Ilyan

by Rebecca Ethington

  “Worse. It was an execution,” She nodded, the anxiety rising as she turned back to me. “It was aired live over the television network. Domor was the one who beheaded the prime minister. They showed it all. You don’t question them. You don’t disobey.”

  “So, Doctor Sirko..?”

  “Is lucky to be alive.” She interrupted with a determined nod, her jaw tight “I saw them take him to the east wing, I don’t know anything beyond that. He is the only surgeon in Kiev, though. They can’t afford to lose him. Most of the other doctors escaped years ago before the SSU closed the borders. Now no one escapes alive, and no one enters unless they are certified pure.”

  “Pure?” I asked, that same familiarity making my stomach twist.

  “Unbitten. Unscathed. No one has made it through yet. If you are involved with or near a Chrlič attack at any point, you don’t pass.” She hesitated, before sitting down in one of the ugly chairs beside my bed, the tiniest scrape echoing as she collapsed.

  “Sounds like all the other wars this planet has raged. Purification in the name of protection.”

  “And just as dangerous.” She paused and I tensed, my physical restriction becoming nearly unbearable. “They don’t take chances. Even a scratch from one of the Chrlič will end with a shot to the head. Everyone who was in the hospital yesterday is either dead or under surveillance.”

  “And me?” I said, letting the bands rattle.

  “Well, you aren’t like everyone else, are you?” she asked, the taunt she attempted to put in her voice seeming harsh. “Domor wants you. Or rather he wants the info you have. And now that you are awake…” She trailed off, glancing back at the door again. “He has been waiting for years to find out what you really are.”

  “I take it waking up when I did may not have been in my best interest,” I sighed, my hand shifting as it attempted to drag its way over my head. I didn’t even move an inch. Not that it mattered, I didn’t have any hair to run my fingers through anyway.

  “It wouldn’t have mattered.” Kaye swallowed, glancing toward the door before she leaned closer “He has the pictures, he knows enough.”

  “What do they know?” I sighed, the memory of seeing the fuzzy image of Joclyn feeling like yesterday to me.

  “They have more, now,” Kaye said, shifting her weight as she leaned closer to the bed. She peered at me through the bars of the bed, shadows distorting her face. “The Czech government released more images from that tent village in the Svarov ruins a few months after you slipped away. The images were on the news for one day before the SSU took control of the media. The former government fell three days later.”

  The timeline twisted in my stomach, having everything laid out so simply

  “So they are gone?” My disappointment was clear. “Do you remember anything about them.”

  Kaye bit her lower lip, hiding a smile as she looked at the door again before pulling out her phone, the bright light reflecting over her face and revealing the deep lines of change I missed before.

  Hours before I had seen the woman she had become, but as she stood over me now I saw what I had missed in the panic of battle.

  It wasn’t just that I had been away for more than two years. It was that the world had changed and she had to change to match.

  Her muddy eyes held a hard determination that was borne more from desperation than from courage. The loss of weight stemming from lack of food rather than age.

  I could tell she was brave, I could tell she was powerful, but it was for survival rather than by choice.

  “Two years” I sighed, the time still feeling like a painful impossibility.

  She froze, finger hovering above the phone as her focus flitted back to me with a piercing stare. She hesitated, phone dropping to her side, and it was only then that my resolve began to succumb to the pity she was throwing my way.

  “Two years and four months,” she clarified.

  Her voice had taken a very quiet tone as if she was attempting to lessen the blow. I don’t think anything could have made it less of a sting.

  “Even my mother didn’t think you would make it.” Kaye continued with a whisper, the confusing realization vanishing to smoke. “I’m not sure how you did. Or how you woke up when you did.”

  “I heard you yelling at me in my dreams. Just like now.”

  “Nice, Jan.” She said with a quiet laugh, the sound as unwanted as the name she had used. “You dreaming about me, then?”

  “That’s not my name,” I growled just as I had before, the memory of the dream was a distant reality after everything I had just learned. “And you don’t belong in my dreams.”

  She glowered at me, as if she saw the same anger in me, before she laughed, the sound lifeless and angry.

  “What is your name, then?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Hmph,” she turned away, folding her arms over her chest as her focus returned back to her phone, the tapping of fingers against glass perfectly matching the gunfire on the television. “Figures. I spend months looking for your Joclyn and you wake up with no new information…”

  “I don’t believe I said I didn’t have any new information.” I cut her off, letting a smile play around the corner of my mouth, the same commanding tone taking control.

  I moved to sit, forgetting that I didn’t have the ability and sent the restraints into another orchestra of metal that sent Kaye on the ready, her eyes shifting to the door as she prepared to run.

  “Good.” She said, eyes sparkling. “Because I wasn’t idle.”

  She flipped her phone around to face me, the screen bright as it displayed an image of what was clearly me, a line of yellow light streaming from my hand, just like it had in this room. It was an image similar to what I had seen before, except that instead of the grainy pixelated imagery, this one was clean, pristine, and obviously me, right down to the massive scar on the palm of my hand.

