Zephyr Box Set 2

by Warren Hately

  Crimson Cowl lifts his remaining hand a moment and then it drops heavily to the soil.

  You’ll need the head, Belle’s tiny voice echoes in my cerebellum. If he followed you, he followed others as well.

  I nod tiredly and get up.

  *

  THIRTY MINUTES LATER I shoo a bunch of natives away from the smoldering ruins of the pagoda, glad to see no other cadavers in the yard as I stroll in with the Cowl’s shiny head under my arm to disappear in the choking smoke as I descend into the pagoda’s cellar.

  Down below, the wreckage of the whirlwind has left only the time travel podium and a few other banks of electronica intact, though the big stone plinth originally in the middle of the chamber has shielded some other equipment from destruction, including the key servers and power source.

  I don’t really have any idea what I am doing, but with Belle whispering disconsolately just above the level of my Unconscious, I switch on some monitors and get the operating system for the transwarp up and running.

  “All good. Now what?”

  “Additional hardware detected,” a soft-spoken woman’s voice announces.

  Tell it to connect.

  “Connect,” I say aloud.

  “New hardware connected,” the disembodied voice says.

  On a nearby shelf, a noise starts from Crimson Cowl’s head. The black wire mesh below the brushed steel faceplate almost seems to take a breath.

  “Activated.”

  I study the machine voice hard, Belle’s words coming and going like the tide, disoriented I know, and hell, perhaps more than a little upset to find herself dead and hitching a ride on an increasingly over-the-hill hardcase like me. A feeling of disquiet overcomes me that is more than just paranoia or intuition.

  Feeling a sense of rising urgency, I tap a few buttons on the control keyboard that achieves very little, then scroll around the monitor with the in-built wheel until I find what looks like a network connections box. An icon that can only represent the Crimson Cowl’s head sits blinking on the screen.

  “This is your tech,” I say aloud.

  “Correct,” the machine voice replies.

  I turn to it in alarm. “The time travel technology is yours as well.”

  “Poor Julian,” the android’s head replies, expressionless in death as it was in life. “He believed he was the only one of Lennon’s god-forsaken offspring to have lacked powers. Why did he think his father sought to destroy him so?”

  “The inventions.”

  “Correct,” the android replies.

  “How does the Demoness . . . sorry, Spectra, how does she have all your tech?”

  “That is not the question you should be asking,” the android says.

  I study this a moment. Belle makes a few frantic and not very helpful suggestions like a drunk friend at a quiz night.

  “I take it you have a back-up body on its way,” I say.

  “Correct.”

  “I’m strangely . . . relieved.”

  “You shouldn’t be, Zephyr.”

  “No, I know. You’re right. I guess I need to destroy you now.”

  I advance towards the shelf and the android head has nothing else up his sleeve, so to speak, just sitting there like a skull waiting for a soliloquy. I electrify my hands to make a point that is only part theatrical. And the Cowl makes a noise like the electronic equivalent of clearing his throat.

  “I can set the co-ordinates to take you to Arsenal,” the cold voice says. “Or you can destroy my head before my reserve armor arrives. You cannot do both.”

  “It’s not even a choice,” I say. “My quarrel was never with you.”

  “Then mount the podium.”

  “How do I know you won’t destroy me?”

  “I could have killed you from a distance any time in the past year, Zephyr. As you say, my quarrel was never with you.”

  “So I take it you somehow – that is, Julian somehow travelled back in time and established the company that Spectra came to own.”

  “It was a simple case of making an elderly Japanese man my business partner and then feigning my own death in a time and place where Julian Lennon never existed,” the android says.

  “Huh. Pretty clever. So you set up Spectra to be your cat’s paw to, what, give you a mainline to Lennon’s kids?”

  “I will eradicate the Lennon bloodline when I am ready,” the android says. “But first I will have my vengeance on my father.”

  The whole deal strikes me of somewhat causal logic. Julian wants John Lennon dead for trying to kill him because, of all his progeny, the Doomsday Man feared Julian the most. He was a genius inventor – superhumanly so. And commanded a field far removed from Lennon’s psionic grandmastery.

  I step onto the podium against Belle’s strident wishes and nod to the head as I hear a distant crashing noise, the arriving replicant stomping across the floor above our heads.

  Zephyr 15.14 “Fade To Black”

  FADE TO BLACK.

  I am relieved to rematerialize at all, so the ruins of old New York do little more to chill my soul that has already been chilled so constantly this evening stretched now across four centuries and back.

  Vines and serrated grasses reclaim the streets around Zuccotti Park, vegetation like a viral infection that engulfs the ancient parked vehicle wrecks, an old city tour bus, weather-beaten and dented yellow taxis, the brownstone church across the square glassless and severe like a hurricane survivor, the windows in all the surrounding buildings mostly long since shattered out, wind churning through abandoned office cubicles and work stations like mournful ghosts a mimicry to the ghosts that have moved on from here.

  “Are you OK?” I ask my passenger, concerned and wanting to check she made this transition as all the others.

  I’m here, the soft twang replies. Can’t say I am OK.

  “Hold on there,” I say quietly. “This all ends soon, one way or the other.”

