She drops her cigarette and looks past me, back at the train station where the others are. She rubs her temple. “You have no idea how powerful you are, Alex.” She bends down and picks at the gravel between the railroad ties, returning with a small handful. “When you rewrite people, you change how they choose—you control how time is shaped and fixed, which means that you control truth itself.” She smiles again. The big maternal loving smile that scares me. “I made you like this, Alex, and the other Gentry don’t know what you can do. I stole you from them because I do know and I need you.”
“Need me . . .”
“To stop things. To stop the Gentry. To save your species.”
“But you are Gentry.”
“Of them and against them.” She kicks at the rail.
I wait for her to say more. She doesn’t. I press her. “Why?”
She shrugs. Looks down toward where the others are waiting. “Love.”
“Love?” She sounds dumb.
She looks up at me suddenly. “Don’t discount love, Alex. Love is enough. It has been for you, and it is for me.”
I look back at Corina. Then: “So what can I do? I’m just me. Tell me how to stop the Gentry.”
She bends over, picks up a handful of gravel, and lets it filter through her fingers before she looks up at me. “Destroy the compound. Destroy Jeffrey Sabazios. Without the futures stored at the compound, and without Sabazios, the Gentry plan will fail.”
“Destroy the futures . . .” My voice cracks, and it feels like my heart freezes mid-beat. I breathe, step back, and my hands come up like I’m going to ward her off with a spell. “You want me to kill the witnesses?”
She looks at me. Her face twists into something, maybe sadness. “You can’t save them, Alex. Their minds are the end of everything, and as long as they live, what they’ve seen is locked in. They need to be destroyed.”
“Fuck that.” I spit on the ground between us and turn to walk back to the station.
“There are choices to make,” she calls out.
I turn back, study her face. She looks repulsive to me now, and I want to get away. “I am not killing anybody else.”
She shrugs. “You’ll do what you do. But if you want to finish this—if you want to be like Abigail—you’ll have to do things that seem wrong to most people. Abigail disobeyed her husband. Abigail stole. Abigail betrayed. Jordan broke protocols, betrayed national security, disobeyed directions from the president. She wasn’t afraid to do what she needed to do, Alex. She wasn’t afraid.”
Her talking about Jordan and Abigail is too much. They’re private. They’re my memories. “Fuck you.” It comes out as a screech. “This isn’t about fear, this is about you wanting me to kill my friends. That’s not what Jordan did. That’s not what Abigail did, and you don’t get to talk to me about Jordan or Abigail.”
But she just points at me. “You know that most of the future you need to stop is locked in the minds of the witnesses.” She shakes her finger. “If you want to save everybody else, then they have to die.”
In my mind, all I can see is the faces that she’s talking about. Paul and Calvin and Maddie and Billy. Damon.
The end of the world is in their minds, but I’m not going to kill them. “No.” It comes out strong, confident, and I start to feel confident because of it. “I’ll find another way.”
She shakes her head slowly. “The Oracle device has seen the whole sweep of possibilities, Alex. There is no future for Earth if they live.” She reaches for my arm again, but I pull away before she can grab it. “Saving them now only dooms them later . . . in a month, maybe two, they’ll die and so will everyone else—die as slaves, as food for Gentry children.”
“No,” I say again, this time without the confidence. Then I turn and walk away.
“Alex,” she calls. “Please.”
I hesitate, but I don’t stop walking again until I’m back at the depot.
“So?” Corina asks me when I get back.
I take a deep breath and let it out. Everybody’s watching me, waiting for me to say something, but I don’t want to talk. Talking means telling them what Sybil said. Kill the witnesses to save the world.
I shake my head, look at the ground.
“What’d she say?”
I look down the tracks. Sybil is still walking toward us, moving slow.
“She said some shit.”
“What shit?”
If I’m going to save the world, I have to kill my friends.
I don’t want to tell them that. I need help.
I dive.
WHAT DO I DO?
She comes to me quickly and clearly, my Voice rising above the Jungle, deafening:
“You’ve already done it, Plugz. Can’t run from it, cuz you’ve done it.”
DONE WHAT?!
“What you’re gonna do, Plugzie. You’ve already done what you’re gonna do.”
Then she disappears. I wait a moment longer for her to come back, but she doesn’t say anything more and I still don’t know anything. I surface, refocusing on the six sets of eyes that are waiting on me to say something. I’ve already done what I’m going to do, she said, and there’s only one thing that makes sense.
“The plan,” I say finally, “is to stop Sabazios.”
“How?” Corina asks.
“I’m going back to Seattle.”
Sybil looks away, then down.
Cassandra watches Sybil’s reaction and then turns to me. “What about the witnesses?”
“They aren’t . . .” But I don’t know what to say after that. I don’t know how to say what she’s asked me to do, and I know for a fact that I cannot do it.
“Alex?” Corina looks at me uncertainly. “What about the rest of them?”
Sybil looks at me. I look away. In my mind, I hear Jordan’s thoughts about kings who weren’t up to the task—too weak to do what they needed to do. I step back from them, out of the circle. I won’t be a weak king. “Sybil says they need to die.” But even before I finish saying it, I can hear my own music grow overwhelmed with doubt.
