Stealthy Steps

by Vikki Kestell

  You have your own problems, Gemma, I lectured. You aren’t responsible for that kid.

  I squashed Aunt Lucy’s reproving voice and returned my attention to my own issues. Now that I was inside my home and feeling safer, I could relax my vigilance, at least a little.

  As soon as I did, my body started complaining again. That dull, persistent ache throbbed everywhere—in my neck, my back, my hands, and my joints. Even my skin pulsated.

  I’m running a fever. I have to be—it hurts so much.

  And I felt drained, more so than just missing a night’s sleep: My very bones felt weak. Rubbery. I dug around in the kitchen junk drawer and pulled out a bottle of ibuprofen. I swallowed two pills and hoped they would work fast.

  Now that I had slaked my thirst, other concerns raced around in my head, bumping and colliding. Every new thought I formed only generated more questions. The kettle whistled and I took it off the burner, but questions—so many questions!—pounded in rhythm with my aching joints. My questions demanded answers, answers I couldn’t seem to produce.

  Why can’t I remember?

  Why was I up in the foothills?

  And why was I up there at night?

  What happened to me?

  Why can’t I remember anything?

  Why, why, why?

  And the most important question was, Why am I invisible?

  It was the first time I’d allowed myself to frame the word and I shook my head in denial. I’m not a whimsical person; I’m not given to daydreaming or fantasy. “Invisible” is not a word that belongs in real life.

  I must have made the tea on autopilot because when I came to my senses I was again sitting at the table in front of the window, greedily sipping the sweet brew. I glanced up.

  Emilio was still standing on the sidewalk in front of my house, in front of my window, his eyes agog. I looked down and saw my mug hanging—just hanging—by itself in midair!

  “Oh, crud.” I slammed the mug onto the table, sloshing tea on the tablecloth, and checked Emilio’s reaction.

  Frankly, it was comical, totally like something out of a cartoon: His expression was pure incredulity. He actually shook his head and rubbed his eyes.

  I laughed.

  I had to.

  What else could I do?

  Chapter 14

  I couldn’t stop the laughter bubbling up in my throat. It kept coming and coming and it grew and grew until it was wild. Hysterical.

  My body hurt with every spasm, and I couldn’t curb it, the hysteria. I laughed until I felt my head was going to launch right off my neck and roll on the floor. All the while, Emilio stood out front, his face radiating confusion and doubt.

  When the hysteria tapered off, I sighed and glanced down—down to where I knew my arms and hands were wrapped around my mug of tea—but I could only see the mug and my little table. I wiggled my fingers. No change. I clasped my hands together. Nothing. I knew I was “there,” but I couldn’t see myself.

  A sob, the tail end of the hysterical laughter, jumped out of my chest, and a rain of tears followed. I tried to smother them, squeeze them back, but they leaked out anyway.

  I dug the heels of my hands into my eyes and smeared the salty water over my face. When I looked up, Emilio was still there. He was scanning my house, his eyes jerking back and forth, looking for any sign of movement. I could see his puzzlement changing to wariness. He looked terrified, too.

  “You think you’re scared?” I hiccupped over another sob. “I’m the invisible freak!”

  Invisible? Like I said, people can’t be invisible! Not in the real world.

  The mad laughter rose again in my throat—and just as quickly gave way to sobs. I buried my face in my hands. More crying. More sobbing.

  “What am I going to do?” I wept aloud. “What am I going to do?”

  My whole body throbbed and pounded. I can’t overstate how intense the pain was! And a low hum, a tiny hiss, kept popping up somewhere behind the pain, like static behind or underneath a song track. I shook my head to rid myself of it.

  That wasn’t a good idea. I was already bone tired and sick—so sick. Shaking my head made the room spin and aggravated the headache.

  I need to sleep! My body insisted on it, but I couldn’t. Not just yet. I had too much adrenaline pumping through my blood and too many questions caroming around in my brain.

  I slumped in the chair and leaned my elbows on the table. As I did, a tiny movement caught my eye.

