Stealthy Steps

by Vikki Kestell

  I swung my legs over the side of my bed and started to stand—but I couldn’t. I couldn’t hold myself on the edge of the bed either, and I tumbled off the mattress onto the floor.

  I was awake but so weak! My hand had stopped stinging and the noises had faded, but I was alarmed at how little strength I had.

  My body was like water, poured out on the floor, spreading, soaking into the carpet, dissipating . . . My arms and legs no longer felt attached to my nervous system. They refused to respond with more than a twitch.

  As life seeped from my bones, fear settled in its place. This weakness was unnatural, caused, no doubt, by them, by what they were doing to my body.

  My bedroom windows were shaded and the room was shrouded in twilight. I lay alone, frightened, unmoving, in the near-darkness.

  I rested for a while and then that spot on my hand began to burn again, as though someone were sticking it with a hot pin. I gritted my teeth and turned my head until I could see my bedroom door. By sheer determination, I managed to inch on my stomach to the door and grasp the jamb. Bit by bit, I pulled myself up onto my knees.

  It was hard, exhausting work. I clung to the jamb, sweating and fearful I would fall backwards if I let go.

  After a few minutes of heavy breathing, I reached feeble fingers toward the light switch. As I inched my hand closer, a trail of warmth ran from my shoulder, shot up my arm, and stretched and strengthened my hand—

  The instant my fingers encountered the switch, my palm flattened and fastened to the switch plate. My palm was glued to the plate as though tendrils had emerged from my hand and sunk into the plastic. Electric current rolled from the outlet into my hand.

  The switch plate under my palm grew hot from the current passing through it, but not hot enough to burn me. The warm flow of the current traveled up my arm, flowed into my chest, and ran down the other arm, down my legs. A shrill, excited thrumming played in my head.

  Power? But of course they need power, Gemma. The nanomites need power or they will fail. The beauty of my design, however, is that the nanocloud can utilize power from any source of electrical current including direct and indirect sunlight and organic or living things.

  The tendrils binding my hand to the light switch released their hold, and my hand flopped to the floor. All was silent.

  I sniffed. My nose was dripping. I climbed to my feet and reached for a tissue box on my nightstand. I saw the tissue as I raised it to my face. I was still blowing my drippy nose when I realized that I was standing up under my own steam. I felt stronger. Less achy. Less sick.

  I thought again about how Dr. Bickel had described the nanomites’ power needs and how they derived the energy they needed: Organic or living things.

  “Living” things as in people? My logical mind produced the question.

  I tossed the used tissue into the wastebasket next to the nightstand. As it left my fingers, a bright stain bloomed on it. I leaned over and inspected the tissue now lying at the bottom of the wastebasket. I stooped and picked it up by one corner. It was stained with blood. Bright, fresh, red blood.

  My blood.

  I shivered and swiped at my still drippy nose with the back of my hand. I looked at my hand. No blood.

  Hmm.

  I drew another tissue from the box and blew into it. When I pulled the tissue away, it appeared unchanged—but a moment later a bloody smear appeared—not as much blood as the first tissue, but blood nonetheless.

  I sighed, tossed the tissues into the wastebasket, and wandered into the living room, captive to my worried thoughts.

  Too many questions. Too many questions with really scary, impossible answers.

  I turned on the lamp hanging over my favorite reading spot, the corner of my sofa, but I didn’t sit down. I stood there, puzzling over my experience of the last few minutes.

  “The nanomites need power or they will fail,” I quoted Dr. Bickel aloud. “What can I deduce from that?”

  A snort of irony followed my question. “I think I can safely say that they just got a much-needed power bump,” I grunted, “and their getting a dose of electricity seems to have made me feel better, too.”

  I did feel better—stronger—since the mites received their dose of electricity. On the other hand, my bones and skin still ached with fever. And why was my nose bleeding?

  That can’t be a good sign.

