by Nina D'Aleo
“You need something,” I told him.
“Sit … sit,” he murmured.
I hovered uncertainly then sat back down. I perched on the edge of the seat and stared at my partner. New tears stung my raw eyes.
He lay for a while with his eyes closed, listening to me gulping and sniffing, then he sighed and said, “Sil—go home.”
“No,” I replied.
He looked at me and repeated, “Go home. I don’t need you sitting here sobbing over me like I’m about to die. I can’t take it.”
“I’m not going anywhere,” I said.
“I’m fine, see.” He tried to move and collapsed back, groaning in pain.
I leaped for the red button on the device lying ignored by his hand and pressed it. A nurse appeared in the doorway.
“He needs something for the pain,” I told her. She came in and checked his vitals and charts, then amped up the dosage of his morphine drip.
Dark’s body relaxed and he mumbled, “Sil—go. I’m not resting till you’ve gone.” He stubbornly kept blinking his eyes open. The electrocardiograph output started spiking as his heart rate picked up speed.
“You’re stressing him out,” the nurse told me sternly. “You have to leave. He needs rest and so do you. Come on.” She tried to manhandle me to the door, but I resisted.
“Fine, I’ll go,” I said. “But just give us a minute.”
She looked reluctant, but left the room, saying, “Two minutes.”
I went back to stand close to Dark. “Your watch, cell and wallet are in this drawer,” I told him, trying to keep myself official so I didn’t start crying again. “They said I have to take your duty belt and guns—hospital policy … I’ll be back really soon.”
Dark shook his head. “Don’t … I don’t want to be that person … lying … lying in hospital … people around them.” His words ran together. “I don’t want anyone else seeing me like this. I’ll be out soon … Go home, then go to work—find the psycho …”
“I will,” I said.
“Go home …” he whispered again. “Now.” His eyelids flickered.
“Okay,” I whispered. I turned and headed for the door.
“Silvia!” Dark struggled to call me and I rushed back to his bedside. “My car …” he said.
“It’s fine,” I told him, smiling because I’d thought it might have been something profound. “They took it to the compound. I’ll make sure it’s okay.”
I settled him back down and arranged the pillows behind his head. The nurse popped her head around the corner and said, “Two minutes.”
“Equals a hundred and twenty seconds—thanks I can count,” I snapped, my tolerance severely stretched.
I kissed Dark’s cheek and backed to the doorway. I stood there for some time before finally leaving.
I caught a cab back to the city and picked up Dark’s car from the C11 impound where the clean-up crew had taken it the day before. I turned over the engine and it spluttered and growled unhappily. Dark never let me drive it and with just cause. Despite scraping through all the agency driving requirements, I was still an iffy motorist. It was an effort to get behind the wheel every time I drove, to the point where I had to admit it was probably some kind of phobia. I thought of Dark’s expression if he knew I was actually driving his baby. That made me laugh, which made me cry, which made my driving even more hazardous, but it felt wrong to just leave the car there. I composed myself, adjusted the mirrors and headed out of the city.
13
I made it home, but stayed in the car. I sat shivering, waiting for the feeling that I was falling apart to fade. An hour turned around—maybe two. After arriving at hospital, I’d texted to ask my brother to tell our parents I’d had an extended shift. I didn’t want them to panic. Mom had phoned a few times and left messages. I knew there would be a scene when they saw me. I would make a scene if I saw one of them in my condition, but still, I was dreading it. I wasn’t sure if seeing them upset would make me break down and I didn’t want them to see me crying. The more something hurt the less I wanted to show it, especially to my family. For some reason them knowing I was hurt made it hurt all the more. But I couldn’t stay in the car forever. The combined odors of blood and hospital stink clinging to the fibers of my clothes and hair were starting to get to me. But I just couldn’t make myself open the door.
Eventually Dad came out with the trash and saw me there. He waved. I waved. I forced my face into a mask and finally got out of the car. I watched his expression as I limped nearer and saw the change—the Hello Happy to See You becoming the What Happened?—a lowering of the eyebrows, the apprehension darkening his eyes. He glanced past me to Dark’s car and his forehead creased into heavy lines. He lowered his head. I’d seen that look before—it was the anticipation of pain. Dad knew a bad sign when he saw it. Mom was an academic, but he was street smart—one result of growing up in a Sicilian orphanage in the height of the mafia reign. As soon as I was close enough he said, “Is he alive?”
I nodded.
The front door rattled and Mom came out with the compost bucket. She saw me and stopped sharp. Her hand shot up to her mouth.. I must have looked even worse than I thought.
“There was an incident.” I got in first. “Dark’s in hospital. He’s okay.”
Dad shook his head; Mom teared up. I braced myself. There was a lull and then they both launched in—asking questions, demanding answers, voicing their united hatred for the job that put me and Dark in this danger. They didn’t actually leave any spaces for me to answer, which was fortunate as I didn’t know what to say.
