent video games, censorship on television and even in films, to a certain degree.”
“But is that really so bad?” He asked me.
“I'm not looking to have a debate with you on the necessity of censorship. I'm telling you this to tell you the rest of the story. This same kid checked out Mein Kampf from the library. Even though his teachers said it was for a history project, we still get new legislation that allows agents to access our library records, regardless of criminal history or lack thereof. Then, the news tells us that this kid was accessing websites about guns and how to use them. Legislation goes through to keep an eye on what we're looking at online. In a world where everyone has gone electronic, we have not one speck of privacy.” I lit a cigarette and rolled down the window, “Obviously, if the killing rampage occurred, it would be a horrendous tragedy. But to use that terrible and very rare occurrence to keep an illegal eye on things, that's horrendous in its own right. So I presented that imaginary scenario to you in order to tell you this story.”
“Can I have one of those?” He asked me suddenly and I pulled a cigarette from the pack to give him.
“Those two journalists died three days apart, both of 'natural causes.' One had no history of heart problems and the other was only thirty years old. The latter, according to the death certificate that I found online, had no preexisting medical conditions. They just dropped dead. Now that means one of two things: either God is cruel and takes healthy people from the earth long before sense would tell us they're ready or there was foul play at work.”
“Weren't they both sitting on something?”
“Yes. It was something exponentially damning, too. It was some sort of bombshell about several of my mother's colleagues. Maybe they even had something on her, too. They were going to post it on April 7. They died on April 6. On April 7, my father's channel reported on the so-called bombshell. But it was fake. My father was on the phone the night before the story aired and as I was walking by the door, I heard him say,' ...just enough to make it plausible.'”
“So, you assumed he was getting ready to fake a story? With those words alone?”
“With those words and the knowledge of how my parents are ruthless in going after what they want, yes. Just in case you weren't sure, I will tell you that I had two friends. They were a couple of years older than me and they were two of the only people I have ever been able to reach a level of connection with. They shared my eagerness for learning things and for keeping an eye on what was going on around us. So, of course, they were the first and only people I went to with what I suspected.”
“And what did you suspect?”
“I suspected that my parents and their shady colleagues had killed two people. It hadn't been by their own hand, of course. But they had arranged it. We were going to shake things up until we figured out the truth.”
“And then what? What would you do with the truth?”
I looked out the window for a moment, contemplating; we had never decided, in all honesty, exactly what we would do with the truth. I couldn't tell James that because then I would have to tell him my real reasoning behind my persistence in finding it. It wasn't to destroy my parents, though truthfully, that was an added perk. It wasn't
for the greater good, even. The sudden increase in emotion I felt as I pondered the question was enough to cease my story. He never could have known how I felt at that moment, but as a young woman who had never been touched by grief and loss before, I did feel something.
“Was that an interruption?” He asked me after a moment, snapping me out of my reverie, “I'm sorry. I'll stop.”
“No.” I replied, shaking my head slightly, “I allow questions. I just don't allow snide remarks. Anyway, we started running searches at the library, thinking that if we checked in under guest accounts, no one could track us. We found the death certificates that said nothing was amiss. We contacted their coworkers at the blog who told us that even they had no idea what the story had been. I call them my friends because even now, I need to preserve their anonymity, out of fear that they're still being watched.”
“The world is getting ready to end, Brynna. I don't think it matters at this point.”
“Force of habit, then, I suppose. We even went poking around their home offices after my guy friend picked the locks on their doors. My guy friend was a genius when it came to computers. His mom and dad were responsible for network security at a law firm and a university, respectively. So he knew his stuff. Because their deaths were 'natural', their laptops weren't confiscated. We knew that if it leaked that the laptops were taken, it would cement what we already suspected. They couldn't afford that story getting out. So it was easy enough for us to get in, for him to override the passwords on both, and for us to find nothing.”
“Well, that was anticlimactic!”
“No. It's not. We found nothing because someone had performed a dump on the hard drive. My friend suggested that perhaps they had done it themselves. But if they hadn't been expecting to die, then what was the point? No. It was too big of a coincidence to justify and too strange to write off as nothing. Now, we were like the Scooby Doo gang for two weeks, solving this great mystery that others wrote off as just a glorified conspiracy theory. I think we were so thrilled to be engaged in such important sleuthing that we started getting sloppy. My guy friend didn't wear gloves when he worked at the computer. I accidentally left a cigarette on the fire-escape of Lilien's apartment.”
“You made a stupid mistake? I am shocked beyond anything I ever thought was possible.”
I looked at him, raising one eyebrow, pursing my lips and crossing my arms in my typical show of intense discontent.
“I'm sorry. I'm sorry!” He told me quickly, “I'm done.”
“I hope so because this is your last warning.” I replied, rolling my eyes. “Yes, they were stupid mistakes. But the last time I checked, I hadn't completed even an entry-exam for the CIA or FBI, so please, forgive my indiscretion. I am well aware Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson, were they real people, would be rolling in their graves. The point I’m trying to make is that I think they knew about this. I think they knew what my parents and their repulsive friends were up to.”
“You think they somehow realized that the end was coming?”
“I do.” I nodded, looking at him again, “My parents were acting strangely. They were always distant but after they started to suspect that I knew something, they cut me off completely. My mother kicked me out of the house and my dad bought me my apartment. I don’t know what happened to my friends.”
“Why would they throw you out, though?”
