by Tim Floreen
“No. On the monitor he was facing this way. He didn’t have the covers over his head.”
She pulled down her badge and touched it to the reader.
“Are you sure you want to wake him?”
She yanked open the door and flicked the light switch. Bright light poured down, turning the room white. The shape under the covers didn’t move. Gertie and the guard crowded into the room after Mom and stood near the wall, mute, as she tore back the sheets. A few pillows lay underneath. No Franklin.
“What the—?” Gertie whispered. But she wasn’t looking at the bed. Mom followed her gaze to the Plexiglas cage on the nightstand.
That was empty too.
Mom smoothed her helmet of hair and took a careful breath. Without another word, she left the room and walked all the way to the end of the corridor, where another floor-to-ceiling window looked out on the blizzard. The snow hurled itself at the pane so hard you’d almost believe the tiny collisions might eventually shatter the glass. Mom pressed both her palms against the window, tilted back her head, and let out a scream. It was every bit as loud as the one she’d released when she’d found out Ethan had gotten shot. Then she sagged against the glass, like the cry had drained her of all her strength.
“Not him too,” she whispered. “Please, don’t take him too.”
I’d heard Mom tell me she’d changed the setting on Franklin’s capsule, but nothing after that. The phone had disappeared from my ear. I spun around in Mom’s chair to find a figure in a long black coat and a Son of War mask looming in front of me.
Inside my body everything seemed to stop working. My lungs collapsed. My heart gave up its pumping. My muscles turned to mush. Somehow I managed to push myself back until my chair had jammed itself against the desk. The masked figure tossed my phone to the floor. Part of me still wondered—was this Franklin? Or Tor? Or someone else even? But then he opened his coat, and I caught a glimpse of bright orange. From an inside pocket he pulled out his notebook.
“What are you doing?”
“Nil told me she has the high score in Son of War High.” Franklin’s voice, muffled by the mask, sounded just as hollow and dead as it had on the day of the Big Bang. “But even so, she’s only ever managed to kill three of you. It’s my game. I want to do better. I should have the high score.”
“Franklin, that’s—”
“Let’s see how I’m doing so far, shall we?”
He spun my chair around and banged the book on the desk in front of me. He flipped through it until he found the pages devoted to Pete. Leaving the notebook open on the desk, he pulled two more items from his coat: a mouse and a Beretta M9. The mouse writhed as he pinned it over the little picture of Pete’s face. He brought the barrel of the Beretta right up to the mouse’s head.
“Bang!”
I jumped. He’d rammed the gun into the little skull, splattering blood and brains all over Pete’s smiling face. He tossed the mouse away, turned the page, and took out another mouse. He pinned it over Callie’s photo.
“Bang!”
I wanted to look away, but I couldn’t. He turned to Lydia’s spread. Held a third mouse up to her headshot. Positioned the barrel.
This time, he opened his fingers, and the mouse scurried away, jumping off the desk and disappearing behind a filing cabinet.
Franklin turned me around again. He took out his last two mice and held them up in his fist. They squirmed and squeaked and blinked their black beadlike eyes. “I need you two for the high score.” He stuffed the mice away again and patted the pocket. “Anyway, everything I wrote in that notebook is still true. Especially the stuff about you. Tonight proves it. You don’t give a shit about me.”
“That’s not true,” I said, the words more breath than voice. “Please, Franklin, just put away the gun. The capsule’s making you act this way. It’s not really you.”
“You’re wrong, Rem. When I was whining and feeling remorseful and wanting you to like me, that was because of the capsule.” He slammed the notebook shut, mouse guts and all, and stuffed it away in another of his bulky coat’s pockets. “I know they’ve been messing with it. Turning it on and off. You think I don’t know that?”
“Not just turning it on and off. They’ve been switching it between two different settings. Franklin, listen to me. A year ago, when you first went to the lab—”
“Quiet!”
He shook the Beretta in my face. I jerked away from him and slipped from the chair onto the floor. My head banged against the desk.
