After Image

A drug induced haze was what Viola woke up to. Her eyelids were so heavy and her body so slow to respond, she had a sudden fear that she was experiencing sleep paralysis, a common problem when she had awoken from REM sleep too fast and the chemical that REM sleep induced to paralyze the body didn’t break down fast enough. She groaned and felt a reassuring hand on her forearm. She let her eyes flutter open slightly and tried to focus on the person hovering over her. For a moment she let her hands flail around her as she looked for her glasses and realized that she was still wearing them. She blinked her eyes and rolled them around trying to make the blurriness vanish.

When she opened them up again, she was staring at the face of Will Czernicki. His face was creased with worry and he gave her a plaintive smile.

“What?” Viola croaked. She couldn’t quite grasp what had happened before waking up. Seeing Will’s face, all she could remember was the kiss they had shared under the stars, which was both repulsing and intriguing at the same time. She grimaced as she recalled this memory and felt a stabbing pain in her head. The shear intensity of the ice-pick headache made her shoot straight up in the bed, clutching the side of her face with both her hands.

“Viola, I need you to stay calm,” she heard Will say in a very slow and calm voice. She felt his hands on her shoulders, but the pain was so intense she couldn’t concentrate on his reassurance. She couldn’t even concentrate on whether she should be relieved that he was here, terrified or irate. The pain eased for a few seconds and everything from the kiss onward came flooding back into her mind. She decided she was irate, opened her eyes, glared at Will and punched him squarely in the nose. She must not have been as weak as she thought because a stream of blood starting spurting from his deviated septum seconds after she pulled her arm back. She felt the pain re-surging and moaned once again, grabbing her head.

“I suppose I deserved that,” Will replied, his voice muffled by cloth as he tried to staunch the flow of blood.

“What, in the name of all that is holy is going on?” Viola asked through teeth clenched with pain.

“You have an excess build up of quantum energy, Viola. Unfortunately we were late in getting to you before this happened. We attempted to reverse the effects of the drug in your system, so you should be able to Image now. The best thing for you to do right now is Image something. Can you do that?”

“I have so many things whirling around in my head right now, most of them concerning you and the bloody dart you shot me with that I can’t even concentrate on anything to Image –“ She stopped mid-sentence, the rage she felt causing her head to swell with even more pain. She let out a terrifyingly loud scream and vanished from the stretcher she was on. Will banged on the side of the cabin telling the driver to pull over. He stepped out of the Ambulance and glanced around the snow covered highway. There was no sign of her. Three other men joined him at the back of the vehicle.

“Where did she go?” One of them asked.

Will made a fist and punched the ambulance door in frustration. “The quantum energy within her was at catastrophic levels, it needed to be release, either she exploded, which I highly doubt as there is no goo in the back of the ambulance, or she popped into another universe.”

“So what do we do?” The driver asked.

Will glanced around at his three colleagues and sat on the bumper of the ambulance. “We wait until she pops back into our reality.”

“Will she come back here?” the man that had been accompanying Viola and Will in the back of the ambulance asked.

“Let’s hope so.”

Viola was still screaming, her head filled with chaotic pain. Had she not had her eyes squeezed tightly shut, she would have seen a blinding spectacle as she physically traversed hundreds of alternate realities in the span of a few seconds, the build up of quantum energy exploding all around her. Slowly, she felt the pain ease. The realities she was falling through began to slow until finally she gave out a sigh, opened her eyes to blinding white light and promptly closed them again. At the same time, she felt the ground disappear beneath her and she fell a few feet onto the road, landing in a pile of grey slush. She shivered from the cold and slowly opened her eyes. How had she gotten outside? She had been on a bed punching Will in the face only a few minutes before. When she looked out of her slitted eyes she saw Will coming to assist her.

“What is going on? I need answers and I need them now,” Viola exploded. She felt Will lift her to her feet and pick her up into his arms. She was freezing cold and happy to not be sitting on the frozen ground in a pair of sweats.

“Did you enjoy your trip?” Will asked.

Viola had her eyes fully open now and found herself staring at the back of an ambulance as she was gently placed inside. “Who are you? How do you know anything about my Imaging? Have you been spying on me? How did you find out about me? Who do you work for? What is going to happen to me –“ Will put his finger on Viola’s lips prompting her to stop her line of questioning.

