Carrying The Cure

The headache wakes me up, and I struggle to claw my mind out of the thick, dark place it’s in. The floor is hard, gritty, my side pulsing with bruises. My temples pound. I scrabble around on the floor with raw fingertips, blinking swollen eyes, but it’s too dark to see. I sit up, bracing myself quickly with a hand against the wall, hard, gritty, as my head swims.

I push myself up, leaning over to widen my reach, frantically searching. There. I scoop up the thin, cold vial.

I blink and blink, trying to clear the fuzz from my eyes. There’s light coming from somewhere, harsh and artificial, dribbled through a few thin lines of grating at the top of the door. I blink until those lines aren’t so fuzzy, and hold up the vial to the light. Empty, except for the brownish drop remaining in the bottom.

That’s good, I tell myself. If it was still full, you’d have bigger problems.

I allow myself a while to sit, head lolling against the cold cement wall, until I feel somewhat capable of actual thought and movement. My head still pounds furiously; that’ll last all day, most likely. A full vial? The plan must have gone way off the rails. I can taste it in my mouth still, flat and bitter.

I’m dressed in clothes I don’t recognize, a t-shirt and black cargo pants. My boots are gone, my bare feet grey with dirt. My hair, braided down my back. I marvel at the neat braid. Someone else must have done this; I can never make them look so even.

The cell is small, too small for me to lie down straight in. I scan the graffiti on the walls, or as much as I can make out in the three lines of light, but nothing jumps out. No symbols I recognize. The door, of course, is locked.

If they know what the liquid in the vial was, I’ll be in big trouble soon.

I sit on the floor, propping myself up against the wall, making sure I won’t fall when I go limp. I press my palms together, holding the pressing sensation in my mind until everything else falls away. The headache is the last to go.

Then I feel nothing, and I am floating in empty, lightless space. I open and close my eyes, making sure. Nothing changes. I forget whether they’re open or closed. There, now they’re closed.

I swim through the nothing. My body is the only thing that exists now, but I can move it, so there must be something here for it to move through. Slowly, I allow the image I want to form. When I open my eyes, I’m face to face with a man, heavy eyebrows, a curling vine of tattoo peeking out from behind his left ear. He’s taller than me, a good foot taller, but I hover at eye level. I can feel the air on the bottoms of my feet now. I make one slow turn, taking in the room.

The man is alone. The wallpaper matches the curtains, and the couch is just a shade off. The mirror across from him reflects his face, and he studies it, expressionless. I’m invisible here.

"Aspicio," I whisper. I can’t remember names in this place, so we came up with other words for ourselves. Latin lends itself to the memory, a dead language that doesn’t want to be forgotten.

He blinks, breaking eye contact with himself. His head turns, just slightly.

"Affluo," he says. "Finally."

"Where am I?" I ask, still in a whisper. Only a whisper can carry across to him. Shout, and he would hear nothing.

He shakes his head. "I’ve been looking for you. Listening, but I haven’t Heard anything useful yet. How much did you drink?"

"All of it."

His face changes, calculating. "You have six to eight hours, then." He looks up quickly, toward the door, startled by a sound. His hand dips into his pocket. "They have the package. Find it." He holds up a glass key, flat on his palm. I place my hand over his, concentrating until I can feel his skin, the cold glass lines of the key, and I scoop it from his hand. He shivers.

"Find the package and bring it to me." He turns away, heading for the door. I close my eyes, focusing only on the key in my hand, until everything else falls away.

Then I feel nothing. I float in nothing. No, I can feel the key, still cold and smooth in my fist. I call up the image of my reality, allowing it to reform around me. The shock of the cement’s sudden presence makes my eyes pop open. I still have the key.

This side of the door has no keyhole, but the glass melts right through the metal, seeking out the lock. There. I feel the key click into place as it shapes itself to the lock. I turn it. With a push, the door lets me out.

The tiled hallway is empty, but I have no idea where I am, or who else is here. I lock the door behind me. Pocketing the key, where it clinks against the empty vial, I steal down the hallway.

There’s an office at one end, a dark-haired, uniformed woman bent over a sheaf of paperwork, and I slip past easily unnoticed. The glass key lets me through the door at the end of the hall. Cement stairs lead up, lit with a grimy fluorescent strip high above. I run up the steps and use the key once again to let myself out at the top. Night air meets me. An unground jail, then. I know they have a few, scattered across the world. I could still be anywhere.

I cross the gravel yard, sticking to the edges, and scale the fence. My bare feet complain as the chain link digs in. There’s no barbed wire, luckily. They aren’t expecting escapes. They don’t know about the key.

There’s a road on the other side of the fence, dusty and long. The jail appears to be in the middle of nowhere. I try to orient myself with the landscape, but there’s nothing much here, and I don’t know landscapes. And I can’t follow the stars, like Saltavi can.

I pick a direction at random and head down the road at a run, keeping my breathing even. Eventually, I’ll get somewhere.

I have no idea where the package is, except that it isn’t in the underground jail. They like to stay unpredictable, but we make a point to know them as well as we can. No way would they make it that easy for me to take it back.

