Fic: What Country, Friends, Is This? (ch. 4 of 12)
Title: What Country, Friends, Is This?
Author: Katta
Fandom: Heroes
Characters (in order of importance): Nathan Petrelli, a whole lot of OCs, Peter Petrelli, other canon characters
Rating: PG-13
Chapters: This story is written in 12 chapters and 5 interludes. This part has 2 chapters and 1 interlude. Everything else is still in the beta process.
Author's note on spoilers: This story was written during the summer, based on rumours and speculation. As you can see, I kind of got things backwards. :-) So, spoilers up to 1x23: How to Stop an Exploding Man, and complete AU for everything after.
Summary: The flying man has lost his home, his family, everything he knew about himself - and his clothes. What is left for him now?
Previous chapters: Chapters 1-2, Chapter 3
Chapter 4
He was woken up the next morning by Zaynab and Rim having a loud discussion in the kitchen. Leaving his room to see what was going on, he met Adil in the hallway.
”I must go,” Adil said with an apologetic smile. ”Sorry.”
”Sure,” he said, wondering why that would be a problem. Then it hit him. ”I thought you were taking me to the doctor.”
”I work. I thinked Qais will take you, but he work too.”
”So who is taking me?”
Adil made a grimace and nodded towards the kitchen, apologized again, and left.
Well. That was an encouraging start to the day. He went into the kitchen, where Rim was in the middle of a very fast, very long sentence that didn't seem to include any pause for breathing. With one hand, she was gesturing at her mother, and with the other she was pouring juice over her cornflakes.
”Hello,” Zaynab said when he entered, giving him a smile and then giving a comment in a sharp tone to Rim. The girl looked down, saw what she was doing, and pulled back the carton of juice while she said something that was very clearly an expletive.
”Hi!” she said, walking over to the sink so she could dump the cornflakes in the trash. ”Listen, you want someone with you who actually speaks English, right?”
”That would probably help, yes,” he said with some caution.
Rim turned to her mother, tilted her chin, and issued a triumphant statement that was definitely some variation of ”I told you so.”
Zaynab turned to him. ”School! She school!”
”Oh. Well, hey, I can't argue with that. School's important.”
”So's her job. It's not that big a deal, it's not like I have a test or anything.”
Her tone was so casual that his eyes immediately narrowed. ”You have a test?”
”No! I said I don't have a test, didn't I?”
”Hm. Has Qais left already?”
”Qais work,” Zaynab said. ”Sorry.”
”Yes, I know.”
”You don't believe me?” Rim asked, her dark eyes looking so wide and innocent there had to be something fishy going on.
”No, I don't.” He told Zaynab, very slowly, ”I think she has a test.”
”Test?” She turned to her daughter, startled.
”I don't, I really don't!”
The two of them talked for a while, in louder and louder voices, and then Rim stepped back with a huff. ”I hate you,” she said, pointing at him.
”That's okay, at least you're getting educated. Does the doctor speak English?”
”No.” She sat down and started pouring herself some new cornflakes. ”Just Eskimo and Latin. Oh my God! She's a doctor. Of course she speaks English!”
”Then can't I go on my own?”
”You're in a strange country,” she said calmly, sounding like he was seven years old and she was forty-five. ”You don't speak the language, you don't have any memory, and you may be chased by gangsters. Which is really weird, by the way. You're not going on your own.”
”If you guys give me directions, I'm pretty sure I could.”
”Mom'll take you.” She dug into her cornflakes with a certain viciousness. ”Serves you right.”
***
As it turned out, travelling with Zaynab was quite pleasant. There wasn't all that much he needed to know that couldn't be communicated through gestures, expressions, and simple nudges. Get on the bus. Sit on the bus and watch the streets go by. He was starting to get used to the green buses and the low buildings, though he kept feeling that there should be much more people around. He tried closing his eyes and multiplying everyone by ten: the teenagers, the mothers with baby carriages (though you couldn't fit twenty baby carriages on a bus), the old people with walkers. It got so crowded that he had to open them again, relieved to find himself back in a half-empty space.
They got off at the bus station, which by now he started to recognize with its yellow-and-glass building in the middle. The doctor was a few blocks away, in an ordinary apartment building near a second-hand store. The mundane look of the place did wonders for his calm - no hospital smell, no green or white coats, just a solid wooden door with a name on it.
The woman who opened it had a green pant suit with a matching headscarf. During the brief minute when she shook their hands, he also had time to notice that her eyes were a similar colour. Then she ushered them in the direction of the living room and hurried away. He assumed that they were meant to wait.
The living room was the only thing that reminded him of a hospital visit. There were three people already sitting there, an elderly woman with freckles across her long, gloomy face, and a short, black man with a little boy of about six years or so, all with that restless waiting room demeanour. The coffee table had a stack of magazines, and he picked one up as he sat down. It was in Swedish, but with this kind of publication, it hardly mattered - it was basically picture after picture of beautiful young women in different outfits. Not very interesting, but at least it would keep him distracted for a while.
Zaynab, meanwhile, struck up a conversation with the other waiting patients. He noticed that they talked in slow, halting sentences, nothing like the rat-a-tat-tat going on in the Mansour home. Whichever language they were speaking, most likely Swedish, it didn't seem like the other three were very fluent in it. In a strange way, it made him feel more at home. At least he wasn't the only fish out of water. In contrast, Zaynab's mellow, slow sentences sounded much faster when spoken here, and ever so different from the few words she could manage in English.
It didn't take long before the doctor let out a young man with wheezing lungs and a sparse moustache, and let in the old woman. She spent only a few minutes inside the office before coming back, and he started to hope that this would all be over soon. Unfortunately, the man and the little boy took much longer. He quickly reached the point where he got tired of the magazines and started browsing the bookshelves for anything in English. When his turn came up, he was leafing through a medical dictionary which, among other things, had a very nasty image of a bedsore.
