Morningstar

by A. J. Curry

  Only maybe not.

  “This ain’t right,” I said to Murgenstaern, who ignored me.

  “It can’t be this easy,” I said to his receding back “I have a really, really bad feeling about this.”

  What was left of the assault team had followed us into the corridor. Bad idea. I was going to order them back out when two things happened − one unexpected, the other supposedly impossible.

  A shot rang out − loud, high-caliber. Murgenstaern pitched forward, as apparently dead as anyone else who’d been shot in the back.

  I threw myself against the wall, turned. Colvin Case was at the far end of the corridor, holding a .45 revolver like he actually knew how to use it − and apparently just had. Behind him stood a triad of Greys. Behind them, they had an assault team of their own. I never thought even one sasquatch with a rifle was a good idea.

  “Did you really think you were the only one?” Case said.

  seven: caroline

  It wasn’t just the age thing.

  Murphy had grown up poor, an only child of people who wound up being married to each other for fifty years. My parents weren’t rich, but they weren’t poor. They stayed married just long enough to make sure I’d be old enough to be traumatized by the custody battles and head games.

  Bottom line: When our own marriage got rocky, I had one set of expectations… and Murphy had another.

  I stuck it out as long as I could, I did everything I could. But at a certain point, it was obvious to me that it wasn’t working. Murphy wouldn’t see it, couldn’t see it. When I finally had to tell him what I had to do, it might well have been the worst day of his life.

  But not mine.

  It had become inevitable.

  I picked fights with him. I’m not proud of it, but I’m not ashamed, either. He stubbornly, obstinately, refused to admit we had problems.

  The fights became more frequent, the makeup sex after the fights started to dwindle away. The occasional drinking turned into constant drinking.

  I needed space and he couldn’t see it, didn’t even understand the concept. He wanted to be married the way his parents had been married.

  I didn’t want to be married any more at all.

  It was everything, it was nothing. Or maybe a whole lot of nothings.

  After two years of struggling with my job, I turned in my resignation. Rather than deal with yet another Pacific Northwest winter, I cashed out my savings and used the airline miles we’d been sitting on for years to plan a trip to all the places we were once going to see that somehow never happened.

  I told him I was coming back. But we both knew that wasn’t really going to happen.

  Neither one of us said a word on the drive to the airport. Typically, he put the top down even though there was occasional light rain drizzling from the gray Northwest skies. Whenever he could take his eyes from the road, he looked at me − but I couldn’t look at him.

  I just… couldn’t.

  Finally, we wound up at the security gate in the airport. He couldn’t hug me around my loaded backpack, but he kissed me until I couldn’t stand it anymore and made him stop.

  Then I turned and walked away.

  For one crazy moment, I wanted to just ditch the backpack − turn around, tell him I was sorry, ask him to take me home. Then the moment passed. I went on with my life.

  I suck, Murphy − I always told you that. Maybe now you’ll finally believe me. Maybe now, you’ll finally stop loving me.

  You really should, you know.

  eight: murphy

  By Gulf Coast standards, it had been a nice day.

  Case had flown in from D.C. It was the first time any of us had seen him since we’d found out he was going to be our boss. I had myself only gotten back into town a few days ago. Caroline and I had gone to see Shannon again, had made a decision.

  I hadn’t been surprised that Case accepted the invitation to a long off-campus lunch, but I was surprised when he ordered a margarita. That sort of behavior was frowned upon by the current Company management he was trying very hard to blend in with.

  We were sitting on the patio at Hugo’s, in Montrose not far from my house. The downtown skyline was visible through the muggy, smoggy air, including the building where our “consulting firm” kept its offices.

  “I never had a chance to tell you how sorry I was about your parents.” Case had shed his jacket and loosened his tie. I didn’t have a tie to loosen, my one jacket was hanging on a peg in my cube back at the office. Lack of rank hath its privileges. The big blond kid I used to get into after-hour clubs was getting skinny and sober and working his way up the ladder, but he was still my friend… sort of.

  “Thanks,” I told him.

  “How’s Caroline?”

  “She’s good. She’s wrapping up her master’s in a few weeks and thinking about a new job.”

  “Congratulate her for me − how many does that make?”

  “Job or degree? I’ve pretty much lost count either way.”

  Case chuckled. “Pretty much just the one job in your case − even though you could’ve had mine.”

  I shrugged. “You look better in a suit than I do, and swapping Houston for D.C. doesn’t strike me as much of an improvement. But there is something I want to talk to you about… and I think you know what it is.”

  Case sipped his ‘rita. The waiter brought us some more chips, as well as some of the fried grasshoppers I’d gotten fond of back when I still did field work.

  “Pretty much,” Case said. “But I still want to hear it from you.”

  “After saying goodbye to Mom and Dad for the last time, I realized there wasn’t one single thing or person in this world I wouldn’t say goodbye to as well − except for one.

  “She’s not happy here, Colvin. There’s not a thing in this world I won’t do for her, not a place in this world I won’t go for her. There’s really just one thing holding me here. And maybe not even that.”

  “Are we talking about your resignation… or something else?”

