Chapter 17

There was no small amount of apprehension in Evie’s eyes as Charlotte and I stepped into the room a few minutes later. The trip from one bedroom to the other had only been delayed by my need to check to ensure Toussant hadn’t passed out on me. I read somewhere that seventy-two hours of sleep deprivation produced the same symptoms as the early stages of psychosis. My captive had recently surpassed ninety. His breathing had taken on a long, drawn-out, shallow timbre like his lungs were ratting just from the exertion of having to work. But if there was one thing more immediate than Toussant’s need to sleep, I imagined, it was the pain. There was a sharp gasp from his lips as I jabbed the toe of my shoe into the burned, peeling flesh. The skin on his lower extremities looked like it was made of melted candle wax which had quickly and unevenly reformed, loosely clinging to the bone and muscle beneath but could be pulled free with little more than a tug.

“Yup, he’s awake.”

And then, I turned back to the task of introducing Charlotte to Evie. My closest friend had watched the macabre display with about as much compassion as I felt. Absolutely zero. For reasons which I couldn’t adequately explain, I was surprisingly proud of her for that. Perhaps it was a knowledge that she would see this thing through to the end; perhaps it was because I knew that she would do whatever it took to see the job done - or at least allow me to. But I was also self-aware enough to know that maybe, just maybe, if she could excuse my behavior, then so could I. As long as she didn’t turn away in disgust, I hadn’t turned into the same animal I was hunting. At that moment, however, the part of me even considering the idea that my actions were crossing a line was incomprehensibly small.

Charlotte stepped into Evie’s room with all of the grace, composure, and confidence I had come to expect from her. Evie rose to her feet. After hearing the wails, the sobs, and the heartbreak coming through the wall for the last half a day, she was doubtlessly under no illusions as to who this beautiful woman was. She was, in a very literal way, her judge and jury.

“Charlotte, this is Evelyn, Evie for short. Evie, this is Charlotte,” I said coldly and calmly as I closed the door behind me. Evie couldn’t have known it, but she had just passed a threshold. There was no going back now. She was either going to leave this room alive and well. Or she wouldn’t.

Charlotte smiled one of those gloriously disarming smiles. “Evie, it’s very nice to meet you. Please, sit down.”

Evie returned the smile nervously and lowered herself onto the edge of the bed. Her fingers worked nervously against the surprisingly tidy sheets. “Please,” she whimpered. “I just want to go home.”

“I know,” Charlotte said, still holding the smile as she pulled a simple wooden chair from its place against the wall, set it down in front of Evie, and sat on it. “I know you are frightened, and you are probably very confused about this whole situation.”

“I am!” Evie almost sobbed, tears building in her eyes at the faintest hope that there may have been a new ally in the room. “I don’t know anything. I don’t know what is going on. All I know is that some men grabbed me, and then Pete rescued me, but they killed ... someone ... his friend, and now he ... he thinks I am involved. But I’m not; I swear I’m not.”

“Shhh, shhh, shhh,” Charlotte whispered, calming the blonde, who was starting to get a little hysterical. “Evie, I want you to understand something. Pete has told me everything that has happened, but the people he is dealing with are...” She paused for a few moments, apparently trying to think of the right word. “Well, they’re evil! There is no other way to explain it. We are talking about people who make the Nazis look reasonable. But he was wrong about something...”

I cocked my head to the side, listening carefully.

“He told you that you were either guilty or you were innocent. I’m afraid it isn’t quite that simple. The truth is that you are either guilty or someone has gone to a lot of trouble to make you look like you are. Now Pete has been sucked into this war, it’s sort of how he met me, and in a very short time, two people who were very important to him have been killed. And both of them really were innocent.”

Evie cast a sympathetic glance at me.

“Now, Pete is an incredibly powerful man,” Charlotte went on. “I don’t think you are ever really going to understand what that means, but for the purposes of this explanation, let’s just say he is a warrior who scares the shit out of our enemy. Pete is a blunt-force weapon; he is brute-strength, and he is far from subtle. But, to his credit, he has shown a remarkable amount of restraint when it comes to you. I will be honest, I am not sure many other people in his position would have. It may not be much, but the fact that you are alive for us to have this conversation, for us to find the truth, should show you how much he thinks of you. He really does want you to be innocent.”

Evie took a deep breath and nodded.

