Cursed (2 page)

“Congratulations. You’re alive,” the voice said, as though it were a good thing. It was the same voice that had kept me from the abyss I sought. The soft, gentle voice.

“I didn’t want to come back.” My voice came out like an old toad’s croak. My throat hurt when I spoke. Did everything have to hurt so much?

“We couldn’t leave you like this.”

I knew I wasn’t in Heaven. I was still caught in the nightmare. I closed my eyes. “Get fucked.”

I was lying on something hard, moving, gliding, but there wasn’t any sound. I could hear the footsteps of people surrounding me in a huddled group. I felt their presence surrounding me. How the hell did I get here? The last thing I remembered was ...

Fire. Heat. A firestorm. Bushfire. I’d unleashed the thought-energy. I’d passed out in the middle of a firestorm. Then ... nothing. My mind kept throwing me out, as though staying with the memory of the fire wasn’t good. As much as I tried, I couldn’t push beyond the solid blank wall inside my mind.

The weakness got to me. I couldn’t move. I didn’t have the strength to lift my hand, let alone use my only weapon: my mind. It was a defenselessness I couldn’t afford. These people could do anything to me, and I wouldn’t be able to stop them. Each time I managed to open my eyes, my vision fishtailed and swam in and out of focus. Dark shadows merged and blurred into indistinguishable alien shapes.

I could see vague shadows of people surrounding me, a head tilting, a body turning. I could see someone bending down to me, touching me. They were all business. Mostly, it hurt. You’d think I’d be used to it, used to the pain. I didn’t know where I was, who they were, and I was vulnerable.

Strips of light flew over my head so bright it made me feel like I was going to be sick. I shut my eyes and concentrated on the feeling to pass. It didn’t. It got worse, like my gut was going to fly out of my mouth. My throat tightened.

“I’m going to be sick,” I whispered hoarsely. My stomach exploded like it had been punched by a steel arm. I retched, my body convulsed. Nothing came out, but I retched again. The walls of my gut were imploding. The hot lick of perspiration dripped from my forehead. I was going to take out the asshole that brought me back to life. At least in the blackness, I couldn’t feel anything.

“The feeling will pass. It’s the effects of the drugs I gave you.” It was the calm, softly spoken, masculine voice in my ear. On another day, it might have soothed me. Not this day, though.

“You can take your drugs and ...” I couldn’t finish the sentence as another retch took control of my body.

“We’re nearly there. I’ll give you something for the nausea. It’s just the muscles pulling. They haven’t been used for a long time. There’s nothing in your stomach to bring up.”

I wrapped my arms around my waist trying to stop the kick-in-the-guts feeling that wracked my insides. I gritted my teeth so tight a dull pain started in my jaw. I closed my eyes and wished I could disappear, but I knew I wouldn’t be that lucky. The gliding stopped, or rather, I felt the absence of movement. It was all I could do to lie on my side, grit my teeth, and squeeze my eyes shut. I hated being like this.

“I’m going to have to prick you with a needle. Just a little sting, and it will settle your stomach.” The voice sounded almost apologetic.

The nausea stopped. My breath hitched in my throat. How could a drug work so fast? “You could have given that to me sooner.”

I wasn’t sure if anyone had heard it. I didn’t even have the energy to speak with any volume. Maybe I just said it in my mind. I didn’t know.

“This will help you recover.”

There was a pressure on my arm, and then a relaxed feeling warmed my body, taking with it the edge from the pain until all that was left was the stiffness. I dragged in a shaky breath and made myself open my eyes. I blinked several times to get them to work properly, but the world was still blurry.

A face hovered above me. “Feeling better?” I wished I could see if his voice matched his face. I tried to answer, but my throat closed over. The sides seemed to stick together.

“Here, sip this,” he said. A hand slipped beneath my head, a glass was held to my lips, and I let the fluid into my mouth, scouring the dryness away.

I tested my limbs and noted on a scale from one to ten how well I could move. I didn’t even reach two. Being pathetically weak was a position that didn’t sit well with me. Control was what I needed, and this was so far on the other side of the scale it wasn’t funny.

“Where am I?” I asked.

“In a hospital.”