  “Something else.” I took a deep breath. Case was sort of my friend and now he was my boss − no “sort of” about it. He could shoot the whole thing down in a heartbeat. But I’d taken worse chances for less. “At any given time, I’m having up to half a dozen simultaneous IM conversations with analysts or technicians − including the ones sitting in cubes next to me. Except for policy, there’s not a single damn reason I can’t do what I do anywhere in the world with a decent Internet connection.”

  Case took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes briefly. “‘Policy’ in our case is no small matter. Implementing a telecommute option in an insurance office or a software company is one thing. Implementing it in The Company… is a little more complicated.”

  “But not impossible.”

  “Hardly. There’s a pilot program back in D.C. − which I’m assuming you already know about, since we’re having this conversation.”

  “Yup.” I couldn’t read him. He was either going to say “yes” or “no”. That much I knew. I also knew there wouldn’t be much point in arguing about it, either way.

  “What you may not know is that there are a lot of restrictions and requirements, including some technical ones involving equipment I would prefer not to have in my home. Have you talked to Caroline about this?”

  “A little. You know I don’t tell tales out of school.”

  “No, you don’t − which is one reason this could work. Do you know where you’re going?”

  “At this point, it looks like probably Portland or Seattle, although there’s a few other places as well.”

  “All in the Northwest, I take it?”

  “Yup.”

  “I’ll put in the request, Murphy. You’re a valuable asset I would prefer we keep. How does this affect your other loyalties?”

  “What ‘other loyalties’?” There were a handful of Company employees I suspected were also in The Order. Case wasn’t one of them.

  “You didn�
��t move around growing up like I did. You have friends here that go back a long time, right?”

  “Oh… that. Colvin, I’ve got The Job, I’ve got Caroline. Nothing else really matters that much.”

  “Did you think you were the only one?”

  What was left of my Sauroid assault team had reacted to the shot the same way I had, were lined up against the corridor wall with weapons pointed back where the shot came from. Behind me, what was left of a supposedly immortal archangel was beginning to leak what looked an awful lot to me like human blood. A few yards further down, the vault-like door to a containment chamber remained shut.

  At the other end of the corridor, my boss was still pointing a .45 Magnum in my general direction. He’d traded his suit coat for a ballistic vest and covered his thinning hair with a black field cap, was otherwise dressed the same as every time I’d ever seen him in the last five years − right down to the goddam tie, tie clip, and fucking cufflinks.

  Behind him stood a triad of Greys − not drones, the tall ones that apparently do the thinking. Popular fiction almost gets it right: They are essentially humanoid insects from a very different universe. Behind them, a rifle squad of sasquatches had taken aim on my team. I hadn’t quite realized I was doing it, but by the time I actually saw Case, my own sidearm was pointed back at him.

  What used to be called a “Mexican standoff” − except I’d not been in one in ten years of Central American field work. The term was no longer considered politically correct, and probably not applicable to interdimensional space aliens.

  Case turning up was pretty close to the last thing I expected. Whatever had been done to him was either very recent or very subtle. Maybe both − I had never suspected a thing. “The only one what, Case? By the way, sorry about the status reports. I’ve been a little busy.”

  “Your lead analyst has filled in admirably. We should consider promoting him.”

  “Sure. Which organization did you have in mind?”

  Case chuckled. “The only one that matters. The one you could’ve been part of if a pack of drug-addled hippies hadn’t gotten to you first. The one you can still join, unless you plan on continuing to stand between me and what I came here for.”

  “The Archangel Array? You could’ve had it any time you wanted it between splashdown and winding up here. You want it now, there’s nothing keeping you from going around me.”

  “Not the array. Not even the object that struck it down. The thing directly behind you.”

  “There nothing ‘directly behind me’ except a buddy of mine you just shot dead in the back, you son of a bitch. Ask nice, and maybe I’ll think about it.”

  This time Case laughed out loud. “He’s no more dead than you’re in a position to bargain. I don’t think he can die − but as long as that bullet’s in him, whatever promises he made you are null and void.”

  “What is it, a silver bullet? You want him, you come and take him… you just gotta get through me.”

  I took the safety off my sidearm with a loud and deliberate click. “You’re a desk jockey, Case, and I was taking out bigger men than you while you were still figuring out what your dick was for. You think you’re up for it? Bring it.”

  “Not silver, not really a bullet or anything else you’ve ever heard of, and not important − it’ll work as well as lead where you’re concerned, and I have five more. But you’re still a valuable asset, and you’ve been a friend − even if you’re a posturing old punk rock cowboy asshole. You have one more chance to stand down.”

  I shook my head. “Sorry − you want him, you gotta come get him.”

  “Actually,” Case said. “I don’t.” Switching to a one-handed grip on the revolver, he made a gesture that seems awfully familiar. I felt a tingling sensation around my face and my head.

  Suddenly, the rolled-up balaclava was stripped away.

  Then he stripped away the tinfoil hat.

  Then he stripped away me.

  Finally, it had become inevitable.

  The fights became more frequent, the makeup sex after the fights went away. The occasional drinking turned into constant drinking. The occasional bitter, drunken accusations turned into constant bitter drunken accusations.

