Wormwood

Chapter 1

Conflagration

The clicking of boot-heels against tile is the first thing she hears.

Then she realizes she is moving—forward it seems. There is an arm around her shoulder; a

Hand grips her arm tightly. It hurts.

Her head feels faint and she stumbles—she's walking? The Man yanks her back up. He hisses

in her ear, “Keep moving.” The pace quickens; He grips tighter—this hurts more.

She opens her eyes—why's it all so blurry?--and sees His face. She remembers him smiling,

then chortling.

“Welcome back, precious.”

* * *

--“I will hurt you...”--

Ravi woke with a start. He'd been dreaming again—the same dream he had every time he

closed his eyes for the last three years.

“Back amongst the living, Boss?” Chou asked, the younger man turning his head from the road

to face him. Having regained control of his breathing and heart rate, Ravi momentarily tried to

assemble a snide rejoinder for the junior officer but gave up without much of a fight. Dreams always

did this to him.

He lay his hands palm up in his lap and studied them. Their skin was a shade paler than the rest

of the skin on his body; the hairline scars on both wrists were constant reminders of that day that

continued to haunt him. He turned his head towards the passenger side window and looked out over

the city from the slow, upward spiral of the causeway. This, too, was a constant reminder--

“Inspector? You feeling well?” Chou queried, this time shading his voice with concern rather
than obnoxiousness.

“Yeah,” Ravi answered, still blankly staring into city's glittering lights, watching as they

steadily climbed the ramp into the air, level by level.

“Nightmares, huh?” Chou pressed. “My older brother used to have nightmares about the

evacuation from Kaohsiung. He used to be terrified of water. He went to a neurologist, they shoot him

up with something and, like that, doesn't bother him anymore. You ever think of trying that? Seeing

someone?”

Ravi didn't want to answer, but he did appreciate Chou's concern. Not wanting to play the

asshole, he sighed, “If anything worked I'd be using it.”

“Just memories, no? Just need to rewire the hardware is all.”

“I suppose so.” Ravi had tried that. Some things don't get better.

There was a moment of blessed silence, but Ravi knew it wouldn't last. Chou was a nice kid,

but he got bored too easily and didn't like to keep his mouth shut. Like clockwork: “You ever going to

tell me what they're about? Those dreams?”

“No.”

* * *

She's awake again. She's not sure how long she's been out—time is still working in stops-and-

starts.

Her eyes are closed. The Hand is still on her and the Man is still there. Her ears pick up more

sounds this time: thousands of echoing footsteps and a voice for every set of feet. There's also a dull

roar—is it the ocean? She doesn't think so: feet don't make sounds on sand and she didn't smell salt.

She wishes that the Man would speak again, but He stays silent. She finds it all so strange--

She stumbles again. The Man violently wrenches her back up; her eyes begin to tear as they

flutter open. The Man is staring at her: eyes obscured by dark glasses, he smiles at her—though on

second thought she decides that he isn't so much smiling as showing teeth. He squeezes her arm
impossibly tight, almost causing her to whimper. “Do not fuck this up. You are mine, don't forget.”

The words don't really mean much to her yet.

Then they're stopped, facing another man—this one in a uniform. For a moment she considers

asking him for help, but she can't fathom why she would ask. Strange.

The other man waves something across their faces. The Man holding her says something,

“SFIS Agent 21A659G7D3—pass-key 'rebel'-7DA. Priority escort of refugee.” Who's the refugee?

The other man hurriedly ushers them past. Around them, hundreds of people seem to be

waiting in line.

Very strange.

* * *

Ravi pulled a cigarette from its pack as he stared out of the car at the hulking edifice of the

airport out the passenger-side window. It was a decidedly retro-looking structure; in fact, it had been

moved in its entirety—piece-by-piece—from the city's foundation to its current perch 300 meters above

its old location—quite an accomplishment for being done during the lost decade of 2040. As it stood,

the airport was the highest point on the island, sitting an additional 80 meters over the already 220

meter floodwalls.

