A Glitch in Reality - Chapter 0053

Chapter 53

From the hallway, through the glass door, Jack watched the young Asian woman lying in the hospital bed.

It was a reinforced bed, lower and wider than the others on the floor, with thick railings on both sides and an unfinished metal headboard. Someone from the nursing staff had already changed her clothes. The filthy t-shirt she had left the shed in was no longer there, and in its place was a light blue hospital gown, made of thin fabric, tied at the back and loose at the shoulders.

She looked frail, and no wonder. Given the deplorable state she was in when she arrived at the hospital, one couldn’t expect much. She was too thin. Her wrist bones protruded from her skin, her cheekbones stood out above her sunken cheeks, and her neck seemed too thin to support her head. Her skin had a yellowish, dull tone, as if she hadn’t seen the sun in a long time. Even unconscious, with her relaxed face, she looked like someone who had gone many days without eating properly, and, from what Jack had seen in that cell, probably much more than days. He still remembered her huddled in the corner, chained to an eye bolted into the floor, her shoulders stiff and her hands clenched, waiting for whoever came through the door.

Her hands were strapped to the bed. Each wrist was inside a steel ring, connected by a short chain to the cast-iron frame, and her ankles were similarly restrained. It was the kind of bed hospitals reserved for dangerous criminals, men who arrived shot and handcuffed, with a policeman standing outside the door. Not that she was a criminal. But being superhuman, in itself, was already too great a risk for the nurses who would need to enter to change her IV and measure her blood pressure. Jack had felt this firsthand hours before. Weak and half-starved, she had still attacked him with blows from someone who had learned to fight early and learned it well. All it took was waking up startled in there. A hand squeezing an arm too hard, a jolt at the wrong time, and some nurse would leave that room with a broken bone.

From the nursing station in the middle of the corridor, a gray-haired nurse would glance at that door every few minutes and quickly look back down. Jack understood the hospital’s decision. Even so, the scene was no less ugly. The girl had been passed from one current to another, and when she woke up, that would be the first thing she would feel.

The floor was almost empty at that hour. The ceiling lights hummed low above the vinyl floor, and the air smelled of disinfectant that clings to the clothes of those who spend too much time in a hospital. Apart from the hum, the only other sound was the occasional squeak of a rubber shoe near the nursing station.

Footsteps in the hallway made Jack turn his head.

Two men were coming from the elevator side. The one in front was tall and square, with completely white hair, and he walked without haste, taking each step firmly. Jack recognized Chief Oliver Jones even before making out his face. Half a step behind came Richard, his right-hand man, in a rumpled suit and with his usual tired look.

Jack hadn’t expected to see the two of them there. After the raid they’d carried out earlier that day, he imagined the chief and the detective buried up to their necks in the mountain of paperwork that an operation of that size left behind. There were too many people arrested to process and too many reports to sign, and Jones didn’t look like the type to leave that sort of thing for the next day.

The chief stopped beside him and looked into the room. Richard stopped on the other side and did the same. Up close, in the cold light of the hallway, Jones’s face seemed even more weathered, reduced to bones and wrinkles. For a while, no one spoke. The glass reflected the three of them, half-muted by the light inside, above the image of the girl on the bed.

“We didn’t catch the drug dealer,” Jones said finally. His voice was low, as it almost always was. “We arrested a lot of people from his faction, that’s true. But it’s not enough. Especially letting the meta-human escape like that.”

From the warehouse, Jack had been thinking about it. Between Richard’s informant, the police officers assigned to the operation, and anyone else who had seen the order passed around, many people knew the place and the time.

“Do you believe the information may have been leaked?”

“It definitely leaked.” Jones didn’t take his eyes off the glass. “Now, finding those responsible is difficult. I’m combing through the department, but it’s a slow process, and without proof, no one in the prosecutor’s office will want to take the case.” He paused briefly. “What I can do is put these men where the risk is greatest. First door in every operation, patrolling the worst blocks of the city. With luck, some of them die.”

