Snap, Crackle ...

by Dale Mayer

*

  Hunter watched in shock, as a weird poof sound could be heard around him, followed by a blending of colors and light, almost in a kaleidoscope, and then, just like that, it stopped. He took several steps forward, watching as Beth slowly opened her eyes. He crouched down in front of her. “Beth?”

  She stared at him, both a worldly shock and a knowing inside her. “Dear God,” she whispered.

  Peter stepped forward from behind and asked, “Now do you remember?”

  She looked up at him and slowly nodded, her gaze going from Hunter to Peter. “Yes,” she said, “I do. So much of it.” Tears filled her eyes. “I kept asking everyone to stop the testing. I knew that the man was suffering terribly, that he wasn’t handling it, and that it was killing him. But nobody would stop.”

  Peter nodded. “That was the boss. A man so full of his own goals that nothing else and nobody else mattered.”

  Tears filled her eyes and slowly dripped down her cheeks. She wiped her eyes, then turned to look at Hunter. “My name isn’t Beth.”

  Peter stepped forward again.

  Hunter looked at him, then at Beth, asking, “What do you mean?”

  “My name is Lizbeth,” she said, her voice so very faint. “I always had this part of me that argued with me all the time, telling me to stop this and to do more to fight back, and then this other part of me was saying I couldn’t and that there was nothing I could do. I was in a situation that I could in no way win, and, if I did fight back, it would just mean more pain and more torment for us all.”

  Hunter understood. “So when you did fight back, this person died.”

  “You mean, I killed him,” she said bluntly.

  He winced. “That was hardly your doing and not your fault.”

  “It felt like it was my fault,” she said, the tears now a steady stream down her cheeks. “And when that happened,” she said, “it was like a scream going off in my head of ‘No more! Stop this!’ And the only thing I could apparently think to do was to split my energy in two. Nocturne got caught in the blast at the same time. He’s still caught. Neither here nor there. Or maybe he just stays because he loves me.” She gave a shudder and lifted her hand. “I feel weird.”

  “Of course you do,” Hunter said quietly. “It’s been a long time since you’ve had this collectiveness around you.”

  “It’s why Lizzy always followed me, why she was always hunting me.”

  “She wasn’t hunting you. She was getting back together again with you, but, at the same time, she could never leave because she was you.”

  “That’s why she always found me,” she said, with a ghost of a smile, “because she, … she was me.”

  “Exactly,” he said quietly. He shook his head and turned to look at Peter and the guard, studying her carefully. “You’re looking like she’s still a bomb about to go off.”

  “If you’d seen what she did,” Peter said, “then it would be something you’d be wary of too.”

  “It was pretty scary at the time for me too,” said Lizbeth.

  “Of course,” Peter said. “I guess I’m just not sure that you won’t blow up again.”

  She smiled. “Oh God, I hope not.” But she looked at Hunter. “I can’t make any guarantees.”

  “Of course you can,” Hunter said, “because the thing is, you won’t be in that testing scenario anymore. You’ll be free, and we’ll get Dr. Maddy to help heal you and give you the time you need, so you can function properly.”

  “I’m not a test case or a sacrifice case,” she said, “so you don’t have to look after me.”

  “No more of that talk,” he said. “I think you’ve been through enough.”

  “Well, she has, and she hasn’t,” the guard said, staring at her.

  “What do you mean?” Hunter turned to face him.

  “You see? One of the reasons why Peter used Lizbeth all the time was because she was so powerful, and sometimes she would hide away and pretend to be unconscious or incapable of working. She was very good at hiding her skills.”

  “And how do you know this?” Hunter asked the guard.

  The guard gave Hunter a ghost of a smile. “Because the boss was my father.”

  She gasped at that. “Now I remember you,” she said, staring at him. “You’ve changed.”

  “We all have,” he said. “I grew up watching you.”

  She shook her head. “That’s not healthy. What your father did wasn’t healthy.”

  “No,” he said quietly, “it wasn’t. But he had his reasons.”

