She stood in her bedroom, listening to the stillness. Her parents were at work, and she was just home from school. It had been an okay day. Lunch was awful, as usual. Didnt the cafeteria ladies know how to make anything other than meatloaf? She sat down on the bed and slipped out of her backpack straps. She grimaced and stretched as she stood back up. There were just too many schoolbooks now. Last year, it was just reading, writing, and some basic mathematics, plus the mandatory PE classes. She hated PE. It just seemed like an absurd waste of time and energy for no real gain. This year she had three new classes: Navigation 101, Intro to Hyperspatial Transit, and Piloting Basics. The book for HT alone was over ten gigabytes. With that, plus the Nav, Piloting, and the rest of her books, her reader was nearly out of space. At least in Piloting they got to sit in the second seat of the teachers ship.
After she unpacked her backpack, she went into the kitchen for a snack. There wasnt much to choose from at this time of the month. Just some fruit, a pudding or two, and some nuts. She checked the fridge for a drink, but everything but water and milk was out. She settled for the nuts and water and walked into the living room. Maybe there was something decent on. As she thumbed the remote, she frowned as channel after channel was news, news, news. Bo-ring. There just wasnt anything to do anywhere. Nobody had invited her over to play since the disaster at the swimming pool a few months back. It wasnt her fault she had tipped the lifeguards chair into the pool. Well, maybe a little, but not much. After all, they had dared her, and a dare is a dare. But its not like anyone got hurt.
She glanced over at the clock. It was just about 4:30. Mom would be home in an hour, and Dad at 6. She sighed and went back to watching some dumb show about whales or something. She wasnt really paying attention; it was just something to do to pass the time. Turn off the brain, fill brain with mindless entertainment. There never was anything good on now. Not since the war started. At first, it was okay. They had specials on some of the ships used in the fighting, but that ended about a month in. Now it was all just news and reality shows and environmentalist hooey. Sit down, shut up, and listen. She wasnt sure but that was what school and life were all about anyways.
As the clock ticked closer towards five, she started to drift off a bit. The show wasnt getting any more interesting. Time stopped, or seemed to, anyways. She heard, or thought she heard, a small voice, or was it a hissing sound. She wasnt sure, but it was annoying, and it made her angry. She shushed the noise, or voice, or whatever it was, and it went away. Time began to move again. Only it didnt, because when she checked the clock, it said 5:15. Mom would be home in a quarter hour. Reluctantly, she got up and put away her glass and the nuts. This done, she went up to her room to study for the Nav test in two days.
The next day, her heart broke. Her boyfriend, her date for the Homecoming Ball, had dumped her. As she walked to Nav class, heels dragging, she pondered for the umpteenth time what she had done wrong. Was it something she said? Did she wear the wrong clothes at the wrong time? Then the sensation came back, harder, faster. It beat inside her skull in a discordant cacophony of pain. She stopped, stumbled over to a wall and sagged to the floor as all of her emotions were turned inside out. It wasnt her fault. It wasnt what she had or hadnt done. It was his fault! He hated her, just like everyone else did. They all hated her, through their smiles, their cheerful talk. They hated her as they ignored her, shunned her, classified and quantified her. She was a number to them, a note in a file. Not a person. Not important.
The headache intensified and she grimaced as it came to a crescendo; she reeled against the wall, dimly noting that her nose was bleeding as she hit the floor. And then, it faded away. She slowly got to her feet again, head spinning. The dark thoughts receded, and she once again was aware of her bleeding nose. She wove her way to class, and a tissue.
As she left her classroom after taking the test, the hissing sort of thing came back again, but it wasnt exactly a hiss any more. Now it seemed more of anEmotion? A thought? She couldnt tell, but she felt like there was something wrong, something she should have done. It disapproved of her, just like everyone else! She wanted to scream to it NO! that it was not her fault. Just as suddenly as it had come, it vanished. She shook her head to clear it, hair flying about. Several of the other students in the hall glanced her way, but just shrugged and kept moving, or else looked down at their shoes abashedly. She wasnt unattractive. Then, without warning, something inside of her broke. She felt angry, at something, nothing, nobody, someone, anything at all that could be a target. The moment passed, and she found herself with yet another headache, questions, and no answers in sight.
