Castling

by Jack McGlynn

  “So you left him flapping there, in his own living room, while you helped yourself to the poor bugger’s shower?!”

  “Yes.”

  “That is harsh.”

  “Molly was very clear about the terms of my return flight” Rook explained, still wet, plunging his ear with an index finger. The Boss hooked a knowing eyebrow,

  “That girl has you wrapped around her finger.”

  “There’s a dirty joke in there... Somewhere...”

  Torcher raised a hand, openly revolted at the suggestion,

  “Spare me.

  So, you reckon he’s scared straight?”

  Rook reclined, folding his arms. He recalled the casual wave he sent Sean’s way on leaving, the look of abject misery on the man’s face. Crippled, scared and carefully insulted, he would prove an easy pick-up for Tartarus’ crews.

  “Uh nope. If you wanted him to stop killing, then we probably should have decided on a more permanent solution. But the damage is done. His rep will deflate. Ours should balloon.”

  Torcher sat back, massaging her brow. She had long grown used to dealing with Lancet’s sort: cocky, tough and too clever by half. The only thing they ever responded to was a good murdering. And she’d always been happy to oblige.

  But what she attempted now was covert, manipulative and subtle - decidedly outside her comfort zone. Specifically the part where she needed to let some of them live.

  Precisely why I need his expertise, his... varied skill-set...

  “But you reckon he’ll gab?”

  “Unceasingly” Rook assured her.

  “About us?” She stipulated,

  “Exclusively.”

  She looked gaunt and pale, cheekbones sharpened by weeks of stress and overworking. Had Rook not known better, he’d have doubted the fires within. He’d have seen a tired, severe woman approaching middle age and scrambling to tie together the strands of her machinations.

  But Rook knew better.

  Everyone knew better.

  “He’s bound to put a spin on it.” Torcher argued, always second guessing, always double checking. Rook tried to reassure her,

  “Of course he will. I would.

  But after losing eight of their own, no-one in that prison is going to be in a hurry to repair him. And it’ll be hard to take seriously the bluster of any half-job that mangled. Plus there’s the evidence. Videos are bound to leak sooner or later.”

  “Sooner. Ron set them live before he turned in for the night...I watched the footage by the way. We all did. You spooked most of my kids.”

  “Really?” Rook asked, sceptical.

  “Badly. And mine are not easily frightened pups. The way you toyed with him - It was not pretty.”

  He crossed his ankles, throwing his arms behind his head with a coy wink,

  “And here I thought you approached me for my looks!”

  Her expression darkened, any cinder of fatigue or vulnerability immediately doused.

  “Rook, I already have pretty people. I have an analytical genius asleep in his bed. I have a prodigy of violence so disillusioned by the best this world can muster, he’s considering taking up knitting.

  I need you as my consultant because, famously, you have the unparalleled ability to annoy people. I need that candour. I need your objections, experience, advice, strategies and tactics. But mostly I need your belligerent persistence.

  When I start seeing only trees, I need you to point out the woods.”

  “Otherwise we’ll have a forest fire?” He shot her a wry grin,

  “Aye, and not just metaphorically. We need to be straight with one another. Starting now: So... how are you?”

  Genuine confusion seeping in, Rook nodded, pointing out,

  “Better than Lancet. Why?”

  “Why?! Because you fight like a bloody sadist, is why!

  In my experience this level of spite is usually reserved for miserable auld sods trying to drown themselves in booze or the psychologically... unwell.

  Warm, sunny gits who flirt with my XO, whip my entire intelligence team into a love-struck tizzy and have Lebanese giants weeping on their shoulder don’t tend to be that sadistic.”

  “Maybe you’ve been hanging out with the wrong sadists?” Rook argued defensively,

  “Probably.

  Listen, I can appreciate putting on a brave face for the team. Hell, I expect it of you. But this work, it takes a toll, even on the best of us.

  I know you don’t need the lecture. You’ve been at this game longer than most. But even I get bone weary sometimes. And you’ve just had a very long day.”

  “Which, I might add, was meant to be spent relaxing in an armchair.”