  “Such as?” she challenged.

  “He thought you could do so much good.”

  “Good?” she cried out, staring at him. “What good did I do? We tested psychics constantly. I was forced to push them to their limits, otherwise get punished myself,” she said bitterly. “And most of them couldn’t handle it.”

  “No, they couldn’t, but the ones who did became very strong.”

  “I don’t even know who they are,” she said, with a wave of her hand. “I don’t even know where they are.”

  “He worked with them closely for a long time. He was just driven. Possessed with figuring out how to make somebody stronger and better. You were the strongest that he had, and every time you worked with somebody, you became better, so he kept pushing you, more for your sake than for the other person.”

  “And that’s just wrong,” she said, staring at him bitterly. “Because it wasn’t for me, it was for himself.”

  “Yes,” he said, “that’s true.”

  She slowly rubbed her face.

  “It’ll take a while,” Hunter murmured, gently reaching out a hand to touch her, feeling the shock and tingling as his energy touched hers. Weird, a sensation of … everything.

  “It’s also why Peter found us.” She nodded slowly. “Because he was always in tune with me back then, weren’t you, Peter?” She looked at him and smiled. “And, of course, you were there when Lizzy became her own person.”

  Hunter sat back, looked at her, and said, “When Lizbeth became Lizzy and Beth.”

  “Yes,” she said.

  “And your twin sister?”

  She smiled. “Sarah. She didn’t survive very long. I have very little recollection of her. At the time I just remembered needing to keep her safe, but she was always sick,” she said sadly.

  “I’d been wondering if Lizzy was your twin sister,” Hunter said. “Or a triplet even.”

  She stared at him and then slowly shook her head. “I wish she were,” she said. “I’m afraid it’s even stranger. Lizzy was a part of me I always talked to, as if she were my best friend. I was so alone and lonely.”

  “And yet now,” Hunter said, reaching out a hand and sliding it over hers, gently caressing her skin, “you’re whole again.”

  She took a long slow deep breath—once, twice, three times. She shifted, almost like struggling into a suit that had become misaligned. “Yes,” she said, with a bright smile. She looked around at the broken-down building. “Did I really do all this?”

  Peter nodded. “Yes, you did,” he said. “It happened so fast. And, yes, people were caught in the blast, a lot were injured. It went down in history as a crazy phenomenon.”

  “And the police?” Hunter turned and looked at Peter.

  He shook his head. “No. We took care of our own, and everybody scattered. Obviously the project, along with the boss, was dead.”

  “And where is he?”

  Peter hesitated. “He’s buried out back,” he said, with a shrug, “as are a couple lab techs, who were here at the time and didn’t make it.”

  She stared, feeling terrible at all she had done.

  Hunter looked down to see her bottom lip trembling. He squeezed her fingers. “It’s not your fault. Everything that had happened to you built up to that point.”

  “And how do I stop it from happening again?” she whispered.

  He pulled her close and said, “You don’t get into that situation again, that’s how.” H
e smiled, leaned over, kissing her gently on the cheek, said, “And I can help with that.” She wrapped her arms around him, and he felt her slight frame shaking. He closed his arms securely around her and whispered, “It’ll be okay.”

  “Maybe not,” said the young guard.

  Hunter turned to look at him. “What do you mean?”

  The guard held a gun pointed toward all three of them. He motioned at Peter. “Go stand over there with them,” he said.

  Peter looked at him. “Harry, what are you doing?”

  “I didn’t think you’d get her back together,” he said, “but, now that you have, do you think I’ll lose this opportunity?”

  “What are you talking about?” Peter said in shock. “The whole goal was to save the one person who needed saving.”

  “Who said she needed saving?” Harry asked. “We should have just caged her. Do you think I didn’t understand what my father was doing? He was controlling the most powerful person we’ve ever seen.”

  “Exactly,” Peter said emphatically. “Control. She’s a human being, her own person. We’ve done enough to torture her.”

  Hunter agreed, but he saw that Harry wasn’t having it. “So you’re interested in carrying on the boss’s work, are you?” Hunter asked calmly.

