Gensomaden Saiyuki Fan Fiction ❯ Suite on Rte. 86 ❯ Springes and Sparrowhawks ( Chapter 10 )

Springes and Sparrowhawks   We sleep crammed into the back of the van, lulled by exhaustion and the constant hum of wheels on pavement. Jordan clings to me almost too tightly until we stop for gas and coffee and she spells Tamar at the wheel. Shane shifts and grunts with discomfort on the other half of the moldering mattress. His breath comes shallowly, hissing through clenched teeth. His bandages are stained brown with old blood despite repeated washings. I imagine it is a strain resisting the pronounced dip that seeks to roll him into me, but he is nothing if not stubborn.   I’d known it was the last time, the last time the three of us would be alone together. I had known from the sharp slide of his glance from her retreating form, so I had taken him in my mouth and Jordan, pressed hotsweetharsh inside me, had danced his fingers up my spine, wound them around his in my hair, and Shane had looked down and seen us. The memory threatens to breach some unexamined surface, so I retreat from it.   Tamar and I watch as grayness creeps through the low clouds and tangles in his pale lashes. She is braced against the rusted wall, legs stretched in the narrow triangle left between Shane and the tangled heap that is the boys. I want to turn my back to them, to bury my face in Jordan’s bony shoulder and breathe her for a while. My back is cold with her absence. I will my limbs into motion and climb into the front seat.     “Would you ever kill someone?” I asked Shane, once, when we were maybe twelve.  I had just finished reading Of Mice and Men and questions of mortality were heavy on my mind.   ‘Yes,” he’d answered, so quickly that I knew he couldn’t have really thought about it. “I would kill anyone who got in my way.”     I didn’t believe him, maybe still don’t quite believe him.      “Why did you kill them?” I had asked him, as Kiran shrank against Jadan’s side and Jordan cheerfully stirred the fire.   “They would have either come after us again or Dibrova would have killed them after they reported our location. What do you think I should have done?” Shane said, glaring at me from under his brows.   “Weren’t they the bad guys?” Kiran asked.   “I’m sure, from their point of view, they weren’t all that bad,” I said.   Kiran wrinkled his brow, “They hurt you and Brother.”   “You hurt them,” I pointed out, glancing at Jordan to include him in the indictment, “Does that make you a bad person?”   “Am I?” Kiran asked, quietly, “A bad person?  I- don’t really remember what I did.”   Jadan opened his mouth, then shut it again, looking fierce and dismayed. His arms tightened around Kiran visibly. Shane was scowling at the ground.   “Sometimes people do good things, and sometimes they do bad things,” Jordan drawled, seemingly amused by my lecture, “Problem is, people don’t agree on what’s good and what’s bad.”   I looked down at the fire. Jordan’s hands landed warm on my shoulders, his grin soft against my hairline.   "Things are not what they seem; nor are they otherwise." Shane said in a tone that brooked no argument.   “How many were there?” I asked later, as we lay awake watching bats map flickering arcs onto the moonlight.   “Counting Skuratov? Eleven. But some of them were dying anyway,” Jordan said, and tucked his head under my chin.     “Such a fascinating specimen. Pure luck, really, that I’ll be able to test some of my more interesting theories.”   A muffled sound of protest.   Lower: “I could make you scream for me. I could make you love it.”   A small, deliberate moan.   The crack of flesh impacting flesh.   Coldly: “Don’t think I’ll be seduced that easily.”   “At least I don’t smell like my dick’s rotting off, pervert.”   “Take it to examining room four. Make sure it’s well restrained, and give it a dose of Pentobarbital. Say, 200 ccs.”     “I don’t dream anymore,” Tamar complains.   ‘How do you know?  It’s only been a few days.”   “I used to dream every night. Now I don’t.”   She and Shane can’t share the mattress; they both hold themselves too rigidly and the narrow, impenetrable space between them prevents them from relaxing into sleep.   “Do you believe in second chances?” he asks me in the silence of the early morning.   I consider for a moment. “If there is such a thing, wouldn’t chance be the wrong word to use?”     The rain has started up again, beading the garish play structure with pricks of light. The wood grain molded into the plastic benches and tabletops stores years of greasy food particles, road salt and dust, seemingly impervious to anything so trivial as cold drizzle. A news channel narrates to itself with desperately cheerful solemnity, fading in and out as the glass double doors open and shut.  