The Unseen Trilogy

by Stephanie Erickson

Owen slammed me into the chair across from David’s desk. Tracy was already there, mid-conversation with David. Both of them were visibly upset.

  “The witnesses are being handled, and I don’t mind telling you, there were a lot of them,” she said.

  “Sorry to interrupt,” I said, rotating my shoulder and trying to work out the ache Owen had left there after jerking me down four flights of stairs.

  “Actually, we’re talking about you,” David said.

  Owen interjected before he could continue. He paced the small office rapidly, making me dizzy. “You said you weren’t a murderer. You dumped me for being one, even though I’ve never killed someone like that—someone who wasn’t actually a direct threat to me or thousands of other people.” He pointed his finger accusingly at me, but the guilt I should’ve felt eluded me.

  “He was a direct threat.”

  “To who?” David asked.

  “He’d killed people other than Maddie. Lots of people. And a—” I choked on the word, but then cleared my throat and got it out. It had to be said. They had to understand. “A kid. He killed a little kid.”

  They were quiet for a bit. “He didn’t even know who Maddie was,” I said, the words coming out of my mouth as if on their own accord. “It was just a job for him. He didn’t seem to know who I was either.”

  “They do now!” Owen yelled. “I bet all the Potestas have a pretty little picture of your sick grin as you walked that guy in front of a bus. You were being watched the whole freaking time!”

  David held up his hand, and Owen quieted down. I didn’t realize how loud he’d been talking until he stopped. My ears rang a little as David started in on me. “How could you be so reckless?” His tone was low, accusing, and dangerous.

  But I wasn’t threatened. I was vindicated, so I held my chin up in response. I’d done the right thing. I’d killed a remorseless killer. Until the moment it happened, I hadn’t even known I was capable of such a thing.

  He frowned as he went on. “As members of the Unseen, we must operate with the highest level of discretion. What you did is the complete opposite of that. Had it been a mission, there would have been sweeps of the area to make sure it was free of Potestas. You would’ve been covered. But this…” He trailed off. “This is a mess.”

  “And the clean-up procedure will be extensive because of the way you handled it,” Tracy added. “Not to mention the fact that the other suspects in Maddie’s murder are lost causes. The Potestas will know you’re targeting them, and by now, their identities will have been wiped clean.”

  Okay. I hadn’t achieved the perfect execution. But I’d still done the right thing. Right?

  Before my resolve could waver, I spoke up. “He deserved it.”

  David thrust a file at me. It was Washington’s. “You know, if you’d given this to me earlier, it would’ve saved me a lot of work.” I was trying to be funny, but no one laughed.

  I flipped it open and started looking through papers. Some of it I already knew—his name, age, address, things like that. But there was new information too. Apparently his “day job,” as he’d put it, was working at Foot Locker as an assistant manager. He also had a younger sister who would be graduating from FSU in two years, and two parents who seemed to dote on them both. I frowned at their latest family portrait. If David was trying to elicit some kind of sympathetic response because the killer had a family, he’d missed his mark.

  “What kind of people could raise such a monster?” Shoving the file back to David, I sat back in the chair, trying to contain my revulsion.

  “The kind of people who’ve just had their son taken from them, the kind of people who will have a hard time swallowing the fact that he was suicidal and walked out in front of that bus on purpose. That’s what all the witnesses are saying.”

  “And the people who had their toddler taken from them? Maddie’s family? What about them?”

  “Clearly, I’m not getting through to you,” David said, his frustration evident.

  I sighed, feeling tired and sad. “David, I didn’t intend to kill him. I went to his house because I didn’t think I’d ever be at peace if I didn’t confront him. One thing led to another, and I couldn’t stop myself from reading him. Once I saw what was in his mind… I couldn’t let him go, I just couldn’t. He had no regrets, so why should I?”

  Owen couldn’t hold on to his tongue anymore. “This is exactly what we were all worried you would do. And you proved us right.” His eyes narrowed. “The worst part is that you aren’t even sorry.” He shook his head and stormed out of the office.

