A Perfect Machine(56)

Tunnels. The word shot into his thoughts like a hard slap from a cold hand.

– the fact that they were together, and that they loved each other. Even though they’d only known each other a short time, they both felt that they’d been in love for as long as they could remember. Like they had never not been in love.

And today’s trip was –

Subway.

– was something they’d been planning for weeks. Maybe he’d surprised her with it at first, then let her help him plan it. Had he won it? Entered some contest? He didn’t feel like either of them had much money, so winning it seemed like a reasonable assumption.

He looked across at her, saw what he now felt sure was the shape of a hot air balloon above them, although he discovered he could not lift his head to see for sure. But that was OK because her eyes were sparkling in the sunlight where it dipped now, shining through her hair, nearing the horizon, and she was so beautiful. Just so beautiful that he wished they could drift up here forever. Drift across this –

Injured.

. . .

What?

His brain tried once again to reboot itself. He felt a literal redistribution of memory take place in his head, like a fragmented drive defragging, reworking itself into a more coherent version of what it once was. What it used to be.

Something clicked inside his skull.

Two firemen poked their heads around the shattered remnants of Faye’s front door, axes in hand. Cursed. Yelled for cops. Yelled for anyone who would listen, then ran back down the hall.

Henry turned himself around one hundred and eighty degrees, stared directly at the woman on the floor.

Faye, he thought. The name came into his beleaguered mind like the snap of a crisply folded sheet.

Faye is injured.

Thinking of hot air balloons, sunlight filtering through soft hair, and the scent of the cleanest air he had ever smelled – all memories of a trip he’d never been on, nor would ever go on – he very gently moved his hand under the unconscious woman on the apartment floor, lifted her up. Wrapped his hand around her, tucked her close to his side, moved his other hand over and around her to protect her from any debris.

Then Henry Kyllo squatted as low as he could, angled himself toward the back parking lot, flexed his pistonlike legs.

And launched himself through the roof of the apartment building.

When he broke through, at the top of his arc, he saw the moon hanging low in the sky, tried to capture every detail of its beauty before gravity brought him down.



* * *



The roof caved in and glass exploded outward in a shower from the windows of the car Henry landed on.

He checked the condition of the woman tucked into his body: still unconscious, but otherwise unharmed. He stepped down from the car, the learning curve of dealing with the proportions of this new body exponentially curtailed from his last incarnation. He somehow felt he’d been born in this body.

He looked around. A small crowd of people had come out of neighboring apartment buildings when the sirens had stopped nearby. Some had likely heard the original commotion.

Firefighters and police had been scattered around, running back and forth from their vehicles to the building. When he’d landed, everyone stopped. Stared. Then panic ensued, and people ran in every direction – every direction that was away from Henry, of course.

Subway. Tunnels.

Henry began walking in the direction of the old subway tunnels. He assumed the police would soon be after him in force, but the ones who’d seen him – and who could properly process what they’d seen – had their hands full right now. Someone would call it in, though. And he wasn’t sure if the force that protected the Inferne Cutis from discovery would be strong enough to play this down, wipe it clean. It would likely be too much. Too many witnesses, too scarring an event. Too strange in every way imaginable.

Probably.

But only a small portion of his mind was occupied with this line of thought. Most of his attention settled on the woman he carried. He felt as though she was Faye. The nurse. His girlfriend? She must be, mustn’t she? Wasn’t she the only woman in his life? He failed to see how it could be anyone else. Although his memories of Faye – and a lot of other memories, to be honest – were sketchy, so…

He was trudging through the dark streets, trying desperately to retrieve memories of Faye, when a strange sound caught his ear: hydraulics, or something close to hydraulics. He looked around, saw nothing, then looked down. At his own legs. The sound came from his legs, whenever he stepped. He hadn’t noticed it before due to the noise around him, but now, cloaked in relative darkness down these side streets, he heard it clearly.

But not quite hydraulics. Something similar – organic tissue mixed with hydraulics? – but different enough to be noticeable. Henry stopped walking, looked down again. Air hissed from something mechanical, like a rig after hitting its brakes. But Henry had seen hydraulic systems before, and these weren’t quite the same. These were more powerful, more efficient. Using some other kind of technology he was unfamiliar with.

The entrance to the old tunnels, he knew, was just another block away, and he still had not encountered anyone on the side streets and back alleys he’d chosen for his path. He started to think maybe he wouldn’t see anyone, would actually go unseen the entire way. He hoped so because he wasn’t sure what he’d do if someone saw him – more accurately, he was afraid of what he’d do if someone saw him. Disturbing flashes of what had happened at Faye’s apartment occasionally bolted through his head, but nothing that made any kind of sense for the person he thought himself to be. These images felt fake – like a film he’d watched, or as though someone had poked around in his head, created false memories for some reason. Some larger plan he was part of but knew nothing about.