Marrow

by Preston Norton

  Frantic men in CTN shirts and electronic headsets interrupted my moment of mind-bending euphoria as they rushed us backstage. A man with a clipboard and a nametag labeled “Bob” reviewed The Cosmo Show proceedings with us. I found myself paying more attention to the hairy wart in between his eyes.

  Honestly, I’m not even sure why Fantom wanted us to join him. During the show he ended up doing the vast majority of the talking. Not that I minded. As popular a TV personality as Donnie Danson was, the guy creeped me out. I was choking on the chemicals in his swooping, gravity-defying hair from ten feet away, and his unflinching grin was big enough to give small children nightmares. Seriously, the guy was like a smiley mutant hybrid between the Joker and the Cheshire Cat.

  The banter between Fantom and Donnie was seamless, although the occasional question was directed specifically to Flex or me. Flex handled his questions well, milking a few laughs from the audience. Every question that Donnie threw my was like a deliberate kick to the face.

  “So, Marrow…” said Donnie, leaning forward on his desk and interlocking his fingers. His lips were peeled back, revealing all twenty-eight of his teeth. “What does it feel like to be the son of the most dangerous and deadly Supervillain of all time?”

  “Uh…” I said. “It…sucks?”

  The photo shoot was way worse.

  The studio itself was an impressive white-walled room strewn with white background canvases. It hurt my eyes trying to distinguish between all the white. And then there were spotlights hanging from the ceiling, lights on stands, and a strange number of lights that looked like umbrellas. All of them appeared to be arranged very specifically. People were running around everywhere, some with papers in hand, others fumbling with equipment. My fifteen seconds of star-struck glee vanished when I met our photographer, Pierre, and the shooting commenced.

  “No slouching, Marrow. You have ze posture of a monkey.”

  “What is zat face, Marrow? You look constipated.”

  “Chin up. Shoulders back. Eyes on me.”

  “Give me a smile, Marrow. Zis is a photo shoot, not an execution. What kind of smile is zat? You look like a homicidal sociopath.”

  “Ah, la vache! Je ne peux pas travailler avec cet imbécile!”

  Pierre threw his hands in the air and stormed away from the camera after this last exclamation.

  By the time the photo shoot was over, my head was ready to explode. Or implode. Or maybe just decompose. I followed Flex back to the rental car and closed my eyes as he drove. The ticking sound…Nero’s words… They swirled together inside my skull like a mental Frappuccino.

  Tick tooock tooock tick…tooock tooock…tick…

  I’m here to kill you, Marrow.

  Tick…tick tooock tick tick…

  I’m here to kill you…

  Tick tick tick tick…

  Marrow…

  Tick…

  “I want to go visit Nero,” I said. I blurted the words out faster than I could realize what I was saying. Something about visiting Nero just felt right.

  I sounded like a crazy person.

  “What?” said Flex. He looked as if I had just asked him to the royal ball in Chinese.

  I decided breathing was probably important and made sure to enunciate. “I want to go visit Nero.”

  “That’s what I thought you said.”

  I waited expectantly for a response. “Well?”

  “You are aware that he’s in the hospital?” said Flex.

  “Yeah, I know.”

  “In a coma.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Because he tried to kill you, and you punched him in the face flying through the air at a hundred miles an hour.”

  “Yep.”

  Flex went silent.

  “Okay,” he said.

  I blinked. “Really?”

  “Yeah,” said Flex. “The hospital is close. And…I was actually wanting to do something myself. So I’ll just drop you off. Pick you up in an hour?”

  “Wait—what are you doing?” I asked.

  “Nothing. Just stuff.”

  “Uh-huh. Right. And I’m the Queen of France.”

  “Oracle,” said Flex. His scraggly face flushed. “I’m going to visit Oracle.”

  Not the answer I expected. My suspicions were more along the lines of “the liquor store” or “I’ll tell you when you’re older.”

  “Oracle?” I repeated.

