The Axeboy's Blues (The Agents Of Book 1)

by Andy Reynolds

  Julius looked at Adelaide and nodded to her.

  She stepped in front of the boy. “Axeboy!” Adelaide's voice boomed. “I, Adelaide LaCoste of both The Agents of Karma and The Agents Of, have brought you into custody on the grounds that your goal of summoning The Axeman from Oblivion would bring utter torment and destruction upon the city of New Orleans. You will be brought back to1934, where your actions will be reviewed by The Agents of Karma, and your fate determined.”

  Looking at the boy there all wrapped up in the net of light, Edith saw the defiance he'd been holding onto so tightly fade away.

  Roman stepped forward then. “Since you have come into our time period, you are under our jurisdiction. Something which did not exist in 1934 was The Fair Memory Act. In accordance with this act, seeing as you impose a direct threat to the city itself, your memories are forfeit. All that is needed is a licensed Louisiana notary, being myself, and a memory reader who can extract memories.” He motioned towards Edith.

  The Axeboy shook his head as much as he was able. “Don't take away my memories!”

  “We're not taking them away,” said Edith. “I'm just going to copy them.”

  “You can't have them!” screamed The Axeboy. “You've already taken everything else!”

  “You've told him about the act,” said Julius. “Now let's copy the memories and send him on his way.”

  “Wait,” said Edith. She walked up to the boy and knelt beside him. He glared at her from between the webs of light-rope. “What you're doing. I know you're not doing it out of hate.” She turned off the Extraction Glove and suddenly felt all the memories swimming around her, the memories she couldn't sense when she had the glove powered on. “I'm not going to pretend to understand what you've gone through. In truth, no one ever will. We are all on our own path, and it's up to us alone to dig down and find out what that path is.”

  Edith reached into her pocket and pulled out the dragonfly pendant. She had taken it from the lab when she'd picked up the glove – having it on her seemed to solidify the sense of purpose that was growing inside of her.

  She held it up in front of her face. “I'm looking for the opera memory,” she whispered.

  The little blue mem crawled out – the one who was the memory of the little girl going to the opera with her grandmother.

  “I want to show you something,” Edith said to The Axeboy, and then she nodded to the mem. “Show him,” she whispered.

  The mem turned and dove from her hand into the boy's head. Instantly his eyes glazed over, as if he was deep in thought.

  “We don't have time for this,” said Julius.

  “Yes we do,” said Edith. “Trust me.”

  The Axeboy's eyes began to water, and the mem crawled out of his head and leaped onto Edith's shoulder. It crawled down her arm and dove back into the pendant.

  “You and I,” said Edith, “we didn't have that. We didn't have a connection to anyone when we were growing up.”

  “Who was that?” asked the boy.

  “I don't know,” said Edith. “A little girl named Stella. I'm going to find out who she was and I'm going to put the memory into a form that everyone can see. That's my purpose here, you see? And you can give me the memories of your father, your mother. You can give me the memories of you leaping through time in the name of your father. And if you do, others will one day soon see those memories, and they will know. They will know your conviction. They will not see you as a mere villain, but for what you are.”

  “And what am I, then?”

  Edith smirked. “I'm not sure. Not a villain.”

  The boy peered at her through the holes in the light-net. “Do you promise that others will see the memories? Not just Agents?”

  Edith nodded. “I give you my word.”

  The boy nodded. “Alright.”

  “Thank you.” She stood up, slipped the pendant back into her pocket, and powered on the glove. Roman walked over, handed her the copier, and helped her hook it into the glove. “Now, first I'd like you to think about your earliest memories of your mother, your father, and the Tartarus Realm.”

