“...where she was last seen in Europe, at a café in Spain where she...”
“...eluded authorities outside a train station in Munich, now believed to be headed east as she reunites with the larger terrorist cells that placed her all those years ago as a sleeper agent, somewhere in the depths of Asia...”
I heard my name, over and over, and saw my face.
I saw pictures of people I loved, heard strangers argue about how many of my family and friends were already dead...until my brain fuzzed over, counting floor tiles in a hotel bathroom while someone pounded on the door, trying to get me to unlock it.
I traveled everywhere in a faceless cloud of seers.
They bought me wigs, wrapped scarves around my head, gave me earpieces to wear, make-up, prosthetics of various kinds, contact lenses. They forced me to eat, drugged me when I wouldn’t sleep in the constructs we hopped in and out of, shoved me into vans and cars and trains to move me every few days, scolded me when I drank too much or stood next to windows without the curtains drawn. I stared at the landscape of different cities across land masses I didn’t recognize through the windows of whatever vehicle they put me in, sometimes for days at a time where I couldn’t sleep, where I could barely tell where I was.
They treated me differently now. All but Chandre, anyway.
Despite their attempts to keep me alive, most of the seers seemed afraid of me. It was a reverential kind of fear, like they saw the end of the world reflected on my face.#p#分页标题#e#
At that point, I wasn’t sure I disagreed.
When Chandre came in alone to talk to me on the third day, telling me the latest news from San Francisco, my mind cut out entirely.
The static remained for days...flavored in flashes of moving scenery, movies shown on flights between Calgary and Montreal and Berlin, images on the vid player one of the seers gave me, hotel rooms and, let’s face it...a hell of a lot of alcohol.
Through it all, the feeds ran.
I couldn’t block it all out, no matter how much I tried to kill my mind.
Some cult started worshipping me. The cult’s followers petitioned for space on the US feed network and got denied because of my terrorist status, causing a wave of sensationalist headlines both for and against. There had been protests. At least one actual riot happened, too, apparently in Los Angeles and mostly between Christians and human Third Mythers.
Seers got dragged into it, too, of course. I saw pictures of a young female seer being beaten with tasers and pipes. The newscasters on the feeds clucked about it in regret, but none put down their cameras long enough to stop the men doing it—men who would never be able to afford a seer like her, even for a few hours.
Rumors spread about me being the Bridge.
Black market feeds had whole sites devoted to me and Revik. Human women loved Revik, especially after it got out that we’d been married. It didn’t seem to matter that he was dead.
World governments were already negotiating over rights to my telekinetic “powers.” The United States and China dominated the discussions, of course, but Russia, Germany, England and Japan vied to be allowed at the bargaining table too, hiding behind the veneer of scientific curiosity. Speculation erupted that I might have been impregnated. Telekinetic rumors and rumors of sightings spread, more so after I was officially blamed by SCARB for the sinking of Royal Faire cruise ship, The Explorer. People who lost loved ones in the bombing posted bounties, wanting me neutralized...dead or alive, but preferably dead.
The feeds fed on the hysteria, fanned it.
More people went missing, presumed dead.
One was my brother, Jon. Another was Cass, who I’d known almost as long as my adoptive brother. Cass and I had finger-painted together while Cass’s mom worked and her father drank. By high school, Cass had her own section of my closet. Every year she celebrated two of every holiday, one at my place and one with her mom and dad and her deadbeat Uncle Phan.
With the last two people in my family gone, I didn’t much care what the world thought of me, or even if I survived it.
Weeks passed. Longer.
I wait for sleep. I crave it, but it doesn’t help.
I can’t reach him, no matter how often he asks. The asking hurts, more than the other ever did, and I feel him in pieces...a darker feeling that is self-hate, emotions that are infinitely more complex.
Still, he doesn’t feel alive.
The numbers return. They are separate from him, but connected somehow. I dream of my father, the engineer. He jokes that numbers are our secret language, so we can speak to one another in code. They are an autistic’s mantra, a broken song I can’t get out of my head.
...17, 10, 42, 12, 1, 57, 12, 20, 332, 178, 12, 102, 9, 13, 15, 2, 2, 2...