Ilyan (An Imdalind Story)

by Rebecca Ethington

  If I had known him, he was gone.

  I shook my head no, and she plowed on, chatting away as she continued to tap on her phone screen.

  “The images the Czech government released were only up for a day before the government began to cover them. I got these off the dark web about three months ago. It took some work, I had to teach myself how to access it on my phone, and without getting the attention of the SSU.”

  Another image, this of a woman with short hair and a man with long blonde dreads.

  Again, nothing.

  “From what I can tell, and what I have heard while I was crawling around in the ceiling, everyone wants you, but no one in the world knows that the man from the images in Prague is in a hospital in Kiev. No one but the prime ministers of the former Ukraine, who are dead, The Cleaners, the SSU,” she paused, “and me.”

  “All the more reason to organize some miraculous escape plan I take it?”

  I said it in jest, and part of me expected her to smile and jump into some master plan, but she continued to stare at her phone, tapping away before she again turned it toward me, this time showing a woman with a fan of blonde hair, with blue eyes that held more hatred and anger than I had seen in her before.

  Because I had seen her before.

  She was the same one who I had seen raped and beaten. The one who had stared out from inside me, as though they were part of me.

  Here, in this image, she stood across from me, fighting me, hating me.

  Just seeing it brought all those same emotions I saw in her face right into me. The restraints jangled loudly as I foolishly tried to grab the phone from her, the power that had been cycling through me for the last few minutes finally erupting in little sparks of lightning.

  The jagged streaks of light jumped between my fingers. Kaye’s eyes widened, fear and amazement pulsing in her jaw as she jumped back.

  “If you are going to explode, you can at least warn me.” She hissed, stuffing the phone into her pocket.

  The anger lessened in me, but it didn’t leave. Now that this little bit of information had been cemented in the emotion stuck, the electric fire sparking against the metal.

  “I’m not going to explode,” I growled, the chains rattling again as I fought against them.

  Just like an animal in a cage. The realization was painful.

  “Are you sure about that?”

  No. I wasn’t.

  Not with her in my mind, not with this woman whose memory infected mine. Before, when I had seen her I had worried for her, I had felt for her. But in that image, in the spark of memory that followed it, there was only hatred, there was only pain.

  “I know her,” I gasped, the sparks of attack as we fought filling my mind, I saw her laugh, and I saw the streaks of blood against the stone wall.

  My blood.

  “Ahhh,” Kaye sighed, glancing at her phone, “I guess I know who I need to find next…”

  “I don’t know if you can,” I sighed, the same image of blood and stone haunting me. “I don’t know if you should.”

  Kaye raised an eyebrow at me, clearly letting her curiosity overtake the fear.

  “I think she is the one whose blood was covering me,” I said. “I think it’s her heart that is beating in my chest.”

  9

  “Are you sure you are focusing on the right thing?” Kaye whispered, where she stood on Dr. Sirko’s chair, the rickety thing squeaking loudly as she shifted the ceiling tile back into place.

  Her mother glanced at her briefly before she went back to her work, her fingers deft as she continued to check my blood pressure and temperature.

  “I’m not even sure how to focus,” I said with a growl, my voice tense as I pulled against the restraints.

  They would have normally flopped open by now. I could feel my magic spark, feel it flood the air. That’s normally all it took, but today nothing was happening. Today it was only the warmth of my magic and frustration.

  “You didn’t dose him with anything yet, did you?” Kaye whispered to her mother as she came to stand right beside me, the loose sole on her shoe slapping loudly against the linoleum.

  “No,” the older woman said, gesturing to something that I couldn’t see, something that I didn’t want to. “I always wait until after you two finish whatever you do. There isn’t anything new today anyway. They were talking about a new truth serum…”

  “They were talking about what?” I snapped, head turning toward her as my magic flared inside of the agitation. With the angry spark of power, the restraints unbuckled, falling away from me with a soft flop against the bed.