  The cushioned vinyl tablecloth “gave” just a little where I rested my elbows.

  I lifted my right elbow and placed it on the cloth again, watching the cloth depress and form around my elbow—except then the depression disappeared!

  I lifted my elbow and, this time, poked the tablecloth with a finger.

  There.

  But as quickly as I’d seen the shallow depression, it was gone.

  “What?” I was puzzled and amazed. I swallowed down the thrum of fear rising from the pit of my stomach.

  The humming that had plagued me on my way down the flanks of the foothills grew louder and nearer. I tried to ignore it, but it rose in volume until my head was beating out a rhythm in tune with the chittering buzz.

  I couldn’t take the pain any longer.

  I jumped up from the table. “Stop! Stop it!” I screamed as loud as I could and squeezed my temples. “Stop it!”

  Movement through the window—Emilio again, cocking his head as though listening. Had he heard my shrieks? I clutched my head and held my breath. He appeared uncertain, perhaps concerned, but made no move toward my house.

  “Oh, it hurts!” I moaned, concerned at how deep the fatigue ran, how tired and wrung out I was. To my grateful amazement, the clicking/buzzing softened and retreated until it petered out. As the chittering diminished, my thudding headache softened, too.

  It had to have been the lack of sleep that made me a little dizzy, right? I sat down and my attention wandered back to the tablecloth phenomenon.

  I need to understand what is happening, I told myself. I poked the cloth, saw the depression, and watched it disappear.

  I poked again. Same thing: I’d see the slight depression in the cloth and then it would smooth out and look as if I weren’t still poking it. I started poking with fingers from both hands. Same result each time.

  Something else made me pause: a faint shimmering around my finger that appeared for the briefest moment and was gone.

  I poked the cloth, slower this time. The “poked” spot wavered for a fraction of a second and disappeared.

  “What is going on?”

  I started jabbing my fingers into the tablecloth as fast as I could, but it seemed to me that as fast as I poked, the shimmering/disappearing grew faster, too, until I could no longer see the phenomenon. It was as though whatever was happening, was happening as fast as I could move—faster than my eyes could register it!

  The word predictive popped into my head.

  Where have I heard that word?

  I sat back, concentrating, desperate to pull my scrambled thoughts together. My thoughts kept jumping to fragments of what happened in the foothills. Bits of memories floated in and out of focus—near, but frustratingly elusive. I could not seem to grab hold of those bits and string them together into something concrete.

  I need some way to catch those pieces so I can look at them objectively.

  Exasperated, I got up and stalked into the living room. I went to a bookshelf and grabbed a spiral notebook and pen. I returned to the kitchen table and sat down. I put the pen on the notebook and closed my eyes.

  I will just let my thoughts float, I told myself, and will write down whatever comes into my head—without thinking about it or trying to make sense of it or trying to connect it to anything else. Just write whatever comes.

  For a while, I allowed the chaos in my head to reign without attempting to impose any order on it—and it was hard, let me tell you. I was sick and worn, but I willed my pen to take on a l
ife of its own while I gave free rein to the random pieces floating through my mind.

  I must have fallen asleep. I must have relaxed until the exhaustion of the sleepless night kicked in. My head rested on my left arm and I’d slobbered on it a little.

  Ick.

  I sat up, wiping my face and then my arm, easing the crick out of my neck. My thoughts were fuzzy and I guess I’d forgotten that I was invisible, because when I saw the pen move by itself I about had a heart attack. Then I realized that I was holding the pen. I had moved my invisible hand and the pen had moved with it.

  I glanced down and drew in a breath. The notebook was covered in a mish-mash of writing. Toward the end of the page, the writing had become larger and less legible until it flowed off the page and onto the vinyl tablecloth. Ink covered the cloth in roughly a foot square. Words and phrases were scrawled in several directions, overlapping each other.

  My hands shook when I picked up the notebook. The writing on it was scribbled and disjointed—as disjointed as my thoughts about last night were—but, together, on the same page? Now I could see the bits and pieces holistically, could maybe make some sense of them.

