Jane undressed herself and tossed her clothes on the floor. They wouldn’t get wet simply because she didn’t allow them to get wet.
Then she walked toward the shower and turned it on. To her great dismay water refused to come out. Instead, the showerhead splashed blood in her face and a metallic aroma quickly dominated the bathroom.
“Fuck. Fuck. Fuck! It’s beginning. I’m too late!”
She turned off the shower and grabbed a towel to wipe the blood from her face. It was probably in her hair too, she realized.
With a deep breath Jane walked back to the door and turned off the light. She had to wake up now or she’d make a terrible mess.
She left the bathroom and stepped back into the hallway. As she did so she saw how a giant stream of blood had begun to flood her mental house. The awful substance already reached all the way to the last step of the stairs and filled the house with a scent of rot and decay.
In the distance Jane could hear the little girls giggling. They were probably swimming around in the blood, unaware of its true nature. What it really meant.
Jane knew what it meant. Her brain was bleeding.
“Have to wake up now. Can’t stay here. Fuck!”
Five… four…. The stream of blood filled the hallway, embracing her naked ankles.
Three… two…. It reached all the way to her knees, gushing against her with a force that almost tipped her over.
One…. Wake the fuck up!
Jane opened her eyes and threw her body forward.
She tried to swallow it, she really did, but she couldn’t. When she gasped for air at the wrong moment the blood ran down her windpipe and threatened to drown her lungs.
With loud and violent spasms she coughed up the blood that came running from her brain, trying to raise a hand to appease Caleb in the process.
She couldn’t tell him not to worry. That she knew what it was and that it would pass. All she could do was cough, and wheeze, and curse the God she knew didn’t exist for this horrible torture.
Agent Bradford sat at a table in the corner of Sparky’s Diner. It was still early and, if he had paid attention, he could have appreciated the gentle sunlight coming through the large window to his right.
Instead, Agent Bradford was reading through the documents one of his colleagues had sent him on a man named Roger Wheeley. Who was Roger Wheeley? What had happened to the man to make him of any interest to his current work? Agent Bradford honestly didn’t know.
All Agent Bradford knew was that Jane Elring had sent him a message last night, or rather in the early morning at around three, asking him to pull the man’s records. His phone buzzing had woken him up and, worried something was wrong with his family, he had looked right away.
It had only been Jane at the ungodly hour, asking of him things that he didn’t rightfully understand and that he would have loved to ignore. But doing so would have meant going against his direct orders. Whether he liked it or not, his job was to facilitate the young woman.
So Agent Bradford had put in the request for Roger Wheeley’s files roughly fifteen minutes after Jane’s message, before going back to sleep.
Now he sat reading through those files while allowing his coffee to get cold and ignoring the beautiful day it was shaping up to be. What was it that Jane wanted to know about this guy? What did a man from Cleveland have to do with the things going on over here in Alabama?
The door to Sparky’s Diner opened and the two people Agent Bradford didn’t want to see stepped inside. Of course they immediately found him, too.
Agent Bradford watched as Jane and her bodyguard walked toward him. The girl looked like shit. Her skin was deathly pale and her eyes were red, as if she had been crying. Her blonde hair was a mess, dancing wildly on top of her head.
Her bodyguard looked a lot sharper, on edge almost. As if he was ready to strike down whatever stood in his way.
Agent Bradford knew that a man like Caleb could snap under pressure. He had done some digging on him and learned that he got kicked out of the army after going AWOL. In a way it made sense that Jane chose to employ him; a man with a frail mind was easily manipulated.
Men with frail minds could still pose a physical problem, though, and Agent Bradford was well aware that it might come to that. If he could avoid it, he would. A physical conflict didn’t serve him. In fact, it would only make his real job of keeping Jane in check more difficult.
It was Jane he had to watch out for, Agent Bradford told himself. She was pulling all the strings and she was the one with real power in this situation. Whether her fat oaf of a bodyguard understood that or not.
The unlikely pair sat down at his table and Agent Bradford reached inside his right pocket. It probably wouldn’t come to anything in here, but holding the button just made him feel more secure. Like he was on equal footing with her. She could walk around in his head all she liked; if he wanted her to stop, he could knock her right out cold.
Jane sighed as she dropped her head slightly, clenching her hair with both hands. She looked awfully frustrated.
It was Caleb who said, “She can’t talk right now. She had some kind of attack or something.”
“Oh. With the blood?”
“Yeah. She coughed up a fair amount.”
“Where was it? Did people see?”
“A few, yeah. It was outside the hospital.”
Agent Bradford shook his head. It would probably be alright this time, but she knew she shouldn’t draw any unnecessary attention to herself. This was exactly what he meant. The girl wasn’t cut out for this stuff. She didn’t have the self-control needed to go along with the abilities she possessed.
Caleb said, “Anyway, she wants me to ask if you got her message last night.”
Briefly Agent Bradford wondered how Caleb knew what she wanted if she couldn’t speak. Then he realized she must have communicated it directly to him, the same way she had done in all those research trials when she steered blindfolded people through the most elaborate mazes.
This meant that Caleb knew what she was. What she could do. A year ago that would have been a transgression that could have killed her, but things had changed. Dr. Greer was adamant they would “observe her integration in society” and this left her free, in part, to build relationships with new people. Agent Bradford thought the doctor was an idiot, even if he was also a genius.
He wondered how Caleb felt about having a stranger’s voice walking through his head. Turning out commands that were completely foreign and unrelatable. If it bothered the bodyguard, he didn’t show it right now.
Agent Bradford hated it. The strange sensation of another person inside his head. Whispering things to him that he couldn’t understand or that made him feel uncomfortable about himself. He had told the girl never to do it again and she had listened to him. He didn’t even have to threaten her with the button on that one.
Caleb repeated, “So did you? Get her message?”
Realizing Caleb was only the translator in all of this, Agent Bradford steered his eyes toward the exhausted girl in front of him.
“I got your message just fine. Pretty shitty time to send it. You woke me up. Had me thinking something was going on with my family.”
Jane just blinked her tired, red eyes.
Agent Bradford could never read her face to know what she was really feeling, but at least she didn’t bother with the creepy smiles this time.
“I pulled the man’s files. Roger Wheeley? I got them for you. I’m reading through them to see if I have to redact anything. Then I’ll send it all your way.”
A waitress with curly red hair approached the table and Agent Bradford found himself looking at her slightly longer than was appropriate. She reminded him of Becky. Sweet Becky, who was alone with their kids now. Always just a little too kind, a little too soft.