Hear No More: Gemination, #1

My name is Leyla Stone. It wasn’t before, and it wasn’t after, but it was then. It’s the only one that matters.

I am but one of almost ten billion people on our planet. We are all, whether conscious of it or not, driven by a deep sense of inner restlessness. This restlessness has a purpose. It’s designed to transform us, to open a door that will set us on fire and emerge, renewed or charred, on the other side. We’re born to realize who we are.

Most of us manage to bury the restlessness under an accrued mound of bills, overconsumption, and gadgets—endless distractions. We stop believing in possibility, and instead live vicariously through a box in our living room, which lulls us further and further into isolation, complacency, and acquiescence.

The box is a shapeshifter. Live in a box, drive in a box, work staring at a box sitting in a box, entertainment in a box—house, car, computer, cubicle, television... box, box, box, box, box. While all this is happening, a box in every hand demands constant attention—the cell phone. Fritter and waste.

But to turn away from the box? To indulge in the restlessness? To embrace possibility? Well that, my friend, will lead the advocate on an interesting journey. So, who am I? A glamorous spy, perhaps? A beautiful but dangerous maiden? No, I’m just like you, a mere mortal.

As mere mortals, a fragment of our human condition is the notion that something is coming. On the macro scale, I’m talking about the end of the world as we know it. This is known as The Rapture, The Apocalypse, Armageddon, Judgment Day, The End of Days.... Pick your poison. For as long as we’ve walked the Earth, we’ve waited for the end of the world, and we’ve waited for a hero to come and rescue us. It’s inherent for civilization to believe that the end is near, inherent to believe that whatever is coming will save us, liberate us. Yet what exactly do we seek liberation from? We look to the external environment to make right all that we feel is wrong inside of us. If only it were that simple. If only something or someone could do our work for us.

I’ll tell you right now, the only impending event is the dawn, and the only hero that approaches is the person looking back at you in the mirror every morning.

To believe the end is nigh gives us the excuse to do nothing. Why wake up if it’s all about to topple down anyway? Don’t make waves; just wait for the peaceful new world order to rise. Wait for the unicorns puking rainbows to arrive. Then we can get to work. Until then, continue to stare at the box. Pathetic. We’ve become weak. Evolution has ground to a halt, but it’s not entirely our fault.

Organizations of all kinds are usually formed with good intentions. What goes wrong is that we rarely account for the darker side of human nature, our capital vices—pride, anger, envy, greed, gluttony, sloth, and lust. Add fear and deceit to that and the list is complete. However, the argument can be made that only two emotions exist, and all others are but shadows of them. These emotions are love and fear, which translates into expansion and contraction of the physical body. Each of us lives our lives from a place of love or fear. Which is yours? Do you cower and fall back into your comfort zone? Or do you take a gamble and move forward? Ask yourself this: what is it you seek liberation from?

Make no mistake: if you only wait on destiny, it will never come. Conversely, if you desperately seek out destiny, you’ll overlook it. You must meet destiny halfway, but also recognize when it approaches, for destiny seldom looks like what we think it will, and it is often unwanted.

My destiny came to me out of a blue abeyance, and I followed him down a path so dark, so deep, that the edges of reality and delusion blurred together and time itself stood still. His name was Devlin Vail. That was always his name. It’s true that darkness cannot exist without light, but it’s also true that light cannot exist without darkness. They’re two sides of the same coin.

Here comes the first of many contradictions. Something is coming, something you don’t suspect and something you will not prefer. I tell you this for one reason: I’ve only bought you some time. Perhaps bought isn’t the correct word. I’ve paid a price, certainly, but I’ve not bought anything. Borrowed is more like it. I’ve borrowed time for you, as time was once borrowed for me. There’s plenty I don’t remember, but the Ether, it seems, has filled that in.

The world is not black and white, but it often comes down to two simple types of people: those who move, and those who do not.

Awake! There is no time.

My name is Leyla Stone. I’ve realized who I am. This is my story.

The dark alley loomed before him like a gauntlet. He stared into the ill-omened shadows with leveled determination, the deep of the night almost more than he could bear, the sky nothing but a blanket of blacked-out stars. A wave of vertigo swept over him and he quickly turned his eyes to the ground, stopping for a moment to take a few deep breaths to steady himself.

At first, the frigid air had helped him focus to some degree, but now it numbed him, burned his lungs, and almost convinced him this was all just a dream.

