Eyes to See

by Joseph Nassise

  I didn’t have an attorney, but I wasn’t about to tell the guard that. I simply walked into the room, sat down at the table, and waited for the other man to be led into the room. When I heard him thank the guard, I knew who it was.

  We both waited for the guard to leave. Attorney-client visits were supposed to be confidential, after all.

  When he heard the clang of the cell door at the end of the block, Dmitri said, in a voice like breaking glass, “Denise is dead, Hunt.”

  “What?!”

  He crossed the room and began pacing back and forth, his boots thumping against the concrete floor. He was clearly upset and getting more so by the minute. His words tumbled over each other. “We should have known better, Hunt. The damn thing is just too strong for us!”

  “Slow down a minute, man. I can’t understand you.”

  But the big Russian wasn’t listening. “God’s blood, Hunt! It’s all my fault! If only I’d been a few seconds faster!”

  I was getting scared now, and when I get scared, I get angry. I could see his vague outline going back and forth in front of me, and so I jumped up, grabbed him by the arms, and shook him until he stopped.

  “Tell me what you’re talking about! What happened to Denise?”

  My anger startled him out of his panic. He stopped, took a deep breath and said, “The doppelganger killed her.”

  Four words.

  Four little words.

  That’s all it took to turn my world upside down.

  I released him and took a few shaky steps backward until my knees hit the bench behind me and I dropped down onto it in stunned silence.

  Denise? Dead?

  “What happened?” I asked dully.

  “When you didn’t show up, we decided to give it a go on our own. We figured we’d just drop in, do a little scouting around, and then get the hell out of there.”

  Dmitri went on to describe how they’d arrived at the old hospital grounds, parked out of sight, and snuck into the main building through a broken window. They found tracks in the dust by the front doors and followed them into the depths of the building.

  The fetch had surprised them in the darkness and overwhelmed Dmitri. “My head slammed into a support column and that was it. Lights out. The last thing I remember was the doppelganger carrying Denise off into the depths of the building. When I came to I was alone in the room with no idea which direction they had gone. Rather than wander around on my own, I found my way out and came looking for you. I heard the press conference on the radio and came right over.” He even bent over, pulled his hair aside, and made me feel the lump on his head to prove he wasn’t making it all up.

  I barely acknowledged his injury; Denise was all that mattered right now. “So she was alive the last time you saw her.”

  “Yes, but …”

  “No buts. We act on that assumption. It wouldn’t have carried her off if it wanted her dead right away. It would have just killed her right then and there. Which means we have some time.”

  But how much time, I didn’t know.

  “Do you think you can find that spot again? Where the two of you were attacked?”

  Dmitri thought about it for a moment. “Yeah, I can find it,” he said finally. I pretended to ignore the uncertainty I heard in his voice.

  “Okay. We can’t do anything while I’m locked up in here, so this is what we’re going to do …”

  When the guard came back, we were ready.

  43

  NOW

  “Time’s up, counselor,” the guard said, opening the door of the cell and stepping to the side to let Dmitri squeeze past.

  Because we had discussed it earlier, I knew what happened next. My partner in crime started to exit the cell, then spun to his left in midstride. The punch probably started somewhere down near his knees and by the time it connected with the guard’s chin it had all the force of a freight train. I don’t think the guy even knew what hit him. One minute he was probably smiling at Dmitri, enjoying his little display of power, and the next he was dropping to the floor like a sack of wet rice.

  Lights out.

  I can’t even say I felt sorry for the guy. After all, he was barely paying attention. He deserved what he got.

  There was some shuffling and then Dmitri was handing me a pair of handcuffs and a small snub-nosed revolver.

  “I’ve got his badge and his service piece. The one I gave you is his backup gun,” he said, as he dragged the guard’s unconscious form farther into the cell. “It’s loaded, so take care.”

  I’d never fired a gun in my life but figured the weapon wouldn’t be all that hard to figure out. Just point and shoot, right? I slipped it into the rear waistline of my pants, hoping my long shirt would cover it sufficiently.

  After that, we were ready to go.

  The plan was for him to impersonate a plainclothes detective transporting a prisoner to the interview rooms on the second floor. What it lacked in complication it made up for in sheer audacity. After all, who expected a prisoner to simply stroll right out of One Schroeder Plaza under the cops’ very noses?

  I just hoped it would work, ’cause we were only going to get one chance. After that, they’d lock us up somewhere down in the basement and throw away the key.

  I put the cuffs on loosely, without locking them, and held my hands behind my back, pretending to be a prisoner, while Dmitri guided me forward with his hand on one of my arms. I had my sunglasses with me, but due to the lighting I couldn’t see much beyond the vague shapes of those around me. I was going to have to trust him to get us out of here.

  We headed down the hall and turned the corner toward the guard station.

  “Two of them,” Dmitri said, meaning the number of police officers who were currently manning the desk, and I breathed a sigh of relief at the news. Two of them we could probably handle, given that we had the element of surprise, but any more than that would have been a problem.

