by K. C. Finn
“We’re here,” he stammers, “there’s an entrance in the mountain up ahead.”
Cae is about to ask “What mountain?” when he notices Kendra’s sharp eyes looking beyond Howard, tracing out the line of something huge nearby.
“I know this place,” she says with a laugh, “We raided a bunch of drug smugglers hiding out here a couple of years back.”
“That’s right,” Howard says, trying to smile, “Only the Special Brigade ever knew it existed, so Julius thought it was the best place to set up again.”
The name drags a sharpness through Cae’s chest. So his father is still here, just as he’d suspected.
“He’s been waiting to see you, Caecilius,” Howard adds, “he’s been waiting ever so long for you to find him.”
Cae lowers his weapons, taking the doctor’s sincerity in. He has known all along then, even when they’d met months ago in Dartley, that Julius had another name and another life out there before this place.
“Why?” is the first word that comes out of Cae’s mouth. He gathers himself, feeling a hitch in his throat that he doesn’t want heard. “Why did he need to vanish from the main base?”
“I think it’s better if I let him explain that himself,” Howard replies. There’s no missing the guilt in his tone, the way he looks down at the dark ground, hiding his face in the smoke and the blackness. “I’ll show you in. We can get some more torches going once we’re into the cave tunnels.”
Kendra leads the way, filled with a new sense of purpose evident in the puffing out of her chest and the way her head is raised higher than before. Cae is pleased to see she still has her guns ready, just in case. Twenty four hours ago they had been so at peace, watching the clear night sky for those precious minutes out on the boat. Now they’re entering a deep, humid cavern, a space where steam meets smog and fills the whole area with a solid wall of haze, unending in its thickness. Cae can feel the prickle of claustrophobia at his throat, a choke so gentle but so unarguably present.
A sudden flare ahead indicates that Howard has found the torches. They blaze wildly, sparking and spluttering in the strange atmosphere, their open flames raging dangerously as he offers one to Kendra, then to Cae. Three balls of fire light their way as the tunnel narrows, its walls coated in some strange black gloss that Cae can’t help but run a gloved finger across. The sticky substance comes off on his fingertip.
“Is this oil?” he shouts ahead. Howard is leading the way as Kendra walks backwards, assessing the path they’ve already taken.
“Not quite,” the doctor replies, “It’s a coating fluid. It keeps the toxicity from permeating the rock.”
Hence the haze and deep concentration of the smog they are walking through. Cae nods to himself.
“Why would you want to do that?” Kendra asks, her voice echoing loudly up the tunnel. Judging by the way the sound carries, they don’t have much farther to go.
“Do you know how tricky it is to filter clean air inside a mountain?” Howard asks, not waiting for anyone to answer him, “We have to take every precaution working in here. Poisoning’s a slow and painful way to go.”
“So we can de-mask at some point?” Cae says gratefully.
The promise of open space and freedom from his mask lifts some of the heaviness from his chest, giving him something to think about besides the man within the mountain, the very reason he has travelled across the ocean in the first place.
“Any minute now,” Howard replies.
A tense silence follows, broken only by the uneven sound of their footsteps. Howard’s shuffling heels scuff the stones up ahead. Kendra’s thump-thump-thump, a regulated march, echoes around the tunnel walls. Cae himself is almost treading on his tiptoes, anxiety rising with every move, his chest growing tighter as the moment he’s been pursuing finally arrives.
7.
The familiar sight of a clean air partition is an odd one in the middle of a huge lump of rock. A faint light ahead directs the trio as they extinguish their torches, passing through the two-doored chamber one by one. When Cae emerges on the other side he finds the light is brighter on this side of the glass, his eyes blinded by the tunnel and the bright glow of the flaming torch he’s been carrying. He winces, turning back to the dimmer wall he has just passed through, rubbing his eyes and ripping off his mask to breathe in a proper lungful of safe air.
