“All the way to what? Complete annihilation?” Vachlan glared at her. “Listen. They will let you go, Visola. You do get to live happily ever after. I told you that I have a plan. You just have to trust me. I can make them think you’re dead.”
“What do you mean?”
“I have a body,” he said quietly. “I have a body that I can use to convince them that you’re dead. It will be altered so that it’s indistinguishable from yours. If they perform an autopsy or forensics, they won’t be able to tell that it’s not you. I will give them this body, and you and I can…” Vachlan was cut off by a punch to the jaw.
“You bastard,” she hissed, hitting him again. “You fucking bastard. How could you!”
“Visola, I just want…”
“You will not mutilate my sister’s body!” she screamed. “How dare you suggest that to me! They already took her life, and now you want to give them her body? I’ll give them my body!” she shouted furiously. “I’m the one they really want. Let them try to take it from me! I’m going to show America that they killed the wrong woman!”
“You’ve already shown them that, Visola. You’ve wreaked so much havoc…”
“I’m not finished! I have so much more to do.” She rose to her feet and stood over him angrily. “You want to fake my death so badly?” she said with a snarl. “Do it for yourself. Do it in your own mind. Let’s pretend you killed me here today. Let’s pretend that there was something left in me to kill. When you walk away from this place, keep that thought in your mind. ‘Visola is dead. Visola is dead to me.’ Just keep repeating that to yourself. Because there’s nothing more between us. That’s all I’ll ever be to you, from now on. Dead.”
With that, she turned and walked away.
Visola had been unable to sleep since her encounter with Vachlan. She was tossing and turning in the small bed of the college dorm room she was currently occupying. It was the holidays, and the dormitory buildings were completely emptied of students, so she had chosen to camp out there with her army temporarily, until moving to the next location. However, the meeting with her husband had left her frazzled. It had been her first unsuccessful and upsetting day in a while. She had been caught off guard by his presence, and she had been shaken by his words. She had also been shocked by her own words, and they would not stop playing on repeat in her mind. She had always been harsh and cruel, but she had never known she could be so heartless
He had barely touched her, but her body seemed to react to his presence in a manner she could not control. She had forced him out of her memory for a very long time; not the knowledge of him, but all the feelings associated with him. She had tried so hard to shut so many doors in her mind, but he had come storming in at the most unexpected moment, and tried his best to tear them open. They had barely budged at the time, but now, a few hours after the event, she felt a small earthquake shaking the foundation of her solid walls. It was unsettling.
She continued to toss and turn, completely unable to get comfortable or find peace. She dug her hands into her pillow, crushing it against her chest. She squeezed it between her knees. She pulled the blankets up over her head. She tossed them completely off her body. “Arghh!” Letting out this small yell of exasperation, she threw her pillow at the ceiling light fixture, and promptly covered her eyes as it broke and shattered.
Visola rose to her feet and tiptoed around the glass shards in the dark. She exited her dorm room, and ignoring the guards stationed outside the bedrooms, moved to the room beside hers. She slipped in quietly and closed the door behind her. She moved over to the small bed where Princess Yamako was sleeping, and sat down beside the woman.
“Hmmm?” Princess Yamako said as she stirred. “Is everything okay? Is there danger?”
Visola bit her lip. “I’m… having difficulty synthesizing the enzyme.”
“What?” said the princess, yawning and rubbing her eyes. “What time is it?”
Frowning, Visola looked around the small bedroom. Seeing some bobby pins discarded on a desk nearby, she crossed the room, combing her fingers through her hair to remove the tangles. Grabbing her hair together in one hand, she quickly twisted it, and used the other hand to tie it into a knot. She grabbed a bobby pin, and stabbed the bun to keep it in place. She grabbed another, and stuck it in there as well, for good measure. She turned back to the princess, relaxing her body and trying to make her facial muscles soften.
“Is everything okay?” Yamako asked in confusion.
