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“Figures,” I grumbled. In my short life I had
come to understand one thing about schools. They worshiped at the
alter of the sport and sports fan, no matter what type of sport it
was, and would do almost anything to ensure that they had a winning
team. Winning teams equaled more fans and more fans equaled more
money. I might not have been big into the whole sports scene
myself, but that was something that I could understand from working
retail for so long. It’s all about the all mighty bottom line.

“So you believe me?” he asked, and I thought
over what he had told me. I decided to answer his question with
another question of my own.

“Who’s this individual that you said you’re
tracking, and why do you think Maria was attacked by him?”

He sighed. “You really don’t believe in
making things easy, do you?”

I shrugged. “Just covering my bases. If, and
I emphasize if, I’m going to trust you, you have to give me a
reason to fully believe what you’re telling me. I do feel a little
better after you dropped the Interpol line, but it still sounds so
wonky that the jury is out on any decision I may make.”

“You’ve been hanging around Mr. Baker a
little too much, you get all formal when you’re flustered,” he
said, amused. “The individual that I’m tracking has been known to
attack people between the ages of 15 and 21. All the attacks have
had the same description; the individual vanished from a crowded
place and were untraceable. They’d be gone anywhere from a day or
two to several weeks, after which they’d show up at their homes
disoriented and confused with no memory of where they had been or
what had happened. They also exhibited strange symptoms, which
eventually turned into physical, mental and emotional shut down.
For lack of a better explanation, they would fall into a comatose
state and die within days of reappearing.”

I sucked in my breath as he talked and my
thoughts flashed to Maria’s disappearance and return along with her
lack of memory about what had transpired. But so far she hadn’t
exhibited any of the shutting down that Akira talked about. If
anything, her emotions were gearing more towards the volatile side.
I lightly touched my jaw where it had impacted my car several days
ago. It was still tender enough that I didn’t want to press too
hard against the faded bruising.

“That’s similar to what happened, only Maria
isn’t having issues with shutting down,” I said slowly as I moved
my fingers from my jaw to press against a faint throb in my
temple.

“Please, tell me what happened and anything
that you’ve noticed that’s different about your friend.”

I met his eyes and read sincere concern
there. I still hesitated. I felt like Akira was keeping something
important back, but my gut told me he had been honest about
tracking this strange person down, and if what happened to Maria
could help him in his search, not to mention maybe finally having
answers and a way to fully help her, then I needed to stop being
quite so cautious and open up a little.

“This is hard for me, because I was supposed
to meet with Maria that night,” I said as I crossed my arms and
rubbed my hands up and down them in response to a sudden chill that
wafted over my skin despite the watery warmth of the sun.

“Please tell me,” Akira repeated. He
straightened up and leaned towards me, his eyes intent upon my
own.

I rubbed my hands over my face and sighed.
“About three weeks ago Maria and I had made plans to meet up at
O’Malley’s Ice Cream, which is one of our usual meeting places
since it’s close to Joe’s. I had to work, but Mr. Baker did the
close down so I was able to get off of work around six that
evening. Maria and I had planned to meet up around six-thirty, but
I was . . . um, delayed and then had to get home, so I never made
it. I didn’t find out she had vanished until the next day when her
mom called the school, looking for her because Maria hadn’t
returned home and she thought that she had stayed with me or
another friend. She was gone for a week, and then just showed up
out of the blue. Walked into her parents house where there were
cops in the living room clustered around the phone waiting for a
call from a kidnapper or something.”

“Were there any witnesses when she
disappeared?”

“They interviewed some of the customers that
were there that night, but they all said the same thing. That Maria
looked at her cell phone, dialed a number, walked out the door and
was last seen heading towards the park. They didn’t see anyone
suspicious follow after her, and no one strange was seen coming in
or out of the park that entire evening. It was like she was
snatched into the air and then carried off or something.”

“What happened when she came back to her
parent’s house?”