Hardening his resolve, he once again gazed ahead into the darkness, the alley walls narrowing into an ominous sliver of obscurities. A moment of claustrophobia seized him, rank with fear, reminding him of his old home, and he immediately felt trapped, like a wild animal. The paralysis of panic crept in subtly, threatening to overtake him, and he struggled against it. If fear took him, there would be no hope.

I’m out, he reminded himself. I escaped.

He willed himself forward, and his legs reluctantly obeyed, feeling heavy and leaden, as though walking through water. With each step, the darkness folded in around him like a wet cloak, heavy and oppressive. Yet, like a cloak, it also offered protection. The new moon above his head gave him a chance—a slim chance, but a chance nonetheless. That was all the time ahead amounted to—a chance—and he would take whatever he could get.

He walked on clumsily, his heavy footsteps echoing off the alley walls. He’d failed to find a way to tread carefully, and was starting to stumble—never a good sign. They would hear him, no doubt, but he was losing the battle to care. His intellect was dimming, and the panicky voice in the back of his mind, screaming at him to stay alert, grew quieter and quieter. Soon the warning bells would fall completely silent, lost in the dim.

He ran his fingers down the side of one wall, and they came away slick from the mist. So, his eyes weren’t playing tricks on him. The weird haze wasn’t a result of the withdrawal from the drugs that They had pumped into him.

Though a young man, he’d aged a lifetime in the last forty-eight hours... or however long it had been—he couldn’t say for sure. He’d run blindly for so long, all concept of time had been lost, and his physical condition had deteriorated rapidly. That’s where the drug withdrawal hit him the hardest: excruciating cramps spread through his torso like wildfire, every joint screamed, and heat poured off his kneecaps in waves of agony. His breath came in ragged gasps, his lungs on the verge of bursting, and he could feel the muscles beginning to tear loose from the ribs, as though they were strings wound too tightly, which would inevitably break from the strain.

Still, he invited it all in—the cold, the pain, and the delirium of it all. Being out, really out, felt so surreal. He inhaled deeply, wincing as the cold drove its icy fingers into his ribs. His muscles spasmed in response, but though the mere act of breathing caused him a great deal of pain, it nevertheless refreshed him. It felt good to breathe free air. In fact, this marked the first time he ever had.

The others had disappeared long ago, dropped off behind him one by one, like prey with no chance of outrunning their predator. He wondered briefly if they were still alive. If so, they’d be feeling much like him at this point—overwhelmed, exhausted, and on the verge of collapse. But one of them had to survive. One of them had to tell the truth—the actual truth, not the perceived truth—although he’d grown so weary, and the details were so intricate, he almost wasn’t sure which was which anymore.

The thought motivated him.

It has to be me.

Since he didn’t know who was alive and who was dead, it had to be him. He mentally slapped himself back to awareness, reinforced his hold on the precipice of consciousness, and clung there.

Focus.

He had to focus; this much he knew. One slip and it would be over, for They stalked him, surely just a step behind, and if he didn’t keep up his pace, They would quickly close the gap. If only he could pass through the alley undetected, he might be able to get lost in the crowds of the city.

It was not to be.

The noise came first, but his senses betrayed him in the moment, and he heard it a fraction of a second too late. The crunch of a bone resounded inside his skull. It must have been something in the inner ear, for his sense of balance went askew.

The shadows shifted and They came for him. He tried to stand his ground, to do what he’d been trained to do, but his loss of balance made it virtually impossible to defend himself, and They overpowered him quickly.

His grip on lucidity first loosened and then slipped altogether, and the periphery faded as he swayed on his feet. His vision blurred, as if a veil had been pulled over his eyes, and he dropped to his knees, classic execution style. He managed to turn his head as his face hit the ground, the asphalt cool and oddly refreshing under his cheek, and the darkness threatened to swallow him whole. He looked up at his pursuers with one eye, and saw his own death—that is, if he was lucky.

Then, from behind, a new form appeared—not appeared, descended. He watched through a thick fog as the form moved and the others fell, one by one. He heard the dull smacks of flesh as their bodies hit the pavement beside him.

The form stood alone and completely still for what seemed an eternity, as though deciding what to do with him. Then it drew closer and bent over him.

Nearly blind, he saw nothing more than a nebulous human shape. The shape spoke to him, but he didn’t understand. Somewhere in the fight, he’d also lost the ability to comprehend language. He wondered vaguely which part of his brain had cracked to disable that. He tried to focus once more, but the damage was done.

Suddenly, the cold left him completely, replaced by a warm sensation that spread out from the center of his chest. Euphoria washed over his body and cleared it of all pain. He could see now, and quite clearly. He hung precariously to a rock ledge on a cliff. Below him, the chasm of empty, blissful nothingness beckoned. At last, he surrendered, relinquishing his need for control, and fell into the abyss.