  “All the more reason to spit it out” Torcher’s smile was thin, threadbare, but mysteriously reassuring.

  Rook knew the Boss wouldn’t lament him any sentiment. Be he jubilant, livid, amused, or even shaken to his core by the day’s events, she could handle it, manage it. That’s why she had both grumpy sods like Hatchet and Gil on her team as well as bubbly personalities like TG and Wendy.

  Poetically, Torcher demanded a certain fiery passion in her underlings. And Rook genuinely considered revealing to her how he had none.

  At all.

  But he wasn’t in the habit of retreading past missteps. So he lied.

  “Honestly, beyond a bit of a headache, I’m fine. Well actually, since we’re being honest, I was a little disappointed in Lancet.”

  “Really?! Because he seemed to surprise you a few times, son!”

  “No no. Before. I asked him the usual. And he came out with this predictably insightful and utterly meaningless spiel.”

  “What was it about?”

  Rook considered for a moment, drawing his palm across his mouth,

  “Reputation, I think? To tell you the truth, I stopped listening. I dunno, I was expecting mind-games or something.”

  “Are you truly complaining the task I set for you wasn’t dangerous enough?” Torcher asked disbelievingly, hands slapping the glass table in mock outrage.

  “Yes, ma’am! I’m a junkie. And occasionally that can be said of my relationship with adrenaline. This wasn’t exactly the baptism of fire I was expecting.”

  They held each other’s gaze a moment before Torcher broke off, her cheek dimpled with a smirk,

  “Ha! Rook honestly, should I ever wish to see what you’re really capable of, I need merely give my brother the nod. And then time how long you last.

  This assignment was to ease you in. A professional courtesy.”

  Rook deemed now as good a time as any to feign shock,

  “I got stabbed four times! In what universe is that courteous?!”

  “Maybe you’re a masochist too! Listen to me, Sean may have been tough, but he was an arsehole. You say you’re fine and I believe you. But dismantling mass murderers is the easy part, isn’t it? When the time comes to start throwing the boot in on the good ones, the nice ones, those poor well meaning dopes who lose control for just a moment, well... we’ll all be sorely tested then.

  Even a cold bugger like you, Rook.”

  Across the table, they stared into one another for another long moment. Differences laid bare, their eyes narrowed and squinted as they took turns questioning one another’s motives, the depths of their resolve.

  Massaging the phantom pain in his already healed side, Rook finally asked,

  “So, the big reveal’s done. What now?”

  Torcher’s expression transitioned from gravity to levity, her eyes widening with conversational ease,

  “Well, Team Leap’s been making demonstrations (not like tonight’s, but considerable) for about six weeks now. But we’re still very much shadows and whispers-“

  “Cloak and dagger?”

  “See, this is why I need you around! Ron’s been checking the ether, but the sad truth is unless we want to be labelled common thugs, we have to keep our heads down and wait for something bad to happen...”

 
“Something with a lot of collateral damage.”

  This wasn’t a question, but the Boss nodded anyway.

  “… And then we hammer whoever’s responsible, brutally, publically. That’s bound to raise a hackle or two.”

  Rook nodded his assent, a grim acknowledging smile on his lips. He liked her plan. It was simple, achievable and had that callous logic that sent most people running.

  Of course, I like it.

  More ambiguous was why someone as decorated, beloved and openly maternal as Torcher would commit to it. He guessed asking couldn’t hurt,

  “Well, turnabout’s fair play: So tell me straight, why are you doing this?”

  “You mean why aren’t we just a gang of mercenaries with hearts of gold who dedicate themselves to white knuckle justice and world peace?

  Admittedly, it hasn’t worked for E.M.F.U. or C.A.M.L. or C.A.P. but we’ll nail it first time because we’re smarter, right? Maybe because we’re meaner? Or wiser? Or just generally better?

  No, Rook.

  I know you can feel it: The tension, the aggro, all those wee supers itching to pound one another into paste. This world is getting ready to eat itself. And if we want to spoil its appetite, we need to feed it a villain. A real villain. Only then will you get heroics from the aforementioned prima donnas!