“Because they didn’t want me to involve Elijah and Violet. If a person is carrying an infection, you put them in quarantine, don’t you?”
“And suspicion was your infection?”
“It was, and it was highly contagious. They were smart enough to know that. They just weren't ruthless enough to do something about it. They did not permanently erase me from the world though they certainly did erase me from theirs. Do you want to know something? And please, when I say this, do not try to comfort me by denying that it is the truth.”
“You have my word.”
“They would have left me behind.”
He opened his mouth to counter my statement with a denial that I knew was heartfelt and for my own benefit. But after remembering his promise not to dissuade me from believing what I had said, he closed his mouth and stared straight ahead as he drove.
“If that’s true…” He said after another lapse in conversation, “…then they deserve to die. I feel no sympathy for them.”
I looked straight ahead also when I responded, “Do you want to know the end of the story?”
“The story about the journalists?”
“The very same.”
“Yes, I do.”
“Two people died because they posed a threat. When my parents and whomever else was involved committed that crime, they crossed a line that, as far as we know, had never been crossed before. If the world were to go on as it is right now, it would continue to happen. Anyone who attempted to cross them would meet the same end. It sounds overly dramatic, like a hyperbole and a half. But you and I both know that it is the truth.”
“I agree with you.” James nodded solemnly, “But what is their endgame? Yes, your mother can hold office for years upon years, if she wants to…”
“And she does…” I interjected.
“She does. But why? What do they need to accomplish so badly that they won’t let go of their power?”
“I don’t know, James. They could have something up their sleeves, some sort of vision that they want to turn into reality that will take years to accomplish. Or maybe they are just obsessed with power. It corrupts the best of us, doesn’t it?”
“It does.” He shook his head before looking over at me. “I will tell you something, Brynna: you are the oddest twenty-two year old I’ve ever met.”
“Am I non-human?” I asked, grinning.
“I’m starting to believe that is the truth.”
“It’s not. I just say it because I’ve always felt like a freak. I’ve always been able to remember vast amounts of information and as a result, my intelligence was so far above average that it bounded right off the charts. What aided my intelligence was my strange wisdom that has always been beyond my years. Maura…” I looked back at her, observing her as she slept, “…always tells me that I have an old soul. I believe her.”
“She’s right. You’re maturity is proof of that. I can see why you felt different from everyone else. That had to have been so difficult for you when you were growing up. What caused it, do you think?”
“What caused my maturity to rapidly accelerate to the bewilderment of every mental health professional I was ever forced to see?”
“And what caused your intelligence to reach such an elevated level that you could more than likely win a debate against a forty year old Ivy League college graduate in possession of three or four Ph.Ds?”
I giggled softly for a moment; I will admit that when adults complimented my intelligence and maturity, I did feel a strong sense of pride that was so refreshingly different from my usual arrogance.
“I told you that I’ve been reading voraciously since I was small. I’ve always had a need to learn things. For a long time, it was my only escape from the ridiculous drama around me. I could disappear into college textbooks, internet databases, and academic journals. I would memorize things but it wasn’t just a verbatim recitation that I could give when asked about certain topics. I had insight into them. It took some time to gain it, but I just read and read until I could understand everything clearly. When I decided that I needed an even deeper escape, I would read fiction. That was escapism at its finest.”
“What were your favorite books?”
“Well, I read Dickens as a child a lot. I loved how he took a culture that today, we see as being so full of grace and dignity and turned it into a third world slum. Not that I believe England is a third world slum, Maura…” I muttered, looking back at her even though she was still fast asleep. James chuckled. “I love England. It was just an interesting perspective. I can understand it now because I have seen this world as what i
t truly is. I have seen what it was intended to be. As a result, I can see a third world slum that reaches every last corner of it in reality.”
“Well, then, you’ve just answered your own question about where your insight came from.”
“I did?”
“You gained your knowledge from the factual information you read. You gained your insight from fiction.”
“That’s an interesting theory.” I told him with my head on the side as I contemplated what he had said, “I believe that, too, James. I am blessed to be this way. I never let myself forget that. I might not have been popular. I might not have had more friends than fingers. My teacher said to me once,’ You have a great mind. Use it.’ And I’ve never let myself forget that, either.”
“He was absolutely right and you shouldn’t forget it. We’re going to need you on Pangea more than you know, Brynna. We’re going to need someone who can think like you. We’re starting life over. We are starting from nothing. We’re going to need you to help us find our way.”
“Well…” I replied as I turned my head to gaze out of the window,” I don’t know about that, James.”
Quinn
We found Alice’s father while we were on our way to the launch site. We had just met many of the other people who had suffered through the same terrible dream that I had. It had taken very little convincing for Alice to finally grasp the severity of the situation.
“You really did see it, Quinn.” She told me incredulously as we drove around, searching for a new motel. “You really did see the end of the world.” She reached over and entwined her fingers with mine, bringing my hand to rest against her chest. “I’m sorry I didn’t believe you.”
I looked at her, with a hint of a smile on my face, “I wouldn’t have believed it, either. If you had come to me with that, I would have said you were nuts.”
“I did think you were nuts.” She laughed despite the situation, “You’ve always been crazy, but I really thought that you had finally lost it completely.”
“I’m crazy?” I asked, “This coming from the girl who did six shots of tequila in a row at Rachel’s party?”
The Shattered Genesis (Eternity) Page 11