  File 83 :: [Roman Wing]

  It was well into the afternoon when The Agents Of gathered at the quarantine zone. Half of the crackerjacks were gone, taken by whichever Collector Mars had decided captured the most misplaced people from 1934. Now that all the trumpet players were in the zone, it had gotten a bit crowded. There were close to ninety people in the small area, and one of the “ropes” had been turned off. Roman walked slowly among the people, using a pocket watch on a chain to find the exact location of the time rip. When inside the rip, the hands on the watch would start winding backwards rapidly, attempting to backtrack whole decades worth of hours and minutes and seconds, reaching for 1934. When the watch was removed from the rip, it would start winding forward just as fast to try and become the correct time again in the present.

  The rip had become much thinner, and was now roughly the size and shape of a French Quarter street sign.

  Mars returned with a few Noisician Coalition members from the errands they'd been sent on. Two of the Noisco members held stacks of drink trays full of large café au laits in paper cups from Café du Monde. Mars herself held two very full and very large plastic bags from Walgreens, and a third Noisician Coalition member carefully held four huge plastic novelty cups with Hurricanes[32] in them.

  “Alright,” said Mars, kneeling on the ground and unloading the Walgreens bags, which were filled with multicolored plastic squirt guns. “You all know what to do.”

  They set the trays of café au laits on the ground next to the squirt guns, then began carefully (yet messily) pouring the chicory[33], coffee and milk into the squirt guns. “It's easier to pour if you bend the cup,” said Mars. “You can make a kind of pour spout.”

  Roman left them and walked over to the other Agents. Adelaide and Edith both looked exhausted, leaning back against a brick wall, but Julius looked fine. The silver axe, which once again housed The Axeboy, hung from Adelaide's hip. “It is time to say our goodbyes,” said Roman.

  He'd refrained from eating Wonder since he'd eaten so much the day before, and between talking to The Angel about Rachel and Adelaide leaving, his human side with all its messy emotions was bubbling to the surface. He wanted to feel it, though. He wanted to feel his heart break when he said goodbye to Adelaide.

  Roman watched as Edith searched through the crowd of people and then took off running to say goodbye to William. Roman smiled as she jumped at William and hugged him.

  “It's not really goodbye for me,” said Adelaide, smirking. “I'm about to walk through that rip and keep on working with you two.” She looked at Julius. “Well, sort of.”

  “I would say that I'm proud of you,” said Julius, “but you know that. Anything I tell you, you already know. I expected you to perform as flawlessly as you did.” He shook his head. “It was good to have you on my team in this lifetime, Adelaide.”

  “It was good to be part of it.” Adelaide smiled, then walked up and put a hand on his shoulder, her smile fading. “I can see you're tired.”

  Julius peered at her. “I'm not tired,” he said, but the words came out flat and without much conviction.

  “How many centuries of doing the same thing? The city still needs you, old friend. New friend. It needs you for a little while longer.”

  He reached up to his shoulder with his one hand and squeezed hers, then nodded. “I know. I'm here until I'm not. There's no cutting out early for me.”

  She stepped towards him and hugged him, and Roman had to turn away and wipe the moisture from his eyes. When he turned back, Adelaide and Julius were still locked together. They finally pulled away from each other, and she looked at Roman and tilted her head. “You didn't eat your Wonder.”

  Roman shook his head and took a deep breath. Her gaze looked just as lovely as when she'd been looking up at him while she lay dying in his lap all those years ago. He felt a hot tear ride the curve of h
is cheek and then drop down to his chin. “It's very rare that I get to say goodbye. And I've never before been allowed to say it twice.”

  She closed her eyes and squinted her own tears away, then smiled at him. “I bet that, when I pass away, I say something remarkable.”

  “Oh yes.” Roman laughed a little. “Yes you do.”

  “Don't tell me. Maybe I'll even think of something different next time. Something even more remarkable.”

  Roman smiled. “I don't know, it would be pretty hard to top. I'm not so certain that you could outdo yourself.”

  “That sounds like a challenge.”

  She grabbed him and they hugged tightly, and in that moment he was not only hugging Adelaide, but he was hugging the dozens of Agents who he'd never gotten to say goodbye to. He was hugging Rachel. “I miss you,” he whispered, and Adelaide held him even tighter.

