Page 48 of The Godhead Complex
“No, I—what’s that mean as far as the person the ring belongs to?Thisformer person. Who is it? Whowasit?” Not anyone from Ximena’s village, she knew that much.
“It’s . . . Kletter.” Carlos looked at her as if she was supposed to know who that was. Everyone who visited their village had three or four names. Birth names. Middle names. Surnames. Town names.
“Did they work for the Villa with mom?”
“It’sAnnieKletter.”
Ximena’s shoulders tensed; all the air in her lungs whooshed out of her. “Thisis Annie?” She looked down in disbelief. Anger. Absent-minded Annie. Dead. Like a black jackrabbit in the desert, right here on the way to the Villa. Ximena would have rejoiced at the thought days ago but now it only made the anxiety in her chest grow to a monstrous size. “Mom and Mariana . . . they wouldn’t have just left her here. They would have given her a village burial. Why . . . why didn’t they?” She paced, gripping the knife in her hand.
Carlos didn’t answer. He just held his bouquet of weeds.
Ximena let the anger surge through her body to block the tears from coming. Not that she would have cried for Annie’s death, no. She was glad that woman was dead.Ellas estan muertas.But the tears she wouldn’t let come were for her mom and Mariana. Something was wrong. They wouldn’t have left someone they worked with for so many years behind. Her mom wouldn’t have let the animals feed on Annie’s dead flesh without any sign of ritual or prayer. “They wouldn’t have just left her here!”
“Maybe they . . .”
“There’s no reason. This close to the Villa?” She shook her head.
“Maybe that’s why your mom and Mariana stayed behind for so many extra months. The lab needed extra hands.” Carlos turned back to the road. “Come on. They’re at the Villa. We’ll find answers. Maybe Kletter left for a different trip and they have no idea she’s . . . gone.”
Ximena followed Carlos up the road.
Her feet pounded the cracked pavement. She wanted answers. Justice. She hoped Carlos was right. She hoped for . . . Hope. But the anxiety in her chest said that Hope was a Devil, luring her to a false reality until both the lie and the truth killed her.
A circular object in the road caught her attention. She bent down to pick up a grass-braided bracelet.
“What’s that?” Carlos asked. “Is it fresh?”
“Yeah,” she said as she wrapped the bracelet around the handle of Annie’s knife. “Might be a clue. Someone had to kill Annie Kletter and I want to know who.”
The woman at the Villa had never told them her name. Isaac wished he’d asked as he sat impatiently in the quarantine room with Old Man Frypan. They were there to be ‘observed’ but it had started to feel more like a prison than a safe place to wait. Frypan sat quietly against the back of the glass pod. Isaac wanted to believe that Jackie would be okay. He wanted to believe that he’d see Sadina again and reunite Sadina with her mom and that Frypan would live to be a hundred years old. But the truth was rarely better than what you wished for.
Isaac thought he couldn’t have been more emotionally drained until he looked down and realized his grass bracelet had broken off somewhere. Must’ve been when he was carrying Jackie. He rubbed his bare wrist. That was it.
“Hey!” He knocked on the glass wall of his room and got another scientist’s attention. He had counted five total people since they’d stepped into the building. All of them wore black clothes under white lab coats. Seemed almost like a cult. Did all scientists do that? He tapped the glass again, and a man at the back wall of the lab looked up at him. “Can you tell me what’s going on?” Isaac shouted. Despite the guy looking right at him, he said nothing and returned to his work.
“They’re not gonna level with you because they don’t think you’re on thesame level as them.” Frypan sighed.
“But she brought usallin because . . . we’re unique. We’re immune. Sadina and—”
The old man interrupted him. “Ever wonder if the truth ain’t really the truth?”
Isaac paused. “What do you mean? You don’t think we’re immune?”
“Things change. Isn’t that what evolution means?” He closed his eyes and settled further against the glass wall. “When a stew gets too salty, you don’t throw it away. You’ve got to add a potato.”
Isaac shook his head. “Seriously? What doesthatmean?” The mention of food made his stomach growl.
“You can add a peeled potato and it’ll soak up the salt in the stew, but you gotta remember to take the potato out. And if you get clever and chop a potato up andleaveit in, you can solve the problem that way too, but then you’ll end up with potato soup rather than a stew.”
Isaac truly loved this man and his lessons. “Are you talking about the Evolution? With a capital E?”
“I’m just saying that we’re in a salty situation, here.” He looked around the lab as if he were afraid the scientists wouldn’t like what he was saying. “We came in to help Cowan and Jackie, but we gotta make sure these two potatoes,” he pointed to himself and then to Isaac, “get the hell out of this pot as soon as we can.” His eyes motioned to a glass pod way in the corner of the lab, which had a black curtain hanging on the outside. Black curtains like black uniforms. Everything in this place had a sense of mystery, cloaked.
“What’s in there?” he asked, and Frypan pointed to the bottom corner of the glass pod. The curtain was flipped up just a bit, slightly revealing the contents of the room.
But Isaac couldn’t really see anything.
“Just wait . . .” Old Man Frypan whispered and watched.
