Amanda's Story (31 page)

Josh and Michael, are you there?
a woman's voice whispered in his mind, and repressed emotions of love, longing, and loss—having finally found an outlet—filled his soul. They were her emotions and it was her voice; the woman Alam had called Amanda. Images of her life mixed with his as the two talked above him. He was forced to listen but prevented from understanding until they came to a long pause and the woman turned her attention back to him.

I'm going to let you up, Bong-hwa
, she boomed into his mind in a language that was neither English nor Korean.
Sit there and be good and I won't hurt you
. The pressure on his back eased off, and he gasped to re-expand his lungs. His head was released, and he rolled on to his back.

“What are you?” he panted. Amanda was a few steps closer, but Ted had retreated into the shade of a tree several steps up the sidewalk. Chang looked around for the rest of his team.

“I sent them away,” she answered, and turned back to Ted. “They were going to take you, and the discs,” she told the American.

“You can't be here,” Alam said, fear filling his voice.

Chang tried to reconstruct the previous two minutes of his life, but they seemed to be lost. Something important was happening, but he didn't have the capacity to recognize it, only to sense it. It was difficult and somewhat painful to formulate coherent thoughts, and then a childhood nightmare flashed through his mind. He was running through the streets of Seoul, but they were covered in waist high snow and an unseen horror tracked him. The vision passed but the terror it reliably produced remained. Both time and reality seemed to have been warped, and his mind searched frantically for something solid to hold on to. He rolled into a sitting position, and his hand brushed against the cool metal of his fallen gun. It slipped into his hand with a familiarity that helped to clear some of the mental inertia.

There had been rumors about the American “psychic soldier” projects since before he had been born, but he had no idea they had made such progress. Not even a whisper of their success had reached his ears, or the ears of anyone else who lived in his world—a world that used information as currency. This made everything he, his boss, and their clients had worked for completely obsolete. The Port Authority plans were worthless when the Americans could tell when, where, and how the attack was coming. In fact, they must have seen him coming. Alam's willingness to deliver vital US secrets was a ploy to draw him and his men out into the open. It was likely the FBI was closing in on him at this very instant.

Panic stricken, Chang jumped to his feet. Ted sensed the movement, saw the weapon, and began to run towards Amanda. Chang's first shot struck Ted just beneath the left scapula as he tried to shield the woman. The second shot struck him in the knee and he fell fifteen feet short of her. Chang recentered his aim and fired his third shot in less than three seconds. Amanda's eyes were wide with surprise but narrowed with something else just as he felt the weapon recoil.

Time seemed to have stopped, and in the instant that lasted an eternity, Bong-hwa Son, AKA Lon Chang, had an almost perfect clarity. He saw the tourists reacting to the gunshots; their attempts to flee the carnage were frozen in his mind. He saw Alam down on his left side, blood already staining the concrete. He saw each of his four colleagues running in different directions, their minds confused and their intentions scrambled. But mostly he saw Amanda. She filled his sight and mind. He felt where the bullet had struck her, just below her right collar bone. Not a kill shot, but close; only, to their mutual surprise, she was for the most part unharmed. It felt no worse than being struck by a paintball; a paintball that in actuality had been a hollow-point 9mm bullet traveling at fifteen hundred feet per second.

“You really should not have done that,” she said, and Chang didn't have enough time to wonder where the voice had come from. The gun seemed to ignite in his outstretched hand. He tried to drop it, but the molten metal and plastic dissolved into his hand and then poured up his arm. His jacket sleeve ignited in a flash, and instinctively he began to pat it with his left arm. The living, red-hot metal jumped to his other arm, and an instant later he was engulfed in flames. His only scream was cut short as the fire poured down his throat. He fell to the grass with his mind yelling that he was burning alive. The woman refused him the peace of unconsciousness, and she whispered that he would suffer for as long as he lived. Time had no meaning as months and years passed. He felt a pull on his right arm, and with perfect clarity he watched it fall to the grass; a similar pull and what was left of his left arm fell across the charred remains of the right.

Beg to die
, her mind screamed, and he had no choice but to obey. He was well beyond human suffering and should by all reason already be dead.

