Crimson

by Ben Wise

  “I swear that there’s a crow over there watching us,” I say.

  She looks over in the direction I was facing. “What crow?”

  “That one over…” I don’t get to finish the sentence. The bird is gone.

  “I guess I’m just over paranoid at the moment,” I say.

  “Don’t blame you,” she says with a sigh. “Don’t blame you at all.”

  We walk together in silence for a while. Cara leads me through a number of narrow city streets. I’m totally lost. The warmth of the new dawn’s light fights this cold concrete maze as best it can. The feeling of panic from the earlier escape has been replaced with weariness.

  Cara breaks the silence. “Uri came to us, maybe a week ago and told us what had happened to you. He’s old resistance, just like he said, but has been out of the game for a while. He said that he’d been watching out for you. Then he told us who you were. Your parents are pretty legendary among the new resistance.

  “We brought in Alex to locate you. And he did. And he told us where you were. And we really struggled to think about how we were going to be able to help him, help you. That place you came out of, that ‘hospital’, is filled with the worse of government types. Hell, we didn’t believe you’d still be alive. That morning though I had a precog of you. I saw you running out of the hospital. And I knew we had to find you. Once I explained the precog to them, it was pretty easy to convince them that somebody should wait around the front of the building for you. I’m glad they hung around waiting for you. I’m not sure how long I could have lasted waiting in front of a government building like that. And then yeah, here we are.”

  She stops suddenly, her eyes inquiring. “How did you get out of there, anyway?”

  “I’m still not sure… I had help I guess. Someone, something helped get me out. I don’t know how to explain it. It was like this entity, this ghost, stepped out of the shadows and freed me. It was… violent.” The question brings back memories. They seem distant, strange; though it was only yesterday, it seems like it was years ago.

  My answer gives Cara a worried look, but she says nothing further. We keep wandering, in silence.

  There is a lot more activity in this part of the city on these streets than I’m used to. Cara says, “We need to be careful what we say from this point forward, none of these people will be sympathetic. They’ve all been trained for years by the government to hand us over if there’s the slightest suspicion against us.”

  “Couldn’t they just have other talented people going around looking for people like us?” I ask.

  “The Templars have always been absolutely anti-talent. They’d never trust a talented person for something like that,” she responds.

  “There was one with them when I was taken.”

  “You sure?”

  I nod. “Absolutely. I think she was there to identify what switch we were, kind of like what Simon was trying to do.”

  “A construct programmer then?”

  “I guess.”

  She shrugs. “Hey, are you hungry?” she asks.

  My stomach rumbles its response loudly. My last meal was the scraps I was fed while captured.

  “Hah, thought so,” Cara says.

  “I, ah, don’t have any way of getting food,” I say, embarrassed.

  “I’ve got you covered,” She laughs as she tries to assure me with a gentle touch on my arm. Instead it’s like a lightning bolt through me. I’m hyperaware of the sensation of her fingertips against my skin. “It’s not a problem.”

  She pulls me into the nearest food place, a café of sorts with seating on the street.

  “Order whatever you want,” she says.

  Breakfast is a simple bacon and egg roll. It’s quite frankly the best thing I’ve ever tasted. Such foods are a luxury we never got much of in the abandoned parts of the city.

  “They don’t have stuff as good as this where I’m from. The people selling food there are pretty terrible.” I laugh.

  A few stray looks from strangers suggests this was an unusual thing to say. I drop it.

  “How old you Cara?” I ask.

  “Twenty, you?”

  “Something like that.”

  “Why?”

  I shrug, “Just wondering.”

  “Everyone seems so young, why’s that?”

  Her eyes go wide. She leans over to whispers to me. “Not here.” She leans back from a moment, then swears under her breath. “Shit. Cops.”

  We both put on our best look of innocence. The next moments are spent nervously. The police both just smile at us and move on. Not an issue in the end. We watch them, perhaps a little too attentively, as they cross the street.

  “Perhaps it’s time to get out of here?” she suggests.

  “Good idea,” I say.

  “Come on then, the place we’re heading isn’t far from here.”

  I follow Cara out of the café. We pause a moment as Cara battles with unruly item of clothing, her loose shirt and belt buckle locked in mortal combat. Across the street from us the cops have stopped in place, in intense discussion. He turns in our direction and points.

  I grab Cara’s wrist. “Time to be somewhere else.”

  She looks up to see what I’m talking about.

  “Shit,” she swears, nailing the sentiment.

  This is becoming a habit. We both bolt. Thankfully the street is still reasonably quiet this early in the morning. Nobody seems willing to get in our way. Mostly they stand and stare at us; all wearing the same shallow, stupefied expression. Have they never seen somebody run from the police before?

  “Left! Left!” Cara yells about 100 metres down from the cafe. We take the left up a short set of stairs, jump onto a concrete garden edge, over a small garden and through the middle of a small section of green space.

  Beyond that, a concrete wall confronts us, as tall as I am. I flash Cara an uncertain look as we cut through the grass field. I don’t know if we can make this. She doesn’t stop. We hit it side by side, hands grasping the ledge; the concrete is rough, painfully so, under my hands. Scrapped elbows provide the necessary leverage.