“That’s what’s so strange,” I said and rubbed
my arms again. “I was sitting in one of the extra chairs when she
walked in as if she hadn’t been gone at all. We all stared at her,
and she looked at me and asked, ‘Hey, why weren’t you at O’Malley’s
last night?’ It wasn’t until after she asked that question that she
seemed to notice everyone else that was in the room. The cops
bombarded her with questions while her mother was hugging her and
crying at the same time. Maria was very confused, she had no idea
that a week had passed, and thought that she had been gone over
night. She said she remembered going into the park and thinking
about camping out under the stars because her parents had been
really fighting that day, and she thought that that was what she
had done. She said that she couldn’t remember anything that
happened after she called her mom until she woke up underneath one
of the large oak trees that’s located on the outskirts of
town.”

“And she still says she can’t remember what
happened?”

“Right,” I said. “She gets this weird look on
her face and insists that she can’t remember a thing, that it’s
like she fell asleep and woke up only to find that a week has gone
by. She once commented that she now understood how Rip Van Winkle
felt when he slept for one hundred years.”

“I know this is a rhetorical question
considering that you still have a very faint bruise on your jaw,
but have you noticed any changes since she’s been back?”

“Well,” I said, “she’s become far more
volatile than I’ve ever known her to be. I mean, she has a temper;
she’s just always been really good at not acting on it. For
example, if she gets mad about something I or someone else has
said, she’ll actually take about ten breaths to calm herself down a
little before she responds. I’ve only seen her really yell at
someone once, and that was when we saw some kids throwing rocks at
a puppy when we were eleven. She’s never, ever hit anyone in anger
before, she saw enough of that with her Dad, and while he never
physically hit a person, he would trash things that she or her
mother cared about when he was angry. She also has a tendency to
blank out, almost like she mentally goes somewhere else where no
one can reach her, which is new.”

“Anything other than her amnesia and mood
swings that has stood out?”

“This is going to sound really, really weird,
but her eyes change when she blanks out,” I admitted.

“Change how?” he asked sharply.

“They just . . . they look weird. It’s like
they get a really flat and milky looking sheen over them. It
doesn’t last long, and she’ll snap out of it, but I see it most
often right before she has a mood swing or something sets her off.
And she’s become extremely absent-minded, which isn’t like her.
She’ll show up and her blouse will be buttoned wrong, or her socks
won’t match. I know that seems kind of stupid and nothing to be
alarmed about, but you gotta understand, Maria has always been
really particular about how she dresses. I’ve seen her coordinate
an entire outfit around a pair of earrings.”

I rubbed the back of my neck and there was a
sharp pain on my hand. Startled, I looked down and noticed that I
had ripped another chunk of skin off of my cuticles, and blood had
dripped onto my pants. I cursed and grabbed one of the napkins that
had come with our sandwiches and held it to the bleeding appendage.
Akira appeared lost in thought, so I went over what he had told me
again, looking for holes and eventually found one.

“You still haven’t answered my question.”

I didn’t realize that I had said that out
loud until Akira’s eyes turned to me and he raised his eyebrows
inquisitively.

“Just who is this person that you’ve been
chasing for so long? There’s got to be something more than just
your job, because to have been following after him for two years
speaks of more than just professional dedication.”

Akira hesitated for so long that I thought he
wasn’t going to answer me. I wouldn’t have blamed him, I was still
a little suspicious about why he came forward so quickly with the
whole “secret organization” thing, but perhaps he knew that I
wouldn’t have been honest myself if he hadn’t been first.

“This individual that I’ve been chasing,”
Akira’s voice broke through my thoughts and I jerked a little in my
seat. “He is, was, my older brother.”

Chapter Seven

I goggled at him as he stared straight across
the pond at the brilliantly colored trees on the other side. I
wanted to say something intelligent, to question him even further,
but sadly, what came out of my mouth was no where near what I
intended to vocalize.

“Buh?!”