  And in the absence of a good, old-fashioned, clean cut, baddie, we will have to wing it. Stand in. Do our very best imitation. With a lot of luck, maybe we can stave off a meta-human war that bit longer.

  And give my wee sister time to do what she does best...”

  Fixer...

  Rook waved his hands in an attempt to brush away the confusion,

  “Yes, yes, I’m clear on that. We’re on the same page, Torcher. (It almost definitely won’t work, you know. But it sounds like fun so I’m with you all the way!)

  But what I was asking is why are you doing this? Did you lose someone? Someone, I don’t know, not like us?” His faint chuckle escaped as a sigh, “Someone innocent?”

  “A few of the kids have. Hinge’s partner was sideswiped by a chucked lorry. And I pulled young Jo from the rubble of Budapest, but couldn’t find her family. She never recovered. Not really.

  Fact is, most of them downstairs have a personal stake in this. And they were only too glad to make this sacrifice.

  But as for lifers like you and me, Rook? Well, I suppose we never had anyone to lose in the first place now did we?”

  Rook suspected she had stumbled upon an excellent point,

  “Suppose we didn’t. Well, this is getting awful maudlin!”

  “It is. I blame the lateness of the hour. Go to bed.”

  Rising with no intention of lying down for eight hours, Rook lied,

  “Gladly, Boss.”

  “And Rook...”

  He stopped at the door to her office, leaning back with a hooked brow.

  “Go to your own bed.”

  Giving her a full view of the mischievous grin slapped across his face, he closed the door behind him.

  *

  Rook sat in the dark. Head cradled in clawing hands, he bent over the kitchen table. On the street outside the pedestrian crossing chirped periodically before being swallowed whole by the night’s oppressive silence. The occasional late night tram sped by with a softly fading electric whine. And excluding the gentle flutter of sleeping bodies floors beneath him, the headquarters was still.

  Save, of course, the rhythmic grunting of Hatch and Molly directly below.

  He was not surprised. His ears latched onto her quickened pulse in the war room earlier. He’d caught the scruffy man’s pupils dilate when Molly grabbed his tunic roughly. He’d felt the jealously peel from Hatch as Molly bantered incessantly with the team’s enigmatic new strategist. And Rook was genuinely astonished no-one else could actually smell the tension between them.

  But he felt no betrayal, no disappointment – if anything, he sympathised.

  Yet to meet a Meta without some kind of vice: And at least hers is comparatively harmless. A little flirting never killed anyone.

  In fact, this recent revelation stirred nothing within him.

  Quite conversely, inside the confines of his skull, things were far from tranquil.

  Rook’s head was ablaze, burnt to ashes from withdrawal.

  His body a constantly churning cocktail of epinephrine, assorted neurotransmitters and (for lack of a long-winded scientific descriptor) Rocket Fuel, the agony of so much unspent energy had only worsened with age. By his twenty third year it had all but devoured him.

  As much as he wanted to assure Torcher he was an impassioned, emotionally available member of her crew, the truth was he had suffered little beyond the searing torment of his condition for years.

  Necessity demanded he find a way to numb it. An addiction of his own design, the slightest trace of sucrose triggered a deluge of painkillers. But the comforting endorphins washed him clean.

  When Rook wasn’t in pain, he was numb. A trait he hid expertly.

  But curiosity had bested him. Something the Boss had said resonated. So he braced the anguish and went in search of sentiment. Provided he could recall what it felt like...

  ‘Well, we’ll all be sorely tested then... Even a cold bugger like you, Rook.’

  He honestly wanted to prove her right. One day.

  But tonight, unsurprisingly, he discovered only pain.

  No joy, no remorse, not even the satisfaction of a job well done: Just the weight of dependence and the fires of his affliction. This at least would have made anyone else miserable, frustrated, manic, depressed. But it only made Rook sore.

  A bowl, piled high with ice-cream, slid under his nose.

  “My favourite” he groaned, “How on earth did you know?”