Ravi turned his head towards the driver's side window, towards the city proper: it was certainly

an impressive point-of-entry for what was the most technologically advanced and economically

prosperous nation in the world, for better of worse. From up here, visitors had a panoramic view of the

entire city-state: a seemingly infinite number of carbon-steel trusses, lattices, and scaffolds; the

fortress-like levies that held back the ever-rising ocean that had claimed the lives of countless

individuals and many countries. The airport was also one of the few locations where one could look

down and see all 30 levels of city, all the way to its very bedrock. While looking down, however, one

also couldn't help but notice the gradient of illumination increasing from the dim graveyard that was

the Understory—a place that even Public Security avoided—up through the immigrant levels—
derisively referred to as Steerage—eventually transitioning to the ever more posh res/com districts and

capped off by the Palaces, home to the city's—and the world's—wealthiest people.

Ravi scoffed then screwed the cigarette into his mouth. For him there was never any sense of

wonder regarding this place: like all the unfortunate souls who found themselves brought in through the

Understory, he saw the city less as a human achievement and more as made-up corpse. He briefly

thinks back to his childhood in Kashmir and wants to go home. He knows, though, that it's but a

passing thought and a stupid one at that: from all the accounts his mother had given him, the near

constant skirmishes and raids of his childhood had worsened and become, in her words, sanjiva.

And that's why I'm here, Ravi thought to himself as he flicked the lighter and brought the

dancing flame to his face. Four years worked; two more to go till he had full citizenship. With

citizenship he could bring his mother over—even with its rotting foundation, this place was better than

the hell that was Kashmir. Two more years he had to remain as Public Security Inspector Ravi

Bhadwal. Goddamn, he hated the job, he thought to himself as he took a long drag of his cigarette.

Devoid of the purpose it gave him, however, he knew it'd only be a matter of time before he'd opt out

of life entirely. Two more years, then I can die, he thought bitterly.

A tapping at his window disturbed Ravi's reverie. He turned to see Chou outside, signaling for

Ravi to come out. Wearily, he opens the door and exits the vehicle. “Smoking in there's against

regulations,” Chou opines glibly.

Ravi shrugs then takes another drag. “Well, pretty much everything's against regs, isn't it?”

Chou looks as if he's going to respond, but Ravi beats him to the punch: “Let's get this over with.” He

reached into his brown micro-suede jacket and his hand brushed down the left side of his body holster:

past his service 9mm and clips and down to his Viewer. He pulled out the glasses-like device and

hooked it over his ears.

As the clear lenses settled over his eyes, a small green dot started to flash in the upper right

corner of his field of vision as the Viewer synced with and authenticated his Ident implant. Ravi hated
the Ident: though only a fraction of a millimeter in size, it contained a transmitter capable of

broadcasting at least a kilometer. That made trying to disappear in the city next to impossible unless

one wished to brave the lowest levels of the Understory. It was also next to impossible to remove the

implant due to its size and location in the middle ear—even the most well-trained eye could rarely spot

it tucked away among the minuscule bones residing there. When coupled with the fact the implant was

synced to an individual's biometric data, it made identity theft a fool's errand. The Ident had taken

some time for Ravi to get used to: he had spent nearly 28 years of his life living off the grid and freely

co-opting identities while living on the mainland and, until four years ago, Ravi Bhadwal rarely lived

as Ravi Bhadwal.

The flashing dot disappeared and the world took on a slightly blue tinge as the embedded LCD

screens fully powered on. Text flashed across his field of vision reading “Session Authenticated” and

then disappeared, replaced by a short stack of icons on his left. Time for work.

