by Ryan Schow
“You hit me!”
“Consider that a warning. You’re only getting one.”
“Mom,” she said in her most reasonable voice, even though her face stung like a son of a bitch, “you’re cheating on dad. He’d never do that to you.”
“What you don’t know about our marriage would ruin your fragile little mind,” she said, her face losing that look of outrage to something else entirely. For a second, the woman looked broken.
“What are you saying?”
“You’re father’s no saint, Netty.”
“Yeah, well no kidding. He’s in jail.”
“I didn’t cheat first. For me this is the first time. I mean, did you really think he’d leave us and I would simply wait with a smile on my face for him to return?”
“Yes!”
“That’s some Nicholas Sparks shit,” she said, her tone still sharp, her Russian temper hot yet smoldering, and not completely gone. “That’s not the real world.”
“So he…cheated on you?”
“Twice.”
“And you didn’t leave him?” she said, her tone changing drastically.
“It’s not that simple.”
“It’s marriage, mom. You’re not supposed to lie, you don’t cheat, and you don’t just fall apart when things get hard.”
Her mother gave the most cynical laugh Netty had ever heard. It bore the weight of a thousand emotions, one of which she heard above all others: animosity.
“Is that what they taught you in school? Or did you read that in a self-help book?” Netty found herself rendered speechless. “What you don’t know about love and marriage could fill an entire library, my dear.”
“So why be married if you’re going to have sex with someone else?”
“It’s not about sex, Netty. It’s more than that. Besides, you don’t know what it’s like to long to be with someone, to just make that physical connection not out of lust, but out of need for human interaction.”
“Oh, is that what you think, mother? That I don’t know about that?”
“Is that where you were last night?”
“Yes,” she spat. “Doing what you were doing. Not keeping my virtue in tact.”
Now it was her mother’s turn to bristle. Netty smiled half-heartedly inside, because with what her mother was doing, she couldn’t turn on Netty without sounding like a hypocrite.
“Who?”
“It doesn’t matter.”
In Russian, because she was pissed, she said, “Oh, yes it does!”
“How can you be so demanding when you just molested some child from the Financial District? Did you even know him before you took his virtue?”
“He’s twenty-eight, not a child. And his virtue was taken a long time ago.”
“Jesus, mom,” she said, laying down. Her face still stung from the slap. She felt the handprint on her face as badly as if it had been branded there by fire. Of all the things she knew about her mother, she didn’t expect her to cheat, or to hit. She’d never done either. Then again Russian women aren’t exactly known for their even disposition. “I suppose that’s what you get for being young and hot and planning sex parties for the rich and infamous.”
Irenka laughed then said, “You think I’m hot?”
Netty fought to suppress a smile. “Of course you’re hot, dummy. You’re my mom.”
Irenka sat down next to her, slipped her hand into Netty’s and they held hands like that for a few minutes. Netty then turned and hugged her mother tight. “I miss him.”
Her father.
“I know, sweetheart,” Irenka said in Russian. “I miss him, too.”
7
I hate this lab. The memories this place holds repulses me. I hug myself to ward off the chill, to try to pass the time in perfect silence. But I’m remembering. And it is making my skin crawl.
Rebecca’s canister is all the way drained, but she hasn’t woken up yet. I’m staring at Quentin, who hangs up the phone from a short conversation with one of his lab assistants-turned-babysitter and looks right back at me. “Alice won’t be allowed near the child again,” he says.
“I got that part already.”
“She will not be in the same room until we arrive to take the child elsewhere,” Quentin says.
Half of me is tempted to tell him my new ears work perfectly. But I don’t because I’m trying not to be rude. “You can’t be certain about anything Alice does,” I remind him. “If she gets offended, and she’s five, she may just set the place on fire.”
“You made that clear already.”
