Phantom Frost

by Alfred Wurr

  “Nah, we’ll colonize space. Go to other planets.”

  He sipped his beer. “Space is far, far more hostile and unforgiving than you think. It’s anathema to life. This world is rare—exceptional, even in the vastness of the universe. Even if leaving it for other planets is ever an option, what a tragedy to kill Mother Earth and all her children, save one, in doing so. What a thankless, cruel barbarism. What a lonely existence.”

  “You’re really bumming me out, man,” Caleb said. “How about some chow?”

  “We just ate. Where do you put it all?” Wilhelm said, smirking.

  The patio doors of the house slid aside as Olivia came out to join us. She wore a bikini and a wide-brimmed hat that shaded her shoulders. She bent to give her husband a kiss on the cheek.

  “You look amazing,” Lucy said.

  Alan stared, his mouth falling open. Lilith rolled her eyes and smacked his shoulder with the back of her hand. He studied the ground before his eyes drifted back. Olivia, for her part, appeared not to notice and sat down on a nearby lawn chair next to her husband.

  “Smoking hot,” Caleb said, eyes as wide as saucers. “Most definitely.” His face reddened, seeing Wilhelm’s face. “Did I say that out loud?”

  “I like your necklace, Lilith,” I said, trying to change the subject. “What’s that symbol?”

  She pulled the necklace forward with her hand, looking down at it. “Oh, it’s an ankh. It’s Egyptian. Alan bought it for me.”

  “Right, it symbolizes life,” he said, looking at me.

  “Mortal existence and the afterlife, actually,” Olivia said, kneeling to scrutinize the teen’s necklace. “The ancient Egyptians believed life extended beyond this mortal coil to a hereafter.”

  “Wow, that’s cool,” Lilith said, looking thoughtful. “How do you know so much about ankhs?”

  “I’m a bit of a history buff,” Olivia said as she regained her feet. “Especially Ancient Egyptian, Greek, and Roman history.”

  “Hey, everybody,” said a voice. Scott waved a hand from the corner of the house. He smiled broadly and wandered over. His white dress shirt hung open, in deference to the heat, and a black tie dangled loosely from his neck. He still wore black slacks, and a pager on his belt. “Hey, buddy,” he said to me. “These the new friends you mentioned on the phone?” He looked around through black-rimmed eyeglasses, nodding amiably at the assembled group.

  As introductions were made, Wilhelm handed Scott a beer and gave him a comradely slap on the shoulder. Scott cracked the can and took a long gulp as I related the story of how I’d met my new friends.

  “Saving people while on the run?” he said, shaking his head slowly. “You’ve got a hero complex, my friend.”

  “I like to think we saved each other,” I said, looking around.

  “I really appreciate you guys watching out for Shivurr,” Scott said, taking a seat. “What happened to the assholes that robbed you?”

  “The cops got them,” Brad said. “At least we think so.”

  “FBI agents came by our hotel to tell us—” Lucy began.

  “They were from the facility, Scott, not FBI,” I said. “I recognized them. We can’t trust what they said, but I think it was mostly true.”

  Scott’s eyes widened. “You’re kidding. How’d you get away? Could you have been followed?” He looked around as if expecting security agents to leap over the stone fence at any moment.

  “They had some car trouble,” I said.

  Alan laughed. “Right. That’s one way of putting it.”

  “It was amazing. Shivurr’s amazing,” Lilith said, touching my shoulder. I shuffled my feet, studying the ground. “He did something, somehow.”

  “Yeah, I don’t doubt it,” he replied, smiling at her. He looked at me. “It snowed in the city last night. Heard it on the radio on the drive. Know anything about that?”

  “Maybe,” I said, avoiding his gaze.

  “Not exactly keeping a low profile,” Scott said, chuckling. “Snow in Las Vegas in the summer. That’s got to be a red flag to Dixon’s boys, if they hear about it.”

  I shrugged. “I heard it was across town.”

