I smiled and felt little pricks of pain as my chapped lips cracked. That was right: he called. As I listened, he gave me an address where to meet him.
“…I’m sorry to call you out here, especially at night. If you’re not comfortable, call me back and I’ll come get you….”
I climbed back outside where the cabbie was still standing, breath streaming out of his nostrils. I held up the phone so he could hear.
“Is that where I asked you to take me?”
“Yeah.”
“How long was I out?”
“Maybe five minutes.”
Nico might still be there, although why he was there and why he wanted me to meet him in the middle of nowhere was beyond me. Why I had decided to even go was beyond me right at that moment too, but for whatever reason, I had gone that far.
“Get back in the cab,” I told the man, “and bring me to the address.”
“You’re here.”
“This is the middle of nowhere.”
“Down there,” he said, pointing. There was a chain-link fence hanging open down at the bottom of a concrete slope under the monorail. A rusted sign hung from it.
GUARDIAN METRO STORAGE SEGURO. SECURE. BLOQUE.
“It’s for storage.”
“That’s the address you told me to bring you,” he said. “What do you want?”
I glanced back at the fence. It looked like it led to a ramp that went underground.
“Just get back in the cab and leave.”
“What about my fare?”
“Go!” I snapped as the lights surged for a second. He didn’t say anything else; he just lumbered back around the car.
As the engine started up and he pulled away, I made my way down to the fence. It looked like normally it was locked, but now it was hanging open. Beyond it, a concrete ramp led down under the pavement, the way dimly lit by a single remaining light. I followed it down to a heavy-looking metal door with a keypad mounted next to it, and a glass window to the right that was dark. A strip of printed tape stuck over the keypad said AFTER HOURSENTER CODE.
The message had given the address and then “8C 1101,” which I thought was an apartment unit or something, but maybe it was the pass code to get in?
I punched in the combination and sure enough, there was a beeping sound and the door thumped and then squealed open with a sound that put my teeth on edge. Behind the door was a dingy, rickety- looking elevator car. I climbed in and the door slid shut.
The numbers started at 0 and went down to 8. I pushed the button for 8, causing it to light up halfheartedly, then flicker on and off as the car made its way down. As the metal walls of the elevator rattled and groaned, I could almost feel the surface getting farther and farther away. What was he doing down in a place like this, and why did he want me there?
The doors opened and I stepped out. After they closed again, it got very quiet. I stood there and listened for a minute, but all I could hear was the occasional drip of water. The musty corridor met a junction about ten feet in front of me, lit by fluorescent bulbs behind corroding metal cages.
“Hello?” I called. My voice echoed once, but no one answered.
A sign at the junction said A-I with an arrow pointing right, and J-R with an arrow pointing left. I took the right, and found the door labeled C.
Looking back the way I came, I began to wonder what the hell I was doing there, and reached into my purse for the flask. It was still half full, so I finished it off and put it back. When it hit my stomach, my forehead beaded up with cold sweat and I felt as though I might have to sit down, but after a minute it passed. This had to be the place. Whatever he wanted, I was supposed to go to him. I was supposed to help him.
I put my hand on the door and leaned against the frozen metal as my mind opened and what little light there was brightened. After a few seconds, I saw it; somewhere behind the door was a presence, a single consciousness. He was there, after all, and he was alone.
Before I could knock on the door, it opened, and he was standing there in the doorway. He was wearing his suit pants and shoes, but he had taken off his shirt and was wearing just a sleeveless undershirt. He must have had some kind of heater working inside, because hot air was drifting out from behind him. He looked down at me with his eyelids drooping. He looked out of it.
“You came,” he said.
That outfit he had on, it was the one from the green concrete room when the dead woman first showed him to me. I could see the scar branching out over his right shoulder.
“Yeah.”
He stared at me a minute longer, then took a step back, giving me room to get by. He looked drunk or drugged.
“Does anyone know you’re here?” he asked.
“Just the cab driver,” I said, slipping through the door. It was nothing but a big concrete box, filled with old junk. As I looked around, I saw furniture underneath plastic tarps, stacks of boxes, and other stuff filling up most of the available space.
“Why are we here?” I asked.
“I had to,” he said.
“Had to?”
As messed up as I was, I could see something was really weird about him. I hadn’t been around him that much, but he was acting totally different from before, like he was a totally different person. His eyes looked dull and his expression didn’t change when he talked.
“What happened?” I asked. When his aura phased into view, there was a thin membrane of light rippling under everything else, like a torn parachute falling from the sky. There was a bright cord tethering the membrane to someplace deep inside of him. I recognized that.
“Why are you so scared?”
He started to protest, but I soothed the membrane back, calming it.
“Don’t—”
I’m not sure what made me do it, but I put my hand on his.
“Shhh.”
The billowing light faded a little more but wouldn’t quite go away. Even as his expression and his breathing relaxed, the tension wouldn’t completely go away, and my heart kind of went out to him. Underneath his fear were other things: guilt, uncertainty, sadness, loneliness, and all the other things I knew so well. In him they were more structured than usual, but in some ways that seemed to make them all the more intense, like the colors were reined in but more concentrated and brighter.
“Stop doing that,” he said, but there wasn’t much conviction in his voice.
“Why?”
There was no one there to see. I put my other hand on his stomach, right under where the gun was strapped. It felt flat and firm under his shirt. Right away, I could tell from the way his patterns shifted that he hadn’t been touched in a long time. I knew how that felt too.
Maybe it was the alcohol, or just the total weirdness of the whole thing, but all I could think about right then was the way he felt under my hand. Without thinking, I ran my palm up and down his belly, feeling the ridges of muscle underneath his cotton undershirt.
“I know you miss it,” I said. “I know you know how I feel.”
He didn’t say anything, but he didn’t pull away either. He put a hand on my shoulder like he might push me away, but he just left it there as the colors shifted in front of my eyes. His eyes drooped further as I moved closer, my forehead almost touching his chest.
“I wanted to thank you,” I said into his shirt.