Dragonfly Girl

by Marti Leimbach

  I imagine that Volkov is a criminal like everyone involved in kidnapping Will and me, but there’s a chance he doesn’t know what happened. Perhaps all Volkov has been told is that a girl with a special process for recovering the dead is in Moscow.

  “That’s a very kind offer. I am more than grateful,” I say as politely as I can, “but I’d like to go home.”

  Volkov nods as though he understands. “Of course you do. But little girls grow up. Eventually, they leave their homes and make their way in new places.”

  “Sir, I can’t,” I say, my voice almost a whisper.

  He leans toward me. “Oh, but you can. You only need to say yes.”

  I say nothing. Volkov adjusts himself in his seat, then says, “Tell me why not.” He leans back, his brow furrowed, taking a long look at me as though sizing me up. “After all, we are negotiating, you and me.” He makes a gesture with his finger, pointing it back and forth between us to emphasize the idea that we are in this together, brokering a deal. “I have made you a generous offer and you have declined. That is perfectly acceptable, but now it is only right that you tell me why you have declined so that I have the opportunity to meet your demands.”

  I have no demands, other than my plea for them to help Will, but I don’t dare mention that again. “I just want to go back to America,” I say, stumbling through the words.

  “America,” he repeats, as though confused over why anyone would want to live there. “Has it been so great a life for you? I’ve been led to believe it has been very hard. For your mother, in particular. Until her illness she worked two jobs at the same time, if I am not mistaken.”

  He’s not mistaken. Two jobs and still things were very tight. But I’d do anything to be back on US soil.

  I shrug. “It’s my country.”

  He draws in a breath. “Patriotism is a fine trait,” he says, regarding me with a serious expression. “Is there a second reason other than this admirable patriotism?”

  A second reason? How about that I’ve been dragged here against my will, tortured, and forced to live as a prisoner? Or the fact that they put Will’s dead body in front of me so I could demonstrate on it? Or that he’s made me afraid over the tiniest of infractions, including not wanting to do vodka shots with him in his ghastly living room?

  But I won’t say any of that. Not if I know what’s good for me. Anyway, he’d refute anything I said, explaining it as a “misunderstanding” or “miscommunication” or some gaffe on Vasiliev’s part. But he can’t change my allegiance to my birthplace. I’ve given him the one reason for which he has no solution. “Only that,” I say.

  Volkov nods. “Thank you for being honest with me. It is important for me to know what stops you from pursuing a life in science here in Moscow. Still, you cannot blame me for wishing that a person with a mind such as yours could be persuaded to use it for the benefit of the people of Russia. If you wish to reverse your decision, you know where to find Uncle Misha, no?”

  I force a smile. “Yes, I do,” I say. “Thank you.”

  We finish our coffee with no more talk of deals. He tells me the garden is visited nightly by an owl. I half expect one to fly out as though at Volkov’s command. But the owl stays hidden. The sky darkens with almost imperceptible slowness. At last, the housekeeper arrives, asking if we would like more coffee.

  “I believe a car is waiting for me,” I say. A car. It’s laughable. What I mean is a dirty van.

  “Of course,” Volkov says.

  We say our goodbyes. I wonder if he really will allow me to leave Moscow, to go home. A man like Volkov can summon up any number of scientists. Perhaps he’ll move swiftly on to the next. It’s only a question of money, of which he has lots, and power, of which he has even more.

  On my way out, I ask the housekeeper if I can use the bathroom and am directed to a door at one end of the hall.

  The bathroom must be three times the size of my bedroom at home, with a large mirror and another gleaming floor. The ceiling is so high the room echoes, and when I wash my hands it’s at a sink so ornate it’s like a fountain. Beside it, mounted on the wall, is a lovely glass cabinet. I see it is filled with curious trinkets and am drawn to a set of crystal jars with delicate stoppers. I imagine there are stories attached to each one, just as there had been a story about the pot of white flowers in Volkov’s living room. And then my gaze focuses on a single jar with a thick base filled with tiny air bubbles that have been trapped during its making. It has a ground-glass stopper and stenciled lettering across its front, written in English.

