The Enlightened

by Dima Zales

  “What about any cases dealing with dangerous people?” I ask, two steps away from sounding crazy. “Or could this embezzlement case get someone who’s dangerous in trouble?”

  “What’s this about, sweetie?” Now her voice sounds a tiny bit concerned. “Why are you asking me this?”

  “I don’t want to talk about it over the phone, but I need to know if you’re working on a dangerous case,” I insist. “Can you please tell me?”

  “This makes no sense,” she says. “Is this some kind of game, like when you were a kid?”

  “Do you need me to beg you to answer?”

  “Fine,” she says, blowing out a breath. “But I have to say, you sound like your mother when she’s had one of those bad dreams. And the answer is no. I don’t have any cases that even Sara would consider dangerous, which should tell you a lot. Nor do I have many cases, period, even the boring kind. But I have been busy looking into the case file on your friend Mira’s parents’ murder. A case that was shelved long ago—”

  “That,” I say, my heartbeat picking up. “That sounds like it could involve dangerous people.”

  “True, but I’m not really working in the field. Just reviewing some old paperwork. It’s a bit odd what happened with this case.”

  “What’s odd about it?” I can’t help being intrigued.

  “It was dismissed as a mob hit. The file states that Mira’s father worked for the mob, which is why no one looked into his death too closely. They don’t bother when mobsters kill each other.”

  “But Mira’s dad—”

  “Wasn’t with the mob,” she cuts in. “I realize that. He was a scientist.”

  “Okay. This is what I was talking about. The people who killed Mira’s family are obviously dangerous—”

  “Actually, no,” she says. “I mean, yes they were dangerous, but not anymore. Not given what I just found out. Once I started digging, I cracked the case. Most of the players involved turned up dead a few weeks ago. The only reason this is still on my mind is because of that misinformation about Mira’s father...”

  Shit. When I do tell her everything, it’ll have to include the truth about what happened to those now-dead players and how I was involved in their deaths.

  “You there?” she asks when I don’t say anything for a couple of seconds.

  “Yeah, sorry,” I say. “So who’s dead?”

  “The Russian assassin who most likely planted the bomb in Mira’s father’s car,” she says. “If it wasn’t for the error about Mira’s father being in the mob, I suspect even my less talented former colleagues in Organized Crime would’ve figured out who’d planted it. That tidbit about this being a mob hit ruined every chance for her parents to get justice. And I can’t help but wonder about that. This misinformation makes it seem as though these people, this Russian crew, had someone on the inside, looking out for their best interests—”

  “Mom,” I interrupt, “as crazy as it sounds, I want you to stop working on this case and do nothing until I speak with you in person.”

  “Darren.” She lets out a sigh. “Are you on drugs again?”

  Damn it. She catches me smelling like weed one time, and for the rest of my life, she’s worried about me being ‘on drugs.’ “Mom, I am not on drugs,” I say patiently. “Have I ever asked you for something like this?”

  “Well, no—”

  “So now I’m asking you to do this, no matter how strange it sounds. I’m taking a red-eye to New York, and I’ll tell you everything as soon as I get there. Everything will make sense, I promise. I need like six hours or so, if I get lucky with the tickets.”

  “This is nuts,” she says, but her voice sounds uncertain. “Then again, it’s not like I could’ve made much progress—”

  “Watch the Godfather again,” I suggest. “The whole trilogy.”

  I know how much she likes mafia movies, especially the ones set during the early history of the mob, long before Lucy’s career began. They’re more fun for her because she can’t complain as much about how they got all the facts wrong about the ‘real’ underworld.

  “Fine,” she says. “You’re lucky I can’t do much with this internal breech theory anyway. It’s a very delicate matter, as you can imagine.”

  I look at the phone. It’s 4:00 p.m. The GPS estimates I’ll arrive in Miami in about four hours. Add in a couple of hours to get to the airport and board the next available flight, and I’ll probably arrive in NYC sometime during the middle of the night. “I’ll do my best to be back tonight.”

