by Camilla Monk
Once we’re inside, it becomes obvious no one lives here. The sparse furniture looks clean—spotless, really—but impersonal and barely comfortable. A table and a few chairs, a kitchenette. Two doors—I’m guessing a bathroom and a bedroom. Someone turned on the heat, a small blessing in what otherwise looks like the setting to a horror movie. Plot twist: the bad guys win, the girl gets killed, and they bury her body in the woods. A century later, people sell books investigating the mysterious circumstances of her untimely demise, complete with gruesome details about the autopsy of her frozen body, perfectly preserved in the icy ground. I swallow back a wave of nausea—I should never have read that book about the Franklin expedition.
When Porho closes the door behind us, I notice that Dominik stayed outside. Through the windows, I see him climb inside the ice-cream truck.
“He’ll get rid of it,” Kovius comments.
He’s looking at me again—scanning me, really. I’m wondering if he’s starting to regret that he took me. He jerks his chin toward one of the doors, which Porho dutifully opens. March leads me into what is indeed a small bedroom, with bunk beds and a lonely chair sitting in a corner. My eyes dart over to the window, trying to assess the feasibility of breaking it with the chair. As if they’d leave me alone long enough for that . . .
Once the three of us are standing in the bedroom and Porho has closed the door, Kovius gestures to me. “We need to take a look at that neck. Take off your coat and sit on the bed.”
Goose bumps rise all over my body in a prickling wave. I step back, only to bump into March’s chest. “What are you going to do to me?” I’m trying to control my fear before it tears me apart, but already I can hear the tremors in my voice.
His hands creep up my arms. “Island, we only want to check something. We would never”—his voice catches . . . almost like he’s afraid too—“no one is going to hurt you again.”
“Then don’t touch my neck!” I yell between panicked pants.
Kovius runs a hand across his face. “Little Island, believe me, I’d rather do this the easy way.”
“Calm down,” Porho says. “We’re not going to try anything here. We’ll need a surgeon for that. All we want for now is to take a look.”
Okay. Now I know with absolute certainty that they are going to hurt me. My eyes dart at the cabin’s door. Kovius and Porho stand in the way; I’ll never make it.
My mind racing for a way out, I play my only card. I whirl around to face March. “Please don’t let them do this!”
His eyebrows draw together in a pained expression. I have no idea what’s the deal between us—or if there is one, for that matter—but there’s a tenuous connection, I can tell that much. I just hope I’m not making a terrible mistake by staking my chances on a potential case of Lima syndrome . . . He takes a cautious step toward me. “Island, we only want to see whether there’s any scar on your nape. Nothing more. I promise no one will hurt you.”
A sense of impending doom grows inside me, like rocks piling in my stomach. “How . . . how do you know about that?”
March’s features freeze, a tic in his jaw the only sign he’s still alive. Porho, on the other hand, doesn’t seem surprised by my answer—there’s actually something smug about the way he arches one dark eyebrow. And Kovius . . . I’m pretty sure I just saw his hand shake.
“How do you know?” I insist.
“How did you get the scar?” Kovius counters.
“It was at the Poseidon Dome. I had a brain injury and . . . I got surgery,” I admit. I hope he can read the hate in my eyes as I add, “You did this to me . . . when you blew it up.”
His nostrils flare, and I’m scared he’s going to hit me. “Is that what they told you?”
“It’s all over the fricking Internet!”
“I see . . . Isiporho, show her.”
I study the interested party warily. Isiporho? Not “Porho” after all . . . Meanwhile, he’s pulled out a phone from his pocket. His fingers dance on the screen, and he hands it to me. “I snapped these back at the castle. They had a medical file on you. It’s not a tracking device; that much we know.”
I take the proffered phone hesitantly. On-screen is the hasty and poorly lit shot of an X-ray. I’m no medical expert, and one half is a little blurry, but I can still recognize a human head . . . and I know something doesn’t belong in there. At first I think I’m seeing some sort of giant daddy longlegs, and I nearly drop the phone, but it’s not that. It’s . . . my skin crawls as I examine the white outline of some kind of narrow, rectangular device lodged right above the first vertebra. The legs are in fact long filaments reaching . . . inside the skull—possibly all the way to the ears; I’m not sure.