  This is an old apothecary glass, just like those in the dining room back at Mellin. I gently open the cabinet door, remove the jar, and hold it up to the light. The jar isn’t only similar to Munn’s laboratory glass, it is Munn’s laboratory glass. A tiny sticker underneath reveals the name “G.P. Munn.”

  A chill passes through me. Why would Munn’s glassware be in Volkov’s house? It doesn’t seem possible. A Russian man so enthralled by science that he is willing to pay for me to stay here and work on post-death recovery just happens to have one of Munn’s laboratory glasses in his cabinet? It’s too great a coincidence. I feel my stomach lurch; everything I think I understand is coming apart. Munn knows Volkov. It’s a startling fact. And if this is the case, Munn may even know that I’m here or at least suspect it. And then I remember Biba’s words: Don’t work for that Munn.

  What does Biba know about the relationship between Volkov and Munn? Volkov said he had friends throughout the world’s scientific community. But he may just as easily have enemies. Perhaps one of those enemies is Dr. Gregory Munn?

  The contrast between Volkov’s palatial house and the dirty van could not be greater. The van smells of burgers and beer, and I can tell by the way it weaves that the driver is drunk. We speed down the road, miss a light, run an intersection, then careen to the left as I tumble in the back, looking for something to hold on to.

  We’re up and down huge boulevards, zipping in and out of buses and other cars moving as crazily as we are, everybody sounding their horns. Meanwhile, my brain is full of questions about Munn. Of all the people I’ve ever known, I admire him the most. But that laboratory glass is as stark a sign as any. They know each other. Had the two of them drunk vodka together in Volkov’s upstairs veranda, looking out over the rooftops, and made decisions about my life?

  I’m also plagued by thoughts of Will. Nobody speaks of him. It’s like he doesn’t exist. I keep remembering him dead on the gurney. I imagine him, lost and blind.

  “Would you stop driving like a maniac?” I yell to the guy with the sweatshirt. He pulls out his pistol and waves it around, shouting drunkenly in Russian. The guy with the tattoos takes the gun from him, replacing it with a can of beer. They drink and speed and laugh, playing a game now in which they take corners at a pace. I brace myself as they jerk to a stop, then roll like a ball in the back of the van as they swerve through traffic, yelling their heads off. Finally, they take a corner too fast and—bang—the van clips the curb, hits a trash can, and does a one-eighty before landing on the sidewalk. It’s not the worst crash in the world, but the guy in the sweatshirt wasn’t wearing his seat belt and he nearly knocks himself out against the windshield. The guy with the tattoo seems to have done something to his foot. Meanwhile, my hip feels like a boulder dropped on it, but I can move while they can’t.

  I have a chance here.

  Sliding across the van, I step over the back of the guy in the sweatshirt, hearing him scream as I push open the door. I fall onto the sidewalk, banging my knee, then pull myself up onto my feet, limping, but moving. I make it to the end of the avenue and search desperately for a way to cross. But there are cars everywhere and no crosswalk. I run up and down, searching for a route across the traffic before finally seeing the underpass that tunnels beneath the ground.

  I’m charging down the steps when I feel a grip on my shoulder. Somebody grabs my hair. I push forward but it’s no use. My head lurches back; my f
eet come off the ground. I feel the same pressure on my neck and head as that night in Palo Alto when I was attacked. That time, they’d used some kind of drug to knock me out. I don’t know what they used because there’s really no such thing as a knockout drug. Even a rag soaked in chloroform and held over a victim’s nose and mouth isn’t instant. It takes about five minutes to work.

  But this isn’t chloroform. The guy with the sweatshirt, his face bloody from the crash, holds me in a locked position as the other one gets a needle high into my arm. I feel the scratch of the needle, then my arm filling with cold. Suddenly, it’s as though my muscles have dropped from my frame. My eyes stare forward like headlights; my heart beats loudly in my chest. I have no control of my body at all, certainly not to stand, but not even to gasp for air. As hard as I try, I can’t get oxygen into my starving lungs.