Shane stands propped beneath the cement overhang, arms crossed, steadfastly ignoring the teenagers huddled on the filthy sidewalk at his feet. Kiran is picking at his sneakers again, pulling out seams and unraveling laces. My last cigarette is finally gone, though I’d tried hard to make it last. I’m not sure if I have enough cash for another carton.   Jordan and Tamar are still not back and Shane is trying not to scowl any harder than necessary.     “But what if Urzica can control you somehow? And if he created your body he must know how to destroy it.”   “She’s my daughter. Maybe you should be the one who waits outside. You never could stand the sight of blood.”   “You’ll be ok if we go in with you, right? I mean, Kiran fixed you before.”   “You two won’t be going in either.”   “But-“   “No.”   &# 8220;They are the strongest fighters we have-  ah- ha ha, that is, they are the most experienced in their strength.”   “No!”   “Shane, he does have a point.”   “We’re not staying out here by ourselves.”   “Maybe you should stay with them, Shane. You are still recovering.”   “You need someone to watch your back while you fuck all the guards unconscious.”   “I know you like to watch, but-“   “We’re not staying outside! If you leave us, we’ll follow you in.”     The ceiling is very white and utterly without texture. The walls are too.   “How long has it been?”   “I’m not going to explain.”   “Well, if they were going to kill us, they probably would have already.”   “No.”   I look over at him, half expecting to find him sullenly rolling down his sleeves, pausing to re-read some phrase of mysterious personal import inked onto his wrist.   He’s not there.   I sit up, no, am standing.   The room is a perfect cube, lit by sourceless, directionless brilliance. Nothing mars the smooth walls, no windows, no vents or switches, no door.   How-?   The weight of white light tires my eyes, threatening to press me back down into memories.     “Are you temping also?”   “Oh, no,” Skuratov says, adjusting his rubber glove slightly before flipping another page in the ancient, fragile tome he’s pouring over. “I work for the Doctor full time. When I’m not helping with his research I’m an orderly up at the hospital.”     I have to figure out what’s going on.     “Are you doing anything this afternoon? There’s someone I’d like you to meet.” Tamar must be on her cell phone, the static makes her nearly impossible to understand.   “Ah, the new one?”   “His name is Antony. He’s a nurse.”   “The usual place, then?”     This isn’t real.  In fact, this could well have been built on research I’ve done for them. But perhaps Urzica’s taste for irony gives me an advantage. The traps I designed for them were not meant for flesh.   I force my eyes closed against the whiteness and the rush of memories that seeks to fill it. For a moment I reel, flailing for any sensation at all until I feel my lungs expand shallowly.  I force air into them until they can hold no more, and am rewarded with a distant scrape of pain. I push all the air out deliberately, then draw it back in, slowing the flex of my diaphragm until I can feel my heart speed. It was beating too slowly, I realize, counting beats and breaths. Far too slowly.   Something across my nose and mouth is warming minutely with each exhale, hindering each inhale. The dark behind my eyelids is filled with a low mechanical hum. When I try to open my eyes the lids are stuck together. My arms are caught in something. Adrenaline surges, warming my extremities just enough for me to realize how cold they are. Loud crackling surrounds me as I fight my way free of whatever is holding me, sit up and strike something hanging above. I freeze as its weight swings back against me, and the space around me fills with the tiny sounds of falling crystals. I pull my hand free of the plastic sheeting I was wrapped in and find my eyelashes crusted together with ice. Opening my eyes makes little difference to my view. The only thing to see is a tiny, steady red light, contrasting the blackness without illuminating anything.   I’m in a freezer, I realize, as I begin shivering convulsively. I don’t know where the others are, or how much time has passed, though I know, through some unconscious inventory of sound and heat, that I am the only living thing in here.   My legs are almost too numb to stand. I trip over the plastic sheeting and sprawl across a frigid pile of plastic-wrapped somethings. I don’t want to think about what they might be, so I concentrate on dragging myself toward the light. The walls stick to my fingers slightly as I feel for buttons, switches, anything, anything.  They are smooth and blank, except for the light and the slick, sealed outline of what must be the door.   