I winced. I had no idea how
Wait, is this
the brother you said you were visiting in Boston during the time
Maria vanished?
turned into something a little less
intelligent, but that’s knee-jerk reactions for you. Akira leaned
forward and put his head into his hands with a sigh.

I decided to try again and cleared my throat.
“Ok, is this the same brother you mentioned visiting in Boston
during the time Maria was gone? Are you sure it’s him? If so, why
is your brother attacking people? How is he attacking them?”

“One question at a time,” Akira said, his
voice a mixture of amused exhaustion that made the tone a little
huskier than his usual silky smoothness. “Yes, this is the same
brother that I said I was visiting in Boston. Truth is, I was
hunting down a lead that I had received from a contact there, but
it turned out I was too late and he had already moved on. I hadn’t
realized he was here until I returned and began to hear some
whispers about Maria vanishing and that she wasn’t quite the same
person after she returned. It wasn’t until I got confirmation from
you about her personality change that I knew for certain it was my
brother. As for what happened to him, pretty much the same thing as
Maria. He was attacked, but instead of following the pattern of
falling into a coma and dying, he simply . . . vanished.”

“Maria’s not going to die, is she?!” I asked
and my voice spiked an extra octave as alarm coursed through
me.

Akira shook his head rapidly. “No, there’s
something different this time that I can’t really figure out. The
pattern isn’t the same.”

“Then how do you know your brother is the one
that’s attacking people in the first place?”

“Because I saw him attack someone else and
run off with them three years ago. When that individual showed up
again, they were almost comatose, totally unresponsive, and died
soon after. I requested that my superiors take me off my current
cases and to let me go after my brother. They weren’t happy, cited
personal feelings and such, but eventually gave me leave to pursue
any and all things that sounded similar to what I had
witnessed.”

“Other cases? Wait, so you’ve been pursuing
your brother since you were eighteen . . . how long have you been
working for these people?”

“Since my early teens. I think I was around
thirteen when I went through their version of your ‘boot
camp’.”

I boggled again. I couldn’t help it, it was
one of those too-bizarre-to-be-true-so-it-had-to-be type stories,
and his face was perfectly serious. There were no muscle twitches,
no strange, jerky eye movements that you read about in detective
stories that always give away the fact that the bad guy was lying.
So either he was a damn good actor, though I doubted that he was
good enough to project so much sincerity that a person could drown
in it, or he was telling the truth. I just couldn’t wrap my mind
fully around it, it was just so, so . . . adventure storyish.

“You do realize that this is extremely hard
to believe, right?”

“I know, but it is true.”

I sighed. “Just for the record, I HATE ‘too
bizarre to be true but really is’ things, though I still think
you’re hiding something from me.”

“What makes you think I’m still hiding
something other than what I’ve owned up to hiding?” he asked with
raised eyebrows.

“Just a feeling,” I said and shrugged. “I
kinda doubt that I’m going to be getting anything else from you no
matter how much I ask, though. Right?”

He smiled at me, a crooked, self-depreciating
grin that brought out that dimple and made him look younger than
his actual years. It also made a small part that I was determined
to ignore melt a little.
Stupid dimple
.

“If I told you,” he said, “I’d have to either
erase your memory or kill you.”

I couldn’t tell if he was joking or not, so I
said the first thing that came to mind.

“Well, bleh on you,” and stuck my tongue
out.

“You know, you should stop doing that unless
you intend to use it,” he said blandly, but the way the corners of
his eyes crinkled in a hidden smile, and the fact that there was a
wicked glint in his eyes, told me he was very serious.

I quickly withdrew my tongue. My cheeks
heated up as my eyes widened, then narrowed, furious over being
embarrassed yet again. Determined to hide both my flustered state
and temper, I gathered up our trash and then asked him if he wanted
to come with me to visit Maria. He looked surprised, but I informed
him that it was only logical for him to talk to her himself after
what he had told me, and I was headed in that direction because she
was home sick and if he didn’t mind leaving his car here for a
little bit I’d give him a ride there and back.