“He wouldn’t want you to save him!” she said in a near scream. I jumped into the air, trying to rise over the rocky wall only to find that she was faster, raising to bat me back down again. I crashed to the ground, instinctively swinging to catch my claws against hers. They clashed and I tried to push her over, but she managed to shove back against me with a matching strength. I was caught off guard and fell again, her blades slipping down and slicing the unprotected inside of my hand before she could stop herself.
She tumbled to the side but was back up instantly, gritting her teeth.
“You can’t die,” she said, sobbing again through her fury. “I was weak before, but I can’t be now. I can’t let you die.”
I bent over, out of breath. I was bleeding from my hand. I looked up to her and saw that her face was covered in alarm at the blood she’d drawn, her claws pulling back quickly.
“You’d rather let him die instead?” I said through my teeth. I wiped my hands down my jeans, trying to clear them of the red, to wipe away the sting.
“You’re the only hope left,” she begged me. “You can’t. You have to let him go.”
“I won’t,” I said with resolve. “You can’t keep me here. I won’t let him die alone.”
Finally, she broke down. She spun, throwing her hands down so that the end of the cliff was open in front of me.
“Fine!” she shouted. “Go, if you want. But I’m not going to die fighting again. I’ll just die here when you do.”
She backed away, gesturing toward the open edge in bitter insistence. The whole of the San Fernando Valley spread beyond her, painted over by the sun’s rays, calling to me to go out. My urge to fight her vanished the moment she gave up. I could see behind her insistence was a longing to hold me back—a duty, even, because she knew exactly what would happen to me when I left.
I knew what I would face. It took all of my strength to tear myself from against the rocky wall, to walk past Callista who still remained hopeful that I would change my mind. I got to the edge and stopped.
Callista stayed behind me, refusing to follow.
“Will you look for me in our next life again?” I asked her. I should have wished she wouldn’t, that somehow she could be disconnected from me so in our next life she could live as a human and never face any of this again. But I didn’t want to leave her. Deep inside, I hoped that if I died, she would be there again in seventeen years, and somehow we would rediscover everything again, and pick up where we left off.
She didn’t say anything back. Maybe she had finally hardened her heart enough to be strong, to keep our promise. So without another word, I pushed myself from the cliff and left to save my friend.
22
Danger To Society
When you are a seventeen-year-old suspected terrorist, there is no shortage of ways to get yourself caught. If I’d wanted fanfare, I could have walked in to a TV news studio and announced my presence, to allow the cameras enough time to grab their startled close-ups before the police arrived. If I wanted to perpetuate the dangerous image they’d already created for me, then I could have walked through the park in the daylight, acting suspicious until someone finally recognized me and a special team was dispatched with helicopters lest I escape. They were all very good options, and I thought hard over my choices as I flew over the city.
In the end, though, I went with the simplest and most boring. I walked in to the first police station I spotted and told the uniformed woman at the counter that I was Michael Asher. At first, she didn’t seem to believe me, telephone resting an inch from her ear, the person on the other side still babbling away. One quick glance of her eyes matched my face to the one on the wanted poster already pasted to the wall beside her.
What followed was a flurry boots, of shouts for me to kneel and place my hands on the back of my head, to lay flat as a startled set of officers rushed to check me for explosives. I lay still as they patted me down, handcuffed me, checked my pockets and under my shirt and around my legs, certain they were overlooking weapons of some sort. When they ran a metal detector wand over me, I expected it to beep when it passed over my hands, but it didn’t.
I was hoisted to stand, pulled by a hastily formed battalion of officers through the back door and toward a cruiser already waiting for me. Somehow the press had gotten wind of my capture. The second the door popped open, a flurry of camera flashes and yelling rushed from gathered reporters. The officers formed a wall around me, struggling to keep the cameras away as I was dragged through the crowd. I tried to show as little emotion as I could; I knew this scene would appear on the evening news. When they showed my picture across all the screens in Arleta, I wanted to look as little like a murderer as I could.
But what was the point, anyway? They’d made their judgments long ago. When I met the fleeting gazes of the reporters, I could see they all feared me, frightened that such a normal-looking teen could have committed such horrible crimes. I knew they’d go back to the office, shaking their heads, saying to themselves, “Of course: all the worst criminals look just like us.”
The officers shoved me into the car and I was driven away with my hands still bound and the bars on the windows blocking out some of the cameras as their lenses scraped my window for a shot. I wondered what my Glimpse was showing at that moment. If I died that day, would I find all these articles about me seventeen years in the future, and get the chance to look back and read myself?
I pushed the thought aside. I had to focus, to plan, to find a way to fix all of this. I would. I always did, in the end.
The line of police cars rocketed off with us in the center, leaving the shouting flood of reporters behind. I tried to settle down into the uncomfortable seat, to calm my nerves with slow and deep breaths. Nothing helped.
At the next station, I was locked in a holding cell by myself. I sat on the hard metal bench against the wall, surrounded on all sides by thick metal bars that offered no privacy from the security camera in the ceiling. My presence had thrown the entire department into disarray, no one knowing for sure who should call who, if the FBI or the CIA were coming, if they should question me or wait. My mother’s death made things worse because I was still a minor and so there was no parent to call. Anytime an officer passed, their eyes would stray to me then dart away again. It was like they kept waiting for me to say something, to make a threat or confession. I just sat wordlessly.
The Guardians already knew I was there. Now, it was a waiting game.
As the hours passed, I lay down on the coarse bench and stared at the fluorescent ceiling panels. The floor of my cage and of the large room outside was made of a dull concrete that echoed sounds through the door and the hall beyond it. The voices of the panicked officers outside were masked by the sounds of the television that hung high in the corner of the room, its old speakers buzzing anytime a commercial got too loud. Its picture was yellowed and had a static line going through the middle.
Surely the Guardians would send someone soon? There was no way everyone in town didn’t know by now.
As if on cue, the commercial that had been blathering away on the television ended and the evening news started. I turned my head to the side to see better. As expected, my face was the first to appear.
“Local terrorist Michael Asher has been captured by Beverly Hills police officers in what has been one of the most dramatic and horrifying cases to sweep Southern California this decade,” the female anchor said, an absolute void of empathy behind her tone. Local terrorist? I pressed my lips together wryly. Now there’s something to add to my resume.
She listed my suspected crimes, which had grown from mere family-murdering and house-burning to an inventory of previously unsolved murders and bomb threats. Again, they pulled up all the necessary sources: kids from school thrilled to talk about that weird Michael Asher kid who read their minds, but was obviously just a clever fraud. Our former next-door neighbor, who said she’d seen me sneak out late at night to practice witchcraft. And finally, Mrs. Milo, wide eyed with her hair all a mess, proclaiming that she couldn’t find her husband anywhere now and that I had surely kidnapped him.