The Beginning Of Rain In December (4 page)

They spoke of the rest of the exhibits, enjoyed light appetizers but she refused to drink more than one glass of one. Hours later, they said their goodbye’s to Fao before walking hand in hand towards a French restaurant down the street.

Once there, they enjoyed exquisite cuisine and conversation before regretfully, they made their way back to the ferry, the last one returning to Seattle soon to arrive.

“I had a wonderful time,” Rain said, still hand in hand with Enlai as they stood at the railing of the ferry, the city of Seattle sparkling in the rapidly dark night.

“I’m glad. Would you like to come back to my place?” He asked, meeting her eyes.

She wanted to say no, wanted to say yes, could not explain herself either way. “I,” she began and once gain remembering what she had promised herself. She hadn’t touched another person sexually since she was eighteen. And even then it had been forced upon her. Now, twelve years later she was so tired in living within the shadows of her nightmares. Tired of withholding herself from the love and need of another. She wanted so much to touch someone in innocence and in love. Twelve long years and she wanted her peace given back to her. Wanted to be able to choose to love and to give to another. She had not had the right since she was six.

“Yes,” she finally said, smiling softly.

He returned her smile, brought his hands to cup her face, kissing her lips softly in the evening light, the brisk air and the heat of his face making her heady with pleasure.

Wrapping her arms around his neck she deepened the kiss, moaning softly before pulling away, a deep flush upon her cheeks. “I think we should keep this PG,” she said shakily as his hands had found his way underneath her coat, wrapping around her waist.

“You are right,” he finally agreed, breathing heavily.

They kept it PG, sharing fleeting kisses and soft touches. When they departed he walked her to her car. “I parked right down this aisle from you, you’ll follow?” He asked.

“Yes, I will,” she said as he opened her car door for her.

“Okay, give me a moment,” he said, kissing her again.

She watched him walk towards his car and pulled out the parking lot as he got inside his car. Following behind him she played classical music and tried to ease the nervousness of her past. She would not allow her past to regulate who she was anymore, to live in fear of things that were long ago buried. She was ready, ready to begin a new page in her book.

She parked her car next to his in his in the condo’s underground garage. Getting out, they met between the two cars, holding hands, kissing in nervousness and excitement.

“Are you sure?” He asked.

“Yes, very,” she said.

He nodded; he wanted her too much to ask her that again but knew if she even hinted at nervousness or was uncomfortable he would stop. He wouldn’t hurt her, he couldn’t.

The trip up the elevator was quiet as he slowly caressed the small of her back. She didn’t ask him if he would call her after they made love, if they would begin a relationship, if she would ever see him again. She doubted it, but did not care. She wanted another human touch the only one she had were the hugs from Belle and Mark, the kisses from their children. She would no more live in the past.

When he unlocked the door to his condo and shut off the alarm, switching on the lights, she paused, stopping, her breath leaving her body, seated in a deep leather chair next to a cold fireplace was Song.

He didn’t seem surprised to see them, was waiting for them. Patiently waiting in a black, tailored suit as Enlai closed and locked the door behind her and her blood grew cold.

“We won’t hurt you, Rain,” Enlai said behind her.

Stay calm, stay calm, she told herself, remembering her gun in her boots, her knife and mace. Just stay calm, Rain.

“Who are you?” She finally asked her voice calm and still, low.

Enlai walked around her, standing in front of the ceiling to floor windows that dominated his entire loft style living room. He made the appearance of civility, his hands loose at his side, given her ample space and room, a small smile upon his face.

“Acquaintances of your grandfather,” Song said, not moving from his seat.

“I have no grandfather,” she replied just as smoothly. She knew that running towards the door would be wasted, they pretended ease but as soon as she moved they would be on her, quickly.

She would remain calm. She was used to surprises in her life. Had expected something to happen. She’d fought since she was six years old, she would still fight.

“You do, Rain,” Enlai said quietly and turned towards her.

She stared between the two men, Song and Enlai, finally recognition upon her face. “You two are brothers?” She stated.

It was Song who nodded.

“Who is this grandfather?”

“He is a very important man to a lot of different people. He hired us to find you.” Enlai stated.

“You don’t really work for the Department of Defense?” Rain asked wryly, what a fool she had been.

“I do, but not in IT but research and development.”

“And Song?”

“Defense systems,” he said.

“Who is this grandfather?” She asked.

“He is a scientist; he has searched for you for many years but to no avail. He was kidnapped from Ethiopia, enslaved to Communist China for many years, leaving behind his son…your father and your father’s new wife. She was pregnant with you. Your grandfather was told that if he tried to escape your father and mother along with you would be killed. He became one of China’s most important and unknown scientists perfecting weapons of mass destruction. So many times China was so close to beginning World War III, each time they were stopped. Your grandfather managed to escape five years later after his kidnapping. He tried to hunt your father and mother down, but the village where you lived had been raided, everyone had been killed…but he found you. Wandering along in the wild, alone, just five years old. He hid you, gave you to close friends of his to escape to America. You have a mark, upon your right shoulder that he placed there. He sedated you, and had an Akofena tattooed upon your right shoulder…swords of war. Once in America, the couple that he entrusted you to was killed; you somehow were lost and ended up in foster care throughout the east coast, going from one foster home to the other.”

