by Natalie Reid
Lifting his head, he stared at the mark as well. There was something about it. Though it didn’t look like much, the story that went behind that mark was something of a tale. He wondered if Ash somehow saw it just before he went.
* * *
December 22nd, 3033
Kenji looked out the kitchen window of the Ancient Ramen Restaurant. Government Task Force helicopters were circling around an apartment complex in the distance. His boss Ren had headed out in that direction several hours ago, yet to return. Kenji turned off the heat on the stove and went to the front room to keep an eye out for him.
Looking out the windows, he noticed a young girl standing outside. She was staring blankly up towards the circling helicopters in the distance. In the December cold, she looked to only be wearing a sweater. Kenji opened the front door and slowly walked out. The girl turned to face him at the noise of the squeaking door. She had brown hair, brilliant green eyes, and her hand was curled up to her neck. The tan lines on her skin where her Potentian Band used to be were easily visible.
“Hello,” he called out to her. “Aren’t you cold?”
The girl’s whole body seemed to be trembling out on the gray cement street. She nodded at him.
“Why don’t you come in?” he offered.
They both went inside, but upon reaching the warmth of the restaurant, the girl’s trembling did not subside.
“What’s your name?” he asked her, helping her to sit down in a chair.
“Jessie Fifty-Fifty,” she told him. She looked blankly around the shop, still keeping a trembling hand to her neck.
“Jessie Fifty-Fifty,” he repeated. “Now that’s a special name if ever there was one. Tell me. How long has it been since you evolved?”
“Eight hours,” she replied, looking down at the table. The hand that wasn’t on her neck came up to feel the smooth surface of the wood.
His eyes widened at her answer. “Where is your Protector then?”
She shut her eyes and shook her head.
“No wonder you’re trembling,” he said. “You should have never been left alone!” He got up and ran into the back room, coming out a second later with a jacket in his hands. Going over to her, he draped it around her shoulders.
“Jessie, can you tell me what happened to your mother? Where is she?”
She clutched the jacket tightly around her shoulders. “I’m going to find her!”
“What happened to her?” he pressed further.
She didn’t answer. She pulled the jacket further up around her shoulders. When she did so, something heavy fell out of one of the pockets. Jessie stopped trembling to stare down at it. It was a large, smooth pocket knife with strange writing on the wooden handle. Bending down, she picked it up.
“That’s my pocket knife,” Kenji explained. “I’ve had it ever since I was in the military.” Suddenly Jessie flipped out the blade. “Oh, wait a minute, there,” he exclaimed. “That’s dangerous.”
She ignored him and put the knife to the wood, muttering “Four, zero, one, two, nine, zero.” She began to carve the number four into the wood, but only managed to make one cross section when Kenji grabbed the knife from her.
“What do you think you’re doing?!” he exclaimed.
“Four, zero, one, two, nine, zero” she repeated again, tracing the numbers in the wood with her finger. “Seven, three, zero, one, three, eight.”
“You want to write it down?” he asked.
He ran to the front desk where there was a notepad and a pen. When he put it in front of her, she began frantically writing. Instead of just writing out numbers, she began drawing a diagram of squares and lines. The first square was labeled Door One. Next to it was a set of six numbers. Then a line connected it with Door Two, and so on, with a set of six numbers next to each door, numbering fifteen doors in all.
“What is that?” Kenji asked, leaning over the table to better see.
“Bank of Social Numbers,” she replied in a dazed voice, as if remembering took a lot out of her.
“What!” he said in a furious whisper. He quickly looked up from the notepad and over to the window. The helicopters were still circling over the apartment complex in the distance. “Why don’t we go back into the kitchen,” he said, standing up. “It’s warmer back there.”
Jessie scooped up the notebook in her hands and silently followed him. She watched without a sound as Kenji went to the blinds of the small kitchen window and pulled them down.