This time, the phone does slip from my hands, and March catches it before it reaches the floor. I reach reflexively to touch my neck and stagger back. “You’re lying . . . it’s not . . . it’s not in my head!”
Kovius and March both move at the same time to catch me. I scramble away until the back of my knees hit the bed. My legs give way under me, and I let myself fall onto the mattress. “What the hell do you want from me? Why are you showing me this?”
March crouches to be at eye level with me. I retreat farther into the bed and huddle to avoid his gaze, the blue eyes I thought I recognized, which belong to a murderer, a kidnapper. Yet his voice is soft, coaxing, each deep vibration like a petrifying caress. “Biscuit . . . please look at me.”
Biscuit. Far from reassuring me, the pet name he keeps using raises a trail of goose bumps down my spine.
“Biscuit—”
“That’s not my name!” I scream, hugging my knees harder.
“Island,” he tries again. At the same time, I feel something touch my leg. His hand. I kick blindly to get rid of it. “Island, it’s me. I’m not going to hurt you. Please listen to me.”
I hug my knees tighter and rock myself, in a desperate bid to shut him out. “Leave me alone. Let me go. Let. Me. Go!”
“What was in the drip?” I hear Kovius ask.
“A cocktail of anxiolytics and a light sedative. But I don’t think that’s what affected her memory like that. She didn’t react when she saw me in Hamina either,” March tells him.
His words send me spiraling farther down an abyss I don’t think I’ll ever reemerge from. It’s him. It was him at the Christmas market. Watching me. Somehow March and I know each other . . . and every memory I might have of him is lost in the depths of the South Pacific, sleeping in the ruins of the Poseidon Dome. What happened there?
“I sent the files to Viktor; maybe he can tell us more about the implant,” Isiporho adds.
“Island . . .” March croons, his voice barely above a whisper. “Are you certain you’ve never seen me before?”
Unable to look up at him, I let out a brittle, “No,” even as the chills coursing through my body remind me that it could be a lie.
From the corner of my eye, I see Kovius step closer. “What about me?” he asks, his tone unexpectedly soft.
“You’re Dries Kovius. You’re the guy who bombed the Poseidon!”
His fingers slowly curl into fists. “I see . . . and do you know who kept you prisoner?”
Prisoner? I feel the room tilting around me as I hear my father ordering Bentsen to go ahead and lobotomize me. I see Morgan’s terrifying smile while he taped my mouth. My skull is throbbing as if it’s about to explode, and a wave of nausea makes my stomach heave. Was I really . . . their prisoner? “This is insane,” I whimper. “This isn’t real. It’s not . . . real!”
March keeps stroking my hair, my shoulder. I wish he’d stop, but I don’t have the strength to fight back.
Unlike him, Kovius doesn’t lose sight of his goals. “Tell me who took you.”
“You did!” I’m crying hysterically now, loud sobs shaking my frame.
“No, little Island. I saved you. Anies took you.”
“I have no idea who that is!”
Kovius’s voice deepens with anger.
“No idea? What about Aidan Keasler?”
March protests. “That’s enough. She’s not in any condition to—”
“That’s . . . my father,” I manage, struggling through a hiccup.
My answer is met by several seconds of stunned silence. On my shoulder, March’s hand stills.
Kovius eventually speaks, his voice clipped, each word like a countdown to an imminent explosion. “Say that again.”
“I-it’s my father’s name. Aidan Keasler.”
I vaguely register Isiporho swearing in Afrikaans while March remains silent, his breath slow and unsteady.
When I peek between my arms, I see Kovius’s blurry form leave the room. Moments after the door has slammed behind him, something crashes to the floor, followed by a roar of pure bone-chilling rage. With a final glide of his fingers in my hair, March lets go of me. I’m not even sure I’m relieved: he scared me marginally less than his acolytes.
