Absence of Mind

by H. C. H. Ritz

  For a few seconds, I don’t see anything. But then light glints off fast-moving metal inside the woods.

  Panting, I look forward. Past the train car graveyard is a set of train tracks and then, a few dozen yards away, the river. There’s a big house, and there’s a large, white boat tied up at a private pier. The space between here and there is flat and open, so I can’t go that way. But they’ll also know that, so they’ll know I’m here in the train cars, and they’ll search all the cars until they find me and kill me. If they’re smart, they’ll split up and shoot me when I run.

  I climb out the front of my boxcar and find a ladder at the far edge. I climb up to the top edge of the car and then bend to the side so I can peek around the side of the boxcar.

  I’m extremely grateful that only two of them come out of the woods, but two still feels like a lot when they both have guns and I don’t.

  I hear the whistle of a train and twist to look. From this height, I can see a train coming from the north. It’s not moving all that fast, probably because it’s coming through a town.

  I look back at the two men. They split up as they approach. One comes toward the left of my car, close, and the other veers wide to the right. Once they’re quite close, I pull myself up and over onto the roof and, staying as flat as I can, roll toward the back of the roof. I stop on my back, staring up into the darkening sky.

  Now that I’m here, I don’t know how long to stay. If I wait too long—if they go past the train car too far—they’ll be able to see me up here.

  So I stay up there until I can’t stand it anymore, and then I peek over the edge on the back side. I don’t see anyone. I climb down the ladder. All I can hear is the whistle and roar of the oncoming train—closer now—and I try to jump down quietly.

  My breathing is harsh, my throat dry, my heart pounding, as I lean down and look under the boxcars to look for legs.

  I find one pair to the far left. Where’s the other one?

  I hear a hollow clang close to my right, and I startle like a hunted deer.

  I climb up into the box car and run straight through it, leaping out the other side, landing hard and painfully, and then pick myself back up and make a mad dash for a large, rusted tank car.

  I hear the crack of a gunshot, but I feel no impact.

  I run past the tank car, and there it is immediately to my right—the oncoming train on the outermost of three sets of tracks. I turn back, and there the men are, right behind me—and with no better options available to me, I try to run across the tracks in front of the train.

  I know I won’t make it even as I’m midway across. The train’s whistle and the squeal of brakes is deafening, the headlamp is blinding, and I’m throwing myself forward when I feel myself caught and spun as if I were a rag doll.

  Fifteen

  Mila has her head up enough to see another black SUV pass them going the other way and spin out across the two-lane bridge. It stops, and more gunfire breaks out. The cops and marshals are momentarily stopped. Then, one man grabs Mila’s head and doubles her over onto the seat. She screams as if in agonizing pain.

  The vehicle goes down an incline, turns a left, goes a surprisingly short distance, and pulls into what seems to be a large garage. The car doors open, men jump out, and a large door motors closed behind them. Flashlights cut swaths into the darkness in a large, echoing space.

  A man and a woman grab Mila and drag her out of the SUV. She screams again, and the woman smashes her elbow into Mila’s ribs. “Shut up,” she says. Doubled over, Mila chokes and gasps for breath as she’s half-dragged along. She doesn’t resist.

  Someone drapes the SUV with a tarp, and another man runs up some stairs toward a large window on a top floor while the woman takes Mila into an interior room.

  The woman shoves Mila roughly onto a metal folding chair and steps away as another man flips the lights on.

  This person has a soft look, with too much padding on his bones, and he wears a dull, gray suit and carries a small briefcase. He’s not with the others. His face is tight and agitated, and his breathing is too fast.

  Mila sobs in the chair, clutching her ribs and her right arm and making no effort to get up.

  “Mila Bremer, you pain in the ass,” the man says with pent-up feeling, and he slaps her across the face.

  She cries out and hangs her head.

