Shrugging it aside, fearing the answer was all too obvious, Caleb was prepared for Boris to resist, to fight back, pull away and ruin this one slim chance. Instead, Boris’s face turned toward the door, his body went limp and before they both went through, Caleb thought he saw Boris’s eyes light up with longing and expectation.
On a thick shag rug floor. Caleb was face down, hands gripping big tufts of carpet. Did they really think this was a smart decorating idea? The thought rolled in on a side car next to a train of pure dislocation, confusion and pain. In the dim reaches of his mind alarm bells were tolling, high above, unreachable or even visible.
Where he was took a back seat to when, as he began to remember.
1994. Somewhere Sammy Hagar was playing on an album, and there was a kid reading the latest issue of Daredevil.
Somewhere else, the Twin Towers were standing still, the world had never heard of iPhones and Trump was still reigning at Atlantic City casinos.
Nearby, someone was coming. Someone in a black hat who meant to undo all this, who had death in his hands and extinction in his grasp.
Got to stop him, or delay him at least, Caleb thought. That was everything.
A hat-wearing shadow threw itself across the faux-wood paneling just as the lyricist in the other room wondered why this couldn’t be love.
Get up, get up. He’s here…
Caleb struggled to his knees, then to his feet, fought a wave of nausea and more dislocation as the lights from the hallway tackled the sunlight from the kitchen windows and met at the black-clad figure of the Operator, only feet away. The tip of the cigarette was glowing, but no smoke emerged, as if he didn’t breathe it in—or does he even need to breathe at all?
The eyes under the brim of that black sought him out, sweeping the room, the floor, looking for him like a cat seeking telltale signs of any prey…
…but finding none.
The Operator stood straighter, smoothing out his coat, adjusting his hat — and staring right through Caleb.
How the hell is that possible? Caleb asked, but already knew the answer, the solution he had been hoping for earlier when Boris wouldn’t respond.
With a flourish of his coat, the Operator turned and headed toward the kitchen and the back doors, presumably to check outside.
A small hand took Caleb’s sleeve and pulled him around.
The young boy Caleb had seen in his previous remote session, wearing a Space Invaders shirt and gym shorts with bare feet — a little green around the toes as if he’d been running out on the lawn all day — looked up at him with wide eyes and with a finger on his lips.
“Have to be quick, before he sees through my hallucination.”
Caleb’s eyes widened. “So it does work on him. On them…whatever.” He studied the boy’s face, seeing the similar darkness behind the eyes, yet clouding over in a film of brimming innocence. “And you…”
“I’m still me,” said the boy, the young Boris, in a sort of familiar voice. “But not for long.”
“You knew,” Caleb said. “What I had done.”
The boy nodded, then slowly looked around, craning his neck to note where the Operator had gone. “I was furious, my head filled with all kinds of devious methods of revenge, and then…not. Now, I think…” He looked up at Caleb, and smiled. “I think I’m going to thank you in a few minutes, and then…” His eyes softened and threaten to overflow with emotion. “I’m going to forget you.”
Letting out a sigh of relief, Caleb relaxed slightly. “I kind of hoped you would.”
A creaking floorboard, a shuffle from the other room, and Caleb turned and backed away. “It doesn’t solve your larger problems though,” Boris said. “The comet…”
“No, but let me deal with that now. My way.”
The boy nodded. “I think he’s coming back. You have to…”
But when he looked again, Boris wasn’t there. Caleb was alone, and the man in the hat rounded the corner, eyes squinting as he reached into his coat to retrieve a sharp, silvery dagger. Ornate, with snakes around the hilt.
Caleb stood absolutely still, barely breathing as the Operator moved into the room. It was like he glided over the carpet on bent legs that never moved, scanning the room in controlled thirty degree sectional sweeps. Caleb imagined his eyes were like robotic lenses, drilling into different wavelengths, seeing beyond anything the normal spectra could supply — or fabricate.
Where was the boy? Was the illusion still in effect?
Caleb was frozen, unsure of anything. Could he be seen, heard, smelled? Damn it, why didn’t I bring a weapon? He hadn’t thought this part through, just figured if he could find an alternate reality where Boris was still Boris, he could deposit the man who had caused so much trouble in Caleb’s world into one in which this Operator had never interfered. Boris could live in that timeline free of all the horror he had endured at their hands. Free from the ‘training’ and development into a soldier of mind-warfare. Boris could recover his stolen childhood, one that was never stolen in this reality; recover his life and grow up without the powers, responsibility or corruption that came with it.
It was supposed to be a gift, but Caleb had screwed it up by leading the very instigator of that destruction back to do it all again. Nothing would change, and maybe it would even be worse.
Caleb’s hands tightened into fists. He would end this now, one way or another. The illusion was either breaking down or the Operator had a way to break it down. Made sense that the guy (or entity) who trained Boris would also have safeguards to prevent himself from being duped. Surprised I got this far.
As the man and the outstretched dagger approached, Caleb had the sense that what would give him away was his breathing, or maybe the very fact that he occupied a space different from the ‘false things’ in Boris’s induced hallucination.
Whatever it was, it was giving him away. The Operator straightened slightly as a smile came to his lips and his eyes settled on Caleb’s location — give or take a few feet.
“Got you,” came the grating whisper.
Fight or fight, Caleb thought. No running this time. Had to give Boris the best chance. God I wish I had Nina here…
The dagger thrust forward, but off just slightly. Caleb barely had to dodge. If it had been a swipe instead it would have caught him, but this miscalculation, something that made Caleb proud of Boris’s skill, offered an opportunity to respond back.
Already in motion, Caleb used his momentum to carry his weight forward and add to the thrust as he punched out with all his might. In a sense, never a fighter, Caleb was cheating as he had a clean shot at the Operator’s face.
A satisfying crunch and a shooting pain in Caleb’s fist, but still exhilarating to land such a blow. The Operator’s head went back and the hat flew off. The cigarette exploded in a puff of smoke. The man staggered and dropped the dagger in shock as he raised both hands to his face.
Instead of crimson blood, a weird sludge of shimmering gold emerged. Not so much oozing or dripping, but blasting out, like fiery gasps from a sparkler on the Fourth of July.
Caleb gaped at him. “What the hell are you made of?”
His bald, eerily misshapen skull turned toward Caleb, and the Operator-Custodian now focused solely and directly on Caleb’s eyes. He touched his nose, and the dazzling escaping bits of light ceased. “Nice try, psychic. But you’re so far away from your element.” He held a glimmering, gold-spattered hand up to his face, frowning at it as if he had never seen himself bleed before, then refocused on his target.