by E. R. Torre
…kill…him…
The shaking slowed.
…kill…
Stopped.
Let go of your gun. That’s it…just let it go.
Nox drew in another breath. She was in control. The electronic squeals were back in full force, gnawing at her brain like a dog chewing on a bone. She realized the squeals almost pushed her into doing a terrible thing. They were the source of her rage. They were behind these dark impulses.
Nox’s stomach churned and she could no longer hold the nausea back. She bent down and threw up. The people around her spread out. A nurse approached her side.
“Are you OK?” she asked.
Outside, General Spradlin watched the woman by the door bent over and threw up. A chill passed through his body. His breath caught in his throat and for a moment he was frozen in place.
He didn’t recognize the woman. Yet there was something about her…
He tried to get a better look. He narrowed his eye and took a couple of steps forward. He thought he spotted something on her forehead. Something blue. A tattoo.
I’ll be damned.
“Sir?” Sergeant Delmont said.
General Spradlin spun around and faced the Sergeant.
“Not now!” he barked.
When his gaze returned to the Hospital entrance, the woman was gone.
The spasms faded and strength returned to Nox’s body. She moved away from the Hospital’s entrance and back to the water fountain. Her entire body was drenched in sweat.
“Are you OK?” the nurse walking behind her once again asked.
It took Nox a few seconds to realize where she was and what she did. More importantly, what she hadn’t done. She gripped the water fountain.
“I’m fine,” she mumbled. She splashed more water on her face and cleaned out her mouth.
The homicidal urge was gone, but the memory lingered like rot. Someone –something– had very nearly forced her to commit cold blooded murder.
But why? She thought. And who is the man with the eye patch?
She stepped away from the water fountain and leaned against a chair. Despite the electronic wail’s continued assault, her mind cleared some more.
She ignored the nurse and tried to find the source of the wails. She looked around the Hospital’s lobby. Almost everyone here carried cell phones or computer pads. Only a few had actual books and magazines. Others filled out hospital forms.
Where is this coming from?
Her head swiveled around, searching, searching. Her frustration built. Try as she might, she couldn’t locate the source. She couldn’t because…
…because it is everywhere.
The realization came as a shock. It was immediately followed by another:
The signals appear to only be affecting me.
Nox laid her hand on the nurse’s shoulder.
“Thank you, ma’am,” Nox told her. “I’m fine now.”
It was a lie. Nox felt very weak. Her victory over the signals would be short lived if she stayed here much longer.
“If you need anything…”
“You’ll be the first to know.”
Nox forced a smile and stepped past the nurse. She returned to the corner of the lobby and this time purposely listened to the signals and tried to hear what they were telling her. The message remained the same.
Join us.
Nox listened some more. She ignored the signal’s primary message. It was saying something else. It was garbled. It was…
Nox heard the other message.
She abruptly moved through the heart of the lobby and to the emergency rooms doors. Cell phones came to life around her. She ignored them.
The guard next to the emergency rooms doors was gone, so she pushed past the doors and walked into the emergency corridor. She spied Catherine’s room and ran to it. She looked inside. The room was empty. Catherine was gone.
Nox moved on, frantically stumbling from one emergency room door to the next and peering inside. Some rooms were occupied, others weren’t. Catherine wasn’t in any of them. Nox spotted a nurse with a clipboard and grabbed the man’s arm.
“Where is Catherine Holland?” she demanded.
“Who?”
Nox released the nurse and returned to the Hospital’s lobby. She walked straight to the reception area, pushing past several people waiting in line.
“Where is Catherine Holland?” she asked the receptionist.
“Ma’am, you have to get in line.”
Nox pulled out her gun and pointed it at the woman.
“I’m going to ask –politely– just one more time.”
19
The screams coming from inside the Hospital echoed throughout the parking lot. General Spradlin and his men scrambled to the Hospital’s entrance but by then a wave of people were frantically rushing out. Neither Spradlin nor his men could fight that momentary tide and rush into the hospital. They first had to let it pass.
“What’s happening?” General Spradlin asked the evacuating people.
No one replied or slowed. General Spradlin grabbed a young man by his shirt and pulled him close. The man tried to break free from Spradlin’s grip but couldn’t.
“What’s happening in there?” Spradlin asked.
“There’s a lady inside,” he blurted. “She’s got a gun.”
“What does she look like?”
“How the fuck—”
“Does she have a blue tattoo on her forehead?”
The young man thought about that. He nodded.
“Yeah…As a matter of fact, she does. You know her?”
Spradlin released the man. He craned his neck and tried to get a look over the chaos inside the lobby.
He couldn’t.
Nox stumbled from the Reception station. Security guards were nowhere to be seen, which was fine with her. Most of the lobby crowd was gone. The last few people remaining were frantically pushing their way through the Hospital entrance doors. They kept far away from the Mechanic, which was also fine by her.