”Mr. Mohammad?”
”Hm? Oh. Right.” That was him. He'd have to get used to that, but then, it wasn't as if the Mansour's ever referred to him as Mr. anything.
The doctor smiled at him. ”I'm Emina Kaya. Sorry it took so long - hours are always a bit approximate here.” Her accent was different than the ones he had encountered so far, and much less noticeable.
”That's all right, I understand.”
Zaynab stood up, and the two women spoke together for a while, both voices and body language implying that they knew each other very well. It should have made him feel left out, but it didn't, because he had a hunch this was something he couldn't have shared even if he spoke the language.
After a few last phrases and a shared chuckle, Emina nodded towards the door. ”Do come inside.”
He went in, seeing an office that was neat and professional, yet gave a very lived-in atmosphere. Leaving Zaynab waiting outside was unsettling, but when you came down to it, her presence was pretty unnecessary.
”Now,” Emina said, sitting down and gesturing for him to do the same. ”As Adil explained it to me, you suffer from severe memory loss, is that correct?”
”Yes.”
”And you were found in West Harbour, with your clothes ruined.”
”That's right.”
”Hm.” She opened a desk drawer and took out a deck of cards. ”Okay. Let's start with a game, while you tell me all about this.”
It was a strange time to play a game of card, in a doctor's office during an examination, but he found it rather relaxing. He told her the details of how he had been found, skipping the dreamlike vision of shooting through the air that had preceded it - maybe it was important for her to know, but it was even more important for him to hide it; he felt the need through his entire body. Likewise, he didn't mention Linderman or the blonde when she started asking about his past, choosing to replace those memories with similar ones that would be less potentially damning.
He won the game, mainly because her poker face was really terrible. She shuffled the deck, put it back in the drawer, and uncapped her pen.
”Okay, new game. Pop quiz.”
Pop quiz. Right. That was one game he was pretty sure he couldn't play. The first few questions she rattled off, though, were the number of weeks in a year, the number of years in a century, things like that. Those he knew, and he got a bit relaxed.
”Which is bigger, the moon or the sun?”
”The sun.”
”Who's the president of the USA?”
”Franklin D Roosevelt.”
She reacted at that, the stream of questions halted for a moment. ”Um. Who's the...”
”That was wrong, wasn't it?” he asked.
”Well,” she said with an apologetic grimace, ”he was the president of the USA. During World War II.”
”Oh,” he said. Well, that was a hell of a mistake to make. ”Missed by a few decades, there.”
”Do you know when World War II was?”
”1939 to 1945.”
”Right. Who led the Germans during that time?”
”Hitler.”
She nodded. ”Hard name to forget. The Italians?”
”Berlusconi.”
Another flinch, smaller this time.
”That was wrong?”
”He's... a little bit more recent than that, yeah. You've got the right country and job for him, though, just like with Roosevelt.”
”Hooray for me,” he said bitterly.
She kept asking questions - some of them he couldn't answer at all, others he got wrong or partly wrong, and others still were really simple. And then there were the really frustrating ones, the ones that should be simple, but weren't. Like the name of his mother, for crying out loud.
It wasn't until she ran out of questions that she started doing what he considered an examination: shining a light in his eyes, feeling the sore bump on his head, listening to his lungs.
”So,” he said once she was finished and they were both back in their chairs. ”What's wrong with me?”
She bit her lip for a moment, tapping her pen at the desk. ”There are three hypotheses I consider viable at this point. Either you have suffered brain damage due to that head injury of yours. That's possible, but I don't find it likely. Your skull doesn't seem fractured, and you don't have a concussion. However, you really should go to a hospital and be properly examined - I don't have access to an X-Ray machine or an MRI or any of those things in here.”
”I'd really rather not.”
”I figured,” she said with a wry smile. ”That's usually the case with my patients. I must warn you, though, it could be your life on the line. Sometimes there can be an aneurysm or similar which causes very few symptoms at first, but is fatal if left untreated for too long.”
”I feel fine.”
”Still. Promise me if you notice any other symptoms - any at all - that you go to the hospital, or at the very least return here. You don't need an appointment, just come right in.”
He watched her, weighing his possible answers, and finally gave her a wide grin. ”I promise.”
”Good. Second hypothesis is psychogenic amnesia - that the cause of your memory loss is psychological rather than physical. Considering what you've told me about how you were found, it's clear that you've suffered a very traumatic experience, and it's possible that your brain has chosen to react to this by refusing you access to your memories. Cases as extensive as yours are extremely rare, but they're not unheard of.”
”Why would my brain refuse me access to the name of the president of the United States?”
She tilted her head. ”Some people would call that a blessing. But you're right, the symptoms are atypical. Which leads me to hypothesis number three, that the stress put on both your body and mind triggered a small stroke.”
”A stroke?” That gave him images of drooling, half paralyzed old people in wheelchairs. ”I'm a bit too young for a stroke, aren't I?”
”Trust me, it happens to people even younger than you. If this is the case, it could happen again, and I can't stress enough that you should...”
”Be examined at a proper hospital. I know.”
”If you have any other symptoms, any whatsoever...”
”I know. I already promised. What about my memory? Am I ever gonna get it back?”
”I can't give you any guarantees,” she warned him, ”but yes, I think so. Part of it anyway. First of all, it's purely retrograde. You don't seem to have any problem forming new memories, which means what you learn, whether be it from your earlier life or your present, you're likely to remember. It's not fully global in the first place, either. Extensive, yes, but you're not a blank slate. You still have most of your skills, which is good. Your memories of basic trivia are affected but not destroyed. Your personal life is more seriously damaged, but again, not destroyed.”
”I can't remember anything,” he protested, frustrated.
”That's not true. You say you see faces, flashes. People you used to know.”
”Yeah.”
”That's promising. Then there's this.” She tore off a sheet from her pad of papers and gave it to him. ”These were your answers to the trivia questions which didn't make any kind of sense in the context. I think they may be parts of your own personal history, rather than common knowledge.”
