by Lee Bond
“On the contrary, dude.” Garth washed the huge mouthful down with a ludicrous gulp of Dr Pepper soda. “Had one yesterday. I could eat this shit for breakfast, lunch and dinner. But I went a long time without. There were days it was all I thought about. Well, that and pizza. Jesus, man, why don’t you fucking use some fucking gardening shears to stitch me up?”
Birchcreek ignored the man’s complaint. “You bitch about this? Not fifteen minutes ago you were in a knife fight with a black dude named Sketch, a dude who gave you a shiny new scar roughly six inches long and two inches deep, and you cry about a little extra pressure?”
Garth crammed some onion rings into his mouth, then found enough space to add a little bit more burger. Around this unholy concoction of wondrous delight, he spoke, “Yeah, but like, they were trying to kill me, okay? Battlefield injuries don’t count. You can’t, like, bitch about that. You’d be a total puss. If I get a paper cut tomorrow, you can rest assured I’ll be talking about that until one of you all decides to call 9-1-1.”
Rommen seized the conversational entry point with both fists, caring little for how clumsy it was. “Speaking of injuries … you look like you’ve been in more than your fair share of battles, Nickels. None of which sync up with your mandatory. I don’t even recognize some of these scars. Got some that look like you got chewed up by a chainsaw, some that look like burns but can’t be. We’ve got holes poked into you by an increasingly dizzying array of weapons. Where’ve you served? And when? You can’t be more than thirty. You’re younger than most of us here! The odds of you fighting and not coming into our radar, or the notice of any one of the people at Securicorps … miniscule. We’ve got connections in nearly every single major fighting force across the globe, including the ones that most governments insist don’t exist.”
“The names, dates and locations of any place I might’ve fought would make little to no sense to you, Rommen.” Garth couldn’t decide between the Slappy Burger Chicken Fries with Ultra-Zesty Chipotle Sauce or the Slappy Burger Winningest Wings with Wacky Bleu Cheese Dressing before opting to combine them. Dumping the contents into the empty burger bag, he fished out a chicken fry dripping with several mouth-sizzling ingredients and shoved that into his mouth.
It was easier this way. Had to eat all the food. Yes, he …
“You’re not even sweating, mate.” Birchcreek shook his head. It was something he’d been looking for since the moment Nickels had scared the utter bejesus out of them. No perspiration. Anywhere. Not even now, when he was being rather inexpertly stitched up.
“Hm?” Garth tried to reach the second of three Dr. Peppers, but the bounty was too far away. Samantha obliged, but she kept her wary eyes on his free hand, almost as if she expected him to start lashing out. “Sweat, you say?”
“Too right, mate.” Birchcreek tugged the thread through another loop. Goddamn, the man’s wound was deep. You could almost see bone, and the man was sitting there, shoveling enough food for six people into his wide open mouth. “That was a fucking fight to the death, man. You should be all gacked out. Sweating and shivering and all that.”
“Meh.” Garth shrugged, instantly regretting the motion; Birchcreek didn’t have time to adjust, so the needlepoint jabbed him deeply. “Motherfuck.”
“Not my fault, asshole.” Birchcreek gave Nickels another jab for good measure. “Quit moving.”
Gambelson couldn't wait any longer. He'd watched Nickels fight through the scope, and the whole time he'd been battling those maniacs, it'd looked like the man had been humming or singing something under his breath. It was time to find out for certain. "Hey, man, I gotta ask ... were you humming when you fought those dudes?"
"Yeah." Garth nodded minutely, certain that Birchcreek would jab him with the needle again on general principles should he so much as move an inch. "Dead Man’s Party, by Oingo Boingo."
"You do that a lot?" Gambelson asked, fingers flying on his smartphone.
"Uhh, yeah, I guess I kinda do. It's my thing." Garth watched Rommen intently through his peripherals. The honest-to-gosh Kansas football hero turned mercenary looked like he was having a straight up crisis of conscience, and it wasn't too difficult to get on board with the man's internal suffering. "You know. Since fighting with an iPod in my pocket would be super awkward."
