For Every Action - The Quantum Mechanic Series Book I
In the Valley of the Shadow

October 7, 2052

34 years after events in Tajikistan

9:22AM EST

Interview 27

Federal Bureau of Investigation – Forensic Research Division

Library of Congress Quantum Mechanic archive records

Subject:

Jessica Saylor

Source:

First person dictation transcribed by Marcus Lillian,

Begin transcription

MARCUS: OK you can begin whenever you want. Just start by introducing yourself and maybe giving us a little bit about why you’re doing this.

JESSICA: Oh, alright. Well, I’m Jessica Saylor. I’m thirty-two years old and I’m from Wexton, Kentucky. Been there most of my life. I guess I’m just here to tell my story.

MARCUS: It happened at the bridge attacks back in thirty-one, right?

JESSICA: Yeah. That was what got him to come out of hiding and people saw what he could do - when he saved me. I guess it doesn’t matter now; but at the time the whole thing messed me up pretty bad. I was just a kid you know? I was eleven, and I was with my mom and dad. We drove onto the Brent Spence bridge right before they set the bombs off. I lost them in like... a second. Happened right in front of me too. I saw the whole thing. It was like everything about who I was, or what I thought my life was, just exploded. It blew up in my face... literally.

I didn’t really remember why we were driving up to Ohio. But my uncle Jacob was there and he told me later. He said they were going to look at this old Camaro some guy was selling. Dad thought maybe they could fix it up, resell it and make some money. Things were pretty tight I guess, and Dad loved cars.

So anyway.... me and mom were gonna go up to Aunt Janelle’s and get our hair cut because she used to be a hairdresser. Dad was driving us there and Uncle Jacob was following us in his flatbed truck. Dad wanted it in case he decided to buy the car. That way they could get it home and me and mom would just drive back after our haircuts. Anyway, traffic in the cut in the hill going down to the bridge could be crazy back then. The new bridge made it a lot better. But back then all we had was the old Brent Spence and Aunt Janelle says it was a total fuck funnel.

Uncle Jacob was following somewhere behind us I guess we got ahead of him a ways. I’m not sure how far ’cause I was just lying in the back of the minivan, playing with my doll Chelsie. I guess I was getting too old for dolls, but I wasn’t ready to let go of her yet. Hanging on to Chelsie was sort of my way of hanging on to being a kid.

So we started over the bridge, and about halfway across there was this loud bang. Like the kind of loud that scares you right out of your mind. Then... it was like gravity and time just stopped. I guess the van got tossed up in the air cause all of a sudden I was floating, and it was so quiet... like, like the whole world just held its breath. I turned my head, and I realized I’d floated up near the roof. Everything was going in slow motion, but at the same time there was this feeling like we were moving really fast. Dad had his hand out on mom, and he was looking over his shoulder at me.

Mom’s hair had floated up around her head and I remember thinking how pretty it was. Isn’t that a weird thing to think at a time like that? She was looking at dad and screaming with her hands up in front of her. I could see the nail on her left thumb had most of the polish chipped off. Blackberry bliss... we had painted each other’s nails a couple of days before that.

Then there was another bang, and everything went really fast. Like time realized it had been slacking off and was running to get caught up. I got slammed to Mom’s side of the van really hard. Like dad had made the sharpest left turn in history or something, and I felt my left leg break. Pop. But it was far away... like it was a movie or something. I never felt whatever happened to my other leg. I saw Chelsie float up right in front of me... then she went flying up by mom and dad, but my broken leg was all caught up in between the back seat and the side of the van. So I got slammed forward from the waist up and I hit my face on the middle seat really hard and broke my nose. Plus, my left arm got caught on something and I got what they call a ‘spiral break’. That’s when all the bones get twisted so hard they all just shatter from one end to the other. It looked like somebody smashed it a bunch of times with a hammer and then stepped on it too for good measure. So you know... Holy Fuck - I felt that.

That’s when I got scared. Really scared. The way my face hit that seat was harder than I could have imagined anything ever feeling. Then my arm snapped, and all of a sudden, this shit was real. Here I was - eleven, and I wasn’t ready to die. But all of a sudden, I knew I could.

