A.D. 3051

3 Years Ago

“Will it hurt?”

“Yes, of course.”

“How badly?”

“It will be tolerable. You won’t be able to see for a few days.”

“What if I go blind?”

“You’re already blind- you just don’t know it.”

Lira’s face became a pallet of cherry red, her fists tightened, her jaw clenched, but Anir’s eyes remained steady, his expression soft and patient. Under those eyes the fire retreated, her hands opened, her jaw loosened, and her muscles finally relaxed onto the operating table.   

Anir continued, “Imitators are walking around everywhere you go. You just can’t see them right now. It’s a miracle you haven’t been infected already,” he said, chuckling. It was a smile that cast a warm hue over the poorly lit loft, transforming the leaky pipes and peeling paint into a metropolitan sanctuary; and, to Lira’s surprise, she found herself chuckling too.  

“I’m nervous,” she admitted.

“Fine, then, be nervous,’ said Anir, casually flicking the propofol-filled syringe, ‘but never let nerves stop you from acting.”

“Can I just… take a moment to think about this?”

“Of course. Take as much time as you need.”

Anir’s small loft was made vast by the slanted windows that ran the length of the room. Lira stood by one of the tinted windows looking down at the streets below; the smothering neon lights of the city stared back at her, and in the cast of their blue and purple fluorescence she could see her past in the piss-stained sidewalks and long-forgotten cigarette buds. She remembered the dirty hand’s of the streets pinning her down to sidewalks and alleyways— hands whose fingertips made her flesh tired with shame and dulled her mind with paranoia. Lira had watched as those same hands drove needles into weakened flesh until it was lifeless ash blowing away in the wind, ash that she herself was in the process of becoming when she had found Anir.

Anir had been crouched on an abandoned rooftop where Lira often took refuge from the crowded alleyways. He had asked her if she was there to watch the city’s streets too. They had spoken through the night, Lira sharing more about herself in their conversation than she had ever shared with anyone before. By morning, she felt she had known Anir for a long time and that he had known her. When Anir offered her a couch in his loft, she accepted, feeling as though she had fallen under the robes of a wise monk.

It was in this small loft, guided by Anir’s monkish ways, that the cruelty and the grip of the streets fell away from her, and from its ashes blossomed feelings and a way of life that she had never known before. But when one truth dies another is always there to take its place; and so it was that Lira learned from Anir that the people of the city had long since been infected by a neurological chemical that eradicated their ability to feel empathy—the Imitators—and there was no way of knowing if someone was infected unless you had an implant surgically inserted into your eye that allowed you to see the Imitator’s diseased brain.

The decision she had to make was clear as she looked down at the once familiar streets: to believe Anir and let him surgically alter her perception forever or return herself to the grips of the street.
Lira watched as the crowds of people shuffled through the city, then looked back at Anir, and knew that the decision had already been made.

“Okay,’ she said, after some time deep in her own thoughts, “I’m ready.”

2 Years Ago

Anir had been right all along. I knew he was… but it wasn’t until I could see them that I truly believed. The Imitators…their bodies are filled with these particles… Anir calls them denumbs….their frontal lobes are just gray lifeless creases….All I can feel right now is anger. I don’t understand how the government let it get this bad…Anir said he used to work for the FBI… he left when he saw that they were too afraid to cause panic to do anything about the denumbs…wasting precious time trying to understand what was causing the disease— letting it spread rapidly until it was completely out of their control. Why wouldn’t they warn the public? Anir said there’s no point in getting angry, that I have to stay focused, that we can do something, but only if we stay calm… He’s always so calm, and sometimes that makes me angry too…

1 Year Ago

They crouched silently at the top of an abandoned department store building. The lights from the neon adverts and nightclubs didn’t reach them at this height; their black leather trench coats blended in with the roof’s shadows, making them two invisible figures hovering above the city’s nightlife, watching.

“I see one,” said Lira.

“Where?”

“There, in line at that club.”

