Estranged (26 page)

She lost all sense of focus.
Everything grew darker, and as she lay there fighting to remain
conscience, like a drowning victim trying to stay afloat, she
noticed a bit of black tape stuck to the floor in front of her. It
seemed to dance and flash as it reflected the red waves of light,
pulsing urgently again and again as though it were trying to remind
her of something very important.

Sounds came to her ears quietly, as
though they had to pass through a wall of cotton to reach her.
Somewhere in the distance, she heard someone shouting her name.
Then someone roughly lifted her from the ground into a fireman’s
carry. Distantly, as though it were happening to another person,
she felt the exposed skin on her stomach press into the skin of her
rescuer’s shoulders, and the darkness leapt forward to pull and
tease at the darkness of the other person. She thought she could
feel a high coming on, but she couldn’t be sure. She felt like the
world around her was just a dream, and the only shred of reality
that remained to her was that scrap of tape. Except her piece of
tape had been replaced with tightly stretched blue polyester. It
took her a moment to wrap her head around the change in
scenery...

Jenna.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Memory Lane

Kalei began to slip in and out of
consciousness. She remembered the smoke receding, but the flashing
red lights persisted. She remembered awakening to the sounds of
screaming and crashes, but her grip on the world slipped again
before she could make sense of it.

She floated through a dark, murky
haze, somewhere in her mind. There was no up, no down. Eventually,
she heard a metallic screeching in the distance. It seemed to be
coming closer. It became louder and louder until it seemed to fill
her skull with noise, and even then, the sound continued to grow.
Kalei launched herself upright, frantically searching for the
source of the sound. But before her eyes could focus, she was
overwhelmed with a wave of dizziness and nausea. It was all she
could do to put her head between her knees.

“
Whoa, easy girl.” Jenna’s
voice sounded close, and Kalei felt her weight pushed forward, as
though they were on a vehicle that was stopping. Kalei took a deep
breath and the dizziness abated, but the screaming headache and
nausea remained. She opened her eyes.

She was sitting on a plush leather
couch, and behind her, to her left, were two matching leather
armchairs. Between them was a sleek, metal coffee table. But the
walls behind the chairs didn’t make any sense. They were a shining,
silver color, a shade that matched the coffee table, but the
windows were oblong, and beyond them, she could see the passing
grey walls of a tunnel. The screeching brakes, the tunnel out the
window; she could have sworn she was on a subway. But she was
sitting on a leather couch. Kalei began to wonder if she had taken
brain damage from the fall.

Jenna sat in one of the armchairs
across from Kalei. She still wore the bikini and shorts, but
somewhere along the way, she had picked up a pistol and a pair of
black gloves. If anything, the new additions seemed to complete her
outfit.

Jenna said, “We’re on Landen’s
personal light-rail. He built it between his mansion and the Tusic
office.”

That made sense. But if this was
Landen’s light-rail... the details started to come back to her in a
flash of images and sensations. Kalei jumped off the
couch.

Jenna jumped up with her, arms out to
catch Kalei if she fell over, and she said, “Ho, easy, sister. You
feelin’ a’ight?”  

Kalei looked around. “If this
is—Where’s Landen? What happened?”

“
Don’ know, don’ care. We
got out of there, you’re safe, tha’s all tha’ matters. I say fuck
everyone else.”

The train gave a final lurch as it
stopped. Kalei pitched forward, catching herself on the arm of the
couch. Jenna stepped up to help her, but Kalei waved her off. Then,
with a click, the power shut down, followed by shouts outside the
door.

“
Shit, the assholes caught
on to us. Quick, out the window. Go. Go!” Kalei ran to the window
and pulled the escape release. For a recovering head trauma victim,
she felt surprisingly alert. The only pain that lingered was the
bite of the darkness running rampant through her body.
Oh. Yeah.
 The
darkness had probably finished the recovery process for
her.

The shouts had turned to grunts as the
guards started to pry the door open behind them. Kalei shoved the
windowpane out of the frame and scrambled through, falling
haphazardly onto the cement and fresh glass below. Jenna followed;
a wave of bullets ripped and exploded through the air above her as
she stuck the landing with a perfect tuck and roll. She was already
on her feet and running as Kalei finished pulling herself
upright.