  DrBickel DrBickel

  “Dr. Bickel?” My brow creased. “Why am I writing about him? He’s-he’s dead.” I frowned again, because my whispered words carried a hollow, uncertain ring.

  DrBickel

  nice he’s nice

  Dr. P no not no

  The writing here was indecipherable. I’d written over it and over it until the ink had soaked the paper and torn through it.

  tunnels tunnels tunnels door door lever find lever find lever

  cave big cave lights lights—something more that, try as I might, I couldn’t read.

  “Tunnels? Cave?” The words fell from my mouth with a vague sense of familiarity.

  A few lines down, I made out glass box glass glass mites mites mites cloud nanocloud

  hello (something, something)

  hello

  hello Gemma

  “Hello, Gemma!” The image snapped into focus.

  “I was with Dr. Bickel! He’s alive! We were somewhere inside the mountain, in the Manzano weapons storage facility. In the tunnels?”

  From there, I pulled more fragmented thoughts together. “He, Dr. Bickel, constructed a little laboratory off the tunnels inside the mountain! He had a glass . . . box. A glass case. Filled with nanomites! Billions of them. No. Trillions.”

  The nanocloud formed before my mind’s eye: Their hazy, ephemeral grey, shot with flecks and flickers of color, moved and morphed like thick liquid. The cloud’s metallic shimmer reminded me of gasoline on water, while in the background Dr. Bickel explained what they were, how they worked, what he had accomplished with them.

  Yes.

  I was beginning to remember. I turned my attention back to the notebook.

  The writing was increasingly difficult to follow. It grew larger and sloped away from the lines and off the page. I stood with the notebook in hand and laid it this way and that on the table, turning it until it was lined up exactly where the writing ran off the page and onto the tablecloth.

  As illegible and disjointed as the scribbled words on the notebook were, the writing on the table was worse. I’d written and then written over what I’d written several times before sleep had claimed me.

  Standing above the inky jumble, certain words began to emerge from the chaos. I grasped a thread and, like untangling a knot—

  I grabbed the notebook, flipped it over, and wrote down what I could make out.

  men

  gun

  gun

  guns

  shoutshoutshout

  men

  guns

  fraid

  cush

  cush

  cushi

  bat

  bat

  Cushing! General Cushing? Was she there? In my fuzzy memory, I could hear shouting, soldiers shouting, but could not make out the words—I could only see Dr. Bickel’s face, etched in horror.

  Bat?

  I saw light glint off a metal baseball bat as he swung it toward the glass case—and connected. The corner seam in the case split apart and, as though a great blockage had dissolved, my mind cleared.

  I remembered everything.

  I knew that my eyes were wide open, staring across my little front yard, but they saw only what my mind replayed: Dr. Bickel smashing the giant glass case. Dr. Bickel waving his arms at the nanomites and screaming “Nano, hide! Hide!”

  Dr. Bickel turning, seeing me as if he hadn’t known or remembered my being there; Dr. Bickel shoving me toward the door into the tunnels.

  I fixated on that moment, the expression of anxiety on his face, the worry in his voice. His protest, his cry—everything good I had come to believe about this man: Compassion, care, concern.

  For me.

  From where we huddled behind the last line of lab tables we saw men—dozens of soldiers in battle gear with weapons drawn—burst from the front entrance tunnel, flood the cavern, and spread.

  “Go, Gemma!”

  Heeding him, I ran.

  We can still reach the back wall! I told myself. We can!

  I remembered thinking, If we can reach the back wall of the cavern without being intercepted, we will be safe!

  My breath caught. Dr. Bickel hadn’t followed me. I remembered hearing him shout, “Hide! Hide, Gemma!” But he hadn’t followed me!

  I was going to go back for him when I heard gunfire—and something struck me in between my shoulders, knocked me down. Had I been shot? So much pain! I couldn’t catch my breath!

  I stared straight ahead and replayed Dr. Bickel’s last words. “Hide! Hide, Gemma!”