"This is fucked up." Gambelson showed Sam and Birchcreek the info on his phone. "This is completely fucking impossible."
"What's got you all jammed up now, Gambelson?" Rommen demanded, a lot more strenuously than intended. He was having a really hard time coming up with a way for them to get squeaky clean. When he'd set this particular ball rolling, he had in no way anticipated the straight-up annihilation of a handful of drug addicts. And the manner! Garth's methods were on par with African warlords and legitimate terrorists trying their damnedest to put the fear in people.
"The original play length of that song is just shy of four minutes." Gambelson offered to show his superior the phone, but Rommen waved it away. "And the fight took nearly the same time. Did you start right away? Humming?"
"Uh, yeah, I suppose, yeah?"
Rommen finally saw where Gambelson was headed and jumped on the other man's words. "You're saying you knew instantly down to the second how long it would take to mur ... to deal with the threat?"
Birchcreek, Gambelson and Samantha went utterly, stone quiet at the fact that Rommen had comewithin two syllables of accusing their employer of murder. It wouldn't be the first time and it certainly wouldn't be the last, but between then and now they had to admit a brutal truth; the violence perpetrated on those three -regardless of their intentions- was actually a step above murder. They could tell Rommen still didn't know how he was going to deal with that brutality, and didn't relish the man's choices.
Rommen wasn't going to quit, and with Gambelson being so goddamned up in his business, it was going to take some uncomfortable truths that'd only lead to more questions, questions Garth really didn't want to have to deal with because when you were dealing with people like Rommen, no answer was as good as the real thing.
"Yes." Garth gauged the looks on everyone's faces. They kept their responses as muted as possible, but after dealing with tricky Latelians, the smallest and tiniest of micro-responses were virtual semaphores. "Yes I did. Before you ask, yes. I took their capabilities in at first glance, calculated the odds of success, built my plan of attack, picked a song, and started in with murdering three people sent here to kill me. And before you ask the next question, Rommen, yes. It will happen again, and more frequently, most likely increasingly and ridiculously and wildly out of proportion to anything that makes any kind of fucking sense. I am not worried about disgruntled lab geeks building rail guns in their basements or retarded CEOs hiring third rate knock-off Brazilian mercenaries to come hunting for me. I've got bigger issues."
"What in the fuck is going on here, Nickels?" Rommen demanded, temper flaring past the point of no return. He couldn't dislodge the brutal yet casual way Nickels had literally unzipped Sketch, or the merciless method he'd deployed to dispatch the kid. The only one who'd gotten any kind of mercy tonight had been Crink, and only because she'd been completely destroyed in the first few seconds; Garth had simply slit her throat, deep enough to gouge bone. "You aren't any kind of businessman any of us have ever seen! You come here, you're setting up some kind of arcade and an incredibly high-tech company in the goddamn basement. You're bringing in equipment that suggests you're planning on doing everything from picking up government contracts to industrial nanotech. You've destroyed more than a handful of US companies in pursuit of this goal and ... I just don't even know what the fuck. And now you're telling me ... us that this is likely to keep happening? What in the utter fuck?"
"You done?" The question came out blunt and brutal. "I get that you've just seen some shit that's more than a little fucked up, so I understand right where you're coming from. Only, we got more pressing problems. I got three corpses just up the way there that are cooling in this f
ine, fine San Franciscan night coming down on us and ..."
"We've?" Rommen scoffed. "Last I checked, you ..."
"Last I checked," Garth countered, blunt as a sledgehammer, "you are complicit in their untimely demise. Were the moment you decided to give me enough rope to hang myself because either way, your decision was in violation of the agreements I signed. According to those super-long, crazy-legal documents that took me for-fucking-ever to fill out, you guys are here to protect me. Especially from myself. It's a really all-inclusive package, a thing you guys might want to change. After today, of course. I could quote you the chapter and verse concerning the pertinent parts of the agreement, but I can tell from the way your chin is hanging down on your chest like that you already know what I'm talking about."
