Estranged (35 page)

And then she had it. There was nothing
left to scoop. The screaming in her body retreated, and she could
breathe freely again. Kalei let out a mental sigh of relief. As she
took another breath, she could feel tears of joy building in her
eyes. She hadn’t thought she was capable of feeling joy anymore,
but there it was.

She slowly became aware of the cold
cement beneath her. She could feel warm sunlight bearing down on
her skin. She could hear the rustle of clothes nearby. A shoe
scuffed against pavement.

But her face felt cool as something
blocked the sun from her eyes. She felt a hand pull away from her
arm, and the shadow retreated, allowing the sunlight to find her
face as well.

Kalei slowly opened her eyes, then
immediately regretted it as the bright light stabbed at her
retinas. She brought her hand up to shield her vision, squinting
and blinking rapidly until she could finally see her
surroundings.

She felt a hand releasing her arm as a
tiny bit of foreign darkness retreated into it. She looked over,
and on her right, kneeling beside her with his stoic, unreadable
expression, was Terin.

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

Remembering

“
Wait...Are you...?” Kalei
sat up. She looked at her surroundings and found that she was still
in the alley with the dumpster. Walker stood about ten feet off
behind Terin, watching her carefully with crossed arms. Samantha’s
body lay beside her. Kalei’s thoughts were jumbled. It was like two
and two floated before her eyes, but her brain kept fumbling the
four. “Did I...?”

Terin stood up. “Can I trust
you?”

Kalei blinked, then squinted at him.
“What?”

“
You know what I did to my
daughter. Your mother. You know what Josh nearly did to his mother.
Can I trust you to stay away from Fenn and the
children?”

His words sent her thoughts clicking
back into order with sobering clarity. “Yes.” The reality of what
would happen if she found Fenn, the memory of what happened to her
parents – for the first time in her life, Kalei was firmly resolved
to never see Fenn again. Her crushed heart was a small price to pay
for his life.

Still,
“You know what I did to my daughter”...
Was this some weird dream? Could he really be...?

Terin turned and walked toward the
alley entrance as he said, “Let’s go.”

Kalei’s arms felt heavy and awkward,
but she complied. “So do I have to go back to solitary, or will I
be free to roam Downtown?”

Terin kept walking as he said, “You’re
free to go wherever you want as soon as we get you back into
uniform.”

“
What?”

“
You’ve been reinstated to
Warden.”

Kalei shook her head, not sure if she
heard him correctly. She glanced at Walker, and the unwavering
seriousness on his face chased away all doubt.

“
Who says I want to be?”
Kalei took a couple steps after Terin, but then a pounding headache
rushed through her skull. She reached out to the nearest wall,
leaning against it as she tried to push back the
onslaught.

Terin called out, “You can do that in
the car.”

Kalei growled through her clenched
teeth, pushed off the wall, and marched past Walker on her way out
of the alley.

The street was quiet, the old theater
across the road sleeping in these morning hours, and the small
restaurant to her left was likewise closed, both businesses
seemingly recuperating before the next rush of evening traffic came
for them. It was just as Kalei had always remembered it, except she
had to step under a strip of “Crime Scene” tape, and at each end of
the street, an officer stood watch, deterring the sparse passersby.
There was also a new silver sedan parked at the curb, which Terin
was already climbing into on the opposite side. Although she knew
they weren’t looking her way, Kalei was eager to get out of sight
before the officers spotted her, so she quickly followed after
Terin and climbed into the back seat.

Once inside, Kalei was relieved to be
safe behind the heavily tinted windows, but the relief didn’t
extend to her body. Feeling heavy, Kalei leaned her head against
the window, watching the buildings slide by as the car pulled away
from the curb. Within her, she could feel the darkness – her new
darkness – pulsing and moving. There was so much now. And every
time she looked at it, she saw images that didn’t make any
sense.

To no one in particular, she asked,
“Why do I have these... memories that aren’t mine?”

She was surprised to hear the driver
reply, “The darkness carries within itself not only a complete copy
of your biological makeup, but it also retains memories so that
when you get hurt, or shot in the head, the darkness can
reconstruct you exactly as you were.”

“
Erit?” Kalei pulled her
head away from the glass and caught a glimpse of his face in the
rearview mirror. “Shit, I didn’t recognize you. How are you
reaching the pedals?”

Erit stiffly replied, “Don’t worry
about that.”

Kalei chuckled as she leaned her head
back against the firm, leather seat and said, “Okay, whatever. So
you’re saying the darkness keeps all of my memories? Why? What’s
the point?”

“
Truly, no one can say for
sure. But some scholars speculate that the darkness is something of
a symbiotic parasite. Its sole purpose is to grow and perpetuate
itself, which it can only do by consuming the darkness of another
individual. In order to ensure optimal success in this endeavor,
the darkness must maintain the health of its host.”

“
Okay... I’ll just pretend
I understood that.” Kalei shook her head. “So where are these new
memories coming from?”

Erit pulled the wheel right, carefully
watching the pedestrians standing at the edge of the sidewalk as he
made his turn. “When you killed Samantha, you absorbed every shred
of her darkness and all that entails: including her
memories.”

Kalei looked out the window. Her eyes
darted as they traced the trajectory of the passing lampposts. “So
I did kill her.” She turned back to Erit. “But how?”

Terin answered, “You pierced her
heart.”

“
No I didn’t. But if it’s
as easy as that—”

Erit interrupted, “What he means to
say is, you pierced the heart of her darkness. It isn’t... tangible
exactly. No one has been able to establish a physical location for
it within the body. It can only be found by venturing your own
darkness into another person. And it can only be destroyed with the
darkness.”

