Enigma Black (6 page)

“Shh…shh… it’s going to be all right, Celaine. I’m here for you. In time, the nightmares will fade away, leaving you and I to our life together and…”

“Stay with me tomorrow night,” I interrupted, more of a plea than a request.

“Hmmm… getting to hold an incredibly beautiful woman for a whole night… I don’t know. I’m really going to have to think about that. I mean, I do have a pretty busy schedule and all, but I’ll see if I can rearrange some appointments and pencil you in.”

“Other than me, you’re the only person capable of mustering sarcasm this early in the morning.” My sobbing subsided. A half-smile returned to my face.

“That’s why we’re perfect for each other. We’re the soul mates of smart ass.”

“I love you.”

“I love you, too. Now get some sleep. You’ve got a busy day ahead of you tomorrow. Loans to decline, lives to shatter, you know, fun stuff.”

“Thank you. I’m not sure what I would do without you.”

“Well, fortunately that’s something you’ll never have to worry about. See you tomorrow, beautiful.”

I hung up the phone, letting my long, tired legs stretch over the side of the bed. It’d be at least another hour before I would be able to fall back asleep again. Switching on my nightstand lamp, I walked down the hall of my apartment to my cold, uninviting bathroom. Its tile floor was like sheer ice underneath my feet, causing me to shudder. I reached for the plastic cup on the basin, turned on the faucet, and filled it with water. Not only did the nightmares affect me emotionally, but they also took a toll on me physically. My throat was dry and the same knee I’d smacked on the floor in the minutes preceding the explosion throbbed in eerie phantom-like pain. Some nights I swore there was still glass embedded underneath my skin; some nights it felt as though I’d lived through the devastation all over again.

As I so often did after my nightmares, I opened the drawer of my bedroom nightstand, taking out the worn photo album. The photo album had been one of a few possessions I salvaged from my parents’ home before moving to Iowa with Aunt Tasha. Its cloth cover was somewhat faded from years of wear and the pages were beginning to yellow. Turning them with care, I soon found what I was looking for: the last family photograph ever taken of us.

There I was in all my awkward teenaged glory, smack dab in the middle. We were all wearing our identical photograph attire: matching blue sweaters and khaki pants. It’d been Carol’s idea, of course. How I missed Carol. She was naturally gorgeous in this particular photograph with her hair, the color of toffee, pinned back. George looked so regal, so professional, and so proud. Then there was Jake. I often wondered what he would look like now as a young man. Would he be in medical school following in George’s footsteps? Married with children of his own? Anger overtook the sorrow as my feelings over the injustice of it all came flooding back.

“There will be a day,” I spoke to them as though they could hear me. “I promise you. One way or another, there will be a day of retribution.”

I tucked the loose photograph back into the photo album and turned off the light. While lying back down in bed, my thoughts drifted to the aftermath of the explosion. My Aunt Tasha had done everything she could think of to make my life as normal as possible and, considering the circumstances, she’d done a wonderful job. Of course, she was nothing like the hawk Carol had been. Under Tasha’s supervision, I’d been allotted way more freedom than any teenager should possess. At times, she’d seemed more interested in playing the role of the big sister to me rather than acting as my maternal role model but, when push came to shove, she managed to step up to the plate, ensuring that my grades were always up to par and that I kept relatively out of trouble. Not that there was a whole heck of a lot of trouble I could have gotten into. After all, there really wasn’t much to do in Iowa outside of outhouse tipping.

Much to Tasha’s chagrin, after graduation I decided to come back home to Maryland. Some would argue that I was a sadist with a glutton for punishment. Regardless, I still felt at home here. On top of that, a part of me needed the closure in seeing the Memorial site that was erected two years after the explosion at The Lakes. In a strange way, seeing the Memorial had given me a sense of peace. It was something tangible. Of course, Lucy had been beyond thrilled with my decision to move back. We’d ended up attending college together; she studying psychology and I, finance.

