Fade to Midnight

by Shannon McKenna

  He'd been in this unenviable state since he'd woken from the second coma, the one following the stress flashback. The one which had necessitated reconstructive surgery upon the face of Dr. Prateek Patil, Kev's neurosurgeon. Embarrassing, considering how hard the guy had worked on Kev's fucked-up brain. Patil hadn't deserved to get pounded all to shit for his trouble. But life was seldom fair.

  He doubted that same fit would come over him if he should see Patil again, but nobody wanted to experiment with that hypothesis, least of all Patil himself. The guy had a restraining order out on him.

  On the button, Stevens cold called $600. Kev wrenched his mind back into focus. Stevens's hand couldn't be that great. His normal pattern was to re-raise big hands, get the blinds to fold, and eliminate random hands that could flop big and crush a high-percentage hand.

  Pay attention. Hard to calculate what kind of hand Stevens would be playing with, his head pounding like this. Moriarty folded. His $100 blind went into the pot. Chilikers squeezed his cards and studied them again before he called $400 more. He'd been an early winner, after he got the stake from Kev. He'd even gotten ahead by about thirty thousand for a while, but for the last hour he'd been taking beat after beat. He'd gotten more sullen with each one.

  Laker, the limper, called. He was getting pot odds for any two cards. That left four for the flop. Laker, Chilikers, Stevens, and himself.

  Chilikers was staring at him again as the dealer burned the top card and flipped up the board. Queen of diamonds, jack of diamonds, two of clubs. Coordinated board. Sucked, for him. Anyone with two diamonds only needed one more to win, or any two connecting cards for a five card straight. His head throbbed sickeningly. He stuck his hand in his pocket, clutching the prescription bottle, but the pills would be useless now. He'd waited too long, hadn't wanted to dull his edge. He was so nauseous now, he wouldn't be able to digest them. So there was no way out of this shitty headache now but straight through it.

  Besides. Seemed stupid to zonk himself into deliberate dullness after years of spending a fortune on extreme sports just to prove to himself that he had a fucking pulse.

  Man, he felt that pulse now. Every heartbeat a meat mallet blow to his frontal lobe, thudding against the swelling, the scar tissue, the knitting bones of his skull. The healing process would be slow, though the doctors had assured him that the situation would improve. The pain, nausea, dizziness, the disorientation would diminish over time. And they had. He'd already gotten off the antiseizure meds. He might even regain some lost memories, they had hopefully hypothesized.

  Though it was clear none of them wanted to be anywhere near him when that happened.

  But Christ, it hurt. Every beat of his heart. Sometimes he wished that organ would give it a rest. Just stop, and leave him the fuck alone.

  Concentrate, goddamnit. Stop whining. Self-pity is not useful.

  That would be a lot easier if that bastard would stop staring.

  It didn't usually bother him, but the disgust, the veiled hostility on Chilikers face bothered him a lot, in his current state. Kev met his eyes straight on, and silently invited him to state his fucking problem.

  Chiliker's eyes flicked away. He checked. Stevens, too.

  Kev bet $1,500. Stevens called. Chilikers, too, then Laker. The pot was up to $8,500. And Chilikers was glaring again.

  Ignore the fucker. He funneled his mind by brute force into the calm detachment that he craved. He played for the express purpose of concentration, detachment, serenity. And he was blowing it because some greedy asshole was giving him the hairy eyeball? Unacceptable.

  The dealer burned, and flipped the turn. Ace of diamonds.

  Ah. Now that was a problem. His mind seized on to it hungrily, rejoicing in the new slew of calculations to make. He had a set, yeah, but a bunch of possible hands could beat a set of aces. His brain churned out the list, examining probabilities in a blinding inner stream of data that gave him sweet relief. As long as he could keep it up.

  He'd happened upon this new coping mechanism by chance. Bruno had brought him a laptop to keep him from going nuts in the hospital, after they'd taken the restraints off. He'd discovered online poker while fucking around with it. It had taken serious effort to get those restraints removed, and convince the hospital staff that he was not going to wig out and attack them. He winced, just thinking about it.

  Online poker was the first thing he found that helped. It chilled him, just that crucial bit that kept him halfway sane. He needed dark glasses to stare into the computer, and even so, the glow of the screen intensified his headaches badly, but it was better than a padded cell.

