by G. K. Lund
“Don’t you have any affiliation then?” she asked me instead of answering.
“A what?”
She sighed. “You really don’t know, do you? I’ve never met anyone like that before.”
“Like what?”
“Yorov are powerful, and there are reasons for that. They take advantage of people to get ahead.”
“People like you?”
She shrugged and ran her right hand over her thigh, grimacing at the pain. “That’s gonna bruise. Well, it could have been worse.”
“It could,” Peter agreed, still typing on his phone. “What’s your name?” he added.
“Evelyn Moon,” she said and gave him a curious look. “Is he always this suspicious?” she asked me.
“Are you?”
“Touché. He seems like the skeptic though,” she whispered. I simply nodded at that. It was true. Peter was becoming more and more shut in as things became crazier around him. I couldn’t really blame him.
“Why did you get pain when I touched you?” Evy went on in the same low murmur, hoping Peter couldn’t catch it all.
“I don’t know. What is supposed to happen?”
“Not that.”
“That’s helpful.”
“It’s why Yorov has sent those men after me. Pardon me for being careful. Are you immune or something?”
“Immune to what?”
She bit her lip a moment as she considered this. “Maybe not, since it hurt you. Okay then. I’m sure you understand there are people who are, shall we say, gifted?”
I nodded. Besides myself and Evy, Saphia hadn’t only been gifted as Evy called it, she had been strong. And then there was Param, though I wasn’t sure how he fit into this. And Winter of course… whatever he was. Hell, I didn’t even know what I was, only that there was something not human about me. Was that the same as the others though? I didn’t think so.
“People like us stick together. Look out for each other. There are people who prey on us for their own gain.”
“Like this Yorov company?”
“Yes.” She exhaled slowly and brushed a loose strand of her hair behind her ear. For some reason, she didn’t strike me as the type who was used to fighting for her life; running from people who wanted to catch her. She was strong though, that was clear, but maybe being a gymnast made you able to keep running even with a painful thigh. Still – she didn’t have the same no-nonsense attitude of Olivia. You knew simply from the detective’s stance that she was not to be messed with. Evy gave off an air of gentleness that was carefully and purposely hidden in Olivia, whereas it was controlled in Rose. Of course, these events were not normal for Evy. This kind of life was not something she had chosen. It had become a necessity, I supposed.
“Why do they want people like you so badly?”
She gave a wry smile. “I’m like a slow working poison no one can detect. Think of how they could get rid of their competition.”
“Says here you’re from Florida,” Peter interrupted, his trusty phone giving him more information.
“Minnesota originally.” She didn’t seem perturbed by his prying into her past.
“How did you…?” I began.
“Social media, Ben. I showed you this, remember?” the disappointment in Peter was not to be mistaken.
“We moved to Miami when I was ten. Why is that important?”
Peter frowned as he glanced up at her. “I have trouble seeing how a European, Dutch it seems, company has been chasing you from there. How did they even find you?”
“They are excellent at that type of thing. They have been honing their skills for centuries. I’ve heard of them operating as child psychologists. What better way to find troubled and useful kids than when parents need help with them? With me, though, it was my coach.”
I could hear the regret and sorrow in her voice as she told us what had happened. She had told her secret to a fellow gymnast, someone she had thought a friend. Little had she known that her friend was sleeping with their coach and that he, in return, had bonds to Yorov.
“I had to leave town after that. Couldn’t even say goodbye to Mom and Dad.”
“Your accounts have been stagnant for a couple of years now.”
She nodded.
“Usually,” Peter went on, “when people go missing people post stuff on their sites. We miss you, please come home… that kind of thing.”
“And?” I prompted, confused.
“There is nothing there,” Evy explained. Peter nodded. “That’s because my friends and family know why I left. Contacting me puts everyone at risk.”
“See,” Peter put his phone back in his pocket, “I have a hard time believing this.”
“Of course. You have no affiliation to this.” She turned to look at me fully. “You, on the other hand… well I’m not quite sure about you.”
“So why are you after Winter?”
“Oh, jeez, here we go again,” Peter mumbled.
“I’ve been hiding for the past two years. Found a nice town, settled there. But I was stupid enough to keep to my training. That must have been how they tracked me down.” She went quiet for a moment and took a deep breath, controlling herself as bad memories threatened to take over. “Anyway. I was told to find him. He’s like a last resort. Yorov can’t touch him I think.”
Oh yes, they could. I had seen that myself. But something made sense. Winter was helping Param was he not? As much as Param could be helped, of course. Winter’s family had been doing it for generations. Maybe Param was not the only one? If this was true, it was disconcerting that I was the only one he wouldn’t help. And for some unknown reason, I couldn’t figure out, because he would not talk to me. A vicious circle it was. One I desperately wanted out of. A cracking noise drew my attention and I realized I had cracked the fingers on the hands. Not on purpose. It had to be something Old Ben had done as a habit. The popping of the joints felt calming for some reason. That, in turn, made me want out of this flesh-container even more.
