In Pursuit of...

Macy Gleason was sitting on a park bench near a lakeside on a Saturday afternoon. She held her mochi snack in one hand and took a sip from the straw of her raspberry boba tea in the other hand.

There were a dozen children playing in the nearby area where the swings and slides were. Their voices weren’t loud enough to distract her from watching the weeks-old ducklings follow their mother as she swam from one side of the algae filled pond to the other.

When her troubled mind satiated by the calm of the scenery, she walked to the trash bin tossed in her empty cup, and then headed north on the narrow sidewalk towards the park exit. As she left, a woman in active wear jogged past and waved. Macy hadn’t recognized her, so she assumed it was a friendly gesture and responded in kind.

When Macy entered the parking lot, she reached into her purse, removed her earbuds, and placed them into the case -which was promptly returned to the storage compartment of her bag. She opened her car door and as she was about to enter, a woman’s voice interrupted her.

“Excuse me, I was just wondering, where did you buy your necklace from?” The jogger from earlier had circled back with a keen interest in Macy’s blue flowered pendant that hung from a silver chain around her neck.

“Oh, this?” Macy pulled at the pendant and peered down at it and then back at the jogger. “This pendant is something that my grandmother handed down to my mother and then to me,” Macy explained.

“Well, I just wanted to tell you that it’s absolutely gorgeous. It looks good on you.”

“Thank you.”

The jogger waved and continued on her way and Macy entered her car, buckled her seat belt, and started her car. She checked her mirror and looked both ways as she pulled out of her parking spot. She took a hold of the pendant and in an instant; she was traveling down the Pacific Coast Highway near Davenport, CA.

“That was close,” she thought. Macy checked her rearview mirror and was confident that she was simply one of the many drivers on their way to Half-Moon Bay.

Still, she wasn’t taking any chances. She cinched the pendant in her palm once more and she was standing in-line at a Tres-Amigos Taqueria, with the view of waves crashing onto the shore in Francis Beach in her periphery. She shifted her eyes from side to side, behind the cover of her dark sunglasses, as she surveyed the people and her current surroundings.

Two minutes had passed since her encounter with the jogger in the park seventy-two miles away. That woman could have been no one, or she could have been one of the many people that have tried to separate Macy from her pendant.

Whoever they were, they were always two steps behind, even in their most recent attempts. First there was the man with a missing ear, who targeted her at the nail salon. His failed attempt to blend in raised suspicions immediately and she was able to escape before he could make a move.

Then there were other encounters that weren’t so obvious. The woman who was pretending to push her infant in a stroller while Macy was entering her office building. It was sheer luck that a construction worker happened to capture Macy’s attention with his loud hammering. The woman with the stroller abandoned it and walked away when her opportunity had been thwarted.

Macy knew she couldn’t keep running for long. She had to sleep soon and let her head rest. Three teleportation activities in such a brief time left a physical strain on her.

Standing at the front of the line, Macy ordered some steak fries and a margarita. She would blend in well with the rest of the customers dining on the patio that overlooked the beach.

She closed her eyes and recalled when all of this first started. It was two weeks ago, just after she turned eighteen, when her mother passed away from terminal cancer. Her uncle handed her a box and a note from her mother.

The box contained the heirloom pendant and her mother’s note: Macy, this is a special pendant that used to belong to your grandmother. She gave it to me and now it’s time for you to have it. Take care of it. You’ll know what to do when the time comes. Love, Mom.

Macy wore the pendant at her mother’s funeral. The crowd that attended the graveside memorial was small and consisted of people that knew her mom best. Macy didn’t recognize a man and woman dressed in matching white outfits. The pair expressed their condolences, and each gave Macy a type of hug that was usually reserved for close relatives.

The pendant grew unusually warm near her bare skin, and she clutched it instinctively. That was the moment that she first experienced teleportation. She found herself in her mother’s room. All her mother’s belongings remained the way she had left them before she was hospitalized. Macy carefully observed the photos of her mother and father displayed throughout the bedroom.