  Harry laughed. “I’ve got a new lab all set up,” he said in a conversational tone. “I have all his notes, all his history. I did all his computer work and backed up everything.”

  “And what? You think I’ll be taken prisoner again?” she asked in astonishment.

  “Sure,” he said. “Why wouldn’t you? Bullets may not kill you easily, but they’ll kill loverboy.”

  She stiffened in his arms. “So, you plan on hurting him to get my cooperation?”

  “Why not?” he said. “It’s a system that works over and over again.”

  She glared at him. “Maybe not,” she said. “I think I’ve had enough of hurting other people.”

  “You’re only good if you can do something with that energy,” he said. “Otherwise you might as well be dead. Because you’re a danger if you’re not.”

  “I’m no danger to anybody anymore,” she said. “I just want to spend the rest of my life learning what life is really like.”

  “Well, that’ll never happen,” Harry said. “So you’re coming along as my prisoner or loverboy dies. What’ll it be?”

  She stared at Harry in shock, then looked up at Hunter.

  “Yeah, loverboy won’t get you the answers you want because I’ll take him out,” Harry stated.

  She stared at Peter. “Harry’s been helping you all this time?”

  “Yes,” he said sadly, turning to look at Harry. “You don’t have to do this. Look at what she did to this place,” he said, in horror and shock and wonder. “She blew it up all at once.”

  “What makes you think I won’t do that again?” she asked Harry curiously.

  “Well, I won’t push you as hard or as fast. I have my father’s notes. I won’t make the same mistake he did.”

  “So you plan to create an army all of your own?”

  “Why not?” he said. “It sounds good to me.” He waved the handgun. “Now, move away from her, loverboy.”

  *

  Hunter said, “Nope, not happening.”

  “Really?” Harry said, with a big grin. “I’m the one holding the gun. Remember?”

  “And I’ve seen assholes like you before,” Hunter said, with a calmness that he didn’t feel. He sent out probes, looking for anything in this guy’s energy that Hunter could track. If he could track it, he could possibly shut it down. “I’m checking out your energy,” he said. “And all kinds of energy are in your aura, especially your father’s.”

  “Sure, we’ve always been close.”

  At that, Lizbeth—and he was struggling to not call her Beth—whispered, “No, you’re right. Something else happened in that blast, didn’t it?”

  Harry looked at her. “What are you talking about?”

  “When did you feel like you needed to do this?” Hunter asked.

  “Right from the beginning, of course.” Harry turned and looked at Hunter funny and said, “What are you talking about? Did you do something to me, Lizbeth?”

  In Hunter’s arms, Lizbeth shook her head and said, “Nothing. I didn’t do anything.”

  “Are you sure?” Harry said, staring at her, but fear was in his eyes.

  She gave him a fat smile. “You’ll never know, will you?”

  He raised the gun.

  She smiled and said, “If I can do what I did, who knows what else I can do?” she said. “Maybe I left some of Lizzy out there. Maybe I left part of her and part of me all over the place.”

  Hunter looked at her. “That’s what happened at Stefan’s, isn’t it?”

  She nodded. “Every time I get exhausted, I fragment,” she murmured. “So, at that point in time, it wasn’t any surprise that bits and pieces of me are everywhere.”

  Hunter said, “You could do that again. You’re probably tired enough.”

  She looked at him and asked, “What do you mean?”

  He said, “I’m pretty sure if you think about it …”

  She looked at him, turned to look at Harry, and said, “Harry?”

  “What?” he asked, waving the gun around. “I don’t like this,” he said. “I feel like you’re ganging up on me.”

  “Well, you could check behind you,” she said, her eyes glowing with an unearthly light.

  “Why?” Harry asked, taking several steps back, and froze, spun around, and cried out. “No, no, no,” he said.

  “Put the gun down,” Lizzy cried out, a fragment standing behind him, in the same form of Lizbeth who talked to him. He turned to look back at Beth, and he fired, but at the images behind him. Immediately Hunter pulled her out of the way and tucked her and Peter behind a wall, where they were safe.

