the train whipped by and passed out of sight. I called in to the station.
“Dasalia, what’s up?”
“I’m on the L,” I said, “just coming up on One Hundred Thirteenth at East Concord Yard, and I’ve got a burning vehicle here. Has anyone called it in?”
“First I’ve heard of it.”
“Get someone down here,” I said, “and coordinate with the fire department. I’m going to check it out.”
The train slowed down as it approached the next stop. While the other people on the train were clustering around the windows I pushed my way into the aisle and headed for the nearest exit. As soon as the doors opened, I got off and started sprinting down the platform in the direction of the truck.
People were packing in tighter, looking over each other’s shoulders as I forced my way through them toward the column of smoke. As I broke into the parking lot, I could already feel the heat from the fire. Bodies were crowded around the truck, phones and cameras thrust out, recording as the event unfolded on the tiny LCD screens.
I held up my badge, shoving my way closer. The truck was dark blue with some kind of emblem on the side. The paint was scorched, but I could make out part of it clearly. It wasn’t an armored car; it was a police vehicle, used to transport prisoners. I could make out a charred figure still behind the wheel of the cab.
“Get a fire extinguisher!” someone screamed, and just then the doors to the back of the truck moved with a thud as something collided with them from inside. A set of keys that still dangled from the lock there jingled as it happened again.
The door was struck again from the inside, and everything kind of slowed down. The back doors were straining against the latch, being pushed from inside as the fire raged. The air rippled with heat, ashes fluttering upward into the smoke. I picked out faces in the crowd as they watched from every side, shouting all around me.
I ran to the truck, pulling my sleeves down over my hands. I grabbed the handle to the back door, turned it, and pulled. The doors immediately swung open and a wave of heat blew out over me, stinking of soot and cooking meat. The smoke stung my eyes, and I covered my face as I scrambled back. I fell facing the crowd and caught a brief look at that ring of cell phones, watching with their tiny cameras, and their owners, who had now looked up from the little screens and were staring behind me in horror. A woman covered her mouth, and someone screamed.
I turned back, following their eyes, and saw there were a bunch of bodies in the back of the truck. They were seated across from each other, facing in. Their heads were bowed and none of them were moving except one. One of them had somehow survived and was bent over in the doorway, struggling forward.
It was a young woman. She was completely nude and was burned all over her body. Her hair had been singed away, and her eyes looked haunted as they stared out of her blackened face.
She stepped forward and slipped, falling face-first onto the pavement. She managed to get back up, hands shaking, and took two more steps before falling down again.
I grabbed her wrists and dragged her back, away from the fire. The crowd parted around me as I pulled her until she slipped out of my grasp and I fell backward.
“Call an ambulance!” someone screamed. Everyone was screaming. I turned the woman over onto her back, cradling her head in my lap.
She looked up at me, and I saw her eyes were the strangest color. They were kind of a pale, silvery yellow, and the irises actually seemed to glow very softly. It took me a moment to realize what I was seeing.
“You’re a revivor….”
I had never actually seen one before, not in person. It smelled terrible, like burnt hair, meat, and tar.
“Hide …behind …whatever you …can …” she whispered.
“Hold still. Help is coming.”
“Keep …your …head …down …”
People had stopped watching the truck and stopped yelling, for the most part. They were gathering to try to get a glimpse of the revivor. The cameras had turned from the fire to the spot where I knelt. Some part of the body still sizzled quietly as I held it. Finally, a siren began to swell in the distance, getting closer.
A man moved next to me, trying to get a better view of the fire. I recognized him from the train; a middle-aged businessman with gray hair and a pink face. He had a smug sort of satisfied expression on his face. His eyes looked like they were seeing the rapture, and he was nodding very slightly to himself, arms crossed in front of him. He noticed me looking at him and looked down at me with contempt. When he saw my badge, some of the challenge went out of his expression, but not all of it. He sneered at me cradling the revivor like I was everything that was wrong with the world, then looked back to the burning bodies until his annoyance melted away, leaving only a sense of righteousness.
The revivor was trying to say something, forming words with its cracked lips. Its eyelids had drooped almost closed and the light behind them was flickering. I leaned forward, moving my face closer and turning my ear to its mouth.
“Zhang knew the truth,” it gasped softly. “You have to wake up….”
I shook my head, not knowing what it meant.
“I don’t understand.”
“Zhang knew the truth….”
The revivor mouthed the words again, and not long after, its lips stopped moving. Its mechanical breathing hitched and stopped, then it sagged in my arms, this time gone from this world for good.
Back at the truck, nothing else was moving. The people around me got their fill and moved closer to the truck, trying to see inside and get shots of the bodies. The lettering on the side of the truck read FBI.
It’s hard to say exactly what motivated me to make the call. Later I thought maybe it was something I could ask Dr. Pyznar about, if I actually made it over there for the next exam. On the surface of it, I was a law enforcement officer, calling a sister bureau with information. It was their truck; these were their prisoners. The trafficking of revivors fell into their jurisdiction; they would have to be called and told what had happened, if they didn’t already know.
That call didn’t need to be made by me, though, and the fact that the person I called was the one who wanted to know was just a coincidence. I called because he was the only person I knew who worked at the FBI, even though I hadn’t spoken to him for years. Maybe that was why. Maybe I’d been waiting for a reason to break that silence.
My vision blurred as cold wind blasted me in the face, followed by a burst of hot, smoky air. I had to disengage myself from the defunct revivor and get moving. This wasn’t my case. My case was still waiting for me….
Blinking, I stared as, for just a second, it looked like someone was standing next to me. Not like a person; more like an outline. It was as if the smoke from the fire blew by, and for just a brief moment it revealed an invisible man standing there. He was looking down at me.
“Ma’am?” a voice in the phone said. Someone had picked up and was trying to get my name. The outline I had seen faded as soon as I saw it. I waved my hand across the spot, but there was nothing there.
“Ma’am?”
“Sorry,” I said, still staring at the empty spot. “My name is Detective Faye Dasalia. I need to speak to Agent Wachalowski.”
Zoe Ott—Pleasantview Apartments, Apartment 713
Someone was knocking. It must have been going on for a while if it brought me out of it. I opened my eyes partway and saw light around the edges of the shade, making my head hurt and my stomach turn over. Stretching out on the bed, I craned my neck back until it popped.
“What?” I mumbled, but whoever it was wouldn’t be able to hear me.
My first thought, which was my first thought most every day, was that this better be real. It was kind of a hit- or-miss thing, that. One time I woke up because my phone was ringing, and talked for fifteen minutes before I realized there was no one on the other end. Another time I woke up and found a man standing in my bedroom, and was so convinced he was a dream that I just went back to sleep, only to find out later he was the landlord’s brother