  “Call me as soon as you land.”

  “It’s a deal,” I say.

  “And Darren,” she says as her goodbye, “you better have a good explanation for all this.”

  * * *

  I park Caleb’s car in our hotel’s parking lot and make my way toward the hotel’s entrance. As I approach, I see Mira standing there. As soon as she lays eyes on me, an expression of sheer outrage flits across her face.

  “Darren!” she yells. “You fucking bastard.”

  She’s shouting at me from across the main road. The passersby look uncomfortable and try to stay out of her way as she heads toward me. I can sympathize with them. How else would you react to hearing a young, attractive woman dropping the f-bomb this loudly in the middle of the street?

  “Mira,” I say once she’s crossed the road, having ignored the loud honks coming from an asshole inside a red convertible. “I’m happy to see you too. I’m about to tell you the craziest story—”

  She runs up to me and, standing up on her tiptoes, gives me a big hug. Her breathing is jerky and uneven. Whatever anger she felt has clearly been replaced by something else.

  “You stupid shit,” she says, pulling back after a moment. Her eyes look suspiciously moist. “Do you have any idea how worried we all were? Any fucking clue?”

  “Not my fault,” I say quickly. “I was taken.”

  “What?”

  “I was kidnapped by my own grandparents. I know,” I say in answer to her perplexed expression. “I told you, I’ve got a crazy story.”

  “We had the beachfront searched for your body,” she says grimly.

  I sense she didn’t really hear my ‘I was taken’ and ‘kidnapped’ comments.

  “Your aunt made them search, and we were about to file a missing person’s report,” she continues, her voice quavering.

  “Listen.” I cradle her face between my palms. “It was Caleb. He approached me as I was leaving the bar, and took me at gun point.”

  “Caleb?” she asks, my words finally registering. “What did he want with you? Is this about Jacob?”

  “Not exactly. Well, Caleb was pretty pissed off about Jacob, but my grandparents had a different agenda. Do you mind if I tell everyone what happened at the same time, so I don’t have to repeat myself?”

  “Oh, right, the others,” she says and takes out her phone. In a whirl, her delicate fingers type out a couple of texts. Almost as soon as she clicks send on the last text, her phone rings.

  “Follow me,” she says, ignoring the call. “We’re getting pizza.”

  I think about objecting for a moment and trying to rush to the airport, but I need to explain what happened, and it might as well be at a pizza shop, since I’m starved. We walk to Winnie’s New York Pizza, a place that’s half a block away from the hotel. We’ve never been there for dinner, but we’ve frequently gotten lunch there. Though, for the record, it’s nothing like the pizza in New York and has more in common with big chains (crappy, in other words).

  Mira’s phone doesn’t stop ringing, so once we’re seated, she angrily taps the receive button. “Yes, he’s okay, Zhenya... That’s what I said in the text... Just get here and bring the others.” After a few angry words in Russian, she says, “That’s what I also said in my text—”

  Lowering the phone, she glares at it. My guess is that Eugene hung up on her after having had enough of her abuse. Better him than me, I think.

  She shuts off her pho
ne after it rings a few more times and sullenly studies the menu. I’m both flattered and frightened by how much she was worried about me. If that’s what her reaction is about. But I do know one thing for sure: given that she’s gotten the brick-oven thin crust pie with basil every time we’ve come here, she doesn’t need to study the menu.

  Thinking about Mira’s favorite choice of pizza reminds me how hungry I am.

  “Can I start you off with drinks?” our waiter asks.

  “We’re waiting for the rest—”

  “We’ll have the Sicilian-style pie with the works as an appetizer,” I say, interrupting Mira as gently as I can. “And I understand that it’s a large appetizer, but I still want it.” When the guy leaves, I say to Mira, “That’s actually for me. Though I guess I can share a little—”

  “Darren, what the hell happened?” Hillary asks as she and Eugene approach the table.

  “What the shit?” Eugene adds, his accent as thick as I’ve ever heard it.

  “Hello to you too,” I say to them.

