Me: Hey, do you have a second to video chat?
We’d never video chatted before, but I figured it couldn’t hurt to ask.
Luke: Driving at the moment. What’s up?
Me: I’m going to tell you something that may freak you out just a little bit, FYI.
Luke: Freak me out? Is it a new book? Did you finish Breakpoint Online?
Me: Let’s just talk later. Video chat. You’re going to want to see this, because when I tell you what I got into last night, you won’t believe me.
Luke: Did you have a crazy night or something? Eat too many wings and nachos?
Me: If you only knew …
“Can we go see the cherry blossoms now?” The woman took a few steps closer to the square.
“That’s the plan.” I joined her, pocketing my phone. “Also, I need a name from you.”
She shrugged.
“Okay, so if you won’t tell me a name, how about we come up with an alias for you?”
The woman turned and looked at me, something flashing behind her dark, Asian eyes. A sudden gust of wind whipped strands of her black hair across her face. “What about the name Cherry?” she asked.
I started to laugh.
“What is wrong with this name?”
“It’s just kind of a …”
I was going to say stripper name but didn’t know if that would offend her. Also, I didn’t know if Cherry was a stripper name; it just seemed like it might be.
“Never mind, let’s just call you Grace.”
“Why Grace?” She whispered the name a few more times, touched her chest, considered the name.
“It’s the working name for a female character I’ve been writing for a new series I’m working on.”
“Series?”
We stopped in front of one of the cherry blossom trees and I pressed my hand against its trunk. The trunk was cold, still a little wet from last night, and the beautiful bright pink and white flowers above betrayed the coldness of its core.
“I write books,” I reminded her. “And I’m working on a series.”
“Writer Gideon.”
“That’s me. And for now, at least until I can figure out who you really are, I’m going to call you Grace.”
She nodded. “I like it.”
Her face drained of color when two black SUVs appeared on the opposite block. “We need to go back to your place,” she said suddenly.
“Why’s that?”
Grace pulled at my arm, fear in her eyes as she whispered, “We have to go.”
A couple across the street was watching us. “We’re drawing attention to ourselves,” I said.
Here’s the thing: I had no idea what I was doing, nor was I fully aware at the time as to why she’d shown up at my place.
While it is easy in retrospect to put the pieces together and realize that something was terribly wrong – beautiful women don’t normally show up at sci-fi writers’ doorsteps – I was naive and clueless.
That was, until I saw the utter fear in her eyes.
The two vehicles skidded to a halt, and men who clearly weren’t law enforcement officers kicked open the door, weapons drawn. They didn’t wear typical police uniforms but black outfits with armor up to their necks and visors over their eyes. Tactical suits, with some type of advanced recognition system.
My oh-shit meter went through the roof.
My knees buckled, my heart backflipped in my chest, my mouth went dry, and I began to clam up.
Grace turned to the men, her image wavering as it changed from dressed-down Asian lady back to her true form.
The five men came for her, and as they did, she lifted one hand, curling her fingers in the air as anger spread across her face.
The first two stopped, touched their neck, exchanged glances, and began to choke.
The first man to pass them stopped dead in his tracks, his face contorting under the transparent visor as he began to scream.
He kept screaming and began firing his weapon, which was some type of stunning device, into the cherry blossoms.
The last two men dropped to their knees, took off their visors, and raised their weapons to their heads.
“No!” I shouted as they triggered the weapon, and bolts of electricity took them both down.
I glanced at the couple across the street as the two men fell. Looking left, I saw Grace with one hand aimed at our assailants, and the other hand aimed at the couple.
Her eyes were completely white, her hair starting to rise off her shoulders.
Even though I’d barely moved a muscle, I was out of breath. My hands twitched, and I was surprised to see my legs moving beneath me.
Other people will see us, I thought, remembering that we lived in a dense area with brownstones and apartments that faced the street. Someone was likely watching.
Even with this thought at the back of my skull, and knowing that it wouldn’t be very difficult to locate me, I returned with her to my basement apartment.
In retrospect, we should have got the hell out of there – out of Connecticut, even out of America – but I was still new at this, and panic had clouded my thinking capabilities.
“Who’s after you?” I asked as we reached my apartment. I fiddled with the key, opened the door, and together, we ran down the steps into my dingy apartment.
Grace stood near the door with her hands at the ready, watching the opening intently, waiting for someone to come through.
If you listed all the things a noob would do in this situation, I would pass with flying colors. If it were a test, I would fail miserably.
But I eventually got my bearings, and as I did so, I started to put the pieces of this puzzle together.
Mysterious woman shows up on doorstep? Check. Some type of law enforcement agency after her, likely federal? Check. A little bit of amnesia? Definitely. A possible government conspiracy? Get out your tin hats. Danger for Yours Truly? You bet. But as Gabriel Garcia Marquez said in Love in the Time of Cholera, “Wisdom comes to us when it can no longer do any good.”
Somehow, I had found myself in either a) an urban fantasy or b) the start of a superhero story.
