Joseph

Cattle Waiting for the Sky to Fall

Senator Wexley. The phone rings. Whitman again.

“You’re on every goddamn screen in the country, Bryce! Standing in the ash like a statue. That’s what they needed. That’s what they missed. Now here’s what comes next. You get your hands dirty. Roll up those sleeves. You dig with the firemen; you pray with the chaplains, you bleed a little if you have to. And you don’t speak until someone asks. You show them what a man looks like.” Whitman is on a roll. “This is what it’s about, Bryce. We are out of step with this decaying world not because we’re lost—but because we belong to another age. An age of order. Of sacrifice. Of hierarchy. And now that age is clawing its way back through fire and steel, and you—you—are its herald. You’re not out of place, Senator. You’re right on time!”

“Yes,” you say. “The sniveling weaklings need a strong leader to show them the way.”

“Bryce, listen close.”Whitman says in a conspiratorial tone, “Our man was supposed to tie off the threads in San Diego. The Flower girl. She slipped. Asset failed. Sloppy work. Unacceptable. Now, don’t panic. I’ve already got a new team en route—Delta boys, off the books. And I’m not just sending them to mop up. I’m sending them to cleanse. Burn the rot. You understand me?”

“Oh yes,” you tell him. “I get your drift. Wipe them out completely, leave no sign they ever existed.”

“Exactly. This is the age of men who do what must be done, Bryce. The rest are just cattle waiting for the sky to fall. Images are the biggest con ever invented. They don’t represent reality—they replace it. A fake becomes the reference point. You lose the original. Go give them the image, Senator!”

“Will do.” you say, and the line goes dead.

You sit with your hand on the door latch. Beyond it the sky rains ash and cinders and the towers burn like funeral pyres. You brace yourself to step out when the phone rings. You glance down. Vince Caruso. Breaking his own protocol. Breaking the one rule he swore to keep: Never call the mobile.

You hold the phone a moment longer than you should. Then you answer.

“You been busy.” Caruso says. “When I saw you on Tough Talk this morning, you had the fire in your gut, Senator. But that ain’t what got me. What got me was two hours later—your face, your whole damn self. Standing in front of the wreckage, covered in ash, you looked real presidential out there.”

“Thank you, Vince. Good to hear from a loyal supporter such as yourself.”

There is a moment of silence. Then Caruso speaks again. “Tell me something. You got a twin brother I don’t know about?”

“No, I’m an only child.”

“Reason I ask, I gotta guy holed up who claims he’s you. Tommy says he looked like a drifter, but once he cleaned up, he looks like you. I mean—exactly like you. Same height. Same nose. Same eyes. Scared out of his mind, raving about being replaced. Claims you’re the fake. Says he’s Bryce Wexley. Says you walked out of Alpine and took his life.”

“What the hell, that’s some lunatic. There must be a coincidence that he looks like me.”

“I want to know what the hell I’m looking at.” Asks Caruso. “And more importantly—what do I do with him?”

“I don’t give a damn.” You say. “Throw him out on the street. I don’t know who the fuck he could be.”

Caruso sighs. “All right. But Senator—this shit’s above my pay grade.”

“Don’t bother me with nonsense like this again.” You tell him and end the call.

You check the mirror before you move. Tilt your chin. Square the line of your jaw. The handsome devil looks back at you. You signal the driver with a flick of your fingers, and he steps out into the smoke to open your door.

The air hits you like a wall. Foul and wet and heavy. Your throat starts to close against it.

You crouch by the curb. Dip your fingers into the grey runoff pooling there. Then into a clump of ash. You smear it across your brow just above the right eye. Just so. A mark. A small touch of ruin.

You stand. Shoulders back. Eyes sharp. Scanning the broken street for cameras. For reporters. For witnesses.

You are ready now.

Ready to play the part.

The skyline burns. Smoke rises in spires of ash and ruin, the color of bruised ochre and old bone. The sun hangs behind it like a tarnished coin. Ash sifts from the heavens like slow snow. The wind bears the stink of jet fuel and blood and the black iron tang of burnt wire.

The sirens wail. From near and far. The sky stitched with the roar of rotors. A bell clangs. The radios whisper code, sorrow, and static. Somewhere in the bones of the ruin a girder gives way with a groan like a beast dying slow.

You stand there. Sleeves rolled. Tie gone to soot. Your hands blistered and blackened. Your nails cracked and rimmed with the dry red of other people’s blood. You hold one end of a rebar rod, the firefighter the other, and you pull like men at the plow. No speech between you. Just breathe and sweat and labor beneath the pall of a broken sun.

You shove at a slab of wreckage, heaving it up with both hands as if you expect to find something living underneath. There is nothing—only dust and ruin.

You look to the photographer standing hollow-eyed nearby. “Hurry up and get this shot!” you say. “I’m hungry.”

The woman lifts her camera without a word. The click of the shutter is sharp as a whipcrack in the smoking silence. She does not understand, or she understands your callousness too well. Either way, she obeys.

A body bag passes. Zipper closed. You stop. Close your eyes. The stench rises like incense. Meat and plastic. Circuitry charred to bone. You breathe it deep.

You are near the end of your patience with crawling in the dirt among these worms. You reckon you’ve earned a drink and a wash besides. The filth clings like a second skin, and the temper in you stirs mean and restless.

By the triage line, a girl coughs dark into a rag, spotted already with her life. You kneel. Lay your palm on her back. “The ones who did this will pay. We will hurt them. We will hurt them badly.” You tell her.

Nearby, a priest prays. Garbed in black. Words low, soft as dust. You bow your head. You mumble, make some vague gestures, and turn to the cameras and say, “The righteous wrath of the Lord is with us. We will make these heathens suffer for challenging the country blessed by God.”

You hear the voice of the world as it unravels. Radios. Weeping. The wind.

You join the line. Hands on buckets. Hands on bricks. Hands on memory. A ring in a palmful of dust. Gold catching sunlight in the ruin. You look at it and think it an ugly thing. Low karat gold, dull and false beside the ring you wear on your own hand. You look and did not take. Turn and keep digging.

A man retches in the gutter. Another falls like timber. You do not turn. Your eyes raw. Your teeth clench against some deeper tremor.

A woman comes with a mic in hand.

“I’m only here to lend a hand, my dear, standing with the weary and the wounded in their hour of need.” You say, feigning anguish. “But soon I must depart to join the finest minds our nation can summon, so that together we may see justice done and hold accountable those who brought this abomination upon us.”

She covers the mic with one hand and leans in “Senator, if you run for president, you’ve got my vote.”

You place a hand on her shoulder, look into her eyes, “Thank you. Every vote counts.”

A bottle comes. You open it. Do not drink. Pour it down your scalp. Steam rises. The sweat and the ash sluicing down the ridges of your cheek. You breathe. Straighten. Say nothing.

