Out of the Black (32 page)

"It's you, Rae."

"
That
isn't me!" her eyes moved to the cameo on the floor.

"No, Rae." He put a hand on her face- she flinched away. "This is, Rae..." He put his hand on her shoulder, "This is you... That's all the necklace shows you... what I see every day. It shows you who I see,
how
I see."

"Hooray. And with your little gift, I can be your dream girl." There was hope in her voice, hiding behind the fear and rage. The pe burned, by far the weakest and most dangerous of the emotions. She wished it would just die. Yet here she stood, listening with one ear and a reluctant heart.

"Rae, please. Please just give me sixty seconds. For all the goofy things we've been through together, for our friendship, for yourself... just sixty seconds."

She didn't answer, but she didn't move.

"I ate eggplant for you." He said like the final statement in a brilliant oratory, and gave her just a hint of that crooked smile she loved so much it hurt. He took a step backwards, waiting for her to bolt, hands up between them. When he was convinced she wasn't going to flee immediately, he scooped up the necklace and returned to her.

"Look." He pointed to the wall mirror where this fight began. It was still cracked from the impact of her fist.

She made no move at first, but then turned slowly. She was a wreck, looking teary and weak. The crystalline cracks were a net cast over her reflection.

He was behind her. "Thirty seconds more. Please."

He put his hands on her shoulders, trying to make eye contact through the mirror. He reached around her throat. His hands met then separated again, trailing a silver chain between them. "Look." He said.

She forced her eyes to meet her own in the mirror.

"Watch for the change." Slowly he brought the necklace to her throat. The cool metal on the back of the cameo touched the skin at her collarbone, and a subtle twist seemed to tug at her vision. In the mirror, she shifted from herself into something truly impressive.

"Paper bag..." she mumbled.

"Paper bags cover you." He said, fastening the clasp. "This uncovers you. Tell me, what's different now?"

"I'm beautiful."

"No, I mean specifically. What's specifically different?"

She looked hard at her nose, which was no longer too wide. "My nose." She looked at her eyes that were no longer beady. "My eyes... everything."

"Really? Are you sure?"

"Don't play with me."

"I'm not. Not at all." He unclasped the necklace. "Now watch your nose closely... don't take your eyes off of it..."

He removed the necklace, but the dimensions of her nose didn't change. "How?" She said, almost forgetting that he was there. She now looked like she always did, but her nose hadn't changed from when she was perfect. In fact, it almost looked good.

"Now look at your eyes."

She obliged, almost more curious than afraid now. He put the necklace back on; her eyes didn't change... yet they were beautiful.

"Now you see what I do. It doesn't change how you look." He paused for effect, "...
it changes how you see
. It makes you see yourself like I see you."

Something shifted in the universe; unseen shackles loosened, threatened to fall. "Who'da thunk..." She said, hot with emotion, yet lighter somehow. She put a hand on the glass, palm forward, fingers spread, feeling the sharp lines of the cracks. Through this cracked window, she saw herself for the first time. Through the tears, she smiled.

His reflection smiled back. "At last, we see the same thing."

"Why?"

His right hand slid from her right shoulder across her throat, coming to rest on her left shoulder. His left hand moved across her waist, completing the embrace. She felt his warmth behind her, his breath on her ear. "Selfishness." His reflected smile broadened.

He was baiting her. He must feel pretty confident that she was done with that face-smashing impulse. Her stare shifted from her reflection to his in the mirror. She waited.

When it became obvious she wasn't going to ask again, he continued, "I needed you to believe I could love you. When your dad looked at you, what do you think he saw?" He gestured toward the cracked glass. "He saw beauty, just like I do. The weird part is that you saw something else. Baby, you're beautiful... you're just stupid too."

"You... love me." The sarcasm wouldn't work, though she tried, it sounded as forced as a warped drawbridge with rusty hinges.

"Now listen, you stubborn woman..." he whispered, "I love you. I might screw up, might even hurt you sometimes, but I'm never going to stop loving you."

Though her cheeks burned, she didn't look away.

"Not till the end of the world."

