by Mike Chen
“What happens when you go past it?”
“I’m not sure.”
“Try it.”
“Are you sure?” Come to think of it, Jamie realized he had never attempted such a rapid leap in scope—when he learned his skills, everything was a very gradual, very controlled test rather than a “what the hell” jump forward. Who knew what going farther might do? It was the freaking brain involved, so could one more poke wreck her base instincts, things like breathing and heartbeats and stuff? Or would it send her into a seething rage, something that was all abilities and zero self-control? Or maybe it would shatter Zoe’s existing persona? Uncertainty—or perhaps self-preservation—held him frozen. “I’ve never done this before—”
“Try it,” she bit out. Her words came clear and strong, forceful even. “I’m not quitting now.”
“Okay...” Jamie worked through the memories; nothing came, the same emptiness surrounding him, almost collapsing around him. He pulled and pulled, and though he couldn’t quite explain why, he felt his memory tug moving through sludge. He pulled again, the mental intensity causing a layer of sweat to form across his forehead. Another and another, and another; he pulled for several minutes until finally an image flashed in front of him. His fingers fluttered in reverse, searching for the image mired in nothingness. And when he found it, he forced it to stay there, as if a single memory fought for its very existence.
“I see something. It’s dark. I see stars.” He held on, pieces of the image coming into focus. Details colored and filled in, shapeless blobs becoming sharp lines and real objects. “A roof...it looks like a rooftop. But not any of the ones in your other memories.” Jamie bit down on his lip, a pounding in his head as he willed the image to steady. “It looks like...feels like...you’re cornered. And across the way, there’s a light. It came and went and now there’s...”
“I know this. It’s like the only thing I can grab but it comes and goes so quickly I can’t make out any specifics.”
Jamie knew he was navigating her memories but pushing through, finding these flashes of details, something instinctive poked through for him. His mind, his nerves, his suddenly twitching muscles all urged him to let go, turn away, disappear. The feeling trickled down into his connection, things blurring in and out of Zoe’s memory, but he’d come this far. And besides, she’d probably hurt him if he let go at this point.
Jamie ignored the creeping fear and forced himself to hold on. “People are coming. I hear radio chatter. There’s someone else with them.”
The image became fully realized and the small apartment in Lower Heights filled with a scream. Jamie opened his eyes, but Zoe wasn’t sitting in front of him anymore.
Instead, she levitated against the ceiling, hands to her head, a petrifying sound coming from her mouth and invading every corner of the living space.
11
THE ROOFTOP.
Zoe knew Jamie saw the rooftop, the one from her only sliver of memory. And suddenly she was there too, like his handiwork turned all the dials up on her mental viewing. A blend of confusion and fear and adrenaline flooded over her, so much that it screamed in her head. She heard cross-chatter, like voices barking orders and asking questions, louder and louder until it all became white noise.
And a scream. A scream to pierce right through it.
A new voice came into the mix, something different. Not the squawking tactical efficiency of the others, but this one repeating with desperation. “Zoe! Zoe!”
Were her eyes closed? No, they couldn’t be. She saw this, yet her limbs froze, immobilized, and gradually she realized that the pressure on her skull came from her own hands. And the scream that filled the void, came from her own mouth.
“Zoe!”
That voice. It was Jamie.
Something tugged on her foot, and from pure reflex, her leg coiled back and kicked as hard as it could. Right when she did that, her eyes opened and she watched Jamie sail across the room, his back hitting the blank wall of her apartment with a dull thunk.
She dropped to the floor, bare feet feeling the carpet fibers. “Oh shit, you alright?” In two bounds, she’d leaped over the coffee table to him. His shoulders bounced with low coughs and gasps, and his hands searched before finally holding the back of his head.
“Okay,” he managed between breaths, “I get it.”
“What’s that?”
“Don’t ever cross you because you could really beat the shit out of me. You proved your point.”
“It wasn’t quite that.”