Lights appear ahead, and then a village. I slow to a walk as I approach, breathing heavily, taking in the buildings. Central or South America, I think.

There’s one tiny storefront, closed, so I let myself in with the glass key and take a bottle of water. I would leave some money if I could, but I have none. The labels are all in Spanish.

I slip out of the shop and walk a little ways from the village, climbing up a tree to sleep. Propping myself between the branches, I wonder where my boots got to. Was is Saltavi who braided my hair? I seem to remember being thrown into the cell, the impact of my hip against the wall, the headache setting in. Nothing before that.

When I wake, the lightening sky glows softly, and I still don’t have my memories. I try to pull them up, but there’s nothing. The last thing I remember is driving toward the border with Saltavi, on our way to pick up the package. We hadn’t yet learned what it was, what we were going to do with it. Did I really have to drink the whole vial? I must have, or I wouldn’t have done it.

Fully awake now, I climb down from the tree and lie on the ground, hoping I’ve regained enough energy to reach both Aspicio and the package, but I know it’s a false hope. I’ll have to sleep again in between.

I press my palms together, focus on the sensation, let everything else drop away. Nothing. I think of his face, allow the image to form. My eyes open, and I’m face to face again with Aspicio. He’s in a different room, but it has the same wallpaper.

Turning slowly to take in the room, I feel a bubble of relieved, terrified surprise. Saltavi is lying on a bed, face white as death, hair white as clouds, a shock after her usually dark complexion. I turn back to the man with the tattoo, and whisper his name. No, not quite his name. Codename, maybe, but that sounds too much like a child’s game.

"Aspicio."

His expression, eyelids falling shut, grows alert. "Affluo," he says.

"Saltavi," I whisper.

"She needs the package."

"Where is it?"

"She needs it too soon, Affluo." He’s staring down at Saltavi’s white face. "You have to come here and find it and bring it to her. Right now."

I won’t be able to do it. I move close to his ear so I can whisper more quietly, conserving the few drops of energy I can. "I’ll be too drained to go looking for it."

His expression is set, determined. "Come anyway. It’s her only chance, you have to try."

I can already feel tears coursing down my cheeks. Latching onto the sensation, I place my tears in the wallpapered room. I place my body there. I look around, filling my sight with the place, filling my senses. I imagine the feeling of the carpet, the touch of the still air, until I can feel it on my skin. Pulling with the last of my energy, I struggle to exist here.

My eyes explode open and I fall, feet hitting the carpet. I collapse, struggling against my eyelids, but I can’t help it. I black out.

- - - - -

My memories come flooding back when I start to wake up, but before I have time to sort through them I’m being hauled to my feet. Someone is saying my name, over and over. I hold onto the voice.

"Come on, Affluo. Come on. We need you." Aspicio. I struggle awake. The package. I remember retrieving it, learning its destination, changing our clothes, Saltavi’s quick fingers in my hair, getting past the border. Almost. I remember them catching us, and separating us, and taking the package, and the flat, bitter taste in my mouth as I made myself forget. No one can torture information out of someone who doesn’t remember it.

"I can’t do it," I say. "I can’t get it." Already, I’m struggling not to fall back into sleep.

Aspicio’s voice is fierce. "You must."

She’ll die without it, I know she will, but I don’t know if I’ll even be able to go to it, let alone bring it back with me. I remember what was in the package now: a cure. The only cure.

I lie back and press my palms together, as hard as I can, forcing all my strength into my hands, from each palm into the other. I let everything else fall away.

It takes me a long time to become aware of my body, floating in the nothingness. What if it’s already too late? The flash of panic wakes me up. Pulling up the package in my mind, feeling its weight, I allow the image to form.

There. The package, the cure. I’m too exhausted to fully form the room, and the package floats on an impression of wood. A desk? A tabletop? It doesn’t matter. I wrap my hands around the package, imagining the feeling of it until it’s really there, against my skin. It takes so long. My focus keeps blanking out.

Finally I can feel the package in my hands. I tighten my grip, and let everything else fall away.

It takes even longer the second time. Is this the nothingness, or am I asleep? I can’t form thoughts. The package. I can feel it in my hands, and a breath of relief pours through me. Now, reality. I allow the image to form…

Sudden wakefulness, the carpet beneath me, Aspicio snatching the package from my hands, and then blackness. The nothingness of sleep.

- - - - -

I sleep for days, drifting in and out of consciousness now and then. Sometimes Aspicio is there, sometimes Facio, sometimes no one. I think of Saltavi’s face, unnaturally bleached, and fall back into darkness.

- - - - -

When I finally wake up, Saltavi is awake too. Her bed is in the same room as mine. I rush to her side.

She smiles up at me. "You saved me, Affluo."

I laugh and cry and hug her through the sheets. "Why were we transporting the package?" I ask. Even with my memories back, I can’t remember this vital piece of information. The memory elixir isn’t perfect.

She wipes away my tears. "Aspicio used his Hearing, and he learned that we would need the cure here. What he missed is that it would be taken from us before we got here, and he didn’t know the reason we would need it." She laughs weakly. "He didn’t know the cause of my sickness was our mission to bring me the cure."