  It dawns on me now that they’ve used a paralyzing drug, which stops all voluntary muscle contractions, including breathing. I’ll be dead soon; I see no way around this fact. I suppose that if I won’t work for Volkov, I’m a liability, a witness to an international crime. Will, too.

  Every cell in my body aches for oxygen. My vision begins to close. My chest is bursting with the pain of asphyxiation. I’d do anything to breathe, such a simple thing. And then someone pushes a finger into my mouth, and I feel a current of rubber-scented air. Perhaps I’m imagining it, but what looks to be a portable ventilation unit, no bigger than a laptop, suddenly comes into my vision. A tube slides painfully down my throat. The machine works away, one breath, two. I feel my body gaining strength, my vision clearing. Volkov must not have ordered me dead after all, which means, among other things, that there is a possibility that Will is alive.

  25

  I WAKE WITH the same throbbing headache I had on the train. Nausea, too. My stomach lurches, but when I try to get up I’m stopped by a heavy restraint on my wrist. I can only get so far. I bend over the edge of the bed and retch onto the floor.

  I pull myself back onto the mattress, covered in a sheen of sweat. Where I banged myself during the crash is sore. And the pain in my temples throbs like a wound. The feeling is familiar, but this time there’s no Will. No cool hand to brush the hair off my forehead and tell me not to worry. Nobody at all, as far as I can tell. The bed is in the same building where I’ve been prisoner for days. I recognize the smell and the sagging, stained ceiling. But the room has been fitted out like a hospital room. I make out a sink and a set of drawers on wheels. An IV sends fluids into my left arm.

  I’m not going to be a prisoner any longer. I just can’t take it. I consider how the IV needle might be used as a weapon. I only need to get it out of my arm.

  But just as I have that thought, Vasiliev huffs into the room, trailed by a dark-haired assistant, a boy about my age, with a long face and a clipboard in his hands.

  Vasiliev says something to him and the boy disappears, returning with a plastic tub and paper towels. He begins cleaning the floor while Vasiliev checks the monitors.

  “Water,” I croak. There’s a sink I can’t reach and a stack of paper towels on a countertop. “Something to clean my face with?” I ask. “Those paper towels.”

  My voice doesn’t sound like me. It arrives slow and thick, as though I haven’t spoken in days. “How long have I been out?” I ask.

  Vasiliev says nothing. He presses a floor pedal and a motor starts, tilting the bed so that I am more upright. My head swims.

  “Sick?” Vasiliev says, and thrusts a bedpan onto my lap.

  “Thirsty.”

  Vasiliev shrugs, then instructs the boy, who drops what he’s doing to fetch the tiniest of paper cups, barely a swallow of water and it’s not even cold.

  I wish they’d go away, both of them. I can’t stand the sight of them.

  “Let me go home,” I say.

  “Sleep,” says Vasiliev. He signals the boy to leave, then follows him out, shutting the door behind him.

  But I don’t want to sleep. I want to go home, to sit in our little kitchen with its oiled table where I set up Legos as a child, where I’d done my homework, read papers, celebrated birthdays. I want to see my mother, who will be scared and alone. To talk to Lauren, my good and wonderful friend. And Dmitry. He’d be so angry if he saw what they are doing to me.

  But I suddenly can’t stay awake, no matter how I try.

  The next thing I’m aware of are footsteps. I wake again, my head feeling like there’s a weight upon it, my limbs like dumbbells. They probably guessed my weight wrong when they medicated me, a simple miscalculation that can kill a person.

  When I open my eyes I see Vasiliev. He’s wheeling in a metal cart with a television on it. Behind him is the boy who cleaned up the vomit earlier, balancing a tray with a pot of tea and a bowl of broth.

  “Why are you keeping me here?” I say. “I’ve already shown you everything I know.”

  Vasiliev doesn’t even acknowledge the question. He unwinds the cord for the television. The boy places the tray on a table so I can eat. I get the feeling it wouldn’t matter if I screamed and yelled. They’d still ignore me. And I can’t do either right now. I’m too weak.