“I’ve been… thinking so hard, all day,” Visola said, slowly walking back to the bed. “It was such a stressful day at the lab.”
The princess looked at Visola suspiciously.
“Yama, my brain hurts,” Visola said in a dejected voice as she sat beside her on the bed. “Will you make me feel better?”
Yamako smiled. “You just got into a fight with your husband, didn’t you?”
“Maybe,” Visola said with a sigh. She reached up to undo her bun. “Sorry, this isn’t working.”
“No, no.” Yamako reached up to clasp her wrists. “Leave the bun. I like it.”
“How did she do this?” Visola asked. “My sister pretended to be me lots of times, for lots of reasons. She even ran my whole goddamn army when I was away. Why can’t I be half as good as she is? Why can’t I be anything like her?”
“You’re more like her than you think,” Yamako said, stretching slightly and observing Visola’s downhearted face in the moonlight. Staring at the curve of her cheek was slightly overwhelming. “Do you know that Sionna tried really hard to present an image of structure and sophistication, just to differentiate herself from you? Just to prove that she could escape her nature?” Yamako smiled. “But it was in her nature to be wild and powerful, just like you. She was more like you than you realize.”
Visola nodded, closing her eyes briefly. “Thanks for helping me these past few months,” she said. “I couldn’t have gotten this far, this quickly without you. Those atomic bombs are going to be perfect.”
“I’m excited too, honey,” Yamako said, lifting herself to a seated position and moving closer to Visola. She traced her fingers along the other woman’s arm, starting at her wrist and moving to her shoulder. Leaning forward, Yamako pressed her cheek against Visola’s back. “I’m sorry if I touch you too much,” Yamako whispered. “I just look for her face in every person I see. I’m always trying to find her. And then, there are you are—so much like her. So much like her that it hurts. It hurts to not be touching you, and pretending that you’re her. Sometimes—like right now, when your eyes are closed, and you’re not saying anything stupid… I can almost fool myself.” Yamako smiled sadly. “I wish I really could fool myself.”
“You can,” Visola said. “I’ll be Sionna for you. Just once.”
“Really?”
“Yes. Just for tonight,” Visola said. “I need the distraction to keep me from killing my husband.”
“I can distract you,” Yamako said, moving forward to press a kiss against Visola’s ear. “And we are in a college dorm room after all.”
Visola smiled. “Okay. You’ll have to tell me what to do. I have no idea how this works.” Visola made a face. “I don’t know what goes where.”
“Just stop talking and kiss me.”
Visola woke up to the sound of soft crying. She was startled when she saw the naked dark-haired woman beside her. “Yama?” she asked with concern.
“You look just like her when you’re sleeping,” the princess said, with a small laugh. “Thank you, Viso. It was like I got to spend one last night with her. I never got a chance to really say goodbye.”
“I know,” Visola said. She reached out and touched the nasty scar running across Yamako’s neck. “When you were injured, you told her to date Dylan Rosenberg, to decide who she wanted. She had been spending all her time with Dylan in the days leading up to her death.”
“If I had known there was so little time, I wouldn’t have given her away,” Princess Yamako s
aid. “I was trying to be generous because he saved my life. I was trying to be considerate of their history, and their unfinished business. I didn’t want to marry Sio if she still had questions. I didn’t want her to lie awake at night thinking about what could have been…”
“I think you did a really good thing for her,” Visola said. “It was awful timing, but that was the sweetest thing anyone has ever done for my sister, in her entire life.” Visola smiled, staring up at the ceiling fan pensively. “Thank you for being so good to her. She was so alone, for so long… I know that she really loved you. She loved being part of Kaito’s life, too. Thank you for making her happy.”
“Oh, Viso.” Yamako looked down at the redhead with teary eyes and wistful expression. “We haven’t talked about her very much, until now. We haven’t been able to.”
“I know. It’s like we’re making a breakthrough or something,” Visola mused.
“I think… I actually feel a lot better,” Princess Yamako admitted.
