Ilyan

by Rebecca Ethington

  “I believe none of that.” The now identified commander interrupted with a snap as he turned back to the physician. “You are a traitor to your country…”

  “I am a hostage and the only competent physician in this facility…”

  “Your hospital, and the local police,” the commander continued with a nod to the two directors, who instantly stiffened, “the fact that they have been led into this guise only shows me further how inept you are to continue his case and his care...”

  At that, both detectives and doctor erupted into revolt. Their voices ran over each other, combining with the low rumble of the television until the room was full of sound, full of anger.

  The emotion pressed against me, heating and swirling until that same lightheadedness from before came over me, the edges of my vision pulling in and out of focus.

  With a low groan, my body collapsed weakly, the metal clasps on my restraints clicking gently at the removed tension.

  The anger in the room evaporated.

  “Nurse,” Sirko spoke over the still protesting detective, “I need you to dose him with cyclosporine. Make sure his blood levels are…”

  “Don’t dose him with anything,” The Commander snapped, rushing to my side and hovering over me. “I need to test his blood.”

  “You have enough,” Kaye’s mother finally spoke, her voice so kind that the snap she tried to place in it felt awkward. “If he doesn’t get this his body will reject his heart and he will slip back into a coma…”

  “The coma never occurred…” The sound of the cleaning crew in the hallway silenced at the sound of his roar.

  “Stubborn parasite,” my nurse grumbled, a painful prick in my arm preceding the cool flood of foreign medication.

  “The coma was a direct result of the heart transplant. His body is rejecting…”

  “Heart transplant?” I asked in confusion, the sound swallowed by the Commander’s hand slamming against the railing of my bed, the sound causing everyone to jump and cower back to the corners that they had been hiding in before.

  I watched them go, watched the white-knuckled grip of the militant man and listened to the echo of the impact, remembering my own fist slamming against a table in some other room.

  Against a map in some other time.

  The memory was no more than shadow overrun by the shout of the Commander’s tirade.

  “Stop this nonsense. They say you remember nothing. They say your heart is not yours. I do not believe them…”

  “My heart…?” I couldn’t stop the shock from bleeding out.

  As well as I had put a lock on everything, this burst out of me, followed by the same image that had haunted me since the moment they had brought me back from the dead.

  My blood, spreading over the stone. The pieces of my broken heart erupting from inside of me in an explosion that burst over rock.

  My jaw dropped, a single sound dripping from my tongue before I clamped the betrayer shut. The Commander’s smile spread wider, his knuckles growing whiter as he leaned over me, hovering like one of the Vilỳ’s.

  “Your heart what?” He hissed, the tone making it clear he thought he had discovered something great.

  “My heart is not mine?” It was more of a statement than a question.

  I made an attempt to clutch my chest and all of those scars that crisscrossed over me, knowing full well none of them was big enough for a heart transplant.

  The Commander smiled. The look only made the foreign object in my chest pump harder, my confusion growing with each throb.

  My anger was rising. I needed to know what they meant, I needed answers. Pushing aside the desire to command them, I looked from the Commander to the Doctor my eyes pleading for anything he could give me.

  “No,” Dr. Sirko said, the response was followed by manic chicken scratches at the foot of my bed, Detective Bondar and his partner coming back from the dead. “We noticed it after you had been unconscious for a few months. Your condition was worsening and we had to intubate you. But all of our tests began to return… abnormal.”

  “Sir, I command you to cease,” the militant man roared, another swath of his hair coming loose from its style.

  “You bare no sign of transplant, but the organ itself bears signs of having come from the woman…”

  “Doctor Sirko!” Another command was followed by the click of guns, no less than twenty instantly trained on the man in question.

  The snap of voices and guns sent poor Katenka into a tizzy as she began focusing on arranging her vials, putting as much space between her and the horrors of the room as she could.

  “I will not advise you again.” The Commander continued as he stepped toward the elderly physician, the man shaking as he attempted to hold his ground. “You do not share criminal information with wards of the Sovereign Sanctuary of the Ukraine.”

  Sovereign Sanctuary of the Ukraine.

  The SSU.

  Kaye had said the acronym once, but the fear and anger behind it had caused it to stick to my bones. Now I understood why.

  Now, I understood the fear.

  “He is my patient…”

  “He is our property!”

  The Commander roared louder as my magic jolted inside of me, the surge of power so strong that I jerked against it, restraints pulling as half the guns turned toward me.

  “Ugh,” the groan twisted into pain as the magic did, the serge of aggression shifting to a warmth that stretched to bones and joints as I began to relax.

  “I must see to my patient…” Dr. Sirko said, sliding from the chair as all of the guns trained on him, the few that had not loaded doing so with a faint click. “His heart… he needs attention.”

  “He needs nothing. You have been duped.”

  “I have not,” Sirko snapped, his frustrations finally breaking free in a roar that sent the older man shaking in place.

  “You will not undermine me!” The Commander roared in return, the room shaking as the eruption turned into a battering ram.

  Soldiers flooded into the room, their guns already drawn as they pointed between me, the doctor, and the poor nurse whose tray of blood went flying, a few of the vials shattering and splattering against the wall.