Nox not only wanted the lobby cleared, she wanted the entire Hospital evacuated. Everyone had to get out.
Everyone.
There was no time for subtlety. If she didn’t get them out in the next few minutes…
How do I do that?
Nox aimed her gun in the air and was about to shoot when she spotted the fire alarm.
Of course!
She approached the device and smashed the glass covering it with the butt of her gun. In seconds the high pitched fire alarm joined the electronic wails in her head.
Nox put her gun away. Next to the alarm was the stairway door. She pushed it open.
Energy ebbed and flowed through the Mechanic’s body. She felt alternatively overloaded, energized, and dried out. She grabbed the stair’s rail and, for a second, blacked out. She regained her senses before hitting the floor. She had to climb the stairs, to get to Catherine’s room. She had to make sure…
How do I know where her room is?
She knew. Somehow she knew. She needed to…
…to do what…?
The thought slipped her mind. She shook her head.
What do I need to do?
She grasped for an answer. It came thundering back to her.
You need to save her.
From somewhere behind the Mechanic came a scream.
No, she realized. It didn’t come from behind her. It came from somewhere below.
No. You need to go up. You need to get to Catherine’s room.
Nox was confused. She knew Catherine Holland’s room was upstairs. The scream…the scream came from below.
She pulled at the metal railing, intent on walking up the stairs. Yet she looked over the rails and at the stairs leading down into darkness. She was drawn to it. She had to see who screamed.
Nox gave in. She walked down the stairs until she was enveloped by the darkness.
“There,” a voice whispered. “Keep going.”
&nbs
p; Nox continued down. There was no light and the temperature dropped. The darkness was bone cold.
After a few more steps, she noticed a faint light. She craved the light and its warmth. She hurried down the stairs as fast as she could.
The light grew larger and larger until it was within her reach.
Nox spread her arms before her. Her legs pumped furiously.
But she could get no closer. Abruptly, the light was gone and she could no longer move at all.
Open your eyes.
The thought was so absurd she almost laughed. Nox opened her eyes and the darkness was gone.
She stood before a rusty, aged vault door. It was shut tight and impenetrable. Faint letters were scrawled on its surface. Her fingers ran over them, spelling the word out letter by letter.
Oscuro.
Somewhere deep in Nox’s jumbled memories she knew that word meant something to her. The memory was very distant. It came from before Arabia.
She was startled by the recollection. There was very little she remembered of her time in the Arabian warzone and, until this moment, absolutely nothing from before that.
Nox’s fingers continued tracing the faded letters while she tried desperately to recall anything else.
Confused memories came to her.
She recalled a time of shadows and impulses and confusion. She recalled concrete rooms without windows. Men and women in white coats…Scientists? Doctors?
They talked to her…no…at her. They cared for her…didn’t they? Beyond that vault door there were others…other children like her. They were bundled together and trained. Afterwards, they were taken to one other place before…before Arabia. And overseeing it all…
The image of a man appeared in her mind. Though he had changed considerably over the years, she recognized him immediately. Back then he had both eyes. Back then his skin was intact and he didn’t have scars.
Nox’s flesh crawled.
She recalled the man with the eye patch, the man she thought she had never seen before. The man she wanted so badly to kill only moments before, when she saw him standing outside the hospital—
The hospital.
Nox’s mind snapped back to the present. The vision of the Oscuro vault door vanished.
She was at the bottom of the hospital’s stairs and stood before an ordinary wooden door labeled “Maintenance.” A smelly mop and bucket lay to the side.
“Son of a bitch,” Nox muttered.
How long have I been here?
She ran up the stairs. There was only one thought on her mind:
Catherine.
20
Nox climbed the hospital stairs as fast as she could.
She passed the lobby level and the second floor. The third. The fourth. By the seventh floor she was short of breath and her muscles ached. The electronic wails continued their merciless assault. It was as if they knew where she was going and why.
The vault door she thought she saw and the flash of memory were, she now realized, also triggered by the wails. This time, they offered her a window into her past and tempted her with revelation. They could return Nox’s lost memories. Each and every one of them. All she had to do was submit to their siren song.
Whoever was behind the electronic signals knew exactly how to tempt Nox. All her adult life she thirsted for knowledge about her forgotten childhood. Her earliest memories came from the tail end of the Arabian War, just before the child soldiers marched into the major Arabian cities and set off a series of nukes. She was supposed to be there, with her fellow soldiers, setting off her own nuke and dying while the cities and the enemies within them also died. These suicide bombings proved a savage end to the Arabian conflict. In one instant, over fifty million people were vaporized, including every one of the child soldiers in the war zone.
All but Nox.
Nox somehow freed herself from command’s orders just before the nukes were set off. She deserted her post and nearly died in the radioactive aftermath. Her thoughts of those days were a muddled mess. It was only after she was smuggled back to the Big City that her memories of those days coalesced into something that made sense.
For years she thirsted for the knowledge of what came before the nukes and the temptation to get those memories back was a very difficult one to reject.
