The Rogue Agent

by Shiloh White

  Then I felt really heavy. My body went limp and I started to fall until the silhouette boy's grip tightened and held me up. I was dangling in the middle of darkness, yelling at him to pull me up.

  The silhouette boy snickered at me and my arm started to slip out of his hand. I reached up to grab his hand with my other arm, but he let go of me before I could grab hold. He pointed at me and laughed as I fell, the voice from before joining in as I fell into the darkness.

  ✽✽✽

  I looked for anyway to stop my fall, even trying to open my eyes. But no luck. I was already in the zone. I couldn't get out now. I looked down, and I could see the darkness starting to fade away into a small checkered floor. It was coming up fast. Before I knew it, I fell into the room and landed in a chair at my own kitchen table. I hit the chair pretty hard on my tailbone, but not hard enough to break anything. How did I get here?

  I took a quick look around. The light in the room was gray and gloomy. Probably from all of the overcast we'd been having. The small table sat against the dividing wall in the kitchen, right where I remember it. The rest of the kitchen was pretty much how I remembered it from yesterday; dishes drying on the counter near the sink; the trash was taken out, except for crumbs and trash from breakfast. It felt so real. I wanted nothing more than to run down the hallway and up the stairs into Chloe's room.

  “You're so worthless,” the voice spoke up in the back of my head. It sounded muffled, like a child talking through a mask. But clear enough to make out.

  “You know she's not here,” it said, giggling at me and chanting “worthless, worthless” over and over.

  “Go away!” I yelled at it, but the voice that came out of my mouth wasn't exactly mine. It sounded...younger. Then that sick nostalgic feeling in my stomach got a lot worse, until I remembered something. About the boy, and the voice.

  Just then, I heard yelling from above. I looked up at the ceiling, and it opened up into blackness and spat Lieutenant Hollister out of it and into the chair across from me.

  “Unpleasant way to arrive,” she said, fixing her clothes and putting her camo cap back on. Then she looked up and saw me. “Lucy, this is your zone; what do you know so far?” she asked it so quickly, it took me by surprise. I could barely open my mouth before she started to snap her fingers and shoot more questions, “Where are we? Where do we need to go? Have you found the Agent yet?”

  But her questions got drowned out by the voice again. I grabbed my head, and yelled out, “Leave me alone! I've already gotten rid of you!”

  Then the voice got louder until it filled the whole room with a sing-song voice, “I'VE ALWAYS BEEN HERE! LUCY JUST HASN'T HEARD ME! AND LOOK WHERE THAT GOT HER…” She giggled again. I just sat there, petrified. Her voice felt like a straightjacket, keeping me from budging an inch.

  “Wake up, Lucy! Snap out of this! The Depression Agent is trying to mess with your head!” Lieutenant Hollister reached across the table, trying to shake me awake.

  “YES, LUCY, WAKE UP...” the voice joined in, as a drawer materialized over Lieutenant Hollister's head. She stopped shaking me and looked above my head. Judging by the look on her face, there was one above my head too. I watched the drawer above Lieutenant Hollister start to tip forward. Then I heard the clacking and scraping sound of metal rubbing against itself, right above me.

  I looked up with just enough time to see the knives falling out of it.

  ✽✽✽

  Every thought in my brain screamed for me to move out of the way of the knives about to impale me.

  Every muscle in my body, on the other hand, was frozen; leaving me stuck in my seat. When it realized I wasn't going to listen, my brain must have given up and devoted it's last seconds to completely unhelpful thoughts. Like what my tombstone would say (Which would probably be something like, “Here lies Lucy Hale; who escaped death by giant boot only to be impaled by a drawer of kitchen knives”), and the coincidence that in every kitchen I'd been to since I arrived in the Dust, something had tried to hurt me.

  Luckily Lieutenant Hollister's mind managed to stay in the game.