  A gratuitous excitement grips me. Perverse as it might be to acknowledge, I haven’t felt this elation since early childhood, the sensation akin to the night before Christmas with the anticipation of a present long desired perhaps becoming real – and with the tantalizingly real threat of not coming real at all.

  It is early morning here in Manhattan. The streets of this necropolis are empty at the best of times, so I move as swiftly as I can towards the big church, bounding with a little assistance over the wrought iron fence and scrambling up one of the tall narrow medieval-looking windows just wide enough for me to squeeze through inside.

  *

  WITHIN, THE CHURCH is cadaverous, the insides long since removed to mummify the total organism. Anything able to be used for fuel has long since gone, but the basic vile semiotics of the religion once preached here remains in the very architecture, the carvings, what few panes of stained glass still clings to the ribs of the battered, weather-pitted structure. Other nearby buildings were reduced to ashes by the Kirlians, but obviously some churchgoers must’ve thought their deity preserved uniquely them, even if that same all-loving god countenanced all the other destruction.

  For once, my stealth doesn’t upend me and I make it all the way to the dais at the back of the church, the door open to the room beyond, a metallic noise tapping in counter-time to my advancing footsteps I do my best to silence.

  Angling on the door, I see Seagal sitting on a drum stool at a work bench covered in various gadgets, his armor basically dissected. He looks up as if by sixth sense and sees me staring at him and freezes a moment, stubbled, slightly jowly face marked with surprise and a weary resignation that it all might eventually come to a moment like this, basically ambushed while on the can.

  I push open the door and enter the small room. A kerosene heater fends off the cold and a series of car batteries provide the power for his appliances, TV news streaming live off a laptop, roaming wireless drive extending from the jack. The guy’s living like a divorcee just moments away from homelessness and he knows it. There�
��s no glory here.

  “How’d you find me?”

  “Crimson Cowl. He was tracking you just like he was tracking me.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  Seagal eyes the gauntlets on the table and slows, knowing I’m aware of his every movement. He turns his dark-ringed eyes back to me.

  “And what’re you gonna do huh, Zephyr? Kill an unarmed man? You’re nothing but chicken shit fuckin’ pussy asshole.”

  “Famous last words,” I say and lift my hand and he goes for the gauntlets anyway, but I stun him with an open charge that sends him twitching off the stool and onto the cold hard floor beside his dirty camp bed, legs kicking about as his nervous system goes haywire from my assault.

  The tremors subside in a moment. The big guy tries to get to his feet, but now it’s my turn to be the remorseless automaton as I grab him by his manky white t-shirt and throw him against the wall, the weak daylight straining through the window higher up too far out of his reach for him to have any other options here. Seagal makes a mewling noise, turning on the ground and trying to charge me, but I move aside and palm him off so that he rebounds off the oak door and spills out into the pulpit beyond.

  I follow. There’s a stone wall now separating him from his namesake weapons.

  Seagal’s defeated and he knows it. At the moment where he could throw himself at me and basically commit suicide, he drops painfully to his knees instead, drawing a huge shuddering breath for all intents and purposes about to unleash with his sob story.

  “Why’d you do it?” I interrupt him, burning with the need for an answer.

  Seagal gives me a dark and reluctant look.

  “He gypped me, the fuckin’ Preacher Man. The others all got great new lives, but not me. Not in this universe. Some fuckin’ nobody, not even a movie star. One crappy TV show and no money and that’s it.”

  “You remember being part of The Twelve?”

  “No, but I know what I lost. The Arsenal suit proves it,” he says, looking up awaiting his own execution. He sniffs. “I did you a fuckin’ favor, Zephyr, and you don’t even know it. That bitch you were with, she was bad news. Better off dead.”

  “Bad news for you then,” I say smugly. “She’s not dead.”

  “What?”

  I grin at his surprise, though the renewed fear blooming on his features surprises me.

  “She got free,” I tell him.

  “You . . . freed her? No.”

  Seagal looks like he would say more, scared for something more than just his life, but then Belle takes him and his fevered expression goes slack.

  *

  SHE LEAPS FROM my mind as graceful as any invisible dancer could be. I only feel the decompression of her departure and watch through a momentary blaze of colors, a sensory illusion created by the flaring and fading of our psychic link. Seagal’s begrudgingly suicidal expression freezes and he gives a short sharp cough, groans, and clutches his throat and chest with such ferocity I fear for a moment Belle’s gambit, whatever it is, has failed miserably.

  But the burly older man catches his breath and steadies, slowly getting to his feet under my careful watch. Heavy-lidded eyes turn cautiously on me, the expression slack until the semi-bearded grin turns up.

  “Holy shit. I did it.”

  Seagal’s voice struggles to catch the requisite shock, awe and girlish enthusiasm of Belle’s words.

  I lower my foe-vanquishing fist, shooting him/her a curious look, still struggling to incorporate the latest update.

  “Are you OK?”

  “I should’ve asked you,” Seagal says.

  I’ll stick with that name for now.

  “I saw my moment and took it.”

