In Irina's Cards (The Variant Conspiracy #1)

by Christine Hart

  “You cannot leave town, Miss Proffer. Not without talking to me first,” Rubin said darkly.

  “Wow, you don’t miss a beat. ‘Hi, how are you Irina? Great? That’s nice, me too,” I said sarcastically.

  The giant glowered at me. His long forehead and thick eyebrows made the angular lines of his face seem outright menacing. He was at least seven feet tall. I shifted in my seat as I realized he was both tall enough and strong enough to lift me several feet off the ground. If he could disappear, this man could easily be my attacker.

  “Who’s your friend? Aren’t you going to introduce us?” I said.

  “Irina, this is Hugo. He also works for Innoviro,” said Rubin. “Now, I know why you’re leaving and it doesn’t matter. Ivan won’t punish you for this afternoon’s indiscretion and . . . your parents aren’t waiting for you at home.”

  “What? How do you know where my parents are?” A creeping sense of dread pawed at my sides. Anger surged in me and I grabbed Rubin’s forearm. A nauseous wave hit, but I held on, transported to my parents’ living room.

  Darryl yelled, gesturing the way I’d seen in my vision. “Listen buddy, I don’t know what more to say here. We’ve never met you before and you’re telling us that our daughter works for your company, and that because of her job, you want us to cut off contact?”

  “We’re supposed to take your word that she’s fine? After only a handful of phone calls? Is this what Irina wants?” Mom demanded.

  “All I can tell you, Mr. and Mrs. Proffer, is that Irina has relocated permanently and she requires time and space to focus on her work,” said Rubin’s voice.

  I couldn’t see him, but suddenly realized his voice came from me, inside my vision. I saw the conversation through his eyes.

  “You’re not making any sense! What have you done to our daughter?” cried Mom.

  “I’ve had about enough of you, man,” Darryl said. “Get out of my house, and I mean NOW!”

  “I’m afraid that’s not possible. Mrs. Proffer, you know why I can’t leave, don’t you? Don’t you understand who I work for? It doesn’t matter in the end. We’re not done here yet,” said Rubin. His hand swung out into my field of vision and my parents both went silent. They struggled against an unseen constriction, but quickly fell back on the couch, stiff and still.

  I let go of Rubin’s arm and staggered backward, dropping onto the wood bench behind me. I leaned forward and vomited.

  “It was you!” I shouted as soon as I recovered my breath. “You’re the shadow in my house! Has it already happened? What did you do to them? Why?”

  “I’m sorry, Irina, it was an accident. My task was to wipe their memories of you, and to seek out your connections in the community, removing their memories as well. Teachers and friends, with the exception of your friend Bridget, I got them all. With your parents, it went horribly wrong. I had to do more digging in their minds. I’ve wiped many memories before and it’s never been fatal,” Rubin said in a slow, calm tone. “If you go back to Prince George now, you’ll waste valuable time searching and groping . . .”

  Rubin’s voice faded as I turned and marched methodically back into the bus depot lobby. Tears rolled down my cheeks and sobs escaped. There wasn’t enough tea in the world to calm me down after this. I felt all the eyes in the room on me as I fumbled through my jacket pockets frantically searching for my locker key. It was no use. I’d come back for my bag later.

  I couldn’t go home, but I knew Faith lived in a hippie neighborhood not far to the north. I’d seen a bus labeled ‘Fernwood’ along Douglas Street. As soon as I was on my way to her house, I’d call to make sure she was home. If she wasn’t there I’d sit outside her building until she came back.

  As I walked and Rubin’s news continued to sink in, I gave in to the grief and let my crying escalate, rippling through my body. I didn’t want to believe it, but I knew my parents had really died. Why hadn’t I seen the whole vision earlier? Was there ever any chance to save them? Why hadn’t I gone home the first time I saw them arguing with someone? If I had put my parents, my real family first, there would be nothing to regret now.