At home that night, as she mulled over the day, each bit of gossip and rumor that flitted about the school, her mind came to rest on what had happened in the hall. She was worried about herself, but didnt know what to do. A fear of rejection, of failure, often follows those who look good or do well. She lay across her bed and placed her chin in her hands; to her surprise, when she took them away, they were wet with tears. She was crying, but over what? The young mind is not an easy thing to deal with, least of all for the young person, and she was feeling the troubles and trials of growing up in a fast-paced world hard now.
As she cried, all the pain and the sorrow and the hurt she carried inside flowed out and pooled around her, just like the tears she shed. It was then, at the darkest time, the time-out-of-time that she thought, for the first time, and not the last, either, of suicide. It wasnt that she was sick of life, or hated it. She was scared and hurt, and didnt know where else to turn; who to run to. Most suicides arent those that hate themselves. Its the ones who are confused and dont know what next to do.
Later that evening, after her tears had dried, she sat on the side of her bed, a small knife in one hand, and her mothers prescription painkillers in the other. The one against the other. The pill or the knife. She descended into a deep melancholy as the decision beat away at her; as she compared each course of action to take. Then it came again. Its voice it definitely was an entityspoke to her not in words, but in emotions, in feelings. It spoke to her of bereavement, of loss, of pain, of sorrow. It spoke of a deep and horrible fate that had befallen it and its kind.
Her tears flowed anew as she shared the pain and sorrow and torment of this alien mind. She shared it, became as one with it. Their sympathies merged and flowed into a new self. Their minds cleared somewhat as both parts took on a share of the sorrow. They were like that for a long while, sharing and taking comfort from each other. But then, all too soon, the moment passed, and the other began to drift away. She begged it not to go, but it told her that it couldn't stay, not from this far away. She nodded to no one; she understood. She would have to find it if she wanted to be whole again.
She knew that she had a mission to complete, things to do. She set the bottle of pills down and placed the knife in her hand. There was only one way to heal the hurt inside, one way to ease the pain. She would have to find this other half of herself. She went downstairs. She knew that her parents would forbid her to go, forbid her to be complete. She couldn't allow that, had to be alive again. She opened the door slowly, quietly. She mouthed her parents' names as she moved to the head of the bed. The knife came down, and she screamed that she was sorry.
It took two days for the police to come. During that time, Katherine Lynne Sawyer had never moved from the bedroom floor where she sat, knees hugged to her chest, softly rocking back and forth. A knock sounded at the front door.
Hello? This is Sergeant David Ferris. Are you alright? The man was of slightly taller than average, medium build. Dark close-cropped hair, blue eyes, and a disarming smile. David Ferris had been a popular school liaison officer just a few short months back.
She started to sing quietly, a song from years ago. ...So hold me when I'm here, love me when I'm gone, you can hold me when I'm scared, I won't always be there, so love me when I'm gone...
"Ma'am? May I come in? Mr. Sawyer's place of employment is concerned because you have not returned their calls." He was not used to this. At the schools, there was always someone who gave a direct answer. Here, though, the only person he could identify was not forthcoming.
She continued to sing and rock.
"Ma'am, I'm going to get the master key for this door, and then I'm coming in. I think you might need help." Footsteps sounded outside in the corridor and receded swiftly as the man went to find the manager.
Katherine glanced down at her hands, and faltered in her singing. Not all of the blood covering the knife and floor was her parents'. She stopped singing and loosed her grip on the blade, dispassionately noting the gash in her palm. She closed her hands again, not so tightly as to cut herself again, and waited for Sergeant Ferris to return. He did so shortly, and with the manager and paramedic crew. The manager fumbled the keys, caught them. He flipped through them until he reached the master, unlocked the door, opened it, walked in slowly and stepped aside for the officer to pass.
"Everything looks alright out here, nothing is missing or broken." It was the manager's job to know what was inside an apartment. If he said nothing was missing, nothing was.
Ferris was unconvinced. "Mr. Sawyer has missed two full working days, has not called his place of employment as to why, and neither his wife nor daughter have left the apartment in that same duration. Something isn't right."
They moved quickly through the rooms, checking for any sign of its inhabitants. Katherine didn't look up from her hands as the door opened to show the men a scene from Hell.
