Absolute Gravity

Since most of the people Clara invited didn't even know me, the party ended after only a few hours. Once they were gone, I was allowed to sulk in silence. Clara and Dana got to work cleaning up and forced Graham to help. So when they were distracted, I took the knife and returned to bed.

This time when I dreamed, it wasn't of Bucky. Instead, I found myself in a field in Ohio. The moonlight was bright and thick, lighting up the field and shimmering on the stalks that were taller than my head. I stepped through them slowly, feeling the distinct texture on my hands. It felt so real. I could smell the earth and the cool air. The local kids used to tell stories about crop circles, unexplained lights, and monsters. But I'd never believed in that kind of stuff. Not back when I still had no idea we weren't alone in the universe.

I used to go there at night sometimes, usually after sneaking out and convincing an adult to buy me alcohol. I'd drink alone among the stalks. Content and unaware. Not just of the universe but of what the future had in store for me.

It couldn't be a coincidence that I was there. That I was aware that I was no longer sixteen-year-old Jo Hayes. It was meant to be a secret place. A memory I'd only wanted to share with one person. Someone I'd never get to see again. This memory was proof that I wasn't alone. Not even then, when I couldn't feel what was already developing inside me. It was smaller then. A hint of chaos behind my eyes that hadn't yet figured out how to recreate memories from my shadows. But it watched. Always watching. Even now, I could feel it in the heavy darkness.

The stars twinkled unnaturally from above. The wind through the stalks sounded just a little too much like a voice. Quiet at first. Something I couldn't hear or understand. Until I began to make out what they were saying.

"Can you feel her?" something whispered.

"All I feel is Darkness."

When I turned, someone was standing among the stalks. Someone who'd never been part of those memories because she'd died the day I was born. But I could see her sometimes anyway. From the corner of my eye. Watching from a crowd of people. I don't know why she chose that face. It had to be deliberate. She wanted me to see her. I had never met Beata. Never able to form my own memories of her. I'd only known her for the first few hours of my life before she forcibly shoved me into Ivan's arms and then took her own life. This wasn't my memory of her. It was a memory the Chaos, whatever it was, had brought with it.

"Why are you here?" I asked her.

"Your mind is fractured between realities. Sometimes I bring you back to safe moments. Safe memories. Where they can't find you," she said.

"This is my secret place."

"I've been part of you for a very long time. I know every secret. Everything you've ever done, said, or felt, I've been with you. I can show you anything from your past. I remember better than you do."

I looked around the field. I wasn't just remembering it. I felt it. Like I was really there again. I could feel the chill in the air, hear the wind whispering through the stalks. "She's trapped," it said.

"Talk to it. Talk to the Darkness."

Even the wispy clouds above and the twinkle of starlight. I felt smaller. Not an adult with a life and a past. A sixteen-year-old girl in a camp shirt and a pair of dirty sneakers I'd inherited after Clara outgrew them.

That's who I was.

I needed to go home.

My parents would be angry if they found out I snuck out again.

"You've been doing this a long time, haven't you? Showing me things? Memories?" I had to hold on before I got lost in the memory again.

"You've always had very vivid dreams, haven't you? But sometimes, you were stronger than me. Your guilt was stronger. I tried to make you remember. But they always got to you first. Now, I can make you see. I can make you do it over and over and over."

"What is it you want me to know?" I turned to her again. A breeze rolled through the field, rustling her light brown hair like she was really standing there with me.

"You won't remember," she said. "When you find another memory to latch onto, this one will fade away. You never remember. I can feel you trying sometimes."

"So make me remember. Like you are right now."

"Why should I?" I shook my head.

"This isn't right. None of this is real."

"It was real. Once."

"So you're forcing me to relive the worst years of my life over and over? For what reason?"

"You're stronger than you know. Stronger than you realize when you have control of your own body. I need you to sleep. I can't let you see."

"See what?"

"What I'm about to do."

For one blessed moment, I had the strength to fight it. I could feel myself clawing at the inside of the glass. My body was weightless and floating. But I couldn't pull through enough. Just not enough to stop the glass from breaking. I could feel it shatter against my skin, ripping at my arms and crunching under my feet. But I couldn't see anything other than the field and the night. Until someone was staring back at me. A girl with red eyes. I had my hand around her throat.

Of course. It all made sense. If there was anything she was good at, it was illusions.

"Stop it," I warned. "Let me go." "I can't do that, Jo."

My hand squeezed. The girl didn't fight back. She winced, and something inside me relished in her pain. I'd wanted this once. To hurt this girl for all the things she made me see.

"Wanda," Chaos said. But she spoke out loud. Through me. It was my own voice now. Not Beata's. "I've been waiting a long time to get my hands on you."

"Jo, stop!" someone shouted. I felt a hand around my elbow. I was yanked away from her. She jerked back, freeing herself from my grip.

There was no field—only concrete. No moonlight. Only fluorescent lights on the ceiling. No stars. Just the twinkle of Tony's lab equipment.

I wasn't in Ohio. But I wasn't in Malibu either. This was familiar—a more recent memory. The basement lab Tony built for his cabin after…

After they died.

