Save Her

Drayden - Chapter 4-3

What else am I capable of?, I wonder as I enter the parking garage. What other capabilities had the gray box given me? I need answers, and all the answers are in Pittsburgh. The gray box is in Pittsburgh. I need to get there as soon as possible.

I look up the slant of the parking structure at my options. I pass by several newer model cars because I don’t want the headache of dismantling a car alarm, and then I find what I’m looking for: an older-model Mercedes Benz coupe, a 300CE, black with gray accents and a gray leather interior. My step-dad, Oscar, used to work on one very similar to this in the garage. It’s a 1990, and most likely the alarm system no longer functions, or at least that’s what I’m hoping. I knock lightly on the glass and shatter it with my knuckles with ease. I pick at the pieces of glass, unlock it from the inside, and open the door. After dusting off the shards of glass, I hot-wire it and listen to the hum of a wonderfully built engine.

I drive out of the parking garage and head straight for the airport. I’m not tired, hungry, and I don’t need to pee. I should be starving by now, and I should definitely have to pee. At the least I should need a nap, but the thought of closing my eyes to sleep is ridiculous. I’ve never felt more awake, or for that matter, more alive.

The highway hums from the tires and the air whooshes in through the open window and thoughts race through my head at breakneck speed, reengaging me with memories that had long been forgotten. My mind skips backward in time to when I was four and then quickly to the events of yesterday. In between are flashes of other memories that seem as complete and as clear as if they had just happened. Entire events play out in staccato images mixed with the compression of sounds that made sense as language — all of this while I wind the road in front of me on the way to the airport. Many of the blips and reels of memories are from times I had forgotten, or at least I thought I had forgotten. Significant and insignificant, everything seems accessible. I think I retrieve everything. It’s all multi-categorized and inter-linked by date, or person, or by what the weather was like that day. Like December 4th when we had that major blizzard in Michigan, I remember Ms. Sanguin, our neighbor, coming over because the power in her house had gone out. I was thirteen, and I couldn’t stop staring at her and her voluptuous breasts. I remember trying to impress her with a math trophy I had won. That day ended uneventfully, but it connected to over one-thousand other memories that branch off in various directions. Following Ms. Sanguin’s branch, there’s another memory fifteen days later with me, mother and Reginald shopping in the supermarket, and me seeing Ms. Sanguin talking to the guy in the fish area. She catches me staring and then smiles at me like she knows of my crush on her before she turns away with an exaggerated sachet I think might be for me. That was December 19th. The weather outside was unseasonably warm. About fifty-two degrees. In my mind, I follow that memory in the direction of a thousand other branches that interconnect with other lines to bring me in any direction into my past. I follow the path I know will bring me to Ms. Sanguin again and find myself reading the newspaper obituary the following February. The date on the top page of the paper is February 12th. Ms. Sanguin’s obituary notice is incredibly small. I see the entire obit in my head as if I had the newspaper immediately in front of me: Judy Sanguin, the beloved daughter to Marv and Evelyn Sanguin, passed away after a bus struck her on the University campus where she worked as a research fellow. Ms. Sanguin was thirty-nine years old. Re-reading the article brings back the feeling of sadness I felt when first reading it. The sadness connects my mind to my brother’s body in the morgue. I see him as if I’m there again, looking at his warped remains, the sadness moving quickly to the anger I felt when in the morgue. I think back to Ms. Sanguin again and remember how I learned later that she had the walk signal when the bus hit her. The anger I felt when seeing Reginald’s body links somehow to the anger I felt when learning about Ms. Sanguin having the right-of-way. And then I feel the sadness again of knowing that she would no longer live next to me and that I would no longer get to crush on her womanly appeal.

I see my brother’s body again as if I had just left the morgue. Then, my mind back-tracks to me as a two-year-old sitting in front of a round cake with white frosting and a blue candle shaped like a ‘2’ that drips slowly onto the cake. My mother and then-stepfather, Gus — my first stepfather and Reginald’s second — argued about the mess I was making. It was my birthday. I remember that was the night she told Gus that I wasn’t really his, that she had gotten sperm from the sperm bank, and that she wanted a divorce. I remembered crying because of the anger between them, and I remember how she made Gus leave instead of us going to a hotel. It was a strange memory because I had never thought of it since then — didn’t even know I had stored it — yet replaying it in my head now makes me certain it had been real. I could smell the wax from the candle again, and the dumb look on Gus’s face when mother directed all of her hatred at him. Mother whispered to Reginald that everything would be okay. She had said nothing at all to me, which I guess is fine because I was only two. Mother put us both to bed soon after. I have no memory of ever seeing Gus again.

