Rehabilitation?
No.
Not that it would have been possible, but it was not even attempted.
Experimentation.
Mutilation.
Annihilation.
Those things were on the agenda at the Global-1 Center for Pediatric Rehabila-blah-blah. That was the prescribed course of care for Kendra Blake.
My parents’ thought-probes were nothing compared with the instruments they used to test my mind. Daily, I was slathered with electrodes on every inch of my skin, medicated, subjected to strobe lights, shocks of every imaginable kind, and the surgeon’s knife. This private torture chamber was my only home.
With puberty, the visions began.
At seventeen, the final indignity was forced upon me. They tied me down with nylon straps and inflicted their brand on me, making me no more than their cattle, one of their herd. They tattooed my wrist, but with a laser. I copied the bar code tattoo onto my forehead so all the world could see what they had done to me.
Their tests and experiments intensified. I felt no more human than the laboratory rats, the knockout mice they used for their other experimental abominations. And one day I learned that they saw me as no more human than those mice. Opening my file, I discovered that I had another name to them, an inhuman name.
I will write of my escape and how I scathed my skin, squeezing through the narrowest of cracks in a thick, outer wall, contorting my body until it writhed in agony and claustrophobic, breath-starved terror.
It didn’t matter. I would have gnawed off my own arm like an animal in a trap to escape them.
In future writings, I will also tell how I learned to armor myself against them by inking my being with the protective totem symbols of the wide world, tattoos of my own choosing that would counter the shame of the bar code tattoo.
Images of the real world have power. The spirit world of the dead has power. The animal world has power. Images of these things I wear, and they empower me.
I am not an experiment. A mutilation. An annihilated freak.
I am art. I am the one with the bright plumage.
I am not KM-5, their name for me.
I am Kendra, the Avenging Spirit of the Desert.
The Phoenix.
The one who will not be caged.
“Put that down!”
Startled, Kayla fumbled the computer notebook. Jack grabbed it before it hit the ground.
Kendra stood in front of them, her eyes ablaze with fury. “Who are you?” she demanded.
“They’re my friends. I didn’t think you’d mind,” Amber explained nervously, stepping forward.
Kendra’s eyes bored into Kayla. “You’re one of us.” She lunged for Kayla’s arm and examined the fake tattoo on her wrist. “It’s not real.”
“Why do you think that?” Jack asked cautiously, keen to know what flaw she’d detected in his meticulously crafted fake.
She pointed to the bar code on her forehead. “The bars are wrong,” she said, her voice angry. “Our bar codes are all the same.”
“No, they’re not,” Kayla disagreed. “Every bar code is individual; all of them are different because they contain different information.”
Kendra pushed her hard on the chest, sending Kayla sliding to the ground. “Moron! Idiot! Imbecile!” she screamed. “Our bar codes are all the same! Everyone else has an individual bar code, but ours are the same!”
“What do you mean, ours?” Kayla asked, staying on the ground, feeling safer there.
“Don’t you know me? Don’t you have the visions?” Kendra screamed.
“Hey, lay off her,” Amber insisted boldly. “She has visions.”
Jack extended his hand to help Kayla get up. “Visions? I know you’re telepathic but … you see actual visions?”
“Sure!” Amber answered. “She’s had them since we were about thirteen. We were at camp together when she saw a mental image of me nearly drowning in the lake. The next day it happened. I got a cramp while swimming. If she hadn’t kept her eyes on me the whole time because she was worried about the vision, I would have drowned.”
Kendra peered at her. “Then you must know. You must have seen me. I have seen you.”
“I’ve seen you, too,” Kayla admitted, slowly walking toward Kendra. “What are we to each other? Sisters? Cousins? Who was your mother?”
“My mother was not my mother,” Kendra said, staring at Kayla with steely eyes. “And you are not my sister.”
“What are you saying?” Kayla asked imploringly. “Do you know the answer to this?”
