The Mesmerized

by Rhiannon Frater

  “I don’t know,” he answered.

  “So you weren’t at the second facility?”

  “No, I was at work at a hospital when the event hit. I saw a lot of people die and there was nothing I could do. If it can see us through the eyes of the mesmerized, then it did see me. Just like it sees you, Simone, Arthur, and Jesse.”

  Alec was lying and Minji knew it. Though he looked at her directly in the eye and did not waver in his response, she could feel the lie beneath his story.

  “Bullshit,” Minji declared. “Bullshit!”

  “Minji, I need you to just do what—”

  “No! I won’t. Not until you tell me why it knows you!”

  “It’s not important!”

  “Yes, it is! Because it’s afraid of you, but it hasn’t killed you. I want to know why. I want to know right now!”

  “It has tried to kill me!” Alec blurted. “It tried, but I have a limited immunity and it couldn’t do it.”

  “First or second facility, Alec?”

  Raising his eyes, Alec fought for control of the emotions that raced across his face, transforming it into a much older version. “The first...”

  “Fuck!”

  “It killed everyone but me. I was security there, stationed in the monitoring room. A friend of mine pulled a few strings to get me a job after I retired. I wasn’t cleared to enter the main building. Security worked out of another building monitoring the fences and the entrance. I didn’t see the creature or the attack. I just saw everyone around me die. I was terrified. I went blind and I could feel it battering on my skull, trying to kill me, too. I must have gone under the influence of the attack, fallen, and hit my head, because I came to hours later. I couldn’t get into the facility because everyone who had security clearance into the building was already inside and dead. I immediately called the Army. My story remains the same after that point. I was told to locate the scientists from the second facility that had been sent to Las Vegas. Even if they’re dead, we can use them to get into the first facility.”

  “So it does know you.”

  Alec rubbed his face with both hands. “Yes, it knows me. It probably saw me through the eyes of the other people in the security room with me.”

  “And it doesn’t trust you.”

  “Probably not.”

  “Dammit, Alec, it does trust me.”

  “I know it does. I’ve seen how it watches you. That’s why I need your help. It doesn’t see you as a threat. I’m not sure why, but that’s a good thing.”

  “But I came here with you!” Minji wanted to shake the man. “It could doubt me now.”

  “True, but it’s a risk we have to take, right? To save your family and the entire world?”

  Without answering, Minji exited the store and approached the bike. The air was so thick, it was difficult to see. It was probably foolish for her to feel betrayed when Alec was right. They had to take risks to save the world, but she didn’t know if she could risk her own daughter. The creature the experiment had brought into the world was inside Ava. It could hurt her, kill her. Minji wasn’t certain she could sacrifice her own daughter to save the world.

  Settling onto the bike, she waited for Alec. It took a little longer for him to exit the store.

  “Did you really hurt your leg in the war, Alec?”

  “No, I didn’t hurt it. Someone else hurt my leg by riddling it with bullets. Doctors saved the limb, but it’s not easy to get around sometimes.” The clipped words and weary look said it all. He was upset with her, too.

  “You need to tell me the whole truth, Alec. This isn’t just about you fulfilling your duty. This is about my children, my husband, and the entire world. You need me to finish this and I need you to tell me the truth. As you have pointed out, I’m not stupid.”

  “You don’t have the clearance to know it all,” Alec answered, but his argument held no real weight.

  “My immunity says I have clearance.”

  Drawing a deep breath through his nose, Alec squared his shoulders. The seconds ticked away as he exhaled, lifted his eyes toward the horizon, and obviously considered what he should or shouldn’t say. “Okay. Fine. You have a point. Hell, this may all be a moot point if we don’t find the second team. The truth is, the doorway they opened didn’t close all the way when the entity came through. That was the other big problem. It’s partially open. Just a sliver.”

  Minji stared at Alec incredulously. “So that explains why it’s so cold.”

  “Maybe.”

