by S. Harrison
“My . . . mind,” says Infinity’s voice, her words reverberating from everywhere around me. “Get . . . out.”
I spin back toward the wall of fragments, scanning for any sign of her. “Where are you?” I call out. “Show yourself!”
“Get . . . out!” she demands again, but her voice sounds strange. It’s monotone and lazy tongued, almost to the point of slurring. Unable to tell what direction her voice is coming from, I search the bizarre mindscape, looking all around, but there’s no sign of her, until suddenly, a crack splinters across one of the frosted pieces and I catch a glimpse of her through the gap between two drifting shards.
Infinity stands on the other side of this wall of memories, facing me like a reflection of myself from a different reality. The fragments are constantly healing together and shattering again, so I have to bob and weave to keep her in sight, which is made all the more difficult because when I move, she does, too, but her actions are slightly delayed and in the opposite direction. From what I can make out, she’s dressed in some kind of formfitting black combat uniform, and she’s staring directly at me with an all-too-familiar bare-tooth snarl of anger contorting her face.
I take a few steps forward, and so does Infinity. I raise my right hand, and she does the same, although judging by the increased intensity of her dagger-throwing glower, she’s doing it very grudgingly indeed. I lower my hand again, and when she also follows suit, I suddenly wonder . . . am I controlling her?
“Never!” Her voice echoes, and out of nowhere a strange compulsion to punish myself for what I was just thinking shudders through me. The bizarre feeling doesn’t make any sense. I am wondering why I would feel that way at all when I notice Infinity slowly opening her palm, and with a resounding grunt of effort, she jerks her arm upward and swiftly slaps herself hard across the face. To my utter surprise, my own hand opens, too, and moves as if it has a life of its own. Copying Infinity’s gesture at twice the speed, I knock my head to the side with a jarring blow as I brutally smack myself across my left cheekbone. I gasp in shock as the lingering sting of the impact prickles my skin. Clearly we both have a modicum of control over each other, and it seems Infinity’s payoff for striking herself lies solely in the fact that I feel it, too.
I glare at her angrily, daring her to try that again. I know she receives my challenge because the instinct to punch myself in the head ripples out from her and comes streaming on invisible waves through the cracks between the fragments. Infinity’s fingers bunch into a fist, and so do mine, but as she twitches hers toward her own nose, I stop it dead and force my trembling arm back down to my side.
Infinity lowers hers, too, and stares at me as waves of wild frustration pour out of her like ripples of heat. Suddenly I’m reminded of the reason I wanted to come here in the first place. “You can control me,” I whisper. “But not for very long. Why?”
Of course Infinity doesn’t answer, and I can’t read any clues from her thoughts, so either she doesn’t know or she’s blocking me somehow, but I do notice something else. For a split second, I saw her eyes flick in the direction of one of the frosted panes of memories. It could be nothing, but I’ve played poker with Bit before, and when she has a bad hand, she always glances out the window into the courtyard outside our dorm room. That’s Bit’s tell, did Infinity just reveal one of hers?
I focus on the jagged-edged, full-length-mirror-size puzzle piece she just looked at and step closer to it. I can feel her resistance, but Infinity steps forward, too. I lose sight of her behind it, but as I reach out toward the fragment, I can feel her doing the same on the other side. I press my palm against the surface of the foggy memory and try to wipe the frost from the blur of colors. It doesn’t do any good, but as I slide my hand away, toward the edge of the fragment, the whole thing moves as if there’s a hinge running the length of it from top to bottom. Excited at the prospect of my new discovery, I push the edge harder. Sure enough, the entire fragment begins turning on an axis, pivoting like a revolving door.
As the memory-pane side swivels to me, Infinity glares with contempt through the open gap. I can feel that she wants to reach across and claw at me, to shout at me again and threaten me with pain, but as she attempts to move her arm, I hold mine steady, and as she tries to speak, I clench my jaw tightly shut. There’s nothing she can do as the fragment rotates completely around, thankfully obscuring her from my sight again. It shudders to a stop, and I gaze upon the crystal-clear image on the other side.