  I frowned as I pondered the two tissues laying in my bedroom wastebasket and my drippy nose. “I have a nosebleed—and I am a little scared to consider why my nose is bleeding.”

  It would have been easy to drive myself nuts brooding over the damage the mites were likely doing to my insides. I turned my speculations away from that line of thinking and onto a related puzzle piece.

  Why does blood show up on the tissues but not on the back of my hand? I was intrigued—in a macabre kind of way. Some possibilities suggested themselves.

  “As long as the blood is in or on me, it is as invisible as I am?” I wondered aloud.

  It didn’t make sense, and I shook my head, frustrated—and then recalled taking off my soiled clothes before collapsing into bed. As soon as I’d peeled them off and dropped them on the floor, I could see them.

  Same thing.

  “Yes,” I added, “It is the same thing! I am invisible and so are the things in me and on me—but as soon as something is apart from me it becomes visible? All right, but why? What about the mites makes things invisible or not invisible in the first place? How do they do it?”

  That whole line of questions stumped me. I circled back to the “power” issue.

  “They got ‘fed’ from the light switch and that made me feel better, but not completely better. So if I feel somewhat better now that they have gotten some power, just which part of me is it that feels better?” I asked. “And why?”

  I’d been incredibly weak when I woke up, too weak to stand. Then the nanomites got their electrical boost.

  A horrifying conclusion began to form.

  I sank into my corner of the sofa, distressed by the wave of revelation washing over me: From the time the nanomites left their glass case, they had been without their normal power supply.

  The mites will conserve energy when they need to, Dr. Bickel had said, but, under pressing circumstances, they will use whatever energy is available.

  What happens if their power source is about to fail and they don’t have another one? I had asked him.

  I’m not certain, Gemma, but they are amazingly resourceful. I’m sure they would come up with something.

  “They-they almost drained me dry,” I whispered. “They needed my energy and I went to sleep, because I was so tired—because they had used up almost all my body’s electrical energy! They almost drained me dry!”

  I rubbed my right hand. The stinging, stabbing pain had not returned, the stinging, stabbing pain that had awakened me—the buzzing, clicking noises and the pain in my right hand that had stirred me out of a dead sleep.

  A dead sleep.

  I went cold all over.

  The nanomites awakened me because, because I was almost used up?

  That insight was followed by a more obvious, scarier one: If I had not awakened when I did—if they hadn’t awakened me—I would have died! Died in my sleep!

  I leaned back against the sofa’s cushions, breathing rapidly.

  “Why didn’t they just swarm and propel themselves to the light switch on their own?”

  But they didn’t swarm and leave my body. Instead, they stung my hand until I woke up. They could have reached the power on their own—but for some reason they awakened me.

  “They don’t have feelings. It can’t have been altruism on their part—they only follow their program algorithms.”

  More thoughts tumbled through my head.

  Do they, for some reason, think that they need me to give them access to electricity instead of getting it themselves?

  The list of half-baked deductions about the nanomites was growing, but
each possible insight generated another round of questions.

  All right. Say they do need me—but why? Why do they need me?

  I stared at the wall for a while, recalling Cushing’s attack on Dr. Bickel’s lab, and allowing more conclusions to form.

  Hide! Hide Gemma!

  “Is it because they are obligated to hide me? To keep on hiding me?” I whispered those queries into the twilight shadows lengthening in my living room.

  “If they believe Dr. Bickel ordered them to hide me, and he isn’t here to tell them to stop, then what?”

  It was crazy. I didn’t want to believe it. I didn’t want to, but . . . but it made a weirdly logical sense. Almost.

  My stomach turned over. I hadn’t eaten in more than twenty-four hours—not since the meal Dr. Bickel had prepared for us in the cavern prior to Cushing’s attack. My belly rumbled again. I ignored it and returned to the on-again, off-again invisibility issue.

  “How are they doing it? How are the mites making me invisible?”

  When my stomach protested a third time, the chittering/buzzing started up—and the now-familiar stabbing pains in my head kicked in.