  “AAAGH!” she shouted and literally leapt into action, diving across the table and pushed me out of my seat. The two of us rode her momentum, rolling into the entryway. I watched as all the knives clattered to the kitchen floor behind the Lieutenant. Then a gray blur zoomed into the room. I didn't recognize it, but it giggled and laughed just like the voice in my head. It flew around the room, and into the kitchen, where all of the knives floated up and around its blurry self. Then it inched from the kitchen to the entryway where we were.

  Lieutenant Hollister rolled off of me and leaned against the wall, trying to block her body from the knives flying everywhere. I tried to sit up and scoot back, and winced. Pain shot up to my left arm. I looked down and saw it had a nice-sized gash on it. One of the knives got me.

  The gray blur giggled again, like it was all a big game, and zipped out the front door.

  I tried to get up again, and the pain from the cut made my arm feel like it was on fire. An old feeling crept up inside me that cleared my head when I felt that pain. I took a deep breath, and focused on nothing but that feeling.

  No...Not that. Anything but that again...my thoughts (conscience?) groaned at me.

  I got angry at myself and pushed that feeling away, bringing myself up to my knees. I couldn't fall into that again.

  “Augh, that hurts!” Lieutenant Hollister said, sucking in air through her teeth as she used the wall to stand up. Once at her feet, she looked down at her boots and sighed. I saw it too, and my heart dropped.

  There was a kitchen knife sticking out of the heel of her boot. She knelt down and grabbed the handle, ready to yank it out. She said nothing, but her face showed she was in pain. Plus, there was no way she'd be able to get it at the angle she was at. She sighed and let go of the knife. “I need you to pull it out,” she looked up at me. She saved my life; there was no debate. But it didn't make it any easier to kneel down next to her foot and grab the knife.

  “On three, I'm gonna pull, okay?” I said, looking up at the Lieutenant. She nodded and said, “On three. Okay.”

  “One...” I tightened my grip around the knife, and braced my other hand against the back of Lieutenant Hollister's leg. Here we go...

  “Two!” I yanked the knife straight out of her foot. Lieutenant Hollister made a sound that was like a yell and a sigh of relief at the same time. She leaned against the wall, and used it to slide down until she was sitting.

  “You didn't go on three.” she said, pulling her boot off. I shrugged at her, unsure of what to say.

  “Thanks.”

  “You're welcome,” I said in a small voice, tossing the knife aside.

  “Did you recognize that gray blur?” she asked.

  “It laughed just like the voice in my head,” I told her. Then I thought for a second. “It might have been the Depression Agent.”

  “If it was, your Zone is one of Self-Harm, isn't it?” she asked, ripping open the bottom of her pant leg, so she could see the wound in her foot. I said nothing. Lieutenant Hollister looked up at me after a moment, and I just nodded. I couldn't bring myself to say anything more. I didn't want to relive this memory at all. I looked down at her cut, and from the angle I was at, the blood made the wound look pretty bad.

  “Maybe...we should go back,” I suggested. “You know, to heal your leg.” I really just felt like I was in an emotional storm, the way I got thrown into this zone. But it was a foolish idea. Chloe still needed me.

  “We can't go back now.” Hollister said, ripping the strip of pant leg completely off. I had no idea what for. How was that going to help her cut? “In your first Zone,” she continued, “you got lucky. It's more difficult than you think to find the Depression Agent. I once spent 3 weeks in a Zone before I found the Agent.”

  She took the strip of clothing and tied it around her ankle, right above where the cut was, to stop the bleeding. The Lieutenant planned o
n seeing this through. We weren’t leaving any time soon.

  She rose to her feet, asking “What caused the self-harm? We have to know where to look for the Agent.” The question was like a gut punch. I didn't want to dig up any of that. But my sister didn't have three weeks to be saved. We needed to find that Agent now.

  “After my brother died,” I started to say, “I felt empty. I slipped in school and life at home fell apart. No one could fix me, and I didn't want them to.” Lieutenant Hollister said nothing, but nodded and kept her gaze on me. She knew there was more.

