The Hidden Throne

by Charlie Cottrell

  “I just wanted to thank you for getting me patched up and taking care of me after that action,” Bodewell said. He remained standing, about four or five feet away from the desk, his left hand stuffed into his coat pocket to relieve some of the strain on that arm. We didn’t have enough material to create a sling, but Miss Typewell had deemed one unnecessary, anyway.

  “Hey, thank you for saving our butts back there. Maya and I couldn’t have gotten out safely with the information if it hadn’t been for you and that charge you made against the guards.”

  “Yeah, I know,” Bodewell said. “Makes what I’m about to do all the harder.”

  “Wha—?” was all I had time to stay as Bodewell stepped forward suddenly, jabbing me in the midsection. At first, I thought he’d just punched me, but when his left hand came away, it was holding a knife.

  A knife drenched in my blood.

  “But…why?” I asked, falling to my hands and knees as a steady stream of blood flowed from my gut.

  “Because I’m making a bucket of money for that information, Eddie,” Bodewell said casually as he came around my desk and pulled up my computer terminal. The folders containing the information Maya had downloaded into the computer system flashed up in a vid window, and Bodewell inserted a small datachip into my desktop to download the files. “My employer thinks this new alloy will be a tremendous asset in his efforts to take over the city’s criminal enterprises. And that gun? God, the things you could do with that piece. Me, I’m just looking to make enough money to retire someplace nice and warm, away from all the noise and grime.”

  “You…bastard,” I said, clutching my midsection and hoping to staunch the flow of blood. It seemed unlikely, given the sheer quantity that was pouring out of me.

  “At least I had the decency to stab you to your face this time, Eddie,” he replied, retrieving the datachip and stuffing it deep into his coat pocket. He came back around the desk and knelt down next to me, a companionable hand placed on my shoulder. “I really am sorry about this, Eddie. When you left a message at the dead drop, we knew it was just too good an opportunity to pass up. Calthus was a fool for testing the mass accelerator here in the first place. He should’ve done it somewhere outside the country on people no one cares about, not his own assistant. Admittedly, that idiot Wallace apparently found out about the rail gun and was going to go public with what he knew.” Bodewell stood up, his knees clicking slightly as he did so. “I swear, I am getting much too old for all this running about and shooting and stabbing things. Anyway, Wallace was a liability, so I guess that was all she wrote for him. And then you, Eddie. I know you. You may be willing to bend things a bit, but I know you wouldn’t have gone along with my plan. So…I’m afraid you had to be removed, too.”

  I struggled to rise to my feet, succeeding only in causing tremendous explosion of angry nerves in my abdomen and a small hiss of pain through clenched teeth. I slumped back down to the floor, losing my footing altogether and ending up face-first in an expanding pool of my own blood.

  “You’re…you’re working for Kirkpatrick, you bastard?” I managed to gasp.

  “Yeah, ‘fraid so,” Bodewell replied. “I’ll say this much for the short bastard, he pays well.”

  “You…there’s still Maya and Ellen. You better…you better not hurt them,” I slurred. I’d already lost a helluva lot of blood.

  “Eddie, you’re hardly in a position to issue threats or guarantee anyone’s safety, are you?” Bodewell looked down at me with something resembling pity on his face. “Then again, you’ve always been pretty fond of empty threats you have no hope of carry out, so this shouldn’t come as a surprise, should it?” He started for the door. “Again, I am sorry about this. We used to be something like friends, but this is simply a matter of business and good sense. The Kirkpatrick Confederation will control criminal enterprise in Arcadia. I know it, the Boss knows it, Kirkpatrick knows it, and so do you. This way, maybe, the transfer of power will be slightly less bloody, a little faster. And that’s not a bad thing, is it?”

  He opened the door and walked beyond my line of sight. I heard his shoes click across the floor through the outer door, which then opened without its customary squeaky hinges or the scraping sound of wood against wood. I marveled at that for a moment before I realized it was because my door had been replaced just that morning. It seemed much longer ago than that. No one was going to replace Eddie Hazzard when he died, though. He’d just be gone, and no one would probably care that much. It probably wasn’t a good sign that I was thinking about myself in third person. I heard the door shut behind Bodewell with a final sound, and my vision began to swim, going fuzzy and black around the edges.

