by Dima Zales
The circular room spins around me like a carousel, but I fight the sudden bout of nausea. Puking in front of a large crowd would be the epitome of humiliation.
“I was on TV,” I croak out. “It’s on YouTube.”
My necklace shines green again.
Chester looks at the crowd around him theatrically and says, “She admits it. Case closed.”
“A fact any idiot with an internet connection can verify,” says yet another familiar voice, this one with a British accent.
It’s Darian, the TV executive who got me the gig.
“Please wait your turn,” Chester tells him.
Slowly, and strangely mockingly, Chester sits down, and Darian stands up and removes his hood.
“I’m Councilor Darian, the Defense in today’s proceedings,” he says, looking at me. “Are you familiar with the term Cognizant?”
My hands tingle in the most unpleasant fashion, and my breathing approaches hypersonic speeds.
“Answer the question, love,” Darian says soothingly. “Are you familiar with the term Cognizant—not the dictionary definition?”
“I had a dream where the term was mentioned. I have no idea what it means,” is what I want to say, but my tongue is refusing to move with all this attention on me. So I just stutter out, “N-no. I… no.”
The stone around my neck glows red, and the room erupts in hushed whispers.
“A lie,” Chester says loudly without getting up.
“Who are your parents?” asks yet another familiar voice (the fourth one if I’m counting them correctly). Is the fear damaging some voice recognition center in my brain? Is that why everyone in this room sounds familiar?
A black-robed man stands up and pulls down his hood—and I know him too because adrenaline has etched his perfect pale face into my mind.
“I am Councilor Vlad, Leader of the Enforcers,” Rose’s boyfriend/nephew states, and I yet again wonder if I’m losing my mind.
“Answer,” Chester demands.
I jump at the intensity in his voice, my stomach twisting. “M-Makenzie Ballard and Braxton Urban.”
The stone around my neck glows red again, and the people in the room exchange meaningful glances.
“He meant your biological parents,” Darian clarifies.
The weight of the stares boring into me seems to double Earth’s gravity, and my nausea intensifies as my hypersonic breathing impossibly speeds up. The room seems to shrink around me, the walls closing in.
“I was adopted,” I hear myself gasp out, as though from a distance. “I don’t know my biological parents.”
My vision blurs, the green light in front of me permeated by white blotches of unconsciousness, and to my horror, I realize I’m about to pass out, like at the One Alpha presentation.
“Did you know that you’re a Cognizant that evening?” someone asks in the distance. I don’t know who it is, nor do I get a chance to answer because my public speaking anxiety finally defeats me.
I faint.
Except I’m not unconscious.
I’m looking at my body slumped on the floor.
Chapter Eighteen
Without adrenal glands, all signs of the panic attack that knocked me out are blissfully gone, and I become a pure observer, just like I was at the morgue and at the hospital.
“What the hell?” Chester says, the mockery in his tone giving way to confusion.
“It’s the fear of public speaking,” says the unidentified familiar voice behind me. “She had a panic attack.”
“This is unprecedented,” Kit says, tugging on a blond strand of hair. “Do we wait for her to come to? Can someone soothe her once she does?” She looks pointedly at Vlad.
“I think we’ve heard enough,” Chester says.
“I concur.” Darian stands up and removes his hood. “There’s no way she knew she was a Cognizant.”
“That’s not obvious at all.” Chester also stands up. “Nor am I convinced if it matters what she knew.”
They both look at Kit, who grudgingly rises to her feet.
“Let’s tackle Chester’s second statement.” She waves her hand in front of her face, and it changes into Chester’s, right down to his devilish grin. If not for Kit’s jewelry and robe on the faux Chester, I’d have thought they’d somehow switched places. “We agreed that it will matter if Sasha intentionally broke the Mandate—”
“But she’s not under the Mandate,” Darian says.
Kit waves her hand over her face again, and now she looks like Darian. “I meant, ‘broke the spirit of the Mandate.’”
“It’s her actions that matter, not the intent,” Chester says. “She violated one of the biggest taboos of our kind.”
“But intent does matter—we all agreed on that.” Darian’s British accent deepens. “She didn’t know she was one of us, which means she didn’t know the taboo—which means this meeting is adjourned.”
“Not knowing a rule is not an excuse to break it.” Chester isn’t looking at Darian but is speaking for the benefit of the surrounding crowd. “It would be like a human eating another human and being pardoned by the courts because he didn’t know that cannibalism is against the law.”
“As you so often like to point out, ‘we’re much better than the humans,’” Darian says, his British accent gone when he quotes Chester. It makes me wonder if he could speak without any accent if he wanted to, and just affects one to sound sexy.
“I’m not convinced she didn’t know, and in any case, I still strongly feel that she should be neutralized,” Chester says, the smile replaced by an earnestness that looks foreign on his face.
Darian raises his hand, palm out. “I think we need another seer—”
“Like we need a hole in our heads,” Chester interrupts, glaring at him.
“Gentlemen,” Kit says, her face back to her own. “If I may. There is a difference between grabbing power intentionally—which is punishable by death—and accidentally stumbling upon it.”
