by J. Bryan
Things looked hopeful for him here—General Ward Kilpatrick clearly had big plans for Tommy’s future.
Tommy already ached to see Esmeralda again and felt terrible for leaving her, especially since they’d parted angry at each other. He wanted to think of her waiting for him back home, and imagined himself coming back to her, finally a success and not a loser. He knew that he was no good for her, that he only held her back and sometimes made her miserable, but he still loved her and wanted to be with her. When he came back a better, more successful person, then she would understand why he’d left.
He flipped the gold coin in his hand. It had belonged to old man Tanner—Pap-pap, as Tommy and the other children had been required to call him—and Tommy had stolen it the night he met Esmeralda. He’d given it to her as a present, and she’d kept it all these years.
He’d been a little surprised that Esmeralda hadn’t wanted to come with him and learn how to use her power for the greater good of the world. She seemed content to spend her life arranging funerals and applying makeup to dead people, but Ashleigh had taught Tommy to reach for bigger things in life. It hurt that Esmeralda had turned down the idea so quickly, and she had seemed to care so little when he left.
For a moment, the room seemed to shift around him, as if he’d had a glimpse of other walls hidden behind the ones around him, drab olive instead of white. All of the small hairs on his body stood up, from his legs to the nape of his neck, and he shivered as if a ghost had passed through him.
The sense of déjà vu permeated the place for Tommy, whether he was doing tests in the lab, eating at the cafeteria, or even sitting here in his room, where the feeling seemed at its strongest. It was like being in the most haunted house in the world, every room crowded with ghosts he couldn’t quite see. Sometimes, like now, the feeling filled him with a strange, paranoid terror.
Tommy left the television on as he left his room and walked down the deserted hall. He wondered about the people who’d originally occupied the rooms on this hall. Nazis had lived here, he reminded himself, and he broke out in nervous sweat.
He walked to the common room, where there was a big-screen television, multiple game consoles, surround-sound stereo, a foosball table, and a pool table, along with bookshelves full of military action movies and video games. They seemed to expect more residents in the future. Tommy doubted they’d provided all this stuff just so he could play with himself.
He turned out the light, lay down on the couch, and blasted an “Arena Rock” music station over the television to drown out his thoughts. The bad feelings weren’t so strong here, and he thought he might be able to sleep.
In that halfway region between wake and sleep, still aware of himself lying on the couch and hearing Guns N’ Roses at painful volume, he had a strange waking dream in which he saw himself walking down the same dormitory hall and entering the same room, but the walls were drab olive, and all the entertainment gear had been reduced to a bulky wood-cabinet radio and an old-fashioned phonograph player with a big funnel amplifier.
Tommy wore heavy black boots in his vision, which echoed on the wood-tiled floor of the boys’ hallway and common room. Within the dream, he somehow knew that this was the boys’ dorm, and there were, elsewhere, both a girls’ hall and a conjugal hall for the eugenics portion of the project.
In his vision, the common room had more spartan furnishing, and a Wagner record had replaced the sound of Guns N’ Roses. Tommy reasoned that he must be completely asleep now, because he could only hear the television very distantly.
A boy was in the common room, reading a book on ancient Roman wars—the bookshelf in the room was stocked only with books about Germany and war. Tommy knew the boy was from Holland and his name was Willem, that he was twenty-two years old, while Tommy was only nineteen in this dream, but Tommy had authority over him. Tommy’s authority stemmed from the black uniform jacket he wore, and the black boots.
“Willem,” Tommy said. “It’s Saturday night, we should have some fun.”
“Do you mean it?” Willem adjusted his thick glasses and sat up. He was a squirmy, fidgety, awkward kind of guy. He seemed awed that Tommy would approach him. Niklaus, Tommy thought. To him, I’m Niklaus. “What do you have in mind? Can we leave the base?”
“That’s exactly what I had in mind.” Tommy, or Niklaus, leaned against the door, lit a cigarette, and blew smoke at Willem. “I have an automobile parked just outside the wall. We could drive to a town, drink at a pub, go dancing.”
