M. Buehrlen - The 57 Lives of Alex Wayfare

Levi grabbed the fabric in his hands and, with another yell, he ripped it in two, freeing me.

We ran.

We pushed Blue’s wheelchair up the steep slope, panting, sweating, sprinting for our lives. I glanced over my shoulder to see Gesh slam his shoulder into the door again, and again, unable to open it.

It worked. I’d cut him off at the knees.

But Gesh wasn’t done yet. He took his stance and fired his last two bullets through the glass. One hit the floor at my feet and ricocheted, the other must have gone astray.

At the top of the slope, we burst through another door and into a dark room. When Levi hit the light switch, a single bulb flickered on above us, illuminating what looked like a parking garage built for a single car in dingy, orange light. A sleek, black Cadillac with chrome rims and heavily tinted windows rested in the sole parking spot. Luckily, it was unlocked. I dove into the driver’s seat with the screwdriver and hammer while Levi helped Blue into the back seat.

The thing about hot-wiring an older car? There doesn’t have to be any hot-wiring involved. If you know where to hit the ignition cap, it’ll pop right off. Then you can jam a screwdriver down between the ignition housing and the steering column, breaking enough pieces so the ignition turns, bypassing a key.

Easy peasy, popcorn cheesy.

I stuck the tip of the screwdriver into the side of the ignition cap and gave it a few good whacks with the hammer. I expected it to take longer than it did, but after a few hits, it broke through and the cap shot over into the passenger seat. I jammed the screwdriver in place, then wailed on it with the hammer. Within thirty seconds, the ignition was mangled enough to turn. The car rumbled to life.

“Ha!” I said, smacking the steering wheel with my hands.

“Um, we have a problem,” Levi said from the backseat.

“What is it?”

“Tre’s been shot.”

I whipped around. Levi lifted blood-covered hands from Blue’s side. Blue was still unconscious from his anesthesia, his head lolled back against the headrest. His mouth hung open.

Oh my God. “How bad is it?”

“Bad.”

“Can’t you do something? Aren’t you a medical apprentice?”

“I…” Levi hesitated at first, but it only took a moment for him to shake off the shock and jump into action. “OK. Hand me the scissors and screwdriver. Then drive. Whatever you do, don’t stop driving. Get us as far from here as you can.”

I handed over the scissors and screwdriver, closed my door, and buckled myself in. I hit a button on the visor and the dingy garage door in front of us came to life, bathing us in afternoon light. The thunderstorm that had raged earlier was over.

I eased the car out into an overgrown gravel parking lot at the edge of a train yard, splashing through deep potholes and puddles. All the high-rise buildings of DC loomed behind us.

Levi sliced open Blue’s medical gown and pulled it off of him. All I saw in the rearview mirror was Blue’s naked, frail body coated in red.

Everywhere, red.

Levi balled the medical gown in his fist and pressed it to Blue’s side. I slammed on the gas and tore through the parking lot, kicking up mud and gravel, searching for a way out of the lot.

“How long does he have?” I said.

“I don’t know. He’s bleeding like mad. I need bandages. I need my tools.”

“Where’s the nearest hospital?”

“How should I know? I’ve never been outside HQ.”

“What? You’ve never been outside?” I guess that explained why all three of us were pasty white. I came to a chain link fence and a gate with razor wire coiling along the top. The gate slid open as we approached, activated by a motion detector.

“I was born at HQ,” said Levi. “We all were. We’re not allowed to leave. And we can’t go to the hospital or the police because we don’t exist. We’re not in their records. We don’t have social security numbers. You want to spend the next few months explaining that to the US government?”

Once we were through the gate, I slammed the gas again and shot down a back alley toward an open road up ahead. “Maybe we should go to the police. What if that’s the thing that brings Gesh down? An exposé on all the experiments he’s done on two kids down in his labs?”

“Yeah, and that wouldn’t make an impact on the future at all.”

I squeezed the steering wheel in my hands. Levi was right, but I didn’t appreciate his snide tone.

Was this even part of the Variant timeline Porter wanted me to play out? Blue getting shot? Dying in the back of a Cadillac? Bleeding to death, just like in Chicago? Did Porter know all this was going to happen? He said I couldn’t mess the Variant up. But what if he was wrong?

“You need to get me to a deserted area,” said Levi. “I need to lay him out flat if I’m going to try to get the bullet out.”

“The bullet’s still inside?”

“Gah, he just bled through the gown.” Levi pulled off his T-shirt and pressed it to the wound, tossing the blood-soaked medical gown to the floorboards. The car was already full of the acrid, rusty smell of blood. I could taste it on the back of my tongue. The air was tinged pink with it.

As I sped through an industrial-looking part of DC, past power plants and factories, I heard Levi swear. I glanced at the rearview mirror and saw Blue close his mouth and wince. He let out a sluggish groan.

He was waking up.

Waking up to a bullet wound. To his body covered in blood.

All my fault.

I turned into the entrance to what I thought was a park, but I soon realized it was a cemetery. One of those beautiful, rolling hill cemeteries with century old shade trees. How morbid was that? Leading Blue to a cemetery while he bled to death? But it was the best I could do. I wound my way through the grassy knolls and tree-lined roads, until I found a secluded place to pull off. It was a small gravel parking spot behind a utility building, somewhat shielded from view.

I threw the car into park and scrambled out to give Levi a hand. We stretched Blue out on his back across the back seat, but it was too tight for Levi to work. We lifted him up and carried him into the woods. Naked and bleeding. Arms hanging limp. His blood leaving a trail. I didn’t even want to think about what might have happened if someone saw us.

We rested him on the ground under the trees, and I cradled his head in my lap, in my arms. “I’m so sorry,” I said to him, my forehead pressed to his. I said it over and over, but no matter how many times I said it, it wouldn’t be enough. How much more pain would I cause for him? If he remembered me at all, he probably wished he’d never met me.

Levi used the scissors and screwdriver to try to retrieve the bullet. He swore under his breath a hundred times. It was too unsanitary. The tools were worthless. The bullet was too deep. There was dirt in the wound. Every time he spoke, he shot my hopes one-by-one like the dart and balloon game at the fair.

Finally he sat back on his heels and wiped the sweat from his brow with the back of his bloody hand. “I can’t do it.”

The last dart punctured the last balloon.

“No,” I said, looking up at him. “You have to keep trying.”

“I can’t do it,” he shouted at me, making me jump. He clutched the scissors and screwdriver in his hands so hard his knuckles turned white. Then he let out a defeated roar and chucked them into the woods. He stood up and staggered back to the car, his head in his hands.

I watched him go, my mouth hanging open. It wasn’t until then that I realized it wasn’t only Blue’s death Levi was angry about. It was mine. Ivy’s.

Your souls are universally linked across time. When you die, he dies. When he is reborn, you are reborn. He is your soul mate in the very literal sense of the word.