“But you were more interested in its beginning.”
“Yes. But when I travelled back, I met you. I saw how terribly your story ended, and wanted to see what could be done to help you as well.”
This is all fucking insane.
“So the time under Maya’s table, you had already met me?”
“Technically,” Tim replies, “you could say this is our first ever meeting. The first time I heard your name or saw you, it was in the Georgetown warehouse as you died. To you, events have seemed out of order; the further I went back, learning more about you, the more I started interfering, which I shouldn’t have done.”
I feel so foolish; for always believing there was more of an interest than one missing little girl from 1989. Then again, everyone had an intense interest in this case to begin with.
And there it is. As I always expected, there is nothing unique or special about Ramona Carol Knox. I am a tool in the eyes of Death, same as anyone else.
“So why show me all this?” I ask, “Why not let me die in ignorance of these greater things?”
“What do you mean?”
“I failed them, Tim. I don’t know how on Earth I didn’t see Hardwick and Royce for what they were. I don’t understand what benefit you get out of showing me all this.”
After a moment to let me suffer the uncertainty, or overcome his own, Tim responds.
“Because I am no longer willing to stand by, Ramona.”
“I don’t understand,” I say.
“All of these events you saw in the mirror are one set of circumstances. In that particular set, you die, Hardwick and Royce escape scrutiny. No further children disappear, but the mythos of Jordan West lives on, leading to everything I just showed you.”
“So what do you propose?”
This is what everything has been building toward. The man who calls himself Death came back in time for a reason, and this is his final pitch.
“The woman who gave me this job talked about fairness. And she knew everything about being treated unfairly.
“She told me fairness is a utopian ideal. It rests upon a balance that does not exist. For something to be truly balanced, something else must be skewed. For every hardwon justice, there is an atrocity to take its place. Which means, in short, balance itself rests on unfairness.”
He’s said that to me before.
“Unfortunately,” Tim says, “she gave it to a person who intrinsically believes in fairness. And that was her final mistake. What I’m proposing, Ramona, is to change the outcome of this case. To save the families who will be ripped apart like mine was. But...it comes with a caveat.”
“Which is?” I ask.
“We are tampering with a natural order. If we do this, Ro, the world we know risks being lost forever. People who have died will see their deaths prevented or reversed. For better or worse, it could change the entire course of history. The World Trade Center could never fall, we may never invade Iraq and Afghanistan, and the atrocities at Haven would be prevented.”
“Hold up,” I say, “Someone knocked down the World Trade Center?”
“It’s not important,” Tim replies, “By reversing your death, we can stop Hardwick and Royce selling Emily Rickard- just like Grace was sold. But so too, will it change everything.”
I finally understand; why he played coy this whole time. Why he was so evasive. The sense of wonder is dispelled, the ramifications of our relationship clear.
The man who calls himself Death is giving me the chance to make things right.
“Are you willing to take the risk with me, Ramona?”
Suddenly, I am five years old again, clutching my teddy bear under a kitchen table, only concealed by a yellow patterned tablecloth hanging over the sides.
Tim is the man sitting cross-legged under it with me, trying to help me understand my petty existence.
This seems like a terrible idea. I would be better off to lie down and die, refuse; have Tim escort me to this Shroud place where I can be forgotten, left to wander the wastes I deserve.
No bone in my body wants any part of that.
“I’m in,” I say instead.
All I care about is ending Hardwick and Royce; all I want to do is set the record straight, and bring a little girl home to her family.
No matter what it costs me, or anyone else.
I am not a monster.
Chapter Eighteen
The first time I met the man who calls himself Death, I was twenty-eight years old. A newly minted FBI agent, my birthday was two months away. The woman who raised me was dead. I was assigned to the Spider case fresh out of Quantico, recommended by my old professor Ian Armstrong.
I fought valiantly, but failed to see the hoax, crafted by my new partner and his friend in the Washington Police Department, who was a former altar boy. They murdered the real Jordan West, tainting his legacy for all time, and set about destroying families all across the country in the name of their careers.
Why, I will never truly understand or care.
The first time I met the man who called himself Death, he imbued me with his powers in the Arcway where he showed me the immediate future, and everything thereafter.
He showed me Hardwick selling my death to Hazel, handing an object across the desk to the recovering Director; speaking every disgusting word as Hazel turned it over in his hands.
Sir, at 11:35 p.m. last night, we found Ramona Knox’s body at a warehouse in Georgetown. West and his crew burned her alive. All we found was this rosary in her hand. No sign of West himself or any of his crew.
I’m sorry sir. I know she meant a lot to you.
Approaching the Hoover Building, Stephen Hardwick will regret that lie. My hair billows in the wind and the streets around the Bureau headquarters are mostly abandoned. Tinges of violet taint the sky, as if a storm approaches, ready to rain Hell down from above.
My flesh is numb where Tim evaporated into a shadow cloud, merging with me just before we left the Arcway. A sensation unlike any other has enveloped me since.