“First let’s get back on the road and get you warm. How is your head feeling? Anymore pain?” Will asked. One of his colleagues climbed into the back with Viola and Will and the other two shut the doors. A few minutes later they were moving down the highway once again. Viola looked around the ambulance, first glancing at the extra guard and then back to Will.

“My head is fine,” Viola replied. She glared at Will.

“Can you give me your right hand?” Will asked gently. Viola had every intention of completely ignoring everything he requested, but had given up her right hand to him before the thought that she was cooperating with people that had abducted her had even entered into her mind. When she tried to pull back her hand, Will responded by tightening his grip on it and slipping a brown glove over her fingers before she gave a firmer yank and pulled her hand completely away from him. “I really thought you were going to protest about giving me your hand.”

“I was,” Viola huffed looking at the glove on her hand. It was a thick leather glove with a bracelet attached to the top that was clamping tightly onto Viola’s wrist making it impossible for her to remove the glove from her hand. She noticed it had an electronic lock of some sort on it. “I can’t help it if I lived my life not having to distrust people. What is this?” She held her hand up and pushed the palm of the glove into Will’s face, mashing his broken nose with the glove and causing him to cry out in pain. A fresh trickle of blood started to flow. Will hit Viola’s hand away and gave her a firm ‘don’t push it’ look.

“Well it’s in our best interests if for now you cannot Image things, especially items that might help you escape from us,” Will replied, staunching the blood flow while looking up at the ceiling.

“And a leather glove is supposed to prevent me from pulling things from other worlds?” Viola chuckled and held up her left hand. “Even if I can’t conduct the energy through a gloved hand, I have two hands you know.” Viola concentrated on Imaging a sedative filled syringe. As it hovered in the air in front of her she tried touching it with her gloved hand. It passed completely through it as if it wasn’t there. She tried with her uncovered left hand and it too passed right through the Image of the syringe. She let the Image fade and stared at her left hand. “Seriously? I can only Image with my right hand?” Viola looked at the glove locked on her wrist and glared at Will. “How would you even know that would work?”

“Are you ambidextrous, Viola? Can you write with your left hand?” Will replied. His nose had stopped bleeding and his eyes were level with Viola. She stared into his warm brown eyes and tried not to think about how much she wanted to trust them. He was the enemy. He had toyed with her to get what he had wanted. Stop being naïve, Viola. She chided herself for her gullibility. She had always been far too trusting. Her friend Mesa was constantly fooling her with completely bold faced lies that she knew couldn’t possibly be true. She just didn’t really understand the concept of lying or joking as Mesa liked to call it. She used sarcasm as a constant thing, so in reality, the concept that other people were being sarcastic back to her should be a plain and evident fact, but she still managed to take things at face value. It was a constant annoyance to her. Falling for the same thing over and over was pathetic. She tried hard to hide the fact that she was so gullible by pretending after the fact that she was being witty and playing along. In fact most of the time she either thought it was true or had no idea at all what was going on. If I can use sarcasm I should be able to understand it. She glared into those brown eyes.

“No, I’m not ambidextrous, Will, but I am sure you know that,” Viola replied.

“Well think of your power to Image like your skill to write. You can with difficulty manage to write with your left, but it looks sloppy and childish. Your right hand has muscle memory on writing and can do it with ease because of years and years of practice. Your access to quantum energy uses the same principle. You’ve exercised your ability to Image with your right hand, so your left is poor at channeling that energy. It cannot channel enough to pull an Image from another universe.

“Worst super power ever,” Viola mumbled and sat further back on the stretcher. “I am completely subdued with an insulated hand.

“Okay, so you have me. Good for you.” Viola gave Will a thumbs-up and the most sarcastic smile she could form. “If you can believe it, my abduction is not what I am worried about at this moment. I would like to know what happened to Eli and my cat,” Viola snapped.

“You’re really more concerned about the welfare of someone you just met and a cat?” Will asked.

“I’m sorry; did you want me to be more self-absorbed?” Viola replied. “Because I know what state I’m in, but I don’t know what happened to my cousin or my cat whom I have lived with longer than any human being besides my parents.”