  Harry cried out.

  Another Lizzy fragment showed up on his left, asking, “What good will screaming do?”

  Now half-crazy, Harry turned to shoot again. But, as the bullets never reached his target, Harry just looked at Hunter, as he stepped closer and closer.

  “Oh, my God,” Harry said. “You’re one of them.”

  Hunter nodded. “I am, indeed. What will you do about it?”

  As if realizing he could do absolutely nothing, Harry turned the gun to his own head and pulled the trigger.

  Hunter rushed forward, as the other two raced up to Harry’s side.

  “That’s not what I thought he’d do,” Lizbeth cried out.

  “No, but maybe it’s the best thing after all.”

  She nodded and said, “Well, it’s an answer. I don’t know about the right one.” She looked at Peter. “However, thank you for getting Lizzy back to me.”

  He gave her a sad smile. “Don’t thank me,” he said. “I just needed it to come to an end, so I could move on.”

  Hunter understood. “It’s quite something when you’re part of it and when you can see the damage done.”

  “So much damage over the years,” he said. “I hated that I was involved, but it was supposedly science, supposedly all in the name of science.” He shook his head. “The boss had grants, big-money grants. Private companies were paying for all that research to find psychics, others as powerful as Lizbeth was. He just didn’t ever respect the limits that a person could be pushed to—before they cracked.”

  “Well, that’s a good one,” she said, “because that’s what happened, isn’t it? I popped. I feel like there are cracks in me even now.”

  “No,” he said. “There were cracks. Just before you and Lizzy joined again,” he said. “Yes, there were cracks, but your skin is smooth now, and, given some time for you to blend again,” he said, “you’ll be fine.”

  She nodded ever-so-slowly and whispered to Hunter, “Thank you.”

  Hunter leaned over, kissed her gently, and said, “No. Thank you for showing me something else in life that I’d n
ever seen before—and for being who you are. An honest, trustworthy, beautiful soul.”

  She opened her mouth to protest, and he placed a finger against it. “Stop,” he said. “What you went through was horrible, but you are not to blame. And now we’ll spend the rest of our lives moving forward together, where you’ll learn that lesson over and over again. That is, if you want to.”

  She kissed him gently and said, “I’m all for that.” She focused on Peter. “And you?”

  “I’m good. I’m going back East to my family,” he said. “I’ve learned a lot of lessons,” he said, “and the biggest one is what is really important in life. And it’s not science.” He gave them a sad smile and said, “Now, if you don’t mind, you need to get out of here, while I deal with the rest of this.”

  She looked around, winced, and nodded. “What will you do with Harry?”

  “I’ll bury him with his father, and he’ll be another cold case, a missing person nobody will ever know what happened to,” he said. “No other way to have this make sense.”

  “Yes, there is,” Hunter said. “Let me handle it.”

  Peter looked at him. “Are you sure?”

  Hunter nodded. “I have people who can handle this.”

  “In that case,” Peter said, “I’m out of here. I don’t have much time left, and I want to spend it with those I love.” And with a hand lifted, he took off.

  She looked at Hunter. “Stefan?”

  He nodded. “Yes, Stefan. We have quite a law enforcement network that can handle this. Just give me a few minutes.” He pulled out his phone, sent a text message, and said, “We’ll have to stick around here, until it’s cleaned up.”

  “That’s fine,” Lizbeth said. “I wouldn’t mind exploring and putting some of the memories into the right places.” At that she heard a meow.

  “Nocturne.” She bent down to her huge black cat winding through her legs. “I was afraid I lost you in that nightmare.”

  He jumped into her arms and rubbed up against her. She hugged him close tears in her eyes. Thanks for being here my friend.

  His engine kicked into high gear. Always.

  She gripped him tighter, delighted to be able to keep the one constant thing in her life.

  “As long as Nocturne will keep an eye on you,” he said with a knowing look at her arms, “and as long as you stay close. No more running away?”