  It became obvious that I’d left behind everything else I knew and loved for someone who no longer loved me, no longer wanted me, and needed ‘space’ that I had never needed, wanted, or even understood.

  I’d put everything I had into one desperate effort at trying to make her happy… and failed. Even if she’d offered me a second chance, I couldn’t take it. I’d made bargains I couldn’t break, painted myself into a corner. Worse yet, I had finally gotten old.

  It was supposed to be a long overdue trip to places in the world she wanted to see, including a few where my past could easily have caught up with me in ways I couldn’t even begin to explain. Neither one of us called it a “separation”. “Divorce” was a word I couldn’t even say to myself.

  But we knew.

  Neither one of us said a word on the drive to the airport. I’d put the top down, despite the drizzle. I stole glimpses of her when I could take my eyes off the road, trying to embed as much of her in my mind and memory as I could. She either stared ahead or look down at her phone. She would not look at me.

  As always, I run the tape back in my mind and try to figure out what else I could’ve said, what else I could’ve done. As always, the tape in my mind still winds up with me at an airport watching my entire world walk away with an overloaded backpack, never to return.

  We stood at the long corridor to the security gate. I couldn’t really hug her because of the backpack, but I kissed her until she made me stop. “I’m going to come back,” she whispered − but I knew it wasn’t true.

  Then she turned and walked away. I watched, incapable of moving.

  Then she was at the gate.

  Then she turned.

  Shrugging off the backpack, she walked back. Never in her life had she been more beautiful.

  I could not move, only watch as she walked toward me − smiling, radiant.

  Finally, she was standing before me. “I was wrong, Murphy. Wrong about everything. We can try again. Will you give it all up? Give it up for me?”

  “I’m sorry, baby,” I whispered. “I can’t.”

  The smile on her face turned to horror as I raised the gun.

  I pulled the trigger.

  “Nonlethal settings,” was what I had told the team.

  Case glared up at me, paralyzed, from where I’d dropped him a yard away. In my hand was the Sauroid sidearm I’d just fired. It was tricked up to look like a Glock 9mm, with an extra control surface accessible to either a human or sauroid thumb. I gestured with it at the end of the corridor.

  “Light ‘em up!” I screamed at my team, dropping to the floor and dropping the fake Glock.

  Case’s Magnum was a easy reach away. I ripped it from his hand. The Grey triad had not moved from the end of the corridor.

  Three shots later, I retrieved my tinfoil hat and balaclava − better safe than sorry. The Magnum got tucked into my jacket.

  Returning to my feet and holstering the fake Glock, I turned to my second in command. “Gimme your knife,” I told him.

  nine: murgenstaern

  Light returned to both my inner and outer vision.

  Murphy was standing over me, his leather jacket spattered with large amounts of what looked like human blood.

  “Are you injured?” I asked.

  “Nope, this would all be yours − took awhile to find the bullet.” He held up a black anodized combat knife, also bloody, and turned to his Sauroid second in command. “Nice knife,” he said, flipping it in the air and catching it by the blade point. “If I’d used the backup sticker in my boot, I’d still be digging. Thanks for the loan.” He extended the blade hilt first to the Sauroid, who returned it to a belt scabbard without comment.

  It was difficult, but I could stand. Murphy helped me. The damage to my ‘puppe
t’ was not trivial. Luckily, I would not need it much longer.

  “I… I don’t know how to describe this.” I said. “My senses went away. What happened?”

  “You got shot, old son − in the back, by this piece of shit.” Murphy kicked another human, lying bound at his feet. “Lucifer Morningstar, meet Colvin Case − one way or another, my now ex-boss.”

  “That makes no sense. How could a bullet make me insensate?”

  “Oh, this is a very special bullet,” Murphy said, retrieving an object from his pocket and holding it up − a small and strangely opaque spheroid. “It contains a miniature version of the same machinery that paralyzed you on the trip down here… except this up close and personal, it completely knocked you out.”

  “If by ‘knocked out’, you mean ‘unconscious’, not so. But all of my senses… stopped. I have never experienced such a thing, not in all of time.”

  “Trust me,” Murphy said. “You get used to it.”

  It was a strange experience, having someone explain to me events of which I had no knowledge.

  Stranger still: To find out how many events had occurred without my knowing… for far longer than I had ever known.

  The Greys had engineered the entire thing. They had found the Seraphim Stone in the depths of space, caused it to arrive on Earth… all for the sole purpose of again attempting to abduct me.

  “What else happened?” I asked Murphy.

  “Not much. Just a firefight, a few Greys getting shot, and me getting assfucked in the mind by the same piece of shit that shot you.” He kicked the other human again. “Nice trick, Case. Greys teach you that?”

  “Teaching isn’t exactly what they do, Murphy.” The monkey named “Case” was restrained with zip-ties at his ankles and wrists. Another zip-tie had been used to secure one of the Faraday cage skullcaps to his head. Between bruises and damage to his clothing, it seemed likely he’d been kicked a few times while I was unaware. “I received benefits in return for favors,” Case said. “No different than you and The Order.”