“How did I get here?” she asked herself. As she shifted her view from one wall to the next, she felt a cold chill run down her spine. “Mom, are you here?” Macy walked to the front of the unmade bed and picked up a dress that her mother had laid out to wear before she was hospitalized. She held it close in her arms and placed the fabric against her nose and inhaled. “I miss you so much.” Tears welled up in the corner of Macy’s eyes, but she would not allow them to run down her face.

She looked at the time on her mother’s wall clock. It was only a minute after the funeral. She didn’t remember driving, and the cemetery was over an hour away. She placed the dress back on the bed just as she found it, then headed to the front of the house to check if her car was in the driveway.

Nothing. There was no sign of her car.

“Where’s my car?” She pulled out her phone and called James.

“Yeah. Where’d you go? People are asking for you. Are you okay?” James asked.

“No. I mean… yes, I’m okay. Hey is my car there?”

James looks over towards the road and locates her car. “Yeah, right where you left it. Where are you at?”

“I’m at mom’s house.”

“Wait, what?”

“Yeah.”

“How? You were standing right here.” James sounds incredulous.

“I don’t know. It’s weird. I’m going to need a ride.”

Just then, Sammy, a waiter at Tres-Amigos Taqueria interrupts Macy’s thoughts. “Senorita, more chips and salsa?”

She politely smiles, nods, and waves him off. “Where was I?” she says to herself before closing her eyes once more.

Macy recalls the next encounter as the one where she was nearly kidnapped. After her Pilates class, she left the gym in the afternoon. A dark-haired woman wearing a long, dark green coat followed her, and tried to force her into a van that had just pulled in front of her with the side door open. Fortunately, Macy fell to her knee as the woman tried to shove her inside. The thud of her hands landing against the door made the driver think the two women were inside, and he sped away. The pendant against her skin grew warm, causing the van to crash into a light pole, trapping everyone inside. Macy, unfazed by her scraped knee, quickly fled on foot in the opposite direction.

Blaring horns on the speakers sounded the start of a new Cumbia song. Her margarita glass was empty, and so were her steak fries. She had worked up an appetite, and rightfully so. The power of the pendant required plenty of fuel, both mentally and physically. Macy set two twenty-dollar bills on the table and made her way out to the beach that had been in her periphery, out of the Taqueria window.

When she reached the shore, she slipped her shoes off her feet and let the incoming tide cover her ankles in cold saltwater. She stood with her arms outstretched and the wind blowing through her shoulder length auburn hair. Her bracelets clanged against one another and reflected the sunlight in colorful glints.

“You’re early,” the stranger said.

Macy ran her fingers through her hair and then turned to the man who was wearing a colorful Hawaiian shirt and khaki chino shorts. “Traffic was better than I expected.”

“I’m just glad to see that you’re safe. Were you followed?” He looked over his shoulder, peered above the frame of his sunglasses, and only seen the typical beach crowd.

“Thanks. No one knows where I’m headed. Besides, they’d need an hour to catch up to me.”

“Good. Let’s go somewhere safe and get to work.” Securing his finger around the silver chain, he exposed a pendant that was identical to Macy’s from beneath his shirt.

Macy placed two fingers across her own pendant, and she felt the charm get warm. She took the man’s hand, interlocked her fingers with his, and closed her eyes. The breeze from the ocean stopped and so did the sound of the seagulls and beach goers.

The long hallway was narrow, white, and without decor. Macy’s heels echoed down the corridor with each step that she took and the further she got; the proceeding overhead lights would illuminate her way ahead.

“Do you know where it is stored?” He was at her side, hand still clasped together with hers.

“There should be a door to the control room. We have to disable the iron cage that surrounds it.”

“You sure we couldn’t just teleport there?”

“I’m positive. The amount of iron causes too much interference. It’s likely we’d become liquid goop if we tried it.”

The pair turn a corner after reaching the end of the hall. A narrow, unmarked door was to their right. “Here.” Macy separated her hand from his and carefully tested the doorknob with her hand. “It’s locked.” She placed two fingers across her pendant, and the handle on the door slowly turned. “Your turn.”

