Chuckles ring in my space with a familiar timbre. My own.
Elliot will know everything and he’ll hear it in my voice, from my lips. Layers and layers of horror wrap around me. What will this monster of a man do with all the secrets I should have protected? I have to stop it, but how? How?!
I’m still reeling when, suddenly, dark shapes slither around me.
No. The shadows have found me.
I shrink, defeated, waiting for them to encapsulate me. I thought I could fool my agent, figure out a way to regain control, but there’s no hope.
To my surprise, the shapes don’t attack. They just sit there, their dark masses shifting slowly, gaining depth, becoming sharper and distinguishable. I wait, trying to understand. Then, all at once, I realize what they are, and that knowledge is all I need to make them snap into clear focus.
Elliot and Doctor Sting hover over me, staring with twin, perplexed expressions on their faces.
I can see them. I’m not blind anymore!
I don’t know how or why. Maybe because the agent hasn’t been able to trap me, but it doesn’t matter. I can see and it’ll help me fight. It will be a reminder of what it is to be alive and why I should battle to take control back again. Not being shadowed allows me access to my hijacked senses.
I resolve to watch and learn. Watch and learn. All isn’t lost yet.
“Well, I can hardly wait to hear your tale,” Elliot says sarcastically, his golden eyes narrowed to slits.
“Unstrap me then. Go ahead, go ahead. What are you waiting for?”
Elliot leans forward, wearing a chilling expression. “I suggest you stop making demands and start talking. NOW.” He shouts the last word, pushing his leering face right in front of mine.
No, not my face. This body in which I’m a prisoner isn’t mine any longer. I’m trapped in a dusty corner of my mind and what used to belong to me is now under the command of an infection: a parasite that knows how to operate my brain, and has turned me into a negated variable inside a hacked program.
In the distance, I perceive a strange humming that is somewhat familiar. I strain to recognize it and then it hits me. It’s the buzzing I always felt whenever I was around Eklyptors. The agent is sensing Elliot.
A general state of submission flows all around my space, as if through that mental signal Elliot is stating his superiority. Could it be that the buzzing somehow establishes a rank among these creatures? Is that its purpose?
“All right. All right,” the agent says, growing meek. “Maybe give me, give me something for my burns. They hurt. Hurt like the devil.”
A blank stare from Elliot.
Another plea. “Okay, okay. Some water then, to clear my throat.”
He considers for a moment, then concedes. The agent’s voice sounds rough enough to justify a small nicety such as water.
After some rattling off to the side, Doctor Sting comes back and presses a metal cup to my, her, our, lips. There’s a swallowing noise followed by gurgling, which makes me aware of other sounds, like the rhythmic thudding of a heart and the constant whooshing that must be blood coursing through the agent’s veins.
“Thanks.” She sounds pathetically grateful. Or at least pretending to be because, from what little I’ve witnessed so far, such qualities aren’t part of the crazy creature usurping my body.
“Now,” Elliot takes the cup away and throws it to the floor, “You’d better start talking, Marci.”
“No, not Marci. I’m not Marci. Call me Azrael because I’m her angel of death, and she’s gone, gone, gone. GONE!”
Azrael? Really? I guess this stupid parasite doesn’t remember Gargamel’s cat? It’s true I haven’t watched The Smurfs since I was five, and I’ve read about the archangel of death more recently in social studies at school. But still.
“Stop this nonsense!”
“Sorry. Sorry. I’ll stop. Right now.” Azrael does a whine in the back of her throat like a chastised dog. Her voice has lost its initial edge and now sounds groveling and deeply submissive. I seethe in anger at her slimy cowardice. “But when I’m done, could you, could you unstrap me?”
“TALK!” Elliot screams, wrapping a hand around Azrael’s neck and squeezing.
“Okay, okay,” Azrael croaks.
Elliot lets go.
Azrael coughs and begins, “Uh, you want to understand why she, why I, she would betray her own kind. I can explain. Yes, I can.” A pause.
Elliot stares, unimpressed, impatience written all over his face.
“It’s ’cause she’s different. Different.”
No. No. No.
Elliot can’t know.
Azrael continues, my protests nothing more than words written in invisible ink. I’m a glitch in a computer with an operating system I can’t hack.
“This body’s different. I’ve been in here since she was nothing. Just two cells. In-vitro job. Should’ve been in control when she got a brain. She never let me. I tried and tried and tried. Nothing worked. Nothing. She was a step ahead. Always,” Azrael says bitterly.
“That is impossible,” Elliot says between his perfect, clenched teeth.