“I am not so good at dancing.”
“You’ll have to learn fast. I invited Roza and Vilja to come with us.”
“You did?” Willem jumped to his feet. He was enamored of the pale, wispy Vilja, the quiet Swedish girl who claimed to see ghosts and demons. Though Willem had never spoken about his feelings, they were obvious to Niklaus, whose job included paying close attention to the male supernormals living here. Willem was often seen trying to work up the nerve to speak to Vilja, but he was awkward and hesitant when he managed to talk to her.
“The girls wanted to get out, too. We’ve all been cooped inside too long,” Niklaus said. “They’re ready for a good time. You don’t mind that I invited them?”
“No, no. Alise doesn’t mind if we take the girls out?”
“Are you scared of my cousin?” Niklaus snickered.
“I’m not afraid of a woman! When do we go?”
“Now,” Niklaus said. “The girls are already waiting for us with a bottle of wine for the drive. You may want to put on a fresh shirt...something with buttons. And a tie. You want to look smart.”
Willem ran back to his room to get ready. Niklaus loaned him some cologne, laughing inwardly as he watched Willem splash it all over his neck and face.
“Keep quiet as we leave,” Niklaus whispered as they walked down the hall. “We don’t want anyone getting mad at us for not inviting them, but the car only seats four.”
Willem nodded and winked. He meant it to be sly and conspiratorial, but it was so exaggerated that Niklaus laughed at him. Niklaus led the way out into the main corridor and up the very long flight of steep concrete stairs to the exit. He had a key that allowed him to unlock the door from the inside.
They passed through the concrete bunker housing the door, where Niklaus exchanged quiet nods with the S.S. officer on guard duty at the desk. Niklaus had already spoken with him earlier to ensure he and Willem were not added to the official record of entries and exits.
They left through the west gate, the supply gate that opened onto a loading dock, which was dark under its high tin roof. Niklaus jumped down to the newly paved road, and Willem only a hesitated a moment before jumping down after him. They walked along the road.
“Where is your car?” Willem asked, looking from the high brick wall to the forest across from it.
“Just ahead. What will you say when you see her?”
“Vilja?” Willem cleared his throat. “I will tell her she looks beautiful...in the, in the...moonlight.”
Niklaus snorted laughter. “Here.” He stepped off the road into a grassy fire break carved through the trees.
“It is parked in the woods?” Willem stopped, looking worried.
“Of course. You will see why, I promise.”
They walked into the dark woods, lit only by occasional patches of moonlight. Niklaus smirked each time he heard Willem stumble over a branch or stone behind him, and laughed when Willem tripped and fell on his face.
“It’s like watching a clown perform,” Niklaus said, as Willem pushed himself back to his feet and wiped dirt from his mouth.
“How much farther? Why is it so far away?” Willem asked.
“It’s by the creek. Can you hear it?” Niklaus led him down a narrow trail to an overgrown creek bank. At this altitude, the creek was only a thin sheet of icy water, spread over a bed of sharp rocks.
“I still do not see a car,” Willem said, fidgeting hard now, shifting back and forth on his feet. “Where are
the girls?”
“They’re just across the creek.” Niklaus pointed to the deep woods. “I told them you would signal them by starting one of your magic fires with your mind.”
“What? No, I can’t just do that right now. I must prepare...”
“You can’t do it at all, can you, Willem?” Niklaus asked. “You tricked the German scientists who came to study you.”
“Niklaus, what are you saying?” Willem shivered hard now. “Why would you say such things?”
“Don’t lie to me, Willem. You tricked them. You aren’t going to lie to me again, are you?”
“Please, Niklaus!”
“Why would you do that?”
“I didn’t...I only...it was a trick, I performed it in the street for money,” Willem said. “I learned the right materials for a very slow fuse, and how to time it just right, so it appeared that, it appeared that...” He swallowed hard. “I could create the fire with my mind. I tried to make a stage act of it.”