  “Can you now tell me what Caleb wanted?” Mira asks. “And where you’ve been?”

  “Chill, people. Don’t all talk at the same time.” They look confused for a moment, so I tell them, “Please, sit. I’ll tell you what happened.”

  “Shouldn’t we wait for Bert?” Hillary asks. “He was just as worried as the rest of us.”

  “Actually, no,” I say. “Quite the opposite. This involves Reader and Guide stuff.”

  “Well,” Hillary says, looking at her phone, “you only have a few minutes before he gets here.”

  “I’ll make it quick,” I say and swiftly tell them everything, only stopping when my pizza arrives. Eugene’s eyes look like they’re about to pop out of their sockets when I get to the ‘making a baby with Julia’ part. Mira’s expression is harder to interpret, but she does rudely cut off her brother’s attempt to ask me how Julia is doing, as though Julia and I had the chance to bond on that level.

  “So your grandparents on your father’s side are just as fucked up as my mom and dad,” Hillary concludes when I finish.

  “I guess,” I say between frantic bites of pizza.

  “So you believe this Mimir being?” Eugene asks. “You think your mother is in trouble?”

  “Yes. I found him very convincing. So I have to get back to New York, and I’ll need Bert’s help to get there. I’m getting this really bad feeling about my mom.”

  “Need my help with what?” Bert asks, startling me. I didn’t notice he’d arrived. “What’s wrong with your mom?”

  I phase out and the bustling Miami street stops in its tracks. I pull Hillary and the others into my Quiet session.

  “What do I tell him?” I ask, pointing to frozen Bert. “How do I spin it?”

  “Just say you were on the phone this whole time, because your mom is sick and you need to go to New York,” Hillary suggests.

  “That makes no sense,” I say. “He’ll never believe that horseshit.”

  “I can make it so he does,” Hillary says. “Since time is of the essence.”

  “Maybe, but he’s my best friend. It feels wrong doing that to him. Does Pushing leave any permanent damage?”

  “I don’t think it does. But that’s more his area of expertise.” She nods toward Eugene.

  “I doubt it causes brain damage,” Eugene says in his most pedantic tone. “But I think we should tell him about us.”

  “What, why?” Mira gives her brother one of her most derisive looks.

  “For starters, his girlfriend is a Push–I mean, Guide. I, his new friend, am a Reader. And more importantly, his oldest and best friend is both,” he says. “On a more selfish note, I need someone with his skills to help with my research. And I could use someone without our abilities to act as a control group of sorts. There is only so much I can do with the neighbors without their cooperation.”

  Now I know why Eugene got all excited when I mentioned my friend is a hacker.

  “It’s tempting,” Hillary says, a hint of a smile appearing on her face. “If he knew about us, going out with him would feel more honest.”

  “I can’t believe this,” Mira says. “Isn’t telling them forbidden?”

  “Good question,” I say, finally getting a chance to speak.

  “In our society, it’s not forbidden so much as frowned upon,” Hillary says. “When you tell them, you’re responsible for making sure they don’t blab.”

  “Oh, right,” Eugene says. “I hadn’t thought of that. You can prevent people from talking. This settles it, then. If you and I combine our efforts, we can be pretty secure in telling Bert everything. I can Read him from time to time to see whether he would expose us, and if he would, I’ll tell you.”

  “Sounds lovely,” Mira says sardonically.

  “It’s not as sinister as it sounds,” Hillary says defensively. “If things go that way, he’ll only find that he keeps forgetting to talk about this subject.”

  “Bert wouldn’t talk,” I say, tired of the back and forth. “Not if we deliver this to him with proper finesse, that is. And by we, I mean me.”

  “All right, we can let Bert into our little circle later,” Hillary says. “For now, just tell him you were on the phone with your mom, and I’ll make sure he doesn’t ask too many questions. We’ll have plenty of time for the whole story once we’re not in a hurry.”

  She walks over to Bert and kisses him deeply. When I catch a glimpse of her tiny tongue in my friend’s mouth, I take it as my cue to avert my gaze.

