Catharsis (Book 3): Catastrophe

by Campbell, D. Andrew

  The man truly is a genius. An insane one who is also responsible for the death of my sister, but he’s smart. Definitely smarter than me. I just hope he isn’t also smarter than Ren.

  Ironically it took the arrival of something even more evil than myself for the distance between Ren and myself to evaporate a bit. With our common enemy reasserting himself in our lives, my previous choices have begun to pale in comparison. I don’t believe my friend has completely forgiven me, but Chadwick is a reminder to both of us that there are worse things in this world than even me.

  “Ok,” I finally say with a shake of my head to clear my thoughts. “We know what the message said, now we have to figure out what he means. Does he really want to meet with me? Like, physically? In person? How would that even happen? Maybe it’s just a metaphor for something? Or just a weird abstract thought he was having? Or maybe he’s just trying to mess with me?”

  That last option seems the most likely knowing Chadwick and what he’s done in the past, but I don’t understand the point of it. Then again maybe that is the point of it…my not understanding and just being confused. That might be his entire goal.

  “Why don’t we just ask him?” Ren says in his quiet way that so effectively interrupts my wild speculations.

  “What?” I ask and stare at him. “What do you mean ask him? How? Blink back at him? Send him a cake with a message inside of it? How are we supposed to just ask him?” As if it were all just that simple. The man is in prison, and I’m wanted by both the law and the criminal underworld. Getting a message inside that place would be far from simple.

  “I figure we just ask his lawyer,” Ren responds with a shrug. “It should be a pretty easy thing. If anybody would know what Chadwick is thinking, it would be him.”

  “His lawyer?” I stammer and blink at him. “How do we even…” I begin before he continues.

  “We can just email and ask him. It’s public record who his lawyer is, and I’m pretty sure I can find the contact information on the firm’s website.” He pauses to watch my reaction, and when I give him little he just continues. “It wouldn’t be hard for me to create a new email address, and then when I contact them I’ll just hide my trail and mask what I’m doing so it can’t be traced back to us. We just send a message asking them what he wants, and then we go from there.”

  “Oh, ok,” is my only response. The way he put it, it does seem simple. “If only we’d thought of all this before.”

  “True,” Ren says. “But we never had a desire to contact him previously, and he didn’t know how to contact us. It’s not like you’ve left a phone number behind. With us living in the virtual shadows like this, I believe he solved the problem in an impressively efficient way. He couldn’t email us, so he made it so we’ll email him.”

  “And you’re sure you can hide us when you make contact?” I ask knowing that Ren is good at what he does, but just the thought of Chadwick having any contact with us at all is a horrifying proposition. “This has to be 100% safe. I don’t trust that man at all. Or whoever his lawyers turn out to be. He has to be trying to trick us into something. I just don’t know what it is, yet.”

  Ren manages to momentarily feign a hurt expression as he looks at me. “Oh ye of little faith,” he chuckles and the impression of pain quickly evaporates from him. “Of course he is trying to trick us into something. I have no doubt of that. What his end goal might be, though, I have not the slightest clue.”

  Ren stops for a moment, and his expression quickly takes on that of a tricky imp about to alight for an evening of fun. “But I also know that when it comes to me and computers, I have that man beat. He may end up tricking us into something, but I can guarantee it won’t be because he tracked us back through this email. It’ll be because he outthought us somewhere else along the line.”

  I nod and smile. “Good enough for me, then,” I say. “Now let’s figure out what we’re going to say in this email to the devil himself.”

  “Not the devil,” Ren replies with a small wink. “Just his lawyer.”

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  We debate what our message should actually say for almost an hour before we come to our final decision. We find it challenging to strike the right balance between asking the right questions and yet not giving away too much about ourselves. We want to make sure that the lawyer both knows who we are and what exactly it is we are asking. At the same time we don’t want to give up anything that he or Chadwick might not already know.

  Ultimately we decide upon a short and simple message: Your client, Chadwick Morrin, has requested to meet me. He knows who this is. What is the plan? Ren sends it using a fresh email account he created for this sole purpose using the name “Put_You_In_Jail”. We figured that would be a subtle enough clue to help convey who the message was coming from. It was my idea to make the final part of what we sent a vague question. Ren doubted they would actually give away any more information than had been originally intended, but it didn’t hurt us to try. They may end up just telling us how to meet with them while Chadwick is in jail, or we might get lucky and they’ll actually tell us more about what they have planned. Unlikely, but always possible.

  As soon as Ren finishes the email and sends it off into the ether, the stress of what we’ve just done and the anxiety over what the results might be sets in. It’s not lost on me that we are playing Chadwick’s game by responding to his request, and that we are playing into whatever devious plans he is designing. At the same time, knowing he is out there and planning something and that I can’t get to him isn’t helping either.

  “So what do we do now?” I say after staring at the computer monitor for almost a minute and waiting for the response I know won’t be coming anytime soon. I know the answer to my question already, but it still feels like it needs to be said. Very little has managed to get under my skin as much as this man has, and thinking about him again like this is beginning to torment me.

