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“I guess I should go then?” I said, taking the phone.
The man put his hand on it—not pulling it away from me, but also preventing me from walking off with it.
“So you do want to talk?” I said. “Then—”
“You can stop bullying him, Mr. Legion,” another voice said. I looked to the side as the other man from the photos approached: older, Caucasian, with flecks of grey in his beard. “He can’t answer your questions.”
“Then who can?” I asked.
The man pointed at the phone. Which started ringing.
I frowned, then answered and held it up to my ear. “Hello?”
“Hey,” Sandra said on the other end. “It’s good to hear your voice again.”
SIX
Sandra.
Sandra.
Her voice was full and husky, like the sound of a solitary cello. It reminded me of peace, of nightmares stilling. Of quiet talks at night, with a candle flickering between us, because modern lights weren’t alive enough for Sandra.
“Why?” I said to her. “Why dump this phone here, and go through all of this? Why not just call me.”
“We needed a secure line, Rhone.”
My middle name. I closed my eyes, imagining lazy days near the end, after I’d silenced and embodied the voices. Days when I got to just lie there, Sandra beside me, speaking softly. She’d always said I wasn’t a “Stephen.” That was too common a name.
“My line is secure,” I told her.
“Secure from you, I’m afraid.”
“So you’re working with these men?” I asked, glancing at the two beside the hot dog cart.
“In a way.”
“I need to meet with you, Sandra,” I said. “I’m … I’m not as strong as I was when you left. Things have started to fall apart.”
“I know.”
“You’ve been watching me?”
“No. It happened to me too.”
“Your aspects. Jimmy, Orca, Mason … how are they?”
“Gone.”
It felt like she’d punched me in the stomach.
“I need you to go with these men, Rhone,” she said. “I need you to trust me. They’re working on something that can help you. Has helped me.”
The longer she spoke, the more wrong she sounded. Like she was drugged or something. I lifted the phone from my ear and pointed for the aspects to gather in closer and listen.
“Sandra?” I said. “What happened to your aspects? What’s going on?”
“I gave them away,” she said softly. “For sanity. Come see me, Rhone. It’s … better this way.”
I looked up to Ivy, who nodded curtly. I hit mute on the phone, looking toward the two men. The young one was a soldier, but the older one—now that I got a good look at him—didn’t have the feel of a security officer. A little too pudgy, a little too relaxed in that sport coat, even if I did spot a gun peeking out from an underarm holster. J.C. would be proud of me.
“What have you done to her?” I demanded.
“Rather,” the older man said, “you should ask what she’s chosen to do to herself.”
“Which is?”
“She’s found peace,” the man said. “We can offer it to you too. A simple business arrangement. Your brain—safe within your skull, don’t look at me like that—and our technology. We can make the world a better place, and your world a saner one, all through the power of our proprietary solution.”
“He sounds like a businessman,” Tobias said, “giving a pitch to the board of directors.”
“He’s intrigued by you,” Ivy said, eyes narrowing. “Maybe even amused.”
I lifted the phone to my ear, unmuting it. “Sandra? I want to talk to you in private. Just you and me. No phones. No listeners.”
“And if I ask you for help?”
I felt a sudden need to give back to her. All those years ago, she’d saved my life, and I was desperate to repay our debt. To put us on even footing. Because, deep down, I suspected she’d left because I had been too needy and our relationship had been unbalanced.
She’s playing me. She knows how I feel and she’s playing me. Help. It was such a difficult word to ignore.
I turned away from the two men, speaking more softly into the phone. “Are they holding you? Have they drugged you?”
“If I say yes, will you come?”
“I…”
“I almost came back, you know,” she said. “Two years ago, when it started going badly for me? I came to visit. But I left before speaking with you. Rhone … it’s going to get worse for you. You’re like me, only a few years behind. The brain, it just can’t take the strain. You’re going to start losing them again. Unless you submit.”
“To what?”
“To a perfect world.”
“Well,” Ivy noted beside me, “that’s not ominous.”
“Sandra,” I said. “It’s not supposed to go this way. I’ve imagined … I mean, I pictured…”
“Rhone, Rhone … You should know by now. The two of us are too good at imagining. But when have the daydreams ever played out as we wanted them to? Go with Kyle.”
“But—”
“I’ll see you then. Come.”
She hung up.
And I realized I was weeping. My arm went limp, and I nearly dropped the phone as I turned toward the two men.
“Mr. Legion,” said the older man, who was prob
ably Kyle, “the paradigm you live in can be expanded. Please, let me show you the nature of our work, and let it redefine your vision of what is possible.”
“You’re holding her.”
“You’ll find that we have done nothing outside the moral and ethical bounds of good business.”
I sneered.
“Leeds,” Ngozi said, taking me by the arm. Light flared behind us, and the crowd cheered.
“I don’t know what you’ve done to her,” I said to Kyle. “But I’m not going with you. I’m going to find Sandra. I’m going to free her.”
“And if she doesn’t want your freedom?”
I snarled. “You can’t—”
“Stephen,” Tobias said. “Perhaps you should calm down. Deep breaths, remember? Let me tell you a little more about these fire displays. Listen to my voice. The displays are so beautiful because…”
I breathed in and out, calming myself to the rhythm of Tobias’s words. Kyle and the other man backed off, and I turned to look across the crowd toward the flashes of sparks against the wall. They were beautiful, as Tobias said. I listened to his voice until …
What was that chill?
I looked into the crowd. Most everyone was facing the display, but one nearby figure moved in my direction. I frowned as this person walked right through a couple—as if they weren’t really there. The figure had … had sunken eye sockets and pale, milky eyes with no pupils.
His skin had gone ashen white, even faintly translucent, so you could see the shadows of the skull beneath. But I recognized that face anyway. Armando.
Armando—what was left of him—howled and leaped toward me, slashing with a large knife. I jumped back, but only then realized he wasn’t aiming for me.
Instead, he cut down Tobias midsentence.
SEVEN
Tobias collapsed without a sound, leaving Armando’s knife dripping with blood. Wraithlike, Armando lunged toward me, slashing the blade, reflecting the red-orange light of the performers’ sparks.
I threw my hands up in a panic, stumbling backward and taking a gash in my arm from the attack. It hurt. It seemed to actually bleed.
I crashed into the hot dog cart, barely noticing as the younger of the two men pulled out his weapon. I didn’t care, couldn’t care. Armando had become a nightmare. And Tobias …
