Save Her

Drayden - Chapter 4-1

Drayden - Chapter 4

I open my eyes, and I’m falling from twenty feet up onto a fast-approaching hardwood floor. I wave my arms frantically and then land hard onto my face and right shoulder and my right hip and then roll over onto my back and realize I’m fine. Above me is a scoreboard. To my left, a basketball hoop. To my right, another basketball hoop. I’m inside USC’s Galen Center, where the university’s team plays basketball. How I got here, I don’t know. My last memory is of the bullets flying into me and the professor at my brother’s condo.

“Get outta here! You’re not supposed to be here!” The voice comes from the stands. It’s a security guard. He starts downward toward me.

I get up and run out the closest tunnel and turn corners until I see an exit. I push the steel bar and run outside, and I feel fast. I look around and see everything clearly. Things are brighter, I think. I feel like I’m on drugs. Some kind of heightened state rushes my brain. I’m not used to it. Things are fast. I slow my pace and look across the street at a tree and am able to focus in on a leaf and see its veins. I hear a car horn honk a hundred feet away and quickly look and register the angry driver’s face. Down on the sidewalk in front of me is an old piece of stained gum with traces of a shoe print and tiny specks of dirt. I look up at the top of a building where I can make out the coarseness of the top bricks. My eyesight is incredible!

I hurry my pace again, eager to get to the safety and comfort of my apartment where I hope to register everything that got me here. It feels like a dream, but I couldn’t have dreamt any of it. There are no bullets in me, but I saw them flying toward me, and I felt them shake my body. I feel no pain, not in my head and not in my shoulder, and when I think back to the beating I took from Tengen, I shake my head and wonder how any of it could have been real. But it was real. I know it was. You don’t get that close to death and not remember the feeling. Plus, I have the twenty steel-gray dots in my forearm from the square box that seemed to sear molten lava into me. They are identical to the marks on Reginald’s arm, the ones the coroner had called a tattoo. Looking at the dots on my forearm reminds me of the feeling of my bones melting, my skin dissolving, my nerves tearing. The pain was real and so are the dots on my arm and so was everything else. Radu Dmitriu was real, so was Tengen, and now I’m here as alive as I’ve ever felt in my life. I’m not dreaming, and I didn’t imagine it.

I see my tall dorm building and run to the entrance and enter my code and take the stairs up three and four at a time and when I get to the 8th floor, I’m not winded at all. I open the door to the hallway and hurry past a guy in boxers knocking on someone’s door. He pays me no mind. I rush inside my dorm room and shut the door behind me and turn on the lights. I drop to the ground with my back to the door and look at the dots on my arm and wonder how long this feeling will last. I feel better than I’ve ever felt in my life. I have no pain at all. I touch the dots lightly with the tip of my pointer finger like I’m reading Braille. They have a slightly raised appearance and look metallic with a thin line of what resembles hardened mercury around each of them. I push one in with my thumb. It’s hard, like a tiny metal stent inserted forever. I push it and then others in different directions with my thumb, and I think I’d feel some level of pain as I push harder and harder, but I don’t. I can feel the pressure of the touch, but no pain at all. I hit the dots with the back of my fist lightly at first and then harder until I realize the same results: no pain.

I roll my shoulder that had been wrenched by Tengen at my brother’s office. It feels wonderful. Strong. As strong as my other shoulder. I lift my arm, move it in small circles, and then in more full circles. I punch the air slowly at first and then quickly with both fists. My hands force the air out of the way at an incredible speed, and I wonder again how this could possibly be real. I can actually feel the air move around my knuckles as if it were layered vertically, and I was breaking it open.

I stop swinging and look at my fists and then think about professor Dmitriu and his fate. Is it possible he escaped? Could he have somehow ended up here in Los Angeles? I think about the men who burst through my brother’s door like a military force with their black garb and black machine guns as if they were ready for the worst. Their faces were covered with black masks except for their eyes. I replay the whole thing in slow motion in my mind’s eye and see the first two men barging through and taking a low position followed by three more who stand tall. The two who ducked down fired their machine guns immediately and the two standing fired from higher soon after. I remember that of the two men who stood and shot at me, one of them had light blue eyes and the other had brown, while the two men low to the ground had dark brown eyes and hazel eyes. They had been so orchestrated and professional in their approach. They were well-trained — that was clear, and it makes me wonder which military branch they represented.

They had all fired at me initially. If the memory is real, then I had been their target. I relive the memory and count eighteen bullets heading towards me before any of the guns had been directed towards Radu Dmitriu. Six total bullets went his way. I remember sensing that the bullets aimed at me had hit me in various places on my body and head. I remember seeing the bullets ripple into Professor Dmitriu’s body. His body reacted violently, and that’s when everything went dark for me. Is it possible that somebody rescued me? No, I don’t think so because I fell onto USC’s gymnasium floor.

