Something stabbed Zia’s deltoid and a warm feeling spread out to the tips of her fingers and over her scalp and down her legs until her knees turned to Jell-O and she was hanging limply from the crooked arm instead of struggling to escape it.
A vehicle rumbled up the alley and Zia’s limp body was dragged into the back of a van. She tried to scream, to fight, to flee, but her muscles didn’t respond. Stars sparkled in the narrowing tunnel of her vision. Her assailant helped the injured man up off the ground.
She should have been terrified, but Zia felt removed from the situation, as if she was looking down on herself from above. Her soul was a still pond, its surface glassy in the gray of impending dawn. This wasn’t the death she had wanted or expected. Maybe her mother had felt like this as her body shut down organ by organ, slain by the very disaster she was hoping to document. Death didn’t conform to human will. There was something oddly comforting in that hard truth.
The heads of the two men scrambling into the van seemed to explode, but it must have been an artifact of the brilliant light show that occluded Zia’s vision as time spiraled back on itself and consciousness slipped away like a stray cat.
+
9
+
Zia stood at the edge of a mesa that towered kilometers above the surrounding rocky plains. It was high noon and the sky was a clear baby blue but rainbows of every conceivable size and angle arched across the landscape in all directions, their multicolored curves doubling and crisscrossing—bolts of lightning writhing between heaven and earth at each point of intersection like ropes between teams playing at tug-of-war. It smelled of roses and ozone. The air was alive with current, burning and buzzing against her skin.
Looking down at herself, Zia saw that her body was not her own, and that she was surrounded by people, that the top of the mesa was packed with them—Aafreen, Jason, Kodjo, Galang, Li Jie, Daniela, Himmat, Vachan, Tommy, Selai, the BSF officer, the girl Zia had beaten to win her first tennis tournament, Vizzini from The Princess Bride, the volunteers from last week’s training—none of them in their own bodies but somehow identifiable nevertheless, all of them naked, touching, probing, kissing, fighting, flailing, tickling, fucking—backs arched in ecstasy, cheeks streaked with tears, sweat and blood and cum commingling to stain the sunbaked stone.
One of the bolts of lightning frayed, sending sparking tendrils in search of a new point of connection. It found Zia. Energy flowed into her. The more there was, the more she wanted. Lust. Rage. Transcendence. More bolts wavered, then one by one they snapped home to send their charge coursing through her. She swallowed them all, demanded more, channeled the electricity into everyone around her, her consciousness merging into theirs as their passion became a single pulsing entity all its own.
Reality’s fabric rippled, ineffable patterns suggesting the shape of the feral gods that hid behind it.
Seedlings sprouted from the teeming mass of humanity. Vines curled out of ears. Saplings rose from open mouths. Wildflowers bloomed in pubic hair. Rivers flowed from tear ducts. Teeth hardened into crystal. Raised arms ossified into spires of granite, breasts rolling hills, and shoulders mountain ranges. Moss spread across boulders that had once been knuckles. Ribs became sedimentary layers folded by tectonic forces.
The transition was at once violent and seamless. Nothing had changed and everything had changed. The jungle was a throng. The people were a jungle. Zia stared down at them from among banks of invisible clouds. Déjà vu like the flutter of a moth’s wing. With mounting horror, Zia realized she knew this jungle. She hated this jungle. She feared this jungle more than anything. She thrashed, but could not tear herself away.
If she pretended it couldn’t happen.
If she wished hard enough.
If she summoned an act of will that could rewrite history.
This time could be different.
This time would be different.
Maybe.
Yes.
Then there was a flash of movement at the edge of the jungle. Two figures stumbled out from the verdant collage, Gilberto half-carrying Miranda, trying not to lose his footing as they pushed through the solid, impossible heat toward the ragged edge of the village. They crossed the gap in less than thirty seconds, but Zia knew it was already too late. The moment they made it through the door of the first hut, they stumbled out of the jungle again. Jungle. Stumble. Building. Jungle. Stumble. Building. Over and over and over and over and over.
Stop, Zia screamed, though no voice would come. Stop. Please.
But it didn’t stop.
It was always the same.
Always.
A single endless loop.
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10
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The first thing Zia did was keep her eyes shut. The second thing she did was keep her body still. The third thing was throttle her brain into overdrive.
Without the dam of unconsciousness holding them back, memories flooded through her. The moon hanging cold and bright behind a thin patina of clouds. The earthy fragrance of chai. The poignant luxury of getting to see Galang. The glimpse of movement through the drooping foliage of the pepper tree. The ghostly flutter of laundry in the evening breeze. The crunch of cartilage. Gotcha. She had to fight to keep her heart rate and breathing even. If they had hooked her up to biofeedback equipment, she couldn’t afford to give herself away.
Kidnapping was just so… cliché. It echoed teenage boasts whispered after curfew as snow swirled outside the chateau. The FBI briefed my family before Thanksgiving because we are high value targets. Oh yeah? We have a full-time white hat team at our family office because Russia-sponsored hackers keep trying to crack our files. Well, my uncle was assassinated last year. Sad, lonely, astoundingly privileged children trying to ward off corrosive insecurities by bragging about how they were so important that the world was out to get them. Being born into power bought you opportunity and illuminated your flaws in stark relief. Kidnapping was the ultimate vanity daydream for the entitled, to be torn from your life so that your loved ones would have to prove once and for all just how much they cared, moving heaven and earth to get back the child they’d ignored for so long. It was deeply embarrassing to Zia that she’d once indulged such fantasies, all the more so now that they were coming true.
Time to take stock.
She was lying in a bed, her head resting on a pillow. Not her bed. Not her pillow. It smelled wrong. This wasn’t Chhattisgarh. Her secret wish that everything would prove to be nothing more than a bad dream faded. No sounds except for her own breathing and the gentle rasp of sheet against skin as her chest rose and fell. She varied the pace of her inhalations and exhalations ever so slightly just in case they were in sync with the breathing of someone standing guard, but if someone was in the room with her, they were being extremely quiet. The air was cool and dry from AC and tasted clean, so if she was in a torture chamber it was a top-shelf torture chamber. Ever so slowly, she twisted her wrists and ankles. No restraints. They knew they had her. When she relaxed again, she felt a gentle tug against her right forearm and realized she must be hooked up to an IV or some kind of sensor. That meant it was possible that her micro movements had already given her away, so she lay still and counted to ninety-nine.
Nothing.
Well, the room might be monitored remotely, but she couldn’t just lie here forever. She cracked her eyelids, letting her eyes adjust to the light before opening them completely. Mahogany beams lined the high ceiling. Sunlight poured in through the shutter slats of wide windows. Historical photographs of rainbow-colored reefs overflowing with marine life hung on the walls. She couldn’t identify any cameras or surveillance devices, but that only meant that they might be going for subtle. An IV did indeed run from her right arm up to a bag hanging from a stand next to the bed. The door to an en suite bathroom stood open. The door to what was probably a hallway was closed. It might be a boutique hotel, or maybe a villa. But a plush cell was still a cell.