  “Yeah, but they’ll know you’re in town now, if word gets back to him. They’ll focus all their efforts here, instead of spreading them around.”

  “I guess I hadn’t thought of that.”

  “Don’t sweat it,” he said, looking sympathetic. “Maybe they won’t catch wind of it. And if they do, it’s a big place. I’ll get you out of town soon enough. Like I said on the phone yesterday, we’ve got lots to talk about. I’ve got something to show you at my place, too.”

  “Hang out a bit first,” Wilhelm said. He stood up and walked over to the barbecue. “I’m just about to grill up a few more burgers.”

  “Sure,” Scott said, putting down his beer. “I just need to go home to change.”

  Thirty minutes later, he reappeared wearing shorts and a T-shirt and took a burger from Wilhelm. Over dinner, conversation soon returned to my delicate situation. Scott stopped me from sharing too much detail with the rest of the group, for their protection. He warned us that the more they knew, the greater the danger they would be in if the Bodhi Group ever found them.

  “No sweat,” Brad said. “We’re going home tomorrow.”

  Scott nodded. “That’s good. It’s safer that way. I’ve got plans to get Shivurr somewhere safe tomorrow anyway.”

  As the day wore on and the temperature cooled, I felt content, sitting among friends, but apprehensive about the future—mine and the planet’s—given what we’d discussed this afternoon. Whatever the greenhouse effect was, it didn’t sound good, especially to me.

  Focus on the positives, I thought, you’re free, you’ve got friends.

  I’d made more friends in the past three days than the past decade. With Wilhelm, especially, a fast friendship had formed; it was as if we’d always been friends. Last night’s adventure had just solidified it.

  As the sun dipped toward the mountains in the west, Scott and I excused ourselves and left for his house, promising to return soon.

  Chapter 14

  Total Recall

  With my hood up and hat pulled down low, I slipped out into the fading light of the day, rushed across the driveway, and hopped into the passenger seat of Scott’s white-and-black 1975 Ford Mustang. I kept low in my seat as he drove the short distance down the street to his home. He backed into the single-car garage and we entered the building through an inside door without needing to go back outside.

  Though it was on the same street, Scott’s house and yard, the latter visible through the windows, were noticeably smaller than the Schmidts’. The house itself had fewer rooms and sat on the east side of the street, backing onto other homes instead of the empty desert. It was a well-kept but sparsely decorated home—lots of chrome, leather, and hardwood floors, with few paintings or photographs—suggesting a bachelor who wasn’t frequently in residence.

  He led me to his office, stooping to pick up a small black house cat with white paws who purred like an idling motorcycle, audible from several feet away. “Hey, Jane.” He scratched behind the cat’s ears, eliciting more utterances of joy. “My sister, Odile, must have dropped her off. I’d better get her something to eat. I’ll be right back.”

  I leaned against the wall by the AC vent until he joined me five minutes later and sank into the only chair in the room, a well-worn reclining black leather office chair. He swivelled it back and forth as we talked while the screensaver drew designs on the monitor of the computer behind him. An old cup of coffee sat on the desk blotter, slowly evaporating, next to a Rolodex and a shiny Newton’s cradle.

  “What is it you wanted to show me?” I asked.

  “Hang on, buddy. First tell me about what happened at the cavern. I didn’t want to say too much in front of the others, but something big went down there. Lots of soldiers and attack helicopters left the base, heading in that direction. Was that you?”

>   “I was there, but it wasn’t for me.”

  He looked relieved. “Good. That makes sense, but I wanted to be sure. I was pretty worried they were being sent to get you at first. Except they seemed to still be looking for you all over Nevada. It wasn’t until I heard that they were talking about extending the search to Utah, Arizona, and California that I began to relax. So, what went on?”

  “It was crazy,” I breathed, reliving the experience. “They were conducting some kind of experiment. Firing beams of light and other things at some pulsating energy sphere floating above the ground. Something went wrong, I guess. These things—fire elementals, I guess you’d call them—appeared out of nowhere. They attacked me, everyone really. I ran; barely got out of there alive.”