“When you going to retire the spectacles for the contacts?” Chou asked, bemused, pointing to

his blue-tinted eyes—decidedly odd-looking for a Chinaman. The contacts were, however, a triumph

of miniaturization, with their complex matrices of gyroscopes, photo-electric cells, and super-fine

resolution LCDs. The contacts had become ubiquitous among the younger generations of the island,

despite their hefty price. This also supplied Ravi's reason for using the specs instead: even his simple

viewer cost an arm and a leg on the continent; over there, the contacts were prohibitively expensive if

you could even find them. Maybe this was just a cultural tendency towards frugality or lack of

disposable income, but Ravi could never justify an expense of the magnitude. Also, they made his eyes

itch something fierce.

“Drop the price a thousand and I'll consider it,” Ravi absently responded. He rapidly blinked

thrice, activating the Viewer's line-of-sight tracking. His eyes traced their way over to an icon reading

“Government Personnel Network”—a real-time database of every government employee and their

current location—and blinked twice, opening a semi-transparent browser window and a virtual
keyboard beneath it. Ravi launched into a flurry of eye movements and blinks, typing into a search

field the name of Customs Department IT Administrator, “Park Yong-Dae.” The results came almost

immediately: he was still currently on duty at his office in the airport's Administrative wing.

Ravi sighed—this was merely prelude to a long night of interrogations, and of the many things

that Ravi hated, interrogations were among the top of the list. All the intellectual inventory tests he'd

ever taken had shown that his real strength was in data aggregation, primarily owed to his near-eidetic

memory. Social functioning was among his weaknesses. Still, a job was a job and as a PS officer

interrogations were part-and-parcel of his responsibilities. At least it should be easy: Park, while a

competent IT Administrator, couldn't completely cover up months of false Ident entry codes and

authentications, especially for someone such as Ravi. Still, had a routine traffic stop not resulted in the

arrest of a blacklisted continental terrorist, even Ravi wouldn't have been able to see the Park's fine

manipulations of the records. Honing in on that particular case, Ravi and Chou had uncovered at least

three dozen falsified Idents—a massive security breach and, unfortunately for Park, a capital offense.

Ravi was puzzled by Park's defection: he had been a citizen for 14 years and his public journals

revealed a man quite outspoken against the policies of the Pan-Asian Alliance. It wasn't out of the

question, however, and anything was possible, as there had been increasing chatter lately regarding

sleeper agents embedded in the national government. Whatever, Ravi thought, a job's a job and all I

have to do is break Park and move on to the next asshole. Ravi took his Viewer off and turned to

Chou, “He's in his office, let's pick him up.”

Chou was staring at a car parked behind them—inside, two men were sitting, waiting it looked.

Chou turned to Ravi, “They're venting too much CO-2, I'm going to cite them.”

Oh fuck me, Ravi thought and rolled his eyes—Chou was really being annoying today. One of

his favorite tricks was to load an ambient spectrometer filter onto his Viewer. This allowed him to see

a wide range of chemical signatures, everything from improperly scrubbed fuel cells to drug residue

under a person's nose. It was no wonder that he led PS Section 4 in the number of citations issued—
although, as in this case, they were by and large citations completely unrelated to Section 4's

jurisdiction over government officials and actions.

Still, Chou loved busting people and Ravi saw no real reason to order him off. Might as well

keep him happy. “Alright, just hurry up.”

* * *

She had never felt worse—or, rather, she didn’t think she had ever felt worse. It was impossible

to tell, as she remembered nothing about her life before this moment.

This realization hits her hard as her cognitive abilities slowly started to return. The harder she

thinks, the more she realizes with mounting horror that she knows neither her name, nor even what she

looks like. Well, she could tell that she was a woman, at least, by the way her clothing moved over her

body. That, and nothing else.

She stumbles yet again, though this time she manages to catch herself and compensate to match

the Man’s brisk pace. She swings her eyes to her left and for the first time clearly sees His face. He’s a

boulder of a man, though it’s largely due to the breadth of his shoulders as opposed to his height. He’s

olive-skinned—Mediterranean ancestry she guessed—though she found herself wondering how she

would’ve known that. His lips are pulled back over His teeth in a perpetual grin, somewhere between

a rictus and a sneer; His eyes are covered by a pair of sunglasses that also served to distract from

some manner of swelling or growth that starts at His temples and disappeared under the lenses. There

was also the hard mass under His right arm that He was crushing her against. She looks down slightly

to try to glimpse at the object, but finds it obscured by His long overcoat.