“You hungry?” he asked. Without waiting for an answer, he began to pour noodles into a pot of water and start up the fire. As he cooked the Ramen, he began talking. “My name’s Kenji, by the way. I’m the cook in this restaurant. Well, obviously you know that,” he said with a nervous chuckle. “I didn’t always used to be a cook, though. I used to be a pilot in the military.” He looked over his shoulder at Jessie and asked “You ever been up in the air?”
She shook her head.
“Let me tell you, there’s nothing else like it. Being up in the air is like… it’s like being a whole new creature. Humans, we don’t have wings. So being up in the air, up with the clouds, it’s like seeing something we weren’t supposed to; something beautiful.” He shook his head. “But listen to me, rambling on. I haven’t been in the air for over twenty years now.”
Kenji turned from the stove and offered her a bowl of steaming Ramen. Jessie stared at how the steam rose up and danced in Kenji’s face.
“It’s good. I promise,” he said, waving the bowl around.
She gingerly put the notepad on the floor by her feet and took the offered food. She slurped up the noodles without regard to manners, splashing the broth on her cheeks. As she was eating, Kenji eyed the notebook by her side.
“Here, we shouldn’t leave this on the floor,” he said. He took a careful step towards her and bent down to retrieve the book, moving slowly with each move to make sure she wasn’t frightened. Jessie was so engrossed in her noodles she didn’t notice what he was doing.
He stared at the numbers written on the page, and then back to the girl slurping up noodles. Going to the window, he stuck two fingers between the blinds so he could peek out. The helicopters were gone. He scanned the skies but he could not find them.
Suddenly the door to the restaurant opened up.
“Kenji?” a voice called out. He recognized it as his boss, Ren’s voice.
He let out a sigh of relief and turned around. There was a bowl of half-eaten Ramen noodles on the table, and the backdoor was open just a crack.
“Jessie?” he called out. He rushed over to the backdoor and opened it. “Jessie?” he shouted louder. There was no sign of her in the back alleyway. He turned away from the door and bent down to look under the table. She wasn’t there either. “Where did…?” he whispered out.
“Kenji, you back here?” Ren called out.
He quickly stood up just as his boss appeared in the kitchen doorway. “Were you yelling just now?” he asked.
Kenji looked around the kitchen one more time before answering, “Ah, no. No I wasn’t.”
Ren motioned to his employee’s hand, asking “Did we have a sale?”
Kenji looked down at his hand and realized that he still held the notebook. “No,” he said, quickly ripping off the page with Jessie’s writing and stuffing it in his pocket. “I just wanted to write a… a thought down.”
Ren nodded and folded his hands together in thought. “Come into the front room. There’s someone you need to see.”
Kenji nodded in respect and took off his apron. When he came into the front of the restaurant, he found a boy standing there. He had a scratch of blood on his cheek and his eyes looked close to tears. Kenji let out a silent sigh of relief, seeing that it was only a child he was meant to see and not the sergeant of a Task Force squad.
“This is Aaron Forty-nine-Eighty-seven,” Ren explained, coming to stand behind the boy. “He’ll be living upstairs in the restaurant with us now.”
Ke
nji’s eyes flew up to his boss’s. He was about to open his mouth, when he stopped himself. Instead, he walked over to the boy and extended his hand. The boy named Aaron had light blonde hair that fell into his wide brown eyes. The red mark on his face stood out against the pale of his skin.
“It’s nice to meet you Aaron,” he said. “My name’s Kenji.”
Aaron took his hand and held it firmly. “I promise not to make trouble,” he said.
Kenji smiled at him and patted his hand. “Good man.” Then, standing up, he turned to Ren, asking, “Can I speak with you upstairs for a moment?”
Ren looked to Aaron who promptly took a seat at a nearby table. It had been the same seat that was occupied a few minutes ago by a frightened, young girl.
The two men ascended the stairs up to their living quarters on the second floor. Once Kenji was sure that Aaron would no longer be able to hear them, he turned to Ren and asked, “Does this have something to do with those Task Force helicopters that were circling the skies earlier?”
