PANDORA

by Rebecca Hamilton

  Sandra disappeared as the lights came back.

  “I’m a junkie criminal,” Casper turned to me wide eyed. “A loser junkie criminal with no friends who burned your house down. It’s like every bad thing my dad ever said about me is true.”

  I stood up and hugged him. “Your dad’s an idiot. This is about me. They did that to get rid of me, right?” I turned to Echo.

  “You and your mother,” Echo confirmed. “We’ve spent the morning digitally combing through town records. There’s no sign of a Cresta or Julie Karr ever living in town. What’s more, there’s no trace of your mother ever working at St. Vincent’s.”

  “They’ve cleaned the planet of you, and they used your friend here as the scapegoat to cover their tracks,” Dahlia added, examining a mace that hung from the wall.

  “Sorry Cass, I didn’t mean for any of this to happen to you,” I said, looking down.

  “Hey, cars drive on roads, right?” He took my hand.

  “Right,” I said, squeezing it.

  “The problem is, we have no idea who’s behind this. I’m sending Dahlia to Crestview with a team to try and uncover answers,” Echo picked up a pen and started marking a sheet of paper.

  “I’m confused,” I said, twisting a strand of hair around my fingers for lack of my necklace and my steering wheel. “If they erased me from town, what good will that do?”

  “They erased you from people’s minds, from their public records,” Dahlia answered. Her voice betrayed annoyance. Her arms crossed herself again. “But the walls themselves are a different story.” She smirked. It was cold and bitter, but it was a smirk nonetheless.

  “She’s a Surveyor,” Echo said. “She picks up on the mental fragments that reside in areas. Cars, houses, even streets and fields; they all have mental signatures. And she can read them”

  “It’s like digging for fossils,” she added. “You break the surface, and you’d be surprised what you find. Two hours in that lovely town of yours and all your secrets will be mine.”

  “How comforting,” I said.

  “In the meantime, there’s something we need to discuss,” Echo said, and his fingers started running across the desk again.

  I’m really starting to hate that.

  “We have something of a situation,” he added. “You didn’t come alone.”

  “I know. I brought him,” I pointed to Casper.

  “You remember me; the crack head firebug,” Casper waved mockingly.

  “No, I mean the two of you didn’t come alone. You were followed.”

  My hand tightened in Casper’s. The blood in my veins went cold like ice, thinking of one of those freakish nightmares in front of me again.

  “What? Where-“

  “Calm down,” Echo stood, holding his hands out in front of him. “He was caught trying to sneak passed our security systems last night and has been apprehended. It’s under control.”

  I relaxed some, but just a little. Apprehended meant he was still here, in the building. If it was Jiqui or Ezra, or God forbid one of those meatheads that probably beat my mother until she couldn’t-

  Ugh! I can’t think about this.

  “The situation is a bit complicated though. It’s- Well, why don’t you see for yourself. Follow me.”

  He walked toward the door. I didn’t follow. Neither did Casper. He must have been out of his mind, thinking I’d want to look in the face of someone who helped kill my mom.

  “Cresta,” he held out his hand. “It’ll be okay. Trust me.”

  So I did.

  We walked out of his office and through a long hall. Students were all around us, sorted in groups dependent on age and activity. Soon, I realized that these were classes. To our right, I saw a gaggle of girls pulling at dumbbells and lifting more weight than I’d have thought possible. Jackson shot us a smile as we passed him, working his way through a class Echo called ‘An Exploration of Dead Languages’.

  Sounds useful.

  There were no walls or doors, leaving only empty space to stop the classes from bleeding into each other. Still, none of the students seemed to be distracted by anything going on around them. In fact, I had never seen people so focused, at least not in a classroom. There wasn’t one person, not one, who looked less than completely engrossed.

  “Breakers have to be well rounded,” Echo answered a question I hadn’t asked. “We train them physically as well as mentally, so that by the time they’re ready to go out into the field, they’re able to deal with whatever comes.”