“But why trick the scientists, Willem?”
“I was hoping they would take me to a university to study me, and I could take classes...Please, Niklaus, you must tell no one!”
“Everyone knows, Willem. Even the typists and the janitors know. You haven’t done a thing since you arrived here.”
“Everyone knows?” Willem turned stark white. He looked at the woods across the creek. “The girls aren’t here, are they?” he whispered.
“You’re of no use to us, Willem,” Niklaus said. “And you know too much for us to let you go.”
Willem was trembling now. “What are you saying?”
Niklaus drew the Luger pistol from his belt and pointed it Willem’s face, aiming for the reflection of the moon in the left lens of his glasses.
“Oh, no!” Willem gasped. “Oh, God, Niklaus, no, you don’t have to—”
Niklaus shot him through the head, shattering the glasses and blasting out the back of his skull, and Willem tumbled into the shallow, cold stream. Kranzler had stressed that he wanted it done with a single shot, to keep things quiet.
Niklaus watched as the boy lay bleeding in the creek, his remaining eye staring lifelessly at the stars. When he was certain Willem was dead, he holstered the pistol and walked back to the base.
Chapter Twenty-Six
Mariella awoke slowly, the tranquilizer gas still floating in her brain like leftover wisps of fog. Her eyes crept open, revealing drab gray walls, a single steel door with a small, clear window, a sink, a toilet. The ceiling had a sickly glowing fluorescent panel and the sort of tiny black inverted dome that usually housed a security camera.
Her bed was hard and narrow, like a prison cot. The entire place looked like a prison cell, in fact, and there was no handle on her side of the door.
She tried to remember where she was and how she’d gotten there. Slowly, her memory came back. They’d been among the stones at Carnac, and someone had captured them. Her precognition had failed to protect them—she’d thought they might have more time before the man that Jenny called “Kranzler” came to capture Seth. It looked like he’d captured Mariella, too, which was probably why her vision of the event had been so fuzzy. It was hard to see her own future, and even harder when perception-distorting mushrooms and sleeping gas were added to the mix.
Then she remembered everything. Before they’d been captured, Mariella had fully remembered dozens of prior lifetimes—not all her past lives, because the process had been interrupted, but plenty of them. She was the ancient soul called the oracle, and Mariella Visconti was just one of many masks she’d worn and discarded over the millennia.
Another such mask was Mia Ruggieri, the poor, clueless peasant girl from Sicily whose reputation for seeing the future had attracted the interest of the German scientists. They’d offered her a sizable amount of money for joining their research, enough to provide for her parents and six brothers and sisters for years to come. Under strong pressure from her parents, Mia had accepted the offer, turned all the money over to her father, and traveled off to Germany with the strange foreign men.
She stood, stretched, and walked to the door to peer out the window. All she saw was a concrete corridor and a similar steel door across from hers. She touched the blank area on the door where the handle should have been. She pounded her fist on the window, but nobody came.
With nothing to do, Mariella eventually reflected on her past dealings with Kranzler and the others, trying to prepare for whatever might lie ahead. Looking into her own future, she only saw a dark blur. Even her visions of love and passion with Seth had deserted her. She didn’t know whether to feel relieved or disappointed, or maybe frightened—it could mean that one or both of them were going to die, and so the anticipated future was gone.
Within an hour after she awoke, a voice crackled from somewhere in the ceiling above. “The general wants to see you.”
A man in a black uniform appeared at the window in her door. She nodded and gave him a small wave.
“I should warn you,” he said. It was odd to watch his lips move in front of her but hear his voice electronically amplified above her. “We’re all armed with X3 TASER guns. We won’t hesitate to take you down if you give us trouble.”
“There’s no need to expect trouble from me,” Mariella said. “I promise. I wish to see the general as well.”
The guard nodded. There was an electronic buzz, followed by a mechanical thunk, as her door unlocked. The guard pulled it open and let her out into the hall. Two other guards were there, with their hornet-yellow electrical stun weapons drawn and pointed at her. She held up her hands and gave them a reassuring smile.
