Obscure

Chapter 7

Elias

Someone had scrubbed the blood off the interrogation room table. It was shiny again, reflecting the light into his eyes like a pair of high beams coming around a curve in the darkness.

No one had bothered to clean Elias up. He had scrubbed the blood from his face as best he could, even taken off his shirt and held it under the faucet. But the harsh soap they had provided him wasn't enough. The ghost of the stain still dribbled down his front like old ketchup. And now his shirt was damp. It clung to his skin, catching the chill from the air vent and amplifying it.

The metal band was still fastened around his wrist. It gleamed at him like a malevolent promise.

He hadn't seen himself in days. There was no mirror in his cell. His captors were probably afraid he would break it and try to slit his wrists. But when he reached up to touch his chin, he could feel his own spiky stubble enough to know he had been here for several days. They would have to give him a shower before long, or Kirill wouldn't be able to stand being in the same room as him.

The door opened, as if Elias had summoned Kirill with his thoughts. "What persona are you putting on today?" Elias asked as Kirill slid into the chair across from him.

Kirill looked like he hadn't slept all night. Actually, he looked like he hadn't slept in a week. His face looked older in some indefinable way, and his eyes were tired around the edges and dull at the centers. He moved like he was trudging through quicksand with every step.

It wasn't his conscience troubling him, or he never would have made it this far in the interrogation. Could the repeated obscuring have had some physical effect? Elias had never used it so many times on the same person in so short a time—not since he was a child and didn't know better, and his power hadn't been as strong then.

If that was the problem, Kirill had already solved it with the metal band around Elias's wrist. Still, Elias indulged in a small moment of triumph.

"I looked into the child," Kirill said, instead of answering.

The memory of the day Sammy was taken again. Pacing back and forth. The clock ticking, each movement of the second hand as loud as a drumbeat. As loud as his own heartbeat in his ear.

He had never thought he could get tired of his own grief.

He shoved the memory away and took a deep breath. He hadn't been lying—he had practiced this. Bringing up memories of Sammy again and again, until the grief welled up, then ruthlessly forcing it down.

He had thought it would be enough.

"An eight-year-old boy," Kirill continued. "Someone who entered PERI a year or two before Elias Kitzner came into existence. A positive blood test, but no active abilities."

Something crawled out of Elias's memory. A creature ten feet tall and spindly as a scarecrow, with a mouth full of jagged teeth. A childhood memory, a monster from a horror movie, stalking Elias through long-forgotten nightmares. The creature peered around the corner where he stood pressed against the wall, quivering. I found you... it crooned in a voice like rustling leaves.

Kirill had found Sammy. That was what he was saying, wasn't it?

"We found three potential matches," said Kirill. "We match their blood to the sample we took from you when you came in. For one of them, the genetics were a match."

Elias didn't have a name for the emotions that came over him at that. But it must have been bad, because the memories came like a flood.

Lisbeth smiling, exhausted, holding the baby and beckoning him close.