  “All right, all right. I’ll get something to eat.”

  The September sun sets around 7 p.m. in Albuquerque; after that it grows dark quickly. The living room’s lamplight emphasized how dim the rest of the house had grown. I padded on bare feet into the kitchen, flipping on a few lights as I went. As I walked past my kitchen table, I glanced out the window into the deepening twilight, but I really couldn’t see anything.

  Was Emilio back to sitting on his curb across the cul-de-sac? Or, after my return home and the freaky things he had seen, was he still watching my house?

  I pulled the blinds closed over the window that looked out on my neighborhood.

  I may have to live with my blinds closed like Abe. The thought popped into my head and I didn’t like it.

  I was very thirsty again. After a long drink of water from the tap, I put the kettle on for tea and started heating some oil to stir-fry some chicken and vegetables. At the smell of the oil heating, my stomach lurched. I was famished! While I chopped vegetables and cut up a chicken breast, I chewed on the unanswered questions plaguing me.

  “How are they hiding me?” This was the question that bothered me the most.

  Do you know anything about stealth technology, Gemma?

  Dr. Bickel’s words popped into my head. The knife I was using to chop vegetables poised motionless above my cutting board while I considered it.

  “Oh, wow.” I scrunched up my face and tried to recall what he’d told me.

  It’s optical invisibility, Gemma, optical invisibility. Also known as passive adaptive camouflage. The mites create optical invisibility by utilizing their mirrors to bend light and reflect the surfaces around them. Nanostealth.

  Were the nanomites only camouflaging me and making it seem that I was invisible?

  “That would mean I’m not truly invisible; I only appear to be invisible.”

  What difference would that make? For all intents and purposes, I’m still invisible!

  A faint scratching near the back door interrupted my reverie. Jake bounded into the room via the cat door. Tail in the air, he went directly to his bowl next to the stove and sank his fat mug into his dry food.

  I said nothing to him as he ate. Our relationship didn’t include pleasantries or chitchat. I finished my dinner preparations and sat down at the table to enjoy the savory chicken and vegetables. I relished each bite—I don’t think anything had tasted so good in a long time.

  I wasn’t prepared when Jake jumped into my lap. He must have smelled the warm chicken on the table—however, he had not seen me in the chair.

  I uttered a surprised shriek and jumped.

  Jake jumped higher.

  Have you watched a cat lose its mind?

  Jake scrabbled and ran in six directions at once. Chicken stir-fry flew everywhere. When Jake finally gained traction, it was on me. He clawed his way up my front side and launched himself from the top of my head.

  The pompous, unflappable Jake, the “I-do-not-deign-to-notice-you” King of Keyes Castle, streaked across the living room, sling-shot around an arm chair, and catapulted over the couch, caterwauling as he went.

  It was an epic moment in the ongoing saga of Jake vs. Gemma. It was an unplanned triumph—but I was willing to take it.

  I laughed until I cried. I was still laughing as I cleaned the remnants of my dinner from the table and floor.

  Chapter 16

  What I salvaged and actually ate of the chicken stir-fry made me feel better. I felt less feverish, less achy afterward, and my bloody nose seemed to have dried up. My thinking seemed less muddled, more cohesive.

  It was time to get a handle on things. I drew the spiral notebook toward me, turned to a fresh page, and started a list.

  “Number 1,” I murmured. And, for the first time, I penned the revolting, impossible truth: Number 1: I have several trillion—give or take a few hundred billion—of Dr. Bickel’s nanomites “living” inside me. My body’s immune system must be on the offensive. That would explain the fever and aching.

  Looking at the dry, matter-of-fact statement on paper made my situation much too real. That moment—the horrifying moment when the nanocloud ploughed into my back and knocked me to my knees—came rushing back. I relived the stinging, fiery pain of their combined trillions drilling and burrowing into my skin, felt the suffocating flow of them flooding my mouth and nostrils and forcing their way down my throat.

