Monster of the Dark Page 6

  “You say you don’t want to fight him, and in the strictest sense that may be true, but both you and I know it is not completely the case. Your heart is beating faster, is it not? Your pupils are dilated. Your hands are shaking. You’re not even looking at me anymore. Instead, you’re focused on your opponent, analyzing him for weaknesses and formulating your strategy. Your mind may say it doesn’t want to fight, but your body—the Dark—knows it is inevitable. And it wants to win. My desire is only to get you in greater touch with this force while dispensing with all your superfluous aspects. This is the most complete and effective way. I am sorry.”

  Carmen took a half-step away from him and the robot. “No.”

  Janus looked at her before dropping his head for a reflective moment. He pointed at the Construct and then at Carmen. “Kill her,” he said, calmly.

  The Construct wasted no time and minced no words. He assumed a guard and started walking toward her.

  “No,” she said, backing away. It was only a few frantic steps until she was against the wall. The Construct cocked his arm back. “No!” Carmen said more urgently.

  A second later, she couldn’t speak anymore. She vaguely registered the punch, much like how she vaguely remembered raising her hands to defend herself. Now the entire side of her head where she was hit felt numb. She couldn’t move her mouth anymore, and it was growing increasingly hard to breathe. Carmen coughed and then watched the blood spew forth and fall to the ground moments before she joined it.

  It was hard to say that she was in pain; it was more like she had been unplugged from the world. She didn’t even feel connected with her body anymore. She couldn’t feel her fingers, and then her toes went numb. Her arms and her legs soon succumbed after a brief shudder in protest. Last, she grew very, very cold. Her breathing stopped, and the last thing she saw before everything went dark was Janus.

  4

  Barriers

  Carmen ran frantically across her room, sliding and tripping as she went. Mikayla playfully barked and bounded after her.

  “Quiet, this isn’t a game!” Carmen hissed. The dog didn’t understand, though.

  She rushed to pile the meager books she had been provided on top of the pillows and blankets already haphazardly blocking the door. She’d been at it since she awoke in her usual cold sweat. Thankfully, her door opened into her dorm instead of the hallway. Nevertheless, she didn’t think her barricade as it currently was would be enough to deter Janus. I need something heavier, she decided.

  Her eyes came to rest on her chair, and once again she darted across the room. It was obvious after a few grunts that she wasn’t strong enough to pick it up, so she slid it across the floor instead. The effort produced a horrible screech, and Mikayla howled in response.

  “Quiet, quiet!” Carmen yelled. “I have to stop him from coming in!”

  She went to her table next and pushed and strained, but it was no use. She got behind the table, pressed her shoulder into it, and screamed as she pushed with everything she had. Her feet lost grip and slipped out from under her several times, and every muscle burned. Mikayla ran around her, barking wildly, but the girl ignored the dog as tears began streaming down her cheeks.

  “Please,” Carmen cried, as she tried to get the table to even budge, but it didn’t yield. “Please!”

  Eventually her body could give no more, and she fell to the ground, utterly spent. Her dorm room seemed to shrink to the size of a coffin as fear gripped her. Her mouth and throat were completely dry. The lights flickered, bathing them in periods of remorseless dark while also painfully illuminating her situation. Her whole body trembled as she thought of how Janus might kill her again. Her hand went to where his bullet had ripped into her, but there was no scar. She felt the side of her face where she was punched, but there was no mark that could tell what happened. There were only memories and nightmares. Mikayla licked her wet face; it was meager comfort.

  Carmen heard a clicking sound. It was only after a minute or so that she realized it was the sound of her chattering teeth. She paid it no mind. What was more concerning was how hard it was to breathe. She gulped the air rapidly, almost in pants, but to no avail. Her skin tingled as the room spun. Mikayla may have made some noise. She didn’t know for sure, as she was groaning too loudly from her twisting stomach to hear much of anything. Yet, in her horrible wretched state, she remembered the room of sand.

