The Mouse

by Lauretta Hignett

  “In public?” Sunny snapped. “You don’t want to be seen in public with me?”

  “We can’t, Mouse, don’t you see? Not even when we’re not zipping in and out of reality together. We can’t just go and get a coffee down in Coogee. We can’t go for a jog or a surf together at the beach. Someone bad might see us together, and wonder who you are. Then, all they would have to do is follow you for a while, and they’d find out. And you might end up in a cage somewhere.”

  She felt like the sun had disappeared behind a cloud. She knew he was talking about their relationship from a professional standpoint, but she couldn’t help but think of it from the personal one. They could never be together, not ever in a normal, everyday couple way.

  Even if he wanted to.

  “Hey. I’m sorry,” Hunter murmured, trying to catch Sunny's eye. “I’m just trying to do everything I can to keep you safe. I don’t want to see you get caught, by anyone.”

  He had misinterpreted the reason for her depression, but she wasn’t about to correct him. She sulked silently for a few minutes while he gazed at the Sugar Loaf Islands in the distance.

  “I’m also mad at you for being so blasé about almost falling to your death here,” he smirked slightly, trying to lighten the mood.

  “It wasn’t a big deal. I didn’t die,” she muttered from under her veil of hair.

  He laughed out loud, heartily. Sunny peeked up, curious as to what was so funny.

  “You have to admit; you keep surprising me. You almost fall off a cliff, and it’s not a big deal. You can enter an unknown dimension, and you’re so cool about it. You seem to take everything in your stride.”

  “Well, what else am I supposed to do, freak out?”

  He shook his head, laughing. “Most people would, Mouse. If anyone else could do what you could do, they might have totally freaked out and gone crazy. Or they would have stolen a bunch of money and blown it all on frivolous things, got some unwanted attention and then ended up in a cage, or playing inter-dimensional courier for some drug cartel.” He gave her a soft punch on the shoulder. “But you, you just go about your business. And occasionally do a prisoner-of-war rescue.”

  She gave a weak smile. “I wish I could do more,” she said softly.

  “You’re doing great. But the more you do, the more at risk you are to being discovered.”

  Sunny sighed unhappily and decided to change the subject. “The other people that can do strange stuff… how did they get that way? Were they born like that?” She had been curious about that but had been scared to ask, in case it brought up questions about how she had become the way she had.

  “Some might have been. The guy who could read minds… he was in a car crash and got a serious head injury. When he woke up, he could hear what the attending doctor was thinking.”

  “Wow.” She breathed. “The poor guy. I bet he thought he’d gone crazy.”

  “He has gone crazy.” Hunter shook his head. “And I have heard of a girl who was born with unbreakable hair.”

  “What?”

  “Her hair,” he explained patiently. “It can’t be cut. It can only fall out naturally. It seems to be some strange mutation, but her hair cuticles are made of an unknown, undiscovered substance. It appears to be unbreakable, so far.”

  “Not very handy, as far as mutations go.”

  “Well, we’ve used a couple of strands as a tow rope for a broken-down company SUV. So, it is handy.”

  “Ha ha,” she supplied dutifully.

  “She’s an interesting case. The agency located her when she was just a little girl, but she disappeared when she was seven.”

  “You mean, she escaped?”

  “I hope she did. I hope that no one else got her. That was over twenty years ago now, though. We’ve still got some of her hair; we keep trying to replicate its structure.”

  Sunny was silent for a while. “You’d probably spot her in a crowd, though,” she said finally.

  “How so?”

  “She’d be the one with hair dragging on the floor behind her, of course,” Sunny said.

  “Uh, from what I’ve read, it never really grew that long. It fell out naturally at about two foot at the longest.”

  “She’d be the one woman in the country who never visited the hairdresser, then.”

  “And there’s a whole bunch of stories out of China,” he carried on, ignoring her. “Of monks. Levitating.”

  “That’s pretty cool. From meditation, I’m guessing.”

  “Yep, mainly. They’re pretty dedicated.”

  “That will be you, soon.” She nudged him with her elbow.

  “I wish. The mind is a pretty incredible thing.” He stretched out on the spongy grass beside her.

  “Anything else?”

  “Well, we heard of a guy on one of the Pacific Islands who had kind of a werewolf thing going on.”

  “Werewolf?”

  “Nothing that specific. He was just quite hairy, and he had sharp teeth and claws. And he was quite aggressive, I’ve heard.”

  “So, he is a werewolf,” she reiterated.

  “Was.” He was blunt. “The villagers on the island got rid of him pretty quickly.”

  “Wow.” She thought for a minute. “Probably right in being a bit aggressive, then.”

  They lay down on the grass together, looking at the puffy marshmallow clouds above and listening to the sweet chirp of the birds on that tiny ledge on the mountain. There was only a soft breeze, it was chilly, but the sun hung comfortably in the sky. It was a lovely day.

  “Hunter?” Sunny piped up suddenly.

  “Yeah?”

  “Are vampires real?”

  “Uh, no. Sorry to disappoint you.”

  “I’m not disappointed,” she lied.

  They lay in comfortable silence for a few more moments.