Except I wasn’t a superhero, and the shifter psychic with me didn’t seem like a superhero. She’d just attacked the feds, or at least people I assumed were federal agents.
But is she a villain?
And this begged the question:
Does the opposite of superhero always have to be villain?
“Quiet, Writer Gideon, your mind is on fire,” she said, her eyes trained on the door.
“Who are those people?” I asked. I could feel the color return to my face.
I was frightened – hell, I was scared shitless and witless – but I was also intrigued, and part of me knew that with what she’d already shown me, it would take quite a bit of manpower to take her down.
“They’re after me.”
The next question was stupid, but I had to ask it anyway. “Are you a mutant?”
She turned to me as a smile crept up her face. “Not like the mutants in your head.”
The mutants in my head? Yep, she’d read my thoughts again, and likely stumbled upon a preteen fascination with X-Men.
“Sorry, dumb question,” I told her. My phone buzzed. “You’ve got to be kidding me,” I said as I looked at a prompt from EBAYmazon telling me that my package had been dropped off. Damn them and their fast delivery!
“Looks like we have a package.”
She only nodded.
“The package may help us.”
If I could plug her in, I’d likely be able to figure out a little more about what was going on here. But that might give our location away. Unless …
I moved over to my computer and unhooked the Wi-Fi. Again, an amateurish move that I should have made last night. But I was trying, and that’s all that counts.
A few thoughts came to me rapid-fire.
First, my basement apartment would not do, at least not for much longer.
I’m not a mutant, her voice said in my head.
“Yeah, I know, I’m just thinking things through, and no talking in my head.”
Your second idea is better. Plan B.
I hadn’t even gotten to my second idea, and the fact that she knew what it was only made me more nervous to be around her.
Could she read my future thoughts? Could she immediately understand and interpret my sudden desires?
She didn’t answer that one, thank Jeebus.
So, I started prepping for Plan B by packing a duffle bag.
I grabbed my laptop and its charger, some clothes, my passport, any documents that I thought were necessary including my birth certificate and my social security card. Yep, I still didn’t quite realize the seriousness of my situation – that these documents would prove useless to me after what I’d do later – but like I said, I was still getting used to this breaking bad thing.
Once I had my shit packed, I ordered a self-driving UberLyft to pick us up. I knew we’d be trackable, but at least we could make it a little harder to find us, which was part two of Plan B: using Grace’s abilities to our advantage.
If people were after us, and if we were going to fight for our lives, we might as well go out in style.
I actually thought this at the time, which was odd for a semi-reclusive bearded writer guy like me. But a little voice at the back of my head told me it was the right thing to think, and as I’d later find out, that voice belonged to Grace.
Chapter Five: Adjusting Grace’s Stats
If you imagine me peeking out into the streets holding a broom with the hope of braining one of the Agent Smiths – I still, at this point had no idea what to call them – then you wouldn’t be far off.
I didn’t have a broom, but I did have a duffle bag and a hunting knife my uncle gave me – yes, the cross-dressing one. I also had a broom, but this was mostly so I could try to scoot the EBAYmazon package away from the stoop to a more reachable location.
Damn USPS never delivered my packages correctly, preferring to leave them on the stoop. A stoop accessible by anyone passing.
But I’d gotten lucky, and the package was relatively easy to reach. The mini USB cable was in a yellow envelope, wrapped in plastic bubble wrap. Knowing I didn’t have time to really play around with it, I stuffed it in my duffle bag.
Behind me, Grace placed a hand on my shoulder, and my nerves tingled.
It took us all of five minutes to rip my apartment apart. It was her idea, to make the grimy place dirtier, and I obliged.
“I can’t believe I’m doing this,” I said for probably the tenth time.
“You’ll get used to it.”
I’ve never been the type that would just set everything down and go off on an adventure, but I was twenty-five now, and I worked at a fucking Yale gift shop. I had a BA in Comparative Literature from the University of Southern Connecticut, and I hadn’t had a girlfriend in years.
If ever there was a time to abandon it all, now was that time.
All this to say: I fucking destroyed my computer with a hammer.
My work was saved in the cloud anyway, and having seen Grace use superpowers, I knew that whatever happened from this point forward would not involve my shitty basement apartment.
“Here goes nothing,” I whispered as the self-driving UberLyft pulled up to the curb.
As we climbed into the car, I glanced around to see that all signs of the ‘security’ team from earlier were gone – poof – as if they’d never existed in the first place.
The thought came to me: Am I being too extreme about this? Should I just lay low for a while?
But, as Henry Miller once famously wrote in Tropic of Cancer, “There are people who cannot resist the desire to get into a cage with wild beasts and be mangled.”
If there was a quote to define my life going forward, it was this one.
As a drop off point, I’d chosen a three-star hotel in East Haven near the Long Island Sound. We were definitely going to get out of Connecticut, but I wanted to spend some time trying to figure out what Grace was and why she was on the run before we hit the open road for good.
The UberLyft curved to the on-ramp as Grace scooted closer to me, and her arm immediately wrapped around mine.
