by Dima Zales
Everything seems to slow, and then goes quiet. A very familiar kind of quiet. I realize that I phased in without consciously trying. Near-death experiences are becoming a habit today.
In the safety of the frozen world, I look around. There is a bloody circle on Julia’s left shoulder. Her face is frozen in shock. Despite myself, I’m relieved. Though she’s clearly been shot, even without being a doctor I know that shoulder wounds are rarely fatal. The real reason for my relief, however, is that my own frozen body is unscathed.
The biggest surprise is Caleb, who I thought was still in the process of laying the dead guard on the ground. In the time it took me to phase into the Quiet, he’s already holding a gun. And the gun has smoke around its muzzle. He must’ve managed to take it out and shoot, almost as soon as the other shot was fired. Or maybe he saw it coming? Maybe he was phasing in every second, assessing the situation around us—something I now realize I should’ve been doing. Still, Caleb’s speed is astounding.
The most incredible part is that I can actually see the bullet. It’s a few inches away from the shooter’s head.
With dread, I open the door into the room with Mira.
It’s bad.
The guy who was playing cards with her is now standing. He’s trying to get out of the way of his partner—the more suspicious guard, who’s now pointing his gun down at Mira. She, with her chair, is lying on her side on the floor. She completed the difficult maneuver, as we’d planned. Only now it might be for nothing. The noise of the gunshots ruined everything.
I get closer to the suspicious guard and inspect the situation. The muscles in his wrist are taut. He looks like he’s about to pull the trigger.
I refuse to accept this.
I touch his forehead.
We’re still contemplating what to say in the text to the hostage’s brother, whose number we located in the girl’s pink phone, when we hear the shots outside the room.
Someone must be trying to free the hostage. Unbelievable. What idiot would even try something so stupid?
We know we need to follow orders, which were very explicit on this. Arkady made us repeat them. If any shit goes down, first order of business is to shoot the girl. After that, we must deal with whoever might’ve come after her. If we kill her brother, we get a big bonus.
We take the gun and aim. We’re pressing the trigger.
I get out of his head. I have no doubt about it now. He’s shooting. In his head, I felt my—or I should say his—finger squeeze the trigger. His brain already sent the instructions to his arm. In a second after I phase out, a shot will fire. A shot aimed directly at Mira.
If only he was just reaching for his gun. If only his partner would trip and fall to cover her somehow. If only the door was wide open already—I’m right behind it, ready to shoot.
I want to scream. I’m ready to kill. Only it’s too late.
I can’t just watch Mira die. I have to do something.
Not sure why, I approach the guard who was looming over Mira. The one who was playing cards with her before. Vasiliy, I remind myself.
I touch his forehead.
We’re looking at the girl on the floor. We know what Tolik is about to do. We feel faint regret. We think it’s a shame she’ll be killed. We think it’s a waste of a very nice female specimen.
I, Darren, realize that this one likes Mira in his own crude way. A way that’s not altogether different from the way I like her. It makes this experience odd. It also seems to push me further with what I’m trying to do.
Without fully realizing what I’m doing, I focus on his regret. On the fact that he likes her. Even on his lust for her.
I picture it growing. I picture what regretting losing someone very close to me would be like and channel it into Vasiliy. I recall wanting to fuck Mira and channel those memories into him. I recall what losing my grandmother felt like, which has nothing to do with Mira, but seems useful, so I channel that into him, too. It feels like I’m pouring my essence into him. As if for a moment, we merge into the same person.
It feels like I’m achieving something, so I continue further, almost becoming my host.
I think of Tolik. He’s my best friend. If I just get in the way of the gun, he’ll never shoot. He’ll stop, and then I can talk to him, explain why the girl must be spared. I picture us coming up with a scheme. We tell Arkady she’s dead. Tolik gets full credit and a huge bonus. She and I disappear from NYC, maybe even from the US. I picture how grateful the girl will be when she realizes she owes her life to me.
I finally picture the simple action that can make it all come together. I need to fall on top of her. From where I’m standing, it will take less than a second to just fall down.
I will feel her body under my own. I’ll be her strong protector. A real man. All I need to do now is show a little courage. And then, of course, Tolik will stop. He’ll never shoot me. All he needs to see is that that she’s important, and it will all be over . . .
As if in a trance, I feel almost pushed outside his head. I’m not sure what just happened.
I realize that in reality, there is only one thing I can do. I can open that door, and I can shoot Tolik. And hope I make it—hope I shoot him in time.
My brain screams at the impossibility of making the shot in time, so I try to hope that whatever I did inside Vasiliy’s head will help.
I open the door. I push my frozen self out of the way and take his exact position. I close the door behind me.
Now, I try it in the Quiet. A test.