  “Can I have my other hand, please?” I’m left-handed, and right now very shaky.

  But instead of unfastening the restraint, Vasiliev gives the electrical cord to the boy to plug into an outlet on the wall.

  “I want to go home,” I say.

  “Shortly, you will not want to go home,” he says.

  This would make me laugh, if I could laugh at anything right now. But all I can think about is whether somewhere, even somewhere close by, Will is being held captive in a similar bed. Are they telling him he won’t want to go home, too?

  “I want to see Will,” I say.

  “Will?” He pronounces the name as though the W is a V.

  “Is he okay?”

  Vasiliev grunts.

  “Is he dead?”

  But Vasiliev is too busy monkeying around with the television, then conferring with his assistant, who pushes the cart cable farther into the back of the monitor. I can’t understand all this fuss with the television.

  “How long have I been out?” I ask.

  “You’ve been ill some few days now. Car crash.”

  Ill? Drugged up to my eyeballs, he means.

  I should probably try to eat. The broth suggests they have no faith that my stomach will hold solid food. I unwrap the spoon from the napkin and take a few messy mouthfuls.

  “Watch,” says Vasiliev, pointing to the TV. The boy gives me my glasses.

  Across the screen are familiar images. Cars, streets, sidewalks. It’s America—I’m not sure where yet. A headline scrolls across the bottom: Resurrection Drugs on the Horizon.

  The TV fills with stock footage of laboratories—a gloved hand taking up liquid with a pipette, test tubes being carefully lifted from centrifuges. Vasiliev ups the volume and I hear a broadcaster’s voice:

  “Post-death recovery could mean people live not one, but many lives, as researchers investigate ways to bring people back to life even hours after they are declared legally dead.”

  The voice goes on to explain that post-death recovery was developed at the Mellin Institute as part of a classified, government-funded research project.

  “But early last week, an employee at Mellin broke ranks with the institute, uncovering this research and bringing US secrets to Russia . . .”

  The report cuts to a man standing on a street outside a government building. The heavy frames of his eyeglasses balance awkwardly on his handsome face as though he isn’t used to wearing them. “We don’t know why she did it,” he says. “We only know that what ought to have been an American technology is now available in Russia, where this researcher is currently residing. And, of course, we don’t know to what end this technology will be used.”

  He raises his hand, offering a brief wave before turning away from the reporters, then pushing his hair out of his eyes in a gesture I’ve seen a hundr
ed times before.

  It’s Will. The glasses are to help correct his vision, which was damaged during his post-death recovery. But everything else about him is exactly as it was.

  I look desperately at Vasiliev, but he directs my attention back to the screen. The clips are recent, but they aren’t in any order. They seem to have been taken over the course of many days, mapping out the world’s response to post-death recovery. I watch various versions of Will giving that same sanctimonious remark to different audiences. He keeps talking about a “researcher,” by which he means me, of course. Like I intended to come to Russia and tell everyone about post-death recovery. Like I’m some kind of rogue informant.

  Then I see Munn being accosted by reporters outside the doors of the Mellin Institute. Munn explains there has been no threat posed by the leak of information.

  “Is it true Kira Adams is currently residing in Moscow?” asks a reporter.

  My name. My name on television. I’d never imagined I’d hear such a thing. Why would I?

  I watch as Munn states that he is unaware of my whereabouts. For the hundredth time, I wonder how this could be the case. I keep remembering Munn’s glassware in Volkov’s bathroom. It’s hard to believe he has no idea what’s going on.

  More footage. There’s April, a knapsack over one shoulder and the animal carrier she uses for rats in her hands. She’s trying to get through a group of reporters, ignoring the questions that fire at her from all sides. But then somebody asks what it was like to work with a person who can bring back the dead, and she pauses for a moment.

  “Are you kidding?” she says, flicking back her hair. “Kira was just learning how to work in a lab, you know?”

  “How long has she been working on post-death recovery?” asks the reporter.

  April shrugs. “I’m going to get in my car now, okay?”

  “What’s in the carrier?” another reporter calls. “Are those rats that were brought back from the dead?”