  Tracy chuckled shortly.

  “What’s so funny?”

  “You. Not that long ago, you were obsessively in love with him. I’ve never seen him so angry, so he’s clearly in love with you. A few weeks ago, that little tantrum would’ve had you groveling at his feet. But you’re just sitting there, your chin held high.” She shook her head. “Now, I don’t support groveling of any kind, but the fact that you’re so staunchly standing behind what you did is bothersome, Mackenzie.

  “If nothing else, you have made this world much more dangerous for yourself. You had some anonymity before. You obliterated that with your act of revenge. Don’t you care about your own safety?”

  “Apparently not.” I agreed with her assertion more than I wanted to. She’d made a good point.

  David threw up his hands and threw himself back in his chair. Looking at Tracy, he said, “I don’t even know how to deal with this.” He jabbed a finger at me, and then continued. “How about this? What you’ve done is completely against company policy. You’ve exterminated a human being.”

  “A member of the Potestas. The enemy, as you yourself have called them. An enemy who killed at least a dozen people.”

  David frowned. “Yes. You’ve found a nice little gray area for yourself, haven’t you? If you think you’re going to go unpunished for what you’ve done, you can think again.”

  “I never expected to go unpunished, David.” I put special emphasis on his name. I couldn’t call him Dad. Not now. Maybe not ever, after what I’d done. “I just wanted to get justice for Maddie and the others.”

  “And is that really what Maddie would’ve wanted?” Tracy’s tone was quiet. The statement cut through me like a sword through a piece of paper, but she kept on. “You always said what a great person she was, so happy and bubbly all the time. Would she have wanted such an ugly vengeance?”

  No. Maddie’s voice echoed in the back of my mind. No. My eyes pleaded with them as I looked from Tracy to David. No. An eye for an eye, right? No. The word pulsed in my brain until I put my hands over my ears and shut my eyes. Pulling my knees up to my face, I created my own personal cocoon in the chair. But Maddie kept talking.

  I want you to be happy, she said. That’s all I want.

  Soon, I felt Tracy’s hands on my shoulders. I risked opening my eyes a little, and found her mere inches from my face. “Unfortunately, we don’t have time for a breakdown right now.” I should’ve known she wasn’t going to be sympathetic.

  I looked at David, hoping for support, something, but his expression hadn’t budged.

  Feeling alone and unwanted, I looked into David’s disapproving face. Somehow, I still couldn’t bring myself to say I was sorry. I didn’t regret taking that man’s life, but it was hard to forgive myself for dishonoring Maddie and endangering the others.

  “Tracy is right. There’s work to do. Today, you will be confined to isolation. Your privileges are being revoked. Tomorrow, you will go back to work. And I mean work. None of this vigilante crap. I need you focused and on top of your game. This is serious, Mackenzie. People’s lives are at stake. A lot of people’s lives. We all believe you can save them, if you can manage to pull it together… if you can manage to put other people above your own personal agenda.”

  I had no defense for that, so I let Tracy escort me to the locked room at the very back of the work floor, the one with the cot, sink, and toilet. I was rig
ht—it was for prisoners. The front of the cell was equipped with a floor-to-ceiling window that would allow around-the-clock supervision of the prisoner inside—in this case, me. The speaker near the door ensured I could speak with visitors, not that I expected any.

  Tracy said nothing as she locked me into the cell. She didn’t have to. The disappointment was plain in her drawn expression, her stiff posture, and the way she looked at me. She’d expected more from me. But I wasn’t sure what. I’d done extraordinary things. Just because I hadn’t done them exactly how they wanted me to…

  No. That was a vindictive and self-destructive path to follow. I’d done wrong by Maddie. That was what mattered. Problem was, I had no idea how to make it right. Maddie was dead. It wasn’t like I could apologize to her.

  Left alone in the cell, the events of the day finally started to penetrate my state of shock. A man died at my hands, rather horribly.