He said it in the same tone he’d used about the prisoners, without changing his voice at all, and it took Jack a second to make sure he’d heard correctly. He thought it was harsh. Without proof, those men were still just suspects, and the plan was to send them to the front lines and let the streets settle things, without asking who was guilty. Jack looked at Richard, expecting some reaction, but found none. The detective continued staring into the room with the same expression as before. Apparently, it wasn’t the first time he’d heard that idea.

Before Jack could answer, the chief continued.

“You might think this is a drastic measure. But know that part of the police force working in San Diego today is actually made up of gang members. This makes our job extremely difficult, and the situation is not easy. Not at all.”

Jack already knew this. Jones had been hunting his own men for a long time, with the care of someone removing a fishbone in the dark, and it was these men who were most delaying the reconstruction of the police force. Hearing it from the chief’s own mouth, in a hospital corridor, was something else entirely.

Jones’s large hand, covered in old scars, opened and closed once beside his body.

“As you know, we lost contact with the feds. Now the state isn’t responding, which is strange. Sacramento isn’t answering and isn’t explaining why. Something’s going on. From the outside, everything seems normal, but inside something’s wrong.” He took a deep breath. “And, until further notice, we’re at war. Our job is to pull out the weeds before they destroy the whole garden.”

Jack remembered a news bulletin from some time before, read at the end of a television news broadcast as if it were a footnote: other cities had decreed the same measures as San Diego, the same curfew, without any of them being able to explain their own decline. Since that night, the suspicion that someone was pushing the city downhill hadn’t left his mind, and hearing the chief arrive at a similar conclusion on his own brought no relief whatsoever.

Jones kept staring at the girl. Since he had stopped there, he hadn’t turned his face away even once.

“Another victim,” he said. “We haven’t been able to locate her origin. The fingerprints don’t match any of the databases we have access to.”

The chief frowned. The deep wrinkle between his eyebrows seemed to show recognition, like that of someone who has seen that same blank file many times before and knows how it usually ends.

“Most likely she’s a young woman who was kidnapped in her own country and brought here. You can imagine the purpose.” He left the sentence hanging long enough that no one needed to finish it. “However, apparently, her situation is special. Correct?”

“Yes,” Jack replied. “It seems she has special abilities, just like me.”

Jones nodded, a single slow movement of his head.

“Well then. By all accounts, she’s innocent, and keeping her in jail would be ridiculous. While she’s in the hospital, she’ll receive care and recover, although, according to the report I received, that should happen quickly. Isn’t that right?”

Jack nodded.

“Then I think it’s right that you should be responsible for her.”

Jack’s eyes widened.

Being a social worker wasn’t his job. He lived in a shed with his best friend, who turned into a six-foot-tall boar, and a trunk that swallowed people. He spent his nights breaking down doors around town and slept whenever he could. He wouldn’t even know where to begin caring for someone who had come from a place like that. A person in that state needed trained people and a quiet place, and Jack had neither to offer.

“I don’t think it’s appropriate or suitable for me to take care of a vulnerable person.”

Jones sighed. It was a long sigh, which made his broad chest slowly sag, and when he spoke again, his voice had the worn patience of someone who had already had that argument with himself before having it with anyone else.

“Young man, this girl has powers. I can’t place her with just anyone, and I have few trustworthy people in my workforce. The chance of her falling into the hands of criminals again is very high.”

For the first time since he arrived, he turned his face away from the glass and looked at Jack, with those clear, still eyes that few people could hold.

“Things aren’t easy, and there’s also the fact that she could hurt anyone nearby. It’s not the best solution, but I think it’s the only viable one. I hope you understand.”

Jack exhaled through his nose and looked back at the bed. The arguments were good, and he didn’t have any better ones.

“And the leader?”

“Nothing.” Jones also turned toward the room.

Jack took off his glasses, rubbed his eyes, and put them back on. Inside, the girl remained motionless, her chest rising and falling slightly beneath the blue fabric, the IV tube taped to the crook of her arm.

What kind of monster has the nerve to do that to a girl?