He started reading the sheet. ”Hero Nakamura. Kerbie Plaza. Simon Montgomery. Silar. Peter. What am I supposed to do, look up every Peter in the phone book?” Even as he spoke, he saw a hand flicking away long dark hair from a slim face, and a lopsided smile.
”It means something to you, though, doesn't it?”
”Yeah,” he said slowly.
”I suggest you start with Hero Nakamura,” she said. ”That sounds specific enough to lead somewhere. And remember, it has only been a few days. You're already regaining some memories. It's far too early to throw in the towel.”
”I guess you're right.” Since she was rising from her chair, very clearly finished with the appointment, he reached out his hand. ”Thank you.”
”You're welcome. I only wish I could do more to help.” She shook his hand, then moved to open the door for him. ”Take care now.”
”I will,” he said, eyes already searching out Zaynab. The living room had a whole bunch of people in it now, but in her low-key way, she really stood out. Familiar, reliable.
What was that word Dr. Kaya had used about his amnesia? Retrograde. All his new memories, he could keep.
Count your blessings, and all that.
***
Having Zaynab around during the day eased his loneliness, but one thing she couldn't do was help him with the names on Dr. Kaya's list. And so he killed time with his CDs, waiting for the next person to come home.
He'd been expecting Rim, since he figured a school day would be shorter than a work day. But the first one back turned out to be Aisha. She threw herself on the sofa first thing, groaning loudly as she stretched out her back.
He watched her in silence. They'd never really talked - she was a lot quieter than her younger siblings and seemed less curious as well. Come to think of it, they spent much more time at home than her, too. Weren't young people supposed to come home only for meals and sleep? He wondered if they were always like that, or if it had to do with his presence.
Well, she was here now, and if he didn't know much about her, she certainly seemed kind enough. Had that pleasant, girl-next-door kind of face. Very pretty, though, and with a good sense of style - a pity that her clothes were so obviously low-price, of course.
”What?” she asked, arm still flung across her eyes.
”I wondered if you could help me with the Internet.”
She frowned at that and took the arm away so she could peer at him between half-closed lids. ”What with the Internet?”
”I need to look some things up.”
She nodded and sat up, throwing a glance at her watch. ”Will it take long?”
”I don't know. Depends on what I find.”
”Okay. I had better tell Donika I can't come, then. We would drink coffee.”
”Hey, if you have plans, this can wait.”
”No, it's okay.”
The computer - as far as he could tell the family's only computer - was in Rim's room, which was a bit crowded now that Aisha had a bed in there too. They squeezed in an extra chair and logged on to the Internet. The procedure seemed vaguely familiar, but he still left the actual searching to Aisha.
”Hero Nakamura,” she said after a minute or so. ”There is a businessman called Kaito Nakamura who has a son named Hiro, with an I. He disappeared.” Her voice changed quality on that last word. ”The eight november. That's a few days ago.”
”You don't think I'm him, do you?”
She threw him a quick glance and suddenly looked very much like her little sister. ”I don't think you are twenty-four years old and Japanese. No.” She clicked a bit and showed him a photo. ”This is him. Do you know him?”
”I think so,” he said, staring at the picture. This was the guy he'd seen the other day, during the Atlas search - he recognized the face and the glasses, though in his head the man was smiling, not serious and stunned-looking like here.
”He was on vacation in America.”
I met a waitress in Texas.
He rubbed his forehead. The voice he heard was foreign, halting. Japanese? Was it connected to that boy? ”Yeah. I knew him.”
”It says here there is nobody on the hospitals that looks like him, and no ran... ransom.”
”Ransom. That means they ask for money. Kidnappers.”
”You think he was kidnapped?” She looked up at him with large, worried eyes. ”By the gangsters?”
”I don't know. Maybe.” Having a possible connection with a name was something, he supposed, even if said connection was currently missing.
”Do you want to see if I can find an email for his family?”
He thought about that. It was tempting, definitely, but the disappearance made him wary. ”Better not. In case something really has happened to the guy.”
”The gangsters could come for you.”
”Yeah. Maybe. What about the next one?”
”Nothing for Kerbie Plaza.”
”Try some different spellings for that as well.”
She kept typing, and finally nodded. ”Kirby Plaza, New York.” She showed him an image of a square with a big red sculpture in the middle. It gave him an unsettling feeling, not quite bad, but definitely not good.
”Okay,” he said, fighting the urge to rub his arms. ”Probably been there at some point. Next.”
”You don't want me to keep...”
”No. Next.”
”Simon Montgomery.” She wrote the name in, then furrowed her brow at the results. ”Nothing definite this time. Some market guy in England?”
”I don't think so.”
”Photographer?” She showed some photos of every sort of thing except the guy himself.
He shook his head. ”Nothing else?”
”A person in a TV show.”
”What TV show?”
”The Mummy. Animated.”
”Probably not, no.”
Trouble was, Simon Montgomery, whoever he was, was important to him, he was sure of it. They kept searching pages full of odd mentions, none of which seemed very promising and some of which weren't even from the recent century. Finally, he had to admit defeat and ask her to check for Silar instead.
”Clock,” she said after a few failed spelling attempts.
”What?”
”Sylar. It's a clock. Look.” She showed him pictures of clocks, watches, all of the brand Sylar.
”That makes no sense. Why would I remember the name of some clock?”
”It's a expensive clock. Maybe you had one, before.”
”Right.” He couldn't keep the sarcasm out of his voice. ”I can't remember my wife, or my children, but I remember my watch.”
”Sometimes it's like that,” she said softly.
”And I guess you're the expert?”
”A little. I work with dement people.”
”You do, huh?” Yet another reminder that things could have been worse, he supposed. He leaned his head in his hands and thought for a while. ”So what have we got? A watch I may have worn, a plaza I may have been to, and a Japanese kid who seems to have vanished into thin air.”