“No, no. It isn’t. They called themselves Symbiots. Fuckin’ Symbiots.”
STOP.
I fight to make myself heard, imagine growing a mouth, lips I can bite until they stop speaking, until they bleed. But all I manage to do is give my position away. Shadows reappear. They come after me and, this time, I don’t run. Instead, I attack, slicing with imagined swords but, when one specter breaks, another appears, then another and another.
“James is a Symbiot,” Azrael says, sounding winded. “There are three others. Three more. Yeah, three.”
SHUT UP. SHUT UP.
I kick and punch, attacking the thoughts as they form, trying to scatter them just the way the agent always scattered mine.
“No no no, you little hack. She’s still here,” Azrael says, jerking from side to side on the restraining chair. “I won’t let you. Never let you. I have you now. You’re mine. Mine.”
More shadows swarm, pouring, seeping, obscuring everything. I fight, visualizing arms as fast as windmills of light, slicing with speed, but still failing to make a difference because this fight is immaterial.
“The little bitch is fighting.” Azrael catches her breath. “But she won’t win. I’ll tell it all. All. You hear?”
Elliot’s mouth twists in distaste at the sight of what must look and sound like a psychotic Eklyptor. Is this how they all behave when they first come into being? Or have all the years trapped inside my head driven Azrael insane?
Gaining a bit of hope, I fight harder, faster. And it seems I’m making progress until my strength dwindles, slowing me down, then finally bringing me to a halt. I’m spent. I’ve been through hell and back, and the wisp that I’ve become only seems to get more ethereal the harder I fight. So much that I’m afraid I’ll disappear. So much that the shadows stop and just stare at me. I collapse inwardly. And I think I’ve become the ghost of a ghost. And I think maybe this is it. This is death.
Azrael exhales in relief. “She’s … she’s done for. Done for.”
“Go on, then,” Elliot orders.
“Yeah, yeah. Symbiots. I was talking about those Symbiots. Those little fuckers. Flukes. They can resist us. Not sure how. Can’t tell. It’s all jumbled up in here. Guess there had to be a few worth a damn out the millions. Filthy millions. James says there aren’t many. Nice little blessing, that.”
Elliot’s expression has shifted. His head is cocked to one side, his eyes alert. “So, I could sense you, but the human was in control. You couldn’t overtake the body?” He still sounds skeptical, but less so than a minute ago.
“That’s right, right, right,” Azrael says.
“Remarkable,” Doctor Sting butts in.
Elliot puts up a hand to silence him, eyes flashing with irritation.
“And that thing, that thing she did with the knife,” Azrael says, “the little bitch has been using me. They all do it, then call themselves Symbiots, ’cause they use us. They steal. She punished me, made her mind so empty, empty. Tortured me, the little creep. Damn her. Felt so special making things move, but she’s not special. She’s nothing without me. NOTHING.”
The sounds of agitated breaths join the fast thumping of my stolen heart.
“Can we trust this?” Elliot asks.
“It would explain why she was fighting alongside the humans and the rumors we’ve heard about superpowers during some of the battles against the Igniters,” Doctor Sting says with a shrug.
Elliot looks almost convinced.
“Trust me. You can trust me,” Azrael blurts out. “And you will. I’ll tell you where their hidey-hole is. Yes, I’ll tell you. It’s made of glass, of light. Right under your nose, all, all, all this time. Tried to tell you, but you couldn’t hear me. Unstrap me. To go there, go and tear it all down. Make them pay, make her pay.”
A maniacal laugh erupts out of Azrael once more. Elliot and Doctor Sting watch with mild distaste. The laughter grows more deranged, almost like an involuntary spasm. She’s crazy, crazier than the game room at a psychiatric ward.
“It’s perfect,” Azrael says. “Just perfect. I’ll go. I’ll kill them all. The best part? She’ll see everything and be able to do nothing, nada, zilch.”
Slowly, all the shadows around me pull away as if they can’t see me, leaving me alone. I imagine myself shrinking, folding into myself, reduced by fear and remorse. I thought that being able to hear and see from this prison could help, but now I know I was wrong. This is worse than being shadowed, cut off from all sights and sounds. Because this wisp that I’ve been reduced to—this state of knowing without really being—is the most excruciating torture imaginable. And Azrael knows it and intends to use it against me, intends to make me watch all the destruction and death. Worse yet, she plans to let me drown in guilt, because whatever happens to IgNiTe after today is my fault.
All my fault.
Up until now, I had thought my life was pointless. Now, however, I wish it really was, because the knowledge that I was born to bring destruction to humanity’s only hope is far worse than having no purpose at all.