Ashes of Foreverland

by Bertauski, Tony

  But Alessandra is too close. It could disrupt everything!

  “We’ll disassemble the basement, Doctor. They won’t know what happened. All data can be erased and reprogrammed. Evidence can be planted to set the warden and guards up. We’ll keep Samuel in sick bay. He’ll continue his mission until its complete, and then we’ll pull the plug.”

  When Alessandra is asleep.

  Tyler pushed the black curly hair from Samuel’s forehead. A red welt remained where the stent had been removed. Tyler had killed the connection just before his stroke.

  Reed was coming through the needle.

  “We transitioned him while you were out, brought his biomite levels up while he was still unconscious. We were able to explain his disappearance to Alessandra until he crossed back over.”

  “How?”

  “I went in, placed a few calls. Explained he was recruited by the government based on his past service with the CIA. I implanted a few vague memories in Alessandra that he’d served in the military before she met him.”

  “It worked?”

  “She’s almost asleep, very open to suggestion. Now that Samuel’s back, she’s almost out.”

  Tyler rubbed his face. He had to check with Patricia. She would be worried; he hadn’t seen her in months. Gramm would’ve kept her updated, but he needed to see what she thought.

  But how do I connect without the needle?

  He looked inward and the voices cranked up like the knob on a radio.

  “I can show you the way, Doctor. I guided Samuel back inside, I can do the same for you.”

  Tyler’s chest fluttered as he paced around the table, his hands against his head. It was all coming so fast.

  Why didn’t he wake me earlier?

  “I’ve already arranged for your transfer to Attica in three days. En route, we’ll detour to the Institute. We have time, Doctor.”

  Gramm put his hand on Tyler’s shoulder. Peace and calm flowed around him.

  “I’ll show you the way.”

  The voices went quiet and still. As if they heard him.

  And listened.

  ——————————————

  In the middle of the prison yard, the afternoon sun fell on Tyler’s face, warm and radiant. He sat on the frozen ground, legs crossed, Gramm beside him.

  The inmates wandered. Breathe in.

  Birds overhead. Breathe out.

  Snow on the mountains. Breathe.

  There was only breath, only this moment.

  Perfectly still.

  He closed his eyes. In the darkness, the breeze whipped broken grass around his knees. Men shouted and birds called. The voices no longer haunted his mind. Across the great silence, one voice called softly.

  And warmed his heart.

  Without movement or effort, the cold vanished and the men fell silent. The breeze died. He crossed the vast space in an eternal moment of absolute perfection.

  The breeze returned, warmer. The clatter of cutlery, the murmur of conversation.

  He opened his eyes.

  Gramm stood in front of him. Instead of the gray prison garb, he wore casual khakis and a loose-fitting white shirt unbuttoned at the top. His front teeth were still slightly crooked, but his hair was thick and past his ears. The surfing chemist was back.

  A waiter cradled a padded menu, gold letters emblazoned on the side: The Press Lounge. Over his shoulder, the New York skyline glittered.

  “This way, sir.” The waiter gestured.

  Patrons were just beginning their evening at the rooftop bar. The waiter pointed at a table near the edge. A woman sat alone, swirling a glass of white wine while she drank the city’s view. Her dress seemed to flow despite the stillness.

  Glowed, despite the darkness.

  She turned. And smiled.

  She fell into his arms, her essence melting through him, her floral scent swirling around him.

  So warm, so soft.

  All of this, everything was Patricia—the people, the buildings, the setting sun. This was her Foreverland. Perhaps he should forget Alessandra, live here the rest of their lives so that, when she died, they would go together. If death came at this very moment, he would not be disappointed.

  But Alessandra could do so much more. Her Foreverland would be endless. She could network people into her Foreverland, bring all of humanity together. Alessandra would be the hub that established an immortal Foreverland, one that didn’t rely on one person, one host.

  The human population would become the host.

  We would become heaven on earth.

  With Alessandra, there would be eternal happiness, not just the fleeting moments of joy. It was what Tyler and Patricia had worked for all these decades.

  He wanted the world to have this joy, too, wanted the world to believe that if death came in this moment, it would not be disappointing.

  They swayed back and forth, dancing on the rooftop. The city light blazed like stars.

  29. Alessandra

  Upstate New York

  Bing.

  Alex had to go through a mental catalog to figure out what that sound was.

  Doorbell.

  That recognition lifted her from sleep, pulled her from a lifetime beneath the sand. Her eyes were open, but she didn’t remember opening them. She was staring at an object.

  Ceiling fan.

  Her throat burned, her lips cracked, but the allure of the bed was greater than her thirst. Sleep was warm like the sun, those first few minutes on the beach before sunburn really set in, warmth that seeped through her, saturated every pore, tugged her beneath the sand—

  Wake up.

  There were voices. One of them was Samuel. The other was a stranger that told her to wake up. Did I dream that?

  At first, they were downstairs. The front door was closed and muffled sounds were just below her window. She would’ve been content to lay there and let them lull her back to sleep, but this time her thirst won.

  Her robe was piled on the floor.