Two tanks over from Rebecca, still in stasis, is Georgia. When I see her, I slip the tethers of my mind inside her head and instantly know why she is here. She wants to right the wrongs in her mind created by her last change. Her emotions, they’re shut down. Entirely. Mulling about the thoughts in her head, sifting through her memories, I rest easy knowing she’s in stasis. She is there because she wants to be there. Because it’s necessary. I also realize Brayden is watching over her, too. As best he can, anyway. Inside, my soul sighs with relief.
“When will her formula arrive?” I ask.
“How do you know about Georgia’s formula?” Quentin says.
“I told you already,” I say. “What you know, I know.”
“Then you know the formula might not be done yet. I’m not sure when it will arrive.”
“Who’s your contact?” I ask, and the moment the geneticist’s name is recalled inside him, I know it.
“I’ll check in with him,” he says. He dials a number, engages in mild pleasantries, then asks about the DNA adjustments.
A few minutes later, he hangs up the phone and says, “The formula is nearly complete. He’ll overnight it in cold storage in a day or two, and then we can administer the shots. Whether or not it will correct her imbalance is a matter of trial and error, of course. These little things can sometimes become long, arduous things.”
“Of course.”
“We’ll run tests after we wake her, and Skype with the geneticist if necessary.”
I feel satisfied. My eyes move from Georgia back to Rebecca.
“You never asked what we are,” I say. “I know it’s on your mind, so just ask it already.”
“Fine,” he says. “Consider yourself asked.”
I turn around and look Quentin so deep in the eye I can feel his insides backing up and trying to duck for cover. “I’m superhuman. Every one of us is to some degree. Me, Holland, Georgia and Alice.”
“And Rebecca?”
“She has a chance at normalcy, despite what’s been done to her. Which is why she has to leave this place as soon as she’s ready. You don’t act surprised about what I said.”
“Half the movies that come out these days are about superheroes, kids with exceptional abilities.” He swallows the ten pound lump in his throat, then says, “It’s not like you’re a novel idea.”
“Wow,” I reply. “And here I though you were working so hard not to offend me.”
“I didn’t mean—”
“Whatever,” I reply, waving him off.
After a moment, measuring his words more carefully, he says, “What will you tell her? Rebecca?”
What can I tell her? That she’s been a madman’s guinea pig? That she brought two live children and one dead one to full term pregnancy in three months rather than nine? That one of her two surviving kids was tossed out of a high-rise apartment complex and died like discarded garbage on the sidewalk? All because a five year old pyromaniac with a temper couldn’t take all the crying? There there’s the whole thing about me not being Abby anymore. How do you tell a girl who is mentally twelve the Abby she knows won’t recognize her because she’s a stand-in, a fake Abby with no real memories of Rebecca. What she needs—and this is what I’ll convey—is stability, and a sense of family.
“I’ll say as little as I can,” I tell Quentin. She may not even remember being pregnant, or giving birth. Let’s hope this is all one gigant
ic blur. “If I have to tell her everything, though, I’m pretty sure I’ll say it as gently as I can.”
The canister is now fully drained and Rebecca is lying flat on her back, naked, starting to come into consciousness. I cover her breasts and pubis with small towels, clear her soft red hair from her face. She’s curling her fingers and toes, yawning. Her eyes blink open and I smile. I give her my most loving look. When she wakes, I want her knowing she’s safe, that she’s loved even though the faces she sees will be those of total strangers.
She startles a little, looks around. She’s got drunk baby syndrome, which is normal when waking up from stasis.
“It’s okay, Rebecca, I’m a friend of Abby’s. She sent me to watch over you. Do you remember Abby?”
Her eyes clear and she slowly nods, yes.
Good.
“You’ve been through a difficult ordeal, but that’s all behind you now. I’m going to take you home.”
At the mention of home, her eyes flood with panic.
“It’s okay. I’m taking you to Abby’s home in Palo Alto, to stay with her and her father, Christian. You remember him, right? You remember living there?”
Now she visibly relaxes.