  Giving in the prevailing sentiment, I went ahead and passed out.

  XI.

  It was dark.

  No, darker than you’re thinking. You’re thinking of a low level of visible light, like when the sun goes down and the power’s out and there’s no electric light shining anywhere in the city. This wasn’t just low light, it was the absence of light. Dark so dark, it was like light had never existed. There was no sense of distance or space, no sense of time, and not really even any sense of self.

  I was there, but there wasn’t really a There to be in. I couldn’t feel anything, couldn’t sense anything, but had a sense that I somehow still existed in some intangible way. It was all very frustrating.

  “What the hell is going on?” I asked myself. Without actual physical space, my voice stopped dead as soon as it left my mouth, if I actually had a voice or a mouth. Which I didn’t, I don’t think.

  It was all tremendously confusing, to be honest.

  “You’re dying,” a voice replied. It sounded an awful lot like my own.

  I tried to turn around, which is tricky when you lack a physical form or the concept of space in which to turn around. Out of the corner of my vision—or whatever the current equivalent might be—I caught sight of another figure. Without either of us actually moving, the figure was suddenly in front of me.

  It was me, but an idealized version of me. His clothes were clean and pressed, his tie was done up in a perfect Windsor knot, and he looked like he’d shaved sometime in recent memory. It was all very off-putting.

  “Who the hell are you supposed to be, me?” I asked.

  “Something like that,” the Other Me replied. “I’m the Platonic ideal of you, everything you could ever hope to be.”

  “Is it safe to assume there’s another, slobbier version of me out there somewhere, too?” I asked.

  “I think you’re that version of you,” Other Me replied.

  “Ouch. Low blow, jackass,” I said icily.

  The other me shrugged. “It’s not my fault you don’t live up to your potential.”

  “Wanna get to the point? I have a lot of dying from blood loss to get done here.”

  “Hiding behind your ‘wit’ isn’t going to help the situation. You’ve got a couple of things you have to deal with when you wake up.”

  I laughed. “I’m bleeding out, asshole. I don’t think I’ll be waking up from this one.”

  “You will. And when you do, you’ve got to nail Bodewell and Kirkpatrick to the wall. Make sure they never come back.”

  I would have arched an eyebrow at the other me if I’d had an eyebrow to arch. “What, like kill them?” I asked.

  Other Me shrugged again. “If that’s what it takes to stop them.”

  “Funny. I’ve never been much for killing, and yet here you are—supposedly the perfect version of me—and you’re advocating I murder a couple of guys in cold blood.”

  “Don’t act so high and mighty. You want to kill people all the time. You’re just not honest with yourself about it. You booby-trapped Kirkpatrick with that capsule. You threatened to kill Bodewell almost as soon as you laid eyes on him. You talk a big game about respecting life, but the fact of the matter is that you’re just a feral beast waiting for the command to go for the throat.” The Other Me’s appearance
had subtly altered as he spoke. His clothes looked more ragged, his teeth sharper, his eyes harder. There was something animalistic to his appearance, and a low growl to his voice.

  “That’s a bunch of bullshit,” I replied.

  “More bravado. Keep it up, I’m sure it will continue to serve you well,” the Other Me scoffed. “I do wonder, though. You’re clearly a half-wild cur, but who exactly is holding your leash?”

  └●┐└●┐└●┐

  I woke up, which came as a bit of a surprise.

  I mean, when you lose as much blood as I had, you expect your next actions to involve either a harp and a halo or a pitchfork and a lake of fire. You don’t expect to wake up, in a hospital bed, surrounded by the sharp scent of various disinfectants and antiseptics. You don’t expect your stomach to feel like it was used as a pincushion.

  You certainly don’t expect bright florescent light to blind your rather sore, weak eyes, but these are the things that happened to me anyway.

