She went on and on about how her job gave her a headache, how she wanted to get a divorce with her third husband, how her five children were driving her insane, and how she couldn't take all of the stress any longer. Clarisa smiled and nodded every few minutes, but couldn't help that her heart was not in the session. Halfway through it she heard Antonna’s mental voice, sending out a distress call to all in the department. Through the link she sensed panic, helplessness, and an underlying feeling of being attacked by someone. It sounded suspiciously like what had happened to herself with Larry. Antonna's signal lasted for a solid fifteen minutes, and Clarisa wondered why no one had hurried to save her. The silence could mean that the worst had happened, because there was no following signal informing them that she was safe. Clarisa tried to probe further for her location, but that drew her attention away from her client. She had no choice but to stay put and sit through the rambling for half an hour more. The client exceeded the arranged duration by another ten minutes, and Clarisa had to cut in,
“I'm sorry, but do you mind if we resume with the story next session? I have something scheduled right now.”
The client did not hesitate to express her unhappiness, and after some rushed pacification, Clarisa finally made it out the door. Immediately upon teleportation, she found herself in a dark, abandoned shopping complex, with broken escalators and wires dangling out from the ceiling. A small crowd of perceivers had already gathered there, and among them was Jonas. She joined in the commotion, and found Antonna’s frail body lying there on the tiled floor, dead, with patches of black rashes all over her skin. They were all too late. She listened as two other perceivers discussed,
“She was sent here with Tim and Bethany. Where are they?”
“I tried contacting them and can’t reach them.”
“What do you mean you can’t reach them? Where are they?”
Clarisa tried but was also unable to access their location. By logic, she contributed,
“There’s only one entity that has a cloaking power, and that is the Darkness.”
One of them responded,
“So there are traitors here?”
“What do you think?” said another.
“Can I even trust anybody anymore?”
A wave of sorrow rose and swept through her, making her drop to the floor beside the body. She took one last look at the face she’d welcomed into the organisation, the perceiver who best applied the knowledge she had imparted. People like Antonna who were willing to learn and improve had been growing short in recent years, and she couldn't bear to lose one such person, especially to injustice. As she whispered her last goodbye, she felt someone's hand on her shoulder, which turned out to be Jonas’. He squatted down beside her as the body was covered and prepared to be taken away.
“Why Antonna,” Clarisa said softly.
Jonas answered grimly, “Is that rhetorical, or are you seriously asking why?”
Clarisa turned to him intently.
“You know why?”
“Just a hunch,” Jonas shrugged. “Something’s been going wrong ever since Jaydis. This has got to be sabotage and treason. You see, Antonna’s one of the few people who actually care around here. If anyone wants to eliminate her, it has got to do with morale.”
“To take the rest of us down?”
“Yeah, people could be working with the Darkness on that.”
Seeing that Clarisa had lowered her head to ponder on his words, Jonas nudged her,
“Don't take me too seriously though.”
He squeezed her shoulder consolingly before standing up to leave. Clarisa stared at the white sheet, her desire to get to the bottom of the situation fueled.
* * *
“What are you looking at?”
She noticed that the crack on the ceiling had doubled in length.
“Do you not see it?” Clarisa raised her head in the direction of the unusual defect. The perceiver shook his head and furrowed his brows, casting her a ‘you are weird’ glance before turning to the door that Johnson had just entered through. He carried a stack of folders in his hands, and immediately, Clarisa observed the fingerless glove he wore on his right wrist. Questions popped up in her mind without her having to form them. Is he injured? What is he hiding? As usual, Johnson went straight down to business,
“Tonight you’ll all be doing pair assignments, and I want them done by six in the morning, no exceptions. Pair up and come get your assignment from me.”
Before anyone could move, one perceiver piped up,
“Sir, why are you still here?”
Johnson glared at him ferociously and shot back,
“Why shouldn't I be here?”
“Five have died under your leadership, and like what happened with Jonas, you should be held responsible for their deaths. Therefore, why haven't you stepped down?”
Johnson held the glare for five long seconds before saying in a terrifying monotone,
“You will see me outside my office right after I’m done handing out assignments.”
