by Moxie Mezcal
"Lovely," Violet grumbled to me. "He's gonna get us shot while he's playing commando."
We pulled off the main road onto a narrower dirt road that followed along the top edge of a steep embankment. We were still five miles from the turn off that would take us to Millennial Bridge. I looked out the rear driver's side window and saw how the ground dropped away sharply and disappeared into the darkness.
Suddenly, I heard another motor roar to life. I looked around but couldn't see any other car, save for the one keeping pace behind us.
"Where is that coming from?" Violet shouted.
"I don't know. I don't see anything," Anthony replied as the sound grew louder.
"There!" Max yelled and pointed out the window. There was a dark shape tearing through the trees off to our right, several yards ahead of us, a car with its lights off. Even though I couldn't make it out clearly, I didn't really need to; I knew exactly what car it was. And at the speed we were going, we were headed right for a collision with it.
Anthony slammed on the breaks, but the blue Chevy swerved toward us to compensate for our sudden deceleration. It hit us square in the front passenger side, sending both cars crashing down the embankment.
---
I woke up upside down and covered in glass. Turning to my right, I saw that Violet was still strapped into her seat, unconscious. Up front, neither Max nor Anthony was anywhere to be found.
I tried the seat belt, which was jammed. Digging in my pockets, I found my knife and managed to cut myself free. The window next to me was already mostly broken, so I twisted myself around and kicked the remaining glass out of the frame.
I crawled free of the wreckage and slowly, painfully clambered to my feet. It took a moment for my head to stop spinning enough that I could get my bearings. I looked back up the embankment that we had rolled down and saw no sign of the armored car that had been following us. They were probably continuing along the road we had been on, trying to find an access way that would lead them down to us. I figured that gave us maybe five or ten minutes until they would catch up, which was obviously the point of the ambush.
Scanning the area, I saw the blue car sitting a couple yards away from the overturned Volvo, positioned between it and the river. Looking behind me, I found Max was staggering along in a daze about ten yards away, just before the treeline. He looked disoriented and shaky, but at least he was on his feet. I circled around the car to the driver's side and climbed halfway into the back to cut Violet free.
Suddenly I heard a gun shot. After pulling myself back out of the car, I looked up to see that Max had frozen in his tracks and was staring past me. I followed his gaze to the driver climbing out of the blue car with an old WWII Luger drawn. The tail of his trench coat fluttered behind him in the night air, and he tore of his wide brim hat that had fallen forward and obscured his vision. This gave me a clearer view of his face, which looked like it was literally about to fall off of his skull like leprous skin.
The muzzle flashed and another shot rang out as he darted past me. The second shot stirred Max from his stupor, and he quickly spun around and took flight into the treeline.
I sprang up and tried to intercept the man in the coat, but was tackled myself by Saint Anthony, who pounced from out of nowhere. He was on top of me as soon as we hit the ground.
"You set us up," he growled and managed to land two crushing blows to my face before I could get my hand with the knife free. I jabbed blindly into his side, repeatedly digging the small blade into his skin.
It was enough to throw him off balance, and I was able to topple him over and break free. I ran about a dozen yards before my legs gave out and I face planted into undergrowth.
A voice called out from behind me, "D, look to your left – ten o'clock." I lifted my head and caught sight of something blue and shiny hidden in a shrub. Reaching my hand through the small brittle branches, ignoring the pain as they poked into my skin, I wrapped my fingers around the cool metal. I pulled the object free and raised it up to examine it in the moonlight. It was a gun with a casing cast from blue metal.
I spun around to find Anthony staggering towards me and unloaded the clip at him frantically. I wasn't sure exactly how many of my shots hit, but it was enough to send him collapsing to his knees.
As Anthony dropped, he revealed Violet limping towards us behind him. She walked right past the crumpled, hacking form of her husband and threw her arms around me.
A wet, gurgling laugh bubbled up from Anthony's throat. "I knew you were in on this from the beginning. I tried to warn him, but he wouldn't listen." He let loose a raspy cough, spraying blood onto the ground, and added bitterly, "Either wouldn't listen, or didn't care."
"Kill him," Violet said softly and cast her eyes down at the gun in my hand. "There's another clip in the bushes."
I stared at her blankly for a moment, then she sighed and knelt down to fish the second clip out of the undergrowth.
I snapped the new clip into place and cocked the slider to load a round into the chamber. Slowly, reluctantly, I raised the gun and pressed the barrel into Anthony's temple. He bared his teeth and let out a loud, earth-shaking roar that echoed through the night. I pulled the trigger.
He toppled back and landed on the ground with a thud. Violet rested her weight against me as I clicked on the safety and slid the gun into the waist of my jeans.
"Where is everyone else?" she asked.
"Max took off that way, back up the embankment. The driver from the blue car ran after him."
"Any sign of Columbine?"
I pushed her back gently. "I think we're past the point of pretenses."
"I suppose so," she replied while nonchalantly lowering her eyes to the gun. "So you've figured it out, then?"
"Enough of it," I said and took her hand. "Come on, let's go find them before Max's goons show up."