She noticed that the guards wore armored black uniforms without no flag or logo, as if the organization that employed them did not want to be associated with their actions. Two wore thick helmets, face shields, and gloves, as if specifically prepared to deal with paranormals. Mariella wouldn’t be glimpsing any of their futures.
They led her down the corridor. She noticed Seth through one of the narrow windows, still unconscious on a bed in his own cell. She didn’t see Jenny in any of the cells, though, just a Latino girl she didn’t recognize, sitting on her cot and staring into space.
The guards took her through another, larger steel door at the end of the hallway, which had to be unlocked with a plastic ID card. They turned down another corridor and passed through another secure door, then rode an elevator up a level.
As they took her down a narrow side corridor to a suite of offices, Mariella felt her skin prickle. She recognized where she was—the colors had gone from gray and green to white, making it feel more like a modern research lab and less like a military base, but beneath that, everything was still the same. It felt the same.
Memories from that past life bubbled everywhere in the underground base. Why not? They were gathering back in the same place—herself, the plague-bringer, the healer, the seer. She wondered whether the Latin girl in the other cell just happened to be the love-charmer, or perhaps the dead-speaker.
The setting and characters might have been the same, but Mariella intended for the story to end differently this time.
The guards took her to exactly the office door she expected, the largest office. Inside, a burly man in a general’s uniform stood behind his desk, and she barely had to look at him to recognize that this was the man from her vision, the man who’d been searching for them. She also knew that, in a past life, this man had been a Nazi S.S. officer named Helmut Kranzler. There was no mistaking his heavy, menacing presence.
He smiled and offered his hand, his green eyes eerily like her own. There was a strange energy in the room between them. They were opposites, but not exactly the sort who fell in love like Jenny and Seth. She wondered if he had any of his past memories, or if he were limited to the gnat-sized viewpoint of a single lifetime.
“Miss Visconti, my name is General Ward Kilpatrick, United States Department of Defense.” He shook her hand, and she noticed he wore gloves, maybe
to protect himself from her power. “Thank you for meeting with me.”
“I wasn’t aware I had a choice, General,” Mariella said.
“Please, ma’am, have a seat. You can relax now.” He dropped into his chair and waved the guards away. “You can go, boys, she’s not violent.”
“We’ll be right outside.” One of the guards closed the door.
Mariella slowly sat down opposite him. “Where am I?” she asked, though in a sense, she knew perfectly well. Germany. The Harz mountains.
“You are at a top-secret defense research facility,” Ward said. “I apologize for bringing you here under these circumstances, ma’am, but you were in the company of a wanted mass murderer. Jennifer Morton. I’m not sure what name she might have told you.”
“Genevieve? She can’t be a murderer.”
“Oh, yes.” Ward turned his computer screen toward her and summoned images of bodies in clear plastic bags, disfigured and twisted by horrific diseases. “Two hundred people, right in her own hometown. Kids from her school. The pastor at her church. The mayor.” He scrolled through more and more pictures, intestines poking through rotten flesh, eye sockets full of tumorous gore, until Mariella had to stop herself from being sick. “She did this to her own, Miss Visconti, not to some foreign enemy. Can you imagine a person who would inflict that on her own people?”
“I can’t.” Mariella shook her head. “Are you sure she did it? She seems so nice.”
“She did it. Her touch spreads a deadly infection...you already know all about that, Miss Visconti. We overheard you have a secret of your own, don’t you?” He leaned forward, grinning and speaking in a conspiratorial whisper. “What is it like, Miss Visconti? Seeing other people’s futures?”
“You know about that?” Mariella faked a surprised gasp. “I tried to keep it secret for so long.”
“Your secret will remain safe with me, don’t you worry.” Ward leaned back. “Miss Visconti, you’re a law-abiding citizen from a good family. How did you get tangled up with these criminals, Jenny and Seth?”