  A hand grabs at my left ankle as I lean over the top. That earns my pursuer a sharp kick with the heel of my boot before I roll rather ungracefully over the top. Really need to stop with these close calls.

  We land together into a narrow alley. The drop on the other side is further than implied by the climb and I land awkwardly, pain shooting up through my left knee. Cara takes my arm and steadies me as I stumble away from the wall. A quick look behind as we reach the end of the alley shows that we haven’t seemed to be followed over the wall. Not willing to wait around to find out.

  “It’s not far from here,” Cara says as we take off again.

  We take another few turns before Cara directs me down a narrow side alley. On the other side it opens out into a dark street, itself not much wider than the alley. The sun hasn’t visited this street for a long while, the air icy cold. The street itself is lined with rubbish skips and heavy security doors. No wall remains untouched by graffiti.

  Past two buildings, Cara leads the way down into an underground car park. Strip lighting offer little illumination. Everything is a monotone grey turned ever-so green, walls free of the graffiti that decorates the street above. The area is larger than expected with at least twenty available car parks. Towards the rear is a thick steel door next to which three dark navy delivery vans are parked in parallel. Each is unmarked. Each tinted beyond visibility. I’m less than convinced that this place is as safe as the term safe-house presumably is meant to imply. The rest of the car park is empty; with nothing to absorb the sound our footsteps echo loudly.

  “I should warn you,” Cara says, “we might not be entirely welcome here.”

  Because that’s really what I wanted to hear.

  “This is a kine safe-house. They’ll give us sanctuary, no issue. At least, long enough to let the heat die down a little,” She continues, “but, kines tend to k
eep to their own kind, they’re distrustful of others. They tend to be, aggressive. A little too pushy, hot-headed. The shoot first, ask questions later types, you know?” Cara looks at me to see if I’m following.

  “At least we keep out of other people’s business.” The short and sharp inflection comes from a man waiting in the doorway.

  He is dressed with military simplicity. A plain tight fitting shirt, navy blue, covers a muscular frame, with matching cargo pants and black military boots completing the picture. If it wasn’t for the fact his blonde hair is too long, he would fit in well with any of the other soldiers already met.

  “Erik.” Cara’s tone reflects both recognition and contempt.

  “Cara.” Erik succeeds in outdoing her contempt.

  It would appear that these two are thrilled to see each other.

  “Word of what happened at the bar is spreading quickly. Still, of all the places you could take her, you brought her here?” he says shaking his head.

  He looks towards me. He doesn’t look impressed.

  “You’d both better come in,” he says. To Cara he whispers rather unsubtly, “You shouldn’t have brought her here.”

  We’re lead up a flight of stairs. The building inside is modern hotelesque; clean white walls and cheap forgettable paintings. Down a twisting hallway we come to a man doing his best impression of a statue, standing in front of an otherwise random door.

  We step into a war room. Around the room are more people with clothes matching Erik’s; a mixture of men and women, twelve in total. Each of them shares his stoic expression. Each occupies a position around a long boardroom table. Three large black sports bags sit on the table in front of them, spilling out a large number of automatic weapons.

  “What’s going on?” Cara asks with a worried look on her face.

  “As far as we know, there are still government soldiers at the Resistance bar. We also believe they’re still holding everyone there, presumably while they work out what to do with them. We intend to hit back quickly. Clean up the mess you’ve left as best we can,” Erik says.

  As if to re-enforce just how they intend to do that, he takes a submachine gun from a bag and loudly works the cocking handle. The motion is less than subtle.

  He continues, “Stay out of our way while we prepare. In the next room are some others who made it out, along with some food and drink if you want it.”

  His attention turns back to his preparation.

  Cara and I follow the hall way along to the next room. The door opens smaller studio; bed, kitchen & living room cramped into one room. A woman sits on the bed reading a paperback. On a tiny small couch a young man is reading a small novel. Neither is older than 25. Both look up from their books and watch us as we come through the door.

  “Two… Only two people made it out?” Cara says devastated.

  The woman’s face reflects Cara’s despair.

  “There may have been more. We’re the only ones that came here. Perhaps others went elsewhere. I’m not sure,” the woman says.

  “But this is the closest safe-house to the bar. Only two people…” she says lowering herself to the edge of the bed in shock.

  I sit down beside her on the bed and wrap an arm around here, pulling her close.

  “You’re not responsible for what happened,” I try to reassure her. It doesn’t seem to help much.

  “Hey, at least you got out,” the man says.

  On the bed, the woman’s eyes light up in panic. She shakes her head, to say that that was the wrong thing to say.

  I take hold of Cara’s wrist and lift her chin up softly with the back of my hand so that I can look her in the eyes. “There’s nothing more you could have done. We don’t have long before we have to leave again and I still have lots of questions. I still have no idea how I even work. Hell, I such a bare idea of what the veil really is I just don’t understand how it could be so important to what I am.”