“My visions are the most powerful. Their experiments enhanced my ability more than any of you. I am the culmination of their efforts. My suffering at their hands has made me invulnerable, and there is no longer a need for the lesser selves!”
Kayla shrank back from Kendra, frightened by the maniacal gleam that had come into her eyes and the fervor of her words. What others was she talking about? What lesser selves?
“These tattoos armor me against them,” Kendra continued her rant. “I have eluded capture and in so doing have transformed into a new creature, one who can outwit and intimidate.” As she raved on, she lifted her arms. Kayla noticed that the undersides of both of them were tattooed with feathers, a gorgeous pattern of blue, green, and brown. Wings!
With her arms still raised, Kendra turned, displaying the feathered tattoo that extended all the way to the two protruding wing bones of her muscular upper back. “I am a being of the future!” she shouted. “I cannot be bound to this desultory, mundane plane of existence.” This was the voice Kayla had heard in her vision, the same monomaniacal, enraged ranting.
“Who are the others?” Kayla dared to ask.
Kendra swung around to face her directly, stepping in front of her and speaking aggressively in Kayla’s face. “You are KM-1. The thief is KM-2. The corporate fool is KM-3. The palm reader is KM-4. At each step they added more and more power. I have seen you all because I am KM-5.”
“Who is KM-6?” Kayla asked, remembering the file on Grandma Cathy. “I read a file that talked about KM-1-6.”
“We are all KM, one to six! But KM-6 is dead! They tried to surpass my power, to fly higher. But like Icarus who fell from the sky, they overreached themselves.”
“Do we have the same mother?” Kayla pressed, frightened but desperate to know.
Leaping forward, Kendra abruptly yanked Kayla’s hair and, in a flurry of agile movement, drew a switchblade from her back pocket. “Our mother is us and I am her perfection. All the lesser selves must die! I will not rest until I am all that remains.”
Kendra raised the knife to Kayla’s throat — but in the next second, Amber twisted the arm away and sent Kendra staggering back.
Whirling around, infuriated, Kendra knocked Amber to the ground. Still clutching her switchblade, she lunged at Kayla again.
This time, Jack jumped between them and landed a punch directly to her jaw. Kendra stumbled but recovered instantly, returning the punch and connecting squarely with his nose, sending blood streaming from it.
Just as Kendra prepared for another punch, Kayla swept up Jack’s pack and swung it at Kendra, hitting the side of her head.
As Kendra careened, flailing for balance, Amber, Kayla, and Jack darted outside the tent and leaped into the swing-lo. Amber squeezed between Jack and Kayla, sitting on the back ledge of the two-seater craft. Jack activated the control panel, his hands flying with lightning speed. The craft lifted just as Kendra burst from the tent, eyes ablaze and waving her knife.
Kayla grabbed Amber’s hand to steady her as Jack brought the craft to full speed. In minutes, they’d put a good distance between themselves and Kendra.
Jack slowed the swing-lo. “Everybody okay?”
Kayla and Amber nodded.
“Well, that was not like anything I ever expected to happen,” Jack remarked, turning the craft in the direction of the cave. “How on earth were you living with that lunatic, Amber?”
“Honestly, I never saw her as banged out as she was today,” Amber insisted convincingly. “From the moment she saw Kayla she got extra flippy.”
“I wonder what kinds of experiments they did to her,” Kayla said. Despite Kendra’s bizarre, aggressive behavior, Kayla felt sympathy for her. Perhaps it was hard not to feel for someone who gazed at her with her own eyes. It was as though Kara and Kendra were living alternate realities. They were like Kayla, but surviving under vastly different circumstances, their personalities shaped by different events and different environments.
Kayla felt powerfully connected to all of them. Even Kendra, murderous maniac though she was, was only trying to survive. Somehow, Kayla felt she understood her struggle.
Back at the cave, the Drakians welcomed Amber and were fascinated to hear her story of how the bar code tattoo had destroyed her life.