Please,
he pleaded across the mental bridge that separated them, and then all at once he was on his back, the sun shining brightly into his eyes. His hands, which should have been charred remnants, flew to his perfectly intact face and chest. An ache in his right shoulder and a spot just below his collar bone told him that he was still alive. He felt something slither up his left pant leg, and then his right. He tried to jump to his feet, but his legs no longer functioned. More cool, slithering somethings found their way into his jacket and then down across his waist. He tried to twist his body but nothing seemed to work.

Snakes!
his mind screamed.

You didn't think this was over, did you?

The first bite was just below his knee, the serpent blunting its fangs against his shin bone, then into the fleshy portion of his thigh. The venom was like acid and his leg began to liquefy. His belt snapped as the mass of snakes found his midsection. The terror broke his mind. His mother's oldest threat was finally being realized. The next bite was to his left testicle, but instead of it dissolving, the serpent began to tear at the tissue. A second, then a third, then too many to count as the organ was ripped from his body. The agony was everything he had been promised so long ago by those who should have loved and protected him. He begged to die, but the only answer he received was a bite into his right testicle. Later, when the snakes had fulfilled every aspect of his mother's threat and he could no longer breathe, they started on his penis. His heart gave out just after they finished.

Amanda knew that she had to move, but she was beyond exhausted. Instead of energizing her, Chang's long slow death had depleted her. She stood over his body, his head oddly misshapen. She kicked his foot for good measure and a small metal object rolled from beneath his shoe. She stared at it, its existence somehow compelling. She stooped to pick it up and nearly lost her balance when the world around her began to spin. She staggered over to Ted, but before reaching his body she turned away. He was dead beyond question. Death had its own unique flavor.

She hurried up the promenade and away from the two bodies. She slipped behind a copse of trees, ran across Madison Avenue, and disappeared into the afternoon crowds.

Two hours later she was in the middle seat of a Southwest Airlines flight to Chicago. It would be a long night of flying before getting back to Dallas, but she could use the rest. Her batteries were drained and she wasn't home yet. It didn't take a lot of energy to project the persona of Dalice Lewis, the name she had chosen to fly under, but circumstances now demanded perfection from her. An FBI agent, someone she had known, had been killed in broad daylight. The situation had spun out of control and she needed to distance herself from it without leaving a trail that led back to Colorado Springs.

“I'm sorry you had to come back early, Amanda.” Greg embraced his daughter-in-law just in front of the baggage carousel.

“Don't be. I was finished anyway, and wanted to be home. How are you?”

“I'm okay,” Greg said, with a mixture of unusual formality and typical male detachment. “I know you and Ted were friends,” Amanda said, grabbing the first of her two suitcases.

“Friends is probably too strong a term. I don't want to talk about him,” he said abruptly.

“All right. Where's Lisa?” Amanda had resolved to respect the mental privacy of her inner circle. As there were only three members, she didn't expect it to be a terrible imposition.

“At home. We aren't exactly communicating well at the moment.” Greg opened the door for her as she wheeled her suitcase out into the cloudy afternoon. “Before you ask”—he cut off her question—“there's something we need to talk about.” Greg suddenly showed a side of himself she had never seen. Professional, serious, and somewhat intimidating. She followed him to the car and they drove silently back towards town.

“Greg, you missed the turnoff.” She finally broke the silence, which had lasted more than ten minutes.

“I don't want to talk at home,” he said softly.

They drove several more miles and he took a familiar exit, followed by three familiar turns, before he pulled into a very familiar driveway. The house facing them was empty, and for Amanda it would always be empty. “Greg, I don't want to be here,” she said, and for the first time in months she felt the familiar pain of loss.

“That may be the first completely truthful statement you've made since you came back,” Greg said, with more sadness than bitterness. “You know that Lisa and I love you as much as we loved Michael and Josh,” Greg said stiffly. “Nothing you do will ever change that.”

“I know, Greg.” The moment of truth had arrived. Greg would need to explain his suspicions and the proof that supported those suspicions. He would admit that Lisa was concerned but didn't completely agree with him, and then Amanda would have to make a decision. Continue living the lie, or confess everything. There really wasn't much middle ground.

