She scratched her arms. She had a technician help her with a spot she couldn’t reach on her back.
The machine powered down. The lead tech removed a metal square not much larger than a credit card. He showed it to Root, who nodded.
“That’s it?” asked Tia. “That’s all it takes to hold the caretaker enchantment?”
“I’m told it once required an idol statue as large as a building, but progress marches on,” replied Root. “It will be locked away until the next batch of candidates can be found. We’ll see that you’re escorted from the base and allowed to go on your way.”
“Very kind of you,” said Connie.
It was weird to leave a secret lair without sneaking out or blowing it up. Root and a contingent of guards escorted Connie and Tia through a tunnel that exited through a shack in the middle of a field. No one said much of anything, but Connie couldn’t stop smiling.
“Thank you for your cooperation,” said Root. “We appreciate your accommodation.”
“My pleasure,” she said.
“Rest assured that we only seek to ensure the greater good.”
“Whatever. Didn’t ask. Don’t care. Not my problem anymore.”
It felt wonderful to say that. It felt more wonderful to know it was true.
Root and his guards closed the trapdoor. It sealed with a loud hiss, and Connie imagined it’d be filled with concrete within the hour. Just as a precaution. She didn’t give a damn. She didn’t have to.
“We did it!” She hugged Tia.
“It’s really gone?” asked Tia.
“I think so. Guess we’ll find out soon enough.”
Tia said, “I can’t believe you did it.”
“Neither can I. I didn’t think it was really possible.”
“That’s not what I’m saying, Connie. I’m saying I didn’t think you’d go through with it. People spend their whole lives wanting to be special, and you just threw it away.”
“Being special is overrated,” said Connie.
“Of course you’d believe that,” said Tia.
Connie said, “What’s wrong with you?”
“What’s wrong? Are you fucking serious?” Tia laughed, hot and angry. “Connie, it isn’t always easy to be your friend, but you’re making it really hard now.”
“What the hell are you mad about?”
“I don’t know. It’s just . . . It’s nothing.”
“No. It’s something.”
“Yes, it’s something,” said Tia. “You threw it away. Like it was nothing.”
“That was the whole point, wasn’t it?”
“I didn’t think you’d go through with it,” said Tia. “I didn’t think it was possible in the first place, but I knew you do impossible things all the time. I assumed, if you did succeed, that you’d change your mind at the last minute, realize what you were doing.”
“I know what I’m doing.”
“No, you really don’t. You want to be normal? You want to live like everyone else? No adventures. No ninja assassins or killer mutants. No trips to the moon or journeys to the center of the Earth. Connie, I’m normal. It’s boring.”
“Boring is what I want.”
Tia sighed. “Forget it. You don’t get it. But you will. You’ll wake up a year from now, doing the same goddamn thing every goddamn day, just waiting for anything different to happen. But it won’t. It’ll just be the same thing until you die.”
“Tia—”
“No. Don’t say anything. You’re only going to make me mad. This is about more than you. And those guys, I don’t trust them. What will they do with the power?”
Connie frowned. “So, now I’m supposed to be responsible for what might happen?”
“What about those people you’ve helped? You made a difference. I know of at least a dozen times you’ve saved this world or another. And two that you saved the whole universe.”
“Somebody else will do it now,” said Connie. “There’s always somebody else.”
“That’s the problem with this world,” replied Tia. “Everybody else expects somebody else to fix it. You were that somebody. Now there’s nobody.”
“The universe got along just fine without me for a million years. It’ll get along fine for a million more.”
“You don’t know that.”
“What’s your solution, then?” asked Connie. “Just live with it until I die a glorious death?”
The anger in Tia’s eyes faded. She shrugged. “Fuck if I know.”
Connie put a hand on Tia’s shoulder. “Are you all right?”
“No, I’m not. Not really. I wasn’t like you. But I had adventures now and then, even if it was as a tagalong or a plot device. Now I don’t even have that. You didn’t just take away your extraordinariness. You took mine.”
“I didn’t think about that,” said Connie.
“Why would you?”
“That’s not fair.”
“No, it’s not fair. None of it is.” Tia pushed Connie’s hand away. “I’ll find my way home.”
“Tia . . .”
“I’ll get over it, but I need some space. I just hope that getting what you want is what you really want. It usually isn’t.”
She walked away.
Connie thought about following. She had the vague sense that she’d done something wrong, though she wasn’t quite sure what. But Tia had always been there for Connie, and if she had let Tia down in some way, it bothered Connie. Her guilt was tempered by her own anger at Tia for trying to take away this moment.
“What now?’ asked Thelma from Connie’s pocket.
It was a good question. Connie didn’t know if things had changed or not. It was too soon to tell. She only knew one thing for certain at the moment.
“We get the hell out of Kansas.”
She caught the next flight out.
When she was getting on the plane, a suspicious passenger, a twitchy guy in a fez and a bolo tie, caught her eye. He clutched a worn satchel to his white suit. Beads of sweat covered his forehead, and whenever anyone walked too close, he’d flinch as if expecting them to attack him.
