Eve and the Faders

by Berneta L. Haynes

  Agent Yu grinned now and tried to laugh, but the pain in her knees transformed the laugh into a moan followed by a cough. "I freed him. It was the least I could do to reward him for leading us to you."

  "Bullshit."

  Niles put a hand on Eve's shoulder while keeping his eyes on the agent. "Eve. I don't think she's lying now."

  Still smiling, Agent Yu tilted her head toward him. "Listen to your lapdog. After AJ got cold feet—"

  "AJ? What are you talking about?"

  "I got a surprise call from her when you were in Philly. She didn’t trust Mauricio and wanted to protect you. Then, she developed a guilt complex and refused to help anymore. Lucky for me, Mauricio decided to give me a call shortly afterward. You know what they say...when one door closes, another opens."

  Eve stood and kept the gun pointed at Agent Yu.

  "Eve?" Niles whispered, cautiously placing his hand on her shoulder. "That's enough. Give me the gun."

  "Tell me the truth. What have you done to him?" she asked, focused on Agent Yu.

  "I'm telling you the truth. I haven't done anything to him. When AJ backed out of helping me, I thought it was all over. I figured I'd never find you, even after scaring your friends—Zoey and Gabriel—into contacting you again. I thought all hope was lost. Until Mauricio called my office the night you were heading to the house in Ardmore. I thought he might be setting us up." She shut her eyes for a second and squeezed her thighs near the wounds. "I don't know why he sold you out. But he did. And that's the truth."

  "He did it to get his family back," said Eve, lowering the gun. "That's the only reason he'd do it. There was nothing he wouldn't do to get back to them."

  "I did some digging, you know. He and Agent Grobeck have a special agreement. I don't know or understand the details, but that's what I found out. There's more to Mauricio than he told you."

  "Clearly. Where's your cell phone?"

  "In my bag, there." Agent Yu pointed to the coat hook near the door.

  Eve handed Niles the gun, and he flicked on the safety. She went to Agent Yu's bag, dug inside it, retrieved the cell phone, and dialed 911. "A woman's been shot. She needs an ambulance," she said and hung up before the operator could respond. She dropped the phone on the floor and turned to Niles. "Let's go."

  Agent Yu stared at the two of them as they hurried out the door.

  ***

  At the elevator, Eve pressed the button for the ground floor. She didn't bother changing from her regular appearance.

  When they reached the outside, they clasped hands and faded.

  Bursting into a sprint, they didn't stop until they were a block away from the building. Niles teleported them back to the hotel in Philadelphia. "We have to remember to stay faded when we hop from place to place," Eve said, gazing around and hoping no one had witnessed their sudden appearance in the middle of the park.

  "My bad. I can't seem to keep us from becoming visible during the move. I'll do some test hops later and see if I can work out the glitch." He hurried behind her as they crossed the street. "I think it worked."

  "What? Oh, scaring the shit out of Agent Yu again? Yeah, it worked. Even better, she and her team will be looking for us in Chicago now, not Philly. We're in the clear for a while."

  "Was that your plan? To trick her into taking her eyes off us here?"

  "Part of it."

  They rushed across the busy intersection, turned left toward the hotel, and walked along a vacant cobblestone street.

  Just as they arrived outside the hotel, she stopped and looked around. A chill went through her, and she felt an intense urge to run. "Niles, I think there's somebody—"

  Gripped by some invisible bind, she couldn't move. Arms. Someone's holding me. She tried to scream, but only muffled sounds came out. Someone's hand was covering her mouth.

  "What's wrong?" He reached out to grab her, but when he did, her whole body lurched backward, as if pulled by something.

  Eve fixed her watery gaze on Niles. "Get the hotel key out of my pocket," she gasped as a hand tightened around her neck.

  He hesitated for a moment but agreed. As soon as he reached inside her pocket, he gripped her arm with his free hand and teleported them to the hotel room.

  When he blinked, he saw a long-haired man standing behind Eve and holding a knife to her throat. "Try anything else, and I'll kill her."

  Niles threw his hands up in surrender.