However, my decision to move home inadvertently became the best decision of my life the day I met Chase Matthews. Shortly after my father’s death, Hope Memorial Hospital created a scholarship in honor of him specifically for those young medical students interested in studying pediatrics. Catching wind of my return, the hospital contacted me requesting that I present the scholarship to that year’s winner. At first, I was a little hesitant. I wasn’t sure how I would react to all the stares and inevitable awkward conversations, but I knew that my father would have wanted me to do it.

Every presentation ceremony started out with a memorial to my father. Dr. Taylor, the pediatric surgeon who’d served as a resident under George, gave the speech every year. From my vantage point on the stage, I could see the admiration in the doctor’s eyes as he spoke about my father. I’d sat on the stage scanning the audience, looking for any familiar faces. That’s when I saw him. He was boyishly cute with shimmering, sky blue eyes and the smirk of a hardcore smart ass. He was resident Chase Matthews. A fan of my father’s work with the pediatric unit, he was as close to perfection as I had seen, and he was staring at me. 

A rush of heat poured into my cheeks, alerting me to the fact that I’d probably turned twelve shades of red. As much as I tried to, I couldn’t divert my attention from him. I was so entranced that, when it came to be my turn at the podium, my name had to be called twice to snap me out of it. Two years later, I was still under that same trance.

With memories of my initial encounter with Chase Matthews flashing through my head, I managed to fall peacefully back to sleep.

The sun beamed into my fourth floor apartment, creating a makeshift heating pad on my back. It was yet another fabulous workday morning. Another day of fun and finance awaited me at the First American Bank & Trust. In this age, I felt fortunate to have a job. Unfortunately though, like many careers, it had just grown too mundane for me.

It was a perfect summer day and, if not for the presence of armed soldiers on every block, it would have also seemed like a normal summer day. Their presence was an omnipresent reminder that things were still far from normal here. We were still living in the nightmare of unwavering paranoia with every person, parked car and building being a potential target for lethal destruction. Pure anxiety had reduced a once bustling, crowded city street to just a few brave souls using it to commute warily back and forth to work.

The attack on The Lakes created a fork in the road for more than just those whose lives it’d directly impacted. A Pandora’s Box had been opened in its wake, unleashing a chain of events overseen by the Brooks’ Administration. Military enforcement of Brooks’ new order swept through the nation, generating a false sense of security. The fall of democracy had been met with praise by Congress and the highest approval ratings of any President in history. President Brooks was keeping us safe; President Brooks cared about society. Bullshit. At least, that was my opinion.

After the revocation of the Twenty-Second Amendment allowing Brooks at least one more term in office, suspicion rose amongst us more cynical members of society. The more vocal members of this opposition—radicals they were called—were said to be launching a rebellion against President Brooks as they considered him just as dangerous as The Man in Black. The Man in Black or any other responsible party still hadn’t been apprehended and, although conditions had become markedly calmer over the last couple of years, there were still random attacks occurring.

The decline in instability was due, in part, to the appearance of an inexplicable duo who’d mysteriously appeared on the scene in the last couple of years. Many thought them to be subhuman, robotically engineered by the Department of Defense to counteract The Man in Black; a means to putting an end to the insanity. Robots or not, there was something different about them Their abilities were not of this world. Normal humans simply couldn’t make the graceful yet deadly movements that they could. Normal humans couldn’t leap into the air at the staggering heights nor possess the speed they do. Normal humans couldn’t take on The Man in Black. They were our nation’s very own “superheroes”, sent to destroy The Man in Black and make our world safe again.

In some ways, I loathed the necessity for their existence, but mostly I longed to have the abilities they mastered. To be able to deliver the fatal blow and watch the life leave the eyes of the person responsible for the attack on The Lakes just as they must have watched my family die would be the best form of justice.

I was a block away from the bank when I heard a commotion coming from the corner of the block behind me. The newspaper had just hit the newsstands and, from the sounds of it, it appeared as though there had been another attack. Curious, I did an about-face, heading back in the direction of the commotion.

“Can you believe it?” a red-headed, freckled woman cried out. “It’s terrible, just

terrible.”

Another woman chimed in, “It just proves this madness will never end.”