In the distance, the wreckage smolders like the altars of a fallen faith. The flag stands among it, limp and then lifting—red, white, and blue beneath a sky that had forgotten such colors.

You stand beside it. Silent. Your shadow stretches long across the dead. The dust rises round your shoes. And you breathe the breath of the old world gone. And the new one not yet born.

You steady yourself, a smile flickering beneath your practiced solemnity. You think of the great responsibility soon to be placed in your hands—of the trust, the authority, the mandate born from fear. And you welcome it. All of it. For their sake, of course.

The Veil Shall Thin

Bryce Wexley. The light through the blinds cuts the room in slats, and you sit still in the chair they’d found for you. Tommy had rigged a dropcloth from a plastic sheet he took out of the limousine. The girl—you still don’t know her name—smokes long brown cigarettes by the kitchen window, her gaze wanders.

Then comes the knock. Three soft taps. Tommy answers, low words exchanged, and the stylist enters.

Young man. Slender. Hair in a bun. A satchel of tools that jingle. You tell him to cut it high and tight. To make you look like a man built for war. He nods once at you and sets to work.

No words for a long while. Only the sound of the scissors, the faint hush of hair falling to tile. You watch the strands drift down, brown and silvered and coarse with age.

You ride high still. You have turned the tables on your enemies. You will take back what was stolen. You will stand safe behind your hired men and bring the false Bryce to ruin. Make him kneel in the dust and kiss your boots for the sin of wearing your face.

The stylist trims along the jawline, the nape. He moves with care, his fingers sure. Then pauses. His reflection in the mirror catches your eye.

“Do you want to keep the beard?” He asks. “It looks good on you. Regal.

“Regal, you say? Like a king? Well, I suppose so.”

He works the shears with the slow patience of a man working on something delicate. Fifteen minutes of snip and silence. When he steps back, you lift your eyes. The man in the mirror is clean now. Clean. Well-groomed. Your dyed hair gone, leaving only the grey. A trimmed beard, pointy at the chin. The best you’ve looked in weeks. But not the same. The bones show sharper beneath the skin. The eyes hold something hollow. The face has been carved by fear, worn thin by hunger and long hours in the dark. Not a man reborn. A man returned. From somewhere worse.

“You like?” He asks, holding a mirror so you can see your reflection of your back.

At first you don’t like what you see. Shrunken. Worn down. You tell yourself it is the look of a soldier. A man ready for war. Fighting fit and hard as coffin nails.

The stylist sweeps up, gathers the tools of his trade, and leaves.

An hour later, the tailor arrives. Drives up in a dented Lexus with dealer plates, carrying two garment bags and a case the color of gunmetal. Tommy opens the door and lets him in without a word.

The tailor is small, dark-skinned, late fifties maybe. Wire-rimmed glasses. Calloused hands. He looks you over like you are a problem that could be solved with the right math.

You stand in the center of the room stripped down to undershirt and boxer briefs, the girl gone somewhere deeper in the house. Tommy sits on the arm of the couch, scrolling through his phone like none of it concerns him.

“Shirt first,” the tailor says. You slip into it. White. Crisp. The fabric whispering as you pull it down over your shoulders.

“Pants.” The tailor hands them over. Wool. Expensive. You button them slow, felt the weight settle across his hips.

“Jacket now.”

You slide your arms in. The tailor steps behind you, pulls at the shoulders, tugs the hem. Then come the pins. Fast, efficient. Cuffs. Lapels. Waist.

The man circles you like a sculptor sizing up the stone. Adjusts his tape. Measures you again.

Then he crouches, one knee to the floor. Looks up at you. Clears his throat.

“Do you hang to the left or the right, sir?”

“Left.” You tell him.

The tailor nods. “Very good.” Then he marks the adjustment, not even blinking.

“Very good. Take them off, please. I’ll have them ready for you within the hour.”

“Hey, Tommy,” you ask. “how many, how many boys you got ready to ride with me?”

“Hey, look, that ain’t my call, alright? That’s Mr. Caruso’s business. He’s on his way right now, you can take it up with him. Anything else I can do for you, Senator?”

“You got those, those guns, and the bulletproof vest I asked for?”

“Nah, I don’t. Far as I know, Mr. Caruso’s got that handled. You want a drink? A smoke? You want the girl too? Don’t get shy on me now. Just say the word, Senator. I’ll make it happen.”

“Any cigars?” You ask.

“I do indeed.” He takes one from the humidor, trims it, and lights it for you as you puff away as you think about your impending victory.

You smoke the cigar slow and easy while the tailor works his trade and leaves. The suit fits like a second skin. You marvel at how the flesh has fallen from your bones. You have not worn a frame so lean since the days when you still believed in such things as future and fortune. You look damn near magnificent.

There comes a knock at the door. Three times. A pause. Two more. Another pause. Then four raps sharp as bones on wood.

Tommy goes to answer it and when the door swings wide a man fills the frame. Broad as a barn beam and dressed in a suit that strains at the seams. The bulge beneath his coat plain enough to know without seeing. A gun.

Behind him comes Vince, smiling with all the warmth of a winter sun. And behind Vince another man larger still, big as a linebacker, carrying a duffel bag slung over one shoulder like a sack of feed.

Vince Caruso stands with the bulk of a man gone soft with comfort but not yet fallen to ruin. His hair slicked back, black and gleaming like tar in the sun. His suit loud in cut and color, more flash than form. He carries the air of a California businessman who remembers violence but speaks now with the easy grace of money. Late forties. A fighter gone to seed but still dangerous in his way.

Vince spread his hands wide like a man offering benediction.

“We need to have a conversation. Not here. Guest house out back’ll do. Tommy, you come too.”

The big man steps through first and opens the door to the backyard, motioning for you to follow. Vince and the giant in his wake. Tommy hesitates, then trailing behind like a condemned man.

The guest house is nice enough, although the air stale. Vince takes a seat in a chair by the window, crosses his legs easy.

“I’ll never forget this day, Senator. World Trade Center. Pentagon. Lord knows where that last bird was bound. White House? Capitol? The world ain’t ever going back to what it was.”

As Vince talks, Tommy busies himself at the kitchenette, grinding beans, rattling cups. The two suited men go to work in the living room, pushing the furniture against the walls without a word. From the duffel, the giant pulls a sheet of clear plastic like the kind painters use. They unfold it, heavy and slow, and tape it down to the floor.

“Yeah, the planes, it’s crazy.” You say. “I think the imposter must be behind it. It’s all connected. We’re going, we’re going to connect the dots. It’s all, it’s all ties together. I know it.”

“Yeah, we’re gonna talk about that.”

Your gut curdles.

