Craving (37 page)

Yes.

“They are trying to force you into the next phase, speed up your transition in hopes that you will have a revelation as the Buddha did. They believe that Eva has imparted some new information to you.”

How could she have?
I had contemplated it too, but if Jinx was right, then the source for her knowledge was the same as every other Arhat and would be equally as dangerous
.

“You have only the barest exposure and yet already developed abilities. This means you are different.”

Taken aback, I wondered what would come after. If my change was different, or accelerated, perhaps madness would come on more quickly too. Could I transcend it with my greater skills? When I had been on the other plain for a given period of time, were the Sangha going to send someone after me, remove me like a manmade diamond and torture me for information? It hardly seemed plausible, since I apparently no longer felt pain. It was as Eva had written, but I didn’t want to be like her, I realized. I didn’t want to be invisible, alone. I wanted to save everyone, even the Sangha, because . . .

I accepted the
dharma
.

“Yes.” Arthur interrupted my dire thoughts in his quiet, non-invasive way. “Lilith, have you seen anyone else there?”

It’s horrible, Arthur. There’s these monsters in cells, tearing themselves into pieces. They scream constantly and there’s so much blood. Why not let them die?

“Besides those, anyone else?”

I thought back upon my arrival, which had a dizzying effect on my perspective.
Only the guards and the man who took the flash drive from me.

“What did he look like?” Arthur pressed, leaning forward with his eyes closed, as if he was trying to use his mind to peer into my memory.

He was just a man.

Arthur sighed again like he had discovered what he was looking for and found it not to his liking. “Be careful. He is a desperate man, even if he seems composed. He will be hard on you, because he is sure you are the end.”

Why?

He blinked, somewhat startled. “Because you are everything he wished to be and more.”

More?

His eyes closed and I knew he would say no more than that.

Would you like me to do some espionage? I am in
complete
spirit form, after all.

I could tell he appreciated my light humor. “Do as you will,” he offered with a tight smile. “I have faith in your talents, but do not endanger yourself.”

Aren’t you going to rescue me?
I replied, but knew, as Jinx had said, it wasn’t as simple as that.
I might lose faith in you otherwise.

“I do not believe you will need rescuing.”

Jinx snorted and flipped off the world in general. “Kick ass, Lily, and take some names for me.”

I’ll try, but I kind of wish the whole vampire thing gave me super strength and speed.

“Where’s nuclear waste when you need it?” Jinx chuckled after Arthur mentally relayed my message, no doubt in more eloquent language.  “Don’t worry though, you’re not finished yet.”

“Such things are only necessary for those who put their trust in power,” Arthur chided amicably. He crossed his arms and tilted his head. “Often, the most effective way of preventing injury is to evade detection altogether.”

“Bend like a reed in the wind, right?” Jinx said. “What happens if you’re facing a lawnmower?”

Way to make me feel better.

There was a delay as Arthur intended to repeat my words, which meant that the exchange flowed at a normal pace for the first time, an irony that was not lost on the hacker.

“It is what it is, baby.” He shrugged.

Call me ‘baby’ again and you’ll have a date with my weed wacker.

“Here,” he said and hit a key, “peace offering.”

Eva’s entire message arranged itself on screen. It was exactly the same: four words, but it was followed by a sequence of nonsense in a bold, red font.

“This program parses language, stops arranging after the first grammatical inconsistency. These four words
are
the full message, unless there’s another set of coordinates we’re meant to apply to the following randomized data.”

I knew which set to try next, but I wasn’t about to tell them. Instead, I stared at the screen and committed those words to memory as fast as possible. I was sure, for some reason, that it was not a message I wanted them to see, that it was intended for me alone. It could have just been wishful thinking, but that no longer mattered to me. Hope was hope, false or not.

“Who is ‘he?’” Unger wondered aloud.

Arthur looked away and sank into a chair. He seemed despondent. To the others, he probably seemed pensive, but I was sure it was the first time I had seen any kind of suffering carve itself onto his smooth, polished face.