I scream myself hoarse, imagining every subtle cadence in the door’s vibrations to be approaching footsteps.     I’m too limp to catch myself when the door does open some interminable time later, and I spill onto the hot grit of the tile floor. There is a white blur before my eyes, and for a moment I’m sure I’m back in that blank room, then Jordan swims into focus, her hands burning me, body burning through her clothes as she pulls me against her. She kicks the freezer closed, cutting off my view of frost-blurred plastic silhouettes and what may have been sides of beef.   I am shaking too hard to thank her.   “Come on,” she says, “You have to try to walk. We have to get back to Shane.” She presses my glasses into the palm of my hand, then changes her mind and puts them on my face for me. I wonder vaguely why she has them. “It’ll help you warm up. Come on.”     Shane is braced against a console in a puddle of smashed glass and viscous blue fluid, cradling something against his chest. Wires hang from the electrodes still glued to his forehead. His teeth are gritted in fierce concentration, face contorted, limbs jerking sporadically.   “Where’s your gun? What’s going on?” I ask him around the chattering of my teeth.   “Drugged,” He grits, “Hallucinating.” He flinches and looks down, “I can hear them dying.”   “Urzica knew about him.” Jordan says, “Gave him something psychoactive.  Fucker.”   “Are you-“   “I’m fine.” She interrupts giving me half a grin, “Underestimated me. I was out of the restraints the second they left me alone. Found him and the girl.”   The bundle of fabric Shane is holding resolves itself into a child, maybe four years old. Coal-black hair, Tamar’s exotic features, eyes white crescents within dark lashes.   “You were limping.”   “I’m fine.”   “Shut up,” Shane mutters, “Shut up, shut up, shut up.”     The halls are too quiet, their silence made more disturbing by a pervasive electronic hum and the distant punctuation of shouts and gunfire. Nothing looks at all familiar.   “I can’t remember how I got in there.” The shaking has abated, and now my skin feels far too hot. I can feel exhaustion looming, waiting to crush me into unconsciousness if I let my guard down. Tamar’s daughter is heavy in my arms now, though when I first took her from Shane she was disturbingly light.   “It was a trap. You passed out pretty much the second we walked in, and then they jumped us.”   “We knew it would be,” Shane grunts.     We come across the first body lying in a blood-painted corner, its throat a bloom of raw meat. Up the hall, the boot of another guard is leaking a dark stain onto the industrial carpeting, several feet from the mangled remains of his legs. We follow them, grisly cairns marking a clear path through the labyrinthine halls. More disturbing than the shredded corpses are the ones without a mark on them; their limbs locked in fetal curls, glassy eyes still staring at something unimaginable. My body is leaden with fatigue; Tamar’s daughter is a dead weight, barely breathing in my arms.   Finally, up the corridor, we catch a glimpse of Jadan’s trailing gray braid. With Jordan half-carrying Shane we can only limp along after them, but around the next corner he is waiting for us. Under the stark fluorescents he somehow appears infinitely more than a fifteen year old boy in an old plaid flannel and dirty jeans. We shuffle to a halt under his brassy, measuring regard and forget for a moment even to breathe. A recognition that has nothing to do with who we are plays across his features. He turns and walks off without a word.   “What the hell?” Jordan exhales.   Shane half-pulls from her grasp and nearly falls. “Keep going.”     We arrive just as Urzica begins to panic, his trademark smirk splintering as he takes half a step back. Tamar is strapped to a table behind him, face, arms and clothes still smeared with gore. Jadan stands squarely before him, Kiran draped with languid intimacy on his shoulder. The shorter boy’s smirk tugs at some primal, deeply buried fear, sending a chill up my spine.   “There is no one who is not guilty,” Jadan is saying, his words charging the air with power even I can feel, “But you, Lance Urzica, have been judged too dangerous to remain Under Heaven. Prepare yourself to receive sentence.”   Urzica reaches into his lab-coat pocket, opens his mouth.   The air is rent as horrible, inhuman sound pours from the scientist’s throat. In my arms, the child begins convulsing. Her mouth and grey-lavender eyes snap open in a wail of pain. Shane drops to the floor, nails carving deep rents in his own face, jaw clenched around an answering scream. Jordan cringes against my legs, hands over her ears, tears leaking from her tightly closed lids. Across the room, Tamar jerks against her restraints, shouting frantic syllables I cannot hear. Jadan looks on resolutely as Kiran, lips a grim line, shakes in his grasp.   