  “Why is always anger that triggers your magic?” Kaye whispered as she jumped onto the end of my bed, leaning against the baseboard in the spot that had been occupied by my feet.

  “Just because you know the trigger doesn’t make me a reliable weapon,” I reminded her, stretching joints and muscles for the first time today. The ache of the first movement was never my favorite, but today was worse after yesterday's test. I had run on a treadmill for three hours without water, something that had never happened before. I didn’t even know they had a treadmill.

  With Katenka's help, I was able to sit up and avoiding the swirling nausea that had normally occupied the movement. Of course, that all depended on what drugs they were testing on me, drugs meant to force honesty, force control, numb senses. They all worked in one degree or another, Katenka and one other nurse tracking effectiveness.

  Today it wasn’t so bad, the worst was about two months ago when I had first been able to control my magic enough to pop the locks on my restraints. They weren’t just strapped on, after all. Commander Domor had each one under lock and key, and he was the only one with a key.

  Luckily, my magic could pick locks.

  Sitting up after spending a solid month on my back, pumped up on various medications, had led to the quick emptying of my stomach and a black out that had both Kaye and Katenka concerned about my safety. Luckily today it was only a slight dizziness that a sip of water chased away.

  The fluid ran down my throat, the taste of the cold fluid reminding me of flowers and dew in the spring. I wanted to guzzle more, I only had so much time to take it in before Kaye, Katenka and the water bottles left. But I knew better than to chug. Time had taught me that.

  It had been three months since the Vilỳ attack, since my magic had exploded out of me for the first time and I had woken in the world controlled by the SSU. Three months of the same routine. Kaye sneaking in through the roof while her mother made her rounds, leaving only when her shift was over.

  “Thank you, Katenka,” I whispered, holding her back the styrofoam cup so she could refill it. “Now will you tell me what I am on?”

  Katenka smiled, the tiny look earning me a wide-eyed stare from Kaye. I glared at the girl, not appreciative of the reminder that her mother thought I was hot. Unfortunately, Kaye’s smile only widened at the glare I gave her. She looked so much like a child right then, you would have never guessed she was almost twenty-one. I fixed her with a scowl before turning back to her mother, the woman now preparing to draw blood from me.

  More blood.

  Every day it was more blood. One of these days she would only get dust.

  “And what that is going to be used for,” I sighed, hating the daily guinea pig routine.

  “They have you on Midazolam,” Katenka provided, casting one quick glance at me before she tied the heavy elastic around my tricep, the lean muscle flexing in agitation. “It’s a sedative. Based on that, as well as the Serax and the Klonopin that you have been on the last few months, I would say that they are trying to find a mixture that they can use to control you.”

  It wasn’t necessarily new information, Kaye and I had surmised as much a few weeks ago when she had overheard Domor and another officer she hadn’t seen before talking about “breaking through” and “taking control”.

  It was sinister then and it was sinister now. Knowing that someone wante
d to control you would never bode well.

  I exchanged a glance with Kaye as Katenka plunged the needle into my arm, the tiny prick stinging briefly. I didn’t flinch.

  “And you know I can’t tell you what the blood is used for, Jan, even I don’t know that,” I bristled at her use of the name, but let it go.

  Kaye’s brown eyes were widened from where she lay, curled up on the foot of my bed. Her lips pinched together as her nose wrinkled, the look one I had seen a million times before.

  If I had to venture a guess, she knew what they were doing with my blood, and she didn’t want her mother to know about it.

  Not that I blamed her, the woman had a habit of getting frustrated and overly worried. Even though she knew who I was, and what we were doing here, she wanted no part, not until the actual moment that we would make our escape.

  “I have one more spot check in the room at the end of my rounds,” Katenka announced, pulling my focus as she set a third blood-filled vial on the metal tray. “I will wait to give you any medications then, just in case…”

  She stopped mid-sentence as she switched out the still full syringes with the empty ones from yesterday, placing the new ones on the ledge underneath the table that we had been utilizing.