  “No, I’m certain that’s why. That other world is leaking into ours through this sliver of an open door.” Pressing fingertips reddened by the icy air against her temples, Minji forced herself to focus. “So we have to close the door, too.”

  “Yes, I was told to close the door and detonate an explosive beneath the facility to kill the entity.”

  “An explosive?” Abruptly lightheaded, Minji closed her eyes in an attempt to steady the wobbling world around her.

  “It’s a contingency that’s probably been in place for years since the area was used for other types of top secret experiments.”

  “We’re talking nuclear bomb, aren’t we?” Minji’s insides were melting into mush.

  Alec gave her a brisk nod. “We close the door, set the timer, and leave. We’ll have time to clear the area.”

  “But all the people heading toward the epicenter...”

  “How many people have already died, Minji? Right now there are people all over the world walking to their deaths across deserts, into bodies of water, off mountains. All over the world people are on the verge of dying from dehydration, the elements, even predators. The clock is ticking.”

  “Then get on the damn motorcycle already,” Minji ordered. “The wind is changing direction, which means we probably don’t have much time. Treasure Island was burning yesterday. That might be bad news for The Venetian.”

  “Then I hope our luck holds out.” Alec carefully maneuvered onto the back of the bike.

  Minji restarted the motorcycle and turned it around. This time, she drove a little faster through the obstacle course of demolished vehicles, bodies, and debris. Up the boulevard, flames licked at the sides of buildings and consumed decorative foliage.

  Las Vegas was burning.

  Chapter 26

  Treasure Island was a smoldering ruin. One side had collapsed, giving it an apocalyptic dollhouse effect. In the fake harbor the land-bound pirate ship was a burning wreckage and the palm trees were lit up like torches along the boulevard. Further down the strip, many of the resorts were in various stages of disintegration. Flames lashed along the edges of broken windows as black smoke spewed into the already congested winds. Decorative foliage along the edges of the boulevard were bonfires spewing ash and cinders into the air. Much to Minji’s relief, The Venetian appeared unscathed, although it appeared that parts of The Palazzo were burning. The wind had shifted to the northeast in the early morning, but the air was an acrid soup.

  “We need to make this fast,” she said to Alec as the motorcycle rumbled along the drive to the rescue station erected outside The Venetian entrance. “The Palazzo is on fire.”

  “I agree.”

  The unmarked black vehicles appeared ominous against the backdrop of the partially erected tents and the luxury resort. Now that Minji wasn’t in the first stages of shock and trapped in the throes of the event, she promptly perceived that all the dead scattered along the drive were wearing white. It amazed her that she’d missed the connection the day before. She’d been so desperate to save her family that simple detail hadn’t registered.

  Parking the bike so it faced the boulevard, she flexed her nearly frozen fingers and wished she’d grabbed some gloves from the store.

  Alec coughed in the pungent atmosphere, then steadied himself by clutching her shoulder as he slid off the bike. “Where was Dr. McCoy?”

  “That tent near the ambulance. I’ll show you.” Kicking her leg over the bike, she dismount
ed and rubbed her hands against her thighs to warm them.

  “You can stay here if you like,” Alec said.

  “No, it’s fine. Plus, the cold appears to be slowing you down a little.”

  “I have pins in this leg. I’m not going to say I don’t feel every single one of them right now.”

  Minji didn’t actually want to see the dead woman again, but Alec needed her help. She was a little unnerved by how quickly she was acclimating to the chaotic new world, but she supposed it was her nature to adapt to survive. Most of her life she’d been doing exactly that before Jake and the girls had brought stability to it.

  Trudging toward the fake Bridge of Sighs that sprawled over the drive, Minji shivered in her lightweight jacket. It was growing colder. How much of that other world was leaking into this one? And exactly what was the other world? Another dimension of some sort? Reflecting on the images and sounds she’d witnessed during the visions that accompanied her blindness in the first attacks, she wondered if maybe Simone and Jesse had both been right in their assessments that they’d seen heaven or hell. Though she wasn’t inclined to believe the scientists had actually opened a path to the afterlife, Ava’s possession and the mesmerized were clearly unnatural. It made her innately uncomfortable to even consider that the event was supernatural, but it would be foolish not to consider the possibility.

