Fighting for Infinity (5 page)

A RIVER RUNS THROUGH ME

Maryah

I wanted to go home.

Rina, the mute ability-stealer, warned me that I needed to get out, and I wholeheartedly agreed. I kept focusing, trying every way I could think of to connect with my body. Rina sat on her mattress watching me but never uttering a sound. The strange black curtain fell around me again. When the dark lifted, Dedrick stood in front of me, beside a woman with snake eyes, and River.

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” I grumbled.

River’s faux-hawk had grown out. He had a ten o’clock shadow of facial hair like he hadn’t shaved in weeks. I could see the family resemblance between him and his murderous uncle.

“Did you miss us?” Dedrick asked all sing-song.

River’s eyes were wide. He stepped closer, cocking his head while studying my transparent light form. A glowing ghostly version of the
me
he used to hang out with. The
friend
he tried to kill. If I could have produced saliva, I would have spit on him.

“Holy shit,” he whispered.

“I told you,” Dedrick sang. “It was easier than I thought. It took much longer considering the detour and all, but eventually she came around.”

“Can she hear us?” River asked.

“I’m quite certain she can.”

River reached out, attempting to touch me. I backed away, but he stepped forward. I kept backing up until I was
pinned against a wall. If I had a body he would have been pressed against it. His closeness brought back the repulsion I felt at Montezuma Well when he traced a heart on my palm and told me he’d never do something so evil as to throw me into the water alive and let leeches eat me. But he did drug me, and he would have shot me and then thrown me in the water. Now he stood in front of me again, just as evil as his uncle with who knows what disgusting thoughts running through his mind. Even though my voice shook, I wanted them to hear me. “Both of you sicken me.”

River whispered too quietly for anyone else to hear. “I’m so sorry.”

“Lexie,” Dedrick snapped. “Update me.”

Lexie, the woman with snake eyes, spoke almost robotically. “She can hear you. Both of you sicken her.”

Dedrick chuckled while River’s gaze dropped to his feet. Great, Dedrick’s drone could hear me. I’d have to be more careful of what I said.

“She plans to be more conscious about what she says,” Lexie continued.

She could hear my thoughts too? How could I stop thinking?
Stop right now
, I told myself.

“She’s trying to stop herself from thinking.”

I snapped at Lexie. “Stay out of my head.”

“Not likely,” she replied. “It’s my job to hear your thoughts.”

“This is such fun, isn’t it?” Dedrick clapped his hands. “And River?”

River’s head jerked up at the mention of his name.

Lexie spewed out her report. “Wondering how Maryah is here. He’s intrigued by how her soul could be trapped.”

I stared at the table behind River, not wanting to react to anything.
Table, table, table
. If I kept my thoughts boring enough, Lexie would have nothing to report.

“She’s diverting her thoughts by repeating “table,’” Lexie said. “River is angry that you asked me to intrude on his thoughts.”

I hated her already.

“Maryah hates me.”

Dedrick snickered. “Don’t take it personally, Lexie. Maryah hates all of us. And River, don’t think of it as me intruding. I’m simply acquiring useful data.”

Table, table, table. 

“She’s back to focusing on the table,” Lexie said. “He’s mentally shouting expletives at me.”

“I’m growing bored.” Dedrick sighed. “Let me know how Maryah responds to this.” He stepped closer, nudging River aside. “I require the use of your ability, my dear,
powerful, Maryah.” He fanned his bony fingers over Rina’s head. “Rina is a pathetic little thing, but she does have one endearing and useful trait—she is a conductor.”

I noted the girl was a conductor, but tried not to think anything else.

Dedrick continued, “Rina will connect us so I may use your power to gather the necessary intel to help me acquire the last few things needed to put my master plan into effect. Don’t worry, the exceptional beings I’ll be spying on aren’t any of your kindrily. Amusingly, those hacks aren’t nearly as clever or powerful as they think they are.” He pulled back his long hair, securing it into a low ponytail. “At least not for my purposes.”

He was spying on people more powerful than my kindrily. What kind of powers must those people have? What was he planning?

“She wants to know what you’re planning,” Lexie said.

Dedrick huffed a half-laugh. Strange as it was, I smelled his sour breath. How could I smell anything without being in my body?