Welcome home, he told himself. Welcome home.

The autumn morning dawned crisp and clear, and I wore a pressed, clean uniform to match it. I listened to my little white shoes clicking on the sidewalk—one foot in front of the other, one eye on the horizon, the other on the destination—simple as that; no need to get wrapped up in the details. It was the perfect day for a visit to the hospital. I thought about whistling but that would have been a bit overzealous, not to mention arrogant.

As I pushed the gurney, its wheels creaked over the sidewalk, and I looked down at the cracks flashing under me.

Step on a crack, break your mother’s back.

The creepy childhood rhyme played in my head on a reel. There were a lot of creepy childhood rhymes, now that I thought about it.

Pocket full of posies... Jack fell down and broke his crown... Lizzie Borden took an ax....

Maybe that’s why I never jumped rope, although, considering the way things had turned out, I should have loved it. One, chop, two, chop, three, chop.... How many swings would it take to kill a person with an ax? I figured one was plenty—one to split the melon in half—but Lizzie Borden had been an amateur, blinded by rage in the moment. She gave her father eleven and her stepmother nineteen. I always thought the old photographs of her to be quite terrifying, namely the eyes, which bore the look of demonic possession.

I glanced up and shut down the unlimited semiosis spiraling around in my mind.

Thought leads to a thought leads to a thought.

No distractions, as the entrance was just ahead and the details were about to get very, very important.

An outdoor security guard motioned to me, a scrawny fellow but barrel-chested, with the telltale sign of a sickness I doubted he knew about. He wore his thin, greasy black hair slicked back over his head, making his receding hairline all the more prominent. Sunken eyes peered out at me from hollow sockets with a mixture of disdain and intrigue, the look of a man chronically unhappy and terminally ill—the former being the cause of the latter. His kind liked to squint and stare, while at the same time managing to avoid eye contact—quite an impressive skill—and their manner of speaking was completely indifferent and monotone.

Clearance, the security guard droned, revealing a crooked line of teeth stained a dull yellow from years of tobacco use. The smell of some horrid cologne, seeming to emanate directly from his pores, wafted thickly through the air.

I held up the security key around my neck for him to scan. Seamless.

Where are you coming from? He gave me and the direction I’d come from a cursory glance, and then looked away, bored.

Lab critical care. Flawless.

He peered around me as though the thin man might be hiding behind my back. Where’s your driver?

I looked back at him haughtily. I drove. They couldn’t spare anyone else, and I wasn’t exactly needed in the back.

Where are you headed?

The morgue. Dead man.

He picked up the sheet on the gurney, and the ashen, pale face of a young man stared up at him.

This time the guard looked directly into my eyes and, in an unmistakable tone of disbelief, asked, "How did he die?"

Odd, but I didn’t miss a beat. Bled out on the table. Doc said to shove him in a slot before he got moldy. I raised my eyebrows at the guard.

He eyed me back for a moment, though more sizing me up than suspicious, seeing if I had a big enough ass for a roll in the hay. He seemed to be weighing his options in his head, trying to decide if I was worth hitting on or not. In the end, he must have decided I wasn’t worth the pursuit. Still, he couldn’t resist the opportunity to cop a feel.

I held my arms out to the sides as his grubby paws patted me down, but I was clean. Unlike old Lizzie Borden, I was no amateur.

Continue on. He waved a hand at me in what could only be annoyance.

He ushered me inside, checked under the gurney, and rolled it around to the other side of the security scanner. I passed through the scanner, cleanly of course, and he looked at me again, as if reconsidering his decision.

Although I didn’t look a day over twenty-one, I wasn’t his type. My type was of the wallflower variety, part of the background, whereas his type wore permanent cosmetics down in the southeast part of the city at three in the morning, part of the foreground. I knew this because I’d followed him last night, all the way down from Prince George County. After he’d picked out a girl named Lita and paid her five hundred dollars for her services, I paid Lita. Her accent betrayed her as a Belorussian immigrant, and I gave her a grand for everything she knew about him. There wasn’t much to tell. I wanted to ask her how it felt to be screwed by a rat-faced, beady-eyed son of a bitch, but that wasn’t exactly relevant information, so I gave her another grand instead to forget she’d ever seen me.

Not that she was likely to talk anyway, but hookers can be useful. They see and hear things most others don’t, partly because they’re always awake in the shady parts of town, but mostly because people aren’t careful around those seen as non-threatening objects that can be bought. Thus, they are often valuable sources of information. Reliability can be an issue, so discernment on the part of the interviewer is key.