  “We wait,” Ren replies with the only answer I knew he could give. “We make our contingency plans for whatever their response may be, and we wait. It’s all we can do.” He glances up at my expression and his eyes soften a bit. “And we try not to think about it.”

  “Of course,” I snort derisively and dismiss his answer. I’m not angry at him, and he knows that. But the situation is still getting under my skin more than I would like. ‘Not thinking about it’ isn’t really an option for me, but I know what he means.

  “I still have repairs to make on the mask and some of the other equipment,” he begins and then changes direction. “Unless you’re needing me around as a distraction. In that case, I’d be happy to…” but he lets his voice fade away without committing.

  “I’ll be fine,” I tell him and force as much truth and emotion into the words as I feel I can muster. “There’s nothing I can do about it now, so I’ll just have to focus on something else. What that ‘something else’ is, I don’t know, yet. But I’ll find it.” I shake my head slowly at the thoughts of what might distract me right now. None of what first emerges is really healthy for my mental state, though. “You take care of what’s needed and just contact me as soon as you hear back.”

  He nods again, and I turn and head towards the Zero. Sitting around our warehouse isn’t going to help me, so I might as well get out and move around the city and feel some fresh air against my skin. I have no intention of seeking out trouble, but at least I won’t be sitting here staring at a computer and trying to will it to make words manifest on the screen.

  Tugging the helmet on over my head, I pop the Zero off of its charging rack and hop on. Twisting the hand throttle down hard and feeling the wild power of the bike jerk and jump beneath me, I rocket out of the far warehouse door and propel myself down the abandoned street that parallels our current home. The coolness of the rushing air that envelops my skin is like river water on a hot summer day. I can feel the conflicting temperatures as the heat of the day is chilled by the movement of the wind across me. It’s both
pleasant and distracting at the same time.

  “What could he possibly want with meeting me?” I ask of the world as it blurs past me. “To gloat? To apologize? To try and intimidate me? It doesn’t make sense. What could he hope to change by having a conversation with me? Especially after the last time we were face to face and I tried to kill him, and he caused my sister to die. He can’t possibly top that encounter.”

  I sigh into the safety and darkness of my helmet’s enclosed space. As I move through the mostly empty sections of the city’s long deserted industrial sections, I let the thoughts bounce around in my head and try to see if answers catch and gain traction. None do. I don’t understand how this man thinks. I can’t even begin to try and grasp his plans even as they’re unfolding, let alone while they’re still being formulated and shrouded in mystery. I simply can’t outthink him. But that doesn’t mean I can’t still beat him. I just have to be willing to commit to whatever is needed, and not let myself be tempted away from that goal. He may be smarter, but I am faster and stronger and much more determined.

  The evening passes slowly and with little incident. Even though I constrain my routes to some of the worst neighborhoods our city has, there just isn’t much motivation for people to make poor choices when it’s still a warm, pleasant day. Regardless of the fact that the streets I drive down may be dangerous at night, during the openness of the day I find people out walking and enjoying themselves. Kids running around and playing. I pass multiple small neighborhood parks full of individuals making use of the day and finding ways to be happy. It’s enough to make me feel a twinge of jealousy. Unless something drastic changes, everything I’m watching will forever be off limits to me. I’ll never romp carelessly down a street, or swing on a playground or throw a water balloon at others without a care in the world. Although my existence and what I’m doing may be making the city a safer place for these people, I’d happily give it all up and never look back.

  To make it all even more depressing and frustrating, I can’t even blame Chadwick for my misery. It started long before him. He’s just the most current distraction. I don’t know who to blame other than a dead body in a dark alley so many months ago, and that won’t do me any good at all. Life put me on this path, and I’ve made it my goal to make the best of it. Even if that particular best still turns out to be a pretty miserable existence.

  Given, I do have some pretty nice toys I’ve gotten to play with during my adventure. Plus, I’ve earned myself a closer friend than I ever had the right to ask for. On top of all that, we also currently have more money than we know what to do with after my last several nocturnal exploits. Really, aside from the ‘needing blood to survive’ thing, I seem to be living a life of more adventure and nightly intrigue than I could have hoped for in any other way.

  That thought keeps me smiling as I continue cruising the streets with my eyes peeled for anything that may lead to a better distraction.

  “We have a reply,” Ren’s voice crackles through my helmet speakers startling me and the bike wobbles momentarily as I regain my composure after the shock. “You need to head back,” he continues.

  “What’s it say?” I blurt out in response. “What does he want?”

  “When you get back,” he says simply. “I haven’t fully read it. I just glanced at it to make sure it wasn’t a form letter response, and it isn’t. I was waiting for you to get back before I committed to it.”

  “Thanks,” I say. “I’m turning around now. Give me twenty minutes.”

  “I’ll be here,” he says in that matter-of-fact tone of his, and then clicks off.

  “What could you possibly want from me?” I ask again as I turn the bike back towards the warehouse and accelerate down an empty back street. “It can’t be good, can it? Nothing with you ever is.”

