Autumn in the City of Lights (24 page)

He stared out the window behind me at the silent city. “Amazing what men will do for love.”

Karl, in love? I shuddered at the thought.

Karl startled me by laughing. “Listen to me! You would never have known I was
ever
part of that emotionless, traveling freak show... The University,” he added, nodding in my direction, as if I needed help following.

“I had a small supply of the Elemental Vitamin left when The University forced me out, but I’m afraid we’ve recently run out.”

“You’re talking about Margery?” I asked.

“Good girl. You’re keeping up,” Karl mocked.  “I met her shortly after I first arrived on Earth and began planning my second attempt.”

My mind returned to the nameless planet Karl had first tried recreating Andros on. He’d said it was full of the most beautiful humans he’d ever seen, but no one had survived the virus he released, so he’d moved on to Earth. I wondered if he’d expected to kill this many people here on Earth, or if he was only shooting for a 50% fatality rate... or just enough to thin out the population to a manageable amount. I swallowed, feeling dizzy and lightheaded again. How could he value human life so little, but still have the capacity to love Margery as much as he claimed?

“The University’s one-sided beliefs aside, Margery would have been an excellent addition to their ranks. Smart, adaptable, patient.” He smiled. “Though she’s grown used to the agelessness the E-Vitamin affords us, so you can understand my insistence to secure more.”

I remembered the pictures on Margery’s dresser at Versailles. That wasn’t her grandmother, I realized. It was her. Then another realization dawned on me... I’d interrupted her with Karl in her room that morning. I thought I’d heard someone else, but when the room was empty of anyone but her, I’d dismissed it. What a fool I’d been.

“Does she know about Sam?” I asked.

“Sam?” Karl asked, with a moment of confusion, then nodded with a wave of understanding and glanced at me with a look of mild impatience on his face. “God, how you amuse me sometimes. You honestly think there was ever anything real between me and
that girl
? She was a means to an end... like nearly everything else on this planet. Did she tell you I was the one to find her after The Plague?”

“She said you found her in a drug store a couple weeks after her sister died.”

“Did she tell you what she was doing when I found her?”

I waited. I remembered her saying he scared her because he seemed to appear out of thin air and that for a moment, she thought he was God, coming to collect her.

“She was trying to sell herself to a man three times her age for a pallet of bottled water.”

I stared at him for a moment, searching his dark eyes for evidence of a lie. I shook my head. “You’re making that up.”

“You can ask her yourself,” he said.  “I’m not surprised she neglected to tell you that part. It doesn’t paint her in a very good light.”

“Why should I believe anything you say?”

“Fine, don’t believe me, but ask yourself this – did Sam tell you the truth about anything while she was with you in Nevada?”  He paused, then said softly, “She did a lot of lying while she was there.”

“Because you told her to. And if what you’re telling me about Sam trying to sell herself for clean water is even remotely true, it’s only because you scoured the Westside and hoarded all of the supplies for yourself.”

“So now you’re defending her?”  Karl leaned back, shaking his head. “I can’t keep up with you, Autumn.”

“I don’t trust either of you, but I do think Sam is a
tad
less contemptible than you.”

He held up his hands in defeat. “I just want your contempt of all of us to be well-informed. We’ve gotten off topic.”  He settled back into the sofa and laced his hands across his chest. “Margery and I are leaving. Very soon.”

My vision blurred, and I blinked. The carpet swam in front of me. I took a deep breath, filling my lungs and stretching my chest. The carpet settled back into place. “Leaving?”

“Leaving,” Karl repeated. “Gone from Earth. Not your problem anymore.” He paused, obviously waiting for my reaction. I wasn’t sure I understood, and if I did, I wasn’t sure I believed him, so I just stared back.

“Don’t you want to be left in peace? Free to be with Grey?” Karl smiled. “Imagine the home you could make together. And the years you have in front of you and how you could spend it with him.”

“Are you serious?” I asked. “You’re leaving.”

“Yes.”

Karl was actually giving up? The world opened in front of me, revealing a sunlit garden behind a small cottage, me working among the tomatoes, and Grey relaxing in the shade of a nearby tree, reading an old worn out book. Connie and Daniel would be coming over for dinner. Rissi and Ben, too. And Shad, of course – my happy thoughts ended there. Shad wouldn’t be there. Neither would my parents, for that matter. Both of their beautiful faces passed before me. They wouldn’t be in this happy picture because of the man slouched on the sofa in front of me. He’d made a mess of two planets already. Decimated populations, ruined civilizations, and skewed history for eternity. And he was leaving to go to another planet. If we somehow found Grey’s lost E-Vitamin and gave it to him, he would live forever some other place. He’d bide his time, waiting and plotting on how to take control once more. Or he might not leave Earth at all. Did I trust Karl to do what he said he would? Of course not.