Eventually the commotion brought my brother out. He saw my damage and started grilling me in prosecutor fashion about the whats, whens and whys of the accident. Finally I managed to move the interrogation through the front door and into the lounge room, where I threw off my jacket and slumped down into a chair. Now that they knew, I didn’t want to be alone. I didn’t want to think. Since my wounds were basically superficial the doctors had given me only low-grade painkillers, but now I wished they’d given me something much stronger. I wanted to pass out into chemical oblivion. Mind and body, I ached.
The day passed. My parents hovered, they worried, shot glances, gave me food and took every opportunity to tell me to quit. My brother put off the work he had been planning to catch up on that day. He had a bunch of downloaded series and started playing one that he thought I’d like. Even my poor sister-in-law struggled down clinging to her vomit bucket so she could sit beside me on the couch. They all wanted to go and see Dark, but Intensive Care had strict guidelines on who could visit and when. So I sat staring at the television screen, seeing the attack over and over instead of the show Benny had chosen for me.
Every time it replayed, my mind added new details. I was sure now that our attacker hadn’t launched a grenade or missile, and there hadn’t been an explosion, but before the impact I had felt something … something like a word on the tip of your tongue, like the tune of a song you can’t quite remember, something half-forgotten, half-unforgettable. That feeling had made me throw myself to one side just before we were hit. Dark hadn’t moved and that was the real reason he was lying in hospital and I wasn’t. A terrible disquiet squirmed in my gut. I needed to figure out what had really happened. It occurred to me that there would be footage of the incident. I got up and everyone copied me.
“I have to call the office,” I said.
“You need to rest,” Mom insisted.
“It’s okay,” I said. “I’ll only be a minute.”
Before they could stop me, I shuffled to the front door and went outside. I dialed Byter and he answered after the first ring,
“Silver!” he said, his usually jovial voice strained. “Are you okay? How’s Dark?”
We spoke for a bit about my partner and then I asked, “Have you seen footage of the attack?”
“No,” Byter said. “I mean—we brought it up straight away after you called it in and there’s a pictur
e, but it’s totally fuzzed out.”
“Fuzzed out?” I repeated. “How does that happen?”
“Well, it can be a few things,” he said. “Usually some kind of electrical interference.”
“They told us that the surveillance footage at the Bank Terrace murder scene was also compromised,” I said.
“Ah …” He tapped on his keyboard then confirmed, “Yes—yes it was. It’s a similar kind of broken track, which makes sense since it’s the same location.”
“Is there any way to clean it up?” I asked.
“Already on it. I’ll do everything I can.”
“Can you do me another favor?” I asked.
“Of course.”
“Can you find out if this kind of interference has happened before and where and when?”
“Sure—I’ll check the logs,” he said.
I thanked him and we talked for several more minutes before hanging up.
As I turned back to the house, I spotted a car with heavily tinted windows pulling into the driveway. I watched with suspicion as it crawled up the gravel stretch. It wasn’t the smartest thing, to just stand unarmed out in the middle of nowhere watching a potential hostile approach, but my brain was functioning on low power.
Luckily, when the door swung open, a familiar figure stepped out. The General straightened up. He was wearing a fedora hat and a suit with the pants pulled up past his belly button, granddad style. I limped over, trying to put on a neutral face. He saw through me in a second.
“Silvia.” He took my hand in his warm grasp. “What happened? Tell me everything.”
I recounted the incident. I also told him what I hadn’t told any of the others—that in my recollection the attacker had not been holding any devices nor thrown anything. When I was finished we stood in silence while the General considered my words.
“Sometimes,” he spoke tentatively, “after a trauma, the mind can create or delete details of an event as it tries to make sense of what happened.”
I wanted to agree with him but I couldn’t. “No, I’m clear,” I told him. “Something very strange happened back there.”
The General gave a nod. He glanced over his shoulder then back to me and said in a lowered voice. “There have been cases like this before, where Shaman syndrome has mutated.”
“What do you mean mutated?” I asked, disliking the sound of the word
“With an average walt it’s the strength we have to watch for, correct? They have the heightening of the senses, but that mainly feeds into their physical enhancement,” the General said. “But in certain individuals the syndrome manifests itself in different ways … unusual ways after they’ve broken-thru.”
“I don’t understand,” I told him. “Are you saying a mutated walt did this? He blew up an entire street with no weapons?”
The General was watching me carefully. He checked over his shoulder again and said, “Possibly. There’s an investigation currently under way—but Silvia—” he fixed his blue eyes on me “—it’s highly classified—highly—it’s very dangerous for us to be even talking about it. I’m telling you this in the strictest of confidence and only because I want to warn you against saying anything to anyone about what you suspect.” He glanced around us again, sincerely freaking me out.
I wrapped my arms around myself and said, “Dark is lying in a hospital bed because a walt is out of control. I need to find out who he is and bring him in.”
“You need to leave this to me,” he said. “You start looking into the wrong places and you’ll get yourself into the kind of trouble even I can’t help you out of … Dark is alive and the right people are aware of what has happened. So get some rest and be assured I’m personally on it.”
“Sir, how am I supposed to do nothing?” I asked him. “I can’t. They could have killed him, they could kill others—and I know for a fact that C11 doesn’t care how many people die as long as their objectives are achieved. I can’t be part of that anymore—murdering innocent people—I didn’t sign up for that! I won’t do it! I want to fight against people like them—not be one of them!”
