Ten
BECOMING THE HUNTED
MY EARS RANG. I couldn’t hear anything else.
I found myself rolling on my back on a tile floor with chunks ripped out of it. Dazed, smoke and dust in my eyes, I fought to see past the falling debris as pain screamed in my leg. I struggled to get to my side, to get up. I wasn’t thinking clearly enough to articulate in my mind what I intended next, but my body moved anyway, just like it had in combat.
I looked for Black and found him lying on his back near a few chunks of stone tile, his eyes closed. I didn’t see anything but small cuts on him from the glass, what might have been burns on his arms and face... but he looked unconscious. My eyes darted to the fire burning in the middle of the room. The woman in the wedding dress looked like some kind of demon as she burned, her up-stretched arms blackening as the fire ate through the fabric of her dress. The gauzy fabric flamed higher as I watched, even as the fire leapt to her long hair.
I could smell her flesh burning even through the floating dust.
I was glad I couldn’t see her face.
I started to move, to crawl towards Black, gasping in pain from whatever happened to my leg...
Someone had ahold of my arm then, and was dragging me backwards.
I fought to breathe, then to extricate myself from whoever it was. My struggle didn’t last long; the pain in my leg ripped through me as soon as I kicked out, making me scream until I ran out of air.
I nearly blacked out the first time.
Whoever dragged me only tightened their grip. When my mind righted itself, I let out a cry, coughing in dust particles as I stared up at the hole in the ceiling where the skylight had been. Blackened at the edges, it belched smoke upwards in a high column through the opening.
But my view of the exhibit hall was disappearing. I grunted, crying out again as I got pulled over chunks of glass and ripped up stone tile, what felt like pieces of metal.
Coughing harder, I fought to free my arm of those steel-like fingers a second time and the person holding me squeezed the muscle and bone hard... so hard my mind blanked. When I opened my eyes next, they’d already dragged me into the darkness of a second exhibit room.
It wasn’t Black...
I twisted my head and neck around to look at who pulled me along the slick floor, trying to see their outline in the dark. I couldn’t see his face, or even get a clear idea of his size now that we were in full shadow. Gloved fingers gripped my arm. I saw a glint of a watch, silver like Black’s military watch, but that glimpse definitely wasn’t of the arm I remembered.
My mind woke up more, penetrating the shock and pain.
Black had been on the floor. Unconscious.
Whoever dragged me now, it couldn’t be him.
“Let go,” I managed, my voice hoarse and muffled in my own ears. “Stop. Please... I can walk... I can walk on my own now...”
Whoever it was didn’t answer.
Maybe he didn’t hear me.
I reached for my left side, looking for the handle of the gun I’d worn. I remembered I’d been holding it when the bomb went off. I must have dropped it. I reached for the right-side holster, but that one was empty too. So was the one lower down, at my hip.
“Hey!” I choked. “Hey... we have friends coming. Police...”
He yanked on me harder, and I felt...
Anger. A hell of a lot of anger.
So much it overwhelmed me briefly, blanking my mind.
It wasn’t my anger.
But that bothered me less than the second realization I had.
Whoever held me, I didn’t recognize their mind.
Moreover, they appeared to be shielding. They shielded like Black did when I tried to read him at the Cliff House restaurant. The emotions I felt came from a distance, a bare hint whispering through the cracks. I wouldn’t have felt it at all, but for the sheer intensity of what lived the other side of that wall.
I twisted in his iron grip, biting my tongue against the blinding pain that spiked in my thigh when I moved. I craned my head and neck again, trying to see him, but he wore something on his face and head, in addition to covering his body and hands. We came out of the next hallway and I saw his outline for the first time––definitely a man from his basic build and height.
Definitely not Quentin Black.
He wasn’t tall enough. He wasn’t big enough. He moved wrong.
I’d known that, of course. I’d known it before we left that burning room. Even so, something about seeing this alien shape, dressed all in black and wearing gloves, woke me up for real, for the first time since the bomb went off.
I let out a drawn-out shriek. It might have been a scream, if my lungs hadn’t been so full of smoke and particulates from the caved-in ceiling in the other room. As it was, I choked out the sound, half a cough and half a broken, panicked yell.
Images of murdered women flickered behind my eyes.
The woman on the stainless steel slab. The one hanging from the bronze wings of that statue, burning, her arms outstretched, that cut in her throat like a silent scream. I fought to push away Zoe’s face, which wanted to superimpose on the two girls.
Even though my right leg was the one I’d hurt, I yanked it up to my free hand, letting out a groan without letting the pain slow me down. Once I did, I saw it: a thick shard of glass stuck in the muscle of my thigh, right above my knee.
I didn’t think. I didn’t let myself think, or question whether what I intended to do was particularly wise.
Adrenaline slammed through my body, making my hand shake as I yanked the shard from my leg. The pain was immediate, blinding––it caused my whole body to jerk. I couldn’t make a sound but somehow, I didn’t pass out, or begin my slide back into full-blown shock. I didn’t wait for the man dragging me to figure out what I’d done.
