Case Notes 38:
Hades
Hades didn’t show it, but he was thinking about what Tyler had said.
You’re dead inside. You don’t even remember your own name, do you?
He had no name, but he did have memories—and the memories he had were warped, broken, and missing. Occasionally, he would mull over his origin and probe curiously, reluctantly, at the barren socket where many of his childhood recollections should have been. Most of the time he merely wandered through life like a sleepwalker through darkest apathy.
He knew deep down there was something else inside him. A whisper. The charred remnants of his old self, that boy called A-02.
Hades didn’t care. He told himself the loss of memories was just another part of his evolution, like the sloughing off of snakeskin. The banishing of his humanity.
And yet…
Flashes of old memories returned to him. Subject Nine of Subset A, her breath hot on his cheek. The dead guard’s blood congealing on his skin as he trembled uncontrollably, clutching a gory brick against his chest. The belt coming down and down again, and his own screams filling his ears.
He’s been manipulating you this whole time. Only you’re too far gone to even realize it!
No, that wasn’t true. He wasn’t a slave. All this time, he had followed Dimitri’s orders of his own accord and pulled the trigger because he wanted to. Killing Dimitri would only confirm that. But to kill him and claim Elizabeth, he must side with the enemy.
“Let me kill Zeus,” Hades repeated.
Shannon exchanged glances with Tyler and the skunk-haired girl.
“Why would you want to do that?” Shannon asked.
“He doesn’t control me,” Hades said.
“Then tell us his address.”
“Not unless you untie me.”
They all looked at one another and did a little huddle-up in the corner of the room. They spoke in hushed voices.
Once they were done convening, Tyler and the other girl left the room. Shannon stayed but kept her distance. She watched Hades with a wary, guarded expression.
“There’s something I’d like to ask you,” she said.
“Go ahead.”
“Who were you before all this?”
“The same person you were.”
“Can’t you just answer clearly for once?”
“Does it really matter?” he asked.
“Yeah, actually, it does.”
“I don’t get why you’re so interested in knowing who I am.”
“Because I want to know if you were always this screwed up or if someone made you this way.”
Hades merely rolled his shoulders in a luxurious shrug and settled against the cushion. For once, he found himself averting his eyes from her, watching the wicker fan cast lazy shadows across the ceiling. Those shadows were wrong. The entire world was. It just never looked the way it was supposed to, and things never happened the way they should.
“I saw the scars on your back,” Shannon said. “I know something horrible happened to you.”
“Something horrible happens to all of us,” Hades said. “It’s called life.”
He wasn’t sure why the questions bothered him so much, but the more she nudged him, the more frustrated he became. Like the time when he’d beat the man at the hamburger stand to a bloody pulp, he found himself wrestling with someone else’s thoughts and feelings. Like a chimera tearing itself in two, gnawing at the suture line.
I don’t belong here, A-02 said in his head.
Leave me alone, Hades thought. If you don’t want to be here, then get out. Go back to sleep.
Who are you?
Shut up. Shut up. Shut up.
Shannon broke his daze by saying, “You don’t remember, do you?”
“No. I’m just about the only one here who remembers.” Damaged as his memories were, Hades knew more than the two of them combined. He knew what he was and where he had come from, and he knew the world probably didn’t exist. He wasn’t lost in the lie.
She was silent for a moment, seemingly absorbing his response. Then she shook her head and said, “I don’t get you.”
“Maybe someday you will.”
“Do you always speak in riddles?”
“They’re only riddles if you’re too stupid to figure them out.”
She gave him a sour look but said, “You know, I almost feel sorry for you.”
“Yeah, I bet you do.”
She didn’t care. She didn’t remember. Her sympathy was merely programming of a different variety. Psychological conditioning that had been asserted on her without her knowledge by this shithole of a society.
“I know what it’s like to lose sight of who you are,” she continued. “I—”
“You don’t know who I am.”
Tyler and the skunk-haired girl returned. Skunk Girl carried a pair of scissors in one hand and a small black aerosol canister—pepper spray?—in the other.
Tyler’s face was cleaned up and he wore an ill-fitting T-shirt under his jacket. He handed Shannon his gun and took the scissors from Skunk Girl.
“Are you going to untie me now?” Hades asked, feeling the muscles in his arms and legs flex. His gaze followed the lethal point of the scissors as they caught the light.
It wasn’t until Tyler knelt down to cut the tape around his ankles that the tension left Hades and he realized he wasn’t going to try anything. Not because he feared the gun but because he needed them just as much as they needed him. They were his path to Elizabeth.
Once the coil of duct tape fell to the carpet, Tyler stuck the scissors in his jacket pocket, gripped Hades by the upper arm, and pulled him to his feet. Rather than cut the tape around his wrists, Tyler just led him to the door.
“Bye, Victoria,” Shannon said as she paused on the front step and hugged Skunk Girl tightly.
“Be safe,” Skunk Girl said and glowered at him, clenching down on the pepper spray canister. “If you even think about hurting her, I’ll hunt you down and tear your guts out.”
Smiling, he regarded the metal street numbers affixed to the wall beside the front door. “Before you start making threats, maybe you should take into consideration the fact that I know where you live now.”
