The Perfect Soldier

by B D Grant

  On the other side of my bed, the nurse asks, “What’s so funny?”

  Karen chirps, “She’s awake.”

  The nurse walks around the bed, her legs coming into view. She leans over like Karen from a little farther back, and a blurry halo becomes the outline of the nurse. She must have given me more medication when she was on the other side of me, because I can feel myself slipping from consciousness suddenly. A light flashes in one of my eyes and then moves to the other. My vision turns dark as the bright light leaves, quickly fading to black.

  “She’s playing tricks on us. Miss Jameson is still very much asleep,” she assures her.

  I hear Karen move closer to me. She speaks so softly that I can barely hear her. “Is my sister talking to you in your sleep?”

  Sister? The only person that talks to me is Dream Walker, and I don’t know anything about her.

  Could Dream Walker be related to Karen? If I could do anything physical in this state, I would shrug. Why not? Them being related would explain the feelings I got toward Karen from Dream Walker when they were both being held in the basement. If my vision wasn’t completely black now, I would study Karen’s face for signs of a resemblance, but I doubt it would reveal much. After all, I hadn’t put it together until Karen brought it up.

  The squeaky shoes stop, followed by a smooth rub; I imagine the nurse pivoting in place. Sure enough, when the nurse speaks, she is facing my bed again. “What was that?”

  Karen moves away from me to ask the nurse, “When will she wake up?”

  My hearing is quickly fading again. It’s the most inconvenient timing because I desperately want to know the same thing. I strain to make out the nurse’s reply. The last thing I hear is a distant, “Your guess is as good as mine.”

  Being able to hear, see (somewhat), and feel again, even for that tiny sliver of time, leaves me drained. The fatigue has me drifting back to the unwelcome darkness. My agitation refuses to give way or allow rest, and the longer it goes on, the more agitated I become. I think of what Karen must have looked like, picturing her dragging me out of the collapsing hospital wing. She very well could be the sole reason I survived; if you could call my current state surviving.

  This train of thought ultimately leads me to Kelly. In one day, my life was saved twice.

  When Kelly and I were freeing the prisoners in the basement, it was Kelly who had knocked me out of the way before a bomb went off. The Rogues had set it, most likely to keep us from going after them. They had Cassidy with them, and they must have known we would try to chase them down as long as they had one of ours.

  It’s easier to picture Kelly saving me. He fits the bill of a night-in-shining-armor with his big, Dynamar physique. Dillon Weston would have been my ideal savior, but beggars shouldn’t be choosers. I do have to say it would be better if Kelly had gallantly swept me off my feet and carried me out of the explosion’s reach instead of slamming into me like a linebacker. He’s definitely got the aptitude to play in the national football league, if nothing else.

  I mentally flinch as I imagine how stupid I must have looked in that moment as I flew through the air into one of the cells having no clue who or what had just rammed into the side of me. I sure don’t make for much of a damsel in distress. But I did witness my knight in shining armor showing his less-than-gallant side at the church after the raid.

  As he raged, he had looked like a man on fire with his auburn hair. It was the captured Rogues, brought to the church to be sorted, that caused him to snap.

  Kelly pummeled a female Rogue viciously after she was unloaded in that packed, church parking lot. His anger, as well placed as it was, was an unstoppable freight train in that moment. No Tempero present could soothe the rage he released onto that woman. The sight of his arms and shoulders heaving as his delivered blow after blow plays out in front of me as if I’m in the audience of a motion picture. Not any of those Seraphim had been able to get Kelly off her.

  There was a girl my age shouting as loud as she could for someone, anyone to stop the beating. I gathered that Kelly was attacking her mother. She was watching her mother being hurt and for that reason if nothing else I was driven to the center of the fight. I ran at him because I wanted him to stop, because another lifeless body wouldn’t have helped anyone. I remember thinking, What am I going to do?

  Kelly was doing his own shouting. He kept repeating the name Anne, and asking the woman how she could have done that, though he gave her no chance between his punches to answer. It was clear that she had killed someone he cared about during the raid. Knowing that he had some justification for what he was doing only slowed me as I maneuvered around the bigger bodies trying fruitlessly to pull him back.

  More Tempero congregated around the pack of Dynamar who were forming a barrier between the Rogues and everyone else in the church parking lot. After all, anyone else might decide that it was time to distribute their own form of justice.

  It wasn’t until I got to Kelly that a Dynamar was finally able to get a grip on him. I caught his attention when I grabbed his arm. He didn’t calm down until I got right in his ear demanding that he stop. I almost dropped my hand as his eyes met mine, second guessing myself for getting between him and the woman he so obviously wanted to pulverize. As I stared up at him I could see the fire in his eyes extinguish. From the fire came an incredulously hard gaze that told me what he was thinking: my intervention had drawn him to his senses.

  Somehow I was able to reach him when no one else could. Not even Tempero, which I am not. Even if I were, the other Temps should have been working on him long before I ran up.

  I freeze the scene in my mind, still remembering as if looking from a distance. I want to examine the incident objectively, but there’s so much I don’t understand.