She collides into a passer-by and swings her eyes right, catching a man—some manner of Asian

—staring daggers at her and muttering under his breath. Immediately after she feels the Man’s hand

tightening painfully around her arm. He leans in to her and hisses: “Careful, love.”

She deliberately avoids looking at Him: she’s conscious enough of the situation to know that

her comfort is accidental to His purposes. Her eyes dart rapidly to-and-fro trying to find a familiar
face or locale among the passing scenery—anything that could offer her the hope of salvation. She

finds only leering businessmen, women unsure of their current states or futures, and the sterile, empty

cavern of the airport (it must be an airport…). These and many disinterested but heavily armed

security personnel. She felt sick.

Suddenly the Man stops. She, however, continues forward a pace and is quickly—and brutally

—pulled back. She turns to Him and sees Him, for the first time, truly smile; it was an awful, awful

thing. “Don’t you say a fucking word,” He whispers.

He turns forward again, looking straight ahead. She turns to match His eye-line and follows it:

His eyes are fixed on a point beyond the airport’s wide bank of automatic doors. He’s staring at a

tallish, well-built Indian man sporting a brown coat. His lips part and bear his teeth…

“Bhadwal…” He hisses…

* * *

It was about a minute and a half into the stop before Ravi started to feel that something was

wrong.

It started normal enough: Chou knocked on the curbside window and the two men inside, one

Aryan, the other some swarthy Euro-Asian mix, exchanged glances, then retracted the window.

“Da?” the Aryan asked in what a distracted and bored Ravi took as a Russian accent, but upon

further reflection could’ve been from any number of the autocratic fiefdoms of Eastern Europe or

Central Asia.

Chou began his spiel: “Officer Chou Yu-Fei, Public Security Section 4: you gentlemen speak

English?” The Aryan nodded; Chou continued, “You know why I’m here?”

At this the men turned to one another and exchanged a couple of words—definitely Slavic,

almost Russian but not quite… The Aryan turned back to Chou and spoke with a thick accent, “No,

Officer. What is the problem?”

Chou stared at them for a moment—Ravi knew it was because he was trying to sweat them,
though only for his own pleasure. Ravi would have to have words with Chou later: this was a bit

perverse and a waste of their time. Finally, Chou pulled an Ident reader out from inside his coat and

spoke as he activated the device, “The carbon scrubbers on your car’s cell are venting CO-2 at above

the legal threshold.”

The Aryan eyes Chou for a moment, then looks to Ravi, who met his stare. Hard eyes; eyes that

were unafraid and cold. And something else: they were the eyes of a man who would do whatever he

wanted, regardless of the consequences. Ravi had many encounters with the type. He found himself

wishing he had kept the reins on Chou.

The Aryan’s eyes moved with Ravi as he came up beside Chou. Without breaking his stare, he

answered, “I’m very sorry, Officer. I’ll have it looked at.”

Ravi looked over to Chou—the fucker was actually smiling. “I appreciate that, sir, but I’m

going to have to issue you a citation. If you both could step out of the car for a moment so that I can

scan you…”

The men turned and spoke with each other once more. Ravi leaned in and whispered to Chou,

“Are you sure you want to do this? We’re wasting time.” Ravi was starting to get a sinking feeling in

his gut.

Chou grinned widely, “I’ve got my reputation to maintain.” Ravi wasn’t listening, however: he

was, instead, focused on the two men. The driver handed the Aryan a stack of S-bills, which the Aryan

turned to hold, slightly fanned, out the window, in front of Chou. “I think we can settle this here, no?”

