by Kelli Kimble
“Whoa,” he said. He pulled his hand out of my reach. “What do you mean, hiding from you?”
“I can’t feel you.” I waved my hands around him. “With my senses. I can’t feel your . . . your life-force. Whatever you want to call it. Before the canyon collapsed, I could sense you. Now, I can’t. Why not? Why are you hiding from me?”
“I’m not,” he said. He glanced at my parents, apparently hoping they’d come to his rescue, but they stood back and watched.
“You are. Just like before, when you came to my settlement. You hid from me until you wanted something from me. Then, you dropped your disguise.”
His mouth worked as he tried to form a thought, but he didn’t say anything.
My dad came over and tucked each of us under an arm. “Why don’t we just go somewhere quiet to talk about this, hmm?”
He steered us towards the shelter – though I could hardly see how that was private, when the fourth wall was missing. As we approached, I was glad to see at least the roommates were blessedly not present. He led us in and sat on the floor, indicating we should follow. We sat in a little circle. My mom was smiling at Thanos. Afraid they were drawing parallels between the two of them and the two of us, I pretended to get myself comfortable while widening the distance between Thanos and myself.
“We need to talk,” my dad said. “Thanos, while we’re glad to be hosting you until your father comes home, I think I need some . . .” He circled his hands through the air while he tried to think of the words. “Some comfort. What are your intentions regarding my daughter?”
“Dad,” I said out loud, heat rising up my cheeks. “That’s hardly appropriate.”
Both parents gave me a harsh look.
“Sorry. Talking out loud is a habit,” I said.
“It’s okay,” Thanos said. “If she were my daughter, I’d be asking questions, too.”
I tamped down my objections. Maybe I’d learn something from what he had to say.
“I’ve asked Nimisila to help me with something back in the city,” he began. “She agreed to consider helping me if I’d bring her to find you. We’ve found you. It’s clear she isn’t going to be very well-received here, and I’m hoping she’ll make that part of her consideration when she decides whether she’s going to help me or not.”
“Just what is it you want her to help with?” asked my mom.
“Let me give you some backstory first. I’m sure you recall how things were when Nimisila was a baby?” He gave a long-winded explanation of how the city had gone downhill with its treatment of poor people, how the power plant needed fuel, but they hadn’t been able to retrieve any, and how the mayor had decided to plunge the Earth into an ice age so that she wouldn’t have to deal with the impact of other humans.
At first, my parents looked shocked, but by the time he was done explaining, they looked appalled. Dad jumped to his feet and began pacing the length of the shelter.
The woman whom I’d spoken to earlier came to the front of the shelter, but upon seeing my dad’s obvious agitation, she rolled her eyes and sulked away.
“And how can Nimisila help with all this?” Dad asked. He didn’t wait for Thanos to respond. “You shouldn’t stand for this, Nim. None of us should. What an outrage.”
“I’d like to hear his plan,” Mom said.
“It’s simple, really,” Thanos explained. “Nimisila and I are easily the two most powerful people in the city. Nobody else has the level of ability we’ve attained, and if we pooled our abilities, the mayor would be powerless to stop us.”
“To stop you from what?” Mom said. Her expression was hopeful and innocent. Naïve, maybe?
I didn’t want to watch her opinion change. I turned my gaze to my dad.
“We’ll overthrow the mayor and take over the governing of the city,” Thanos explained. “The first thing we’ll do is stop the weather from changing. Then, we’ll work to make the city a place where anyone – poor or not – can live, work, and be happy. We’ll shut off the power plant and switch to more sustainable methods of generating electricity.” He stopped and looked around the shelter. “Though, personally, I’m not so sure we’d do ourselves a favor by having it. The people in the city are fat and lazy. Their every whim is tended to with technology and electricity. Maybe we need to get back to basics?”
“You mean, the rich people are fat and lazy,” Mom said.
“Right, exactly,” Thanos said.
