H.A.L.F.: The Makers (26 page)

“Thanks.”

“Don’t mention it. I think that’s all of them. Let’s make haste.” He shuffled back toward Tex.

Tex lay as still as the stone on the table.

“What is that at the back of his head?” Erika asked. She rubbed her throat and tried to get her starved lungs as full of air as she could.

“I’m not sure,” Dr. Randall said. He bent down and looked at it. As he did, the overhead light flickered on for a second then off again. “We’re running out of time.” Dr. Randall felt at the back of Tex’s head.

“Do you think you can remove it?”

“Probably. But the bigger question is whether it’s safe for me to remove it.”

“Doc, how can it be any worse?”

Dr. Randall’s face was pale, his eyes bleary and red. He took a deep breath, gently removed the metal clamps and pulled the tube from Tex’s skull. Fresh blood spilled out of the back of his head and joined the puddle of blood that had already gathered beneath him on the table. Tex didn’t move, speak or show any indication that he was aware of what Dr. Randall had done.

Erika looked upon the shell of a being that used to be Tex. When they’d first met, he’d been small in stature but exuded power. He’d nearly killed a half dozen men merely by thinking of it. And Erika had known immediately that he was capable of so much more. Now he looked like a skeleton wrapped in a thin film of skin, his flesh like a cellophane candy wrapper.

Erika’s eyes welled with the tears she’d held back. She allowed her heart to feel all of the hurt she’d experienced since they were taken aboard the alien ship. The separation from Jack. The dark, quiet isolation. Missing her home, her school, even her mom. The illness and fear that she’d die, then the even larger worry that she’d live but Ian would not.

As she looked at Tex, it all broke loose and she let the tears spill. She wanted to scoop him into her arms like she had so long ago when she pulled him across the floor under the door to safety. She’d held him to her and warmed him with her body heat and saved him, though from what she could no longer be sure.
He would have been better off there.

They searched the room and found a Conexus tunic and pants. The cloth glittered, and even in the dim light, it was reflective. Erika put the top on him while Dr. Randall took care of the pants. Dressed in Conexus clothes, Tex looked even more like a grey than he did before.

“I bet this fabric has moisture-wicking properties,” Dr. Randall said.

Dr. Randall scooped him up. Tex looked even smaller now in Dr. Randall’s arms than he’d looked in Dolan’s. Her tears created a river down her face and joined the half-foot of water covering the floor, tinged purple now with the blood of the Conexus she’d shot.

Erika’s fingers trembled as she reached for his bony hand, limp and lifeless and dangling. His fingers were dry despite the moisture in the air.

She held his hand in hers. On the off chance that he could still read thoughts, she pushed aside her grief at seeing life ebb from him. Erika tried as hard as she could to think encouraging thoughts to him.
I’m here now. We’re going home.

Eternal black oblivion was replaced with the fiery fingers of merciless jabbing pain in his skull. The Conexus were there at the periphery of his mind like gentle waves lapping at the shore of a lake. He allowed them to step a toe into his consciousness and his pain eased. Their horrible, mind-splitting buzz became quiet chatter. Tex allowed them in further and the chatter fell into a low, persistent hum that was nearly soothing compared to the buzz they’d been before.

Images flashed in his mind’s eye. He saw Earth, but these thoughts were not his own. He had never been to the places shown in his mind though he knew them from photographs he’d seen in his studies at A.H.D.N.A. The pyramids in Egypt. Aztec and Mayan ruins in South America. Stonehenge and Machu Picchu. These places were intermingled with the faces of humans. Young and old and of all nationalities. Some were in clothing that looked similar to that worn by the people he’d known, yet others were in strange costumes perhaps from another time. Symbols flashed in his mind. Words in a language unknown to him. And another place. It did not look like Earth. But it was not this place he was in either. Pyramids of gleaming green glass and smooth, pearly stone. And an image of Aphthartos.