”What else is there on the sheet?”
He handed it over. ”Peter.”
She gave him a sympathetic grimace that showed that she was as aware as he was of how impossible it was to follow that lead. ”I am sorry.”
”Damn it, Peter,” he muttered. ”Why couldn't you have a last name?”
***
He actually slept well that night, and woke up at a reasonable hour. The day that followed was uneventful and a bit boring - he really needed to look into getting a job. Lounging about the apartment watching daytime television was torture after a while, and in any case, he couldn't live off the Mansours forever.
Still. No memories, no surprises. Not until the next night.
He dreamed of Kirby Plaza, though from a different angle than the one he'd seen in the Internet picture. Instead of standing below the sculpture, he was soaring high above it, seeing groups of people gathered below. And in the centre, a glowing figure, someone he had to reach in time. He could feel his heart pounding and the bitter taste of urgency in his mouth.
A blonde girl raised a gun. In the dream he knew exactly who she was, though he couldn't articulate it. The gun, the glow, one of those things was going to go off, and either option was a disaster he couldn't let happen.
It was down to him. He had to make it right. He swept down, bracing himself...
...and the blonde screamed, loudly and shrilly.
He woke up with a dropping sensation, followed by a thud that jolted through his body. The change was dizzying, as was the shift in perspective from upright to lying down.
The plaza had been replaced with a small, dark room, and the woman standing in the doorway screaming her lungs out was most definitely not a blonde.
”Aisha?” he asked, scrambling to sit up. ”What's wrong?”
She stopped screaming to point an accusing finger at him. ”You flied!”
”What? Of course not! What are you talking about?” Even as he started protesting, he knew instinctively that what she said was true; he had been flying, and it wasn't the first time. Kirby Plaza was more than just a dream, it was a memory, just like his memory of shooting through the sky before Qais found him.
The other Mansours came rushing in, which was hardly surprising - anyone who could sleep through that racket had to be either drugged, deaf, or dead. Adil and Zaynab came first, then Rim, and after Aisha had already started shouting excitedly to the rest of her family, Qais, rubbing his eyes.
”Han flög!” Aisha said. ”En halv jävla meter ovanför sängen, jag svär...”
He watched Aisha point at him and measure a distance closer to the ceiling than any sleeping man should conceivably be. If he was to manage any form of damage control, he'd better start right away.
”Will somebody talk to me?” he asked, annoyed. ”Please?”
Aisha turned back and repeated what she had clearly been saying all along. ”You flied!”
”Flew,” Rim muttered.
”Shut up!”
Despite his predicament, he felt a pang of sympathy for Aisha - Rim's nitpicking was without a doubt ill-chosen.
”It's late,” he said. ”Or early. In any case, you're obviously still tired, and your mind is playing tricks on you. Let's just calm down and be rational. People can't fly.”
He noticed Qais' expression grow more stricken with every word, and cursed his bad luck. ”Don't you even start!”
Qais just stared at him wide-eyed for a second, and then his face softened in a smile. ”If you stop lying, I won't have to.”
Everyone grew quiet. He sat down heavily on the bed, wondering how the hell he was supposed to get out of this.
”You can really fly?” Rim asked in a very small voice.
He gave a self-conscious shrug. ”Apparently.”
”How?” Qais asked.
”I don't know. How do you do what you do?”
”You can fly,” Adil repeated, with both wonder and disbelief evident in those few words.
”Show them,” Aisha said softly.
His stomach churned at the idea of flying in front of all these people. What choice did he have, though? He couldn't talk his way out of this, and they were blocking the only exit. For that matter, running wouldn't exactly do him any good.
He took a deep breath and let go, like opening a hand you'd held clenched for much too long. A bit awkward, slow, but at the same time perfectly natural.
The room was small, which meant he couldn't stretch out the way he might want, the way he knew that he could, now that he thought about it, but he let his body drift a few inches up, rejoicing in the sensation and trying really hard not to think about the people staring.
Which they did, and he could only ignore that for a minute before forcing himself back onto the floor.
Qais mumbled something that had his mother swat him lightly at the back of his head.
”Are you an angel?” Rim asked.
”No.” At least no one was screaming anymore. Being mistaken for an angel was quite acceptable in comparison.
”A djinn?”
”What? No.”
”Get off it, Rim, he's not a djinn,” Qais said.
”You said his clothes were burned.”
”Why would a djinn burn his own clothes?”
She turned back to him, excited. ”Were you fighting a djinn? Is that is?”
”I wasn't fighting anyone!” he protested. ”I'm not an angel, or a djinn, or anything like that.”
”Then what are you?” Aisha asked.
”I don't know.”
Everyone was quiet for a while. Zaynab pulled her dressing gown closer around her body. Rim bit her lip, as if she was holding back something she wanted to say.
Finally, Adil reached out and pulled a book from the pile on the desk. He held it up. ”Activating Evolution.”
He took a deep, shivering breath. ”I was wondering why I picked up that book.”
”This - is you.”
”I guess so, yes.”
”And Qais.”
He looked at Qais thoughtfully. Five minutes ago, he had cursed the man's gift for lie detecting. Now it felt like the one thing in this mess that was on his side. ”Yeah.”
”Me?” Qais seemed taken aback. ”I'm good at spotting liars. That's hardly like flying.”
”Good at spotting liars?” Rim echoed.
”She's right,” Aisha said. ”Good doesn't even cover it.”
Adil was watching him intently and patiently, still holding up the book. ”This says what you are?”
”I don't know. I haven't read it yet.”
It sounded pathetic, and the reason, which he didn't share, was even more so. He'd been afraid to read it, getting ill with unease every time he picked it up.
Adil just nodded, though, and calmly stating, ”I suppose it is time to read it now - for us, as well,” kissed Qais on the top of the head.