  Scott sucked air into his lungs over clenched teeth. “That explains the choppers and truckloads of soldiers. And no one saw you?”

  I shrugged. “One of the soldiers guarding the camp did. I helped him escape the fire elementals and he let me go. He said he’d keep quiet about me being there.”

  “I think he probably did keep quiet. Nothing I heard suggested they knew you were there. Like I said, from what I overheard, they’re looking in other states now. They seemed sure that you’d been to Tonopah, though. After hearing about your adventures with the kids, I now know why.”

  “I don’t suppose they’ll just give up, will they?”

  Scott shook his head and bit his lip. “No chance of that. Director Wallace was furious when they realized you were gone. He tore Dixon a new one, I heard. By my estimate, they had half the security force out looking for you. They probably still do. They’ve got choppers combing the desert, too. Dixon ordered us to check law enforcement databases, and to monitor police scanner frequencies for leads. That’ll be how they came across the Lunar Crater robbery report. Too bad it wasn’t me. I’d have quashed it.”

  “No doubt,” I said. “I’d do it again, though. I hate bullies. Besides, I meant it when I said they saved me too.”

  Scott waved a hand. “I get it, man,” he said. “They seem like good kids and you’re here, safe. They’re lucky you were there.”

  “Yeah, I suppose so,” I said.

  “What about the chamber? Did you find any answers? Anything to explain what the visions mean. Maybe figure out where you’re from?”

  I shook my head. “No, I didn’t get the chance before everything went to hell.”

  “Damn, that sucks,” Scott said, shaking his head. He took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “Maybe you can try again, once things settle down. They can’t keep this up forever. Dixon already had to lift the lockdown. No one could come or go without his authorization, and a mutiny was brewing. Even the security forces were getting tired of it, wanting to go home.”

  “Yeah, maybe,” I said. “If I live that long.”

  Scott smiled. “I’ve got some good news there. Like I said on the phone, with everyone out looking for you, I had a chance to get into the archival vaults.”

  “Aren’t there cameras in there?”

  “Just at the entrance, and I looped the camera feed. It’s overwritten every forty-eight hours or so. In a day, they won’t even be able to find the loop.”

  “Smart,” I said. “What did you find?”

  He yawned, then rubbed his face. “You know how your memory is all messed up, right?”

  “How could I forget?”

  “I think I know why,” Scott said. “What do you know about your biology? How your body works and operates?”

  “Uh, aside from being prone to heat stroke? Not much. I know I can do things people might call magic.”

  “Okay, stupid question. Sorry. It must be weird not knowing anything about your physiology. I just realized that. I mean, humans today, we know tons about our own biology. Even the average person knows they’ve got a heart and kidneys and stuff like that, and the basics of how it works. We know how disease spreads, to wash our hands regularly, all that stuff. But a few hundred years ago, maybe not even that long, they knew jack shit. Even the doctors were clueless. Bleeding people with leeches was the only thing they knew, or thought they knew, to do. But today we tend to forget that and take all this knowledge for granted. But for you, you’re living that now. You don’t really know much about how your body works, if anything. If you have a heart, things like that. Don’t look at me like that. I’m not trying to be a dick. I’m just saying, I get how lousy that must be. It just seems like it’s something we should know intuitively, but why would you? How could you?”

  “Sure, you could fill a library with what I don’t know,” I said.

  “I might be able to help with that,” Scott said. “They’ve been studying you for years now. Doing X-rays, testing your abilities, testing your limits, and recording their findings. What you probably don’t know is they’ve taken samples from you as well. Removed bits with syringes and scalpels. Scraped up any residue left behind when you were melting in the heat and captured any airborne evaporate—steam and such.”

  “Why?” I asked, frowning. “I’ve been helping them with their experiments. Why do this too?”

  “They did it early on. From what I learned, you were fighting them in the early days, before I came on the scene.”

  I shook my head. “Yeah, once I knew that they’d lied and weren’t going to help, I left.”

