The sound of the train wheels hitting the rail tracks should have put me out of my anxiety, but rather added to it. I was stiff in my chair, gripping my backpack to my chest as if that would protect me. It was that which gave me company. Trees and other foliage whizzed past outside the window, forcing me to look at the beauty of the countryside while my insides seethed like a bubbling kettle.
And I wasn’t any closer to discovering who I was, who that person was. The path I had set on as I tried to solve this internal conflict and rip the Gordon of identity tangle in my mind, only led me to the darkness. Now, as I returned to the city, returned to the lab, that first one, the one that was owned by the Raven, I began to feel as though I were being followed.
It started small. Spinning around, that feeling when you’re sure someone is watching you up close, but you can’t quite turn around and check. I attempted to rationalize my situation and thoughts as nothing more than paranoia due to my current state of stress and sleeplessness. However, as the hours passed, this feeling only intensified.
I saw them in reflections on the train windows only. Three men dressed just like any other person in the street, yet as they swaggered along the corridors they instantly brought fear into my heart. They never talked to me in person, but their appearance was oppressive all the time.
I first found myself thinking it was a ruse, that I was not really witnessing the current that I wanted to exist. Still, I have been calling my sanity into question for weeks now. What were a few imaginary stalkers to the memories of everything that we were going through swirling in my mind?
But as I was walking back to the lunch car with the dishes, as the train stopped at a small station to pick up some more passengers, I was able to get my first good look at them. They were scattered around and while they attempted to be inconspicuous they stared at me. Among them was a tall man with close cropped hair. He looked at me in the eye for a short while. Those cruel eyes gleaming with vicious intentions filled me with doubt.
I didn’t think. I just acted. The moment the door of the train opened I jumped off with my heart racing like a rabbit. I could hear voices calling out behind me as the tread of the large figure’s footfalls approached. Panic gave me quickness as I ran through the tiny station and out into the road way of the facility beyond the station.
The town was unknown, crooked and with high rise construction, with little crooked laneways in many places. I started running blindly in any direction, trying to make random turns in the hope that the bad guys would not follow me. Still, no matter how I accelerated, how many corners I turned, I could still see them following me.
This was one of the rare times that I had attended marathon reggae in a park, so my lungs were burring, and a stitch formed in the side of my abdomen and, while I was diving down an alley, I looked for my phone. I needed help. I needed… I leaped out of that bed hurting and not knowing what I wanted, but I did know I could not deal with this by myself.
My hands were trembling as I finally was able to type and open the messaging app. So, I had a group chat with Chase, Alessandro and my parents. As I ran, I typed out a frantic message:
“Help! Being chased. Don’t know who they are. Three men. Can’t shake them. This is headed towards Manhattan]. Oh, God, somebody, anybody, please help me!
I pressed the button to send the text just as I left the narrow hallway and got to a somewhat more populated corridor. For a while, I could not find them from the jostling crowd. I began to walk slowly to look like any other pedestrian… and breathe in large amounts of this precious commodity.
But then I saw them. All three of them, forging forward through the audience as if that were their only purpose in life. I saw their eyes focusing on me, so I realized my moment of relief was through again.
I started running once more. This time I didn’t pay attention to the rate of astonished people I was shoving on the sides. My phone vibrated in my hand with response arriving to my plea but I lacked focus to read the display. Before them, every fiber of my being was concentrated on getting out of there.
This caused my mind to flashback as I continued to run and each memory that crossed my mind was a jumbled up image. Other chases, other dangers in other worlds and in other time zones, or are they really different? In one, I was running away through the virtual urbanized jungle under electric moonlight. In another, I was making my way through the wind-like hallways of a futuristic space station. None of those memories even if they were memories of my making would provide any filler to help me figure out how to get out of my current situation.
I quickly ran to a nearby park, thinking the less angular path and avoiding trees might hide me well. My lungs felt like they were burning, my legs felt weak from all that I had done. I soon could not maintain this much longer.
Wandering until I saw a bench with enough space for me to sit on it, and it was hidden slightly by a large oak, I took out my phone for a second. The responses from my frantic message scrolled across the screen:
Chase: “Brianne?! Where exactly are you? Go and tell someone that is around now so they can call the police this very moment.