Twisting my head and neck, I only looked back long enough to see exactly where he was. Then I swung the glass shard as hard as I could, sawing the jagged edge into the skin and flesh of the arm holding me.
A line of dark red swiftly opened above those black gloves.
Whoever held me let out a hissing gasp.
Right before they opened their fingers.
I felt heavily to the tile.
I didn’t wait, but rolled to one side, letting out a cry as my weight came to rest on my gashed leg. I jerked myself up seconds later, using the wall and my good leg and a major dose of adrenaline. I regained verticality with a heavy gasp, then struggled to keep it.
Facing him, I hopped on one leg, using the wall for balance, still brandishing the jagged shard of glass.
I tried not to think about the fact that I might be bleeding out where I stood.
The man in front of me wore a black mask. Not a ski mask... something else.
Whatever it was, it covered everything but his eyes. The material looked hard, like plastic or metal. It gave him a creepy, dead-faced look, like a blank, expressionless doll. It also completely changed the shape of his face, making him impossible to identify.
He didn’t even look human.
He turned his head slightly as I thought it. A small console light from the security box in the corridor glinted on the surface of the mask.
Metal. It had to be metal, just by how the light bounced off the burnished surface.
He just stood there, watching me.
I could almost feel him thinking, but I didn’t try to determine that for sure, remembering what Black said about not letting him know what I was.
His eyes were light-colored through the holes in the mask, ghostly.
They were so light, in fact, I found myself thinking they had to be contacts––they looked almost white, or even colorless, like crystal. Then I remembered Black’s weird-colored eyes and wondered if that was something to do with what he was.
Maybe all of Black’s “people” had eyes like that.
The idea that this... person... might be like Black, brought my fear back in a rush.
It also caused me to take a step backwards.
He moved when I moved, holding the cut on his arm as he maneuvered closer, mirroring my steps. He halted when I brandished the piece of glass. Pressing my back to the wall, I looked around, breathing hard as I tried to decide what to do.
His knees bent slightly, lowering his body into a predatory crouch. I found myself flashing to a cat readying to spring, its tail lashing back and forth as it waited for its prey to flinch or look away.
I didn’t take my eyes off him as I began to shuffle-walk sideways, sliding along the wall with my back and holding the glass shard higher. As I positioned my back to get me closer to the stairs, he held up a hand, almost a peace gesture.
Again, something in the gesture reminded me of the strange way Black moved.
My other hand pressed against the cut in my thigh. After the barest pause at his gesture, I continued to make my way along the wall, thinking if I could just get to the staircase...
The man raised his other hand.
That time, he gripped a gun. Maybe even my gun. He aimed it at my chest.
That glimmer of hope I’d been grasping faded.
Fear fought to wipe out the remainder of my thoughts.
Black was in the other room. Lying on the floor. Maybe burning by now. I’d never seen him move after that blast. If he’d woken up, he would have come after me, wouldn’t he? He wouldn’t have just let this psycho just take me.
But I never saw him move. Never heard him make a sound.
Had he been... could he have really been...
My mind stuttered around the word.
Black couldn’t be––
“Dead?” the man in front of me said.
His voice made me jump.
Partly for the volume––he didn’t whisper but spoke loudly, above the sound of the fire. It was the first speech I’d heard above a murmur since we’d left Clement Street.
But mainly, it was his voice itself.
The word came out machine-like, distorted. His voice sounded cartoonishly deep, with a discernible echo. He had a voice-scrambler built into the mask, my mind told me a half-second later. That wasn’t a real voice. I was still moving gradually along the wall as I thought it, shifting my feet and weight instinctively.
I halted when he clicked off the gun’s safety, renewing his grip on the handle before he aimed it back at my chest.
Still staring at me, he raised his other hand. With a strange precision, he wagged his index finger at me. Somehow, it was that weirdly archaic gesture that got my mind moving again.
“Stay,” he said, as if speaking to a dog.
As before, the word distorted, deep and mechanical-sounding through the scrambler.
I clenched my jaw, thinking again about Black.
He wasn’t dead. He couldn’t be dead.
The man in front of me laughed. The laughter was even more eerie through the voice box. It sounded like the laughter of a super-villain.
“I think abandoned you is more likely,” he said. He paused, as if waiting for a reaction from me. When I didn’t move, or answer, he spoke again through the mechanical scrambler, and I heard humor in his voice. “From what I hear, Mr. Black never was all that reliable when it comes to females. Not that I blame him for that...”
Biting my lip, I fought to think.
Where are the guards? my mind wondered.
Where were the fire alarms? The sprinklers? Had Black’s people turned off all of that, too? Or had the masked man disabled everything prior to setting off the bomb?
“I dress you up,” he said in that stilted, mechanical voice. “You all look so pretty, dressed up. I can forget what you are. I can forget... everything. Everything.”
I didn’t answer, still fighting to think. Did he want an audience? Should I be trying to get him to engage, keep him talking to me? Even through the scrambler I could hear emotion in his voice, some flicker of passion. He was angry. He felt powerless maybe. Frustrated. My mind fuzzed. I couldn’t make it work well enough to decide what to say.
My leg throbbed. I was getting light-headed. I’d lost too much blood.
