By Any Other Name

By Any Other Name 15 MINUTE READ

The day was oppressively hot. Najma was finding that Wyoming did not, as a rule, have days that weren’t oppressively hot in the summer. Her life in Iran was the only thing that hardened her enough to the extreme temperatures to keep her from making her way by hopping from shaded pavilion to shaded pavilion clustered around the dig site. Some people stopped in their work to look at her in surprise. The dress code among the scientists laboring over the new discovery in the Badlands was tank top and shorts. Dressed in all black, from her tightly wrapped hijab to the tips of her heavy boots, and covered from wrist to ankle, she stood out like a shadow as she cut through the bright dig site.

She found the woman she was looking for also wearing a tank top and shorts, deep brown skin exposed and darkening under the sun, crouched over what appeared to be massive finger bones embedded in sandy rock. She wore her hair pulled back in short twists and didn’t look up even when Najma stood so close she shaded her work. Najma had to clear her throat before the woman glanced up.

“Uh,” she said, confusion plain as day as she took in Najma, “can I help you?”

“Antoinette Doherty?” Najma asked, hands folded together behind her back as she looked down at her. The woman blinked in surprise before standing and clapping dirt from her hands.

“Netta,” she corrected, extending a hand for Najma to shake. “Dad’s big on literary names, but ‘Antoinette’ is a bit of a mouthful.”

“As in Marie Antoinette?” Najma guessed. Netta gave her a rueful smile.

“Far too cheerful. Wide Sargasso Sea,” she said. “Anti-colonialism was served with the grits back home. What’s your name?”

“I’m Najma Behzadi,” Najma said, dropping Netta’s hand after a firm shake and smiling at her. “You seem a busy woman and I don’t want to take up too much of your time, so I’ll just get straight to the point. I work with an agency seeking a potentially dangerous individual, and we received a tip that she might’ve taken an interest in your family. Have you been approached by or seen anyone unusual lately? Anyone who, perhaps, made you uncomfortable?”

Netta stood and crossed her toned arms over her chest and frowned as she thought. “Nobody I can think of. Not many people make a point of hanging around the Badlands unless they’ve got work here. This dig site and the crew involved are pretty entrenched, too. I’ve known most of these people for years.”

“You can think of no one?” Najma pressed. “Have you heard anything unusual from other members of your family?”

“Nope,” ‘Netta said. She shrugged. “The only people excited about my work are usually under the age of ten or under the influence of Jurassic Park. And Mom and Dad don’t get many visitors now that he’s retired and she’s too infirm to run church things. Siblings and cousins aren’t in touch that much. Sorry I can’t be of more help.”

Najma nodded in understanding and slipped a card out of a case in her pocket. It was made of cream cardstock, printed very simply with:

Director Najma Behzadi (659)-555-1023

“Please contact me if you do, in the future, note an individual who seems out of place, or hear from any of your relatives about someone fitting that description,” Najma said as she handed the card over. “Thank you for taking time out of your day to speak with me. Best of luck here.”

“Thanks,” Netta said as she shoved the card in a pocket of her jean shorts. She flashed a grin and added, in her soft Texan twang, “My grad students get any lazier, I’ll definitely need it.”

Najma turned and was a few steps back towards the distant parking area when she heard Netta snap her fingers and call out.

“Wait!” she said. “I can’t believe I forgot— while you’re here, you might could check with my sister-in-law.”

Najma frowned as she internally reviewed what she knew about the Doherty family from her files. “Sister-in-law?”

“Yeah!” Netta said, happy, apparently, just to have something helpful to give. “She was staying down with Mom and Dad for a while but flew up to see me, and what little sights there are in Wyoming, a few weeks ago. She’s just up the slope a ways, keeping under a pavilion so she doesn’t burn to a crisp. She’s pretty keen-eyed and good with people. She might’ve caught something I didn’t.”

Najma gave Netta a tight smile. “Fantastic. I have to ask, though… The files our agency has access to regarding your family don’t list any of your siblings as being married.”

“Us Dohertys don’t have good luck with love,” Netta joked. She blotted sweat on the neck with a crumpled bandana she yanked out of a back pocket. “No, it turns out it was the black sheep, my older sister, who finally got her life together enough to find someone willing to marry her. After she died, Therése turned up on our doorstep to give us the news and reconnect. She was the best thing to come out the whole ordeal. Mom and Dad think she hung the moon. Like I said, she’s just up the slope.”

“I’ll head that way,” Najma assured her. “One last question. How… If I may, how did your older sister pass?”

“Oh, in the war,” Netta answered without missing a beat. Najma smiled sympathetically.

“Which one?” she asked.

Netta opened her mouth to reply but closed it after a moment of nothing coming out. She got a confused, distant look on her face as she stared at Najma. Her hands clenched and her brows furrowed.

“The war,” she insisted. “Therése said she died in the war.”

“I’ll just be on my way,” Najma said.