“
Oh.” Kalei returned her
attention to the passing scenery. She remembered how it had felt
when Samantha’s heart had snapped. She remembered the rush and the
dark place it had taken her... She tried not to get
carsick.

Well, I think I understand
why Erit and Terin wouldn’t teach me this shit in basic.

“
What happened to the
backpack Josh had with him?”

“
What?” Kalei pulled away
from the window to look at Terin.

He looked at her with his usual, level
stare. No new grandfather there, no touching reunion or
reconciliation with the past. Just the same stoic Terin, with the
same dumb questions. What the hell did she care about the kid’s
backpack?

She looked away and scoffed. “Josh
probably dropped it during that incident with his mom. You guys
found him, right? Why not ask him?”

Terin’s tone gave away about as much
information as his reply. “We can’t.”

She looked back, trying to find the
answer in his weary eyes. “Why not?”

Terin met her gaze, but it was Erit
who answered, “Well, technically, we could ask him. I mean, we did
pick him up. It’s just... it’s complicated.”

“
What do you mean? You ask
him the question, he answers. How can it be more complicated than
that? Is he refusing to cooperate?”

“
No, he’s very compliant,
but his answers... You girls...” Erit sighed. “Allow me to put it
this way. You know what I told you about the darkness being able to
contain memories and reconstruct the mind? Well, in rare cases,
especially when multiple head injuries are suffered within a short
period of time...” Erit trailed off.

A red flag went up in Kalei’s mind.
Erit loved to talk about anything and everything. Stopping himself
was not something he did. “What’s wrong with Josh?”

Erit navigated another turn in
silence. For a second, Kalei thought he wasn’t going to answer.
Then he said, “It seems his mind did not fully reconstruct itself
... He can talk in English and walk a straight line, all of that,
but...”

Terin interrupted, “Did he tell you
what was in the backpack?”

“
No. Why? What’s wrong
with Josh?”

Josh paced the recovery room,
anxiously scratching his head with his right hand while he held his
left hand inches away from his mouth, the black thumbnail ready and
waiting to be chewed on as needed, which seemed to be every time he
paused for breath. “Trojan, bug, no... Always servers, frogs like
to jump in the summer, yes, that’s good...”

Kalei walked further into the room and
tried to catch his eye. “Hey, Josh. Do you remember me?”

He looked at her and his eyes widened.
“Frogs! Frogs are green! Frogs are green! FROGS ARE
GREEN!”

Before Kalei could react to his
outburst, Josh retreated to the far end of the room, muttering to
the wall. Kalei was stunned. She wasn’t sure if it was anger or
frustration she saw in his eyes, but she felt hurt and bewildered.
She didn’t know if it was directed at her or... in either case, she
wanted to say something, but she just... didn’t know what she could
say.

Terin turned and left the room, with
Walker and Erit following close behind him. Kalei took one more
look at Josh’s quivering form, then withdrew as well.

Kalei had a hard time
believing that an Estranged could be damaged like that. Josh was
mentally shattered by wounds that otherwise were unable to kill
him.
If I had known this could have
happened, I would have put a helmet on him. I would have stopped
Jenna, I—
The image of Jenna’s skull
falling to the cement with a fresh bullet hole on the scalp flashed
into Kalei’s mind.

“
Wait— where is Jenna! She
took a bullet to the head. She didn’t...Jenna...she’s not like
that, is she?”

“
No,” Terin assured her.
“She’s quite all right.”

“
Good.” The horror of what
she might have done melted away with Terin’s assurance. The final
scraps of guilt were promptly eradicated by the recollection
of
why
she had
shot her sister. Kalei pushed Jenna from her mind, hoping to never
see or think of her again.

She returned her attention to the
people before her and found Walker already talking to Terin.
“...completely useless to us. I don’t know why we even bother
keeping him around. He can’t tell us any more about that device
than Erit can. Just let him out into the district where he can live
out whatever shred of his miserable life he has left.”

Terin replied, “I’m not going to do
that. The other inmates would be all over him. He can leave if he
wants, but we’re not sending him out.”

Kalei asked, “What did you need him to
tell you? You said it has something to do with that backpack he
had, right?”

Terin answered, “You already know
about it. Josh was working on Franklin’s device. The same one you
were going to plug into our computers. Josh had the latest
prototype in his backpack. ”

“
How do you—”

Terin waved off her question.
“Franklin isn’t as smart as he thinks he is.”

“
Okay, but what’s the big
deal about Franklin getting intel on SWORDE? Sure, there will be a
political uproar and all but—”

Erit replied, “We don’t think it is
designed to gather intelligence. We don’t know what it is,
but—”

“
Yes, we do,” Walker cut
in. “It’s some sort of digital worm designed to take out the
electric fence, the solitary cells, and other key facilities around
here.”

Kalei asked, “The fence is run by
computers?”

“
Yes, that’s how we know
when the fence takes damage, or if a section loses
power.”

Kalei remembered her foray through the
fence with Lecia. “You may want to get that system
checked.”

Erit interjected, “We don’t have any
evidence to support your theory that it is a worm—”

“
We don’t need evidence.”
Walker’s hands adamantly emphasized his point as he continued, “We
know that it needs to be hand delivered in order to work. Xamic has
already proven that he can access our networks remotely. If he
wanted dirt to bury SWORDE, he could get all he needed in an
instant. The only systems not connected to any external network are
the fence and the solitary systems.”

Kalei asked, “But why would Franklin
want to take out the fences? He said he just wanted to expose
SWORDE. Maybe take it over himself. I don’t see how releasing
thousands of Estranged upon the city is going to help
him.”