“Which one?” I asked.

“One of the largest. And the best.”

“Who are you?”

“Julius Freeman. Doctor Julius Freeman,” he said, then, “Can you remember who you are?”

Did I? My life poured through my mind, as unwanted as dirty water. I remembered who I was, where I came from and ...
what
I was. It was the “what” that cursed me. The “what” that kept me from being normal.

My childhood, if you could call it that, drifted through my mind. Bouts of horrendous sickness, horrific medicine that would send me to bed for weeks. I had no friends. I did have a mother. Once. But I barely remembered her. There was only my father. Victor. He had to give me the medicine to try to cure what I had. Or that’s what he told me when I was little.

Then I got wise. I tried running away so many times, but he never let me go. There was always more medicine. Making me different. Changing me. Then came the tests. More and more until they all blurred together. I lost perspective, not knowing if it was hell on earth or just hell in my mind. The only thing that stayed constant was the need to get away.

Months later, I had a chance to get away for real. I met Heather. My one and only true friend. I will never forget those years and how good they were. I’d lived as a normal person. Had learned how real people lived. It took Victor eight years to find me. And I didn’t perform for him again. No matter how much he tried to make me. Force turned to torture and still I didn’t succumb.

With flashes of memory, came the final one before I’d blacked out. The fire. I’d lain on the ground to die, but the bastards found me. They took me to some buildings. The ones that weren’t burnt to a cinder. Ones I had no idea about. Then I was kicking and screaming. I made the fire change direction again. The building fell around us. Pieces of walls and ceiling crashing to the floor. I didn’t care if I died as I killed them all. I wanted to die, too. It was the release I craved.

Victor was there. Yelling at me to stop. Screaming. So much screaming. So much pain. Blood everywhere. I must have blacked out. He put me in a coffin, and then came the complete and utter darkness.

Julius must have thought my silence meant I couldn’t remember because he said, “Don’t let it worry you. Under circumstances like this, it would be plausible to forget.”

I concentrated on his blurry form. “What ... circumstance?”

I heard him draw something across the floor. A chair. He settled, and his head tilted forward as he leaned close. “You were found. Yesterday. By a building team.” His voice was hesitant, weighing words as he spoke. He rested his chin on fisted hands. A thumb moved over his lips. Nervous.

I had no idea what he was talking about, so I just stared at his blurry face. I tried to reconcile what he said, but it didn’t make sense. He was probably feeding me a lie. I wondered what my father was planning to do to me this time. Instead of torture, he’d now provided me with a new friend. Someone to gain my trust. If force didn’t work, then maybe a softer approach might cause me to use my gift.

The doctor pressed on. “Robo-workers were doing routine excavation work beneath an old road system. They knocked down a wall and found a building buried beneath heavy rock. They had no idea anything was there lost beneath tons of dirt and foliage. When they found it, they sent in some archaeologists…”

“Archaeologists,” I rasped. Why on earth would they need archaeologists? Road workers, specialists, yes, but archaeologists? There was an angle I wasn’t getting, and years of living in the street had made me pretty good at reading angles.

He cleared his throat. “They found all sorts of artifacts in one room in particular. It was a fantastic find, everything was in pristine condition.” Moments passed. “Then they found you in some sort of a capsule.”

“Bullshit.” I wanted to laugh, but this wasn’t even funny. This was hysterical. It bubbled up inside of me, ringing my crap-orama bell. If there was one thing about my father, it was that he didn’t do technology by halves. That’s why the government gave him so much money. Tech did its best to keep up with him.

This was just a mind game. Something to put me off kilter. How far could they take this idea before I tilted on the edge of insanity? I didn’t know this Julius man, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t one of
them
. He probably wasn’t a doctor. Or maybe he was, of the worst kind. I wouldn’t trust him as far as I could throw him, and I couldn’t even lift my arm at the moment. This could be just one thing in a long list of things they were trying out on me.
Get Katia out of her comfort zone, watch her do her thing, then rope her in
. God knew, torture hadn’t moved me.

“Go on,” I said quietly, ready now, watching for a slip of the tongue that would let me know what they were up to. I liked fairy tales.