  As planned, Dmitri tried to get up close and personal, flashing his stolen badge to set them at ease while I stood docilely nearby. I heard him joke with the others in a low voice, there was the sound of a brief struggle, and then Dmitri was back at my side.

  “All clear,” he said.

  We left one of them tied up with his belt and shoelaces behind the guard desk. We shanghaied the other into leading us down the back stairwell, bypassing the elevator, where we were sure to run into more people and thereby increase our chances of getting caught. Weaponless, and with his hands cuffed behind his back, Officer Dietrich was docile enough for even me to handle.

  Dmitri was in the lead, with our hostage in the middle and me bringing up the rear. When we reached the first floor without incident, Dmitri turned to Dietrich and asked how to get out.

  The officer indicated the door in front of us. “That leads to a small service hall off the central corridor. Turn left at the main corridor, cross the rotunda, and you’ll be at the front doors.”

  Sounded easy enough.

  That should have been our clue right there.

  Dmitri cautiously opened the door and peered out. Finding the service corridor empty, he pulled us along behind him. We crept another ten feet forward and then waited while he checked out the next step.

  “Pizdetz!”

  From the tone of his voice I didn’t need a translator to tell me that something wasn’t right.

  He reverted to English with his explanation. “Some idiot is holding a press conference in the middle of the rotunda. There is no way we are going to get past all that without being recognized.”

  I jerked on Dietrich’s arm and jammed my revolver into his side so he got the message. “Is there another way out of here?”

  His voice cracked as he said, “Across the hall. There is another service corridor that leads to the morgue. You can get out that way.”

  I thought it over. We’d have perhaps ten seconds of exposure as we crossed the corridor and opened the service door. Fifteen seconds max. From a distance, Dmi
tri and I might pass for a couple of cops escorting a prisoner, but if Dietrich chose that moment to call attention to us, we’d be screwed.

  You’ll just have to see to it that he doesn’t, I thought.

  Turning to Dmitri, I said, “I don’t see any other option, do you?”

  “No,” Dmitri answered, and followed it up with another long stream of Russian.

  That was good enough for me.

  I jammed the gun into Dietrich’s side, told him I’d put a bullet in him if he opened his mouth to say anything, anything at all, and then followed Dmitri out into the hallway when he tugged on my arm.

  The chatter from the press conference filtered down the hall to us, and I could tell just by the sound of it that it was going to be a big one. Apparently they hadn’t started yet, but it couldn’t be long now.

  We were in the middle of the hallway when our luck ran out.

  A voice rang out from inside the rotunda.

  “Hey! Stop right there!”

  Stanton!

  “Let’s go, people,” Dmitri said nervously and pulled us after him.

  “I said stop!” Stanton shouted. The sound of running feet quickly followed.

  We crossed the last few steps and reached the door. Dmitri hauled it open, shoved our hostage inside, and then grabbed me by the arm as I followed.

  “We’re out of time, Hunt. If we don’t stop them here they’ll pin us down in the stairwell.”

  I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. The big idiot wanted a confrontation when we were seconds away from escaping. We didn’t have time for this!

  “Don’t be a fool, Dmitri. We can still do this.”

  But he didn’t answer and it took me a heartbeat to realize that he had already headed off down the hall toward the oncoming group of cops.

  So be it. One of us had to get out of here.

  I kicked the door shut behind me and was about to get Dietrich to lead me down the stairs when an unbelievably loud roar sounded from the hallway we’d just left.

  “What was that?” Dietrich asked, his voice shaking in fear.

  I knew I should get going, knew I should be hightailing it down that hallway and out the morgue entrance before anyone could figure out what was happening, but I felt rooted to the floor with curiosity.

  I wanted, no, needed, to know just what the hell had made that sound, too.

  My hand was still holding on to the handcuffs Officer Dietrich was wearing so I pulled him back toward me and, with the gun in his side to keep him from trying anything stupid, made him open the door just a crack and look out.

  “What’s happening?” I asked.

  He froze, tried to speak, and failed again.

  I ground the muzzle of the revolver into his kidney.

  “Talk to me, damn it! What do you see?”

  His voice was small and tight when he said, “A polar bear.”

  What???

  I’d had enough. My anger flared and before I could stop to think about what I was doing I gathered my will and “pushed” myself into my captive’s head.

  Unlike the smooth connection that had accompanied the link between Denise and me, this one hurt.

  A lot.

  Pain flared through my head, through the depths of my mind. It felt like someone was taking sandpaper to the back of my eyeballs, grinding it back and forth, over and over again. It went on for what seemed to be minutes, but in the end the pain stopped and once again I could see.

  Next to me, I was dimly aware of Dietrich sinking to his knees and retching, but I didn’t care. He wasn’t a threat any longer; after all, not only was the man handcuffed, but he couldn’t see me anyway.

  Another roar split the air outside the service corridor and with it came several human shouts of fear.

  Throwing caution to the wind, I pulled open the door and took a look for myself.

  Looking through Whisper’s eyes usually presented me with a riot of unearthly colors. Borrowing the sight of one of the Gifted was almost like seeing normally again. But doing so through the eyes of a Mundane was like looking at a scene left too long in the summer sun; the colors were faded, the edges fuzzy, as if the entire image was going to fade away to nothingness in the very near future.

