Hellboy: Unnatural Selection(19)

But he did not know her. And deep down, she hoped that he was wrong.



* * *



She had plenty of guilt to walk off. She could pretend it was culpability at the killing of the werewolf, but that was not true. When she thought of that thing lying in the road as she put a bullet through its eye, she felt nothing. This was a deeper, sicker feeling, one that stank of betrayal. Betrayal of her friends. They had taken her in and cared for her, and she had told them nothing. She had lied. She found it strange that freedom only increased that sense of guilt.

She passed a burnt-out building and paused for a moment, wondering whether she should go inside and find somewhere to sit for the night. A man and a woman passed her and averted their eyes. She stared at them, hoping they would say something that would change her mind. But they walked on, wrapped up in their own small world. Sometimes Abby scoffed at such narrow-mindedness, but most of the time she wanted to be just like them.

Her satellite phone rang, and she sighed. That would be BPRD asking where she was. Tom, probably, the concern in his voice barely masking the worry he had about her being out on her own. She plucked the phone from her pocket.

"Hello."

"Abby? Tom. Where are you? I thought you were coming in."

"I ... I am, Tom. I'm still in Baltimore. Walking. Couple of things about the guy I killed I'm still trying to work through in my head."

"Hmm. Well, can you work them through back here? The shits really hitting the fan right now, and I could do with your help."

"What's happened?"

"Sightings," Tom said. "Lots of sightings."

"Sightings of what."

"Well ... things. Dragons. Sea serpents. Other weird stuff."

"Where?" Abby already felt a chill, the sweat on her brow cooling.

"Everywhere," Tom said. "Abby, come home. Abe's on his way back, and I'm hoping to hear from Hellboy and Liz soon. I think we're in for a busy couple of days."

Abby cut the connection and pocketed the phone without agreeing to return, hoping that Tom would take that as a yes. Dragons ... sea serpents ... other weird stuff. She closed her eyes and allowed in the memory of her dreams, and they were filled with bad things.

Blake.

And she suddenly knew that she would not be returning home.



* * *



Abby Paris remembered her dreams, and she knew that the dreams were memories in disguise. In those memories she was nameless, because she had yet to be named; she was empty, waiting to be filled with history; and she was unsettled.

Yet still she remembered herself as Abby, because to remember herself with no name was like being nothing.



* * *



She walks through the New Ark a young girl in a world she does not understand, and yet she regards it as normal. She knows nothing else. She is a teenager, but she can remember nothing of her childhood. She knows the reasons for this — the evidence is all around her — though she does not understand that, either. Understanding is for Blake; her job is simply being. That is what she had been told. You exist, creature, because I give you my will to exist, Blake told her. You are here because I brought you, you breathe air because I allow it, and in your creation there was a pledge of faith to me. Wander the ship, but do not wonder. See what is happening but do not question. Your time in the Memory is over, and now you have a new home in reality. Accept that, accept me, and your future is one of triumph.

That was the only time Blake ever spoke to her. She has seen him many times since then, working at a vat or wandering through the ship. But although he always offers her a smile and a nod, he never speaks. He is a tall, thin, ghostly figure, and for some reason he always reminds Abby of her time before memory began. That is a dark time, and Blake carries darkness with him. It is also a deep, hollow time, filled with nothing but space, and when she looks into the tall man's eyes — past the light of passion, past the shades of madness — she can see the hollowness that lies at his core.

The hollowness of her own mind has its ghosts as well. They are knowledge and intelligence, things that she was born with but that are not exactly hers. Her first memory is of Blake staring down at her, smiling as he uses a rough old cloth to wipe fluids from her eyes, clearing them, ensuring that he is the very first thing she ever focuses on. Even then she has a strange awareness, and yet everything this awareness brings up feels as though it has been left behind in her mind by someone or something else. Her life is new, her mind old. She screams. Blake steps back, still smiling, and she thinks her first true thought: He's more than used to this.