At least most of her captors were now in jail. With the state of emergency in effect in San Diego, anyone who had left that warehouse in handcuffs wasn’t going to see the streets anytime soon, and it was quite possible that the chief and the mayor would take the opportunity to clean house. Both had been military men, and high-ranking ones at that. They knew how to be pragmatic and knew very well how to get rid of a weed when necessary.

Minutes earlier, the idea of ​​sending police officers to their deaths had gone unnoticed. Looking at that bed, Jack could no longer bear the unease with the same conviction. Perhaps the greatest luck that city had had in recent years was precisely having those two where they were, tough men, ready to get their hands dirty when necessary.

“Good,” said the chief. “I’ll leave that in your hands.”

He said goodbye with a nod. Richard, who hadn’t said a word the entire conversation, gave Jack two light pats on the shoulder before following the chief. Jack returned the nod and watched the two walk away down the corridor, the chief with his firm, unhurried step, Richard slightly bent beside him, until they disappeared towards the elevators.

He stood there for another moment in front of the glass. Then he sighed, pushed the door open, and went inside. The girl was now his responsibility.

…

Kimiko woke up with blurred vision.

He blinked once, then again, and nothing changed. The world remained blurry, a scattered white light where some darker spots floated without ever taking shape. This frightened her more than it should have. Since the blue liquid in her veins, her eyes had become too good. She could see in the dark and distinguish the tiniest crack in a wall on the other side of a room. To be without them, even for a few seconds, left her exposed.

She was lying on something soft. Her body sank in slightly, there was a pillow under her head and a light sheet over her legs, which brushed against her skin when she breathed. A bed. She had slept on the floor for so long that this mattress seemed like the most comfortable place she had ever lain, and it was quite possible that it was.

Her senses gradually returned, each bringing a piece of the place with a force she hadn’t felt in weeks. First came a sharp, regular beep, somewhere above her. Further away, wheels glided on a smooth floor, a door closed, two voices spoke softly in a language she didn’t understand. Then came the smell.

Clean and burnt. Alcohol, cleaning product, glove rubber, new plastic, wiped cloth, and underneath it all, a sweetish aftertaste of medicine. Her nose effortlessly separated each layer, and the mixture brought a sensation she hadn’t felt in years. Many years, in fact. The last time she’d felt that, she was just a little girl, so small that no face remained in her memory, only the smell, stored somewhere in her mind. She recognized it immediately. She was in a hospital.

The smell wasn’t the only clue. There was a needle in her arm, in the crook of her elbow, held in place with tape, and a thin tube protruded from it, brushing against her skin when she moved her arm. The tube led up to a transparent blur hanging beside the bed. Kimiko knew needles in arms well. For a long time, needles had meant milky fluid, a heavy body, darkness, and then, a new scar. With this one, her body didn’t feel heavy. Whatever was flowing down the tube entered drop by drop, cold, and didn’t pull her down.

She also realized that she was no longer wearing the dirty t-shirt. She had on her body a thin, clean piece of fabric, open at the back, which allowed the sheet to touch her back directly. Someone had taken her clothes and put that on her while she was unconscious, and Kimiko didn’t like thinking about it.

Out of habit, she searched her own body for any new marks. She felt no unusual tugging, no fresh stitches itching beneath the skin. There was only the old scar, on the right side, below the ribs, which still ached a little when she took a deep breath.

One thing, however, made her truly nervous. There was metal on her wrists. On her ankles too. She felt the cold of the rings and their tightness against the bone, and when she moved her right foot she heard the short clinking of a chain.

Her heart raced. The beeping went off along with it, and it took her a moment to understand that the sound was counting her heartbeats.

They just moved me to a different place.

They did this all the time. They carried her from one corner to another, always unconscious, and she would wake up on a different floor, with the same chains. This time the floor had become a bed, but the chains were still there. And a place like that, smelling of medicine, with a needle in her arm and people in gloves walking down the hallway, could very well be the room where they cut her. She had never seen that room. She would fall asleep earlier and wake up later, with one more mark on her body. Perhaps, this time, she had woken up too early.

