Taker

by Patrick Wong

  Stunned, a familiar feeling passed through her, and the noise of the plane dulled to a silence. She fell back almost limp in her seat. Her mind began to drift away as it had done before, and, almost immediately, a moldy stench hit her senses.

  As she opened her eyes, she was now in almost total darkness, surrounded by cold and damp stone walls. She couldn’t place the time she was in, but these were stone walls she had seen before back in the forest. Here she was, encased by them again in the dungeon.

  Then the sobbing began. Nicole knew that there was a presence behind her; she could feel her skin prickling at the closeness.

  She was standing in front of another girl.

  She turned and — to her surprise — found that the girl was laughing, not sobbing. She reached out her hand. Nicole caught a better look at her this time. Blond, petite, pretty. She was a little older than Nicole and looked a little like Jason’s friend, but she was wearing old, tattered rags.

  She couldn’t be here — could she? Not here in this room.

  “Hi,” Nicole murmured.

  “Hello.”

  As Nicole reached out to touch the girl’s hand, the girl stopped laughing, and then pulled back her hand before Nicole could clasp it.

  The girl laughed again, and Nicole suddenly realized that this was not happy laughter. It seemed hysterical, and it sent chills down Nicole’s spine.

  The fit of laughter stopped once more, and the girl moaned in an eerie, monotone voice, as if in a trance, “What you bring to others will be visited twofold on you.”

  “What do you mean? I don’t understand.”

  In the blink of an eye, the girl appeared to Nicole’s left side and whispered, “Bring hope to others.” Then, no more than a second later, she had disappeared and reappeared at Nicole’s right side. The girl’s face had morphed into that of an angry woman, looming over Nicole and screaming in her ear, “Take hope away!”

  Nicole stumbled, attempting to take another step closer to the wall to steady herself. But her legs were shaking with fear, like that time in the forest, and the pain returned to her wounded thigh. It was immense, searing, overwhelming.

  Suddenly, she collapsed, and everything went black.

  “Nicole?”

  Nicole roused and rubbed her tear-filled eyes. Her bright surroundings brought relief. She was back on the plane again. It was Jason, nudging her shoulder.

  “Wow, that was creepy. I liked the little French girl better.”

  “French girl? Are you all right?”

  A little shaken, Nicole paused for a moment to allow the confusion to subside, and to get acclimated to her real surroundings — the familiar gray and red stripes, the passengers.

  “I’m OK. I think I was having a bad dream or something.”

  Ding.

  “This is your captain speaking. It has truly been an honor and a privilege to be your pilot. And please don’t take this the wrong way, but I hope we never have to do this together again. As you may have noticed, we have landed safely, and as soon as we can get some stairs up to the plane, I’ll release the cabin doors and we can all get off. Welcome to Patrick Air Force Base!”

  They had survived. The applause was thunderous, and Nicole lifted her hands to join in the elation.

  Jason, applauding as well, smiled at Nicole. The warm glow of his face was back. Once more they locked glances, united for a moment with their hands and their eyes. They started to kiss, but the moment didn’t last long, as a hand soon zoomed into view. It was followed by Amy’s grinning face.

  A little embarrassed, Jason excused himself. Nicole half-heartedly tried to include him, but he encouraged her to enjoy the moment with her friends.

  “Go team Balancer!” Amy yelled.

  Together, Nicole, Amy, Drake and, with prompting, Ben (who had run up from Jason’s old seat) shared triumphant high-fives. They had made it, against all the odds.

  As they waited for the cabin doors to open, Nicole leaned forward and nudged the boy in the seat in front of her. He turned around.

  “Hey!”

  “Hey, yourself,” Nicole tried, with a perky tone she had seen work with Amy’s little brother, Troy.

  “I’ll swap you that magazine for a bag of candy.”

  The boy seemed to consider this. His mom had other ideas.

  She lifted the magazine from her son’s hands.

