by Mike Chen
EMTs wheeled over a stretcher; latches clanged and clacked, and the air filled with medical speak as they checked him over. Though Jamie had gone a long way to earning some level of trust, Zoe still lingered just long enough to hear the EMTs pronounce the man’s vitals as steady and stable.
The Mind Robber kept his word.
And suddenly, those moments of chasing him down seemed a little different.
* * *
As two firefighters passed by, one commented about how a blown transformer on its own shouldn’t cause such a big fire, not at that speed. The other said it looked like the building’s old wood structure probably didn’t help, though its earthquake retrofit with concrete had kept the whole thing from toppling down.
Blown transformer. Did that explain the flashing blue and sudden blackouts? An hour had passed, and while the danger of the fire was mostly gone now, the burnt stench lingered in the air. Combined with the incoming bay fog and light rain overhead, the whole place became a stew of all the worst smells. Jamie adjusted on the bus stop bench he shared with Zoe as they watched the firefighters. Lights from police cars brought flashes of blue into the mix, though there looked to be a plainclothes officer helping out.
They hadn’t really said much during that time, mostly commenting as the firefighters and EMTs did their job—“true heroes,” Zoe called them—though they played up the adulation when Ian came by to thank them, before dropping back to tension just as quickly. Jamie didn’t think Zoe was going to break him in half or turn him in, though she had just thrown herself through a concrete wall. So she was probably a little impulsive.
“What’s it like?” Zoe suddenly asked.
“Huh?”
“Doing the...memory thing,” she said. She tugged on the blanket provided by the EMTs, eyes still forward. “What’s it like?”
“Well, it’s um...it’s kind of like watching a movie? You can fast-forward or rewind. Or pause.” He waved his fingers around. “Fingers help, they kind of act like controls. Like, um, swiping to move around. And delete.”
She finally looked at him, eyes wide but not combative like earlier. Instead, she leaned forward, the questions coming out at a much quicker clip. “Anything in their memory? Like even stuff from way back when?”
“As far as I can tell, as long as it’s in there, like if their brain is still capable of recalling it, I can access it. Sometimes it looks a little hazy and then it focuses.” Jamie broke eye contact, even though he could feel her gaze lingering. “But honestly, I try not to pry too much. You know, it’s creepy to do that. I usually just cover my tracks and that’s it.”
“Even yourself?”
Jamie’s muscles locked up. This had to be leading somewhere. While the fire and ensuing rescue had occupied their focus over the past few hours, there was no getting away from the original reason they were there. Or was it a trick? She had, after all, been chasing him. He weighed his options and realized that sitting next to someone with extraordinary speed and strength left very little margin for error. “Not myself,” he said, breaking the silence. “It’s like what you said about the wall. I’m like you. Who I was before two years ago, I’m not sure.”
“Two years. That’s gotta...” Zoe’s voice trailed off, her brow suddenly furrowed before her eyes locked onto his with a sudden intensity. “Have you tried pushing past it?”
“A little. But I figure, what’s the point? I am who I am now. You can only move forward from that. You go backward, you’ll only find that it wasn’t the way you imagined.” He opted to not mention the strange underlying sense of guilt the past seemed to spark. “I try to look ahead.” She remained still, the putt-putt-putt sound of the fire engine in the background. “You?”
“I’ve researched.” She didn’t blink; in fact, she didn’t move, almost to the point that he wondered if he’d accidentally brain-stunned her. “Something has to explain it. You hear the rumors from Hartnell City? I—” She stood up and stared off, the connection broken. “Never mind. I should go.”
“Can I ask you something first?”
“Sure.” The smallest of smiles came to her lips.
“I get the strength and speed and stuff. But how does the whole hovering thing work?”
“Oh that—” her laughter filled the air around them “—I don’t even know. It just does.”
Simple as that. Zoe seemed to blow it off like floating in the air was the same as doing a cartwheel. Jamie couldn’t do either.
“So what are you going to do now?” he asked, his breath puffing into the night sky. This was the logical question, one he’d hoped would have come up by now. It hadn’t, so he figured it was on him. This was one variable that couldn’t be left unchecked. Not after this morning. Not after evading her.
Not after saving people together.
He went on, “I mean, look, I’m pretty tired after tonight. So if you’re going to turn me in, I think I’d like to skip the whole beating up part.”
“No.” A gust of wind kicked up strands of her smoke-matted her. “No, I’m not going to turn you in. I think you’ve earned a bit of good faith. It’s too bad, ’cause I had the best catchphrase I was going to say when I caught you.”
“Thanks. Maybe save that for another villain? Well, I guess we know if we wound up working as EMTs together, we’d be okay.”
“Yeah.” Zoe’s head bobbed in a quick nod. “Guess you could call that teamwork.”
She turned, the lights from beyond obscuring her expression, though he could see her mouth drop. “What you said about—” she started before cutting herself off and looking down. “I mean. Never mind. It’s been a long day. I could use a shower.”
“Right. I should get home to my cat. She’s probably wondering where I disappeared to.”
“You have a cat?”
