Temet Nosce

I was here before, I have seen it all.

The smashed pieces of metal, melded into each other, resemble an impressionistic piece of art, grotesque and visceral, thought provoking, only it isn’t: it smells like burned flesh. The blood is spread on the ground, its color turning darker and darker as the night goes on. I wish I was not here, I wish I was in my bare room, looking at the moldy walls of the bearded man’s house. The man calls himself my uncle, and I know he isn’t, and he knows that I know, and yet we never talk. We have never talked. It is our number one policy, the first rule of fight club: you don’t talk about fight club. 

If it was a movie, he would have been my mentor. I was emotionally attached, but in denial, and he was too, even more so, and our duo would be a heartwarming one. His final death, his inevitable demise, would bring tears to the eyes, and I’d mourn him for a year. I would never move one.

My self proclaimed uncle, however, is not my mentor. He does not know, has never known, and has no intention of knowing, what martial art is, and what constant training is, and most importantly, what it is like to have a superpower you do not know. 

Oh but how meticulously he makes sure I don’t. Evey night, right before bed, he appears at the doorway. I used to dread him when I was younger, I sat on my bed, sweating and shivering with my eyes closed, praying he would never come. But he did. Every night. 

He was gentle. He must’ve been a nurse at some point, because the needle never went too far into my skin, the blood never came out. I was not physically hurt, though I was emotionally scarred. I did not know the needle can be used for anything good, and I certainly didn’t guess, he might have been doing me a favor. 

Has it been a favor, I ask myself, now that I am here, on the road, a tragedy unfolded before my eyes. Did I do this, I ask myself, over and over again. Did I, did I, did I … No matter how many times I repeat the questions, the answers never emerge, they’re not even there. How do they do it? Even the strongest memory erasers leave something: a hazy picture, a vague feeling, a premonition that doesn’t precede the event, but comes after it, often too late. Is it too late? 

I search for the traces of any humans who might have been in the car. I find a naked dull, its cloth burned into ashes, its eyes melted down. I look into its hollowed eyes, searching for an answer. Where are they? Have they burned into nothingness, a void? Have I saved them, or have I killed them? Even the best scenario does not exonerate me, doesnt’t wash out my guilt. The blood beneath my shoes, dark as the night itself, reveals the truth. 

Where are the bodies? 

In the darkness spread out in the air, and inside my soul, I look for them. I close my eyes and try to imagine, in vain, how they might have been before the incident, how their bodies might have changed, the burning, the mutilation, the dread in their eyes. I hear a sigh, not too far, but too low - too familiar. 

Uncle, his silver hair like a source of light in the night, does not say anything. Motionless, almost like an inanimate object, he stares into my eyes. I’ve been preparing for this moment, and somehow I have prepared myself for violence, resistance, struggle. He is quiet though, and looks at me not with anger, not with anything, as he has always done. 

“I am not coming with you. Never.” 

“Even if I told you where they are?” 

I feel my heart drop. He has offered me a key, and now I see the door had never been locked, only I was too afraid to look. 

I hang my head, my emotion suddenly too intense to shake off. I have never experienced emotions, not in the real sense. Constantly medicated, I have barely been a human. I wonder if Uncle is the same. 

“Why didn’t you want me to remember this? What happened to them?” 

“You have done your job. You did everything you could.” 

“What does that mean?” I am yelling now. I have never yelled before. The voice, coming from somewhere deep in my chest, shaking my vocal cords on its way out, surprises me. But it doesn’t surprise Uncle. 

“It means,” he says slowly, “that you need to come with me, and if you want to know, you have to know it all. Not just a part, or two, all of it.” 

I have never seen him say anything emphatically, with real emotion, and this must be the closest he has done so. He is a human, after all. 

“Are you ready?” and I know he doesn’t mean it physically, ready to go on a ride, look at the bodies, and know what happened. It’s an invitation to another world, a world free of medication and memory loss, a world of knowledge and pain. An invitation to turn the little Pinocchio into a real human. 

I run. 

***

I was eight years old when they came. The kidnappers. Not that anyone noticed. It was not a dramatic show, and I’m sure no one put up a notice, no one bothered to call the police. I was playing by myself, on the empty field. My father had been dead for a year then, and my mother would pay them to take me away, “one less mouth to feed,” she would say. Children went missing in our neighborhood all the time, and no one asked questions. It was a given, a fact of life. I did not struggle when they took me away, I thought they’d take me to a palace, with servants and warm food, expensive toys to play with. I was not wrong.  

The palace was white, so white in fact, that I found myself dreaming in white, thinking in white. I was used to darker colors, to gray, to black. My brown skin in the white clothes, close to white walls, looked bright and fresh, I watched myself in the mirror for hours and hours. I had never done that before, never bothered to look at myself. I barely knew what I looked like. Now I knew. And I liked it. 

One day, after breakfast, they took me away. Away from the whiteness surrounding my new life, away from my brief period of happiness. They took me to Uncle. 

He was stronger then, his muscles showing even under his navy blue shirt. I was frightened, and after he smiled, forced and full of pity, I knew there was something wrong. I just didn’t know what, and it took me ten years to figure that out. 

Today I am eighteen. I am ready to know who I am, who I was working for, and if I have murdered, if I have shed blood. 

Excpet I am not, and when Uncle offers me the truth, I panic. I run.