  “Given what you just did, you and your friends can have anything you want. You’re all brave.” The boy’s mom handed the Adventure World magazine to Nicole, and she kept eye contact for a few moments before releasing it. Her kindness — and perhaps even admiration — was a welcome relief after the dungeon girl’s admonishing.

  “Think I went to Adventure World a few years back,” Jason said, interrupting Nicole’s wandering thoughts. “It’s a pretty fun place. Maybe we could go sometime?”

  The lights of the cabin flickered, and Nicole heard the sound of the cabin door opening. But instead of the bustling of passengers rushing toward the front of the plane, a sudden, solemn silence fell over everyone. The people around Nicole stood in unison, and a few passengers bowed their heads while a girl a few rows up ahead appeared to be saying a prayer.

  Several Air Force officers and medical personnel had boarded the plane and were respectfully tending to the bodies of the pilot and second officer.

  Why did some have to die in order for others to live?

  Although the front and rear doors of the aircraft had now been opened, not a single person moved toward the exits until the soldiers had removed the fallen from the front of the cabin. After the soldiers had loaded the bodies into the waiting medical vans and the doors to the vans were closed, everyone seemed to exhale collectively.

  Slowly, the volume of life turned up, as people resumed the process of gathering their things and preparing to deplane.

  Nicole’s mind was full — overwhelmed with the hijacking events and with what had felt like some kind of flashback just then. She was having trouble speaking, and she could read confusion over that on Jason’s face. The only thing she was sure about was that she wanted to see him again.

  But before she could say this, Amy cut in.

  “I would say,” Amy started, “that we all deserve a little fun right about now.”

  “Sure,” Nicole smiled. She was wondering how things would work out now that they’d landed. She knew her dad was probably back at Orlando International Airport given that it had been their original destination, so he wouldn’t be waiting on the outside.

  “Ahhhhhhhhhh!” Amy screamed in false agony as she punched Ben in the arm.

  It was a pretty hard hit, and it made Ben wince a little. “Ow. What was that for?”

  “That’s for making us get rid of our phones. How long has it been? Four hours? I think that’s the longest I’ve ever been away from my phone. I think my mind is starting to melt a little.”

  “It’s not for me. It’s for her.” Ben pointed at Nicole matter-of-factly. “The government can trace us with those phones. There’s no privacy. We can’t carry them.”

  “Ever?”

  “Well, just for a while, until we figure out the long-term plan for keeping Nicole safe,” Ben explained as he braced himself to get hit again.

  “I’m just messing with you, Ben. You’re right. You usually are.”

  Amy caught Ben off guard with her sudden praise. That wasn’t a feeling he was used to experiencing. “I am?”

  “Yeah.”

  Maybe the life-changing events on the plane had caused Amy’s attitude to do a 180? Amy gave Ben a quick kiss on the cheek before turning back to Drake.

  Nicole spun around to look for Jason, to say more to him, but with the airplane doors opened, her fellow passengers were now more eager than usual to deplane, and she had been separated from him. Every now and then, she caught a glimpse of his checkered shirt or a flash of his fair hair, but before she could call out to him, the crowd had pushed him out the door. Frustrated and now weary, Nicole
found herself being carried along by the sea of passengers, all desperate to touch the ground they had thought they would never see again. Then, finally, the reassuring beams of daylight streamed in through the open door.

  Nicole took a deep breath and touched the plastic of the plane’s interior once more, then lifted her foot onto the ladder to walk down. She could hear sounds of joy coming from the outside. There at the top of the stairs, Nicole hesitated a bit when she saw the scene below, and a bolt of fear stabbed through her.

  Military trucks, soldiers armed with automatic weapons slung to their sides, ambulances, doctors and nurses. As she proceeded down the stairs, she caught the unmistakable sight of two blacked-out SUVs racing along a road on the outside perimeter of the base.

  The feds. They were here.

  Which Is It? Sick or Dying?

  Bishop eased back in the passenger seat of the SUV, his elbow encroaching on his fellow traveler’s space. A sudden twitch, and some dislodged papers fell to the floor.

  “Excuse me,” he apologized coldly.

