Vicki Pettersson - The Scent of Shadows

I pressed against walls, crouching around corners, and narrowly avoided running straight into Hunter, apparently on his way to his session with Greta. I watched as he knocked on her door, and had to duck back around the corner when he whirled to sniff suspiciously at the air. Then I heard the door open and Greta’s voice welcoming him inside.

I peeked again. The only light in the entire corridor was the glow eking from the office’s shaded window. Tekla’s room, diagonal to that, was utterly dark. I suspected I had ten minutes, perhaps less, before the next agent arrived for their session, and while it seemed enough time, I’d be standing in plain view for the duration. Even ten seconds was enough to ruin it all.

When the light in Greta’s office dimmed, I made my move. My boots echoed on the tile like gunshots, but keeping my nervous energy contained so no one would detect my presence through anything but direct sight was a far greater concern.

Reaching the door, I shook the handle. Locked, of course. For a moment I considered taking it as a sign. Who knew what I would find beyond that door? Tekla might be completely mad by now. Frothing at the mouth, rocking in a corner. I was taking a big chance on what amounted to nothing more than a hunch on my part. Then again, as Rena had said after I told her what I intended to do, if what I thought was true, I’d be taking a bigger chance by doing nothing at all. So I took a deep breath and turned to peer into the window.

Two great brown eyes stared back, inches from my own. I screamed, muffling the sound with my palm, hoping it wasn’t too late. The brown eyes rolled in response to my girly reaction, and I dropped my hand, embarrassed. Not only was Tekla not frothing, she had apparently been waiting for me. I swallowed my fear and embarrassment and stepped back up to the glass.

Clarity. That’s what I saw there. Not the lunacy I’d been told to expect, or the grief immortalized on the pages of Stryker’s comic. Not the helplessness and pleading that’d shadowed her gaze the day before. There was a hint of fury, and bitterness, I saw, pulling her mouth tight, but more than anything there was a ferocious lucidity. In that singular look I saw exactly why Tekla had been locked away. And what my role was in all this.

“Can you hear me?”

No, but I can read lips, Tekla mouthed back. She went on, her mouth exaggerating the words so I could read them, but I was distracted by the sound of pounding feet and looked away.

“Shit.” I pulled my conduit from the top of my left boot, palming it, wondering even as I did what I intended to do with it. Tekla must have wondered too. Her large, expressive doe eyes widened and her mouth moved again.

“What?” I asked, leaning closer. The pounding, more than one pair of feet, was growing closer.

She pointed at me, her index finger tapping on the glass, and repeated herself. It looked like she wanted me to shoot myself. I shook my head, indicating I didn’t understand. Just then Micah and Chandra rounded the corner, their own conduits held out in front of them.

“Olivia!” Micah shouted at me. “Get back!”

Chandra, holding what looked to be a normal gun, had drawn on me. Her eyes were expressionless, but still cold.

“We have to let Tekla out.”

“What you have to do is get away from that door,” Chandra ordered. “Now.”

I swallowed hard, but didn’t move.

“Olivia, Tekla is sick.”

“No, she’s not.”

“You looked in her eyes, didn’t you?” Micah lowered his weapon, which was good, but took a step toward me, which wasn’t. I sighted on him, and he took back that step. “Damn it, Olivia. That’s why we don’t want anyone down here. That’s why the doors to the sick ward are supposed to be kept shut.” He and Chandra both glared at one another. “She’s ill, but she’s still powerful enough to influence a weaker mind. She can make you believe she’s all right, but as soon as we release her, she starts ranting again.”

“Maybe she’s telling the truth.”

“Just step away from the door.” He was speaking to me in the same voice people used to coax jumpers from ledges, and it made me grind my teeth. I might be insane, but it wasn’t because I’d looked at Tekla.

“Maybe she’s not crazy,” I continued, concentrating on keeping my arm steady, “and she’s really just pissed off because no one will listen to her.”

“Get away from the goddamned door!” Chandra yelled, voice deepening as she dropped into a shooter’s stance, and I knew she would shoot me.

Because if you’re this generation’s Archer, what does that make her?

A rogue agent, I thought, swallowing hard as I stared down the barrel of her gun. And rogue agents killed their matching star signs, just so they could usurp them in the Zodiac.

“Chandra,” Micah said, turning toward her.

She didn’t look at him, just continued staring down her arm at me. “Put down your weapon and get away from the door.”

I flicked my gaze at the window, but Tekla had disappeared. Back to Chandra, then, whom even Micah looked wary of. “Okay,” I said, which had her looking surprised…and not a little disappointed. “Just answer one question first.”

“What?”

“Micah injected Warren with a compound containing my pheromones. That’s how we’re linked, right? Chandra, are you able to create such a compound?”

“Of course.”

“That’s what I thought,” I murmured, and lowered my conduit.

Micah tilted his head. “What are you talking about?”

“She doesn’t know,” Chandra snapped, taking a step forward. “And she isn’t supposed to be here.”

“With the chemicals from your lab and a little knowledge, could I do the same?”

“Yes,” Micah said cautiously, brows drawing low.

“No,” Chandra shot back. “It’s not just a little knowledge, it’s the right knowledge. This isn’t like makeup application. It’s called chemistry.”

I nodded absently. “How did you know I was here?”

If Micah was perplexed by my quickly shifting subjects, he didn’t show it. In fact, he seemed to sense direction behind the questioning, which there was, though I was making up the details as I went along. “We were alerted the moment you touched the door.”

“Alerted how?”

“What’s going on here?” Greta emerged from her office, followed by a heavy-eyed Hunter. “Chandra? Micah?”

“Alerted how?” I repeated, louder, eyes lingering on Hunter for a few moments. He rubbed a hand over his face, hard, then studied the rest of us like we were part of a dream he expected to wake from at any moment.

“We have a sensor on the door handle,” Chandra said to me. I could tell she was humoring me, answering my questions until they closed the distance between us. They weren’t too far off now. “Greta decided it would be the surest way to keep the general population safe.”

“Greta did, did she,” I murmured, and my eyes locked on hers.

“What are you doing down here, Olivia?” she asked, her voice a tad too sharp. “You’re not well.”

“Not well?” I repeated, as if the words made no sense. “Not well like Tekla? That kind of ‘not well’?”

Chandra made an impatient sound in her throat, almost a growl. “Olivia looked her in the eyes. I told you we should have covered that window.”

“Tekla can ‘see’ what’s being done with Warren,” I said, noting Hunter had regained his bearings. He was watching me in that silent way of his, eyes narrowed as they moved from my face to the conduit in my right hand. “We need her in order to locate him.”

“Nonsense,” said Greta. “She hasn’t spoken any sense in months.”

“Because somebody ordered her to be locked in a five-by-ten-foot cell, not to be seen or heard by anyone! Somebody has taken away her voice!” And with four people looking at me like I was crazy, I was beginning to understand what that felt like.