  They stayed like that for a few moments, and then finally they began to pull apart.

  “It's best if you say little to nothing about what happened here,” said Roman, “when you go back to 1934.”

  Adelaide laughed, pulled away and looked at him. Her face was wet and her eyes were red. “Even without eating Wonder, you're still adept at ruining a good moment,” she laughed. “Don't worry, I'm not going to tell anyone about your silly little future, old man. And no one would care anyway.”

  “I suppose not.”

  And then Edith was there.

  Adelaide turned to her. “I wish I could take you with me.”

  “I wish I could go,” said Edith. “Or that I could keep you here.”

  Roman could feel the energy between them, the energy of a bond much closer than he himself had with Adelaide.

  “You are going to do amazing things,” said Adelaide. She reached out and placed her palm on Edith's chest, above her heart. When Adelaide spoke, her voice was a whisper. “You are more significant than just an Agent, Edith Downs. You have the potential to change the very landscape of the city. Remember your path – in the midst of the chaos, remember who you are, and who it is that you are becoming.”

  Edith's hands came up to her own chest and grabbed onto Adelaide's hand.

  “In the future,” said Adelaide, “when people talk about The Agents Of, The Agents of Karma and all the other incarnations, they will speak of Edith Downs long before they mention Adelaide LaCoste.”

  “That can't be true,” said Edith.

  Adelaide leaned forward and kissed Edith's forehead. “You know it is. Your humility is honorable, but you'll have to give it up sooner or later. You should do so before it starts to hold you back.”

  “Well, I'll keep it in mind then. Thank you for everything you've taught me.”

  “It was a pleasure unrivaled by any other.” They hugged, and Roman realized he'd been staring at them so he looked away. Just as consuming Wonder altered his perception of reality like humans described the taking of drugs, so did not consuming Wonder. He supposed he was just more accustomed to the altered state that Wonder gave him, with its absence of raw emotion. He pondered for a moment whether there was any state in his experience that could be considered un-altered.

  Roman watched Mars exit the crowd of misplaced people from 1934. He felt naked in the focus of her gaze, in the midst of her utter confidence. She was his pupil, yet he felt so weak compared to her in that moment – he felt human and broken and vulnerable. She walked up holding a neon-green squirt gun in the shape of a German World War II pistol, darkened from the café au lait that filled its insides.

  Adelaide and Edith pulled away from each other and Adelaide turned to Mars. She smiled, reaching out to grab Mars' shoulders. “I want to be you when I grow up, Mars.”

  Mars squinted and laughed a little. “If I grow up to be a tenth as badass as you, I'll die fucking happy.”

  They hugged, then Adelaide turned to Roman and patted the axe hanging from her belt loop. “I can't bring a net gun back, can I? How are we going to get the boy out without him escaping?”

  Roman shook his head and glanced at Julius. “We... we figure something out. You don't have to worry about it.” He saw Julius wince as both of them remembered the past incarnation of Bes nearly breaking The Axeboy's back when he fell out of the axe in 1934. They'd ended up keeping him drugged and mostly unconscious until Roman had figured out a way to tether him to the living world, imprisoning him inside a room so they could let him sober up.

  “Good enough for me,” she said.

  Julius stepped forward. “It's time.” In that moment, Roman thought that Julius looked like his old self more then he had since the incident in the swamp. They walked through the crowd of '30s people and up to the circle of chalk that marked where the time rip was when it had been quite larger. The squirt guns full of café au lait were piled on the sidewalk. Roman picked one up – it looked like a space gun from a 1950s TV show – and pointed to where the time rip was now.

  He looked at Mars and the few Noisco members who stood next to her also holding squirt guns. The rest of the Noisco members were guarding the mouth of the street, making sure no one got in or out. “When we start shooting café au lait at the time rip,” said Roman, “it's going to get larger. We should be able to see through to the other side. It's very thin right now, almost healed up. Basically we're pulling apart a wound, but it's going to snap shut very easily. Try and keep it from expanding more than five feet across. When it reaches about five feet, stop shooting the squirt guns until it starts to shrink. Do you all understand?”