I worked up the courage to look back at my mom. Her sharp gaze was trained on Thanos. “And how would you overthrow the mayor?” she asked. “You have a concrete plan for that?”
Thanos faltered. “It’s . . . well, I’d assumed we’d go to the mayor’s office and break in. Make our demands. You know.”
“I know you’d have to threaten and most likely kill her – and probably a lot of other people – to get your way,” my mom said. “Is that really how you intend to start out this . . . this . . . utopia? You really think you can create a utopia with that looming over your head?”
Thanos pressed his lips together. “Uh, well . . .”
“And what does Nimisila have to do with this?” my dad asked. “She says you have more abilities than her. Why do you need her?” He stopped right in front of Thanos to say it, leaning down as he did.
Thanos had to tip his head back to look up at my dad as he talked. “Sure, I could do it without her,” he said. He paused and licked his lips. “But I don’t want to. I think she is a pure soul. Someone who could temper me, keep me from becoming power-hungry and selfish like the current mayor and all the past mayors. I think she can help me to be . . . just.”
My dad tipped his head, confused. “Just?”
“Yes, just. You know, fair? She’ll keep things on an even keel. She knows what it’s like to be on the outside looking in; she’ll look out for the little guy. You know?”
Based on the look now gracing my father’s face, Thanos had managed to say the exact wrong thing at the exact wrong time. My dad turned red, and a vein on his forehead bulged and pulsed.
Mom tried to mitigate the damage. “You feel Nimisila helps you see reason; is that it? She has had a positive impact on your life?”
“I’ve looked up to Nimisila since the first time I heard her story,” he said. “She endured so much, and she didn’t just meet expectations. She smashed them.” He smiled and spread his hands. “Seriously, she smashed their expectations, both figuratively and literally. When my father told me how she destroyed the lab, how she did what had to be done without hesitation . . . I couldn’t wait to meet her from that moment on.”
My parents exchanged a look. I was glad to see they did that to other people besides me. “You’re aware Nimisila is deeply ashamed of that behavior, and she still carries guilt about it, even today?” my mom asked.
“Yes, and that’s what’s so brilliant about it. She knew it was wrong, and she learned from it. She grew into a person who is never going to make that mistake again. Right? I mean, she’s done the worst thing anyone could do by killing innocent people.”
Even if Thanos somehow managed to convince my parents I should help him overthrow the mayor and take control of the city, he was never going to manage to convince me. Not talking like this. I stood up and started out of the shelter.
“Nim, where are you going?” my dad asked.
“I need some air,” I said, not looking back.
So that I can figure out how I’m going to walk away from Thanos without having to kill him, I thought to myself.
Chapter 10
Eventually, I made it back to the shelter. They were all sitting in a circle on the floor, laughing. Thanos noticed me first. “Nim, I’m glad you’re back. Your parents are awesome.”
My mom was wiping tears from her face, and Dad was coughing from the belly laugh he’d been having when I first approached. Mom wacked him on the back until he stopped.
“You know, I can help you with that,” Thanos said.
“You can
?” my dad asked. His face belayed an eager hope.
I didn’t like Thanos giving him false feelings, and I was about to say so, but Thanos closed his eyes, and I felt his essence again. It surprised me so much that rather than stop him from whatever he was going to do, I stood and watched instead.
First, my dad’s face began to glow pinkish-orange, like a sunset over the water. The glow spread down his neck, and through his clothes, I could see his chest was glowing even brighter. He closed his eyes, and his face became smooth; the wrinkles and age-spots evened out and disappeared. A smile tickled the corners of his mouth.
“Oh, my goodness,” my mother said in her raspy voice.
Thanos leaned forward, his eyes squinted shut. His whole body was vibrating. Then, he leaned back to a sitting position and opened his eyes. “There. How do you feel?” he asked.
My dad’s wrinkles and age spots had returned – though they seemed somewhat less than before. He thumped a fist against his chest once, then again. A smile lit up his whole face, so big that I could even see his back teeth. “I’m fine,” he said. He turned to my mom. “I’m fine.” He stood up, and they embraced, then kissed.