  After only moments of standing alone at a bus stop up the street, I felt a giant hand clamp down on my mouth. Another wrapped around my throat. The grip held me in place, but as my eyes darted around, there were no hands or arms in sight. One mystery was solved; Hugo had definitely been my attacker from the gas station parking lot. Fat lot of good it had done for me to relate the incident to Rubin. Obviously he’d known immediately who I’d encountered. Maybe he had even ordered it. Maybe Ivan had. My heart raced faster.

  “We’re going to get into the back of Rubin’s car,” said that familiar gravelly voice. “I suggest you don’t fight me or I may squeeze too hard.”

  On cue, Rubin pulled up in front of the bus stop. Hugo’s giant meaty hands forced me forward. I knew I was trapped, so I reached for the car door handle on my own. After shoving me into the car, Hugo pushed in beside me. His hunched form seeped back into reality like a rapidly soaking stain. I ignored him and focused on Rubin’s eyes in the rear-view mirror.

  “Why my parents? What did they do to deserve having their memory wiped?”

  “Ivan thought it best that you cut off ties to your previous life,” Rubin said. “I sensed some homesickness in you and I advised him accordingly. The series of procedures Ivan asked me to perform has been done for many variants in the past. When you join Innoviro, you step into a world which requires boundaries and protection. It’s for the good of the work we do, as well as the people we work with, and for our clients.”

  “So you went up there to scramble their brains so they’d forget I ever existed? Just in case they felt like coming for a visit and met my mutant friends and saw my mystically protected apartment!”

  “Essentially, yes,” said Rubin.

  “What about my sister? She wasn’t in Prince George and she’ll start asking about me.”

  “No, Irina, I’m afraid she won’t.”

  “What? You killed her too?”

  “Thankfully I visited her beforehand and nothing went wrong.” Rubin tried his best to sound soothing as he turned off the main drag onto the road that funneled traffic out of the Inner Harbour and up the coast. He continued along the edge of the Harbour until the road curved and the coastline opened up ahead. “Families or other interconnected parties need to be wiped very close together so as not to cause confusion or regression. I took my time with the rest of your life so I could leave your parents to the end.”

  “So, what will Gemma think happened to me?”

  “She now believes she is an only child. All traces of you were removed from your parents’ house. And courtesy of several Innoviro IT staff, no record of your birth certificate, Social Insurance Number, high school transcripts, or driver’s license will be found when the police investigate your parents’ death. They will simply inform Gemma that her parents died of accidental carbon monoxide poisoning,” said Rubin.

  “So you and Ivan have this shit all figured out, eh? You’re going to clean up after yourselves as though I never existed!” I looked over at the waterfront sidewalk on our left. A smiling middle-aged couple escorted their golden retriever. A mother pushed a stroller, accompanied by a little girl skipping.

  “Of course not, Irina. How can you think that? I am deeply sorry for what happened and I know Ivan will be too. He’s not going to care that you peeked at your medical file. Come with me and we’ll get you back into the lab so you can proceed with your injections. You can still help find Ilya.”

  “Well, there’s no need for that search anymore either. I’m pretty sure he’s already dead,” I said, with slight satisfaction. I felt sick again as soon as the idea reached completion. No matter what Rubin or Ivan had done, Ilya deserved better. I still felt like I knew him.

 
“Have you had a fruitful vision now?”

  “You could say that. I saw his ghost. He tried to tell me something, but of course I couldn’t hear the words. It was Ilya though.” After a pause, I added, “But, now that I’m thinking of it, why can’t you hear him? You picked up on me the moment I got to town. Why can’t you put your ‘feelers’ out for Ilya?”

  “The fact that I can’t is one of the elements that has Ivan so worried. I’m puzzled by it myself. However, I highly doubt you saw Ilya’s ghost. He is capable of using astral projection to go places. Did he communicate anything, any gesture or message at all?”

  I reviewed my mental picture of looking back and forth between Ilya’s urgent expression, his outstretched arm, and the blue-green hills on the horizon. I quickly remembered my present company and blotted the hills out of my mind, instead reliving the terrible scene from my parents’ living room.

  “If you think I’m ever going to help you or Ivan again, in any way, you can both go fuck yourselves. You killed my parents! You’re a monster! You think I care anything about Ilya compared to my own family!”