  “You make it sound dangerous.” I felt like he expected me to say something.

  “It can be,” he answered. We pushed out of the facility and into the outdoors. It was cold today, and I shivered as the icy breeze hit me. “As Breakers, we’re often called to a series of widely varied vocations during our careers. The future is fickle and can twist in a thousand different directions. We have to be prepared for all of them.”

  “You, like, kill people?” Casper asked. He was shivering too. With his arms crossed, he rubbed along his biceps, trying to keep warm. Echo, though, seemed unaffected by the cold.

  Still, he winced when Casper asked his question. “That’s not really something we like to talk about, son. I’ve been a Breaker for almost twenty years now. I’ve ate with kings and fought with killers. I’ve helped people find the greatness inside of them and I’ve beat back mudslides. Now, I teach the next generation. And yes, I’ve done things that I wish could have been avoided, but that’s rarely the way of it. We fight for the future, and do what we have to in order to preserve it.”

  In front of us, crops popped up in rows as far as the eye could see. Every fifty feet or so, large planks jutted from the ground; like the sort you’d expect to see a scarecrow hanging from. Only, instead of a straw-filled man, these planks held large wooden ‘W’s painted red. People; Breakers, I was sure, shucked corn, bailed hay, and hauled water off in the distance.

  “This wasn’t here yesterday,” I muttered, my teeth chattering.

  “It was, you just couldn’t see it,” Echo answered.

  “Is that what the ‘W’s are for, to make people see what you want ‘em to?” Casper asked.

  “You’re shrewd for a baseline, aren’t you?” Echo smiled. “Illusions as big and sustained as what we use here, or what I assume was used on you in Crestview, require anchors; something to trick the human mind into ignoring what’s in front of it. Without the stipends we put in place last night, the sight of any ‘W’ on this property would send a message to your brain telling you to see something other than what’s actually there. We have over two hundred acres of farmland here. We also raise cattle and chickens, but anyone passing by would just see a barren field within the walls of a juvenile delinquent center, and beyond that, a wildlife preserve.”

  “You farm?” I asked. It hardly seemed like the exciting life of a band of suave superspies.

  “Where do you think the food we eat comes from?” He smiled. “Besides, this sort of work teaches the children about responsibility. It teaches them to work for what they have and that, even with abilities as powerful as the ones they possess, they’re like everybody else. They have to earn their way.”

  I was right. They were Breakers. They were students. Apparently, when the kids here weren’t doing three hundred pound bench presses or learning how to say ‘Thank you very much’ in Klingon, they’re made to grow their own food.

  This place sounds like a winner.

  “You’re thinking it sounds like a lot of work,” Echo looked at me. It’s like he was reading my mind. Wait? Was he reading my mind?

  “You’ll get used to it, I promise. And I think you’ll find this sort of life very fulfilling. I know I have,” he looked ahead as we weaved through the cornfields. “I want you to know I’m very excited about having you here Cresta. You’re starting late, but I firmly believe that, with the right training, you could do some real good in this world.”

  He wanted to keep me here; to train me
as a Breaker. But what did I want? I hadn’t even taken time to consider it.

  “Of course, the extent of your abilities will become clearer after the drugs leave your system.”

  The drugs.

  That’s right, my mother drugged me.

  “Do you have any idea who was after us?” I asked, wanting to change the subject.

  “Well, it could have been any number of people. There are several sects of renegade Breakers who are known to use prophecies to further their own ends. There are also black market fate dealers; Breakers who sell their talents to the highest bidder; usually wealthy individuals who want to make sure they stay wealthy. There are even rumors of organizations that recruit wayward Breakers and bend them to nefarious means. I was hoping that our prisoner might help shed some light on the whos and whats surrounding the attack on you. But he’s proved less than helpful and, I’m afraid that, without knowing why your mother defected in the first place, it’s really a jigsaw puzzle.”

