Monster of the Dark

by KT Belt

  “They said it hurt. Like getting shocked.”

  Janus nodded slowly. “Do you know why that is?” Carmen shook her head. “Then let me educate you,” he began.

  “Surrounding you and every other living being is a bioelectric field. I will not describe it scientifically. No one has yet been able to do so, though many have tried. Anyway, your bioelectric field is unique to you and only you, like a fingerprint. As a Clairvoyant, you can sense another person’s bioelectric field and get impressions from it. For instance, you can know when someone is lying to you, their mood, or even at times exactly what they are thinking. Most of these impressions will be imparted to you subconsciously, like reading a facial expression.”

  She nodded, though she really didn’t understand what he was saying. She always felt so dumb around him.

  “I’m sure you always knew your parents were around, even when you didn’t see them or hear them,” he continued.

  Carmen nodded again. That was true. She had just figured everyone was able to do that. “Why did it hurt when they touched me?” she asked.

  She remembered how they winced almost every time she made contact with them. Eventually, she just stopped doing it to spare them the pain. She had figured that was normal as well, but even so, she hadn’t liked it. It was hard to say why.

  Janus held out his arm. “Try touching me,” he said.

  Carmen looked at him, not sure if he was serious. The sincerity in his eyes, however, told her he was. She hesitantly reached out, her hand shaking a little. After a few wavering seconds, her finger touched his hand and she yelped. The surprise of the pain was more than the reality of it, and she cradled her finger for a moment before thinking nothing of it. Janus slightly rubbed the spot where she touched him, and a small part of her was surprised he was able to feel pain.

  “It hurt when you touched me because of the interaction of our bioelectric fields. For an average person, the bioelectric field of a Clairvoyant is so overpowering that they can be affected by it without physical contact, if the Clairvoyant is in a high state of charge.”

  “So, no one will ever be able to touch me?” she asked mournfully.

  Janus shook his head. “You can be touched. You pet Mikayla, don’t you?”

  “Yes,” she replied with a small smile. She hadn’t about that.

  “You are relaxed with Mikayla and have a low state of charge, though you are consciously unaware of it at the time,” he continued. “Your state of charge can be consciously controlled to the point that you can touch anyone, even another Clairvoyant, with no discomfort.”

  “How do I do that?”

  Janus shook his head again. “A lesson for a different day, perhaps. You are not here to learn how to hug people. You are a monster. This is why you are here.”

  He raised his hand and pointed a finger at one of the targets. A shaft of bluish-white light shot from his finger toward the target at the other end of the room. The lights in the room flickered just before it happened, and Carmen jumped from the thunderous noise. The impact on the target was no less dramatic. At first, it began in an explosion of bright light that was hard for her to look at. Janus extinguished the beam a second or two later, and all that remained of the target was white-hot, half-melted slag.

  “Essentially, this is radiation from a Clairvoyant’s bioelectric field. Its most tangibly felt quality is extreme heat,” he explained.

  Carmen looked at him and the target, her eyes large and unblinking. She nodded slowly.

  “You try,” he said.

  “I…I can’t do that,” she muttered, shaking her head.

  Janus looked at her hard, and she knew instantly that had been the wrong thing to say. Instead of protesting further, she took a few steps forward and aimed her finger at a target. Her hand was in the shape of a gun, and she thought she looked ridiculous, so she quickly changed to just point at the target like Janus had. Then she stopped.

  “How?” she asked before adding, “Please.”

  “How does a bird fly?” he responded. “How does a bat use echolocation? How does a dog wag its tail?”

  “But that’s different,” she whined.

  He waved away her words with a hand. “Not at all. For a Clairvoyant, creating beams of heat or even walking on the ceiling is as natural as flying is to a bird.” Carmen opened her mouth to protest, but Janus spoke again before she could say a word. “111724,” he began, “in time, much that you consider impossible will become mundane. Much that you thought you’d never be able to do shall summon not even a second thought. The limits you possess now are only the beginning of your potential.” He took a deep breath. “Now, try again. I don’t want to hear any more of what you can’t do. There is much to accomplish today.”

  Carmen shuddered. “Will I have to fight again?”

  “Eventually.”

  “I can’t do that.”

  As Janus looked at the quivering girl in front of him, his eyes narrowed. “We will see.”

  5

  The Mask

  Subject: 111724 Age: 8 Status: Forging

  It was all so easy now. There was no thought—not consciously anyway. There was only will, force, pain, and submission. Her every opponent had fallen to her with pathetically little effort. This had to be her seventh or eighth today; she had lost count, as she tended to do. For their part, however, she did sport a bruise or two from when she grew careless or, as Janus would say, when she allowed it to happen. He always argued semantics, but his constructs never stayed in her mind for very long. The here and now always took precedence over his nonsense.

  She took a casual step back, and the Construct’s foot passed where her face had just been. She hadn’t seen it coming and reacted faster than any terran was capable of; Carmen had just known it was coming. She didn’t know the future—no Clairvoyant did. She wasn’t even a Clairvoyant according to Janus and his semantics, not yet anyway. It wasn’t even extrasensory perception that kept her a step ahead. The body could move in only so many ways, and a kick to her face or at least some part of her was the only move the Construct had left. She’d engineered as much about three to five seconds prior. A block here, a dodge there, a feint, a blow, a counterblow—she may as well be pruning roses. It was all so easy. Once you knew a thing, it was easy to predict.