  “I don’t need to see that,” Mira says and touches her frozen self on the neck. With that, she’s gone.

  “I’m out too,” Eugene says and grabs his other self’s wrist.

  I can’t phase out because that would take Hillary out of the Quiet with me, and she’s not done with her odd, French-style Guiding technique.

  “All set,” Hillary says after releasing Bert. “Hold on,” she says as I reach for my pizza-holding doppelganger. “I wanted to talk to you about something.”

  “What’s up?” I ask, deciding I can stay in the Quiet for a moment longer, since no time is passing on the outside.

  “It’s about this new ability your grandparents mentioned. The one they’re trying to ‘breed’ you for.” She wrinkles her tiny nose at the word. “I’ve heard about something like this before.”

  “You have?”

  She nods. “There have always been rumors about some of our Elders being able to Split while in the Mind Dimension, into a sort of extra level of alternate reality that’s accessible only to them.”

  I’m taken aback for a moment. “Do you think those rumors are true?”

  “I wouldn’t rule it out. And what’s even more interesting is that these same rumors claim it requires a Reach of incredible proportion. The kind of Reach only the most powerful Elders possess.”

  “Really?”

  “That’s what I heard growing up,” she says. “You’ve got to remember that my family was essentially a breeding farm to replenish the Elders’ ranks. In fact, the reason I never met my grandmother is, I think, because she is—or was—an Elder.”

  “That would make her my great-grandmother,” I say.

  “If she’s alive. But here’s my point. My sister’s children were supposed to join the ranks of the Elders if she had, you know, mated with the ‘right’ person.” She makes another face as she says the word ‘right.’ “My children too. Though that’s also not going to happen.”

  “Okay,” I say. “So what’s the point?”

  “Don’t you see? Your father had to breed with someone with great Depth, and my sister was someone with big Reach, which are, at the core, one in the same, as they both relate to how long you can stay in the Mind Dimension,” she says, looking at me expectantly.

  “So what are you saying?” I ask, my heart skipping a beat.

  “What if your Depth, or Reach, or whatever we’d call your thing, is already powerful enough to access a dimension
beyond this one?” Her eyes gleam with excitement. “Have you considered the possibility?”

  I blink a few times. Could she be right? How do I know I can’t do what my Enlightened grandparents are hoping to achieve by breeding Julia and me? How do I know I’m not on par with Hillary’s rumored Elders? After all, it’s true that my Depth, when it comes to Reading, is formidable. I can measure my Depth by recalling the furthest I’ve ever gone with it, which has to be when I Read my mom’s memories from before I was born—on the day I learned my biological parents had given me up for adoption before they were murdered. I never connected the dots before, but according to that one Reading experience, I can conclude that my Depth is truly insane.

  Given that Readers split their Depth with the person they’re Reading, my Depth must at least be double my age, or a little over forty years. And who knows, it could be greater, as I’ve never tried to go further into someone’s memories yet. To put these forty years into perspective, Mira and Eugene’s Depths allows them to be in the Mind Dimension for mere minutes.

  “I understand what you’re saying, but it’s still hard to believe,” I say slowly. “If I could do something like that, something so big, wouldn’t I know it by now?”

  “I have no idea,” Hillary says. “But I think your grandparents were fools to dismiss you and focus on your future offspring.”

  “They’re fools for many reasons.”

  She smiles. “Agreed.”

  “So if true, then what?” I ask. “What do your rumors say about the practical aspect of it for a Guide? My grandfather said the ability would allow a Reader to Read another Reader.”

  “I’m not too sure,” she says thoughtfully. “The rumors don’t reveal much, but everyone fears the Elders who can do this. Some of the rumors echo what your grandfather said, though. They say these special Elders can actually Guide anyone, even a Reader or a Guide, which is why my parents said this kind of power was ‘abominable.’” She sighs. “Then again, they found a lot of things abominable.”

  “It would certainly explain their fears. Who would want their mind manipulated?” I glance at frozen Bert as I say this.