“I don’t know what you’re doing with this plastic. Hey, I already got my hair cut. We don’t, we don’t need the plastic.”

“Oh, no, Senator, this isn’t a haircut.”

From the bag came sealed packets. They tear them open and shake out white hazmat suits. Don them like men dressing for war. Tape their boots, their wrists, their throats.

The giant sets a single chair in the center of the room and covers it with another sheet of plastic.

Vince nodded toward it. “Have a seat, Senator.”

You break into a sweat. You do as he says. You walk to the chair, slow and reluctant, like a man stepping into his own grave. You keep your gaze locked on Vince’s eye.

“What’s this all about? Vince, you trying to double-cross me? Are you in league with the imposter?”

Vince steeples his fingers and speaks low.

“Don’t know who you are, the man said. But you ain’t Senator Wexley. Know how I know? Cause I just spoke to him myself. And you know what he told me?”

He leans in close, his voice calm as prayer.

“He told me to get rid of you, but first, we’re gonna have a conversation.”

“You believe him? Ask me anything! I know everything about you! We go way back, Vince!”

“Oh, I’m gonna ask you lots of things.” Vince growls.

“Vince! You remember the first time we crossed paths? Wasn’t on a golf course. Wasn’t at a fundraiser. It was in that little bar down in City Heights, smelled like piss and bleach. You were still running numbers for the old man. You remember? I was nobody back then. Fresh off my first election win. City Council. Eighteenth District. Nobody paid me any mind… except you. You slid that manila envelope across the table. You didn’t say a word. Didn’t have to. Five grand in untraceables. No letterhead. No promises. Just a note: Remember your friends. And I did, Vince. I did! When the rezoning deal went through? You got first crack at those lots. When the city contracts came up for grabs? Your cousins got the bids. When the neighborhood association needed a new board? You picked the chairman. I never forgot who carried me when the big boys wouldn’t.”

As you speak a red light blooms from Vince’s belly like a wound torn in the fabric of the world. It pulses slow and terrible. No man turns to see it. Only you. As if it were meant for your eyes alone.

“I never forgot how you vouched for me when nobody else would touch a clean-skin kid with a trust fund and a crooked smile. You remember that thing down by the docks? The warehouse? The one we don’t talk about? I remember it too, Vince. Every second of it. Every shovel full of dirt we packed over that mistake. You and me. So don’t you sit there looking at me like I’m some stranger. I know you! And you know me! Question is, who do you want standing with you? The Senator with the cameras and the lapel pin? Or the man who never forgot who gave him his first goddamn shovel? Vince. We’ve been through so much. How could you, how could you doubt me? I’m right here in front of you!”

The more you talk the more light spills from Vince’s belly getting brighter and brighter.

He steeples his fingers and he says, “I don’t know who you are, but you know an awful lot about me, and we’re gonna get to the bottom of this. Now, the Senator, he told me to get rid of you, didn’t exactly say how, but we’re gonna find out a little bit more about you.”

“Wait, Vince, wait! How do you know the Senator is real? I’m telling you, he’s an imposter! He doesn’t have this information I just gave you”

“I’ll give you this. You do look like the Senator, but you’re thinner than the Senator. And I just saw my TV, not once, but twice. Saw him Tough Talk, and I saw him at ground zero. Whoever you are, we’re gonna find out. And Bue here,” Vince nods to the giant, “he’ll make sure you don’t clever with the details.”

The big man, Bue, goes to the duffel bag. Sets out the tools deliberately. A hammer. A set of pliers. A propane torch still scuffed from old work. Lays them in a row like relics before an altar.

He looks up. Smiles without mirth.

The quarterback pins you to the chair with strips of duct tape, binding your wrists and ankles.

Bue hefts the pliers, turns them once in his hand like a man testing the heft of a blade. Then he crouches. Takes your hand in his. Chooses a finger. Sets the teeth of the pliers against the nail, ruining your recent manicure from earlier.

“Who are you?” Asks Vince.

“Did the aliens get to you? Did they get to you? Vince, are you in league with the Greys?”

Vince frowns. “Wrong answer.”

Bue jerks his arm back in a short, brutal snap, and pain floods you so fierce it blots the world to a single white star.

The studio lights are searing. You sit across from Phil Doherty beneath the glow of national attention. You are dressed in a midnight blue suit. Power tie, discreet flag pin. The perfect American.

Doherty leans in. His voice is smooth, practiced. “Senator Wexley, your new reality show premieres this Friday. Cameras follow you into the halls of power—and maybe behind the curtain too?”

“What? What? Who, who? What do you mean?” You say.

You hear applause. Canned and clean.

Camera two zooms in.

The red light blinks. But it’s not a camera light anymore. Not entirely. It’s the red emergency beacon above the blast doors in Alpine, blinking as the first scream cuts through the feed room.

A technician mutters something in Russian. You sign off on the stack of files beside you. You don’t ask what the names mean. They’re already in the system.

“Some say the Senator is a man with vision. Others say you’re chasing ghosts. What do you say to the critics?” Asks Doherty.

“The ghosts are real! They’re aliens! They’re out there!”

The applause fades. It becomes the hum of fluorescent lights. Flickering. Failing.

The klieg lights that shine on you during your crucifixion. Blood in the grout. 3,333 human subjects arranged in rows of cots. Some drugged. Some still whispering prayers. All gone before the door was sealed.

You remember their names. You remember nothing.

A figure approaches. He is pale. Clad in surgical white. No eyes—just skin pulled taut across sockets. He hands you the last form. “The final seal must be affixed by one who has been seen.”

“I won’t do it! I won’t do it!” You scream.

Something brushes against your mind. A fouling. A trespass. It is like two pounds of sand poured into a one-pound sack. You feel it spill into you. Heavy and wrong. You are full to bursting. You cannot hold it, and yet you do.

Phil Doherty is saying something about leadership. About unity. But you can’t hear him. You are watching the monitor behind him. It’s playing footage from Alpine. The screen is not supposed to be playing that. But there it is. Out in the fields stand strange shapes. Sculptures that cast no shadow and lean against the sky. The earth is scoured clean in great rings. The bodies lie there too. Flayed and splayed. Pinned like insects by some hand unseen.

The chanting gathers in intensity.

A wide shot of you standing between two glass pods. Each holds a version of you. One gestating. One fully formed.

You flinch. The camera holds.

“Everything okay, Senator?”

You scream.

The pods hiss. One opens.

The version of you that remains inside is not awake. He is dreaming. That dream pours into you like cold black water. The pod opens and you fall to the floor, a thing discarded. A thing aborted.

The other pod cracks open. The doppelgänger steps out. Perfect hair. Perfect skin. Smile unbroken. He does not look at you. He does not need to. He has already replaced you.