“I wonder what’s wrong with your codes?” Nate said.
“Bipolar disorder,” Amber replied. “Aunt Emily made me suspect it, and when I asked, my dad admitted that it runs all through my family. My mother’s side is full of Parkinson’s disease.”
“But they cured Parkinson’s with stem cell therapy years ago,” Kayla pointed out.
“Doesn’t matter,” said Dusa. “They don’t even want to be bothered treating it. They’d rather eliminate people with the disease than pay for their treatment.”
Kayla had been standing nearby listening when she suddenly felt limp with fatigue. Jack noticed her leaning against the cave wall, her arm extended for support, and joined her. “You’d better lie down,” he suggested, gently touching her shoulder. “You were pumped with adrenaline; now you’re feeling the letdown. Plus, that desert sun can wipe you out. I should build some kind of roof on the swing-lo for shelter.”
He grabbed a sleeping bag from a storage trunk and led her to the back cavern where the stalactites and stalagmites were so abundant. “It’s quiet and cool in here,” he said, spreading out the bag. “You should rest.”
Kayla did feel wiped. She stretched out on the bag and shut her eyes. Sleep didn’t come immediately, but instead she rested in a semiwaking state, aware of the slow drip sound coming from somewhere in the cave. Its repetitive steadiness was soothing….
She is in a black room. Outside are the crashing waves of a vast and tumultuous ocean. In dim light she is looking at a hand. A voice says, “It’s up to you to stop this. Help will be called from the sky, though I do not know if it will come in time to save us all.” A right hand traces the line of a palm on another right hand. She recognizes the hands, the slim fingers, the curve of the palm. Both of them are her own.
With a shudder, Kayla awakened from her trance.
Two right hands? she wondered.
Later that evening, Kayla walked out in the desert with Jack. “Do you think the swing-lo could get us to California?” she asked.
“Don’t know. I’d be interested in testing it, though. California isn’t that far. Why do you want to go there?”
“I had a … a … vision.”
“Oh, right. Your psychic visions,” Jack said.
“Yeah. I think I was born with some natural ability but I got better at it during the time I spent studying in the Adirondacks with Eutonah. She’s a powerful shaman. Even now, she can project her spirit out of her body and travel.”
“Astral projection,” he said. “My grandmother in Ireland claimed she could do it.”
“Did you believe her?”
“Hey, did anyone ever think I’d be zipping around the desert like George Jetson?” he replied. “I think anything’s possible.”
His words brought back a memory of Allyson’s last letter to August, the one where she said the same thing: Anything is possible.
“I’d like to go see my friend Allyson at Caltech in Pasadena,” Kayla told Jack. “And I had a vision that I believe was of the person Kendra called KM-4, the palm reader. In the vision, she was reading my palm. She told me help would come to me from the sky.”
They had walked far enough from the cave that their only light was a blanket of stars. He knelt and took matches from his back pocket to light a tangle of dry sagebrush that had slowly tumbled toward them. It burst into flame instantly.
A distant look came into his eyes, as though he was calculating something. “I wish I knew how high the swing-lo can fly. Maybe if I get it going I’ll be the one who’s able to help you.”
“Why don’t you test it?” she suggested. “The desert seems like the perfect place.”
He stared into the steadily glowing fire of the tumbleweed. “I’m afraid of heights,” he revealed, a note of embarrassment in his voice. “The fire walk didn’t cure you of your fears?” she asked gently.
He smiled sadly, still staring into the fire. “Do you know why your feet didn’t burn?”
Kayla shook her head. She assumed it had something to do with mind over matter — but otherwise she had no idea.
“Most people don’t know, so when they do the walk it takes enormous courage. But before my walk, I already knew that ash is an excellent insulator. The heat from the coals doesn’t travel through it easily. If the fire has been burning long enough and there is a good layer of ash covering the coal bed, you won’t get burned as long as you keep moving quickly. The ash is like a blanket of protection over the coals.”