He did what he always did. She took a deep breath, ignored the sting of the scar, straightened her back against the mattress, and closed her hands around the chains, ready to pull with all her might and find out how much it could hold.

He didn’t pull. A hand held her arm.

The hand was strong and firm. It closed around her forearm, just above the ring, and Kimiko’s whole body tensed, anticipating the crack of a stun baton against her ribs. Nothing happened. The hand held without squeezing, without trying to twist her arm or pin it against the mattress, and there was nothing abrupt about the way it lay there, still and warm. After a moment, the thumb moved slightly across her skin, from side to side, a small movement that wasn’t meant to restrain anyone. It seemed more like a gesture of comfort than anything else.

She turned her head toward the direction from which the hand had come. Her vision was still blurry. She saw a long, dark shape sitting beside her, and at the top of that shape, where her hair should have been, a golden blotch.

The image solidified, much faster than she expected, in a matter of seconds. Perhaps it was the adrenaline. She didn’t know. The golden blur turned into blond hair combed back, and beneath it appeared a face she recognized.

It was the same young man she had seen before fainting. He wore the same gold-rimmed glasses and the same dark, well-tailored suit, made of an expensive fabric of the kind she had only seen a few times in her life, and never so close. The overcoat remained on top. He was sitting in a plastic chair that was too small for him, his knees higher than the seat. The hand that still held her arm was large, with long fingers, the same one he had extended to her, open and empty, in the other cell. Under the white light of the room, the green eyes behind the lenses looked tired.

The rest came rushing back at once. The room spinning after she’d lunged at him, the floor switching places with the ceiling, his hand in her hair, and the will to fight vanishing without her knowing why. She also remembered the wooden chest with teeth, walking on little legs and drooling on the floor, and her eyes darted around the room searching for it. She saw white walls and, behind the glass door, a lit hallway. No chest. She wasn’t even sure anymore that it had happened.

What she had learned in training camp worked on its own, without her needing to think. The door was just a few steps away, and there was no one guarding the hallway. The metal IV stand was within reach of her left hand, should she need a weapon.

As for him, Kimiko couldn’t decide what to think. He was the one who had freed her from the chains in the other cell, and she had responded by trying to hit his throat. Now she woke up imprisoned again, and he was there, sitting beside her, as if watching over someone’s sleep.

He was speaking to her, in the same low, firm voice from the cell, only gentler. Kimiko didn’t understand a word, but she understood the rest: the soft words, spoken calmly, one or two repeated. He was trying to reassure her.

After a while, he pulled his hand away.

Kimiko tried to raise her arms. The shackles wouldn’t let her, and the chains hit the bed frame with a dry crack. She tried her legs, which wouldn’t budge either.

The young man raised his open hand, palm facing her, asking for calm. She understood more or less what the gesture meant. She didn’t trust him, but she stopped forcing it and let her body settle back onto the mattress. Beside her, the beeping became less frequent.

Then he reached inside his suit jacket, and Kimiko stiffened again. The last time he’d made that movement, he’d pulled out a narrow, curved dagger, with writing on the blade that seemed to move when she tried to read it. Now his hand returned with a small key.

He leaned over her slowly, letting her see everything his hands were doing, and fitted the key into the ring on her left wrist. There was a click, and the metal opened. He did the same with her right wrist, then circled the bed and released her ankles, one at a time. In a few seconds, nothing was holding Kimiko to that bed anymore. The open rings hung from the iron frame, swaying slightly.

She pulled her hands close to her chest, still not quite believing she could. Her wrists were red where the metal had pinched. She bent her knees under the sheet just to feel her legs obey.

He went back to the headboard and spoke again, in the same tone as before. Kimiko still didn’t understand.

The two stared at each other. She saw in his face the same realization that must have been in hers: he didn’t speak her language, she didn’t speak his, and neither of them could make themselves understood.

A huge silence fell over the room. In the hallway, the wheels had stopped, and the voices too. This made the beeping grow slower and slower.

Jack searched his mind for some way to communicate with her. Nothing occurred to him.