“I’ll go talk to him. Isiporho, can you please watch over Island?”
I glance up at the two of them. The smug expression I thought might be permanently etched on Isiporho’s face is nowhere to be found. He places his hand on March’s shoulder and gives a brief squeeze before tipping his head to the door behind which Kovius is working on destroying the living room. “Go.”
When March opens the door, I get a glimpse of Kovius standing among toppled chairs, dragging a hand across his face. Was it the mere mention of my father’s name that set him off like that? Or maybe they have . . . the wrong person? Once the door closes behind March’s departing form, I roll around to face the wall. I’m not in Kansas anymore; this is hell.
ELEVEN
THE TAN
Things have cooled down a little, but Kovius basically went berserk. I heard furniture move and crash; glass shattered on the floor. He shouted some stuff in Afrikaans, but I was terrified, and pressed my hands over my ears to block his barking. I didn’t care. Didn’t want to hear.
He seems to be done destroying the living room for now—presumably because he went out: the ruckus ended right after the front door slammed. Isiporho left his chair once to check on the damage. I glimpsed Dominik helping March clean up everything. He must have returned at some point after he got rid of the ice-cream truck. There was something weirdly poignant about seeing March on all fours, in his black fatigues, with a double holster over his turtleneck . . . meticulously picking up each piece of a broken mug, like it mattered if the floor was clean.
Now it’s over, and the low hum of March’s voice echoes through the wooden walls as he discusses something in Afrikaans with Dominik. I strain my ears to listen, grasp at anything that could give me a hint as to my immediate future . . . “Opstyg voor sononder” . . . “steek die grens oor.” Take off before nightfall . . . cross the border. So there’s a plane waiting for us somewhere—as for the border . . . I have no clear sense of time save for the certainty that the sun hasn’t set yet. We didn’t drive that long to reach the lake, and the helicopter must have still been in the general area of Hamina when we jumped. The closest point to cross the Swedish border must be four hundred miles away—Norway is even farther. That’d make it the Russian border then.
I know the puzzle’s pieces are here somehow, scattered before me. But I can’t make sense of any of it. Lying curled up on the bed, I study the knots and veins in the wooden wall. I’m no longer so scared those guys are going to kill me, but now that I feel more focused, I can’t stop thinking about the scar on my neck, the spider on the X-ray. Maybe they’re trying to mess with me. But if it’s real, why would Bentsen have put that inside my head? They called it an implant. Maybe it’s actually a plate, like the one in my wrist? No . . . wires snaking inside one’s brain, I’ve never heard of anything like that. I touch my nape tentatively. I can’t feel anything, only the inch-long vertical scar.
“You won’t feel anything; it’s deep.”
I’d almost forgotten about Isiporho sitting in the chair across the room. I stare at the wall obstinately, ignoring him.
He sighs. “Not in the mood to chat, huh?”
Hardly . . . My thoughts drift to clown Kovius. I’m starting to suspect that this has nothing to do with ransom kidnapping. The way Kovius lost it when I mentioned my father; this is personal. Revenge, maybe? He said something about a guy . . . Anies. Maybe it’s someone my father knows. In my mind, the dots, at last, slowly start to connect. My father did everything he could to isolate—well, insulate—me so I wouldn’t hear about the Poseidon and remember Kovius, who knows him, and knows me too . . . Kovius, who was at the Poseidon at the same time I was and caused my wounds. But my father also let the world believe I’d been killed in the attack—yet another detail he tried to hide from me.
Then there’s March: he doesn’t act like we just met. I can still feel his lips on mine, the moment he ripped the tape. The warmth and the urgency . . . My eyes flutter closed. I don’t know if I want to remember last night’s dream or, on the contrary, wipe it from my memory for good. My rational mind fights the very idea, but every instinct I possess tells me it could really be my night visitor. That would certainly explain why I deleted all mentions of him in my mailbox . . . or did someone else take care of that for me? The Google results Ingolvinlinna’s network were serving me were evidently fake until I hacked the router; how much of what I browsed over the past months was real then?