The perceiver froze in his position, knowing that he had stepped into hot water. The rest moved around the room in search of their partners, and Clarisa made her way effortlessly to Leo, whose eyes smiled when he saw her. A rushed, late night, pair assignment was ten times more endurable if Clarisa was in it. They joined the queue to collect their folder and he sent,
[He’s right, why is that dotard still here?]
Clarisa shook her head with a frown.
[I wish I knew.]
When their turn arrived, Johnson was left with three folders. He eyed Leo and Clarisa purposefully before picking one of them and dishing it to them with a flick of the wrist. Leo grabbed the folder thanklessly and they opened their assignment. Inside was a single sheet of paper, on it the assignment number and a black and white picture cut out from a news article. It displayed the interior of a car.
Leo glanced around and realised that they were alone in the meeting room, everyone else already gone to work. He looked to Clarisa to see that she was ready, then turned back to the picture and sent as a cue,
[Three, two, one.]
* * *
As soon as they were on board, the car accelerated down the road. The sun in the sky was setting in their direction of travel. Leo found himself in the driver's seat, and Clarisa in the backseat. Stunned, she asked,
“Leo are you driving?”
Leo raised his hands and shook his head in puzzlement. The front wheel was steering by itself, and the car continued to whiz down the deserted country lanes, sweeping dust into the air as it went.
“This isn't a self-driving car,” Leo said as he stomped on the brakes. “I can't get it to stop!”
The car seemed to be able to navigate, and maneuvered its way without colliding into anything. Clarisa turned and found two large suitcases in the seat beside her. One of them was not locked so she opened it, and stuffed inside were bundles of banknotes.
“We're in a getaway car!” she exclaimed.
Leo, who had been struggling with the controls, looked around to see why Clarisa had made her presumption. To his surprise, next to him on the shotgun seat was a revolver. He reached for it hesitantly and opened the breech, which was fully loaded.
“Check this out.”
He held the gun out to Clarisa, who recoiled slightly before taking it for examination.
“You seem to be right that we're in the middle of a crime scene,” he said as he fiddled with the gear lever that ignored his command. “Any idea where this place is?
Clarisa watched as trees and unfamiliar road signs zoomed by her window. “No.”
Neither could she sense any trace of the Darkness in the car, and she said so.
“Then I don't see any point in staying in this thing,” Leo remarked. He pointed out the window,
“You see that no U-turn sign up ahead? On the count of three, ready?”
“Right.”
[One, two, three.]
But they stayed exactly where they were. Leo turned to face the backseat, and Clarisa looked as bewildered as he was.
“Go anywhere. Get out of here,” he told her, but after ten seconds they remained rooted to their seats, their positions unchanged. They jiggled the car doors that would not budge, and Leo could not unlock them.
“It has to be the Darkness,” Clarisa asserted immediately. “But I still can't sense it.”
“Since when has it been able to take away our powers?” he frowned.
“Leo, something… is happening,” Clarisa decided to tell him. “This isn’t the same Darkness we know anymore. It's evolving.”
“Evolving?” Things seemed to be sounding worse by the second.
“Yes,” Clarisa said severely. “It cloaked Tim and Bethany's locations following Antonna's death. Now it's disabled our teleportation. It's interfering with us on a whole nother level.”
The sky darkened as the sun disappeared behind a hill. The two perceivers were stuck in a car speeding at eighty, with two bags of cash and a gun. They had dug around the storage pockets and compartments, and found nothing but a couple of sweets and fashion magazines. Leo suggested,
“I could smash the window.”
“You wouldn't make it out alive,” Clarisa disadvised.
Leo sighed and leaned back in his seat for the first time. “This ‘evolved’ Darkness you mentioned, can it still be cleared?”
“The Darkness can always be cleared,” Clarisa said confidently. “Just not all of it.”
“What makes you so sure?”
“There isn't an assignment I've left uncompleted,” she said simply. “Excluding the one in the African village, but that’s an exception.”
“That wasn't even your assignment,” Leo said with a half-smile as he turned to face her. Clarisa returned a smile, which only lasted a split second before her expression changed to one of shock.
“Leo it's... It's a-”
Bang.