  "Why've you been following me?" the man asked.

  Eve recognized that voice, but she couldn't move or speak for fear that he'd slit her throat.

  "Easy. I'm Niles Woodard. We're like you. Faders."

  "I know what you are. Did they send you after me?"

  Sam? Is that you?

  There was no answer, just silence. It sent chills through Eve. Why couldn't she hear him? Why couldn't he hear her?

  Niles took a step forward, looking as though he was trying to calm a wild dog. "Just listen—"

  "I took out the chip days ago. How could they know where I am?" A large bandage was on his right forearm that was wrapped around Eve's midsection.

  Niles held out his hands, taking another cautious step forward. "We're not SPI. We're trying to stay off the radar, too, just like you. Now, put the knife down. Let her go. We're on your side."

  Sam? Can you hear me? We weren't sent by SPI. We're—"

  "I'm not going back," he shouted at Niles. "Not after what they did...after what they made me do."

  "Bro, we're not trying to make you go back. We're on your side."

  "Nobody's on my side but me," he spat, squeezing Eve's midsection so tightly that she felt the air leaving her.

  Sam, please?

  In the next second and with one swift motion, he slid the knife against her throat.

  As he released her, she stumbled from the blinding shock of it all. She watched the bloody knife fall to the floor at her feet. For a moment, everything stopped. Eve stood inert like a mannequin. A thick red line appeared along her throat, and an expression of surprise sailed across her face only to be replaced with a pained contortion.

  She collapsed onto the floor.

  On her stomach, she clenched her throat with one hand while clawing at the carpet with her other hand. She wasn't aware of the physical struggle that had commenced between the two men or the faint sound of the gun firing. Every breath she drew became more painful and more of an effort. Finally, she stopped scratching at the carpet, lay still, and watched it all—the carpet, the room, the men. It all melted away and receded into a vast array of brilliant colors until there was nothing and no one.

  12

  As Eve lurched to her feet, she looked around the strange room. Cement floor, four blank walls, steel door. A familiar feeling of terror crept up, and she ran to the door. Her hand closed around the knob, but it wouldn't turn.

  "Help," she screamed, but all that came out was a choking sound. Niles, anybody, please!

  Her feet felt ice-cold, and she looked down to find that she was standing in a puddle. Water gushed in from a vent on the back wall. Desperately, she tried to turn the doorknob.

  "Help me," she called out, banging on the door as the cold water rose past her calves. "Please!"

  For no reason that she could discern, the door swung open, and she fell forward. Her face slammed against the floor. Stars dancing before her eyes, she squinted at the shadowy figure approaching.

  "Come on," said Agent Yu, helping Eve to her feet.

  Coughing and struggling to catch her breath, she managed to dust herself off. Why...how am I not wet? She turned to reassure herself that she'd escaped the flooding room. But there was no water. No door. Only a blank, cement wall.

  "Let's go." Agent Yu grabbed her arm and hoisted her. Together, they lumbered down a winding hallway.

  Eve knew this hallway. It led to a room with rows of beds—like hospital gurneys—and wires. Wires they would attach to her body while her wrists and ankles were locked to a bed. Or maybe that was an
other hallway. Why did it feel like she was trapped within a maze of hallways lately?

  Walking at a brisker pace than usual, Agent Yu glanced back now and then, as if worried that someone might be following them. Her dark hair hung past her shoulders, and the stern face Eve was so accustomed to seeing was nowhere to be found. In fact, Agent Yu looked younger.

  As Eve began to speak, a piercing pain shot through her throat, and she massaged the tender skin of her neck. Her mind flashed to the long-haired man with the knife in the hotel room. "The fader—Sam—he cut me. Where is he? Where's Niles?"

  Agent Yu didn't respond.

  Eve stopped. Still rubbing her neck, she stared at Agent Yu. "Am I dead? Did I die?"

  Agent Yu turned to her and shouted something that sounded like nothing more than gibberish.

  "Agent—" Eve tried to speak again, but no sound came out this time. "Why can't I hear myself?" she screamed silently, staring at the woman, and mouthing the words with as much emphasis as possible.