  He'd played for days on end, until the doctors started talking about taking the computer away. He'd made it clear that wasn't an option, and shortly afterward found himself discharged, much sooner than hospital protocol dictated. The staff was scared shitless of him.

  He didn't blame them. Christ, he scared himself these days.

  As soon as he could stagger out on crutches, he'd sought out some real poker games. High-level play. Seasoned, talented players. The more layers of complexity, the better the trick worked for him. Those guys played for real money, though. They'd kicked his ass for a while. It had been an expensive coping tool while he made the adjustment.

  Not anymore, though. He won, now. Almost always. He cycled through a big circuit of clubs, so that no one got too tired of that fact.

  Not that he gave a shit about winning. The money in his pocket when he walked out was a byproduct. It was the process he craved. The stream of calculations in his head, blotting out the jangle of emotional overload. The game as he played it was painkiller, anxiolytic, and sleep substitute. After hours of probabilities calculation, he felt almost rested.

  Patil was still pissed. There was a lawsuit pending. But whatever. If Patil wanted money to compensate his shock, pain, and mental anguish, Kev would give it to him. Of course, money didn't do shit for shock, pain, or mental anguish. He should know. He had plenty of money, and what fucking good had it ever done him?

  He'd apologized to Patil, very sincerely. Bruno had gone to see the guy while he was recuperating from his surgery, to grovel on Kev's behalf, since they wouldn't let Kev himself anywhere near the man. But Patil had been unimpressed. Maybe it was the shattered orbital bone, the dislocated jaw. Kev could relate to that. He'd had a shattered orbital bone and a dislocated jaw himself when Tony had found him. He'd been too damaged to talk at the time, but he remembered the pain just fine.

  It had an unsalutory effect on a guy's sense of humor.

  Bummer, for Patil, that he'd resembled the troll from Kev's nightmares so closely. No. Correction. Not nightmares. Memories.

  Not clear ones, nor particularly useful ones, but still, they were memories. Not dreams, or fantasies, or hallucinations. He was sure of it. If there was one good thing about going over a waterfall and getting pounded to pulp, it was that. He had a narrow bridge connecting him to his former self, and he was clinging to it.

  He no longer went out, except for the nighttime poker. He just holed up in his loft, trolling cyberspace all day, sunglasses on, shades drawn. Looking for his memories under every rock he could turn up. Since he finally had a snowball's chance in hell of finding them.

  Osterman. He had a name for the monster who haunted his nightmares. He even had a visual reference, in the luckless Patil's face.

  Osterman was the name of the troll that stood guard at the door where his memories were locked. And a name was something to start with. It was a seed. Entire forests could be grown from a single seed.

  He had a scarce handful of other data. The date, August 24, 1992. The warehouse south of Seattle where Tony had saved his life. A man had been beating him to death, Tony had ascertained, after watching on the closed-circuit camera for a while. Tony had been unwilling to get involved, but he didn't like the look on the guy's mug. He'd been enjoying himself a little too much. A few shots with Tony's Beretta sent him scuttling like a rat, and Tony had been lef
t with a comatose guy, soaked with blood and beaten to hamburger. No identity. None of his marbles, either. Dead weight.

  The homemade tattoo on his leg that read "Kev" was as good a name as any, so he'd stuck with it. Though it seemed odd for a guy to tattoo his own name on himself. What, like he might forget it? Hah.

  Then there was the fact that he spoke some Vietnamese, of all things. That, plus his combat skills had led old Tony to conclude that Kev was Special Forces, but Vietnamese? Special Forces would make sense if he spoke Arabic, Persian, Pushtu, Croatian, Spanish. He was thirty years too young to be a Vietnam vet. It didn't track.

  And the math, the science. Big bodies of human knowledge he was inexplicably familiar with. Theoretical physics. Biochemistry. Computer engineering. Earth sciences. Astronomy. The physics of flight. The history of aeronautics. The migratory patterns of birds, animals, and insects. Extensive first aid and field medic skills. Carpentry. He could sew, for the love of Christ. He connected the dots and got a scrambled clot. None of it made sense. But did any human life make sense?