Erica and Sal look at Cassandra. Cassandra looks at Corina. Corina looks at Sybil. “What’s he talking about, Sybil?”
Sybil shrugs and gestures at Brett, who retrieves a pack of cigarettes from his pocket and hands her one. She holds up a finger for us to wait while she lights it and blows out a cloud. “Alex knows what to do.” She examines her cigarette.
“You told him to kill all the witnesses?” Corina asks.
“He’ll do what he needs to do.” Then Sybil just shrugs and reaches behind herself. She pulls at the denim that covers her butt. “Whatever he does, though, you’ll need something.” She bends down and unties her bag, reaches in and produces a crinkly metallic envelope.
“Here,” she says, handing the envelope to Corina. “Use it. Or don’t.”
Corina doesn’t reach out for the envelope. “Just me? Why do I need something? What about them?”
“It’s for you.”
“What is it?”
“It’s a patch. Wear it, or don’t. Either way, if you go back to Seattle with Alex, you’ll die. If you stay here, you can help.”
Corina doesn’t take the patch immediately. She stares at Sybil’s hand instead. She looks at me, then at Sal, who nods, just slightly. She reaches out. “If I wear this, I don’t die though, right?”
Sybil looks up at her. She smiles, but she looks tired. “That patch will help you live forever.” Then she looks at me. “I have something for you, too, Alex. Something you’ll need to do what you’re going to do.”
I step back from the circle as she bends down to open her bag again. She comes up with a silver foil package that looks a bit like the patch she just gave Corina. “What is it?” I ask.
“The tool you’ll need.” She ho
lds it out to me. “Keep it in the waistband of your pants, against the right hip. You’ll know when it’s time to use it.”
I stare at it, but don’t reach for it.
Cassandra grabs it from Sybil’s hand and shoves it at me. “For fuck’s sake, Plugzer, it’s not a wedding ring, just take it.”
My Voice steps in to tell me about this: “KEEP THE GIFT, BOY. FOLLOW THOSE INSTRUCTIONS—YOU’RE GONNA NEED THEM.”
I take it from her.
We leave Sybil and Brett at the abandoned station, where they’ll wait for the next freight, and walk slowly back up the hill to Slab City. Erica and Sal are in the front, Corina behind them, then Cassandra.
I’m far behind them, glad that nobody is trying to talk to me, but not about anything else.
This time as we pass the painted mountain, I stop. Corina must’ve have been listening to my footsteps because she stops, too. She turns around and looks at me, her face a question.
“I’ll meet you back at the bus,” I say. “I just need to think.”
“You want company?” she asks.
“No. Not right now.”
She nods. “They’re asking a lot of you, Alex.” She edges back toward me, slowly, carefully, like she’s afraid of me. “Too much.”
I shake my head. “I . . .”
She reaches for my hand. I give it to her. “If you can’t do it . . .” She looks at the mountain, takes a breath. “If you can’t do it, you need to know that I love you, whatever you do.” Squeezes my hand. “I’m with you forever, Alex Mata, whether it’s old age or Locusts or something in between that gets us.”
Corina. The despair I felt in my host, whenever that will be, floods back in, collapsing me. I bend forward, landing my head on her shoulder, and she pulls me in. She’s not here forever, because sometime in the future, sometime before we’re old, sometime soon, it’ll just be me.
Not her. Not us.
“I love you.” I can’t make the words sound out loud. I say it again, pull her against me. “I love you.”
She pulls back just a little, kisses me. Her skin is salty from sweat, hot against my lips. “Take your time to think,” she tells me, “then do what your heart and soul tell you to do, not anybody else.”
“’K.” I stand on the road and watch her walk fast to catch up with the others.
She looks back at me, and I wave and try and freeze the moment in time forever.
When they’re gone, I walk up the short road to the painted mountain, look at the broken-down trucks and cars that’ve been painted to match it. There are a dozen of them scattered around the base of the mountain. There’re messages on them, written in white paint against the colors, about love and Jesus. I read the ones that are easy, skip the long ones, and then head to the sign that marks the beginning of the path up the mountain.
I climb it, thinking that when I get to the top I’ll be able to stop and think about what I’m supposed to do, but before I’m halfway up, I know.
I know what Abigail would do.
I know what Jordan would do.
I know what I want to do, but I don’t know if I can.
I sit at the top for a little while anyway, looking out at things and feeling feelings. It’s growing dark when I climb back down and I head back to the school bus, watching shadows from the mountains around us grow and take over the desert.
Sixty-Three
“You can glide without a patch?” Sal is skeptical.
I shrug. “Yeah.”
“And you can control people?” Erica asks.
“Yeah.”
“Prove it,” Cassandra says from the stairs, where she’s sitting. “Show them—we’ll go outside.”
I shake my head. I’m sitting on the coffee table with my back to her, so she can’t see me. “I can do it here. It’s probably easier without all the other people around here in the background.” I look for Corina, but she’s in the bedroom. She’s been in there since before I came back. “Okay,” I say and lie back on the table, closing my eyes.
