CHAPTER SIX: BENNU ISLAND

  Firestorm:

  “This is where the lies and deceit began.” I flew through the most important portal in the entire Slipstream multiverse to show Jackie the truth.

  Hungry scavengers called in the distance.

  Jackie was hesitant to enter my portal and lingered on the cusp, conscious of its contents but not experiencing it fully.

  This was my first time allowing someone else to ride my stream, but after successfully riding Jackie’s, I knew it was possible as long as her inexperience didn’t get in the way.

  I left her at the threshold. Baby steps.

  Soaring over the lush forests of Bennu Island, over to the massive industrial complex that stained the island’s history, I landed on Life Rite’s large circular balcony that sat precariously over the lip of the volcano.

  Grace, a gorgeous girl with strawberry blonde hair, stood on the balcony watching villagers build a new castle-like tower.

  It was backbreaking work for little pay.

  Grace walked into the complex where her mother sat idle, slumped over in a wheelchair amongst scientific lab stations.

  “The new tower is coming along nicely.”

  Her paralyzed mother didn’t respond.

  Grace pushed her mother’s wheelchair out of the office and around the large complex their family owned and operated.

  This monstrosity housed one of her father’s many important businesses. The living quarters completed the north wing, where they spent their summer vacation in modest comfort.

  “What’s with all the birds screeching?” Jackie asked.

  “Relax and watch.”

  The rules of the Slipstream Proba-verse took some getting used to. I didn't even know everything after all these years...

  How many years has it been?

  In the afternoons, Grace parked her mother’s wheelchair by a crackling fireplace in the sitting room so she could explore the island.

  The mysterious call of the Bennu birds drew Grace into the forest, despite being told to stay close to the compound. Like Jackie, Grace had to know what was out there.

  She kissed her mother’s cheek. “I’ll be home for dinner.”

  Her mother didn’t respond, not with a word or a gesture. Not for lack of want, but because she lost her physical ability.

  Muscular dystrophy turned her into a decaying shell of her former self, left to stare into that fireplace for hours while her daughter, so full of life, explored the breathtaking lands of Bennu Island.

  Each afternoon, Grace gained confidence to go farther and deeper into the woods. Even the rotting carcasses littering the island didn’t deter her.

  In fact, the sight of the half dragon/half human-like skeletons of the local Bennu bird only fueled her curiosity. She was dying to see the creature alive, in the flesh, after hearing their relentless calls day and night since her arrival.

  Today, Grace went farther than ever and found a warehouse in the middle of the forest.

  “What’s that doing here?” Grace approached the building cautiously, her hand brushing against the chalky cement walls.

  The steel door had a keypad lock.

  “Why not a DNA Identifier?” As Grace contemplated the code, the door unexpectedly opened from inside.

  She ran and hid behind a nearby tree.

  A man wearing a white hazmat suit left the building, carrying a walkie-talkie. “I repeat, the next phase has the green light. Over.”

  As he walked away, Grace slid from the tree’s cover, hoping to catch the door before it locked shut.

  Not wanting to be seen, she was too late, and the door closed before she reached it.

  “Uh.” Grace sighed. She was used to getting what she wanted, but did not get easily discouraged.

  She entered a code into the keypad; her birthday.

  The device flashed red. That wasn’t the correct combination.

  She tried her home address and one-two-three-four.

  No luck.

  Grace thought… and then entered her parent’s anniversary. She knew that date well because every year before her mother got sick, her father threw lavish parties to celebrate their love with five hundred of their closest “friends.”

  As her mother’s health got worse, the parties stopped.

  This year for their anniversary, her father took the bricks from the chapel where they got married, transported them to Bennu Island, and built that new tower on the complex to symbolize their undying love.

  Grace’s father spared no expense in his grand gesture to show his devotion to her mother, despite her current paralyzed state.

  Bingo. Their anniversary, May twentieth, was the correct code.

  The keypad flashed green, the door unlocked, and Grace slid into the secluded building.

  The heavy door clapped shut behind her. Grace paused at the entrance and tip-toed forward only when she heard no movement within.

