The Nobody People by Bob Proehl (manga ereader TXT) 📕

“Oh, God,” wails the man.

“Say you understand,” Smithson shouts.

The woman pulls him closer. Her wrists are zip-tied in front of her. She holds him in the sealed circle of her arms. “We understand,” she says. Smithson opens the door and pushes them in, closing it behind them. He turns his attention to Carrie and Avi. “When you step through this door, your abilities will temporarily return,” he says. “Someone will be standing behind you. If you attempt to use your abilities in any way, he will shoot you in the head. Do you understand?”

“We understand,” Carrie says. Smithson opens the door, and they step through into a small, dark hallway. There are no green lights here, and she can feel her ability, her Resonance, return like a sleeping limb waking. Doug Shaw, Downer Doug, who worked in the office at Bishop, who’s been one of Miquel’s clients for months, sits on a stool at the end of the hall. His face is bruised, his right eye black. He looks at Carrie as if he’s trying to apologize. There’s a man standing behind her, gun drawn. Doug pulls her down into the Hive. His Hivebody looks worse than his actual one, skin and bones, black roses climbing his calves like kudzu, rooting him to the ground. He says, “He’s inside. He’s okay. I’m sorry,” before letting her back into the dark hall. He turns his eyes to Avi, then closes them. They shoot open in panic.

“He’s not one!” Doug shrieks. “He’s not one!”

The armed man is on Avi in a second. He sweeps Avi’s cane out with his foot and knocks him to his knees. Avi yelps in pain as he smacks the floor. Green lights click on, flooding the room. The door behind them opens, and Smithson shoves Carrie against the wall, holding her by the base of her neck. Maxwell and two more enter, guns drawn and pointed at Avi’s head.

“What the fuck are you doing here?” Maxwell says. “Who the fuck are you?”

“My name is Avi Hirsch,” he says. “I’m a reporter. Call Louis Hoffman; he knows me.”

“Did I not fucking tell you not to tell Hoffman?” Maxwell yells at Smithson.

“Fucking shoot him,” says another in what is unmistakably a Chicago PD uniform.

“Call Louis,” Avi says.

“Get him the fuck out of here,” Maxwell says. “Drop him in the United Center parking lot with bus fare.”

“We’re letting him go?”

“I got into this to save human lives,” Maxwell says. “I’m not going to shoot him in the head. Blindfold him, drive him out, and drop him somewhere. He doesn’t know shit. Get him out.”

“I’m sorry,” Avi says to Carrie. “I’ll get you out. I’ll get you help.”

“Like fuck you will,” Smithson says as he drags Avi back out the front door, leaving his cane in the hallway. Maxwell opens the door behind Downer Doug and leads Carrie inside. Here’s the limit of allies, she thinks. This is where helpful people get you.

She wanders the large open space. The people all look sickly, bathed in green light. Prisoners, thinks Carrie. Not people. She starts to see people she knows. The black kid who sells mix CDs for five bucks on North and Oakley. Janet, who did a pop-up gallery show in the old barbershop on North and Artesian. Benny the See-Through Drunk, who’s a regular and translucent customer at Vibration. Miquel tried to tell Carrie about the value of a neighborhood. Child of the suburbs that she was, Carrie never felt it. Until now, with this network of connections lifted out of context and placed onto a stark backdrop. Next time anyone asks where I’m from, I’ll say North Avenue, she thinks. She wonders if she’ll get a chance.

She finds Miquel sitting next to a cot in a makeshift triage area. He looks haggard, with an irregular splay of dark stubble spotting his cheeks and blue bags under his eyes. He’s the most beautiful thing in this ugly, horrible place, and she can see he’s cracking under the weight of it. She runs to him, grabs him, thinking she needs to support him and then that she needs him to hold her together. Arms around each other, she waits to feel some kind of strength return, but it doesn’t come. There’s only a fear that isn’t lessened by being shared.

After a few minutes of holding him and being held, Carrie sees who he’s sitting vigil by. Bryce lies in the bed. His bark is drying out, curling and peeling away. Carrie thinks about Jonathan clutching his chest cavity under the lights.

“I said we need a doctor, and they told me they’d send a lumberjack,” says Miquel. “I think he’s dying, but I don’t know how to tell.”

Carrie puts her hand on Bryce’s chest, comforted that it rises and falls. When she pulls it away, a papery piece of bark clings to her palm like a Post-it note. “Have you slept?” she asks Miquel.

He shakes his head. “They keep the lights on. The buzzing makes it hard to sleep. It’s strange not to know what people are feeling. Everyone is a mystery.”

Miquel leans close to her. He examines her face in the green light, trying to suss out what she’s thinking. It’s like watching someone listen to a language he doesn’t understand. “How are you?”

On the car stereo, Leonard Cohen croons like molasses poured over broken glass. In the back seat, Bishop’s breathing rattles, a moth battering its wings in a cigar box. Kimani’s off with Patrick, chasing ghosts, so they’re traveling the long way. The normal way. Fahima leans against the passenger side and watches Alyssa drive, sunglasses on, unfazed by the Technicolor vividness of spring in Massachusetts. Alyssa grew up normal. She knows how to do shit like this. People don’t get how amazing normal is if you grow up without it. Driving lessons and proms and failed attempts at heterosexuality. Fast food and family car trips