Connie wondered what he had in the satchel. An ancient relic? A priceless diamond? The blueprints for a car that ran on happy thoughts? Whatever it was, she wasn’t a part of it. Not anymore. Twitchy guys in fezzes who were clearly up to no good were no longer her concern.
He sat several seats down from her, clutching his satchel in a white-knuckled grip. He wasn’t murdered on the flight, leaving her to solve the impossible crime. He didn’t try to pass the satchel to her or stash it under her seat when she wasn’t looking. When the plane landed, he spotted a pair of skulking hoodlums in black suits waiting for him. He pushed his way through the crowd, right past Connie as if he didn’t even notice her, with the hoodlums chasing after him. They dashed past her too, like she was just somebody beneath their notice. And then they were gone.
Leaving the airport, she took a cab home. While loading her bags in the trunk, the driver found an ancient idol. Connie recognized the markings from the city of El Dorado, but she didn’t comment. The driver tossed it in the glove box, and Connie waited for something to happen.
It never did.
Back at her apartment, she ran into Mr. Prado as he was leaving. He carried two suitcases.
“Going somewhere?” she asked.
“No more caretaker, no more job,” he replied.
“Sorry.” She didn’t make an effort to sound sincere, because she wasn’t. “What was your job, anyway?”
“Sit in the lobby, keep an eye on you. It wasn’t very interesting.”
Most of her adventures took place away from her apartment. She didn’t spend much time here. Mr. Prado’s monitoring duty couldn’t have been rewarding.
“You’re better off,” she said.
“Says who?” He snorted. “I was getting paid to sit around and read, write a report now and then. Monitoring you put my kids through college.”
“You have kid
s?”
“Three of them. Never sussed that out, did you, little miss detective? Never broke cover. Not once. The secret is that I lived my life like I was a landlord. Didn’t see my kids or wife or do a damned thing Mr. Prado wouldn’t do. I smoke. Prado, he doesn’t smoke.”
He pulled a cigarette out of his pocket, lit it, and took a deep drag.
“Damn, that’s good. I’ve been waiting eight years for that.”
“You’re good.”
He smiled. “I’m the best. Good luck with the rest of your life, Constance.”
“Good luck with your . . . whatever.”
Mr. Prado half-saluted and strolled out of her life.
There were no ninjas lurking in the shadows of her apartment. No ghosts. No space Nazis. Nothing but a space crammed full of the junk from decades of adventuring.
She still didn’t believe it. She checked and double-checked everything. The box full of cursed artifacts. The box beside that full of non-cursed artifacts. Probably not a good idea to keep those right next to each other, she noted. The alien technology. The large standing mirror where her reflection was always frowning and flipping her off. The shelves of books of prophecy, forbidden knowledge, and magic, including a first edition of magical theory from America’s greatest sorcerer, Benjamin Franklin. The stuff accumulated from decades of adventures, now quietly sitting in her apartment.
She didn’t need it anymore. She’d never needed it, but she’d always been stuck with it. If she was truly ordinary now, then she could finally lose all this junk. She could be free of it.
Except maybe the Ben Franklin book. She liked that one. And that one cursed idol that turned people into vampires. That was probably better off in her hands. It would also look terrific on her mantle. A conversation starter when she had people over for her new life.
“Oh, that? Just a souvenir from Dracula after I destroyed his evil robotic double. Nothing, really.”
That wouldn’t do. She’d have to get rid of it all. Every single thing. Even Franklin’s Mad Richard’s Almanac. Even the Holy Grail, which she’d been using as a planter for a small asparagus fern because, though she had many skills, keeping houseplants alive wasn’t one of them. She’d ditch everything and start fresh.
She’d stop worrying about aliens and conspiracies and superspies, start worrying about paying bills and how to best decorate her apartment. She’d obsess over TV shows and pick up a hobby that had no practical use. She’d find a job she tolerated and complain to her coworkers about it. She’d develop just enough interest in politics to have simplified opinions about complicated issues, root for and/or bemoan the local sports team, and worry if her shoes matched her purse. She’d get a purse.
She’d be normal, and heaven help anyone who tried to stop her.
23
It took her a week to get rid of most of her stuff. She could’ve gone the garage sale route, but most of it was dangerous in some form or another. It didn’t belong in the hands of regular people. She contacted all the extraordinary people she knew, the magicians, the crime busters, the rogue explorers, weird scientists. Piece by piece, box by box, she shipped out the stuff to their capable hands. The workers at the post office dreaded her coming by.
“Anything fragile, flammable, or liquid?” they’d ask.
“No, just a petrified snake that grants wishes,” she’d reply.
“No, just an alien ray gun, but don’t worry. I shipped the battery packs separately.”
“No, just a part for a time machine that I was saving because a future version of myself told me I would need it someday, but turns out she . . . I was wrong.”
After the fifth day, they stopped asking and simply took the package.
She was stuck with Thelma, carrying the haunted pen with her because, when it was all said and done, she felt bad about killing the former fairy godmother. Connie offered to exorcise her, sending her onto the greater mysteries of the Other Side.
“Thanks, but I’d rather stick around a bit longer,” said Thelma.