What is it, Arthur?

He shook his head. “Eva, the fruit is poison.”

The distant look in his eyes made me wonder if he was remembering the alley, but to everyone else in the room, it appeared as if Arthur had gotten us confused. In the uncomfortable silence that followed the seeming mistake, I could almost hear Unger macerating on his tongue in an effort not to hurt my feelings. Jinx fixed his eyes on the piles of folders and did not look away. Sam’s low rumble came from outside, but had no effect on the tense moment.

Eva’s dead, Arthur.

“Yes, so she is, but when she wrote this, she was not.”

You can’t warn her now.

He turned, and to my astonishment, looked right at the piece of me that watched him. “I
am
warning her then, no matter what will happen now.”

Sam reentered the room and waded through the thick silence to a chair, obviously aware that he had missed something important.

“Sam, will you please explain how time works to Arthur?” Unger demanded. “It’s bad enough that Eva’s dead, but talking to her as if she’s still around only makes it harder on Lilith.”

“Lilith isn’t here.”

“Tell him that too.”

The humans shared a moment.

“Wouldn’t help,” Sam finally declared.

Arthur’s face returned to its usual emotional ambiguity. “Perception does not change the facts. She may be dead, but I may still want what is best for her.”

“Should have stopped her from jumping then, huh?” Unger snapped.

I said nothing, but his words echoed my own thoughts. Why hadn’t Arthur stopped her, if he was so capable?

“I did all that I could,” Arthur explained. “Eva had her reasons for doing what she did. I could not change them, for my own reasons.”

“Her death was a coded message too,” Jinx intervened. He shut the laptop and I was forced to give up my exercise, though I was fairly certain I would retain the jumble of words when I woke.

The
jhana
took away all unnecessary thoughts and concerns. It freed the onboard computer that was my self to think about things other than breathing, feeling, contemplating. It made everything immediate, instantaneous. It meshed past with present and presented the future with clarity. Perhaps that was why Arthur said what he said, because he walked around with one foot in the
jhana
.

“These modulus are the date of her jump,” Jinx finished.

“She could have just written them down in a calendar and gone into hiding,” Unger muttered.

“If she had, you would not be here,” Arthur pointed out. “Would that be preferable to you, Detective?”

For a few moments, Unger bit his lip and glared at the space around Arthur’s head, as if looking for me to convince me how untrue that was. “No,” he said eventually, “I like knowing the truth.”

“There’s only one truth,” Jinx whispered. “There is no spoon.”

He giggled to himself, but unfortunately for him, the only one to appreciate the reference was an invisible, disembodied spirit. Unger seemed as if he wanted to smack himself in the forehead, while Arthur looked proud.

“So you have taken up philosophy!”

Jinx rolled his eyes. “You people suck. I wish Lily was here.”

I am.

“I wish you were
here
here,” he clarified.

An alarm went off, ringing like a telephone on Jinx’s tiny computer speakers. He pitched himself forward, opened the machine, and began a furious round of tapping.

“What is it?” Unger demanded.

“They’re accessing the drive.”

No one spoke lest they disturb his fugue state. He reached, at one point, for the empty coffee cup and scowled at its lack.

“Well, this is bogus. Lily, are you in Shanghai?”

What?
I responded in surprise.
No. I’m only a few hours away by car. Somewhere where there’s lots of grass, I think.

He swore and went back to his mechanical communion. A few moments later his battle ended, and he leaned back with a sigh, his face flushed. “Epic fail.”

Arthur placed a hand on his back in encouragement.

“They assumed there might be a bug in the drive. They opened it on a system that wasn’t connected to their mainframe, but my bug is a burrower, and like the cockroach, will survive the zombie apocalypse, right alongside the Twinkie.”

“Then . . .” Sam prompted.

“They’ll wait and see if anything happens. They’ll scour the files, but when they don’t find the bug, they’ll think it’s safe. If they ever link that system with the mainframe, I’ll have a backdoor.”

Unger blinked in what I knew was secret admiration.