Ren nodded slowly, taking his time to answer. “Yes. They were there for the boy’s mother. Or rather, what was left of her.”
Kenji stared at his boss in shock. “You mean…she had given into the Bandit?”
“Yes. The poor child had to fend off his own mother from killing him. Luckily one of his neighbors called it in and a unit arrived before much damage could be done.”
“Before damage could be done?!” he asked incredulously. “That boy just witnessed something no grown man should ever have to!”
“Keep your voice down,” Ren warned, as calm as ever. “I’m well aware of the trauma he will face. That is why I offered to take care of him. He will need a peaceful and safe environment in which to recover. We can offer him that here.”
Kenji ran a hand through his hair, trying to come to terms with this knowledge. “Wow, you just, you just made a life-changing decision in the course of, what, a few minutes?”
“If you want to send him away, you’re perfectly free to go down there and tell him yourself.”
Kenji sighed and let his head hang limp. “Why do you always have to be so right?” Then he started down the hallway, saying “I’ll go welcome him in then.”
He walked slowly down the stairs and stopped. There was the boy, someone he hadn’t known for more than a minute, yet was probably going to know for the rest of his life.
“Aaron?” he called out softly.
The poor boy did not hear him. His head was downcast and he was staring at his fingers on the wood of the table.
“I know this will be hard,” he started. “But in time, you will feel happiness again.”
“She was already starting to lose it,” Aaron sniffed out. His arm came up and roughly wiped his nose. “She couldn’t afford me. She told me. When I was a Potentian, she said I made her weaker. Then I evolved, but she was still…” The boy stopped to scowl at the table. “It’s because of me that she gave in.”
“Now Aaron,” Kenji scolded. “I will let you live in my house on the condition that you do not tell lies. And what you just said, dear boy, is the biggest lie of them all.”
Kenji moved closer to put a comforting hand on his shoulder. The fabric of Aaron’s jacket looked worn thin in places and not much use for keeping out the cold. Under his hand, he could feel as Aaron moved his arm. His right hand slid to a mark on the table, and his finger absently traced the cut in the wood. Kenji narrowed his eyes on the newly created mark. It looked like an X, yet one line was longer than the other, like a small t. It appeared to have a calming effect on Aaron. He traced his finger down the long line, then across the short one. Down, across, down, across; over and over again until that was all that filled his mind.
Chapter 11
Porridge
Every morning was the same, hot cereal for breakfast. Sometimes Jessie called it oatmeal in her head, other times porridge. Anything to break out of the monotony. It wasn’t that there was anything wrong with their breakfast; she just felt that the repetition somehow locked her into a stagnant, never-ending cycle where nothing would ever change. And if breakfast never changed, if life at the military compound never changed, then how could she hope for things inside her mind to change? How could she hope to remember the codes to the Bank of Social Numbers, the one key standing in the way between her and her mother? She needed to be shaken up, challenged. Being with Tom was amazing and exciting, but if anything it put her off of her quest to remember the numbers even more. What she needed was a catalyst. And to not have the same glop for breakfast every morning!
As she ate her breakfast this morning, she could feel Carver’s gaze on her. She kept her head down and stared at her cereal, but she knew what he was doing. It was as if he was trying to see inside her head and divine what she could not, as if the numbers to the Bank were written on the strands of her hair.
Several chairs scraped across the floor as Griffin and Harper stood up from the table. Despite Nel’s half-finished bowl, she hurried after them, eager to go outside and play with some new hovering invention that Griffin had made for their plans. Jessie watched them leave, and then turned to Carver. She couldn’t take him staring, and wanted to get their minds on other things.
“I was thinking,” she started. “Would it be possible to sneak back into the house on Aileron? Maybe mom left something else in those books. Something that would explain the song.”
Carver turned his spoon over in his bowl. “It isn’t a good idea. Especially now.”