  “Zombies are, though,” Hunter spoke suddenly.

  “What?” She sat up, alarmed.

  “Zombies. They’re real.” He opened one eye and looked up at her.

  “Are you serious?”

  “Yeah. There is a virus that kills people and reanimates their bodies, and they seem to crave living human flesh. Just like all the books and movies. But we’re managing to stay on top of the outbreaks and cover them up. Remember that bath salts thing in the States not that long ago? That outbreak almost got away from the FBI. They caught it just in time. The bath salts story is just a cover.”

  “Holy shit.” She was stunned. “Annabel might get her wish,” she added under her breath.

  “Huh?”

  “Nevermind.”

  They stayed there for a few more minutes, basking in the warm sunshine and the cool breeze. Finally, Sunny spoke.

  “So, where to now? Back to Casa Del Huntero?”

  “Yeah, but can you do me a favour?”

  “Sure.”

  “Can we take a quick glimpse at North Korea? I want to have a look at the front line, and at their compound. We need to know what it looks like right now before we try and go in. I’ll worry about explaining my information later.”

  “Sure.” She held out her hand to him, and he took it. He closed his eyes, and after a few minutes, he entered the state in which she could pull him over to the Alternate. He opened his eyes when he felt the change, and smiled at her.

  “That was fast.”

  “You too. You’re getting good at this meditation thing. You’ll be levitating in no time.”

  “Well, we kind of are levitating. So we can tick that box.”

  “Fair enough.” She moved to sit upright and drew him up off the little ledge. “How come you’re getting so quick at the meditation thing?”

  “I don’t think I have to try and get into a deep meditation for this to work. It’s just this… a feeling of openness, of acceptance, that you get when you are meditating. I remember the feeling, and I’m finding it easier and easier to pull it back.”

  “Yeah, kinda the same with me. I just have to wait until yo
u’re open to it, then I can grab you. We’ll be able to do it instantly soon, I think.”

  “That would be handy.”

  She pulled him up high, up and up, so New Zealand was a couple of small splotches in a vast ocean, and Australia was easily seen in the distance. She turned north-west, and started out at a slower pace back towards Korea, letting him experience the islands and ocean that whizzed beneath him from a distance.

  After a while, she spotted the layout of Korea, and she headed down to where the Republic Army’s compound was. She found it easily and dragged Hunter to hover just above it so that he could take in all the details. He quickly pulled out his phone and switched it on, but it died almost instantly.

  He became very focused as he scouted out the defences on the compound, he assessed the outer walls and entrances, and he calculated the soldiers on each gate and catalogued all their weapons. He tugged her over to the guard towers on each point of the building so he could inspect them, then back down to the huge iron gate at the entrance.

  There were fewer trucks, fewer soldiers, and less activity. They did a sweep of the whole compound, whizzing through all the buildings so he could see what each area was used for and what soldiers were in there. They zipped through the prison cells very quickly, Sunny pausing at each poor soul slumped on the stone floors, in case one of these men were open to coming with them, but she didn’t sense the openness in any of them. Twice, they came upon dead men lying on the floors of their cells. It broke her heart.

  After a while, he gave her a curt nod, and she drew him back up and out. They didn’t speak on the way home; he was pensive, and hardly taking in any of the sights below. She caught his mood, and flew fast all the way back to his apartment, dropping him right back in the kitchen where they had taken off.

  Sunny withdrew her hand, and he barely noticed, he was still thinking hard.

  He hit the ground running. “I’ve got to go,” he said distractedly, pulling out his phone and flicking through it. “I have to go and report all this before the final orders are given.”

  “Okay,” she said dejectedly. It was an awful end to what had started out as a lovely day, where she had shared an amazing experience with him. He was in business mode now, quickly running to his room, within seconds he had emerged in beige chinos and a white shirt, buttoning it up quickly and gathering up his keys, he was halfway out the door.

  “You can hang out here if you want, or I’ll call you later,” he barked, shutting the door behind him before she could blurt out a response.

  “Alright then.” She looked around his apartment, assessing her options.

  She could have a nap. But she wasn’t that tired. Especially after copping a look at Hunter’s muscular, tanned and slightly scarred chest. She aimlessly scanned all his books on the shelves, but nothing took her fancy. She considered turning on his TV, but she didn’t feel like remaining sedentary. Plonking herself down on his sofa, she thought for a minute.

  She could be doing something useful while he was away. There was still the puzzle of the EMP nagging at her mind. Perhaps she should go and see if she could find it.

  Making up her mind, she flew straight out of Hunter’s apartment and straight back to North Korea. She headed back to the valley where she had felt the pulse last and was hardly surprised to find that it had moved again. She still felt the faint twang of it in the atmosphere, but it wasn’t as strong as it had been before.

  She moved through the air listlessly, eyes closed, trying to determine the direction in which it became more pronounced. It drew her slightly more south, then a little southeast, before she came to a small town just north of the front line. It was quite a few miles to the east of the main compound that they had just been in, and the town was apparently a civilian settlement. It had some of the strange architecture of the bigger cities, and it also had some buildings that looked more flimsy, with an odd cardboard-like texture, obviously been put together hurriedly. The streets were very clean, and there were a few people around on the wide pavements, although they seemed to hurry along as if they were all running very late.