The three of them are obvious in the closed-off Jungle of the bus. There’s nothing else to hide them. They’re loud and clear right in front of me. Their music is on the top of the pile in the drawer. I think about what to do for a demonstration. Something too small and they won’t be able to tell if it was me or not. Something to big and I could lose friends . . .
I go for juvenile. When the music is written, I open my eyes and sit up.
“So?” Sal asks.
“In just a moment, you’re going to pick your nose and eat it,” I tell him. Erica looks at me and then at him. I hear Cassandra getting up off the stairs behind me.
“It isn’t gonna happen,” Sal tells me. He’s smiling like it’s a joke.
I shrug and point at his hand, which is already rising slowly to his nose.
Erica gasps. “What are you doing?”
Sal’s hand finishes its slow approach to his nose and his finger extends up into the nostril. He’s not looking at us; his eyes are focused on his own hand. He’s still smiling like he was when he said it wasn’t going to happen.
He pulls out a decent-sized booger, examines it on his fingertip, and then pops it in his mouth.
Erica explodes. “Holy shit!” She points at him as he’s swallowing. “He did it! He did it!” She freezes, turns to me. “You did it.”
Sal suddenly returns to life. He makes a face, gags, then runs to the kitchenette, pushing me out of his way so he can spit into the sink. “You mind-slaved me,” he says between spits. “I was like, there’s no way, and then I felt myself think, I should pick my nose and eat it, even though I remembered that I’d just freakin’ told you all that it would never happen.” He makes a face and spits again. “Augh!”
“How did you do that?” Cassandra asks. “Show me.”
I try to explain.
I tell them about the music, the guitars, and how I find the sheet music. It doesn’t make any sense to them.
There’s movement at the bedroom door. I turn around. Corina raises her chin at me and crosses from the bedroom to the couch. She sits down next to Erica in the seat Sal left behind, not asking or anything, but nobody says a thing about it. They’re all too nervous.
She closes her eyes.
I’m just about to ask her what’s up, but then I can’t because my head’s too full.
I feel her in every sense. I smell her smells, and feel her touches. Our music is joined and momentarily we are playing the same notes, and it’s louder than anything else in existence. I feel her changing my melody, my intensity. I feel myself smile.
Then I remember that I’m hungry, too, and I know what I want to eat.
My hand comes up to my face, my finger, my nose.
My mouth.
“What’re you doing?” I hear Sal say it, but he’s a million miles away. He’s outside Corina and me.
Corina recedes. It’s like a tide has gone out. I’m not underwater with her anymore, but she’s left traces of herself all over me. I reach out for her and she’s there. We’re connected again.
“What the hell?” Erica’s question brings both Corina and me back to the moment.
“I can do what he does now,” Corina says. She rolls up her sleeve to show us a starfish-shaped thing on her arm. “Sybil’s patch.” Then: “This one’s different, though. Lots of stuff I can do.”
Sixty-Four
There’s got to be another way. Corina feels it to me, but she also feels something else. There’s no other way. She’s torn and her conflict fights in my head just like my own.
“Come with me.” I feel the question as deeply as I can.
Anxiety pulses. Fear.
Then actual words: “Sybil said I would die if I did.”
She sounds exactly like my Voice, words skywritten with clouds on the inside of my
ears. My heart pounds.
“We need a plan.” Cassandra can’t hear the conversation between Corina and me. She doesn’t know she’s interrupting, but I’m annoyed anyway.
“I need to destroy the compound and kill Sabazios,” I say.
“How, brainiac?” Cassandra rolls her eyes. “You’re gonna go in and overpower the compound with your death grip and bad breath?”
Sal speaks up. “Getting in won’t be that hard—he’ll rewrite people beforehand. If he can make me pick my nose, he can get a guard to open a door and tell him where to go.”
Corina brightens immediately, warm to the idea. “Sal’s right—it can’t be harder than making strangers give you their credit cards.” Hearing her voice outside my head clutters the memory of how she sounds inside. Even with the clutter, though, I have trouble not thinking the thought that’s bubbling just below the surface.
I force myself to focus on the issue at hand. We talk it through. When I get there, I dive. I find the guards and make them want to be helpful to us. Corina will work with me in the Syllogos.
Once we’re inside, we’ll locate Sabazios and the witnesses.
“How’re you going to . . . ?” Erica doesn’t finish the question. Nobody wants to finish the question.
You’ve already done it. “I don’t know yet, but Sybil gave me this thing.” I pull out the foil package and hold it up. “So I think I’ll know what to do when the time comes.”
“And I’ll be watching over things from here to help out,” Corina adds. “So he’s not going to be relying just on his own brains.” She taps her head. “He’ll have mine, too.”
“And that’s going to do it? That’ll be the end of it if you . . . ?” Erica sits forward. “I mean, when you’re done we can all go home? It’ll be safe?” There’s something hidden in her words, only found in the way she says them. She doesn’t think I’m coming back.
I look at Corina, who shrugs. Cassandra starts to nod her head slowly. “I think so.”
“That’s what Sybil said. Without the compound and without Sabazios, their plan fails.”
Strange Days Page 30