“Something happened to you in Central America.” He waved off what he had just said. “Something more; something you haven't told us.” Amanda let him continue. “I can understand the new attitude, the way you talk, the things you say. God knows you've been through enough.” He turned and looked at Amanda. “The day Abby Eden confessed, you came to the station to bring me back my keys.” Amanda nodded. “I saw how she reacted to you. I didn't think much of it at the time, but then I remembered the therapist, Christi Bates, and Eden's story that a woman, tall and black, coerced her to confess.” He opened his jacket and pulled out a single sheet of paper wrapped in a clear plastic evidence bag. Amanda followed the letter as Greg smoothed it out over the dashboard. “It's the suicide note of Suzie Watts. No fingerprints on it except hers. Only, she didn't write it. She put the words down on paper, but they weren't hers.” Silence hung heavily between them. “The office manager of Dr. Eldridge Adegbite told us that the day before he was killed a woman, tall and black, talked her way into an unscheduled appointment. He was a psychiatrist who worked here in town, and he lived next to a drug dealer named Diaz. Diaz was a bad man, a very bad man, and I very much wanted to catch him, but just before we were going to bring him in, he kills the shrink, and then he cuts off eight of his own fingers and toes and bleeds to death.” Still Amanda was silent. “Three cases I was intimately involved with, and three sudden resolutions, all of which have a rational explanation that stinks to high heaven.” Greg turned away and wiped a tear from his eye, and silently held the floor for over a minute. “You know, I still can see Josh walking across that porch with his monster walk. And I see you bent over him, eyes full of love and life.” More tears began to fall. “God forgive me, but sometimes I wish I would have a stroke, or something that would wipe my memory clean; maybe then I could sleep.” He used his sleeve to wipe his eyes exactly like Michael used to do, and a pain so intense that Amanda gasped awoke inside her.

“Greg, I want to go,” she said forcefully. “Now!” she demanded when he didn't move.

“Dalice is an unusual name, don't you think?” Greg said matter-of-factly, returning to his recitation. “I remember Michael mentioning it years ago; she was your roommate in college. Although I think her last name was Watkins. I don't know why I remember it; maybe it was that Joe Ely song: ‘Have you ever seen Dallas from a DC-9 at night …' You should have chosen a different name.” His voice was devoid of emotion, almost calm, while Amanda's emotions began to boil to the surface. Mittens was awake as well, but she was powerless against Greg. “Why Ted? I know he was on the edge, but he didn't deserve that.”

She didn't have the energy to maintain the lie any more. Greg knew, and anything but a full admission would only cause him more pain. “I didn't kill Ted; the Korean did.” It was out, and suddenly she needed to tell the entire story. “But I did kill the Korean.” She reached into her pocket and extracted the small fragment of metal she had found at Chang's dead feet. “He shot me in the chest.” Amanda felt the full complement of protective instincts rise in Greg's chest. “For what it's worth, I didn't want anyone to die. At least, I don't think I did.” Now Greg let Amanda have the floor. “I'm responsible for your three cases.”

“How?” he asked, turning in his seat to face her.

“Instead of killing me, the virus did something else. I can't explain how or why.” Amanda turned to Greg. “A couple weeks after they flew me to Tellis, I started to hear things—in my head.” She tapped her temple and for the next twenty minutes took Greg from Tela, Honduras to Washington, DC.

When she finally finished, they sat in silence for a full two minutes. “I don't understand, Amanda,” Greg whispered weakly. “I don't understand how you could do this.”

“Are you asking me how it was done, or why it was done?”

“For now, let's tread softly and explain how it was done.”

Amanda fiddled with her fingers for a moment. “I can't tell you how it's done because I really don't know. At first it was just happening to me. All of a sudden there was a chorus of voices in my head, and I began to question my sanity. Later, I realized that I had become a sort of receiver for the thoughts and emotions of those around me. Just before I left Tellis and came home I learned to filter and amplify those signals, and then it was a reasonably short step to control them.” She paused, but Greg's body language told her that he needed more. “I imagine that at some level we all are physically connected, but a barrier keeps us apart. A wall or something that fastens our consciousness to the physical world, and confines it to our individual bodies and senses. This is how all of us experience the world. But when that barrier is removed, our minds naturally reach for each other; it's like two magnets being drawn together. Instead of two magnetic fields, we get one larger field.” She glanced at Greg. He was closer but not yet comfortable with her explanation. “I think part of the reason you suspected me is that each time I visited your mind”—her verbiage was awkward, but not nearly so much as the thought it expressed, and Greg winced—“I left footprints behind that led back to me. At some level you were aware of what was happening.”

