I run through pitch-black.
I scream with no voice.
I cry with no tears.
Shadows chase me. Endlessly.
I’ve been running, dodging, hiding forever, too confused to fight and afraid of being shadowed like it happened once before. They want to imprison me. I won’t allow it. Not again. Not ever. I remember vividly what it felt to be in their clutches—shadows encasing me, trapping my consciousness in a bubble inside my own brain, keeping me from the physical world while the agent, this infectious parasite that has taken residence in my brain, snatched the reins of my body.
All hope would end if they catch me.
I morph to smoke, slide from one synapse to another. The chase takes a lifetime … or maybe just one second. Either way, I adapt and learn and find the best places to hide, the untouched crevices inside my consciousness where not even the agent has thought to send its specter army.
For now, I hide, skulk.
If I succeed, maybe later I can prowl.
At the moment, I am the shadow.
Why did this happen? Would this have been James, Aydan, Rheema’s fate if Doctor Sting had tortured them? Maybe I’m just that weak. Maybe I held on longer than they ever could.
“What are you saying?” A question echoes through the cavernous space where I hide. The whole world seems to vibrate with the sound.
I cower. Where is it coming from? Is it an echo from the past? A memory, maybe?
“Just what I said.” A second voice. “She threw a knife at me. With her mind. She was strapped to the chair. She looked at the knife. The knife flew in my direction. I stopped it just in time.”
God. Oh, God. I can hear them.
I whirl, searching for the source of the voices, but they’re all around me, through me and, at the same time, nowhere at all. They permeate the utter darkness that surrounds me. And it’s worse, much worse than simply being blind while an unseen world revolves around you.
“Strange,” the first voice says, clearly disbelieving the knife story.
The British accent registers for the first time. Elliot.
“Well, is she ready to talk?” he asks.
“I don’t know. She passed out.”
“Let’s wake her, then.”
Steps. A splash. Gasps. “Argh, fuck!” A curse word spoken in … my voice.
A curse word I didn’t say. God, the agent!
“Your hand looks a mess, Marci,” Elliot says. “For your own sake, I hope you are ready to tell me what I need to know.”
“That fucking bitch, bitch, bitch.” My stolen voice again.
The sound is eerie, like a bizarre dream from a bizarre universe. And I know that if I had a body, chills would be rippling down my skin. But I’m nothing. Nothing.
Suddenly, light explodes around me, consuming the darkness. I want to hide, but there’s nowhere to go. The brightness subsides by degrees as I struggle to comprehend what is happening.
“I understand the need to insult me,” Doctor Sting says. “But I’m clearly male, so I’d say the only bitch here is you.”
“Not you,” my voice, hoarse and weak. “The human. The little witch bitch. But she’s gone now, and I’m free, free. If I could just find her, catch her, trap her, I’d—”
My agent sounds deranged, rambling, repeating everything. God, is this what’s been living inside of me all this time?
“What game is this?” Elliot demands.
“No game. Nope. I’m ready to talk. Ready to tell it all. All. All. Isn’t that what you want? Huh? Huh? And when you hear what I’ve got to tell you, Elliot Whitehouse. You’ll shit a brick. A big, fat brick.”