Extraordinary Lies

by Jennifer Alsever

  “When you hear the sneeze tomorrow, you’ll know to ask to use the bathroom and get the guard to open the door.”

  I knew she could see the suspicion on my face. I was so tired. I had hardly slept because of the heat, just tossing and turning on the hard, concrete floor. It killed my hips and gave me an impossible headache. Even my freaking spine and skull throbbed. I doubted I’d even be able to do a reading with this little energy.

  I wiped away a drop of sweat that stung the corner of my eye and when I looked back up, Julia was gone.

  I stood up, paced in the small room, and bit on my chapped lips. I tried to imagine how I’d get that guard in the room. I removed my blouse, which stuck to my body, and fanned myself with it. Catching a glimpse of my bare skin, I considered using my sexuality to win him over.

  Of course, that’s what I’d do in a tough situation. The predictability of it irritated me. No. I wasn’t going to do that. I had to figure out something else. I put my top back on and banged on the door.

  The guard’s skin drooped around his chin and his green military hat looked crushed on one side. “Can I get some water?” I asked. A legitimate request.

  A few minutes later, he opened the door and handed me a jug of water in a metal container. I took it with one hand and clasped his hand with the other. His arm stiffened. “Thank you so much.” I looked him in the eye—sunburst of hazel shooting around the edges of green iris.

  He nodded hard like he could shake me off him with his head, but I held tight to his hand, just long enough for images to start fluttering like magazine pages. A little girl with curly brown hair, freckles, a missing front tooth. Anastasiya.

  Just as he was about to close the door, I blurted, “Wait!”

  He stopped and frowned.

  “They told you that I can see things with touch, right?” I didn’t wait for his answer. “Well, they didn’t tell you what else I can do. I can go to people in their sleep and smother them. Or torture them.” Lies.

  He gazed at me, pretty much rocked to his core.

  Even before I said what I said next, I kind of felt a tad guilty. But some lies, I decided, were necessary. Some lies were more important than the truth.

  “I want to know where the electrical power source is in this place,” I said evenly. “I’ll know if you’re lying. And if you lie, I’ll go to Anastasiya.”

  16

  Katerina

  The wind from the helicopter felt as if it would lift me off my feet. I ducked my head down and ran toward the aircraft. The blades thumped like steady, rolling kettledrums, and the air smelled of burning rubber.

  A man in a military outfit moved to stop me twenty yards away. He yelled over the noise. “Ms. Bachev, you must stay here!”

  “Of course not!” I yelled back. I cupped my hand over my mouth to be heard. “I’m your collateral. If I were lying about this and you died, I would too.”

  He put an arm around my shoulder and walked me back to the SRI rooftop. “You’re just a girl. We can’t have you getting involved.”

  Fury ignited inside me. “A girl? I was a KGB-trained spy…” I read his name off his badge. “Major Patterson. I think I can handle it. In fact, I might very well save your ass.” I pushed his hand off my shoulder.

  He gazed at me for a long moment before nodding, expressionless. “Fine, come with us.”

  17

  Julia

  My heart sounded like it was trying to escape from my ribcage. There wasn’t enough oxygen in this cell. I thought about Carol, the girl who’d had a heart attack after too much out-of-body testing. Would that be me? Would I be the one to die tomorrow? Fear danced around the edges of my vision. Staying here for a decade and being brainwashed like Aunt Sabrina was worse than death, I decided.

  This whole thing depended on Henry and getting him to think like us. Basically, to not be a complete jerk. I took another deep breath, pretended I was back in the power of the cage, and then went to find him.

  I found Henry in his cell, which—unlike mine—had a cot in the corner. The bed meant they were already working on him. They had delivered a platter of isolation, dead but not gone. A dose of powerlessness and dash of no escape. And then, he gets a surge of delight: a bed, granting him a minimal amount of humanity. It could turn him to their side, which, judging from his sense of morality, wouldn’t take long.

  I didn’t even have to say his name for him to look at me. “What do you want?” he snapped.

  “I hate you for what you did.”

  “You came here to tell me that? Big surprise, genius.” He snorted and looked away.

  “That’s not—”

  “Well, you don’t gotta worry about me anymore. They put this thing on my head to block me from doing much of anything. Better watch out, you’re next to get it.”

  I hadn’t noticed the thin strip of metal around his head. Red clots of blood scabbed around various points. “Is that permanent?”

  He shrugged and glared at me.

  He reached up and rubbed his forehead. “Can’t you just rip it off?”

  “Drilled in, dummy.”

  Devastation swept through me, and I felt pulled back to my own cell. I clawed with the teeth of my mind to stay. I knew convincing him to help us would be hard. After he’d lured everyone to this place, he was our only hope.

  He paced the room, pressing his fists together.

  He said what we were both thinking: “I’m of no use with this thing. No use to anyone.”

  I frowned. Is this another act? I had never seen him like this before, and I didn’t necessarily want to give a pep talk to a monster. But something about him made me pity him.

  “You need to figure out how to get that thing off. Pry it off with your hands, convince the guard to remove it, something.”