Looking down, she sees her body. Her hands go to her stomach, where (and I see this in her memories) she was sliced open with an Exacto-blade, where two children were pulled from her womb.
“Baby,” she says, her voice still not fully back.
“Several,” I say.
Tears leak from her eyes and I can feel every bit of the hurt she’s feeling. It’s like a fifty pound rock dropped on my chest, the deepest pain imaginable, a crushing suffocation. My mind quickly retreats. Survival instinct. She turns away from me and Quentin. I hoped she wouldn’t remember, but how could anyone displace such insanity? What I saw being inside her mind, she remembers everything.
Damn.
“You were used in experiments, Rebecca, which wasn’t fair to you,” I say, sounding so sad, sounding almost as lost as her. To actually have to say out loud the shit these monsters did to her makes her nightmares all the more fleshy and real. “Two of your babies survived at first. Of these two, one recently passed from complications. I don’t know how the surviving child is doing or if she will live, but they were never going to give them to you.”
“Where is she?” Rebecca croaks.
“You weren’t even expected to survive the delivery,” I confess, my voice still tender, still compassionate, “so we’re in uncharted waters here. Plans were never made for a mother being in the equation.”
“But I did survive,” she says in the hushed voice of someone battling not only emotional pain but physical pain as well.
“Do you know how many people are relieved that you lived?” When she doesn’t reply, I say, “There are people who love you, Rebecca. People who want you safe.”
“Abby,” she says. Turning over, laying her watery eyes upon mine, she says, “Where is she? I want to see her.”
“Abby had a very bad accident,” I say. “She’s alive, but her memories have been…her memories are gone. She almost died trying to get you out of here. We thought she was dead.”
She couldn’t look more disappointed if she were abandoned in deep space. The weight of her trepidation returns. She doesn’t know where she belongs, where she fits in. My heart breaks for her, for the crowding darkness of her isolation is a loneliness crueler than despair.
It’s a kind of waking death.
“I’m going to take you back home, to Abby’s father’s home. Do you remember him? Do you remember Christian Swann?”
“Yes.”
“Good. I’m taking you home tonight.”
8
Sitting on the couch in the office lounge, I watch something mindless on TV. Alice comes and sits down next to me. She says nothing. She looks at me and I look at her and I’m not sure if I should hate her or if we should become friends. She scoots over next to me and slides her arm around me and I don’t know what to make of that.
She’s a freaking housecat.
In the bathroom, Rebecca is showering and changing into clothes that won’t fit, clothes she’ll have to make due with until we can get something in her size. What Heim did with hers when he brought her back is a mystery for another time.
Feeling like someone else in a life that is no longer mine, I’m officially starting to suffer a sense of things lost. Rebecca used to sleep with me when I was Abby. I miss it. I miss having her in my life. Now I’m about to give her away.
My mind is spread thin now—wanting to connect with my father, to reach out to Jake, to Netty and Brayden, just to see how they are—but I can’t do that. I’m not Abby Swann anymore. I haven’t stopped loving them, though. For a second, I think about mind-melding with them, but then my conscience says that would be intrusive, a violation of privacy, even though they would never know I was there.
Instead, I reach into the head of the girl beside me: Alice. The minute I’m in her head, a rush of sickly energy causes my physical body to jerk. At first I’m reeling in surprise, but then I’m left gasping for breath.
Being in Alice’s brain is like being thrust into a fiery playroom where the flames refuse to go out, and they never completely burn the structure down. The space in her psyche is rolling with fire. Like orange pillows of heat, blazing up the walls, eating up the ceiling, filling the tiny room with boiling clouds of smoke. I cover my mouth and nose with my hands, get as low as I can.
And there is Alice. Standing across the room in the smoke, unaffected. She’s wearing a powder blue summer dress, just staring at me. Smiling a wrong, sort of twisted smile. Suddenly I want out. But I can’t pull my eyes from hers. She’s innocence mixed with disease mixed with a dark seething and an insatiable, almost reckless appetite for solitude.