---
We ran deeper into the woods, following the trail of blood and broken branches that Max and his pursuer had left behind. The uphill climb and uneven terrain would have made things rough even if we weren't tore up. As it was, my legs burned, my body ached, and my vision was blurred by the constant trickle of blood rolling down my forehead and into my eyes. Violet didn't look much better, her limp growing more pronounced as she leaned on me for support.
After about fifteen minutes, we finally found Max sitting on a small landing where the ground had leveled off. He was propped up against a tree, panting heavily, his face caked with mud and blood.
"Where is she?" I asked.
He pointed to a spot where the landing dropped off sharply a few yards further past his tree. I made my way over and looked down. The corpse in the trench coat laid sprawled at at the bottom of a steep, rocky embankment. "I guess he lost his footing," Max explained.
We trekked back to find and easier way down, Violet still leaning on me while I kept Max two paces ahead of us, where I could keep the gun trained on him.
As we approached the body, it was obvious the neck was broken, with bone poking grotesquely through the taught skin just as it had in McPherson. The Luger had landed on top of a rock a couple feet away.
I knelt down and flipped the body over. The expertly applied latex makeup was already partially ripped off, the bulbous prosthetic nose dangling off to one side. I peeled the rest of the latex away, exposing Columbine's face underneath.
The shock in Max's face was palpable. Of course, there wasn't even feigned shock in Violet's face, which was chillingly emotionless.
"Makeup and prosthetics," I explained as I handed Max the remnants of the nose. "The suit was padded to give her bulk, and the elevator shoes gave her height." I kicked her feet. "They're probably what killed her, too."
"They certainly couldn't have made running across that incline any easier," Max agreed.
Something blue sparkled in the moonlight from around Columbine's neck. I picked it up and realized it was a sapphire necklace, almost identical to the one Jacinda had been holding in my dream, bu
t for the color of the stone. It even had the crowned globe symbol etched onto the back.
I stood up and held it out for the two of them to see.
"That was the necklace her mother left for her in the doll," Violet explained.
"The necklace in Jacinda's hand was meant to send you a message," I said to Max. "It's just too bad you didn't figure out everything it was meant to say."
Max shook his head in disbelief and opened his mouth, but all he could manage to say was a single word: "Why?"
Violet chimed in bitterly, "Maybe it has something to do with the fact that you helped her mother abandon her and hid that knowledge from her for years despite being one of the few people in this world she could supposedly trust."
Max shrugged apologetically. "No, I get that. I just meant, I don't get why all this smoke and mirrors – the disguise, the blue car."
It was my turn to jump in. "It's like you said – imagine you're rich and bored, what would you do for fun? You have an overactive imagination, a flair for theatrics, and a past riddled with abuse and abandonment. You're like a child stuck in arrested development, and you truly believe it when someone tells you that life is just a game."
Max chuckled, trying desperately to hang onto his mask of practiced indifference, but the grief twisted his face into something pathetic and detestable. He dropped to his knees and cradled his friend's lifeless head, and for the first time ever I realized I was witnessing a one-hundred-percent genuine human reaction from him.
I glanced up and saw the twinkling of flashlights along the top of a distant ridge, heading our way.
"We better move," I said to the two of them. I lowered my head to give Columbine's body one last forlorn look, then noticed that the Luger was missing.
I looked up just in time to see Violet pressing it into Max's temple.
She squeezed the trigger. It clicked; the chamber was empty.
"What the hell are you doing?" I yelled.
"What do you think I'm doing?" she replied. "Give me your gun."
"No," I blurted out, more in surprise than protest. "He's unarmed and defenseless. We're not going to just shoot him in cold blood."
"What do you suggest we do with him?" Violet asked, her voice cracking in exasperation. "He is going to kill me the first chance he gets – probably you, too."
Max nodded his head and cracked a rueful grin through the blood dripping down his face. "I could deny it, but honestly, who am I trying to fool?"
I looked down at the blue gun in my hand contemplatively. "No," I finally said, trying to sound as resolute as possible. "I need him alive."
Violet looked at me incredulously; Max, curiously.
"He has to show me what's hidden under the Asterion storage facility in Room 33."
* * *
38. Stop!
We were able to drive right up to the Asterion facility without any interference from security, which I saw as simultaneously good and bad. Good because I didn't actually have a plan for dealing with them other than putting a gun to Max's head and praying that they wanted to keep him alive more than they wanted to keep me out. Bad because I felt fairly certain it meant we were walking into a trap.
"Open the door," I said to Max.
"I don't have my key," Max replied, staring blankly at me.
"Then how can I get in?" I asked.
"Why don't you try using yours?" he said in a tone that suggested the answer should have been obvious.
I dug the Abrasax keycard out of my jacket pocket and swiped it in the card reader. The door opened slowly while emitting a low mechanical buzzing sound.
The three of us walked into the cavernous lobby and found the same elderly receptionist sitting behind her desk, not looking up from her knitting even to acknowledge our presence.
Behind her, the wall of CCTV screens were all showing black-and-white static. She didn't seem to notice them, either.