  “I wanna know about her,” I said, leaning on Casper as we walked and careful not to look at Echo. “What was my mother like?”

  He was quiet for a second, long enough for me to think that he didn’t want to answer. But then he spoke. “Your mother was amazing. She was kind and brave. She knew what was right, and she wasn’t afraid of anything. That’s why I’m having such a hard time making peace with what’s happened. If you’d have asked me back then, who is the last person in the world you’d ever think would run away from her responsibilities-“

  His voice trailed off. I spoke quickly, afraid I was going to lose him to the memory.

  “What happened? I mean, what did you think happened to her?”

  “It was her third field mission. We hadn’t been married very long, but already, she was a star. She’d have been a legend, if she had sur-“

  He cleared his throat and looked away.

  “Sorry. I’m still not used to the fact that she actually did. She was part of a group of Breakers sent to Russia. They were tasked with stopping the illegal trade of missile codes that, if left unchecked, would have thrown the world into a third world war. Two months into their mission, something went wrong. In their last transmission, they reported curious happenings, but before help could arrive, the facility where they had been housed blew up.”

  My mind rushed back to yesterday, to our house exploding in a mess of fire, splinters, and screams.

  “In the wake of it all, no survivors were found.” He took a deep breath and wiped some moisture from his eyes. “Whatever really happened, I suppose, is anyone’s guess now.”

  “You loved her,” I said. It wasn’t a question, but he took it up as one.

  “Our marriages have little to do with love traditionally,” he answered. Once we got through the field, we took a sharp left toward a small rounded silver building. It looked more like and outhouse that anything else but, for my part, I really hoped it wasn’t.

  “Creating a Breaker is an intentional endeavor,” Echo continued. “It takes specific genetic codes in both partners and those codes have to work together in certain ways. These genes are, for the most part, hereditary. They run in families, in bloodlines. As such, when a young Breaker is of age, their genes are examined. They’re then placed with a member of the opposite sex whose genes most perfectly match their own. That ensures the best likelihood of children with potent gifts.”

  I pulled back instinctively, sort of disgusted at the whole prospect. Where was the romance in that? Where was the love? To Breakers, it seemed marriage had all the joy of working at a factory. It was a meat market, and they were shoved together like chickens, bent on producing as many eggs as possible.

  Casper summed up my feelings pretty perfectly when he said,” That sucks! It sounds so lonely.”

  “You think so?” Echo sounded genuinely surprised. “I always thought of it as comforting actually. To know that I was going to end up with the person who, even at a biological level, was perfect for me, to take away the possibility of human error or youthful impulsiveness; it helped me through a lot of nights.”

  “Maybe my mom didn’t agree,” I said. “Maybe that’s why she left; to find love.” It didn’t seem like such a mystery to me. I mean, who would want to live under some dictatorship where you couldn’t even choose who to spend the rest of your life with?

  “Perhaps,” he choked out. “It’s just, I thought that we-I suppose it doesn’t matter what I thought, does it?”

  Echo placed a palm on the silver outhouse. The door glowed and then opened. We stepped through.

  What looked like a small oval building was huge on the inside; much bigger than it had any right to be from looking at it. I wondered if, since this was apparently the place where prisoners were held, it had some sort of special guise around it; one that even Breakers couldn’t see through. If that was the case, Echo didn’t let on as we advanced.

  The walls were metal and studded with vent-like holes. A long hall stretched straight ahead with a green stripe running along the floor that seemed to point to a door at the end. Aside from that, and twin fluorescent lights that buzzed along the ceiling, the place was bare; without the flourish that existed in the rest of Weathersby.

  We headed toward the door, with only the buzz of the lights overhead to break the silence.

  “Stand down,” Echo said as we settled in front of the door.

  The air shimmered and solidified around us. The nothing rippled like a wave, revealing two armed guards. They, like the guards in Echo’s office the night before, held twin crossbows.

  I guess Breakers aren’t really ‘gun type’ people.