The chemical smell is here too, though much stronger than that of the abandoned laboratory at the base. At his place near the wall Cae finds himself looking at endless streams of paper: maps, schematics and equations all secured onto the rock wall like the poster-filled bedroom of a nerdy teen. Some of the posters have been hammered in with nails, old nails that have had time to react and fuse with the ores in the rock.
This lab has existed for much longer than six months; it is no temporary hiding space built since Julius felt the need to suddenly disappear. This place might even be older than the other lab, judging by the decay around the edges of some of the oldest scrolls on the wall. His eyes renewed, Cae steps back to survey the wall further as Kendra emerges from the partition, pulling off her mask with a faint smile. She, perhaps unsurprisingly, doesn’t seem to have a problem with the light change. He makes a signal for her to come close so he can tell her about the age of the place, but Kendra’s hazel eyes are already lighting up at the sight of something before her.
“Julius!”
Cae freezes a moment, unsure if he really wants to turn. Kendra’s already off across the cavern like she’s been shot from a canon, making Cae’s slow rotation seem even less hasty. By the time he’s facing the right way she’s on the other side of the huge internal space, a pair of long lab-coated arms around her shoulders. His face is obscured by Kendra’s plaits, but the crop of fair brown hair slicked back on his head is horrifically familiar.
It occurs to the young detective that somewhere in the back of his mind, he might still have been hoping that this was all an elaborate trick. The photograph could have been doctored to make Julius look more like his father, or perhaps it would have been so old that the runaway professor might not have been here at Lachrymosa anymore. But now the voices travel across the cavern to where Cae stands, that accented tone and his breathy inflection over every “h” sound he makes. He can’t deny it or pretend to mistake it. His father is alive and ten feet from him.
And yet Caecilius Rex cannot move.
“When did you get here?” Julius asks, pulling away from his embrace with Kendra, touching her chin with a strange fondness, “I’ve been hacking the reports of the official boats coming in, but-‘
“I had them leave us off the guest list,” Kendra explains, her voice abnormally light, even a little frivolous, “We’ve picked up some enemies that are…I guess persistent’s the word, but that doesn’t really cover it.”
“We?” Julius asks.
And that’s when all conversation dies. His face is bearded, flecks of silver in the tawny mix, his toothy smile dropping away to a mild gape of shock. Like his son, Julius doesn’t move a muscle, just staring across the space at Cae like he might be a ghost. Cae supposes it must be stranger for him really; his son was only fifteen the last time he looked upon him. Now before Julius there stands a grown man, a man with pain and death and hardship drawn into the premature lines around his bright eyes. A man dressed head to toe in layers of black, lean but stoic, unyielding in his presence. All Cae can see is the same lanky scientist from his distant past, the man who wore his lab-coat at the dinner table, always ready to head back to work.
“Kendra,” Julius says, his eyes not leaving Cae’s, “You found him. Well done.”
Cae quirks a dark brow, his lips almost opening to speak.
“What do you mean I found him?” Kendra asks, looking between the two men repeatedly for a reply, “Was I looking for him?”
“Who do you think arranged that house on Buchanan Street in the first place?” Julius answers.
Cae huffs out a breath that almost makes i
t to being a laugh.
“You made us neighbours,” he states, nodding, “That’s clever.”
Julius takes one step forwards, but then he stops again. His eyes are wide and pleading, a paler blue than Cae’s own.
“I couldn’t contact you directly,” he explains, “We both would have died if I’d tried.”
“Wait a second,” Kendra interrupts, “Is that why I got bumped from the brigade? Because you needed a secret messenger to find your son?”
Cae can remember how difficult it had once been for Kendra to let go of her army ways, it has taken her months to even begin to adjust to a new way of living after her decade in the military. Her lack of memory prior to that means that she’s known little else. Julius finally breaks his stare with Cae to address her growing fury and Cae feels a pang when the professor puts his hand on her shoulder gently. It looks like he thinks it belongs there, like he’s entitled. And Kendra The Untouchable doesn’t seem to mind.
