No Romance Chapter 9

Chapter 9. It’s a thing, all right.

Well, shoot. That was confusing. I---

---

Jack, confused, made his way back to his room. What had he been expecting? Certainly not this. Certainly not that his mother had ever taken up with such a man. Certainly not that his mother was some sort of martial arts expert.
            Although that part was rather cool.
            He wandered through the villa, getting a little lost. At one point he meandered past a dog kennel compound and stopped to say hello and get licked. They were very friendly dogs. He felt like a dog sometimes. Or no, he actually felt like a ragdoll cat, the kind that are genetically bred to go limp when you pick them up and not fight back. He had had one when he was younger. It had never fought back, but it had growled up a storm when he picked up the poor thing, which he did every ten minutes or so. It didn’t take long to get that cat hissing. But it could never do anything about it, otherwise. He felt much more like that than a dog. But the dogs had got him thinking about it.
            Jack had now done what he had come here to do: meet his father, learn more about where he ultimately came from. As it stood, he had met his father and there didn’t seem to be much else to learn. And so each step of uncertainty he took back to this quarters drained him of motivation, of desire, until he was almost not a character anymore.
            And he felt this sharply.
            If only he could talk to Annie about all this, compare notes with her....
            Her?
            Why her?
            That was odd, he thought. But, thinking further, it was honest, too. She was at least a sane human being. For the most part, anyway. No one here in this place felt quite real. That was definitely a mark of the adventure episodes of his life. But really, he didn’t feel at all like killing this facility and freeing all the slaves, enacting justice and saving lives. He hoped that if that had to happen, it would be for a different reason than the obvious ones. Right now, nothing was compelling him to do anything, go anywhere. If Annie showed up, it might be able to help with that. Maybe he should make it his business to find her, starting tomorrow. Yes, that was surely what he needed to do.
            He opened the door to his room to find the dead body gone, the bloodstains evaporated, the fire still roaring strong in the fireplace, and Paula lying in his bed.
            He sighed.
            “What do you want?” he said, keeping the door open.
            “Oh, that will be clear soon enough,” she said with a smile. “The question is, Jack McDowell, what do you want?”
            “Just like Annie, huh? Investigating me still? Even after all that happened today?”
            “I don’t mean it like she did. I really want to know. To see if I can help. With anything.”
            “I’m not sure I like the sound of that. You see, I believe you when you say you’re dangerous...very dangerous.”
            She slowly raised herself to a sitting position on the bed, and stood up. She still wore that tight black t-shirt and those tight black pants, none of her curves covered up.
            “It’s true,” she said softly, her strawberry-colored lips reminding Jack a little too strongly of Annie. She stepped towards Jack. “I am dangerous. But I’m also changeable. Loyalty was never my strong suit.”

“You know what I think? I think you’re just trying to get me to take off my jacket.”

            “Ah, that would be intriguing, no? A Samson without his hair.”
            “And you, a Delilah with designs to destroy me. Who are you working for, little miss Paula? Golbez or Vanasmas?”
            “Oh, you see the split there?”
            “Impossible to miss. Golbez is keeping things from Vanasmas, and Vanasmas from Golbez.”
            “We can talk shop later, Jack, but right now I’m thinking more of you.” She took another step. Her blond-streaked black hair shimmered in the light of the fire.
            “I’m thinking of me, too,” Jack said. ”I would be very sad for me if you were to win this little exchange.”
            “Come on, Jack. Isn’t there anything you can think of?”

One more step.

            “There is one thing...” Jack said. “One little problem you could solve.”

Now just an arm’s length away.

            “Anything,” she said, again in that soft voice.
            “I want---”
            She reached behind him with one hand and pushed the door shut. WIth her other hand she put her finger to his mouth. “No. No words. I already know.” She then closed her eyes and opened her arms to him, palms open, as if in offering.

“Jack, I want to...give myself to you.”

            Jack burst out laughing.

“No, no, no. That’s not what I want. I want you to tell me about Annie.”