  Velasquez glanced up from her tablet and flashed Bishop a cursory smile, then, without moving her eyes from the text, picked up the papers near her ankles and replaced them in the file.

  Velasquez pushed a small strand of hair behind her ears and closed her tablet with a sigh.

  “It just landed.”

  Bishop was frustrated. In his chess move, he had anticipated Flight 91 landing at Orlando, and so his PRESS team had been waiting at the wrong airport. He’d had to reroute the entire team to Patrick Air Force Base.

  He clenched his fists and sat forward.

  “Look, can you get us in there any faster? It feels like we’re just driving around,” he said to the driver.

  “We’re almost there,” Velasquez said reassuringly, though Bishop could see she was already packing away her files, preparing to make a run for it.

  The SUV continued at speeds well above the posted 25-mph limit, but Bishop doubted it would be enough.

  PRESS had briefed the guards at the security gates of the base to expect the two agents’ arrival. As they approached, Bishop experienced a few moments of gut-wrenching tension when the gates looked to be remaining closed. Then he could see one of the soldiers stationed at the gate pick up a call, and slowly the barbed-wire gates began to open.

  “Get as close as you can to the aircraft.”

  Bishop could see it then, up ahead — the distinctive gray and red lines of the aircraft’s decal. Vehicles dogged their path, but Bishop knew Velasquez had called ahead in an attempt to make their passage as smooth as possible.

  Before the vehicle had even stopped, Bishop opened the door and clambered out. The SUV had already drawn the attention of two local federal officers. As Bishop knew from recent experience — and recognized with some degree of bitterness — he’d need to show his badge, so he flashed his wallet before speaking.

  “I need an inventory of everyone coming off this flight,” Bishop commanded.

  “We’re taking it as standard protocol, sir. First, we triage all passengers through a med tent set up in the hangar nearby to check for injuries. The hijacker, he’s …”

  “In a minute. Get me a detailed list of everyone treated in the hangar and their ailments. Injuries, wounds — anything. Whether it’s related to the incident or not. Nobody leaves this base without my approval. Understood?”

  “Understood. Now, sir, I think you’ll want to see the hijacker.”

  “What’s happened?” Velasquez cut in, with the merest of side-glances Bishop’s way to acknowledge her subordination.

  “He’s sick. Actually, he may be dying,” the local federal officer theorized.

  “Well, which is it? Is he sick or is he dying?” Bishop demanded in a condescending tone.

  Bishop and Velasquez followed the officers toward the makeshift triage hospital in the hangar that, minutes earlier, had been cleared of its aircraft and equipment to make way for any casualties. They scanned the crowd for any sign of Nicole as they walked through.

  One of the officers took a call on his walkie-talkie. “Quickly,” he then shouted to both agents as he turned toward the far corner of the hangar and broke into a run.

  Unsure what they were running for but spurred ahead by the urgency, Bishop did as instructed.

  Weaving in and out of officials, police and medical crew as fast as they could, he and Velasquez eventually arrived at a gurney in the corner. The gray-haired man lying on it and covered with tubes and wires looked drawn and deathly pale.

  “Who is this?”

  “The hijacker, sir.”

  Velasquez’s confused face said it all. The man had hollowed cheeks and a gaunt, dead-eyed stare as he lay limp on the gurney. How could this weak man be capable of hijacking an aircraft? He didn’t even look like he could walk a block without collapsing.

  “Clear!” the doctor shouted, and the trained staff stood back, allowing the physician to plunge his defibrillator paddles down hard on Allen Kreschkensky’s chest. The paddles created a massive impulse that arched the hijacker’s ailing body.

  All awaited the following few seconds with baited breath as the monitor continued to flatline.

  “Again, clear.”

  Bishop winced — he always did when he saw the controlled medical violence of those paddles.

  The second pulse worked, and the monitor sparked to life.

  “Cardiac arrest, sir,” reported one of the doctors. “Bloods show hematology and high T cell count. He’s dying.”