  She tied it closed, but not before seeing her hips jutting out at her waist, her ribs pronounced beneath her breasts. The window was a sheet of ice. The lawn was buried under snow, a fresh set of tracks carved to the front porch.

  Everything so foggy.

  Alex shuffled to the stairs, grabbing the walls and furniture for support. She couldn’t quite straighten up, and her feet hurt. Her fingers were stiff. It wasn’t until she reached the bottom of the steps that she moved less like an old woman.

  Samuel had his hand on the glass door. He was talking to a kid all bundled against the cold, ice crystals coating his ski mask. A lock of red hair had escaped through one of the eyeholes. Large snowflakes, the biggest she’d ever seen, hissed behind him.

  Snowflakes don’t hiss.

  The distant buzz of the voices was back, a radio playing static between her ears.

  Samuel started backing into the house, waving the kid off, thanking him for stopping by, wishing him luck to find a house he could shovel, when Alex heard the tapping.

  A fingernail on a pane of glass.

  It came from the back door.

  30. Danny Boy

  Upstate New York

  Danny rolled in the snow, getting legitimately cold before walking down Park Street, to the address Cyn gave him. Even though they didn’t dare drive past it, she described it in great detail like she’d been there before. Like she knew exactly what to do.

  “Just keep him busy for five minutes,” she had said.

  “How do you know all this?”

  Ever since leaving the wilderness, that’s how she answered questions: like she didn’t hear them.

  “You going to tell me what happened?” he once asked.

  “I will.”

  Her unperturbed posture and her unblinking gaze were intimidating. She knew exactly where they were going, what they were doing. She didn’t say how, one look was all he needed to know. Did Reed come to you? Did he tell you how to build the bridge?
>
  When Danny’s confidence wavered, the few moments his thoughts carried doubt into the foyer of his mind, she took his hand. As if she knew.

  “We’ll find the truth, Danny,” she would say. “It’ll set us free.”

  And doubt would be extinguished.

  “His name is Samuel,” Cyn had told him.

  “What are you going to do?”

  “Meet me at the truck.”

  He left the house on Park Street, a teenager in search of driveways to shovel. Danny walked down the sidewalk, a brand-new snow shovel over his shoulders. The truck was around the corner, the tailpipe huffing a steady cloud, the tires half-buried in the unplowed street. Cyn was turned in the passenger seat looking into the back.

  The back windows reflected the drifting snowflakes and gray sky. Danny cupped his hands against the tinted glass. They had laid the backseats down before parking, and used their pillows and blankets to make a bed. She didn’t say why. When he left her, it was unoccupied.

  Now someone was in it.

  We need to make a delivery, Cyn told him when they left the wilderness. And the package they were to deliver was lying in the back.

  The woman’s eyes were closed. He hoped she was sleeping and not dead. Cyn was holding her hand. Danny opened the driver’s door.

  “Take my hand,” Cyn said.

  The smell of lilacs was overpowering. His eyes began to water. Danny climbed in and did what he was told. He took her hand—

  Blinding light.

  A spotlight beamed through the windshield. It was like looking into the sun. A jolt of energy fired from her hand, pure sunlight beamed through every pore in his body.

  He melted into ecstasy.

  There was no separation.

  He merged with everything around him. The silky essence of the universe flowed without friction, without boundaries, without resistance—

  “She must stay asleep.”

  Danny was back in his body, back in the truck, the steering wheel in front of him. “What the hell just happened?”

  “Don’t let go.”

  “Who is she?”

  “I don’t really know, just don’t let go,” Cyn added. “They can’t see her if she’s asleep. Go now.”

  “Who are they?”

  “Drive, Danny. And don’t let go.”

  The GPS was set for New York City.

  He didn’t ask how she got the woman into the truck, or who she was or where they were taking her or why. But this was about Foreverland. It had always been about Foreverland, ever since he escaped the tropical island.

  The faces might change, but there was always a they.

  ——————————————

  New York City

  The snow had been cleared from the Brooklyn Bridge.

  Traffic was unusually sparse. Danny drove with one hand on the steering wheel. His other hand was clammy; his fingers ached in Cyn’s grasp. In the hours it took to get this far, her grip had tightened. She never looked away from the sleeping woman.

  Lilacs were pasted to the back of his throat. It had never been this strong, as if the woman sleeping in the back was the essence of lilac.

  “Alessandra Diosa,” Cyn told him. “Her name is Alessandra Diosa.”

  Diosa? Danny had cringed. Goddess.

  “Go faster,” Cyn said.

  He crossed the Brooklyn Bridge. The first light was green. So was the second one. They were all green, as far as he could see.

  And traffic was thinning.

  Cars were turning off Fifth Avenue, clearing a path for them to speed through the green lights. Even ambulances didn’t get respect like that.

  Alessandra moaned.

  Cyn squeezed Danny’s hand, their fingers grinding together.

  “As fast as you can,” she said.

  Earlier, she told him to go the speed limit. They didn’t want to attract attention. Besides, the roads were slippery and with only one hand on the wheel, they could just as easily have wrapped around a tree. But now they had a straight shot through the middle of the city.

  And everyone, somehow everyone, knew they were coming.