“Next time you’re in a floating screaming trance, I’ll try to help you from a distance.” He looked up as flecks of drywall and paint fell on his head. “Soft landing, huh?”
“Good thing this place is shitty. Seriously, are you hurt?”
Jamie flexed his fingers and moved his legs. “Everything hurts. But like an equal amount all over. So I think that’s good?”
“Come on, let me help you up.”
“I’d like to not move if that’s okay.” He shut his eyes and bit down on his lip as he shifted. “There was a memory. Beyond the void. A rooftop at night.”
“With guards. Or soldiers or something.”
“You recognize it?” he asked.
“Yeah. But just a flash. That little clip, that’s always been there.”
“But it’s gotta be something. Maybe that’s where they did this—” he gestured to her “—to you.”
Zoe stood and marched over to her detective board. “A medical facility. Or a prison. Or something like that.” She stared at the papers and printouts, names and details. “Nothing like that here.” She spun back and looked at Jamie until he locked eyes with her.
“Maybe that’s what 2D Industries actually is?”
“More than just leasing shitty apartments?” They both laughed, though Jamie squinted through the pain with each chuckle.
“You need to dig deeper,” she finally said.
“Got any body armor?”
“Kinky.” For the first time since Jamie arrived, they smiled at each other. It was brief, something that came and went faster than Jamie’s flight across the room. But it was there, the smallest of warmth between adversaries.
“I can control it this time,” Zoe said. “Promise.”
“I, uh...” His voice trailed off. Zoe could feel the weight of skepticism in his eyes. “That, erm, really hurt. I would like to not experience that again.”
“I can contain it.”
Jamie’s expression did not change, despite her assurances.
“Okay, look,” she said. “We’re trusting each other, right? So trust me.”
Jamie’s face turned from wary to a less-skeptical weary smile. “Right. Trust. Just please don’t kick me again.”
“Seriously,” she said, her lip curled up in a grin. “I can hold it in.”
Jamie grunted as he struggled to his feet. “I’m pretty sure your neighbors might be freaking out about the screaming and crashing.” He propped himself against the wall, teeth visibly clenched. “I think I’d hurt less if you broke every bone in my body.”
“Lemme help.” Zoe put one arm around his back, then scooped him up by the knees. She levitated them up, floating across the space. As they did, Jamie’s legs dangled, and though it seemed to hurt him to turn his neck, he looked down, and she could see a smirk come over his face. She set him down on the futon, moving as slowly and gently as she possibly could.
“So, your neighbors?”
“I’ve heard worse, actually.” Zoe looked off, as if she stared past the stucco and pipes between apartments. “That’s the thing about these abilities. You know you can do something about it.”
“Do you?” Jamie asked, grabbing his ribs with the question.
“Sometimes. Sometimes I call family services. Sometimes I find other ways to—” she couldn
’t stop herself from smirking ever so slightly “—intervene. Those rolling blackouts can come in handy if they occur at the right time.” Zoe picked up a chair, then plopped down onto it, hands gripping the sides of the seat. “Can we chat about being neighborly later? Come on, something’s there and we have to find it. Once you got there, the memory turned from a vague feeling to that thing.”
“Okay, okay. So much for small talk.” Both Jamie and the futon groaned as he sat up. “Anything before or after? I was searching and that was all I found. Like everything around it was scrubbed and they missed that part.”
This apartment, it was the first thing she remembered. And that note. She closed her eyes, willing things to go back farther, to bring that moment back.
The stars. The soldiers. The voices.
Bringing it back prompted a nausea in her gut but she forced herself to see and examine it. But nothing moved around the memory. There was no forward or backward, just the moment and what she could pull from it.
“Nothing. We need to go back.”
Jamie looked her over, then brought his hands up, flexing them and pulling them. “It’s all in the fingers,” he said. “Okay. But any screaming or floating and I’m stopping. Got it?”