            Instantly the willing look cooled off, and Paula looked as if ice water had been thrown in her face. She couldn’t even speak properly. She started stammering, like Annie did. Then she blushed, something Jack had thought impossible for Paula. Then a little frown crossed her face. A pouting frown.
            “I can’t help you,” she said, and tried to push past him.
            He stopped her, blockading the doorway.
            “You’re going to answer my questions.”
            “I’ll answer yours if you answer mine.”
            “Fine. I go first. I’ll start with an easy one. To break the ice. Or maybe dampen the heat.”
            Paula’s pout continued, but she nodded.
            “You knew my last name was McDowell. Why didn’t you tell Golbez about it?”
            “You said your name was McDowell, not MacDowell.”

“I could hardly hear the difference between those two, and it’s my last name.”

            “Well I’m not hearing it, I’m reading it, aren’t I?”

“I don’t know. Are you?”

They looked at each other strangely, as if something absolutely bizarre had just occurred, a kind of deja vu, or the crumbling of the foundation of their lives, like something had given way and the floor had dropped. After a moment they steadied themselves and forgot all about it.

“My turn,” said Paula. “Am I barking up the wrong tree with you?”

“If by ‘wrong tree’ you mean...”

“Yes.”

            “No, no, just...no romance.”
            “Why?”
            “It’s a thing. Don’t worry about it.”
            “That’s not fair.”
            Jack laughed. “My turn. Tell me about Annie.”
            “That’s not a question.”
            “Who is Annie, to you?”
            Paula huffed and looked very, very grumpy. “People say she’s my twin, but I don’t believe it. We are nothing alike. I hate her. She’s...she’s a stupid-face. She has dumb...hands. And weird feet. Sometimes...sometimes we have the same taste in fashion. Sometimes. Is that enough?”
            “Does she work here too? Was she setting me up the whole time or was she honestly investigating this dishonest place? And where is she?”
            “Ah, ah, too many questions, Jack McDowell. My turn.”
            Jack rolled his eyes. “Go ahead.”
            “What kind of women do you like, Jack McDowell?”
            He looked at her as if to say, Really?

“Really?” he said.

            “My question, not yours.”
            He sighed. “Okay, here you go. One thing that I like in a girl---that’s probably very different from other characters like myself---is when she does the right thing. So long as I have known you, Paula, you have consistently done the wrong thing. You’ve tried to kill me, you’ve locked me up in a cell, you’ve punched and kicked me in the face; I am not Golbez, and I do not enjoy personal abuse. What I find attractive is just a woman who does the right things for the right reasons. Yes, entirely boring, I know. That’s why, in the end, I’m rather grateful all of my previous romances have failed, which is to say, the girls have died, often tragically in my arms, because they’re all spunky and quirky and hard-edged. But in all honesty, I am so glad none of them worked out, that is to say, they died. Because I would not want to end up with them. I like quiet girls who do the right thing. You are nothing close to that. You want me to like you? Start doing the right thing. Boring, I know. But given my life, boring is exciting to me. I won’t pucker up for you, sweet strawberry lips.”
            Paula stiffened as Jack spoke. Her face turned placid, stony, blank. The foreign color in her cheeks had disappeared, leaving a mask of whiteness. At Jack’s final pronouncement she shoved him aside, swung open the door behind him, and darted out.
            He followed her outside the door, but just watched as she ran down the hall, hand still on doorknob. When she turned a corner, he re-entered the room, slammed the door shut, forgot to lock it, and sighed.
            Then, in an effort to forget it all, Jack threw himself on the bed and fell asleep within seconds, his jacket still on his shoulders. His final thought was that his mother had never told him any of that, any at all of what Golbez had told him.

---

            No. This is my story. I’ll tell it, thank you.

“Jack. Jack! Jack, oh please get up. Jack! Jack, please, please! Jack, please get up! You need to get up, Jack. Jack! Why won’t you get up! Why won’t you listen to me, Jack? You need to get up now! Now! Oh, Jack, you’re not in a coma too, are you? I don’t know what to do if you don’t get up! Please don’t leave me here all alone. Did you really do it, Jack? You need to tell me! You need to get up and tell me! You didn’t really put him in a coma, did you Jack? Jack, Jack, Jack, please wake up! Jack! Wake up, Jack! Jack!”