  Since the ride over Twin Trails Falls, his dreams had gotten clearer. They lingered after he woke up, instead of scuttling away to hide. Things were shifting in his mind, tectonic plates moving. Little puffs of steam, spouts of ash, but no dramatic realizations, no floods of returning memory, no "aha!"

  Nothing so easy. Just feelings, images. Teasing, poking at him. Like his tiny angel, for instance. What the fuck was she about? She was too perfect, too iconic to be a real person, in that shining dress of hers. More like an angelic doll. A divine symbol, not a person.

  Maybe he'd desperately needed a benevolent presence to counteract Osterman's evil, and his brain had fabricated the little angel for protection. Maybe he'd been religious, before. Spiritual.

  And then again, maybe not. He remembered throwing someone through a window. That didn't strike him as particularly spiritual.

  He shied away from analyzing the angel, though. She had saved his life and sanity. Whenever he slid into that paralyzed black hole in his head, he hung on to her, and she led him safely out. She'd led him out of the first coma, the one he'd been in when Tony first found him. She'd guided him back into speech again. Maybe a psychiatrist could explain her psychological function, but no thanks. He still needed her too badly to risk spoiling her magic with clinical explanations.

  The first memory that had come to him after the waterfall had been of trying to convince some guy to help him, to believe him, but for the life of him, he couldn't remember what it was that he wanted the guy to believe. He remembered the man's disapproving face perfectly. Long nose, thin mouth, curled lip. But not his name.

  It was maddening. Total amnesia had been more peaceful.

  He remembered Osterman gloating over him. He remembered a blond, leering man with a thick red face, too. An open flame, coming toward his face. The sizzle of contact. And pain. So much pain.

  There were gentler memories. A bearded man with a seamed, unsmiling face. Boys. A weathered house in the woods. A rough table, a kerosene lamp, like a scene from another century. Maybe he was remembering a past life. Pioneer days. Hah. This life alone was enough for him to wonder about. Spare him the red tape of past lives, too.

  He needed more. Frames of reference. Names, dates. Hard data.

  Concentrate, goddamnit. He'd lost the thread. He stared down at the cards. They were floating, shifting. Double vision, glowing with a halo. His ears were ringing, tinny and sharp. He couldn't screen out the soaps and deodorants of the men around the table. The detergents their clothes had been washed in made his nose burn. The earthier smells of their bodies, their sweat, their breath. Chiliker's chronic lung infection, the alcohol emanating from the pores of the dealer to his left. Cigarette smoke, peeling paint, dust. Mildewy water damage.

  The fetid stink made his head throb like a rotting tooth.

  And everyone was waiting for him to snap out of his vague dream, get off his ass, and bet. Chilikers had checked, so had Laker.

  Kev stared at the backs of his two aces. He couldn't take this tonight. He'd play like a hothead rookie, end it fast. "Seven thousand."

  Stevens blinked. "All-in, nine thousand five hundred."

  Chilikers eyes darted to Stevens. He hadn't expected that. "All-in, seventeen five," he said, but his voice sounded nervous.

  Laker folded, shaking his head.

  Kev shrugged inwardly. What the hell. "I call. I'm all-in."

  They all stared at him for a long moment. 5.5:1 pot odds didn't technically justify his drawing odds, but he wanted it to be over, and he was feeling reckless. Angry. Twitchy. Acting out, like a bad little kid.

  "Two players, all-in. Turn over your hands," the dealer directed.

  Kev turned his aces, and looked to his left. Stevens had flopped a set of queens. Chilikers had turned the flush.

  "Pair the board," Kev said.

  The dealer burned the top card, and turned over a jack of hearts.

  Full house. Aces full of jacks. He'd won fifty thousand bucks. Son of a bitch.

  He flicked a few fifty dollar chips to the dealer as a tip, and walked out the door with fifty-eight thousand and change. Plus the title and keys to Chilikers' 2007 Volvo, which bit his ass, but whatever. More than usual. He usually averaged ten thou a night, and that was playing more carefully and consciously than he had tonight.

  He limped out into the predawn chill. Chilikers was there, staring morosely at his Volvo, smoking a cigarette. The final blow for his infected lungs, no doubt. Kev crossed the street toward him. "Hey."