Viola saw a familiar look form on Will’s face. It was the look she often got from people that were perplexed by the way she talked, acted, or thought. It annoyed her, because it was the kind of look that made her think that everyone around her was trying to tell her that she should be more like them and less like her. She must have given him her famous ‘death-glare,’ as Mesa called it, because his look became sober very quickly.

“My employer, Mrs. Ironside, has made sure that Eli got that trip you promised him down to visit your family,” Will finally replied. “Eli dropped Makoto off with your mate Mesa. So, they are both safe. Satisfied?”

“No, I’m not satisfied. Just makes me have a bunch more questions, like why would Eli go and visit my family without me? Who is Mrs. Ironside? And where exactly are we going? Also, are you really from England? Or was all this just a ruse to play on my emotions?” They seemed to understand her psyche very well. In fact, she was starting to think they had read her journals. She poured her heart and soul into those; it would be easy to play on her emotions with the information that was concealed in the pages of those thirteen volumes.

“I can’t answer all your questions, Viola,” Will replied.

“No, of course not. Abducted people don’t have rights according to the abductors. Why would I expect any answers from you?” Angry, she grabbed the leather glove in her teeth and pulled as hard as she could, roaring in anger and causing tears to drop from the corners of her eyes.

“I promise you will be extended every courtesy,” Will said touching Viola’s arm. She promptly stopped biting at the glove and pulled her arm sharply away from his grasp.

“I don’t like being touched, thank you,” she replied vehemently.

Will sighed. She didn’t understand why he was being so talkative with her anyway. He was her captor. She had expected to get back in the ambulance and drive in absolute silence while she angrily raged at these abductors until they gagged her. Then again, this was the first time she had been abducted. The only examples she had to go by were those she saw on TV and in the movies.

“I am from England, yes, and we are going to the airport,” Will finally said.

“Oh lucky me, my first private jet and I get to take it in handcuffs… or, well, a handcuff.” Viola clenched her right hand in the glove. “Is this an overseas flight? Is that where your conspirator is from as well, this Mrs. Ironside?”

“No this is more a joint effort with the United States,” Will replied.

Viola thought about his response and suddenly something clicked. “This is government sanctioned isn’t it? So what, your MI:6 working with the CIA? I guess you guys left CSIS out of the loop?”

“You’re incredibly sharp, Viola. No, CSIS is involved, but the facilities we need are at CIA Headquarters.”

“But I don’t get it; I just gained the ability to Image last week? How long have you been watching me? How did you know to watch me?”

“Mrs. Ironside has encountered your kind before. You displayed a lot of the characteristics that we were looking for. We’ve been watching you for months.”

“So there are others like me?” Viola asked tentatively. She wasn’t sure if she thought this was a good idea or if this disturbed her. What if those people use it for selfish reasons or even worse, to hurt someone or commit a crime?

“No, Viola, I’m afraid there is no one quite like you,” Will replied.

“But I thought you said she had encountered others of my ‘kind,’” She spat out the last word like it was dirty. As if I am not human.

“None that display the completeness or control of Imaging like you do. In fact, I don’t think I would be wrong in saying that in all the universe, you are the only one that can Image properly.”

“The universe is a big place,” Viola replied, “We’ve never left our solar system. There is no possible way you could know that is true.” Besides, there are other universes out there. A lot of other Mes out there. If I can do this, why couldn’t they? She suddenly felt cold, thinking that throughout infinite universes people were abducting her and using her for nefarious purposes. It made her shudder. It also made her anger fade abruptly, the only insulating feeling she had to keep her from feeling the ultimate fear of the situation she was in. Abducted by the CIA and MI:6. You may not be able to get away from them, Viola, but you don’t give in. You fight with everything you have, even if that is just your words or your refusal to cooperate. You are a strong woman and you can get out of this, I know you can. She wasn’t sure if a pep talk from herself was going to be enough to get her through this, but it was a start, a little crack in the wall back to her freedom.

“Maybe you’re right. Unfortunately, here on Earth, that doesn’t help you very much,” Will replied.

Viola laid back on the stretcher imagining the crack in the wall to her freedom widening with each breath she took. She just needed the right opportunity and she promised herself she wouldn’t miss it.