  “Why would you care, Julia?” He shot me another look of contempt.

  “You’re the key to all of us breaking out. Cord saw it in a vision. I only move things when I’m really mad, and I’d shake this place so much it would collapse in on us. Henry.”

  He sneered.

  “I mean it. I can’t control it. So this is … about you.”

  He scoffed.

  “You need to do some serious thinking about yourself. Make amends and do the right thing.”

  His expression contracted, but he didn’t look up. Either he heard me and didn’t care to answer, or he was figuring out how to get that thing off his head. Or simply dwelling in self-pity.

  I couldn’t stay long enough to find out.

  18

  Sabrina

  Each time I passed Julia’s door, I tried to catch quick glimpses of her. She was a life-size photograph of me at that age. Up on the dusty road when she found me, she emanated a vibrant light. I had forgotten who I used to be—that is, until Julia later vomited all those cutting words on me. She had changed so much since she was a child. Even when I had last seen her, through remote viewing, she was more docile.

  Yet with each passing hour, I saw a weakened version of my niece. Strong in spirit but anemic in body. It was as if she were sleeping with her eyes opened. Why is she evaporating before us? Dr. Strong said that if she didn’t eat, if she didn’t persevere, she would be of no use to the Party.

  “Let her die,” he had said.

  His words cut through the armor around my heart, and I felt them stab my chest.

  “But we planned for so long to get her here. Orchestrated—”

  “She either benefits us, or she dies. We can never give her back to the Americans.”

  “If she lives, stays alive, she’ll come around to our way of thinking, she will. I kno—”

  “Or dies.” He adjusted his crisp shirt and turned away from me.

  I watched her through the window of the door. Seeing her there, watching her wither away, delivered another long-forgotten sort of pang to my chest. Heartache.

  It was too hot for her. For all of them. Dangerously hot. She sat on the floor with her eyes closed, her head le
aning back against the wall. I watched sweat bead on her pink forehead, and a series of confused trickles meandered around the bones of her face and dropped into a puddle on the floor between her bent legs. I watched this as cool air from a ceiling fan blew on my own face.

  A few hours later, Dr. Strong grabbed my arm in the hallway. “You have work to do. Stop watching her.”

  He was right; I should’ve stopped watching the girl. It was doing something to me, melting a steel wall that had been built around my heart.

  “We have work to do.” He spoke to me in Russian. I’d always been so impressed with the way he had assimilated into American culture. He’d picked the name Strong himself, because he liked the connotation. Iron-clad strength. No one at the lab called him by his real name, Dobry Kuznetsov.

  Together we walked into my office, where he kissed me harshly, and I fell into the routine of it. The tradition. The expectations. The practice of it. His mouth was hard and he smelled like sweat.

  19

  Charley

  The guard squeezed through the door. Boxy shoulders folded in like cardboard, and reeking of body odor, he towered over me. “You no threaten me, little girl.”

  I stood on my tiptoes and brought out my wiggly, scary eyes. “You don’t know me well enough, Anton.” I figured knowing his name alone would give him the creeps. “You know why I’m so valuable to your bosses? It’s because I’m capable of witchcraft.”

  His nostrils flared. I thought about how Julia wanted me to get the electrical box information. But I just wanted to get out of there. I could get this guy to get us all out. “Tell me how to get out of here,” I demanded, drilling my eyes into his.

  “I let you go, they kill you. And your friends. Nowhere to run.”

  Of course he’d say that. He couldn’t just let me walk out of that place. I was his prisoner. We were in the middle of nowhere. Stuck.

  But I had something here. He was scared of me, and at that moment, I had power. Did I sit back and wait in that hot stinking cell just in case this premonition of Cord’s really happened? Cord had been wrong about his predictions before. He’d told me so. But then, he’d also been right on a lot of them, too.

  “Well then you better tell me where the electrical box is. And where all exits are. Now. Or else.”

  He backed into the wall, and terror laced shadows across his face. “I will get you a neuroshield. I will see to it. You… You are—”

  “Your daughter looks nice. Her room back in Kazan doesn’t have much to it, kind of a shithole, right? And you worry about her all the time. You worry that she won’t get fed. That’s why you took this crappy job, right? So you could send money home to her and your sister. But wouldn’t that be a shame if this was all for nothing? If you worked so hard inside this rabbit hole of a prison, only to say no to little ol’ me? Only to cause your daughter more suffering?”

  I said a silent prayer to God, asking for forgiveness. This was my worst.

  He placed a pale hand over his face, rubbing the facial hair that grew in patches on his cheeks. “The electrical box … it is in the utility room. The exit is … that way.” He pointed his thumb to the left.

  I crossed my arms over my chest. “Draw me a map. A good one.”

  20

  Julia

  Samuel paced like a tiger in the room, his hands clenching and unclenching, ready for his moment.

  “It’s time,” I said. Though really, I had no idea what time it was, what day it was. My body flickered in and out of his room like a waving kite. Minnie and Charley had come through, delivering details on the electrical box, and I memorized their instructions, though my head felt stuffed with cotton. I was pretty sure I passed the right information to Samuel. I hoped the utility room wouldn’t be too far away for him to mess with it.

