Estranged (5 page)

Joanne responded with a laugh of her
own and replied, “Perhaps you’re right, but we’ll leave it to our
editors to decide. Well, thank you for joining us, Professor.
Coming up...”

A hand closed around the remote and
picked it up from the worn, wooden desk. An old fountain pen rolled
to the side as it was knocked away by the rising controller. The
thumb— with a black flower swaying gently within its nail— pressed
the power button and the television went silent.

***

Kalei woke up facing an abandoned city
street. She only glimpsed the cracked grey pavement and heard the
eerie silence before a deep, piercing dagger drove into her heart,
forcing her to close her eyes against the pain. The sting was so
acutely emotional that it felt alarmingly physical, catching her
unaware and making it painful to breathe, making it impossible to
even think. She bent forward and clutched at her chest, clenching
her jaw as she tried to shut it out.

Gritting her teeth, Kalei forced
herself to take a few deep breaths. One, two, three breaths and she
started to regain her senses. Then it all came back. The attack,
the car, Fenn, the girls— Her eyes flew open and she heard herself
call out, “Fenn!”

Her voice echoed off the pavement and
bounced off the abandoned structures around her, but she heard no
response. It didn’t make any sense. She didn’t recognize any of
these buildings. The cracked pavement, the abandoned, trashed cars
on the sidewalk...

She looked up, and up, and
up as her eyes followed the lines of the towering, crumbling
skyscrapers. A soft breeze brought her the scent of salt and dead
fish. Between the buildings, she could see part of the Alundai
mountain range watching from the west.
Downtown.
I must be Downtown.
The end of Celan’s peninsula used to be the
center of it all. Now it was cordoned off and— like the frostbitten
tip of a toe— left to die. This was Estranged territory.

Kalei’s head began to
spin, and a growing headache threatened to rip her skull apart.
None of this was right. How did she get here? What had happened to
Fenn and the girls? What was she doing Downtown? Kalei pressed the
heel of her left palm into her forehead, and then placed her right
hand on the pavement as she prepared to push herself off the
ground. Through the crack in her half-opened eyes, she saw black
fingernails. Her own fingernails were all black. Kalei’s mind
locked. Everything within her froze as a fresh wave of daggers
ripped through her lungs and down through her gut. Again, she
doubled over, unable to breathe. Her thoughts slowly began to turn
as she hunched there, choking for air.
I’m... I can’t be...

Kalei’s vision blurred.
She fell forward and caught herself with both hands. Both
black-nailed hands. The coughs became more violent as her lungs
began to function again. She didn’t know how long she sat like
that, her entire body shaking as cough after cough ripped through
her throat, but eventually, the coughs subsided and she began to
breathe normally again. She listened, suddenly exhausted, to the
sound of her own breathing. Everything seemed so surreal. It felt
like there was some... thing inside of her, moving through her body
like a watery serpent bent on destruction. And even as it moved,
she felt more of its body pouring out of a chasm in her chest,
spreading and expanded as it lay claim on her body.
Perhaps this is just a
really
vivid nightmare,
she assured herself. Then, in the renewed
silence, she heard the sound of a shoe scuffing against
pavement.

Kalei sat up abruptly and pulled away
from the source, pressing her back into the brick wall of the
nearby building. A few feet away from her stood a young man with
dark hair. Her eyes didn’t linger on the figure for too long; she
looked past him to see if there was anyone else. She suddenly felt
very exposed; she felt that any minute, a group of Estranged could
attack her, and here she was on the sidewalk, totally unaware and
unprepared. She checked the street, she checked the sidewalk on her
right, she peered warily into the shadows of the abandoned cars,
but she didn’t see anyone else. Kalei heard a shout in the
distance, but it was too far away to be related to her and the new
visitor. They were alone. She wasn’t sure if the revelation made
her relieved or more anxious.