  She raised one of her hands slowly. Her limb shook involuntarily to the point of uselessness, but as she stared, feeling slowly came back to her. After wiping away the tears from her wet face, she looked at the table again. A thought sent it careening into the door with a loud bang, and a startled Mikayla jumped.

  What else is there? Carmen thought as she hurriedly looked around the room.

  Her work desk was the next obvious reinforcement. She didn’t know how she could be so stupid as to forget her obvious gifts before. She was gentler with the work desk, telekinetically placing it so softly that it was hard to tell when it touched the ground. Then she looked at her bed. She could sleep on the floor. It rested against the door only a few seconds later. After that, there was nothing else to move.

  “Mikayla,” she called, and the dog obediently responded to her summon. Unable to think of anything else to do, Carmen sat in the center of the room and held the puppy close.

  Mikayla whimpered. She had been squeezing her too tightly.

  “Sorry,” she muttered before her eyes fixed on the door. Such was her focus, she had to think to even blink. “Everything is going to be okay,” she said softly as she petted her. The texture of the dog’s fur was distracting. “Everything’s going to be okay.”

  It was only belatedly that Carmen realized her food entered through the same door she had barricaded. She didn’t care, though.

  “Everything’s going to be okay.”

  Mikayla was so comfortable that she began to fall asleep. Carmen, by contrast, could hear the rapid-fire beats of her heart while her temples pulsed. She stroked the dog faster. There was nothing she could sense or feel, but Mikayla suddenly perked up and lifted her head. Carmen swallowed hard. Someone was at the door. Whoever it was tried to open it, but her barricade held firm.

  “Everything’s going to okay,” Carmen muttered imperceptibly as fresh tears welled in her eyes.

  “111724,” Janus called. “111724, open the door.”

  She could make no response other than a small squeak.

  “111724, open this door right now,” he commanded, sounding more annoyed than angry.

  Carmen was unable to even pet Mikayla coherently. Her shaking hand skipped along the animal more than caressed her, and her tears began to soak her shirt collar. “Everything is going to be okay.”

  “I will not ask again,” Janus said.

  The girl swallowed hard. “Everything is going to be—” she started to say, but her voice caught in her throat when the door opened a crack. Another push from Janus turned that small crack into a sliver. “Leave me alone!” Carmen screamed.

  Her handler gave no reply. The door opened slowly, and she screamed and cried with each ever-widening inch. Eventually, she was able to see that he wasn’t opening the door physically; he stood in the center of the frame and simply stared at her while it opened seemingly by some horrible magic trick. Janus’s gaze froze her soul, yet it contained no wrath that she could discern. He didn’t even seem annoyed anymore. Nevertheless, Carmen screamed and kicked her legs until she had propelled herself firmly into the opposite wall. The door opened fully, and Janus walked calmly inside. She cried hysterically and raised her arms to protect herself, as if he were going to boil her alive.

  He still didn’t speak. He looked at her and then turned and looked at the remains of her makeshift barricade. With no prompt or ceremony, the items of her barricade levitated and slowly flew back to their proper places. Carmen watched the scene in trembling horror. She had spent all morning on what he had demolished and corrected in seconds. Mikayla, the trai
tor, even went to him and licked his hand.

  “111724, it’s time,” he said simply.

  Carmen’s throat was too paralyzed for her to speak. Her legs felt like they were made of mush. The best she could manage was a few squeaks and quivering moans. Janus took a few steps toward her, and her eyes grew wide. He paused after that, watching her for a few seconds in silence as the girl’s terror remained unabated.

  “You can be tiring,” he finally said, more to himself than to her. He then abruptly left the room.

  Surprised, Carmen was just about let out a sigh of relief when some unseen force lifted her off her feet and out of the room. She gave an earsplitting cry that could have shattered glass, but it was no use. She looked at Mikayla, who barked and jumped at her. It was hard to tell if the dog was trying to aid her master or if she thought this was another game, but it made no difference either way. The door to Carmen’s dorm closed, and she floated after Janus, crying the entire way. He placed her on her feet when they reached the elevator, not completely ungently. She cried on the floor.