“I want you to close your eyes.” The tears started flowing again, and Evie’s hands resumed worrying the sheets. A desperate, pleading look washed over her face. She looked like a woman who knew she was about to be executed. “Evie, calm down,” Charlotte whispered. “Nothing is going to happen to you. It’s an exercise to help you remember, that’s all. As long as you tell us the truth, the whole truth, nothing bad is going to happen to you. I promise.”

Evie took another deep breath and slowly closed her eyes.

“You were right,” her voice sounded in my mind. “She isn’t human. I can’t get a read on her at all. Do you have a way to use that fancy computer of yours?”

“Always,” I answered levelly.

“Okay, great. I want you, Jeeves, and your computer to check everything she says. If you need to ask a question, tell me, and I will ask it. Without getting into her mind, we are going to have to do this the old-fashioned way.”

“Let’s start at the beginning,” Charlotte said calmly and softly after a few moments’ pause. “I want you to tell me what you were doing before all of this started. Were you at home?”

“Yes,” Evie nodded. “I was putting the final touches to my project for college. I was actually thinking about Pete; he was the only person who seemed to understand it.”

“Good, you’re doing good. Then what happened?”

“I...” Evie frowned. “I heard a noise out my window. I went to see what it was. It sounded like breaking glass, and I wanted to make sure it wasn’t Lori’s car.”

“Lori has gone home for Christmas, right?”

“Yes, she has taken Jimmy to meet her parents.”

“Then why would her car be outside?”

“She didn’t want to drive that far. They took the train.”

“Jeeves?”

“Confirmed, Sir. Train tickets were bought with Jimmy’s bank card, and security footage shows them boarding the train.”

I nodded to Charlotte.

“Okay. What did you see when you looked outside?”

“Nothing, it was too dark. Someone broke the street light outside the apartment weeks ago, and it hasn’t been fixed yet. It was pitch black. I went to put my shoes on to go and check.”

“And what did you see when you went outside?”

Evie frowned again. “I ... I didn’t make it outside. I think I ... Everything is fuzzy,” Charlotte was about to speak again when Evie stiffened. “There was someone in the apartment!”

“You heard them?”

“No, I turned around to get my shoes, and they were just there, standing right behind me!”

“They? How many men were there, Evie?”

“They sprayed something in my face! God, it burned!”

“Slow down; you are safe here. How many men were there?”

“Umm, I don’t ... three, I think, I don’t know. It happened so fast.”

“Jeeves?”

“I’m sorry, Sir. There is no evidence of three men being near her apartment on the night in question. Although I can confirm multiple calls made to the town council from residents of the street complaining about the broken street light. And there does appear to be some damage to Lori’s vehicle.”

I cast a look at Charlotte and shook my head, relaying what Jeeves had told me. Charlotte sighed but then frowned. I could feel the thoughts being processed inside her mind. “Evie. When did this happen?”

“What do you mean? It was the night Pete rescued me.”

“Christmas Eve?”

“What? No. Christmas Eve is not until Tuesday ... I’ve been here three nights, so today is...” She frowned again. “Monday? Christmas Eve is tomorrow. This was Friday night.”

“Evie. Today is the 27th. Pete rescued you on Christmas Eve.”

“What? No, that impos ... It was Friday night!”

I relayed the information to Charlotte.

“So they knocked her out and kept her that way for four days?” She asked wearily. “That doesn’t make sense either.”

“A lot of this doesn’t make sense.”

“Evie, I want you to think carefully. They sprayed something in your face. What happened then?”

“It burned!” she whimpered again. “It felt like my eyes were on fire. It looked like a deodorant can, but,” She frowned for a second. “But everything went dark and ... Jesus, what the hell did they do to me?”

My ears pricked up; Charlotte noticed it too. Our eyes met with the same mutual question.

“That can’t be a fucking coincidence!” I growled, images of the can used by Sterling to knock me out on the street before his attack on my mind washed through my head. That had looked like a deodorant can to me, too. Now that I thought about it; my memory was fuzzy about the whole thing as well. I clearly remembered him spraying me, large parts of the illusion, and the whole fight with him were crystal clear, but I couldn’t for the life of me remember where we were when I had left the mindscape after my victory. In fact, the first thing I remembered about the real world after that whole encounter was sitting in my apartment with Sterling on the floor in the kitchen. I had no idea how I got him there, but I seemed to know that I hadn’t broken free of the illusion in my apartment. That had happened somewhere else!

“Evie, I want you to think about the next time you woke up, the furthest thing back before Pete rescued you” Charlotte asked before waiting for my answer.

“I...” There was another frown. “I smelled smoke. There were shouts and screams and lots of banging. I think it was the banging that woke me up.”