The floor dropped out from under Ravi. Of all the people to bribe, Chou? There was no way

Ravi would be able to call him off now and Ravi knew that the bribe was simply the lesser of two evils

for these men. He started to wish he had undone the safety strap on his shoulder holster…

Chou, meanwhile, had turned serious. “You’re trying to buy your way off? Do you know what

the penalty is for bribery of a state officer?”

“Not enough?” the Aryan asked. “I have much more. Name your price.” Ravi felt the men
start to coil, readying to attack.

Chou only felt his anger—probably insulted by the bribe. The boy’s skin was too goddamn

thin. “The both of you get out. Now!”

Shit. Well, now that it happened there was little doubt in Ravi’s mind that this was going to be

ugly. The Aryan’s jaw tightened as he stared death at Chou but, right as his shoulders shifted and Ravi

started for his sidearm, his eyes shifted again, this time looking behind Ravi. Then he smiled.

Ravi spun around and saw Him: the same face he remembered from four years ago…

--“I will hurt you, and you will bleed until I get what I want. Then I’ll hurt you some more.”—

“Hello, Bhadwal,” He said through his death’s head grin.

Akin. Sirhan Akin. The devil had come for him again.

* * *

And just like that, she was alone. She hadn’t even realized that her knees had hit the ground

before He was outside the terminal’s doors, standing behind the Indian.

She tried to stand up but her knees buckled. She looked behind her—should she go back and

find a security guard; ask for help? The thought of going back in there made her sick.

Actually, she felt sick anyway: she found herself for the first time realizing she had been

drugged. She felt bile rising in the back of her throat; the air in the building had become oppressively

heavy. She needed to be outside.

She crawled forward and put her hand on the frame of the door as it slid open for her. She was

vaguely aware that several guards had started towards her.

And then He moved…

* * *

Akin was grinning, “I told you I wouldn’t let you escape.”

And then He moved.

To his credit, Chou saw Akin’s arm dart inside his coat first—Ravi was too shocked to notice
something so fast. Chou was already reaching for his sidearm, shouting a warning to Ravi.

In the end it didn’t help him. Before Chou’s hand was able to wrap around his gun, Akin had

his out, pointed at Chou’s face. Desert Eagle, 254-mm—bigger than he had remembered...

The sound of the gun firing left a ringing in Ravi’s ears and called attention to the four inch hole

that appeared in the back of Chou’s head. As his body collapsed against the car and slid to the ground,

the gun was suddenly in Ravi’s face. “Now you die,” Akin sneered. “This is for the last four years.”

Ravi’s knees buckled. Just then, Akin fired his second shot.

Ravi was surprised: facing down a gun wasn’t a totally unfamiliar situation for him, but he had

never before lost himself like that. As the sound of the shot and rush of air from the bullet passed over

his head, he felt a tinge of regret: as though he were a coward for falling…

Then he hit the ground. Just as suddenly as they arose, the regrets were gone. Replacing them

was fear as Akin—with surprising dexterity—brought his gun down to Ravi’s head.

Ravi didn’t lose himself this time. As Akin’s gun settled in front of his face and he saw the first

hint of tension in Akin's trigger finger, he threw himself left, against the trunk of his car. Ravi had

pulled out his Glock by the time Akin’s gun was leveled at him and blindly shot. Ravi threw himself

backwards, then rolled left, trying to put the car between him and Akin. He saw a small trail of blood

spreading down Akin's shirt. That was puzzling: a point-blank abdominal wound should be more than

a dribble. He saw Akin rise and turn towards him as he flattened himself against he car and crab-

walked towards the hood. He heard Akin laugh, “I'll take more than your limbs this time, Bhadwal…”

Then the screaming started.

* * *

It began so suddenly, it didn’t even register as real. Before the Chinese man could move, His

gun was out and there was blood in the air. Then the gun was on the Indian.

When the gun went off again, she looked down—more subconscious than intentional. She was

surprised that the Indian was still alive. He was on his knees: odd.
 The Man—lightning-quick—brought the gun down and fired once more. This time, the Indian

dodged right, getting a shot off of his own.