In a strange way, he felt that the kiss encompassed him too, and so he relaxed his tense shoulders and dared to smile.
Author: Katta
Fandom: Heroes
Characters (in order of importance): Nathan Petrelli, a whole lot of OCs, Peter Petrelli, other canon characters
Rating: PG-13
Chapters: This story is written in 12 chapters and 5 interludes. This part has 2 chapters and 1 interlude. Everything else is still in the beta process.
Author's note on spoilers: This story was written during the summer, based on rumours and speculation. As you can see, I kind of got things backwards. :-) So, spoilers up to 1x23: How to Stop an Exploding Man, and complete AU for everything after.
Summary: The flying man has lost his home, his family, everything he knew about himself - and his clothes. What is left for him now?
Previous chapters: Chapters 1-2, Chapter 3
Chapter 4
He was woken up the next morning by Zaynab and Rim having a loud discussion in the kitchen. Leaving his room to see what was going on, he met Adil in the hallway.
”I must go,” Adil said with an apologetic smile. ”Sorry.”
”Sure,” he said, wondering why that would be a problem. Then it hit him. ”I thought you were taking me to the doctor.”
”I work. I thinked Qais will take you, but he work too.”
”So who is taking me?”
Adil made a grimace and nodded towards the kitchen, apologized again, and left.
Well. That was an encouraging start to the day. He went into the kitchen, where Rim was in the middle of a very fast, very long sentence that didn't seem to include any pause for breathing. With one hand, she was gesturing at her mother, and with the other she was pouring juice over her cornflakes.
”Hello,” Zaynab said when he entered, giving him a smile and then giving a comment in a sharp tone to Rim. The girl looked down, saw what she was doing, and pulled back the carton of juice while she said something that was very clearly an expletive.
”Hi!” she said, walking over to the sink so she could dump the cornflakes in the trash. ”Listen, you want someone with you who actually speaks English, right?”
”That would probably help, yes,” he said with some caution.
Rim turned to her mother, tilted her chin, and issued a triumphant statement that was definitely some variation of ”I told you so.”
Zaynab turned to him. ”School! She school!”
”Oh. Well, hey, I can't argue with that. School's important.”
”So's her job. It's not that big a deal, it's not like I have a test or anything.”
Her tone was so casual that his eyes immediately narrowed. ”You have a test?”
”No! I said I don't have a test, didn't I?”
”Hm. Has Qais left already?”
”Qais work,” Zaynab said. ”Sorry.”
”Yes, I know.”
”You don't believe me?” Rim asked, her dark eyes looking so wide and innocent there had to be something fishy going on.
”No, I don't.” He told Zaynab, very slowly, ”I think she has a test.”
”Test?” She turned to her daughter, startled.
”I don't, I really don't!”
The two of them talked for a while, in louder and louder voices, and then Rim stepped back with a huff. ”I hate you,” she said, pointing at him.
”That's okay, at least you're getting educated. Does the doctor speak English?”
”No.” She sat down and started pouring herself some new cornflakes. ”Just Eskimo and Latin. Oh my God! She's a doctor. Of course she speaks English!”
”Then can't I go on my own?”
”You're in a strange country,” she said calmly, sounding like he was seven years old and she was forty-five. ”You don't speak the language, you don't have any memory, and you may be chased by gangsters. Which is really weird, by the way. You're not going on your own.”
”If you guys give me directions, I'm pretty sure I could.”
”Mom'll take you.” She dug into her cornflakes with a certain viciousness. ”Serves you right.”
***
As it turned out, travelling with Zaynab was quite pleasant. There wasn't all that much he needed to know that couldn't be communicated through gestures, expressions, and simple nudges. Get on the bus. Sit on the bus and watch the streets go by. He was starting to get used to the green buses and the low buildings, though he kept feeling that there should be much more people around. He tried closing his eyes and multiplying everyone by ten: the teenagers, the mothers with baby carriages (though you couldn't fit twenty baby carriages on a bus), the old people with walkers. It got so crowded that he had to open them again, relieved to find himself back in a half-empty space.
They got off at the bus station, which by now he started to recognize with its yellow-and-glass building in the middle. The doctor was a few blocks away, in an ordinary apartment building near a second-hand store. The mundane look of the place did wonders for his calm - no hospital smell, no green or white coats, just a solid wooden door with a name on it.
The woman who opened it had a green pant suit with a matching headscarf. During the brief minute when she shook their hands, he also had time to notice that her eyes were a similar colour. Then she ushered them in the direction of the living room and hurried away. He assumed that they were meant to wait.
The living room was the only thing that reminded him of a hospital visit. There were three people already sitting there, an elderly woman with freckles across her long, gloomy face, and a short, black man with a little boy of about six years or so, all with that restless waiting room demeanour. The coffee table had a stack of magazines, and he picked one up as he sat down. It was in Swedish, but with this kind of publication, it hardly mattered - it was basically picture after picture of beautiful young women in different outfits. Not very interesting, but at least it would keep him distracted for a while.
Zaynab, meanwhile, struck up a conversation with the other waiting patients. He noticed that they talked in slow, halting sentences, nothing like the rat-a-tat-tat going on in the Mansour home. Whichever language they were speaking, most likely Swedish, it didn't seem like the other three were very fluent in it. In a strange way, it made him feel more at home. At least he wasn't the only fish out of water. In contrast, Zaynab's mellow, slow sentences sounded much faster when spoken here, and ever so different from the few words she could manage in English.
It didn't take long before the doctor let out a young man with wheezing lungs and a sparse moustache, and let in the old woman. She spent only a few minutes inside the office before coming back, and he started to hope that this would all be over soon. Unfortunately, the man and the little boy took much longer. He quickly reached the point where he got tired of the magazines and started browsing the bookshelves for anything in English. When his turn came up, he was leafing through a medical dictionary which, among other things, had a very nasty image of a bedsore.
”Mr. Mohammad?”