“You are the door,” say the twins in unison. Their mouths do not move. Their voices come from within your skull.

You lunge at the doppelgänger, hands groping for his throat, wild to close on it, to crush the life from him.

Phil Doherty leans forward. “Senator?”

Your scream goes on without end as you clutch at the throat of your own likeness, bent on throttling the life from it.

“And what does the future hold, Senator Wexley?”

You turn to the camera.

The feed distorts. The audience screams. You are no longer in the studio.

You are beneath it, in a room that does not exist, a dark space humming with ritual geometry, with blood in the seams of the tile. The applause echoes like ritual chanting. You look down. Your hands are red. Not metaphor. Not symbol. Just blood. Still warm.

From the edge of the dark, your better self steps forward, suit immaculate, hair perfect.

He speaks in your voice, but the words are not yours.

“Thank you for joining us. Now the veil shall thin.”

Phil smiles at you, grinning ear to ear and then some. “We’ll be back after you return from the Alpine.”

He smiles. The lights go out.

The Bue and the other man lay curled on the floor like something folded in on themselves. Their breaths shallow. Their gaze fixed not on any thing in this world. Catatonia. Or else some deeper fugue. A silence without end.

Caruso kneels in the wreck of himself. The front of his slacks dark with urine. His face lifted as if in prayer, though there was no god to meet it. He sobs without shame.

Tommy slides down the wall. The stink of voided bowels is sharp in the air. He shakes like a struck animal, eyes wide, lips working. “No. No. No. No. Too much. Too much. Don’t. Want. It. In. My. Head.”

He draws the pistol from his holster with the slow resolve of the condemned. Sets the barrel in his mouth. Pulls the trigger.

The blast cracks the room like thunder made flesh. A bloom of blood and bone cast like seed against the drywall. You feel the spray of it on your face and newly coiffed hair. Warm.

Caruso blinks. Looks at the body, then at you, then at the sleeves of his coat, slick with what remains of Tommy’s brain.

He bares his teeth.

“What the fuck was that? What just happened?”

You try to lunge at him but are still bound to the chair.

Caruso stands in the blood-warm hush of the room, taking in what he’s seen. His face turns slack, his jaw goes heavy. Behind his eyes, the slow grind of thought like stones moving beneath old earth.

He looks at you then. Looks through you. The kind of gaze a man gives the moment the veil lifts and the truth of things comes screaming in.

“Bryce, I didn’t believe you. Can you blame me? It sounded like lunacy. But after what I just saw… Fuck. It’s true. Every goddamn word you said.”

His voice breaks. Then something else passes across his face. A flicker. A spark behind the eyes. Realization.

“Bryce. Oh God. Bryce.”

He steps back from you as if the air around you had turned to flame.

“I told the other one. The Senator. I told him about you. He knows you’re here. In San Diego. We gotta move. We gotta get you out of here. Right now!"

Cyberphr33kz

Belle Flower. Your mother leads you into a mirrored tent where every reflection is wrong. Not backwards—wrong. The glass shows versions of you spliced with beasts: a second head curled like a fetal twin; feathers sprouting from your scalp; your torso shaped like a spider’s abdomen; goat hooves stitched where your hands should be; he body of a horse grafted to your spine; a toucan’s beak nailed over your nose and mouth. The seams are rough and weep blood and pus in slow and endless measure. Each reflection speaks in your mother’s voice.

“You were born opened,” they say.

“The mother of monsters takes her own.”

This has to be a dream—a nightmare. You have not seen your mother in so long, and yet here she stands. You don’t know how you came to be with her, and you don’t know why. You thought you had escaped, thought you were free. But you are back—back in this place—and you cannot say how.

In one of the mirrors, you see the words stitched in silk, the letters running backwards: La Belle et la Bête. Your mother towers over you, her hand heavy on your shoulder, whispering things you cannot bear to hear. “Perfection is a curse. We’re saving you from it.”

She nods to your reflections in the mirror.

You want none of it.

You feel yourself cleaved from your own being, slipping away, and you would give anything to be made whole again.

Your mother tuts and turns you this way and that before the glass. In the mirrored depths, you see yourself adorned with new monstrosities: a rhinoceros horn fastened to your brow, the hide of a zebra sewn raw along your back.

“These are your inheritance. The Mother doesn’t want pretty things. She wants truth.”

You turn to run, but the mirrors fold in, closing like a flower. You see your father, kneeling, weeping, clutching something in a cloth. You lift the edge.

It’s your own face, calm, doll-like, stitched at the lips, eyes wide open.

Your body begins to unravel. Scars split open, revealing not organs but symbols carved into bone—sigils you doesn’t recognize but feel burning in your skull like migraine. You collapse into the dirt, and the bones of your spine stretch up like a serpent, rising from your back.

Even in the dream, you try to scream, but your mouth is sewn shut with silver thread.

You wake with tears running down your face. Maybe you whimper. Your throat is raw, and every muscle in your body screams. You are cold to the bone.

As the world steadies, you feel the bandages wrapped around your elbows and skull. Your right wrist swollen and dark with bruising.

You are in a car. The sky is bright and blue, and the trees slip past in a blur. A highway sign swings into view: Chula Vista. Five miles.

The man driving wears a shirt loud with flowers and a bucket hat. He leans to the dash, and the fog on the glass clears. And that is when you see it. On the back window, a shape reveals itself in the glass: a spiral. You didn’t draw it. But it’s there. A perfect coil.

You feign sleep. Breathing slow. Eyes half-lidded. Biding your time.

The car slows. Gravel cracks under the wheels. Above you, a sun-faded sign leans against the wind: Rico’s Autos.

The man nudges your shoulder. “Hey, you awake? How you doing? You up yet? Hey, hey kid.”

You stir like something half-dead, come back from the dark.

“Who are you? What do you want?”

He looks at you, and there is something like sympathy in it, though not quite.

“You’ve been through a lot. I’m Detective Grayson, FBI. I was investigating you—routine background—planned to meet, ask a few questions about matters you’re already familiar with. But things escalated. You were attacked. No question, the man intended to kill you. We stopped him. He’s in custody. Right now, we’re at a secure safe house. Intelligence suggests you’re being followed by individuals with hostile intent. Our priority is your safety. That said—you are in legal trouble, young lady. We’ll address that when the immediate threat is neutralized. For now, you’re secure. I intend to keep it that way. Are you hungry? Need anything?”

“I think I know what you mean,” you say. “But I don’t think I’m who you think I am. I’ve been trying to get back to my apartment. That’s what matters. There’s someone I was supposed to meet. I need to go.”

“All right,” Grayson says. “Some of your belongings were taken by whoever this guy was working for. The rest are in the custody of the San Diego Police Department, pending evidence processing. We’ll do what we can to recover them, but right now it’s tied up in red tape. Is there anything you need urgently—medications, anything critical?”