“I’m tired of you twisting things around with all your talk,” Franklin said. “It doesn’t matter. When this is all over, everyone’s going to find out what your mom and the rest of them have been doing to me, and I’ll have my revenge on them too.”
I clutched the back of my head where I’d banged it and tried to pull my brain into focus. The poem. I needed to recite the poem. The first verse I knew. It was the one I’d included in my Tattoo Atlas picture, the one I’d recited for Franklin the other night. But what about the last? The one that would turn him back into the Franklin who could feel empathy?
“ ‘The brain is just the weight of God,’ ” I said. “ ‘For, lift them, pound for pound,’ . . .” I licked my lips. “ ‘For, lift them, pound for pound,’ . . .”
Franklin’s mask cocked to the side, like he thought I’d lost it. From another pocket he pulled a roll of duct tape. He made a circular movement with the barrel of his gun. “Roll over on your belly.”
I stared at the tape, my breath fast and uneven. He wanted to tie me up. So he didn’t plan to kill me right away. He wanted to take me to school, like he had Callie. That means you still have time. I tried to concentrate on that. Just do what he says. You still have time.
He motioned with the barrel again. “Hurry up.”
I obeyed.
“ ‘The brain is just the weight of GAAAH—’ ”
Franklin drove his knee into my back, stopping my words short and driving the breath out of my chest. He yanked my hands behind me and wound the tape around my wrists.
“ ‘The brain is just the weight of God, For, lift them, pound for pound,’ . . .”
Now he rolled me onto my back. He crouched above me, another piece of tape ready in his hands. He must’ve stowed the gun in his pocket, but with my wrists bound, I couldn’t do a thing except thrash around on the floor. Sweat slid down my forehead and stung my eyes. The scraping noise of my breath filled my ears. The mask’s mirrored goggles flashed above me, impassive.
The last part of the poem came back to me in a torrent.
“ ‘And they will differ, if they do, As syll—’ ”
He smacked the tape hard over my mouth.
Franklin grabbed me by my shirt, hauled me to my feet, and marched me out to the main living area. With one hand he kept a grip on my taped-together wrists. With the other he drove the barrel of the Beretta into my back.
“Sit down on the floor with your back against the wall,” he said, probably following the military protocol he’d learned from Son of War. He wrenched open the sliding glass door leading to the backyard. Cold wind gusted into the room. Outside, the snow didn’t swirl anymore. Now it drove past in horizontal sheets. On the back porch, up against the railing, a seated figure cloaked in snow hunched and trembled.
Franklin delivered a kick to the figure’s midsection. It snapped to life, tossing and twisting and wrestling against itself, banging against the porch. That was the noise I’d heard earlier. The snow blanketing the figure went flying, revealing hulking shoulders, a broad bare chest, wispy hair now crusted with ice and sticking out in all directions. Tor had his hands tied behind his back, like me, and bound to one of the porch posts. Duct tape covered his mouth. He still only wore that grubby pair of gym shorts. Not even anything on his feet. His usual exhibitionistic, weather-blind dressing habits taken to a nightmarish extreme.
“Settle down or I’ll blow your head off,” Franklin muttered.
&
nbsp; Tor’s body stopped its flailing but continued to shake. Franklin kept the gun on him with one hand while with the other he took out a knife and cut the duct tape fastening his wrists to the post.
“Get up. Go inside. Stand next to Rem.” To me he said, “Stand up.”
Tor staggered across the carpet, tracking snow. His bare feet had turned rigid and bluish-white, the toes frozen in contorted positions.
Franklin slid the door shut and leveled the gun at us both. “I bet you can guess where we’re going.” He waved the Beretta, motioning us toward the garage. We filed through the door he opened for us. He flicked on the light and from another of his coat pockets produced the keys to the Saab. He must’ve palmed them earlier when he’d claimed they’d fallen down the drain. Unlocking the rear, he said, “Get in.”
It took some struggling for both of us to cram ourselves into the way back with our hands tied behind us. The small backward-facing bench seat was narrow because of the wheel wells on either side, so Tor and I ended up crushed against each other. Tor’s shivering had diminished but hadn’t stopped. Or maybe he was just shaking from fear.