  “Yeah, well, once that happened, the kid gloves came off, and they started experimenting to find out what you’re made of and how it is you can exist.”

  “Why don’t I remember?”

  “They sedated you somehow and operated on you,” he said, leaning forward in his chair and pointing to my forehead. “They must have messed up your head when they did it.”

  I slid down the wall and sat on the floor. “You’re saying they lobotomized me? And I don’t even remember?”

  “I am so sorry, buddy. It’s awful,” Scott said, looking sad. “People justify all sorts of horrible shit, particularly if they don’t think you’re human.”

  “Like being human is so special when they’ll do this to another sentient being.”

  “I’m sorry, man. It’s terrible,” Scott said quietly. “If it helps, they’d probably do it even if you were human, if they thought that it was for the greater good. If it helped fight the Reds and the evils of socialism. Any crime in the name of national security, right?”

  I said nothing, staring at the wall, simmering. The room grew colder as I fumed. Seeing my agitation, Scott stayed quiet for several moments, crossing his arms and hunching his shoulders against the chill, allowing me time to process the news.

  Finally he spoke again. “The files said the crystals are composed of several elements that have never before been found on earth. The scientists have been creaming their jeans, inventing new names to describe them, like arborium, cryominium, freonium, rorubium, tekinium, polarinium, and others I can’t remember. They can’t wait to add them to the periodic table. The dumbasses don’t realize that’s not likely to ever happen. No way the Bodhi Group is going to announce this to the public if they can avoid it. And they’ll do whatever it takes to ensure they don’t ever have to.”

  “What’s so great about some new elements?” I asked with a frown.

  Scott’s eyebrows climbed his forehead. “Are you kidding? These elements are all kinds of weird. They’re still trying to figure them out, based on what I read. That’s just in raw elemental form. Blended and formed into crystals, they get even stranger. It seems memory storage is only one function. They’re also tied to your abilities, your powers, somehow, but they don’t understand a lot of that yet. It’s possible you used to be able to do even more than you can do now.”

  Scott took a swallow from the old cup of coffee, looked inside, and grimaced before continuing. “These crystals, according to the files, have unique properties. They attract each other slowly across great distance, arranging themselves into larger crystals. The samples they took, placed into a water medium, formed into several crystal
s visible to the naked eye.”

  “How large?” I asked.

  Scott pulled back on a ball in the Newton’s cradle and let it go. “About the size of one of these balls,” he declared as they clacked back and forth. “They sent several of them to labs around the country.”

  I shrugged. “But how does this help us?”

  “I’ve got the locations of the labs,” Scott said. “Dug them out of the mainframe. Maybe we can figure out a way to get the samples back.”

  “But what’s the point?” I asked, raising my voice. “My memories are gone.”

  Scott shook his head. “No, they’re not. According to the files, you can reintegrate them. Your memories should still be intact. The crystals act like non-volatile storage, sort of like a computer floppy disc. They tested this in the experiments that they did on you. They had to do it repeatedly to map out your memories, at least roughly, so they could selectively remove memories. They wanted you to forget what they’d done and keep you compliant, so this was critical to their plans.”

  “But there’s nothing selective about my memory loss. My memory is just a black void before I came to the Institute.”

  Scott nodded, regarding me with a sad face. “Yeah, the selective removal came later, when they were messing with your memories formed since coming to the Bodhi Institute. I guess they either messed up early on and botched all your earlier memories or didn’t want you to remember why you came in the first place, so you wouldn’t try to leave again. I just don’t know.”

  I sagged lower against the wall and stared into space.

  “You get it, right?” Scott said. He got up and walked over to where I sat, crouched down, and put his hand on my shoulder. “You might be able to get all your memories back, and any powers that might go along with them. Everything.”

  A slow smile spread across my face as I turned to look at him. “Getting into those labs isn’t going to be easy.”

  “True, but I took something that might help us,” Scott said. He held out his hand and pulled me to my feet. “Come with me.”