“If I could get my cell phone?”

“Is there anyone you need to contact right now?” Grayson asks.

“Yeah. There’s someone I need to talk to.”

Grayson studies you.

“I want you to understand the situation.” He says. “We’re aware of your involvement with certain online message boards, and we believe you had prior knowledge of the events that unfolded today on the East Coast. You know exactly what I’m talking about.”

“No, and I don’t have my phone or laptop or anything to prove anything or, you know, have any evidence. Do you have a warrant? Or, like, are you detaining me?”

You’ve spent your life evading eyes like his. Hackers don’t talk to agents. That’s the rule. But you’ve seen things. You know that much. You just don’t know what it all means.

Grayson exhales.

“All right, listen,” He says. “I don’t have a warrant. And I know your type—suspicious of law enforcement. Frankly, we could have a long, philosophical debate about whether that suspicion’s justified. But right now, here’s the truth: you shouldn’t trust me. Look at me. I’m not even dressed properly. It’s ridiculous. All of it was to keep you alive. A little gratitude would go a long way toward making this process easier—for both of us. But I understand where you’re coming from. You don’t have to say a word right now. All I need you to do is step out of the car. We’re at an FBI-sanctioned safe house. We’ll take this one step at a time."

“How do I know you won’t just tie me up?”

“You don’t know that for sure.” He says. “Your options are simple: you can stay in the car while I figure this out—I’m not going to drag you out—or you can get up and come with me. I don’t advise running. It’ll only make things worse. I’m going to look you straight in the eye and say this: You’re safe. And you can trust me—at least as far as knowing I am who I say I am.”

You study his face—the small flickers of truth behind it.

“What happened to my friend in the trailer?”

“He took a round to the stomach. He was in bad shape, but he was still alive when the paramedics took him. We can call the hospital and check on his status if you want. You’re welcome to use my phone if you need to call someone. Do you know the number by heart? Because you’re not getting your own phone back anytime soon.”

“There’s someone I do need to call. Someone I’m supposed to meet.” You tell him.

“I’m advising you to be careful. You’re not in deep shit—not yet—but you are a person of interest. If you’re thinking about calling a drug dealer or anyone like that, I strongly suggest you don’t. Now, who exactly were you supposed to be meeting?"

“Buck Flanagan. He’s family, in a way. I haven’t seen him in a long time, and we were supposed to see each other.”

“Would you like to make that call here, or would you like to make that call inside?” He asks.

“I’ll take the call outside.”

You step out into the light.

The garage squats in the dust like some gutted thing. A pale blue ruin under the morning sun.

Chain-link fence rattling in the wind. Beyond it, the sound of traffic, dogs, a siren. Two rust-bitten cars out front, still as corpses, their windshields cataracted with grime. The windows boarded or blacked out. A patch of wild grass clawing through the cracked asphalt, obscene in its greenness. Oil-stained concrete and cigarette butts. No name on the door. No mailbox. Only the faint scent of rust and rot.

Grayson hands you his Blackberry. You fumble with the keypad, pretending to recall Buck’s number. But you’re digging.

Grayson’s recent calls:

A number from San Diego.

A Boyd Whittaker in Los Angeles.

Marley Ginger.

Dolores, last name a heart emoji. Cute.

Calls to a General Virek.

Multiple to Langley, Virginia.

Text from Alicia Hightower: I’m here to talk if you need me.

Grayson’s reply: Thanks.

You dial Buck.

His voice jumps through static. “Belle, are you okay?”

In the background you hear: elephants trumpet and heavy machinery beeping.

“Yeah, I’m, I’m okay." You tell him. “I don’t know how I will be able to meet you. Some guy, some Fed, picked me up. The guy who was been following me, that guy I told you about earlier, he found me again when I was at Red’s house in the trailer park. He tried to get in, and he shot at me, and I’m okay. Just grazed my temple. I got knocked out. Right now, I’m in Chula Vista, but I’m gonna be able to meet up with you. Where are you?”

“I’m still in Arizona. I got about an hour to go, and I’m gonna head out of here. I’ll get you the phone and clothes you asked for. I can’t believe what’s happened to you! I’m glad you’re okay. Red hasn’t a picked up his phone, though.”

“I think he’s in the hospital.” You say. “There’s more, but I can’t talk about it now. I’m on someone else’s phone. But I need a way to reach you.”

“I’ll call this number when I’m an hour out. Tonight.”

“Okay. Thank you.”

You hand the phone back to Grayson.

The wind moves around you.

Grayson opens the trunk of the car. Inside lay a flak vest, a pump shotgun with the stock taped up crude, and a med kit with dried blood rusted at the latch.

And your laptop.

Compaq Armada. Old but built like a tank. Loved by hackers for being cheap and stubborn and born for Linux. Security men and pentesters prized them, too. The black plastic casing plastered with stickers. One, the sad ghost face of an old Macintosh screen. Another of some local band: Drive Like Jehu. Your hard drives velcroed to the sides like cargo meant for rough roads.

And there, too, was your phone.

“Look,” Grayson says, voice steady. “I’m going to need some assurances from you—that you’ll cooperate. If I hand this over, you’re free to make your own decisions. But I’m coming clean with you. I want to work with you as an informant on an issue of national—and international—security. There’s more I can tell you, but right now I need a commitment. I’m just asking you: don’t run. Cooperate with me a little while longer.”

You look at him. “I have no choice,” you say. “I have nowhere else to go. I’ll stay. I’ll cooperate. But I need to know more before I give you anything. You owe me that.”

He doesn’t answer because the door groans open behind him, a Winston smoldering at the edge of his mouth. His hair buzzed tight, gray at the temples. His eyes lock on you, then your shirt. “I’m a Steve Earle man myself.” He says. Then to Grayson. “Afternoon, Agent. What division you say you’re from?”

“It’s Lookout division, but you wouldn’t have heard of it.” Grayson shows the man his badge.

His jaw works behind the smoke. “We just moved our C.I. on your say-so. You know how hard it is to move someone when they’re halfway through an investigation? Come on in. I’m Leland Carrick. Everyone calls me ‘Lee.’”

You step through the door, and a fly drifts in before Grayson. Its green thorax catches what little light there is. It moves without urgency, as if summoned, as if it belongs.

Inside, the air smells of rust and ghosted gasoline. A ceiling fan spins slow overhead, creaking in protest. Pigeons rustle in the roof beams. Lanterns threw long shadows against hanging tarps that formed makeshift walls inside the converted garage bay.

A work lamp buzzes, its filament pulsing like the heartbeat of something dying.

Wires snake along the walls, half-hidden behind torn insulation and peeling paint.

