Tormented

by Robert J. Crane

  “Sa—” Augustus began.

  “—me one you’ve always had, yes,” Zollers finished for him, “you’re very amusing.”

  “The hell?” Augustus asked.

  “It’s Dr. Zollers,” I said, “the telepath I told you about, remember?”

  “You didn’t tell me he was a brother,” Augustus said.

  “Is that … was that something I should have mentioned?” I asked. “Because I’m not really sure how to work that into casual conversation without making it seem awkward and forced. ‘Oh, yeah, Zollers and I were good friends, and he’s an African-American dude, like you!’ Like I’m fishing for street cred cookies, y’know?”

  Augustus looked unamused. “Yeah, you probably shouldn’t say it like that.”

  “Her mind is whirling,” Zollers said, speaking as he worked to clean her up. “It’s bad.”

  “How’d you know to come here?” I asked.

  “I sensed trouble,” Zollers said, looking up for a moment to make eye contact with me. He had the warmest eyes I’ve ever seen, still, even now, looking tired.

  “Can you do that?” Ariadne asked. “I mean … from where you were?”

  “Where he was?” Scott asked, looking perplexed. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “It means Ariadne’s been keeping tabs on me,” Zollers said with mild amusement. Ariadne flushed scarlet, roughly the same shade as her hair. “It’s all right, I don’t mind. I was spending some time in India when I sensed Sienna was in mental distress.”

  “You picked her up from across the world?” I asked in sheer disbelief. “How? Aren’t telepaths limited in their range?”

  “When you’ve spent as much time in someone’s head as I’ve spent in your sister’s,” Zollers said, “it attunes you to that particular mind, like wearing a path in rough and brambly woods. So yes, I could sense her mind at certain times of great distress from all the way across the world. Most of the time I’d sense physical danger, alertness, basically that was … Sienna being Sienna, getting in trouble. Things would return to calm, her sense of heightened agitation would fade back to the normal levels of angst.”

  “I like how you call it ‘angst’ even though she’s a grown-ass woman,” Augustus said.

  “It’s an apt word,” Zollers said with a shrug. “Emotional distress would also fit. She’s been in a state of that on and off for the last few months, but it wasn’t urgent, at least not until a few days ago.”

  “So, you detected it when she first got sent into these nightmares?” I asked.

  “Actually, no,” he said, shaking his head, “they didn’t start out as nightmares. It started out as her on a peaceful island—and that’s how I knew something was wrong.”

  “Beg pardon?” Scott asked.

  “Her normal levels of distress faded,” Zollers said, “they were muted, like she was unconscious, but for far too long. So I walked down my path into her mind, and found her … ‘asleep,’ as it were. Trapped in her mind, unable to wake. So I tried to ‘shake’ her awake. Push into her dream, stun her mind into realizing where she was so that she would snap out of it. When it failed, repeatedly, I knew there was something deeply wrong. So I hopped a plane, in hopes that getting closer would allow me to reach into her mind and jolt her out.” He shook his head. “But I can’t slip into her dream, even this close. She’s so ensconced in the delusion her mind is creating around her that she’s losing connection with the real world.”

  “How did this happen?” Isabella asked, a needle in her hand, a droplet of clear liquid catching the light at the tip.

  “I don’t know,” Zollers said, “but she’s stuck in her own head as surely as you or I could get locked in a room. Or a—”

  “Metal box?” I offered helpfully. And sarcastically. “How do we get her out?”

  “When she reached out for you,” he said, pausing in his work, “it was a good sign. A sign that she was cogent enough to recognize the nightmares for what they are to some extent. But since then, there’s been a significant degradation of her thought patterns. She’s no longer coherent. This little delusion of hers started out as a cleverly constructed fantasy that her mind put on, a continuation of her real life as she embarked on this vacation she had planned. But it’s jumped the track; she’s shifting back and forth between various scenarios at a rapid pace, all of them centering on unresolved conflicts and emotions—”

  “So she’s dealing with her guilt?” Augustus asked, sending me a pointed, sideways look.