I guess when you’re a kid you don’t really think you can die. You know? Then one day you find out that the world doesn’t care about your starring role in “The World According to Jessica”. Nope, didn’t read the script. Be sure to use the exit marked “Dead”. Don’t call us, and we won’t call you - cause dead little girls don’t answer the phone.

So I looked up, and he saw me... dad did. Looked right at me. Then ... it was like the whole world ended. At least my whole world. My parents died right in front of me, and... and soaked me in their blood.

MARCUS: The way the bridge came apart is why you weren’t killed, right? Can you tell us how you remember that happening?

JESSICA: Yeah. Well first the bridge broke into three pieces. We were on the bottom middle part. When the top middle part collapsed, a piece of it came down on the front half of the van and just smashed mom and dad into pulp. It happened so fast all the blood splashed back on me.

So when I crawled out of the back of van, I was covered in my mom and dad’s blood, and brains, and... and all sorts of pieces of God knows what. My left leg was compound fractured with both bones sticking out. I had to pull myself out with my right arm on account of my other one looking like a pretzel. Funny thing was that the broken arm and leg were agony, but my right leg and hand didn’t hurt at all. Probably because I left them in the van.

You know, the doctors told me later that they were “clean amputations” and acted all happy about it. Like “Hey, looks like you just got the most extreme manni-pedi in history. But at least their clean amputations!”

Fuckers.

They never found my hand or leg in the river or anything, so I guess they’re fish poop now. I know it sounds crazy, but I honestly didn’t notice they were gone. My other leg and arm hurt so bad they were all I could think about. Once I was out I just laid there face down on the cement. All I could do was breathe cause everything hurt so bad. I guess I was still trying to figure out what the hell just happened.

Then I looked up, and I realized that I was alone on the bridge and there was no way off. I was about six inches from the edge of a two-hundred-foot drop onto this big pile of concrete and smashed up cars in the river. The bridge was still moving and... shifting. I could hear cracks and breaking noises under me, and I knew it was going to fall. I couldn’t believe it. I had just dragged myself out of a hell of exploding brains with the only working limb I had, and now I was just going to fall and die anyway. I think I laughed... or... it was something like a laugh.

Then, just when I was going to put my head back down and try to get a little rest before I died I looked up and saw him. He came up on the cars all the way back by the hill. Way back from the crowd.

There must have been hundreds of people back there running up. But he was the one you had to look at... ’cause there was something about the way he was moving. It just sorta screamed at my brain. There was this... wrongness about it. I wanted to close my eyes and shut it out cause I knew what I was seeing was... well, ain’t no other way to say it… It was fucking impossible. I mean, it made you think you were losing your mind. People started hearing him coming, ’cause when he landed on a car it was really loud. So everyone turned around and by then he was pushing off on the roofs of the cars so hard the windows were exploding. was only touching down on maybe every fifth car or so. It was more like every tenth one by the time he jumped. That last step he used to push off was on the hood of this big black Mercedes and just crushed it flat. Half the car got punched down right through the pavement. It looked like a kid stepped on a toy car in his sandbox.

But you know what? He didn’t look all graceful when he was in the air. You could tell he’d never done this or anything like it before. Cause when he came flying over he was waving his arms and legs, just trying to stay upright so he’d land on his feet. Then when he hit next to me, it didn’t feel like no impact a person would make. It was like he was made out of lead or even something heavier. He slammed into the concrete up past his ankles and had to pull his boots back out just to edge over to me. The whole bridge was swaying and I thought for sure it was just gonna drop out from under us. Truth be told, he almost fell right off when he was trying to get his footing. There wasn’t a whole lot of room between the back of the van and the edge.

I looked up at him and he really wasn’t what you expected if you were thinking superhero. He sure wasn’t dressed like one I’d ever heard of. No spandex. No black leather getup. He was just wearing these old black work boots, jeans, and a dirty “Guns n Roses” t-shirt. Nothing flashy, but seeing as I’d just watched him jump four hundred feet like he was playing hopscotch, my mind wasn’t exactly on critiquing his wardrobe. He must have really liked black t-shirts cause he had another one tied around to cover his face. He’d just ripped a hole to see through and he looked... amazed and scared, and well... completely fucking freaked out.