Goose bumps trail across my skin, carrying in their wake a fear I can’t place, an intuition that once I know the truth, I won’t like it. Ever since I woke up in the hospital and listened to my father’s account of the fall of the Poseidon, I took for granted that I was but one of the many innocent victims of the disaster, but Kovius said he saved me; March and the others act like they know me already . . . Maybe my father wanted to save me too, in his own twisted way. From myself?
I gave you everything I couldn’t give your mother . . .
I jerk to a sitting position. “Where’s Kovius?”
Isiporho blinks as if I just rose from the dead before a warm grin pierces through his beard. “Probably smoking in the shed like he’s sixteen again,” he says with a wink in the direction of the window. Half-buried under a white blanket is a wooden roof I didn’t notice before. “Don’t worry; he’s going to pull himself together.” His lips go tight for a second. “This is a little too fucked-up even for a man like Dries.”
“What? You mean that thing in my neck? Why did he lose it like that? Why did you take me?”
His smug expression returns. “Looks like Dr. Bentsen’s magic cocktail has cleared out of your system . . . That’s more like the girl I know.”
I decide not to probe where he knows me from: I’ve got enough thugs in my contact list for now. I stand up from the bed and look at the door. My hands are shaking again. I ball my fists. “I don’t understand any of this,” I eventually say. “I want to talk to Kovius. I—”
The door handle moving nearly sends me hiding under the bed, until I remember that I need to man up—or so to speak. I’ll never get answers otherwise. So when March enters the room, I don’t chicken out; I square my shoulders and give him a level stare.
“I need to understand,” I say simply.
“Isiporho, can you please leave us?” March asks.
A silent question flickers in my warden’s eyes, but he complies nonetheless, casting me one final glance before the door closes behind him.
As if prompted by the doorknob’s final click, March moves closer. I stand still as a mouse, trying to appraise his mood. Unlike Kovius, whatever manic rage might simmer inside him he conceals under a perfectly calm façade. Yet in his silence, in the faint lines around his eyes, his mouth, I sense a weary sadness. It’s that side of him that scares me. Dries and Isiporho I can deal with. The secrets they’re hiding make my stomach churn, but I think the walls inside me are strong enough for me to face them. I won’t let them get under my skin.
But March . . . everything about him feels personal, intimate—possibly is,
for all I know. As he stands before me, studying me with equal interest, I struggle to keep my expression blank. My brain is working in a frenzy though, filing each detail to compare with whatever shreds of memory might still be lying around. His hair—I suspect he keeps it that short because it curls when it grows—the mesmerizing pattern in his blue irises, that faint bump on his nose: broken in the past?
I try to cross my arms so I won’t fidget, but I end up wrapping them around myself. I hope that looking away from his face will help, but I find myself just as taken with the rest of him. He’s rolled up the sleeves of his black turtleneck in perfectly flat and even folds. I perform a meticulous scan of the corded muscles, the veins running under his skin. I’m practically counting each hair on his forearms when I pause in my examination to glance at my own wrist and the chalk-white skin there. His is a dark shade of gold, almost coppery in places, on his hands, the bridge of his nose. There’s a band of paler skin peeking from under the black bracelet of his watch.
“Looks like you’re back from a vacation . . .” I mumble. I’m well aware that it’s a disastrous start the moment the words leave my mouth, but I’m desperate to ease the tension building between us.
Dumb as it may be, the question seems to shake him a lot more than it should. One of his hands jerks, rises to touch me, but he hesitates, and it drops back to his side instead. I hold back a sigh of relief. When he finally answers, his voice is low, tight. “Island, I’ve been looking for you. Everywhere. I spent months following cold trails, until I managed to track down one of Anies’s men in Rio. He was part of the team who transferred you to Ingolvinlinna. I questioned him.” I notice the way his jaw works silently before he adds, “He spoke.”
I’m not sure where the certainty comes from, but I know, without a doubt, that this man tortured someone to get here. To find me. To take me. I exhale slowly, inching away from him. “Who’s that Anies guy? Does he have something to do with my father and Kovius?”