  This Construct was slightly better than most of his peers. She’d noticed over the years that, just as Janus said, there were slight variations from Construct to Construct, even if they largely looked the same. She could only assume they were intentional variations, though she didn’t see much point in them. Pure clones would probably be easier to make, although that was merely a guess. At this point in her life, however, guesses were her only refuge from the certain horrors of the next day.

  Today would be especially terrible. She had math class today—a math test specifically. She hated algebra. What was the quadratic equation again?

  She reeled back, and her face stung as the Construct slipped a punch through her defenses. She glared at the make-believe terran. That was no fair! She hadn’t been paying attention. This thing had no worries. It had no family either, though she had long forgotten what hers looked like. It was just a guppy bred and trained to be good sport before it was killed. It barely even provided that.

  A small rage ignited within Carmen, and suddenly this particular fight, at this particular moment, had a purpose. What it was exactly she didn’t know or really care, just like she ultimately didn’t care about most things now. The feeling surged through her, though, and she allowed it. She even conjured more to add to the fire—a bad memory here, a shattered hope there. She was young, but there was quite a lot to draw upon.

  The Construct hesitated for a second. They were dim beasts, no doubt about that, yet even they occasionally realized what she was and gave pause, especially now. The lights flickered and a spark ran along her arm, but she restrained herself to that. There was no reason to go all out; this would be over soon enough.

  It starte
d with a light blow to the Construct’s chest. She punched with all of her physical might, which wasn’t much. Her body had been disciplined, as Janus would call it, by years of fighting, but she was still a little girl against a full-grown man. The next hit, however, wouldn’t be nearly as gentle. Her body could be read like any other person’s, and her planted feet and twisting hips gave away that she was going to throw a left punch. It was all too obvious—even the Construct knew it was coming. Just as she hoped he would, he raised his arm to protect himself, and the trap was set.

  Her telekinetically-amplified punch broke his arm and continued on to graze his chin. Constructs didn’t feel any pain—she knew that better than they did. She didn’t fully hit him, but there was enough force to make him stagger and fall to his knees, just as she’d wanted. Carmen glared at him for a very short moment before she punched him in the throat. The Construct didn’t die, though; not yet, anyway. She had crushed his windpipe, and he fell to the ground, choking. His body gave spasms, but he didn’t die.

  “111724!” Janus started.

  “I know, I know,” Carmen muttered as she turned around. Her handler always watched her fights, but there were distinct times she wished he didn’t. “Every kill must be definite and clean,” she finished for him.

  Janus stared down at her. “Yet?”

  She shuddered. Although she couldn’t read him, he was extraordinarily gifted in seeing right through her. She may as well have been made of glass around him; she was at least as brittle. Carmen didn’t know if he read her or if he was just good at guessing what was on her mind. Either way, it was pointless to lie to him. He always knew.

  “He hit me,” she said.

  “So what?”

  “It was no fair. I was distracted.”

  Janus nodded and then asked, “Did it hurt when he hit you?” The question didn’t seem to be born out of any concern for her wellbeing. He could have just as casually asked her for the time.

  “Yeah, I guess so.”

  “So, you drew your own attention to induce a sting that forced you to refocus on the fight. There are more efficient techniques, but it was effective. The fight ended soon after. Still, that doesn’t explain why you were so harsh.”

  Carmen rubbed her bruised cheek. “He hit me.”

  “Because you allowed him to,” Janus retorted. She opened her mouth to speak, but he cut her off. “111724,” he began, “are you suggesting that he made you angry?”

  She glanced at the now dead Construct and then looked back at her handler. “Yes,” she said simply.

  “That is beneath you,” Janus remarked. “Always remember that mind and body are a team. We are not unthinking brutes. Use your emotions—cherish them, keep them close, and allow them to reach their full expression—but never let them rule you. Your emotions are part of the Dark, just like everything else about you. They are illogical and largely subconscious, which means they make an excellent motivating force for whatever aim you wish to achieve. Channel the explosion, focus it. A Clairvoyant is never more powerful than when their conscious reason is united with their subconscious desire. But do not cheapen yourself as you just did,” he said firmly. “Do you understand?”

  My conscious reason and my subconscious desires want me to run away, she thought, but she didn’t dare say it out loud. Carmen always had half a mind to protest. She never did, though.

  “Yes, I understand,” she said, even if her voice was a bit hollow.

  Janus looked at her sidelong. “That’s it? ‘I understand?’”

  Carmen looked him in the eye before glancing away quickly. “Yes.”

  “You don’t have anything else to say?”

  “No,” she said, trying to keep herself from shuddering again. “I understand.”

  “Perhaps you do,” Janus said softly to himself. Handler and charge were quiet for a brief moment before he spoke again. “But with you, it’s always the same: just enough and no more.”