I am running through the forest now, my justification is that I don’t want his tyranny anymore, I don’t want lies. How do I know he won’t take me to the cabin again? He won’t force the needle into my skin? I run until I know I am far, and I have barely stopped, before I see the helicopter descending into the empty road in front me. Uncle steps out. 

“I am not forcing you, I am giving you a choice.” 

“And you’re chasing me with a helicopter?” 

His eyes, hollow like that of the doll’s, show the distant trace of an emotion, a kind of pain, or pity, the one I saw on his face on our first encounter. Somehow I feel ready, maybe I have been ready for a long time and now I accept it, I step forward, look into his eyes, as if telling him he is a bastard if he’s lying, and he knows. He holds the door for me, I step into the helicopter. 

He is going to take me to the place where the bodies are, to the place where knowledge resides, sacred and hidden, waiting for me. 

***

A week after I was relocated, and I lived in the cabin with Uncle, they came. This time, they were covered: their faces in rough cotton, their bodies in bulletproof clothing. They did not talk. 

One of them, whom I assumed was a woman, gave me a booklet. I could hardly read, but I saw the figures in martial arts poses. I looked at them in confusion, and they were already laying out the tools, my work clothes, my weapons. I was about to learn how to fight. 

Every morning was spent in extreme physical exertion, and every night Uncle gave me a pen and a paper. My education was thorough, both mental and physical, and I had many questions, and they had many answers, both of which were utterly irrelevant. 

“Who are these people? Why did they take me? Where am I?” and somewhere deep in my soul, I saw a question shaping, a question I had not dared to ask yet, a question I would not ask for a long time: Who am I?

When I finally do ask the question, it is a bit underwhelming, nothing like the movie scenes where the identity of the protagonist is revealed bit by bit, and then all the once, in a spectacular way. Nothing about this is spectacular. The noise of the helicopter is deafening, and Uncle has not ridden a helicopter for a long time. We are about to fall to our death when I ask, “Who am I?”

“You … save people’s lives.” 

“How do I do that? How did I never notice?” 

“You weren’t supposed to. They erased your memories after each incident. The things you see … the things you do, they are all very dangerous. They can’t let you know.” 

“Who are they?” 

He presses his lips, and concentrates on not falling anymore. I don’t push him, and I try to process what I have just heard. Saving lives. It doesn’t sound right. It doesn’t sound right at all. 

We land on the rooftop of what turns out to be a dilapidated hospital. He takes me to a room, which smells familiar: metal, flesh and blood. Suddenly I don’t want to be here. I step back.

“You don’t want to see them?” he asks, quietly. 

“Are they dead?” 

“Not exactly.” 

He opens the curtains, and I see three bodies lying still. A middle aged man, a woman in her late twenties, and a girl, probably six years old. I remember the doll, and I feel very cold. 

I can see the injuries, the bruises, and yet they are clean. They are not breathing. 

“You call that saving lives?” 

“You did save them. These are not real. They are not real people.” 

I just look at him now. He must be a lunatic, or I must be one. 

“They are clones of the real people. You saved their bodies from burning. They can fix them.” 

I turn to look at them again. They feel so real. 

“Who am I then, another clone?” 

“They could make one of you, but it would be of no use. You can … do things. Your clone won’t.” 

“But what ...  things?” 

I have, somehow, known that for a long time. I just hadn’t let myself believe it. 

He pauses for a moment and then pulls out a tablet, taps it open and shows me a clip. 

It is the car, before the accident. I appear like a shadow, only a second before the crash. How did I know? I can hardly follow myself, everything happens so quickly I have to pause the clip and go back every two seconds. I pull out the bodies before the fire, the other car has only one man in it, he runs. The other one has three, the same three who are lying on the bed behind me. The little girl is stuck between the seat and the floor of the car, and I remove the seat as if it was a piece of plastic. I pull her out just before the car explodes. 

“It is not just the power, the rapidity. You know things, before they happen.” 

“How? And how did I not know?” 

“The drugs won’t let it happen in everyday life. They wanted to have your powers only for themselves.” 

“And who are … they?” 

“At its core, a private organization. But it’s more complicated than that. It used to be simple, you know. A government, and one of its allies. They paid, we did the job. It was not dirty money either. We were bodyguards, mostly. Protecting the most vulnerable politicians, some of them even good. But it has changed, everything has changed. The organization is a government in itself now, a small country. They have thousands of clients, thousands of people to protect … or not.“ 

I have never seen him talk for so long, but I can’t concentrate on him. It must be the drugs, or the lack of them. 

“You said I know things before they happen?” 

“What are you seeing?” 

“Them. They are coming.” 

“We should hurry, then.” 

He gives me a briefcase, and pushes me towards the window. 

“You haven’t been drugged for more than a day. You can use your powers. These are the cases you have been involved in. You can negotiate with them … you can go to the police. Do what you want. Run.” 

I can hear them now. I climb out, and before I go, I say, “wait. That day, when I resisted the drugs, when I escaped, you didn’t do anything. You wanted me to know, didn’t you?” 

“It was time. And it’s time for me to be retired.” 

“But … “ 

He closes the window before I have time. I climb down the wall, I run. 

And now I know why the crash scene seemed like a déjà vu - I had remembered, not the scene itself, but my feeling of it. 

The powers surging through my body, I am far away before I feel them entering the room, arresting Uncle. I will find him, I will save him. 

For now, I am free. I can fly. 

I am who I want to be.