  “Yes, guilt is the prevailing emotion in this case,” Zollers said. “Guilt, regret, fear. They’re all there, the negative emotional spectrum is lit up in her head right now like the Empire State Building at night.”

  “What does that mean, long term?” I asked.

  “Negative emotions are necessary for life,” Zollers said. “Sadness, guilt, fear, they protect us and allow us to process life experiences and put them in emotional context. But the chemistry of the brain is not suited to handle intense bombardment for extended periods of time.”

  “Is she going to burn out?” I asked.

  “I wouldn’t worry about that.” Zollers shook his head. “What I’d worry about, as her nightmares become more intense and hostile—”

  Sienna jerked in her sleep, and a thin lash of fire flew out of her hand, ascending to the ceiling, where it lit a burn mark in the white tile and then vanished in a puff of smoke.

  “Is that,” Zollers finished.

  “What the hell, Gavrikov?” I asked, stalking up to the invisible line that Isabella had drawn when she’d told us to back off.

  “This is the bad news,” Zollers said. “The souls she’s captured are screaming inside her.” His eyes were bright, attentive, and worried, hidden behind the wrinkles and bags made worse by his lack of recent sleep, I guessed. “They are unable to reach her or hear anything going on out in the real world because she’s not getting much of anything from the real world. She’s locked in, and they’re cut off without her. But,” he said, voice grave, “they’re still taking commands, and their panic is growing wilder and wilder as time rolls on. My guess is that it’s only a matter of time before one—or more of them—does something a hell of a lot more dangerous than setting the ceiling on fire.”

  57.

  Sienna

  “Sienna, how does it feel to be hated by everyone?” The voice was sharp and clear, ringing out on a late summer’s day as I stepped out of the door of an eatery in South Minneapolis, a few blocks from my house. I glanced over my shoulder to see a man coming down the sidewalk at an eager jog, cell phone extended in front of him with the camera lens catching the glint of the sun.

  I ignored him and turned away, even though my car was in the direction he was coming from. I could circle the block, get to my car, and be gone before he could catch me at that slow-ass jog. The sun’s rays shone down on me, warming my skin.

  “Sienna, what does it feel like?” he asked again, like I hadn’t heard and ignored him the first time. His voice bubbled with excitement, the thrill of the hunter boxing in his prey, I suppose. “A Pew research poll puts your job disapproval rating at 65%. Why hasn’t President Harmon fired you yet?”

  “I didn’t know they polled on my job performance,” I said, blinking in surprise and speaking out of turn.

  “Sienna, you’re supposed to appear before a congressional hearing on metahumans next month,” he said, sensing weakness now that he’d gotten me to at least mutter a response. I increased my pace, leaving him behind. “What do you think they’re going to say about the escape incident? The Atlanta catastrophe? Any comment?”

  “No comment,” I said, leaving him in the dust as I made for the corner of the brick building. I was still walking, determined not to let this guy think he was making me flee. I’d fought some of the toughest people on the planet; running from some amateur journo-douche with a cell phone wasn’t gonna be a thing that happened.

  The second guy sprang out from his ambush jus
t as I was about to turn the corner. I would have reacted perhaps less violently, but I had my head turned to look back at the guy I was trying to leave in the dust, and when I turned back, there he was: another dick with a camera. “Sienna, what do you think your mother and father would say if they could see how hated you are now?”

  I don’t know whether my response was prompted by my surprise at turning around and seeing another cell phone in my face, or if it was the tenor of the question that provoked me, but I slugged that guy right in the face and he hit the ground, nose already streaming blood. As his cell phone came clattering down behind him, I stomped it as I broke into a sprint around the corner, leaving the other paparazzo in the dust. He didn’t even stop to tend to his compatriot, just stood there filming me until I turned the corner out of sight.

  Fortunately, I didn’t break into sobs until I was safely in my car, driving away.

  “This is pathetic,” my mother said from the seat beside me as the world darkened around me. “That’s what I would say about where you’ve taken your life.”