Surprise crossed Karl’s face when I chuckled out loud. The noise gave me confidence, and a small flame flickered to life inside my core. I raised my eyes to meet Karl’s black gaze.

“I can’t give you what you want.”

Karl continued to stare at me. His eyes slowly clouded with rage, and he took a deep breath and sat forward. He pressed his hands into fists. I could see from where I stood that he was shaking. I was shaking, too.

He was deadly quiet for a long moment, then looked up at me. My breath caught in my throat. For a moment, it was as if I were staring at pure evil. His eyes were black pits under the dark ridge of his brow.

His jaw unclenched and, in barely controlled rage, he whispered, “You need to learn that because of your self-righteousness, the innocent people you surround yourself with
will
be hurt. I’ve tried to warn you, but you continue to practically
beg
me to do this.”

He stood, and for a moment, I thought he was going to rush at me, but then he was gone. My heart dropped inside my chest, and I whipped my head around, searching the empty room behind me.

But I knew where he’d gone. Knew what he was going to do. Or by now, had already done.

No, no, no,
no
! What had I done?

My heart lurched to life again and, panicked, I ran for the door. The hallway was empty. I had to get out of here and get home. I had to somehow stop him. I ran toward the elevator, bare feet sliding on the carpet. I hit the down button and looked behind me down the dark hallway. Still empty. A chime made me turn around, and the door slid open.

Surprised, Hart looked up from a magazine he held. I immediately began backing away.
Where are the stairs
? I thought wildly, wondering if I would be able to beat Hart in a race down multiple flights. He charged forward, tossing his magazine to the floor. I dodged one hand, but he caught my arm with the other.

“No! Please,
don’t!
” I yelled, fighting the tears of desperation that filled my eyes. “I have to go home! Please, let me go!” I hated the wail that seeped into my voice. His large hand grasped my arm and twisted it behind me, then he grabbed my other arm.

A scream from inside Karl’s room made me stop. My whole body went cold. I knew that scream. Frightened, yet still laced with a pouty, put out, offensiveness with a hint of the baby she used to be. I felt like I was falling through the floor. This wasn’t happening. This couldn’t be happening.

Hart dragged me, half stumbling, back to Karl’s room. I knew what I was about to see, and as much as I wanted to see her, ached to see her, I didn’t want it to be true. Because it meant she had been pulled into this awful mess with me, and I wasn’t sure if I could resist giving Karl what he wanted when he put her between us.

Rissi was dressed in her pink striped pajamas, and her feet were bare. Her dark hair was loose, the curls a riot around her small shoulders. She was struggling against Karl, who held her skinny arms pinned behind her.

“Get your filthy hands off her,
now!”
I exploded, trying to wrench my own arms free from Hart’s grasp.

Rissi’s curls fanned out as she whipped her head around to look at me. “Autumn!” she screamed, her face crumpling into tears. A bright red splotch stained her left cheekbone. He’d hit her.

Anger like I’d never felt before bloomed inside me like a giant, ugly flower. It was a blinding, all consuming, soul-shivering anger. I was going to kill him. It was as simple as that. And I wouldn’t feel hesitation or regret. Ever.

I quit struggling against Hart and stared at Karl. “You’re going to pay for that,” I said quietly.

Karl took Rissi’s chin in his fingers and tilted her tear-streaked face up to his. He inspected the blossoming bruise then pushed her face away. “When you’re in charge, you don’t have to pay for anything.”

“We’ll see how long that works out for you.”

“And we’ll see how much longer you can keep up this attitude of indifference with her here.”  Karl’s face hardened further. “
Now tell me where that E-Vitamin is
!” he yelled, yanking Rissi’s arms tighter behind her, making her cry out in pain.

“I don’t know!” I shrieked, wrenching against Hart’s grasp on me as I watched Rissi’s face contort with pain and terror. “We lost it!
I
lost it! The night you attacked Hoover!”  The truth came pouring from me, along with a deluge of tears. “When you disappeared and left me hanging off the side of that hill, Grey was helping me back up and the vial he keeps his E-Vitamin in slipped out from beneath his shirt, and the chain got tangled in my fingers and... and it broke... and it fell over the side of the hill. We couldn’t find it anywhere!”

My sentences dissolved along with any strength, and I sagged, Hart still clutching my arms behind me.

“Please stop,” I whispered, staring at Rissi’s tormented face. “Please stop hurting her.”

Karl threw us back into my little white room without a word. I was relieved but also terrified I’d just made Rissi and myself useless to him. Karl had been keeping me alive so far for bargaining purposes, but now the only thing I knew of value was where Grey kept the vial of Plague virus, and Karl could have an infinite supply of that for all I knew.

I watched Rissi as she stood looking at the tiny room around us, the Tasty-O’s! box lying on its side, the empty water jug, the two crusty puddles in the corners. I couldn’t let her go through this with me. I was considering banging on the door immediately to call Karl back when Rissi turned to look at me.

