Guise, p.27
Guise, page 27
He sloshed over to the green button and depressed it. Shuffling towards the middle of the pool, he crouched down and sat with his back toward the camera. Slowly, he reclined. The liquid in the pool held him in a firm, but gentle embrace. More confident, Darwin stretched out. As he did, the light dimmed.
Patience watched Darwin on the monitor screen.
His reaction to getting undressed before the camera baffled her. As well as his concern over her seeing him. He had to know that she had seen him naked, didn’t he? He had had no problem seeing her naked. In fact, quite the contrary if you went by the vital statistics she had recorded when she had been bound in Yoki’s condo.
She ran through the various sensors, making certain each was working, and that a complete record of the session was being recorded.
She hadn’t bothered to tell Darwin that she had disabled the psychic booster. First, she wasn’t certain how to program it for someone who could display multiple abilities. It was temperamental enough with an individual with one ability. Someone who could display multiple unrelated abilities wasn’t something she had investigated programming.
Second, she didn’t see the need to incur the risk of trying to artificially boost Darwin. While him realizing his potential was a goal, doing it to the Invader’s timetable was not necessary. Especially in light of the fact that, even with his abilities, there was no saving Yoki. Sessions in the sensory tank would help him, but he would be working without the booster.
Third, he wasn’t going anywhere for the immediate future. Darwin would be staying right here, in her house, until Monday, well after the Herald’s deadline. It was the only way she could think of to keep him safe and not have to follow her orders to execute him.
If keeping him here necessitated holding him against his will, she was prepared to do that.
CHAPTER 37
Darwin floated in darkness.
He tried to see, but there was no light for his eyes to take in. He tried to hear, but the only sound was his breathing and the gentle slap of the liquid against the pool sides as he shifted his body. He felt light and started to relax.
The floating sensation increased as his muscles unwound. He wiggled his fingers and toes, just to assure himself that they were still there. He stopped and it felt like they didn’t matter. His awareness of his body receded.
How long have I been here?
His mind started to wander, wondering and worrying. He wondered how long he was expected to float there. He worried about being trapped in a senseless void. He pushed aside these intrusive thoughts and focused on one goal: Saving Yoki.
How do I do that?
Obviously, he did it by taking control of this mysterious power he was supposed to have. Certainly, he had experienced some very strange things the last few days. Now all he had to do was focus and take charge of his abilities. Once he did that, he could use them to save Yoki from the entity possessing her.
Well, that and the weapon Patience was working on. The two together would be Yoki’s ticket to freedom. With the entity banished, Yoki would be free to live her life. A life with him? He hoped so.
What if Patience couldn’t come up with the weapon in time? What if he didn’t learn to harness his powers? What if he didn’t have the right abilities? What if they had the weapon and his psychic ability, but it still wasn’t enough to help Yoki?
If only I knew we were doing the right thing.
Darwin saw Yoki standing in her condo, in a fluffy white bathrobe, smiling at him. There was snow on the ground outside the window behind her. He smelled turkey cooking and the sun was setting.
This is what he wanted.
Now how do I get there
Darwin saw himself floating in a tank of liquid. The lights were brightening as a musical chime sounded. He sat up, warm liquid rolling down off of him.
I guess I start by getting out of this tank.
Darwin looked around, but it was still pitch black. There was no musical chime. What had he just seen? Was it the future? If so, was the first vision, the one with Yoki in the robe, the future as well? How did he get from “A” to “B”?
Suddenly both visions appeared before him, side by side. Each played over and over again in a few second loop. He focused on one and then the other.
So, how do I get from one to the other?
The visions shrank before his eyes, down to miniature windows the size of icons. Each continued to play the scene he had seen. The images spread themselves apart. The one of him in the tank was on the left. The image of Yoki was on the right.
A network of fine lines began to grow out of the right side of the left-hand image. The lines grew and branched and spread, traveling generally to the right. At the same time, another set of lines sprouted from the left side of the right-hand image. While not as numerous, these lines grew in the same manner, spreading to the left.
As Darwin watched, the lines spread more rapidly, growing into a dense forest, looking as if a pair of solid lines were racing from the right and left to crash together in the middle. As the lines met, a dark spot appeared on the right near the Yoki image. It obscured the lines. Those not going through it dissolved, until only lines going from the left to the right through the black spot remained.
The vision stopped.
Darwin looked at it, trying to decide what it meant. As he watched, he noticed that some of the lines were vibrating. Soon, more and more of the lines were vibrating. Then lines started to shimmer. Some disappeared. The thick network that had looked like a single line began to take on form once more as a group of separate lines.
What the hell is this?
Darwin’s viewpoint changed. Where he had been seeing the entire panorama, now he saw the left-hand image and hundreds of lines emerging from it. The hundreds winnowed down to dozens, the others twisting and fading from his vision. Now, each line sprouted a small shimmering window. As he watched, his vision zoomed in on one of these new windows.