And what I see . . . is me. My first thought is that maybe this fragment is partially transparent and I’m simply looking at Infinity through it. But I quickly realize that’s not the case when I notice that I’m wearing the same black hooded top I have on now, and instead of my hair being in a tight ponytail, like Infinity’s, it’s loose and hanging wet on my shoulders. This other me is standing over a stainless-steel basin, staring at my reflection in a clear strip on a steamed-over mirror.
I don’t have any recollection of this moment, but judging by what I’m wearing and the images of the recent past captured in the other shards, it can’t have been very long ago. I raise my hand to the center of the fragment, but this time, the instant that I touch it there’s a sudden feeling of acceleration, as the image pours out of the shard and folds completely around me.
I’m not standing in a dark crystalline gallery of memories anymore. Now I’m actually standing in front of the steel basin. Behind me in the mirror, I can see a beige concrete wall that glistens with fresh condensation. The room is warm and damp, and that clean soap smell of a recently run shower still hangs in the air. The color of the wall is a dead giveaway. This must have taken place in the washroom in Dr. Pierce’s underground lab.
I study the reflection of the me from the past. I have a distant look in my eyes, like I’m lost in thought. I raise my hand to my face, stroke it against my cheek, then smile. The smile slowly becomes a quiet chuckle, which soon changes into a demented giggle. All of a sudden I stop laughing, and that’s when I notice the darkness in my eyes and a feeling of unjustified rage rippling through me, just like when Infinity took me by surprise and made me slap my own face only moments ago. Suddenly I open my mouth, bare my teeth, and with a dead-eyed stare and a vicious snarl, I chomp hard into the pad of muscle at the base of my thumb.
My disturbingly emotionless eyes glare straight ahead into nowhere as my jaw clenches with voracious effort. I watch in horror as blood begins pulsing and dribbling from the bite, but I don’t stop. Rivulets of red stream down my face, but still I keep going. My movements are animalistic; I look like a starving dog, my neck spasming as my head bucks forward, driving my teeth deeper and deeper into my own flesh. I moan as blood flows freely down my arm into the sink, but I scream out loud as I feel teeth crunch into bone. I can’t turn away; this has already happened, and it can’t be changed. All I can do is ride it out.
I watch the reflection of me in the mirror as I wrench my gored hand from my mouth, and I gasp with relief as my trembling palm suddenly releases from the surface of the fragment and the horrible memory snaps back inside the shard, encased once again inside its frame. My heart is racing, and my senses are reeling, but underneath all of that I feel something much more sinister. In the washroom Infinity took control of me and made me bite my own hand, using pain to push me out. On the promenade she literally tried to scare me out of my mind by appearing as a bloodied and broken ghost, and when that didn’t work, she threatened to hurt someone I care about if I didn’t give her what she wanted.
Looking back at those memories with a clear mind, I can feel the intent of Infinity’s dark motives lingering in the shadowy alleyways of my subconscious. I know what she’s been trying to do! She’s been lashing out, using the small amount of influence that she has to try and weaken me, to tear holes in me, wearing me down physically and mentally so she can squeeze through and take over completely.
If I’m right, these blurred-out fragments must be instances when she momentarily regained
control, and that’s why I can’t see them clearly. But one thing is becoming increasingly clear. Infinity has been bluffing this whole time. That’s why she didn’t want me to dig any deeper. She was afraid I would discover the reason why she can’t take full control. She is undeniably strong, but the truth is . . . I’m even stronger. Out of the two of us, I’m not the weak one . . . she is.
I can feel her hatred bleeding through the cracks as I turn away from the fragment and stride alongside the wall, searching for the next frosted-over piece. Through the spaces between us, I can see Infinity is forced to copy my opposite actions as she walks in the other direction, but she can’t escape me. Rage twists her face as she slides backward, like I’m pulling her along with an invisible tether. I spot another fogged-over shard and dash toward it, but as I reach out, my hand suddenly veers wildly in a different direction, and my legs disobey me, causing me to leap sideways farther along the wall. “What are you doing, Infinity?” I shout out, willing my limbs to obey my orders and deny hers.
