Darkness at Midday

Ellie Two.

Ellie Two.

Before the mysterious event happened in Northern Mexico, the child, Ellie, and a now ebony skinned Crystal were enjoying everything Shanghai offered. A mere five years since the New Age Rave in the Texas desert, Ellie the younger had mysteriously grown into a woman. Crystal had taken to calling her El for short.

Having no fear of her ever running into the first Ellie, Crystal never went into great detail of El’s beginning. Crystal never went into great detail about anything. Details were not her forte, she even found using two syllables to call El too much work.

Never needing money, Crystal always seemed to acquire what she wanted, leaving all she met in a much better mood. She’d taken the time to teach El a few of her more useful powers, specifically how to control people. But as far as everything else there was to learn, well tomorrow was another day. Why study today when we can enjoy all life offered? Time was a concept Crystal found difficult to fully understand.

Trevor would’ve had a hard time recognizing the current Crystal. After Big Jim’s bullet penetrated her chest, she’d changed. Her bone structure was the same, but her skin grew much darker. The most significant change was that she didn’t possess that spark of otherworldly knowledge she once displayed. From insightful, she became not entirely ignorant but flaky for sure.

The pair of them were shopping on Nanjing Road at midnight, when Crystal got strangely quiet. All fun and games leaving her, she said, “El, dear. I think we need to head back early.”

“All right, Crystal. I will take care of this, and we can go.” El slowly dragged her fingertips across the woman’s hand they were haggling with over a designer bag. Without further thought, the woman presented the bag to El as a gift.

Crystal took El’s hand away, pushing the bag back into the saleswoman’s open hands. “Sorry, she doesn’t need it.” Grabbing El by the hand, she began to lead her back to the hotel room, right off the central shopping road.

“I hate to be a bother, but I feel something unpleasant is about to happen. I need to run to check it out. I want to get you off the street first. Something disagreeable is happening,” Crystal stressed as they moved through the late-night touts and street vendors, as they plied their services to the elegantly dressed shoppers roaming the street.

El was finding it hard to conceal her concern, never having seen Crystal act this way; typically, Crystal was the life of the party. El was the one who needed sleep over Crystal’s constant need to party, be around fun people, and generally having a marvelous time. El learned early in life, where Crystal went, people always had a good time. “It’s all right. I’m ready to head back now if you are,” El lied.

Once reaching the suite, Crystal locked and bolted the door. “Dear, I need to run. Don’t leave the room. If you stay here, you will be safe. I will be back as soon as I can.” With that, Crystal created a golden oval and stepped out of sight.

It was one in the morning, the exact time the black sphere materialized in Northern Mexico.

Shocked, El had never seen Crystal do anything like that before. She’d witnessed her do some genuinely magical things but never disappear into thin air. This turned the concerned El into a distressed El. How am I supposed to sleep now? How long will she be gone? Opting for television over sleep, she reached for the remote, climbed into her bed, and clutched her legs for comfort.

Tell a teenager they must do something, more than likely they will do the opposite. While not officially a teen—El was only five, after all—she inhabited the body of a healthy eighteen-year-old woman. This included all the appetites of a healthy eighteen-year-old woman.

At eight in the morning, this craving consisted of baozi for breakfast, delicious little morsels of pork and spices wrapped in a white dough. Tempting, calling for El to find them and pop them into her mouth. What would it hurt to grab some breakfast? The hotel room service sucked.

It took about fifteen minutes to convince herself there was no harm in some quick takeaway. Leaving the hotel elevator, El had a quiet chuckle to herself as she spied a pair of older tourists, both sporting bleached blond hair and tie-dye shirts with linen pants. The couple sat in the lobby drinking coffee, trying hard to watch the elevators in the mirrored walls. She wasn’t sure which decade they belonged to, but she was sure it wanted their clothes back.

With a spring in her step, she skipped down the back stairs of the hotel straight onto the pedestrian shopping area of Nanjing Road. It was still early. Many of the more exclusive stores were still closed. Even the upscale coffee shops had yet to open for business. That didn’t concern El. She knew a little restaurant that catered to the local workers as they passed through the area, a quick stop for some much-needed breakfast. El figured a half dozen should do just right. She glided her way past the group of older gray hair people practicing Tai Chi. She smiled towards a mature group of women all dressed in the same warmup suits, fiercely hanging onto their youth by dancing before their days started. Just before her street, she passed a younger group of people rehearsing with stage swords the moves of some Chinese opera. Nanjing Road was a wide-open space, never truly quiet. She was ever amazed at the power a smile and a nod could have on a person.

Prying her way to the counter, as everyone else did, she spoke her order to the counter person in bright, clean Mandarin. She had identified swiftly her ability to master the most complicated languages with ease.

At just over five feet tall, she was shorter than the average customer. Standing in the jostling crowd, she wondered if she might ever find a place where she was considered tall. Surveying her surroundings, she made a mental note, Is that another couple with platinum blond hair and the hippie clothes? What is up with that? They don’t look like the type to eat baozi.

She could feel the hair rising on the back of her neck. Not alarm, but a feeling all was not right in her surroundings. Getting handed her order, she whispered to the staff, gently stroking the older woman’s hand, “Thank you so much for the gift. Is there a back way out?”

A smile of serenity spread over the old woman’s face as she said a soft blessing and pointed to the back of the little stall.

“Xièxiè,” El thanked her in a soft voice. She did a slight dance as she dodged her way past the workers in the tight kitchen space, and out the back door. Just before she let the door close, she hazarded a quick glance back into the kitchen. She witnessed the blond couple trying in vain to follow her, blocked by two rather fat men with cleavers. She plopped a whole baozi into her mouth with satisfaction, before realizing they had just come out of the steamer and the contents’ temperature was marginally below boiling oil.