A renewed wave of pain brought Kalei’s
attention back to her condition. It rolled through her like a flood
of angry lava, pouring through her veins and melting through every
inch of her body. Her head bowed and her eyes locked on the
pavement as she tried to regain control. The stranger was still
there, probably some curious bystander who had found something new
to look at. She managed to rasp, “Get the hell away from
me.”

She heard the young man take another
step forward. His voice carried a certain authority when he said,
“Tell me what happened.”

The odd question sent another wave of
dizziness through her skull, and she almost lost hold on what
little control she had regained. Kalei clenched her jaw for a brief
moment as she waited for the world to stop spinning, then opened
her mouth to spit a wad of phlegm onto the ground. She said, “What
the hell do you know? Why should I tell you anything?”

“
I need to know,” he
simply stated.

This new guy was grating
on Kalei’s already raw nerves
.
“You don’t need to know anything. Just get the
hell out of here!”

“
I need to know about the
attack on your household. You and I both know that attack wasn’t
random.”

Kalei went rigid. Her pain
coalesced into rage, and she used the fresh wave of energy to push
herself off the ground and look him in the eyes. “What do you know
about it?” For the first time, she got a good look at his face. His
features seemed familiar. She recognized— Kalei froze.
His face...
Standing
before her was an exact picture of the boy Kalei remembered from
seventeen years ago. The boy who killed her parents.

She saw the arms of this man wrapping
around her mom. She saw her dad falling... “You murdering son of
a—” Without bothering to finish her sentence, she swung her fist at
his exposed face.

The young man didn’t react to her
retort, and as her fist neared his cheek, he continued to hold her
eyes with his own. The pure sorrow within those steel grey eyes
almost stayed Kalei’s hand. Although his eyes were dry, she felt as
though she were looking into the heart of a soul that never stopped
weeping. Her fist finished its arch.

Her knuckles slammed into the flesh
and bone of his cheek. His whole body rocked to one side and he
spit out a tooth. The sudden, physical contact brought Kalei back
to her senses. She remembered who she was facing, and she recalled
her hatred. Whatever she thought she saw, it wasn’t there. This
young man was an Estranged and a murderer.

As he recovered from her first blow,
Kalei went in for another, but this time, he caught her wrist. She
hadn’t even seen him move. Then she realized she couldn’t move
herself. The entity within her, the thing that had been ripping her
apart... it locked. Every inch of her body was soundly frozen. Not
even her eyes could move away from the hand that held her
tight.

She wanted to scream, she wanted to
run, but she couldn’t even widen her eyes at the terror of being
imprisoned within her own body. She stood at the verge of a
complete mental breakdown, but the young man interrupted her
thoughts. “Shhh... Calm down.”

His attempt to calm her only enraged
Kalei. She hated the fact that he had caught her this way, she
hated the fact that the murderer was trying to calm her, but
mostly, she hated the fact that the monster was touching her, and
there was nothing she could do about it.

Unable to perform any of the physical
actions she wanted to – and unwilling to think about what would
happen next – Kalei focused her attention on the hand that held
her, the one piece of the world left to her.

The young man’s nails
weren’t anything she expected. They weren’t the flood-black nails
she had remembered from the hand that killed her parents. They
had... flowers. A single, intricate black flower painted onto each
and every fingernail. Six delicate petals atop tall, slender stems,
all writhing in a tortured dance. They literally moved upon his
fingers, doing the one thing she
couldn’t
do. She found herself lost
in their motion, wishing she could be free with them... Eventually,
the flowers slowed and paused.

The young man broke the silence. “Do
you remember the other man from E-day? Was he there
tonight?”

Abruptly, Kalei felt her mouth loosen
as she regained control of her lips and voice. She moved her jaw
experimentally, then let her anger poison her voice as she said,
“Yeah. That murdering, no-name bastard. He was there. Are you sorry
you missed out on the party? Or were you hiding in the
bushes?”

“
Xamic Kahli.”

Kalei would have blinked if she could.
“What?”