Urzica crumples to the ground, a fine blue glow leaking from every orifice.   The silence is abrupt and nearly as loud as the screaming it follows.   For a while, no one moves except Tamar.   “Let me out of here!” she calls, the metal of the table groaning under her struggles.   The child is still again, Jordan shaking slightly at my feet. Shane appears to have passed out. Jadan is crouched on the floor, thoroughly absorbed in rocking Kiran back and forth.   I edge around the body, which still oozes a barely-visible blue from the corner of one eye, and lay Tamar’s daughter on her blood-spattered chest as I numbly undo her chains. She handles the girl like spun glass, as if at any moment she might evaporate right out of her arms.   Jadan’s fist catches my pants as I return to check on Shane. He looks up at me with wide, dry eyes.   “He kept me-  But. Something happened, and we-“   I sink to my knees beside them. He slowly, tentatively leans into my chest, shoulders hunched as if expecting a blow. I hook an arm around them and he collapses against me in a grateful rush.   “Is Kiran all right?” I ask.   “He’s sleeping. It hurt.”   “What did you do to him?”   “We smeared him. So he won’t ever come back.”   He couldn’t mean they-   “Fuck.” Jordan says, with a rising note of panic, “Fuck. He’s not breathing.”     Urzica’s labs are far bigger inside than they are outside. Some distant part of my brain is calculating how he might have accomplished this. The rest of me is preoccupied with our frantic search for an exit, with Shane slowly cooling between Jordan and I, her worsening limp and the endless maze of halls that all look the same. When the building finally exhales us into the sharp morning sun, the wail of sirens sends us scrambling in half-panicked flight.   It’s almost a mile to the van. We’re injured and overburdened and we end up abandoning Shane’s body to the freezing grasp of the river. The tea-brown water folds carefully over his features, whirls his pale form down and out of sight. We watch for a moment longer, then keep walking.   Jadan practically passes out the second he touches the mattress, still clutching the other boy close. Tamar sits beside them with her daughter in her arms, watching like her eyes alone will keep her lungs moving, her heart pumping. Jordan’s ankle is too swollen to move. I steer the van onto the first highway I find.   It’s a full day before Kiran wakes up. When he does, he already knows Shane is dead.     The heavy, rhythmic flops of the waves chase sleep from my mind. Jordan and I sit awake listening, eyes fixed blankly beyond the dingy windshield.  In the rearview the others are low, dark masses of shadow. Nothing has moved in so long that Kiran startles us when he does, gently detangling Jadan from his legs and slipping out the back. The grey-haired boy does not wake, an even more alarming sign of overtiredness than the deep purple smudges under his tightly closed eyes.     Beyond the parking lot, the land disappears in an abrupt lurch. The sea is an oily reflection of the sky; the foaming remains of the waves slide carefully between dark rocks, stroking up and down the pebbled slope below. The oversaturated wind collects on my glasses, dapples my shirt with chill. Down the shoreline, the beach is shingled with sea lions, their discordant conversations syncopated against the hiss and crash of the breakers. The horizon is too vast for perception; the clouds follow the water’s curve down into indistinctness. If I weren’t so numb I might be disquieting- the unstable sea and the low clouds bleeding down into some hungry, unseen void. This horizon is somehow much more threatening than the desert’s sharp smudging of blue and dun.   Jordan’s arms anchor me before I can start to sway.   “Is it like you expected?” she asks.   “No,” I tell her. “I’d always just assumed I knew what it was like.”   Her lips rest against my skin. Below us, Kiran has scrambled down the slick rocks and is throwing stones at the water with defiant, hollow plunks. I wonder whether the tide is in or out, and how long I’ll have to watch him throw stones before I can tell.   “What will you do now?” Jordan asks Tamar, who stands coiled around herself nearby.   She shakes her head mutely.   “Come with us,” Jordan urges, leaning her cheek on the back of my neck.   “I have to find someone who can fix her,” she says, eyes dropping to watch Kiran’s restless form.  “I have to tell her father.”   “We don’t know where we’re going, anyway,” I murmur as the thought occurs to me.   “Does that matter?” Jordan asks, hiding her face in my shoulder, arms tightening around me.   “No. I suppose it doesn’t.”