  “Dying? What of?” Velasquez’s concern echoed the doctor’s.

  “Early tests show fast-onset lung cancer.”

  “But that can’t be right. We don’t have a record of that.”

  Bishop exchanged looks with the young agent.

  “It’s not impossible.” He turned to a nearby federal agent. “Have you found Nicole Aaronson?”

  “No sign as of yet, sir.”

  The two federal officers looked at each other, unsure why Bishop seemed obsessed with a teenage girl who had no prior criminal background.

  “I’ve submitted a shoot-to-kill policy on the Aaronson girl. If she resists arrest.”

  “Sir!” Velasquez protested. “We have no evidence of her involvement in this.”

  “Look at this man,” Bishop fired back. I saw your file on Kreschkensky — the still photos from airport security. When that man got on that plane, he had meat on his bones. See him now? There is only one person I know of who can suck the life out of a man, and that person is Nicole Aaronson.”

  “She saved the plane!”

  “You don’t know what else she may have done up there. I cannot have a supernatural teenager with a God complex roaming around.”

  “You are taking my words in vain.”

  “We cannot allow it, Velasquez. If I am right, this girl has tremendous powers. She’s killed an agent — my partner, if you haven’t forgotten. And what’s next? One day she’s going to do something while she’s meaning well that will amount to a big mistake for someone else. Maybe for lots of people. In my book, that makes her dangerous.”

  Bishop stopped his impassioned speech, aware that the federal officers were watching him and Velasquez argue with a mixture of surprise and amusement.

  “Of course, we’d prefer to have her alive.” He turned to the officers. “But if you engage her, and you feel anything uncomfortable — any sudden pain you can’t explain — don’t hesitate. Shoot to kill. You have your orders.”

  “Agent Bishop,” the taller one began. Bishop took note of the officers exchanging glances, and his impatience got the better of him.

  “Listen, by all means, make your calls. But it’ll amount to the same. You follow my orders, or I’ll have you punished for gross insubordination. Understood?”

  As if to underline Bishop’s statement, Velasquez grabbed the clipboard the federal officer was holding and marched toward the front of the passenger manifest queue. Without looking back, Bishop
followed her.

  Listen to Me If You Want to Live

  “Keep your head low,” Drake hissed.

  “No, don’t. Chin up, Nix. She needs to look like she hasn’t done anything wrong,” Amy cut in.

  “Well, for the record, that would be true!” Nicole shot back.

  “It doesn’t matter what you look like. They know you’re here based on the flight manifest,” Ben chipped in. “Unless you’ve learned some other power. Teleportation would be nice about now.”

  Nicole uttered a curse under her breath. They were standing in line for the mandatory medical tests. The waiting was maddening. Scores of other passengers were also growing impatient as members of the small medical crew stationed in the makeshift tents did their best to triage passengers. Nicole’s one saving grace was that the cluster of other high schoolers who had been on the plane made blending in and remaining unnoticed far easier.

  The line lurched forward. As they drew nearer and nearer to the front, tensions rose among the four friends.

  “We need to find out which list they’re working from,” Ben remarked. He glanced around for a moment, then decisively headed away toward the tent.

  “Nix, look!” Amy pointed.

  Sure enough, in the distance, a National Transportation and Safety Board Jeep was drawing up. Nicole had seen it try to enter the compound a few minutes before, and her hopes had been growing, but the vehicle had apparently run into some trouble at the security gates.

  Then she saw it was her dad.

  She raised a hand to wave, but quick-thinking Amy held it down.

  “Stay low now. There might be trouble.”

  Nicole’s nervousness seized her, and like an excited little girl, she bounced on the spot she was standing on for a few moments. Her dad’s silhouette was unmistakable, and she could see his old aviators glinting in the light. She was so close to him now — and yet so far.

  “We’ll have to wait it out. We can’t get out of line,” Drake said.

  “But he’s got a pass. He just has to show it and then we can get away.” Nicole whined.

  “He’s got a pass for him. Just think for a second, will you Nicole?” Drake was getting irritated.