Disconnect
Despite being absolutely convinced they had the answer to the mystery in front of them, the agents in charge of the case couldn't act as they wanted.
Carla Casasbuenas would already be on her way to some detention center if it weren't for the weight of her surname, which threatened to crush the necks of the three agents assigned to the case if it wasn't handled as required.
Everyone knew that such a prominent family had connections, and that her father, who was about to arrive, could ruin any career with just a few phone calls. All three agreed unanimously that this occasion called for neither honesty nor thoroughness.
So with nothing but time on their hands, the first of the three officers in charge turned on the microphone and decided to ask Carla once more about what had happened that morning. She, with weariness, looked defiantly at the camera for a few seconds before wetting her lips and repeating what she had said an hour before.
Four friends, a walk, and a moment of disconnection.
The guide's instructions had been very clear. Walk slowly, plant your feet firmly due to the instability of certain areas, don't touch the flowers or other plant species so as not to disturb the ecosystem, and go only as far as the first lagoon, the limit for visitors to the site.
Then he emphasized reading the trail's climate to interpret its mood, as if it were a palm read by a palmist, and Carla found this at least strange, so she ignored that last part and took the first step toward the interior of the hill, ready to connect with nature.
Further ahead, Ruth, Theo, and Eric were waiting for her, and something subtle blended between the call of her friends and the call of the landscape, as if the two merged into a single invitation.
"I'm already feeling the effect," she told herself before moving forward.
Carla and Ruth embraced, immortalized the moment with a photo, and moved on to match the pace of Theo and Eric, the latter being the one who had introduced the rest to the pleasures of alcohol, partying, lighter drugs, and the harder strains at different stages of life.
They had all gone in and out of using at various points; he kept the keys to that room, guarding it in case anyone wanted to return. Since those visits were becoming more and more sporadic, he decided that today's hike deserved something special, and he took it upon himself to get the most potent hallucinogen his contacts could provide.
It was his way of showing his friends affection and love, even if they didn't see it that way.
The first hit was routine: mild effects and a gentle sense of peace; the following ones would lead them to live in the present with the intensity of someone who doesn't know when they'll die, and would connect them with every bird, insect, and blade of grass swaying.
Faced with such a promise, they all took the smoke in two, even three, hits in a row.
Minutes later, the trance that slowed down every movement began to set in. Their steps became dreamy strides within an oneiric space that moved as slowly as their thoughts. At moments, everything seemed happier, more bearable, more interesting to them. They appeared misshapen, disoriented, ecstatic, excessively happy.
The vastness of the landscape led them to a point of ultimate tranquility, where not even the cawing of birds reached, and only the faint buzzing of the lagoon adorned the scene, inviting them to stop and close their eyes, just as they did.
And there, paranoia failed to grasp how vulnerable they were, planting vague ideas in all their minds about the absence of destiny, until one of those many thoughts triggered Eric's sudden, energetic reaction, making him jump up and run off across the whole plain.
Meters ahead, he stopped ad portas of a slope.
For him, at the gates of his new raison d'être.
.
Compulsive—more than usual—Eric insisted on the call of a virgin lagoon to human footsteps, and, driven by a magnetic force, he began walking briskly toward it, forcing Carla, Ruth, and Theo to follow so as not to lose sight of him.
They climbed down the cliffside trying to reach him, trading the hopeful radiant blue for the false promises of the mysterious silver.
Soon, the privileged view the hill had given them was lost, and when they came to, they were surrounded by a chain of cold mountains enclosing them in an unfamiliar space.
Their tired legs let themselves be carried along by the siren song the lagoon was emitting. The vegetation grew more hostile and gave shape to the guide's warnings, which resurfaced in Carla's thoughts.
A jarring noise took hold of her head, a haze of conjecture settled over her mind and made her see how detestable Eric was, how unpleasant Ruth was, how weak Theo was. She wanted to dispel the cloud of accusations she'd never actually held against her friends, but it was already too late. She could no longer see them as anything but distorted characters who had dropped their masks.
With every meter they advanced, they were unknowingly stepping into the mouth of a leviathan with misty breath and immersive vegetation. Rage, envy, resentment, and disgust arose between hiking companions.
The screams of desperation came, the tears, the hand-to-hand fighting. It was all so fragmented that Carla barely remembered how she had crossed the lagoon to reach a forgotten spot of towering frailejones and scorched earth. Time jumps that answered nothing and that shed no light on where Eric had fled to, where Theo had turned, or in what part Ruth had stayed behind, sitting.
Carla Casasbuenas, thirty-three years old, worldly, yet lost in the middle of her own thoughts. Blink, rocky path, blink, a rock in her hand, blink, someone's tortured voice, blink, a scream with no apparent source, blink, the mist creeping into her eyes, blink, tears, blink, no one around her.
Carla Casasbuenas, thirty-three years old, running with no apparent destination across the frigid high plain before night fell. A stumble, a fall; upon standing up, the feeling of not having moved in hours, and at the same time, her chest pounding with a thousand heartbeats after fleeing an effect so intense that it had finally worn off.
The agent had to speak over the loudspeaker again.
He looked at his two colleagues, who with knowing glances showed they suspected the same thing. Perhaps as a game, perhaps as a test for the accused, or perhaps as mischief before her father arrived, he threw out a question that was more of a statement, a confrontation.
"Are you sure the effect has worn off?"
Exhausted, she decided to answer, with evident annoyance, what was being questioned once again in the room. It was the same script from an hour ago... or maybe two? She'd been there too long, so it was possible they were even asking her for the third time, and this time it might be necessary to make everything clear.
She automatically knew she had no way of knowing what counted as "a little" or "a lot" in that room, and then tried to determine how much time had passed since the episode. Minutes? Hours? She didn't know, any more than she knew where her friends were or why she was there.
Then she discovered she couldn't even vouch for her own lucidity, and the room's mirror, as gleaming as the lagoon's reflection, threw the answer back in her face. Her face, her hands, her body were moving even more slowly than her guesses. Abrupt jumps and loops defined her stay and showed her that the effect had never actually worn off.
Her hand left trails of movement, her blinking left halos of light, her blonde hair whipped through the air, lingering longer than it should.
Álvaro Casasbuenas watched her from the other side, alongside the family lawyer. Both shook their heads in a show of disapproval.
Together, they sought to finally address the accusation weighing on Carla.
The homicide of three people, brought on by a crisis in the middle of the mountain.
Brought on by the ingestion of hallucinogenic substances.
Brought on by a total disconnection.