  Gold stars crisscrossed their skin, in absence of the ‘W’s I had gotten used to seeing. I smirked. Turned out I was right about the extra security. That slight feeling of accomplishment grew cold when I realized I had no way of knowing what else was being hid from me.

  The guards parted and, as they did, the door they did, the door behind them melted away into nothing.

  Breath caught in my throat, but not because of the physics bending illusions. After a day of floating amputees, surround sound holograms, vanishing plantations, and buildings that were bigger on the inside, a melting door was nothing.

  What was behind the door though, that was another story.

  I had prepared myself for one of the monstrosities that barged into my house the day my mother died. Bile burned in my throat at the thought of seeing one of them again; of watching Ezra float in front of me with his gruesome smile and deceiving eyes, of watching the fluorescent lights illuminate the scar on Jiqui’s face, of looking at the bloodied knuckles of one of those brutes who very likely beat my mother to death.

  But what I had not prepared myself for, what I doubt I could have ever prepared myself for, was the set of deep blue eyes that peered back at me now.

  Owen sat chained to a metal chair in the center of a padded room. His face was swollen and red. His nose was bent and bruised, and his jaw was a puffed and purple marble on his cheek. His clothes; the same clothes he wore the last time I saw him, were tattered and torn. Blood had dried and clotted in his hair, sending the dark hair that I used to love up in soiled and unruly spikes.

  His hands trembled, strapped against the arms of the chair. My first instinct was to run to him, to untie him, to clean him up, and take care of him.

  I hated myself for that instinct. I should hate Owen. He lied to me for two years. He set all of this in motion. He was part of whatever mysterious group set out to kill me; succeeded in killing my mother.

  But he also saved you.

  I shook that thought from my head, and resided my weakness to old habits. They were, after all, hard to break. I had loved him for so long, or who I thought he was anyway. Even after all that had happened, it was hard to turn that off, especially now; seeing him so completely broken.

  “This is the Breaker formerly known as Agent G-77,” Echo stomped over, stood behind Owen, and jerked his head back violently. Owen winced and
jutted forward; his mouth clenched tight. “And he has some explaining to do.”

  My heart jumped, partly because of how forcefully Echo was handling him, partly because of Owen’s pained reaction to it, and partly because of the way Echo had introduced him.

  Agent G-77

  The seventh letter of the alphabet followed by twin sevens.

  Seven, it was always seven.

  Chapter 9

  Girl in the Tower

  It took all I could do to hold myself back, not to rush Owen, to push Echo away, and stop him from hurting him. I hated myself for that. Of course, just because I was able to stop myself didn’t mean I was ready for what came next.

  Owen started to scream; horrible, blood-curdling, heartbreaking screams that cut through whatever thin defenses I had managed to guard myself with. Tears ran down Owen’s bruised and ruined face. Look at him. He had lied to me. He had lied to the people that I love. He had caused hurt and pain and God knows what else, but hadn’t he been through enough? What was Echo hoping to accomplish by being so rough with him?

  Echo pulled harder at his head. Owen jerked back; his body arched and rigid. I looked at Casper, hoping for some sort of direction, but only found a similar confusion. Looks like I wasn’t the only one who didn’t know how to feel.

  Owen’s screams sharpened into a shrill guttural thing, like someone was pulling out his insides, and I couldn’t take it anymore.

  “That’s enough!” I screamed, but didn’t move. No matter what was happening, and regardless of the tears that I had failed to keep from pouring past my eyes, I couldn’t make my body run to him. I just couldn’t.

  Echo looked up at me, his hand still pressed to the back of Owen’s head. “Almost, but not quite yet.”

  He yanked again and Owen pulled one last time. I though he was going to die or pass out or something, but as Echo inched away, Owen let out a sigh of relief.

  “Extraction’s complete,” Echo said, looking at the guards. “You can let him go now.” He bent so that he was close to Owen, who was panting exhaustedly. “You did good, kid.”