My mind traverses into long-forgotten chasms. Dates and times of past events appear in my mind’s eye like my mother’s in-style hairdos and our many houses and different schools. I remember the black on yellow numbers on the outside of the school buses we had ridden, problems on math tests I had taken, the page numbers of passages from books, and girls I had crushed on. All of this is coming back and the memories are amazingly clear. Nothing is forgotten. If I had ever seen it, I can now recollect it in full detail. I’m sure I can recall anything. Everything! To test this, I think about my brother’s little brown notebook. I had only glanced through it when I found it, but now the images of the numbers and passcodes are visible somewhere in the space of my memory, and they’re as clear as if the book is right in front of me.

My eyes see things more clearly, like the segmented white lines that guide me down the highway toward the airport. They have more contrast against the blacktop than before my transformation. The lights illuminating the billboards have a bluer tint than I had ever noticed before while the headlights of the Mercedes I’m in display a yellower hue. My eyes can focus as near as seeing my fingerprint a half a centimeter away from my eye, or as far as obstructions will allow. I see a high-mast light clearly from five miles away and then look at the skin on my hands that seems softer, younger, and flawless. I squeeze the steering wheel and watch the flexing of my tendons and the movement of my knuckles. The steering wheel suddenly feels so breakable. I’m confident I can snap it, and maybe even crush it if I try hard enough.

My new abilities confound me. They amaze me. What can’t I do? And what couldn’t Reginald do that had allowed somebody or something to hurt him to the point of disfigurement and death? It makes no sense. I feel invincible. I’m sure that Reginald had the same powers, and that being the case, how is he now dead? I remember the fear he had on the video he left behind for me. Why was he so scared? I think the answers to the mystery will start with his computer and his files. Surely the laptop had answers that were otherwise unexplained, like what had the steel box done to me, and what did my new powers make me capable of, and what were the ways to defeat someone with my seemingly invincible strength? I have to get to it and soon. Hopefully, from there I can get some idea of what happened to me, and to Reginald.

My first glance into my brother’s laptop had been rushed and unfocused. Also, it had been before my transformation. Now I’m replaying the moment in my head and see a program of code within my brother’s files again. What had once been an overly complicated series of ‘if-then’ equations now becomes a simple matter of ‘this=that’ in my head. I understand it more clearly now. The program is a simulation program. No, it’s a fighting program! The data contains a series of ducks, holds, kicks, and punches, and even includes a long series of code that contains weaponry such as knives and spears. Reginald’s programming was complex with an interweaving of code that overlaps and repeats like it’s taking into account twelve reactions to every one attack. I read it, and like a computer, my brain deciphers the data. The math and computational calculations add up to mean different shapes and actions. Every shape and action equates to a different form. A different sequence. A different movement. It looks like a video game, but the programming is one-dimensional, with one body responding to kicks, punches, and strikes by various weaponry, without the coding ever including the specific form of another body to fight against. It’s just a series of ‘if this then that’ combinations that, while comprehensive, was also not entirely complete. I know I can code it better, but that was never as much his forte as it is mine.

I’m just minutes away from the airport. In twelve hours I hope to be back at my brother’s home where I’m sure I’ll discover that Professor Dmitriu had died from a barrage of bullets, and where I’m also sure the gray steel box will not be found. Despite knowing I’ll find absolutely nothing beneficial, I have to go there. I have to see it for myself. I’m sure the steel box will be gone, which means I’m one-hundred percent sure I had let Reginald down. And that’s not something I’m okay with. I have to make it right. I’ll use my new abilities and make it right. And after that, I’ll avenge his death. As I pull up to long-term airport parking, I think about how the steel box and avenging my brother are undoubtedly linked. Finding the gray steel box will lead me to my brother’s killer. I’m sure of it.

I grit my teeth when I think of the one lead I have: Tengen. Seeing him again is something I now look forward to because I’m no longer out of his league.