  The vaulted cement walls made the open space dark and dreary, but a few rays of sunshine peeked in from the skylight.

  Rows of shelves filled the front half of the warehouse. Grace looked at the oddities on the racks; ropes, muzzles, whips, handcuffs, chains, and knives. She walked through the rows of strange storage as if browsing through a library.

  She went deeper into the building and found a cage, and in it, a boy.

  Yes, there was a boy in a cage.

  They locked eyes. Seeing each other jolted them both into a panic.

  Grace stumbled and knocked over a bucket full of rancid liquid, recoiling when it splashed onto her expensive dress.

  She stared at the boy in the cage.

  He froze at the unexpected sight of her.

  “Oh goodness, are you locked in there?” Grace asked.

  The boy nodded. His eyes lowered to the muddy floor.

  Knowing the cage was locked, Grace was bold enough to step closer to examine the boy.

  He was a teenager around her age, seventeen. He wore tattered and stained pants. His lack of a shirt showed off his thin but muscular frame. He had a tanned complexion and shaggy black hair.

  The young man felt the power of her gaze on his sculpted body and lifted his dark eyes to meet hers.

  “Are you alright?” Grace asked. “What’s going on here?”

  The sheepish boy in the cage didn’t answer.

  His cell was five square feet with a bucket and a food plate in the corner.

  “How long have you been in here?” Grace asked next.

  The boy responded with a shrug.

  “Why are you caged like an animal? You must have done something awful. You reap what you sow.”

  That triggered the boy. With furrowed brow, he paced the cage like a lion, now sizing up Grace.

  Her shiny blonde hair, bright clean sundress, and fair skin; not something he saw every day.

  As he paced, he exposed the deep scars from a whip across his back.

  “Who are you?” she asked.

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  “Who are you?” the boy barked back with an indigenous accent.

  Grace flinched at the intensity of his voice, but the excitement of the experience intrigued her. She moved closer and put her hands on the cell bars.

  “Maybe I’m someone who can help if you answer my questions. Please tell me… how long have you been here?”

  “Many moons,” he responded vaguely, with a faraway look in his dark eyes.

  “What did you do to deserve this?”

  The boy mumbled something in another language. His shoulders slumped, and he shook his head.

  Despite the language barrier, Grace understood exactly what he meant.

  “No one deserves this,” she whispered.

  She examined the dark circles under his eyes, the bruises on his wrists and ankles, and the filthy condition of the cage. The boy didn’t seem dangerous. He seemed beaten down.

  Grace inspected the cage’s door. There wasn’t a DNA Identifier scanner. Instead, a simple lock was the only thing preventing this young man’s freedom.

  “Keys?” The boy pointed at Grace and added, “You… have?”

  “No, but maybe I can find them.”

  Her statement sounded uncertain, more like a question. Still, the boy’s eyes moistened at the vaguest hint of release.

  “What will you do if I release you?”

  The boy hugged himself and said, “Family.”

  Grace nodded. “I’ll get to the bottom of it. Even if you did something wrong, no one should live like this. Justice can still be served.”

  The boy looked at Grace with confusion.

  “Jus…dis?” he asked.

  “Don’t worry. I’ll tell Father. He’ll fix this. We own this island, and if he knew what was going on, he would surely stop it. Trust me…”

  The confusion on the boy’s face grew, stuck on the fact that Grace thought she owned the island his people had inhabited for centuries.

  A bell rang in the distance outside.

  Grace looked toward the sound. “Already? Wow, it’s getting late. That’s the dinner bell. I have to go.”

  Realizing his only shot at escape was leaving without him, he reached his hand out between the steel bars and grabbed Grace’s arm to stop her.

  “Please…” he begged.

  She looked at his grip.

  He let go and put his hands in surrender, clearly a practiced action.

  “Don’t worry,” Grace said with an empathetic smile. “I’ll be back. I promise.”

  “She’s going to leave him there?” Jackie asked from her comfortable vantage point in the Slipstream. “Who is this over-privileged chick?”

  “Keep watching before you judge,” I responded.

