The Phantom City

Chapter 7

She plunked the paper in my hand.

I scanned over the title. My heart did a funny flip in my chest. "He's dead?" I demanded.

"Him, Mayic, a handful of the crew that came along with him that day." Her eyes narrowed, her fingers tapping more rapidly on the armrest. "All by the one they're calling the Silver Ghost."

For some reason, hearing about Race's death upset me more than anything else I'd just heard. "You're joking. The police had him." I said, numbly. "He was going to be imprisoned."
"That's the thing," Asha said, apparently giving up his cause. "The reason the killer has that name. He just came out of nowhere, slaughtered Race in his interrogation room, and left."

I lowered the newspaper. For months before this, I'd been so sure that we were going to make an example out of Race. We poured every effort into learning who he was, tracing his footsteps, so that we could show the world that New York's justice system still had some merit to it. After all, there was no way that he would escape jail time if we turned in the footage. And that meant maybe the other dealers around town would think twice before spreading their poison to the masses.

Now he got to be a martyr.

Asha placed a hand on my shoulder. I looked down and realized I'd crumpled the newspaper in my fist. "I get it. You're mad, you're probably still exhausted. But once they clear the charges on you, we can put all of this behind us. We'll just... move on to the next thing."

I almost turned on him to yell that he didn't get it, he didn't get what I'd been through at all, but I stopped when I saw the dark circles under his eyes. They'd stayed by my side all this time, when even Mom had apparently left. If she ever came. I blew out a breath and slumped back down. "Yeah. You're right. The police will figure all this out, and we can go home and grab that pizza. Or steak." I said, giving Dana a wry smile. Glancing down at the newspaper, I set my finger on the photos of the other victims the Ghost was alleged to have murdered. "You know, things really could be worse. At least we're not Mr. Alvarez here."

Dana nodded, yawning. "Or Mia Sinclair."

Movement flashed to my left. "What did she say?" Abel's projection hovered directly by Dana. His eyes were black dots in his now sheet white face. "Tell her to repeat that name. Tell her!" Shadow eels burst into existence around him, hissing and seething around his shoulders.

"Who?" I asked her, slowly. Without looking at it, I pressed the button that would call the nurse.

Asha frowned and glanced back and forth between us. Dana smiled and calmly met my eyes. "You heard me. Mia Sinclair, killed three nights ago."

A feral roar ripped itself from Abel's chest, a noise like a tiger being stabbed through the heart. His projection melted into black oil -- then shot directly towards me. The shadow liquid rushed up through my mouth, my eyes, my nose, filling me with the crippling sensation of ice being jammed through my veins.

Without my permission, my body lurched to its feet and charged forward. Two weeks of being bedridden didn't seem to matter. My fingers closed around Dana's throat and my shoulder rotated to slam her against the wall. Asha jumped to stop me, but my leg swept his feet out from under him. I struggled to release my grip. Iit was about as useful as trying to move through concrete. "Liar! She lives. She lives," I pleaded, as Dana gagged and struggled.

Let her go, you monster! I screamed the thought. Her pulse hammered in her jugular vein, the flesh of her neck so soft under my fingers, and I felt my hand hesitate. Hot guilt and anguish stabbed at my insides, but I knew it wasn't my own. It lasted only a split second. It was enough. Dana's strong arms propelled a well-deserved fist at the side of my head. Something harder than bone, buried in the space between her knuckles, collided above my ear.

I reeled, and she slipped onto the floor, her back against the wall. The ice began leaking out of my veins like someone had opened a valve. The black oil flooded out of every pore of my body, and Abel's projection returned, flickering violently again. He lifted his head as though he wore a crown of lead. His lips formed a name, but the sound didn't reach me, and soon enough his image melted away entirely.

I finally wrenched myself free of the cold, and turned to see Asha standing over me with a metal food tray. "Don't!" I yelped, holding up a hand. I sensed there were only so many hits my poor skull could take.

"He's gone, Asha," Dana let her head fall back against the wall. "We're safe."

"Safe? Safe? What about this is safe?" Asha threw the tray down with a clatter. "Did you know that this was going to happen?" Although he was practically spitting fire, he helped her back into the wheelchair with a deep gentleness.

"I didn't know it, if anyone is wondering." I said, raising a hand to touch the thin stream of blood trickling out of my nose.

"I'm not," Asha answered, shoving a tissue at me before turning back to Dana. "I'll ask again: did you know that was going to happen? And if you did, why didn't you tell me?"

She snorted. "How was that conversation supposed to go? 'Hey Asha, your friend has a computer in his brain, and is probably being possessed by a maniac. Mind if I provoke him'?" He glared at her. A faint pink flush rose to her cheeks. "And, honestly, I didn't think it was going to go exactly like that."

Holding the tissue to my nose, I sat down on the edge of the bed. "I'm sorry." I said, flexing my fingers to prove that I could. "He completely took over, and I was kind of just along for the ride." Talking. Talking was great, definitely. Anything but thinking was fantastic option at this point. If I started thinking, I was going to freak out, and maybe never stop.

Asha dragged the heel of his palm down his face. The seat cushion squeaked as he flopped onto it. "Alright. How about we back up for this dummy here, huh? Because clearly you two know something that I don't."

Dana patted his shoulder. "Don't be silly. Owen barely knows more than you do."

"Hey," I protested. "I've been unconscious for two weeks, and hit more than three times in the head. I have a disadvantage."

Asha just stared at us.

Dana sighed. "Okay, okay. Listen, I knew something was up with the serum they gave Owen. No chemical can teach you new skills, no matter how strong it is." She rubbed absently at the blooming bruises on her neck. "The second clue was the perfect MRI results that Owen had. I hacked into the hospital's database --"

Asha choked.

"-- and it turns out someone had, obviously, tampered with his brain scans. And it looks like they weren't expecting anyone to dig through the source code, because the lack of encryption was appalling." She rolled her eyes. "But yeah. The originals told the whole story, Owen. Your brain was full of little bits of metal." Biting her bottom lip, she glanced away. "You're lucky whatever they put in you wasn't magnetic."

I imagined the little chips ripping through my brain tissue, and made a noise of agreement.

"Yeah. So, it didn't take long for me to put two and two together. I'd read about neuroprosthetics in a journal once, but God, that's supposed to an invention fifty years from now. But what else could it have been?" I couldn't help but feel awe at how much she'd figured out. She caught my eye, and the corners of her mouth lifted.

"Doesn't explain the maniac." Asha said.

"Well, I needed to know who had switched out the images. The Ghost attacks on Race and his crew happened around the same time that I figured out his identity." She paused dramatically, as though she was telling a scary story around a campfire. "And who was accessing your files, except the account of a doctor who was supposed to be dead?"

"Abel." I said.

The door clicked open, and we all flinched.

"There was a call?" A young nurse with her hair tied back in a frazzled ponytail peeked in. Her eyes filled her square-framed glasses when she caught sight of me. "Oh -- you're --"

"Feeling a lot better." I gave her my best estimation of a winning smile, all things considered.