“So when the two magnetic fields merge, you direct them.” He looked at Amanda for the first time in several minutes. He held her gaze and then looked away. “My world is fairly simple, Amanda. I believe in the Newtonian laws of physics. I believe that every person has been given the choice to allow God or Satan to direct their actions, and all are capable of great good or great evil. And I believe that absolute power corrupts absolutely. It may be that the barriers that separate us were erected to prevent the moral erosion that has been eating away at you.”

Their discussion was going as badly as Amanda could have imagined; the last thing she wanted was to alienate Greg and add to his pain. The second to last thing she wanted was for Greg to lecture her. “I didn't ask for this, Greg,” she started softly, but her volatile emotions began to roil. “For a moment, I want you to imagine every one of your darkest thoughts and desires, all the things every person buries deep in the recesses of their mind, suddenly dragged into the light and amplified to unbearable levels. Then, I want you to imagine that you have the power to indulge those desires, without consequence. Do that, and then talk to me about moral erosion.” By the end, her voice had become angry and bitter. “All my life I have followed the rules of God and man, and things like this keep happening to me.” A small part of her wanted to cry, but a larger part of her mind shouted down the weakness.

“I can't possibly know what you're going through, Amanda, but you can't use it as an excuse for murder,” Greg said softly.

“It isn't murder if they deserve it; every one of them was guilty. They all had blood on their hands.”

“And now so do you.”

Amanda waved off his retort. “Justice was served. Simple, expedited, and completely infallible.”

“Is it justice you were after, or an excuse?”

“You've had thoughts of doing the same thing I've done. The only things that have stopped you are the possibilities of making a mistake and of discovery. I can't be wrong, and the only reason you discovered me is that I led you.”

Greg took a minute to study the backs of his hands. “Every cop at some point in their career secretly wishes to become a vigilante; I'm no exception. Whether it's right or wrong, we are motivated by something greater than ourselves. Justice is a natural law, a harmony that is hard-wired into all of us, and the motivation to take matters into our own hands is to re-establish that harmony, not vengeance, or retribution, or personal gain.” He turned back towards Amanda. “Your motivations are completely different.”

“So you don't condemn the act, only its motivation.” She held his gaze.

“I don't know, Amanda. I'm a police detective; my entire professional life has been dedicated to the laws that protect society. You exist outside those laws; they weren't written for someone like you. You've made yourself judge, jury, and executioner, and despite your belief of infallibility—or maybe because of it—I can't shake the feeling that that there is something fundamentally wrong here. God forgive me, but I'm not sorry those people are dead, so maybe I can't condemn the results, but the process, our process, no matter how cumbersome and inexact, has a purpose. It prevents any one individual from having the power of life or death over another. I just don't know, Amanda.” He shook his head and turned away. “Forget what's already been done. Right now I have to decide if you are a threat to society. What's going to happen if someone cuts you off in traffic? Are you going to blow out their tires and send them careening into a wall?”

Greg's perspective was a new and unwelcome slant, and as much as she wanted to deny it, his assessment was likely much closer to the truth. “So you think I could be a danger to others?”

“How much of a step is it from killing the guilty with complete impunity to killing the innocent? After twenty-three years of police work, the one thing I know for certain is that anything can be rationalized. And if you continue to change, are you going to reach a point where you won't even bother to rationalize your actions? A point where even Lisa and I won't be safe around you?”

It was the worst possible thing Greg could have said to her, if only because there was a grain of truth in his question. What little human emotions remained inside her were concentrated around the three people in her circle. The realization that at some point she could rationalize hurting them terrified her. She grabbed her purse and opened the car door. “I need to be alone, Greg. I'll be home before Lisa finishes dinner.” She pulled away from the door.

“Lisa, it's a five mile walk. It's not safe.” Greg's face was full of concern.

“Nothing on two or four legs can hurt me,” she said with her back to him, and then realized that not all of Greg's concerns were for her safety.