Authors: Bryant Delafosse
Cora lifted her tear-stained face from her mother’s shoulder and blinked at Simon’s back.
“I dreamed they killed him, Mr. Simon.
They killed Reggie.”
Simon nodded.
“Yes.”
He rose and walked away from them to stand at the escalator.
Almost as if he were using the escalator entrance for support, he locked both arms out and hung his head.
Lara studied Cora’s face.
“You’re okay, hon.
It was just a bad dream.”
Cora’s eyes dulled for a moment and the corners of her mouth sagged briefly.
She shook her head slowly, her glistening eyes widening.
“I don’t think it was a dream, Mommy,” she said in a hushed confidential tone of voice.
“We have to go get him before he catches Owen.”
“Before who catches Owen, hon?”
Lara asked.
“The Boogeyman.
Wicked like the green witch on TV that set the straw man on fire.
Except worse.
He’s real.
He’s here.”
“There is no boogeyman, Cora,” Lara replied in as soothing a voice as she could manufacture.
Then Cora gave Lara a look that was so patronizingly adult-like that she felt a moment of disorientation.
“But you know that there is, don’t you?”
The darkness closed around her like a cloak and the walls of the store dissolved around her, her chest tightening.
For a moment, she was small and defenseless again.
Eight years old.
Trapped.
Alone.
Mommy and Daddy gone, never to return.
All alone.
Where’s auntie?
She’s been gone so long.
Cora watched as Lara closed her eyes and laughed, a sound off-kilter and as shocking as a cold splash of river water.
The little girl stiffened for an instant as a seething yellow color began to bubble all around her mother, boiling up from her tummy down her legs and arms until they began to quiver.
Finally, Lara reached out and smoothed Cora’s sweat-moistened hair against her head gently, the warm amber glow settling back over her.
She had been playing the color game since they’d entered the Mall that afternoon.
It had happened so rarely before in her five years of life that she found herself relishing the novelty of the game.
The Mall must be a magical place that she could do it so easily here.
It had been fun to stare at all the interesting people passing them, each with their own individual color, changing with mood and emotion.
Anger mostly red and orange.
Blue or amber usually relaxed or happy.
Green or brown meant nasty thoughts, sometimes a prelude to red.
But yellow--that was the color of fear.
Did Mommies get afraid, Cora wondered?
Maybe she wasn’t playing the game right after all.
“Mommy, are you okay?”
“Relax, kiddo,” Lara replied, a calm returning to her voice.
“We’re going to find your brother if it takes all night.”
Then she sat her gently back on the edge of the bed and knelt between her dangling white-socked feet.
“What was Owen doing in your dream?”
Cora remembered the darkness.
The dustiness.
The soft material around her.
“Hiding in a hole.
Everything’s muffled and quiet.”
“Hiding from whom?”
“I told you.”
Lara’s eyes hardened briefly.
“Where was he… in your dream?”
“Clothes.
Smells like new clothes,” Cora replied with a frown, her eyes drifting down to the hands of her mother holding her own.
“Towels.
Fluffy towels all over, then carpet against his palms.
He’s running away from Reggie, because he doesn’t know Reggie.”
Her eyes returned to her mother’s face.
“He’s holding something big and heavy and metal, like a…it’s a flashlight.
And something else, too.
Something thin and sharp.”
“Did you see a place, hon? The name of a store?” she asked, the excitement leaking through her voice.
“Scared and running, hands sliding over something hard black and smooth, smells like under a car’s hood, grease and metal,” Cora said dreamily.
Then more clearly, “Escavator, right?”
“Escalator,” Lara corrected with a look of wonder on her face.
“There are only fifteen stores with an interior escalator,” Simon announced from beside Lara, making both she and Cora start in surprise.
He’s fast, Cora thought.
“Only eight of the anchor stores have clothing, bedding, and items such as flashlights and cutting tools all in one store.
Excluding the one we’re in now, that leaves seven.
Judging from the time it took for Reggie to locate him, this store had to have been one of the far six in the other three sectors, Green, Yellow, or Red.
West, East, and North respectively.”
Lara turned back to Cora.
“What else did you see, sweetpea?”