Jenna fired a couple shots back at the
train as she ran, shouting, “Come on! Let’s go!”

Kalei ran after her sister, the guards
behind them returning shouts and bullets of their own. The tunnel
was completely dark ahead, and soon it was all Kalei could do to
make out Jenna’s outline in the fading light. Luckily, the ground
was flat and even beneath her feet, or else she was sure she would
have tripped.

She caught up to Jenna, and the young
woman greeted her with an increase in pace. “I can get us to the
surface, but I dunno where we gonna go after that. No way in hell
we can use a Tusic safe house now.”

Kalei panted, “You said we’re by the
Tusic building, right?”

“
Yeah.”

“
I know a place.” Kalei
suggested an abandoned office that wasn’t more than a mile from the
Tusic building. Kalei knew it because when she was a cop, she had
visited the building several times to bust kids who were breaking
in to vandalize the place.

Jenna led Kalei into a narrow service
tunnel as she asked, “Untouched kids? What if they show
up?”

The shouts of the guards were far
behind them now, but the sounds of their boots echoing down the
tunnel still put Kalei on edge. “They won’t. They haven’t gone back
since one of them was turned Estranged there.”

Jenna nodded and stopped to climb a
ladder. Unlike the ladder in the sewers, this one was clean and
dry. Kalei appreciated the minor luxury.

They emerged in an empty alley, the
sky above them still dark and shining with the few stars they could
see from the city. Kalei suddenly realized how conspicuous they
looked in their halter-tops and short-shorts, but decided that no
one would look twice at a couple of prostitutes slinking around the
city at night. She helped Jenna replace the manhole cover, and the
two women disappeared into the streets.

A chain-link fence surrounded the
building, sagging and peeling away from its posts as though it was
losing the energy and the desire to hold on to its life. Kalei and
Jenna stepped over a section that had already met the ground and
crossed the dirt-packed, weed-strewn yard. Off to their left
sprawled an old parking lot, faded and cracked with a pile of
garbage collecting at one corner where the wind had blown it. Ahead
of them rose the office building, roughly ten stories of bricks,
elaborate stonework, and broken glass. Although neglected, it still
didn’t look as desolate as the towers in Downtown. The stone
moldings on each level of the high-rise sported only a few cracks,
and more than half the windows were still intact. From what Kalei
remembered, this building hadn’t been abandoned for more than ten
years.

Inside, fallen ceiling panels and
chunks of plaster were strewn across the floor between scattered
walls of misty construction tarp. Kalei and Jenna found a staircase
and made their way up to the seventh floor before calling it quits.
Kalei sagged into a wadded pile of the plastic sheeting, shaking
from head to toe.

After looking out the window to make
sure they weren’t followed, Jenna noticed Kalei’s condition and
walked over to her. She knelt down and gently took one of Kalei’s
hands into her own gloved one. On some fingers, Kalei’s swirls were
twisted and contorted, and on others, they were completely gone in
a wash of black. “Shit, Kalei,” Jenna said softly. With an effort,
she let go and sat back. “Man, I jus’ wanna hug my little sis, but
we is showin’ so much skin I’m surprised I ain’t gettin’ a high
just by lookin’ at you. You and I are every schoolboy’s wet dream
right here.”

Kalei gave a small laugh. “It’s still
hard to believe my big sister Jenna is so vulgar. And so
little.”

“
Little, my ass! I’m still
five years older than you!”

“
Maybe, but you’ve still
got the body of a puny teenage girl. I could break you like a
twig.”

“
I’ll believe that when I
see it!” Jenna laughed.

Kalei gave a weak smile. Then she
sighed, leaning her head back against the wall and closing her
eyes. It was too much to take in. Shenaia, her sister, Landen, a
maniac... the only part she found believable about the last
twenty-four hours was the way Xamic had swooped in and started
killing people like it was some sort of sick sport. If that was
believable, then she really needed to get her head
checked.

After a long pause, she heard Jenna’s
voice crack as she asked, “What happened?”

