For my father.
For my mother.
For me.
I used all of my mental power to dig into my mind and find Charlie, and my grip on reality began to slip. I could feel my body shake and my eyes roll back into my head, and with all of my might, I screamed at the top of my lungs.
“You’re going to pay for this, Charlie! You hear me?! You’ll pay!”
Chapter 29:
What Doesn’t Kill You
“You’re going to pay for this, Charlie! You hear me?! You’ll pay!”
Awaking to pure black nothingness, a familiar voice was distorted to a shrill as it echoed painfully loud throughout the open space.
Flick!
The spotlight from before popped on and shone brightly onto me.
Flick!
The other spotlight appeared a hundred yards away or so.
It was Ryan, and even from my distance, I could tell he was furious.
“You’re going to pay for this, Charlie! You hear me?! You’ll pay!” He yelled again with even more ire in his voice, but there was no echo that accompanied it the second time.
It was clear as day, and so too was it clear that the time had come for me to show Ryan the last things that I had to offer him.
“You’re right to be angry, Ryan.”
“You’re a liar and a murderer!” he screamed.
I could feel his visceral emotions. When someone goes mad like that, they tend to not think about their actions so much, and they live off pure adrenaline. That was exactly what I needed to see my plan for Ryan through.
“Now that you know the truth, Ryan, there are some other things I need to show you. Things you’re going to need to know.”
“Don’t say another damn word!” Shaking his head, Ryan made a move. With me in his sights, he put his head down and bolted. Quickly getting to top speed, even the spotlight had trouble keeping up with him as he blazed across the abyss.
At the rate he was going, he would collide with me in a matter of seconds, but something told me that it wasn’t the time or place to fight. “No, Ryan. Not here. Not now.”
I tightly closed my eyes and thought of the best setting to begin engaging Ryan. The sounds of a violent wind and crackling electricity began to fill the emptiness around us, and I felt a vortex encircle me. The weight on my feet lessened and lessened until I was finally lifted up into the infinite void. I focused all my mental power on going deep into my memories to get to where we needed to be, and a tear in the black space allowed it to happen.
After just a moment, the intense commotion around us began to fade, and I felt the vortex gently lowering me back down until my feet felt something firm below. Eyes still closed, I relished the cool breeze blowing across my cheek and the warmth of what had to be the sun on my brow. An early spring scent was in the air, and while part of me thought it was nostalgic, another part of me hated where I had taken us. Upon opening my eyes, I was anything but surprised to see the field behind Mr. Reno’s house.
Looking down, I was in my eighteen-year-old body, wearing my favorite t-shirt and jeans. It was just before I was going to leave for the marines, and I was already in pretty good shape. I found Ryan standing twenty yards away, looking identical to me.
He charged, closing the distance between us while yelling, “Everything is all your fault! You ruined my life! Now I’m going to erase you from my mind so that you can’t hurt anyone else.”
“Yes, Ryan. Channel your anger and attack me!”
He put all of his force behind a right hook toward my cheek.
Narrowly dodging his fist, I knelt down and left jabbed him in the gut, knocking the wind out of him. “Pitiful, Ryan!”
He stumbled back, then gathered himself, and even more livid, came back with a left uppercut toward my chin.
I leaned back making him miss, then landed a right jab to his neck, causing him to gasp even more. “That’s not going to get it done, Ryan!”
Trying desperately to breathe, he doubled over. Through his hate, he inhaled deeply, looked up, and shot me a dirty look. Next, he took his first step right for me with his head down. Like a bullfighter, I took two steps to the right and out of his way, sending him tumbling to the ground. It was clear that I had learned more about fighting at Gates as a kid than Ryan had learned his entire life, and that just wouldn’t do.
“You find out that I killed your father, ruined your mom’s life, and paralyzed you, and all you can do is swing and miss? If you’re going to beat me, you’ll have to do better than that.”
“Screw you!” Popping up he offered more swings and more misses.
He received more counterstrikes from me.
“Ow!” Out of breath, Ryan stopped flailing and just looked at me with fire in his eyes.
Above, thick black clouds began to cover the entire sky, and our battle was momentarily darkened. Intermittent lightning strikes in the distance provided a strobe light effect that gave each of us a clear glimpse every few seconds.
“To defeat your enemies, you must fight them where they are weak. If this truly is my mind we’re in, you should know what I’m going to do before I even do it. Use that against me.”
A bit of confusion leaked through the anger on Ryan’s face as he tried to decipher my advice. Finally, with a scowl, he nodded in my direction and shut his eyes tightly. He began to shake violently as he concentrated hard to find the knowledge and skills that I possessed for hand-to-hand combat. A red radiance enveloped him, and I could feel my presence getting weaker the stronger his glow became. Then the light around him dissipated, and he opened his eyes. Our stares couldn’t have been any more intense.
With an unmistakable newfound confidence, he took the first step toward me to resume our fight. “You bastard!”
His blows came in rapid-fire and with much more precision, not allowing for any rebuttals.
Left jab at my eye.
I blocked.
Right hook at my jaw.
I dodged.