”Hm? Oh. Right.” That was him. He'd have to get used to that, but then, it wasn't as if the Mansour's ever referred to him as Mr. anything.
The doctor smiled at him. ”I'm Emina Kaya. Sorry it took so long - hours are always a bit approximate here.” Her accent was different than the ones he had encountered so far, and much less noticeable.
”That's all right, I understand.”
Zaynab stood up, and the two women spoke together for a while, both voices and body language implying that they knew each other very well. It should have made him feel left out, but it didn't, because he had a hunch this was something he couldn't have shared even if he spoke the language.
After a few last phrases and a shared chuckle, Emina nodded towards the door. ”Do come inside.”
He went in, seeing an office that was neat and professional, yet gave a very lived-in atmosphere. Leaving Zaynab waiting outside was unsettling, but when you came down to it, her presence was pretty unnecessary.
”Now,” Emina said, sitting down and gesturing for him to do the same. ”As Adil explained it to me, you suffer from severe memory loss, is that correct?”
”Yes.”
”And you were found in West Harbour, with your clothes ruined.”
”That's right.”
”Hm.” She opened a desk drawer and took out a deck of cards. ”Okay. Let's start with a game, while you tell me all about this.”
It was a strange time to play a game of card, in a doctor's office during an examination, but he found it rather relaxing. He told her the details of how he had been found, skipping the dreamlike vision of shooting through the air that had preceded it - maybe it was important for her to know, but it was even more important for him to hide it; he felt the need through his entire body. Likewise, he didn't mention Linderman or the blonde when she started asking about his past, choosing to replace those memories with similar ones that would be less potentially damning.
He won the game, mainly because her poker face was really terrible. She shuffled the deck, put it back in the drawer, and uncapped her pen.
”Okay, new game. Pop quiz.”
Pop quiz. Right. That was one game he was pretty sure he couldn't play. The first few questions she rattled off, though, were the number of weeks in a year, the number of years in a century, things like that. Those he knew, and he got a bit relaxed.
”Which is bigger, the moon or the sun?”
”The sun.”
”Who's the president of the USA?”
”Franklin D Roosevelt.”
She reacted at that, the stream of questions halted for a moment. ”Um. Who's the...”
”That was wrong, wasn't it?” he asked.
”Well,” she said with an apologetic grimace, ”he was the president of the USA. During World War II.”
”Oh,” he said. Well, that was a hell of a mistake to make. ”Missed by a few decades, there.”
”Do you know when World War II was?”
”1939 to 1945.”
”Right. Who led the Germans during that time?”
”Hitler.”
She nodded. ”Hard name to forget. The Italians?”
”Berlusconi.”
Another flinch, smaller this time.
”That was wrong?”
”He's... a little bit more recent than that, yeah. You've got the right country and job for him, though, just like with Roosevelt.”
”Hooray for me,” he said bitterly.
She kept asking questions - some of them he couldn't answer at all, others he got wrong or partly wrong, and others still were really simple. And then there were the really frustrating ones, the ones that should be simple, but weren't. Like the name of his mother, for crying out loud.
It wasn't until she ran out of questions that she started doing what he considered an examination: shining a light in his eyes, feeling the sore bump on his head, listening to his lungs.
”So,” he said once she was finished and they were both back in their chairs. ”What's wrong with me?”
She bit her lip for a moment, tapping her pen at the desk. ”There are three hypotheses I consider viable at this point. Either you have suffered brain damage due to that head injury of yours. That's possible, but I don't find it likely. Your skull doesn't seem fractured, and you don't have a concussion. However, you really should go to a hospital and be properly examined - I don't have access to an X-Ray machine or an MRI or any of those things in here.”
”I'd really rather not.”
”I figured,” she said with a wry smile. ”That's usually the case with my patients. I must warn you, though, it could be your life on the line. Sometimes there can be an aneurysm or similar which causes very few symptoms at first, but is fatal if left untreated for too long.”
”I feel fine.”
”Still. Promise me if you notice any other symptoms - any at all - that you go to the hospital, or at the very least return here. You don't need an appointment, just come right in.”
He watched her, weighing his possible answers, and finally gave her a wide grin. ”I promise.”
”Good. Second hypothesis is psychogenic amnesia - that the cause of your memory loss is psychological rather than physical. Considering what you've told me about how you were found, it's clear that you've suffered a very traumatic experience, and it's possible that your brain has chosen to react to this by refusing you access to your memories. Cases as extensive as yours are extremely rare, but they're not unheard of.”
”Why would my brain refuse me access to the name of the president of the United States?”
She tilted her head. ”Some people would call that a blessing. But you're right, the symptoms are atypical. Which leads me to hypothesis number three, that the stress put on both your body and mind triggered a small stroke.”
”A stroke?” That gave him images of drooling, half paralyzed old people in wheelchairs. ”I'm a bit too young for a stroke, aren't I?”
”Trust me, it happens to people even younger than you. If this is the case, it could happen again, and I can't stress enough that you should...”
”Be examined at a proper hospital. I know.”
”If you have any other symptoms, any whatsoever...”
”I know. I already promised. What about my memory? Am I ever gonna get it back?”
”I can't give you any guarantees,” she warned him, ”but yes, I think so. Part of it anyway. First of all, it's purely retrograde. You don't seem to have any problem forming new memories, which means what you learn, whether be it from your earlier life or your present, you're likely to remember. It's not fully global in the first place, either. Extensive, yes, but you're not a blank slate. You still have most of your skills, which is good. Your memories of basic trivia are affected but not destroyed. Your personal life is more seriously damaged, but again, not destroyed.”
”I can't remember anything,” he protested, frustrated.
”That's not true. You say you see faces, flashes. People you used to know.”
”Yeah.”
”That's promising. Then there's this.” She tore off a sheet from her pad of papers and gave it to him. ”These were your answers to the trivia questions which didn't make any kind of sense in the context. I think they may be parts of your own personal history, rather than common knowledge.”
