“Yes,” Pax said. “I’m fine.”
“Bullshit!” Julie tried to calm down, aware the monitor was beeping faster again. “That’s not possible, Pax. There is no spontaneous remission with this! There’s no way you can just suddenly feel better and go for a fucking walk!”
“Mom, I’m fine.”
“You shouldn’t be!” The words came out as a shout, and as she said them, Julie knew she was more than just angry. She was frightened. It wasn’t possible for someone to get better from acute diffuse scleroderma. Not so fast. Not at all. “You should be in a hospital bed, Pax!”
“No!” said Pax, and there was a vehemence in his voice she’d never heard before. “I’m not going back into a hospital bed. Ever. I’m not going to be your guinea pig again.”
“Dammit, Pax, that’s not why you should be in a bed. You’re dying!”
“Not anymore, I’m not!”
“You should be!”
“You’d like that, wouldn’t you?” snapped Pax. “Like me back in bed so you can stick me with needles some more and find out new ways to make the pain last even longer. Well, I’m not going back.”
“Enough of this!” said a nurse from the door. She was a small woman, with dark skin and hair pulled back in a bun and a look in her eyes that promised mayhem if Pax didn’t listen. “This woman’s had a heart attack! You need to calm down!”
“No,” said Pax. “I need to go. I’ll see you when you get out of ICU.”
“Pax!” Julie watched him turn away and head for the door. “Goddamn you, Pax! You get back here!”
Pax didn’t even turn around.
Akllana’chikni’pai sensed it when Scarlett stepped out into the sunlight. She felt the warmth sinking into Scarlett’s skin. Scarlett’s astral body immediately began processing some of it, converting the heat and light into energy for its use. There was too much for the body to use, of course, so some bounced off harmlessly. The tendrils of negative energy seemed to sense the sun as well. They writhed in what was almost a fury. They redoubled their attack, as if the touch of the sunlight was enough to send them into madness.
For the first time since being trapped the day before, Akllana’chikni’pai had a way out.
She put her swords away and let the tendrils wrap around her. They covered her in a smothering pile of wriggling, slimy flesh. Had they been corporeal, they would have stunk to high heaven, Akllana’chikni’pai thought. As it were, they were unpleasant and trying to be painful. She let them.
And while she let them, a thousand tendrils of her own, too microscopically small to be noticed by the negative energy, slipped out between the tentacles, joining with Scarlett’s own nerve endings and flesh and redirecting the sunlight’s energy into Akllana’chikni’pai’s own essence.
She wondered how long she had until the tendrils realized what she’d done.
Pax stomped out of the hospital and stood in the parking lot, taking in gulp after gulp of fresh air. He didn’t know what he was, but it wasn’t sick, and he wasn’t staying in the fucking hospital a day longer than he had to. No matter what Mom said.
It wasn’t like she even knew what was really going on. As far as his mom and her altered memories were concerned, Pax had had another heart attack and had been chest-paddled back to life. Then he’d sat up from bed perfectly healthy. But that was still enough to make her freak out and order him to go back into the hospital. Not even a “Thank God! I’m so happy you’re alive” or anything like that. Her first response was not to celebrate his recovery but to demand that reality accord to her expectation. Fuck that. There was no way he was going back to the hospital, not for anything.
Pax walked back to his mom’s apartment. He stopped once along the way to go into a Starbucks and have a coffee. He’d never had one before and was amazed at how much it cost. The smell was good. He tasted it, thought it was bitter and added sugar until it tasted right. He walked back out into the street.
I look almost normal, Pax thought. I just need some headphones, and I’ll blend right in.
He wished he’d thought to get his laptop from the hospital. And wishing that made him wish he had more money. He wasn’t sure what he was going to do when the money from his mom—maybe fifty dollars was left—ran out. Ask for more, he guessed. And where the hell is Terry? He’s supposed to be watching me and guiding me. How long could it take him to find Lana, anyway?
He reached the dull gray metal and glass building that was his mom’s apartment. At the front door, under a metallic awning, the doorman hesitated. He was a black guy in his thirties who looked like Neil deGrasse Tyson in disguise. He kept looking at Pax out of the corner of one eye. The guy finally brought Pax inside the building but made him wait in the lobby while the doorman called the hospital.
When he got off the phone, he looked more sympathetic. “You tell your mom to slow down and put her feet up once in a while. She’s been pushing too hard lately.”
Slow down? The man didn’t know his mother at all. “I will,” Pax lied.
“You’re lucky,” the doorman said. “You and your mom both. I’ll be saying some prayers for you two, all right?”
Pax nodded. The doorman pressed the elevator button for Pax. Thankfully the doors opened almost immediately. He stepped in. The doorman was still watching.
Was Pax reading too much into it, or did the doorman still look suspicious?
As soon as the doors closed, Pax checked himself over. Ten fingers, including fingernails. His skin looked like skin, complete with wrinkles across the knuckles. He was wearing Chucks, blue jeans, and another Sean John hoodie. He looked like he was supposed to look.