“We will bring balance to this world,” the man said in his metallic voice. “Just like we did the other one. We will be legion here... it will be like it was in the beginning again. Pure.” His voice grew harder, audibly angry even through the scrambler. “There must be... sacrifices. There must always be sacrifices along the way...”
“Sacrifices?” I said. “Is that what those girls are? Sacrifices?”
He only stared at me through the metal mask.
“How?” My voice shook. “How will you do it? Bring balance to the world?”
He didn’t answer that either.
I could still hear the flames rising and sparking and spreading in the other exhibit rooms. The fire seemed to be sucking oxygen out of my lungs where I stood. The smoke was getting denser as well, harder to see through. I remembered all of the paintings, the priceless furniture. The noise of the fire seemed to get louder as I thought it. Then another sound rose at the bare edges of my hearing.
I listened, thinking I was imagining it...
But the sound grew louder.
Sirens. Distant, but definitely coming this way.
Even as I thought it, there was a popping sound above us, in the ceiling.
I flinched violently, looking up...
The sprinklers turned on, spraying water down on our heads.
In that bare instant of me looking up, the man in the metal mask lunged at me. He slammed into me with an arm and fist, knocking my hand holding the shard of glass. The sudden, precise blow forced me to let go.
Before my mind caught up, the glass had already left my fingers.
Stepping back, he kicked me right where the shard had been embedded in my leg. He did that with equal precision, hitting hard and down with the heel of his boot.
My injured leg crumpled.
I fell with zero resistance. My knees and palms slammed into the tile floor and I let out a hard gasp, choking on the scream that rose to my throat. It felt like the bones in my forearms splintered from the impact.
Looking up, I blinked against the onslaught of water, fighting to see.
The man in front of me raised the gun, aiming it at my face.
I let out a gasp, closing my eyes, bracing myself.
He wasn’t going to wait.
No ritual for me. No spiral carvings in my chest while I screamed in pain.
I was just dead.
But the pause stretched. The gun didn’t go off.
As I crouched there, panting, it crossed my mind to wonder why he’d dragged me out here in the first place. Why not just let me burn, like Black? Why not shoot me where he found me? I matched his victim profile, but I strongly suspected I wouldn’t be getting the white dress or the caked on make-up, either. None of it made any sense... but I couldn’t read him at all, even though I was actively trying now, which reminded me of something else.
Whoever this guy was, Black had been right.
The man in the metal mask was definitely like him.
Zero advantage, Miriam. I guess that whole psychic thing had been more of a survival crutch in wartime than I’d realized.
The man above me let out another of those grim chuckles. Even though he’d done it once before, the sound of it through the metallic-sounding scrambler made me wince.
“You were never meant to exist at all,” he said. His voice sounded colder, even through the scrambler. “You are a disgusting, filthy abomination... an animal...”
I stared up at him through the falling water, confused.
Did he mean humans? People not like him and Black?
Or me, specifically?
Still staring at him, I felt my confusion worsen. What was he waiting for? Why hadn’t he shot me? I could almost feel his indecision as he stood over me.
I closed my eyes, gasping for air through the water running down my face and into my mouth. Tensing for the gunshot I still expected, I nearly jumped out of my skin when another voice ripped through the quiet, one I definitely recognized.
“Police!” Nick Tanaka yelled, even as lights clicked on around us, showing at least ten guns on us from the staircase. “Put it down! Now!”
Relief exploded through me, so much it nearly brought tears to my eyes.
I looked to my left from where I knelt on the floor in the water from the sprinklers. I immediately saw Nick in front of about six other plainclothes officers, a light pressed against the barrel of his gun. I saw fury in his expression, so intense that I barely recognized his face, even apart from the dim light.
That fury wasn’t trained at me though.
I couldn’t even be certain he’d recognized me at that point. Rather he stared at the masked man standing over me, looking like he was having to restrain himself from shooting him on the spot. It hit me suddenly that Nick thought the man in the mask was Quentin Black.
Somehow, the realization almost made me laugh.
Then I remembered Black himself.
“In the other room!” I called out, pointing towards the opening into the exhibit hall. “Man down... in the other room! Call an ambulance!”
Nick barely gave me a glance, his focus still on the gunman.
“Put it down,” Nick said, his voice a growl. “You have two seconds. Or we’ll put you down like a rabid dog...”
Looking away from Nick’s face, I stared back at the gunman.
He hadn’t moved. I didn’t feel any fear on him.
When I looked up at his face, I didn’t see any fear in those crystal-colored eyes, either.
If anything, the glimmer of feeling I got off him felt closest to humor.
“It’s sweet, how you worry about him,” he said through the voice scrambler. “I’ll be sure and let him know... when I run into him next.”
“Who are you?” I said, still fighting to focus through the falling water.
I swear I saw the visible flesh around his eyes crinkle in what had to be a smile.
Before I could speak, he flipped the gun in his hand, so fast I couldn’t track the motion. Before I could blink, he swung his arm. The black handle of the gun rose into my vision.
Then it slammed into my temple, making my vision flash white.
... Right before everything went dark.