Visola seemed surprised. “Hey! Me too.”
“Does this mean we shouldn’t launch the bombs?” Princess Yamako asked with a sly smile.
“Heck no!” Visola exclaimed. “Are you kidding? It just means we can enjoy them more.”
“Good, because I wasn’t feeling that much better,” Yamako said. “I still need the bombs.”
Visola laughed to herself, and stretched. She was startled when she felt a hand on her stomach.
“Sio didn’t have huge scars like these,” Yamako said.
Visola looked down. “Yeah. She gave me some of those. This one is from my caesarean section, and this one is me trying to perform hara-kiri and kill myself because Vachlan pissed me off.”
Yamako grinned. “Wow. You two have a very interesting relationship.” Yamako reached up to touch her neck absent-mindedly. “We both have some pretty nasty scars, don’t we?”
“The worst ones are on the inside,” Visola said. “I felt like when Sionna died… I had a surgical removal of most of my soul. She was the secret box where I stored the best aspects of myself. Once she died, I became a monster.”
“You didn’t become a monster, Visola,” Yamako assured her. “You have always been a monster.”
Visola smiled sadly at this. “You should have heard the things I said to Vachlan yesterday. I was so awful. I was out of control. Seeing him and hearing him talk about our kids. That was difficult. I’m not used to feeling things anymore. I blamed him for everything, but it’s not his fault. It’s this country.”
“You blamed him for what?” Yamako asked.
“For Sionna’s death. For Alcyone’s death. It wasn’t fair of me to say those things,” Visola said. She sat up and ran her hands through her hair. “This is new. I’ve had beef with lots of countries before, but never like this. I’ve never gone up against a country quite like America.”
“Honey, I don’t think anyone has ever gone up a country like this one. No one would be crazy enough.”
“I loved this country,” Visola said sadly. “I liked the people. I admire them, in a lot of ways. They can be good, kind, and fun. But they can be so dumb. And then they do things, like assassinate my sister…” She closed her eyes. “If only they had not made that mistake. They should have killed me instead. No one would have cared. If they had killed me, the world wouldn’t be at war right now.”
“You’re wrong,” Yamako said. “If it had been you instead of Sio, I would be right here, in this very college dormitory, on this same mission. Sionna would have reacted in the exact same way, and I would have come along and supported her in avenging you. The only difference is that we might have accepted Aazuria’s help.” Yamako gave Visola a teasing look. “And also—I’d be getting laid a lot more, and it would be so much better than last night…”
Visola laughed and smacked the other woman with a pillow. “Sorry! I just don’t know how to work with what you’ve got going on down there.”
Chapter 17: Watching a Movie
Visola strolled through the streets of Los Angeles on New Year’s Eve. In a few hours, an atomic bomb was going to fall on the city, but none of the residents knew that. With her hands tucked in her pockets, Visola whistled to herself happily as she strolled down the lively avenue. She wore a pale blonde, Marilyn Monroe-style wig to loosely conceal her identity from anyone who might recognize her, but she did not care too much about complicated disguises any longer. Knowing that everything she saw was soon going to be plunged into chaos made her appreciate the beauty of the city even more. She had grown much more intimate with the continental United States during her vast journeys from east to west, and south to north; and she had developed something of a sentimental attachment to many of the places she visited.
Not sentimental enough to forgive, but sentimental enough to recognize the value of what she was destroying.
A couple of kids walked by her, chattering in excitement. She thought nothing of it, until she heard snippets of their conversation traveling toward her on the wind.
“What’s it called again? The one that got the best reviews.”
“Maelstrom. Apparently, it’s an incredible film.”
Visola paused. She turned and glanced back over her shoulder, at the teenagers who were heading into the theatre. Her memories were stirred by the word, but she brushed it off and kept walking. She took a deep breath, and tried to return to enjoying the scenery.
A couple was walking past her, and chatting among themselves.