“Got it.” She steadied herself in the chair, back straight and fingers digging into the wicker structure. She watched Jamie close his eyes and put his fingers up. The base of her skull tingled, and Zoe shut her eyes too.
* * *
Fortunately, the rest of the evening went by without Jamie sustaining further injuries. Instead, they knelt side by side on the floor, Jamie drinking cup after cup of coffee, both scribbling down furiously on Post-it notes and notebook sheets all of the details they could find.
It came in snapshots, little clips found among huge swatches of nothing. Six hours passed, including a pizza break—Zoe dashed off to get it, but Jamie paid, having recently robbed a bank and all—and yet nothing exactly matched up with the clues on her detective board. If anything, it just made it more of a mess.
“Well, so we know you had parents. And there were a few snapshots in high school but we don’t know where.”
“And a shitty car. Did you catch a plate on it?” Zoe asked.
“Nope. And I’m terrible with cars, so other than blue, I’m not much help. Other memories, there was snow. It couldn’t have been here. But with memory wipes, tiny fragments always remain. It’s pretty meaningless without context.”
Zoe tapped the sheet at her feet, the rooftop sketch she’d pulled down from her detective board side by side with Jamie’s own interpretation from tonight. “This one. There’s gotta be something there. I feel it,” Zoe said.
“You have psychic powers too?”
“No, I just hit people really hard,” Zoe offered with a grin.
“And hover. That’s kind of better than being psychic. I can’t imagine how much money you save that way.”
“There is that.” Zoe tapped at her crude sketch again. “But no, call it a gut feeling. There’s something else. One more try.”
Jamie told himself to let go of all the muscles that suddenly tensed up.
“You’re giving a look,” Zoe said.
“No I’m not.”
“Yes you are.” Zoe pulled her shoulders up to her ears and looked down while her teeth formed a grimace. “Like this,” she said through gritted teeth. “Too much coffee?”
“Not enough. Except—”
“Except what?”
“That memory,” he finally admitted. Zoe’s drawing wasn’t much more than conjoined rectangles or glorified stick figures. “It was the hardest to get. We only got that flash. And even that seemed to be enough to cause you to freak out.”
“There has to be more. Come on.” She stood up and dashed to the closet. “We are so close.” Her voice came muffled from the closet, the strange sounds of shuffling and clinking carrying through the space before she emerged holding...
Jamie blinked to make sure he saw it accurately.
A chain.
“Why do you have a chain?”
“Tie me up. Make sure I won’t kick you.”
“No, why do you have a chain? Chains belong in, like, car repair shops.”
“Oh.” Zoe stood there, a thoughtful glint coming to her eyes. “It’s just, you know, extraordinary strength. Wanted to test it.”
* * *
It took way longer than Jamie anticipated to wrap Zoe up in the chain. He’d mused that he didn’t know if he could untie such a heavy thing, but she assured him she’d break it if absolutely necessary.
Jamie stood over her, the chain wrapping her like the metallic tortilla of an extraordinary burrito. “Chains are way heavier than I thought.”
“We’ll be fine. Safety first, you know?”
“Right. I may rob banks but I don’t have health insurance, so I appreciate avoiding any trips to the hospital.”
Links in the chain shifted, creating a symphony of squeaks and pings. Zoe let out a breath and closed her eyes. “Let’s go.”
Jamie closed his eyes too, his hands extended to lock in. Back he dove, past her conscious time as the Throwing Star, beyond the first few moments in this apartment. The memories they’d uncovered over the past few hours remained, fragments of Zoe’s life. But the roof, the soldiers, it stayed elusive, a glint of clarity among a sea of distorted blurs. All he could grab was that one singular image even though he knew she was right.
Something lurked just past that.
“It’s no good,” Jamie said, his eyes snapping open. “I can’t get a good lock. It’s like trying to climb up mud.”
“Would it help,” Zoe asked, her head sticking out from the wrap of chains, “if you got closer? Like touched my forehead?”