He stared at himself until the elevator door opened. The hallway on Mom’s floor had textured, fingerprint-resistant maroon walls. Hazy modernist art in black plastic frames hung along the hall. A potpourri-scented air freshener was plugged in behind the artificial ficus tree next to the rose-and-navy patterned chairs crouched upon the subtle leaf pattern on the carpet which screamed, “I’m here to hide stains!”
The hallways looked a lot like hospital waiting rooms. It made Pax shudder.
Maybe that was why his mom had picked this place: it felt familiar.
Pax slid the key in the lock. He wasn’t really sure why he’d come back, except he couldn’t figure out what else to do. It had been a nice day outside. The sky was bright, even though it was covered with a thin layer of clouds. Looking out the glass wall that was the apartment’s windows he could see the city below and around him. It was like looking down at a million possibilities. It felt like he could go anywhere and do anything, now that he’d escaped his hospital room. He leaned his head on the window. The glass was cool against his forehead.
He didn’t have a fucking clue where to go or what to do.
After a while, Pax wandered into the kitchen. One cupboard was full of meals in boxes—just add water. Soup, boxes of flavored rice, mac’n’cheese. The fridge had mostly bottled water and boxes of moldy takeout.
He dumped all the takeout containers into the trash. He pulled the trash bag out, tied it, and put it by the front door. He’d take it when he left.
In the bedroom, he stared at the bed where he and Scarlett had fucked. He tore the sheets off and found new ones in the cupboard. It took a bit of work, but he got the bed made again. He found his mother’s laundry room and put the old sheets into it. He’d wash them when he came back. He went back into the living room and found himself staring at the picture of the three of them together, just before everything went bad.
Memories came. Not memories of his father, but memories of what had happened after the man died. Of his mother’s fierce resentment. Of Mom screaming at him for always being sick, for taking up too much of her time, for destroying her life. She’d hit him sometimes. She’d told him it was his fault Dad had died—despite
the fact that Dad had died when Pax was four, in a plane crash that had nothing to do with him. When she looked at him, there was no tenderness or affection in her eyes.
Then she found out the diagnosis, and everything had changed. He could almost hear her blaming herself.
Pax stood up, reaching for the ceiling. It felt good. He looked over his human-shaped body and smiled. He’d find Terry again and find out what he had to do to keep humans from being blocked from the astral plane. He’d become a teacher and maybe even a superhero. Pax looked out the window again.
But not now.
Now, he was going out, to eat some diner food and maybe see another movie and go for a walk in the park. And then catch up with Scarlett at school. Maybe he could convince her to skip, and they could go back to her place. He grinned and headed for the door.
First step: find out what to do with the trash.
Akllana’chikni’pai, now cocooned in the tendrils of negative energy, waited. The energy from the sun was building up in her faster than she had expected. She let more and more of it pour into her through her tendrils, waiting for the moment when she could tear free of the tendrils and take over the girl’s body—or better, escape it and find one of her own.
She feared doing that, not because it would be at all difficult, but because of the way the darkness had fully intertwined itself with the girl’s body. It had to be driven out. Akllana’chikni’pai was sure of that, even if she didn’t know why.
Her tendrils had extended now, had pushed into the girl’s senses so Akllana’chikni’pai could see what she was doing, even if she couldn’t change things.
The girl was heading to school. Her backpack was bouncing on her shoulder and Scarlett was humming to herself. Akllana’chikni’pai could feel how much the girl hated everyone at the school, could feel the negative energy thriving off the hatred.
Maybe they are symbiotes, Akllana’chikni’pai thought. Maybe the tendrils live off the human energy and in turn make humans behave a certain way to create more negative energy.
It would certainly explain a lot about human behavior.
The processed stone path beneath the girl’s feet was pockmarked and splattered with filth. The air was scented with spoiled meat and sour milk, burning oil, and polluted waters. Machines traveled along the thoroughfares, stubbornly jostling each other like packs of donkeys. The great buildings of the city shadowed her, and the noise of the city devoured the sound of Scarlett’s footsteps.
Akllana’chikni’pai would have pitied the girl if she hadn’t known what lived inside her.
The girl entered a building made of baked red brick and gray mortar. It resembled a fortress, having only thin, deep-set slits for windows and few doors. Guards patrolled the armored doors, searching the children’s packs for forbidden materials and reminding them of their lowly status. The girl reached the front of the line, passed a gate emitting radio frequencies being used as a metal detector, and was waved through the door.
The building closed around her, cutting off what little sunlight reached the sealed-over earth and replacing it with weak, unsteady artificial lighting. Bodies pressed against her, shoving her from side to side. The stink of sweating flesh and rancid chemicals was overwhelming. The children sneered at each other, slaves competing for rank.
It was nothing like Akllana’chikni’pai’s temple at the top of the mountain. And yet she could not help but be reminded of it.
The temple walls had been made of large, rough-cut blocks of gray granite rippled with traces of iron and glittering with specks of quartz. She had smoothed the eastern wall until the stone had shone like glass at dawn, casting a bright mirror of light into the deep shadows of the jungle that crashed against the side of her mountain. The air was thin and cool and fresh; the ground covered with thin-petaled mountain blossoms: luminous purple, buttery gold, icy white.