I turned to the man standing behind me. The one who'd pulled me away from the girl. He looked panicked, uncertain that he could trust me. But he was alive. He was familiar and different all at once. His arm was black. This wasn't a memory. Nothing that had happened before. Because he was supposed to be dead.

I ripped my arm out of his grip and stepped back. My bare feet crunched over broken glass and black liquid.

It was starting to come back—the memories of the time after. Chaos couldn't show me anything that hadn't already happened. She could only show me memories. I'd never seen Bucky with a black metal arm. I'd never seen him there in Tony's basement lab. I only knew one person who could make me see things that weren't real.

She'd done it before. So many times I struggled to regain my sense of reality for a time. It was so bad that I'd killed my own father.

She was standing back now. Sam stood beside her. She was more powerful than both of them. But she held her hand over her neck as if shocked that I could hurt her. I couldn't. I'd tried so many times, but I never could.

"I can," Chaos told me.

"No," I said. "This isn't—real. Please don't do this to me again?"

"Jo?" Bucky asked, like he was afraid of me. I snapped my eyes back to him. "It is real. I'm alive. We've been trying to get you to wake up."

"No!" I shoved my elbow into his gut. He slammed backward into a wall of servers. I spun around and went for the girl again. The witch. The liar. The one who'd pulled apart my brain and forced me to watch him murder everyone I loved. I couldn't kill her. But the Darkness would when I set it loose in her blood.

Bucky was quicker. He jumped forward and snatched my ankle. I hit the concrete hard, smacking my chin hard enough to make me taste blood.

"Don't touch me!" I kicked at him, and he hopped back to his feet and held his hands up in surrender.

I couldn't get back up. I leaned on my hands and breathed in and out. I groaned through the sharp, stabbing pain in my head.

"Jo," he said again. He knelt down beside me, touching his hand tentatively to my back. "What's happening?"

"It hurts. There's too much of it. I can't control her."

"Who?"

"Chaos."

I could feel the Darkness swirling inside me. Burning up my arms, trying to dig its way out of my skin to find something to kill. To feed. The room dimmed. The lights flickered. One of the alarms began to blare. Tony made them. Just for me.

"Buck," Sam warned.

"Get out! Go!" I yelled.

Why was I here?

This was not a memory.

"What's wrong with her?" Bucky asked from my side. Wanda rubbed her throat.

"Her mind is fractured," she explained. "It's as if she's two different people. She doesn't understand."

"Who am I talking to?"

"You're dead. You're all dead," I answered. His face betrayed how he was feeling. There was a flash of pain. He moved to touch me but hesitated.

"Jo?"

"I don't know how to make it stop. It just keeps going. On repeat. Over and over. I've watched them die a thousand times. I can't do it again." I groaned. I couldn't hold it back. It hurt too much.

"You can get out of this. You can keep fighting it. We're doing everything we can. I'm here with you. I'm alive."

"You won't be for long."

I was in a clearing surrounded by tall pine trees. It was full of overgrown grass and wildflowers. There was a small, shanty cabin just beside the tree line. I stood outside watching a woman hang clothes out to dry on a line. She hummed a lullaby. Whenever she bent toward the basket, her glasses slid down her nose. Her belly took up most of her body.

No.

"Where am I?" I asked.

"Another memory," she said. "Beata's this time."

"Where was I before?"

"You were in a lie. Don't forget what that girl can do. She's not so different from me. I'm stronger now. I can hurt her. You don't need to see."

"I want to go back there. Please take me back?"

"I can't."

"Please—why are you showing me this?"

"The lullaby Beata was singing—she wanted you to hear it. She asked me to remember it so I could show you one day. I didn't know how else to share it with you."

"I don't want to do this anymore. I want to go home."

This time when I blinked, I was standing in our apartment in Bucharest. I could hear music playing from the small pink radio in the kitchen. Bucky was making dinner. I could see the back of him as he moved. He had his hair pulled back. His arm was silver again. He looked so natural and at peace. He was cooking something that smelled savory and warm. There was even a towel over his shoulder. The apartment was cold, but it was full of life.

"Why are you doing this to me?" I asked. Beata was standing beside me again.

"You wanted to go home. So I took you someplace safe. This is another safe memory."

"Why here? Why is this home?"

"You're jumping between moments in time. Reliving things you've already lived. I can't always control what you see or do. You get lost in them sometimes. Wanda has been trying to communicate with you for days now. They sneak in when I'm not careful."

"You're lying." She just smiled.

"Do you know why Beata called me Chaos?" I shook my head slowly. "Chaos is many things. I was born from it. So was the girl. Chaos is the void that all things come from. It's from her womb that we have life. It's from her womb that the universe was gifted magic. And magic is merely something you have yet to understand. It's the very essence of what I am."

"So Bucky was right. Chaos—not as a destructive force, but as a living thing. A god."

"The first god. A god of shadow and mass. But that doesn't mean she wasn't a god of destructive forces."

I turned to the thing that was holding me hostage and presenting itself in the form of my dead mother.

"What do you want from me, Chaos?" She turned her eyes to me. They were the same as mine. Not the color. But wide and innocent. Or at least that's how my mom always described them.

"I want the same as you," she said. "I just want to be whole again."

"Why are you tearing me apart? Making me see different things? Different memories?" She looked at me as if this question confused her.

"What makes you believe that it's me?"