I manage to regain control of one of my legs, but I stumble and fall onto one knee right in front of a large fragment. I look up and see that it’s different from all the others again. It’s made up of a collection of dozens of smaller shards that are cracking apart and mending back together in rapid succession. Some of the sections are frosted, and some are not, but all are tenuously combined into one unstable, shifting mosaic.
“You want to remember?” Infinity growls. “Then remember this!”
My arm thrusts out on its own, thudding against the patterned fragment, and the jagged pane quickly swings around on its axis. It wobbles unsteadily as it comes to a stop, and the lattice of cracks across its surface instantly solidifies into one clear image. In it I see a rectangle of light, and inside that is the large dark silhouette of a person. I recognize the shape immediately. It’s Jonah. For some reason I can’t understand, an unsettling fear shudders through me, and I can feel Infinity’s influence slither into my arm and force my palm against the surface of the fragment.
All of a sudden, my hand is pulled into the frame, and the blackness surrounding Jonah’s silhouette pours out and snaps shut around me like the walls of a dark box.
I’m sitting on a bed, staring at Jonah’s shadowy outline, as the feeling of fear swells and churns inside me. He reaches toward me, and I scream out in absolute terror. “GET AWAY FROM ME! WHERE AM I? WHAT HAVE YOU DONE TO ME!”
The fear rises and curls inside me as my hands jolt against the restraints strapped around my wrists. I gasp with horror as memories from years gone by begin pulsing forth from the depths of my mind. I see a white room with medical equipment lining the walls, and I’m sitting loosely in a cold metal chair, my body paralyzed.
“You won’t remember this horrible day, sweetheart. I swear,” Jonah whispers from a chair beside me. He adjusts a metal band on my head and wipes a tear from my cheek. “This won’t hurt at all,” he says as he turns his attention to a nearby computer screen. He swipes his finger across it, then he looks back at me and smiles. “Y’know, it’s funny how many times I’ve told you that.”
All the lies and betrayals come flooding back with agonizing clarity. I curse at myself for forgetting what he did to me, not just once but twice now. I feel stupid and angry and sad all at the same time, the hurt in my heart just as fresh again as it was the first time I discovered what kind of man he really is.
The white room vanishes, and suddenly I’m strapped to the bed in Dr. Pierce’s lab again, thrown back into this memory that Infinity is forcing me to relive. Just like before, I see Jonah walk forward from the doorway and approach the bed, and I suddenly remember what came next. Jonah was telling the truth. I really did attack him and choke him to the ground. He tried to confront me about it afterward in front of everyone, but I didn’t believe him. Now it’s replaying in my mind all over again, as the me from the past roars with anger, breaks from the restraints, and pounces at Jonah. Time slows to a painful crawl as I fly through the air with my fingers clawing toward his neck.
I feel so ashamed of my past self for such a cowardly attack. I remember how much I wanted to kill him, but even though he betrayed me, he didn’t deserve to die. What was I thinking? Was I so blinded by anger that I forgot who I was? I would never murder anyone, so I don’t understand why I would suddenly want to kill the man who raised me, even if he—suddenly I sense it, a writhing undercurrent of single-minded brutality mingling with my own spirit, burning and twisting around my soul like a swirling tornado of fire, revealing the true source of hatred.
I should’ve known. The sadness I felt in that moment was mine, but the murderous rage was all Infinity’s. It feels as if our personalities were locked inside the same frame, like the shards in the mosaic of this memory. I feel an overwhelming sense of guilt as I see my hands, controlled by Infinity’s lethal intentions, reach toward Jonah. I remember the expression of absolute bewilderment on his face, and that’s exactly what I dread to see again as I look beyond my outstretched fingertips that are trembling with rage and completely beyond my control. But it isn’t Jonah that I see staring back at me. I don’t know why, and I don’t know how, but the memory has been altered. Jonah has been replaced, and instead all I see are my own clawed hands diving directly at my own startled face.