My mind reaches out to the girl in the smoke, melds with her, like it’s second nature now. The second I’m in her head, I’m transported to another place, like someone snapped their fingers and the room of flames disappeared. I’m standing in the doorway of a cold, sterilized lab where everything is bare concrete and shiny, stainless steel surfaces.
A mind inside a mind.
In the middle of the low-ceilinged room is an operating table with three men leaning over it. Lights overhead illuminate the girl on the table: Alice. She is unconscious, the top section of her skull removed. Seeing her exposed brain, my insides wiggle and shake. I’m terrified of what I’m seeing, but I’m also terrified the doctors will turn and see me.
Curiosity has me aching to see their faces, but I can’t. I won’t risk it. Instead, I look with riveted eyes upon the sight before me. The doctors are working on her brain with a bevy of tools I’ve never seen before. They’re not talking about fixing her. Or healing her. They’re discussing how certain paranormal skills will work in conjunction with the freshly harvested DNA to allow for “this child” to have an “extraordinary skillset.”
“The things this little girl will be capable of will defy logic and human nature,” one of the doctors says. The other two agree with silent nods, as if they’ve heard him say this same thing a hundred times before.
I don’t recognize the voice. Part of me is hoping he will speak again, but other parts of me are anxious for him to never say another word.
To the left of the main table is another bed holding an unconscious man as tall as the non-alien, non-human doctor from Dulce. He’s seven feet tall, easy, with long, stretched extremities. Especially his fingers. This one’s skin, however, is not as pure looking or as perfect as the Dulce doctor’s skin. The dead thing’s skin is scaly and tinged green. Almost reptilian. Almost like the leaves of a dead rose if rose leaves could rot to that hue.
My mind slips into his.
He is a cosmic well of emptiness. A pit so dark and loathsome, so bled dry and hollowed out he feels like the center of Hell. My stomach is a clenched fist. It wants right the f*ck out of this place, and out of Alice. My curiosity, however, holds me ho
stage.
The man whose head I just crawled out of, he’s dead. Murdered. I can’t help wondering, what the hell is he? What was he?
All kinds of tubes and wires are running out of its opened skull. Its brain looks sautéed, like its been baking in the hot sun for too long.
I turn and look down and there is the younger Alice. She’s standing beside me. Gazing up at me. She looks three, or four years old. Her unnerving smile is gone, her nostrils slightly flared, her eyes watery looking and terrified. This isn’t the Alice I know.
This is the before-Alice.
She reaches up and takes my hand. In her mind, I have a physical body she can hold on to. I take her hand and she looks over her shoulder, to the wall behind me. She points at it, her little body twisted. My eyes follow the direction of her finger and behind me is a glass partition. With their faces near the two-way glass, looking past me like they don’t even see me, are Alice’s parents. I know this because she knows this.
My eyes return to the young Alice. We hold each others’ gaze for too long. “They knew what the doctors were doing,” Alice says, her voice like little cushions of hurt made worse by the knowledge of her betrayal. “They knew what the doctors were doing to me, and they let them do it anyway.”
Again she links me to her pain and it blisters inside me, bloating me like a feral infection, metastasizing like cancer cells to feast upon the light in my world, rip and tear at my sanity, suck away any will I have to carry on.
“I have to go,” my voice says, panic stricken. The anxiety in me is reaching catastrophic, near toxic levels. “I need to get out of here!”
I wiggle my hand loose from hers, and the creeping sickness begins to dissipate. “Close the door on your way out of my mind,” she says, her face now far from innocent. Alice now has that downright malevolent look, and her eyes are onyx black and malicious.
When I leave, I slam the door on her mind with force.
Fingers snap and the operating room is gone. I am back in the lab. Back on the couch. Alice is sitting on the floor in front of the couch, her dark eyes watching me.