It wasn’t shimmering, it was playing a scene just as he had seen with the first windows. In this new window, he was storming out the front door of the house. As he did, Patience pulled a gun and shot him in the back.
Darwin flinched.
The scene he was watching zoomed out. The window faded, taking the lines going in and out of it with it. Another window filled his vision. In this one, he was atop Patience in the kitchen. They were tearing at each other’s clothes. The scene retreated. The next image moved front and center, growing to capture his attention. In this one, he was yelling at Patience as she watched him and cried. The scene moved back and another took its place.
The process repeated for each of the dozens of images. Each image was different. A handful disappeared after he watched them. The rest remained. When he had finished viewing all of these images, the panorama returned. His vision focused on another segment of the network and it underwent the same kind of transformation. Only this time, the starting point was one of the second-tier windows.
As Darwin watched, the process became faster and faster, more and more windows appeared for his review. Soon, the panorama was an overlapping mosaic of windows and lines.
Sometime during the evolution, he stopped moving only forward. He found himself jumping back in sequence, between images he had already seen. The dizzying mosaic hopped all around now, but he found he could follow what was happening without any problem.
Strangely, the black spot remained, an impenetrable void where lines went in and came out. Why it existed and what it meant, he had no idea.
The last round of windows receded, leaving only a handful of paths from one side to the other. As Darwin watched, lines thickened and thinned. As they did, connected windows grew brighter or dimmer. Finally, the picture before him stopped.
He waited for something to happen, but nothing did. The image sat before him looking like a complex roadmap. That was when he realized that was exactly what it was. It was a roadmap. A roadmap showing him what actions had to take place for events to travel from the start to the end.
Can I pick a path?
Once more, his question triggered something. This time, his vision soared down to the starting image on the left. From there, his vision moved along the thickest path, skipping from image to image along the way. As he moved rapidly along this path, he encountered an image that made him blanch. Abruptly, his headlong flight stopped. He backed up to the previous image and took a different path, accelerating forward again.
He followed this process until he reached the black spot. There, he was abruptly sent back to the beginning to follow the next thickest line and its series of images, with detours and retreats whenever he reached something that he didn’t fully like.
The process seemed to go on endlessly, with him seeing the same image or slight variations of it over and over again. Finally, he reached the black spot a final time and the panorama came into view again. There was a single twisting path from the starting image to the black spot.
Is that my path?
Rather than get an answer to this question, his vision focused on the right-hand image. This time, his vision moved in the opposite direction, taking him again, towards the black spot, but backwards in time. The choices were less numerous on this side of the void and he quickly resolved things to a single path.
Finally, his vision pulled back and he saw the overall path leading from him in the tank to him standing before Yoki in her bathrobe. Significant junctions along the way shone brightly.
Now I can see what needs to be done to ensure I get where I need to go, thought Darwin. As he did, the background behind the panorama started to brighten, overpowering the lines and the windows.
“No,” screamed Darwin, sitting up in the shallow pool. The lights continued to brighten, giving the room a twilight glow. A soft chime reverberated for the final time. The door clanked and hissed as Patience pulled it wide.
“Darwin, are you okay?” she called out, running into the room and sloshing into the pool over to him.
“I had it,” he sobbed. “I had the answer and now it’s gone.”
“What are you talking about?”
“I saw it,” he said, fiercely, turning to her and gripping her arms. “I saw the path, but I don’t remember what steps to take.”
“You need to calm down,” said Patience, gripping his shoulders. “Your heart rate was critical. I had to cut the session short.”
“You did?” asked Darwin, releasing his grip on her arms. “How long was I in here?”
“Only a little over three minutes,” said Patience, letting go of him. “You were fine for a couple of minutes and then your heart rate started climbing. It was the same time you started registering psychic activity. Both just jumped up the scale exponentially. If I hadn’t stopped you, I’m afraid you would have gone into cardiac arrest.”
“I had a vision,” said Darwin, starting to calm down. “A vision of the future. It showed me a way to rescue Yoki.”
“It did?” asked Patience doubtfully. “What did you see?”
“I don’t remember,” said Darwin, frustrated. “There were so many images, and not all of them were the right ones. When I got to the final correct set, it got blurred out as you woke me up.”
“I’m sorry,” said Patience, laying a comforting hand on his shoulder.
“It’s okay,” said Darwin. “Maybe I’ll get it back when we try again tomorrow. At least now I know that Yoki can be saved. I’ve seen it.”
“Precognition is a pretty tricky thing,” said Patience gently. “Sometimes, the precog sees what they want to see, not what will happen.”
“I know what I saw,” said Darwin with conviction. “And I’ll see it again and get the details I need to make that future happen.”
“Okay,” said Patience. “For now, I think you have had enough for one night.”
“Yeah,” agreed Darwin. “I feel beat.”
“Not surprising.”
“Um,” said Darwin, looking at her and blushing. “Can you give me a minute to get something on?”
