Lincoln, Fox and the Bad Dog

by D Roland Hess

  Apparently, Juan wasn’t authorized, so I clicked the link that read Sign in as admin, entered Henri’s creds and found myself in a not-horrible little lookup interface.

  I typed Dan’s phone number.

  A warning popped up on the screen indicating that I was about to access sensitive user data, and that doing so without a proper business need was a violation of various consent decrees the carrier had with the Federal government. Sorry Henri.

  I clicked through and was rewarded with a map view of the Western Pennsylvania region overlaid with dots and lines. I had date range filtering available and was able to zoom in down to a street level of detail.

  I actually went back several days and followed him along to make sure this was showing what I expected to see. Indeed, there he was in the Strip District that night, then up to Mt. Washington, into the suburbs, etc. It was him.

  I went to the last several days and saw something that I hadn’t expected. With the exception of a couple of forays outside at random intervals, he’d been spending all of his time in the Carnegie Museum of Art and Natural History complex. Overnight, too. The phone was moving around though, so it wasn’t like he’d just gone to the museum and lost it. Which, why would he go to the museum in the first place?

  Dan–you just gruesomely murdered the head of the Congress of the Pittsburgh Neutral Territory! Where do you want to go?

  I want to go to the Carnegie Museum of Art! said no one, ever.

  I mean, the Carnegie is a great museum, but it’s not exactly going to be my first call once I’ve achieved my goals for localized world domination. There was obviously something else going on.

  But the Carnegie it was. That’s where I’d have to start. And maybe for some reason I couldn’t yet figure out, he actually was hanging around there like his phone records indicated.

  I quit out of the browser, logged out of the shell, and logged Juan out of his computer.

  I closed the laptop lid and got up to leave.

  Several sets of eyes followed me.

  As I walked out of the large cube farm, I couldn’t resist it.

  “Have a good one!” I said loudly, throwing the room a two-fingered wave.

  I got a chorus of “You too”’s and “See ya”’s.

  I traced my route back to the interior lobby with the coffee and snack machines.

  More nods.

  It was bizarre.

  No wonder Dan wanted this thing back. He was already an ego-maniac.

  I went to leave through the door that Becky had walked me through but found that I needed a badge to get out. Which made sense.

  No one was in the immediate vicinity, so I figured I’d wait a moment for someone to either enter or leave. I could tailgate on them.

  I pulled out my phone and messaged Gwen.

  How you doing?

  I didn’t expect to get a response right away, but I’ll admit that I was kind of hoping I would. Nothing came back though.

  It was about this time that the two security guards came around the corner.

  They walked right toward me. For a half second, my confidence flagged, but that was shoved aside almost immediately by something that felt like an injection of equal parts adrenaline and vodka.

  I went right up to them and said, “I can’t find my badge, and I have to be at a client site in ten minutes. Can you guys let me out?”

  By rights, they should take that as their cue to say, “Sir, please come with us.”

  Instead, the smaller one said “Nah, you have to go get a temp badge from Ray.”

  I looked the bigger guard in the eye and said, “Can you help a brutha out?”

  And yes. He was black.

  Under normal circumstances, I’d kick my own ass if I heard me saying it.

  But.

  He didn’t.

  He just kind of laugh-smirked.

  “Sure,” he said.

  The two of them walked me to the front security door and badged me out.

  I walked through, shocked that all of this had worked.

  As I went past the front desk, Becky half-stood as though she were going to follow me. I waved, flashed a cheesy smile, and made for my car.

  How did the jacket actually work? Was it a temporary or proximity effect, such that everyone would very soon be wondering just why the hell they had treated me like they had and start calling the cops? Or was the magic deeper, altering their perception of their memories to make them accepting of it?

  There was no way to know without some real experimentation. And it didn’t matter now anyway. The police would either be after me soon or they wouldn’t. I had to proceed as though it were going to be the latter.

  As I got into the car, something urged me to remove the jacket. I listened carefully, and there was that part of me, sitting behind glass. He was shaking his head and mouthing, “Take it off.”

  It’s hard to take a coat off in the driver’s seat of a car, so I got back out.

  I went to remove it and found that I didn’t want to. I really didn’t want to. I felt like Frodo trying to ditch the Ring into Mt. Doom.

  So I did what I’d been learning to do when my body didn’t want to respond to high level commands like take off the damned enchanted jacket. I’d do it mechanically, piece by piece.

  Place hands at chest. Grip lapels, one in each hand. Pull elbows back, coincidentally opening the front of the jacket. Arch back a bit and drop hands downward.

  When the leather cleared my shoulders, I felt more like myself. I had no problem dropping it the last few inches from my hands. It fell to the ground behind me. I turned around, picked it up and threw it in the passenger seat of the car.

  As I had suspected inside, the jacket wasn’t just playing with the minds of the people around me. It had affected me as well. Maybe that was an unintentional side effect, and if a Praecant wore it, it wouldn’t happen. I had no way of knowing though.

  I realized at that point that beyond the primary (and now secondary) effect of the thing, I knew almost nothing about it. How old was it? Who had made it, how and why?