Jessie slumped back in her seat. Uncomfortable silence filled the table.
“Not too much longer I think,” Denneck spoke up, trying to sound cheerful. “Just a day’s more work on the ship. We can even stay down to finish it today.” He nodded and took a quick bite of food. “We’ll make it up there before the twenty-fifth.”
Jessie’s heart knotted, and she felt the weight of guilt on her shoulders. Everyone at the table knew what Denneck was leaving out. It wasn’t just a little more work on the ship that they needed. They were all waiting on her for the codes.
She looked down at her oatmeal, staring more determinedly than she had before.
“You think we’ll be ready in a few days?” Carver asked from the head of the table.
Denneck was about to respond, when Ritter broke in. “Just waiting on the kid-wonder over there to remember what she owes us.” Jessie did not look up, but she could hear his chair shift as he leaned across the table, saying, “Though, from the looks of it, she thinks the answer lies somewhere in that oatmeal of hers.”
It had only been two days since Ritter had saved her from the bear, but she felt like smacking him already.
“How ‘bout it Chance?” he taunted. “That lump look like an eight to you?” Jessie gritted her teeth as he knocked on the side of her head. “Whatever you’re doing in there, it isn’t working!”
Tom’s chair screeched as he rose to his feet. “Hey!”
“I’m just saying what you’re all thinking,” Ritter defended. He waved his hand around the table. “All this will be for nothing if she can’t remember.”
Feeling her emotions rise, Jessie got to her feet and swiftly left the kitchen before she could do or say anything rash. It would have been easy to hit Ritter, to view him as the problem instead of her own inability to remember. Yet Ritter had only stated what she herself had been thinking. It was no cause for another fight.
Still, her temper was hot as she stormed into the back work room of the cabin. She kept a stack of bottled water in the corner and started in on several, trying to drown her sorrows much like a drunken man at Mercury’s. She could hardly believe she had been reduced to this state. Water and alcohol were not the same things, but the addiction they both created were hardly any different. She craved water like a drug and turned to it when she wanted to escape from the world.
After she emptied several bottles into her stomach, she cast one of them against the wall and sunk down to the floor. She rested her back against
the wall and pressed her palms to her forehead, trying to squeeze the answers out of her head, but they still wouldn’t come.
Closing her eyes, she remembered back to the night in Bunker City, when Jack had found her in a similar state in the piano cave.
“Thirsty for what Jack?” she whispered to herself.
She didn’t know what she was thirsty for anymore. Water, a series of numbers, a missing piece to the puzzle. Something was missing, her mind kept nagging and nagging, but no one would tell her what it was.
A gentle knock sounded at the door, and Tom stuck his head in.
“You okay?”
She took her hands from her head and let her legs spread out on the floor. Across the room, a shadow slinked across the floor, leaving a strange web behind it.
“Are you seeing that?” Tom asked, adjusting the glasses on his eyes.
She glanced at the shadow again in disinterest. It didn’t scare her. She had too much on her mind to be scared.
“That spider-looking thing?” she clarified. “Yeah. I see it a lot.”
Tom carefully walked across the room, trying to stay far enough away from it. He took a seat next to her on the wall so that his arm was pressing against hers.
“Do you get used to it? Seeing them all the time?”
She shrugged. “I don’t see them all the time. I used to back at the rink, and when I first came here. But…” She pressed her palms together and put them between her knees. “If you want the truth, I don’t see them as much when I’m with you.”
“Really?”
She looked over and caught the smile on his face.
“That’s really interesting. I wonder if it has something to do with chemicals in the brain, maybe blocking their signal.”
She stifled a chuckle. “Nothing says romantic like ‘you stimulate my brain with signal blocking chemicals.’”
Tom looked down, a faint blush on his cheeks. “I sounded like Tag, didn’t I?” He took off his glasses and lightly placed them at his side. “Will you allow me to try something?” he asked, almost timidly.