"Now," Garth let that sink in for a second before continuing, "If you want to bail, that is one hundred percent understandable. You don't wanna deal with what's coming. Hell, I’d prefer any-fucking-thing else. I'm gonna deal with those corpses in just a little while..."
"Those are people!" Samantha intruded into the conversation at long last, literally bulling her way towards Garth and the bickering Rommen to get her point across. "People."
"Sure, you're right." Garth accepted the statement in the method it was intended, only he didn't let it dissuade him. "They are also Ziggurat addicts and are more than probably involved in a long string of crimes, up to and including murder and worse in the pursuit of getting the dough for their next high. They will not be missed. There will be nothing for the police or any other interested parties to find. They are not an issue."
"What is the issue then?" Rommen asked plaintively, literally and figuratively worn out. "What is it you're trying to tell us?"
Garth smiled bright and wide. "Well. You've seen what I'm capable of. That, and more, will be dropped on the heads of anyone who comes this way to push me. These three are the first wave. The man who is my enemy will not rest until I am dead and buried and even actually worse than all that. I have the means and the capabilities of dealing with them on my own terms. And I'll do so. If you leave, I'm gonna haveta bring in another group, and they're nowhere's near up to the kind of snuff I'd like. There're gonna be a lot of innocent people here, all the time."
"So you want us to stick around and do ... that?" Birchcreek pointed up the ramp.
"Fuck no, man. Not on your life. What I would like is for you to stick around and maybe keep the collateral damage to a minimum." Garth pointed at the cut-rate medic's gloves and instruments. "Gonna need those. And anything else that's come in contact with blood."
"Why?" Then it dawned on him. "Ah. Copy that."
"Are you saying," Rommen brought things back around to where they needed to be, "that there will be collateral damage? From you?"
The four Securicorps officers arrayed in front of him had a combined military career of over sixty years, with a kill ratio of a small country. They’d been in some of the most dangerous areas in the entire world, and while the wars of this proto-Reality hardly compared to the ones fought on Earth in the Unreal Universe, they still carried with them the unmistakable tones of greed, desperation, hunger and hatred. Fighting under those kinds of conditions changed a person, sometimes for the better, sometimes for the worse, but you were always changed.
Garth knew he was different. Even more than before, when he’d been under his father’s tutelage. Even more than during his time as Specter in the Stars. Confrontations in Latelyspace had begun the transformation into what he was becoming, the fire had been lit ‘neath The Dome, the next stage was here, in this place.
His doubts about the reality of the men and women in this place had been put on bright display, quite alarmingly so up on the roof of the parkade, where he’d slaughtered those three Zigg-heads. They weren’t real, none of them were, obviously, because the original proto-Reality had been transformed into quadronium, ninety percent or more of which was now inside his body, forming the framework of machinery necessary to deal with his Father on a more even footing.
Looking at the war of emotions raging across Rommen’s countrified face reminded Garth that although to him the everyone he came in contact with was nothing more than a puppet whipped up by Etienne Marseilles, they thought they were real. The simulation was so profound that there was every chance that when they all went home for the night, they’d kiss their wives or husbands or girlfriends or whatever, sink their asses onto the couch and watch The Walking Dead, thrilling to that emotional rollercoaster.
Garth wanted Rommen and the others to stay, and for precisely the reasons he’d mentioned. Without people with a similar skillset to his own sticking around to keep an eye on him, there was every chance that the collateral damage he was talking about would come from him. But it was more than that, too, he thought.
He needed people around him. Without someone to talk to, even someone who hated him at this point would be just fine, he got weird. Trapped inside his own skull, the burden of destroying the Universe blossomed out of control, a rampant garden full of dangerous flowers, dark buds hinting at quicker, easier ways of doing things.
The lure of rest, sooner over later … it was dangerous. The people of the Unreal Universe deserved their chance to shine, but if he was left on his own for too long, the off switches in his head grew more attractive by the second.