“Yeah. Her name is Normal. She’s...not that bright.” Her persistent meows and awkward gait popped into his mind, prompting a laugh. “Definitely can’t survive on her own.”
“Huh. Well, people can surprise you every day. Look, I’ll stay out of your way. You stay out of mine. Okay?”
The question lingered, a bit of a truce in the air.
“Yeah. Sounds good.”
Zoe nodded again, and though he wanted to say something more, the right phrases refused to form. They stared at each other.
Maybe it didn’t have to be this way. Maybe they didn’t have to be at odds.
Maybe they could even help each other.
“You know—” he started, but as he did, Zoe gave a quick wave and turned. She walked off down the alley, looking left and right but not back, then sprinted off with her extraordinary speed.
The drizzle picked up, washing soot and debris off his clothes, out of his hair. And though he considered trying to catch up to her, for now he decided to leave it be. All around him, the power fluctuated again—the lights on the fire engine, the streetlights, the surrounding buildings.
They stabilized, and Jamie stood and looked straight at a flyer on a telephone pole.
The flyer was for some furniture clearance sale, nothing to bother with. But burned into it, as if someone had taken a pencil of electricity and charred the paper with it, was the word STOP. The edges of the lettering glowed, little flecks of ash blowing off in the wind.
Questions formed in Jamie’s mind, pondering not just the word but how it got here, why it got here. It had to be deliberate, for him to see—with the rain and the madness of the evening, it had to be. But he would have noticed someone coming in with a cigarette lighter or something and burning the word in there.
Stop? Stop what? Stop the fire? Stop being the Mind Robber?
Stop Zoe?
“You alright?” a voice called out. The tone was familiar and Jamie looked up to catch sight of the detective from earlier. He immediately straightened up—Chesterton, that was his name. “Oh. W
e met earlier, didn’t we? This was your support group you mentioned?”
Jamie told himself to relax. It was completely reasonable that a police officer, even a plainclothes detective, would help out with a downtown fire and not be tracking him from earlier.
“Yep. That was me. Oh,” he said, trying to turn on an extra level of gracious vibes, “sorry again about my cat earlier.”
“My fault. Never say hello to strange animals. Common sense. I heard you helped get some people out here?”
“I just did what anyone would in that situation.”
“Well—” he smiled as he looked over at the open ambulance door “—the city is grateful. San Delgado could use more people like you.”
Best to leave. “Thanks, Detective. I appreciate it.”
“You’re okay? You need anything?”
“Yeah, I’m good.” He oriented himself using the towering and brightly lit TransNational Building as his guide, then set out to the nearest Metro station, just as he did nearly every single day. But this time, each step felt a little different, as if the world had suddenly shifted from a few hours ago, and it had nothing to do with the burning building or humming fire engines.
8
GETTING WOKEN UP BY Normal’s frantic meows had happened once before. Jamie’s first day, in fact. Well, his first day of this life. Back then, those initial moments had the meows coming through an open window, so rhythmic and purposeful that they shook him out of his stupor. Even after he’d taken several minutes to try to piece together his new life, the meowing still rolled, enough for Jamie to look out the window of his seemingly normal apartment, revealing a run-down complex somewhere tucked away from distant city towers. The courtyard, with its dying lawn and thin trees, offered a picture of suburban normalcy. The parking lot, the faded exterior paint, the garbage and recycling dumpsters, it all seemed cookie-cutter, though nothing activated specifics in his memory.
And then there was the source of the meowing: a gray cat with orange and peach patches lying in the courtyard sun. A crow landed next to it, trying to get a nearby piece of bread. It poked at the cat, the beak picking the feline’s fuzzy side, small tufts of fur floating into the sunlight. The cat continued letting out helpless meows, and Jamie watched the scene repeat for about a minute before stepping outside and shooing the bird away, the cat too inept to save itself. “You’re not normal, are you?” he said to it after it began following him.
The cat might have been his for all he knew, and for that reason, he’d let it go inside with him following his inspection of the courtyard. A sunny spot seemed to call to the creature, and it sniffed for a few seconds before rolling on its back, a soft purr finally replacing the frantic meows from before.
That day, Jamie searched all the cabinets and drawers, and the only things he turned up were two sheets of paper. The first was a one-year lease agreement signed out to 2D Industries. Weeks later, he’d call the number on there out of curiosity, only to have it go direct to a generic voice mail.
The other was a note with a short sentence written by hand. “You can read their memories.”
It was such an odd statement. Was it literal? Was it a joke? Was it an incomplete statement? How did someone read memories?
What about his own memory? He’d tried to press into it, but trying to remember was like diving into an abyss, an impenetrable but blinding fog everywhere he turned. One single flash came through, surprising him twice—first that it existed and second with the content.
It appeared to be a hallway, some industrial complex or maybe an old hospital. Grim fluorescent lighting turned up the contrast, making hallway corners and doorways seem like creases in a drawing. A metal door sat in the middle of the hallway, and at the end of it lay...something just out of frame. Crumpled silhouettes on the floor in the far room.