  “Stop it. The noise is growing bothersome,” he said nonchalantly. It only made her cry louder than before. “111724,” he said firmly, looking down at her.

  Carmen glanced up at him. She stopped crying out loud, though there were still tears in her eyes.

  Janus didn’t seem to care. The elevator door opened, and he looked down the corridor and then at her again. “Will you walk?” he asked. Carmen, well aware of the alternative, nodded meekly. “Good,” he replied. He then exited the elevator. Carmen followed obediently, albeit on shaky legs.

  This floor seemed the same as all the others, though it was hard to tell with her swollen eyes. Her whimpers were reduced to a few choked off moans that Janus didn’t seem to mind. The trail of tears in her wake, however, remained. Her feet felt impossibly heavy. It was no small wonder that she was even able to trudge behind him. Janus entered a room, and Carmen followed. Neither handler nor charge said a word.

  The room was empty, save a small desk in the center. Other than that, it looked the same as the room in which the Construct killed her, the same as the room of sand, and the same as the one in which she was shot. Janus said nothing. She began to hyperventilate. He glanced at her with a raised eyebrow.

  “No,” she squeaked weakly as she backed away from him.

  Janus sighed loudly. “111724,” he began, but Carmen started screaming before he could say anything else.

  She just couldn’t help herself. Her legs gave out from under her, and she became a crying mass on the floor. Janus stood over her but didn’t speak. He sighed again, loudly, when it was obvious that she wouldn’t be stopping any time soon. Once again, that unseen force lifted her off the ground, and she shrieked. She was sat at the desk, calmly and gently, despite what her hysterics implied. Then Janus pulled out a small object she couldn’t see, and she rose her shaking arms in a futile attempt to keep whatever it was at bay. Her handler rolled his eyes before placing the object on the desk. Carmen shrieked again. She didn’t know she could scream so loudly, and it made the door to the room vibrate as her vision blurred. It abruptly stopped, however, when she finally saw what he was going to attack her with. Unless her guess was wrong, it was a Personal Data Device, or PDD. For a fleeting second, she wondered if it was a bomb that was just shaped like a PDD, but when she picked it up, she realized it was indeed genuine. She had played with or at least used a PDD since as far back as she could remember. She looked at Janus, curious what this new devilry would mean.

  He placed his arms behind his back and started walking slowly. “Mind and body are a team, 111724,” he said. “For the moment, your mind will be our focus. Unfortunately, how intelligent you are or are not is a potential neither you nor I can affect. Wisdom—true wisdom—is, regrettably, also beyond our ability to engineer. Its chief architects are knowledge and experience. Experience comes with time and exposure to the vagaries of life, and I do my best to craft your experiences. It is knowledge that we must busy ourselves with and which provides the most value for effort.”

  Carmen looked at the PDD and then back at Janus. “What do you want me to do?” she asked hesitantly.

  “This is a simple knowledge assessment. A test, if you will.”

  Carmen activated the PDD to find he wasn’t lying. As she scrolled through the assessment, there were math problems, passages to read, words to spell, and other minutiae. She felt suddenly lightheaded.

  “That’s it?” she asked after shaking her head.

  “How shall I teach you if I don’t know what you already know?” he asked back matter-of-factly. “We are monsters, 111724, but that doesn’t mean we are stupid monsters,” he added.

  Carmen took a deep breath, and tears welled in her eyes again. “That’s not what I meant,” she said. “I thought you were going to have me—”

  “Have you what?” Janus asked, cutting her off.

  She hesitated. It was hard to speak. “I thought you were going to have me fight again,” she finally eked out.

  “All of life is a fight, 111724. Every second of every day,” Janus said. “Indeed, every test you take, except this one, will be graded only as pass or fail. To pass is to live another day to be tested yet again. To fail…”

  “You’ll kill me if I fail a test?” Carmen asked with watery eyes.