  I lay down on the cot and turned my back to the outside world. Even in death, Maddie was a better friend than I was. Now, I could do nothing but live with that fact.

  “Turns out, neither one of us was right, Maddie,” I said to the wall through my tears. “I’m not a savior. I’m nothing but a killer.”

  Sometime in the night, I drifted off. It was Mitchell who woke me up with a light knock on the window. He was sitting in a chair he must have dragged from one of the workrooms.

  “I was hoping Owen would come by,” I said, wiping my eyes, willing them to focus after so little sleep.

  “He’s pretty pissed at you.”

  I nodded, not needing to hear more. We sat in silence for a few moments, like we so often did. Except this time, I could feel something hanging in the air, like a strange sort of pressure.

  Eager to relieve it, I prompted him. “Why’d you come here, Mitchell?”

  He didn’t look at me. Instead, he just kept staring down the long, quiet hallway. I knew him well enough to realize he was deep in thought.

  “I didn’t even see them coming.” It came out quietly. So quietly in fact, I almost didn’t hear him. I sat up and scooted to the edge of the bed, as if getting closer would help.

  “They wrecked me. Not anyone else. I didn’t have anyone else for them to wreck. I was already an orphan by then, through no fault of theirs.” He glanced at me and shrugged.

  I’d never heard Mitchell’s story, and had no idea what was prompting him to tell it to me now, but I silently urged him to go on, completely enraptured with his tale.

  “But what they did to me… I can’t explain it. They thought I was dead. But I wasn’t. Somehow, by some miracle—or maybe some cosmic joke—I was left alive.”

  “They hacked into my mind, tortured me in ways I’ve never been able to tell anyone. Not even David. And then…” He trailed off, his expression distant.

  Getting up off the bed, I crossed the room, if for no other reason than to be closer to him. I put my hand against the window right next to him. But he didn’t see. He was in another world, watching his memories.

  He blinked and took a deep breath. When he turned to look through the window at me, he didn’t seem startled by my sudden closeness. He simply went on with his story. “At any rate, they made it very difficult for me to differentiate between the world they’d created and reality. Even after David and his people rescued me. I couldn’t enjoy an ice cream sundae without suspecting it wasn’t real.”

  “An ice cream sundae?”

  “Yeah.” He glanced over at me and shrugged. “They’re my favorite. And the Potestas knew it. They liked to exploit that fact. Frequently.”

  Slowly, I sat back, still keeping my hand on the glass, trying to make a connection with the broken person on the other side.

  “What they did to me made me so angry. They destroyed the person I was.”

  My head snapped up. He was angry too? Everyone always acted like I was the only person in the history of the Unseen to react that way.

  “In fact, I was so angry that I went back to the place where they’d tortured me. Years had passed, but I still remembered it like I’d lived there my whole life. Small details stood out to me, like the single, bare lightbulb that hung in the room where they’d tried to break me.”

  Silence hung between us for a few beats, so I decided to risk a question. “Mitchell, why? Why did they do that to you?”

  “You know, at the time, I didn’t understand. I was an orphan who could read minds. I wasn’t really anything special. My foster families could vouch for that.”

  His frankness pulled at my heartstrings. He’d been through so much, yet he was still somehow holding it together. I, on the other hand, was a complete and total wreck.

  “When I went back, I asked that very question to the man I found there. At first, he didn’t even remember me. But, after some persuasion, his memory came back. He said they wanted to get to me before the Unseen did. That’s all it was. I asked him why they didn’t recruit me instead. Apparently, they needed talented subjects for their trainees. For them, I was nothing more than a target for shooting practice.”

  “It was slow and messy. But I didn’t kill him.” He looked at me then, a sad smile on his face. “I did him one worse than you. I destroyed his mind, leaving him a drooling vegetable. When I walked away, he was nothing but a worthless shell of a body.”

  Were he and I really so similar? If so, maybe he could help me find a way out. “Mitchell,” I said quietly. “How did you come back from such a dark place?”