The pavilion up the slope was the smallest, but best situated to look out over the entire expanse of the Badlands dig site. Under its shade a long folding table supported a variety of paleontology tools, computers, and crumpled water bottles. A young man pecked away at a laptop in the middle, focused completely on his work. A woman sat at the far right end. She sipped at a sweating thermos and read from a paperback folded over in her hand, blonde hair shifting around her face as the occasional breeze cooled off the pavilion. She stood apart from everyone else Najma had seen in an immaculately white blouse and pair of low heels. Her only concession to the nature of the terrain were the tailored linen pants she wore instead of a skirt.

“Mrs. Therése Doherty, I presume,” Najma called up to her as she mounted the last of the slope. SCP-5538 looked up from her book in alarm.

“You don’t want to be here,” she said. Her voice dripped with authority. The grad student working at the laptop bolted from it so fast he knocked over his chair, sending a puff of dust and sand into the air. Najma just kept coming up the slope. She gestured to her hijab.

“Do you like it?” she asked, cheerfully. The slick, almost wet-looking fabric shimmered under the sunlight. “Specially-made. Resistant to mental influences up to a class seven. Also, fashionable.”

“I’ll scream,” ‘38 threatened. Najma stepped under the shade of the pavilion and fanned herself. “You might survive, but everyone else here wouldn’t be so lucky.”

“Do you include your sister-in-law in that count?” Najma asked as she pulled a chair up to the table. “No, there’s no need for threats. I’ve come here to talk.”

“Of course you have,” ‘38 said, tone saccharine. She set down her thermos and book. The cover flapped closed to reveal a tangle of foliage and a bolded title. Wide Sargasso Sea. At Najma’s glance, ‘38 pursed her lips and looked away. “Professor Doherty gave me a reading list after finding my literary knowledge thin. It seemed right for the visit.”

She looked Najma directly in the eyes as she recited, “‘If I was bound for Hell, let it be Hell. No more false Heavens… You hate me and I hate you. We’ll see who hates best.’”

“A friend is known in adversity, as gold is known in fire,” Najma replied. ‘38 frowned.

“What’s that from?”

“Persian common sense,” Najma said. She leaned forward over the table and gestured to ‘38’s thermos. “I do hope that is sweet tea. I’ve developed a terrible weakness for it while looking for you. You did better on her parents, you know. They didn’t mention you at all.”

‘38 moved her thermos farther away from Najma and took a pointed sip. “They’re old and tired. Netta has an upsetting amount of energy.”

“I imagine she would need to, considering the conditions out here. Neat trick with the registry office, too, by the way, although the justice of the peace who handled your paperwork is now completely insane,” Najma said. She held ‘38’s gaze as she continued. “Pleasantries addressed, let me establish terms right now. This does not involve the Foundation or any of your former handlers or researchers. Any agreement would be between you and I, as equals.”

“What ‘terms’?” ‘38 snapped. She looked around, cautious, before adding in a hiss, “Why would I want to make any agreement with you, huh? You tasered me.”

“It was nothing personal,” Najma said. ‘38 scoffed and made to get up. Najma motioned her back into her seat. “It was a little personal. Regardless, I would not be interfering in your affairs without good reason. While I may not approve of the method by which you have insinuated yourself in the late Agent Doherty’s family, you have been otherwise very compassionate in your dealings with them. It reflects… growth. No, I have been seeking you out to retain, however temporarily, your services as a…”

“‘Dangerous mental influence’?” ‘38 suggested with a vicious smile. Najma glanced out over the dig with an amused expression, hardly stung by words taken from her own reports.

“Consulting expert in the field of extranormal mental effects,” she corrected. “In my capacity as the new director of an agency dedicated to the destabilization of the Foundation and rehabilitation of its detained anomalous humans, I’ve come to find that my need for a person of your ability and autonomy is great.”

“Again,” ‘38 said, “why in the hell would I want to make any agreement with you? What, do you have Mohsen with a twitchy finger on the trigger hiding behind one of these dinosaur nerds?”

“The stick was the method du jour for working with you in the past,” Najma observed. “It is my personal belief that the carrot would be much more effective.”

“What could you possibly have that would be good enough reason for me to get within a hundred miles of another Foundation site?” ’38 asked, irritated but tone tinged with a sliver of curiosity.

“The only thing in your life that you tried very hard not to break,” Najma said.

Najma let her words hang in the air as ‘38 worked out her meaning. She knew the moment her implication registered because ‘38 dropped the thermos she was holding and it spilled drabs of tea over the ground as it rolled away. Najma bent and picked it up. She wiped off some dust and took a long sip as ‘38’s mouth opened and closed soundlessly and her eyes lost their wary aggression.

“They said no,” she whispered. “They said it couldn’t be done.”

“They didn’t have a good enough reason to try,” Najma said. “I do.”

‘38 stared at the cover of her book. She traced a thick Sargasso leaf with one of her thin, pale fingers. Her nails had recovered admirably from how bitten-down and bloody they’d been when last Najma had seen her. They shimmered under the thinnest coat of shell pink polish.

“How?” she asked, quietly. Najma shook her head.

“That’s need-to-know until such time as you’ve agreed to work with me and completed the tasks I need you to do,” Najma said. ’38 huffed and seemed to collect herself.