  “You led us on a wild goose chase,” the man snaps. “Across the whole damn country. But then, you know? As soon as we looked for your mother, there it was. Flying from Atlanta to Cleveland under her own damn name. You’re not that bright after all, are you?”

  The mercenary woman stares at them both with her lip curled and her arms crossed.

  “And it was all no thanks to you, wasn’t it?” the man shouts at the mercenary. “I thought you people were competent!”

  “She’s here, isn’t she? Still alive. And so are you.”

  “Thanks to luck,” he snaps. “What the hell was that stunt with the bus? You nearly got her killed. And you weren’t supposed to draw this kind of attention. We told you not to draw attention! How the hell are we supposed to cover this up now?”

  The mercenary woman shrugs with an eyebrow raised. “Yeah, well, that was before the targets ran for it and the US marshals showed up. It kind of all went to shit after that. If you had told us about the marshals, that might have come in handy. Makes me wonder if this is your first damn rodeo.”

  The man turns and kicks at Mila, missing. “You couldn’t just accept our deal. You just had to turn this into one big, hard-to-cover-up wreck of a situation.”

  The mercenary rolls her eyes. “You need help with this pathetic woman or can I go make sure we’re not all about to be killed? There are only three of us left on Alpha team, you know.”

  The suit slams his briefcase down on a table and opens it. Inside is a jet injector and a gun.

  He goes over to Mila and grabs her face, forcing her to look at him. “You’re not going to fight me, are you?”

  “No,” Mila sobs. “P-please don’t hurt me.”

  The man lets go of her face and surveys how she’s clutching her arm and ribs. He grabs her right arm roughly, twisting it. Mila voices an ear-piercing shriek. He looks at the arm and sees inches of bruising already evident. “Broken. Ribs, too, huh?” he demands. He slaps her torso, and she chokes and doubles over.

  He turns to the mercenary with satisfaction. “No, she’s not going to give me any trouble.”

  The woman smirks and leaves the room, closing the door behind her.

  “You’re going to give us the confession we need to make all this go away, aren’t you?” the man says coldly. “We’ve got it pinned on you already. We just need a confession and a very tragic suicide in a standoff with law enforcement, and then I don’t know what the hell we’re going to do about the rest of it yet, but I guess we’ll figure that out as we go along, won’t we? Because what choice do we have, Ms. Bremer?” His face reddens as his voice reaches a scream. “What choice have you given us?” Rage boils visibly within him, so strong it might break loose. He snarls under his breath as he pushes it down.

  Mila cries quietly, her head down again, trying not to draw his rage.

  The man turns back to his briefcase and picks up the jet injector, and already, Mila is on her feet, holding her metal chair with both hands and swinging it viciously at the man’s head.

  I lie in the grass as the world settles down around me. I don’t even try to get up. My nurse training kicks in, and the first thing I do is assess the damage. I think I got hit on the left leg as I was trying to leap away from the tracks. My left knee joint feels wrong and maybe the hip joint, too. Even though everything still moves like it should, which means nothing’s dislocated, the joints feel loose. I’ve probably screwed up some tendons. Recovery is going to suck, but nothing hurts yet. My body’s in shock.

  The train is still braking, the wheels squealing. For the moment, my pursuers are on the other side of the train.
>
  I look behind me. That house and its tied-up boat call to me less than a hundred yards away, but I’ll never make it across that wide, bare expanse of grass.

  From my angle on the ground, I see the pumping legs of one of my pursuers as he runs up and tries to jump onto the ladder of a moving boxcar from the other side. It’s a three-foot vertical, and he doesn’t quite make it high enough. His legs flail and come forward to counterbalance his weight and get pulled into the wheels directly below the ladder.

  I can’t hear anything over the squealing of the wheels, but I get a fine mist of blood on my face.

  I feel nothing now. Later, I’m sure I’ll be horrified. For now, what matters is that there’s only one left.

  I look to my right. The tracks branch out to a set of five, and not far down are two more trains at rest on their own tracks.