The man places his hand on the door and slowly opens it. His other hand is at the ready over his pendant. A lone security guard sits at a small desk with his back turned towards the door as he watches over an array of computer monitors with various video feeds and data streams.

Macy gives her companion a reassuring nod and his fingers apply pressure to the pendant as his thoughts flow from his mind to the charm. The security guard is flung from his chair onto the wall adjacent to his monitors. The force of the impact causes his head to hit a support beam and renders him unconscious. “That should give us a bit of time.”

“Is he dead?” Macy asks.

“Just a little nap. He might wake up with a headache, though.” The man proceeded to examine the control panel. “I think that’s the one. I’ll disable it now.” He flips over a cover and presses a green button. “That’s it?”

“Expecting confetti and balloon? It’s a switch to a cage in another room. Let’s move.” Macy’s sense of urgency encourages him to follow her.

The duo moves quickly past an adjacent corridor which is shorter than the one before. It also has various oil paintings of outdoor scenery. “Look for the one with the view from atop a mountain overlooking a forest below,” Macy informs her companion as the two split duties and one takes the right side of the hallway, while the other takes the left.

“I found it. It’s this one,” he says.

“Yeah, that’s the one.” She makes her way back to the door and they both stand on opposite sides of the door frame.

He signals her to wait while he uses his pendant. The door handle turns, and the door slowly opens forty-five degrees into the room. “Your turn.”

Macy peers from the edge. The room is dark and appears empty. She moves her hand along the inside wall until she finds a switch and flips it on. “There,” she points along the far wall, showing that the bars of an iron gate are raised three-fourths of the way up.

She cautiously makes her way past a few cluttered desks as she heads for the iron gates. Her companion is a few steps behind. The pair keep their bodies low, in a semi-squat position as they inch their way closer until Macy passes the threshold under the raised bars.

The beam from her flashlight illuminates the darker areas of the small, dimly lit room the size of a walk-in closet. Shelves line each wall, containing an assortment of boxes with various labels - some faded with age, and others more recent.

Macy closes her eyes and places two fingers on the pendant, which warms once more, and allows her to see certain objects in the room with a heightened sense of clarity. “There, it is That’s the one.” She reaches for a box labeled transcendence and slides it off the shelf. After placing it on the floor, Macy squats down to open the shoe box style lid.

“What’s in there?” The man asks.

Macy removes the item from its container and rests it in her palm. “It’s the final pendant.” A silver chain dangles from her palm as a pendant identical to her and her companion begins to emanate heat against her skin.

“Amazing. You were able to divine its location using your own pendant. Think of the possibilities of what someone could do with all three together.”

“Yeah. I can imagine why they’re after it. I’m just glad we got here first.” Macy closes the lid and places the empty box back. The newly found pendant grew warmer in her hand. “Something’s not right. We should get out of here.” She warns.

“We better move then. Here, you should let me hold on to that.” He stands in the doorway with his hand outstretched.

Macy can feel the temperature rising in her palm. The pendant across her chest is now warming to match the one in her hand. She examines his posture. “It’s okay, I got it.”

“No. You don’t understand. Give me the artifact.”

The foreboding shift in his tone causes Macy to take a step back as she reaches for her own pendant.

“Don’t do anything hasty. We don’t know what it does yet and how it will behave in conjunction with yours,” he reasons.

“Are you forgetting that you have one of these around your neck, too?” she counters.

“Look, you’ve been through a lot. I just think it would be better…” He is interrupted by the sudden lowering of the gate above him.

Macy leaps forward and yanks the pendant from around his neck. She shoves him past the threshold of the doorway onto the other side, as the gate descends to the floor.

“You don’t want to do this, kid.” He shouts.

Macy, now with the two pendants in her hand, brings the three together and closes her eyes. A burst of air fills the small room, and a searing light temporarily blinds the man on the other side of the gate.

Macy Gleason was gone.