The Perfect Soldier

by B D Grant

  Both of them laugh. I don’t. Shaking my head, I groan, “Really, Dad?”

  He doesn't apologize. “You got nail clippers in that bucket of yours?” he asks.

  The nurse sets the plastic tub on the counter beside the bed. "I can grab a pair. Be right back.”

  I follow after him giving my dad a quick wave bye, not wanting to be anywhere near the room while bath time is going on. He will most likely be badgering the poor guy the entire time about whether there has been any word as to my mom’s whereabouts.

  Maybe getting cleaned up will bring a little bit of the perky man he was less than two months ago, before he was taken, back to the surface. Once he feels settled, I know he will be sending me out to question everyone in this building about what’s going on. Poor Dad isn’t a Veritatis like me, so I will have to be his personal lie detector until everything has calmed down, or at least until Mom reappears. She’s a Veritatis too, and she was a good one from what I’ve been told, back before I was born. From what little I’ve gathered from Mitchell Lanton on the ride from the raid to the regrouping site where the ambulances were waiting, my mom took off in the early morning hours before the raid.

  She skipped out of the motel her and Mitchell Lanton were staying at. Like my mom, Mitchell was searching for Seraphim he believed were taken by Rogues, so at my uncle’s introduction, they joined forces. She and Mitchell Lanton had been following leads, which lead to the unearthing of the Rogue school’s existence.

  When Mitchell realized my mother wasn’t in her room the morning of the raid, he had Uncle Will send over a couple of his people to check out the motel for foul play in the early hours before the raid. He believed that she left willingly. I have my suspicions. Too much has happened for me to fathom getting one parent back after all this time only to turn around and discover that the other has vanished in the mist of the chaos.

  I stroll down the hall heading for the large window at its end. Most of the patient rooms are open, with hospital staff walking to and fro, performing various tasks in preparation for new patients or treating the ones who were brought in with Dad and me.

  Kelly and Boston are sharing one of the rooms that I pass. Both of them had been students at the school we raided. They were fortunate enough to realize what was happening, and instead of fighting us, they helped us. If it wasn’t for them, we may not have located the basement. I think for a second about popping my head in and seeing how Kelly is doing. After all, he was the one who pushed me to safety just before the Rogues set off an explosion in the basement, but he’s probably going to ask me questions that I can’t answer. While Dad was getting checked out by the medic at the regrouping site after the raid, Kelly managed to lose his cool on a Rogue captive who was being evaluated in the parking lot. There were plenty of Tempero to stop him, but they seemed unable to calm his temper as he waylaid the Rogue. Even his fellow Dynamar couldn’t completely get him off of her. It wasn’t until I managed to get my hands on him that he settled down. I don’t know how I was able to calm him or if I was really the one who did so, but he clearly thought so. As I think of the compromising questions that he could ask in regards to my ability, I speed up, hoping he was distracted enough to not notice my passing.

  As if on cue, Mitchell Lanton appears in the hall emerging from the elevator. Kelly had been Mitchell’s primary target to extract during the raid. It had been Kelly whom Mitchell Lanton had been searching for before and during his time with my mother. Mitchell is pushing an elderly woman in a wheelchair. The woman carries an odd-shaped smile on her face that isn’t affected by the sounds of discomfort coming from quite a few of the rooms. As one of her hands grip the armrest of the wheelchair almost anxiously, her other arm lays unmoving across her lap.

  "You should be really proud of Kelly after what he did today,” Mitchell tells her as I coming up on them.

  Her smile deepens as I walk by, making the drooping corner of her mouth more noticeable. “I’ve been proud of that boy since the day he was born,” she beams.

  I continue down the hall slowly slightly as I begin to hear an argument going on in the last room I pass before making it to my destination. I steal a glance inside the room as I go by. The argument is between the room’s single occupant and two female nurses. A woman who looks as though she has Down Syndrome who I would guess to be in her mid-thirties is fighting to remain in her bed as the nurses try to persuade her to get into the wheelchair waiting next to the bed. She is quite pale with dark circles surrounding both eyes, but her sickly appearance doesn’t seem to dissuade her vigor.