  The empty syringes hit the tray with a loud smack that caused Kaye to jump, the whole bed jerking with her movement.

  I, however, sat still rubbing the sore spots on my wrist as I watched the woman who had become so much of an advocate for me.

  “Katenka?” I asked, Kaye finally sitting up as the frustration of her mother hit her.

  “Please be careful,” she began, Kaye instantly opened her mouth to retort, as if she knew what was to be said after only three words.

  I held up my hand to the girl in warning, the single finger one she had seen enough to know better than to defy.

  I did, however, earn myself an eye roll.

  “One of the orderlies,” she continued, her voice growing stronger now, “a new one from a military village near the border said he heard voices in here the other day.”

  There was a pause, Kaye and I exchanging a look. While ‘the other day’ was vague enough there was no way of knowing what it could have been, we knew.

  Kaye’s eyes looked right to the deep grey smudge on the wall where I had accidentally set it on fire.

  “Everyone hears voices in here, mom,” Kaye whispered, her voice strained as she tried to calm her mother down. “They all just think Jan…”

  “Not my name,” I mumbled under my breath, Kaye continued on.

  “Talks to himself.”

  “I know,” Katenka sighed, now holding the tray as she prepared to leave, “But new people talk more, and he’s curious. You know they don’t tell anyone what’s in here, even many of the guards don’t know.”

  “Ukraine’s best-kept secret,” I glowered, wondering for the millionth time if Joclyn was alive, and not dead as I had assumed. Perhaps she was just trapped in another prison, in another country.

  Another person’s guinea pig.

  My magic bristled, the heat running through me in a deep agitation that just the possibility gave me. I could feel the magic needing to escape, but I kept it restrained, only one pop of silver light erupting near my index fingers.

  “Hey now!” Kaye interrupted, her perky response drenching my worry in sugar. “I like to think that’s me…”

  Kaye’s mother visibly flinched, “I would like you to be a bit more serious about that. Be back to our dorm on time tonight or you are going to need to sleep on the roof. Last night was too close, and one of the doctors two doors down heard you…” She paused, her voice raising an octave before her emotions and frustrations burst out in the form of tears. “He heard the door. He could know Kaye.”

  I stood, legs shaking as I took one step toward the woman, towering over her as I pulled her into an awkward hug, the motion even more so due to the tray of blood and syringes she still carried.

  “I’ll talk to her about it,” I whispered, sure the promise was gaining me another eye roll from the child in question.

  “Thank you, Jan,” she whispered, before, with a sigh and a glance toward Kaye, she shuffled away and out the door, the faint click of the lock the last echo of sound before Kaye turned the TV on.

  It had been nearly six years since the attack in Prague, and while the news had shifted from that war and destruction, it had moved to another. Thanks to the still present plague of Vilỳs, the world was in disarray, people exploding, underground factions taking shape, governments falling.

  We saw none of that. The only reason we knew was because of Kaye’s illegal cell phone and non-registered existence. Everything outside of the Tor browser on her magic box was controlled by the SSU, and it showed.

  Last month the morning news featured the report “Inside the Dictatorship: How America’s Religions took Control to Protect their People.” It painted a beautiful picture of how regimes and control can help a society. It was utter bull.

  Today, Kaye was cranking the volume on some odd sitcom about teenagers growing up in an academy run by the SSU, For The Love of Country.

  The whole thing was propaganda mixed with teenage angst and drama. It ground on me in a way that my magic would easily rise to. So, not only was it fodder, it provided the perfect audio cover.

  “What happened last night?” I asked before Kaye could change the subject, her deep sigh turning into a grunt as she peeled herself off the bed.

  “I got stuck in a wall,” she said as she took my arm, beginning the few tentative steps of our well worn path around the room.

  To anyone else that statement might sound purely ridiculous, but to Kaye it made sense. Years before she could wander through unused corridors, read books on the roof, steal food from the cafeteria. She was hiding, she wasn’t supposed to be here, yes, but people knew.