  The hysteria continued to swirl around her until a door appeared before them.

  "Okay, that definitely wasn't there a second ago," Eve remarked, eyes wide.

  The agent typed a code into a small box. The door made a creaky sound as it opened. The room looked almost like a hospital emergency room, except the beds had leg and foot restraints. The only people present, besides Eve and Agent Yu, were a middle-aged white woman in a lab coat standing over a black man strapped to one of the beds. The woman wore a disappointed expression as she stared at the man.

  Eve drew closer and noticed the man was unconscious. It appeared he'd been dunked in a pool of water. Water was dripping from his clothes, spilling from the bed, and forming a small reservoir on the floor. She took another step toward the man, wanting a closer view, but Agent Yu pulled her away.

  "Don't move," Agent Yu said. "Stay here."

  Doctor Thomas frowned as Agent Yu approached her. "I didn't call for you, Agent."

  Eve tried to get closer to hear what the women were saying, but something she couldn't see prevented her from moving forward. Holding her breath, she pushed against the invisible barrier but relented when Agent Yu turned around. "Agent Yu?"

  With no warning, the agent took off running toward the door.

  Eve thrust herself against the invisible barrier and hurried after Agent Yu. They stopped at a door, and the agent typed a code into another box.

  "That fucker. That evil fucker," Agent Yu muttered once inside the office. She slammed the door and paced for a moment. When she stopped pacing, she groaned and sat in the leather chair behind a large desk.

  "Agent?"

  "They're not going to get away with this," she said, pecking at the keyboard. She gasped, covering her mouth and staring at the computer screen.

  Eve watched all this with curiosity and increasing worry. "Agent?" She scurried around to get a look at the screen.

  There was a video of a man, the man who had been unconscious on the bed. He was lying naked in a puddle of water in the middle of a cement room. His tattered clothes lay near him, and his body showed red and brown lines from lashings. The lines striped his whole body, neck to legs. He was shivering, and Eve couldn't be sure if her eyes were fooling her, but he seemed to be fading in and out. What's more, his hair was changing from dark brown to white to red with every passing second.

  "What the...?" Eve began.

  Agent Yu closed the video and moved it and several files, one of which was titled "Special Project Report, Part One," to a delete folder. Frantically, she moved several more files.

  When she dragged the last file to the delete folder, Eve caught a glimpse of a familiar name: Forest Sherman. "Hey...why does that name sound—"

  "They're not going to pin this on me. I had nothing to do with it. Nothing." The agent wiped away tears and paused. She looked upward, then rose to her feet and sniffled. "You have to go. Now."

  "Who is he?"

  "He's like you." She rushed to the door and turned to Eve. "He could do more than disappear. He could do...everything. I didn't tell anybody about it."

  "Agent—"

  "They only know about the disappearing bit. Not the rest. I made sure of that."

  "Slow down..."

  "He could've gotten free. The fool could've gotten out of here and never been found. Why did he stay?" She was speaking in a jagged, broken sort of way, partly to Eve and partly to herself. She looked at the ceiling again, as if she were seeing something Eve couldn't see. "You have to go."

  The lights went out, and there was a sound of feet against the floor and the door opening.

  "What's going on?" Eve whispered, her heart racing.

  When the lights came on, she was standing next to Agent Yu, and they were both looking at a man lying on a hospital bed. His hands and feet were strapped to the bed, and he was dry now. Eve looked into his wide, lifeless brown eyes.

  "Is he..." she said, turning to Agent Yu, but the woman was no longer there. Instead, Eve was staring at another set of familiar brown eyes.

  ***

  Squatting over her, Niles sniffled and his tears dropped onto her face. But he stopped when he saw her eyes blink. Leaning in closer, he brought his face within inches of hers and turned his ear to her mouth. His hair hung over his forehead and draped his face and hers.

  "Eve, how...?" he said, drawing back in shock. "How are you still...?"

  She coughed a few times and focused her blurry gaze on him. Instinctively, her hand went to her neck, and she stared at her palms. No blood? From the corner of her eye, she noticed another man lying on the floor near the bathroom. He was squirming in pain and clenching his left arm.