Softly cursing her stupidity, she bent over to remove the offending dough and meat into her hand, when she made out the ‘ping’ of something metal hitting the drainpipe behind and over her head.

Rapidly looking up, she saw the two from the hotel lobby had somehow followed her. Having little time to think, she launched the handful of piping hot dough and meat into the face of the man reloading the pistol. How did they find that here? No weapons are allowed in China.

Armed only with her plastic bag of bread, she did the only thing she could think of, run.

Darting down to the first corner, she turned and headed down an even smaller alley. She knew if she made the primary shopping area, any laowai, a westerner, running down the streets would turn some heads. The closed-circuit cameras would record her every move. Even down the larger alleys, there was a better-than-average chance of being recorded. Her best bet was to use her small size and the ever-tightening alleys to her advantage. Try to give them the slip in the twisting labyrinth that grew to the north of Nanjing Road.

She had never needed to run before, never experienced fear—not that she felt fear now. More a sensation of confusion as to why anyone would want to hurt her or even follow her. Crystal had always been by her side, always ready to handle any situation, even before El thought about how she might handle it. This was an entirely new experience. Not knowing the capabilities of those giving chase, or their numbers, she promptly decided the best thing was to run away, and she was right.

Twisting and turning down the warren of back passages, she came out a block from where she began, one major street over. Confidant she had given her pursuers the slip, she stopped to pick up a huge floppy hat and shawl. Bending over, she tucked her shoulder-length blond curls up into the hat. She didn’t realize her quick change was caught on the city’s CCTV.

Slowing her pace, she realized how little exertion she exhibited. If anything, she appeared more alive than ever before. As if the fight-or-flight response had awoken something deep within her. Two stalls down, she stopped to shoplift a pair of over-sized sunglasses, very fashionable in Shanghai this time of year.

Flush with adrenaline, she decided to risk identifying her pursuers. El doubled back to where the chase began, just in time to witness the two that tried to follow her through the kitchen being cuffed and escorted into the small-sized electric powered paddy wagon. So much for gaining any information from them.

Deciding caution was the better part of valor at this point, she covered her face with her hat and moved down the street. Better that she did. Once the two troublemakers had been loaded into the back, and the police car began to pull away, there was a much quieter varump noise. Again, people in the vicinity had the sensation of all the surrounding air and sound being sucked into a black hole. This event had been captured on Shanghai’s leading CCTV network and stored for later retrieval. Ending with the appearance of a statuesque, porcelain-skinned goddess materializing from a black hole. Her raven hair blended perfectly with the abyss she walked out of.

Meanwhile on Nanjing Road, foot traffic began to pick up; opening time for the major stores approached. Just before stepping back out into the sparse lines of shoppers, El saw the first drone. What the? Then she saw another one, cruising up and down the road, three to four stories above the ground. That’s something new.

The drones appeared civilian, not a city policing device. From her vantage point, they looked to have a dove gray underbelly, making them hard to spot from the ground.

Remembering the forgotten baozi, she decided to sit for a bit on a giant planter. She used the tree for cover while eating the lukewarm bread and spying on the drones patrolling the street.

Thirty minutes passed, the time gave her a chance to calculate the search pattern of the tiny aircraft. Her butt tired of sitting on cement, she decided to risk a move to a more comfortable location. She timed her movements to coincide with the drones’ search pattern, sliding unobserved by the operators into a building that contained a third-floor coffee shop on the south side of Nanjing Road.

Once safely inside, she ordered a double latte and slipped into a lovely corner window seat. From her position, she enjoyed a clear view of the central shopping area. The western shoppers were interwoven amongst a sea of umbrellas that the Chinese women used to protect their porcelain skin from the tropical sun. She felt safe in her new overview location, watching the river of bodies flow.

Sitting and watching, she drank another cappuccino. She counted at least twelve platinum blond individuals similarly dressed, trying in vain to blend in with the shoppers dressed in upscale clothing. Either she missed some new hot fashion—highly unlikely—or this was something bigger than she anticipated. She was relieved she had not returned straight to her hotel room, as she would’ve been cornered. Her skills of control had only been practiced on individuals, and only in direct contact. El didn’t have a clue whether she might control more than one at a time, but she was certain she didn’t want to find out while being swarmed by the uniformed horde. Noting the different nationalities and ages of the group that tracked her, she was struck by the age and race differences displayed by her stalkers even though they all had the same bad taste in clothing and hair color.

An hour and two cups of coffee later, she witnessed an increased police presence. Much greater than the routine patrols to protect the shoppers from the ever-present pickpockets. At the same time, the tie-dye shirts trickled away, and the drones found a different place to be. As far as El knew, the drones and hippies did not belong to the Chinese Government. That did not come as an enormous surprise.

What had her more concerned was what could she do now. The room must be watched. Crystal had never had a problem finding her before. I am sure she will find me again when she is ready. I will go to a place I know well, I will go home. Not being sure who was after her, she would travel as light and as direct as possible. It would be difficult to stay off the radar, she must take the slow way to avoid most of the highest levels of government monitoring.

The good news was she only had two borders to cross. The better news, she knew the way. She would backtrack the way Crystal had brought her. She should be able to return to Siem Reap in about three days. Hopefully, her guess was correct, and Crystal would find her no matter where she went.

On the side street where El bought her baozi, locals found a police cruiser with its battery drained. In the front were the two desiccated corpses of the arresting officers. The back had two bodies missing, the interior of the van having been painted with the two occupants as if they exploded. The only remains, two blood-soaked sets of clothing.