I look down at my shirt and then get up and run into my bathroom and flick on the light. In the mirror’s reflection, I see the holes in my shirt. Through some holes, I can see my skin. I take off my shirt and look at it. There are twelve holes. Bullet holes. I remember that the other six had been heading for my brain. I look in the mirror at my face and head and neck for any signs of being shot, but my skin is perfect. I remove my pants and stand in the mirror in my underwear. Something is definitely very different about me. My skin appears clearer. My blemishes are gone. When I was ten, I tripped and fell onto a saw blade in our garage. It ripped a three-inch gash near my collar bone that had healed menacingly. That scar doesn’t exist anymore. I look at my right knee. Where I had once had a two-inch scar from a loose go-cart nail that had ripped me to the fat is now gone as well. I look at my near-naked self in the mirror. My skin is perfect. I’m perfect.

That’s when it hits me. The gray box. My brother’s dying wish. I think back to the arena where I landed and am sure it wasn’t anywhere near me. It’s gone. I’ve let Reginald down.

I have to get out of here. I have to get back to Pittsburgh as soon as possible. I have to find the steel box. It’s almost midnight which means I’ll have to wait until morning to fly out. Driving would take too long. I have no cash, but my credit cards still have room on them. I’ll buy the first flight out and hopefully be back there by the afternoon.

I dress in jeans and a different black shirt and go to my little fridge out of habit, but when I open it, I realize I’m not hungry. I should be starving by now, but I’m not — not at all — nor am I even a bit thirsty, despite not having eaten or drank anything in over half a day. That’s odd for me because I’m always chowing on something.

I shut the fridge, grab my spare keys, and as I open the door to leave, two burly men are there waiting for me. The Russians. I’ve seen these two before but never as close as they are now. The last time was during a poker break in the middle of the night on my way to the restroom. They had a guy pinned up against the wall with a knife to his throat. I remember walking by and watching them the whole way and remember thinking how incredible it was that they never even looked at me. Their focus was on the poor soul who owed more than he could pay. When I came out of the bathroom, they were gone and so was the guy. I have no idea what happened to him. I don’t know if he got cut, or worse. I never saw him again. Now, these two are looking at me with the same intensity. They’re angry. They look hyped like they’re ready for anything. Like they’re ready for me to run or attack. Their faces look like they’ve lived a hard life in the harsh winters of Siberia. They look like they were trained to inflict pain and like they were used to it, and like they maybe even enjoyed it. They make their way in, one carrying a baseball bat and the other one wielding an ax, and shut the door behind them. Both wear thick black leather jackets and have guns tucked into their waistbands. The one with the ax is about six feet five inches tall, and his biceps look as thick as my thighs. The one with the bat is six-foot-two inches and is pure steroids. He’s the scarier of the two. His eyes are more intense. More focused. More evil. Both move confidently. Both have the fearlessness of having done this many times before.

“Hey guys,” I say, backing up. “I wasn’t exactly expecting company, but I have some delicious leftover Chinese if you’re interested?”

Getting around these guys in the tight quarters of my dorm would be nearly impossible. They march forward some more, not at all impressed by my attempt to lighten the mood. As they step forward and I back up, I think about my weapons options, and the best I can think of is one of the pillows from my couch. I’m screwed. No sense looking like a fool before dying.

“We saw your lights come on,” says the one with the baseball bat.

I happily remember the twenty-six million my brother had left me.

“Listen, I can offer you more than the bounty on my head. Tell me what it is,” I say as they back me up toward the back wall. “Exactly how much am I worth?”

“Too late for that,” said the one with the ax.

“There’s got to be a price,” I say. They look at each other, which gives me hope. “I have the money. I can double it! Hell, I’ll triple it!”

“Okay. Triple,” says the guy with the bat as he stops advancing. He’s apparently the thinker of the two.

“Well, I don’t exactly have it with me but I can get it as soon as the banks open--”

“No money? Then you die tonight,” says the guy with the bat, cutting off my attempt at negotiation.

“You going to kill a 16-year-old?” I say, wondering if these two know my age.

“You’re in college,” says the guy with the bat.

“What can I say, I’m advanced.” I look at the ax guy who looks at the bat guy and try to read them. My age has only temporarily stymied them.

“Too bad. Orders is orders,” says the bat guy as he steps forward and pushes me back with the tip of his bat. I see his movements come at me in slow motion and I feel the bat hit me in the sternum, but I hardly feel anything.

“After you, we find your step-father and kill him too,” says the ax-man.

Oscar. My mother’s fourth husband. The only man she had married who had truly loved Reginald and me. They had only been married for five years, but it was the longest of her temporary loves, and he was the only one who Reginald and I both kept in contact with over the years. Anger brews that they mentioned him, and I’m mad at myself because I hadn’t thought of the jeopardy I had put him in by losing to the Russians. They only know about him because I gave the address of his cabin as collateral. I wasn’t going to lose in poker. The odds against my hand losing were too great. But then the river card killed me, and now here I am. Their threat to hurt Oscar stops me cold and instantly angers me.