  I try to get to my feet, but I simply can’t put weight on my left leg. Some primal part of my brain tells me it’s not an option, and that means something is broken after all. I feel down my leg and discover that putting pressure on the shin makes me scream.

  I cast about for something—anything—that might help, and I’m lucky to find a discarded piece of metal by the tracks. I use it as an impromptu crutch and hobble toward the other trains, my heartbeat thudding in my ears.

  The way my left leg feels, I’m going slow—so slow, it’s like moving through waist-deep water—but the train is still braking, and I don’t have far to go.

  I see freight cars with ladders that only go halfway up. There’s a series of cars loaded down with enormous metal tubes, but if I go inside those, I’ll be a sitting duck. And if I go into an engine, I’ll be cornered, and it’s too easy for him to glance into them to see if I’m there.

  I’m at the first train now. There’s a tank car with a catwalk around the outside. I want my legs off the ground so he can’t see where I am, but I don’t think I can climb up there and down again. I hobble past this car. Ah. The next train is pulling double-decker flats of smartcars. I look behind me. The first train is almost stopped. I’m out of time.

  I hurry as best I can to the double-decker flat, open a car door, pop the trunk, and look around one last time. I can’t see anything from here, but I don’t see my pursuer. I climb into the trunk¬¬ and pull it almost closed. I put the tips of three fingers into the gap and pull the lid down until it hurts. I don’t want to be stuck in here, but I also can’t risk him seeing that the trunk lid is tilted up.

  Now, all I can do is hope, because now I’ve trapped myself. If he checks every train car and every smartcar methodically until he finds me, I’m dead.

  The metal chair crashes down on the man’s head, and he crumples.

  “My arm is bruised, not broken,” Mila says, and she hits him again. “And my ribs are just sore.”

  He’s still conscious but stunned, his hands on his head but not protecting it well enough.

  “And I had less than five minutes to get my mom away from you people. Not enough time to construct a false ID that would stand up to the TSA, okay?”

  She rotates the chair and hits him with the edge of the chair back, and finally, he goes unconscious.

  “And it’s a good thing I don’t need you awake,” she finishes.

  She looks around, opens the door briefly, and peeks down the hallway. Seeing no one, she checks rooms before she finds an old desktop computer in the third room. After ensuring that it has wi-fi, she goes back for the man.

  After two failed attempts to transport him, she goes back to the computer and searches for “how to drag an unconscious body.”

  Seconds later, she goes back to the first room, rolls the man onto his back, and kneels behind his head. First, she gets her arms under his shoulders and raises him up onto her lap, and then she gets her arms around his waist and stands up, lifting his upper body with the strength of her legs. Then she drags him slowly down the hallway.

  She goes back for the metal chair, too, just in case.

  Sitting at the desktop computer, she launches into a flurry of activity. First, she pulls out a USB drive and quickly installs the exploit she used to hack into other Navis from her laptop. With the exploit, she gets into the Navi of the unconscious man besides her, who she confirms is Slava Knyazev, and from his Navi, she intercepts the messages and Navi IDs of all three corporate mercenary teams currently hunting them.

  She watches until she finds what she needs—messages from the man who’s hunting Phoebe.

  His name is Michael, and, according to the messages he’s sending his fellow mercenaries, his situation isn’t good. He’s hiding from the cops and US marshals that are closing in on the train yard, and he’s still trying to find Phoebe at the same time. But apparently, the other mercenary team somehow got away from the cops on the bridge and are coming up in the woods behind the cops and marshals. Things are about to get ugly.

  She sends a quick message to Tom Lyons, the US deputy marshal responsible for their manhunt.

  > vmsg nid CT09372380 “Dear Tom. This is Mila Bremer. The corporate mercenaries are right behind you. I think you might want to address that. Phoebe and I will turn ourselves in soon, I promise. Meanwhile, please don’t get killed.”