  Mars looked at her friends, then nodded to Roman. “We got it, captain. But why café au lait?”

  “Oh,” said Roman, thinking that it was obvious. Sometimes he had to remind himself to explain things. “Café du Monde was around well before 1934, serving café au laits. So, in a sense, the café au lait inside these squirt guns transcends time, because during so much of New Orleans' history you can walk into Café du Monde and order it. Therefore covering the time rip with this café au lait will strengthen the current connection between now and 1934 on the other side, as unnatural as that connection is.”

  “Like poking your finger through a hole in a sweater, a hole made from a cigarette burn.”

  Roman nodded. “Like that, if the sweater could also heal itself.”

  Mars scratched her temple with the barrel of the German pistol/squirt gun. “Ok, you're gonna have to tell me the story of finding that out. Cause all I picture is you with a time rip, just throwing everything you can find at it until something happens.”

  “I'd be glad to tell you the story.” Roman looked at the Noisco members. “Ready?”

  They raised their guns and aimed in the general direction of the time rip, a couple of them striking dramatic poses as they did. Of course none of them could see the time rip yet, so none were aimed directly at it.

  “I'll shoot first, so that you know where to aim,” said Roman. He stepped away from the time rip, aimed his space gun/squirt gun and began rapidly pulling the trigger. Stream after stream of café au lait hit the time rip, which was still invisible, and ran down to the ground, marking where it was like an X on the ground. Mars and the Noisco members began shooting the time rip too, and he could see from the café au lait flowing over it's surface that it was getting larger and larger. “When it opens, try and aim at its edges.”

  The time rip was about the size of a floor-to-ceiling window when, through the wash of café au lait Roman could see the same street in 1934. In the street he saw himself, though quite a bit younger, standing in a sea of business people with their briefcases and tourists with their shopping bags and colorful shirts and sandals – all of them from the current time period.

  “Slow down your firing, but don't stop,” Roman told Mars and the Noisco members. “Remember to hit the edges.” Roman lowered his squirt gun and looked at the younger him. He pointed down, then pointed at the time rip. The other Roman nodded and began moving all of the people to the side, making room for people to come through the rip.


  One of the Noisco members went to the pile of filled squirt guns and began switching them out with the others as the guns began to empty out.

  “Listen up!” yelled Julius. “Time for everyone to go home. Please line up in a single file and walk through.”

  All of the misplaced people began lining up and walking through the rip, their clothes getting splashed with café au lait as they did. Roman could tell that they were all mentally and physically exhausted, yet happy to finally be going back.

  When William reached the portal, he stopped to hug Edith, then continued through.

  Eventually there was only Adelaide left, with The Axeboy inside the axe hanging at her hip. Roman closed his eyes and took a deep breath, trying to breathe in that last moment of her.

  Adelaide saw him and smiled. “Eat some Wonder, you silly old man,” she whispered.

  Then she walked through and was gone.

  After a moment the businessmen, service industry workers, and tourists began filing through from the 1934 side of the time rip. They looked dirty, unkempt, and tired – and also got splashed with café au lait as they walked through. In total there were about forty of them.

  Mars said to Roman, in a lowered voice, “Do you think it's possible that we got everyone to the right time periods?”

  Roman shook his head. “Julius and I were never under the illusion that we'd get everyone back to their proper time. I do believe we got most of them.”

  “What'll happen to the people stuck in the wrong time?”

  Roman looked over at her. “Adventure.”

  “Aww! That's something I'd say! Am I rubbing off on you, boss?”

  He smiled as the people stopped coming through the time rip. He looked through the rip to the younger version of himself, who nodded.

  “Is it weird?” whispered Mars. “To see yourself like that?”

  “Not particularly.” Then Roman turned to the Noisco members. “We can stop shooting now.”

  The café au lait stopped flying through the air, and the time rip began shrinking, albeit extremely slowly.