  I stood among the tattered tents in Svarov, Joclyn behind me, fighting in the same way. The yellow string I had seen before was now clearly a golden ribbon, the ends of the strand tied into both of our hair, connecting us as they tangled around each other.

  Seeing her there, seeing the ribbon, sent my heart into a heavy bass of emotion, my stomach twisting in a powerful need. I tried to reach for the phone, desperate to see her better, to hold this tangible proof of her existence in my hand, but I was only met with pressure and an immovable force.

  “Joclyn.” I gasped, my fingers aching with the need to grab the phone.

  “Typical,” Kaye sighed, sweeping the phone away from me and beginning to tap the screen again. “I show you an image that proves you’re an alien, and all you see is her.”

  “I’m not an alien,” I growled, although I was fully aware I had no proof of it. “It’s magic.”

  I cringed at my own words, somehow saying it aloud while strapped to a hospital bed made it seem ridiculous.

  “That’s what you said after you killed all the Chrlič. Alien or not… you did something last night.”

  “It was magic,” I said again, focusing on the warmth that always was present now. But instead of it rising to my fingers in a spark, it settled deeper. There was nothing but warmth.

  As powerful as I was, as powerful as I felt at times, I still could not control it. Without control, I was nothing more than a prisoner.

  “I’m actually starting to believe you.” She said, looking at the phone with a subtle awe before turning it back towards me, the shot zoomed in on the woman I had dreamed of for years.

  On Joclyn, and her determination. Her power.

  My heart felt like it was going to beat out of my chest, luckily the beeping of the machine I was connected to didn’t agree, the beep stayed steady.

  “The entire world wants these two because they can kill the Chrlič. And thanks to these pictures, and whatever stunt you pulled last night…Commander Domor wants you. He wants whatever this is.”

  “What is he going to do? Cut it o
ut of me?”

  I asked the question rhetorically, putting the threat into the air with as much disdain as I could muster. Instead of responding in agreement and moving on, however, Kaye wilted. Her eyes grew wide as she swallowed, a worry I hadn’t expected blasting through the dark flickers of the room.

  “Can you ‘cut it out’ of you?” she asked, her fingers brushing the air in quotation marks.

  “I don’t know, Kaye,” I said in confusion, trying to understand what she was saying as she absentmindedly ran her fingers over the metal cuff that tied me to the bed rail. “It’s magic, not an organ…”

  “Are you sure?” Was it hope or disappointment I was seeing? I wasn't sure. Her reaction flared deeply and I cringed, suddenly doubting the trust I had freely given her.

  “I’m not sure of anything,” I said, choosing my words carefully.

  The grinding scrape of metal against metal reminding me just how possible that was.

  “I doubt that will stop them.” She said sadly, the questions from before suddenly making sense. “It didn’t stop them before.”

  She looked at me with pity and heartbreak. The emotions hit heavy, settling in the pit of my stomach like a rock as I narrowed my eyes at her, trying to ignore the thunder in my heart.

  “What did they do to me while I was in a coma, Kaye?”

  The question obviously caught her off guard and she leaned back, clutching the still illuminated phone to her chest as though it was a lifeline. She pressed her lips into a hard line, a look that I had seen enough just in this conversation to know it did not preempt good news.

  “They know how fast you can heal, and they haven’t found any magic to cut out of you. Not that they have stopped looking…does that answer your question?”

  She spoke fast, stubborn, defiant. For the first time since I had awoken, I saw the teenager in her, but I barely registered it. I only heard the horrors that I had been subject to, heard what she had refused to tell me before.

  “I need to get out of here,” I said, pulling against my restraints, fully expecting them to crumble under the force of my strength.

  “So break your way out of here.” Kaye hissed as she put her hand around mine, stopping my battle with the restraints. “I saw you…”

  “I can’t control it that well.” I interrupted her with a snap. “It just kind of explodes.”

  Kaye flinched, an eagerness I had seen in her yesterday coloring her face, “Then explode your way out of here.”

  I cringed, she didn’t know how close to the truth that was.

  “It doesn’t work when I want it too,” I added quickly, the failure from before still stinging. “Last night…not now. And even then it can’t stop bullets.”

  “How do you know,” she countered, her defiance sounding like a playground taunt.

  “That’s just it,” I said patiently, desperate for her to understand. “I don’t. And it’s not worth the risk right now.”

  “It is to me,” she said, desperation bleeding through her as she grabbed my hand, her stubbornness turning into a plea. “You don’t know what they can do…”

  “And then what?” I pulled my hand away with a jerk, sending the restraints rattling as my magic bubbled, her unwanted proximity igniting it in one single spark. “From what you have said about the government even if I was to break us out, we are trapped here. We have nowhere to go. I am not even sure who I am.”

  The hopelessness that lined her face vanished so fast I would have thought she was slapped if it wasn’t for the eager smile that took its place.

  “You may not remember.” She whispered, tapping on her phone once before turning it back to me. “But I am pretty sure she does.”

  Her phone blazed with a black and white image from what looked like a news article, the headline a dark blank line amongst chicken scratches of text.

  “Mother dies in firefight, daughter wanted for questioning.”