  Jackie wasn’t strong enough to enter the scene fully yet. I didn’t need her meddling, trying to change things. For now, watching was enough.

  If she proved worthy, I’d teach her how to affect the streams to try out new probabilities. She was on a need to know basis before I truly let her in, lucky she couldn’t smell the feces or taste the suffering in that tiny cage.

  I sped up the stream so the events could unfold faster for my impatient audience.

  “Whoa, how are you doing that?” Jackie asked. “How does time work in the Slipstream?”

  Another answer that was too complex to give, so I focused on stopping the stream at the next pivotal moment to give Jackie the best understanding of what was at stake.

  My plan was to show Jackie enough to convince her to work with me to crush Life Rite.

  Will she go against her employer and bite the hand that feeds her?

  I stopped the stream when Grace came back the next day to visit the boy in the cage, as promised.

  He smiled at the sight of her, a glimmer of hope reinvigorating him.

  “Good,” Jackie mumbled, satisfied for now.

  As Grace approached the cage, the boy pointed at himself and said, “Happy.” He pointed at her to link the feeling to her return.

  Her fair cheeks blushed. “Hey, what’s your name?”

  He pointed at himself again. “Zayne.”

  “That’s a super cool name.”

  “Cool?” The slang was lost in translation.

  Grace laughed. “It’s a compliment.”

  Zayne didn’t want to let on that he didn’t understand, so he echoed her laugh.

  “What do you do in here all day?”

  Her question puzzled Zayne. He looked around the grungy cage at his empty lunch tray and bathroom bucket in the corner.

  “Strong and silent type, I see.”

  Zayne flexed his bicep muscles. He knew what strong meant.

  Grace giggled.

  Zayne smiled. He liked her laugh.

  “What was life like before you… got locked up?”

  Zayne paused, reflecting.

  “Typic,” was all he said.

  “Typic? Like typical? My life is anything but normal.” Grace let out a privileged sigh. “The constant expectations are ridiculous.”

  Everything about Grace baffled Zayne. How she spoke, what she wore, her citrus perfume. They couldn’t be more different.

  His silence intrigued her.

  “So what did you do?” she asked.

  “Do?” He didn’t understand.

  “To be put in here. You had to have done something wrong.”

  The repeated question from the day before threw Zayne into a sudden rage. He ran to the steel bars that separated them, shook them, and screamed.

  Grace jumped back and held her arms close to her chest.

  He paced the cage, kicked his bucket, and threw his lunch tray. He pointed his finger at Grace through the bars to scold her.

  “I was taken,” he shouted. The pain behind his anger was obvious.

  “I’m sorry. I’m trying to understand. This whole situation is incredibly unorthodox.”

  Zayne raised his eyebrows, unsure of what she was saying exactly. He pointed to the lock and asked, “Key?”

  Grace hesitated.

  His rage gave way to her guilt.

  “I… I tried to ask my father, but he’s been swamped lately. He didn’t even come to dinner last night.”

  Zayne huffed, annoyed at himself for allowing hope in. After everything he’d been through, indulging in optimism was dangerous.

  “Zayne…” Grace moved closer to the cage again. “Listen. I’ll figure this out, but I might need to be a little sneaky to do it.”

  She mimed a tiptoe to ensure he understood her plan.

  “Keys.” She pointed to the lock. “I can steal them. That’d be easier than talking to my father because… it’s complicated.”

  “Comp… cated?” he asked, seeking clarification.

  He understood what she was saying overall, but Grace truly confused him.

  “Things have been strange since we got here, okay? I hoped this was going to be a fun summer, snorkeling or whatever. An island vacation. But Father has locked himself in his office. I rarely see him. My mother… Well, she’s not exactly great conversation these days. Now that I’ve found you… I need time to investigate. Okay?”

  Grace looked at Zayne for a reaction.

  He softened and sat to hear more.

  She sat on the other side of the bars.

  “I know he wants to spend time with me,” Grace said with doubt in her quivering voice, “but Father’s work is important. He’s a self-made man. No sleep for an innovator.”