  I think about that for the next several minutes as the houses and trees and cars blur past me into a collage of muted colors.

  “What’s the point of this, Chadwick?” I ask myself. “It’s not like anything is going to change because we meet or talk. Our journey is done. There’s nothing more to add.”

  But I’m wrong. More wrong than I’d ever been before. Chadwick was about to send us down a path that would be the ruin of us both. It was just that neither of us knew it, yet.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  As soon as the Zero’s tires hit the warehouse floor, I started pulling off my helmet and dismounting the bike before it even had a chance to roll to a stop. I jumped off of it, tossed my helmet onto a chair and impatiently walked next to the bike to get it into its charging cradle before turning and walking directly towards Ren and his computers.

  He was sitting in his customary chair and staring at me and waiting.

  “That was nineteen and a half minutes,” he says with a smile. “It’s spooky how accurate you are with that sometimes.”

  “It’s a gift,” I say dismissively. Now was not the time for compliments or distractions.

  “I know, but still,” he continues before letting it trail off. I think he had more to say, but my sour expression stops him.

  “Let’s see it,” I say as I step up to the wall of screens. “What’s the message?”

  “Well, for one,” Ren says hesitantly. “It’s not from Chadwick. It’s from his lawyer. So it won’t be much, and I’m sure it will be vague. Small difference, but it’s worth noting.”

  “And two?” I ask and wait.

  “Two,” he says with even more hesitation. “Is that absolutely nothing good can come from either reading this email or whatever it leads to. Nothing.” Ren pauses to make eye contact with me and holds it. “The man is evil, Cat. As close to being an embodiment of the devil as I can imagine a human being able to do. And he’s smarter than us, and he’s had a lot of time to formulate a plan. A plan we can’t even begin to suspect of what the end goal is supposed to be.”

  Sighing, I gently shake my head. I know all of this. Ren knows that I know all of this. We’ve covered this before.

  “I know, Ren.” I say slowly. “But we have to read it. And we have to do something. Ignoring it and ignoring him isn’t going to make things better.” I frown and think about where my mind has been lately. “It isn’t healthy the way things are now. Something has to change.”

  “Ok,” he concedes. “But at least we’re alive now, and making a difference around here. It might only be a small difference, but it’s a start. If we do this, then that all may change.” Pausing, he shakes his head back and forth with a hint of despair. “Especially the alive part.”

  I start to reply, but he cuts me off before I can actually get any words out.

  “I’m scared,” he says suddenly. “This man puts a fear into me like I haven’t experienced in a long time, and I have a bad feeling about this.” He sees me about to speak and continues before I can. “But I agree it’s something we have to do. You’re right; this isn’t something we can just choose to ignore.”

  And with that statement, he turns back to his computer and taps a handful of keys to bring up the email from Chadwick’s attorney, a Mr. J. Miller Nicholas.

  The message is short but packed with meaning.

  Thank you for contacting me. My client has been anticipating this, and would like to arrange a meeting so that you may talk in person. He has information that is critical for you to hear. To facilitate this, a name has been added to his official visitor’s list with the intention of you using it. It is the name of his niece, Ms. Anna Belluck. You will need to acquire an identification card in that name.

  It would be best if you visited before this coming Friday as the information my client would like to pass along is time sensitive.

  Thank you,

  J. Miller Nicholas

  I read the email several times before stepping away from the computers. I only needed to look at the message once, as that was all it took for me to memorize every word of it, but the physical act of seeing the words helped keep me calm. Because as soon as I move away and no longe
r have the monitor’s glow to keep my attention, the unanswerable questions and thoughts start to spring forth.

  He wants to meet with me in person. In the prison. With others around. Is that even possible? How am I supposed to enter a prison and walk around? How can I impersonate his niece? Who is this niece of his? How can he have information for me when he’s been trapped inside those walls for months? If he does have information for me, how can it possibly be time sensitive?

  Nothing about this message really makes sense, and instead of answering the questions I had before it has only raised more.

  “She doesn’t exist,” Ren says raising his voice and interrupting my barrage of thoughts.

  His comment stops me and brings me around to face him. “What?” I respond dumbly. “Who are you talking about?”

  “His niece,” he continues. “She doesn’t exist.” He pauses and then looks up at me with a confused expression. “Well, technically, maybe.”

  That response was not what I was expecting, and it catches my attention. “What do you mean she doesn’t exist? Or technically doesn’t exist? How is that possible? What’s he trying to do?”

  “One moment,” He responds and a small twinkle pops into his eyes as he turns and begins to type furiously into his computer and read and dismiss windows as they pop up in front of him.

  “Ren,” I begin. “Seriously. What are you talking about? You can’t just say that and then ignore me. Does she exist or doesn’t she?”

  Instead of giving me a full answer, though, he just grunts and says, “Hang on. I think I’ve figured it out.”

  Stepping up behind him, I watch the screens pop up and his scanning of them briefly before he dismisses them to bring up new ones. His speed is uncannily fast when it comes to both the typing and the reading, but as I watch the screens I start to get the gist of what I think he’s figured out.