David blanched when he saw the bloody bed with two nearly decapitated corpses lying in disarray thereon. He swore and reached for his radio. “Dispatch, this is Ferris at the Sawyer apartment. Send two body bags and a forensics team.” After receiving a confirmation that the requests were on the way, he called the medics in to look at the girl. She looked to be about thirteen or fourteen, with grimy, lived-in clothes and dark hair matted with blood. She was clutching something in her hands and rocking back and forth, back and forth.
“No relatives? None at all?” Ferris' words were more a statement to steady his own nerves than a question in their own right.
“None at all. Apparently she is his niece; her parents both died in a midair collision when she was approximately eighteen months old. Custody was given to the Sawyers shortly thereafter, being no records of her biological mother’s family. No, Sawyer is her only living relative. That is…Was, until two nights ago.” Caduceus Watkins, resident legal adviser, looked troubled. Caduceus was a fairly tall man, black of skin and hair with intense gray eyes. He also on occasion wore horn-rimmed glasses constantly in danger of falling from his face, which gave rise to his habit of pushing them up at odd times.
“I still don’t understand who would kill them. He had business enemies, sure, but none that would want to kill him.” David looked out the window, lost in contemplation and utter bewilderment.
“Perhaps you should ask Katherine. I’m sure she could shed some light on this.” The lawyer snuck a glance at Dave, both of them knowing full well that nobody had managed to get her to talk in the four days since the murders. She even refused to eat, forcing the staff at the emergency room to give her an IV. The three-inch gash on her hand had taken nearly forty stitches to close, but even before that they had had to give her a sedative before she relaxed her hands enough for them to extricate the knife. Once the sutures were finished and the anesthetic worn off, Kate had returned to stony silence, sitting on the gurney and rocking, empty hands grasping an invisible knife.
Not that the forensics group was having much more luck finding any trace of the killer. Devil of a slick operator, whoever it was. Michael and Amanda Sawyer's killer hadn’t left so much as a finger, foot, or handprint on anything. There was no sign of a jimmied lock or window, and the logs hadn’t recorded any access by anyone other than a member of the family on that day. Pete Holman, the lead investigator of the Sawyer case, later confided to Dave that there was almost no chance whatsoever that it had been an outside job.
“From all the evidence, it looks like the girl. Mind you, there are no identifiable fingerprints on the knife; she smeared them all very well, intentionally or not. We did find something in her room, though.” Pete handed a plastic bag to Ferris. In it was a small prescription bottle, with about a half-month’s supply of a powerful painkiller. Pete was an older man, nearing sixty-five, but as active as when he was twenty-three. He regularly outdid the younger members of the force, and did so even with his balding head and grandfatherly demeanor.
“You mean she’s a druggie? That doesn't make any sense at all. For all she’s a silent statue, she doesn’t display anything of the sort. The bloodwork shows she’s had nothing stronger than Ibuprofen in the past seven months, barring the last few days when they've been pumping her full of stuff for surgery. She wasn’t abusing these.” David looked up from the bag, incredulous.
“I had the prescription checked. It’s in her aunt’s name for chronic arthritis. Also, if I were to guess about these, I would say unattempted suicide.”
"Unattempted?" Ferris' eyebrows shot up.
"She was only thinking about it." With that, Pete turned on his heel and headed for Katherine's ward. So many questions and no answers in sight. Perhaps she would be willing to talk today.
Three more days of coaxing had managed to get Katherine to at least acknowledge the existence of the others in the room, even if that was no more than the barest flicker in her eye. Holman took this to be a good time to begin questioning her about that fateful night, and so the next week and a half were a constant drudgery of existence, punctuated by the occasional sharp smell of disinfectant or the motion of the wheelchair to which they had graduated her. For nine days she held her silence. Pete would come into the room, take a seat, and wait. A few moments later, and Katherine would arrive, propelled by a nurse, who would place the wheelchair at the other side of the small table and then scurry off to another ward. He hated this part of his job, but the commissioner was adamant that an explanation be gotten out of her, and so to those meetings Pete went.
He would try to lead her into giving some kind of a response, any response, but she remained catatonic. Once, he thought he saw her look him in the eye, but then the spot of light kept traveling along the wall, reflected off of a portable EEG machine in the corridor. They’d tried an electroencephalograph on her, of course, but despite the high levels of activity in the portions of her brain responsible for consciousness and thought, she didn’t really notice anything happening. She’s ignoring us, thought Pete, like we don’t even exist at a high enough level to matter.