  Zayne shrugged, understanding only part of what Grace said, but seeing the whole heart behind it.

  “Who are you?” he asked, repeating her question from the day before.

  “I’m Grace. Nice to officially meet you, Zayne.”

  Grace extended her hand to him, and he looked at it. She laughed, grabbed his hand, and showed him how to shake.

  His skin was coarse, but she welcomed the warmth.

  Still holding hands, they locked eyes.

  Few people asked Grace about herself. Even fewer people knew of him and his plight. They both felt seen.

  “What is your life, Grace?” he asked in stilted English.

  She gently pulled her hand back to tuck her hair behind her ear.

  “A lot of girls at school are jealous, but… things have been tense ever since my mother fell ill.”

  Zayne nodded, listening intently.

  “You should see how much Father loves her. He’s rebuilding the chapel where they got married here on the island, brick by brick. He says it’s an expensive and time-consuming project. Can you imagine? I’d like someone to love me that deeply someday.”

  Her own honesty surprised her.

  “Love… is yours,” Zayne whispered. “Beautiful angels have love in all lives.”

  Grace blushed. “You’re a great listener.”

  She leaned her head against the cage bars and wished them away.

  Zayne leaned in as well, and their foreheads touched. They sat connected for several silent moments, taking each other in without the barrier of words.

  The beep of the door’s keypad broke their connection.

  Grace gasped and looked at Zayne for direction.

  “Go.” He waved her away.

  She jumped up and ran behind the nearest shelf to hide.

  Someone in a hazmat suit walked toward Zayne, who stood and struck a battle stance.

  The man in the suit dropped a tray of food on the ground near the cage. He opened a Pelican case and moved toward Zayne.

  Suddenly, and with substantial force, Zayne pushed the man in the hazmat suit.

  He flew backward with such power; he knocked down a row of shelves.

  The hazmat man grabbed a shock stick and marched toward the cage.

  Grace struggled to see what the man did to Zayne from her hiding place. She heard only the taser and Zayne’s resistance.

  The man stepped back, and Grace watched him remove an empty syringe from Zayne’s arm.

  She locked eyes with Zayne.

  Embarrassment filled him, ashamed that Grace saw even a part of what they did to him.

  Trying to see more, Grace hit a chain on the shelf next to her. She ducked as the hazmat man turned in her direction.

  Grace held her breath, praying he didn’t see her.

  She stayed hidden as Zayne wailed in agony. His screams lasted for what felt like an eternity.

  Then he fell silent.

  Footsteps were followed by the door slamming.

  Grace sighed with relief that she had not been caught. She peeked around the shelf and found Zayne crouched in a fetal position.

  She ran to him. “Who was that? What did they inject you with? Are you okay?”

  Zayne looked at Grace with bloodshot eyes.

  “Go,” he screamed.

  The veins in his arms swelled and glowed brightly under his skin like radioactive lava. Whatever they injected him with lit his blood with intensity.

  “Zayne? What’s going on with you?”

  “Go,” he screamed with a wild look in his eyes. The veins in his neck bulged. His breathing was quick and shallow.

  “Go, Grace. Go!”

  She gasped and ran out of the warehouse, terrified and confused.

  Days went by without a visit from Grace, but there were plenty of tours from Zayne’s captors, eager to test his resilience more than ever.

  The man in the hazmat suit brought his boss, a rugged man wearing a polo shirt and boat shoes, who watched the torture from the boundaries of the shadows, a passive observer to the systematic breakdown of the boy in the cage.

  They threw everything they had at him, but Zayne was determined not to break. These evil men wouldn’t get the best of him, not with Grace as a newfound beacon of hope.

  He knew from experience the mutilation always stopped right before the brink of death.

  They must need him alive.

  Armed with that knowledge and the memory of Grace’s beauty, Zayne transcended his bodily limitations and removed himself from his physical reality as much as humanly possible.

  “Where’s Grace?” Jackie asked from the entrance of the stream. “She can’t leave him there. Look at what they’re doing to him. She’s got to help. Can’t she save him?”