  “I just wanted to visit her…by myself,” said Flex. “Not that I don’t appreciate your company or anything. It’s just…you know…”

  I didn’t know. But frankly, as long as he was visiting Oracle, I didn’t care. I was too keen on visiting Nero anyway. However, I still needed one more thing. And since Flex wanted to get rid of me…

  I eyed Flex’s cell phone sitting on the center console.

  “Do you have Specter’s number?” I asked.

  “Huh? Specter? What do you need her number fo—?”

  He paused before he finished his sentence and rolled his eyes. Grabbing his phone, he unlocked it with his thumb and handed it to me.

  “Tell your girlfriend I said hi.”

  ***

  I didn’t realize how insane this was until I was standing over Nero’s hospital bed. His face seemed so calm. Peaceful. For the first time in my life, I didn’t want to punch him in the face. Of course he was only in this situation because I had punched him in the face, but that was beside the point.

  Not only was he in handcuffs, but the entire room had been telekinetic-proofed. Minus his IV and the machines monitoring his vitals, every loose object had been removed. Every other object, including his bed, were bolted to the floor. Sure, if Nero could fling a car, he could easily break the bolts. However, there was a motion sensor set up in the room, and a police officer stood outside, armed with a tranquilizer gun and ready to act the moment Nero woke up.

  If he woke up. The doctors had no idea when he would regain consciousness.

  I doubted the police officer would have even let me in if he hadn’t seen my face all over TV. It helped that I was probably the only person in all of Cosmo City wearing a skin-tight skeleton bodysuit. I would have to try really hard to stand out more than I already did.

  TICK TICK TICK TICK…TICK…TICK TOOOCK TICK TICK…

  The ticking was louder than ever. I pressed my index and middle fingers to my temples as if I could squeeze the ticking out of my skull. I was only slightly aware of the door as it opened and closed behind me.

  “Marrow?”

  It was Sapphire. I slowly turned to meet her gaze. Her blue hair seemed to frame the concern in her eyes.

  “Marrow, what are we doing here?” she asked.

  I’m here to kill you, Marrow.

  “It doesn’t make any sense,” I said, shaking my head. I wasn’t exactly sure if I was talking to Sapphire or Nero’s voice in my head.

  Sapphire folded her slender arms and bit her lip. “What doesn’t make sense?”

  Everything. Nothing made sense. But that wasn’t my response. There was something else. Something that had been bothering me for a while.

  Something I hadn’t really realized until now.

  “Marrow,” I said.

  Sapphire shot me the sort of look one would usually reserve for someone dancing in the middle of the street in their underwear or throwing their own poop around like a monkey.

  “Huh?” she said.

  “Marrow,” I repeated. “Nero never called me Marrow.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Nero has always called me Bonehead,” I said. “He’s never called me Marrow. Not even once.”

  “Okay…” said Sapphire, clearly missing the point.

  “Do you remember him ever actually calling me by my name?”

  “Well, no, but what does that have to do with anything?”

  “He called me Marrow when he tried to kill me,” I said.

  Sapphire was silent for a moment, her face unreadable. “S
o what are you saying?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t know what I’m saying. It just doesn’t make any sense.”

  “So you called me here because Nero actually said your name?”

  “It’s weird though, isn’t it?”

  Sapphire was unimpressed. “I think you’re reading way too much into this. Just because he called you Marrow doesn’t mean—”

  “But he kept calling me Marrow,” I protested. “Over and over again. And he didn’t call me Bonehead once. That goes against everything I know about Nero. If you’re Nero, you call me Bonehead because that’s as far as your cleverness goes. And that’s that.”

  “So…what? You think this isn’t Nero then?” Sapphire gave a humorless nod to the hospital bed.

  I opened my mouth to respond, but the door opened. Whisp timidly poked his head inside. “Hey, guys.”

  “Whisp?” said Sapphire. Her head whipped back to me. “You told Whisp to come too?”

  I ignored her. “Whisp, do you ever remember Nero calling me by my name?”

  Whisp blinked behind his thick glasses. “Uh…”

  “Marrow, stop it,” said Sapphire.