  She nods slowly, composing herself somewhat.

  The man gets up from the couch, leaving the book open. “We can probably help with that a little more than she will be able to. Cara’s talent is just a little too innate for her to be able to teach properly,” he says. “It happens or it doesn’t, as she is unfortunately aware. We’re a little different.”

  He grabs a pair of soft drink cans from a small bar bridge. He gives me one and tries to offer Cara another. When she doesn’t respond, he just shrugs and keeps it himself.

  “Theo.” He holds out his hand to shake.

  Reluctantly I return the greeting. As our hands touch I feel snakes of energy wrap themselves up my arm. I recoil in horror. He laughs at my reaction.

  “Behave yourself Theo. She’s clearly new to this,” the woman says.

  “Oh, don’t be so sour,” he counters.

  She just gives him a scolding look in return.

  “And my name is Melita, and it’s a pleasure to finally meet you,” she says with a smile.

  “You know who I am?”

  “When Uri came to the bar with the news that Sari and Michael’s daughter had been captured that day word spread pretty quickly,” she says. “If you couldn’t tell, Theo here manipulates energy and builds constructs. And is more than willing to remind you how rare his talent is. Though,” she looks at him and says, “I think she might have you beat. I, on other hand, am a telepath. Between us we should be able to fill in a few of those gaps in your understanding. Maybe, if what Uri said of you is true, we might even be able to teach you a few things. And, despite his other faults, when it comes to energy constructs, Theo is a very good teacher.”

  Theo drags a small arm chair in front of the end of the bed.

  “Cool, energy constructs 101, abridged edition,” he says with an unnatural exuberance.

  He holds out his hand to me, palm up with fingers spread as if he were holding a bowl up.

  “I want you to wave your hand over mine and tell me what you feel.”

  As my hand moves over his, the air starts to feel thicker, my skin tingles as if moving through cool fog.

  “You feel it?” he asks. “Your basic energy ball. You can’t see it, it has no mass of its own, but your body still reacts to it in the only way it knows how, tactility. That’s how your body will react and feedback a lot of the information it needs to when working with energy. Eventually it becomes like another limb with the same sensations you’d get from any other limb.”

  I nod. That’s exactly what the entity made me experience before.

  “Now, it’s all well and good to get basic feedback, of the sort, but to actually manipulate it with any level of complexity, it needs to be something a little more visual.”

  Melita interrupts, “Not everyone one is visual.”

  “True, but most people are. Let’s assume she is and go from there,” he says. “Now like I said, energy is invisible to the naked eye, but,” he leans over and taps me a little too hard on the side of my head, “our minds can compensate for that too. I hope you have a good imagination. The next bit draws a fine line between imagination and reality, so the better the imagination – the better people tend to be at this.”

  I assure him my imagination is just fine.

  “Ok, I want you to close your eyes but I want you to keep a visual of the room around you in your mind, as if your eyes where still open. As you turn your head around the picture in your mind should show you what you’d expect to see. Got it? It’s important that the visual is first person, yeah. Don’t go wandering off around the room. That’s another lesson.”

  I nod. “It’s dark but I think I have it pictured.”

  “Yeah, of course it’s dark. Your eyes are closed silly. Now, look down to where my hand is.”

  Strange, despite the fact that his hand has moved, I can see an outline of it easily in my head.

  “Good, now watch.”

  It’s faint, difficult to see at first in the darkness of my mind, but in his hand an orb appears. It starts first as tendrils of fluor
escent light of indescribable colour that slowly spin out of his palm, forming a small bowl shape before growing upwards until they complete the sphere. It’s difficult to describe what it looks like. There simply aren’t sufficient words. I open my eyes in amazement.

  “I take it from your reaction that you can see what I’m talking about. Good. You’ve experienced something that only other energy manipulators get to, something Melita and Cara here can’t.” He seems to be smiling at me in genuine pleasure.

  “The easiest way I’ve found to manipulate energy is to picture the world around you in your head, overlay what you want to happen in that picture and with a little extra push your mind fills in the rest.

  “Now it’s your turn. Before we start, one thing that is important to be aware of. When you ‘look’ at somebody like you are doing with me at the moment, when you connect with another person, called scanning, it’s considered quite invasive. While a light touch is often used as a greeting, anything more than that is kind of like having somebody watch you in the shower, except for the fact that it’s quite obvious.”

  A sentence forms in my head. A voice, Melita’s, reads them out, “Of course, that doesn’t stop them.”

  “I saw that. Ironically, a telepath transmitting directly to a person without permission is considered much worse,” Theo bites back.

  “Bah, we’re teaching here,” Melita says.

  “Hmm, speaking of scanning, perhaps we should have done it sooner. Did you know that there’s somebody else is connected to you? We all tend to have faint but constant bonds to the people most important to us. It’s an empathic link. For instance, you have the beginnings of a bond forming between you and Cara. This, however, is a much more solid. But I thought though that your parents were, ah, dead,” he says awkwardly. “Do you have any other family or a love interest perhaps?”