  But it was good enough for my purposes.

  And, to my amazement, I saw that Dietrich was right!

  A polar bear stood on its hind legs in the midst of the corridor, snarling and bellowing at the small, determined knot of policemen that hadn’t fled when everyone else back near the press-conference stage had.

  The creature was enormous, all yellow-white fur and primal muscle, and its very presence was confusing the hell out of the cops facing off against it. They didn’t know whether to shoot it or simply try to subdue it; after all, polar bears were protected species, and where in God’s name had this one come from anyway?

  It took me another second or two to realize that I actually knew that particular polar bear.

  “Well I’ll be a son of a …”

  Dmitri was a berserker.

  First mentioned in the Norse saga, Vatnsdæla, the berserkers were described as elite warriors led by their king, Harald. They wore animal pelts on their heads and charged into battle in a ravaging frenzy, fighting so hard that they were nearly unstoppable. Of course, the bards hadn’t quite gotten it right, never realizing that the berserkers were actually warriors who were so in touch with the totem spirits of the animals they respected that they could assume the physical properties of these beasts in battle, borrowing, if you will, their strength, cunning, and senses to accomplish things they never could have done as mere humans.

  I knew the legends of course; any scholar of Old Norse worth their salt did, but I had never imagined I’d ever actually see one.

  Even as I watched, three cops tried to rush Dmitri from the darkness of an unoccupied office to his left. I have no idea what they thought they were doing. He was a damned polar bear, for heaven’s sake, but you had to give them credit for trying. Dmitri spun toward them with a quickness that belied his immense size, and with a blow from a paw bigger than my head he sent them scattering like tenpins.

  I knew I couldn’t linger any longer. Dmitri was buying me time to escape in order to save Denise, and I couldn’t let either of them down.

  I slipped back inside the service corridor, hauled Dietrich to his feet, and dragged him along behind me as I raced down the hall.

  We burst through the basement doors, startling several people who were standing in the hallway, waiting for the elevator. I hollered something about a terrorist attack, which sent them all scattering in different directions, and then shot down the hallway to my left and through the big metal doors marked “Morgue.”

  No sooner had I done so than an alarm started blaring throughout the building and someone came on the intercom system to warn the employees that there were two dangerous fugitives loose in the building.

  Thankfully the morgue was empty and no one stopped us on our way through the back door. We emerged onto the loading dock.

  Through the eyes of my captive I saw a police car sitting ten feet to my right.

  I froze, cursing my luck.

  To have come so far …

  After a moment, I dared to breathe again. No one got out of the cruiser. Apparently, all the cops were inside.

  There were several other cars parked next to the cruiser. The fourth one in line, a dark green Chevy Tahoe, had unlocked doors and a spare set of keys in the glove box.

  Some people just never learn.

  I didn’t think too much about it, just shoved my unwilling guest into the rear seat and hopped inside. Dietrich was whining piteously in the back, asking what I had done to his eyes, begging me to return his sight, but I didn’t pay much attention; I only needed him for a few more minutes anyway.

  I smoked rubber coming up the ramp, lost control, and bounced over the curb into the pedestrian square that spread out in front of the building.

  People screamed and race
d to get out of my way as I fought for control. As I spun the big vehicle around, I had an uninterrupted view of the front of the building just as Dmitri, back in human form, burst through the plate glass doors and rushed down the steps.

  I gunned the engine and shot backward in reverse, skidding to a stop beside him.

  “Come on!” I yelled, watching half a dozen more officers charge out of the front door behind him.

  He stared at me dumbly, hesitating.

  “Get the fuck in the car, Dmitri!” I screamed, as the officers went for their guns.

  I think it was the screaming that did it. He grabbed the handle of the door behind me, wrenched it open, and fell into the backseat as I slammed my foot back down on the accelerator and set a new land speed record getting out of there.

  44

  NOW

  Denise awoke to darkness.

  She lay still, trying to unravel the fragmented cords of her memory. Her head was pounding and she was having trouble focusing. She was sure about one thing though—she wasn’t getting up anytime soon. She was tied hand and foot, a situation she didn’t like in the least. At least her hands were in front of her, rather than tied behind her back.

  Thank Gaia for small favors.

  She remembered making the drive to Danvers State with Dmitri, recalled how they had parked on one of the long unused driveways that led to the property. After hopping the fence, they’d found a broken window large enough to let them pass and had gone searching through the darkened interior, looking for the fetch.

  As it turned out, the fetch had found them first.

  Now she remembered the fight in the darkness, remembered the fetch tossing Dmitri aside and coming for her. She remembered fighting back, to no avail. At one point she’d stepped backward into nothingness, never seeing the rotted flooring until it was too late.

  The fall had knocked her unconscious.

  Why the fetch hadn’t clambered down and finished her off was a mystery.

  The reality of her situation hit home with a mental thud as she realized she was a captive somewhere in the darkness of the ruined old hospital, completely at the mercy of a creature as evil and deadly as any she’d ever encountered.