            “Eh?”
            “Jack, you’re awake! Okay, quick, get up, we have to go!”
            “Eh!”
            “Oh, please don’t be cross with me! I’m trying to save your life!”
            “What are you doing here? Where have you been?”
            “I can explain later! Please just trust me! We have to go!”
            “Mooglebarger. Slam the dunk ball. Get yer out of this closet face.”
            “No, Jack, don’t turn back to sleep! Jack! Stop dreaming, look at me, and LISTEN!”
            I stopped, looked at her, and listened.
            “There are people coming for you! To kill you!”
            “There are always people trying to kill me.”

“More people than usual! The whole smuggling camp! Golbez is sleeping! I mean, he’s in a coma! And they’re saying you did it!”

That got my attention.

“Okay, we’ll get going then,” I said with a groan. “But you’re going to have to tell me what you’ve been doing this whole time, and what you know that I don’t. We can talk later, but that’s the condition I have if you want to go with me.”

She gave a tiny little nod, looking like a timid little bunny.

            “Let’s get going then,” I said.
            I decided to leave my pack behind, and I stuffed Wrench, my revolver, into the back of my pants. I had kept it under my pillow overnight for emergencies, but obviously that plan had been forgotten the second my body was in a horizontal position. How I woke up to Annie proved that.
            And yes, it really was Annie. No semblance of Paula in her features, other than her lips. The short brown hair, bouncing with every movement; the blush in her cheeks that appeared at the end of almost every sentence she spoke to me; the looser clothes, including a button-down white blouse with sleeves rolled up at her elbows and dark-colored jeans covering trainers on her feet, indicating that she was not trying to show anything of herself off, so unlike Paula.

At least she had shed the raincoat.

I followed after her as we ran out of the room and down the hall. She led me through a maze of corridors that made me question just how big this ridiculous villa was. After that, I considered the possibility that I was dreaming. Then I realized that if this was a dream, so was the last decade of my life, after all those world-saving adventures I lived through, and it wouldn’t matter either way. And so I decided that whatever would happen here, on this island, I would be looking forward to it. Just like you.

Aaaaaand we screeched to a halt. Right at a corner. Voices could be heard around it. Annie, taking some marvelous initiative, threw us into a nearby closet, where we breathed quietly and listened.

“Go two by two, men, and find him,” said a voice with a strange, clipped accent. “Find the Enemy. But do not split up. Watch each other’s backs. Be very, very careful. And remember that you are brothers.”

“Righto, boss,” said another voice.

“Our pleasure and privilege, Head Hermano,” said a third.

Then other voices mingling together, indistinguishable, then fading away.

I opened the door a crack. Annie tried to silently stop me, but I needed to see, so I fended her off. She could be really bothersome sometimes.

            One man remained in the hallway. His back was turned to me. He was short, had dark hair and skin that was not quite brown, but darker than white, almost a yellow. He wore  a black vest, presumably bulletproof, over fatigues. I stepped softly towards him, thanking the gods for the villa’s thick carpeting, and took out my gun. I stopped an arm’s length away from him, and pointed Wrench right at the base of his skull. Then I cocked the hammer.
            “Don’t move,” I said.
            He didn’t.
            “Ah, ‘Jack McDowell,’ I presume,” he said in that clipped voice, his back still towards me. “If that is your real name.”
            “It is,” I said.
            “I understand about that sort of thing,” he said conversationally. “My name, too, is a fiction. But unlike yours, it is not stolen.”
            That seemed a non-sequitur, but I didn’t have time to think it through. My life was on the line, remember. So I asked a far more typical question.
            “And yours is?”
            “I am called Amon Dem. My father calls me something different, something embarrassing, but I have not seen him in several years. And this is how I’m known to my men. To my brothers.”

“It’s a shame that you forgot to ask one of your men to watch your back. The awkwardness of odd numbers. But don’t worry, Amon Dem. I’ve got your back.”