  “I met this boy at my school,” I continued, looking at the floor while I talked. “He was determined to...”put me back together,” he called it. Everything he did around me was to help me feel better...and I started to. I got feelings for him and he did for me. It was just what I needed. Or at least, what I thought I needed. After a while, he started ignoring me altogether. I thought I was to blame. Then one day, after I tried to put him out of my mind—” A lump formed in my throat. I tried to swallow it and keep going.

  “I saw him, with another girl. I asked him why he left me alone, and he said I was taking pieces from him to fix myself, and that he didn't want that to happen. On top of that,” I continued, raising my voice now, “he spent the rest of the school year proclaiming how down-in-the-dumps worthless I was.” I punched the wall when I said worthless.

  The Lieutenant walked closer to the door, using the wall for support. “So, the boy dug a ditch for you. While you were blinded by emotions, he tripped you and you fell right in. And the rest,” she gestured to the cut on my arm, “is history.”

  It sounded a lot colder explaining it that way, and I felt even more stupid as tears started to well up in my eyes. But I nodded at her. She was right.

  I set my jaw and still kept staring at her, unblinking so she wouldn't see the tears fall. I didn't want to feel inferior to Lieutenant Hollister. We were practically inside my head, but I couldn't be crying. I was here to stop this stupid feeling once and for all.

  Lieutenant Hollister opened the door, and hobbled through the doorway. “We need to stay focused. Let's go.” she said.

  “Where are you going?” I asked.

  “Where that Agent probably went,” she said through her teeth, “to your school.”

  25. We Almost Get Run Over By A Kamikaze Canine

  Lieutenant Hollister didn't make it very far out the door.

  One step outside, and her foot buckled underneath the weight of her body. She would've fallen to the ground if I didn't catch her. She slung her arm around my neck and I shifted my weight to help hold her up. Then we started walking down the sidewalk.

  “In my first Zone, Scott said to follow the memory that was inside it. But this memory went all around; school, home. How do you know it's gonna be at the school?” I asked.

  “Experience.” Hollister said, keeping her eyes forward. I waited for her to explain, but she said nothing.

  “Experience...” I echoed. “Like the zone that took you 3 weeks?” Not the best choice of words, but I was a little unstable. And curious.

  “I had the most experience going into that one; it was the last Depression Zone I entered!” Hollister shouted, shoving me away. I waited for her to land on her bad foot so I'd have to catch her, but she stood just fine. “I went in undercover, so I wouldn't affect how the zone went. The girl was 11. Life seemed absolutely perfect. The girl lived with her dad, and he loved her more than anyway.”

  “How did you know that; the part about the dad?” I asked, looking down at her feet. She had to be in pain from trying to step on that cut up foot, but she wouldn't show it. Nonetheless, I was making sure I was ready to catch her if she fell over again.

  “They went everywhere and did everything together,” Hollister explained. “Beaches, amusement parks, you name it. For two weeks. And for two weeks, I found nothing. No sign of the Depression Agent. But I—ouch!” She winced and reached down for her foot.

  “Are you okay—”

  “I’m fine,” she said, gritting her teeth. “Here, take my arm.” She put her arm around my shoulder again, and we kept moving.

  “So, you couldn't find the Agent?” I asked after we started hobbling down the sidewalk.

  “Right,” Lieutenant Hollister said. “I knew something was wrong, though. Sure, there was no sign of an Agent. But I also began to realize that there was no sign of anyone. Just the girl and her father; always together and doing something.”

  I thought about my own father. I wondered if he would treat me with that love, even if I was the only one. Not that it would have been worth losing Chloe. Dad always seemed a little too busy for that sort of thing.

  “At that moment,” Lieutenant Hollister continued, “I realized I'd known where the Agent was the whole time. I just didn't want to accept it. It wasn't real, but the girl, she looked happy.” Her voice got quiet near the end. I kept my eyes forward, but nodded slowly. I'd put the pieces together.

  “The father was the Depression Agent.” I said quietly. Lieutenant Hollister said nothing and looked down at the ground with a slight nod.

  It had to be hard. I wouldn't want to be the one in that position. What was an Officer to do at that point? What could they do, since they could only assist the adolescent?

  “Did she do anything?” I asked.