“You were alive. Impossibly alive,” Julius said.

“The road workers brought you to us, and we managed to wake you. After so many years asleep, you woke up.” He sounded surprised. Like I had beat all the odds, and he didn’t know how the hell I did it. He sounded so honest I might almost believe him.

“Years?” I could hear a little noise beeping in a rapid staccato.

“Yes,” he said. “For something so archaic, it kept you alive.”

“What was archaic?” I asked.

“The capsule we found you in. You were in complete suspended animation. That’s what kept you alive.”

“How many years?” The beeping went faster. Their mind games were working.

I felt his hand on my wrist, feeling for my pulse. I flicked it away. “I thought it might be too soon to tell you. You need to calm down, or we’ll have you back where you started from.”

“Tell me!” I snatched his wrist, fingers digging into his skin.

His voice cracked as he told me. “One hundred and ten years.”

“You’re lying!” Panic, cold and hard, rose from the pit deep within me. This couldn’t be true; this couldn’t be happening. I thought Victor had done his worst, but he’d upstaged himself. “Tell me the truth, or so help me God, you will be sorry you ever laid eyes on me,” I screamed as hard as my scorched throat would allow.

“It is the truth.” His voice sounded defeated and quiet, like he was breaking bad, bad news. “This is the year 2120. You are in The Royal Melbourne Hospital, the largest in the southern hemisphere, and you have been in suspended animation for one hundred and ten years.”

“You’re lying,” I whispered.

I stared at his blurry face trying to make sense of what he told me. It couldn’t be true, was against all logic. It sounded so fantastic it couldn’t possibly be real. Something out of a science-fiction book. Some story they had invented to make me do what I mustn’t do for them. For
him
.

But why did this man sound so sincere?

Had I forgotten what true sincerity was? Had Victor mistreated and used me for so long that I only saw the bad in people? Or was it something more insidious? Ruin what was left of my world, crumble it at my feet, watch me try to pick up the remains, and hope that I would cower to him. When people don’t have anything left, they don’t have anything to lose.

It was totally improbable. One hundred and ten years. Things like that just didn’t happen. It was against all odds. It was impossible. Victor had done
something
to me, but this story was unimaginable. I would be a fool if I believed it. I hadn’t realized I was holding my breath. It hissed out between clenched teeth.

What was even more inconceivable was this Julius man trying to get me to believe him. Either that or he
thought
it was true. I was in serious trouble either way. I was either going looney tunes, or I was with someone who already was.

He sighed. It was a nice sound. I was reminded of how sincere he sounded. It was tempting to give in and believe that someone could be genuine, let myself be taken on an honest ride, to believe something good was still out there. “If I could lie to you, then I would. You have to believe me when I tell you if I could undo this, then I would. I really and truly would. I don’t want you to be scared.”

“I don’t get scared.” If he knew the things I had seen. The things I had done ... I hoped my face didn’t show the self-disgust and loathing that crawled inside me.

I did things once when I was young and weak and I thought I was pleasing my father. When I was striving for him to love me. I couldn’t do it again. I told him I couldn’t do those things to people anymore. He didn’t listen. He persisted. He had kept at me until I had no choice but to disappear. And then he chased. Endlessly.

“You don’t need to be. I’ll be here to help you,” Julius said.

I shook my head. “No help.”

“Let me see your eyes. I can tell you’re having trouble with them.” Before I could pull back, he held my face between his hands. His gentleness startled me. I wasn’t used to anyone being anything other than rough with me. His hands were firm, warm, and caring. He turned my face one way then the other, and I let him, too stunned not to. I was afraid to breathe in case he stopped being gentle. It was a shame, he was a total looney.

He took one hand away, and a blurry red blinking light moved into my vision close to my eyes. I moved my face away from his hands. “Stop.” His fingers instantly moved away. I wasn’t used to people listening.

“Your eyes aren’t focusing,” he said.

“You could tell all that from a toy light?”

He chuckled, a deep rumble that started deep within his chest. I liked the sound. Surprise washed through me again. “It’s more than just a light. I just scanned your retina and optical nerve. It will take some hours, but your sight will return. There has been no lasting damage from the induced coma.”