Kalei opened her eyes and looked at
Jenna. One glove was now off, both hands sitting in her lap as she
studied them. The wheels on her hand spun and veered just as
haphazardly as Kalei’s own thoughts. “What do you mean?”

“
The night Mom and Dad
died. How’d it happen?”

Kalei sighed and rubbed her forehead.
She didn’t want to go there, not now, not ever again. But if anyone
had a right to know, it was Jenna.

“
Mom was getting ready to
cook dinner. It was Asian night. You were at a friend’s house and I
knew rice was your favorite, but I hated the stuff, so I decided
that we shouldn’t have Asian night. So I took Mom’s rice cooker and
hid with it in the closet.” Kalei smiled. “I hid the rice cooker in
a box, I piled shoes on top of my lap, I even put a coat over my
head so no one could find me. Mom found out I was missing and it
turned into a game of hide and seek. She was laughing and making a
big deal about checking behind the couch, threatening to unleash
the tickle monster if I didn’t come out.” Kalei laughed. But then,
the smile faded.

“
There was a knock at the
door. I took the coat off my head peeked through the slats in the
closet door to see Mom walk over to the front window. When she saw
who was at the door, her smile disappeared and she called Dad over.
Dad heard the sharp edge in her voice the same as I did and he came
running into the living room saying, ‘What? What is it?’ Mom seemed
upset, confused. She lowered her voice and said something to him.
They talked quietly for a minute, but I couldn’t hear what they
were saying. Dad started smiling and he started to rub her arm. I
think he was trying to tell her that it was okay. But then he went
to look out the window, and his smile disappeared as well. Mom and
Dad looked at each other, confusion and concern mirrored on both
their faces. I almost came out of the closet to ask what was going
on, but then the doorbell rang. I hunkered down in the shoes and
watched as Dad took a deep breath and opened the door.

“
And there he was, Terin,
exactly as he looks today, with Xamic standing behind him. He took
one look at Mom and his eyes widened. They stared at each other for
a moment, Mom and Terin. Xamic was smiling like an idiot in the
background, and Dad stood behind Mom protectively. Then Terin
stepped forward, and before Dad could stop him, he hugged Mom. She
went limp. Dad put a hand on Terin’s arm to pull her away, but then
he screamed. I had never heard a man scream before, and Dad’s
scream was terrifying. And that was it. Terin stepped back and they
both fell to the floor like dolls. But Terin... something crazy,
something totally happy washed across his face.” Kalei’s eyes fixed
on the memory in the distance. She sat like that for a moment,
staring into the past with her mind’s eye. She could still see that
ridiculous smile on Terin’s face. She could still hear Dad’s scream
ringing in her ears.... She closed her eyes and continued, “When
Xamic stepped into the room, Terin seemed to wake up. He froze when
he saw them lying there. Xamic said something like, ‘How does it
feel to be free?’ I don’t know if that’s right, that’s just how I
remember it. Anyway, Terin began sobbing and pulling at Mom’s body.
He pulled her into his lap and started rocking back and forth,
holding her head close and talking to her like she was going to
wake up.... I didn’t know what to do. I was so scared...

“
I think I started crying,
because Xamic heard something and came over to the closet. I didn’t
think I could get any more scared, but I became so terrified that I
started to claw at the back wall of the closet, as though I could
make a door appear and escape. I heard Terin scream, there was a
lot of crashing, and then it went quiet. After a few minutes, I
gathered enough courage to look through the slats again. Xamic and
Terin were gone. All that remained were Mom and Dad’s bodies on the
floor in front of the open door. It felt like an eternity sitting
in that closet, crying my eyes out, unable to take my eyes off
their corpses. Sometimes, it feels like I never left. But I guess I
did. The next thing I remember, I was in the police station and
some detective was feeding me candy and fishing for answers. Not
that I ate any candy, and I don’t think he liked my answers.” Kalei
shrugged, staring at her nails, losing herself in the full wash of
black that painted them. The pain from the night bled into the pain
of the darkness and threatened to rip her in half. She muttered,
“Now you know.”