Even now she found it hard to remember what she was doing and why she was climbing the stairs at such a furious pace.
Stay focused.
Catherine was in trouble. Nox had to save her life.
The memory of the man –the General– returned. She was repulsed by him and once again felt a homicidal anger.
He’s the one you want, the electronic squeals whispered. You want him dead. You want him ripped to bloody pieces.
Nox slowed her pace and shook her head. She was covered in sweat.
No. I…I don’t want him dead. You do. Whoever the fuck you are.
By the time Nox reached the ninth floor, she was almost out of energy and her mind was static. A door opened somewhere down below and armed men spilled into the stairwell. A couple headed to the basement. The rest moved up, toward her.
They are coming for you.
Nox gritted her teeth and continued. Each step was a mountain, each floor its summit. Nox felt something warm spill onto the lower half of her face. It was blood. Her nose was bleeding. The electronic wails continued.
She was nearly there.
Nox exited the stairwell and entered the eleventh floor.
Three corridors spread out before her. Directly in front of Nox was a Nurses’ station and manning it was a heavy set woman in her sixties. She rolled her chair back and forth, reaching for documents while coordinating the fire alarm evacuation.
Nox wiped the blood from her face and walked as calmly as she could to the station. The heavy set nurse noticed her and stopped what she was doing.
“Ma’am?” she asked. Her eyes were on the blood pouring from Nox’s nose. “What are you doing—?”
Nox didn’t reply. She had her bearings and knew where she needed to go. She walked down the west side corridor.
“Ma’am?” the nurse repeated.
Nox continued onward. The nurse reached for her phone and dialed 0.
“Get me security,” she said.
Before she could say anything else, the line went dead.
So too did the fire alarm.
As Nox neared Catherine Holland’s room, she found it harder and harder to breathe. The blood flowing from her nose was a gusher and the pounding in her head a pile driver. She barely noticed the fire alarms were off. Pressure built behind her eyes. It felt like her brain ballooned under her skull and threatened to burst.
Her feet moved, one after the other, propelling her closer and closer to the room she sought. The corridor turned at a sharp right angle. Nox knew Catherine Holland’s room lay beyond that turn.
Two security guards were posted before Catherine Holland’s door. One of them was on his cell phone.
“This is Matthews,” the man said. “When the alarm started up, we were told to wait. The alarm’s off now. Should we still…?”
The other security guard watched his partner. His hands were at his hips, close to his handgun.
“Look, I need to know if we should move her,” Matthews asked after a few seconds. “Was this a drill or are we dealing with a legitimate—”
An electronic squeal erupted from the phone’s speaker. The Security Guard pulled the phone away from his ear and grimaced.
“What the fuck?” he yelled. The noise blasted through the phone’s speaker until the device could no longer handle the overload. A puff of smoke signaled the cell phone’s destruction.
“The hell is this?” he said.
Matthews realized his partner’s focus was on the corridor rather than his phone. He looked up. Approaching the two guards was a woman. Blood streamed down her face and onto her shirt. Her movements were labored. She looked like she was about to collapse.
Th
e security guards approached her. Matthews grabbed the woman by her shoulders and steadied her walk.
“Lady, you’re bleeding,” Matthews said. “Who are you?”
The woman didn’t say.
“She has to be a patient,” his partner said. “She heard the alarm and wandered out of her room.”
The woman’s eyes came into focus. She looked directly into the security guard’s eyes.
“I’m sorry,” she said.
“For what?”
“This.”
The woman moved like lightning. Her right fist smashed into Matthew’s throat. He collapsed to the ground gasping for air. His partner barely had time to react before the woman delivered a brutal kick to his midsection. He bent over and Nox followed the kick with a knee to his face.
Both security guards lay on the floor writhing in pain.
Nox wiped the fresh blood from her face and took a second to orient herself. The expended energy took its toll and coherent thoughts were coming to her with greater difficulty. She stepped past the moaning guards and to the door to Catherine Holland’s room.
Again she blacked out.
When she came to, her head rested against the door’s frame. She looked back at the guards. They were trying to get to their feet. The heavy-set nurse stood at the end of the corridor. She kept her distance.
Nox grabbed the door knob and turned it. The door opened and Nox stepped inside.
The room was dark and silent.
It was filled with sophisticated medical equipment. So much that it took Nox a few seconds to realize there was a bed in the middle of it. On the bed lay a sickly figure. A tan blanket covered the figure’s body and white gauze covered much of her face. Plastic tubes ran from the machines to the body, their life giving sustenance keeping Catherine Holland alive.
Sensors flashed red lights while warnings scrawled on the monitors. Catherine let out a moan.
The fog in Nox’s head momentarily lifted. She approached her friend and was relieved to find her still alive. Nox reached for her. She wanted to take Catherine’s hand in hers.
“What did they do to you?” Nox managed between gritted teeth.