Then the screaming started. First, from behind her—a woman—then, a couple outside that had

retreated down the sidewalk after the first shot. After those, the voices became too many to distinguish.

The Man rose, apparently uninjured. He started forward, just as she felt hands on her shoulders.

She screamed.

* * *

Akin had started forward, utterly unconcerned with the scene erupting around them. Then he

stopped. He looked as if he were listening to something. Ravi had a chance: he raised himself to a

kneeling-crouch and took aim when he was suddenly knocked back. He swung his eyes over and saw

the driver of the other car with a pistol pointed at him, using the door as cover. As Ravi hit the ground

he unloaded four bullets at the driver’s legs; three connected and he screamed as he fell to his hands

and knees. He fired another four at his hands, shredding them and bringing his torso into sight. The

man whimpered. Ravi emptied the remaining three bullets in the gun into the left of the driver’s chest.

He was silent after that.

Ejecting the spent clip and loading another, Ravi noticed a blood-stained hole in his right

shoulder followed, conveniently, by a throbbing burn. Shit, Ravi cursed, but he knew that he was

lucky. Aside from narrowly avoiding death, he would’ve had to handle his weapon left-handed if the

wound had been placed different; he was a terrible left-handed shot.

Ravi looked towards the terminal from underneath the car. He saw Akin walking towards the

terminal’s entrance; guards with M-16s were rushing towards him, but he kept forward, unconcerned.

Then Ravi saw his target: a white woman, though rather dark skinned, wrapped in a large

overcoat, being dragged from the doors by a guard, screaming. When the guard saw he was being

approached, he dropped the woman and started to lift his rifle. Akin killed him before he got the safety

off.
 Three rounds caught Akin on his right flank, sending fragments of clothes and what looked to

be chunks of viscera flying. Without turning his head, he points his gun and fires a shot, taking out the

guard that had just shot him. Akin reaches down and pulls the woman to her feet with one hand and

then starts pulling her back away from the terminal.

Ravi didn’t understand: Akin had taken one 9mm and several NATO rounds to the body, yet was

still moving. He also moved too fast, and his huge pistol exhibited little recoil. What the hell was

going on?

The guards had established a line about six meters inside the terminal and began to fire at Akin.

He spun, giving them his back as a target while he pulled the woman in front of him, shielding her.

With his right arm, he turned slightly and begins to fire at the guards. The smile has yet to leave his

face.

Ravi then realized that he heard another weapon—an automatic—firing in his vicinity. Rising

to his knees, he saw the Aryan still in his car, covering Akin with sub-machine gun fire. Just as Ravi

saw him, the Aryan’s eyes swung over to meet his. Ravi lifts his weapon and pumps three bullets into

him through the windshield.

Rising to a crouch, Ravi looked at the scene through his car windows. The guards had suffered

severe casualties; the floor was littered with bodies and the rifle fire was becoming more sporadic.

Akin calmly walked back towards Ravi and the cars.

Fuck! How to stop a man that can take assault rifle fire and still walk? Ravi started to consider

just disappearing…

“BHADWAL! I can hear you!” Akin shouted maniacally. Shit! how can he hear me? Akin’s

trajectory led directly to him.

Think! In the trunk was another M-16—clearly ineffective—and a USAS-12. Ravi clenched

his jaw: an automatic shotgun should do he trick, but then again, he would’ve thought the same thing

about an M-16 before tonight. Not that there was another option…
 Ravi eased the driver’s side door open slightly and pulled the trunk release. Ravi spun out of

the car, just in time to avoid the bullets that impacted on the steering wheel. Akin had started to laugh

to himself loudly and scream every so often in Turkish—Ravi hoped this was due to blood loss. He

jumped up and went for the trunk, gun at the ready.

Once up, though, Ravi saw Akin walking towards him, gun forward and using the woman as a

shield. Oh what the hell, Ravi thought as he took aim for Akin’s head—he was reasonably sure he

could avoid her at this distance. He fired and then dropped down to a crouch.

Then he heard him scream.