  Nausea almost brought the chicken stir-fry back up. I swallowed it down and, with a shaking hand, forced myself to scratch, Number 2: “They” (the nanomites) think Dr. Bickel ordered them to hide me.

  Had he? Had he ordered them to hide me, to save me from General Cushing and her stormtroopers?

  Hide! Hide Gemma!

  Or had he screamed, “Hide! Hide, Gemma!” to me and not to the nanomites?

  Would I ever know what his command had meant, which way he had intended it?

  Except what he’d meant or intended didn’t matter. Only what the mites believed he’d intended mattered. And if they believed Dr. Bickel ordered them to hide me, then—

  I shook my head and went back to how the mites were doing it, how they were using their mirrors to render me “optically invisible” to the world. Under my breath I murmured, “The mites must be in me but they must also be on me, on the surface of my skin, if they are using their mirrors to hide me.” That was a new detail. I added it as a note under Number 1.

  I heard my cell phone ringing from somewhere in the back of the house, likely my bedroom.

  My first panicked response was, I can’t answer it! I pattered down the hall and found my phone in the pocket of my grungy jeans still lying on my bedroom floor.

  I checked the Caller ID.

  Zander!

  I couldn’t decide how to handle the call, so I let it go to voicemail. When the phone vibrated that I had a new voicemail, I put it on speaker and listened to it.

  “Hey, Gemma. I came by around lunchtime and saw your car in the drive, but I couldn’t find you. Just wanted to say ‘hi.’ I’ll catch you later. Have a blessed day!”

  He came by while I was sleeping, I realized. I was going to have to keep him away from me somehow. His voicemail reminded me that my car was still in the driveway—one more detail I needed to handle.

  And his ‘have a blessed day’?

  He had no earthly idea.

  I sat down and poked the cushioned tablecloth with an index finger, looking for the expected indentation. Nothing. I poked again. As closely as I watched, I never saw one. I poked with both hands, alternating them and, one time only, glimpsed a shimmer as the nanomites “removed” the indentation.

  Of course, I now understood that they were not removing the indentation; they were only camouflaging my fingers and the indentations they made in the tablecloth.

  “You little buzzards a
re fast learners,” I snarled. A couple of “clicks” echoed from the back of my head. Under Number 2 I scrawled, The mites learn quickly. Dr. Bickel said he programmed them for “predictive” learning, which means they remember that I poked the tablecloth earlier today and so they were ready for it when I did it again just now.

  “Number 3,” I whispered and wrote, The mites need power to survive. “And now, so do I,” I added.

  I scratched an outline beneath the third statement:

  a) Dr. Bickel designed the nanomites to draw power from multiple sources—including me if I’m not careful! BE CAREFUL, I added in all caps. I underlined it a couple of times, too.

  b) When they use me as a power source, I grow weak.

  c) Therefore, as long as they are inside of me, I will need to provide them with power—so that they don’t use me.

  d) They have proven that they can draw what they need when I touch a light switch.

  “How often do you need to ‘recharge?’” I fretted. “How long after getting power until you start draining me again?” I didn’t like where that line of thinking was headed. Not at all.

  I strode to the nearest light switch and placed my hand on it. Like before, my hand seemed to fuse to the plate and warmth overspread me as the mites drew power from the switchbox. A few minutes later, my hand released.

  When my hand dropped, I felt oddly—unnaturally—refreshed.

  “Interesting.”

  I returned to my list and added, e) I need to figure out a way for them to be “plugged in” all the time.

  It was fully night now, but I wondered about tomorrow and what would happen if I went outside into the sunshine. Would the mites automatically convert sunshine to solar power?

  Suddenly, my house felt close and stuffy, and I had the urge to be outside, breathing fresh air. I was jumpy. Antsy. Needed to blow off steam.

  Was my newfound vigor the result of the mites taking in power from the light switch? Did their action recharge me, too?