Patience looked at him, her eyes flicking down to where he sat covering himself with his hands. She smiled and stood up.
“Of course,” she said, heading out of the pool to the door. “There’s a robe in the locker and some slippers. A towel as well. I’d recommend drying off, putting on the robe and heading upstairs for a shower. The tank fluid can make you feel kind of slimy.”
“Thanks,” he called to her, retreating back.
“No worries,” she said from the other side of the doorway.
Darwin stood and headed to the locker. He dried off with the towel and slipped on the overly large fluffy white bathrobe. Slipping on a pair of matching slippers, he headed out of the chamber.
Carrying the towel with him, he went upstairs. There was no sign of Patience. He moved to the living room where Otaku continued to slumber on the back of the couch. The remains of their meal still rested on the coffee table. He took the main stairs up to the second floor and headed to the room Patience had shown him earlier.
He opened his bag and removed the small toiletries case, as well as some pajama bottoms and a t-shirt with a zombie horde shuffling forwards with the phrase ‘Got Brains?’ under it. Scooping everything up into his arms he headed for the bathroom to get a shower.
He opened the door and froze.
Inside was Patience. Her sodden shoes were kicked off to the side. She was peeling off her soaked pants. She turned to him as the door opened.
“Sorry,” she said, finishing peeling herself out of the clinging garment. “I didn’t want to track water into the bedroom.” She balled up the pants and tossed them into the hamper.
“I’ll let you get your shower,” she said, heading towards the door.
Darwin quickly closed the door, preventing her from leaving. He set the case and clothes in his hands on the small table next to the sink and let the towel drop to the ground.
“How about you join me?” he suggested.
Patience lay a hand softly on his chest.
“You know that this won’t manifest your power,” she said sadly, in a soft voice to his chest.
“It’s not about that,” he replied.
“Isn’t it,” she asked, looking up into his eyes, uncertainly.
“It isn’t,” he said, opening his robe and letting it slide off of his shoulders to pool at his feet.
Patience bit her lower lip.
Darwin reached out and slowly unbuttoned her blouse. She watched his face. He gently brushed the garment from her shoulders and let it fall to the floor.
He reached around and grabbed the clasp of her bra. He fumbled with it. After a few seconds, she reached behind her back and waved his hands away. She unhooked the bra and slid it off of her.
He reached for her panties.
“How about I take care of this,” she said, sliding her fingers through the waistband and slipping the silky underwear off of herself. “Another incident like the bra could just ruin the mood.”
“I don’t think anything is going to ruin this mood,” said Darwin taking her into his arms and pulling her to him.
CHAPTER 38
Darwin woke.
He lay still, letting his eyes adjust to the dim light. The moon could be seen peeking from behind some clouds, casting its brilliance through the window.
Darwin carefully sat up, trying not to wake Patience where she slumbered next to him. He eased out of the bed. Softly, he padded across the room to the door, careful to avoid a seriously creaking floorboard that had startled him on their way into the room. He looked at the bookcase next to the door. It was filled with all manner of hedgehog collectibles, tchotchkes, figurines, and more.
He looked forward to hearing the story behind the collection.
Darwin closed the door behind him and padded down the hall to his room. He dressed quickly. Once dressed, he went downstairs. He paused at the front door, doubts filling his mind. Shaking his head to dispel them, he opened the door and stepped out into the cool night air.
He quickly walked down the path to the gate. As he opened it, the hinges let out a dreadful squeal. Darwin froze, certain that the entire neighborhood had been roused by the noise. After a few seconds, he slipped through.
As he crossed the street, he pulled out his cell phone. He had seven messages - all from Yoki’s phone. As he reached the other side of the street, he walked down a little way towards a nearby streetlight. On the edge of the pool of light, he stopped and opened the messages.
There was a text with a single word: Call. It was followed by six pictures. The first was a blurry image of Bo watching TV. The second showed Bob, Margie, and their three kids sitting around a table playing some kind of board game. The third looked like some kind of party with some people he recognized from work. The fourth was a picture of Lynn, the librarian at the library he frequented. It looked like she was at the movies.
The fifth picture made him pause. It was a picture of his sister. He hadn’t talked to her in over five years. He wasn’t even certain where she was. It showed her staring out a rain-slicked window.
The last picture was his mother and father, dozing before the TV. Their dog, Muffin, lay sprawled on the floor at their feet, greying muzzle resting on his paws.
Darwin seethed at the threat implicit in the pictures.
Darwin called up Yoki’s number. He shifted nervously from foot to foot as he waited for her to answer. Not her, he corrected himself. The Herald.
“Did you like the images Darwin Angus Mendelson?” asked the Herald, answering after the fifth ring.
“Where and when,” growled Darwin through gritted teeth.
“What? No pleasantries? No impotent promises of dire consequences if I should dare to harm those close to you? No bargaining? No demands?
“Could it be that you finally understand your place in this process, worm?” snarled the Herald.