  She points at me as I pass shouting, “You, you!”

  I jump past the doorway to get out of her sight. I make it to the window, regretting my decision to come this way as the woman continues to wail. I try to find something out the window to stare at, attempting to look as if I had been here a while in case one of the nurses checks the hallway to see who upset their patient even further. Nothing I see outside helps me drown out the commotion from the woman refusing to budge despite the nurses’ persuasive pleadings.

  “You don’t understand. It isn’t safe,” she insists.

  The window overlooks an inconspicuous side entrance into the hospital, a different one than Dad and I had entered through. A car pulls under the short covered entrance, blocking my view of its occupants. The lights beaming down on the side of the building cast shadows as people exit the vehicle and quickly go inside. Judging from the small shadows grouped closely together followed by a much taller shadow, my guess is that more kids from the school are being brought in. They walk inside without any staff rushing out to meet them; I take it to mean that none of them are injured. Thinking about what they have experienced today, though, is enough to know that they can’t really be expected to be perfectly fine. The psychological damage alone will affect everyone to some extent. My only hope should be that they aren’t physically injured on top of witnessing today’s events.

  The parking lot connected to the side entrance is full of vehicles, many of which I recognize from the church parking lot. The SUVs used during the raid that could pass as privately-owned and not peppered with bullet holes are also scattered about the lot. Based on the chaos below and all the ambulances I’ve seen there must be multiple floors where they are taking the wounded.

  “It will take less than five minutes once we get down to radiology,” a nurse coaxes from inside the room.

  “Don’t touch me,” the woman snaps. The tone she is taking with the nurses doesn’t sound like one she is comfortable using. “Please,” she adds quietly.

  “You are coming with us, Karen,” the other nurse demands, sounding accustomed to the stern voice the woman had failed to maintain. A silence falls over the room.

  Then, sheets begin to ruffle without protest accompanying it. They must be picking her up themselves as soft grunts in near unison begin. A sudden scream from inside the room causes me to jump. The hair on the back of my neck stands up. Her scream wasn’t that alarming, not enough so for such a reaction. I examine my hands and arms, trying to grasp my bearings as deja vu sets in. Am I really awake? I have heard that exact scream before, but only in my dreams, only when I was connected with Dream Walker.

  The arms in front of me are mine, not Dream Walker’s, so I am most assuredly conscious. There is no way I’m looking through Dream Walker’s eyes, but I’ve only heard that scream coming from her side of the world.

  I heard that scream before as Dream Walker begged Rogues through the window of her cell door to leave the woman alone as they were carrying her off.

  I separate from my perch by the window, no longer concerned with what the nurses might think. How do I start, I wonder. Hey, there is an old lady you were being held captive with in that prison you just got out of. Can you tell me about her? I know that you know her because I can see and hear everything she can, but only when I’m sleeping. It sounds like something that might get me committed. As I turn the corner into the room, I decide start by asking if the nu
rses need any help and then go from there.

  The patient, Karen, is in the wheelchair, looking unsettled by the change of location.

  “Help me,” she begs as my eyes lock onto her. “They won’t let me be.”

  A nurse pushes her toward the door in my direction.

  “I need to talk to her,” I tell the nurses, trying to sound assertive.

  “Tell them we have to stay,” Karen insists. Her voice drops to a near whisper. “They aren’t done with us.”

  One of the nurses leans over beside Karen, “You are in a safe place, Miss LaCourt. The doctor only wants a couple of x-rays to make sure you aren’t hurt anywhere. I promise that we will bring you right back to your room.” She takes Karen’s hand in hers, but Karen isn’t buying it. The nurse doesn’t let go as she nods at her coworker to keep pushing the chair toward the door.

  “You are going to have to wait,” the nurse pushing the chair informs me. “You can talk to her when we get done, if she is up to it.”