I open the door. My hand is steady. I shoot. His temple is red. It all takes no more than two seconds.
I’m ready. I take a breath and phase out.
I open the door for real this time. My hand is even steadier here than it was in the Quiet.
I hear the Russian’s shot as I squeeze the trigger.
22
My own gun fires—but I don’t hear it. I phase into the Quiet once more.
Tolik’s head is frozen mid-explosion. Bits of his skull and brain are caught mid-flight toward the wall behind him. I killed him, but I don’t even register that fact. Instead I focus on something else entirely—and what I see makes me feel like I’m about to burst with joy.
Vasiliy, the guy whose head I was in just a moment ago, is on top of Mira.
He took the bullet that was meant for her.
I roll him off her and see no signs of the bullet having traveled all the way through. It hit him in the right shoulder blade.
Mira is unharmed, other than some minor bruises due to falling with the chair. She hasn’t been killed.
I know there is a possibility, however remote, that the bullet is still about to go through Vasiliy. I might’ve phased in at just the right fraction of a second to make the bullet freeze on its way out.
I run to my body and slam into myself, roughly grabbing whatever exposed skin comes my way.
I am in the real world again, hearing the sharp crack of the shot I just fired.
I rush into the room.
I ignore the sound of Tolik’s body falling to the floor where I shot him. My entire focus is on Vasiliy, now crumpled on top of Mira.
He moans in pain.
She’s quiet.
My heart sinks.
Tolik’s shot must’ve reached her through Vasiliy’s body.
Filled with panic, I roll him off her as fast as I can. His moans become screams at my rough treatment, but I barely notice his pain as I see Mira lying there, alive and unharmed.
Just as she was in the Quiet.
She’s strangely silent, however, and I decide that she must be in shock. Feeling a tiny fraction calmer, I start cutting away the duct tape from her legs.
“You’re a hero, Darren,” Caleb says from the door. For the first time, I hear no sarcasm in his voice. “You should know I don’t throw around compliments lightly.”
“Help me untie her,” I say, not knowing how to respond to that.
“Can’t,” he says c
urtly. “I need to bind Julia’s shoulder.”
I remember Julia’s wound and I nod, continuing to work on the tape by myself. Mira still doesn’t say a word. Her silence begins to worry me.
Finally, I succeed in cutting through the tape, and Mira slowly gets to her feet, still without speaking. Then, not looking at me, she walks to the gun that fell from Tolik’s hand and picks it up.
She’s going to finish Vasiliy off, I realize.
But instead of pointing the gun at the injured mobster, she points it at me.
I barely have a chance to register the tears gleaming in her eyes and the shaking of her hand before I instinctively phase into the Quiet.
Battling my shock and disbelief, I approach her and brush my fingers against her frozen cheek, determined to understand her strange behavior.
Instantly a moving Mira joins me in the Quiet. She wipes the tears from her eyes, looking around the room, and as her gaze lands on me, the expression on her face turns to fury. Stepping toward me, she slaps my face, the way wives do to cheating husbands in movies. Then she punches me in the stomach.
I’m stunned. What the hell is she doing?
“You fucking Pusher!” she says through clenched teeth. “Don’t you ever come near me again!”
Before I can react, she turns around and touches her frozen self.
Numb, I look at my own self standing in front of her gun. His face looks more confused than it did on the day I first discovered being able to ‘stop time.’
I now know what upset her so much.
I now understand what I did to Vasiliy.
Mira must’ve phased in after the shots went down. She must’ve Read Vasiliy. She must’ve seen the telltale signs of what happened in his mind.
Signs similar to what I saw earlier in Piotr’s mind.
Signs of what I refused to really think about, until now.
I made Vasiliy protect her with his body.
I made him fall.
I overrode his free will.
I pushed him.
I’m what she hates most in the world.
A Pusher.
I touch my confused self on the forehead.
I am back in the real world, with Mira’s gun in my face. It’s shaking more than it did before.
Is this really how it’s going to end? Is she going to kill me? I’m so numb that I just stand there, waiting for it.
But no. She slowly lowers the gun. Then, hurrying over to Tolik’s dead body, she picks up her pink phone from the table next to him and runs out of the room.
Finally shaking off my strange numbness, I run after her.
“What the fuck was that?” Caleb yells after me, but I don’t have time to explain.
I keep running after her, gaining speed, but she’s fast. After chasing her down a couple of flights of stairs, I slow down and then stop. Even if I catch her, I have no idea what I’ll say.
Feeling exhausted all of a sudden, I go back and rejoin Eugene and Caleb, who seem very confused. Julia is bleeding, her face deathly pale, and Eugene is hovering next to her. His face is almost as pale as hers.
“What’s going on?” Caleb asks, frowning at me.
“Don’t ask,” I say. “Please.”