            “Oh, wonderful irony,” he said with a laugh, still not turning around. “What do you want, then, hero? Why aren’t you killing me?”
            “I’m not killing you because I know your name. That means you have a soul. That means you’re important for later on. So I don’t want to kill you. What I do want is for you to close your eyes and go into this closet while I escape bloodlessly.”
            “And the Enemy shows mercy. Mercy not granted to my own men.”

“I’m the Enemy? I’ve done nothing wrong!”

            “You’ve killed several of my men. My brothers. You do not understand, hero. These men are like family. And I’m the Head Hermano.”
            “You guys with your twisted ideals,” I said. “I was saving my own life the whole time. I didn’t start this war.”
            “And yet you poison the man who you claim to be your father. Tsk, tsk, Jack McDowell. Tsk, tsk.”
            I glanced over at Annie. She wordlessly threw her hands up in the air, eyes frantic, unsure what was supposed to be happening now but also seeming in a bit of a hurry.
            “I didn’t do that,” I said plainly. “What reason could I possibly have---”
            “Vanasmas informed all of us that you’re here to stop this facility and shut down all of our functions. He said you admitted this yourself.”
            “Well, damb it, I’m going to just have to hit you really hard with my gun then.”
            And I smacked his skull with Wrench. He crumpled to the ground.
            He never saw my face. And I never saw his.
            Delighted by my success, I turned to Annie again with a smug, boastful face only to find that she had started running again.
            “Hey, wait! Annie! Hey!” I said and followed after her.
            “I’ll meet you in the jungle!” she called back over her shoulder as she pushed open a glass door.
            “The jungle?” I called after her while the door swung shut. “The jungle is huge! It’s thick! It’s dark! It’s...foreboding!”
            That was the last I saw of her. Until a few minutes later. But before that, I caught a glimpse of Vanasmas. I had followed Annie out the glass door to find the world a beautiful blue, a new day about to dawn. As opposed to about twelve hours previously, I loved this time of day. It had a certain smell, recognizable even out there in the jungle, that reminded me of my childhood days when I had a newspaper route in the morning. That didn’t last very long; I ultimately got so bad at waking up early that my mom ended up doing it for me before I could properly resign.
            Anyway, out the glass door was a jungle patio, a sprawling open area that on one side led to the seaside cliffs and the other went along the edge of the jungle with several lawns and fountains and things, and a plethora of paths that all converged at the far, far end. Lots of lawns, though. It looked like it could have been a golf course. It might even have been one. And Annie could have gone anywhere. This villa and yard were huge. She did say she would meet me in the jungle...
            But first something had to happen. A beat in the plot. A sighting, an incidence that would compel me to go somewhere specific. As I thought this, I heard some loud voices from inside the villa. They had probably found the stunned body of Amon Dem and were trying to innervate him. They might come through that door at any minute. So I had to dash. Where else? Into the jungle. Not permanently, though. Just to watch from behind a tree until they called out the dogs. Metaphorically speaking, of course.
            So I ran across the patio area and into the thick, dark, foreboding jungle, just a few meters in, and hid behind some ferns between two humongous trees. And here is where I saw Vanasmas. No, not ‘here’ where I am, but I saw him from here. Came out of the same glass door I had, walking just the way he had when I saw him last: shoulders square, step swift. He walked along a path parallel to the jungle that led through the gardens, up to the far end, away from the cliffs. Given my policy of not directly killing named characters unless we happened to be locked in mortal combat, I did not kill him and instead followed. He may have claimed to be “The Stealthy One,” but in this moment, I deserved that title a lot more than he did.