“I had no idea,” Kayla admitted. “So you’re saying that you didn’t get the benefit from it because you already knew you could do it?”
“Right. If I take the swing-lo high into the air, that would be overcoming my greatest fear. To help you, I might be able to do it. I’d be willing to try, anyway.”
She looked at him there in the flickering light and their eyes met. She knew he was acknowledging the feeling that had been silently growing between them, a strong attraction that was both physical and emotional. She felt a powerful urge to kiss him — it would have been the most natural thing to do at that moment. But she also thought of Mfumbe, trapped in his bed by sickness and injury — her Mfumbe, who had gone through so much to stand by her.
This thought made her refrain from the kiss, offering only a warm smile instead. Still, she wondered how much longer she could keep herself from moving into his arms.
To every man is given the key
to the gates of heaven;
the same key opens the gates of hell.
Buddhist proverb quoted by
Richard Feynman in his talk titled
“The Value of Science”
The swing-lo hovered low to the ground and then descended to a stop on a grassy mall on the campus of the California Institute of Technology. Jack had driven it much like a car, keeping it only several feet above the ground the entire way. Because they’d stayed so low, they’d expected their landing to go unnoticed, but Kayla and Jack were instantly surrounded by keen-eyed, fascinated students who had immediately identified the craft as aerodynamic. As one of the premier centers for scientific research in the country, Caltech attracted some of the best and brightest students. “I hope you have a patent on this, man,” said one student as he rubbed his hands along the swing-lo’s sides.
“Sure I do,” Jack said as they climbed out, though Kayla had the feeling it wasn’t so.
“Who’s your sponsor, what company?” asked a young woman.
“Don’t say it’s G-1, please,” said a young man with a bald head.
“Who else would it be?” Jack bluffed with a convincing confidence.
“One of the small start-up companies,” yet another young male student suggested.
“Naw,” Jack said dismissively. “None of them can match G-1 for manufacturing. These crafts are the next big thing and whoever can produce them the cheapest is going to corner the market. You have to go with G-1 or you’re sunk before you start.” These remarks were met with a mix of resigned agreement and grumbling.
“Anybody know where I can find a Professor Gold, the nanobot guy?” Jack asked the crowd … and it seemed that just
about everyone knew.
As Jack took down the directions to Professor Gold’s office, Kayla marveled at how convincing his bluff about Global-1 had been. It brought back unsettling memories of how Zekeal had concealed from her his true involvement with Global-1 and his ties to Tattoo Gen.
She pushed her doubts aside; of course they had to seem to be on board with Global-1. They were wearing fake bar code tattoos — Dusa had given her a fake containing Kathryn Reed’s file. “When you lie about something it’s good to stay as close to the truth as you can,” she’d reasoned as she pressed it onto Kayla’s wrist. Kayla found it eerie to be pretending to be her own grandmother.
Jack grabbed Kayla’s hand. “Come on. We’re close.” They hurried along the walkway to a brick building with large picture windows and entered it. Professor Gold’s office was listed on the information board as being on the third floor, so they took the elevator up.
Before they reached Professor Gold’s office, they passed a large glassed-in room crammed with computers and printers spitting out yards of paper containing bar graphs. “There she is!” Kayla cried softly, spotting Allyson behind one of them. Excited, she banged on the glass.
Allyson looked to the sound and her face instantly lit up with delighted recognition. Her appearance was nearly the same as Kayla remembered. The halo of messy blond curls that always surrounded her round, angelic face was now pushed up onto the top of her head and held in place with a pencil. Kayla thought it looked slightly blonder. Her pale skin was now the golden color of a lightly toasted marshmallow, which gave her an outdoorsy look she’d never had before. A white lab coat replaced the loosely flowing tops she used to favor to cover the fifteen or so extra pounds she wanted to lose, so it was hard to be certain but it seemed that she had shed at least some of them. She was still Allyson, but her looks were somewhat improved.