by Jalex Hansen
“Ask Angine. He’s the Obi Wan Kenobi around here.”
“You know what I mean.”
He was angry then, angrier then he had been in a long time, and somehow even that felt okay because it felt like something, anything at all. “I don’t know what you mean. I don’t know what any of this means. Why am I here? Why are you here? What’s happening to us?”
“We’re being used.”
“Why?”
“You don’t want to know.”
He went to her, stood as close as he could. “I do. What do you know that you’re not telling me?”
“Nothing. Forget about it.” She laid her head on his shoulder. She smelled like cigar smoke, not like Joanne at all.
“You can tell me anything, you know,” he whispered into her hair.
“Men always say that, but it’s not true.”
“You know a lot about men all of a sudden.” He was picking at her again and he didn’t want to. That had always been their way, hadn’t it? That’s what had made it exciting.
“I don’t know anything at all.”
He sighed from somewhere around the bottom of his feet. She didn’t love him anymore. And he didn’t love her either really, just the idea of her, what they had been together back when they were tabloid stars, young and beautiful and on the rise.
“I’m moving out tomorrow.” She said it so softly he thought he might not have heard her right. “Angine thinks it’s a good idea if I have my own place. He thinks I’m a distraction to you. He thinks if you’re alone you’ll be--”
“Easier to use?”
She slid off the counter against him and then ducked under his arm. “Goodnight, Con,” she said. “I’ll see you around.”
He used her glass, and he didn’t pour any of his wine down the sink.
Later, when he was asleep again he felt someone approach him. Joanne leaned down and put her mouth on his ear. “He has everything bugged,” she whispered. “Don’t say anything, just listen. Do what he says, whatever it is that you can do, do it. Use it or he will kill you. If you can get away, go. There are people in the mountains somewhere; I’ve heard him talking about them. Try to find them and they’ll take you in. There are others like you.” He felt the intake of breath, a hesitation, as though there was more she wanted to say, then-- “Goodbye.”
He reached for her, but she was gone.
Chapter
Eleven
A formless subtle windswept the landscape away and replaced it, sculpting the red sand into drifts and eddies. The sky was high and ancient catching black birds in its cloudless net and sending them in spirals. The heat settled onto Lissa’s skin and burrowed in heating her blood and breath. It was not an empty landscape as she first thought, but a clean one, the kind of land where you had to face nothing but yourself.
“Perfect isn’t it?” Gideon stood next to her looking out onto an endless vista that blurred at the arc of the horizon.
“Where are we?”
“We’re on the edge of humanity,” he said, “A place that no one goes unless they are lost or searching.”
“Are you going to speak in riddles now, Sensei?” Lissa grimaced.
He explained that this was the perfect place to begin her training, a place as pliable and open as a person’s soul, a place they would not be found. She shivered. The dreams had come every night since the first time, and she was run ragged, her eyes hollow and grainy her skin tight on her bones from lack of sleep and fear.
“We’re protected here,” he said. “No one can find us unless we allow it. It belongs to the Tesero.”
“Who are they really?’
“They are the source. Now, stop asking questions and wait for the answers to find you. First, we have to build your body.”
“Uh, I’m in pretty good shape, you know.”
“Good!” he called over his shoulder, “Then follow me.”
He sprinted off across the sands and Lissa started after him feeling the warm wind give wings to her feet. She sprinted past him laughing, feeling so free, so good out here in the sunshine with this strange man and her whole uncertain future ahead of her. She thought a moment of how she had run and jumped off the edge of the plateau. What if Gideon had arrived a split second later?
“That would never have happened.” He stopped, turning to her, his gray eyes full of hot desert light. “All your life there has only been the moment of me coming to you. Nothing could have changed that.”
“Did you just read my mind?”
“Do you understand prophecy?”
“It’s a prediction.”
“More than that. It’s destiny. You and I here now, this is destiny, part of something bigger than us, bigger than this desert, than that sky. We don’t know what it is yet, but it’s the only truth there is, the one that guides us and pulls us forward. Now that you’re here, there’s no turning back. You know that, don’t you?”
She nodded. “I’m afraid.”
“I know. Fear can keep you in balance sometimes, keep you from being reckless. You’re only afraid because you don’t know your strengths. Soon you will.” Without even taking a breath he took off again and she followed on his heels until the sand pulled at her feet and her breath felt like fire in her lungs. “I have to stop. I may not know my strengths but I definitely know my weaknesses.”
Gideon’s face was expressionless and she thought suddenly that she didn’t know him at all. He was a man, but not like ordinary men. His presence, his flesh and bones and breath were all focused, distilled, honed to a perfect control. It was unnerving.
“You will push past every weakness that you know you have, and then go beyond that. It’s only after you’ve given everything, all that you can and more, that you will succeed.” He lay on his belly on the sand and motioned for her to copy him. The sand scorched her skin and she protested.
“Pushups,” he demanded.
She lost count at twenty-five and finally dropped trembling to the sand, hoping it would just incinerate her and end her suffering. “You didn’t tell me this was going to be boot camp,” she muttered.
His face softened. “I didn’t say it would be easy.”