“Nathaniel didn’t tell you?” Dedrick asked me. “I’m going to become the gatekeeper of this world.”

Nathan had told us that, but we didn’t understand what it meant.

“She doesn’t know what that means,” Lexie reported.

Dedrick stood tall, his chest expanding as if proud of what he was about to say. “I’ll control who comes into this world. Some souls should never b
e allowed reentry.” His eyes shifted upward. “
Certain
meddling ones need to be permanently banished. If so, this world would be a much better place and evolve at a faster pace. Reincarnation,” he hissed, “is a broken and outdated system, and I plan to update it.”

He was a lunatic. No way could Dedrick ever change a universal system that had been in existence longer than anyone knew. Could he?

Lexie started to speak. “She thinks—”

“I know what she’s thinking,” Dedrick barked. “That it’s impossible for me to play God. That I’d never be able to acquire that sort of power, but she’s wrong.” He leaned close to me, and his foul breath of stale coffee and rotten milk hit me again. “You’re wrong, Maryah. I’m not only going to play God. I’m going to
be
God.”

“How?” The one word came out
breathless because I was shocked and scared. The confidence in his voice, the calm and collected yet steady fire burning in his eyes: it was almost enough to make me believe he could pull it off. And if he did, I didn’t want to imagine the state of our world.

River sat on the edge of the table, running his hand over his hairy jaw. Lexie didn’t flinch. Rina gnawed her fingers, her head down as if trying to be invisible.

Lexie repeated my question. “How?”

“You’ll see soon enough.” Dedrick turned to River. “Any parting words, nephew of mine?”

River fidgeted. “Uh, no, not right now, sir.”

Dedrick eyed him suspiciously. “Not right now because you have an audience?”

River shrugged.

“I understand,” Dedrick said. “I’d allow you alone time with her, but it would be a one-sided conversation without Lexie.”

River tapped his knuckles on the table as he seemed to silently plead with his uncle.

Dedrick squinted at him before tossing his hands in the air. “Fine. I’ll grant you ten minutes alone with her.”

“Thank you.” River stood too eagerly. I wanted to shove him back down.

“Let’s be on our way, Lexie. We have much to accomplish today.”

“Wait.” River motioned to Rina. “What about her?”

“My mute?” Dedrick asked. “I can’t take her out of this room, but I can see why you wouldn’t want anyone eavesdropping. Very well then.” He walked over to the cabinet and opened a door. Rina pulled her blanket over her head. Dedrick took out a glass vial and a syringe then filled it with a pale yellow liquid.

“What is that?” River asked.

Dedrick rolled his eyes. “Do you want to be alone with Maryah or not?”

River stuck his hands in his pockets and lowered his head. Dedrick crouched beside Rina’s bed. She leaned away, but Dedrick grabbed her arm and stuck her with the needle.

“There,” Dedrick said to River. “She’ll be out cold. Won’t hear a thing. Give it about two minutes to kick in, and then it will be just you and Maryah.”

River eyed the blanket covering Rina. “Did you hurt her?”

“Hurt her?” Dedrick cooed as if it was impossible for him to hurt anyone. “I simply put her down for a nap.”

“Okay,” the gullible idiot muttered. “Thank you again.”

I wanted my solid hands so I could grab a syringe and stab both of them.

“Ten minutes,” Dedrick warned. “Use it wisely.”

River nodded as Dedrick did his “Lights Out” ritual of blowing out the candle. I was hoping when the darkness lifted, River wouldn’t be there, but no such luck. I took some comfort in the fact that my body wasn’t in the room with him. He couldn’t hurt me again.

“I’m so sorry.” River rushed over to me. “You have no idea how sorry I am for all of this.”

“Ha! You tried to kill me!” It was pointless to respond since he couldn’t hear me, but I couldn’t help it.

“I have no idea how he did this to you, but—” He glanced sideways at the heap of blanket where Rina was passed out then lowered his voice. “I’d set you free if I knew how.”

That piqued my interest. Would River really help me get out of here if he could? I hated thinking River, of all people, might be my only way out of this mess, but it wasn’t like I had a lot of other options.