Franklin used more duct tape to fasten our ankles to metal loops attached to the floor. He didn’t hurry. Instead he moved with precision, still acting out the part of the highly trained Son of War soldier. Maybe that explained why he had the mask on too. Maybe his game required it.
He grabbed a gray wool blanket from a shelf and tossed it over us. Its stale smell filled my nostrils. Dim light filtered through the weave of the wool.
“Behave yourselves.”
The rear hatch slammed shut.
Some time passed while Franklin hauled up the garage door. Under the blanket, Tor’s fast, noisy breathing and my own turned the air between us humid. I caught the tang of his chlorine-and-sweat smell over the stale stink of the blanket. Our eyes met for a second. What a lunatic I’d been, over the last week and especially the last twenty-four hours, bouncing from theory to theory, making accusations left and right, when the truth was the killer had always been the most obvious suspect of all. And Nil and Tor were innocent.
Although I still wondered what had gone on between Tor and Franklin down in the steam tunnels. Something Franklin had said during our first session together came back to me: Maybe there is no innocent, really.
Maybe that went for all of us.
The Saab roared underneath us. It eased backward. I could feel the storm swallowing us up little by little. The wind rocked us from side to side. The snow hit the windows like millions of tiny BBs. The car dipped as it rolled from the driveway onto Boreal Street and paused as Franklin changed gears.
I remembered the police cruiser parked on the side of the road. How much time had passed since I’d talked to Mom on the phone? Five minutes? More? By now Mom must’ve gone to check Franklin’s room and found him missing. She’d call the police, knowing I’d be in danger. They’d send a bunch of cruisers and get in touch with the cop guarding our street. He’d see my car pulling out of the garage in the middle of a violent storm and know something was up. He’d stop Franklin, maybe a shootout would follow, in which hopefully no one would die. And it would all be over.
Only that didn’t happen.
The Saab pulled forward. Outside I couldn’t hear any sirens. Only the howling of the blizzard. Next to me Tor writhed back and forth until the blanket slipped off his head and mine, just in time for us to see the police cruiser parked at the side of the street, with the cop in the driver’s seat fast asleep.
I thought Franklin might stop the car to pull the blanket over our heads again, but he didn’t bother. No one else had ventured out in the storm. We had the roadway to ourselves. I watched the pavement roll away behind us and get swallowed up by the darkness and the driving snow. Sitting here in the rear of the wagon made me think of the picture I’d drawn in my Tattoo Atlas of Pete in the way back with the bullet hole in his head. Don’t forget I’m back here.
Up front, Franklin hunched over the wheel, the black coat adding bulk to his shoulders, its hood pulled low over his face to conceal the mask. He didn’t say a word during the trip.
We pulled into a spot in one of Duluth Central’s faculty parking lots. The police must’ve had a car here too, but Franklin had probably done reconnaissance and knew where to go to stay clear of the cops. Anyway, in this storm, we probably could’ve passed within ten feet of a police cruiser without the cop inside seeing a thing.
Franklin appeared at the back of the Saab, his long coat whipping in the wind. The hatch groaned open. He pulled his gun out of one pocket and the knife out of the other and cut our ankles free. Then he stepped back while we struggled out through the hatch. The cold bit into my skin in a thousand different places. I didn’t have my coat on, just a button-down and jeans, but at least I had more protection than Tor, who’d already started convulsing again.
Tor and I swam through the wind toward the back of the school, with Franklin behind us holding his gun and barking commands over the roar of the storm. He guided us to the stairway that led down to the steam tunnels. Snow had flooded the stairwell, but Franklin jabbed us in the back with the Beretta and waved us forward. We waded down the steps. By the time we reached the bottom, the snow came up to our waists. An especially strong gust of wind swept more snow over us, and chunks of it landed on my head and shoulders. It made me think of someone shoveling dirt into a grave.
