once again. This time she keyed in “FRUITC8K.”
She stared at the eight simple characters for a moment, then stiffened her index finger and drove it down with a deliberate stab against the return key. Falling slowly back in the chair as the screen winked and the hard drive whirred, she frowned at the computer and waited for the inevitable error message.
The drive continued to spin, and the backlit LCD panel flickered as the computer clunked through the hackneyed routine. Five seconds passed, then ten. After fifteen, Constance raised an eyebrow and started to sit forward. At twenty-five, the installed reader software was opening. At thirty, it had maximized to fill the display, and a document was in the process of loading.
Judging from the progress on the status bar, it was sizeable.
AFTER a while, you discover that darkness isn’t really what you think it is.
You get used to it. And when you do, it stops being the absence of light. In a way, it becomes its own kind of illumination-a mix of blue, and black, and gray, with shapes and shadows everywhere. There are things you can see, and things you can feel, and things that you just somehow know.
That’s what darkness really is.
Of course, the getting used to it part doesn’t happen right away. Accepting the darkness for what it is takes some time. Constance didn’t know how long a span that happened to be, but since the world around her was a mix of blue, and black, and gray with shapes and shadows everywhere, she knew she must have been in the darkness for at least that long. But to tell the truth, she really couldn’t be sure, because in a peculiar way, it seemed like it had been much longer, and it seemed like it had been no time at all.
A terrible noise pierced Constance’s skull and she pressed her palms tight against her ears, squeezing her eyes closed to shut out the brilliant darkness. Now the sound of her own breathing became loud and inescapable, trapped behind her hands to echo inside her head.
She waited.
The terrible noise, blunted only slightly by her hands, reverberated against her again. She steeled herself in fearful anticipation of the next blast, but it didn’t come.
Now only the sounds of her breaths filled her ears.
She let go and drifted.
Constance was so cold that her skin was numb, but that didn’t stop the pain. It couldn’t. Not on the inside, and that’s where she felt it most. Her body was aching in ways she had never known before, even during her time at Quantico. Back during those first few weeks of physical training at the academy, more than once she’d been certain she was going to die. But this wasn’t like that at all. This was worse. And it was different.
It wasn’t just physical.
It was beyond merely that. It was a violating kind of ache that never ended. It pulsed straight through her core, making her want to vomit. In fact, her mouth tasted sour, so she wondered if she already had but that she’d simply forgotten.
The terrible noise came again, loud and urgent. Behind it was a strange rattle. She reached to press her hands against her ears again, but the noise was too quick for her. It rang out and penetrated her skull with its violent sound. The rattle forced her to clench her teeth as it filled her head with a disharmonic chord.
Then silence… And the silence continued.
Constance sighed. The ache seemed to be gone now, but it had left a phantom in its stead. While the pain itself had faded, the violation remained, and the bitter taste of bile still survived on the back of her tongue.
The silence shattered like crystal.
The terrible noise bit into her brain, forcing a familiar pattern to form. Sharp notes escalated in front of a hard plastic chitter. Midway through the awful chime a loud clatter joined in, followed almost immediately by a dull thud.
Then the terrible noise sounded again and again.
Constance came awake with a start, snapping her eyes open and sucking in a quick breath. It was a mix of blue, and black, and gray with shapes and shadows everywhere throughout the room, but the shapes and shadows were different than her recent memory. Or was that memory just a dream? She blinked and exhaled hard, fighting to push away the fog that was clouding her head.
The urgent peal of her cell phone tore a wide swath through the quiet once again. She breathed in, then exhaled with a deep groan as she rolled over and reached for the nightstand, fumbling through the shadows for the screaming device. Her hand came up empty. She shifted then pushed up on her elbow and groped some more, sending her eyes along with her hand to go searching in the blue and the black and the gray. Still nothing.
She yawned and then cleared her throat. The fog was starting to lift, and she vaguely recalled a clatter and thud. Rolling forward onto her stomach, she thrust her arm over the side of the bed and pawed the carpet below. It was rough and cold. She was ready to give up when her fingers brushed against something hard. She wrapped her hand around it and then rolled over onto her back.
The device had fallen silent. She cleared her throat again and swallowed hard. Her throat was dry and her mouth not much better. Trying to will away the remnants of sleep, she held the phone up and aimed her bleary eyes at its glowing display.
It read: 5 MISSED CALLS.
She started to thumb over to the lists when it began to bleat out a familiar ringtone once again. She pressed the answer button, cutting off the tune, then lazily pushed the device up against her ear.
“Yeah, Ben…” she answered; her voice was as thin and arid as her throat.
“Constance?” Ben’s concern was wrapped tightly around the words that issued from the speaker. “You okay?
She coughed, then cleared her throat a third time. It didn’t really help. “Yeah…” she croaked. “I’m fine…”
“I wake you up?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Sorry…” he replied, although it was relief that threaded through his voice. “When ya’ didn’t answer right away I started ta’ get a little worried.”
“Like you needed another excuse,” she mumbled.
“Sue me.”
“Too much trouble,” she replied, her words quiet and lazy. “What time is it anyway?”
“‘Bout ten after five.”
Her heart thumped and she rolled her eyes quickly around the shadowy room. “In the evening, right?”
“Yeah.”
“Good,” she breathed.
“When’d ya’ finally crash?”
“Around three.”
“That ain’t much sleep. Wanna just call me back later when ya’ get up?”
“No…” she grumbled, pushing herself up and swinging her legs over the side of the bed. “Getting up now. My alarm is set to go off in another few minutes anyway.”
Just across from her the heater was blowing, but the room still felt cold. She stood up and padded over to it, then checked the controls. The dial was already set to high; however, lukewarm air was all that seemed to be pushing up from the vent. She positioned herself in front of it anyway, stretching in an attempt to loosen a few kinks.
She turned slowly and allowed the air to blow up across her back as well. It really didn’t help much. After a moment she gave up trying to get warm, wandered over to the door, and flipped the light switch. A soft glow filled the room, but to her it seemed as bright as the sun, so she squinted against the onslaught.
“You still there?” Ben asked.
“Yeah… I’m here…” she replied, her voice still a tired mumble. “Just trying to wake up.”
“You’re pushin’ yourself too hard, hon,” Ben told her. “You really should’ve hit the sack when we got off the phone this mornin’.”
She stretched again, letting out a semi-satisfied groan, then admonished, “Stop being such a mother hen. I had something I had to follow up on. You know how it works.”