  Or had he said, “Hide! Hide Gemma!” . . . to them?

  The awful truth was dancing around the edges, forcing itself into my conscious mind: It didn’t matter which way he’d said it or which way he’d meant it. Only how the nanomites interpreted what he said mattered. Only what the mites believed he’d meant mattered.

  I relived the moment when the corner joints of the glass case had given way, how the nanocloud had flowed out, how they had bunched and rocketed toward the ceiling of the cavern. In response to Dr. Bickel’s urging I’d run toward the back of the cavern, toward my exit—until something had slammed into my back and knocked me to my knees.

  I hadn’t been shot.

  They had swarmed me. The nanomites had swarmed me.

  I felt again the stunning impact followed by the stinging pricks of their entry into every part of my body. My skin burned; it was on fire! I was choking, suffocating, as they rushed down my throat. The memory of their clicking and buzzing sickened me. I dropped my head on the table and tried not to scream, but I was terrified.

  They are inside of me! The nanomites are in me!

  I couldn’t wrap my mind around it.

  It’s why I am so sick, I realized. They are making me sick!

  “Get out! Get out of me!” I moaned.

  I heard only a few isolated clicks and then silence.

  I lay with my fevered face on the table, thinking about Dr. Bickel, sorting through the impossible facts, trying to make sense of them.

  Two hours later, I was no closer to figuring out what to do next. I rubbed my gritty, sleep-deprived eyes. I was weaker now than when I’d come home.

  “I need to sleep,” I whispered. I left the table a mess and dragged myself toward my bedroom. The sight of my bed had never been so welcome.

  I’ll be safe while I sleep, I told myself. I can think this all through later, when I have a functioning brain.

  As beat as I was, I decided that Emilio did not pose an immediate threat.

  Who’s going to believe a skinny, ten-year-old brat when he says he saw a coffee mug floating in the air from twenty feet away?

  I ripped off my torn, grimy clothes and dropped them to the floor. I paused and stared. As each item of clothing left my hands and hit the floor, it became visible.


  “That has to mean something,” I mumbled, but my strength was draining away. I didn’t care that I was putting my equally filthy body into a clean bed. Spending what little energy I had left, I crawled beneath the covers.

  I should have succumbed to sleep right away, but my mind, exhausted as it was, refused to shut down. Paranoia ran its fingers up and down my spine, tapping out a warning.

  General Cushing has to be—she must be!—looking for the nanomites. How long before she sends someone to question me? Except they won’t be able to find me! How long before someone figures out that the mites—

  I was not ready to put into concrete terms what had happened. I was not ready to slap a label on The Event. I was like an obstinate Scarlett O’Hara: I will think about that tomorrow.

  Or whenever I woke up.

  My body surrendered then, and my last conscious thought was, It’s not fair. I never asked for this to happen to me! Now I’m in this mess and look what they did to Dr. Bickel! They killed him! Oh, Dr. Bickel!

  Before I slept, the rational, organized part of my brain reasserted itself. To the panic caroming off the walls of my brain it spoke calmly. Logically.

  I will find a way to deal with this, somehow. I will figure out something. I have to, because I can’t afford to attract attention to myself.

  I am certain my life depends on it.

  Chapter 15

  Dear Reader,

  I have now related the whole chain of events up to and including the first entry of this account. Now you know what happened to me and how it happened.

  The following morning, after I made it home and after I remembered being in the lab with Dr. Bickel, I finally went to bed. I fell asleep around midmorning. I hadn’t slept at all the night before.

  Do you remember how sick I’d felt when I fell into my bed? How drained?

  I almost didn’t wake up. As in ever. I still shiver when I think of how close I came to dying in my sleep. In my own bed.

  Toward evening, after I’d slept in exhaustion for maybe seven or eight hours, my right hand began to hurt. I mean, really hurt. It stung and burned as though it were on fire. I squirmed in pain, but I couldn’t seem to wake myself up. The sound of chipping and buzzing grew so loud in my head, though, that I, at last, began to stir.