Charlotte looked over to me with an arched eyebrow, silently asking the question. I was pinching the bridge of my nose but nodded. Those bangs could easily have come from the gunshots, the catwalk being ripped off, the building being blown apart by the energy bolt or any number of things during the fight with Toussant and his men. They had stashed her somewhere out of the way, and I had simply turned up to rescue Becky before they could do anything about Evie.

“Okay, Evie,” Charlotte said after a short pause. “You can open your eyes now.”

There was no small amount of shock on her face when she opened her eyes and flicked them nervously between Charlotte and me. Nobody needed to have powers to translate the look of frustration on my face, nor the look of concern on Charlotte’s. “I don’t know anything else; I swear I don’t,” Evie pleaded, apparently not garnering any confidence from what she saw on our faces.

Charlotte looked back at her and smiled. “It’s okay. We believe you.”

“You do?”

Charlotte smiled again and nodded.

“I ... I can go home?”

“Evie, I don’t think that is a good idea,” Charlotte said slowly.

“But why? I answered all of your questions.”

“I know you did,” Charlotte said reassuringly. “It’s not because of you. If you are telling the truth - and we believe that you are - that means that a few of these people are still out there, and they know where you live.”

Evie’s face drained of color in an instant. “But ... I don’t know anything about you either ... clearly,” she gestured to me. “I’m not part of this.”

“Neither was Becky,” I said simply. “And they killed her anyway. Her only crime was knowing me... you know me, and they know that. Otherwise, they wouldn’t have taken you in the first place.”

Evie was silent for a long moment before she started sobbing quietly. “What am I going to do?”

“You are going to stay here, where it’s safe, until we know that you will be okay at home,” Charlotte smiled softly. “I know. It’s not ideal, and I really am sorry about that, but...”

Evie sniffed, wiped her face with the back of her hand, and nodded. “I understand,” she said when it became clear that Charlotte couldn’t finish the sentence. “You want to make sure I don’t end up like Becky.” She froze for a moment. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it to come out like that. I just ... I don’t understand what is going on, and I’m scared.” Her whole body seemed to sag as she resigned herself to the inevitable.

Charlotte cast a glance at me. I took a deep breath and nodded. She didn’t need to project her thoughts to mine to ask the question. We both knew what was coming next.

“Evie, honey,” Charlotte said softly. “There is something else we need to talk about.”

Evie raised her eyes cautiously. Charlotte’s smile was still as disarming and reassuring as it had been when she first entered the room. I could see the bedside manner that made her such a great nurse. But now she was looking at Evie with an air of curiosity.

“I’m not sure how to say this. But I don’t think you are ... human.”

“What?” Evie’s face scrunched up in confusion.

“Can I take your hand?” Charlotte asked, holding out hers.

Evie glanced down at it, shot a quick look at me, then slowly and tentatively reached her hand for Charlotte’s.

The hours marched on in the inexorable way they always have, as Charlotte told Evie everything. She told her about the Evos; she told her about our powers, our bunkers, our cities, and our ongoing war with the Inquisitors. She told her about the mindscape and our ability to see inside the minds of normal humans. Evie, for the most part, sat and listened in silence. Only asking the odd question, but otherwise just taking it all in. I imagine that Charlotte was using the same calming technique that Marco had used when he had awoken me, because the more I listened to all of it, the more I realized how utterly ridiculous all of this would sound to the average person. Yet Evie was just listening.

“You see,” Charlotte explained. “When people like Pete or I look into the mind of a normal human, we see an avatar of them standing in the middle of a field. What we are seeing is an avatar of how that person sees themselves. Like their own mental picture of who they are. But, in humans, that avatar doesn’t move; it doesn’t speak unless we ask it something. It just stands there. You are different.”

“I am?”

“Yes, It’s actually quite beautiful,” Charlotte smiled. Evie beamed, looking over at me for a moment. I nodded in agreement. “With you, you are responsive; you are sitting around a campfire. It is so peaceful and serene. You look up at us, and you communicate. But what is truly remarkable about your mind is that we cannot read it at all unless we are touching you.” Both of them glanced down at their joined hands. “That is why Pete lost you when you were taken. With everyone else he cares about, he could see their minds, even from hundreds of miles away. He knew if they were in trouble or not, but with you, he has never been able to see you unless he was physically touching you. He saw Becky’s mind, he felt her fear and her pain, he followed her to that warehouse and found you. The last person he expected to be there.”