  Quivering, she sat up and tried to stand. Her knees shook as though she hadn't used them for years, but she managed to balance herself. She went to Samuel Kim and glared at him, his mouth hanging open and his eyes wide in astonishment. He flinched as she grabbed him by his shirt and pulled him up. For a moment, she regarded him with a mixture of confusion and fury.

  She slapped him hard enough to split his lip.

  He whimpered and averted his gaze.

  "You tried to kill me. What the hell is wrong with you?" A wave of guilt flooded her as she watched him shrink and cower away from her, tears spilling. This wasn't the Samuel Kim she remembered. "Bring me a wet towel, Niles."

  Staring at her like she was a ghost, Niles didn't move.

  "Niles? Did you hear me?"

  After a moment, he shuffled to the bathroom and returned with a small towel.

  "Let me see it," she said to Samuel, gesturing to his injured arm. With the warm, wet towel she dabbed at the wound, cleaned off the dried blood, and wrapped a dry towel around his arm. He slouched to the floor, and she realized she'd never seen so much sadness in anyone other than her mother. He looked like a dog that had been beaten one too many times. What had happened to him?

  "Bring me a glass of water and my backpack," she ordered Niles.

  Still not saying a word, he ran to the bathroom once more, filled a paper coffee cup with water, and brought it to her with the bag.

  She handed Samuel four pills along with the cup of water. "Take it," she insisted when he hesitated.

  "You were dead, Eve," Niles whispered, shaking his head. "There was so much blood and...you had no pulse. For at least five minutes, you were dead."

  Her fingers swept over her neck. The skin was as smooth as it had always been, but the spot where the blade had cut through was still tender to touch.

  "My grandpa died on our living room sofa when I was ten. Stroke. I was sitting right next to him when it happened, watching Happy Days. I'll never forget how he sounded when he took his last breaths, and how his eyes looked. You made the same exact sound, Eve. And your eyes...your eyes looked the same way." He touched her neck. "There's no trace of where he cut you. It's like it never happened."

  She retreated from him.

  Observing her like she was a circus animal, he cupped his hands around the back of
his head. "It's impossible."

  As she retreated from him, she glimpsed a spot on the floor. There was a large pool of blood on the area of the carpet where she'd fallen. "You know that feeling when you walk into a room and notice a picture on the wall is a little crooked, not quite level? That's how the world, all of this, feels right now. But no matter how hard I try, I can't level the picture."

  "Eve?"

  Walking past Niles and Samuel, she went to the window. Rain was falling in a slow trickle onto the alleyway below, and she wondered if it would turn to snow later in the evening. Was it snowing in Chicago right now? She missed the peaceful quiet of snowfall. She missed the simplicity of it.

  "How is any of this possible?" asked Niles.

  Leaning against the desk and watching the rain, she thought about the strange dream she'd had. She recalled Forest Sherman's still, wet body. Was any of it real, or was it a dream? If it was real, why had Agent Yu protected the man's secret? Did the flash drives contain information about him? She turned to Niles. "We need to take a look at the flash drives."

  "Eve, we need to talk about how you—"

  "Later."

  "But—"

  "Not now, Niles," she said, her tone shorter than usual.

  "Fine," he replied, sighing. "But shouldn't we figure out what to do with him first?" He looked at Samuel who was staring at them in horror.

  "What to do with him? He's with us now."

  "He tried to kill you."

  "Yes, but he failed. I doubt he'll try it again, especially not in the sorry state he's in." She turned an icy stare on Samuel. "You got any plans to try to kill me again?"

  He shook his head.

  "See? There you have it," she said, smiling at Niles.

  "The man cut your throat."

  "He's a victim, like the rest of us. He didn't know we weren't sent by SPI."

  "Whatever you say," Niles scoffed. "Look, I need to get some air."

  Before she had a chance to respond, he teleported.

  With a long sigh, she knelt and took another look at Samuel's injured arm. It appeared to be swelling. You know I'm taking a big, fucking risk by trusting you, Sam. Don't prove him right.