  “I didn’t. At least, not right away. I was pleased with what I’d done. Owen wasn’t sure how to handle me at first. He couldn’t understand why I would destroy someone like that. Despite what you thought of him at first, he’s pretty black and white when it comes to killing people. But, he’s still a good friend and a brother in arms, so he tried to be supportive while constantly telling me what I’d done was wrong.

  “I didn’t agree for a long time. Years. Only when I managed to let go of my anger did I see the violation I’d made. I hadn’t just killed someone—I’d ruined their life.”

  “But—” I started, not sure how I would’ve finished if Mitchell hadn’t interrupted me.

  “But nothing. That was the fact of the matter. Every once in a while, I check on him. He’s in an assisted living facility, eating from a tube because his family can’t bear to let him go. One time, I even stopped in to see him. To tell him I was sorry. But I couldn’t do it. The silence coming from the other side of the door was crushing. I’d left nothing untouched, and it showed.”

  He sighed, the weight of what he’d done evidenced by his hunched shoulders. “In the end, I knew it wouldn’t do me any good. So I left. I haven’t been back since. That was right before you joined us.”

  I scooted back and leaned against the wall, looking in the same direction as Mitchell. Resting my arms on my knees, I looked down the hallway, hoping to reconcile what I’d just learned with my own future.

  What kinds of people use an ice cream sundae against you as torture? These are the people who deserve mercy? I thought. But justification wasn’t the right path to follow, and I knew it.

  “Boy, I could sure go for an ice cream sundae right about now,” I said, trying to distract myself from the tension around me.

  He laughed. “When you get out, I’ll show you what a real sundae is. Homemade caramel sauce like you’ll never get out of a jar.” His smile lit up his face. It gave me hope to think he could still enjoy a thing that had been so terribly used against him.

  “It’s a date,” I said. “Hey, Mitch, can I ask you something?” He nodded, so I went on. “How did you know what I was going to do?” He didn’t answer, so I prodded him a little more. “After I got back from my first job, I was carrying Maddie’s folder, not the scientist’s, when I came up here to work. You stopped me in the hall and told me to use caution. How did you know?”

  He sighed and scrubbed his face with both hands. Finally, he said, “I’ve been trying to find your… aunt. David is concerned
about that particular loose end. I knew David was planning to share the intel we had on Maddie with you, and when I saw you come back from your job with another file, I put two and two together.”

  I leaned my head back against the wall. David was working to find answers, if not for Maddie, then for my safety. I’d really blown it.

  Mitchell added one more thing before he left me with my thoughts. “I didn’t tell you any of this to make you feel sorry for me, or to tell you you’re not alone or some other BS. I told you so you’d know what the world is like on the other side of this glass. It’s different, now that you’ve killed someone on purpose. But that doesn’t make life unlivable.”

  “But… Maddie.” My voice cracked, made unstable by sorrow.

  “But nothing. Maddie is dead. If she were still alive, she’d have every right to judge you for what you’d done. But things being what they are, I don’t think she much cares either way. Let it go.”

  I cringed at his harsh words, but he didn’t see. He was already walking down the long hallway, leaving me alone to consider the road I’d already walked, and the one that lay before me.

  Two paths diverged in a yellow wood. Maddie’s voice echoed in my mind. It seemed ages ago when she’d said that to me. My choices had seemed so much simpler then—one job over another, not one life over another.

  “Well,” I said aloud to the room, hoping she’d hear me. “I certainly took the road less traveled.”

  In the following silence, I decided to try to get some rest. I didn’t know what the road ahead held for me, but whatever it was, I wanted to be ready.

  14

  Tracy came to get me in what I assumed was the morning. Without windows or any natural source of light, the Unseen relied on their watches and clocks to separate day from night. I didn’t have my watch, and there was no clock in the cell, so I was sleeping when Tracy showed up. She seemed only slightly irritated at having to wait.

  Surprisingly, I’d slept rather well in the cell. I suspected my exhaustion had finally caught up with me and silenced my concerns about my future.