“You made it sound like we were going to sit out here and meditate.”
“We’ll do some of that too. Let’s go back to camp and get some dinner.”
She hadn’t realized how far they had run, and by the time she had slogged back across the desert, helped set up a canvas tent, and started the portable fire she couldn’t do anything but sit and stare at the plate Gideon had filled with some kind of mush and beans.
“Eat up,” he said cheerfully, apparently enjoying his role of torturer. “You’ll need your strength.”
She glared at him and shoveled a spoonful in. It tasted… healthy. Her eyes were so heavy she couldn’t keep them open by the time the plate was empty.
In the tent, two cots were spaced on opposite sides and a small canvas wall lay between them. She lay down in her clothes and listened to him cleaning up after dinner.
He came in with a hushed pull of the canvas and lay on his own cot where she could hear him breathing steadily and deeply in the darkness. Her last thought before drifting off was that he was too far away.
Morning dusted the tent with madder and ochre and gold. The glow lifted her eyelids open. Outside a bird wheeled and cried. It was early and the canvas was coated with dew, the heat hadn’t yet reclaimed the land. Lissa got out of bed, wincing at sore muscles, but still feeling good. She peeked carefully around the canvas curtain and was surprised to see Gideon still asleep.
His shirt was off and the sheet thrown back. His arm lay thrown over his head. He was like a carving, each muscle fine and delineated, perfectly placed. His lips were full and gently parted, his breath even and silent. His hair lay splayed on the pillow, and Lissa thought he looked vulnerable and incredibly beautiful.
Uh oh, she thought, and he opened his eyes. They were both caught off guard and remained still for a s
econd before Lissa felt his concern, his startled surprise at the naked emotion on both their faces. She almost heard his feelings as though he had spoken his thoughts into her head, This might be a mistake, before it was replaced by a gray wall of silence and he sat up and smiled as though nothing had taken place, as though the most treacherous thing of all hadn’t just reared its head and made them both fragile in a way they hadn’t expected.
“Good morning,” he said. “Did you rest well?”
“Unbelievably.”
“No dreams?”
“No dreams. What time do you think it is?”
“There’s no time here, only the passage of eons, sand, water, sun. You have to let go of all the things that hold you in illusion.”
“Is everything an illusion or just, say, hotdogs and zombies?”
“What’s a hot dog?”
“Are you serious? You really were raised in isolation.” Lissa remembered camping with her parents, roasting hotdogs, marshmallows, just the three of them and a billion stars in the sky.
“The stars are real,” Gideon said.
“Hey! You just read my mind again!”
“I can’t help it sometimes. Your mind just falls into mine.”
They considered each other carefully, as the hot wind lifted the flaps of the tent and entered to ruffle their hair. Lissa looked out the entrance at the horizon. “What do you think they’re like, the others? Like us?”
He rose and reached for his shirt while she watched the flex of his ribs out of the corner of her eye. He came and stood beside her. “I don’t know. I’ve always felt like part of me was missing, no, more than just a part, a huge chunk of who I am. I think when we find the others we’ll make up something greater somehow.”
“I feel whole now, more whole than I’ve ever been.” Had she said that out loud, it didn’t really matter did it?
“When we’ve completed what we need to here, we’ll go and find them.”
“What if they’re all dead?” She felt cold despite the heat and leaned imperceptibly toward him.
“You would know if they were. You would feel a blackness, a hole where the rest of us should be. I’m sure of it. It’s time to get started.”
Lissa turned her eyes to his. “Are you preparing me for war?”
Gideon ran a hand through his hair. “This is a mental war. Whatever abilities we have, whatever their source, they come forward when our minds and bodies are in balance. First we have to get you in balance, then we can hone your skills.”
“How long will we be here?”
“That’s up to you.” He held the flap open and gestured her out into the sun.
Lissa had a feeling that once she knew what she was capable of she would not want to leave, she would want to stay here in this desert solitude, just her and Gideon. Because once she harnessed her power she became a target, a valuable commodity.
She thought of the dreams, somehow they had not been able to follow here. In the distance a coyote howled, and she was sure that was the sound of eyes watching.
Chapter
Twelve
The congressional offices were different in the dark, full of amorphous shapes and hidden shadowy threats. Hikari hid in the coat closet again with her good buddy the mink, (This was getting to be a ridiculous technique, but hell, if it worked go with it.) waiting for the cleaning lady to finish sampling her father’s liquor cabinet while she pretended to dust.
Kari willed her to go. If they screwed this up even by a minute they would be caught, and she had no idea what kind of story she would make up to explain why she and her friends were hanging out in the congressional ceiling panels and oh hey we just accidently disabled your security system Papa, you know, just a bunch of kids having some fun on the weekend.
The cleaning lady finally gave the cabinet a good wipe down and toddled off on unsteady legs. Kari pulled out her phone and gave a thumbs-up. Kym had jail broke their phones and written an app with a secure encrypted IM and webcam just for them. She even had her own server system to handle it. The girl was a miracle worker.
“Cool.” Dimitri’s voice was low and serious. “I’ll wait until security locks her out and then go for it.”