“I’m sure you don’t believe me, or trust me, and I don’t blame you, but I swear to you, Maryah, I regret whatever happened at Montezuma Well. I didn’t even know what I was doing.” He shook his head. His thoughts seemed far away. “I can’t remember anything about that night, and when I snapped out of it at the police station and they kept asking me why I tried to kill you, I lost it. I couldn’t believe what I’d done. You’d already been through so much, losing your parents and brother, and then I tried to kill you? I’ve been so messed up over it. I feel like I don’t even know myself anymore.”

Partly flabbergasted, I wanted to scream at him and call him a liar, but I couldn’t do anything except watch him. I analyzed his body language. His hands kept rising limply at his sides. His bloodshot eyes made him look so stressed and upset. It hadn’t occurred to me until that moment, but had Dedrick mind-controlled River the same way he did with Gregory and the other Nefariouns?

“No,” I muttered, replaying the details of the night River tried to kill me. “You didn’t have snake eyes. You knew what you were doing.”

“I don’t know what the hell is going on anymore. The cops made me take a bunch of psychological tests. They diagnosed me with some mental illness.” He glanced away, but not before I saw the shame in his eyes.
“I don’t understand any of it. I didn’t know my uncle was like this.”

If only he could have heard me. I would have asked him where he was before they came into this room. Were we in a basement of some kind? A castle? But Dedrick would have never left us alone if River and I were able to effectively communicate.

“I’m locked up too,” River said. “If it makes you feel any better.”

“What?” Dedrick was keeping his own nephew locked up too?

River reached out to me, but I didn’t move this time.

“Can you feel that?” His fingers swiped through my glowing arm. He stared at me, probably waiting for me to nod or shake my head, but I only scowled at him. I couldn’t feel him, but I still didn’t want him to touch me.

“This is by far the strangest thing I’ve ever seen,” he said. “I keep hoping I’ll wake up, and you and I will be back in English class passing notes and laughing about whatever. We could go back to normal.” He bit his bottom lip. “I keep thinking about what my uncle said, that you can asteroid travel or whatever. What does that even mean?”

Asteroid travel. What an idiot. He waited as if expecting an answer. I didn’t bother thinking of a response. Even if he could hear me, I’d never tell River anything else about me or my kindrily ever again.

“I always knew you were something special, Maryah. April did too. I mean, we didn’t know people with supernatural powers existed, but we knew you were different—in a good way.” He rubbed his beard again. “I don’t understand why my uncle is doing this, but I’m sorry for all of it. I swear I’ll do everything I can to help you get out of here.” 

I wanted to believe him. But I knew better.

QUIET AS A MOUSE

Maryah

Dedrick returned long enough to black-curtain the room again and take River away. Rina remained in a drug-induced nap.

For what felt like forever, but was probably a few hours, I floated around the room. My fear and anger transitioned into worry and disgust.

Behind the moldy plastic curtain
were a filthy stained toilet and a bowl filled with dingy water. Not even a sink for the poor girl to wash herself.

“What a monster.” Who would let anyone—especially a child—live in such filth? Next, I studied the cabinet in the corner of the room again. The glass shelves were caked with dust and filled with vials of liquid and a box of syringes. I wanted to take all the drugs and dump them down the toilet, but I couldn’t touch them. I couldn’t do much of anything.

On the table in the center of the room sat the book I’d been drawn to when I first traveled to this dreaded place. I hovered over it, desperately wanting to flip open the leather cover to see what its pages contained. The cracked binding looked super old. There was no title, nothing written on it at all, not even on the spine.

Rina stirred, and I darted to the corner where she hid beneath her dirty blanket. A mouse scurried across the floor then shimmied up onto the mattress and under Rina’s covers.

I yelled, “Shoo! Shoo!” while swinging my hands at the blanket. “Wake up! Before that rodent bites you and gives you rabies.”

The blanket inched down far enough for her to peer out through her disheveled black hair.

“Get up! There’s a mouse in your bed!” Talking made me feel more proactive and less alone.

She pushed the blanket off, and the mouse was sitting on her chest. I expected her to jump up and do a frantic
help-there’s-a-mouse-in-my-bed dance like I would have done, but she didn’t flinch. She reached up and petted the mouse with one scabby finger then opened her other hand. The mouse stepped onto her palm.

