by TJ Klune
“They didn’t,” Alex said, hands in fists at his sides. “They believed her. After a time. But they didn’t let her go.”
“Questions,” Art said. “So many questions. How and why and where and what does it all mean? They asked how many of us were there. Where had I come from. What our plans were. If we were hostile. If we were going to take over your planet and enslave the human race.” She puffed out her cheeks. “Take me to your leader.”
Nate thought the sound he made was a laugh, but it felt like a sob.
“And the tests.” Art threw up her hands. “All the tests. They poked and prodded and inserted. They showed me images of water and fire and earth. Of people helping others. Of women in pretty dresses and men in top hats, walking arm in arm down the street, smiles on their faces. Of atoms splitting, causing death and destruction. Of guns and sickness and men marching, arms raised. Of people dancing. That… I think that was my favorite. I liked it when I saw people dancing. It made me feel happy.” She looked away. “I don’t think I’d ever felt what it means to be happy before that.”
“They don’t have… emotions,” Alex said. “Not like we do. Not that she could define in any way that they could understand. It was because of Oren that she began to feel it. He was a host, and she was the parasite, but instead of turning him into her, she began to turn into him.”
“What happened to him?” Nate asked, dazed. “The man. Oren. Was he… in there? With you?”
She winced. “I wasn’t… very good. It took me a long time to learn. For a while, I could hear him. But he wasn’t hurting. He wasn’t even really awake. It was more like… Do you dream, Nate?”
He nodded slowly. “Everyone does.”
“Dreams are tied to how you form memories,” she said. “They’re… the things you learn. Stuff that’s happened to you. The people you’ve met. Experiences you’ve had. They get lodged in your head, and you dream about them. Sometimes you dream of the fantastic. Sometimes you have nightmares. But then you wake up and you breathe, and everything is okay again. It was like that for Oren. He was… dreaming. I could feel them sometimes. He dreamed of fishing. He dreamed of a beautiful woman whispering in his ear. He dreamed of a monster chasing him through the woods.” She cleared her throat. “That one was my fault. But… we talked. He was aware. He knew, after a while, what was happening. It was strange, really. He… accepted it. He began to become curious. About me.”
“What happened to him?” Nate asked again, a cold chill running down his spine.
“He stayed as he was for years,” Alex said. “He didn’t… age. He stayed twenty-four years old for twenty years.”
It was as if all the synapses in Nate’s head fired at once. His mind felt whited out. Blank. He couldn’t form a single coherent thought.
“It was another test,” she said, and for the first time, he thought she sounded angry. Of all the things that had been said, of all the things he’d seen and heard, the anger in her voice scared him the most. It was laced with bitterness, her words more clipped and hard. “I didn’t know that. I thought I could trust them. I shouldn’t have, but I thought I could. Time passed differently in the Mountain. Time passes differently everywhere here. We don’t… mark the passage of time. Not like you do. Not with anniversaries or parties or balloons or cake. It has a different meaning. It’s… fluid. It can bend. It’s not the straight, rigid line you think it is. Time and space never are. I—” She shook her head and looked away.
Nate watched as Alex reached up and put a hand on the back of her head. She leaned into it and closed her eyes. He was comforting her. Like he’d done it before. Like he knew what she needed.
Nate’s eyes burned.
The air smelled of rain.
“It was before me,” Alex said. “A year before. She… They called it a transfer. There was a girl. Her name was Emily. When she was nine years old, she developed encephalitis. There was nothing that could be done. She was in a coma and had been for three months. Her parents, they… were told she wouldn’t wake up. But they persisted. They always persisted. They kept going. They kept her going. Until one day, they were killed when their car was T-boned by a truck at an intersection four blocks away from the hospital.”
“They died instantly,” Art said in a dull voice. “They felt no pain.”
Alex nodded. “There was no one else. Emily had no other family. No one to worry about her. To care about what she—” Alex coughed. “They found her. I think they were looking for someone like her. Someone who wouldn’t be missed. It was… very official, I’m told. They took Emily from the hospital in Pasadena and brought her to the Mountain.”
“They told me that they wanted to see if I could help her,” Art whispered. A drop of rain splashed on the left lens of her sunglasses. “Because I could… heal. Sometimes I could trick the body into thinking it was healing faster than it was.” She shrugged. “It’s the time thing again. It moves differently.”
He was shot. By a jerk who wouldn’t get out of the way.
“Jesus Christ,” Nate said hoarsely. He looked at Alex. “You did get shot. You fucking bastard. Rubber bullet my goddamn ass.”
Alex scowled at him. “I didn’t know you. Would you have really believed that a little girl had healed me if I’d told you at the time?”
“I don’t know if I believe you now.”
“You do,” Art said, watching him. “It’s hard overcoming what you know to be true, I know. You’re hardwired that way. Some more than others. But you do, Nate. You know everything we’ve said is the truth.”
Nate shook his head furiously. “No. No, I don’t—”
“I tried to heal her,” Art said, voice flat. “I tried to do what they asked of me, but they lied to me. They didn’t care about the girl. About Emily. They didn’t give a damn about her. They didn’t care that she had no one. That they had stolen her. They just wanted to see what they could do. If they could make me… if I could…” Her chest heaved.