  Inset into the article was a picture of a joyful woman hugging a young girl with tangles of dark hair that were practically covering her face. A hood of a sweater was pulled down low and if it wasn’t for the pale color of her eyes I would have never recognized her as the same powerful woman that was blasting her way through a dystopian wasteland.

  Once again, I tried to grab for the phone, the clanging of the restraints even louder in my desperation. Kaye jumped at the noise, looking toward the door as she stepped into the shadow of the tattered window hangings. My own breathing picked up at her action.

  “The German government has been rumored to have fallen this last week…” the sound of the television was twice as loud as we waited.

  The little light that filtered through the glass in the door dimmed in the shadow of one of the guards. My heart was a thunder, the ends of my nerves frayed as we waited; I looking at Kaye, her at the door.

  “It is the fifth government to fall under the influence of the Japanese republic…” The television buzzed, the dim light returning just as Kaye lifted her phone.

  “Angela Despain,” Kaye whispered from the dark, my eyes wide as her shadow curled over the faint glow of her phone, “A forty-three-year-old single mother was found dead in her west-side apartment last night after neighbors reported a domestic disturbance between her and her daughter, sixteen-year-old Joclyn Despain.”

  I jerked again, the motion an uncontrolled response to the name, to the story. It was familiar. I stared at her, desperate for her to continue. I needed to hear more, to know more. Like a loose thread on a sweater, I knew this was leading to something I had forgotten. Something I needed to remember.

  “The girl,” Kaye continued, each word closing in around me and making the bed feel like the prison it truly was, “who was described as a loner and a destructive influence by the mother's employer, Edmund LaRue, is wanted in connection with the murder. The girl may be injured, as signs of a fall and a large amount of blood was found in an alley.”

  An alley.

  The flicker of a broken street lamp, an old rusted dumpster overflowing with garbage. I could smell the sweet rancid scent, the aroma lingering with that of gunpowder and smoke. The scent was so strong I could smell it here, in this hospital room. It cut in my chest, the tension that came with the single image making the whole scene feel toxic.

  I didn't see much more than that, but somehow I knew. I knew it was where I found her, where I had saved her. A girl, dying behind a dumpster.

  I half expected to find her blood covering my arms and hands right then, the memory was that strong. But there were only monitoring wires, irritated skin, and the gentle electronic beep of my pulse reminding me that that alley was only a distant memory.

  “You found her,” I could barely get the words out with how my throat was constricted.

  “I found her.” She sighed, taking a tentative step forward. “She’s missing and hasn’t been seen since this article was posted almost four years ago. No one who is alive remembers her, and as far as I can tell no one else has made the connection. You can’t without a name, because this,” she flashed a close up of the image attached to the article, “looks nothing like the image of the magical badass you are obsessed with.”

  “She’s beautiful,” I whispered, unable to stop myself.

  “Obsessed is definitely the right word,” Kaye growled, her irritation unable to break through the wall of awe I was currently wrapped up in. “There is something else…”

  She was hesitant, cautious even. Like a child with a soap bubble the warm blanket of awe I was wrapped up in evaporated, leaving me on the cold hospital bed, an ice cold dread working it’s way up my spine.

  I tensed, desperate to release this energy in some other way than the explosion I could feel brewing.

  “That woman’s boss, Edmund LaRue... his mansion was damaged the night Joclyn disappeared. And then the whole thing exploded about a month later, on the night of his son’s graduation party.”

  “His son?”

  “Yeah, Ryland…” she tappe
d her phone, turning it towards me again. “He was in Prague too.”

  It was the same tents, the same scene of battle, but instead of Joclyn and I standing back to back as we massacred the Vilỳ’s, it was a single man, his blue eyes raging as he screamed in an agonizing anger. Bright red light poured from him, the line of color dripping as though it was made from blood. The color was shocking, but not as much as he was.

  The look on his face was pure pain, the skin crisscrossed with scars and fresh bleeding cuts. His hair dripped with sweat, lifeless curls hanging over his eyes and down his neck in wet tangles.

  “He looks deranged.” I didn’t know how else to put it, although the words sounded harsh for some reason.

  “And scarred. His face… it doesn’t look anything like the kid in the yearbook that I found. That guy…” she sighed, “there is a newscast that is closer, however.”

  She tapped her phone again, turning it toward me as a video began to play.

  “I know it has been inferred that I may have been involved in her disappearance.” The young man’s voice was dead and flat as he stood before a bank of microphones, addressing what I assumed were multiple reporters. It was obvious he had been trained in public speaking, but his head and hand were continually jerking in awkward directions that were destroying the illusion of authority. While I could see some similarities from the pictures, looking at him here was more like a before picture from some drug rehabilitation program.

  “And I would like to state again,” the video continued, the twitches increasing, “that I was not involved in this tragedy in any way. I am proud to say that…”

  She turned the phone back to herself abruptly, tapping the screen so hastily that I half expected a soldier emblazoned with the yellow star to be standing right behind.

  No one was there.

  Kaye stared at me, obviously waiting for some flash of memory and more answers to go with the bombshell she had already dropped. But I didn’t know him. There wasn’t even a phantom emotion or image to go along with what she had shown me.

  If I had known him, he was gone.