We knew not to speak in the UberLyft, just in case we were being recorded, and I hoped our disguises would at least help us find cover for long enough to get our bearings.
She’d chosen to become a cute redhead with glasses and a smattering of freckles across the bridge of her nose. A tight pantsuit and high heels completed her outfit.
I didn’t have a great disguise, but I did have a Yale baseball cap and a pair of fake Wayfarers on for good measure. I also wore a scarf around my neck that I’d tugged up to the bottom of my beard.
Grace laid her head on my shoulder and looked up at me.
I wanted to hug her in that moment, to share my apprehension of the choices we’d just made, but I kept my composure, focusing on the cars around us instead.
Keep your cool, Gideon, I reminded myself, like it somehow mattered.
By stepping into this UberLyft, I’d made my decision. There was no turning back.
We arrived at the hotel and the vehicle dropped us off in the back, as per my instructions. We waited for the UberLyft to leave before speaking.
“I’m counting on you,” I told her, “and your abilities.”
She nodded. “What do I say again?”
“I want you to tell the person at the front desk that we have a reservation. Make them think it has been paid for and that our names are … Edward and Jill King.”
“Edward and Jill King.”
I could tell by the glint in her eyes that she knew what to do but that she too needed some reassurance. I would later learn this about her and the other one like her: even with their great powers, they still needed reassurance; they still needed to be reminded sometimes of just how strong they were.
We entered the lobby, Grace still a redhead. There were a couple of fake plants, a television broadcasting some shitty local newscast, a coffee bar with a Keurig machine, and a lime green sofa. Tasteful.
After smoothing her hands over her dress, Grace stopped in front of the receptionist’s desk and told the lady what we’d gone over.
“Edward and Jill King …” The receptionist took a moment to scroll through a list of scheduled guests. “I don’t see you here. Did you make the reservation online?”
“We sure did,” I told her.
“Yes, we made it, um, online,” said Grace.
A look of confusion followed by sudden understanding smoothed over the receptionist’s face. She nodded, prepared the room key, and told us about checkout and free continental breakfast in the morning.
“Enjoy your stay,” she called after us.
“That was awesome,” I told Grace as soon as we’d gone up the elevator and found room 224.
“Really?” she asked, turning to me. It was like she’d never been complimented before; she wasn’t quite confused, but she didn’t smile nor offer any indication that she appreciated admiration.
“Really.”
I scanned the keycard and the door popped open. Whoever had cleaned the place went overboard on the air freshener, which made me wonder what the hell had gone on in here the previous night.
I set my duffle bag on the floor and got my laptop out.
Once I plugged in the cable, I moved over to the bed.
“Lay down,” I told Grace as I booted up my machine.
“Okay.”
The receptionist had given us a single room with a king-size bed. Grace’s decision or the receptionist’s? Who knew.
My phone buzzed, and I saw that it was a message f
rom Luke. I ignored it for the moment, so focused I was on plugging into Grace’s neck and seeing what I could discover.
I wasn’t disappointed.
Grace rested with her hands on her chest, the mini USB cable plugged into her neck.
“Okay, here goes nothing,” I said as I plugged the other end into my laptop.
A shadow box appeared.
[Initiating user]
[Anonymous User Y/N?]
I thought about that for a moment. If I selected ‘yes,’ then it may trigger some alarm that gives off her location. If I selected ‘no,’ then I’d likely have to log in somehow, and I for sure didn’t have any login ID.
“It’s asking me if I’m an anonymous user,” I told her. “Do you know anything about this?”
“No.”
“Okay.” I thought some more. “If I say I’m not an anonymous user, do you think you could help me find a password? Surely some part of you knows who installed this or was around when someone plugged into the port in your neck.”
She tilted her chin and looked down at me, an indecipherable expression on her face.
“Well?”
“Username: 1351885. Password: 1QAZ2WSX3EFV4321QWEASD.”
“Um, shit. That was awesome, Grace.”
“Thank you, Writer Gideon.”
I bolted to the room’s desk and found a pen and a hotel notepad. I asked her to repeat the details, and as I wrote them down, I got to wondering if it was caps or lower-case letters. I asked, but she didn’t quite understand what I meant.
[Anonymous User Y/N?]
Here goes nothing, I thought as I selected ‘N.’ The username and password screen popped up. I typed the username and tried the password in all caps.
It worked.
An hourglass appeared on my desktop. It began doing the AppleSoft spin, the sand moving from one side of the hourglass to the other as it processed. My laptop whirred, the fans kicking into gear.
It was risky; I wasn’t foolish enough to believe that what I was doing wouldn’t end up triggering some type of built-in locator and getting us caught.
But curiosity killed the cat, and many times it also killed your favorite writer.
Or something like that.
My curiosity paid off when a program opened after a few more seconds of loading. There were file folders – old school style with a plus sign that opened the drop-down menus. A ton of folders, actually, and even more subfolders.
Cherry Blossom Girls Box Set Page 3