“Electrical impulses,” Alex said. “In the neurons. Across the synapses. They found if they overloaded them, if they essentially fried the brain, it would force her out. And so they did. It was a test. An experiment. A way to fight back in case the others returned for her. If others became… possessed.”
“That’s all they thought about,” Art said, brow furrowed. “About fighting back. Like we are something to be feared. They didn’t know it was already too late for me here. Too many things had changed.”
“She latched on to Emily,” Alex said, and Nate thought that if he could have gotten his legs to work, he’d be running away as fast as he could. “It was the only place for her to go. She wouldn’t have survived for long. Too much of her had been twisted up in our genetic makeup. She wasn’t… who she’d been before. So she did the only thing she could.”
“It wasn’t like Oren,” Art said quietly. “Emily wasn’t dreaming. It was cold and dark and empty for a long time. I almost couldn’t find a way to… do it. But there were enough electrical impulses left, just a hint of a spark, to let me take her. Oren dreamed. Emily was already gone. It took me almost a year to open my eyes on my own. But I did it. I did it. They didn’t think I could. They didn’t think I would. But I did. I proved them all wrong. And I scared them because of it, even more than I already had. And I liked it. I liked that more than I should have, and it made me happy. I wanted to see it more. I wanted them to all be scared of me. And then he came.”
“Alex,” Nate said. “Alex came.”
She nodded. “And things were… different. After that. It was a test, of course. It was always a test, but I knew that. And when you know, you have power over it. You can change the outcome. Make it how you want it. But Alex, he was… different than everyone else.”
“You didn’t like me at first,” Alex said, and Nate swore he was almost smiling.
“You didn’t like me,” Art retorted. “You were mad and mean, and you said that you wanted nothing to do with
me. But you still came back.”
“I did.”
“Why?” Nate asked.
Alex blinked. “Why what?”
“Why did you keep coming back?”
Alex shook his head, and even before he spoke again, Nate could see the walls shoring back up. “It doesn’t matter,” he said gruffly. “It’s not about me. It’s about her. It’s about getting her home.”
“How?” Nate asked, suddenly feeling the smallest he’d ever felt. If this were real, if this were all true, nothing would ever be the same. He wanted to think they were crazy. That they were liars. But he’d already seen things he couldn’t explain when it came to Artemis Darth Vader. And no matter how he tried to force it away, it still washed over him, pulling him under.
“Don’t quite know yet,” Art admitted. “But they’re coming back for me. I can feel it.” Her voice took on a dreamy note. “It’s like… a song in my head. I can hear them singing, and I know they’ll return. I just have to wait.”
And then she fell silent. Nate felt drops of rain on his head and shoulders. The storm would be on them soon. They were waiting on him. He just didn’t know what to say.
Finally he said the only thing he could. “Why?”
She arched an eyebrow at him. “That’s vague. Why what?”
He felt hollowed out and empty. “Why here? Why us? Why did you come here?” He brushed away a tear that spilled down his cheek.
And when she leaned forward, when she put her small hands on his face, he didn’t flinch. “You think yourself alone. You think yourself lost. We wanted to show you that there was so much more than this place. We didn’t come to hurt you. We didn’t come to save you. Only you can do that. We came to be your friend. To make you understand that, in the end, you are never alone.”
After that, Nate drifted.
Another nameless motel in the middle of nowhere. They had crossed into Washington late in the evening. Nate didn’t think they knew exactly where they were going, but he didn’t ask. He didn’t know how.
They left him alone in the motel room while they went to get food. Nate sat on the edge of one of the beds, staring down at his hands. Underneath the pale flesh of his palms, he could see the twisted shape of veins. He turned his hands over and saw the bones beneath his skin as he moved his fingers up and down.
They were giving him time. Giving him space to see what he would do. If he would even be here when they returned. It’d be easy, wouldn’t it? To get up and grab his bag. To walk to the motel office and ask to use the phone. He could call the police. They wouldn’t believe him at first. Who would? Maybe he wouldn’t even have to tell them. Not everything. He could say they’d taken him from his home. Surely people were looking for them. Maybe they’d have Alex as a kidnapper. A man who had stolen a child from her home, and won’t someone please help them find this little girl? He could do that. He could do that so easily. And then, if he was lucky and if it still stood, he could return to the cabin, close the door behind him, and never think about Artemis Darth Vader or Alex Weir ever again.
There was a moment when he felt his legs tense, like he was preparing to stand.
He didn’t.
They brought back fried chicken. Mashed potatoes. Corn. Biscuits. Colonel Sanders smiled sagely from the side of the red-and-white bucket. Art looked relieved when Nate was in the spot they’d left him. Alex looked… like Alex, though his eyes did widen briefly. Art told him that she brought him food because she was providing for him. She had gone out and shot it herself, partner, and she cleaned and gutted and cooked it over an open fire under a cascade of stars in the night sky. She’d heard a lonesome coyote howl as she played her harmonica, hoss, and she hoped he was mighty hungry.
He blinked slowly at her.