“Don’t you think we’ve been here long enough now?” Peter said, making it clear, as he turned toward the door, that he didn’t want to hear anything else about this.
“How long has it been?” Evy asked as she eased herself off the table. She winced as she put weight on her leg, but kept at it.
“Twenty minutes,” Peter said over his shoulder.
“Surely they would have found us by now if they were still here?” I asked.
“I would not underestimate these guys,” Evy said as she walked over to Peter and looked out the door with him. She was right. I was aware that I had been lucky when using the fire extinguisher. The violence? Well, I didn’t quite know what to do and hadn’t in that moment either. I had only known what actions that could lead to death, and that they would not in this case. A certainty that had spurred me into action as I needed to know what Evy knew. Unfortunately, she was not very forthcoming. She had only just met us though, I had to concede that. But if I was going to wait slowly for people to trust me, then I was going to be stuck in Old Ben’s body for a long time.
No thank you.
“Best to leave before the workers do,” Peter said and pushed at the door. “I don’t want to get locked in here by accident.”
We walked back into the large hall where the walls were mostly uneven bedrock, patched with concrete here and there. We could still hear talking further in as well as a clanking noise of someone hitting stone with a sledgehammer or the like. They were probably doing work to use the space for something.
“Let’s just figure out where we are,” Peter said as he led the way toward the sharp beam of light that forced its way into the gloom by way of the door left ajar. “Then we can call an Uber and get the hell out of here.”
“Sounds good,” Evy said as they walked through the door that had saved us earlier.
Which turned out not to be the case this time around.
I had barely taken a step outside before one of the men came forward in a
rush and grabbed at Evy’s arm and yanked her to him. She cried out in anger, and then half stumbled on her pained leg. Peter and I stepped after her on sheer reflex and were rewarded with a gun aimed at us.
For a moment we all just stood there, taking the situation in. Evy tried twisting her arm free, but the man said something short to her in another language. Spanish maybe? She looked at the gun and stood still. I noticed the man still had gloves on.
“Unless you want me to use this,” the man told us in English with a heavy accent, “we are going to leave peacefully, and you will not follow.” He glanced around and I knew his friends were not far. They must have been spending the last twenty minutes splitting up and searching the area.
Then it dawned on me, that yet again, I couldn’t sense anyone’s imminent demise. No pressure and tingling in the head. I took a step toward the man. It made him yell at me in the other language again. Still no sensation. He didn’t want to shoot. His finger wasn’t even on the trigger. Either he wasn’t much of a murderer, or he didn’t want to attract attention.
“Ben, are you crazy?” Peter hissed somewhere to my right.
The man seemed to order me to stop. He raised the hand with the gun, ready to strike me with it instead.
Quick as a snake, Evy raised her free hand and laid two fingers to the man’s temple. I could see her eyes narrowing in concentration, and then she stepped back.
The man’s eyes widened as he lowered the gun and turned toward her. He said something to her, voice broken and afraid. I grabbed the gun from an uncaring limp hand. He repeated the words over and over again. “What have you done to me?”
“What you deserve,” Evy answered him in the same language as she twisted loose from his now lax grip and stepped back. “Come on,” she added in English to Peter and me.
“What have you done? What have you done?” The man staggered backward, almost stepping into the road as a car drove by, honking at him after it had passed.
“What has she done?” I asked, not doing as Evy said. I was too curious.
“Why? Why?”
“What happened?” I asked him, not really paying attention to the fact that I actually understood what he was saying.
His eyes barely managed to focus on me, desperation shining through, no trace of the malice he had met us with mere moments ago. He was desperately afraid of something.
“She has killed me. I can’t survive this.”
“That’s your own fault,” Evy broke in. I felt her grab the right arm, trying to pull me along. “You’re alive aren’t you?”
“I can’t… I can’t…” the man was reeling, as some sort of revelation was hitting him.
“Fucking hell, Ben,” Peter shouted behind me. “When did you learn to speak Spanish?”
“What?” I said as I glanced back at him and then toward the man who was moving unsteadily, panicking, hands to his distraught face.
“Never mind that,” Evy said, tugging at the arm. “He’s not alone, remember. We need to leave.”
Feeling as confused as the man in front of me, I gave in and followed her, noticing, not for the first time, Peter’s worried look. I handed him the gun which he, without a word, promptly stuffed into his satchel.
Chapter 11
“This is all madness,” Peter said before we’d all managed to get through the door to Old Ben’s apartment. “What am I supposed to do with this?” he added and pulled the gun from his satchel. He held it up between his thumb and index finger.
“I’ll take it,” Evy volunteered.
“Do you know how to use it?”
“A little.
“Oh, a little? Well, that’s comforting. We should have called the cops.” He put the weapon down on the coffee table, and then, with more care, the satchel with the laptop on one of the chairs. “I need a beer,” he announced and headed for the kitchen.
I glanced at the clock on the wall. “It’s three fifteen.” Had this not been an issue with Param?
“I don’t care,” he yelled back from the kitchen. “Unless you can schedule attacks from criminals until after nine p.m., I don’t give a shit.”
