They run.
A few seconds later, Kayla emerges out of the darkness, lowering the gun she’s drawn. Staring at the steel spikes in Charlotte’s hand. Her jaw’s slack; her eyes are wide. She’s shaking her head back and forth. From the other direction comes Marty. No drawn gun, probably because he had faith the drug would work. But he seems as awestruck as Kayla. And, like her, he seems unwilling to get too close.
“Talk to us,” Kayla says. She sounds winded. “Describe what you’re feeling.”
“What are you feeling?” Charlotte asks.
“Like I’m gonna wet myself. But don’t answer a question with a question. It’s annoying.”
“Bone music,” Charlotte answers.
“What?” Marty asks.
“It’s like there’s music playing inside my bones. Or a beat, at least.”
“Like a waltz beat or a samba beat or a rave beat?”
“Is that a serious question?” Charlotte asks.
“Is it painful, is what I mean?”
“No,” Charlotte says, “it’s like I can’t feel pain. And I’d go with samba if I had to pick.”
She throws the spike in her left hand at the dirt with one downward thrust. It lands like a perfectly aimed spear.
Kayla gasps. Then Charlotte takes the jagged end of the other spear and drives it slowly into her left palm. The pain is a dull, muffled thing. The skin should break, but it doesn’t. Instead it develops an instant dark bruise that comes on too fast, then seems to vanish the second she withdraws the steel. Like her body’s trying to assert its usual response to being stabbed, but the drug suppresses it.
Kayla and Marty flank her now. “Keep talking, Charlotte,” Kayla says.
“OK. What do you want to know?”
“Just keep describing what you’re feeling. Altered vision? Mood changes?”
“I’m not about to turn Incredible Hulk on either of you if that’s what you’re afraid of.”
“Hey, Charley,” Marty says. “Just a suggestion—maybe hold the sarcasm until our entire sense of reality isn’t being turned on its head.”
“Sorry, but this is just the kind of moment sarcasm was made for, Uncle Marty.”
“Your heart rate,” Kayla says. “Is it elevated?”
“It doesn’t feel like it. It’s like I said. The feeling in my bones and what you saw me do. It’s pretty simple.”
“This is not simple,” Kayla whispers. “This is not simple, but this is . . .”
For a second Charlotte thinks Kayla has literally lost her mind. How else do you explain it when a grown woman starts suddenly jumping up and down and clapping her hands together and cackling like a hyena? “Oh my God! Oh my God!” Kayla cries over and over again.
She looks like she just won the lottery. But even in the midst of her joy, she doesn’t allow anything less than five feet of space between herself and Charlotte. Now it’s clear why Kayla had such a hard time believing her story; she wanted it to be true so much she didn’t trust herself. She wanted it to be true the way we want fairy tales and romance novels and Santa Claus to be true. And now that she has undeniable proof, it’s like she’s a child again.
Charlotte laughs, then feels awestruck that she can laugh. That even as the drug courses through her, making the impossible possible, she has all her human emotions within reach.
“Women,” Marty mutters. Charlotte makes a fake grab for his throat, and he goes skittering backward so quickly he ends up on his ass, which only makes Kayla laugh louder, which only makes Charlotte laugh louder.
“If it’s anything like last night, we’ve got three hours,” Charlotte says once she catches her breath. “Let’s play.”
17
“Again,” Marty says to Kayla.
“I’ve circled twice, Marty. Nobody’s here.”
“Third time’s the charm.”
“For you and the eye doctor, maybe,” she grumbles.
Kayla’s right, the place does look abandoned. The warehouse has meteor-size holes in its walls. Weeds grow in the broken asphalt of its empty loading docks. The chain-link fence looks relatively new, like someone threw it up for protection after the last tenant left, but even it’s collapsing in sections.
By the time her companions start arguing over which particular nest of shadows will conceal the car best, Charlotte’s managed to thread her hair into a ponytail without tearing out large chunks by the roots. Together with the fact that she hasn’t torn a hole in any part of Kayla’s back seat, this accomplishment makes her feel pretty damn proud of herself.
Inside, they find almost nothing Charlotte cannot bend to the point of breaking.
She’s most impressed with what the drug does to her aim. After snapping some rebar with her bare hands, she’s able to throw pieces of it through the air with enough force to spear the wall from what would amount to two car lengths away, a trick similar to what she did outside the bar when she sent the steel spike into the ground. To overcome gravity like this from this distance, an ordinary human would require impeccable aim. For her it’s not an issue because of the insane amount of propulsion that comes from even the lightest flick of her wrist.
With each successful hit, she takes another step back. Eventually she discovers the point at which distance overcomes her enhanced strength. At about three car lengths between her and the wall, the rebar starts to fall short.
“We need to film this,” Charlotte says.
“You sure about that?” Kayla asks.
“I’m sure I’ve only got one pack of pills, and if I run out and nobody believes me, there’s gonna be no way to prove we’re not all crazy.”
“You planning to tell the world about this?” Marty asks.
“I don’t know yet. I don’t know anything yet. But if we have to tell someone, I want to be believed.”
Charlotte begins rubbing two pieces of rebar together to see how long it takes her to make sparks. The answer—ten seconds. They light up the vast, shadowy interior of the warehouse, making it clear how much her eyes have adjusted to the darkness.
“I’m not trying to be a pain in the ass,” Marty says. “I just don’t think it’s a good idea to have any of this on film. Not yet.”
“I understand you feel that way, and I’m not asking you to store it on your phone for longer than it takes to transfer it to some kind of portable hard drive. And I don’t want either of you on camera. I’ll keep you out of it as best I can—I promise. But I’ve got to have some kind of record that this is actually happening.”
Marty’s staring at her, wide-eyed and frightened. It takes her a few seconds to realize it’s not the prospect of putting all this on film that’s got him scared. Not in this moment, at least. It’s that she just gave him an order in a firm tone of voice, and right now, when she’s capable of breaking steel, her orders mean more than they did an hour ago.
“You’ve got the pills, Charley,” Kayla says. “That’s your proof.”
“Yeah, and we saw how easy it was to prove they work. All I have to do is set myself up to be raped and murdered. You can’t trick this drug, guys. If I know the threat’s not real, nothing happens. I mean, come on. Imagine I’m in police custody, trying to get them to believe my story, but the only way to prove it is to get them to drop me in the worst neighborhood in town, where I might end up breaking some guy’s neck or, you know, destroying private property. Do you really see that going well for me?”
It’s dark again inside the warehouse, but she can tell from the shapes of their bowed heads they’re studying the shadows at their feet, considering her words.
“Also, there’s another reason we need the film,” she says.
“What’s that?” Marty asks.