“Have you been here this entire time?”

I nodded.

“Where are we?” she whispered.

“Hollywood. In the basement of Brass Ring Records.”

“We’re so close to home,” she breathed. “And you’ve been here this whole time...  Grey’s going to freak out.”

“How is... everyone?” I asked.

“Okay. I mean, you know. Everyone’s really worried about you, of course. Daniel came back from Paris by himself. He told us what happened to Shad.”  Her voice pitched up when she said his name.

“Is Connie okay?”  I almost didn’t want to know.

Rissi shook her head. “She didn’t believe him at first. Then she sort of... well, I guess she had a meltdown. She started freaking out and hitting him. She said it was his fault.”

I slid down the wall so I was sitting. This was more horrible than I could have imagined.

“Daniel forced her to go to bed. He was afraid she would hurt herself or the baby. She’s pretty much stayed in bed since then.”

“Where’s Grey?” I asked.

She looked at me with a small amount of triumph in her brown eyes. “He got back almost a week before Daniel. I’m the only one here who knows he didn’t fly back with the rest. One morning while I was walking to school, Grey was just... there, walking beside me.” She looked pointedly at me. “He told me something bad had happened in Paris, and he needed my help. I ditched school that day.”

I shook my head, ready to argue with her again, but she cut me off before I could say anything.

“I
told
you I knew about Grey.” Her voice lowered into a whisper, and she leaned toward me like she was about to spill a huge secret. I held my breath and watched her warily.

“And then
he
told me. He said I was right. He said you told him I knew, and because I was in his inner circle, he needed my help. He said Daniel knew and Shad... he’d known too, but because of what happened, Grey had to come back here ASAP to find you, and no one could know he was here until Paris could gather enough fuel for the plane and fly everyone back. And until then, he had to lie low and look for you, and he needed my help.”

I stared at her helplessly. What on earth was Grey thinking? He couldn’t involve Rissi in this. Why had he told her and not Ben?

“So how were you supposed to help find me?”

She grinned suddenly, my question as good as an admission she was right. “Well, because he wasn’t supposed to be back yet, he wanted me to let him know if Karl popped back up, or you, so he could rescue you. He checks in with me every evening before bed, then disappears again to keep looking for you.”

The thought of Grey’s fruitless efforts made me sigh.

“Come here,” I motioned to her, and she scooted closer on her knees. “What did Karl do when he came for you?” I studied the new bruise on her cheek. She winced when I gently touched the edge of it.

“He just grabbed me and did that thing Grey does, and suddenly I was somewhere else.”

“Were you with anyone when he appeared?”

“No. I was in my room, and I’d just changed into my pajamas. Ben was waiting in the hall until I was done, and we were going to go to sleep.” She paused, looking miserable. “I’ve been having bad dreams, so he’s been sleeping in his chair by my bed.”

“So Karl just showed up in your bedroom and grabbed you and... left?”

She nodded. “I screamed for Ben, but then we weren’t there.”

I shuddered, imagining how panicked Ben must have been, hearing her scream, then barging into an empty room.

Her face screwed up as she tried to stifle a sob. I pulled her into my lap and cradled her against my chest. I smoothed her hair and rocked her while she cried, her tears soaking through the front of my shirt and her fists clenching my collar. I could smell the shampoo on her hair.

After a while, she quieted and only an occasional hiccup interrupted the silence.

“What are we going to do?” she whispered against my wet shirt.

“I’ll think of something. Don’t worry. We’ll both be back home soon. I promise.”

A few hours passed in silence, and Rissi dozed against my shoulder. I was passing between an uncomfortable half-sleep and an even more uncomfortable half-awake state when the door clicked open quietly.

Margery entered the room, and I stared at her in surprise. She held up a paper bag and a bottle of water, offering them to me.

“It’s bread. Fresh. A small piece for each of you. Don’t eat it too fast. I know he hasn’t wanted to send food down here for you.”

I opened the bag. Two small pieces of crusty bread huddled at the bottom. I offered the bag to Rissi, but she shook her head, turning away.

“This is just to get you acclimated back to food. I have more for you to eat in a little while,” Margery reassured.

I looked at Rissi.

“You eat both,” she said and added quietly, as if she felt guilty, “I had dinner just a little while ago.”

I nodded and bit into the first piece of bread. It was still slightly warm from the oven, and the smell was almost too much. I was whisked back two years to The Water Tower, Ben at work at the table on some project, Rissi watching a movie in her tent in the living room while I baked bread in the kitchen and dreamed about meeting the boy who saved me from The Front again. I blinked, and the feeling was gone. I chewed and swallowed until the first piece was gone. It felt heavy in my stomach, like I’d just eaten a massive plate of pasta.