Time snaps into full speed as Infinity erupts out of the mosaic, shattering the memory completely apart in a burst of flying fragments. She slams into me, wrapping her hands tightly around my throat as we both tumble backward, through the opening of my eyes, and out of this mad, twisted mindscape of horrors and back into the dimly lit concrete corridor of the real world.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
The concrete floor is cold against my back, the solitary moth is still circling the light above me, and I’m lying in exactly the same prone position that I’ve been in for the last twenty-five minutes. The shock of reliving the brutal attack on Jonah and Infinity’s surprise assault has left me panting quick, adrenalized breaths, my rapidly rising and falling chest the only movement my paralyzed body will allow. Even the muscles that move my eyes have been rendered useless, but that doesn’t stop me from scanning my peripheral vision for any movement. Infinity is nowhere to be seen. Somehow she managed to breach the wall of memories and force me back out into the real world, but now I can’t even feel or sense her at all.
I try to take in slow and measured lungfuls of air to calm myself down and assess the situation, but the process is abruptly interrupted by a rising sense of panic when I feel something beginning to move inside me. It’s growing in the center of me, like a swelling tumor. I can feel the edges of it in visceral detail as it sprouts tendrils from its corners and a bulb from one end, molding itself into a miniature humanlike shape.
Infinity is inside me. Spreading like the poison that paralyzed me.
The doll-size mass is getting bigger and bigger, and it isn’t long before I sense Infinity trying to worm her phantom arms and legs inside mine, squirming her way into my skin so she can wear me like a suit. I want to fight back, but I’m not sure how to.
I try to imagine her shrinking smaller again, and suddenly the enemy limbs creeping inside my own seem to retract ever so slightly. It isn’t much, but it’s a start, so I take as deep a breath as I can and begin focusing harder on resisting Infinity’s power. It’s working; I can feel her influence waning as the tips of her snaking tendrils shrivel back toward where they came from. I’m winning, and I’ve almost forced her all the way out, when all of a sudden her venomous voice echoes in my skull.
“I’m not the only one who wanted to kill Major Brogan,” she whispers tauntingly. “You wanted it just as much as I did.”
That . . . isn’t . . . true, I reply in my mind.
“I’m not lying,” she says. “Let me help you look deeper, Finn.”
I try to block her out, but a tortured moan escapes my lips as images begin pulsing through my mind. I see Jonah sitting at my bedside, reading me a picture book, smiling at me wi
th genuine love. I see the desperate worry in his eyes as he’s reduced to a flustered, bumbling mess when I break my arm falling from my bike. I see him grinning like a goofy idiot as I blow out the candles on the cake at my fourth birthday party, and I feel the warm embrace of his huge arms when I cry because I have no friends to play with. I see Jonah kneeling beside me, draping his jacket over my shoulders as the memory of his voice drifts on a warm current through my mind.
“I love you like you are my daughter. No matter what happens, never, ever forget that.”
And I vowed that I never would. He was my Jonah, and I loved him, too; part of me still does, and that’s why it hurts so much when all my fond memories are tainted by the bad, and all the joy that I used to cherish is now crushed by the sight of his pleading face, flushed red with blood, his eyes bulging while he gags for breath as my hands choke him to the ground.
“You wanted that, too,” whispers Infinity.
A feeble sob escapes my lips, and remorse ripples through me as the guilt of the attack and the pain of his betrayal fill my heart once more. Tears roll warm down the sides of my face, and my resistance falters, only for an instant, but it seems that’s all Infinity needs, as she suddenly expands to full size, filling my body completely. This is why she tried so hard to show me these things; she took a chance and gambled that the shame I felt would be my weakness and my weakness would give her the edge to take control.
Damn her to hell. She was right.
I know that I’m stronger than her, but she’s fired an arrow through a chink in my armor. I feel myself losing my grip and tipping backward into the void as Infinity shunts me into the darkness. I can feel her regaining command over my body as I drift away in a tangle of black. It’s like I’m surrounded by a mass of invisible ropes, and it feels as though Infinity’s spirit is swelling, pushing me further and further into oblivion, and I’m helpless to stop it.
