Stillbringer

by Zile Elliven

  A new thought occurred to her, and she jumped on it. “You’re a norm, though. How could you have a shield? What’s special about you?”

  “As far as I can tell, I am perfectly normal.”

  She laughed and then moaned again, clutching her head. “Even a shut-in could tell you’re special. Take it from me, I would know.” She released her protective hold on her head to pat his arm but snatched it away after minimal contact. “Sorry, I know you don’t want me to touch you.”

  “Listen, about that . . .”

  “Don’t worry about it, I get it,” she said quickly as if trying to make him feel better about whatever misperceived issues she thought he had.

  “No, I don’t think you do.” He noticed a trickle of blood run down her face past her ear. “I need to clean up your head wound.”

  Searching, her hand found the blood, and she winced. “Sorry, I must be wrecking your sheets.”

  “Heaven forbid that happen,” Fourteen said, rooting through the box he had used earlier when bandaging her feet.

  She blinked at him and then smiled. “You make jokes, too? I never would have guessed.”

  “I don’t make a habit of it, but sometimes it comes out unexpectedly.”

  “Like diarrhea?” Her face turned the color of a boiled lobster. “I can’t believe I said that out loud.”

  Fourteen looked at her flaming face and burst out laughing. Doubling over as great whoops of laughter erupted from his body, he clutched his stomach. He wiped a stray tear away from one eye and tried to calm himself, but one look at Aeyli’s stricken face sent him over the edge again.

  It took several minutes before he stopped laughing, but when he did, he felt different. On the inside, something tight had cracked open, allowing a part of him to come out into the sun for the first time in a long time. It reminded him of what it felt like when he touched Aeyli.

  “I didn’t know you could do that.”

  “Neither did I.” The smile on his lips felt odd, but welcome.

  “Please don’t hold the things I say against me. I wasn’t brought up properly—or at all, really.”

  The reminder of the injustice of her upbringing sobered him instantly, causing the respite from his mental conditioning to end abruptly. Walls slammed in around him once again, leaving him empty and alone with the cold, but instead of feeling normal like it used to, it felt constricting and uncomfortable.

  He busied himself with laying out the items he would need to clean up a head wound and took the time to center himself. “Let me look at it again. Please,” he added as an afterthought. Aeyli deserved to have someone treat her with respect. He should be able to manage that much, at least.

  She nodded her assent but looked fearful. “Can you put the spray stuff on it first?” Her voice was almost steady.

  Canister already in hand, he applied a small amount to her head before touching the wound. “Minimal damage. Likely you won’t even notice it in two days, but I’ll clean it to be safe.” His gloved hand lingered in her hair as he pulled it away. The blood stood out sharply against the pale blonde of her hair, and his jaw tightened before his conditioning smoothed away the anger.

  “That’s comforting. When my head bounced off the wall, I was sure it was all over.” She smiled weakly as if she had made a joke.

  Blood pounded in his ears as anger roared back though him, and his hand crushed the ointment he had picked up. He barely registered it oozing over his hand as the programming in his mind fought to reestablish dominance. In the span of two heartbeats, he was free of the emotion.

  The cotton pads took care of the mess, but the container was ruined, so he threw it away. After cleaning her head with peroxide, he used an ointment-covered pad and applied it to the wound. “No bandage, I think.”

  Aeyli had stayed silent during his slipup, but he could see that she was thinking. When she finally spoke, he wasn’t surprised at her topic of choice.

  “You seem different than when I first met you.”

  He nodded slowly, his face blank. They needed to talk about the side effects he was experiencing around her. He wasn’t going to get a better opening, but he didn’t know where to begin. If he got it wrong, she might run from him again. The thought of chasing her and getting into another fight made his bones ache with fatigue. At this point, he would be lucky if he made it out the door without falling on his face.