In the garage bay, the roll-up doors braced shut with welded iron bars.

A foldout table held a scatter of maps, a pair of radios, a pistol laid out on a towel like an offering. A coffee can full of cigarette ash. A Gideon bible wrapped in duct tape.

The cameras run silently, their feeds flickering green in the half-dark like frog eyes in a swamp. Someone had written a phone number on the wall in grease pencil. A knife stuck into the drywall below it. And beneath it all, the quiet hum of power drawn from a rigged generator.

Carrick turns to Grayson. “You were at Waco. You think it was about guns? Or did somebody not like the idea of a messiah in Texas who wasn’t federal-issued?”

“That’s a can of worms,” Grayson says. “My friend, I would be happy to break it down over a few beers someday. But right now, there’s a lot in motion.” Grayson’s face clouds. Were you there?”

“Nah, I got some buddies with the A.T.F. who were there. But yeah, I’ll take you up on that beer. Let me introduce you to the crew.”

A man in his early twenties sits cross-legged on a milk crate near a surveillance wall, sipping Mountain Dew from a can that looks older than the kid himself. He wears a faded Bauhaus tee. C.R.T. monitors glow green behind him.

“Yo, uh, is this the package?” he asks, blinking furiously. “Didn’t know we were running intake again so soon. Was about to heat up some Cup Noodles.”

Carrick nods in the direction of the kid. “That’s Evan Park, our surveillance tech. Evan, this is Agent Grayson.”

“Call me ‘Blinky.’” the kids says. “Wait a minute. You’re the Agent Grayson? So, uh… real talk, Grayson—what if Kaczynski wasn’t wrong, y’know? What if we’ve already crossed the threshold? Like, the control systems are too good, and now we’re all just… sleepwalking into a technological apocalypse?”

“Honestly, I think he was more right than he realized.” Grayson tells him. “I don’t know what kind of evidence he had, but you folks are asking questions that are way above my pay grade right now. Like I said, get a few beers in me sometime, and we’ll talk it through—at least what I’m cleared to discuss. Some things I know, I’m not authorized to share.”

“Roger that.” Blinky says.

A woman steps in from the side bay, braids tight. She glances at Grayson, then you, then Carrick. “Who the hell’s this?”

“That’s Miss Belle Flower.” says Carrick. “New intake. Temporary. Agent Grayson, this is Deputy Marshal Rocío Velasquez.”

“You can call her ‘Ro.’” says Blinky.

Rocío Velasquez steps up and extends her hand to Grayson. You can tell she has a strong grip. “Good to know you, Agent. You better not be bringing ghosts into this place. We just cleared one out on the say so of your friend, Guthrie. We can stay on board for a day or two to help out.”

“That would be great.” Says Grayson. He leans in. Whispers something meant for no other ears.

Carrick leads you toward a back room. Former office. Two cots. One chair. A place for the displaced. “You can sleep here.” He says.

Ro crosses her arms. “Not taking the panic room?”

She nods to the pit in the floor covered by a mat and some tires. Steel ladder leading down to the dark.

“Bathroom’s still dead. Use the bucket system. Fresh water’s in the jug. Don’t flush if you can help it.” Says Carrick. “Generator’s on its last legs. How long you need this place?”

“Honestly, I don’t expect we’ll need this location for long. We’re likely going to stay mobile.”

Velasquez asks: “And what’s the girl running from?”

“She’s been through a lot, so let’s keep this professional. She’s rattled—needs time to get her footing. What I can tell you is she’s witnessed violence, and she’s been targeted. At the same time, she’s a person of interest. So stay sharp. And let’s make sure she doesn’t disappear on us.”

Velasquez looks at your feet. “Well, I don’t think she’s going to go too far. Let me get you some sandals, kid.”

Velasquez pulls out a pair of flip-flops from a bag.

“Where is the bathroom?” You ask. “Because I need to take a shower and wash my feet.”

You wash. It helps only in the way it always helps. A little. Not enough.

Later, Grayson comes to you. The overhead lights threw long shadows.

“I’m sorry for what you’ve been through. You don’t have to trust me—I get that.
But I’m asking you to stay put.” He says. “Right now, this is the safest place for you. We’re going to work with you to figure out a long-term plan. Going back to your old life isn’t an option—it’s not safe anymore. I know it’s a lot to take in. I’m sorry for that. But you could be a critical asset in something bigger than either of us. If you need anything, let me know. These folks here will make sure you’re taken care of."

“Okay. Thank you.”

Grayson nods and leaves.

Blinky hands you your computer. At long last, you’ve got your laptop. It feels like it’s been an age since you last had it. You plug in Blinky’s ethernet cable, adjust your settings and you are back online. You can tell that your laptop is being monitored. You open a terminal window, type rapidly, and you are free of scrutiny. Across the room, Blink does a spit-take with his Mountain Dew. Tries to play it cool.

You check your PayPal account. You’re flush.

Alerts pinged. eBay. Cyberphreaks message board.

You ignore the eBay alert, focus on the message NullCatastrophe, fellow denizen of Cyberphreaks. It was sent in the dead hours before the towers fell.

“Need help,” they said. “Something’s following me through the sites. It’s coded in corrupted JavaScript.”

NullCatastrophe spoke of a digital presence. A thing without form but not without will. Drifting between domains like smoke through a keyhole. It left marks in comment threads. Whispers in backend code. A glimmer in the static. You follow the trail, but each time you do, your browser begins to act strange: the URLs redirect to nowhere. Your webcam flickers on for a moment, then off. And the speakers—your own speakers—say your name. Not the name the world knew. The old name. The one sewn into a silk banner above the freak tent: Belle et la Bête.

And you ask yourself: “Did I hear it? Or did it hear me first?”

You hunch deeper into the chair. Lose yourself in the code. Barely notice when Blinky drops food and soda at your elbow. Didn’t see night fall until he turned on the lamp.

Later, Grayson comes back. Wearing the Federally-issued suit of his kind. Asks how you are. You muttered you’re fine.

He nods. Lay. on a cot. Out cold in minutes.

Hours pass.

The air grows cold. Your breath steams like smoke from your mouth.

From the other room comes a sound. Low. Wounded. It’s Grayson. A whimper. Wrong from a man like him.

You freeze.

And from the edge of your vision, a shadow moves.

A shape large and bent and black.

The rot hits you next. Thick and wet in your throat. Your stomach turns.

A thud. Wet meat on concrete.

And the thin, thin wail of an infant.

Each time it cries, your body answers.

Your breasts swell.

Your nipples throb.

Yellow milk leaks and soaks your shirt.

You can not move.

You can only listen.

And you could only pray it had not yet seen you.

The Box

Agent Nicholas Grayson. You drive the Impala away from the safe house. Carrick called it South Glass.