  Bright red streaks against the dark striped grey wallpaper.

  Blood against stone.

  Blood against….

  I jumped at the sound of the gun.

  I jumped at the scream.

  It was all I could do not to call out, not to let whatever magic was inside of me out and fight the soldiers.

  I wasn’t sure what good it would do even if I tried. I would be just like the doctor, blood pouring down my arms as I was dragged from the room.

  8

  “What about that one?”

  I felt her voice more than I heard it.

  It came in a soft whisper that tickled over my cheek, hot like the sun that was burning our skin, but cool like the breeze. As confusing as a woman should be.

  “I see a toad… or perhaps a prince.” She answered her own question in a whisper, the sound almost lost in the waves that were not far from us.

  The steady rhythm of the ocean was relaxing, almost as much as her fingers that trailed up my arm, the touch leaving a line of burning heat behind it.

  “How about a toad prince?” I said lazily, lost in the sensation of her touch.

  She giggled at that, the sound was the soft bell of chimes in my soul and I exhaled letting the calm joy she was infecting me with take hold.

  Finally, I opened my eyes to the blazing sun, the clouds that drifted over us looking like puffs of spun sugar moments before they melted.

  There was not a toad or a prince in sight.

  “It’s called The Frog Prince…” she couldn’t even correct me properly, she was laughing too hard.

  “Where you were raised perhaps, but I met the author.” Her giggles only increased at that, the sound off in my head as I tried to understand what was going on, and why I would lie about
such a thing.

  “He was a toad,” I continued, my heart swelling as I shifted my weight in the sand, turning toward her bright smile. “So, I can’t think of a more perfect way to describe him.”

  “Your life. It amazes me sometimes,” she whispered, the soft touch of her fingers coming to a halt.

  Yes. They were words I wanted to say, but they never came.

  I knew the story, the fairy tale. Although why I knew it, and why I would lie about meeting an author that lived hundreds of years before made no sense to me. The words had poured from me with such an assurity of honesty, however, that I could not question them further.

  Joclyn twisted in my arms as she giggled, shifting her weight until she hovered over me, the tips of her hair tickling my cheek.

  I loved the feeling of it, the feeling of her so close to me, pressing against me. I loved the touch of the hair that smelled so divine. But I loved her more.

  I loved her.

  I wasn’t sure if I controlled my hand as I reached to her, as I swept her hair back and ran my fingers down her jaw, over her neck, around the mark behind her ear. The wind blew cold, pulling at her hair and the tall green grass that we were nestled in.

  Neither of us noticed. She was too focused on my touch; I on the warmth of her skin.

  Her eyes were fire as she watched me, her lips pressing into a tight line at the sensations. I had seen her so often in my dreams, I had seen her in flashes, and watched moments of a past I wasn’t sure I would regain.

  But this felt so real.

  It was so different.

  The way she looked at me felt real, the heat from her skin felt real, the pressure of her body against mine felt real. It wasn’t a shadow of memory, it wasn’t a moment that jerked and jumped in my mind like a dream. It was clear and perfect, right down to the feeling of her thunderous pulse underneath my fingers.

  My body was heating on its own in a reaction that having her this close was doing to me.

  “Joclyn…” I breathed, still unsure if I was controlling this dream or if it was just another memory.

  She smiled at her name, her fingers lifting from the blanket to trail over my face, sending yet another wave of heated emotions through me.

  “Jan…” The word was breathy and familiar in all the wrong ways.

  Joclyn smiled from where she lay over me, her eyes closing as my fingers moved up her neck, combing through her flyaway lengths.

  “Jan…”

  The hiss came again, cutting through the serenity of my dream as everything began to freeze. Together we turned toward the sound, into the brush that lined the beach. Nothing was there.

  “Jan…” The whisper came again as everything began to grow dark, as everything began to grow cold. The mark behind her ear glinted at me as I looked back to her, her focus still on the brush, on something I couldn’t see.

  “You need to go,” Joclyn said, her voice calm against the hiss as it came again.

  “It’s not my name, Jos.” My tone was harsher than it had been before, the anger at being attached to that name bubbling up. “It’s not me.”

  “It is right now.” She turned toward me, her eyes sad as the clouds that had been so bright and fluffy before shifted to the dark grey that had smothered us.

  “They aren’t calling to me.”

  I wanted to snap at whoever was using that name and trying to pull me away from her.

  “They are today,” she sighed, her fingers soft as she ran them up my arm again. “And if you want to find me, you are going to need to listen to them.”

  “But you are dead…” The passion of the moment before had evaporated, leaving me with gooseflesh from the chilly air that drifted off the ocean.

  She smiled, the light touch of her fingers leaving as she replaced it with the wide heat of her palm. “You don’t know that for sure.”

  “Jan… wake up.”

  For the first time, I felt anger, true anger, bubble and rise up in me. It came so fast and so quick that I wasn’t sure why I wasn’t yelling. I wasn’t sure why I wanted to. The words were there, waiting...

  It is not my name. I am not leaving.

  “You have to,” Joclyn sighed, the response to my thoughts cementing the fact that it was a dream in my mind.

