Chapter Six

Juliette

France

Saturday 1:40 p.m.

J uliette floated on the high-pitched ringing in her head. She used it like a wave, buoying her body. The movement below her was like water in its fluid motion. Above her, she felt brewing storm clouds. The storm. The thunder rumbles of tires against the roadway. Her limbs were so heavy that she couldn't move them; she couldn't open her eye lids.

She had no choice but to float.

She wondered if this was what it was like for the whales. The beautiful, majestic whales, who were assaulted by the US Navy and their sonar sounds. Was it like this for them, the high-pitched whistling in their heads, unable to make it stop? Unable to find relief or escape?

She'd been reading a lot about whales. About sound. When she read the articles, it felt like home to her. Like she'd been lost flailing about the oceans, and here was an island of peace for her to crawl onto and rest.

If only she could rest now.

Fighting this incapacity to fully wake was exhausting.

Air swirled around her face. The fine hairs tickled over her cheek. She had slowly recalled where she was – a car with two Russians, being driven to…somewhere. They'd put the car windows down.

The wind sounds hurt her ears. Made them whistle.

A jet engine, a roaring crowd of sports-goers, whales, elephants, that set of nouns seemed to have little in common, one to the other. Their commonality was that they all produced sound waves that include a frequency too low for a human ear to hear called subsonic sound waves. Not hearing them didn't mean they weren't dangerous. They weren't innocuous. The sound changed the way the inner ear worked.

It would help Juliette if the Russians would roll up the windows, blocking the low frequency road sounds. Her head might not hurt as badly.

Since her accident and the brain trauma, vibrations had become her enemy. Juliette found it ironic that the word for the sound wave measurements "hertz" sounded exactly like "hurts."

Sound could hurt as in physically damaging the ear.

Sounds could hurt as in creating physical pain, like she was experiencing now.

Sounds could hurt as in words that no one ever wanted to hear like – "There was an accident. Your mother is dead. Do you recognize me? Do you know who I am? I'm your father."

Juliette sometimes thought that her dad was her greatest hero. He was the one who operated on her, who trained, and molded, and worked with her brain.

Sometimes, Juliette was not so grateful.

If she was going to be truly honest, she thought that dying in the accident might have been the kindest thing that could have happened to her, and that her dad's efforts to keep her alive were rather a matter of selfishness on his part. She could understand his not wanting a daughter to die, not wanting to mourn two family members at once.

She worked to forgive her father's selfishness.

Her dad, after all, didn't live with her disabilities and could never understand her struggles in anything but an intellectual way.

Maybe these men could just kill her and end this.

Juliette thought that might be too much to hope for.

After all, they didn't just shoot her in the street. They took her away at gun point. That was her mistake. She got into their car to protect the little boy from stray bullets. If she'd fought these men, they might have just killed her.

What were they going to do with her?

If she could just remember what happened after she passed by Ballroom C the first time she'd seen these men, then maybe she'd know what was in store for her. What they wanted.

Hot tears made a rivulet along Juliette's nose, followed the swirl of her nostril, and dripped onto her lips.

Salty like the ocean waves was her last thought before she let herself stop struggling, and she was swept back into the darkness.