When you left the Kearny Mobile Home Park you called Guthrie and told him you needed a place. He said you wouldn’t like it. He was right. Still. He delivered.

The crew were solid. Carrick and Park asked too many questions but you could live with that. Velasquez kept her questions to herself. That counted for something.

You told her to make sure Park kept an eye on Flower’s internet use.

“We want her motivated to dig.” You said. “Get her whatever she needs. But monitor her internet activity—covertly. And bug the phone. I want a full record of who she’s talking to.”

You watch the lights of the city drag past the windshield.

You hope Flower will be all right. Surprise yourself with the paternal instinct kicking in.

Still. She is stronger than she looks. You can see it plain. The way a tree grows twisted in a hard wind. The scars told the story whether she wants them to or not.

General Virek calls. Sounds like he’s walking through a hallway.

“Agent Grayson, I only have a minute. Today’s been hell since the attacks. Your digital footprint’s been compromised. Someone’s been sniffing around your secure files, but the IP trail’s been rerouted through a series of proxy servers—maybe even a chain of zombie nodes. It’s clean work. Could be Russian, could be Chinese, could be private-sector. The signal’s been bounced too many times to trace directly, but the access pattern suggests they’re combing through Alpine-related intel. Whoever they are, son, they know what to look for.”

He hangs up.

Your Blueberry vibrates.

Guthrie.

“I just left the trauma unit at UCSD Medical.”

“How is he?” You ask.

“Mathers is alive. Took a round to the lower spine. Paramedics got to him in time, stabilized his vitals. But it’s bad.”

“Jesus.” You say under your breath.

“He’ll live, but he’s not walking again. Bullet severed the spinal cord. Complete paralysis from L2 down. The surgeons installed a colostomy system. He’s looking at permanent care. No more rodeos. Not ever.”

“Guthrie, keep me up to date on his status.”

“Yeah. He’s unconscious for now. Heavy sedation. But when he wakes up, he’s going to need answers. One more thing—hospital’s tight-lipped, but the media’s sniffing around. Local PD put out a boilerplate report: home invasion, one suspect in custody. That won’t hold long.”

“Do your best.” You tell him. “I’m heading to the police department.”

The line goes silent. And then you arrive.

You sit in the stale chill of the homicide bureau with the sun just now lifting over the windows slatted with dust. The two detectives across from you wear shirts wrinkled and ties askew. A clock on the wall ticks time that will not be returned. One of them scratches at a legal pad. The other stares as if watching something far off through a fogged pane.

“This isn’t how I saw the day unfolding.” You tell them. “Obviously, none of us could have predicted—or prepared for—an attack of this scale. I expected a simple pickup. Bring the girl in, start the work. But there are other forces in play here. We need to find out who—or what—is involved in the attack on her. And who’s pulling the strings.”

One of the detectives hands you a coffee.

“Agent Guthrie speaks highly of you. Questions your methods, but says you get results. We got Mercer in the box. You want to interrogate him?”

“Affirmative.” You say.

“Oh, and Guthrie said you’d want this.” The detective hands you a plastic bag containing your suit.

“Thanks. I’m going to change.”

When you come back you hand them the bag. The sandals and the shorts and the shirt and the hat you took from the civilian at the Kearny Mobile Home Park. Borrowed, if that’s what you want to call it. You gave them back just the same.

“Can you return these?” You include a twenty in the bag as a way of thanks.

You follow the man down a corridor lit white and unkind. The walls close in like the sides of a long forgotten tomb and the stink of old sweat and sour coffee is thick on the air. He opens the door and you step inside.

The box. Four walls and a single light hissing overhead. The floor is scuffed and dulled by the scrape of shoes and struggle. The air is still. Still as death.

And there he is.

Silas Mercer.

Chained at the wrists to a bolted steel ring like some dog they never could break. His head shorn close to the scalp, the flesh of his face dark with bruises, split, bandaged. Left eye swelled shut beneath a web of gauze and blood. They say he may lose it. That the glass got in deep when you drove him into that mirror.

But he sits there unmoved. Back straight. Breathing slow. A calm about him that is not peace but something more feral, more profane. The stillness of a man who has seen what lies beneath the world and made his peace with it. He looks at you with the one eye left to him and smiles.

Like he’s waiting on the next act. Like he already knows the lines.

“I was just talking to our old buddy, Boyd Whitaker.” You ask. “Hard to believe how long it’s been. When’s the last time you were in touch with anyone from our Gulf outfit?”

“Whitaker? I haven’t talked to the motherfucker in years.”

“Yeah, well, you never really got along with most of the platoon. It’s been a long time. What have you been up to?”

“Been busy. You got me in a chokehold, huh? Been takin’ jiujitsu classes on the side? Hell, you’d never have put me down like this back in the Sandbox.”

“No, I guess my skills have come a long way since then. Although, to be honest, there were plenty of times I wished I’d put you in a choke hold.”

“Back then we were young.” Mercer says. “Saddam, he was a bastard, no doubt. But he was our bastard. Iraq’s got no sea. Couldn’t play ball with Iran when the mullahs dropped their oil to bleed the markets. Saddam warned ‘em. Said if nobody stepped in, he’d take Kuwait with both hands. Hell, he told the U.S. government. Told the western press. Nobody listened. So he did what he said he’d do. And we used it as our excuse. That’s why we were there, Grayson. That’s what we fought for. Not justice. Not peace. Just the story folks back home could stomach.”

He stares at you with his one good eye.

“You been busy since. Waco. McVeigh. The goddamn Unabomber. All them ghosts clingin’ to your coat like soot. And still you punch that Bureau clock? Still think you’re clean in all this? Didn’t learn a thing, did you? Thought you were one of them Seventh-Day boys. Thought y’all believed in judgment. Investigative kind. So tell me, when’s yours comin’?”

“The way I see it, Mercer, judgment’s happening all the time. It’s not for you or me to figure out how it works. Our job is to follow the law—God’s law, in this case. And we just have to hope we see a little justice now… and the rest in due time.”

Mercer spits on the table.

“When all is seen, ain’t nothin’ understood. You drown in the light and come up empty. Mais, you ever sit and think on them men? Kaczynski. Koresh. McVeigh. I do. I done thought on ‘em plenty. They like dominoes. One knockin’ the next, and the next, till the whole line gone down. Koresh, now, he thought he was the Lamb of God. But lemme tell you, Grayson—God been dead a long time. We done kilt Him. Still, the man weren’t wrong ‘bout everythin’. We are livin’ in Babylon. Babylon with its shiny badges and black boots and big ol’ buildings, and despite all Koresh’s guns and sermons, Babylon came knockin’. Came with fire. Took him and a whole house of folk with him. Why? So the ATF could flex a little muscle ‘fore budget season? So ol’ Janet Reno could make an example, say this what happen when you push back?"