  “He always called me Bonehead, right?” I pressed. “Do you remember him calling me Marrow? Even once?”

  “Well…I don’t think so,” said Whisp.

  “He was trying to kill you!” Sapphire snapped. She stepped directly between Whispand me, meeting my gaze with a fierce glare. “He’s never tried to kill you before, has he? People aren’t exactly going to be themselves when they’re trying to kill you, are they?”

  I didn’t have a response for that.

  “I know this has been hard on you,” she said. “It’s been hard on all of us. We all went to school with Nero. But that doesn’t change what happened. Nero made a mistake. A big mistake. And nothing can change that. So you need to stop whatever it is you’re trying to prove because you sound like a crazy person. You’re seriously scaring me, Marrow.”

  That shut me up. I was crazy. I was literally losing my mind, and I was dragging Sapphire and Whisp into it.

  “Is this a bad time?” Whisp asked, fidgeting awkwardly. “Because I can leave if it is.”

  “No, it’s…I’m sorry,” I said, lowering my head. “Both of you. I don’t know what’s gotten into me. I haven’t been myself lately.”

  Sapphire stepped forward and wrapped her arms around me. “It’s okay, Marrow. We’re here for you.”

  “I think you’re right,” I said. “I think I really am going crazy.”

  “Don’t talk like that.”

  “I’m being serious,” I said. “I keep hearing this sound. This…ticking. Like a clock, except it has no rhythm. The ticking is all over the place. And ever since Nero attacked me, it’s gotten worse.”

  Sapphire’s arms went limp around me. She stepped away, eyes widened and mouth slightly ajar. “You’ve heard it too?”

  Her reaction sent every hair on my body rigid. “Wait—you can hear it?”

  “Well…not right now,” she said. “But I’ve heard it. I thought it was just part of a really bad migraine or something.”

  Whisp’s nervous gaze darted between the two of us. He shifted uncomfortably where he stood. Sapphire and I both simultaneously turned to face him.

  “Yeah,” he murmured, nodding his head slowly. “Me too.”

  Okay. This was too weird. It was one thing if I was hearing a ticking sound inside my head. I was crazy. Big deal. But if all of us had been hearing the same ticking sound inside our own heads…

  “You can hear it right now?” Sapphire asked me.

  “Yeah,” I said. “You can’t?”

  Sapphire shook her head.

  “Whisp?” I asked.

  “Not since yesterday,” he said.

  TICK TICK TICK TICK…TICK…TICK TOOOCK TICK TICK…

  The ticking continued to pound my skull. It was so relentless I could barely think.

  “When did you start hearing the ticking today?” Whisp asked.

  “When?” I squeezed my eyes shut in a futile attempt to clear my mind. “Uh…I dunno. I woke up to it.”

  “Has anything made it worse?”

  I opened my eyes. My gaze drifted to Nero lying peacefully in his bed.

  “Yeah. It got worse when I came here.”

  Now that I thought about it, there was only one other time when the ticking sound was this bad. It was on the drive back from the hospital two nights ago.

  Right before Nero attacked us.

  “Nero,” I said, breathless. “It’s always worse when I’m around Nero.”

  Sapphire’s eyes grew even wider, bouncing back and forth between Whisp and me. Meanwhile, Whisp had his lips pursed in a straight line, his gaze concentrated on some invisible point in space.

  “What does it sound like?” Whisp asked.

  “Huh? You just said you’ve heard it.”

  “Yes, I know I’ve heard it,” he said. “But I can’t hear it right now. What does it sound like?”

  “Um…” I said. I actually struggled to concentrate on the sound now that I had spent so long trying to concentrate in spite of it.

  TICK TOOOCK TOOOCK TICK…TOOOCK TOOOCK…TICK

  “I dunno,” I said. “It’s a ticking sound. Like a clock. Except some of the ticks are longer than the others. Deeper. Like they’re scratching on my skull or something.”

  “And there are spaces between some of them, right?” said Whisp. “Like some of the ticks are grouped together?”