He tried to make sense of it. The Conexus were trying to tell him something. But as he tried to think, the pain grew. And as the ache in his head returned, it made him wish for his human companions. He tried to pull up a mental image of Dr. Randall or Erika or Ian. But try as he might, it was as though he was trying to access a forbidden file. The harder he sought to remember them, the larger the pain in his skull grew. But if he let them go, he’d be lost and cease to be. The memories of his human friends kept him tethered to his being. He forced himself to hold onto them despite the agony it caused.

How long this went on, he could not know. He would allow himself to fade back into the darkness only to be pulled out of it somehow by a force he could not see or understand.

Quite suddenly and without warning, tendrils of fiery pain wound their way through his head. It was as though something had been ripped from him, as though a part of him had been excised. And while it was a shockingly painful way to awaken to the world again, within seconds the sharp stabbing that had filled his head receded.

Something brushed the skin of his hand. It was familiar, but he could not place it. The touch stung his tender skin. He wanted to pull his hand away but lacked the energy to move.

He had fought the Conexus. He tried to fend them off, to be Tex and not just one of many. But there were so many of them and they were too strong. The pain too great. He had fallen down a spiral of nothing and allowed it because it was the only thing left for him to do.

But here he was. Tex.
I still am.

They had not taken him. At least not entirely.

He could think and feel, and he knew that they were his individual thoughts, not those of the collective.

It was his pain, white-hot and agonizing.

It was his fear, shaking and cowering.

And it was his curiosity, seeking and wondering.

Who touches me?

And then as if in answer to the question that he knew he had not spoken out loud, there was a solitary voice in his mind. It was not the collective voice of the Conexus.

“I am here,” she said.

Though he had no way to count the days of his tortured existence in the realm of the Conexus, it had been long enough – agonizing enough – that he had given up hope that he would ever know anything else. And he had assumed that Erika, Dr. Randall and Ian had either been killed or abandoned him.

She held his trembling hand in hers.
Yes, it is Erika’s hand.
Though he was too broken to move, too weak to open his eyes, he smelled her. Sweat and dirt sought to mask the scent, but it was still there, underneath the grime of this place. A powerful odor of musky spice and citrus with a hint of sweetness like a wildflower. It was Erika and she was here.
She did not give up on me.

Tex had never experienced love before. He had been trained to ignore his feelings of empathy and to quash desire. He had no observational frame of reference for what love must be like – feel like.

But he knew that Erika’s touch lit within him the desire to live where mere seconds before he had wholeheartedly committed himself to dying. And he knew that he wanted to lay waste to anything or anyone that tried to harm her.

Tex yearned to gaze into her eyes, to touch her smooth skin with is hand, to press his lips to hers. He had faced death. Had asked it to take him. But he was not dead. And he was still Tex. He had survived the onslaught of the Conexus and it emboldened him.
I will cower from my own feelings no longer.

He tried to raise his head, but it was no use. He might as well have been trying to lift a boulder with his pinkie. He was inert, lying like a pile of broken refuse on the stone table.

“Be still, my boy. We’re getting you out of here. I’ll …” Dr. Randall’s voice cracked.

Tex’s feelings about the man who had created him were complex. He’d considered Dr. Randall to be the only father he’d ever know. But the Regina had shown him the dark side of A.H.D.N.A. – and of Dr. Randall – as well. It was as though he’d been shown two photographs, each conflicting with the other. He didn’t know which to believe. At the moment, he was too tired to figure it out.

Tex was lifted from the hard bed on which he’d lain for countless time. Cool air rushed over him and he shook again. He tried to remember the warm sun on his face, golden and beautiful. But it was no use. It was like a strange dream a life before he was always cold and perpetually hungry and waiting only for it all to end.

Dr. Randall’s arms were warm beneath him, his chest comforting to lie against. There was rustling and a muffled curse as something crashed to the stone floor, echoing in the cavernous room.

His skin, now used to being naked, felt like it was being rubbed by sandpaper as Erika and Dr. Randall shoved Conexus clothes on him. Though he shivered with cold, he despised the feel of the cloth binding his skin. But he was helpless to protest, still too weak to even speak let alone still their hands.

His head bounced and jostled as Dr. Randall carried him. It brought a new wave of nausea as the pain intensified. Tex willed the bile down as he sought the comfort of the darkness once again. But this time, he hoped that he would wake.