Alessandro: “Stay calm. Remember your training. Find a crowded place. I’m on my way.”
Mom: “Oh my God, Brianne! We’re coming! Please be safe!”
Dad: “Called the local police. I told them your last known location. Hang on, pumpkin!”
Their worry was clearly evident despite having been conveyed in texts, hence in an impersonal manner. I almost immediately regretted bringing them into this and causing them further stress in what was already a worrying time. But mostly, I was relieved, although it was more than an emotion, it was some kind of liberation. I wasn’t alone. Help was coming.
But would it arrive on time?
I stood with my head against the tree trunk and slowly tried to survey the park for any of my chasers. There was a moment when I believed I had lost them. The park looked surprisingly calm, and it appeared as if it was only populated with some individuals jogging or taking their dogs for walks, every day knowing nothing about the events happening around them, let alone the plot that had just taken place mere inches away from them.
Then I saw him. The skinny man with the shaved head. This was a man who was standing at the entrance to the park, calmly, even absent-mindedly, scanning the surroundings. I hid behind the tree, panting and closing my eyes, only to realize my heart was beating so loud that I thought he could easily hear it.
I needed to move. They could not afford to stay in one position because of the threat. But where could I go? I had no idea this town, had no idea where I could turn for assistance, where I could get under a roof.
My phone buzzed again. A message from Alessandro:
“Trust your instincts. The reality is that you are stronger than you can possibly even imagine. Remember the backdoor.”
The backdoor? What did that mean? Was it some kind of code? At this point, there was still another fragment of memory rising from the edge of my mind, but I couldn’t successfully recall it.
I did not have time to decipher the meaning of the message before me. I could hear footsteps coming, voices, more than one pair of feet hitting the gravel underfoot of the park I was in. They were closing in.
Inhaling one final time, I emerged from behind the tree. If I couldn’t continue to deny and be invisible, then perhaps I could bluff my way out of it. I stood up straight, and faked confidence that I hardly had left in me and began to march towards the other exit of the park.
I had only halfway through the park when I heard someone call my name. “There she is!”
I burst into a run. There was no point in trying to remain composed anymore. I could hear them getting nearer, nearer with every passing moment. It appeared an eternity beyond the park exit.
These runs changed with the words of Alesandro ringing in my ears. Trust your instincts. ‘Remember you are stronger than you think you are’.
But what did that mean? What could I be secretly strong at that would aid me currently?
Almost reaching the park, this event happened to me. A feeling that I can’t really define rose from deep down in me. I felt like electricity passing through my organism and making my hair rise. The environment shifted as if seen through the surface of water that had been disturbed.
The world burst before my eyes and I saw… everything. It expanded out to every possible version of this moment as far as it could reach. I saw scenarios where I was caught, and scenarios where I escaped, and a thousand other scenarios of what could happen next.
In that place of knowing, I understood what I was supposed to do next.
If I had stopped enough for a spin, I turned towards my chasers abruptly. We were close now, close enough to see their surprise as I stopped attacking with the knives.
I held my hands up, my palms out and my fingers wide. I was a complete amateur, I didn’t know what I was doing, not really. But somehow, some other part of me, another version of Brianne that surely knew better than to go looking for bad things, must have seized the wheel.
I felt energy every time I snapped my fingers. I really got the cheesiest metaphorical vision I’ve ever seen and that was the air itself looked like it was distorting and warping around me. My pursuers slowed down, indecision and the first signs of apprehension replacing the single-mindedness in their eyes.
I opened my mouth, stood before him, and prepared to… say something still, I wasn’t completely sure what. Command them to stop? Rip away the very fabric of the space time continuum? I wasn’t sure.
Casting off the deadness that threatened to sop up my strength, I tried to turn to face the enemy, to see if this new authority was real, or just another splinter running through the insane crack of my mind; but before I could move, before I could make sure for myself, large hands came down roughly on my shoulders.
“Got her,” a voice with very little patience responded in my ear.
The energy dissipated. The vision formed and dissolved more quickly than smoke in the wind. I tried, but it was impossible, the clasp of the fingers around my arms was like a vice.
When the other men came closer, they had victorious smiling and all I could ask myself was
“What have I done?!”