The young man’s voice was toneless as
he answered. “That’s his name.”

“
I don’t give a fuck what
his name is! I don’t know what you and your friend have going on,
but I will put an end to each of you before you can lay a finger on
the girls, Fenn, or anyone else in this damned city.”

Out of the corner of her vision, she
saw him look away. The flowers began to writhe again. He said, “You
will never see them again.”

For a moment, everything went quiet.
“What?” He couldn’t mean— he couldn’t be talking about Fenn. He
couldn’t be talking about Kas and Teia. “What the fuck are you
saying?”

“
Make peace with that.” He
released her arm and turned away.

The moment his skin left hers, she
felt full control over her body return. Her arms dropped to her
sides. She should have gone after him, she should have demanded
answers, exacted revenge –but all the anger was gone now. Instead,
she felt the power go out of her legs. She slumped to the ground,
free, but still utterly powerless. She knew what he was trying to
say. They were dead. All three of them. It was over.

Nothing mattered. Nothing made any
sense. From that moment on, everything passed in a blur. Words were
spoken. Words were shouted, but none of it mattered. Nothing
mattered. Hours? Days? Not even time meant anything
anymore.

Numb. She wished she was numb.
Instead, intense pain accompanied her every movement, her every
moment. It started in her chest. A sharp knife that pierced her
heart and spread throughout her body. What felt like dozens of
dull, tearing razors bore down relentlessly on her body, piercing
her through, ripping her to shreds until Kalei wanted to reach in
and pull her heart out to be rid of it all.

But the pain propelled her. It wasn’t
something she had ever encountered, and yet, it wasn’t entirely
alien either. It was familiar, as though all those nights she had
cried alone had suddenly jumped forth and set up shop in her veins.
And with the desolation of losing Fenn, with the anguish of failing
to save the children, it had coalesced into a raging demon that
tormented her incessantly. It consumed her.

Then it all went away. A hand, just
one hand with those black-tipped fingernails reached out and
touched her. The pain was gone. From the place on her shoulder
where skin had met skin, a sudden... relaxation spread throughout
her body, like a soothing wind sweeping through and dousing the
fire. Then it went further. It picked up her heart and carried it
high into the air, sending it singing through the sky. The rest of
Kalei followed with sheer, unimaginable elation. She moved even
further away from the world. She moved into the clouds and kept on
rising higher and higher. Anything outside that sensation ceased to
exist. It became the center of her world, it became her new life,
away from all the loss and sorrow.

But when the trip to the clouds began
to wear off, when reality began to creep back in, only those
black-tipped fingers could bring back the clouds. She needed their
touch. She needed to wash away the pain, to wash away this decrepit
world. Black-tipped fingers; that was all that mattered.

Hand after hand slipped through her
palms. An arm, a shoulder, anywhere that skin could contact skin
was enough to bring the high rushing back. Kalei didn’t know up
from down. She didn’t know who she was, or what was happening to
her life. She didn’t care. All she knew was that touch that lifted
her to where the pain couldn’t reach.

Another hand, another high. Kalei
reached for it, but an alarm tried to sound in the back of her
deafened mind. Kalei reached anyway, desperate to claim the
promised ecstasy. She heard a scream, but she was almost there. The
hand tried to pull away, but Kalei wouldn’t let it; she needed it.
Her hand closed in on the other. Then, somehow, it registered. The
fingernails weren’t black. A gunshot went off.

Kalei awoke to the sensation of a
pounding headache. A woman’s voice kept asking, “Are you okay?
Hello? Kalei? Are you okay?”

The voice sounded oddly familiar, yet
different. Kalei tried to place it, but the relentless hammering in
her skull only increased with the effort. She wanted to just roll
away and block it all out, but the voice kept pestering and
pestering; it wouldn’t let her rest. So, Kalei opened her eyes.
Leaning over her, silhouetted against the blue sky, Kalei saw a
face that finally placed the name.