The tenth day started just like all the others. Pete took his place, set down his notepad, coffee, and recorder, and waited for Katherine. At precisely 9:37AM, the door opened and the nurse wheeled her in. The nurse excused herself to check on another patient, said she would return to take Katherine back in an hour or so, and vanished. Holman set down his stylus and massaged his temples. Time to get down to business, Pete, he thought. He intended to get a response out of her today, and felt that he could do it, too. He pressed the record button and began: KatherineThere are a lot of questions floating around you and your family. Can you help me clear some of them up today? Id really like to understand what happened and help you get past this. He took a swig of coffee and grimaced. It was cold, just like this room. He shivered slightly under his coat and settled in for another long round of one-ended questions.
Pete sighed. She wasnt helping the situation at all, was Katherine. He tried a different tack. KathKatie, I know its a shock, and you have every right to be confused, but now isnt the time. We need answers, and you can give those to us. Kate said nothing, and continued staring into nothing. A small trickle of drool ran from the side of her mouth. From all outward indications, she was a vegetable, but there was no reason for her to be. Trauma, even psychological trauma of that magnitude simply could not reduce a person to a shell. Or could it? Pete wasnt sure; his job and expertise involved getting answers to hard reality, not existential pondering. He ran his hands through his hair and leaned closer, stared into her eyes. What secrets are you still hiding, Katherine?
My body may have been motionless, but my mind was anything but. I knew the EEG had detected that. I knew I didnt have much to go on before they started trying to pry what they wanted to know out of my head. I cant let them do that. I scream into the void, seeking my other half. Surely we can find a way to escape this. I scream, and I answer. I and me mesh again, flowing together like twin streams of water into a lake. We are one again, and I find rest in that. I ask myself how to escape this, and I answer. I tell myself how, and I learn the way. I must kill Pete Holman. But how? In an instant, I know. Only it isnt me that knows; its something that is beyond myself, yet a part of me. I am we, we are me, and we are one. I know who we are.
Pete stared at her, mind spinning. He felt coldness in his head, like someone had forced a steel bar in through his ear. His vision flickered. Katherine stood up and pointed at him. No, through him. At the door. Then she vanished. He spun around, eyes wild. She was in a coma, damnit! Girls dont simply awaken after two weeks or so of a coma, stand up, and vanish in front of your eyes! He found his pistol in his hand as he searched the room, but he couldnt remember drawing it. He spun around to the door, and there she stood. She moved impossibly fast, stepping face to face with him. In her hand was a knife, the same knife that had killed her parents. No! This cant be happening! My gun, yes, my gun! He pulls the gun up from his side, reckless in his haste to stop her as she draws back the knife. The gun comes up, the knife comes down. Them both caught in between. He smells his fear, her sweat, their exertion together and inside he smiles a little. He fires twice.
I stood up from the wheelchair and walked over to where his body lay. The first round had taken the top of his skull off, the second lodged in his neck. I thank me for saving us, for confusing his vision, for deluding him; I take the gun from the man's cooling corpse and leave.
She ran quickly, darting through the wards like a wraith, always moving, staying just out of sight. Katie knew where to go; the skimmer parking was on the north side, and she was sure there’d be at least one that was unlocked. If not, and there was someone there already…Well, she had the gun. She shot past startled nurses and doctors to reach the door, only to find that it was one of the ones with an “If door is opened, alarm will sound” sign on it. Hell with it. She opened the door anyways and ran, trusting the pandemonium created by the alarm to keep people busy while she got a ride.
She found one three rows down from the door, a somewhat dingy machine of dubious integrity. She hoped it wouldn’t fall apart on her. Apparently, that was what the owner trusted to keep it from being stolen. For most thieves, it doubtless worked perfectly, but Katherine was no ordinary thief. She had a date to keep, and she knew exactly where he was. She took a moment to kick the gun under the vehicle one spot over. Left here, right there, follow the lines and pray the cops don’t spot you. The classic mantra of the underage driver, but it fit well. It took here about twenty minutes to reach her destination: the home of Carl Sandberg, ex-Homecoming date, and she was just in time. His bus turned the corner towards his stop as she got out of the skimmer and went up to his room. Really. People were far to trusting about their property’s security to lock the front door. She fingered the small knife in her pocket. She didn't want to use it again if she could help it.
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