He started reading the sheet. ”Hero Nakamura. Kerbie Plaza. Simon Montgomery. Silar. Peter. What am I supposed to do, look up every Peter in the phone book?” Even as he spoke, he saw a hand flicking away long dark hair from a slim face, and a lopsided smile.
”It means something to you, though, doesn't it?”
”Yeah,” he said slowly.
”I suggest you start with Hero Nakamura,” she said. ”That sounds specific enough to lead somewhere. And remember, it has only been a few days. You're already regaining some memories. It's far too early to throw in the towel.”
”I guess you're right.” Since she was rising from her chair, very clearly finished with the appointment, he reached out his hand. ”Thank you.”
”You're welcome. I only wish I could do more to help.” She shook his hand, then moved to open the door for him. ”Take care now.”
”I will,” he said, eyes already searching out Zaynab. The living room had a whole bunch of people in it now, but in her low-key way, she really stood out. Familiar, reliable.
What was that word Dr. Kaya had used about his amnesia? Retrograde. All his new memories, he could keep.
Count your blessings, and all that.
***
Having Zaynab around during the day eased his loneliness, but one thing she couldn't do was help him with the names on Dr. Kaya's list. And so he killed time with his CDs, waiting for the next person to come home.
He'd been expecting Rim, since he figured a school day would be shorter than a work day. But the first one back turned out to be Aisha. She threw herself on the sofa first thing, groaning loudly as she stretched out her back.
He watched her in silence. They'd never really talked - she was a lot quieter than her younger siblings and seemed less curious as well. Come to think of it, they spent much more time at home than her, too. Weren't young people supposed to come home only for meals and sleep? He wondered if they were always like that, or if it had to do with his presence.
Well, she was here now, and if he didn't know much about her, she certainly seemed kind enough. Had that pleasant, girl-next-door kind of face. Very pretty, though, and with a good sense of style - a pity that her clothes were so obviously low-price, of course.
”What?” she asked, arm still flung across her eyes.
”I wondered if you could help me with the Internet.”
She frowned at that and took the arm away so she could peer at him between half-closed lids. ”What with the Internet?”
”I need to look some things up.”
She nodded and sat up, throwing a glance at her watch. ”Will it take long?”
”I don't know. Depends on what I find.”
”Okay. I had better tell Donika I can't come, then. We would drink coffee.”
”Hey, if you have plans, this can wait.”
”No, it's okay.”
The computer - as far as he could tell the family's only computer - was in Rim's room, which was a bit crowded now that Aisha had a bed in there too. They squeezed in an extra chair and logged on to the Internet. The procedure seemed vaguely familiar, but he still left the actual searching to Aisha.
”Hero Nakamura,” she said after a minute or so. ”There is a businessman called Kaito Nakamura who has a son named Hiro, with an I. He disappeared.” Her voice changed quality on that last word. ”The eight november. That's a few days ago.”
”You don't think I'm him, do you?”
She threw him a quick glance and suddenly looked very much like her little sister. ”I don't think you are twenty-four years old and Japanese. No.” She clicked a bit and showed him a photo. ”This is him. Do you know him?”
”I think so,” he said, staring at the picture. This was the guy he'd seen the other day, during the Atlas search - he recognized the face and the glasses, though in his head the man was smiling, not serious and stunned-looking like here.
”He was on vacation in America.”
I met a waitress in Texas.
He rubbed his forehead. The voice he heard was foreign, halting. Japanese? Was it connected to that boy? ”Yeah. I knew him.”
”It says here there is nobody on the hospitals that looks like him, and no ran... ransom.”
”Ransom. That means they ask for money. Kidnappers.”
”You think he was kidnapped?” She looked up at him with large, worried eyes. ”By the gangsters?”
”I don't know. Maybe.” Having a possible connection with a name was something, he supposed, even if said connection was currently missing.
”Do you want to see if I can find an email for his family?”
He thought about that. It was tempting, definitely, but the disappearance made him wary. ”Better not. In case something really has happened to the guy.”
”The gangsters could come for you.”
”Yeah. Maybe. What about the next one?”
”Nothing for Kerbie Plaza.”
”Try some different spellings for that as well.”
She kept typing, and finally nodded. ”Kirby Plaza, New York.” She showed him an image of a square with a big red sculpture in the middle. It gave him an unsettling feeling, not quite bad, but definitely not good.
”Okay,” he said, fighting the urge to rub his arms. ”Probably been there at some point. Next.”
”You don't want me to keep...”
”No. Next.”
”Simon Montgomery.” She wrote the name in, then furrowed her brow at the results. ”Nothing definite this time. Some market guy in England?”
”I don't think so.”
”Photographer?” She showed some photos of every sort of thing except the guy himself.
He shook his head. ”Nothing else?”
”A person in a TV show.”
”What TV show?”
”The Mummy. Animated.”
”Probably not, no.”
Trouble was, Simon Montgomery, whoever he was, was important to him, he was sure of it. They kept searching pages full of odd mentions, none of which seemed very promising and some of which weren't even from the recent century. Finally, he had to admit defeat and ask her to check for Silar instead.
”Clock,” she said after a few failed spelling attempts.
”What?”
”Sylar. It's a clock. Look.” She showed him pictures of clocks, watches, all of the brand Sylar.
”That makes no sense. Why would I remember the name of some clock?”
”It's a expensive clock. Maybe you had one, before.”
”Right.” He couldn't keep the sarcasm out of his voice. ”I can't remember my wife, or my children, but I remember my watch.”
”Sometimes it's like that,” she said softly.
”And I guess you're the expert?”
”A little. I work with dement people.”
”You do, huh?” Yet another reminder that things could have been worse, he supposed. He leaned his head in his hands and thought for a while. ”So what have we got? A watch I may have worn, a plaza I may have been to, and a Japanese kid who seems to have vanished into thin air.”