Even if they weren’t real, even if they were just manifestations of the Emperor-for-Life’s will and nothing more than that, men like Rommen provided a nice safety valve for his darker temptations.
“I don’t know what I’m saying, Rommen.” Garth admitted at last, restricting the double high five that wanted to jump out from him at the abrupt change in the other man’s expression. “There is a lot more going on here than I can or will talk about right now. Your suspicions … well founded, I suppose, if we’re gonna be honest. I’m not a foreign spy. I’m not here to destabilize America more than it already is. I’m not the minion of some massive, secret organization determined to gain complete control over the financial centers of the US.”
“See,” Birchcreek drawled, a big goofy grin on his face, “I would of for sure gone with that last one, right? You definitely look the type. Swing in, unload a ton of bleeding edge tech all over the place, everything’s all low-jacked, gives you total control over everything.”
The Aussie snapped his fingers to drive home the plot point.
The only reason Garth didn’t flinch at the suggestion –which was so close to home that it was a bit eerie- was because there were five or six movies out right that moment that covered the salient bits of that particular idea.
Rommen raised a finger. “So let me get this straight. You’re a good guy. You have an enemy. He or she is capable of mustering these … Zigg-heads as assassins, where before they’re generally content to get higher than the highest kite and fight each other to death in any open field made available to them. And yes, perform the occasional murder and mugging and all of that. You’re more than capable of protecting yourself and have the technical know-how to conceivably bring the United States of America back to the world stage. You’re worried about collateral damage, but can’t say from which end the damage will come. And you want us to stick around because reasons.”
Garth ran the list though his head. “You forgot seriously good looking and very free with his money as it relates to the acquisition of delicious and expensive fast food.”
Rommen didn’t let the joke derail him. “Let me be clear, Nickels. I am staying because while your antics today haven’t affected any innocent lives, there’s no guarantee that tomorrow won’t see you dancing in the streets with peoples’ spines. You’re too smart to get caught by any other firm you might bring in for security, and with a new crew, you’d be even more on the alert for snoops. I can’t make any of the others stay, though. If I have to quit Securicorps to keep an eye on you, that’s going to happen.”
“Hey, no, yeah, totally dope.” Garth collected everything that had even the smalles
t trace of his blood on it and tossed the pile into his bloody, ragged shirt, which he turned into possibly the grossest homemade satchel currently in existence; there wasn’t a lot of his red stuff anywhere else save the third level of the parkade, so he figured he wouldn’t need to come by later on with an overcharged pen to zap it out of existence. “I get it. You’re here to keep an eye on me, maybe call the National Guard if shit gets out of hand. That’s kind of what I’m looking for here.”
“Well I,” Birchcreek said as he reassembled the medkit, “ain’t goin’ anywhere. I got the feeling this place is gonna be the most exciting locale in the world. And I’m including Bangkok in ’89 and the entire Middle East in ’00 into the mix. Couldn’t make me go away at this point.”
Gambelson and Samantha threw their two cents into the wind. Rommen accepted each of their fresh pledges with a weary nod and a grunt. “Varely, Mack and the others’ll stay as well, I’m sure. They like their continental US deployments too much to bail out of a Securicorps contract. The only other people looking to hire right now are in Egypt and South Africa.”
“Fuck that.” Gambelson said with a wry grin. “Them motherfuckers over there hate me. My pretty mug is on dirt and daub walls everywhere in both those regions."
“You gonna bring the others up to speed on what happened?” Garth asked.
“No choice.” Rommen shrugged an apology he didn’t feel. “The entire team needs to see the scope footage, Nickels, make no doubt about that. Both to understand what you’re capable of and what the enemy might look like.”
“You gotta destroy that footage as soon as, Rommen.” Tone made it a command that would be obeyed upon threat of death. “No fooling.”
Rommen dropped a flat smile on Garth. “Why on earth would I want video of my employer, a man claiming he’s nothing more than a rich, bored philanthropist intent on restructuring America into a world power, beating the living shit out of people who should’ve died from wounds long before they became an actual threat to him? Because that makes sense.”