He didn’t have the luxury of seeing her expression, because by then Tyler was already shoving him forward.
Hades sat in the backseat this time instead of the trunk, on the passenger side. The moment Tyler sat down behind the driver’s seat, he pointed his gun at Hades, pressing it right up between his ribs.
“I was just joking,” Hades assured him. “We’re on the same side now.”
Tyler rolled his eyes. “Yeah, right.”
Case Notes 39:
Artemis
Shannon sighed, watching the world pass by beyond the windshield. In just the last several hours, she had discovered a stunning ability to cope with strange circumstances, but her strength was waning. She was growing mentally and physically exhausted, and with every mile, she found herself sinking deeper into a stupor.
“Are you all right?” Tyler asked, meeting her gaze in the rearview mirror.
“I’ll live,” Shannon said.
That is, if the sociopath in the backseat didn’t murder them first, or if the guilt over what she had done didn’t drown her.
“We both will,” Tyler said.
She looked back at the street ahead and stepped lightly on the gas pedal. She wanted to say more, just wasn’t sure how to put it into words. She wondered if Tyler was thinking the same thing she was.
How many people have I killed?
She was a killer. That was something she would have to live with her whole life. And one day it very well might consume her, but for today at least, she would have to keep that monster at bay. She couldn’t fight her own demons when the devil waited somewhere just beyond them.
What mattered now was finding Zeus and dealing with him. Even if it meant adding another body to the pile of corpses that w
eighed down on her conscience. And even if, by the end of this, the cumulative weight of those sins would drag her into hell.
Shannon glanced at the gun she had placed in the door compartment. The thought of having to use it made her heart lurch with nervous tension.
As they drove, Hades gave her directions. Otherwise, he kept strangely quiet, compared to how he was before. She wondered if he would try to betray them once they reached their destination or if they had actually managed to get through to him. More likely, he just had a concussion.
As they entered the area of Georgetown where Zeus apparently lived, Hades said, “Wait, stop the car.”
Shannon sighed and pulled to a stop along the curb. “What is it?”
“I need to drive from here,” Hades said.
“Why?”
“Because there are cameras, and I’m the only one here who knows the passcode. If they see you driving and me sitting in the backseat, they’re going to know something’s wrong.”
“What exactly do you mean by ‘they’?” Tyler asked.
Hades rolled his eyes. “Do you really think this is the work of one man? Dimitri is just part of it.”
“Dimitri?”
Hades hesitated, then said, “Dimitri Kosta. Zeus.”
Shannon felt her mouth go dry. Dimitri Kosta, as in Dr. Kosta, the psychiatrist she had been seeing for the last year.
“Oh, you’ve got to be kidding me,” Tyler said, and she saw at once the link connecting them.
“Are you a patient of Dr. Kosta’s, too?” she asked Tyler.
“That bastard,” Tyler said. “I’m going to kick his skull in.”
She wondered why, during her last phone call with Zeus, she had not recognized Kosta’s voice from her bimonthly psychiatry appointments and put two and two together. Then she realized she couldn’t even remember what they discussed during her visits.
There were so many gaps in her memory. How could she have overlooked them?
“Look, just untie my hands,” Hades said. “I won’t try anything. You can even keep the gun pointed on me.”
“Should we trust him?” she asked, glancing at Tyler.
Tyler sighed. “Do we really have a choice?”
“No,” she muttered, unbuckling her seat belt. “I guess we don’t. I’ll cover you.”
Shannon took the key from the ignition and retrieved her pistol from the door compartment. She stepped out of the car. She kept the gun close against her body as she opened the door that Hades would exit from.
“If you try to run, I’ll shoot you,” Tyler warned.
“I’m not going to run.” Hades got out of the car and leaned against it, his stomach flat against the side of the vehicle.
“Don’t move,” Tyler said, putting his gun in its waist holster. He zipped up his jacket and pulled the hem down, presumably to make it more difficult for Hades to access the pistol. As he took the scissors from his jacket pocket, Shannon aimed her gun at Hades’s chest.
Tyler snipped the tape and took a quick step back. He tossed the scissors across the street and extracted his own pistol from its holster.
Hades lowered his hands to his sides and turned around. “That wasn’t too hard now, was it?”
“Get into the driver’s seat,” Shannon said.
He obeyed, shutting the car door behind him. Once he was inside, Shannon circled around to the front passenger’s seat and sat down, pointing her gun at his chest. Tyler returned to the backseat.
“Hades, don’t buckle your seat belt,” Shannon said, worried he might try to ram the car into a wall or lamppost to disable her. She didn’t want to distract herself by trying to buckle her seat belt with her left hand. The last thing she needed was for him to come to a quick stop and hurl her through the windshield.
“I didn’t plan to,” Hades said, glancing at her as though she were an idiot. “It’s just a couple streets down.”
“I can’t believe we’re having him drive,” Tyler muttered.
“I’m a very good driver,” Hades said.
“He probably has a concussion,” Tyler said to Shannon.
Hades turned back onto the street. His gaze flickered to her every few seconds, as if he were worried she might shoot him the moment they arrived at Dr. Kosta’s house. While she had no intention of executing Hades, she wished that she could somehow restrain him. He couldn’t be trusted.