Embarrassed, I looked back at Thanos. He stood and touched me on the shoulder. “We should give them a moment,” he said. He tipped his head towards the missing wall.
I followed him out, only because I wanted to grill him about what he’d done to my father. “What was that? What did you do?” I asked, trailing after him.
He went to sit on the ground near the fire. Several people sitting nearby glanced at us, collected their things, and moved away. I reminded myself their acceptance wasn’t important right at this moment.
I sat down beside him. “Seriously, what did you just do to him?” I asked again.
“I healed him. He had cancer.” He picked up a wood chip from the ground and tossed it into the fire. “You could do it, too, if you’d concentrate.”
“I . . .” I wanted to yell at him, tell him he wasn’t a doctor, and ask him who he thought he was, but the voice in my head trailed away at the thought of my father having had cancer. I’d known something was wrong and sensed maybe things weren’t right when I’d scanned him, but I had no idea what cancer looked like. “How did you know? That it was cancer?”
He shrugged. “I’ve seen it before. It’s not uncommon.”
“And you . . . removed it? How can it just be gone?”
“I didn’t remove it, so much as changed it. Cancer is just a mass of cells, growing out of control. I controlled it. Simple as that.” He looked around at the few people still near the fire.
Rori was near the food pot, stirring.
“Look at her. The stew woman.” He jerked his chin in her direction. “She’s got it, too. Look for it. Where can you see it?”
I glared at him. “You can’t just run around invading people’s privacy like that.”
“If you were sick, wouldn’t you want me to cure you? I cured your dad. Did you want him to die?”
“Of course not,” I said, “but you asked him.”
“I’d already looked, and I was going to help him whether he said I could or not. I just would’ve picked another moment, if he didn’t want me to.”
I rubbed at my cheeks. They felt sore from all the frowning I’d been doing. If I could help people, I should have tried to do it, right? I glanced over at Rori. She was chatting amiably with another woman now, one hand still stirring the pot.
“She’ll die, if we don’t intervene,” he said.
“Everyone dies,” I said.
“You know what I mean. She’ll die before her time.”
I closed my eyes and slipped towards Rori. My thoughts invaded her body, and I shuddered. Whatever was wrong with her, it felt pervasive.
“You’re right,” Thanos said. It was more than his voice. He was in my head. “Calm down; I’m just trying to guide you. You’re looking inside her now, right? Scanning for something that feels wrong?”
“Yeah,” I said.
“What do you feel?”
“She feels tense. Broken. I don’t know how to describe it.”
“Good. You’re doing great. Now, imagine you’re looking for something. Something that doesn’t feel normal.”
I swept my mind’s eye through her body, feeling for something that was out of place. Immediately, I sensed a dark presence in her abdomen, sort of tucked behind and to the right of her stomach.
“You found it.”
“Something near her stomach,” I said. “It’s . . . dark.”
“It causes her pain,” he said. “She’s stopped eating. I can feel her hunger, but she can’t stand the pain of eating. Can you feel that?”
I nodded. “Yes, she’s intensely hungry.”
“Focus on the mass, the darkness. Imagine it being filled with a healing light. Imagine you can reverse the process.”
The image of the pinkish-orange light in my father’s chest came to mind. I imagined that light bathing the area in Rori’s abdomen. I thought of it shooting out, like joy escaping the confines of my heart. There was a scuffle in the physical world, and though I didn’t open my eyes, I homed in on it. People were gathering around Rori.
“Ignore them,” Thanos said. “They don’t understand what’s happening. Just continue what you’re doing. What you just imagined, whatever you thought of, that was great. You’re doing great.”
I returned my concentration to Rori, and again imagined the pink-and-orange, hazy light illuminating her from within. The darkness shrank away from it, and I moved to push the light against it, bullying it away.