“But doesn’t the severity of her transgression matter?” Chester asks. “Millions of humans think she’s an oracle. That hasn’t happened since antiquity—and we all know what manipulating faith can lead to.” He looks around and in a lower voice adds, “Can you all even imagine how powerful she is now?”
“Fear-mongering isn’t becoming of you,” Darian says dismissively. “She’s but a pup, untrained and innocent of our ways. Besides, if we were to neutralize all Cognizants with too much power, all of us in this room would have to slit our wrists, wouldn’t we?”
“Your kind invented sophistry,” Chester says in frustration.
“And yours perfected bollocks,” Darian says, his tone even.
“Vlad, what do the Enforcers think?” Kit waves her hand over her face, and her features morph into Vlad’s marble-cut, brooding countenance.
“We either kill her, or she goes under the Mandate and is forbidden from performing her tricks ever again, under penalty of death,” Vlad says ceremoniously.
“Right, that is the decision in a nutshell,” Kit says, her face now turning into mine. “I was hoping you’d lean one way or another, not enumerate our choices.”
“Seers are useful to us, and powerful seers are doubly useful,” Vlad says after a moment of consideration. “But this could set an unfortunate precedent.”
“I see that, as usual, Vlad will not commit to a choice, especially if it seems to favor one kind of Cognizant over another,” Kit says, her face fluctuating between that of Chester and Darian.
“I don’t approve of frivolity,” Vlad says, looking at Kit sternly.
“I say we vote then,” she says, her face back to her normal round-cheeked visage.
“I don’t see why,” Darian says.
“See, something we can finally agree on,” Chester says. “Why vote if we can just kill her right here, right now.” He looks eager to jump down and personally slit the throat of my unconscious body.
“If Kit says ‘vote,’ we vote,�
�� says the man who put the stone around my neck. There’s a steely undertone in his voice, and the crowd goes silent and still.
“We vote then.” Chester visibly forces himself to relax.
“Even if that’s a waste of our precious time,” Darian says, his mouth tight.
“Everyone in favor of leniency, stand up,” Kit says.
Vlad, Darian, Kit, the stone giver, and a couple more people stand, but the vast majority remain seated.
They just voted to kill me.
The stone giver steps forward. “Councilors—”
I wake up to the roar of the cab’s motor. Opening my eyes, I see we’re already in the city.
Was that another one of my vision-dreams? It seemed to combine the two types I experienced before. The first half of this dream was like what happened on TV. I was fully present and experienced everything with my own senses—and just like that time, it was horrifying. The second half, the one that began after I fainted, was like the morgue and the hospital episodes. I guess if my future self is not at the location of the forecast, or is there but unconscious, I float like a disembodied ghost—which makes some kind of warped sense.
So was it a vision? Or could it have been a weird nightmare that has nothing to do with the future?
I strongly hope the latter to be the case because this Council, or whatever they are, voted to kill me.
One piece of evidence that this was just my brain randomly misfiring during a regular REM sleep cycle is that Vlad and Darian were in this dream. And there were way too many familiar voices. That happens when you’re dreaming sometimes; your brain regurgitates your waking experiences and puts a weird spin on them.
“Can you please hand me my phone?” I ask the cabbie, my voice scratchy from my impromptu nap.
“Here you go.” He unhooks the phone from the charger and hands it to me over his shoulder without turning.
I take the phone and dial Darian, though I don’t know what I’ll ask him when he picks up.
“We are sorry,” a robotic female voice says after a doo-dee-doo sound. “You have reached a number that has been disconnected or is no longer in service. If you feel you have reached this recording in error, please check the number and try your call again.”
Since his number is recorded in my contacts and has worked before, there is nothing to check. They should really update those disconnect auto-messages for the cellphone era.
I log in to my email, find Darian’s most recent message (the one with the video of me), and write back, “We need to talk.”
An auto-reply comes almost right away, informing me that my email has gone into the internet equivalent of a black hole.
Darian deleted his email profile and disconnected his number—but why?
I call the studio and ask for Darian, only to be told that no one by that name works there.
Desperate, I call Kacie—the show host—but I get her voicemail. And something tells me that if she did pick up the phone, she wouldn’t know who Darian is anymore.
This is bad. Darian disappearing supports the dream, because why would you disappear if you’re just a normal guy?
Vlad was never normal to start with. I have to talk to Rose about him; if nothing else, she should know about his violent tendencies.
I dial Rose’s number, but her phone just rings until her voicemail picks up.
“We’re here,” the Spanish-accented voice of the driver intrudes into my thoughts.
He’s right. We’re standing right by my building.
“Can you autograph one of the bills for me?” he asks sheepishly.
“Sure.” I sign a dollar for him and pay for the rest of the ride, making sure to tip him extra generously.
This is the first time someone’s recognized me, and it would’ve felt really good if I weren’t dealing with all this other crap. Lost in thought, I trudge into my building and catch the elevator. If that dream was a vision, they—whoever they are—will kill me. I have to prevent that. But how?