I knew I’d said more than I should have, but once I’d started I couldn’t stop myself. The General swallowed, studying me. He sighed and ran a hand through his hair and I could see he was thinking fast.
“Have you said this to anyone else?” he asked me.
“No.”
“Then for the love of God—don’t,” he said. “This is not an employer that you quit from, Silvia. I thought I was very clear about that when we signed you up.”
“You were,” I could remember him saying that, but I’d thought he’d meant that it was difficult to resign, not impossible—not dangerous—I’d thought he’d meant red tape not red blood.
“What do I do?” I whispered.
“You rest.”
“Do you think people will really believe that I wouldn’t try to track down whoever did this? He almost killed my partner.” As I said it I felt tears swelling again behind my eyes and I thought—He almost killed my best friend …
The General considered it and said carefully, “I think people will expect you to start investigating—and it will come across as strange if you don’t. So I think you should start looking into things, but—” he held up his hand “—only on a superficial level—don’t dig. You’ve entered extremely dangerous territory and I’m trying to keep you safe. Please trust me on this.”
I shook my head. The General was my hero, but right now I felt as though he really wasn’t seeing things from my perspective and, even if he was, he was trying to downplay it, no doubt he thought it was for my own good, but I still felt unheard and angry.
I pushed down the bad feelings and nodded.
The front door to the house opened and Dad emerged, some antagonism in his eyes.
“Silvia needs rest,” he said. “No more work.”
‘Dad, it’s okay,” I told him.
“No, your father is right,” the General said. He spoke to Dad, “This was just a very quick visit to let your lovely daughter know we’re here for her.” He gave me a smile and squeezed my arm. “Goodbye, Silvia. Please get some rest.” He turned away and I thought I saw a tear in his eye. He climbed into his car and started the engine. After we watched him leave, Dad steered me back inside. I told everyone I needed some sleep and retreated to my room.
Once I was alone, my body seemed to just crumble. My legs wobbled out from underneath me and I sat heavily on my bed. I closed my eyes my mind replaying the General’s words “ … in certain individuals the syndrome manifests itself in unusual ways … highly classified … You start looking into the wrong places and you’ll get yourself into the kind of trouble even I can’t help you out of …” It really didn’t surprise me at all that there was more to the walts than the bosses let on. It was shocking and confusing, but not difficult to believe given the covert nature of C11. The bosses told us only what they wanted us to hear. We were just their flesh robots. Tears blurred my sights and I put a hand up to my face. How had Bos and I ended up here?
As I had neither the energy nor the desire to stop them, my thoughts returned themselves to when I was twelve. I had a friend, Amy, a neighborhood girl. She had a brother—two years old. He was kidnapped by two older boys, tortured and left to die. It had broken their mother: she’d split with their father and Amy had gone with her dad. I remembered the little boy clearly and Amy crying for him … and the day she’d been bundled up into her dad’s car with a bunch of boxes and bags. She’d looked so pale and frightened and just stared out the window at me as the car had pulled away. First they’d gone to another city and then back to England where her dad originally came from.
After she left I wasn’t able to stop thinking about them. To the point where my parents had taken me to a doctor, then a psychologist, then a psychiatrist. The tragedy had ripped Amy’s family apart, and, not to take the focus away from their grief and pain, it had marked me too. I’d been diagnosed with Post-Traumat
ic Stress Disorder. I’d developed an obsession with saving people. I was convinced I could be a superhero. I jumped off our balcony wearing a cape and broke my legs. Long story short the thoughts settled down with time, they changed, but never completely stopped.
And when I did finally accept that Superhero wasn’t really a valid career option, I decided I wanted to become a cop.
And so the path had led here, but even though I’d spent my entire working life in law enforcement, I felt as if hadn’t saved anyone—not even my own partner. Anger rushed in and gave my body back its strength. I stood and went to my desk. I turned on my laptop and used my portable Shake to access C11 files.
A knock disrupted me. I went and unlocked the door and found Benicio standing in the hallway. His eyes were worried. My brother had a hard exterior. He could come across as cold, but his heart was the opposite. Mom had told me that when we were kids she never knew who was hurt because he cried with sympathy every time I did—until he hit eight, and me seven: then we just wanted to kill each other.
“I wanted to check—are you okay?” he said.
I nodded. “Want to come in?”
“No, no—get some sleep,” he said. He turned to leave then changed his mind. “Maybe … and I know Mom and Dad have been saying this all day … but maybe you could try a different job. Do something else less—fatal.”
At that second—I really wanted to tell him the truth about the Chapter, about what I really did. If anyone in this world would understand it, it’d be him. We’d always been close, but now I felt as though we were standing on two separate islands with an ocean of lies between us. I almost broke, but managed to stop myself.
“Yeah,” I said. “Might be time for a career review … I’m not exactly in my prime years any more.”
My brother shrugged. He ran a hand through his hair and said, “It’s a race.”
“A race?” I asked.
He pointed to his hair. “Between the bald and the gray. It’s still anyone’s game.”