Outside, car doors slammed and chattering voices approached, the sound of the swinging crackle of plastic bags and footsteps breaking him out of the mystery image. He peeked out the window at an older couple walking slowly across the courtyard.
Seeing that he had zero recall of who he was or how he got there, trying to read someone else’s memory might have been only the second strangest part of his day.
He squinted, staring, as if that was the path to jumping into someone’s mind. Was there a gesture or magic word or something that was supposed to activate it?
And nothing.
The room filled with his sigh. He closed his eyes. Something invisible tugged on his hands; he raised them, and there was a subtle temperature shift underneath the skin when he extended his fingers and gave in.
Then images flew into his mind.
It wasn’t anything groundbreaking, like learning someone’s deep dark secret or the key to their soul. He saw through the eyes of a driver while a car lurched into a parking spot, handicap placard swaying. He heard the sounds of a man’s grunt while pushing himself out of the passenger seat. He heard the thunk of the car’s trunk slamming shut after that same man removed several plastic bags.
And he felt the warmth of two hands together.
All through the eyes of an old woman.
It was strange, this person who’d lived decades more than him, who probably spent much of her time living in memories, she managed to captivate him at a moment when he had no memories, and the simple gesture of holding hands with her husband defined the significance of the present rather than the past.
His eyes snapped open to find the cat staring up at him, unblinking. “I guess I’m not normal, either,” he said, hand extended. Her ears perked up at the words, and she rested one paw on the palm of his hand, right above where a scar cut diagonally across the skin. “Or maybe you are? Normal?”
The cat replied with a meow, the same awkward staccato meow that he first heard.
The same meow that woke him up off the bed here, now.
He’d dozed off, open suitcase next to him. A week had passed since the fire at the YMCA, something that the authorities chalked up to an electrical fire that spiraled out of control given the condition of the building. No one mentioned the Mind Robber or the Throwing Star, though apparently Zoe was still on the job; news outlets were reporting she’d taken down another mugger two days ago and also rescued someone from a wrecked car that had hydroplaned during the recent storm.
Jamie, however, didn’t want any of it. Not the fame, not the media adoration, or the social media speculation. Not anymore. Zoe seemed to be a perfect fit for whatever that life entailed.
But not him. He spent the afternoon considering all the variables: his abilities, the amount of cash he still had, Normal and her care. Other than his phone bill and the bank account he used as an intermediary for the cash he stole, there were few ties to this place. No car, and very few records under his own name. Library records, sure, but of all the places with an official identification, a library card seemed the most benign. Even this apartment was signed to some mystery corporation, absolving him of the responsibility.
Everything he needed was right here. That, and the extra motivation from the morning news: the injured woman from the bank was going to speak. It spread quickly to every possible media outlet. Even simply walking in the park for fresh air blasted it in his face. Every passing TV in every restaurant, everyone’s conversation along the way, even the tiny screens he saw in people’s hands while waiting in line for a coffee, they all focused on the news that she’d regained consciousness. Journalists rushed to get her first exclusive interview while police fought them off, asking for everyone to back off so she could give an official statement.
The first victim of the Mind Robber who remembered the encounter. Even though Jamie felt secure that she couldn’t identify him, the sheer presence of the chatter and the focus bore down on him, urging him to escape. He didn’t need another unpredictable element in his life.
And yet, something didn’t quite allow him to
just make the move, to pack everything up, pick a destination and go. People like customs officers, ticket takers, security desks, all could be handled with a combination of timing and the right level of brain-stuns. Normal might get stressed, but her everyday state seemed to veer into jumpy and neurotic anyway. He hadn’t quite reached his goal, but if he budgeted right, maybe he could still make the Caribbean work, a place where work records and IDs mattered less than simply showing up and being a good person, a hard worker, someone who just wanted a quiet night to read memoirs with a cat on his lap.
And that would erase all the nonsense created by the Mind Robber, turning it into a footnote in San Delgado’s history, a thing for people to obsess over in online forums and social media.
So easy. Too easy. So why hadn’t he done it? He’d stared at the suitcase all morning, going over option after option until he finally decided to sleep on it. One nap later, all he registered was Normal’s growing hunger rather than a path forward.
“Alright, alright,” he said to the meowing cat. She did the usual hunger dance, moving in figure eights between his feet as he opened the can and filled her little dish. Normal waited, eyes fixed on him until he reached into the fridge and got out the carton of coconut water. He was mixing several drops into her water dish when a knock came at the door.
Things had been quiet in the past week. But Jamie knew he couldn’t be too cautious, and he approached the door with his guard up and a cap covering his hair and face. His shoulders tense, he peeked through the side of the window, expecting to see the detective from last week.
Instead, he laughed to himself. Of course.
Because Zoe stood at the door, afternoon sun behind her poking through gathering clouds.
“I can see your heat signature, Jamie. You might as well open it. I’m not here to beat you up. Or turn you in.”
Jamie unhooked the top chain—a chain wouldn’t stop her—and he cracked the door. “Hey.” From just the little sliver of space, the air felt thick, giving away an imminent rain.