Margery stepped outside the room and returned with another bag. “There are more appropriate clothes for you both in here, along with some toiletries. Take your time. I’ll be back, and then we’re going to go talk to Karl and get all of this straightened out.”

Her voice was kind but slightly irritated. Was she frustrated Karl’s plan had gone so wrong? Was this some kind of trick to get us to trust her? She turned and left before saying more.

I tore into the bag, unearthing the promised soap, water, and towel. I dumped out the clothes to find jeans, sweatshirts, socks and sneakers. A comb fell out last, and I stared at the bounty of useful items — so basic, yet so vital to feeling human.

I washed myself and combed my hair out, then dressed in the fresh clothes. They were brand new with tags still connected. I ripped them off, tossing the trash on the floor. I threw Karl’s shirt and the ripped nightgown into the corner, hoping I’d never wear or see them again. Rissi didn’t want to leave her pajamas, so I convinced her to put on the clothes over them.

I was sitting on the floor, wiggling my toes inside my fresh thick socks, contemplating how my new items might best be used to dismantle the door handle when Margery returned.

“Let’s go,” she said gently. “I have a warm meal ready for both of you, and then we’re going to have a peaceful conversation. This has gotten far out of control, and trust has been damaged on both sides. We’re going to find a resolution we’re all happy with. I hope you can believe me.”  She glanced at me, and I nodded, wary at the relief I felt. I hoped I
could
trust her.

We followed her out the door and down the hall. I glanced through open doors into the rooms surrounding ours. Recording studios and sound booths were everywhere.

“Why did Karl put me into that room when he has an entire hotel at his disposal?”

Margery spoke without turning around. “That room is called an echo chamber. It’s used to rerecord sound as it’s being bounced around its interior. It’s soundproof and conveniently barren. I suppose he thought it was a dramatic place to put you.”

Instead of exiting at the ground floor, we rode up as far as the elevator would take us. When the doors rolled open, we were in a grand lobby. Margery opened one of two large wooden doors, and we emerged into a very large, very round office, though it looked more like a lounge. It must have been the entire top floor of the building. Floor-to-ceiling windows ringed the room, providing almost a 360 view of the dark city. A desk sat at the far edge of the room, empty except for a large computer screen. The rest of the room was taken up by various seating areas, a television, a small raised platform with a few musical instruments on it, and a large conference table.

The conference table caught and held my gaze. It was laid with a modest but wonderful looking meal for two. Steaming vegetables, grilled chicken, a soft pillow of mashed potatoes, more crusty bread, water, and glasses of ice.

“I wasn’t sure what you liked, but I thought after so much time, you probably wouldn’t care what you ate.”

I stepped toward the table, my eyes lingering on the crusty black grill marks lacing the chicken.

“Go ahead and eat, Autumn. Just go slowly. You probably won’t be able to eat much.” She turned to Rissi. “I know you said you weren’t hungry, but please feel free to eat as well. There are also cookies.”

Rissi and I sat down. We looked at each other for a moment, and her eyes seemed to ask if this was okay. I looked the food over and then nodded at her. If Karl
was
going to kill us, he wouldn’t be so elaborate as to poison us privately. He’d want an audience.

After only a few bites, my stomach felt as if it might burst, and I leaned back, dizzy and warm from the good food. Rissi was reaching for a second cookie when the door opened and Karl entered. I caught the mildly annoyed look he gave Margery before he sat down on a nearby couch.

Margery sat across from us. “I don’t like how our relationship with you and the rest of New Burbank has devolved to kidnapping and torture,” she said plainly, looking me in the eye.

“There was nothing to devolve
from
,” I corrected her. “Our relationship with The Front has never been above kidnapping or torture. This is pretty much status quo for Karl.”

Margery sat silent for a moment, and I sensed sadness in her stillness. I wondered if she was thinking back to a time before she’d met Karl, when she was still innocently aging like every other human being around her. I wondered what her life had been like before, if she’d craved power over others and power over time? Maybe it was what had drawn Karl to her? Made him fall in love with her, trust her... and vice versa.

“You’re right,” she said simply, turning her palms up in admission. “Though you’d have to include me in that judgment. I’ve become impatient, and that’s caused me to cut corners, sometimes in a ruthless manner.”

Margery’s voice dropped low, and her French accent thickened as she continued. “My father was a strict man. His expectations were very high for me and my sister. He was a scientist who spent many hours away from my family securing grants and respect in the scientific community for himself. He fought tooth and nail to provide a good life for my mother, and everywhere I went, school, Mass, the market I worked at, friends’ houses, the movie theater – everyone seemed to know my father and expected the same brilliance and excellence from me. Sometimes it was very difficult to be his daughter.”

Margery looked at Rissi and me and raised her eyebrows. “I don’t expect your fathers were quite as difficult on you as mine was on me.”