  While she moves on to trying to hack into Michael’s Navi, she watches the communications between Tom and the rest of the marshals and cops. He’s not dumb. He sends a small team to scout the area behind them while he continues to advance with the rest of his men.

  This is a problem, but it’s a problem that solves itself as soon as the scouting team finds the mercenaries and all hands turn to trying to defend themselves.

  At last, Mila gains access to Michael’s Navi, and she sends him a quick message.

  > display emmsg nid LS03984703 “Excuse me, Michael. This is Mila Bremer. I’m inside your brain. And I would like to suggest that you stop hunting Phoebe now.”

  The message appears in Michael’s emergency notification panel, highlighted with triple exclamation marks.

  Michael’s video goes still. Then he gives his Navi the command to turn off.

  Mila grimaces and turns it back on.

  > display emmsg nid LS03984703 “No, no, Michael. You’re not in control now. I am. Now, let’s see how well you can dodge cops and shoot helpless women when you can’t see. Oh, and let’s take away all your communications, too.”

  > godark nid LS03984703

  > cmd nid LS03984703 comms-down

  Michael’s display goes black.

  > vmsg nid LS03984703 “Now, listen. You might want to consider the fact that I know where you are—currently, crouching behind a green van—and I can relay that to the cops who are all around you. Give that some thought. Also, think about the fact that if you make me happy, I might let you go. I can hear you, so say, ‘Yes, ma’am’ when you agree to do what I say.”

  She hears him curse.

  She turns her attention to Slava Knyazev, still on the floor next to her. He’s sleeping peacefully. She shakes her head.

  Reluctantly, Michael says, “Yes, ma’am.”

  Mila nods, her face still tense. She gives him his vision back. Then she orders him to take the bullets out of his guns and throw them away and then throw away the guns. Next, she makes him look at his ankles, wrists, waist, and pockets to show her that all of his weapons have been discarded.

  > vmsg nid LS03984703 “You can tell from the gunfire that the authorities are busy, so go ahead and start looking for Phoebe again. And repeat after me, loud enough for her to hear you: Mila is in my head, and she says…”

  Curled up in the car trunk, I have plenty of time to think about the situation and start worrying about Mila. I don’t want her to get hurt. I’m unspeakably angry at her and I don’t think that I could ever forgive her for what she’s done, but I still don’t want her in the hands of these men.

  I also have plenty of time for my leg to stiffen up and start to hurt in earnest, all the way from ankle to hip, and maybe up toward my ribs, too.

&nb
sp; I nearly have a heart attack when I hear a man’s voice only a few yards away. He’s speaking in a rough and reluctant tone of voice. “. . . I’m not allowed to hurt you. Mila says she’s sorry about what happened earlier. She says she finally figured it out. Do you remember how that one day she wanted to go to the ER and get an M-MRI because she thought she’d had a Navi implanted, and now you know from the first video that they did inject something that they used to make her cooperate?”

  I listen intently.

  “So apparently, the same thing happened earlier, after that conversation she had with those guys at her office in the second video, only that time they wiped her memory. She remembers that day. She got sick and she didn’t know why. So she really didn’t know about Eve or what it was doing.”

  Muddled as the explanation is, it makes perfect sense.

  “And so far as the message about giving you to them, she admits that she was considering their offer, but only up until the point where they wanted you. She would never have given you to them. After that, she was just stringing them along to buy time.”

  I open the trunk a crack and look out. A man with his dark hair in a ponytail and black combat fatigues is looking around, unarmed. He goes on in an increasingly disgusted tone of voice. “Mila admits that she was a huge jerk on both of those videos that you saw. She feels like she’s been changing over the past couple of weeks. She says that she didn’t think that she cared about people. But that was ‘before Phoebe.’ She says that you’re showing her what she’s been missing. She says you’re teaching her to how to care…” He makes a face and heaves a sigh. “. . . and she wants to keep learning.”

  I’m half-crying and half-laughing as I open the trunk. “Um, a hand here?” I call to the pony-tailed thug.