  “When I came out of The Venetian with the girls, the police escorted me over here.” Minji pointed to the tent they were approaching. “Dr. McCoy claimed to be from the CDC, but there was just something off about the whole scenario.”

  “She definitely wasn’t CDC. That was just a cover story. I can imagine she was very excited to find people who were immune.”

  “Like you are?” Minji sounded a little bitchier than she wanted, but the weight of what needed to be done to save everyone was burdensome on her mind and heart.

  “I’m sorry to drag you into this,” Alec answered giving her a genuinely sorrowful look. “If I could do this myself, I would.”

  Minji shrugged. “It is what it is.”

  The heavy soles of her boots crunched on the debris littering the walk. Bits of glass, rocks, and shrubbery were mixed in with a thick layer of ash. The world was eerily muted except for the distant roar and crackle of fire. Returning to the tent where she’d witnessed the death of the scientist was particularly unpleasant. She suffered a pang of guilt. The last words the scientist heard before dying was Minji and Arthur arguing with her. Remorse sought to infect her, but Minji realized she truly didn’t have time to deal with the emotions wrapped up in the event. If she even let a tiny bit seep through her defenses, she might collapse. There was too much to process and not enough time.

  “Here,” Minji said ducking into the tent. She pointed to the figure lying next to the toppled table.

  “I’m going to have to open her hazmat suit. This is going to be very bad,” Alec warned her, carefully lowering himself to one knee and awkwardly extending the other to one side.

  Minji wasn’t sure if there was anything that could faze her after the last twenty-four hours. All she’d experienced had inoculated her to the horrors of the world. Or maybe she was just in shock. Whether she was developing a thick skin or emotionally numb, it was futile to attempt not to watch Alec at his gruesome task. Curiosity, no matter how morbid, would win out, so Minji gave up and squatted next to Alec.

  “I need to get to her actual I.D., not the cover story one,” Alec explained, pointing to the fake CDC badge. He started to open the suit, flinching when the first puffs of putrid air escaped it. “It should be somewhere on her person.”

  The smell hit Minji a few seconds later. She swallowed the bile creeping up her throat and adjusted her facemask, but the thin white mask couldn’t keep the smell at bay. Her throat burned from stomach acid and her eyes watered. Pushing aside her revulsion, she helped Alec pull open the hazmat suit. Beneath the bulky suit the woman was wearing blue trousers and a pink blouse. Around her throat was a gold necklace with a Mobius strip pendant. These little details of the dead scientist’s lost life made the woman’s death somehow even more terrible.

  “I’ll do it,” Minji volunteered. “Let her have some dignity in death.”

  Alec inclined his head. “All right.” He stood with some difficulty and leaned heavily on his cane.

  Pretending to be made of stone and steel, a trick from her childhood when kids picked on her at school, Minji reached into the suit and skimmed her hand along the dead woman’s body searching for pockets. In the front right-side of the woman’s pants, Minji found a small aluminum wallet and pulled it free. When she saw the purple metallic case with a unicorn sticker pasted on the lid, her resolve slipped and a soft whimper escaped her lips. The sticker instantly reminded her of something Ava would do. It was so easy to imagine a child pressing it onto their mother’s wallet. Dr. McCoy had been a mother and now she was gone. Where was her child? Was that child alive? Dead? And when this was all over, would the child be an orphan?

  Straightening, Minji popped the case open and immediately saw a small picture booth photo of Dr. McCoy and a little boy. The tiny glimpse into the life of the woman who now lay dead at her feet struck deep into Minji’s psyche. As a mother, she wanted nothing more than to save her children and their father so they could be whole again. But Dr. McCoy no longer had that hope. Her child was without a parent, and perhaps a partner was now without their spouse. Reverently, Minji touched the small photo.