  I just kept sobbing, curling up as the car drove on toward an even darker future than I had ever imagined. It wasn’t as though things had any hope of getting better, after all. For as long as I could remember, they only ever did the same thing: got worse and worse.

  “All this has happened because you’re fighting against the truth that you are death,” my mother said. “And the sooner you accept that and get on with the business of embracing your end, the sooner you’ll find … peace.”

  I lay my head down, and once again the thought of that—peace—made its way in, and I felt just a moment of bliss in an ocean of sadness. Then I let the grief and pain carry me away, and my body bucked as I cried uncontrollably.

  58.

  Reed

  “Hell, she’s flaring,” Scott shouted, and she damned sure did. A six-foot gout of flame shot out of my sister’s hand and streaked into the empty space occupied only a second earlier by Dr. Zollers. Scott clamped a hand down on hers and steam hissed as he shot water, dousing her fire.

  “Gavrikov and the others are panicking,” Zollers said from his new position at the foot of the bed. “They’re shouting as loud as they can at her, but they’re as confused as she is. They think she’s in genuine danger, that all these things are truly happening and that she’s unable to contact them for help. They’re being almost as emotionally battered watching her as she is in the thick of it.”

  “So they don’t see the truth any more than she does,” Scott said. “Everybody in her head is flying blind.”

  “Just like us out here,” I said.

  “She’s ramping up again,” Zollers said, squinting, “Gavrikov is reacting to something she’s seeing in her head, emotions are all over the place.”

  “Not good,” Scott said, and I watched his hands shimmer as he drew moisture out of the air. “Ariadne, can you turn on a sink for me? It’s easier if I don’t have to decrease the humidity of the room.”

  “I can help,” Augustus said from his place on the bed. “Add a little a dirt, do a mudpack, maybe if you want to work together.”

  “Keeps us from burning to death and gives her more youthful skin at the same time,” Scott said. “I like it. There’s something for everybody.”

  “Uh oh,” Zollers said, frozen in place. “This next one … it’s going to be bad.”

  “Augustus—” I said, interrupted by the wave of fire that crawled over Sienna’s skin, replacing it with flames as she crackled to life, burning—

  The hiss of steam was loud, like a speaker crackling in my ear when Scott unleashed his power. Over my shoulder I heard the door to the medical unit whoosh open, the smell of fresh dirt filling the air as clods of black earth flew over my head, not so much as dusting me as they went past. They disappeared into the cloud of steam as I held my hands up in front of my face. The air was hot and steamy, like I’d walked into a sauna, and it was baking my palms and forearms.

  The heat radiated out, and Zollers stumbled out of the steam wash, the hiss still filling the air as he caught hold of a nearby hospital bed and steadied himself. “Isabella!” I called, and she came out of the steam wash a moment later with her face red, mildly burnt from the release of heat in the water vapor. She held a hand to her cheek and her eyes were tightly shut. I grabbed hold of her and drew her over to me, pulling her from the densest concentration of steam.

  “Okay, got it!” Scott shouted, and the air finally started to clear. I saw him, redder than usual, at the center of it all as the air circulation in the medical unit started to clear the atmosphere. I gave it a helping hand, stirring the air currents toward the vents. Scott’s curly hair was surprisingly limp with dampness, and he wore a grimace of pain coupled with exhaustion. He was leaning against the wall, head back. “That … was not good.”

  “It’ll get worse,” Zollers warned, still leaning against the bed to my right.

  “But of course,” Ariadne said from far behind me, near the door. “We couldn’t have a chance of it getting better, would we?”

  “Perhaps there is a solution,” Isabella said, pulling her hand free of me. Her cheek was already starting to blister. “If she is deep in sleep, perhaps I can wake her up with a shot of adrenaline.”

  “You should stab it right into her heart,” Augustus said dryly, “like they do in the movies.”

  “I will have to,” Isabella agreed, moving to the drug cabinet next to her office. “Exactly like that.”

  “Well, damn,” Augustus said, the wind right out of his sails. “I was just joking. You know, trying to lighten the mood.”