She groaned loudly when she ate her first bite of fried chicken, eyes rolling back in her head. She raved that it was on par with bacon. By the time she finished, she had mashed potatoes on her cheek, and her lips were shiny with grease. Her eyes were drooping, and she leaned back on the bed, patting her stomach happily. “That’s the ticket,” she said. “Whatever else you guys got going on here, you did well with all the food.”
Nate didn’t eat much. He picked at it, but he had a hard time swallowing it down.
Alex ate perfunctorily and quickly. He kept glancing at Nate, but he didn’t say a word.
Nate thought about curling up on the bed away from them and trying to sleep. He didn’t know how successful he’d be.
It was Art who slept first. She’d brushed her teeth and made Alex undo her braids. Her hair was crimped and kinked as she shook it out. She’d changed into her pajamas, the same ones she’d worn every night since Nate had met her for the first time. She was asleep even as her head hit the pillow.
Nate had never felt more awake in his life.
Alex moved quietly around the room, picking up the remains of their dinner.
Nate had nothing to say to him. He didn’t think he wanted to hear either of them speak again for the rest of the night.
Which is why he was surprised when he spoke. “You took her.”
Alex tensed, hands freezing over the empty Styrofoam container that had held mashed potatoes before Artemis descended upon it. His fingers twitched.
“You took her from the Mountain.”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
Alex glanced over at him, looking as if he were gearing up for a fight. He was defiant when he said, “I would do it again.”
“I’m not—”
“If I had to do it all over, I would do it again.”
And Nate believed him.
“They were hurting her,” Alex said, shoving empty containers into paper bags. “They weren’t—it wasn’t—they didn’t care about her. Not who she was.”
“But you did,” Nate said quietly.
Alex didn’t answer. Instead, he dropped the bags into the plastic trash bin in the corner. The room smelled like stale fried food and harsh cleaning products. Nate was getting a headache.
“I get it, okay? I—”
“No,” Alex said coolly. “You don’t. You don’t understand the first thing about her. About me.”
“I’m trying.”
“Why are you still here?” Alex asked, turning around and glaring at him. “You could have left while we were gone. You could have put us behind you and left.”
“But I didn’t.”
“I know that,” Alex snapped at him, glancing at Art. She was snoring quietly. When he spoke again, his voice was lower but still charged. “I know you didn’t. I don’t get why.”
“Why did you tell me about her?” Nate countered.
Alex looked frustrated. He reached up and ran a hand over his short hair. The mask he wore—the man, the soldier—was slipping again, farther than Nate had ever seen it. He wondered if Alex even knew it was happening. “Because, you—you just—you would have asked questions. And you wouldn’t have stopped.”
“So you could have made something else up,” Nate said. “Like you did the first time.”
Alex shook his head. “You wouldn’t have believed me.”
“And what makes you think I believe you now?”
“You do.”
“How do you know that?”
“Because of that look on your face. That pale, wide-eyed look. I know that. I’ve seen it before. In the mirror after they showed me who she was for the first time. After they explained to me what I was seeing. I looked the same. You believe.”
Nate swallowed thickly. “I don’t know what to believe.”
Alex sat on the edge of the bed, careful to keep it from shifting and disturbing Art. He reached down and began to unlace his boots.
“I thought about it.”
Alex hesitated, but then lifted his foot and slid the right boot off. “I know you did.”
“I thought about walking right out that door.”
“I know.”
>
“Finding a phone and calling the cops.”
Alex pulled off the left boot.
“But I didn’t,” Nate said. “Because I couldn’t make myself move. No matter how hard I tried.”
“We,” Alex said.
Nate turned slowly to look at him. The room was dark. Through the window, the red neon from the VACANCY sign filtered in, outlining Alex. “What?”
“Back at the cabin,” Alex said, head sagging. “When he showed up the first time. The Enforcer.”
“The water guy.”
Alex snorted. “Yeah. Him. I should have seen that one coming. I—” He scrubbed a hand over his face. “When I saw his truck. You asked me a question. You said, what should we do?”
Nate waited.
“You didn’t say you. You didn’t say what should I do. You said we. Us. You didn’t know who we were. We’d broken into your cabin. I had a gun. For all you knew, I could have been some… some kind of creep. Taking a little girl to the middle of nowhere.”
“The thought did cross my mind.” Nate winced. “Uh. I mean—”
Alex sighed. “I know. I don’t blame you. Not for that. I—it doesn’t matter. But you said we.”
“I don’t remember.”
“I know. It’s—you stayed.”
“I did.”
“Even after everything. Even with how crazy it sounds.”
“Yeah.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know.”
Alex didn’t seem too happy with that answer. “How did you know? When you came back to the cabin, you said Seventh Sea. How did you know about it?”
That startled Nate. “Ruth.”
Alex looked sharply at him. “Who?”
“Ruth. She’s—an old friend.” Nate felt his face growing hot. “I might have asked her to look you up.”
Alex just stared at him.
“To be fair, your story about being a bodyguard sounded like bullshit, so.”
“That was Art’s idea,” Alex muttered. “Her second one. She first wanted to tell you that she’d been kidnapped by bandits and that I’d rode in on a white horse and rescued her.”