Her breath stopped, flashbacks of memories forgotten. Screams of terror in a small house…a woman pushing her away, telling her in a distant language, run, run, don’t look back, run. Someone picking her up, running with her, someone not much larger than she was, a trusted friend, a young male just twelve years old. Her friend, she remembered crying, screaming, and then the boy dropping her, his wide dead eyes staring at her, urging her to run, leave, hide, escape.

She knew the wilds of her village, had run wild in the trees, she hid in her favorite place, a small hollow in a tree as she watched pale men with slanted eyes hack away at the underbrush, speaking foreign words, shooting villagers that had run into the village.

She stared wide eyed, her breath frozen in her throat as strange shoes stood directly in front of her hiding place. She knew if she moved she would be killed just like her parents, just like her friend.

She couldn’t remember how long she hid inside the small hallow of the tree, only that many nights had passed and her legs were raw with bug and ant bites before creeping slowly out, making her way slowly back to her village, but where her village had once been was nothing except charred small homes and a heaping pile of still smoldering dead bodies.

She wouldn’t look at the bodies, instead going towards what had once been her home but was now nothing except burned rubble. She picked her way through the hot embers, looking for food and finding none, she went back to the wild, eating and drinking what she could for many days, making a small home in her hallowed trunk with items that had not been destroyed by fire, and too shock to do more than anything other than to stare into the midnight sky, her young mind trying to grasp futilely at the destruction that had just occurred.

She remembered the man that looked like her father finding her. He had fallen to his knees in front of her, calling her name. “I am your grandfather, little one,” he said.

She knew who he was; her father had a picture of him. She trustingly walked to him, sitting on his lap as he stroked her hair, his tears falling upon your cheek. “I will protect you,” he said.

Days later he gave her to a strange couple as he hugged and kissed her goodbye. They were next to a large, machine that he told her would fly in the sky and take her away from these troubles.

She trusted him and the people he knew. She nodded to show her understanding and hugged him, before she was hurriedly taken into the large machine, an airplane and stared out the window at her grandfather who waved her away.

Her memory began in bursts. Something very bad had happened to the couple she was with. The man had hid her and told her to hide forever. That she was in danger. She hid, but eventually she was found in the middle of downtown Boston, as strangers gasped with shock at the small five year old girl covered in dried blood.

She was taken to a hospital by child protective service and the police. But she would not talk, she could not talk. She was placed in foster care, quiet, young and small, and at the age of six had been raped by her foster father. When the state had found out she was placed in numerous other homes, some safe, clean, hospitable, others horrid, abusive, painful. Until she’d escaped from her last foster home, the day of her last raped, she’d hitched a ride to Chicago, began college and started working as a waitress, trying to bury the pain of her past.

Forgetting her birth right, but not the pain of her childhood abuse.

And now the memory of her earlier years. This could not be. Why now? God, why now?

She unconsciously touched the top of her shoulder, that strange symbol that had always been with her, that she had not even noticed until she was seven years of age.

“What happened to him, after he placed me on the plane to America?”

“He was found by the Chinese again. He was tortured, he nearly died. He managed to escape under the United States by protective custody. He revealed China’s secret and was given asylum as a refuge and began to work for the Department of Defense. On his own he searched for you. But he was met with dead end after dead end. The airplane was to take you to New York where he had others waiting for you. Yet, for some reason it was diverted to Boston, you then were loss in the Boston foster system. He hired us to find you.”

“How did you find me?”

“Your museum. You had a large opening at your museum. Your name, your English name was placed under the marketing information and it was code. It was how you escaped from Ethiopia. Under the rain…rules. It was raining the day you left the country. It ruled the ability to escape or not. You had to go in a storm to help reduce the ability of China finding you with their equipment.”

“Rain Rule isn’t my real name?” She said. That had been the only thing that she had told the Boston police in her heavily accented voice as a five year old.

“No,” Song said. “Your real name we will not speak, not until you are reunited with your grandfather. You are still in danger, Rain; there are those who would wish you dead.”

“Why?”

It was Song who continued the tale. “Your grandmother was a scientist in her own right. A biochemist. She performed experiments on your mother, experiments your mother did not know of. Somehow she altered your DNA, gave you resistance to every single disease known to humans. When the Chinese came, she destroyed all of her research and would not reveal who she had experimented on. The Chinese killed her. No one to this day has been able to replicate her experiments. Within you, Rain there is a DNA genotype unmatched by any other person upon this planet. If the Chinese find you, you will be killed, but not before you are fully experimented on.”

“How do I know that you do not work for those that wish to kill me?” She asked.

“You don’t,” Enlai stated. “But we were sworn to protect you and we will die to protect you.”

“Why?”

“Because our parents were also imprisoned within Chinese communist. We are also orphans, escaping to America on the same plane that you yourself escaped. Your grandfather promised our parents that he would help us escape. When we arrived in Boston, we were taken by our people and you were still with the couple. We thought, we thought everything was safe. We stayed in America for years before moving to the UK under the CIA. We returned to America just a short few years ago under the Department of Defense.”

Another memory, the plane trip, there had been others on the planes, refugees. Young small, boys, who looked as nervous as she had, and an elderly people, but she had not been interested in them. She only wanted to return, for her parents to come back, for her grandfather to hug her again. “I remember,” she said slowly. “I remember you,” she said.

“I…” she could not say more, her head hurt, as she stared at the two men before her. Things like this did not happen, this should not occur. Could not. All she wanted was to be normal. Normal like everyone else. Not haunted down by strange killers…not injected with strange DNA…not a freak.