  “We’re standing next to a human nuclear bomb that’s on runaway reaction,” Scott said, “if this mood gets any lighter, we may all float away as individual atoms.”

  “What if it just makes her condition worse?” Zollers asked. “What if it just causes her mind to race even faster, panic even harder?”

  “Kaboom,” Scott said. “Anyone remember Glencoe? Fair thee well, see you people in the upper atmo as our component parts.”

  “You’re awfully calm about that,” Augustus said, eyebrow cocked.

  “Isn’t death part of your job?” Scott asked.

  “Uh, living is part of my job, too,” Augustus said. “Kinda hard to do it if I’m dead.”

  “This is bad,” Ariadne said. “Maybe we should push the panic button.”

  “Hey, I’m way ahead of you on that,” Augustus said. “So glad the doctor hooked me up to a painkiller drip now. I think I pressed it like twelve times.”

  “It’s a wonder you’re still conscious,” Isabella said, working her way back to Sienna’s bedside. The rails were melted, the sheets scorched where they weren’t damp with water. “How is she?”

  “She’s in a trough,” Zollers said. “Gavrikov and the others are becalmed, but these delusions of hers are getting progressively worse.” He frowned. “It’s taking all my concentration just to keep track of what’s going on, and I’m not even getting the full picture, just the emotional view. It’s like watching a movie through a piece of paper.”

  “What do we do?” I asked, swiveling to look at Ariadne, the closest thing to an authority figure we had here.

  She looked stricken. “You’re more in charge of these kinds of things than I am.”

  I started to open my mouth, then realized I had no idea what to say. I was in charge? In charge of a rapidly spiraling disaster of doom in which my sister was descending into nightmares that might cause her to burn everyone around her to cinders?

  Oh, my.

  “You wanted to show everyone how different things would be when you were in charge,” Augustus said, picking that perfect moment to chip my self-confidence into the corner pocket. “Here’s your chance! Try not to get us killed.”

  “I think we should try the adrenaline,” I said, nodding at Isabella, who had the syringe in her hand, filled to the brimming. She nodded at me once and headed toward Sienna. “Ariadne, you should g
et out of here.”

  “I’m not leaving,” she said, setting her jaw. “She needs us all.”

  “Yeah, but she kinda needs water and mud and psychic intervention more than conversation, you know?” Augustus said. When every eye fell on him, he seemed to retreat a little. “I’m just putting it out there. Might be safer elsewhere is all.”

  “If it ends like Glencoe,” I said darkly, “there might not be anywhere close by that you could consider safe. In fact, you might just rate this as a catastrophe on the scale of—”

  Before I could finish the doors slid open and a voice that usually sounded oh-so-calm broke into a shout that was almost like thunder out of the heavens. “WHAT … THE … HELL … is going on in here?”

  “Director,” Ariadne said, all the blood drained from her face. She was almost as white as Sienna.

  Standing in the doorway, his face red for an entirely different reason, was Andrew Phillips.

  “Let me finish that for you, Reed,” Augustus said, “a catastrophe on the scale of … THIS. This right here. Because I think we can all agree that this shit just got sooooooo much worse.”

  59.

  Sienna

  “Maybe you don’t belong here.”

  Andrew Phillips's voice rang out over his office, over the view of the green and verdant campus, but it sounded like death to me, like fall leaves should have been fluttering out of the trees, like icy snows should have dumped from grey skies, like life should have paused, fled, and left me in a dark and empty place.

  “Excuse me?” As far as witty responses went, it wasn’t my best.

  “You hit a paparazz—” He paused, mid-turn. He’d been pacing in front of his window, gesticulating with his arms in a way that I hadn’t really seen him do before. Maybe he was worked up for once, but his voice remained cool. “Is it paparazzo or -i?”

  “What’s the difference?” I asked.

  “I honestly don’t know,” he said. “And it doesn’t matter. The point is, the news is everywhere. Another hit for us in the favorables. The pictures have been screen-grabbed and turned into memes—again.” He sighed and looked faintly disgusted. “Congrats on your internet superstardom. You’re heading toward more hits than Grumpy Cat.”