  It wasn’t easy for him—the talking thing. Verbal conflict resolution was not something his trainers had felt important to add to his repertoire. In hindsight, he was beginning to think he should have been clear about her effect on him from the beginning. He doubted her family had discussed anything important with her during her captivity, and the last thing he wanted to do was remind her of that time. He’d locked her in a car, and she’d run from him the moment she got the chance. How long would she stay if she found out he had been lying to her?

  He opened his mouth to say something, anything, but closed it again. It was hard to think with the constant ringing in his ears. He shook his head slightly, trying to make it go away, and the room began to spin.

  “I don’t know you well, but you seem like a fairly”—Aeyli bit her bottom lip as she searched for the right word. Fourteen’s eyes tracked the gesture and felt something inside him respond to it. He blinked, struggling to focus—“contained person. And while this has been a stressful day so far, you have been acting less contained than you were when I met you.”

  He wondered if she had figured it out on her own.

  “Do you think it’s possible I could be having an effect on you that is being mitigated by your shield thingy?”

  Fourteen braced himself and dove in. “I haven’t been entirely honest with you about your effect on me.” He stood up and paced the room, ignoring the dizziness as it intensified. He had been ignoring the exhaustion for days. He should be able to do it for a few more minutes until he could explain things properly.

  Her eyes showed nothing but confusion. “Wait, so being around me does make you angry?”

  “It’s not as simple as that.” He slowed his pacing, certain he was going to mess this conversation up. Who could blame him, really, with the walls shimmering around him so distractingly? If the floor would only hold still so he could walk, he might be able to think. The world tilted alarmingly, but he managed to stay standing.

  “Hey, are you okay?” Aeyli was standing now, though he hadn’t noticed it happen, and was holding on to his elbow. “Fourteen, how long have you been awake?”

  Her question hit him like an order, and he straightened to attention. “Sixty-six-point-five hours.”

  “Sweet Vis, that’s way too long! Why were you up for so long?”

  He snapped into report mode. “My last handlers had me stay on guard for my previous mission. They knew I have advanced endurance, so they had me stand guard while they slept. When I met you, I stayed awake to observe you while you slept and haven’t had a chance to rest since.” He shouldn’t have been able to speak even the small amount of information he was telling her. Why was he reacting as if Aeyli was his handler?

  “Well, your handlers . . . what were their names?”

  “I called them Steve and Frank.”

  “Steve and Frank sound like horrible people. You need to sleep, right now.” She tugged at his arm, surprising him with her strength.

  The command rolled over him, and he almost dropped to the floor, but there was something important he had to do first. Something he needed to make sure of. “Don’t . . . leave.” He managed to slur out.

  “I promise I won’t go until we’ve talked first. Now sleep.” She managed to pull him to the bed, thankfully, because her last words drove him to unconsciousness.

  Chapter Nine

  Aeyli

  Sixty-six hours was a ridiculous length of time to stay awake. Aeyli wasn’t surprised the poor man dropped as soon as she mentioned the idea. It was kind of abrupt, though. What would he have done if there wasn’t a bed around,
prop himself against a wall?

  She sat next to him, content to watch him sleep for the time being. Everything had been so hectic she hadn’t had a chance to catch her breath or think.

  She felt like an idiot for running away instead of talking to Fourteen. It was extreme naivety and arrogance to think she could do this alone, but she really hadn’t wanted to involve anyone else in her affairs. At this point, it didn’t look like Fourteen was likely to allow her to leave him out of it. Truth be told, she was relieved. If she hadn’t landed in his lap last night, she would be dead now and she knew it.

  Her family wanted her dead.

  The concept continued to astound her, even though she'd had weeks to adjust to it. Sterling, her own brother, wanted her dead. Of everyone in her family, he had been the one she was closest to.

  As children they had been confidants and partners in crime—always escaping their nanny and having adventures together. After she’d been confined, he had come to her once and had spent the entire time crying. He never came back after that. She assumed it had been too hard for him to be around her so she didn’t blame him—or so she had tried to tell herself.