  How was he so unaffected? Can Dynamar, being the hotheads that they are, experience such a rage that even Tempero are rendered ineffective? Could he be a Seraphim oddity like me?

  I revisit the image in my head, although I have no ideas as to what I should be looking for. If we share a mark from God or any mythical creature, it escapes me. I don’t have any birthmarks, and most of Kelly’s exposed skin was so badly burned from the basement explosion that there is no way to make out external identifiers anyway, nothing that signifies some greatness within.

  The only thing I am remotely comfortable taking away from the encounter is that my ability might branch into Tempero territory. It doesn’t explain Kelly’s momentarily immunity.

  “You shouldn’t have stopped me,” he told me as I escorted him away from the woman so that her injuries could be tended to, and so they wouldn’t have to worry about Kelly going at her again. Once he cooled off, he never came right out and asked me how I had done it, but when I told him that I was a Veritatis, not a Tempero, he looked as equally confused as I was as to why I had managed to bring him out if his rage when no one else could.

  A door shutting wakes me as it makes contact with its frame. The eyelids I look through open with no difficulty. They are not my eyes I’m looking through. I’m connected to someone with a functional motor response. Excitement bubbles from inside me; finally, I’ve been pulled from my mind’s darkness.

  Ssshhh, Dream Walker hisses at me inside of her head. I can feel her desire to quiet my giddiness. She is in no mood.

  She is lying down, staring up at the ceiling. I am relieved that I’ve finally connected with her and excited to no longer be alone. It’s impossible, though, to hear what she’s trying to share with me over the clatter of my own emotions.

  Her mind goes blank when a door clinks open from behind her. It shuts much more softly this time.

  She strains to see who’s in the room with her but is unable to move. This gets my full attention. There aren’t any reflective surfaces around her, so I cannot see what has stopped her from turning her head, but I can feel what she is feeling. Her skin tells me what I need to know. There is something tight, some sort of a strap, across her forehead. Her wrists and
ankles are bound as well, and any attempt to move them yields nothing but resistance.

  I realize that she’s not on a bed either. Against her back, buttocks, and legs feels like a hard surfaced table. She squirms to show me that her thighs and midsection are also being held down. She was right to not want me to feel excitement.

  The door opening again pushes her right into the range of terror.

  The voice of an old man speaks out somewhere off to her left. He sounds like he could be a caring grandfather sitting down to chat with a stubborn child. “Your handlers tell me that you are refusing to eat.”

  Dream Walker stares straight up at the long, fluorescent light bulb on the ceiling, ignoring the man and me.

  He leans over, close to her face. I urge her to look at him, but she refuses. Her vision begins to blur, turning the elongated light into a hazy cloud of brightness. The only thing I can make out from her peripheral vision is the man’s gray hair. With the bright light beaming down on the back of the man’s head and the eyes I’m looking through refusing to budge, his face is incomprehensible.

  Her silence endures his scrutinizing stare. “Not talking, are we?”

  The halo of gray vanishes from the corner of her eye. We listen as he moves away from the side of the table. His footsteps travel to the right side of the room. They pause there, and I hear another door open.

  “I don’t need you for this one,” he says from the doorway.

  I can hear someone walking away as the door clinks gently as it shuts behind the old man.

  As if the man can hear me, I whisper in Dream Walker’s head, Are you alright?

  Her response is cold. This is a bad time. You should go. She doesn’t want me here with her.

  You connected with me, I snap.

  Did I? she asks, allowing the question to float in her mind. Her insinuation is blatant.

  It had to be you, I tell her, recapping what I can remember of the blackness so that she understands. She doesn’t seem to be paying me much attention so I flat out tell her, I don’t know how to connect.

  A machine in close proximity to the top of her head comes to life, giving us both a start. She squirms enough to catch sight of the machine looming over her. I’d seen something like it before when Mom took me along to one of Dad’s doctors appointments when I was little. They let me watch through a plate glass window as Dad was laid out on a padded table and instructed not to move as it slid into a cylindrical scanner much like this one.

  From this angle, the hole in the middle of the machine seems like an open mouth waiting to be fed. In my memory, Dad had a nice person standing next to the table, gently informing him of what was happening at each step. Of course, there’s nothing like that here.

  A light vibration runs below Dream Walker’s shoulder blades. The table begins its slow decent toward the hole. She wiggles against the straps covering her body searching for a weak point where she could get a hand, foot, anything free. The only thing her struggling gets her are sharp tinges of pain as her shoulder blades dig into the unyielding table.

  I’m not going to let you go through this alone, I say, wanting to give her solace, as if I had the power to end our connection. I pause before cautiously asking, What are they doing to you?

  The old man’s voice comes in through a speaker somewhere in the room. “Let’s get going.”

  A banging starts up from inside the machine.

  Hope you’re not claustrophobic, she tells me without speaking a word. Her head moves into the small, gray tube. The table stops once she has been inserted shoulder-deep inside the machine.

  Claustrophobia is a definite concern. If the strap wasn’t keeping her immobile, she would only be able to lift her head a couple of inches without hitting the machine. She closes her eyes, shutting me out from the light of the outside world.