  I resolved not to wear it again until I had some real answers. It caused a possibly permanent psychic effect on people around the wearer and changed the wearer too. And those were just the things I could observe. I was starting to understand that sometimes magical effects happened beyond your immediate ability to perceive them.

  So no more jacket. It was too dangerous.

  Back in the car then.

  Before I hit the engine, I checked my phone. Nothing from Gwen. I messaged her again.

  So what to do?

  I’d come back to the city to get things sorted out with Dan, one way or another. I knew where he was hanging out. It was time to just do it.

  But not stupidly. I’d have to assume that everything was going to go to shit. That meant gearing up. And maybe gearing up would ensure that everything would go as terribly as possible, but then again maybe it wouldn’t. You negotiate best from a position of strength, right?

  And how much did I think he’d be willing to negotiate?

  Perhaps not so much, seeing as he had sent a bunch of people out looking to kill us.

  A chill went down my back and landed in my stomach. Brigit had said that she was glad she was the one who had found us. How had she found us? It made sense that the “others” that Dan had employed could also find us, and by “us” I meant Gwen.

  I’d left her at her apartment because, well, what was I going to do? She was done. Checked out, as she should have been. I wasn’t going to force her to come with me. But really, there was no checking out until this was settled. I’d known that leaving her alone was risky. It was just less risky than bringing her along. I think my stomach had just realized how much uncovered risk there was regardless of what I’d decided to do.

  I squealed the tires leaving the lot, dialing her number with one hand.

  Ringing.

  Ringing.

  No answer.

  Ringing.<
br />
  Nothing.

  Pick up the damned phone, will you?

  I told myself that she was fine. Well, not fine, but at least ignoring my calls because she didn’t want to have anything to do with me, not because she was being tortured or worse by some psychotic lackey of Dan’s.

  But my gut, my intuition that I used to trust so readily, was screaming a blue streak in my ears. Something was wrong.

  As I sped back to her apartment, taking absolutely stupid chances in traffic, I was rehearsing the different scenarios I might find. None of them were good, but all of them worked out better the sooner I got there.

  I needed her. I felt that, regardless of anything else, her continued existence in this universe was crucial to my continued existence here. For me, I’d decided, she was a requirement.

  There was no open parking in front of her building, so I just pulled crookedly into the driveway of the house next door. Let them call the cops.

  I hesitated a moment in the foyer of her building.

  Which would be worse–the elevator or the stairs? I had a flash of waiting for an impossibly long time in the slow, tiny elevator, hitting the button with furious impatience. I had a picture of myself trying to take any kind of action after sprinting up five flights of awkwardly spaced stairs. It wasn’t good. I hit the elevator.

  It wasn’t too much hell standing there, watching the floor indicator slowly climb.

  “Fox,” I said, drawing the gun I’d strapped on in the car, “kinetic force.” He pulsed his ready response.

  After about a week, the door opened.

  I tore down the hallway. My plan was to listen with my ear to the door for a couple of seconds. If I heard problems, I was blasting my way in. If I didn’t, I’d knock.

  I listened.

  Nothing.

  Well, almost nothing. Normal voices.

  I wasn’t ready to holster Fox though.

  I rapped sharply on the door, twice.

  One of her roommates opened the door the distance of the chain.

  “She wants you to go away,” she said from inside. I smelled booze.

  I turned my body so that she couldn’t see Fox. That wouldn’t go well.

  “Seriously?” I said. “I need, like, five minutes.”

  “Have a nice day,” she said, and the door closed.

  Damn it.

  I didn’t want to do it, but I felt like I had little choice.

  I really didn’t.

  I had Fox in my right hand, and the jacket draped over my left arm. I’d brought it to give to her. I holstered the gun. The jacket had kept the Slenderman from the Outer Forth from locating Brigit, so it was clearly very powerful. I wasn’t going to be using it again, and there were risks associated with it, but Gwen should have it. If Dan’s goons found her, she could put it on and charm the shit out of them.

  I knew that less than half an hour ago, I’d decided that I wouldn’t wear it again until I knew way more about it, but here I was.

  I needed them to open the door.

  I needed Gwen to be safe.

  I put on the jacket and knocked again.

  The door opened. Her roommate didn’t say anything but eyed me with suspicion.

  “I’d like to come in,” I said, trying to sound soothing. I projected compliance, or at least I tried to.

  “I’m sorry,” she said, and it sounded like she really meant it.

  “I like your necklace,” I said, before I was even aware that I’d seen a flash of gold at her throat.

  “Oh stop,” she said.

  “Look,” I said. “I have something I want to drop off for Gwen, then I’ll go. Unlock the door for me, okay?”

  “Okay,” she said. The door closed for a second, I heard the sound, then it opened the whole way.

  I also heard Gwen swearing at her from around the corner.

  “Tish! What the hell, I said not to-”

  And she stopped when I came into view.

  “Can we have a minute?” I said, looking at her roommate.

  “Oh sure,” she said. “You two look like you need some privacy.”

  “Lincoln,” said Gwen, her demeanor instantly changed. She took a step toward me, put her hand on my chest against the jacket.

  “Hey.”