  “Who?” Lieutenant Hollister stopped walking.

  “The young girl in her Zone. Did she find out about the father?”

  Lieutenant Hollister opened her mouth to answer, but something behind me must have caught her eye because the next words out of her mouth were “LOOK OUT!”

  I turned around, and saw a big yellow school bus zooming straight toward us from down the street.

  ✽✽✽

  If you live near a school, or pretty much any public neighborhood, it's pretty much every day you see a yellow school bus coming down the street.

  But it wasn't every day you saw one coming straight at you, with the intent to kill.

  I helped Lieutenant Hollister keep balance as we ran down the sidewalk, trying to escape the bus's path. Only, the bus didn't really seem to know where its path was. I took a quick glance and saw it swerving to the left and the right as it got closer to us. Unfortunately, it was still a school bus, so it wasn't like it would miss us if it had to swerve a little. I knew with the Lieutenant's hurt leg, we weren't going to get much further. I stopped running and turned around, ready to fight or dodge if I had to, although I knew neither would work out well.

  All of a sudden, right before the bus would've flattened us, the tires screeched and the bus took a hard right. Then it shot forward and slammed into the school wall behind us with a loud metallic CRRNCH!

  It knocked over a good chunk of the wall, kicking up a ton of dirt in the process. “What the heck was that about?” I asked in between a couple coughing fits.

  “It's your Zone, Lucy,” Lieutenant Hollister reminded me. “Anything familiar about this?”

  I shook my head. “I think I'd remember a bus crash—”

  I heard a noise from inside the dusty cloud of smoke. The bus door opened, and the shadow of someone or, something started to walk out. I was waiting for it to come out of the dust cloud and appear, when I realized the dust cloud started moving.

  To be more specific, it was a blob of shadow and dusty smoke about the size and build of a Great Dane. It had a big jaw about the size of my forearm, and moved on all-fours; four long smoke stumps leading it right towards us.

  “What is THAT?” I asked Lieutenant Hollister, trying to keep my cool. I didn't want to set off whatever this thing was.

  “That's a Depression Fragment,” Lieutenant Hollister said.

  “Fragment?” I asked, taking a step back from it.

  “When a Depression Agent has taken enough strength from their host, they can create minions out of it.”

  The Fragment must not have liked being called a minion. It growled and charged us, moving rather fast for a body mad
e of smoke. I turned and started at the school wall. Maybe I could climb over before it reached us. I barely took a step towards it, though, before Lieutenant Hollister grabbed my arm tight and kept me in place.

  “What are you doing?” I shouted. “We gotta get away from that thing now!” It might have only been a portion of the Depression Agent, but in my mind, a human-sized shadow seemed a little more reasonable to take on than a violent giant-dog-sized one. Especially when it drove a school bus to get to us.

  “Not yet.” The Lieutenant said. The Fragment was almost on us now. My leg started to shake and I almost jumped out of the way, but Lieutenant Hollister kept a strong grip on my arm. “Wait for my mark...ready, now!” she yelled, letting go of my arm. We split, dodging to either side of the beast. It ran right past both of us, but I swear I felt smoke brush up against my leg. It was too close for comfort.

  I turned around to see the Fragment keep charging up the sidewalk, and straight for the pole of a “NO PARKING” sign. It smacked its head right into it and spazzed around in a pile of smoke until it re-morphed into its Great Dane shape, facing us again. I looked over at the Lieutenant, who was doing her best to stand up, but she was faltering on her hurt foot.

  “They might be from the Depression Agent, but they're not all that intelligent.” Lieutenant Hollister called out from the street. “It makes them easier to beat.” The Fragment paced back and forth, as if it were trying to decide which one of us to tear up first.

  “How are we going to beat it when we can't get close enough to harm it?” I asked.

  “We need to—”

  GRRRRRR! The Fragment let out a deep guttural sound, cutting off Lieutenant Hollister. It was as if the Fragment didn't want its secret spilled. Then it shrieked like a banshee, making a high-pitched noise as it ran straight at her.