            The silent, stealthy pursuit lasted only a minute. His path was getting closer and closer to the jungle itself, and I deduced only just in time that it was actually entering the jungle, crossing my way, and I stopped. So far he hadn’t noticed me at all. Jack “The Stealthy One” McDowell.
            Vanasmas continued to make his way down that path under the trees where sunlight was starting to shimmer on the glistening green leaves, refracting through the dew drops to create tiny moments of spectral beauty. Given that we were beneath the canopy, it still wasn’t bright, but the light that did get through shone bright.
            That prose doesn’t sound like me. Hm. Are they...?
            A building appeared in the midst of the trees. Not large at all, maybe the size of a cottage, built on a slab of concrete. But it looked nothing like a cottage. It’s hard to say what it looked like. But maybe it’s not: it had sheer walls with sharp 90-degree corners, all impeccably white and clean, like it had been constructed entirely of sugar cubes. An odd sight in the middle of a jungle, but so was that minefield and catapult. (Darn it, I forgot to ask Golbez about that one.) The pathway headed straight for it, up a slight slope. I couldn’t very well follow Running Rat up there, so I hid behind a fallen tree trunk and waited for him to enter. As I waited I noticed large print writing one side. It read: THE LABORATORY OF DOOM AND DIVINITY.
            Must be the doctor’s place, I thought. Maybe it’s bigger on the inside.
            The door must have been around on the other side, because Vanasmas went behind it, disappearing from view. I made my approach up the rough slope, looking both ways to make sure I was clear. I decided to go around the windowless laboratory to find---
            Oh. It wasn’t quite windowless, was it?
            Doh.
            On the far side, not where Vanasmas had entered, but near there, was, indeed, a window, a large window. A very large window. Almost an entire wall, in fact. It started about four feet off the ground and ended about a foot from the roof, eight feet higher. It was also about fifteen feet across, and stupidly I didn’t find it until I was right in front of it. Upon this useful discovery I slid right down till I was sitting on the concrete foundation against the wall below the window. And then I heard voices, coming from inside. Actually they were coming through a kind of vent or grill in the wall next to the window, presumably designed to let fresh air in,but probably to let someone safely and conveniently overhear a sinister conversation on the other side.
            “The experiment has ALWAYS been ready, Vanasmas,” said a voice Jack didn’t recognize. It sounded harsh, assertive, arrogant. A slight nasal quality to it, too, and a hint of an English accent. “I regret how little you trust my abilities. I’ve been doing this for thirty years. And you are not my superior. I’m doing this for you as a favor. And for my own scientific purposes.”
            This must be Dr. Aperture.
            “What have you done to him?” Vanasmas said. “And by what power do you do this?”
            “I’ve done science to him, that’s what,” said Dr. Aperture. “By my own divine power.”
            “Then he will truly be a god?”
            “He will be a great scientist, yes. Capable of self-awareness and critical thought.”
            “And he will be my ally, my friend.”
            “And my creation.”
            “I shall call him Monty Jr.,” said Vanasmas. “Or perhaps Mr. Stripes.”
            Dr. Aperture laughed, a nasal, arrogant laugh. “No. He will be named after the greatest scientist of them all. That is my condition, before giving him up to you to use.”
            I was just confused as the next man, were he to overhear such a conversation. And, like he probably would, I wanted some clarification. So I poked my head up by the corner of the window and got a peek. Something orange and black with a tail lay on an operating table between Vanasmas and Dr. Aperture. Then something happened that had never before happened in my experience with eavesdropping on villains.

