Kei

  “The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents. We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far.”

  --H.P. Lovecraft

  My dreams are restless chaos, full of questions. Full of memories, illusions, half-forgotten truths.

  When I draw on my full power, as I did with the run tonight, it’s like grasping a powerline, energy coursing through me in lethal surges. Lightning bolts bound only by my body. But my body can take it. I’m not so sure about my soul.

  The storm inside is often more destructive than the one without. That’s its nature – stirring up what’s fluid and unstable. My Gift’s invisible winds work on spirits and dreams even more easily than earth and stone.

  Still, I calm myself and lay still. It’s all I can do. Breathe in, breathe out.

  I’ll wake the Donovans if I spend the night pacing my floor. And calming myself after using my Gift is my one tradition. The one thing I have left from my past life besides my name and a few faces and memories.

  Long, slow, deep breaths. Smoothly flowing in and out in a single uninterrupted rhythm. Noise swept up like dried leaves again, and igniting and burning on its way out. Clean, calm, free life energy surrounds me to be breathed back in to scrub my tissues of further noise. A cycle I know well, though I do not know how. Lost like so much of my past. But for now, all I need is this one memory my mind somehow knew to never surrender.

  So I lay quietly, calming the cold fires within me. Driving back the dark. Feigning sleep.

  Until at last sleep comes to claim me in truth.

  ***

  I float weightless in peaceful darkness, seemingly forever.

  There is no sight, no sound, no sensation of any kind. My mind is free but empty.

  Then, after an eternity, dreams like memories fill the night, and I am no longer alone.

  A birthday cake, a bicycle, a black boy laughing as he runs with me. Someone I know but have never met, some time I’ve lived but never seen.

  My mind is too young and formless to question, and what is there to question? Logic has no more place here than light. Only dreams and darkness dwell in this place.

  More dreams come, like puzzle pieces in this place. I live a life in silence. A short one, but vivid and heartfelt.

  One by one, each vision finds its place. Until at last I have all I need. Family, friends. Laughter, love. Words.

  A name.

  I am Kei.

  My first thought, and I am already old enough to remember it. But the silent dark seeps into my mind again as the dreams fade, and I am left alone once more in the emptiness.

  Still peaceful, but aware.

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  The silence lasts for a long, long time.

  “She’s beautiful.” A man’s voice, startled.

  “She is, isn’t she? Our masterwork. Our child.”

  “Ours?”

  “My work, your genes.”

  “What?”

  “Yours, and a few others. I take only the best, Yoshi.”

  “Then she’s…?”

  “I call her Kei. But yes, she’s engineered. A clone of all that is best in you and our other Enhanced. All the best, and more.”

  “Kestrel, what have you done?”

  “You always wanted a daughter, and I’ve always needed a teacher. She fulfills us both.”

  There is silence. A long silence.

  Then Yoshi speaks. “We’ll speak of this later.” His voice is different, but I cannot say how. “For now, you need to set her free.”

  “Of course,” Kestrel says, and there is a smile in her voice. “I’ve only been waiting for you. Yours will be the first face she sees.”

  Light spills into the darkness, but now it is no longer the light of my mind, my imagination showing me visions, but a shaft of pure white light erupting in front of me. And widening.

  I realize something is opening my world up to the daylight I’ve never seen. Water ripples around me. I am completely submerged yet breathe without hindrance.

  “Just a moment, Yoshi,” Kestrel says, her voice echoing strangely through the liquid. The sound of water rushing away rumbles beneath me. “I’m draining the tank.”

  “What is—?”

  “Something high-density, like in a floatation tank, but easier on the skin. She’s been in sensory deprivation for some time, but her mind never noticed. Useful.”

  Yoshi is silent, and as my eyes adjust, I see him, just the other side of the glass.

  He has kind eyes, and an open face. Intelligent, handsome, compassionate. I do not yet know him, yet I recognize him. And I feel safe when he is near.

  His right hand presses to the glass. Just beyond the glass, sliding panels are moving aside, showing more and more of the lab beyond. I see no windows, yet sunlight falls through shafts of crystal in the ceiling, and the world beyond my glass cocoon blazes bright.

  My feet touch the bottom of the tank and I find my balance while the remaining water still buoys me, but I keep looking up at the man and everything beyond him. I think he’s tall, much taller than me. And as the water drops me below eye level, I remember I am very small.

  Five candles on my last cake. I remember how it tasted, spices and lemon frosting.

  A transparent mask unseals from my face and falls away with the water. I never feel the suction, or now its absence, yet there it is.

  I recognize the face, and the kind eyes gazing at me, yet feel strange, as if I’ve never seen him before.

  “Kei,” he says, “I’m Yoshi, your… father.”

  I regard him silently, eyes wide. I know I can speak, yet breaking the silence seems unnatural somehow.

  White cloth is settling around me. Where before I floated in just my bathing suit, softer than the water itself, the fabric which floated around me like a second cocoon, never touching me, pulls closer and forms into clothes.

  As the water sinks below my feet and flows away, I stand barefoot in a simple, flowing white dress. I am damp, but the cloth is somehow dry, even airy. I take a nervous step forward, and with a ‘whoosh’ the glass slides from left to right, opening the tank completely as it disappears into the wall. And I look at the tall man waiting for me.

  And I speak the first words my lips have ever spoken.

  “Dad. I missed you.” I draw in another breath, but don’t know what to say.

  For a moment, it’s like I’m seeing the world in double vision – one image is the world in front of me, the other, the world as I’ve always known it. I draw in another breath, and the world merges together.

  I blink my eyes furiously, though there’s nothing in them. Everything is one now. My mind will simply have to adjust.

  I take another step, but the man has met me halfway, kneeling on the damp metal and gently taking my shoulders. He is careful, almost as though I could break if he holds me wrong, or speaks too loudly.

  “I’m here to take care of you, Kei,” he says, his calm, certain eyes gazing into me. “Are you ready to go?”

  I nod, and he lifts me up.

  I see there is only one other person in the room, a woman with purple hair and eyes. She is the most-beautiful person I have ever seen, and she looks pleased as Yoshi turns to carry me away.

  “I can trust you with her safety, then,” she says. “And her education, too, I hope.”

  The man pauses, holding me gently. “What are you doing, Kestrel?”

  She smiles. Her beauty fills the room, but chills the air. “What I must, Yoshi. And now you will do what you must. And the world will be better for it.”

  Yoshi shakes his head almost imperceptibly, and we leave. The door opens into bright sunlight, rippling across distant waves.

  ***

  I start awake.

  The dream was vividly real, and I realize it was not a dream. Not necessarily.

  My memories may be lost, but there’s something about the power that flows through me in my desperation.

  I’m stronger when it comes upon me, faster, and the world, despite all the chaos and blinding speed, is somehow clearer.

  Thinking about it, I think I’m smarter when the cold fire flows through me.

  And if I am… then the same power lighting up my neurons and accelerating my reaction time may also be clearing my thoughts.

  It comes and it passes, but am I truly left unchanged?

  And if so, can my secrets remain buried for long?

  A chill runs through me that has nothing to do with my power.

  Yes, knowing what the danger is may help me face it. But the blanket of blissful ignorance may be falling away.

  And for the first time, I realize I may still have something left to lose.

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