She had thought it beautiful, once.
And then the priests had trapped her there.
It had been her own fault. The priests knew she loved the sun and the sky and used it as her source of power. They weren’t wrong. The energy of the sun was the strongest on Earth and she, like all other astral beings who lived there, used it to sustain herself. The priests had taken her far, far below ground and sealed her in, holding her there until her energy was nearly entirely depleted. From then on she was at their mercy, not even strong enough to pull the energy from the stones around her. When she had finally managed to escape, she’d decimated the entire civilization in her rage.
The children swept along the long, undifferentiated corridors, talking to each other, stopping to gather supplies, entering the minuscule, plain rooms where they would sit in rows, at desks. Everything about them seemed to cry, “I am owned… I am used… I am harvested…”
The girl entered a room full of rows of plastic and recycled-wood desks with glass screens set flat into their tops. Students sat and interfaced with the network. Excellent. It was almost as though the girl was responding to Akllana’chikni’pai’s subconscious influence.
The girl sat in front of one of the terminals. The other students nearby, dressed in identical uniforms, glanced at her and then returned to their work. The girl logged onto the network, checking messages and wandering idly around shallow entertainment sites. Doing nothing.
Killing time.
The trash chute was three apartments away from Mom’s, in the opposite direction from the elevator. Maybe that was why her fridge was full of half-rotten takeout; the trash chute was the wrong way, and Julie Black was never one to go out of her way when she was doing something.
Pax took the elevator to the street level and stepped outside. The sky was hazy but blue. It was still windy, and he was glad he’d worn his hoodie: not because he was cold but because it helped him fit in. It was too tight. He’d broadened his shoulders and chest when he’d rebuilt his body to appear more human, to match the body he always wore on the astral plane. He felt more comfortable in his astral body, anyway.
But it did mean he should probably get a bigger hoodie.
Where to go? He turned right and started walking.
Scarlett was at school, so he probably shouldn’t call her cell phone. Too bad he couldn’t talk to her in his mind the way he talked to Terry.
Wait a minute. Why can’t I?
Pax grinned in spite of himself. He kept forgetting: he wasn’t human anymore. Neither was Scarlett. They were astral. And if he could communicate with Terry through his mind, there shouldn’t be any reason why Pax couldn’t communicate with Scarlett.
He stopped and leaned back against a wall. Just another teenager. Nothing to see here, folks he thought. Now, how do I do this?
He tried to focus his mind on Scarlett, tried reaching out to her and seeing if he could find her. He sensed where she was and could almost see her, but he couldn’t quite reach her.
He kept walking. He passed a teenager wearing a faded blue hoodie with dangling, worn-out cuffs. The teenager shoved his hands into the pockets of his jeans.
After he passed the kid, Pax shoved his hands into his pockets, too.
Something smelled good. He didn’t know what it was. It wasn’t something he’d had in the hospital, that was for sure. He looked around and found himself staring at a falafel place. The sign said they had shawarma as well, whatever that was. He thought about going in and trying it but reminded himself he had only $50 left. He didn’t want to blow it all.
I’ll need I.D., too. And I should probably learn the subway so I can get around.
The wind gusted, picking up Starbucks cups off the street and rolling them past him. He wanted… he didn’t know what he wanted. He wanted to stop thinking so much. Just for a while. He wanted to walk around a town he’d lived in his whole life and pretend like he belonged here.
Scarlett had bought him
pants, underwear, socks, Chucks, and T-shirts. Not new clothes. Used ones from a thrift store, like he’d asked. He didn’t want new things. His whole body felt new.
Normal. He wanted to be normal.
Just for a little while.
He followed the side of the building onto the narrower cross street, which was packed with double-parked trucks. Moving vans. Big guys in tight T-shirts with moving company logos carried boxes and sofas out of the backs of the vans to a service entrance at the back.
Pax walked to the end of the block, crossed the street, and kept going. Manhattan wasn’t as busy as he’d expected. Not this part. Pax checked his cell phone: 9:02 a.m. Away from First Avenue, the buildings were all four-story brick apartment buildings. He passed a park with a dozen kids playing, parents sitting on benches, gripping the handles of their strollers. Tennis courts without any players.
After a few blocks, he crossed some mysterious boundary and the first floors of all the buildings became shops. Diners. Uniform rentals. A deli. He passed skinny trees planted in grated holes in the sidewalk. There must be an underground watering system. The streets were busier, with people going in and out of the shops.
There were more taxis now, more traffic. More smells of food. People smoking on the street. Car exhaust. The smell of trash, dirt. Sometimes the smell of flowers—a couple of the trees were blooming. When the wind gusted, the petals blew off the trees like snow.
Pax wanted to taste something. He wanted to walk into a deli, or a diner, or even a restaurant. The problem was, he didn’t know which one he should try. Some of the better ones had menus posted on their windows, and he read through them. He thought about burgers and fries and fried chicken and nachos. He didn’t know which one he wanted, so he left them alone. There’d be time to eat later, and he wasn’t really hungry.