  “Irina, you must understand that there is more at stake for Innoviro than your personal life. You’re going to have to stay with us until you’ve calmed yourself. We can go to my apartment.” Rubin made an abrupt left onto a residential street and then spoke to Hugo, “I think our employer will want to get involved at this point.”

  Hugo nodded silently, slid a phone out of his pocket, and started typing deftly in spite of his meaty fingers. While Hugo concentrated on his text message Rubin came to a halt behind a handful of cars stopped at a red light.

  I seized the moment and flung open the car door. I heaved myself out towards the road and landed on cold damp grass. I rolled across loose twigs and debris. We’d been travelling along a road on the border of Beacon Hill Park. I didn’t stand a chance on foot for very long, but I hastily remembered that the park had many tourist attractions including flower gardens and a petting zoo. Neither of the men wanted to follow me into a crowd of civilians, especially not children. I heaved myself up and sprinted in the direction of the zoo.

  I’d gambled correctly that Rubin and Hugo would steer clear of a crowded children’s petting zoo. Whether they drew a moral or a tactical line, they didn’t seem to be following me at the moment. Continuing on to Faith’s was out of the question now. I couldn’t risk that Rubin knew my plan. He may have seen those blue-green hills in my mind, ready to intercept me no matter what route I took or whose help I enlisted. I had to think of something. I couldn’t stroll around the edge of a petting zoo all day.

  As I walked slowly along the park’s main path, wracking my brain for how to direct my feet, another wave of grief hit me. The image of Mom and Darryl dropping lifelessly onto our couch played over and over in my mind. The sadness tightened its grip on my heart and I felt powerless to keep moving. It was all I could do to keep putting one foot in front of the other. I saw a bench and sat. I lay down on my side, tucked in my legs, and turned to face the back of the bench. The wood was hard and cold with the damp of mildew and old rain. I was not comfortable, but I couldn’t move. I let the tears resume and continue pouring off my face. I cradled myself helplessly.

  It seemed like an hour passed before I cleared my head enough to sit up and take stock of my surroundings again. I dried off my face with the sleeves of my jacket. My parents were gone, but Gemma was safe, for now. The only outcome that could give any meaning to this disastrous period of my life would be saving Ilya. If he was still alive, I had to help him. After I found Ilya and told him who I was and what had happened, maybe he was powerful enough to help me get revenge. We could gut Innoviro and ruin Rubin and Ivan!

  What I needed was back up–an extra pair of hands and heads. Rubin could likely read my mind from a distance making my only currently viable option to do nothing. And what was the worst Rubin could do? Other than killing me too, he’d already taken away my life and my family.

  I phoned Faith. No answer. I left a voice message for her and then for Cole, all the while thinking of a brick wall for Rubin’s sake. I’d seen that tactic in an old movie. I couldn’t keep up the brick wall constantly, but I hoped to keep enough concrete details out of Rubin’s grubby head.

  When I dialed Jonah’s number, I had no trouble becoming distracted from my plan. The images of burn-like wounds reflected at me in my bathroom and hallway mirrors were still mentally and physically painful. I blushed again, now thinking of Rubin seeing my body and knowing how I got injured. As I was about to hang up, Jonah finally answered his phone and agreed to meet me at the drive-through diner at the edge of the park.

  I ran to the diner and flung myself into a corner booth. I suddenly realized that I must seem like a meth addict pursued by mental demons. I took a deep breath, returned to the front counter, and ordered myself a sundae. I treated myself to butterscotch syrup and a waffle bowl with it, knowing it would taste like wax with so much grief and rage in my system. By the time Jonah and Cole sauntered into the diner, I pushed cold butterscotch, waffle crumbs, and melted cream around a small glass plate.

  “Thanks for finally showing!” I glared at them as they approached. “We need to drive up the coast immediately. Those blue-green hills north of the city.”

  “Uh, you want to give us a reason?” said Jonah.

  Cole frowned, looking back and forth between Jonah and me. “Or a more specific destination than the Sooke Hills?”