Cora closed her eyes and nibbled her lower lip.
Try as she might, she could remember nothing else.
After a few moments she shook her head.
“I’m sorry, Mommy.”
Lara gave her a kiss on the forehead and glanced over at Simon, who took a few steps away from Cora and glanced coyly back at Lara.
She pulled the blanket back up over Cora’s legs.
“I want you to lie down for a few more minutes for Mommy.”
“But I don’t want to.”
“A few minutes, Coraline, while I go talk to Mr. Simon.”
With resignation, Cora flopped back onto the display bed and watched Lara with a suspicious eye as she joined Simon at the foot of the escalator.
The now bluish-green glow surrounding her mother encompassed Simon as she drew closer to him.
“We’re back where we started from, aren’t we?” Lara asked.
Simon simply stared at her.
“We’ve narrowed it down to six stores, but we still don’t know which sector.”
“There’s something else, Lara.”
At the use of her name, she glanced up at the artificial man suspiciously.
“Just before Reggie was destroyed, he sent out a distress beacon,” Simon explained.
“When a Bot does that, he’s moments from total system failure.”
“So Cora was right?” Lara asked in a small voice, shifting her eyes toward Cora without moving her head.
“So it wasn’t just a dream, was it?
My daughter is… what would you call it?”
“Clairsentience.”
“What is that?
Like a psychic?”
“No, it’s somewhat different.
Clairsentience is a form of extra-sensory perception conveyed directly through feelings or emotions.”
“You believe my daughter has that?”
“The facts clearly bare it out, therefore it must be true.
If you listen closely to her descriptions, she accesses various senses apart from sight, most often touch and smell, which are more closely linked to emotion than sight or hearing,” Simon stated.
“Clairsentience,” Lara murmured, sampling the feel of the word on her tongue, as if seeking the texture of it.
Was its taste fair or foul?
“Perhaps, you should be more concerned right now about whoever destroyed Reggie.”
Lara squinted at the other.
“Do you think it was my son?”
She asked the question, though she knew the answer already.
“No, Reggie clearly expired protecting the boy under the dictates of the code,” Simon replied.
“That much was communicated quite directly.
When a human is in danger, a priority one distress beacon is sent giving the exact coordinates where the human can be found, so that other units can come to their aid.”
He turned to look at her directly, the effect so dramatic that he had her full attention instantly.
“When a human being is killed…”
At the word, distortion entered his voice and he seemed to choke on the word like a taste of rancid food.
“…a separate distress beacon is sent.
Before Reggie located Owen, this beacon was transmitted by another Bot in Red Sector, a Bot that saw evidence of the m-murder of a human.”
Once again, his voice failed him and his body gave an infinitesimal shiver, a gesture that caused Lara to consciously think of that childhood phrase, “Someone must have stepped on your grave.”
Then the implications of what he was saying struck her, and her body turned cold.
“Did you say
murder
?
Before Reggie found my son, you knew someone was killed here?
In this Mall?”
Lara asked in breathless exasperation.
“And you didn’t tell me?”
Simon appeared to swallow awkwardly.
“It would have caused you undue distress.”
Before Lara could stop herself, her hand had instinctively lashed out and struck his cheek.
Instantly, she felt the solid metal that rested just beneath his skin (or whatever skin-like material covered his body) and turning her face away from him, she sucked in a pained breath.
In an instant, she wondered at her reaction.
Shame?
Shame in front of an artificial construct?
Simon grasped her hand with lightning fast speed and held it before his face in obvious concern.
Lara snatched it back in frustration.
“Never mind that.
Who was murdered and by whom?”
“I don’t know.”
It was obvious now why Simon’s behavior had been so erratic over the last hour and why he had stood vigil at the top of the escalator.
He had been guarding them from this unknown assailant lurking somewhere downstairs.
“If you knew this person was in Red Sector all along, why did you lie when you said my son could be in any of the other three sectors?”
“I never lied.
There was no evidence that your son was in the same location as the suspect.”
Simon studied her now, reaching for the hand that had struck him, and this time she let him take it with a resentful frown.
“It may bruise, Lara.
You should’ve known better than to strike me.”
“It was... instinct to lash out like that.”
“Instinct?”