“Oh. It’s like your pet, isn’t it?”

She raised the mouse up to her face, and it rubbed its tiny nose against hers. She smiled and my heart warmed. Considering the way she lived, I wouldn’t expect her to ever be happy, but the mouse was clearly her friend. As silly as it was, I was grateful the strange girl had a friend—even if that friend was a rodent.

Rina held up the mouse for me to see. I leaned in, our faces only inches apart. He was sort of cute, brownish gray with big ears, and his whiskers twitched as his pink nose sniffed me. “Hi there, dungeon mouse. So you can see me too?”

The mouse turned, his long tail flicking behind him. He scurried up Rina’s arm then sat on her shoulder as if they’d done the same routine a million times. She rested her head on the wall behind her and closed her eyes.

As I watched Rina, who appeared to be sleeping again while sitting up, I realized I wasn’t tired at all. Would
I ever get tired, or was that only possible if I had a body?

The mouse curled up against Rina’s neck and went to sleep. The sight of them together made me miss Eightball—even his snoring. More than that, I missed sleeping beside Nathan, feeling his chest rise and fall against my cheek as I listened to the lullaby of his heartbeat.

I floated in the candlelit room: bored, worried about my kindrily, and feeling completely alone, even with two other living beings just a few feet away from me.

“This is no way to live.” I was speaking on Rina’s behalf, the mouse’s, and mine.

∞

Dedrick returned, hardly saying a word except to announce it was time for him to travel again and ordering Rina to his side.

“No!” I shouted. What if he spied on my kindrily again? What if he used my ability to hurt them or someone else?

I tried pulli
ng away as Rina linked hands with Dedrick and me. “I hate you! My power is not yours to steal.”

Dedrick spoke a name as I was yelling. It sounded like Vivian, but I couldn’t be sure. I was angry at myself for not staying quiet so I could hear him. Several seconds later, Dedrick went limp.

Rina lifted her head. In a terse and cutting tone, she said, “Hate isn’t a strong enough word when it comes to Dedrick.”

I gasped. “You can talk?”

“Of course I can.”

“And you can hear me?”

“How else would I be answering you?”

“But Dedrick said you were a mute.”

“Dedrick is wrong much more often than he’s right.” She pointed at me. “Don’t go spilling my secrets. He can’t know that you and I can communicate.” She turned away. “Or he’ll make me do horrible things.”

I cringed at the possibilities of what that meant. “I won’t say a word.”

Was there anyone who willingly helped Dedrick, or did he have to trap or control everyone? Rina pretended to be a mute. How long had she been fooling him? I was still in shock that she could talk—and hear me. She was a conductor and a faker. “Is there anything else I should know about you?”

She faced me again, looking serious. “I trust very few people.
Very
few.”

Fair enough. I didn’t blame her for not trusting anyone. I wouldn’t either if I was being held prisoner by a madman. “How long have you been here?”

“My whole life.”

I couldn’t hide my shoc
k. “You were born here?”

She motioned to the corner. “On that very bed.”

I turned my nose up, shuddering at the sight of her stained, more-unsanitary-than-I-first-assumed, sad excuse for a mattress. “Where are your parents?”

“I never met my father. All I know about him I learned from my mother’s stories.”

“And your mom?”

“She had to leave.
But she promised to come back for me.”

My heart hurt for her. How could any mother leave her child? Mind-controlled or not, I wouldn’t be able to stomach it. However, if Rina had lived in this room her entire life, maybe she didn’t know how terrible it really was. Maybe she didn’t have a sense of family or understand what it meant.

“So this,” I said as I motioned to the prison around us, “is all you’ve ever known?”

“Yes.”

“That makes me so sad for you.”

She shrugged. “This is where I need to be for now.”

She was definitely damaged. No healthy person would take their imprisonment so lightly. “You’re okay with being held captive? Being ordered around and used.” I had been afraid to ask, but I had to know. “Has Dedrick ever hurt you?”

“Dedrick hurts everyone in one way or another.”

“You can’t be okay with that.”