  “I’m… sorry,” she said. “I don’t know what I was thinking before. I just…”

  She looked like she had been crying, stopped, then washed her face.

  “Let’s forget about everything I said before,” she said. “I just want everything to be all right between us.”

  “It’s okay,” I said. “I understand. We’ll work it out.”

  “Lincoln,” she said, “I know we will. I’m in love with you.”

  I was about to tell her the same, when I realized what was going on.

  Shit.

  “Just a second,” I said, taking her hand and moving it away from me.

  I took off the jacket. It was easier to do this time. Apparently, incentives matter. I laid it on the kitchen counter.

  “I’m sorry I did that,” I said. “I had to talk to you.”

  It took her a minute. Her eyes, which had been dilated, fell back to normal. A cold expression came over her face as her finger traced a seam along the jacket’s arm.

  “Get out,” she said. It was a whisper.

  “You need to hear this.”

  “Get. Out.”

  “Gwen, there are more people out there looking for us than just Brigit. You’re not safe.”

  There was a low growl, and then she punched me, right in the face.

  “After everything that happened to us,” she said. “You saw what that did to me. And that … that thing … and it hurting me…”

  I’m sorry.

  “It was in my head… and… it took weeks for Babd to find me…”

  I’m sorry.

  “And you come in here in your magic coat and you fuck with my head?!”

  I’m sorry.

  “What is wrong with you!”

  She pushed me.

  I’m sorry.

  “Get OUT!”

  Tish appeared in the room.

  “It’s time for you to leave,” she said. “Now.”

  Gwen stood in the kitchen, shaking, her bleeding fist a bundle of fury pressed against her mouth. Tears streamed down her face.

  I backed toward the door. Tish followed.

  “I don’t know what she told you,” I said, “but she needs to keep that coat.”

  “The coat. Uh huh.”

  “Tell her not to answer the door without wearing it.”

  “We are all done here,” she said.

  “Patricia, we’re both in trouble. It’s really bad. Just tell her. I mean it.”

  She screwed up her face and glanced into the kitchen at Gwen, then back to me.

  “I’ll tell her,” she said.

  “Thanks.”

  “Go.”

  I went.

  My brain was not working correctly. Clearly. There had been so many other ways to have done that. Why had I chosen that? Why had my systems delivered up that terrible, terrible idea to me, and why had I done it?

  This was bad. I thought about all the different possibilities that could have happened, and this one was a tiny, terrible edge case. The kind of thing I always managed to avoid.

  She was safer now, yes, but I had this sensation like there was some kind of elastic band between the two of us. I could feel it stretching. I could feel that it was frayed in a way that it shouldn’t be.

  In a normal world where people didn’t get twisted into piles of ground bone in their back yards, and spider birds didn’t try to eat you alive, and dogs didn’t talk, and things from outside the universe didn’t crawl into your mind and torture you… In a normal world, I’d have time to go back and do the right thing and work it out. To relax the elastic. To let it draw me back so we could take care that the frayed bits didn’t spread.

  But this wasn’t a normal world. I’d have
to stretch the cord further because there were people out there who intended us the worst kind of harm. That was more important right now. If it never snapped back, then it would never snap back, and I’d have to live with it.

  I’d chosen very, very poorly.

  And I had it again, that same feeling I’d had in the warehouse that a million other Lincolns in the other universes were crying or screaming, but I was just standing here. Every single one except for me was allowed to do that. Yet here I was.

  I stood in the hall and pressed the palms of my hands into my temples, trying to gather myself. I took some deep, deliberate breaths.

  Down the stairs, this time. Some physical motion to try to get my shit together.

  It worked, a bit.

  I got into my car. No one had bothered it.

  The hotel. I needed to hit the hotel to gear up and regroup.

  As I drove, my head and stomach were in complete turmoil. A creeping, cold feeling grabbed me, and I knew that no amount of amateur Zen hand-waving was going to touch it. It seemed like everything that had happened was converging on me as I drove: the events of the past week ran through my head unbidden, Gwen’s words back in her apartment, the bizarre images I’d seen in altered states with Babd, and finally pictures I didn’t even think I had available. A family reunion. Standing with everyone. Having a great time. May running around with my little cousins, barking and daring them to chase her under the slide. I remember a feeling that I couldn’t identify at the time. But it was a feeling I’d grown used to recently. Right before everything went crazy. Magic.

  There had not been a gas explosion.

  Magic.

  A horn blared behind me.

  “Get off your phone asshole!” came a shout.

  I was sitting with my foot on the brake at a green light.

  Shit.

  But this was a memory I hadn’t had access to before now, before this instant. I hadn’t been able to remember anything about the time right before the accident. Until now.

  It wasn’t much– just that one image–but it had a flavor to it that was now unmistakable to me. Some kind of magic had killed everyone but me that day. I was as certain of it in that moment as I was that I was sitting in my car getting yelled at by a huge guy in a Ford F250.

  I layed off the brake and let the car move.

  For the rest of the way to the hotel, those images fought for primacy in my mind, and I kept wrestling them aside, so I didn’t hold up traffic or plow into a pedestrian.