They saw me!

I looked into the piercing, penetrating, blue-eyed robotic gaze of Dr. Aperture, a man with a white lab coat on his back, a clipboard in his hand, and a reflector headband on his, well, head. He looked at me with all the fury of a righteous warrior. His face turned a rageful red and as if in slow motion he raised his condemning finger to point at me.

“HIM!” he shouted, blood vessels about to burst.

            Then came Vanasmas’s face smushed up against the glass.
            “HIM!” he shouted too, and the glass by his mouth fogged up. He didn’t draw away for a while.
            I stood, and finally got a good glimpse at what was inside: it was a huge, massive, really big and also unconscious tiger lying on a high stainless steel table in some kind of laboratory. On the far wall was a big red button that seemed like it would be really fun to push.
            We were all now in plain view of each other.
            “Send him out to get the hero!” Vanasmas tried to command,
            “He’s unconscious! You can’t just wake up a Super Tiger!” countered Dr. Aperture. “So hit the button, man!”
            “Good going, guys,” I said through the glass with a taunt. “If only the damb creature were awake he could actually be useful for you!”
            “Do not say such things about---!”
            Vanasmas bashed in the button on the wall, and the resulting blare drowned out Dr. Aperture’s final words. From lipreading it looked like “Snarl Fagan.” I don’t know why I had the presence of mind to recognize that over the chorus of
            PRISONERESCAPEDPRISONERESCA---
            and all that jazz.
            Then a cacophony joined the choir: behind me came shouts and bursts of gunfire that sounded exactly like the chase sequence from the other day. I whirled around to see and found a huge mob of gunmen and guards at the borders of the jungle, a veritable army appearing out of nowhere with intents to destroy me.
            Even though no thought preceded my action, I sprinted away, further into the depths of the jungle, without another one.
            So, they’re chasing me again. Somehow I managed to sigh in between huffs and puffs as I ran. I started grumbling, too, producing sounds that were not real words but something more akin to primordial, infantile curses. How annoying this all was!
            This is already the second major chase scene of this story, I thought. Doesn’t this god have any originality? Maybe he just needs to get me somewhere. What a contrived plot device.

I wondered where “somewhere” was.

Then, like my foot stepping into snake hole, which is what just happened, a fact fell into place in my brain. An idea, really, or maybe a question.

