System Seven (15 page)

Or some kind of
opportunity.

• • •

Darkening gray skies
churned. Anki sat bundled up in heavy blankets with Johan on the roof.
Nightfall descended and the lights of the port city ignited like miniature
bonfires. An empty bottle of wine and a box of crackers lay next to their
glasses. In the distance a cruise ship pulled away from the port of Den Holder,
billowing steam into the wind.

In the hours since
they made love Johan grew more concerned they might be tracking him through his
thoughts. When he peaked with Anki, the familiar sense of otherness loomed, as
if people were stealing from his senses, trying to get a look around him. While
weaker than the stormy night in Oostendorp, it felt more intimate. To further
complicate things, a feeling of unease had taken hold, subtle yet persistent.
Perhaps it stemmed from Anki not making her decision or not sharing it if she
had. Or maybe it was just a vulnerable feeling being outside the shell of the
apartment. Whatever it was, it made time with her less enjoyable than it should
have been.

“Where would we go,
Gregor?”

“First to Elburg, my
house there. I need my kit to become Max Dosch. I know people in South America.
My associates. But...”

“What?”

He hesitated. “Anki, they
will fabricate more murders. Uncover the Dosch identity. Make it harder to
travel. They have my DNA now. Given what they can do, I don’t know all the
dangers ahead. I can only do my best and that is also to say I may not escape.”

Her eyes held his. The
wind tossed her hair about. A low groaning from the channel signaled a vessel
getting underway. She breathed deep.

“I need to go with
you. I’m compelled beyond all reason.” She smiled with puzzled and pained eyes.
“I can guess at the danger and it’s enough for me to want to run the other way.
Yet... and this sounds crazy, but I know history well, Gregor. We need great
change. The world does. Something is driving you towards it, I can feel it. You
need someone to face it with. You just do. I want to try with you, to push the
change forward. As far as it can go.”

He felt the same
imminent change and was validated by her words. He reached up and touched her
hair. “I don’t want you to have regrets.”

She held his gaze. “No
regrets.”

He held her tight,
seizing the moment. A world of possibility spun around them. With a mental nod,
he acknowledged their place in it and committed to the changes ahead.

Johan pulled the roof
hatch shut and secured the bolt. He stepped off the ladder and padded to the
closet to fold the blankets. Anki stored the crackers and checked the
refrigerator.

“Ach. No eggs for
morning.” She peeked out the window and down the street. “Baba’s is still open.
I’ll run and get some. Shall I move your car again?”

“Good idea, if you
don’t mind.”

“I’ll be back in a
few.” Anki slapped his butt and smiled on the way out. She grabbed his black
box remote for starting the car and descended the stairs.

He stood in the empty
apartment overwhelmed with gratitude for their alliance, for being led to her.
Everything happens for a reason.
He fell
onto the couch and searched for a news channel on the television. There would
be more on Mrs. Shulz’s murder, some indication on how close to tracking him
they were, if at all. He found a news program and watched a story before a
commercial break began.

The phone rang. He
crossed to the base unit and waited for the machine to finish its announcement.
He heard a noise from next door – or was it downstairs?

The tone sounded. “To
the roof, now!” Anki’s voice was urgent, winded. “Stay low and meet me on the
east end of the building, alley side. There’s a ladder there. Move now! Don’t
forget your laptop!”

In seconds he grabbed
the laptop and was fumbling with the hatch’s sliding bolt. Each step to the
roof took an age. In the dimness he dodged roof vents, antenna guy wires, and
skylights before finding the ladder. The Volvo approached in the alley below.
He banged his knees in the rush to get down the ladder and ducked into the rear
passenger door. It shut as Anki pulled forward.

“What’s happened?”
Johan asked.

“Get down. Two cars in
front of the shop. Four men each. They went right in.”

“It was locked! The
alarm...?”

“It’s remote
accessible by the service in case of fire. I saw them pull up and knew they
were your seekers.” He slid down when two police cars flew past with lights
flashing. “Gregor, those men, they were like dead men. Cold, like stone.”

“Fuck. How did they
find me? What am I missing?”

He forced calm. The
getaway to the coast had become a getaway
from
the coast. He had to learn how they were tracking him.

“Where to?” Anki
asked. “This takes us past the airport.”

“No good.” He recalled
the map he’d studied. “Take the coastal road to the N9 at Schoorl. We’ll decide
from there.”

Anki drove silently,
carefully. He laid down in back and breathed.

As he sought calm and
emptied his mind, it struck him – the pressure, that sense of unease he’d been
feeling...
wasn’t his
. Even now,
heart thumping with fear, the uneasy emotion was there, a drab monotone anxiety
clearly out of pace with the moment. The seekers were close enough to insert
the emotion. He pushed at the connection by means of the pressure. As if in response,
the pressure grew.

A live connection
. Like a fish with a hook in his mouth.

Insane!
He tried to reject it but the tension remained, leaning against his
psyche. Stressed, uneasy, and not coming from him. Just as the video suggested,
they were able to evoke and manipulate emotions in others. He had detected
their manipulations amidst a storm of emotions: a small victory. It was time to
take advantage, to take control of his experience. It might be a last chance.

Something tied him to
them in a roundabout way. With it, they
could inject the emotion and through his experience of that emotion could find
him. Like ripples in the pond signaling back, they must use it to triangulate
materially. It wasn’t tied to his body unless they had chipped him somehow. In
that case, the chase was soon over.

If not something in
his body, then it had to be in the nebulous region of his thoughts. Ignoring it
wasn’t enough as it was too strong. If they were using his thoughts to identify
him then he had to think differently,
become
different
.