“Now, you’ve got to move to a cellular level,” Thanos urged. “You’ve got to think about reprogramming those cells to do what you want and stop their out-of-control population.”
My eyes squinted shut even harder, and my forehead scrunched up so tightly that I felt like my scalp might tear off my head, but I continued. I could help that woman. Thanos was right; I had an obligation to help because I could – whether she wanted me to or not. My thoughts homed in further on the dark mass, which now seemed to be cowering in fear of the light. I thought about the whole thing, then imagined myself magnifying just a tiny piece of it and zooming in to look at that tiny piece with a big lens.
Rori started to scream. Her voice was scratchier than most, suggesting she rarely even laughed out loud. It felt like the claws of a rodent being dragged across a stone, and I shrank away from it. I clapped my hands over my ears.
“Don’t listen,” Thanos urged. “She’s not in pain. She just doesn’t understand. She’s scared. Imagine her being comforted. Like she’s floating in her mother’s womb.”
I pushed that thought from my head. She didn’t need comfort. She needed me to finish what I was doing. Again, I zoomed in on a tiny piece of the darkness, homing in on single cell, and then imagining myself stepping into the cell and having control over it. It wanted to reproduce madly, at an insane rate, but I wanted it to stop. I wanted the tumor to wither and die. I concentrated every ounce of my strength to confine the cancer and beat it down, then shrink it to a single cell I could pluck away with an imaginary pinch of my fingers.
The screaming stopped, and there was more scuffle.
Thanos put an arm around my shoulders. He whispered directly into my ear, “She’s all right. Don’t worry; you’re getting there. You’re doing great.”
The darkness quivered and began to shrink. It seemed to be folding in on itself, losing both mass and size. I gave one last push against it, and it was gone. It was a single cell, and, in my mind, I grabbed that cell and threw it out like garbage.
Then, it was gone. The darkness was gone.
I opened my eyes and glanced over at the crowd surrounding Rori. Her hands were splayed over her stomach, and she was sucking in great gasps of breath, like she’d just run for miles without a rest. Her hair and her clothes were wet with sweat, but she was smiling. She looked around at the people trying to offer her support, and she s
uddenly began hugging them: one person, then another, then she grabbed two people at once. Her scratchy laughter tinkled over the crowd. “Thank you,” she said, repeatedly. “Thank you, thank you.”
Thanos patted my knee. “You did it. You cured her. I knew you could.”
My hands were shaking, and I felt like I could eat an entire rabbit all by myself. I lifted my hands and looked at them, then back at Thanos. “What’s wrong with me?” I asked.
He shook his head. “That kind of manipulation takes a lot of strength and a lot of energy. You just need to rest.”
I looked over at Rori. She was still thanking and hugging the crowd. I stood and moved to go towards her.
“Don’t,” Thanos said. “Your parents knowing that we can have this kind of impact is one thing, but the others won’t understand. They’ll be afraid of you if they believe you – and they’ll think you’re a liar if they don’t.”
Realizing he was right but angry about it anyway, I turned and stomped back to the shelter. My parents were sitting side-by-side in the lowest hammock, still giggling and kissing. I turned from them and ran right into Thanos.
“Why are you angry about this?” he asked. “I just taught you something really useful – lifechanging, even. What’s the matter?”
“The matter is, I don’t want to overthrow the mayor with you, and I feel like you’re only doing all these things to manipulate me into doing something I don’t want to do.” I pushed away from him, but he caught me by the wrist.
“Look, if you don’t want to help me, that’s fine, but what do you think is gonna happen, huh? If I go back there, and take over the city myself . . . I don’t want to even think about what that will turn me into. I’m not a good person, Nimisila. Not like you.”
I wrenched my arm from his grasp, hoping my parents hadn’t noticed how freely he’d touched me. Closing my eyes, I wished for Red. I needed him, and I’d left him behind. I’d failed him and all the others: his parents, Silver, Tabby, everyone. They were going to die when the weather finished changing – if they weren’t dead already.