  Chilikers did not turn. "Two fuckin' outs," he said, teeth clenched.

  "More like seven. Eight, with Steven's quad Queen draw," Kev replied quietly. "You were the 4:1 favorite. I just got lucky."

  Chilikers muttered something obscene under his breath. "Asshole," he growled. "You didn't even have the fucking odds to call."

  "No. I didn't." Kev gazed at him for a long moment. He fished the title and keys out of his pocket, and held them out.

  Chilikers stared. "You won that," he said slowly. "It's yours."

  "You paid," Kev replied. "But I don't need it. Got no place to park it. Don't want to insure it, or deal with selling it. Take it back. Please."

  Chilikers looked tempted, but then his mouth hardened. He flung his cigarette down, stomped it. "What, feeling sorry for me, now? I don't need any fucking favors, freak. You won it. You keep it."

  Kev held his breath, teeth clenched. Whew. Before Twin Tail Falls, that interchange wouldn't have registered on his radar screen. Walk away. He already had a lawsuit in course for assault and battery.

  He walked away, careful not to limp. So he was driving home, with Chiliker's unwanted fucking car. He refused to let himself feel grateful. His leg was better, but it would have taken forty painful minutes to stagger home on foot with a headache like this.

  He peered up at the sky as he got into his new car. It smelled like Chilikers, he noted. Not good. But he'd unload the car soon. It was later than usual, and when the sun rose, it would drive long, cruel nails of light into his throbbing brain tissue. But with the wheels, he could afford to make a detour before he holed up in his dark lair.

  He parked by the battered brick front building on NE Stark. A sign by the door read "ANY PORT IN A STORM." It was a shelter for runaway teens. It provided twenty-four-hour-a-day crisis intervention, emergency shelter, individual and family counseling, transitional living programs for homeless youths, street outreach, emergency housing, help for kids who were addicted to drugs. He'd done some cyber snooping, and he liked the place. He pulled the wad of cash out, shoved it into the brown envelope he'd shoved into his coat pocket for that purpose, scribbled the name of the director, and sealed it up. He'd give them the car, too, if it would fit through the slot, but he wasn't up for anything that would require human interaction. His head hurt, his jaw hurt. He worked the envelope through the letter slot, waited for the thud. Saved him the bother of writing out a bank deposit
slip.

  He'd had some incidents, on these morning walks. He'd once brought a young prostitute to the door of Any Port, after saving her from being beaten up by her john. The john he left where he lay, moaning in the gutter. Fuck him. Punching a teenage girl in the face. Kev tried to be tolerant, but there were limits. Another time, he'd been ambushed by a couple thugs near this very shelter, but he'd flattened them with no trouble. All in all, though, his morning walks were mostly uneventful.

  But Christ, his thigh hurt. And his ribs. His arm. Everything.

  His reflection in the glass window in the door caught his eye. So thin, haggard, cheekbones jutting, cheeks hollowed. He stared at himself, seeking recognition in the face he saw. But it eluded him.

  All he had now was what he'd made of himself since Tony found the bashed up wreck of his body eighteen years ago. That ought to be enough, but it wasn't anymore. Not since the waterfall. Memories were stirring, and his hunger to know more itched and burned, prodding him along with nasty, anxious urgency. Almost as if something terrible might happen if he did not succeed in remembering.

  He parked by the unlovely brick warehouse building on NW Lenox that housed his loft apartment, an alley in the less swank, not-quite-gentrified-yet northern outskirts of the Pearl District. His hand shook with gratitude as he stuck the key into the lock...until he smelled Bruno's aftershave. Shit. He himself had taught Bruno to pick locks, back when Bruno was a delinquent teenager. Now, Bruno was a delinquent thirty-year-old, with skills more suitable for a career criminal. His own fault. He shouldn't have taught the kid to pick locks.

  Bruno lay in wait, lounging on a stool and drinking coffee like he owned the place. The smell of frying bacon assaulted Kev's olfactory nerve like a wrecking ball when he stepped in the door. So did the perfumed cream that fop had smeared over himself after he'd shaved. The stink was enough to knock a brain damaged guy right on his ass.

  Kev switched off the overhead, and pressed a switch that brought the shades over the high skylights. "What are you doing here?"