“What could compel you to make this offer?” she asked, eyes flicking to her doctored hijab. She was obviously unaccustomed to having to ask about anyone’s motives. Najma looked down at the thermos.

“The only thing that matters, in the end,” she mused. “Love.”

’38 leaned in across the table with morbid interest. “Hmm, no. You don’t know how to love. You’re an android pretending to be a person in the bleak future. You’re an alien here to eradicate all human life before you untie your scarf and die of the common cold.”

“Professor Doherty really has done wonders exposing you to the magic of reading,” Najma observed. ’38 jerked back and shot a nasty look out over the Wyoming hills.

“It’s nice after other people’s demands,” she sniped. “But fine. This is holding my interest and I can’t take another second of this dusty hole in the ground.”

“Well then, Mrs. Doherty,” Najma said, pushing the cool thermos of tea back across the table towards her. “Shall we come to terms?”

The bound woman didn’t struggle as the man paced the room. She just watched, eyes guarded but missing nothing, as he worked out his frustration on the rug.

“This is all very messy,” he hissed. “Very messy. I thought the whole point of little cabals like yours was to keep things neat and organized. ORIA at least managed that, for all their many other failings.”

The bound woman said nothing, because she couldn’t. A tight gag held her tongue for her. Her hijab was sliding away, exposing thick brown hair with silvery strands of gray struck through it. Her nose was crooked, broken in her earlier fight with the man, and blood leaked from it over the gag to drip on her dirty and torn abaya. His steps were loud even with the muffling effect of the rug, snapping down onto the floor as he pivoted to pace in a different direction. Burning wool reached the woman’s nose even through plugs of blood.

“For someone of my status having to do legwork… It’s a complete disgrace. I remember when your kind groveled before inconveniencing me in the slightest. Now I’m having to drive,” the man snapped. “Well? Say something!”

The bound woman grunted and the man threw his hands up in disgust before coming over to undo her gag. He yanked a chair in front of her and perched on it as she worked her mouth to recover the feeling in her lips the gag had cut off.

“Your kind are a mistake on the part of nature, and Allah will see you finished,” she spat. The man slapped her and she screamed. The mark of his hand on her face was an angry red and, as seconds passed, pale pockets of burn tissue rose to the surface.

“I existed before humanity thought to stop fighting and fucking each other long enough to sow a seed,” he hissed, “and I will exist after the soil is rich with the dust of your bones. Tell me what I want to know, or we can enter hour six.”

“It’s a splinter faction,” the woman said. She slumped with abject exhaustion. “Led by a powerful and undying leader. They’re attacking any organization that detained humanoid anomalies.”

“All things die, save myself,” he said. “Who is he?”

“She,” the bound woman said, looking up with a grin on her burned and bloodied face, “is someone you might have remembered, had you not carved a space in the mind with fire.”

The man canted his head to study the woman more closely. “You knew this vessel, Agent Ebrahimi.”

“I’d never forget his face, after what I had to do,” she said. “And neither will the Undying.”

The man reached down for Agent Ebrahimi’s hand, bound to the chair and bristling with bamboo splinters, jutting from her fingertips like the cruelest form of manicure. He gripped three of the splinters and forced them further into the woman’s nailbeds as she screamed.

“Give me a name!” he demanded. She gasped for air as he let up.

“Anush,” she choked out, “Saraswati.”

“That is the Undying?” the man asked. Agent Ebrahimi laughed hysterically.

“No,” she said. “That is who she tears apart the underworld for. Why you will pay the most dearly.”

“The name!” the man snapped. He broke four of her fingers with one cruel twist. Blood ran over his fist to drip on the rug.

“Najma Behzadi!” Agent Ebrahimi shrieked. “I have reviewed the records! She is the only one it could be!”

“Then she is the one House Afseneh will take to task for these attacks,” the man said.

He dropped Agent Ebrahimi’s hand, bringing her a moment of relief, before closing his hand anew around her throat. Any screams she might have let out burned away with her vocal chords, and then her esophagus. The pain was unimaginable, but the woman smiled. She yanked her broken hand free of its bonds and scratched at the man’s left eye with the bamboo splinters. He reared back and squeezed with his own hand, severing her head from the rest of her body with a crackle and burst of ash.

“Messy,” he hissed. “All so messy.”

He dropped the head and shook ash and blood from his hand. Then he crossed the barren room he’d requisitioned for his interrogation. He studied the damage to his vessel the dying agent had inflicted in a mirror mounted precariously above the dresser where he’d spread out his borrowed interrogation tools.

The mirror reflected a burning, reddish light from his right eye, illuminating the face of a man with a strong nose and two days’ stubble. Instead of a pupil or iris, his right eyesocket contained only an ever-swirling mass of molten orange and red. He bared glass points of teeth in an irritated grimace. Thin lines of blood raked up his left cheek to the eye socket.

The eye within was a flat, milky white.

“Najma Behzadi,” he hissed. “Now, where do I know that name?”

ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED JULY 2016 | REHOSTED 2/27/2024