The scream from my mouth where I woke naked in a morgue scared the living daylights out of every person in a ten foot radius. Without clothes or worry, I climbed off the metal gurney. In shock and awe, the morgue employees readying to cut my remains open shared that my skin had regenerated in front of their eyes. They returned my clothing- also regenerated, but to a lesser degree. Refusing their offer to call an ambulance, I dressed, walking past widened eyes.
No doubt Hardwick and Royce will suffer equal surprise.
I can no longer see the man who calls himself Death, because he is part of me now. He speaks, and I hear him in my mind, whereas my thoughts make up our conversation. I can no longer see him, because I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds. Entering the building, flashing a charred badge in ashen clothes, soot runs through my hair and my face is unwashed of the dark stains left by surviving an inferno.
“Ramona Knox, here to see Director Hazel,” I say, “I’m sure he will be very interested in speaking with me.”
The same two guards I met my first day of working here- who both gave me the runaround because my clearance wasn’t working properly- share a perturbed glance.
People passing in the lobby, coming and going to the elevators just beyond me, are stopped in their tracks. All eyes on the ground floor fall on the woman who has returned from the dead, unscarred, other than in her fashion choices.
The guards can’t manage words. I tell them it’s a matter of national security and a phone call is promptly made.
When those elevator doors open, armed agents pour from within. From stairwells, the garage and balconies on the second floor, I am met with the sight of two hundred weapons.
Another lift door opens, another wave of agents. Stephen Hardwick bolts to the frontline, shoving past my former colleagues to confirm the rumour with his eyes.
“Knox?”
I bear no weapon, other than the man who calls himself Death, embedded within my phy
siology.
“Hello Stephen,” I smile, “It’s over.”
Panic racing through Hardwick’s face is hard to miss. His cheeks are so pale they can be seen under the grey beard; his shoulders slouch even further under the suspenders. My former partner unholsters his service weapon, training it on my heart.
The third lift door opens, and John Hazel emerges, escorted by a smaller group of nameless agents. Like Hardwick, the FBI Director pushes through bodies, demanding to see me with his own eyes.
“Ramona?” he says, “What the fuck is going on?”
I wish there was an easy answer, John.
There is no escape from this, as far as my co-workers are concerned. I don’t raise my hands, or show an inch of fear at every gun in the building trained on me. My calm, however, unnerves my former partner, and the gun trembles in his grip.
The fact I still live changes everything.
“I think you should ask Agent Hardwick, sir,” I reply. “He knows far more about what’s going on than I ever did.”
Hazel looks to Hardwick, who struggles to swallow under this new predicament.
“Stephen?”
The look in his eyes is that of a cornered animal. I may not be walking away, but neither is he.
“She’s lying, sir.”
“Lying?” I chuckle, “Pretty sure the part where you burned me alive is true. I mean, look at me, Stephen. I walked through the motherfucking fire.”
Hazel scoffs.
“Is this true, Agent Hardwick?”
“Oh,” I tell the Director, “it gets even better, doesn’t it, Stephen? Why don’t you tell him about West?”
The Director frowns, perhaps beginning to realize how out of the loop he has been.
“Was it you who called me, Hardwick? Pretending to be the Spider? I’m sure the building call records can back me up. After all, I believe those conversations are archived. Isn’t that right, Director?”
I smile, because I’ve won.
“Yes,” Hazel replies, glaring at his most senior agent. “I believe they are.”
“Maybe we should do this in private, then. Sound good, Stephen? I was thinking on the fourth floor.”
Before my joke can settle in, get some laughs, Hardwick changes sight. Training on the Director, he fires his weapon at point blank range. Hazel’s body revolts against the bullets piercing him- one in the chest, another in the head- and falls to the floor, dead.
This should immediately be cause for most of the FBI agents surrounding us to fire on Hardwick, but only about half turn against him. That group is met with bullets from the rest. All the agents above us are in the old agent’s court, creating a mess of fallen bodies on the linoleum lobby floor around us.
What the hell is happening?
Whatever this is, it’s about far more than thirteen boys in a Los Angeles church basement. Hardwick was never an altar boy. His father was a reverend, in the United Church.
None of this makes sense, even after everything.
“Now,” my former partner says, “I hope you’re happy. All these murders on your head. We have enough to put you up to the death penalty, Knox.”
I scoff.
“That will never hold up.”
Hardwick smirks.
“All we need is motive and results. We have both, and many witness accounts to back it up. Mass shooting. American tragedy at its finest.”
“No forensics team is going to back that up. All the camera footage will just show you, gunning down an FBI director and your colleagues,” I say, gesturing to the corpses, many whose eyes are frozen open in surprised shapes.
Hardwick chuckles.
“Not hard to doctor footage, or make it disappear.”
I could kill them all right here, right now. I could shrug off the fact a large swath of the Bureau has been complicit, and Hardwick leads the charge.
But I need answers.
“I just want to know why,” I say, “How can you all justify this?”
“That’s the problem, Ramona- you still think this is about children. It’s about sustaining a failing black market which pays dividends to the real one. It’s about upholding the standard of living we have become accustomed to- life, liberty, security.”
“That doesn’t explain the kids.”