At the end of the street, they reached a high stone wall overgrown with vines of Virginia creeper.
“Tyler, duck down,” Hades said as he pulled up in front of the spear-pointed gate. He rolled down his window and leaned out, typing into the keypad.
Shannon tightened her grip on the pistol. She hoped the person watching through the camera inserted into the metal panel wouldn’t be able to pick up on the fact that she was pointing the gun at Hades. Or, for that matter, that they had a stowaway crouching in the backseat.
As Shannon waited for the gate to open, she quickly became certain Hades had typed in a different code, one that would summon them—whoever they were—in an instant. But then the gate rolled forward, and he drove through the opening. She flinched at the echoing crash of the great wrought-iron door closing shut behind them.
The sprawling mansion emerged through veils of rain. At the sight of the home, it suddenly occurred to Shannon that the people they were up against were very wealthy and most likely very powerful. Located on prime real estate and far larger than the surrounding homes, the mansion must have cost upwards of ten million dollars.
Apprehension ate away at her. Maybe they should just get the hell out of Dodge while they had a chance.
Hades stopped in front of a small single-room outbuilding that Shannon presumed was a garage. After removing the keys from the ignition, he just sat in silence, staring at the rainwater pouring down from the roof’s eaves.
“What are you waiting for?” Tyler asked from where he huddled in the backseat.
“I’m thinking,” Hades said. “Unlike you, I actually have something called a brain.”
Shannon scoffed. “I never would have guessed.”
“The three of us can’t go in together,” Hades said, ignoring her jab. “Dimitri’s not stupid. He’ll know something is up if Tyler’s with us, even if he pretends to be our prisoner.”
“I’m not letting you go in with her alone,” Tyler said.
“You don’t have a choice,” Hades said, then paused. “And it’s not like you’re just going to be sitting out here. You’ll attack from the flank, as soon as you secure Elizabeth.”
“Who’s Elizabeth?” Shannon asked.
“The only person worth a damn to me,” Hades said. “She’s my collateral, okay? Tyler takes care of her; I’ll take care of you. That’s how it works, right?”
“The last thing I need is for you to take care of me,” Shannon said, annoyed that Hades even thought for an instant that she needed his protection. “In case you forgot, I’m the one with the gun.”
She expected Hades to make a mocking retort, but instead he just looked into the rearview mirror then across the lawn. His demeanor seemed different than how it had been just an hour ago, his expression hardened with cold practicality, his eyes wary.
“Listen, there’s a utility tunnel that runs beneath the house, between the garage and the basement,” Hades said. “The garage entrance is hidden in a cabinet at the back of the room. I think it’s the one that’s filled with golf clubs. The bottom is loose, and there’s a keypad hidden there. You’ll have to remove the panel to reach it. As soon as you get to the basement, find Elizabeth and free her. Have her wait for us in the garage. She’ll be safe there.”
“She’s the girl in the picture, right?” Tyler asked.
“Right,” Hades said, then glanced at Shannon. “Do you have a pen? There are two codes. One for the garage and one for the utility tunnel. I don’t expect your boyfriend to remember both.”
Keeping the gun directed on him, Shannon opened the glove box with her left
hand and groped around inside of it. She knocked documents and coupons to the floor then searched through the compartment until she came across a black marker.
She gave the marker to Tyler, who wrote down the passcodes on his inner wrist.
“The dogs might be out,” Hades said to Tyler. “If you come across any, tell them grün. They’ll leave you alone then. Probably.”
Without waiting for her permission, Hades opened the car door and stepped out into the rain. He didn’t bolt, just shut the door and circled around to her side. By then, she had already gotten out of the vehicle.
“See?” He smirked at her. “We’re allies now.”
Shannon trusted him about as far as she could throw him. He was a contradiction, doing one thing and saying another, smiling warmly even as his eyes remained icy and guarded. However, she sensed that somewhere between his pistol-whipping and now, his motives had shifted, and his goals now aligned more closely with hers.
“Are you doing this for that girl you were talking about?” she asked as they walked through the rain. Water drizzled down her cheeks, and the wind buffeted her face. She slipped the pistol into the baggy pocket of her jacket, holding it pointed away from her. She kept a step or two behind Hades, with ample space between them, in case he tried anything.
Stepping under the colonnade, he answered her question with one of his own. “Do you ever feel dead?”
His question took her aback, and she didn’t know how to respond.
“I don’t when I’m with her,” Hades said and opened the mansion’s double doors. “But I do everywhere else.”
Case Notes 40:
Persephone
Elizabeth yanked at the canvas restraints. No good. They wouldn’t loosen, no matter what she tried.
Her struggle was disrupted by the sound of approaching footsteps and soft conspiring voices from the hall outside her door. She recognized the voices as belonging to Dr. Kosta and the Leader of the Academy, that white-haired man who had greeted her when she had arrived here. Her blood thickened into frozen mud.
She tried to sit up, only to be pulled down again by the straps around her wrists and ankles.
“I trust that you’ll be able to correct it?” asked the Leader, his voice clipped with his strong accent.
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