  He heard her stir minutes earlier. He caught her scent, however faint, as she crept into the kitchen. He had even felt the thump of her heart as she spooned chocolate goo into the bowl. But the withdrawal had dulled his focus and he’d forgotten she was even there.

  Hardly ideal for a man as widely disliked as Rook.

  “I’m a fifteen year old girl and you eat twice as much ice-cream as I do.” Jo explained, “Didn’t take a genius.”

  “Thanks” Rook smiled, one finger still on his temple, pawing the bowl closer to him. Clad in comically oversized pyjamas, an obscure anime logo plastered across her t-shirt’, Jo climbed into a chair alongside him. Gathering her knees in her arms, hooding her toes in excess pyjama leg, she advised,

  “You hide it too well.”

  Pain receptors overtaxed, patience too thin, he simply stared at the young girl. It took less effort than conjuring a pithy quip.

  “You have them convinced. They all think you’re like them. Just like them.” She interrupted herself to reach out with a previously concealed tea-spoon and scrape away some midnight desert. Smiling, Rook nudged the bowl closer to her. “So when, like tonight, they get a glimmer of what you really are, it freaks them the fuck out.

  It’s best if you just ease them in. Let them come to terms with what you really are gradually. Take me, for example: Everyone knows I’m a bit... off. I just can’t care in the same way they do. I pretend like it got worse when my Dad and my brothers... But... I dunno.

  They can’t empathize, they can’t. But they try their best to be patient. And when that wears thin they’re nice enough to give me a wide berth.”

  “No-one’s avoiding you, Jo” Rook ventured automatically, mimicking concern,

  “Stop that!” She bit “See, that’s what I came to talk to you about: You needn’t. Not with me. With me you can relax, because I get it: You don’t mean a damn word you say.

  And I don’t need you to.”

  Giving in, Rook shovelled a heaped spoon into his mouth. An eerie calm fell upon him as a fog.

  “What gave me away?”

  “Nothing. You have them” Joe flicked a wrist, gesturing to the wider world, “down better than anyone. Better than me, anyway. And that�
��s the problem – you’re going to break their hearts.

  My best friend was singing your praises earlier. You stood in front of a gun for her...”

  “It was only a .22. Barely even qualifies as a gun-”

  “And then she cried herself to sleep tonight having seen what you did to that old guy. Or maybe it was how you did it. Or why you did it.

  The point is, I don’t know why they get so upset but they always do.”

  Rook jabbed an accusatory spoon in her direction, licking ice-cream from his lips before it set and cracked,

  “She must have seen worse than that these past few months...”

  “Oh she has. But from grouchy old warriors and, what’s the word, veterans? She expects Breaker to be vicious. Not sweet men who wink at her and make jokes and put their hand on her shoulder and tell her what a good job she’s doing. She had no idea you’d be capable of such... callousness, I guess” she shrugged, becoming braver with the size of her scoops.

  “But you did, Joe. How did you know?”

  “I always know, Rook. All the sodding time! For as long as I can remember. No surprises, no twists or discoveries. Just this oppressive...”

  “Omniscience?”

  “That’s a big word for this late. Anyway, I just thought I’d give you a heads up. Dial it back a bit. A little coldness now will mean a lot less heartbreak later.

  G’Night Rook.”

  Leaving her teaspoon in the half-emptied bowl, Joe unsheathed her toes and made to leave.

  “Stay where you are, young lady.

  If you really wanted me to buy your little spiel, you probably wouldn’t have handed me a bowl of medicine. Besides, you said it yourself, I’m a perfectionist. I’m hardly going to pack it all in, am I? Not just to save their feelings. Feelings I can barely define anymore.

  But you already knew that. Just as you knew I’d see right through your little pep talk and confront you.

  In future, you needn’t go to all that effort, Jo. Not with me. Never with me.

  So why don’t you pick up that spoon, help me finish this ice-cream and just tell me straight why you came up those stairs in the first place.”

  Jo smiled, not with joy or relief, but with a grim satisfaction. The cream cold on her molars, she worked it around before swallowing and admitting,