  I am forced to step aside as they roll her into the hallway. I follow behind them, trying to decide if it is important or not that my questions be heard by the nurses. Down the hall, a group of people are stepping off of the elevator and beginning to disperse. Nurses and support staff split off in two directions as they go about their various tasks. The last to exit the elevator are two men dressed in civilian clothing, offset by the hospital staffs’ scrubs and the raiders and wounded students’ dirt-covered attire that surrounds them.

  Karen keeps grabbing for the wheels of her chair to stop it from moving, causing the nurses and me to lurch to a halt. The nurse next to her fights to regain control of Karen’s hands.

  Mitchell is strolling down the hall again, coming from the opposite side of the hallway and again heading toward Kelly and Boston’s room, this time with an arm full of soft drinks from the vending machines. He makes it a couple steps past the two men and then looks over his shoulder at them before going into the room.

  Karen is exactly as Dream Walker had described in her pleas to their captors: she is not a Seraphim. Thanks to the small dose of the Sensaa ability floating in my DNA, I feel the tug of familiarity to both nurses whom I have never met before; that they are both Seraphim, but not Karen.

  Karen rocks back and forth in the chair despite the nurse still holding her hands. “Please go back to my room, please?” she whimpers.

  The two men go to the nurses’ station. They begin talking to the lady sitting behind the three-foot tall counter separating the nurses’ station from the hallway.

  “We will, as soon as we are done, I promise,” the nurse holding Karen’s hands tells her.

  One of the men walk around the counter as Mitchell appears at the door of Kelly and Boston’s room. He is no longer holding the drinks. His gaze flickers over the nurses’ station. He peaks back inside the room, saying something before shutting the door behind him. He leans against the wall next to the door, watching a woman walking down the hall in a tired, depressed slump, still wearing her torn camouflage pants from the raid. He gets her attention watching her until her eyes finally meet his as she gets close. His eyes flicker behind her, and she stops in front of him. Mitchell takes his phone out, does some button-pushing, and then hands it to her. As she examines the phone, she rolls her shoulders back. The tiredness retreats from her face as she looks down at the phone. She gives him a polite smile as she hands the phone back and starts talking to him, taking a position next to him against the wall. She casually angles herself to face Mitchell, but I can tell that she’s keeping the nurses’ station in view.

  One of the men talks closely to the woman behind the nurses’ station, and the other is casually glancing around the hallway. Mitchell and the woman in camouflage are chatting lightly. He flinches when she grasps his arm as if it were injured. They must be doing it for the man at the nurses’ station’s sake, because I know that Mitchell’s arm is perfectly fine. He was one of the raiders with me in the basement, and he drove Dad, me, and several others to the regrouping site. When I look back to the man in front of the nurses’ station, I see that he’s now staring at Karen.

  The nurses, like everyone else meandering about, haven’t noticed the tension. With the man’s growing interest in Karen, I walk around the nurse pushing her chair and stop in front of it. The wheelchair comes to a prompt halt before colliding with my shines.

  The nurse snaps at me, “What are you doing? Move out the way,” while the nurse holding Karen’s hand releases it in preparation to deal with me next.

  “Maybe we should wait a minute,” I say hesitantly, looking over my shoulder at the nurses’ station. I kneel down to Karen, “What did you mean that they weren’t done with us?”

  A shrill voice down the hall begins yelling, “Code Black! Code Black!” from the nurses station.

  Both of the nurses standing around Karen snap to attention. Doors begin slamming, shutting randomly throughout the floor. A door slams shut next to us as a patient is walking in front of it with one arm in a sling and a brace around his knee. He jumps back in surprise and trips. He tries catching himself with his one good arm. The two nurses rush over to help him.

  I turn to see what caused code black, whatever that is, to be called. The lady behind the nurses’ station is struggling with the man behind the counter. They fight over something in his jacket. She continues shouting the code as she wrestles with him. The other man has turned away from the counter and is unzipping his jacket as he heads in our direction. Karen sticks her head out to look around me, trying to see what I’m looking at.