“What choice do I have? I do what I need to do to survive.” She replied so quickly. Sometimes she spoke before I finished speaking. It was almost hard to keep up with her.

“Survive to do what?” I asked. “Live another day like a prisoner in a cage? I would’ve begged him to kill me and put me out of my misery.”

“What good would I be dead?”

“This is a horrible way to live.”

“If it’s so awful then why are you here?”

“I didn’t choose to be here.”

“Ah, but that’s where you’re wrong.” She smirked. “You came here of your own free will. Your instincts told you not to go near Dedrick again, but you traveled here anyway. You’re here because deep down you chose to be.”

I stared at her, bewildered by what a little enigma she was. “How do you know about my instincts?”

She lifted a chunk of hair to her lips. “I’ve said too much.”

“I get the impression you never accidentally say too much.”

“You’re smart.”

“You’re peculiar.”

“Peculiar. I like that choice of adjective.”

“See? Most people wouldn’t think being called peculiar is a compliment.”

She leaned in so our noses almost touched. “We’re not like most people, are we?”

For once I could see the coloring of her eyes. The dim lighting had given the illusion that they were black, but they were actually a striking shade of dark blue.

She backed up suddenly as if she’d been burned or shocked. “He wants to come back. Don’t speak a word of this. If you tell him my secrets, you’ll ruin everything.”

I nodded, panicking a bit. “I won’t say anything, I promise.”

“Don’t think it either.”

She was right. I needed to find a way to shut off my thoughts so I didn’t accidentally reveal anything to Lexie.

Dedrick stumbled backward, returning from his astral travel. Rina collapsed to the floor and didn’t move. Wherever Dedrick had gone, or whomever he had spied on, had him
panting and bouncing like an excited hyena. He didn’t say a word, just blew out the candle.

When the sorry excuse for light returned, Rina was still on the floor.

“Rina, are you okay?”

She rolled over, alert and not appearing drained at all. She sprang to her feet and brushed the dirt off her.

“You fake it, don’t you?” I asked. “Helping him astral travel doesn’t drain you at all.”

“I told you, I do what’s necessary to survive.”

She said revealing her secrets to Dedrick might ruin everything. Did she have some sort of plan to break out? “I have a feeling you’re hiding a lot of secrets.”

One thin brow rose, and she sort of sneered but in a way that hinted she was being playful. “Tip of the iceberg, my glowing lightning bug, tip of the iceberg.”

Hearing her call me lightning bug like Dedrick had sent a shiver through me, but my instincts assured me I had no reason to be afraid of her. If anything, I may have just formed a powerful and unexpected alliance.

“How old are you?”

“I don’t know.”

“Do you know your birthday?”

“We don’t celebrate occasions like that here.” She tugged at the ends of her frayed hair. “But why does it matter? Why should a person’s potential be based on the age of her body? Maybe the soul is older, wiser, capable of more than a much younger body. The age of a person’s soul is what’s important.”

“Okay, Miss Almighty Wise One, how old is your soul?”

She bit her pinky nail. “I lost track.”

“You say a soul’s age is what matters, but you haven’t kept track of how old yours is?”

“I didn’t say it was a perfect system.”

“Do you think your soul is older than mine?”

“That depends how we’re counting. Are we basing it off of your age before or after you erased?”

My voice raised an octave as I tensed. “How do you know I erased?”

“Dedrick just said you did when he was here with River.”

“Oh, right.” I had almost forgotten she had been in the room because she wa
s so quiet. “Back to who is older. Use my age before I erased. I had lived nineteen lifetimes.”

“In that case, I don’t know.”

“Then why did it matter which option we based it off of?”

She shrugged. “Just wanted to see if you still valued your old self.”

“I value all of myself—old and new. And I’m going to remember my past.”

“Are you sure about that?”

I hesitated, not sure at all, but really wishing I could. “I’m trying my best.”

She turned on her heel and walked over to the table. She ran her fingers over the cover of the book.

“What is that?” I asked her.

“It’s my book.”

“Obviously, but what kind of book?”

“A storybook.”

Man she was frustrating. “What’s its title?”

“It doesn’t have a title.”

“What’s it about?”

She looked up at me. “Don’t ask so many questions. You won’t like the answers.”