Franklin leaned past us and, with a single practiced movement, wrenched the padlock open. We spilled inside and shuttled down the second flight of stairs, a single swaying bulb lighting the way. With my hands tied behind my back and snow making my sneakers slick and terror making my body weak and loose, I had to concentrate hard to avoid slipping.
We reached the hot, dark tunnels. Franklin continued marching us in front of him and barking directions at each intersection. I could tell he knew his way around down here better than either of us. After three turns, I was lost. We made slow progress, Tor and I never getting too far ahead. We couldn’t: only Franklin had his hands free to reach up and turn on lightbulbs, so he had us walking into blackness.
“I should thank you for showing me these tunnels, Tor,” he said. “Best hiding place ever. I had an extra mask and guns and ammunition and this coat squirreled away down here, just in case I needed them. I never expected I’d be coming back for them a year later. It pays to be prepared, I guess.”
Here and there we passed narrow wood staircases leading up into the school. Franklin stopped us at one of them and waved us up with his Beretta. Once we all reached the basement, he had us wait there while he climbed a second flight and unlocked the door at the top. He came back down.
“Go up.”
I recognized the odor before I even reached the top of the stairs. Sweat and chlorine. A stronger, more sour version of Tor’s smell. All of a sudden my forehead felt hot and cold at the same time. With my mouth taped up, I couldn’t seem to pull enough air in through my nostrils anymore. The duct tape sucked against my mouth as I struggled to breathe.
We stumbled into the boys’ locker room. The only light filtered in through small rippled-glass windows near the top of one wall. A few used towels draped over benches and hung from open locker doors.
My breathing sped up even more. Again I forced myself to focus. In a second, Franklin would march me over to that spot in the corner, rip off the duct tape, and tell me to say the words I’d said two years ago, the words he’d written down in the book. Keep your eyes to yourself, pervert.
But when the moment came, I wouldn’t say that sentence from the journal. I’d recite the last verse of the poem instead. I just had to get out the words before he pulled the trigger. I remembered them now. The lines seemed to glow inside my head.
Would the change in his brain happen fast enough to save me, though? Would the magic words transform him just like that? I had no idea, but at least there was hope.
Franklin directed Tor to wait off to the side. To me he said, “Go stand o
ver there.” He prodded me with the gun, but my legs barely had the strength to carry me forward. I felt like I was still wading through snow. Once I reached the far corner, Franklin turned me around and grabbed a corner of the duct tape covering my mouth. The goggles of his mask reflected back to me my heaving shoulders and pale face and wide eyes. The final stanza of the poem was there, on my taped-up lips, ready to spill out.
But he didn’t pull.
“No.” He shook his head. “You don’t get to talk. I don’t care if I lose a few points. I don’t want to hear your voice anymore.”
He backed up a few steps and raised the Beretta. My vision blurred. It took me a second to realize I’d started crying. He hadn’t pulled off the tape, but I tried to say something anyway, maybe the poem or maybe something else, I didn’t even know, but it came out a formless moan. His finger tightened on the trigger. Next to me a locker lolled open like an empty coffin. This is it, I kept thinking. This is it. This is it. Me dying here, in this room, at Franklin’s hand. It didn’t feel real, but at the same time, it felt absolutely inevitable. I closed my eyes, pressing out tears.
I didn’t hear a gunshot. I heard a crash. When my eyes snapped open again, the mask and gun had disappeared. Tor had barreled into Franklin, and the two had rammed into the lockers. The gun skated across the concrete. They slid to the floor and wrestled there, their bodies a writhing mass.
Tor was a lot bigger than Franklin, but he still had his hands tied behind his back, just like I did. Franklin punched him with his fists, jabbed him with his elbows, even knocked his head, metal mask and all, against Tor’s. The blow stunned Tor, but only for a second. He kicked Franklin hard in the belly. A strangled grunt came from inside the mask. Franklin clambered away from Tor, who struggled to his feet and lunged after him like he wanted to keep on kicking. Rolling onto his back, Franklin reached into his coat for something.
A second Beretta.
The room exploded with noise and light. In the darkness that followed, I could just make out black spots of blood dotting the green lockers behind Tor.