  One building, in particular, drew her in. It was small and squat, maybe five stories tall, and seemed more reinforced than any other building she had seen. If some of the buildings in this town were made of cardboard, this one looked like it was made out of solid steel.

  There were no windows at all, which gave it a sinister appearance, and quite a few grey steps that led up to just one double door at the entrance. Most of the other dwellings in the town had busy people going in or out, or passing by.

  This one, they seemed to avoid.

  Sunny wasn’t sure if it was the ominous feeling the building gave off, or if she felt like the pulse was stronger here. She eyed the double doors dubiously. There was not enough space for a massive machine to fit through the doors, and there were no other entrances at all.

  But still, the building piqued her interest. At the same time, it completely repelled her.

  She milled around for a while, reluctant to go in, but she felt like she was closer than ever to the machine that made the pulse.

  “Don’t be a fool,” she whispered to herself, and floated closer. She had nothing to fear from what was inside; she could stay in the Alternate and just observe. And when she laid eyes on the machine, she would come up with a plan to destroy it.

  Floating straight through the solid grey door, she entered an odd lofty hallway, with heavy undecorated grey columns flanking the sides of the walls. Punctuating the columns were guards in stiff grey uniforms, automatic rifles drawn and pointed straight ahead.

  Each guard was deathly still, completely silent, and staring straight ahead, as if fully prepared to fire at the enemy right there and then. Even their hair was the same; all precisely bowl-cut, with a deep part carefully slicked over to one side with what must have been industrial-grade hair gel.

  This must be the place. Only one thing would warrant this much attention, this much security. She cautiously drifted forwards, searching in between the columns for anything unusual. There was a heavy black desk at the end of the hallway, and a soldier there stood at attention, staring unblinking towards the entrance.

  Behind the desk, a strange cage had been assembled. Sunny went closer, and saw that it was a sort of manual elevator, constructed in the middle of the building, going all the way up the five floors. There was nothing beyond the elevator besides empty space, and more still, staring guards. For a tiny second Sunny wondered if they were real, they seemed so un-lifelike, as if they were wax figures instead of flesh and blood. The level of discipline they were displaying was seriously disturbing. Silently edging towards the guard on the desk, she watched him for a moment and managed to catch the slight rise and fall of his shoulders as he breathed in and out.

  Satisfied that they were real people and not lifelike dummies, she peeked up the elevator shaft. It wasn’t very big - a couple of metres squared - and certainly not big enough to haul a huge machine up there. Nevertheless, and despite the slow cold-water trickle of dread that tingled through her, she floated up the elevator shaft to the first floor.

  It was an empty space. Not even a guard stood to attention there. The whole floor was stark bone-white, no speck of dust or fly spot anywhere. It was the most dead space that Sunny had ever seen in the Alternate, with barely a living organism able to reside there. It was nearly more ominous than the wax-like soldiers guarding the building.

  The next floor was identical, just a cold, sterile white space. She gave it little attention as she drifted further up the elevator shaft to the fourth floor, and froze in fear.

  The floor was teeming with guards. They stood, erect, their faces almost death-masks, guns cocked and pointed directly at the elevator as she drifted up through the shaft. For a wild moment she thought they could see her, and had trained their guns on her on purpose. But not by a millimetre did they betray their rigid stance; no flicker of recognition entered their eyes. Heart thudding wildly, she
allowed herself to breathe again, and she floated through the gates of the elevator shaft and onto the floor.

  There were guards at attention all along the walls of the space, all as focused and still as the next. The floor had absolutely nothing on it apart from the elevator shaft cage, and a strange tiny room that had been sectioned off in the middle of the floor. It was a few metres square, but barely tall enough to let a full-grown man stand up in it.

  Like everything else in the building, the walls of the room were stark white, and there was one white door set in the middle of it. There were guards sitting on each corner of the top of this room, and stationed at every wall below, each one as silent and tense.

  Sunny knew she had found the machine. She could sense the pulse, stronger than it ever had been, coming from that small white room, and she knew that she would have to try and destroy it.

  But how? She had no idea what she was dealing with. The pulse made her anxious. And if she made a mistake and pulled even one hand out of the Alternate to touch the machine and bring it with her, chances are they’d shoot her before she could lay a finger on it. They even looked like they were poised for even this eventuality.

  Hunter would kill her if she would even risk it.

  Sunny frowned as she drifted closer to the small white room; she had thought that locating the machine was going to be the hard part, not getting rid of it. She’d assumed that as soon as she found it, she could quickly grab it, lift it up into the air with her in the Alternate, then drop it from a great height so it would smash into a million pieces. The Allied armies would be able to storm in with all their sophisticated weaponry and force the Republic to surrender.

  She should have known it wouldn’t be that easy.

  The room in front of her was completely silent – indeed the whole building was as quiet as a grave. The thumping and clanking that she was expecting from the machine just wasn’t there. Warily, she edged closer and let her transparent figure drift slowly through the wall of the room to see what was inside.

  There was no huge, pulsing machine. There wasn’t even a machine at all.