A few days ago, Jamie would have assumed such a request was a trap, a way to sucker him in so she might get a good grip for knocking him out. Even with the chains. Now he offered a mix of concern and uncertainty. “I’m not sure if it will help.”
“Try it. We’re so close.”
Jamie put his fingers on Zoe’s forehead, but the physical contact didn’t change things. Minutes passed, with Jamie trying variations of formations to connect. “Nothing.”
Zoe’s mouth twisted in frustration. “Can you at least scratch the back of my neck? It itches from all this.”
The floor creaked as Jamie knelt down next to her, one hand sliding behind her neck. He’d intended to merely scratch an itch. But as his fingers connected with the base of her skull, a heat radiated off of them; he couldn’t tell if that was from her or from him but it drew him in. His hand held the position, locked into the mystery force while the rest of him angled and contorted to lie down next to her. “Wait a minute,” he said, now lying sideways, the lower arm still reaching under her neck while the other lightly placed on the wrapped chain for balance. “Stay still.” He closed his eyes and found himself sucked right into the vision.
Everything projected with greater vibrancy. The colors shone brighter, the sounds lighter, even a feel of temperature rippled through him. And that moment of Zoe on the roof, he found it with greater ease. Pieces were still missing, but the further he dug, the more scraps appeared—an image, a sound. With each new memory, Zoe’s own tension amplified, causing her to shift underneath the chains. Their struggle became unified, and Jamie fought alongside her to keep it together, to prevent her from exploding out of her confines and unleashing a banshee scream that might level the block or at least prompt the neighbors to call the cops.
The images told a story of some sort, and Jamie kept pushing until he could get to a definitive start point. She’d awoken in a room—a cell, all industrial with harsh fluorescent lighting. Groggy, a vague notion of something pulling at her, something telling her to run. And the evidence pointed to herself as the catalyst for the destruction around her.
She’d looked down at the floor. Bodies. There were bodies, though she felt shock at seeing them. Then she looked across the room, only to notice that the door had been knocked off its hinges. In fact, it looked like she’d punched it hard enough to knock it down the hall.
“I see it!” Zoe said, her voice bright and urgent. “I’m getting pieces. A room? And...bodies? Are those bodies? Are you seeing those too? Shit, this is just like Psych Ward Takeover.”
“I am. Hold steady. Concentrate.”
Jamie dove back in. Voices, and then Zoe ran before the voices could catch her. A stairwell, then up to the roof.
“It’s going too fast,” Zoe said. “I’m missing it.”
“Don’t worry. Let me read it, you just stay in control.”
Several minutes in the dark but then an image appeared. It lay buried, and as Jamie dug further, wiping off the layer after layer of mental fog and dust, Zoe’s internal resistance grew. The chains rattled as her body began vibrating, and her teeth clenched, groans of effort filling the room. Heat came off of her, not just from the mental connection but a full-body fever that created a cocoon of warmth. “Keep going!” she yelled through gritted teeth, and he could feel the pushback—for every corner he wiped clean, new obfuscation generated, a battle against mental fog rolling in until he ripped it apart piece by piece.
The image snapped into focus and Zoe’s voice roared through the apartment.
“Hold it,” he yelled. “Just hang on!”
He kept the image steady, taking it in to absorb whatever details he might find. Nighttime. Rooftop. Eight soldiers in two rows of four. And a lone helmeted figure in official-looking armor came in from behind them, splitting the middle. Audio began fading in and out, and the memory itself blurred even as it continued.
“What’s happening?” Zoe asked in the apartment. “I’m losing it.”
“Focus. We’re almost there.”
Voices came through distorted, syllables slurring into each other, and a fuzzy blur moved across her vision. The image sharpened just enough, like staring through a frosted window, and Jamie could see the lead man approach and kneel down. He yelled something, though the helmet’s visor muffled his voice even further, even beyond Zoe’s weakening connection.