            What would happen if I just stopped running? I thought as I tripped spectacularly and rolled on my shoulder. As I came to a halt in the roll, I decided to stay there in that half-crouched, half-kneeling position. It was an experiment. A theory. Would anything happen to me?
            I wouldn’t really care either way, of course. Predictability be damned. Either I’d get some time to think or I’d get caught and the story would proceed in a different way.
            Another attempt at rebellion.
            So I continued to stop, and stopped further. Right there in the jungle, slowly rising to my full height. And I listened.
            Lots of voices, of course, just a few paragraphs behind me. It sure as hell sounded like they were about to come crashing through the brush and skewer me with their bayonets (I always imagined them having bayonets, though I suppose that might be out of fashion these days) (but I have to admit that upon further reflection, I realized that I’m not even sure what year this is).
            But the pursuers never appeared, and neither did their bayonets. Regarding the latter, well, they might as well have bayonets because I can’t see them to prove it either way; and regarding the former, I could only hear them. The higher-ups ordering the lower-downs, some calling out that I had gone one way, others saying that’s bleeping stupid why would he go there, and still others thinking I had doubled back on them, and one fellow even thought I was there among the mob posing as one of them because he had seen that happen in a movie once. I was just thinking that that last idea was a pretty good one and that I’d have to try that someday when it just sort of kind of in a way started repeating the bloody thing all over again. The same voices sounding out the same lame ideas as before as if it were a looping audio track, or a broken record on a phonograph (does that date me?). Or no, better yet, here: have you ever fallen asleep on the couch while you’re watching a DVD, and it finishes and it goes back to the menu screen (maybe I’m not dated then…) (we’ll never solve this time and date crisis now, will we? Damb it) and then the stupid menu screen just loops its twenty seconds of dialogue or music over and over again? Yeah, it was exactly like that. It drives me crazy, even when I’m sleeping.
            So I stood there, in the middle of the jungle, doing nothing, just waiting, listening, and time seems to have stopped. At first I felt the initial irritation at hearing them over and over again, BUT I realized that this was exactly what I was looking for, damb it all, and I was gonna stay there at least a few minutes and just think out my situation. I knew I’d be okay; they weren’t going to catch me.
            The sad thing about all of this is that in the end, I had almost nothing to think about. I suppose I just desired some substance in my life. This fact left me troubled. But at least I understood myself better, right?
            Again, I sighed. Might as well keep running. The prison of my metaphysical situation ran with me, like a shell on a snail, but not that slow. I run fast. As fast as I need to. As fast as the story needs me to.
            But no, wait. I wanted to stay stopped. So I stayed! I stayed in defiance, I stayed in stalwartness, I made my stand —
            A movement on the ground caught my rebellious eye, which instantly snapped to attention and took in the image of something that looked very much like a cobra, coming out of the hole I had tripped on in the first place.
            The instrument of an angry god.
            I shook my fist at the tree canopy above me and, constrained by unfortunate circumstance, took off running again. With a WHOOSH everything resumed to its proper place, and the audio track behind me broke out of its loop. I heard dogs barking now, too.
            As I was running the thought came to me that if I had been able to think about it, I should have been able to wrangle that snake, maybe befriend it, and sic it on the fellows chasing me…
            But before I could complete that thought, a fallen tree trunk got in my way, and I had to dive roll over it. Back on my feet I found two things: myself in an open clearing and a very odd, strange, weird surprise.
            “Annie!” I cried out, sprinting in her direction. I didn’t have the breath to ask what in hell’s coldest hailstorms she was doing there. Then I thought one second further and realized that if I took my time, I could stop and catch my breath and ask her just fine, without worry. (As long as that cobra wasn’t chasing me.)
            (I checked and it wasn’t. )
            “Annie,” I said more calmly, still puffing a bit. “Annie. How… are you?”
            I looked her up and down. She had clearly been roughing it. Some chocolate-colored mud was on her face, in streaks as if applied by fingers. Her hair was mussed and her face blank, confused, looking like she had just woken up.
            “What’s the situation? I mean...what happening on your end?” she said in a sweet, innocent voice that for some reason made me think of marshmallows.
            (Paula, meanwhile, made me think of dark chocolate. Now all we need is a graham cracker.)
            “We’ve got a team of guns chasing after us. Or maybe they’re just chasing me. I don’t know if they care about you at all. Or if they even know you exist. But your sister has probably said something by now. If she knows you’re here.”
            “Are we in danger?”
            “Well, yes and no. You’re with me, remember.”
            She stood there awkwardly. I don’t think either of us knew exactly what to say.
            This was feeling way too much like a date.
            Then I heard dogs barking.
            “Looks like they’ve got some dogs, too,” I said. “To make them sound more violent. But I don’t think we have to worry about them. I met those dogs at the compound; they’re rather nice. One of them practically licked my inner ear.”
            “Have you thought that maybe they showed you to the dogs so the dogs would catch your scent in a chase?” She said this incredulously, but it was clear she wasn’t any more afraid than I was. She knew what was going on. She knew the game. We were conversing casually, plain as day, as if I hadn’t just found her in the middle of a dangerous jungle island inhabited by beasts and smugglers and ridiculous caricatures. And dogs. The barking seemed to get louder every few seconds.
            “I got it!” I said, snapping my fingers. “The dogs. It’s the hint we needed. I know where we need to go now.”
            “Hint? Who’s hinting?”
            “The dogs!”
            “What about them again?”
            “Water, damb it! We need to find a river.”
            She looked at me like I was crazy, and the way I looked at her confirmed that suspicion.
            “It will lose our scent!” I said. “And with that...unusual perfume you’ve always got on, we’re going to need it!”
            Her mouth turned downwards the same way Paula’s had. Shock and hurt. But I had no time nor inclination to apologize. I was trying to save her life.
            “Just…run!” I said, frustrated. “Run, and we’ll be okay. Okay?”
            “Okay. Okay, but — ”
            “No,” I said. “We go. I’m in the mood for a chase, anyway. Blood’s pumping, heart’s pounding. That’s our cue.”
            By “cue” I meant the rising urge to start running, given me directly from the puppeteers. Nothing I was doing in that moment would get me in that physiological state: It was artificial. He was getting impatient with me. Or she. I wouldn’t know. I’ve never met him directly. Or her. Or them.
            Man alive, I hate this prison.
            But if I wanted to get answers about all of this, if I wanted to find out how it was going to end, if I wanted to become something more than I already was—and I do, I do, I do—I would just have to embrace my identity as I knew it to be then. Do what comes naturally. Give in to the puppeteer. Let the gods determine my fate. Let them sweep me away.
            I grabbed Annie’s arm. “Come on!” I yelled, and pulled her into the jungle, the voices of guns, dogs, and men following after like imprinted ducklings following a jerk of the neighbor swan that was strangely and obtrusively present at the hatching of the eggs.

End of Act I