She's never seen him completely serious before. "You proposing something?" She said with a twinkle in her damp eyes.

His flinch was barely perceptible, "Ah! Some kind of proposal, you say? Those kinds of questions..." he made a show of scratching his neck uncomfortably, "Well, they take a long time to ask properly..."

"Sure." She interrupted, shaking her head and rolling her eyes with theatrical disappointment. She was more than willing to get back to a more comfortable level of flip banter, "Someday you're gonna grow up, Ahmed- maybe I'll still be around..."

"...but I think I've been asking for some time now." He said with such deadpan delivery she didn't at first realize he was kidding... and then she realized he wasn't. He was staring directly into her frightened eyes, steady as ever, but slightly less dorky, maybe.

Her mouth moved, trying to find some sarcasm, but willing to settle on irony if that was all that was within easy reach... no luck. Her lips stopped, and they were both left staring at themselves in the mirror and watching fear and hope fight it out in a desperate jello wrestling match in her face.

"'Buh da?' is not an answer, Rae."

"Sudden." she said, for lack of something better.

"Sudden? I think I've been asking since the first time I told you 'no'."

Shock. Time passed, things changed. Now she still stared into cracked glass, full of fear and purpose. Things were different now, but her hand still pressed against cracked glass, palm out, fingers spread. "Not till the end of the world..." She whispered, crying still, but now, her tears were bitter.

Behind her ephemeral reflection, inside the car, Alex lay like a discarded rag doll. She was afraid to open the door, afraid to discover the worst, but she had to move. Now it was all up to her. To her left, Ping sat unconscious, slumped against the open front door of the car, dead or dying; blood matted his hair, stained his jacket from neck to shoulder to chest. Her eyes returned to Alex, she removed her hand from the glass. Her reflected eyes hardened, her jaw set, and her reflection slid away as she opened the door.

Dek stood on the edge of a bridge above the five southbound lanes of highway 12, perhaps fifty kilometers south of Roy's house on Lake Geneva. He still needed to get
farther away before he dared call Kaspari. Dek knew his call would be traced and his position fixed by the resourceful hunters still on their trail, and he didn't want to give them any reason to disturb Alex and the others before they got underway.

Twisting around, his eyes scanned over the approaching traffic. There! His eyes settled on a two-module cargo transport approaching the bridge from the north. An instant after it disappeared beneath the bridge, he jumped. His jump was nearly parallel with the street below because he needed to bridge the speed differential between himself and the transport.

He flew through the air, dropping slightly as gravity exerted its slow acceleration on him. The truck appeared below him, the low rumble of its engine emerging from the rush of the slipstream. As he fell, he reached out with hands and feet, spreading his impact over as wide an area as possible to avoid waking the driver. Dek was reasonably sure the driver was asleep because the transport traveled in a guide lane and it was well after sundown.

The cool exterior of the transport slid beneath his hands. He'd hit the truck a bit slow, but he had plenty of time to find handholds in the slow motion world of his own speed. He hadn't been out hitching for decades and he'd forgotten how fun it was. Roy used to take him out hitching all the time. If Ivo had known what his kids were up to, he would have felt obligated to get a bit stern. That's why they always told him they were going out to a movie or some other half-truth.

Here, a barnacle attached to the speeding transport, Dek smiled at the memories of loved ones and simpler times. Then he stopped smiling when he remembered why he was here, why he was doing this. He was here because his world had been destroyed. He was here because those loved ones were gone and times would never be simple like that again.

The lust for power was something Dek would never understand. This lust seemed to only bring destruction and misery to those who acquired it. It was an over-full grail that sloshed destruction on pursuer and bystander alike.

The pursuit of power had brought many enemies to Ivo's door. Entire clans had focused their considerable resources on Ivo's exploitation or destruction, and yet he had never dealt them more damage than required for defense. But now, heaven help him, Dek was going to make sure those who had destroyed his family got every bit of the destruction they deserved. He wanted it more than anything else. He wanted it more than he wanted to breathe, more than he wanted to live. These people took something precious from the world, but never again. Those monsters would not live to ruin more lives, bring more misery, to leave anyone else this desolate. As Roy would say, "They were going to join Mr. Lem Li in the hell of being cut to pieces."