  She feels me tense in the darkness and tries to take the edge off by imaging open meadows, vast mountains, and picturesque beaches complete with the sounds of lapping waves to offset the banging that has yet to stop. The landscapes are engrossing. Why can’t I come up with these sorts of things when I’m alone in my mind?

  You can, she says, showing me a memory of her burying her toes in sand so soft that it tickles, focusing on the color of her light blue-painted toenails. The sand is cool on her skin, but the memory is so vivid that I start to feel the warm sun beating down on her.

  Rustling from the other room drifts in through the speaker. Dream Walker remains in her memory, but the sound of waves breaking are replaced by a door swinging open hard from inside her room. Hurried steps rush to the side of the table. Her eyes remain closed, but the memory of the beach fades as she listens to the movement outside of the machine.

  The table vibrates again as it starts moving, this time spitting Dream Walker out. She peeks out through one eye, her vision still partially blocked form the tube.

  The man is right beside the table. His head is turned away from Dream Walker as he looks at something behind him.

  “That’s enough,” he barks.

  The table stops abruptly. Dream Walker shuts her eye before the man turns back to face her. His voice moves closer. “I know you’re linked to one of them now.”

  Dream Walker remains cool. “I’ve told you, there aren’t any more.”

  “Your brain is telling a very different story.”

  “You’re mistaken.”

  In a hushed voice, he asks, “It’s the girl, isn’t it?”

  Chills run over Dream Walker, and I’m not sure which of us they come from. He’s talking about me.

  “Has it changed?” he asks loudly.

  “No change,” the unseen person replies.

  Dream Walker wiggles beneath the straps. “Hope you kept the receipt, because this thing is faulty. I am all that’s left.”

  “You need to listen closely,” he says, his breath hitting her shoulder.

  “And if I refuse?”

  “I’m not talking to you, Sidney” the man spits.

  Your name is Sidney? I feel her eyes roll at me under her eyelids. Wait…does he mean that he’s talking to me? How does he know about me?

  He’s toying with me, she says in her head. He knows nothing about you, she assures me.

  But he knows I’m a girl, I rebuke.

  In a deep voice he purrs, “I’m coming for you—”

  He knows I don’t connect with male Seraphim. Don’t let him get to you. You’re safe. I’m the one stuck in a room with him.

  Stop talking, I bark. I can’t hear him!

  “You may be under the illusion that the worst is over, but it isn’t. Everything is playing out as planned.”

  Don’t listen to him. You’re safe, she insists.

  Hush!

  “You may feel secure, but that won’t last.”

  Maybe Sidney is telling the truth; if he did know about me, then he would know that I can’t feel anything in my current state.

  “I know where you and your friends are, and I’m coming for you.”

  I want to see his face. I try to will Dream Walker to open her eyes, but she’s determined not to acknowledge him. Nothing he says is registering with me as a lie, but my ability might not work since I’m hearing through Sidney’s mind.

  “None of you are safe,” he continues, his tone growing more menacing by the word.

  You’re safe, Sidney repeats, continuing to be unmoved by his threats.

  “Running and hiding won’t change the outcome.”

  He’s trying to get under my skin, I think to myself. Sidney echoes my sentiment. Don’t let him get in your head.

  The man’s breath disappears from her shoulder. “You may doubt what I’m telling you, and that would be unwise,” he says. He taps on the table before stepping farther away. The vibrations are tiny, but I can feel them against her right arm. “If doubt does dance in your pretty little mind, ask your father how doubting me worked out for him.”

  I’m not in my own body, yet I feel as though I’ve b
een kicked in the stomach. Sidney isn’t as shocked by his statement as I am, but she opens her eyes nonetheless.

  “I’ll see you soon,” he says nonchalantly. Her eyes find his back as he exits through the door from which he first entered. The door shuts with the same ‘thunk’ as before. Dream Walk— Sidney tries to ease the sting of what he said.

  That wasn’t proof that he knows you specifically. The table beneath her moves again, sliding her back into the machine.

  I beg your pardon if me believing the scary man offends you, but I don’t need him—whoever he is—naming off everyone I care about in order to believe that he means business. I mean, look at what he’s done to you!

  The table stops once her shoulders make it inside. Her vision is bathed in darkness again as she closes her eyes trying to relax within the tight space. If you’re that worried about him, why don’t you warn someone?

  Has she not paid attention to my current situation? And how would you suggest I do that, Ouija board?

  With your mouth, you brat.

  That word sparks mixed emotions. It aggravates me, for one. But it also makes me yearn to see Jake in all his annoying glory. He’s been calling me a brat for as far back as I can remember.

  With Sidney’s eyes closed, it’s impossible for me to stop picturing Jake’s stupid face.

  He’s cute, Sidney comments.

  Immediately defensive, I snap, Mind your own business!

  Break your connection with me if you don’t want to be here.

  How?

  Without an explanation, she pushes me. The sensation is different from when she’s blocked me out before. She’s slowly showing me that this resistance I’m feeling is how to end our connection.

  I push back, trying my best to copy what she’s doing, and then suddenly she’s gone. I’m back, floating in my darkness all alone. Learning how to do that was a lot easier than I expected. Next time, I decide, I’m going to ask her to show me how she connects with me.