“We have to see it!” the man was saying passionately. “It’s about this warrior who sets out to destroy the world all alone…”
“But is it romantic?” the wife asked.
“Of course, it’s romantic!” the husband said. “You see, the warrior’s husband is a writer, and she abandons him and their two kids to go on this crazy revenge mission…”
Visola stopped abruptly on the street. She crossed her arms across her chest and frowned. “He didn’t,” she muttered to herself. “Please tell me he didn’t.” She stood there for a moment, tapping her fingertips on her arm as more people passed by her, all chattering with excitement about the movie.
“Yeah, you know that chick who’s been blowing up the country? I hear it’s loosely based on her life!”
“No, it’s directly based on her life! It was written by her husband.”
“So, is it like a documentary on how she got to be so crazy?”
“Are there going to be sex scenes? Because I think we should watch a movie where we can just sit in the back row and make out.”
“Apparently he wrote the original screenplay while Shakespeare was still alive! He only recently adapted it for the big screen.”
“…And the ship gets sucked into the maelstrom at the end…”
Visola lifted her hands to cover her ears. She walked briskly away from the movie theatre, trying to drown out all the chatter about the new blockbuster. She felt like she had been picked up and dropped into a giant puddle of Vachlan, and she was now soaked and submerged in him. Hearing so many strangers talk about the play that was so precious and intimate to her was disturbing. It was the story that had first caused her to get to know Vachlan and fall in love with him. When he had so many hundreds of newer plays and screenplays written, why had he chosen to make a movie of that old relic?
Also, was she hearing correctly about the main character being female? That did not seem right. It had originally been written about a man. Maybe the movie was not based on the same Maelstrom that she had read all those years ago, but just happened to share the same title. She hoped this was the case, for Vachlan’s Maelstrom had stolen her heart when she first read it, and she had been dying to see it produced for over two centuries. She would not be able to resist shelling out a few American dollars to see the movie, even if a bomb was scheduled to flatten the theatre just as the credits started rolling. However, this might be a fitting and peaceful way to go, almost as perfect and poetic as the death of the main character in Vachlan�
�s original story.
Visola sighed in memory. Then she frowned at herself. “Keep walking,” she ordered her legs. “That’s it. Just keep on walking.” She was pleased when they listened and continued to move as directed, carrying her far away from the lethal movie theater that was surely trying to seduce and kill her. Of course, her mind was probably slightly exaggerating the danger, for the theatre might not have been precisely within the one-mile hypocenter where the bomb was marked to hit. However, for several miles around the point of impact, there would be serious repercussions. A firestorm was likely to sweep through most of the city, causing enormous damage to everything in its path.
The explosion would also likely result in a small earthquake, which could hypothetically trigger the massive earthquake that was bound to happen sometime soon, due to the buildup of pressure in the San Andreas fault. There were endless possibilities for mayhem. Ultimately, it was not the wisest idea to be sitting in a movie theatre in Los Angeles tonight. Visola knew she needed to get far, far away from the city. The transportation to take her away was already waiting, but she was feeling in the mood for a nostalgic stroll.
She turned a corner, and abruptly stopped walking. There, before her, was a brightly lit billboard advertising the movie. There was an image of a Maelstrom swirling in the background, and a woman with red hair on the poster who closely resembled Visola herself. The woman looked angry. In giant letters, the tagline for the movie read:
She will take justice into her own hands…
Visola scowled at this. “Justice? It’s not justice. It’s revenge.” She inhaled deeply, glaring at the poster and shoving her finger up at it in annoyance. “I am not the hero, Vachlan. I’m the villain. How much money did you spend just to aggravate me?” She stared at the image thoughtfully, and then glanced down at her watch. “Maybe there’s enough time…” she murmured. Turning on her heel, she marched back to the movie theatre. She saw another poster there, on the exterior wall of the building. and was able to read more of the fine print. She stopped when after the names of the actors, she saw her husband’s name.
Maelstrom Page 29