“Well I told you it was a paperwork issue,” he says, trying to smile, “I wasn’t that far off, was I? And admit it; you’ve done rather well since in Dartley.”
He has always been that way, trying to justify his behaviour when it’s clear he’s in the wrong. Cae is thankful to see Kendra shake her head.
“You could have told me,” she insists, “You could have trusted me, just one whisper.”
“Howard knew too,” Cae chips in, “Neither of them told us anything.”
He can’t resist the bitterness he feels at being so heavily deceived. Perhaps it’s a cheap shot, but he wants Kendra to still be on his side, to feel the same way about the pair of them as he does right now. She steps out of Julius’s touch and a shade closer to Cae instead. The young detective smiles.
“I suppose I should have guessed you knew more about me than you let on,” he says, his eyes fixing on Howard’s fearful face, “You’re one of the very few people who says my name right, after all. Most people have to be taught to pronounce it. And who better to teach you than the man who chose it.”
Julius takes a few more steps, closing a foot of the gap between father and son. He holds out his hands pleadingly, palms facing Cae, fingers splayed. His face is cautious but alive with thought.
“What does it matter son?” he asks, still approaching, “We’re all here now. We’re together.”
But that isn’t true. Someone is missing from their little reunion, someone who definitely isn’t coming back.
“Ready to play happy families, are you?” Cae snaps, suddenly louder and flushed in the face, “I think we’re missing a player.”
Julius stops walking, his hands slowly lowering toward the ground. Guilt overrides his look, making his features suddenly seem ashen in the artificial light.
“You don’t know how sorry I am about your mother, Caecilius.”
Cae clenches his fists, his gloves squealing under the strain.
“Prepare to be sorrier,” he hisses.
He springs from his stance with his fists flying out ahead of him, faster than his father can react to the assault.
8.
“Ouch!”
“Shut up and hold still.”
“Kendra?”
“Unfortunately, yes. Keep your eye shut, I’ve got an ice pack over it.”
“I can’t believe I got KO’d by own father.”
“You didn’t. I clocked you before you could kill him.”
The revelation isn’t as surprising as it could be. Cae has often heard in witness statements and criminal testimony of the concept of seeing red. So many people over the years have tried to explain the white-hot anger, its overpowering quality, the idea that rage can become so all-consuming that one no longer knows what they’re doing. Cae had never believed in it before, but now he reckons it’s not quite as ridiculous as it sounds.
“I don’t remember anything,” he says, opening the eye not under ice and squinting up at Kendra.
She looks angry with him, but she’s biting her bottom lip with worry all the same. And she’s here looking after him, not tending to Julius, who must be just as injured. That’s a good sign. He reaches out a gloved hand and touches her wrist for a moment.
“Sorry,” he murmurs.
Kendra shrugs.
“No worries,” she answers glibly, “Family reunions are not my area. I just wish you’d warned me how angry you were at him. I thought you were going to be relieved to see him, you know?”
“So did I,” Cae replies, a sadness overtaking him.
The detective pulls himself from his sprawl into a proper posture, sitting straight and having to take in the cavern all over again from a new vantage point. He and Kendra sit on two hospital beds surrounded by a privacy curtain, which Cae immediately pushes aside as he gets to his feet. His head swims briefly at the sudden motion, but he regains focus at the sight of Julius at a nearby bench.
He’s still working. His neck has finger-shaped striations glowing crimson, his nose is bleeding profusely into a handkerchief he has stuffed up one nostril, yet he stands at the workbench in a perfect tableau of calm, except for the twitch in his right shoulder as he tries to pour powder into a cylindrical plastic container. It takes Cae a moment to decide what’s really wrong with this scene, since it’s no great surprise to him that Julius wouldn’t let a trifling thing like a near-death experience get in the way of his work.
The plastic container. Written up the side in thin, delicate print, is the word REMEMBER.