  It was hard to tell if he was disapproving, complimenting, or just stating facts. She had no idea what he was talking about, anyway. Typical.

  Janus watched her for a few seconds longer before he sighed and started toward the door. “That’s enough death for now,” he said. “It’s time for school.”

  Carmen swallowed hard. She’d rather stay here and kill Constructs than take her test. One was wholly easier than the other. Despite that, she followed him out the room as obediently as always. She wasn’t bad at math, as far as she could tell, but she had no one to compare herself to, as all of her classes were one-on-one. She passed most of her assignments, but she eventually learned what a failing grade meant.

  Failure usually meant she went a day or days without food. By now, she gathered that bringing her back to life each time she died wasn’t simple, cheap, or even certain. Janus often scheduled a high calorie day the day after she failed a test. His comments were that the high stress would either shape her into a more fearsome monster than she was now or break her. Either outcome seemed like it would do. If she survived intact, that was good. If she was broken, she could be put back together again into a stronger whole, which was just as good. Carmen, however, had yet to be broken. Janus never said much about that, other than revealing a quick flash of surprise at her resiliency during one of his rare unguarded moments.

  All the same, she was now a different little girl than when she first arrived. Her blonde hair spent most of its time bound in a ponytail. She’d used to like styling her mother’s hair and her own, but that joy had been sacrificed early for sheer practicality. The word “why” was all but exorcised from her vocabulary, why or how only mattered in very specific instances. On the rare times she met someone new, her first thought was usually how she would beat them if they had to fight. Her body and her mind were now hard, focused, and disciplined. She didn’t bother with anything else—there was no reason to.

  Carmen and Janus walked to the classroom in silence as usual. It was hard to remember the last time he or anyone else had asked her a question as simple as “How are you?” Well, the doctors asked whenever she was nursing a broken bone or four, but Janus hardly ever showed any open concern for her welfare. When he did, a lesson was always contained within. She’d gotten used to it long ago. It was just how it was here. You didn’t talk to your handler, or anyone else for that matter.

  When they exited the elevator, she began growing anxious. Her life had devolved to constant testing, constant battle, and constant stress. Mental or physical, there was never any difference, she fought in both realms—mind and body were a team. But then there were math tests. She hated math tests. Janus opened the door to the classroom. Carmen dutifully entered, but only because she knew she had no choice.

  The classrooms were all the same and had no windows. There were never windows in any room Carmen had been in here. Trees and clouds were practically a figment of her imagination at this point.

  Around the solitary desk and PDD were her distracters for the day. They were a relatively new addition, and there were four this time. As usual, they wore body armor and were armed with rifles. Their sole goal was to try to shoot her at random intervals throughout the test. The distracters were never Clairvoyants or even Constructs; they were just average, normal people. Carmen could easily read them all, which made them quite purposefully a minor issue, albeit one that sapped some of her attention, of which she had little to spare. She felt her cheek where the Construct had punched her. Little attention to spare indeed.

  Janus nodded at all the distracters in turn. He then looked at his charge. “You have two hours, pass or fail.”

  The soft sigh of an eight-year-old girl filled the room. This was a hard test. Every test was hard. Most of the questions weren’t exactly beyond her; they just took an inordinate amount of concentration to solve. She sighed again and doubted she’d have dinner today. Her time had to be getting short, but she needed to take a second to sit back and regain her focus.

  One of her distracters took a shot at
her in that moment. It was the worst time he could have chosen, as her attention was fixed on nothing in particular, causing his thoughts to rattle in her head like boulders in an avalanche. She didn’t kill the distracter—she never killed the distracters. Janus had always been strict on that point, and she never complained about it. This time, she spoiled the shot simply by holding the trigger open telekinetically. She then turned her attention back to the test.

  Almost done, she thought—hoped. There were just a couple questions left. They were mind-numbingly, soul-destroyingly hard, but their number was few. She leaned back and a bullet just missed her. Carmen’s lips pressed together in a sneer. The distracters were annoying, but they were just a fact of her weird, violent life.

  Janus had told her their purpose. A Clairvoyant just existed like a hurricane just existed. She wasn’t supposed to focus her thoughts on any one thing, at least not consciously. He preached that conscious thought was inefficient and caused doubt or hesitation. Such weaknesses would never do. The distracters forced her from that state of being. If she focused too much on the test, they’d kill her. If she focused too much on them, she’d never pass. It was all nonsense. If he explained it to her fifty times, she’d still think he was blowing smoke.

  She hunched over the PDD. She could solve this problem. Perhaps, if she just…. But Carmen’s thoughts were broken as she stopped a bullet in midair just before it hit her. She tried to not let it faze her; her mind was already running in circles, trying to remember how to solve the problem. It was then that one of Janus’s earliest lessons came to mind. It was about doing without thinking about what you were going to do. He was usually referring to telekinetically snapping a man’s neck as opposed to solving math problems, but whatever worked. She smiled as the answer appeared in front of her like magic. Then she casually batted one of the distracters’ guns away with her hand. He fired anyway and just missed hitting one of his colleagues in the foot. Carmen didn’t notice that part, though; she was on to the next problem.