“I need a Redbull,” Jinx hissed and with a fluff of his spikes and a gesture at the breeze that was me, he wandered out of the room, leaving another uncomfortable dynamic in his wake.

Things were quiet for a time, all parties thinking about their next move while Unger smacked his cigarette pack against his opposite hand.

“So,” he said slyly as he pulled out a cigarette and put it to his lips. “What do you think of his Ananda theory?”

I waited to see if his direct question would have a more positive result than mine had, and remarkably, it seemed that Arthur was caught off guard.

“Which Ananda theory?” Arthur countered.

“The one that’s really
yours.
”

Sam looked between them and, sensing the tension, got up and followed Jinx. “I guess I don’t need to worry about your wrist anymore. Hang tough, Ninja Girl.”

Unger opened his Zippo. The click, click of the striker echoed around the room. “Answer me this,” he said around his habit, “are
you
Ananda?”

My vision skipped, agitated like a pool of water by the single drop of sincerity. I expected it to even out, smooth back into my looking glass, but it continued to distort and my concentration was lost. I was pulled through the cheese grater of space and, sliver by sliver, returned to my body. Sensation began to come back to me; hands squeezed my limbs, momentum jerked my stomach as I was hoisted up.

My body was being moved.

Chapter 24

When I opened my eyes, I was lying on some kind of cushioned table covered in white leather. A soft, chenille throw was rumpled at my feet, as if the one who had moved me had not thought it necessary to cover me. Next to me was a tray table on wheels littered with instruments for a physical examination. It was as if I had been carried to an unusually luxurious doctor’s office.

It opened onto a terrace through French doors that stood wide. A gentle breeze lifted the sheer white curtains until they whipped around a massive dark wooden desk. The floor was covered in a natural fiber rug. Weird objects and wooden statuary stood around sparsely or in awkward groupings, as though the decorator simply got bored with arranging things and walked away. In all, it gave the impression of the elegant simplicity of an eclectic traveler, or at least, the attempt at it.

Outside, sunlight glared, blinding eyes that were accustomed to the dimmer interior. It was midday at least, but when I had been with Jinx, I was sure it had been evening. Had it taken me hours to awaken?

I wanted to sit and ponder all I had learned, spend endless hours brooding over the likelihood of Arthur’s secret identity, but the open door and the freedom it offered was too great a temptation. I began taking stock of myself, preparing for a daring escape that was probably exactly what they wanted, since they had been the ones to leave the door open.

Gingerly, I poked and prodded my own flesh, trying to tell what effects, if any, the
jhana
state had had on my body; after all, since my first exposure to it, I had gotten on a plane and flown half way across the country on a premonition. After the second, Ursula’s gift had developed. Could it be cumulative? Would I acquire more abilities the more times I entered into meditation? There was no one to tell me. If Arthur was right about my transformation, it was happening in a way that no one could anticipate.

I cautiously moved my injured ankle, surprised to not feel the slightest hint of pain or stiffness after my long sojourn. I wiggled the toes, stretched it hard, but the sprain had apparently vanished, and I hadn’t even had to think about healing it the way I had my wrist.

At least I’ve got that super power down cold.

In that moment, voices approached the French doors. I hastily leaned back and closed my eyes, trying to seem as lifeless as possible. Two men were talking in that long-dead language, arguing about something in tones that barely restrained whatever words were being held as weapons. One voice was my captor’s: deep and controlled, a perfect, preternatural inflection seemingly designed to unnerve. The other voice was emotional, vacillating between pleading and force, and somehow familiar.

“I said no,” my nameless host finally growled in English. “Do you honestly want to risk the exposure? Think clearly, man.”

There was a strangled sob and then a few loud breaths. “I know,” the other voice panted hoarsely, “but I can’t stop thinking about it.”

“Try harder. We had an agreement, an understanding; you can’t just go back on that. You were given power because we believed you to be capable of restraining yourself. Are you now going to disappoint?”

“I’m trying so hard, but I just feel like I would be alright if . . .”