“You,” Cae begins. Julius stumbles briefly at the sound of him so close by. “You make the drugs? You actually make these powders?”
If he didn’t feel sick about having been addicted to the chalky substances before, then Cae certainly feels it now and it’s made all the worse by his knowledge of their origin. Julius stops pouring and sets down his powder, turning slowly and removing the handkerchief from his nose.
“If I don’t send a certain quota out every month, someone comes up here to try and slit my throat,” he says simply, “although I daresay you were about to save them a job before Kendra stepped in.”
“So that makes you what?” Cae asks, “The Face’s hired hand? Chemist for rent? Or does he pay you well for it?”
Julius grits his teeth for a moment. “He doesn’t pay me at all,” he replies.
The scientist wipes his bleeding nose again before setting down the handkerchief and stooping into a crouch. He gingerly lifts the leg of his slack trousers, revealing a device strapped neatly to his calf. The workings look worn, eroded by water and scuffed over time. The area of flesh around the gadget’s strap is desperately sore and ulcerated, swollen beyond reasonable proportion like a poison blister ready to burst. Cae sees now why a few punches and a mild strangling wouldn’t have stopped his father from working; the pain that the device is causing him must be a hundred times worse.
“I’ll tell you one good thing,” Julius says with a hollow laugh, “I’ve invented a bloody good drug for stopping the septicaemia from killing me. If I ever get out of here, it’s going to revolutionise the medical world.”
“How could you let them do that to you?” Kendra asks.
She comes to stand closer to Cae and he can feel her shaking a little. Julius lets his trouser leg drop and rises less gracefully than when he’d crouched. He gives her an awkward look, apologetic but still trying to sound proud.
“When he first told me to put it on, The Face threatened to kill Cae and his mother if I didn’t wear it,” he explains.
Cae’s heart sinks. “That must have been years ago,” he says.
Julius just nods, smiling sadly. “Ten years. How was I to know I’d never be able to get the damn thing off?” He stretches his shoulders out with a thoughtful look. “He could have killed me anytime he liked, one push of a button and this little piece of jewellery would eviscerate me and anyone in the vicinity.”
Cae furrows his brow.
“Why are you in the past tense?” he presses, “You said he could have kille
d you. Can’t he still?”
“No,” Julius says, his smile growing into a grin.
“Why’s that?” Cae asks.
“The Face is dead,” he replies.
Cae shakes his head immediately. None of it makes any sense.
“How can you be sure?” he demands.
His father fixes him with a solid gaze.
“Because your mother and I killed him.”
9.
Perhaps feeling as though it will assuage his uselessness, Howard makes everyone coffee. It is a strange situation, the four participants sitting at a lab bench as though it’s a suitable table, all sipping the hot but ultimately flavourless beverage, waiting for one another to speak and break the silence that has closed in around them. Kendra, unsurprisingly, is the one to do it.
“Cae’s mother has been dead for six years,” she says with a querying look.
“I know that,” Julius answers, looking into his tarnished mug.
“We have evidence that The Face has been operating up until just a few days before we travelled here,” the ex-solider continues.
Cae thinks bitterly of Redd Richmond’s smug smile, that simple gesture he had made under the lamplight to show the detective who he really was. The clapping of hands. A mocking display. He grips his mug tighter, not daring to lift it until his hands have stopped shaking with the anguish of it all.
“I didn’t say he died six years ago,” Julius replies.
“Then how?” Kendra presses, “How can Jennavive have killed him with you?”
“I finished what she’d started,” the professor explains.
He drains his coffee as Cae watches his throat; the strangle marks he’s created are slowly fading away now. Julius gathers himself up, straightening his shoulders and resting his hands in his lap.
“I was abducted when Cae was fifteen,” he begins, telling the story to Kendra rather than meeting eyes with his son, “and Jenna spent years after that tracking me down. When she located The Face, she had a bargaining tool ready for him. A syringe full of poison.”