Swinging back kick to my ribs.
Landed.
“Oomph!” Stumbling back, I was impressed by his decisions, but knew I needed to continue antagonizing him to bring out his best. “Is that all you got?!”
Without missing a beat, he came at me with a flurry of quick punches, knees, and elbows that I was able to block or dodge. Finally, he put everything he had into a massive roundhouse kick to the side of my head.
“Ahhh!” The force of his foot flipped me head over heels, and I hit the ground with such an impact that I bounced twice, then lay there for a moment.
Ryan stood over me. The little bit of light that was creeping through the clouds was completely eclipsed by his silhouette. The flash of the lightning strikes compared to the boom of thunder meant they were very close, and I knew that our time in that place in my mind was about to be up.
“This is for being one of the Padre’s thugs!” With a heavy foot, he attempted to come down dead center on my face and end it all.
Harnessing my mental power, I focused on another time and place for the next phase to begin, and the vortex returned, sucking both of us up into the black infinity and dropping us elsewhere.
We both opened our eyes, and we were standing twenty feet apart in the sandy hills of Pakistan. As always, it was arid and blistering hot, but the thunderclouds from the field had followed and the thunder roared. Sensing the change in my clothing, I looked down to find that I was in my camo fatigues and armed with my trusty knife. Again, we looked identical with blades already drawn.
With a piercing glare, I did my best to rile him up again. “What are you waiting for?”
Dagger pointed, he sprinted toward me, again attempting to end it all.
With a loud clink of my blade against his, I diverted his stab, then shoved him to the ground. “More of this silliness, Ry
an? Come on!”
Getting up, he lunged at me again, but with more control, and we sparred for several seconds.
Tink.
Tink.
Tink.
After parrying one of his swings, I caught him with a left hook in the mouth, staggering him back.
Ryan spat blood at my feet, and surprisingly, a maniacal grin swept across his face. “You won’t hurt anyone anymore, Charlie. I’m taking you out!” He took a giant leap back and closed his eyes again.
He entered his meditative state much more quickly this time, and a brighter orange aura encapsulated him. His shaking was much less intense as I felt my essence being drained. He was learning, I was dying, and I couldn’t have been happier.
“That’s it, Ryan. Take my energy and use it against me.”
In one motion, his eyes opened, and he dashed at me, swinging the knife with much more accuracy. The scuffle was highlighted by the repeated contact of metal on metal.
Tink.
Tink.
Tink.
Following Ryan’s last attack that I repelled, he kneed me in the ribs and head butted me back. While I was still reeling from the blows, he pounced at my face with his knife, and it took everything I had to dodge the point of the blade, but the razor-sharp edge still managed to slice a sizable wound into my cheek.
Backhanding his thrusting arm, I was able to knock the weapon from his hand. He followed that move with an elbow to my temple, dropping me to the ground and nearly causing me to lose consciousness. I purposely remained on the ground as Ryan grabbed his knife and again stood over me, determining my fate. Thunder and lightning boomed all around us as he firmly gripped the handle of his knife with both hands and raised both of his arms up above his head.
He began the motion down, aiming right for my skull. “This is for my father!”
Tapping into my dwindling strength, I commanded the vortex to swoop us away through the void to yet another time and place. A calmness came over me as we shifted between locations, but it was only a few seconds before we were plopped down in the rotting old steel mill where I had seen the vile product the Padre had gotten rich from. We were both dressed in my normal, dark work garb and both armed with my favorite 9mm.
Thunder and lightning rumbled just on top of the building, causing the whole structure to shake.
Finally making eye contact with me again, Ryan fired a shot in my direction while he dove behind some rusty machinery. Instinctively leaping behind a wall, I got out of the way just in time for his bullet to whiz past my head instead of into it. Getting to my feet, I peeked around the corner, and I could see Ryan’s head sticking out from the machinery enough to get a clear kill shot had I wanted to. Instead, I aimed at the metal plate below him and pulled the trigger.
Ping!
Ryan ducked down but popped out only his gun to return fire.
Pop! Pop! Pop! Pop!
“You’re wasting bullets, Ryan! That’s not how you get vengeance.”
“Go to hell!”
Eyeing a heavy piece of metal within my reach, I grabbed it and chucked it across the room.
Clink, clink, clink…
It worked. Ryan rolled out from his cover and emptied his magazine in the direction of the noise, giving me the opportunity to sprint from my position and kick the gun from his hand. As a surprising counter, he grabbed my foot, dropping me to the ground beside him. Climbing on top of me and holding me down, he reached over my head for the gun. We were both shaking as he tried to impose his will on me, and I resisted all the more. He inched closer to my gun, and I used what energy I had left to hold him back while working to free my other hand.
Getting impatient, he lunged for my weapon, giving me just enough space to hurl him off of me while never losing my weapon. As I popped up, he scurried to grab his gun and then disappeared through a door into the dark maze of the steel mill’s maintenance area.