  A sharp pain in her hand caused her to break from her gloomy reverie, and she looked down. It was clenched tightly around the material in Fourteen’s jacket, and it was hurting her. She examined the leather closely, running her hands along the front and discovered that there were hard plates woven inside the material. When her fingers found a plate, they felt funny, almost as if they were touching something that wasn’t there.

  If she hadn’t had such a disastrous object lesson in the cemetery about tinkering with her magic, she would have considered trying to play with the sensation. Instead she decided to let it be. She’d ask Fourteen about it when he woke up.

  She should get up and leave him alone to sleep instead of gawking at him and feeling him up in his sleep like a pervert, but she couldn’t find the will to do so. Her eyes caressed his face, taking in the strong line of his stubble-covered jaw and his full mouth, relaxed in sleep. The faint lines at the corners of his eyes didn’t detract from his looks but, instead, enhanced them. She thought they made him look competent and experienced, and she had firsthand knowledge that he was both.

  A strand of dark hair had drifted near one of his eyes, and she brushed it away before she could stop herself. It was so soft that her fingers lingered for a moment, relishing how it felt. His entire countenance was like a personal invitation for her to explore at her leisure.

  She jerked herself out of her thoughts. What the heck was wrong with her? The last thing Fourteen needed was for her to be creeping on him in his sleep.

  Carefully, she rolled away from him and sat up. Maybe she could take a walk inside the warehouse to clear her head. The thoughts and feelings Fourteen evoked may have been new to her, but she knew enough to understand both parties needed to be awake and consenting. He had clear feelings about touching, and she didn’t want to violate his wishes no matter what her thoughts were on the matter.

  Before she made it out of the bed, a hand stopped her, grabbing her arm. She looked at his face, but Fourteen was still asleep, so she tried to gently tug her arm out of his grasp.

  It was no use, the more she tried, the closer he pulled her in. She felt like a fish getting reeled into a fisherman’s boat. By the time she gave up, she was nearly on top of his body with her face pressed against his hard chest. This was kind of like consent, wasn’t it?

  Now that she had been made aware of it, the quiet nothingness his jacket was giving off was obvious. She wondered why she hadn’t noticed it before in the cemetery. Maybe it had something to do with being attacked by people who were supposed to love her, she thought wryly.

  The nothingness was a soothing hum against her cheek and encouraged her to relax. He had no right to smell as good as he did—a mixture of metal and musk. It was exactly like she imagined sin would smell like. She gave in and buried her face into his jacket to breathe in his scent. His smell and the lulling hum of his jacket encouraged her to sleep too. Hopefully he wouldn’t react too badly to waking up with her in his arms.

  ✽✽✽

  Things skittered and writhed at the edges of her vision as she walked down a dimly lit hallway. She kept jerking around to try and catch whatever was there, but the hall behind her was always empty. Eventually she forced herself to stop, not wanting to give the whatever the satisfaction of seeing her jump. As she continued down the hall, the way got brighter, but the scrabbling at her periphery intensified. Before long, she came to a plain white door that stood out in the gray, dingy hall. Dream logic dictated she open it, so she did, noting that the whatever fell behind as she passed through.

  On the other side of the door was a stark, white room with three men gathered around a large, black sphere that dwarfed the room.

  One of the men, a short, balding man in glasses and a lab coat, was telling a tall, powerfully built man in uniform, “I don’t know why the adjustments aren’t taking hold, Colonel. It usually only takes one treatment to permanently delete a subject’s memory—two at the very most.” He pulled off his glasses and cleaned them nervously.

  The Colonel glared at the sphere then turned to face the short man. “I seem to recall you telling me you had perfected this method. Called it foolproof, if I’m not mistaken.” The glint in his eye told Aeyli he didn’t feel mistaken.

  None of the men paid any attention to her arrival, so she cautiously ventured closer to the sphere.

  “We have, and it is!” The other man in the room also wore a lab coat and was tall and painfully thin. He twitched as he spoke and made Aeyli think of a praying mantis. “We’ve never had results like these. It’s fascinating, really. Just fascinating.”