  “You didn’t need to do this,” I tell, uh, him. “We could’ve found you a body better suited for your . . . orientations.”

  “I don’t know,” he guffaws inappropriately. “Some of my exes might tell you a lecherous drooling old dude might be just the right tonic. Holy shit,” Belle-in-Seagal’s-clothing says. “I’ve got a cock-and-balls. Holy shit.”

  “Well, spare me and don’t go pulling ‘em out just yet,” I say. “Plenty of chance for you to get some alone time, but just not yet. We’re in the middle of mutant Manhattan and I don’t have too many fans around these parts.”

  “I took your vengeance. I’m sorry.”

  Seagal looking all sincere and shit, creeping me out. I rapidly shake my head.

  “No. No, you didn’t,” I answer. “Maybe this is the best revenge. He still in there?”

  “No. I burnt him out,” s/he replies. “I had to. Wasn’t going easy. Seagal’s an empty shell without me here driving.”

  “Well OK then,” I say, shrug, reappraising my new pal all of a sudden. “Are you gonna grab his toys or are we going to. . . ?”

  “Arsenal’s dead as far as I’m concerned,” Belle answers.

  “Holy shit,” I say, getting it at last. My turn for mimicry. “We should celebrate.”

  “Right you are.”

  And Seagal cracks a grin that almost convinces me the whole thing is just some trick.

  Zephyr 15.15 (Coda)

  HOURS LATER AND all I want to do is sleep, but the drinks are lined up and I’ve introduced my new friend High Roller to the gang – or actually there’s no gang, but you know, the soaks who happened to be at the Flyaway when we dropped in unannounced, just a few stringers from E! and other stations lounging out the back trading cigarette smoke and industry gripes.

  Also in the club tonight: Terence Trent d’Arby, Yves Saint Laurent, Gotye, Diva Zappa, Ziggy Marley, Zoltan Gera, Xavier Samuel, Zara Philips, Ratko Mladic, Zezozuze Zadfrack and various other people I won’t name lest you start to think I’m making all this up. The air is heavy with the smell of teen pop idols and hashish coming from the men’s room, but I am transfixed by my own discomfort at the sight of my gal pal now masquerading in Seagal’s corpulent body, the reclaimed helmet the only real concession to some kind of costume as s/he jiggles a young starlet named Mila who they tell me just made headlines for a record $100,000 fee for her new movie, a comedy about pet sitters or some such starring Nautilus. I’m glad to hear my old teammate’s finally getting to where he wants to go, but judging by the actress’s performance giggling at every off quip the so-called High Roller makes, I think she’s about to earn every cent.

  High Roller gets my look and after muttering something in the girl’s ear and setting off another round of giggles, Seagal heaves himself over and across to me, laying a meaty arm around my shoulders I have to resist the urge not to throw off.

  “Hey, why the long face?”

  “I can’t get used to you, you know, not being you.”

  “I told you not to fall in love with me, Zephyr,” he says, the comment perverse and unsettling coming from Seagal’s stubbled mannequin.

  “Please, you’re grossing me out. A guy doesn’t have to be in love to be unsettled by the latest turn of events.”

  “Revenge, it’s got a certain ironic quality, don’t you think?”

  He lifts brawny arms still clad in the tubular vinyl fabric Arsenal wore beneath his various gadgets.

  “I think you got a raw deal,” I say and laugh blackly, looking almost anywhere else.

  “How do you figure?”

  “He’s getting on. Old and not in the best shape.”

  “The young lady I was cozying up to just now didn’t seem to mind.”

  “Mask-struck,” I say and shrug again. “Actors, you know? They’ll fuck anyone to get their names in the paper.”

  “God bless ‘em.”

  “I still say you got a raw deal.”

  “I’m not worried.”

  “No?”

  Seagal gives an expansive shrug.

  “I learnt the trick, Zephyr. Can’t unlearn it. I’m like a snake now, and these bodies, they’re just skins.”

  “You can . . . make the jump again?”

  “I think so,” he says, smirking slightly as his dark eye
s alight on mine in the gloom of the club, thumping pulsing insistent bowel-weakening music behind us.

  “It’s a good feeling,” he says. “Like freedom. Like I never have to fear death again.”

  “So I shouldn’t get too used to High Roller?”

  “No,” Seagal’s mindless body says. “And I don’t know about Bellwether either. I’ve been thinking about a new name. All the endless possibilities before me. Life, it’s an endless continuum.”

  I look, but Seagal’s eyes are elsewhere now, lost in some internal search across landscapes of Belle’s own imaginings.

  “What sort of name?” I ask with a sort of pale trepidation.

  And those black eyes find mine again. The slightest of smiles.

  “You know those little Russian dolls? The wooden ones, have tiny copies inside?”

  “Babushka dolls,” I say weakly.

  “But that’s not what they call them, is it?”

  As she speaks, something of Arsenal’s coiled menace surfaces once more.

  “No.”

  “Say it then, Zephyr. Say it.”

  “They call them . . . Matrioshka.”

  And Belle nods and grins, the look more like a grimace that shows every contour of the skull beneath Seagal’s face that she will soon abandon like so much excess waste.

  Matrioshka.