  “Turning off the lights, what does that even do?” he asked.

  “It causes chaos. It might unlock the doors. It’s just … necessary to fulfill Cord’s premonition.” It was a last, desperate toss of hope into the wind.

  “You know Cord’s been wrong before, Julia,” he said. “He told me the ‘winning’ horse at Bay Meadows two weeks ago. Wrong. His precognition is subpar, at best.”

  Samuel gazed at the opposite wall. Clearly, he wasn’t seeing me there. He was only hearing my voice. I felt the sputtering sense that this was my last hurrah of remote viewing.

  I sunk back into my own sweaty skin in my own musty cell. I opened my eyes half-mast, feeling like the ground was a tipping, sinking ship. My heart pounded again, banging frantically on my chest.

  I needed Henry, but I couldn’t bear any more remote viewing. I was a limp dishrag and I struggled for air.

  I fell asleep like that, my tailbone pressing uncomfortably into the hard floor, my chest heaving for air, my legs bent, and my back pressed up against the wall. I wondered momentarily: if I shut my eyes, would I ever wake up?

  21

  Sabrina

  Dr. Strong came back to my office again and brought with him the scent of cigarettes and mold from the holding cells. “She’s nearly dead.”

  “What?” I popped up from my chair, surprised by my concern. I knew he was talking about Julia.

  “Let it be. The others will prove more useful.” He stood with hands dangling, his broad body taking up much of the doorframe. “She’s too willful anyway. It would take too long.”

  “I, too, was willful.” I reminded him. My throat tightened.

  “We’ll dispose of her early.” His words stole my breath.

  We had disposed of others in the past, but at the time, it had been a matter of natural selection. Those subjects had failed to achieve their useful purpose. Yet we had given them months to come around, not days.

  “Julia deserves more time,” I said.

  He cleared his throat. “Deserves?”

  “You’re impatient,” I said.

  He didn’t respond, instead pushing past me to gather his silver pistol from the desk drawer. He and I had built trust. He knew I wouldn’t dare touch the weapon, let alone use it against him—not after all these years. He cocked the gun and spun on his heel.

  But he was going to kill Julia as if she were a lame horse. He was ruining everything.

  “Don’t…” I hesitated. “Don’t you worry?”

  He stopped and frowned. The gun dangled at his side, and he said nothing.

  “Don’t you worry that we’re lying to ourselves? That maybe we convinced ourselves that wrong is right?” My words spun wild like a windup toy.

  “You’re attached.”

  “But—”

  “What?” His voice snapped like a whip. “We’re building our army right in plain sight of the enemy. Crushing them with psychic weapons drawn from their own gene pool. You know this.”

  “Julia. She has so much life in her…”

  His voice became animated, and my lower lip quivered. “She could have been on the right side of history. But she’s changing you.” I was under his thumb, and I had been for six years. I was strong and smart, and I’d convinced myself that he and I were a team, but really, I was once again under a man’s control. This wasn’t doing anything to level the playing field in America. This was only hurting people, on both sides of the world. He was going to kill my niece. My niece. The reality of it stung like alcohol on an open wound.

  I reached for the gun. “No!”

  His free hand hit me hard across the face, a searing reminder of what I’d left behind years ago. Back then, he had shattered my hopes, kept me isolated, and then he had been the one to offer me gentleness. I covered my cheek with my hand, feeling the heat of his punch in my gums and jawbone. Breathless, I gazed at him.

  Then, in a flash, he stroked my arm and a small smile crept up his cheek. He attempted affection, but it was always hard for him.

  “Remember why we’re here. We stay the course.” His voice, while quiet, was razor sharp. The punctuation for the end of the conversation.

  I surprised myself
next, knowing this could be the death of me; this could ruin everything. I felt like I was drowning.

  I couldn’t help but fight back.

  22

  Charley

  The sneeze. The ah-choo sounded thunderous, even from inside the cell. Just like Cord had predicted. I bolted upright and ran to the door. The cue! It was the cue that meant everything was about to happen. Adrenaline surged inside me like a raging river.

  “Anton!” The guard looked up from the book and looked at me through the door’s window. He wasn’t going to move unless I gave him a good reason.

  “Anastasiya!”

  He jerked upright and opened the door.

  The cool air of the hallway rushed in, offering a glorious drink of water to my skin. I wanted nothing more than to push open the door with all my strength, but instead I waited, breathless, for the next sounds to come. The metallic click and slow creak of doors opening. The others had heard the sneeze! A woman’s high-pitched shriek sounded in another part of the facility. The argument!

  “What is matter?” Anton asked in a thick accent. I turned my attention to him, ready to make up a lie to get me out into the hallway.

  The lights went out and we were plunged into darkness.

  23

  Julia

  The sneeze. The yelling. The lights. It was happening. I comprehended this, but a film had grown around my thoughts, distorting the immediate color and urgency of the moment. Weak, I crawled on my knees toward the door. Shouts and chaos stirred in the hallway. What was supposed to happen next?