“He seems nice,” Evy said. It looked like she was suppressing a smile.
“Yeah, I think he generally is.”
“You think? I thought you were friends.”
I considered for a moment what to tell her. She was after all different as well, but I decided to go with the basics.
“I was in an accident. Ended up in the river. After that I don’t remember much.”
“Oh, I’m sorry. Wait, you mean like amnesia?”
“Yes.”
“For real?”
“Why does everyone have such trouble grasping that?”
She gave a short laugh at that and shook her head. “I need some air,” she said and walked past the furniture, the gun, and headed toward the little balcony. “You coming?” she added over her shoulder. I heard Peter bang something down on the counter in the kitchen and nodded as I walked after her, adding a yes as she couldn’t see this.
“So,” she said and inhaled and exhaled fresh air as I closed the door behind us. “He doesn’t know about you, does he?”
“No.” It was a little colder up there than down on the ground, but the air was better than down in the midst of traffic.
“I’m thankful you didn’t call the police. I know that sounds shady, but things tend to go bad when they get involved. They don’t understand what’s really going on, and while they’re keeping you, Yorov usually gets a chance to zone in on you.”
I believed her. About this company, I knew they had tried to kill Winter, and about her gift… or curse. “What did you do to that man?”
Evy held on to her own elbows at the question. She looked like she was trying to comfort and steady herself at the same time.
“When I… touch someone like that…” she trailed off and looked down at the street below. The sound of cars driving by reached us and mixed in with shouts from people, alarms and building work a block down.
“You can tell me,” I said. “I do believe you.”
She gave a quick smile at that. “Yeah, that’s not the issue though. I know you do. It’s just that it’s a difficult thing to deal with.”
“How so?”
“I bring forth the worst in people. When I touch them like that, when I provoke it, bring the bad to the surface… well, it’s like a conjuring of guilt. You remember every bad thing you have ever done to someone. People you’ve picked on, stolen from, used violence against, lied to. Everything that has ever hurt someone, both physically and mentally. Even things you didn’t consciously know hurt someone.”
“Oh,” I said. I wasn’t even annoyed at my lack of eloquence. That was an interesting talent.
“Yeah, that’s not even the worst part. Do you know what hell is?”
“Uh, I understand the concept.”
“When the people I touch begin to remember this, it is not only their own memories that come to life. They feel the pain they have caused others. Not the violent pain, but the one within. They feel it, and they understand it. Imagine what that does to someone like that guy outside the bomb shelter.”
I nodded. He was hired muscle. He was there to abduct Evy, and who knew how many other shady jobs he’d done before today. If what she was saying was true, there was no wonder he’d panicked when she had touched him. He knew what was coming. “Is that why they wore gloves?”
“Yes. It requires skin contact.”
That hadn’t helped him much since she had gotten close enough anyway. “He said you’d killed him. He seemed alive enough.”
“Obviously he knew what will now happen to him. The thing about guilt is, it can become unbearable. Throw the true understanding of others’ pain into the mix and you have a recipe for people who will want to end it all.”
“That’s what you meant by Yorov using you like a slow-working poison?”
“Exactly.”
I could see it.
If they used her to touch someone they wanted to get rid of, and they were certain the victim had done enough harm in their life to warrant a massive reaction – well, what would happen by their own hand a few days later couldn’t be traced back to the real culprit.
“Truly understanding, and feeling the pain of the people you’ve harmed,” Evy continued as she let her arms drop to her sides, “that is what I think true hell must be like. No amount of torture will ever teach you any lesson. But this lesson? If you deserve it, then you will likely not survive it.”
We stood together in silence a moment. I had a feeling she didn’t go around announcing this to people often. I could see why. I looked down at the hand I had placed on the railing. The same thing hadn’t happened when she touched me. “Why didn’t it work on me?”
“I have no idea. I’ve never experienced that before. What’s your affili– sorry, what’s your thing anyway?”
“I don’t really know.” I looked sideways at her. How much was I supposed to tell? For some reason, I felt I could trust her. I had known her only a few hours and briefly met her once before that. Sure we had some things in common, but being human was not truly one of them. I did understand why she’d chosen the balcony though. I turned and saw Peter on the couch inside the apartment, laptop on the table.
I decided to trust her, somewhat. “I seem to be able to sense when people are about to die.”
“Death warnings?” she said and then nodded slowly. “I think I’ve heard of that. Yeah. They’re not common, but there are people who get them.”
That lifted my spirits a little. “And visions of people who have died before, though they feel more like memories.”
“Huh, never heard of that though. What do you mean by before?”
“Other times, other places. Most often here, where I am.”
“And you don’t know anything about this?”
“I don’t remember who I’m supposed to be.”
“Yeah, amnesia.” A gust of wind hit us and made her long ponytail fly up before the thick mass of curls and gravity forced the locks down again.
“Maybe that is why my trying to provoke your guilt didn’t work. If you have no memories, then there is nothing to feel guilty about.”