Anyway, he scrambled over and tried to pick me up. When he did I let out a scream like nothing you’ve ever heard, cause that broken leg was just flopping around. The bones were grinding on each other and my busted arm got pinched between us. Man, he jumped when I screamed and damn near lost his balance again. I remember some lady in the crowd screaming “HE’S GONNA FALL!“, but he didn’t. He wobbled and waved his other arm trying to catch his balance for a second until he got it. Then he looked back down at me and he made this sorta... choking noise, and said something like “Oh God, I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry” over and over while he shifted me around. He got my leg up on his arm and lifted my arm into my lap real gentle. I think I was sobbing and wailing like a baby the whole time.

That was when I noticed how hard he felt, and it wasn’t just muscles hard like some meathead from the gym. It was real hard... like he was made out of rocks or something. I mean, nothing on him gave if you pushed. It was like... like I was being held by one of them statues they have over at the museum.

But the weird thing was - he looked pretty normal. I mean, I could hear him breathing really hard while he looked back at the road. Some of his hair had poked out in places around the t-shirt on his head too. It was real blonde, and I could see it waving in the wind. He was sweating real bad too. Now I was thinking he’d just jump back to the shoreline or maybe fly or something, but he didn’t. He kept shifting his feet and looking up and down and all over and after a second I realized he was freaking out... he didn’t know what to do. He didn’t have any way to get a running start and there was nowhere to go but down. He’d decided to save a little girl cause he was the only one who could - and now he was gonna fuck it up.

MARCUS: But why didn’t he fly? We’ve seen him do it since then.

JESSICA: You know; I think we’ve all seen him do shit since then that made the bridge look like nothing. The fight in Tokyo, that thing in the Philippines, the nuke in Australia, and… and then what happened in China. But people forget that all came years later after he’d had time to figure things out. Right then I think he was just scared, and he had no idea what he was doing.

So anyway... I looked over at the screaming people and all that water under us for a second, and when I looked back I realized he was crying. He had his head bent down and I couldn’t see his face, but I could feel it. He was shaking, and his chest kept hitching, and I got scared again. I guess part of me was thinking this all had to be some sort of dream or hallucination or something. But when I saw he was scared... for some reason, then I knew it was real. I guess I stopped crying cause he looked down at me and I could that see he had blue eyes. They were kinda pretty too, and I guess me noticing meant that being a little girl was already over anyway.

Then all of a sudden he stood up real straight and took a deep breath while he looked up at the sky. He kinda reminded me of my dad right then. Didn’t want me scared by seeing him scared... I could tell he had decided something, but he didn’t like it, and he was figuring out how to deal with it.

Then he squeezed his eyes shut, and you could tell he was concentrating really hard. I started to feel weird, kinda sick and dizzy. I know I was in shock, but this was a different kind of sick, and I don’t know how to explain it except to say that it was bad... real bad. There was this awful noise... but at the same time it wasn’t a noise. At least not like anything I’ve ever heard. It wasn’t even like the other times when other people say they heard it.

I guess I only thought I could hear it too, but I could tell it wasn’t coming from my ears. It was like it was coming from the top of my head and way down in my hips, and it felt bad... Really, really bad. Like the way watching him run felt bad. This was like that, but it was inside me. Then he took another deep breath and I could feel him tense up like he knew something was coming. That sound just kept getting worse and worse and louder and louder until it just filled up everything and I felt so sick I thought I was gonna puke. So I did. I think I ruined his shirt.

Then, somewhere underneath all of that I heard the bridge finally give up. It just sort of groaned and tipped like a see-saw, and then we were falling. That sound inside me ramped up and up and up, and all of a sudden it canceled itself out or... or harmonized or something. Either way, it turned into this one bone rattling sorta note - only you felt it instead of hearing it. It was deep and... thick and it reached in and touched every part of you and ... it sang.

I guess that’s what it was like when other people heard it. You just wanted it to go on forever. Like the angels had come down from heaven and were singing some sad love song just for you. Then it rose up even farther, and it filled up everything. I couldn’t hear I couldn’t see I couldn’t even think... and then there was this unbelievable like... CRACK.

It felt like my soul split open, and I saw EVERYTHING. I mean - I saw the whole universe, me, him, mom and dad, God. Everything... and it went... like forever. There wasn’t no way to keep it all in your head. It was just too big, too much, and I was just a little girl. So I did the only thing I could think of...

I died.

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