  Janus paused a moment. “Is every failure lethal?” he asked simply. “If you fail to tie your shoes, will it kill you?”

  She thought about it before answering, “No.”

  “Correct. But, if you fail to tie your shoes, it may be difficult to walk or run. In short, you have to deal with a hardship.”

  “What will happen if I fail a test?” she asked.

  Janus opened his mouth, as if he were about to answer, then closed it slowly. “You will find that out in time,” he said. “But enough of that. This is your knowledge assessment. You have as much time as you require. You may begin.”

  Carmen swallowed hard and then got to work. The beginning of the test was quite easy. On and on it went, though, and the further she advanced, the harder it became. She didn’t know how long she spent on the assessment. Janus was even lenient enough to allow her to take a few short breaks. After a while, she had to skip a question or three to make any progress. Eventually, she could do no more and stopped. Janus picked up the PDD and studied the results.

  “Did I pass?” she asked nervously.

  “As I already said, this test will not be graded,” he replied with minor though noticeable annoyance. He then nodded slowly. It was hard to tell, but he didn’t seem displeased. “If you have no more questions, we may go.”

  “Where are we going?”

  He never answered; he just turned to exit the room. Carmen was well aware that resisting him was pointless, so she followed him out feeling decidedly cold. They were in the elevator soon enough and deposited on yet another floor. The hall here vibrated from an oddly muffled rumbling noise, like a continuous thunderclap. She looked at Janus, tempted to ask him what the sound was and, more important, what it meant to her health, but her handler seemed completely oblivious to his charge. It started her young mind thinking.

  “Why are you my handler?” she asked meekly.

  He glanced down at her with an expression she thought was as close to confusion as he could show. “That is not a question assets are in the habit of asking.”

  “Please,” she begged.

  She didn’t think Janus even liked her. At times, it seemed like he outright hated her or at least wanted nothing to do with her. Her parents were always sad around her, but she didn’t question whether they loved her; they just had to. But Janus....

  “I was assigned to you,” he said simply. “There are more factors than I care to mention, but suffice it to say it was not my decision. Does that answer your question?”

  Carmen brought her hands to her shoulders, hugging herself slightly. She stopped walking as an idea turned over and over again in her head. Janu
s eventually stopped and looked back at her. She couldn’t even look in his general direction.

  “If there is something you’d like to say, 111724, let’s hear it. You are wasting time.”

  She hesitated. “Do you hate me?”

  Janus said nothing at first. “Hate?” he muttered as he considered the concept. “I can see why you would ask that. Indeed, some handlers don’t particularly care for their charges. There are some who can be said to even hate their charges. As for myself, no. You can trust that I don’t hate you.” Carmen felt no fondness behind his words either. “You are my charge. You are here to learn from me. Whether I hate or like you is of no great importance to the fulfillment of that task, nor is your affinity for me of any great importance.”

  Carmen hugged herself tighter. His words were about as comforting as sleeping on a bed of porcupines, but she had to admit that, on second thought, Janus didn’t seem to outright absolutely, utterly, and completely hate her guts. She sniffled as she tried to comfort herself with the idea that at least she had that.

  Janus began walking again and she followed. They entered a new room and, for once, it was completely different from the others she’d been in. It wasn’t very wide—she could easily walk from one end to the other—but it was long. At the far end of the room were targets.

  “How often did your parents touch you?” he asked.

  Carmen was so taken aback by him asking about her parents that the best she could manage were a few incomprehensible sounds. Finally, she asked, “What?”

  “How often did your parents touch you?” he asked again. “A hug or even a simple pat or kiss.”

  “Not very often,” she said.

  “Did they say why? Especially when they touched you by accident, or when you weren’t expecting it.”

  Carmen thought back to them, even though she usually tried not to. She was still certain they were going to come rescue her, but now it was harder and harder to believe as much, except on the coldest and darkest lonely nights. She couldn’t even say it out loud anymore.