”What else is there on the sheet?”
He handed it over. ”Peter.”
She gave him a sympathetic grimace that showed that she was as aware as he was of how impossible it was to follow that lead. ”I am sorry.”
”Damn it, Peter,” he muttered. ”Why couldn't you have a last name?”
***
He actually slept well that night, and woke up at a reasonable hour. The day that followed was uneventful and a bit boring - he really needed to look into getting a job. Lounging about the apartment watching daytime television was torture after a while, and in any case, he couldn't live off the Mansours forever.
Still. No memories, no surprises. Not until the next night.
He dreamed of Kirby Plaza, though from a different angle than the one he'd seen in the Internet picture. Instead of standing below the sculpture, he was soaring high above it, seeing groups of people gathered below. And in the centre, a glowing figure, someone he had to reach in time. He could feel his heart pounding and the bitter taste of urgency in his mouth.
A blonde girl raised a gun. In the dream he knew exactly who she was, though he couldn't articulate it. The gun, the glow, one of those things was going to go off, and either option was a disaster he couldn't let happen.
It was down to him. He had to make it right. He swept down, bracing himself...
...and the blonde screamed, loudly and shrilly.
He woke up with a dropping sensation, followed by a thud that jolted through his body. The change was dizzying, as was the shift in perspective from upright to lying down.
The plaza had been replaced with a small, dark room, and the woman standing in the doorway screaming her lungs out was most definitely not a blonde.
”Aisha?” he asked, scrambling to sit up. ”What's wrong?”
She stopped screaming to point an accusing finger at him. ”You flied!”
”What? Of course not! What are you talking about?” Even as he started protesting, he knew instinctively that what she said was true; he had been flying, and it wasn't the first time. Kirby Plaza was more than just a dream, it was a memory, just like his memory of shooting through the sky before Qais found him.
The other Mansours came rushing in, which was hardly surprising - anyone who could sleep through that racket had to be either drugged, deaf, or dead. Adil and Zaynab came first, then Rim, and after Aisha had already started shouting excitedly to the rest of her family, Qais, rubbing his eyes.
”Han flög!” Aisha said. ”En halv jävla meter ovanför sängen, jag svär...”
He watched Aisha point at him and measure a distance closer to the ceiling than any sleeping man should conceivably be. If he was to manage any form of damage control, he'd better start right away.
”Will somebody talk to me?” he asked, annoyed. ”Please?”
Aisha turned back and repeated what she had clearly been saying all along. ”You flied!”
”Flew,” Rim muttered.
”Shut up!”
Despite his predicament, he felt a pang of sympathy for Aisha - Rim's nitpicking was without a doubt ill-chosen.
”It's late,” he said. ”Or early. In any case, you're obviously still tired, and your mind is playing tricks on you. Let's just calm down and be rational. People can't fly.”
He noticed Qais' expression grow more stricken with every word, and cursed his bad luck. ”Don't you even start!”
Qais just stared at him wide-eyed for a second, and then his face softened in a smile. ”If you stop lying, I won't have to.”
Everyone grew quiet. He sat down heavily on the bed, wondering how the hell he was supposed to get out of this.
”You can really fly?” Rim asked in a very small voice.
He gave a self-conscious shrug. ”Apparently.”
”How?” Qais asked.
”I don't know. How do you do what you do?”
”You can fly,” Adil repeated, with both wonder and disbelief evident in those few words.
”Show them,” Aisha said softly.
His stomach churned at the idea of flying in front of all these people. What choice did he have, though? He couldn't talk his way out of this, and they were blocking the only exit. For that matter, running wouldn't exactly do him any good.
He took a deep breath and let go, like opening a hand you'd held clenched for much too long. A bit awkward, slow, but at the same time perfectly natural.
The room was small, which meant he couldn't stretch out the way he might want, the way he knew that he could, now that he thought about it, but he let his body drift a few inches up, rejoicing in the sensation and trying really hard not to think about the people staring.
Which they did, and he could only ignore that for a minute before forcing himself back onto the floor.
Qais mumbled something that had his mother swat him lightly at the back of his head.
”Are you an angel?” Rim asked.
”No.” At least no one was screaming anymore. Being mistaken for an angel was quite acceptable in comparison.
”A djinn?”
”What? No.”
”Get off it, Rim, he's not a djinn,” Qais said.
”You said his clothes were burned.”
”Why would a djinn burn his own clothes?”
She turned back to him, excited. ”Were you fighting a djinn? Is that is?”
”I wasn't fighting anyone!” he protested. ”I'm not an angel, or a djinn, or anything like that.”
”Then what are you?” Aisha asked.
”I don't know.”
Everyone was quiet for a while. Zaynab pulled her dressing gown closer around her body. Rim bit her lip, as if she was holding back something she wanted to say.
Finally, Adil reached out and pulled a book from the pile on the desk. He held it up. ”Activating Evolution.”
He took a deep, shivering breath. ”I was wondering why I picked up that book.”
”This - is you.”
”I guess so, yes.”
”And Qais.”
He looked at Qais thoughtfully. Five minutes ago, he had cursed the man's gift for lie detecting. Now it felt like the one thing in this mess that was on his side. ”Yeah.”
”Me?” Qais seemed taken aback. ”I'm good at spotting liars. That's hardly like flying.”
”Good at spotting liars?” Rim echoed.
”She's right,” Aisha said. ”Good doesn't even cover it.”
Adil was watching him intently and patiently, still holding up the book. ”This says what you are?”
”I don't know. I haven't read it yet.”
It sounded pathetic, and the reason, which he didn't share, was even more so. He'd been afraid to read it, getting ill with unease every time he picked it up.
Adil just nodded, though, and calmly stating, ”I suppose it is time to read it now - for us, as well,” kissed Qais on the top of the head.
In a strange way, he felt that the kiss encompassed him too, and so he relaxed his tense shoulders and dared to smile.