“It’s a lot messier than the public was ever told—and that’s for their own good. You’re not wrong to think something bigger is at work here. But it’s better to stand with the light than with the devil. The only real question is, Mercer: whose side are you on?”

“My own side. I’ll tell you something, that fire lit somethin’ in McVeigh. He was out there at Waco, sellin’ bumper stickers, flyin’ the flag. Watchin’ that compound burn down with women and babies inside. He saw that and it twisted somethin’. Thought he could strike back. Thought he was defendin’ the Constitution, blowin’ up that buildin’. Thought the men and women who torched Waco worked there. But all he did was hand the government the excuse it needed to tighten the leash. Dominoes, cher. Just fallin’."

“You can argue about whether it was the right role to play, or whether the dominoes should have fallen at all.” You say. “But we can both agree—they’re falling. And it’s about time you made a choice. Word is, you’re losing that edge. Your days as a gun for hire are numbered. Not many people are going to hire a shooter who can’t see straight down a barrel.”

“Nah, I’m not worried about that.” He says.

“What are you worried about, then?”

“I know what my future is.” He says. “Your future is Kaczynski. Now that one, he saw the whole game laid out. Knew we weren’t made for this world of concrete and cameras. Said we’re creatures meant to hunt and bleed and run free in the wild. Not be penned up in apartments and cubicles and told how to live, how to think, what to want. He said we in a zoo, boy. Bein’ domesticated. Obedience is the endgame. Smile for the zookeeper.”

Mercer looks up to the ceiling, then back at you.

“And now? These attacks today? Maybe it’s foreign. Maybe it’s homegrown. Don’t make a lick of difference. It’s just the next domino, Grayson. Watch close now. They gonna come with more laws, more eyes, more fences. And we? We’ll ask ‘em for it. Beg ‘em to keep us safe. Hand ‘em the leash with a thank you. But today? Just today, the veil slip a little. And folks see Babylon for what it is. But it won’t last. They goin’ back to sleep. Ain’t nobody drivin’ this engine no more, bébé. This thing done wound itself up, and now it’s runnin’ where it wants. So I ask you, mon ami—where’s that next domino fall?”

“Let’s get straight to it, Mercer. I need to know who you’re working for and why you were hunting the girl. You can make this easy on yourself —or you can make it hard. Your call.”

“Look, Grayson, I am a consummate professional. You’re not getting anything from me.”

You lean forward, both hands on the table, and look him in the eye. “You want to make it hard on us? Fine. We can handle that. You? You’re going away for a long time.”

“You listen close now.” He snarls. “First fella look at me crosswise in that yard? I ain’t gon’ hesitate. I take him out right there, clean an’ mean. Make a scene they won’t forget. Let ‘em all know—I done arrived. After that? Oh yeah, they gon’ come knockin’. I’ll have to pick a crew. Might be the Aryan Brotherhood, the kind with the lightning bolts an’ bad tattoos. Maybe the local flavor, y’know? Don’t matter. Give me three years. I’ll run that gang like a Sunday sermon. And then? I run that whole damn prison. And you, on the outside, you’re in prison, too. You got some hard choices to make.”

You tell the guard you’re done and leave. Outside in the garage the sun has risen higher. Your ribs throb. Your knuckles split. You lean against the cold steel of the car like a man held together by old injuries and newer regrets.

The FBI building was new. Fluorescent lights hum overhead. You pass through checkpoints and doors, nodding to clerks and analysts who don’t know him and didn’t want to. You step into Conference Room C.

Miller sit there with a file like a priest with a sin list. She flips the pages as if they might rearrange themselves. She does not look up.

“You want to explain yourself?”

She reads from the page. Unauthorized operation. Transport of a civilian witness. Violation of protocol.

“Look, you can hand over the forms or not.” You say. “Either way, I’m doing my job—and how I do it isn’t your call.”

She stares at you for a long time and says nothing. There was a kind of mercy in that.

You sign forms until your hand cramp. Use-of-force reports. Custody logs. Transfer records. Signatures that would be filed and boxed and never read again. Your name, over and over, as though it might eventually become someone else’s.

By dusk you sit in the Crown Vic they assigned you parked beneath a sky smeared with red like a wound across the horizon. You had not eaten. You had not slept. The bruises beneath your shirt blooms like some terrible flower. Your bones ache. Your mind replays the scene like a reel jammed in a projector. The girl’s blood on his hands. Mercer’s eyes in the mirror before it shattered.

You grip the wheel.

There was no peace to be had.

There would be no sleep.

Only the long night and the forms he hadn’t signed yet.

And finally, the drive back to the safe house.

You check in with the team. No trouble while you were gone. You ask who’s taking watch through the night and offer to take a shift yourself. Velasquez shakes her head. “You look beat to hell, she says. Get some sleep.”

She’ll take first watch. Then Carrick. Then Blinky.

You nod. A smile half-formed and broken on your face. “Yeah,” you say. “I’m just gonna lay down.”

You pass by Flower. The pale glow of the laptop screen on her face. She barely looks up.

You shrug.

Find your cot.

Sleep takes you before you can think twice about it, and in your dreams, you are once more a child. In the old farmhouse in Indiana where your mother was raised. The walls hung with sun-faded posters of the shows your grandparents let you watch. The Superfriends. Deputy Dawg. Yogi Bear. Your mother did not approve.

It is that night—the night it happened.

You rise from the bed and step out into the darkened hall. Past the kitchen. Past the living room. The television spilling the national anthem into the stale air. Your father slumped dead asleep in the Barcalounger, the floor about him littered with empty cans of Old Milwaukee. His mouth open. Your mother has already gone to bed. Worn out from the fighting and the futility of it. She tries to get him to seek help but it comes to nothing. They argue and argue. Like beasts in a pen with no gate.

Somewhere, the man you are now, dreaming this dream, begs you not to take another step, not to leave the farmhouse. But your pleading goes unheeded. You open the door and step out into the summer night.

The grass is wet with dew and cold against your feet and you move out into the corn. In the rows ahead something hangs in the air. A woman maybe. A thing. Its face pale and skull-like. The black robe it wears is fouled and torn and it flaps in the faint stirring of the night.

“Lo, my child,” It hisses. “To fashion thee into the instrument of mine own purpose, I must needs take the scales from thine eyes, yea, even thy innocence must I strip away. For I am the whetstone, and thou art the blade; and by mine hand shalt thou be sharpened.”

It drifts down out of the dark and presses its mouth to yours.

It’s tongue. In your mouth. The taste of it. Cold. Wet. You gag on the length of it, and still it comes. Unending.

In the distance, you hear yourself mewling, trying desperately to wake from your nightmare.