  Unlike his associate, the short man sensed the danger exuding from the Colonel and rushed to appease him. “Up to now our method has been one hundred percent effective. If there is a fault, it’s with the subject, not us. He must be defective in some way.” He put his glasses back on and valiantly pretended he wasn’t shaking in fear and drenched in sweat.

  The Colonel stared at the short man impassively for a moment, savoring his fear, then relented. “He’s just stubborn, is all. Hit him again. It will take eventually. We just have to keep at it.”

  “With all due respect, sir, if the subject has any more treatments we run the risk of damaging him permanently.” The tall man pointed to the readings on the screen beside him. “Why not just scrap him and start with a new subject?”

  “Because he’s mine.” A grown man saying such a childish thing should have been amusing, but his harsh tone sent chills down Aeyli’s spine.

  Aeyli walked around the sphere and saw a small, round window on one side with a panel next to it. Inside lay a familiar-looking teenage boy strapped to a metal frame, with enough wires sticking out of his body to make him look like a porcupine. She turned to look at the trio behind her. How could they talk about this boy so callously?

  The Colonel stalked over to where Aeyli stood and used his fist to smash a button next to a speaker. “Do you hear that, boy? You’ll stay in there until you know who you belong to!”

  The boy’s eyes cracked open slightly. They were ringed with dark circles, and the edges were lined with pain, but he shakily held up a hand as far as his restraints would allow and gave the man a one-fingered salute. Aeyli recognized his storm-gray eyes and gasped. Horror stole over her, leeching strength from her body. How dare they?

  A wordless growl escaped the Colonel. “Do it.”

  “But . . . sir!”

  “Do it now!”

  “Yes sir. Prep Subject Fourteen, maximum dose this time.”

  After snapping the ominous pronouncement to his partner, the short one bustled around the room, poking at keyboards and squinting at computer monitors. The tall one took a large vial of clear liquid and inserted it into a compartment near the window.

  She couldn’t let this happen, but this was only a dream. What could she
do?

  When ear-piercing screams began to emerge from the sphere, her mind kicked into overdrive and turned things around—what couldn’t she do?

  She spotted a heavy-looking microscope, picked it up and swung it at the head of the Colonel, who collapsed to the ground like a bag of ground meat. Neither of the scientists reacted, so she gave them the same treatment. Both of them fell to the ground without uttering a sound. She looked around the equipment with increasing distress, spurred on by the heart-wrenching noise of Fourteen’s screams.

  First she tried to open the sphere, but it had no visible latch on the outside, so she abandoned the idea. Then she tried to read the screens to get some idea of how to stop the machine, but the words swam in front of her and refused to take any kind of recognizable shape.

  The stress of the situation was causing her higher mental functions to go haywire, and she became increasingly frantic. Smashing random buttons on the machine did nothing; neither did pounding on the window of the sphere helplessly. Her knowledge of computers was limited to what she had learned from a helpful librarian three weeks ago, and it hadn’t prepared her for this.

  She had to do something, the boy’s screams were getting weaker, and they kept getting cut off by choking sounds.

  She had to stop reacting and think. She tried to remember what the short man had been doing right before Fourteen started screaming, but all she knew for certain was that he had been poking at one of the computers. With no other options, she ran over and began to trash the computer station, hurling the monitors to the floor, ripping out chords and smashing hard drives. Her systematic destruction of the lab was so noisy that it took a moment for her to realize the screaming had stopped. The monitor she was using to beat against a tower fell to the ground with a loud crash and she raced back to the sphere, fearful of what she would find.

  It was dark inside now, but it was still sealed tight. She could neither see nor sense any movement inside.

  A scream of frustration tore from her throat, and she kicked the sphere as hard as she could. With a hiss, a crack appeared in the smooth surface of the sphere, revealing an opening. She wedged her fingers into the crack and heaved, expecting to encounter resistance, but it slid open smoothly.