“Good catch. Aim the gun just as we practiced. Remember to breathe as you pull the trigger. You have to hit the back of the neck in order for the antidote to work.”

“Will they feel anything?”

“They might feel a small prick. Once you’ve been infected with denumbs for long enough your senses are dulled, pain and pleasure sensations start to disappear.”

Lira took a deep breath and aimed the gun at the base of the Imitator’s neck. She breathed out, pulled the trigger, click. 

The Imitator reached for the back of its neck, rubbing the spot where Lira had just embedded hundreds of antidote filled nanomolecular beads into its skin.

“What happens now?”

“Now,” Anir said, “you celebrate. That was a good shot. The antidote will do its job. Reversing whatever damage was done to the body and we’ll have one less Imitator walking around in the streets.” Lira felt proud, a feeling that she was becoming used to under Anir’s guidance. Her moment however was blunted by an unfamiliar distance on Anir’s face.

“I have to go soon,” said Anir.

“Where?”

Anir looked at her, his green eyes like a steady pond, and Lira knew he couldn’t tell her where he was going. A somberness fell across her face, telling Anir that she already knew she wouldn’t be able to come with him. “We’ll meet here, once a year, on this day. Just remember my instructions and you’ll be fine.”

NOW  

Anir’s instructions repeated in her mind as she ascended the rusted stairwell.

Through the basement door. Up the stairs. 

Don’t make too much noise.

Never, and I mean never, use the elevator. 

“Why can’t I use the elevator?” Lira remembered asking.

“Elevators give people an opportunity to look at you, and that defeats the purpose.” She looked down. Embarrassed that she hadn’t realized that herself.

…basement door….Up the stairs…

Don’t make too much noise…

…never use the elevator…

With each quiet step up the metal stairway, Lira thought about the past year. The loft had become lonely without Anir’s presence and her steps were lighter knowing that she would see him again soon. She had so much she wanted to share with him since they last met, she had been busy and the progress she had made in her district was impressive; the Imitators were almost completely irradicated, and the streets had taken on a new, livelier, form.

Lira turned the corner to the last set of stairs that led to the roof. Something was different about the lock. Anir always placed it to the left of the handle, a subtle indicator to Lira that it was indeed Anir who had moved it, but this time the lock hung to the right. Lira drew the gun concealed hidden in her trench coat. She opened the rooftop door, holding the gun close to her chest.  

She looked around the rooftop, her vision as clear under the moonlight as it would be during the afternoon sun, a tall figure stood at the edge of the building, far too tall to be Anir.

“Who are you?” called Lira.

The man turned around, revealing a high brow and pronounced jaw and eyes that seemed vaguely familiar…

“Anir sent me,” he said, his hands raised in the air.

“I don’t care who sent you. Who are you?”

“My name is Seik, I’m Anir’s son.”

 Lira lowered her gun, stunned. Anir…had a son? But…all that time…he never mentioned a son…would he keep something like that from me?

 Lira raised her gun again at Seik, “Prove it.”

“He told me to give you this.” Seik extended his hand out to Lira, a small-folded note pinched between his fingers.

Lira approached, the gun still raised, and took the note from his hands. She now recognized why his eyes seemed so familiar, they were the same green eyes that had looked at her all those years ago; but younger, and there was something else just beneath their surface, something that reminded Lira of the fire she had once felt burning inside of her.

She unfolded the small note and noticed Anir’s handwriting immediately:

You’ve learned to see in so many more ways than I could ever teach you. Seik can introduce you to the next phase of your journey—I’m sorry I won’t be there to join you. I’ve always known there is no limit to what you can see. -Anir

Lira folded the note and placed it back into her pocket. She looked at Seik, remembering how she had hesitated the night that Anir had performed the surgery that had changed her life; she again felt the same weight with the choice that Anir was asking her to make with Seik—but this time, she felt no such hesitation. Anir’s words resonated in her mind: I know there is no limit to what you can see. 

“Okay,’ she said to Seik, holstering the gun once more, ‘we go now.”