* * *

And just like that, it was over.

She remembered the fear she felt as the Indian rose from behind the car, gun leveled at her. At

that moment, as the gun went off, she started to cry, convinced that she was going to die without so

much as even knowing her own name.

But she didn't die.

Instead, the Man screamed—right into her ear, leaving it ringing—and collapsed, releasing her

to stand on her own power. As shards of plastic rained down around her—His sunglasses, she decided

—her knees gave way once more and she was back on the cold, wet concrete.

She looked at the tableau surrounding her: the Chinese man's body leaned haphazardly against

the car where he fell, blood starting to congeal in a small puddle on the ground behind him. Above

him, in the car, was the body of a blonde white man, head limply hanging out the window; the front of

his shirt was soaked in blood.

Time seemed to drag along as she turned her head to look behind her. She saw over a dozen

people bloodied, some limping towards the sparse cover afforded by a bank of seats in a waiting area

and others crying for help where they lie. Then there were those who didn't move or cry: six guards

scattered around the vestibule, faces obscured by combat rebreathers, and two civilians—one, a pretty
Chinese woman who's torso had been perforated by gunfire, and, two, a middle-aged white man with a

massive hole in his neck who looked as if he had drowned in a pool of his own blood.

She turned her head back towards the Man lying beside her. She had to fight a wave of nausea

and the taste of bile at the back of her throat as she looked: the front of the button-up white shirt He

was wearing had been shredded by gunfire, the remaining edges dyed with the rust-black of drying

blood. Instead of viscera being exposed by the firing-squad He had faced down, there was only a

charcoal black material, devoid of any surface texture. Her eyes trailed up to his face, now bearing a

pained snarl as opposed to a cruel grin.

Then she saw his eyes: they appeared the same shade of black that his torso did. The skin

around them was bloodied, plastic shards from his sunglasses jutting out everywhere. Other than that,

however, there was no damage from the gunshot. Those eyes...

...somewhere, in the back of her head, she knew them. She screamed again.

* * *

Ravi rose from behind the car once Sirhan's screaming stopped. Cautiously, he began to move:

the woman was on the ground next to Akin, looking back into the terminal. His right arm was starting

to ache fiercely now and, deciding that the situation was safe enough, switched his pistol to his left

hand. As he slowly approached them, the woman turned to look at Akin. She seemed to be scanning

his body: his chest was covered by neither clothing nor skin at this point, but by what looked to be

body armor. Then she looked at his face and screamed.

As Ravi drew closer and saw why: instead of eyes or even ocular implants were membranes of

the same black-gray material that covered his flayed body. This took him aback: was he always this

way? Ravi's own memories of him were so blurred and disjointed that he thought perhaps he was.

Then she turned towards him, eyes red, puffy, and lost. Then scared. He realized that without

his knowing he had raised his weapon and trained it on her. He lowered it and quickened his pace

towards her.
 As he got closer, she started to push away from him: an uncoordinated, panicky movement. He

quickened his steps and reached for her, catching her arm as she raised it to cover her face and

screamed hoarsely.

“Shh, shh,” he hushed as he leadenly collapsed to a crouch in front of her. “It's alright, he can't

hurt you anymore,” he said, echoing the words that he himself heard once freed from his ordeal with

Akin.

She brought her arm down and started shaking her head back and forth slowly, as if a

madwoman, muttering under her breath, “No...no, it's not...”

Ravi lightly jerked on her arm, bringing her attention back to him. “Listen miss,” he began, “I

know you're scared and I can't imagine what he did to you, but I need to know who you are and why

you were with this man.” He got no response, only her wide-eyed stare and the silent workings of her

jaw as she tried to articulate something.

A tinge of anger rising in the back of his mind, he jerked her arm again—harder this time—and

repeated himself more forcefully, “Who are you and why were you with this man?” This startled her

and, after once more looking to Akin's body, she turned to him, eyes large and still lost.

“I don't know.”

Chapter 2

Black Box