“It’s the old adage. Sex sells. But everything is becoming overregulated, Knox. You got the sex workers fighting for their rights. The gays want equality. There’s whispering of legalizing drugs every so often.
“By feeding the market what it wants, we keep ourselves, and our friends at other agencies, working hard to apprehend such monsters. It’s a cycle, Ramona.
Over his shoulder, none of the weapons trained on my heart and forehead flinch.
“Of course,” Hardwick continues, pacing to me, then away; “there will always be the best and brightest of us, who just have to interfere. That’s just their nature, Knox. You would have never understood.”
“Did your old partner understand that, Stephen? Would Jim have been on board?”
Somewhere in the grizzled FBI agent’s facade, I’ve struck a chord.
“What happened to Jim was a tragedy. I loved the man like a brother. But he was so dead set on the right thing; serving the ‘greater good’. James Partridge was not a political person.”
So much death, all to keep a job which doesn’t even pay that well; all to feed the machine of criminals men like Hardwick need to avoid the word “cutback” surfacing in their weekly meetings.
I would gladly take my pink slip knowing the world was a safer place.
“So,” I say, “I guess this is where you arrest me? Maybe put a bullet in my brain, Stephen? Go back to ripping families apart, all in the name of your fucking career. You and Royce, right?”
He says nothing, glancing at Hazel’s body near our feet. His survival means my end, and vice versa; only I am Death. I am imbued with all Tim’s darkness, and I know he would never let me come to harm.
“Make the call, Stephen!”
Hardwick ponders his order a moment, like he wants me to see some internal struggle that isn’t there. He is a sociopath, like I am, and feels nothing for the command he momentarily gives.
“Kill her!” he orders, turning and making his way for the elevator.
In the split second a hundred trigger fingers lapse, applying pressure inward and bullets in the double digits hurtle at me, I am calm. Some come from far; others are point blank as the ones which killed Director Hazel.
The first bullet hits me, bouncing off. The second, third and fourth ricochet off my arms and chest, cast back at the agents in front of me. One has a projectile disembody most of his neck, and falls to the ground beside Director Hazel’s corpse.
In response to this assault, the skin of my shoulder blades is torn apart. The pain set upon me is momentary, but brings me to both knees. My hands shrivel at agony rippling up the spine, splitting skin and fabric alike. And when it has passed, something reaches out behind me; dark, branching off into jagged directions.
It takes a moment to recognize these things are part of me; they grow from center mass, morphing from their origin point into any shape they desire.
Its first iteration is knives, extending from at least eight separate directions- four on either side, like a spider. The limbs lash outward at the agents immediately surrounding me. The impaling arms cut through the bodies like butter. One man is sliced in half, torso sliding directly off his bottom half. Several others lose limbs, including the ones grasping weapons.
Tim works fast, dispatching more than fifty people inside three minutes. Many impaled, some are smacked on the way back from driving through their colleagues.
There is no limit to this creature’s destruction.
Every projectile launched in my direction is absorbed or halted in its trajectory, collapsing to the lobby floor. I don’t feel the limbs, but know they arch from my shoulder blades, pommeling and wrecking the attacking forces. One shadow arm swipes at a lo
bby column Hardwick has taken shelter behind in panic. Looking over to my former partner, his service weapon is aimed at me; the chaos drowns out his yelling as he fires and reloads.
Everything he propels at me is useless. The column crumbles around him, forcing his retreat. More bullets fly down from the balcony, but I ignore them. Cutting through what’s left of the opposing agents on the ground floor, the weapons from my back thicken and batter them against walls and furniture, leaving a trail of bodies in our wake.
The last of them fallen still, those limbs reach for floor, supplanting my own. Forming giant legs - again, like a spider- the shadow which merged with my physical body lifts it off the ground, walking forward.
Hardwick bolts for the door, descending the steps to its threshold, exiting onto Pennsylvania Avenue. The monster gives such entryways no consideration. Its feet launch me at the wall above it. Half the legs wrapped around my core, protecting it from impact, we break through it, landing in the street.
People witness to the giant human-monster hybrid which rips through the Hoover Building’s Brutalist architecture scream. Others flee, narrowly spared death by crushing under concrete debris.
In the near distance, sirens wail, come to chase me as I pursue Stephen Hardwick.
No idea where Royce is, but I’m coming for him, too.
Chapter Nineteen
I am not a monster.
Don’t know how well that logic will play out in the long run. The story of a little girl who had no business becoming an FBI agent, but did anyway; then turned around and became a demon will surely not be framed the way I want it to.
In all likelihood, the sight I have become in my final hours will go down as one of the most bizarre occurrences in modern history.
With the full weight of the law in D.C. given chase along Ninth Street, the stretch of road is a blinding mess of blue, red and white behind me. Above, pulsing helicopter blades are only preceded by the floodlight shone upon my new form.
The limbs of shadow crush parked cars, kicking or throwing others aside. The sight of me scatters pedestrians and sends dogs into fits of barking. The arms are not in my control; I only have to focus on Hardwick, who sprints ahead of me, but cannot outrun the strides of Death.
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