  “Er…Yeah, I guess so,” I said.

  “Like…Morse code.”

  Morse code? I didn’t really know anything about Morse code. But I had heard someone else mention it recently.

  We should communicate to each other with Morse code or something.

  “Nero knows Morse code,” I said. “He wanted to use it when we were about to fight Arachnis in the Final Chall—”

  My breath fell short as I realized where Whisp was getting at with this.

  Was Nero trying to communicate with us?

  Whisp dashed out of the room. This earned a baffled look from the police officer standing outside. Sapphire and I exchanged puzzled glances, but Whisp was only gone for a few short seconds. He brushed past the police officer and came into the room with a custom St. Luke’s Hospital pen and notepad in hand. He shoved both of them into my chest.

  “Write it down,” said Whisp.

  “What? How am I supposed to write down ticking?”

  “Use dots for the short ticks and dashes for the long ones. And be sure to leaves spaces when the ticks pause.”

  “You know Morse code too?” I asked.

  “Yeah. Don’t you?”

  “Um…” I chose not to answer the question, focusing instead on the ticks. Holding the paper against the wall, I immediately started drawing dots and dashes.

  TICK TOOOCK TICK TICK…TICK TOOOCK TOOOCK TICK…TOOOCK TOOOCK…TICK…TICK TICK TICK TICK…TICK…

  I scratched my pen on the paper furiously. I did not go long after this point when Whisp stopped my hand.

  “The pattern is repeating,” he said. “Let me translate it.”

  I surrendered the pen and paper to him as he took my place at the wall. Whisp stuck his tongue out of the side of his mouth as he scribbled down letter after letter with hardly a pause in between. He dropped his writing hand and held the paper up for us all to see.

  L P M E H E

  “Lipmeehee,” I said, pronouncing the letters together as one word. “Well that’s helpful. Morse code can kiss my butt.”

  “No, wait,” said Sapphire, snatching the paper and pen out of Whisp’s hands. She proceeded to jot down new letters. At first I thought they were random, but I quickly realized she was starting from a different point in the loop.

  It took her only seconds to finish. When she did, she seemed to falter. She held the paper away from her like it was diseased, and her hand began to tremble. Whisp and I crowded around her.

 
; H E L P M E

  Help me.

  CHAPTER 22

  The brief silence felt like an eternity. None of us spoke. None of us moved. The two words seemed to scream from the paper

  “What is this?” Sapphire finally said. Her voice seemed to waver in sync with her trembling hand.

  She knew. We all knew. All three of our gazes shifted in synchronization to Nero lying on his bed.

  “It’s Nero,” said Whisp. “Somehow he’s using his telekinesis to cause the ticking.” His voice choked slightly as he added. “H-h-he…he wants us to help him.”

  “Because he’s in a coma?” asked Sapphire.

  “No,” I said, shaking my head. “I heard the ticking a couple days before then. I mean…I even heard it right before he attacked me.”

  “So what are you saying? Nero’s being mind-controlled by someone?”

  There was a clearly mocking edge to her tone. She obviously intended the comment as pure sarcasm. However, Whisp and I exchanged uncomfortable glances.

  “Oh nuh-uh,” said Sapphire, shaking her head in a blue flurry “That’s ridiculous. Mind control isn’t real. I mean…it just isn’t! Right?”

  Whisp shrugged. “Superheroes weren’t real until the Gaia comet hit. Who’s to say there isn’t a Super out there who has the power to control minds?”

  “I think we’re jumping to conclusions here,” said Sapphire. “Just because we think the ticking sound is louder around Nero and he just happens to know Morse code doesn’t mean some Super is mind-controlling Nero to make him assassinate you, Marrow.”

  She had a point. The message was real, but we had no solid proof that it was, in fact, Nero.

  Unless…

  I approached Nero’s bed. Now that I was familiar with the rhythm of the ticking, it was obvious that this Morse code message was ticking on a loop. There was very little conscious effort going into it. But it was a conscious effort nonetheless. I leaned into Nero’s ear.