  But someone doesn’t. We’re hiding from someone with an all-reaching eye, someone that’s looking for Alessandra.

  “Do they know she’s missing?” he asked.

  “Not yet.”

  Danny flattened the accelerator.

  The truck bounced over imperfections in the road, tossing them in their seats. Cyn’s grip tightened. He couldn’t feel his fingers anymore.

  The flag on the GPS came into view. The destination was close.

  Buildings towered over them, their shadows dissolving into the night. Broadway billboards looked down on them. The street was nearly empty. Only a few cars waited for them to pass; pedestrians watched from the sidewalks and inside brightly lit storefronts.

  They turned on Forty-Sixth Avenue. There, on the corner of Seventh Street, the windows were brightly lit. The door stood open.

  “Stop in front,” Cyn shouted.

  “There’s nowhere to park.”

  “Just stop!”

  He mashed the brake with both feet. The truck slid sideways before jerking to a stop. Alessandra slid forward, but her eyes remained closed. Danny opened his door.

  “Don’t let go!” She pulled him back. “You can’t let go, understand?”

  She crawled into the back and he followed. They moved slowly and methodically, keeping their fingers laced. He reached the latch and the back door whooshed open.

  Headlights glared inside.

  Traffic had resumed closer to normal and was starting to back up. People were shouting as they passed, windows down, fingers out. Whoever had cleared the roads and turned the lights green had waned.

  Or maybe they were focusing on other things.

  “Sit her up.”

  Danny pulled her into a sitting position. Alessandra’s head wobbled. Drool glistened on her chin. Are we committing a crime?

  The time to ask that question had passed.

  “Take her hand.” Cyn let go of Danny.

  “You sure?”

  “Take her hand!”

  Danny grabbed Alessandra’s free hand. It was limp and cold.

  They held her up and took half-steps, her bare feet dragging across the pavement. She weighed as much as a grade-schooler. Danny could carry her with one arm.

  Horns sounded off, cars stopped.

  “Alessandra?” Cyn leaned in. “You don’t have to open your eyes, but take a step.”

  Her head rolled from left to right, mouth open. They didn’t slow down, but kept moving toward the open door on the corner of the building beneath bold letters, The Institute of Technological Research.

  They reached the curb when she took her first step, flopping her bare foot onto the sidewalk, skin scuffed from her toes. Her eyebrows arched, but her eyelids were too heavy.

  Car doors slammed behind them. Red and blue lights swirled across the building. Someone told them to stop.

  “Don’t turn around,” Cyn said.

  They were going through that door, even if shots were fired.

  The police lights reflected off the letters above the door. Sirens came from the other direction.

  Three steps left.

  Two.

  One.

  A man in a white lab coat blocked the entrance. There would be no fight, not with a barely conscious woman in their possession.

  Cyn looked at him, unblinking. And like the wolves, he stepped aside. They went inside the lobby. The man locked the door. Seconds later, a fist hammered it.

  “Unlock this door!” a cop shouted.

  The man in the lab coat crossed the lobby and pushed open the swinging doors. A harsh antiseptic smell rushed out. The soles of their boots squeaked on the waxed floor. Alessandra slid her feet until her knees buckled. They caught her before she crumpled.

  “Alessandra?” Cyn shook her. “You can wake up now. We’re here.”

  Her ey
es fluttered but didn’t open.

  “Where are we taking her?” Danny asked.

  “Just don’t let go.”

  “Tell me where we’re taking her!”

  “Follow him.” The man in the lab coat led the way.

  “Why are we here?” He couldn’t ignore the fear pounding in his chest. “Why are we bringing her to this place?”

  “The truth is down there, Danny.”

  “But why Alessandra?”

  Cyn stopped midway down the hall, clinging to Alessandra’s thin arm. She panted like a cornered animal. She feels the quiver, too.

  “It’s the only way out of this?” she said.

  “Out of what?”

  “This mess, Danny. She told me she’d leave me alone if we did this.”

  “Who told you?”

  Desperation pleadingly pried her eyes wide. “Just trust me.”

  She gently shook Alessandra until her eyelids fluttered again. An unfocused gaze peered through slits.

  “We need to walk,” Cyn said.

  They took one step, then another. Alessandra’s feet dragged and flopped. They held her hands like parents guiding their child to a very scary place.

  The hall was long, the doors open and offices empty. The man in the lab coat waited at a metal door. Alessandra was walking on her own when they arrived, her eyes almost completely open. The man in the coat tugged the metal door.

  Danny had been to the Institute in the spring, but none of this was familiar. He didn’t remember the hall or what was beyond the metal door. He only had a vague memory of arriving. When the metal opened and the funk of wet fur and dung hit him, he remembered.

  Coco.

  The orangutan lay on a table, long arms at his sides, a needle in the forehead.

  The walls weren’t walls. They were dark, but he could see through the reflections, could see the cubicles with smaller animals strapped down.

  And the wire. All the wires.

  “She has to go back there.” Cyn pointed at another set of doors across the room. The man in the coat waited.

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know! We just have to go back there, Danny.” She swallowed the lump cracking her voice. “We go back there.”