The transport pulled into the exit lane for highway 176, so Dek changed cars a few times, ending up in the back of a pickup truck continuing south towards Rosemont. As he sailed between the speeding vehicles, he couldn't help but enjoy himself. He knew Roy and Dad would want him to be happy- though Dad wouldn't want him to be happy Hitcng.

He smiled, and for a moment he was wrapped in the warmth of their memory. They were a quirky lot; strength and peccadilloes meshing like cogs in an odd gearbox. Each of them was unique, but they all fit together to make something beautiful- a family.

His tears slipped from him, taken away by the wind. He wanted to scoop the sorrow out, replace it with hate. He was afraid that this sadness would make him weak when the time came for action. It was too much; it would make him falter. But in spite of his best efforts, the sadness deepened until it was a physical feeling, like slow fire in his chest.

He looked about, half expecting to have a Kenobi moment, receiving a little glowing visit from his dead family. Of course, he was still alone with the speeding traffic. But he couldn't shake the impression of his dead family appearing to him in glowing Jedi robes. He could almost see the scene play out in his head- they would show up, affecting faux gravity, then Roy would blow the mood by telling Dek to 'use The Force', or some such nonsense. They'd laugh like idiots while Ivo waited, affecting the patience of the pious dead, until his kids sobered up enough for him to deliver whatever Really Important Message he'd come from beyond the grave to deliver. Dek could almost see them, could almost feel their arms in the wind about him. He laughed and cried, speeding at almost 200 kph down highway 12.

Forgive. The thought entered his mind like a breeze, warm and scented of summer.

And then the moment passed and he was alone in the battering slipstream. A sweet pain remained; daring him to push it away, but his rage was gone, or at least far enough away that he'd have to reach out to touch it. It no longer smothered him. His suspicion was that the next few days would bring a lot more murder, but he'd do it because it had to be done- not out of weakness, not out of rage. He was free.

He jumped and was again lost in the rushing wind. There was a change in the quality of the ambient sound as the bridge passed beneath him with a whoosh. He flew perhaps half a meter in front of a cargo transport that was crossing the bridge. He had time to spare a wave for a startled trucker, and then the bridge was gone from beneath him and he landed on another cargo transport.

Free.

***

Rae lay curled around Alex's comatose form in the middle of yet another geek exhibit. They lay in the top bunk of youth-sized bunk beds in the small, dim room that had been their sanctuary for the last two days.

At times like these- and there had been many times like these since she'd started dating Alex- it helped her to picture herself as the Jane Goodall of nerds. She lived among the little monkeys, observing, even participating in, their strange introverted rituals, yet fundamentally not nerdy herself. Nope, she was a strong, black woman, she was a tough cop on one of the city's toughest beats- she had plenty of street cred.

If she played online games while she worked out, that was because she liked to work out and was bored. If she was in love with a computer geek, it was because he was sexy in his own dorky way, because he was wise and infuriating. If she cried when she lost her online wedding ring when that Morgoth Dragon ate her, well...

From the lower bunk, a polite but urgent voice counseled her to "seek medical attention" for the hundredth time today.

Around them on the walls we holos of Pachinko Molasses and several other Anime characters she didn't recognize; all big eyes, improbable hair, and comic relief animal sidekicks with names like Yabbachu. On the top of a nearby dresser were intricately painted figurines of all the major characters from J.R.R. Tolkien's
Lord of the Rings
trilogy.

The room, until recently occupied by Ari and Mir Olafsen, ages 7 and 9, seemed the archetypal dwelling of suburban preteens. However, Rae couldn't shake the feeling that this was a geek spawning ground. This was an unkind thought, especially since the children's father was currently risking his life to shelter them. But she couldn't keep the thought at bay, or the warm smile that it brought with it. Someday she would admit that she was a geek lover... not out loud so Alex could gloat, but inside... maybe... someday.