Keeping up my guard, I slowly followed behind him. I entered the hallway where the walls were a finely meshed fencing with various doorways to the equipment that used to drive the whole operation of the place. Ryan could have been lurking in any of them, so staying low, I weaved back and forth from wall to wall, pointing my weapon in each of the openings, ready to fire. He had to have gone deeper into the mill since I wasn’t able to find any sign of him.
“What are you hiding from, Ryan? Don’t you want me dead?”
Suddenly, it felt like the life was being sucked right out of me as I stumbled into an open room between hallways. I could make out a bright yellow glow from one of the corners, and I knew what Ryan had gone there to do. The thunder and lightning felt like they were inside the building at that moment, and I knew we were getting close to the end.
With my vitality being drained down to nothing, I dropped to my knees and watched the yellow glow dissipate. A lightning strike came down directly on Ryan, and between my long blinks, I watched him vibrate as energy left my mind and entered his. He was finally ready to exact his revenge, and from the darkness I heard his final words.
“This is for me!”
Pop! Pop! Pop! Pop!
Thunder and lightning exploded through the ceiling of the mill, causing the ancient building to groan. Numbness overtook my body as I watched chaos reign when the whole structure started to fold in on itself. With my remaining energy, I made the vortex take us to our final destination.
This time an overwhelming silence swooped in, and the smell of the woods filled my nose as I was placed onto the ground. I knew exactly where I was. It was night, and I was behind the Oceanic Laboratories building.
Ryan was in the parking lot screaming my name. “Charlie!”
That was when I communicated with him in the only way I knew he would listen. Snap!
“Charlie!”
Snap! Then I used an inner voice to communicate with him. “Be quiet or be dead.”
Waiting to hear his angered yelling, all I heard was the wind, so I continued talking between our two minds. “Your surroundings are as important as the enemy. Never get caught in the open without a plan.”
I could hear slight movement just in front of the building.
“Focus on deliberate, fluid motion, like an animal.”
There was more obvious rustling, so I moved swiftly through the shadows in his direction, and cracked him in the jaw.
“Ow!”
By the time he fought through the pain to look for me, I was already out of sight again.
“Control your breathing. Exhale in tandem with your movements.”
I blinked, and he was no longer in the location where I had stuck him. “Good. Approach the enemy from behind, and strike without hesitation.”
Hearing the faintest footsteps behind me, I moved just in time to sweep his legs, slam him in the chest, and disappear back into the darkness.
“Ahhh!”
“That won’t do, Ryan. Now, live in the shadows. Strike from behind. No hesitation.”
Again, he vanished from the ground, and a moment later, I heard the sound of Ryan’s fist through the air as he landed a pulverizing kidney shot to my back. Before I could writhe in pain, he had already gotten his forearm around my neck and was squeezing the little life that I had left out of me.
“Good, Ryan! As I get weaker, you should get stronger.”
Blinking as the end became eminent, everyone I had loved and wronged flashed before my eyes.
Sarah. Lucy. Joey.
“I’m sorry.”
Ryan. Stacy. Ryan.
“I’m sorry.”
I used the last bit of energy I had to send off a message to Ryan, and then everything turned to nothing for the last time.
“No! I can’t breathe!”
An intense flash of light whited out everything around me, and I squinted, trying to keep my view. Pictures from th
e past appeared in front of me. Charlie playing as kid. Charlie in high school, courting Sarah. Charlie fighting the war. Charlie being a father and husband. Charlie working for the Padre. Charlie in jail. Charlie committing…
Before I saw the end of Charlie, my perspective faded to black. Having seen Charlie’s entire life in an instant, I forgot all of the rage I had just felt for him and became aware that I could no longer feel his presence.
To be sure he was gone, I called out to him in the abyss. “Charlie! Charlie?”
But there was no answer.
“Charlie! Where are you?”
Not only was there no response, but I couldn’t even feel his essence around me like I always had since the migration. And in being alone for the first time in my mind, it was strange. I thought I would feel relief and happiness. I thought I would feel independent and free. Instead, there was a certain emptiness that didn’t bring me any comfort. Quite the opposite, an intense melancholy quickly overcame me.
Looking around the black space, I wondered what would be next for me. It wasn’t a second later that, similar to before I encountered Charlie, my mind began to spiral like an unplugged drain. My thoughts began to slip away as a throbbing migraine set in. God-awful, unbearable agony overflowed from my mind as my reality was sliding into the infinite darkness.
Whoosh!
Blurry at first, I wiped my eyes only to be shocked half to death. I was back in Auto, sitting at the ID reader, and Atlas the Ant was ready for me.
“Greetings, Ryan! Thanks again for your investment in Atlas Digenetics with your purchase of a standard mind migration and host package. You’ve come a long way to get to this point, and the next phase of your journey begins with your acceptance of the terms and conditions that were laid out in your migration contract. To review the terms and conditions, please say ‘Review’ or tap the Review button on the hologram below. Otherwise, simply say ‘I accept’ or you can press the Accept button.”
More than confused, I felt like I had awoken at the end of some cheesy movie where the whole story was just a dream. But the more I took in my surroundings, the more I understood what was happening wasn’t exactly real.
Between Two Minds: Awakening Page 35