They figured Kym had about ten minutes to record the empty hallways and then start a playback on the security system while the guard was checking the locks.
Kari switched her cam to Kym and watched as she waited for the signal from Dimitri and then gave her own curt nod that they were a go.
“Awesome, baby girl.” Dimitri whispered.
“No big deal,” Kym mouthed.
They had originally planned for Dave to cut off the electricity while they were in the building, but had decided that that would bring everyone running. The whole city was connected on a grid, and when something like that happened, particularly in a government building, everyone went on red alert.
Kari escaped the closet and waited for Kym to meet up with her. Dimitri continued to monitor the guards while Metti, Dave, Shake, and Yerik were posted outside at various locations ready to alert them if anything looked suspicious.
Kym sauntered in and looked around. “Not what I expected,” she said.
“Uh, can we get going? I’ll give you the tour some other time.” Kari thought she was probably nervous because it was her dad’s office.
“Relax. We have ten minutes before it repeats. And unless Brutus out there is really alert he probably won’t even notice when it does.”
“At least not the first time,” Kari grumbled. “Okay then, we’ve got ten minutes.”
Kym sat down at the computer. “You’ve got his password?”
“Yeah, and his cryptocard. It was in his dresser drawer, if you can believe it. Guess he isn’t too worried. “
“Nice work.”
Kari didn’t mention that getting the password and the card were her brother’s handiwork, he was twelve, he was too young to get credit.
Kym took the cryptocard, (it looked like nothing more than a car alarm key chain) and entered the congressman’s four digit pin, and pressed a button. “This’ll send a signal to the server to generate a login.” In a few seconds she grinned. “Easy as pie.”
“What does that mean anyway?” Kari asked. “What’s easy about pie?”
“The way it goes down, I guess.” Kym was setting up a restore point that they could go back to when they were done, so no one would know they had been in the computer at all. Kym’s fingers were flying like small winged insects. “There. Now let’s see what we got.”
She was digging through files, opening and discarding them, looking at files within files. Hikari indicated one of the files that she recognized. “Those are the ones I pulled.”
Kym pushed her hair out of her eyes. “I figured. The rest must be embedded in other files, hidden, you know.” She tapped in a few more times. “Holy cat balls Batman, I think these are it. He really buried these, must be some scary shit. That or nudie pics of his girlfriends.”
“Eck,” Hikari said. “That was uncalled for.”
“Just saying. Huh... ”
“What?” Hikari leaned over Kym’s shoulder.
“Look at this one. D-day.” She took a moment to open the file and it popped up a bunch of schematics with the date August 20th. “It looks like some kind of map of L.A. Take a look at this.” Kym pointed to a symbol, a tic-tac-toe of bold black lines. They were scattered all over the city. The key at bottom for the symbol was labeled “internment”.
“That doesn’t sound good,” Kym said.
“No, it doesn’t.” This shocked Hikari on a deep level, that her father would have such a document. Her grandparents had been in internment camps in World War II, and her grandmother carried that bitterness down the family line. Her father’s entire campaign had been built on a platform of personal freedom. Was everything he had done a lie?
Yerik appeared in the doorway startling both the girls. “We’ve got company.”
“I need thirty seconds,”
Kym said inserting her flash drive.
“They’re coming fast, looks like trucks. I think they know someone’s here.”
“Trucks?” Hikari went and stood to the side of the window, trying to look out without being seen. A phalanx of headlights was coming down the street directly toward the office building. It was long after midnight, there was no reason they should be here. “We’ve gotta book.” She called to Kym to hurry.
“You go ahead. Get everybody out. I’m coming right behind you.”
Yerik and Hikari hesitated.
“I said go.” Kym was pulling out the flash drive. “I have to restore the system.”
“Forget about it,” Yerik snapped, “They already know we’re here.”
“Okay, okay let’s go.”
Hikari alerted everyone else through the phone cam.
Her nerves were stretched to the breaking point. She had dragged her friends into this mess and now it was screwed up.
She started after Kym at a run with Yerik right behind them. As they bolted down the corridor the guard saw them and fumbled for his gun. “Stop right there!”
Everyone froze. Outside they could hear the unmistakable approach of a helicopter. Hikari knew without a doubt that Angine was coming for them, she could feel it, a black thrum in the marrow of her bones. Relying on some instinct she never knew, she blocked thoughts of him out and focused on the guard. “Congressman Suzuki is my father, you will let us pass.” She said calmly. As she spoke she felt a heat rise in her, a white sunny hotness that floated just under her skin. The guard looked surprised and dropped his gun, shaking his hand as though he had been burned. He stood still, transfixed, as though he did not see them.
“What the--” Yerik began, but Hikari motioned for him to follow her. They walked out under his nose to where the others huddled, unsure where to go.
Shake was vibrating at the highest frequency she had ever attained. “We’ve got to get out of here now. I can’t shoot down a helicopter.” She had brought the gun under their protests. Breaking and entering was one thing, but shooting someone or threatening them was another matter entirely. “You said my job was to protect you,” she’d argued. “This is how I plan to do it.”