However, if someone did show up asking about me, I didn’t believe for a second that she’d keep her mouth shut. Anyone who would give information for money would give anyone information for money. The extra grand implied I might be back, serving as both an incentive to stay quiet and a suggestion of more money to come. Often that’s enough to deter someone from talking, but it didn’t matter. I wouldn’t return to her for information again, for that was one of the rules, one of the Novem: never tap a source with financial motives twice—no better way to get in trouble.

I’d learned enough from Lita, though, including that the guard wasn’t that smart, which made him the weak link in the hospital’s security. He was also a creeper with an Oedipus complex, another fact immaterial for my work, and one I wished I could unlearn.

I resumed pushing the gurney and rolled past the guard into the lobby, which immediately enveloped me in white sterile indifference and harsh light cast by fluorescent tubes. Hospitals never offered any hint of comfort, for if they made it comfortable, people might be inclined to stay longer. In my experience, hospitals wanted patients in and out as quickly as possible, with as much money out of their pockets as they could extort—the destruction of ambience for high turnover.

Churches have a similar story, but for different reasons. Why are church pews so damned uncomfortable? So the worshippers don’t fall asleep, so the Lord has their undivided attention. The moral of this story? Have church pews for couches, so guests never overstay their welcome.

I signed in at the front desk and looked down at the bowed head of the little nurse behind the desk.

Her shrewd eyes sat behind narrow spectacles perched precariously on the end of her nose, her graying hair pulled smartly back into a bun. Either intensely busy or pretending to be, she’d go home before she’d acknowledge me.

I headed directly for the morgue, courtesy of a little map I’d memorized the day before. No one so much as glanced at me. I became a chameleon, part of the hospital staff. Today, I was here to work, and hoped to be in and out fast. There was one catch, though: I didn’t know exactly what I was here for. Only the cadaver knew that.

Oddly enough, the morgue was not in the basement. Usually, they kept morgues underground, away from prying eyes, but this morgue sat about halfway down the east wing, on ground level. Having never encountered one so close to a hospital entrance, it gave me pause—perhaps an omen, or perhaps nothing at all.

I stopped outside the doors to the morgue, pretended to fish something out of my pocket, and inconspicuously glanced through the glass to find it deserted. After making sure no one else in the hallway looked interested in going to the morgue, I gave the door on the right a shove and it swung inward. I caught it as it swung back again, held it, and pushed the gurney inside, letting the door close slowly behind me. I maneuvered it along the wall and into the one corner of the room I knew the camera didn’t reach—another glitch in the hospital’s defenses. If I’d wheeled the gurney in normally, through both doors, the camera would have picked it up. Of course, why the hospital had so many defenses to begin with remained a damn good question, but not one I’d allowed myself to indulge in.

The only camera in the morgue sat right above my head, focused on the morgue slots. Thus, it missed the corner and most of the sidewall. One could slip in and out easily by hugging the wall and the doorjamb.

I walked to the side of the gurney, slipped a hand under the sheet, hefted the body ever so slightly, and pulled a tiny, nearly invisible fluid-filled pouch from underneath the cadaver’s tailbone. I delicately peeled the white sheet back and stared down at the dead man, marveling for a moment at his perfect representation of death—porcelain skin, full powder-blue lips, icy to the touch, a shock of jet-black hair attached to frozen pores.

Then I poured the contents of the pouch into his mouth, and he came to life with a jerk, gasping for air.

Welcome back, I congratulated.

I really hate that, you know, Ember choked out, his wide blue eyes staring up at me, the flush of the living beginning to flood back into his face. He blinked several times, which seemed to take a lot of effort.

Well, I told you I would do it. It was my turn anyway. I eyed him suspiciously.

Consider it a favor, Stone. Ember sat up stiffly, and flexed his hands and rolled his wrists a few times, trying to get the circulation back in them.

Six hours ago, he’d taken an adulterated antipsychotic, not because he was psychotic, but because of the drug’s ability to influence thermoregulation, resulting in a kind of artificial hibernation. The drug shunted all blood from his extremities into his core, mimicking severe hypothermia, chilling the body and slowing the heart rate. Breathing became infinitesimal. Only a trained eye would be able to tell the difference between that and death, and the guard certainly did not have a trained eye. A high dose of sublingual epinephrine, raw adrenaline, sped everything back up again, but when the body came to, it moved at glacial speed for a while. We used this technique every now and then, but extremely rarely, only if we had no other way. Well, Ember