I stood up on my tip toes to peer over the crowd in order to catch a glimpse of the headline:
Hero killed after confrontation with The Man in Black

A wave of nauseated shock ran over me. How could this be? These super humans… they were mortal? I guess I shouldn’t have been too surprised. The duo had to have been at least partly human, and there wasn’t exactly anything man-made out there that wasn’t entirely indestructible. Nonetheless, it was shocking to me, and I had grown almost immune to shocking over the last ten years. In disbelief, I headed back down the sidewalk.

The mayhem didn’t recede when I entered the usually quiet, mundane atmosphere of the bank. Everyone was abuzz with the news of our hero’s demise.

“How could this have happened?” Travis, one of the other loan officers and a constant thorn in my side with his by-the-book attitude, enquired.

Veronica, a teller and my closest friend outside of Lucy, piped in, “Geez, Travis, nothing is impossible, nor is there anything that’s indestructible. Besides, this would be a great career opportunity for you now that there’s an opening.”

“Oh, really, how do you figure?”

“With that hard head and that thick hide of yours, it would be almost impossible for a bullet to wound you.” A snicker erupted through the crowd. Travis was not exactly a favorite amongst our usually tight-knit group.

“Hi, Celaine,” Veronica greeted me with her all-too-cheery-for-this-time-in-the-morning voice.

“Hey,” I replied. “I see we’re starting in early on Travis this morning.”

Travis let out a disgusted groan as he headed back to his office. Veronica was one of the first people I met when I moved back to Maryland. At first, it seemed as though we had nothing in common, but after learning that we shared nearly the same unfortunate story, we instantly bonded. Having both had family members killed in an attack by The Man in Black, we began leaning on each other in hard times like an emotional crutch.

Veronica flipped back her long raven hair, the envy of every woman at the bank, and followed me into my office. “So, do you have any big plans tonight?” she asked.

“Actually, yeah, Chase is coming over tonight, and we plan on going out to dinner. Last night was another bad one, and I think he feels sorry for me,” I replied with a stifled laugh.

Veronica looked at me with concern growing in her eyes. “You had another nightmare? Celaine, this is really getting ridiculous…maybe you should get some help.”

“Are you implying that I’m not quite right in the head?”

“No, of course not. That was something I already knew.” She shot me a smirk as she adjusted some paperwork on my desk. “That ship sailed a long time ago.”

“Thanks.”

“What I mean is that maybe there’s something more behind your dreams. You know, like… like psychological or something. Maybe you need to work your inner demons out with a licensed professional. Doesn’t one of your friends work in that field?”

“Lucy, yeah. Believe me, she’s given me more than my fair share of free counseling throughout the years. Actually, I’m pretty sure she uses me as an exemplar for the mentally ill when she’s in session with her patients.”

Veronica laughed. “I just worry about you, Celaine.”

“I really appreciate it, Veronica, but Chase takes great care of me.”

“I’m sure the boy wonder does,” she said with a wink. “I just don’t know how, for the life of me, you can be around that human encyclopedia all day. He would give my brain a knowledge overload.”

“What can I say? I like ‘em’ nerdy.”

“That you do… that you do.” With that, she leapt from her perch atop my desk, nearly spilling my coffee in my lap in the process. As she proceeded to her booth in the front of the building, she offered up another jab in Travis’ direction for good measure. A quick retort of ‘Bite me’ rang from his office to which she replied, “Is that all you got? I’m sorely disappointed,
Weiner
.”

“It’s pronounced
Wine-ner
.”

“That’s not how it’s spelled,
Weiner
.”

Besides the obvious monetary gain, there were definite advantages to coming to work.

Chapter Seven

The Shadows

“You look absolutely amazing tonight,” Chase said, admiring me from across the small, entirely-too-cramped, wooden table.

I could feel my face turning redder than the merlot I was sipping. No matter how much time passed, I still felt the butterflies in my stomach whenever I was around him. He was like kryptonite to me; my one weakness. It was a profound feeling that was riddled with contradiction being both frightening and exhilarating at the same time, but I basked in it with the knowledge that some of the best things in life made absolutely no sense.