  I noticed the tension in Cole’s body and I remembered what his grip did to a tabletop. Had Jonah finally told him about us?

  “Ilya is out there, somewhere, and I know he needs my help, our help. I don’t want Rubin making an appearance. I want to talk to Ilya and find out what’s been happening to him–and more importantly, why he hasn’t come home.”

  I told my story, relating my intensifying reaction to my injection, the cryptic contents of my file, the disturbing biological samples at the lab, my jog through the catacomb tunnels and finally the confrontation with Rubin and Hugo. I reached the part where I learned about my parents’ deaths and the floodgates of emotion opened again. The few other patrons in the diner all instinctively looked back at our table, but I didn’t care.

  “Irina, I’m so sorry,” Jonah said. “I don’t know what else to say. But how can you be sure about any of this? Rubin’s never hurt anyone. This has to be a mistake. And labs can feel creepy. Specimens reserved for testing are usually pretty grim looking.”

  “Jonah’s right. Rubin isn’t a violent guy.” Cole frowned. “Plus, you were in a restricted lab. No wonder you saw things that freaked you out. I think you’re overreacting.”

  I hadn’t expected them to question my story. Unless my visions were bunk after all, I had lost my parents to a ruthless psychopath and having to convince someone it happened was excruciating. I reminded myself that they’d been working for Ivan and Innoviro for several years. They believed in their work, and by extension, their boss.

  Finding out you work for a malicious monster would be a tough pill to swallow. When I watched Walter get arrested, I’d stared in shock, slightly disappointed that his downfall didn’t feel more satisfying. Instead, I felt fear and unease. Ivan’s crimes were much, much worse and my apprehension scaled up accordingly.

  I took a deep breath and focused enough to talk again. “I can’t prove here and now that my parents are gone. And I can’t prove that Innoviro is doing something terrible. But I know that something is wrong. Why would he go to the trouble of having my existence wiped out of the minds of everyone I’ve ever come in contact with? Rubin made it sound like they do this often! Ivan is doing more than erring on the side of caution with his secrecy. At least consider it!”

  “It’s not that we don’t believe you.” Jonah’s voice slowed to a soothing tone. “I think you’re misunderstanding things. You were okay with Ivan’s gene th
erapy. It seems like you got spooked after looking behind the curtain, if you know what I mean. If I’d just seen my parents die in an accident, I’m sure the entire world would look completely messed.”

  “I am not fucking imagining this! Everything else I’ve seen has come true, and I’m not overreacting or exaggerating! Rubin admitted killing my parents!” Tears pooled in my eyes again.

  Frustrated, I grabbed Jonah’s hand. “Here, I’ll show you how right I can be,” I put my thumb and forefinger on the silver ring he wore on his middle finger and tried to clear my mind. I hoped with every fiber of my being to see something that had already happened, an incident I could relate for immediate verification.

  I saw Jonah slow dancing with a girl in a silver dress, her hair sculpted into a fiery red French roll. Smoky charcoal powder framed her eyes in sharp contrast to her porcelain skin. Her smooth and slender frame moved gracefully above her sparkling high heels.

  In another setting, I’d think I was looking at a prom, but from the low light and chest-high tables, it looked like a bar, although not one I’d seen. After a few more moments, the girl dropped to the ground like a wilted lily. Her arms had the telltale red blisters where Jonah had been touching her. Within moments, the other people on the dance floor had noticed the scene and started shouting at Jonah.

  The look of panic on his face was much more intense than I’d seen the other night. He glanced furtively at the crowd, back to her limp body, and again at the people shouting at him. One man took hold of Jonah’s arm while the girl recovered herself and glared up at Jonah with a look of outrage and disbelief. Heat grew in my own hand where I gripped Jonah’s ring, so I let go and opened my eyes to the diner.

  “There was a red-head–she must have been the first girl you burned after experimenting on yourself. She’s the reason you said yes to Ivan’s treatment, wasn’t she? She looked so hurt and betrayed. Were you afraid when that guy grabbed you?”