So far, I get the feeling that the future doesn’t like to change. Case in point: I couldn’t save Amie. Maybe the change I made on that TV stage was a rare event. Maybe, going forward, I’ll be cursed with seeing unfortunate events without being able to do anything about them—assuming I don’t get killed, that is.
The elevator dings, and I beeline for Rose’s apartment door.
I ring once and wait.
Nothing.
I ring a second time, then a third for good measure.
Still nothing.
I look left and right to make sure no neighbors are watching, then unscrew the top and bottom balls that hold together the two pieces of the stud in my tongue. I take the whole thing out and unfold it into a set of lock picks. The guy who made this gimmick for me builds illusions for the biggest names in Vegas, and this thing cost a small fortune.
Making short work of the lock, I open the door and step in, unsure how I’ll explain the breaking and entering to Rose if she comes out to greet me.
Rose isn’t home. Neither is the cat.
A lot of Rose’s things are missing, and all cat accessories as well.
Maybe Vlad took Rose on a vacation? Perhaps he didn’t like her proximity to the zombies he dispatched the other night?
Locking the door behind me, I head for my own apartment.
As I open the door, I dial Ariel again.
A phone rings in her room.
I wait to see if she picks up, but my call goes to voicemail.
Did she forget her phone?
I pad softly toward Ariel’s room, unsure why I’m being stealthy. When I’m by the door, I hear faint shuffling sounds coming from inside.
Without a knock or a warning, I barge into the room.
The cold barrel of a gun presses against my forehead, halting me in my tracks.
Chapter Nineteen
“Ariel!” I shriek. “Why are you pointing a gun at me?”
“Sasha.” She lowers her weapon. “Where did you come from? Why didn’t you knock? You almost made me shoot you.”
In a break from hyperventilating, I take a good look at my friend. Dressed in a standard-issue Army Combat Uniform, Ariel looks ready for a black ops mission.
“Where are you going dressed like that?” I ask, realizing I didn’t even know Ariel kept a gun in our apartment.
Random thoughts flit through my adrenaline-oversaturated brain as I stare at the weapon. What if she or I got pregnant and the hypothetical offspring shot one of its friends with this gun? Or, perhaps slightly more realistically, what if Felix found the gun? It’s all too easy to picture him roleplaying Neo and shooting his foot off. Oh, and I thought it was hard to get a gun in NYC—I toyed with the idea of performing the famous bullet catch effect, as well as the fake Russian Roulette act, but I put those ideas on the back-burner, thanks to the city’s restrictive gun laws and, to a larger degree, my overdeveloped sense of self-preservation.
“I’m sorry.” Ariel slides the weapon into a holster at her side. “I don’t have time for twenty questions.”
“This is about Beatrice, isn’t it?” I say on a hunch. “You found out where she is.”
“I really have to go. I only have a small window of opportunity,” Ariel says without meeting my gaze, and I don’t need Nero’s truth-discerning abilities to know I hit the bullseye. This does have something to do with Beatrice.
“Fine.” I put my hands on my hips. “Wherever you’re going, I’m coming with you.”
Ariel glares at me, then strides to her closet and takes out a coil of rope. She hangs it on her shoulder cowboy style and heads for the door.
I move to follow her.
With inhuman speed, Ariel closes the distance between us and grabs my elbows. By the time I have a chance to blink, she’s twisted my arms behind my back. “Please don’t move,” she says. “I don’t want to hurt you.”
“You’re already hurting me,” I complain as I futilely try to break free but only manage to hurt my s
houlder blades and yelp in pain.
“I’m sorry.” Ariel drags me to a chair and forces me to sit. “I’ll make it up to you, I promise.”
“I can’t have you fight this for me,” I say, suppressing another yelp of pain as she brings my wrists together. “If something happens to you—”
“I’m trained; you’re not.” Ariel starts to tie my wrists with the rope.
I go silent, all my concentration on feeling the rope against my skin. My struggles become very calculated now—but to Ariel, they probably look like the last-ditch efforts of a trapped woman.
Done with my wrists, she wraps some rope across my chest and torso.
“Ariel, please think about what you’re doing,” I say. “You might need me. What if I get a useful vision? I haven’t even told you about the thing at the hospital. Beatrice is dangerous.”
Ariel doesn’t reply to my pleading. Still avoiding my gaze, she comes around to examine me from the front. After studying her handiwork, she walks over to her nightstand and takes out a pair of handcuffs.
Despite the seriousness of the situation, I can’t help but ask, “You just happen to keep those in your nightstand?”
Ariel blushes but remains silent as she drags me in the chair to the window and cuffs my ankle to the radiator.
“I’ll be back soon,” she says. She straps her M9 knife to her outfit, grabs her cellphone from the table, and leaves, ignoring my last-minute pleading.
As soon as she’s out of the room, I start working on the rope.
Escapes are classic fare for illusionists, so I’ve included them in my preparations for my future show. I mastered rope escapes early on, because I had tons of rope after adding a cut-and-restore rope illusion to my restaurant repertoire. More recently, I’ve been practicing getting out of straitjackets and handcuffs, and have even experimented with a combination of them all.
If I ever get a kinky boyfriend, he’d have to be a master of his craft to properly tie me up.