  In a flash, Mitchell is in the middle of the hall, blocking the man’s path. The woman who was standing with Mitchell charges at full speed toward the man behind the counter, who’s still trying to fight off the lady.

  I grab the metal sides on the front of Karen’s wheelchair as she begins crying in fear, and I push her as fast as I can away from what’s happening behind me. I don’t know what code black means, but it ain’t good. Getting to Karen’s room at the end of the hall is the only thing my mind can process with all of the chaos. The hallway becomes a smorgasbord of yelling.

  Three consecutive shots ring out behind us. Karen’s crying ceases. My first thought is that she has been shot. I scan the front of her for signs of an entry wound as I run. There is no blood, and her gown doesn’t appear to have any holes in it. She hasn’t stopped peering around me.

  Her mouth gapes open as one of the men shouts, “Abominations have no right to live!”

  Karen’s hands fly up to cover her eyes from whatever is unfurling behind me. I speed up only steps away from her room. I turn the chair slightly in preparation for the sharp turn out of the hall and into the room, and it’s then that Karen sneaks a peak between her fingers and gasps.

  A roar erupts from behind me. The loud, floor-shaking explosion engulfs me. I’m blinded from the explosion and my hearing is shot, but I’m still running.

  Something drops from the ceiling above me. I catch a flash of it, but I don’t have time to look up before it plows into the top of my head and then smashes into both shoulders. I collapse from the impact. I haven’t quite made it to the room yet, but my momentum sends Karen’s wheelchair sailing from sight before I collapse. The ringing in my ears and pain radiating from my head make it impossible to get my bearings. All that surrounds me is an indistinguishable cloud of debris. As more wreckage falls from the ceiling, I fight the sharp tinges coming from my shoulders and cover my head as best I can with my arms. My vision darkens, and I think for a second that the lights have been shut off. But the ringing in my ears is fading into a deafness that can only mean I’m about to lose consciousness.

  As my hearing dwindles, I feel my body sliding against the dirty floor. The pain in my upper body spikes to a nauseating high. I force my eyelids open, thinking that the sensation must be my mind playing tricks on me. I am moving, slowly, but it isn’t me controlling the movement.

  A pair of dust-covered Crocs is all I
can make out by my head. I’ve worn shoes like that before. They look just as ugly and comfortable as I remember. It is the person wearing them who is dragging me.

  Another explosion goes off. I know only because I feel the ground vibrate beneath my body as it had under my feet during the first explosion. It causes the person dragging me to lose hold of my wrists. My head hits the vinyl floor, and the world around me goes black.

  Being unconscious is much like being asleep, except there’s more static. I’m distracted from the unease when I realize that I’m not alone.

  “Is that you?” I ask, waiting for Dream Walker to speak up. She is working on me like a Tempero would, taking away all of the discomfort I’m experiencing and sympathetically replacing it with peace.

  My last five minutes of consciousness replays for the both of us to witness. It hurts me watching it, but this time the pain isn’t coming from me. The replay ends with me losing consciousness after the second explosion. A heart erupting with cold heartbreak and hot rage flows over my subconscious.

  “It’s okay,” I say gently.

  The female voice that answers isn’t Dream Walker’s. “I’m so sorry, sweetheart.” The voice is my mother’s. “I wish I could trade places with you. I would take it all from you in a heartbeat.”

  Hearing mom as I have heard Dream Walker in my sleep is shocking. Has she been connecting with me too, and I didn’t know it? Can I connect with anyone? The sadness she’s experiencing makes it hard for me to concentrate on the revelation.

  “Mom, it’s okay. Dad’s alive. I got him out.”

  She replays me sitting in Dad’s hospital room before I had fell asleep beside him. Our connection begins to slip as the staticy feeling returns. Mom’s sadness grows exponentially as I struggle to stay with her as a murkiness tries to divide us. “I’m sorry I’m not with you,” she says, with a level of deep emotional attached to her words that I have never experienced myself before.

  “I’m just tired,” I tell her, the murkiness growing thicker with every thought-out word despite my efforts to fend it off.