The car had knocked something down, and they felt a bump as it got run over by the tires. Leo had been too late to see what it was. Clarisa whipped around to look through the rear windshield, and fixed her gaze as the car sped off and away from the object.
“What was that?”
When it had moved far beyond sight, Clarisa turned back to Leo, her fingers over her mouth. She breathed,
“It was a girl.”
Leo’s eyes nearly popped out of their sockets. He faced the wheel and realised that they were entering the city. The roads filled with other vehicles as well as pedestrians. Leo clutched onto the handles, bracing himself for a hell of a ride. The car disobeyed all traffic regulations and burst its way through crowds of zebra-crossers, sending them fleeing and shrieking in terror. An elderly man in particular was flung thirty feet by the bonnet of the car and onto the concrete road, his head dislocated. Other vehicles screeched to a stop where they got in the way and honked after them. Right when they thought they couldn't scream anymore, the car slammed into a bus that was turning out from a stand, sending the car spinning with its tires howling deafeningly. Leo ducked and cursed aloud while Clarisa lay over the suitcases for support and shut her eyes. Finally, when they came to a stop, the car accelerated once more and drove them towards a highway.
Dazed, Leo tried to keep his eyes on the road but couldn't see it anymore. The long highway at night faded out from view and changed to a bright road against a white day sky. He blinked in confusion when he saw a lady in the distance, running down the road away from him. His eyes widened as he recognised her.
“Mom!” he cried. He stepped on the accelerator to chase after her, but the lady could run faster than he could drive. She leapt away in big, clumsy steps, her arms flailing along beside her, but no matter what speed he went at, she grew further and further from his vision.
“Don't leave!” he called again as fear overcame him. It was a dormant fear that had always been lying inside him unnoticed, a fear he never knew he had until this very moment. A fear of being useless, unwanted, forgotten by the people he most valued acceptance from. It sounded unlike him even to himself, but it was this phobia that enveloped his mind and drove him forward.
Clarisa saw that Leo had raised his arms to grip the steering wheel, and it now looked as if he was in control of the car, racing it recklessly down the highway. He would not answer her when she called his name. She leaned over to look in the rearview mirror and gasped. The grey in Leo's beautiful eyes had turned pitch black, extending over the scleras to what looked like irises of the devil. It could only mean one thing: The Darkness had taken possession of him, and they were reliving a past crime scene projected by it.
[Wake up, Leo!] she called to him telepathically. [Whatever you see is not real, the Darkness is deceiving you!]
Without warning, the car smashed into a motorcycle, sending it flying off the highway and throwing Clarisa off her seat. Leo resumed his course down the road without looking back. She climbed back up and leaned forward to shake Leo’s arm.
[You are on assignment 2847, with Clarisa Janisson in a getaway car. Please wake up, Leo!]
With one hand off the steering wheel, Leo grabbed hold of hers and twisted it injuriously. She cried and pulled it back, knowing from the piercing pain that it was broken. Blue and red flashed in the side mirrors, and sirens began to wail behind them. Though she had never been a criminal, she knew that those were seldom a good sign. Clarisa glanced around aimlessly, at a loss for what to do. She could not possibly fight Leo, just one violent move told her that his physical strength and agility was superior to hers. Neither would he listen to reason. But the fact is, she corrected herself, he wasn't Leo anymore.
Her eyes fell upon the revolver on the car floor. That was when she realised that the solution was simple, though not simple to bring herself to do it. It made sense, because this was exactly the kind of scenario the Darkness would want to put her in, to see if she could bear to shoot at her best friend. And could she bear it? She did not know, but the answer was irrelevant. She picked up the revolver with her working hand and pulled back the hammer with her thumb. The question now was, where to shoot him? At both of his hands to stop him from driving? Given the dexterity of her left hand, that would be a struggle especially if he moved. Make a hole in his pretty head, a surefire way to drive out the Darkness? Chances of him surviving that were low to zero.
Two police cars had caught up with them, one on each side. “Stop your vehicle,” an order sounded through the megaphone. Leo of course, sped on heedlessly. Forced to make her decision, Clarisa held her aim and pulled the trigger.
No comments:
Post a Comment