At the far right end of the room were three metal doors, each one differently colored: the one on the left was red, and I recognized that as leading to the hallway with the operating room where I'd been last time. The middle door was white, and the right one was black.
Max walked over to the black door and opened it outward, holding it for us to enter. The door led down a flight of stairs. I looked at Violet, who looked silently back at me, and then started down the stairs. Violet followed behind me, and Max brought up the rear.
The stairwell continued on for several flights, enough that I lost count. When I finally reached the bottom, I found a blue door with the Highwater globe and crown sigil drawn in metallic silver paint. It was modified, however, so that the crown was positioned below with its apex overlapping the globe, as if penetrating it suggestively. A small number 1 was painted below it. As I opened the door, I felt a blast of cold air.
We entered into a long hallway whose walls were lined with computer racks filled with servers, switches, cables, and various other tech equipment. Both the ceiling and floors were solid concrete, reminding me uncomfortably of a fallout shelter. The hallway extended like this both directions as far as I could see.
Max pushed us aside to take the lead once again. He started down the hallway to the left. "Stay close. You don't want to get lost down here."
"What is all this stuff?" Violet asked.
"This is Abrasax's server farm," Max explained.
"So this is where you keep all the data you steal from your customers when you spy on them?" I said.
"Yes, D, this is where we keep it," Max replied patronizingly, then turned right abruptly where there was a break in the server racks. He snaked a twisted path through the labyrinthine rack setup.
"This place is like a maze," Violet remarked.
Max turned around and flashed her an are-you-kidding-me look. "That's the idea."
"How do you know you're going the right way?" I asked.
Max sighed. "Because I have the way memorized. I know exactly the number of steps to take, which direction to turn, which path to follow. If we don't go precisely the right way, we could end up lost down here for hours, maybe even days. Of course, if I have to break my concentration and answer your questions every five seconds, that's exactly what's going to happen."
We followed him silently through a couple more turns.
"So," I repeated, "how do you know you're going the right way?"
He groaned and moved quickly to the end of the particular corridor we were following. He swept aside a thick strand of banded data cables to reveal a small square plate stamped with the inverted crown and globe sigil and the number 2. "As long as we keep seeing the markers, we know we're going the right way."
---
After two hours of following Max through this high-tech maze, we reached a large triangular clearing about twenty feet by twenty feet. An oval-shaped bench sat in the middle, upholstered in black crushed velvet. On the far wall was another marker with the Highwater sigil and the number 13.
Max took a seat and motioned for us to do the same. "We need a rest," he said.
The three of us squeezed onto the bench together all tight and cozy – me in the middle, Violet and Max on either side of me, both of them doubtless running through a similar calculus, trying to determine what will be their best opportunity to off the other, and probably also me in the process.
After several minutes of tense silence, Max finally said, "So McPherson probably didn't have anything to do with it, then?"
"No," I answered. "I think Columbine fabricated his involvement so she could pit her two enemies against each other."
Max's lips twisted into a grin of begrudging admiration. "I suppose I should feel bad about offing poor James then, but frankly I'm more impressed with Columbine. I didn't think the kid had it in her."
He then leaned forward and looked past me at Violet. "And so how do you fit into all this?"
Violet narrowed her eyes and glared disdainfully at him. "You really don't remember me?"
Max shook his head, but perh
aps a little unconvincingly.
Violet turned her gaze to me with an amused smirk. "You know, don't you?"
I nodded. "I think I've figured it out."
Max looked at me questioningly. "Please, enlighten me."
I took a deep breath, savoring my Hercule Poirot moment.
---
The woman who called herself Violet was born in what was then Czechoslovakia five years before the Velvet Revolution. Unfortunately, the fall of the Iron Curtain didn't do much to improve the financial fortunes of her family. The oldest of seven sisters, it fell on her to provide for the others - her father was disabled, her mother had died during the birth of her youngest sister. She struggled to balance work, college, and home life, but soon became overwhelmed and wanted nothing more than to escape.
When she was 19, she was approached in a club by a glamorous older woman who offered to set her up with a modeling job in the United States. She would be able to send back extra money for her family while saving up enough to pay for the rest of her schooling.
Upon reaching America, she was taken to a derelict hotel where she essentially became a prisoner. There were about a dozen girls all together staying there from different parts of the world. Mostly they were kept under the watch of a handful of violent thugs who didn't speak their languages or care to try. Occasionally, the man who owned the brothel would come by to check on things. He was a young man, handsome and always very well dressed, except for his funny red shoes.
Several times a night they would be forced to dress up in ridiculous underwear and paraded out to a room where strange men would look at them like they were cattle, sizing them up as objects, often without even being able to look them in the eyes.
When she was picked, she would follow one of the men back into a private room to be used however he wanted. If she was lucky, all he'd demand was a straight fuck and it'd be over quick. But for some men, that wasn't enough – they wanted to hit her, to call her degrading names, to smear her in filth and bind her like a slave. They wanted to make her cry, to make her suffer, to feel like they had power over her.