  “Minji?”

  “I’m fine,” she answered, then dug her teeth into the inside of her bottom lip so the pain could steady her emotions. “I was just wondering about her. She must have been so excited to find me and Arthur. She must have thought we were salvation for her little boy.”

  “You are,” Alec assured her. “We’re going to beat this thing.”

  “If we can find a way in.” The case contained credit cards, a driver’s license for the State of Nevada, and a blank white card with a strange holographic inset on one side. “Is this it?”

  Alec took the card, flipped it over, then nodded. “Yes. This is it.”

  “But there’s no name or anything on it? Shouldn’t it say the Department of such-and-such?”

  “Actually, no. The facility is technically owned by the Department of Energy, but various agencies rent it out. Whoever is leasing the first and second facility would just be known as ‘the tenant.’”

  “That sounds ominous.”

  “Most likely she’s employed by a company with Department of Defense funds behind it.”

  “So, you both worked for ‘the tenant’ and had no idea who it was?”

  “She probably knew, but I was just security. I sat and watched monitors all day. Miles of fences. It was incredibly boring.”

  “Until yesterday.”

  “I would've rather it stayed boring.”

  “Me, too.”

  Rotating slowly in a circle, Alec scrutinized the area. “There should be tablets that they used around here.”

  “She had one. I remember.”

  Minji crawled on her knees to the jumble of items from the table Dr. McCoy had struck when she’d fallen, thrusting away the emotions battering against her self-control. This was not the time to give into them. They’d have to wait until she’d either succeeded or failed. She shoved her dreads out of her face and tucked the ends into her jacket pocket so she could see.

  “We’ll have to get another card off someone else from the facility. The doors only open for one person at a time. If more than one person attempts to enter, there are security measures we don’t want to deal with.”

  “Sounds very James Bondish,” Minji mused.

  “Well, yes. It does.” Alec sorted through the items on the table that was still standing.

  Finally spotting the tablet with the thick gray plastic case, Minji exhaled in relief. “Okay, got it.” She automatically swiped the screen to see if it still worked and was rewarded with a black screen with a large white
barcode.

  “Great, it's working. This one is broken,” he said, nudging another tablet with his cane. The glass was shattered.

  “How does this help us?” Minji asked.

  “Well, believe it or not, it has all the safety protocols for the experiment. They were downloaded to the tablets of the second team so they could gain entry to the first facility.”

  Rolling her eyes, Minji gave him an incredulous look. “Really? They have instructions on them?”

  “It’s encrypted, of course. It’s not like you or anyone else without the passcodes could get into it. But I was given that information, so...” Alec lifted a shoulder. “It does sound a bit simplistic, but they were scrambling.”

  “No, it makes sense. I guess I’ve seen too many movies,” Minji said, glad for the simplicity. She handed Alec the tablet and he took it was a reverence that was unexpected.

  “This is how we save the world,” he said in awe. “It’s all right here.”

  “I guess we’re lucky that the second team was reporting in when the event expanded so that the people in power knew where to send you.”

  “I wasn’t planning to seek you out at the medical center until I had the accident. The car wreck was real, and really fortunate. It made me find you.”

  “Because I’m completely immune.”

  “Exactly.” Alec shoved the tablet into a pocket inside his jacket and steadied himself on his cane. “We should hurry.”

  Somehow it felt wrong to leave the hazmat suit open, so Minji took the time to close it while Alec limped over to the next body. This time he searched it himself.

  “Not high enough security clearance,” he called out, then limped to the next body.

  With gritted teeth, Minji searched another person lying near the ambulance. She found a card in a wallet, but when she flipped it over it had a different holographic symbol on the back. “This isn’t it?”

  “No. It has to look like Dr. McCoy’s. I’ll check inside the van.”

  Minji hurried over to the next body and started to search while Alec approached one of the black vehicles. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw him hesitate when he heard the thumping coming from within.