  They just didn’t care.

  Once the SSU took control things became more difficult. Now that the military was boarded in the old surgery wing she was trapped in her own prison. Her existence now relied on crawling around through the ceilings as I had shown her, utilizing old rooms and still unrepaired destruction from the Vilỳ attack as places to hide. She slept on the floor under her mother's bed and would read in the old pigeon shack on the roof.

  Her getting trapped in a wall literally meant she was trapped in a wall.

  “They probably think there is a ghost with how much drywall I have had to rip apart to get out,” She said, the image of her busting out of walls causing me to chuckle. “Maybe I can use that to my advantage.”

  “I think that might just worry your poor mother more.”

  She sighed, the truth as much a heavy burden on her as her mother, no matter how much she tried to fight it. She pulled us to a stop, her back tensing as she exhaled deeply, her focus on the stained and ripped wallpaper that covered my room.

  “Kaye?” I asked, my fingers soft against her forearm as I tried to get her attention.

  “We are trying to figure out how to get me papers,” she finally admitted, as we began to pace the floor again, the sadness behind her statement confusing to me. “How to get me registered.”

  “That should be a good thing, shouldn’t it?”

  She nodded once, “I have gotten through the last few years on luck… well, and a bumbling government. Once they moved the employees into the hospital I had no choice to come here with my mother. It was that or go to the boarding school for survival children.”

  “Survival children?”

  “Yeah,” she stalled, swallowing hard as she pulled us to a stop again, her focus dropping to her broken and ripped shoes. “I’ve told you I’ve seen someone get bit before. I told you I saw him explode.”

  “Him.” That information was new. “It was your father.”

  She could only nod.

  “The school they tried to send me to was attacked only months after Prague fell. I was supposed to be there. We got a letter in the mail announcing
my death and everything.”

  “And here I was thinking when you said you don’t exist…”

  She smiled

  “It got worse with the SSU because they track everything.”

  “So you need to get registered.”

  “I at least need papers. We think we found a man that can make them, but we aren’t sure. We get me papers and maybe I can get a job here and then my mom can get rid of that ulcer.”

  She tried to force a smile, but the look was sad, broken. The failed joke only slammed harder against her, the impact setting the flood waters free.

  I had only seen her cry once before, but then it was angry frustrated tears right before the Vilỳ had broken in. These were different. These were pain, these clung to her heart and dripped directly from her soul in little agonizing drops.

  “Kaye?” I whispered as I turned, taking a step toward her.

  Tears rolled over her cheeks as she looked at me, pain and heartbreak bubbling through as she shook her head in embarrassment, reaching up to wipe the treacherous things away.

  “No,” I whispered, grabbing her hand in mine as I stopped the progression. “It’s okay to cry. It’s okay.”

  “No, Jan, it’s not okay” she sobbed, trying to break her hand away from mine, something I didn’t fight, I let her go, the pressure in my chest expanding as she stepped away, wiping her dirty arm over her face, leaving smudges of grey behind. I could feel my magic heat and warm as it tried to break from me, as it tried to soar away from me.

  The pressure, the warmth, there was something about my power that was different, a different feeling.

  It wasn’t angry.

  “You’re right,” I said, taking a step closer that only ignited my magic more. “It’s not okay. And we can’t make it okay. But we can fight. We can protect ourselves, and…”

  “No one protected my father,” she interrupted her voice so broken by a sob that I could barely make it out.

  Her back shivered in her tears, her hair falling over her stained and ripped shirt in waves that shivered with each gasp of breath. I watched her, unsure of what to do, of how to comfort her. But I did know, I realized, or perhaps my magic did. The power continued to press against me, heat growing as my own pain began to echo hers, as I longed to reach for her, to help her. The strength of my magic surged as I wrapped my arms around her, pulling her back into my chest. She spun in my arms in response, her own arms pulling me against her as her tears picked up.