"Who are you?" Audrey asked.
"They called me Chaos when they buried me, but you may call me Peace."
Audrey felt her legs getting stiff from standing, and Peace must have sensed it.
"I believe there is at least one chair in the room," she offered.
Audrey looked around until her eye fell on a heap of ash in the corner.
"Yeah, um," she remarked, "It looks like it burnt up." The thought occurred to her as she spoke the words. "Hey," she took a seat on the floor, "Are you the one who's been making things burn up around this area?"
"I'm afraid so," the woman admitted. "You have heard of the Troubles, correct?" She continued before Audrey could respond, "Of course you have; anyway I was born in Boston, deaf and blind. Right about the time my parents discovered a doctor in Haven who claimed to be able to cure me, the Troubles started. I got my sight and hearing back, yes, but I was also afflicted with dynamogenesis at any sound or any sight or any movement."
"What's dynamogenesis?" Audrey asked, amazed that someone deaf and blind could detect her presence and understand her so completely.
Peace turned her head slightly—a tiny movement—and Audrey felt a blast of heat radiate from her body at the same time she heard Nathan cry out. Audrey whirled back toward the door and saw that it had totally melted right on it's hinges.
"That is dynamogenesis; liquid boils, wood and plants burn, metal heats and melts, and gas ignites. Under normal Trouble conditions, it would only happen when I got agitated, but for me, it was any little sound I heard, any pinprick of light I saw, any voluntary movement of my body—obviously not a cure at all, so they gave up on me, pronounced me twice-damned and incurable, and buried me down here with enough intravenous nourishment to last me fifty years—till the next wave of Troubles came."
Audrey's head spun; was this what Lucy knew before she was erased? Could this woman be the key to curing the Troubles once and for all?
"How did you know the Troubles were back again?" she asked.
"Why else would anyone even think if digging me up? Certainly no one wanted to be around me!"
"Why not?" Nathan asked, coming into the room.
Audrey noticed that he had blood dripping out of his nose again. "Because the human body has a lot of liquids in it," she pointed the trickle out to Nathan, "like blood."
"Yes," Peace agreed, "and bile, and humors, and sweat." Her voice dropped to a whisper. "I was only five years old; the first sounds I ever heard were cries of agony, and my first sight was that of every nurse and doctor in the operating room shriveling and dying before my eyes because every ounce of liquid in their flesh superheated and evaporated."
Briefly, Audrey wondered if she should really be that close to such a dangerous patient. She continuously glanced over her shoulder to see if Nathan would collapse again.
Peace continued, "Of course, they had to seal my ears and cover my eyes again, but they found out that any voluntary movement of my body, or even the movement of cloth against my skin also had a dangerous effect, hence the straitjacket. As long as I keep perfectly still, I am relatively harmless."
"So I guess we know what almost killed the Garelsons," Audrey mused.
Peace seemed almost horrified. "I killed someone? Surely my effects can't be that strong from a distance!"
"Peace, three people are dead: one lady poured boiling water over her head, one killed herself and a third was roasted alive at his kitchen table. There was a couple who we thought might be behind it all, because their symptoms matched the irrational behavior of all the other victims, but I guess we were looking at the wrong common thread."
"Irrational?" Peace asked. "Hmm; can you tell me whether the heat occurred before or after the irrationality?"
Audrey shrugged before she remembered to whom she spoke, so she said aloud, "I don't know for sure on all of them, but the ones with witnesses seem to fit a pattern of the flame up happening just before the irrationality comes."
Peace was silent for a long time.
"He's here," she whispered at last.
"Who?" Audrey asked.
"The Enemy."
"What enemy?"
"Nobody knows his name, but his Trouble is unmistakable. He can get into your head and make you do whatever he wants, and he can walk by and even talk to you and then make you forget you ever saw him."
"Well, why hasn't anything like this happened before?"
"Oh, but it has; he is the reason I had to be buried in a bunker like this. He's probably been living here, making everyone he meets forget about him, behave irrationally, and kill themselves, since they buried me; he's waiting for me because he wants my Trouble."
Audrey shivered, "Wait, so he has a Trouble, but he can also take on the Troubles of his victims?"
"Only one at a time, but yes. When he is the cause of a Troubled person's death, he can assume their Trouble. The difference is that he is fully aware of his ability, and fully in control of it. He cannot help assuming the Trouble when a Troubled person is killed, but every time a new kill is made, he must give up the previously acquired Trouble."
"So how come things never melted and burned before now, if you've been buried here the whole time?"
Peace considered the question before answering. "Maybe because before, when I was awake, times were not Troubled, but I have just awakened now during this time, which tends to activate my Trouble, as much as I try to stop it."
"So the melting, boiling, and burning were not done by you on purpose, but then the irrational behavior was this Enemy, coming in behind you and maybe..." she thought over possible motivations, "Maybe he was searching their minds to find out where you were and if they had seen you."
"I'm so sorry those people had to die," Peace responded. "But Lucy, that's not the worst of it."
"I'm not—" Audrey started to protest, but Peace didn't let her as she continued, "Just think what he could be capable of if he could control a power like mine: he could kill anyone he wanted, he'd be impervious to heat and cold, he could melt bullets in midair and diffuse electricity... He'd be unstoppable."
Audrey fidgeted and stood to her feet. Nathan motioned her over.
"We need to get her out of here," he said.
"Why?" Audrey asked, "You heard what she said; the Enemy has not found her yet, and if we're lucky, we can just close everything up and—" she faltered as she remembered that Peace had already melted the door of her room.
Nathan resumed, "We are her protectors now, till either the Troubles go away, or the Enemy can be stopped; leaving her in here would be like leaving a canned mouse for a cat."
"Lucy can keep me safe, Nathan," Peace spoke up.
Audrey turned back to her, feeling the same old lurch in her gut as every time she thought about her alternate identity—if she really could call it hers.
"Lucy isn't here, Peace," she said through clenched teeth.
"Aren't you Lucy?" Peace persisted.
"No," Audrey stated. "I'm not. My name is Audrey Parker."
"But you are Lucy," Peace insisted. "Or perhaps you knew her?"
Audrey was growing more frustrated. "No I'm—"
"Hey," Nathan interrupted, "Check this out."
Audrey welcomed the opportunity to shift her focus off Peace and her strange fixation with Lucy Ripley. She looked toward the ceiling, where Nathan pointed.
The ceiling had hinges in the corners, and latches down the middle. It was not a solid piece, but split so that it could open easy.
"We could just lift her through the roof," Audrey murmured.
"Careful, though," Peace warned, "The more people who know about me, the easier it will be for the Enemy to find me in their minds and memories."
Audrey looked around the room. There was a dresser, a small table, and a large steamer trunk in addition to the gurney. She grinned at Nathan.
"I have an idea," she said, "and I know just the person to help us."