  Her fingers were hot as they moved over my skin, burning against the scars on my chest, her touch gentle as she traced them. Her breath was warm against my lips as she bent over to kiss me, but the pressure never came. It was only the sweet taste of her breath before it dissipated back into reality, leaving only cold air and painful restraints. The ever-present beeping of the machines I was once again connected to smacked against me just as hard as the hand across my cheek.

  “Jan,” the hiss followed the hit. “Wake up.”

  I groaned, opening my eyes to the low flicker of a television, the dim light only barely cutting through the dripping dark that drenched the room. The face that hovered over me was only partially illuminated by a soft light that should have been comforting, but the illusion was shattered by the look of fear that was penetrating her eyes.

  “You’re alive,” I gasped, trying to reach out to her. The only sound of welcome, however, was that of metal as I pulled against the restraints.

  She glanced at the door with the loud clang, her body tense and ready to run. To hide.

  I lay in the silence, nothing but the flash of the television and the ever-present pulse of my foreign heart. Even that familiar sound was becoming more haunting with each beep of the mysterious organ.

  The tension of the hospital room, of this reality, was unwanted after my dream. I wanted nothing more than to close my eyes and return to Joclyn, but this place, this horror, this was real. I couldn't escape it, even if I didn’t have padded straps holding me in place. It would follow me.

  “Yes, I’m alive,” she hissed to the door, waiting an extra minute before turning back to me. “Thanks to you. If they had found me, they would have killed me.”

  “Were you bit?” I asked, the fear that I had expected to feel over the possibility melting away into an exhilaration.

  I didn’t understand where that emotion was coming from. The memories I have of the Vilỳ are of fear, what I had seen on the news was of fear…everything but that tiny raised mark on Joclyn’s neck.

  “Not that I can see, but it would have happened either way. I’m not registered.”

  I gave her a look, one eyebrow arching high as she shifted her weight, leaning awkwardly against the railing.

  “You mentioned that before,” I asked, my voice soft as I tried to glean any information I could.

  From her or the television. “Does everyone need to be registered?”

  “Now they do.” She hissed, an obvious line of irritation coloring her voice. “And I’m not. My mom has hidden me here for years, and now I can’t escape. Now that Commander Domor is here everything is crawling with Cleaners. I don’t know what will happen if they find me.”

  “Is that the man who was in here before?”

  “Yes,” she cut me off, her eyes drifting to the door again as if speaking of him would call him to us. “I don’t have much time, my mother is making her rounds and told me you would be…”

  “Kaye!” I hissed, pulling her focus back to me, “That man…I need you to tell me what happened. I need to know what’s going on.”

  “I take it we are still in this together then?” she whispered, her eyes sparkling brightly as she leaned over me. “You trust me?”

  “You are perhaps the only one I can.” I shook my arms, sending the restrains rattling as I emphasized my point.

  “Why? Because I am the only one who hasn’t put you in handcuffs.” I could hear the tease in her voice and it rattled me, stomach twisting uncomfortably.

  She should not be allowed to speak to me so casually. The thought was firm and cemented, and yet, here I was handcuffed to a bed. Completely out of control.

  “Exactly why I need your help,” I whispered pushing my
pride aside. “I need to know what is going on. Now, who is that man?”

  She hesitated, taking a glance at the door before lowering herself to hover beside the bed. “Commander Domor is one of the Tykha Shistʹ, he was one of the six who overthrew the government three months ago.”

  “The Silent Six,” I repeated the phrase to myself in Czech, the words sounding ominous.

  I lay still, staring at the TV infused flicker of blue against the dark ceiling. “And ‘The Cleaners’?”

  “The loyal military of the Tykha Shist’. If you see the treacherous star, that sunburst looking thing they all wear, run the other way.”

  Kaye tapped above her shoulder to emphasize her point, but I only gave her a look, letting my restraints rattle again as I glowered at her.

  “Forgetting something?”

  “Well, maybe you just shouldn’t tell them anything.” She sighed, “The Cleaner, the military, they wear a yellow sunburst. There are orange for spies, grey for local officials, you get the idea.”

  “So, Commander Domor’s red star..?” I asked, the question causing her to shift awkwardly as she again looked toward the door.

  “He is one of the original six. There are five others. After that, only purple is higher. And there is only one of them.”

  She shivered, looking from the TV to the door as she pressed her lips into a tight line. Her knuckles tightened around the metal railing of my bed, posture tensing as if she expected the man with the purple star to come charging in right then. The intensity of her stare, the fear that rippled off her dripped in the air and I turned against my restraints, the emotions fueling a familiar nightmare.

  The dark hair and green eyes of the man in my dream teased my thoughts, the memory blinking at me from the dark as he did. The single memory sent my heart rate monitor into a haunted dance, the shadows that moved behind the hastily repaired glass only fueling the delusion.

  Kaye ducked below the bed, the top of her head peering through the rails as she watched the door. The sound of her knife grinding against a sheath sent gooseflesh over my arms and I tensed, glad when both heart rate and shadow faded away.

  “So it was a coup?” I asked in a hushed whisper as she stood, slipping her knife back into the pouch at her waist.