“Is Mira okay?” he persists.
“I think she is, yes,” I answer wearily. “I mean, she’s not hurt—physically, at least.”
“Fine. Then help me,” Caleb says. He gives Eugene the keys and tells us to get the car. Meanwhile, he picks Julia up like she weighs nothing, and starts down the stairs. Everything seems to happen in a haze.
Eugene and I get the car in silence. He looks back toward Caleb and Julia once, then looks around, probably hoping to spot Mira. She’s nowhere to be seen, but we find the car in the Costco parking lot, where we left it. I drive to the curb, pull up, and Caleb carefully puts Julia in the back. Caleb reclaims the driver’s seat, while I ride shotgun. Eugene gets in the back with Julia. I hear them talking quietly, but make out only her repeated insistence that she’s fine.
In five minutes, we’re parked at the Lutheran Medical Center. Caleb gets out as soon as the car’s stopped. He leans in Julia’s window. “You holding up okay?”
“Fine,” she says. “Really. I’m okay.” She doesn’t look okay—she looks like she’s about to pass out. Eugene doesn’t look much better.
“I’ll be right back,” Caleb says. “Give me a minute.”
As soon as he’s gone, I hear the sound of Eugene’s text alert go off. I don’t know why, but the sound alone fills me with dread.
“Darren,” Eugene says after a few seconds. “Mira just texted me. She’s on her way here on foot. She says she wants you gone when she arrives.”
I don’t know what to say. “Okay. I’ll go then.”
“What happened?” Eugene asks, his face the very definition of confused.
“Talk to Mira,” I say tiredly. “Please don’t make me explain.”
We share an uncomfortable silence. Through the haze surrounding me, I’m aware of Caleb returning a few minutes later with a wheelchair for Julia. How did he get one so quickly? Did he show his gun to someone in the hospital? Surely not, or security would be right behind him, I reason dazedly.
Caleb says something to Eugene and sends him on his way with Julia. Something about making sure she’s okay and about being back once he drops ‘the kid’ at his house. He also suggests some bullshit cover story to explain the gunshot wound. I listen, but I’m mentally somewhere else.
When Eugene and Julia enter the hospital, Caleb starts the car.
“Are you okay, Darren?” Caleb asks me as he pulls out of the hospital parking lot.
“Yeah, sure,” I say on autopilot. I’m far from okay, but he doesn’t need to know that.
“All right then, I’ll take you home. Give me your number, and I’ll get in touch with you soon. I’ve almost made up my mind about the first person whose fighting we’ll experience.”
“Great.”
“You’re in shock,” Caleb says. “It happens sometimes after a battle. Even with the best of us.”
I just nod. I don’t care about his theories or approval. I don’t care about anything. I don’t want to think.
My phone rings. It’s my mom Sara.
“Do you mind?” I ask Caleb. I think it’s very rude to talk on a cell in front of someone.
“No worries,” he replies, and I answer the call.
“Hello?” I say.
“Darren, I was beginning to worry,” Sara says. This makes my stupor fade a little. Beginning to worry is Sara’s default state. I don’t believe the woman has ever called me when she was chill. Of course, if she thought I was in even a fraction of the trouble I’ve been in today, she would go to her second-favorite state—panic about me.
“I’m okay, Mom. I was just busy today.” Understatement of the century.
“You aren’t mad at us?” she asks, and I immediately realize I’ve been an ass. I should’ve called to reassure them about the adoption business from the day before.
“No. We’re good, Mom,” I say, forcing certainty into my voice. Better late than never, I always say.
She seems to believe me, and we move on to the usual ‘how are you’ chat that we have every day. The whole thing is surreal.
When I get off the phone, Caleb is just a few blocks from my place. We ride in a companionable silence the rest of the way.
“This is you,” Caleb says when we get to my building.
“Thanks for the ride,” I say, extending my hand to Caleb. “And for helping us out. That was some good shooting you did.”
He shakes my hand firmly. “You’re welcome. You weren’t bad yourself, and I know these things. Get some sleep,” he says, and I nod in agreement.
It’s the best idea I’ve heard in a long time.
I get to my apartment, eat something, shower, and get into bed. Once there, I just sit for a moment, looking outside. It’s still light out there, the sun only beginning to set
. I don’t care, though. I’m exhausted, so I lie down.
When I’m this tired, time seems to slow. It’s like my head approaches the pillow in slow motion.
I think about everything that’s happened to me today. I think about the things that are about to happen. In those couple of seconds it takes for my head to hit the pillow, I think of anything but the fact that Mira will hate me now. Anything but the biggest question of all.
What am I?
And then my head finally touches the pillow, and I’m out, falling asleep faster than I have in my entire life.
The End
The series continues in The Thought Pushers.
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