Jack hadn’t paid attention to how they’d gotten from the car to Trattoria Segreto. His plan was to walk back to the car, get it started and park outside the restaurant and wait for Anna. He turned right at the end of the street he was on and weaved his way through the crowds of people on the sidewalk.

But the crowds thinned and he soon found himself in a neighborhood long past its prime. They hadn’t seen this neighborhood on their way to Trattoria Segreto. He turned and walked more quickly as if faster would magically make him unlost.

He got a sick feeling in his stomach and glanced over his shoulder. Two guys not much older than him were following closely behind him. Their hands were in their hoodie pockets.
Maybe their hands are cold.
It was a chilly day.
Or maybe they’re carrying guns.

His brisk walk became a jog. Jack looked back and the guys were still there though he’d managed to put more distance between them. His jog became a run. Jack’s breathing was labored and sweat poured from his temples despite the autumn chill.

He was relieved when he saw the rust-bucket car. He’d lost the two sketchy-looking guys that he thought were following him. His heart pounded hard in his chest as he unlocked the car. He locked himself in and downed an entire bottle of water while he tried to calm himself.

It had already been close to twenty-five minutes since he left Anna. He’d planned to be back to the restaurant already.
I hope she’s okay.

By the time Jack found the restaurant and circled the block to find a place to park, he’d been gone nearly thirty minutes. He expected to find Anna standing outside near Trattoria Segreto, angry that he was late. But she wasn’t outside the restaurant or on the sidewalk near the place. The twitchy feeling in his gut was back.
She should be out here by now.
Either she was sucking down pasta without him, or she was in trouble.

Jack wanted to text her to see if she was okay. But she’d insisted on no phones. “Too easy to listen in and track us,” she’d said.

I hate this off-the-grid crap.

Each second was like an hour as Jack weighed his options. While Erika was a bust-in-with-guns-blazing type, Jack was more methodical. He preferred considering all options and was always a fan of the choice that would lead to the least amount of potential damage. He figured why barge in the front door and face guns pointing at your face when you can sneak in and out of the back door before anyone has seen you?

But there was no time to be calculating. Jack pulled the door open and strode to the host stand with as much confidence as he could muster. The restaurant was nearly empty. A group of four portly men sat at the back table. They talked loudly and laughed. No one was at the host stand. Jack made a show of checking his watch and huffed loudly with impatience.

The bartender called out to him, “Wach’ya need?” The guy’s voice didn’t sound very enthusiastic about helping Jack.

Jack pitched his voice high. “I’m meeting a friend here and she’s late. Well, actually, I’m late, shame on me.”

The bartender extended his arm and gestured around the room. “You see anybody you know in here?”

Jack shook his head. “Maybe she was here and left. She’s tall – for a girl. And long blonde hair. Did you see her come in?” Jack searched the room with his eyes while they spoke. There was a long hall in the back and an exit sign.
Why would she go out the back when she was the one who told me to meet her in the front?
The twitchy feeling was still there.

The bartender flipped up a piece of counter and came around the bar. He wiped his hands on the white apron sitting just below his oversized belly as he approached Jack. “No broads been in here today.” He looked Jack up and down. It was more of a search for an arsenal than an appraisal of his fashion.

“I’ll take a quick peek in the back. Maybe she tucked into the powder room to freshen up.”

Jack stepped forward, but the bartender did too. His wide body blocked Jack’s path. “I told you. No chicks come in here today. So take your fruity ass outside before I kick it out.”

Jack let out another forced nervous giggle. “No need to be rude. Obviously I have the wrong place. She probably meant the café on the corner.”

The bartender stopped his approach and crossed his arms on his chest.

One of the loud guys in the back rose from the table. “You okay up there, Carlo?” The man didn’t wait for Carlo to answer. He dropped his napkin on the table and walked toward them. His lips were pulled in and his brow crinkled, hooding his eyes.

Jack didn’t need another hint to hightail it and run. He wasn’t going to get any answers from this mob squad. He backed toward the door, keeping his eyes on all the men in the room. He counted six. He hoped there weren’t more in the back.