He followed impulse.
As if shrugging out of a coat, he began to tweak emotion and ranged into
happiness.
Shift.
Down into sadness.
Shift
. Outward into anger. Then over to serenity.
Shift, shift.
Whatever felt familiar and
constant, he flipped. Old identity struggled to keep its form.
Shift
. Morphing, rejecting, birthing new
emotion, a new self.

The pressure sagged
noticeably but not enough.

He drew on memories
and dove into them like scenes from a movie.
Shift
. A street vendor selling leather wallets in Oslo in the
spring, two years prior. The vendor’s story was found in his eyes, etched on
his face; a hard past, a new start, trying to stay out of trouble. He’d bought one. The vendor’s thanks was sincere.
Shift
. The woman reading a book at a
bus stop in Rotterdam, the day before Crosstalk’s email. With all his being, he
was
there,
replete in his ignorance
of the file, reading the bus schedule on the sign.
Shift.
The truck driver hitting his brakes to avoid the three
laughing girls. Hammering the horn with all his might; anger and relief blended
into one feeling.

Away from the file...
far away.
Shift
.

Großvater Bartel,
angry with Johan for smoking hash at age fourteen. The disappointment.
Shift.
The nurse at the hospital asking
how he’d been shot, her concern and suppressed attraction betrayed by her every
touch.
Shift.
A small boy trying to
fly a kite, his mama too busy chatting to offer help. The wind blew like mad,
taunting the boy’s failed efforts. He’d stopped to help him like a father
might, the mother suddenly interested not for her son, but in the handsome
stranger.

Memories flipped in
and out, some fast, others slowly, continuously shuffling. Emotions flowed. He
lost himself, engaged in endless identities and situations of the past, a
schizophrenic symphony of experience. Running invisibly alongside was the
understanding he had to keep going to escape those who would claim him. It
became a manic dream of beauty in randomness and chaos.

“Gregor..? Are you
okay?”

Her voice threatened
to break the stream, a window thrown open to an unwelcome light. The pressure
had diminished but it wasn’t enough. Shooting past the urge to respond, he went
deeper through memories like a driven wind. A fisherman arrived at port, back
from a long day at sea, his hand bandaged from a nasty cut; dark red stains on
a white cloth. Pain. Duty. Accomplishment.

Shift.
Slower, deeper.

A school teacher
wondered how she was going to help the young lad move past his parents’ death.
Gray hair in a bun, face wrinkled from a lifetime of emotion, hands gentle as a
warm blanket, eyes of compassion and ears made for understanding. How she
worked for his success, truly giving and utterly loving...

Shift
.

The cock-eyed bastard
had killed the cat. Pat’s silly grin as he dangled it by its tail revealed the
monster within. In Johan’s eyes, the boy was the same as the murderer who’d
taken his family. Rage boiled and blew out in a savage attack, catching the
brute off guard and off balance. The older boy fell backwards off the deck,
landing in an awkward pile eight feet below. The wind pressed his face as he
stared at the motionless bully.

Shift!

Abruptly, he was in
the car again. The uneasiness had fled, leaving a familiar sense of control but
also a sense of
them
, searching.

“That’s it... I’m
clear.”

“What do you mean?”
Anki asked.

“I think I’ve done it.
They can’t find me and I think I see them. I’m sensing them. Where are we?”

“Groet. The N9 is a
few miles ahead. Are you okay, Gregor? Why can’t they find you?”

“My vibe. However I
made it onto their radar, I’m a different reading now. For the time being
anyway. I need my laptop to get a map up.”

She glanced in the
rearview mirror. “You are amazing, you know that?” She added, “But the
incredibly
bad
news is that I’m cut
off from my home, my business, my everything. My accounts! I need to pull out
something, anything.”

“Anki, no. That would
get you a few hundred euro only to put us on a pushpin map and give them a
cordon area to work from.”

“Damn, you’re right.
Gah!” She slapped the wheel. “It’s all gone then. I had imagined making plans.”

He paused. “You don’t
have to do this. I can let you out and–”

“That’s not what I
want.” She drove in silence for a time. “I’m okay. I want to help. That is what
I want. To help.” She added, “But I want your real name. Your first name at
least. I don’t like talking to an alias.”

“Johan.” Not his birth
name but it was his own.

“Thank you, Johan. I
love that name.”

“Money won’t be a
problem if we can get clear.” He positioned the laptop on the floorboard and
dimmed the screen’s brightness. “Where are we?”

“At Schoorl, coming up
on the junction. I don’t think we’re being followed.”

“Let’s be sure. Hang
on.” The map software loaded. He zoomed in. “Turn left when you reach the N9.
Take the first right and tell me when you go over the bridge. In the meantime,
take inventory of the cars behind you.”

“Understood.” She
drove carefully, typically. The light ahead stayed green and she turned left
onto the N9.

“Watch the cars.”

“Two came with me.”
She turned right towards the bridge and watched the mirror. “One took the turn.”

“Lower the front
windows completely. Rest your arm on the door, elbow out. Pass over the bridge
then take the two next rights. The street will be named Sluisweg. Go slow there
and pull over at the second house on the right. Tell me what you see.”

She made the first
right turn and glanced in the side mirror.

“It’s there.”

He unzipped a side
compartment of his laptop bag.

“I’m onto Sluisweg
now. Second house? There’s a lot of light here, a street lamp. Is that okay?”
The car slowed to a stop. “Here we are. What do I do?”

“Off the motor, leave
the keys in the ignition. No dome light. Read your phone. Keep your elbow at
the window.”

“Oh hell. It’s pulling
in behind us.”

“Easy. Tell me who
approaches and how.”

“My side, one woman.
She’s got something behind her back.” She whispered, “She’s at the bumper...”