She didn’t say more than that, and Connie suspected—no, she knew—that the ghost still carried more secrets than she was willing to share. Connie didn’t ask.
Opportunities for adventure kept presenting themselves, as if her old life was reluctant to give her up. Small things. Mysterious packages left in the lobby. Suspicious people going about their suspicious business. Some strange tentacled horror poked its way out of her toilet for an afternoon. She didn’t know if it was a second chance or if she’d spent so long being extraordinary that she noticed things most people didn’t. Except the tentacle. That was clearly adventure trying to get her attention. Either way, she didn’t answer when opportunity came knocking.
By the end of two weeks, the incidents dried up. She worried at first that everyone might be right and that she’d made a mistake, but she loved being ordinary. Waking up every day without fear of being drafted to fight some cosmic war or chase down terrorists. It was glorious. She could finally sleep in.
She got up when she wanted. Did what she wanted, when she wanted. She still had the wealth from her adventures, and for the first time, she had the time to do something with it.
And what she wanted to do was nothing.
She was lounging around the apartment, eating chips and aimlessly surfing the internet, when Lucas Harrison came knocking on her door. She almost didn’t answer, but he kept knocking.
She opened the door but didn’t invite him in. He didn’t ask.
“What the hell did you do, Verity?” he asked.
“Nothing much. I’m ordinary now,” she replied. “I would think you’d be happy about that. Oh, right. You’re part of a conspiracy to keep me from having an ordinary life. Well, sorry to have to break this to you, but that’s over.”
He didn’t lie to her. She had to give him credit for that.
“Do you have any idea of the consequences you’ve set in motion?”
“The more important question is: do I care? I don’t need a lecture from you, Harrison. All this time, I thought you were a friend. Maybe not a close friend, but someone I knew. Why did you want me to go into space, anyway?”
“I didn’t. They did. The people I work for believe that something terrible is going to happen on Earth, and the only way to prevent it was to have you not be here.”
“I thought I’d been drafted to prevent terrible things.”
“Some terrible things,” said Harrison, “but this is the terrible thing. And you and all your predecessors and everything that’s happened since the beginning of time are part of that thing. Some call it the final operation. Others call it the end of everything. If the universe is an Engine, then performing its ultimate function could very possibly mean it no longer has a reason to exist.”
“Forgive me if I don’t shudder in terror at your armchair metaphysics, but even if it were true, I gave up that role. I’m out of the game.”
“You can’t just get out of it,” he said. “We’re all part of it, whether we want to be or not, whether we’re out there saving the day or just living our little lives. It’s all connected in ways we can’t fathom.”
“I don’t get it. Do you want me here or not? Are you upset that I’m not the fixer anymore, or that I ever was?”
“I honestly don’t know anymore. I don’t think I ever knew. All I know is that I believe in you, Verity. Believed. Maybe I still do.”
“I thought my job was to keep it running.”
Harrison rubbed his eyes. “I can’t explain it to you. I don’t understand it myself, but the Engine is real, and we’re all just moving parts. But there’s another possibility. You aren’t here to help it complete the final operation but to finally shut it down.”
“Shut down the universe?”
“The Engine isn’t the universe. It’s simply a thing that has enslaved the universe. We think.”
“Who is we?”
He grunted. “Hell if I know. Hell if anyone knows. All I know is that I’ve
read the reports. I’ve seen what you’ve done, and if I was going to bet on anyone to be the right person to do something that needs to be done at the right time, I’d bet on you.”
“That was the old me,” she said.
He smiled bitterly. “You really think that?”
“Just pick a new person to be your grand savior. That’s how it works, isn’t it?”
“It’s not a role you can just plug someone into,” he said. “The spell and the conspiracy didn’t make you into the person you are. They just gave you a nudge in the right direction now and then, but it was you who kept saving the day. Not some special magic. Not some grand plan.”
He held out his attaché case.
“Take it,” he said. “Read what’s inside it. You wanted to be normal. Here are the consequences.”
The door across the hall opened, and Dana stuck her head out. “I thought I heard you.”
Connie nodded. “Thanks, but no, thanks, sir,” she said to Harrison. “I gave at the office.”
He sighed. “You got what you wanted, Verity. I hope it’s worth it.”
He set the case beside her door and walked, and she hoped she never saw him again. He was her old life. She didn’t need a handler now.
“Are you going to open it?” asked Thelma from Connie’s pocket.
“Beg your pardon?” asked Dana.
Connie clicked Thelma quiet. “Didn’t say anything.”
“I thought I heard someone.”
Thelma shook in a silent grumble.
“Thin walls,” said Connie.
Dana asked about Harrison, and Connie mumbled something about a door-to-door charity.
She appraised Dana. It was a habit at this point. They’d bumped into each other in the hallway at least once a day, and every time, Connie pondered if Dana, like Mr. Prado, wasn’t who she said she was. But if so, she had no reason to still be here.
“You wouldn’t know where Mr. Prado is?” asked Dana. “He isn’t returning my calls.”
“I heard he quit,” replied Connie.
“Damn. I’ve got this garbage disposal I need installed, and he said he’d do it today.”
The Last Adventure of Constance Verity Page 15