  For the briefest of moments, I saw the ghostly after-image of my other self, his teeth fangs and his eyes feral, before the bright hospital lights wiped the vision away. I was back in the real world, with all the frustrations and aches and pains that entailed.

  For effect, I decided to groan a little. It wasn’t much of a stretch, what with the fiery pain in my belly and the general sense of confusion and unease I felt. Groaning seemed thematically appropriate.

  “Good, you’re awake,” a feminine voice said, somewhere off to my right. I couldn’t really get my gross motor skills together enough on the first go to turn my head, but I eventually managed after I marshaled my resources and coordinated the effort a little more. Granted, my eyes had trouble focusing, so now instead of a blurry ceiling I was starting at a blurry female-shaped blob sitting in the chair next to my hospital bed.

  Since movement was going so well, I decided to take a shot at speaking, see if I could manage that as well. It took less time than I’d have thought to get parched lips and cottonmouth to work together to make sound. “Wh-where’m I?” I finally managed to rasp.

  “Quiet now. You’re in a hospital. You lost a hell of a lot of blood, and you’re lucky to be alive,” the feminine blob replied.

  “Wha’ hap’ned?” I croaked.

  “You mean aside from getting stabbed?” The female blob was starting to become more defined as my eyes remembered how to focus. Tallish, curvy, wavy hair. Commanding voice. My brain started coordinating facts and cross-referencing them against memories to see if this raised any flags. It did, finally.

  “Vera?” I mumbled, blinking.

  “Yes, Detective Hazzard, and we have a serious problem on our hands.”

  “What?” I asked, still not really clear on what was happening. Serious abdominal wounds coupled with severe blood loss and several days unconscious will do that to a guy.

  “They have my computer expert,” Vera continued, rising. I tried to track her with my eyes, but had trouble. “Your secretary managed to escape and notify me, which is probably why you are still alive, Detective.”

  I chuckled, which caused me to wince in pain. “Miss Typewell saves my bacon on a pretty regular basis, it’s true,” I replied, clutching feebly at my middle.

  “Regardless, Bodewell is working for someone else, someone sinister,” Vera said, staring out the window of the hospital room. “I don’t know whom for certain, but I can take an educated guess.”

  “No need for guessing,” I said, trying to push myself into a sitting position and failing as my middle screamed out in pain. I fell back on the bed, exhausted from the effort. “He’s working…for Kirkpatrick,” I panted.

  “That’s what I assumed,” Vera said, turning back to me. “This is not good, Eddie. Miss Typewell told me about the devices depicted in those files. If Kirkpatrick gets his hands on them…” she left the end of the sentence unspoken, but I decided I was tired of being in the middle of everyone else’s game.

  “Then he’ll have the upper hand on you, and this little game you two have played for control of the city will end pretty damn quick,” I said.

  “Yes, and how many innocent lives do you think will be taken in the process of Kirkpatrick winning?” Vera asked with a snarl, fire burning in her emerald eyes. “Surely you don’t believe he’ll just execute my men? With a handheld mass accelerator, he could kill people three blocks away without even intending to. And do you think he’ll stop when he’s won?”

  “Of course not. I remember the business at City Hall just as well as you do,” I replied, anger welling up inside me and giving me more strength than I should have possessed, invalid that I was. I forced myself into a sitting position, ignoring the stab of pain in my gut. “But I’m sick of people like you and Calthus and Kirkpatrick putting me in the middle of your little power struggles! I’m just trying to help people get by in a city that really doesn’t give two damns about them. All I wanted was to figure out what happened to Terry Wallace, discover how and why he got killed, and maybe bring a little peace to his widow. Instead, I’ve been shot at, stabbed, threatened, and thrown out of at least two buildings! I’m through,” I slumped back into the bed at the end of my little tirade, exhausted.

  “Then who will defeat the evildoers, Detective?” She was baiting me, I could tell by her tone, but I pushed myself back up with a struggle, staring her straight in the eyes. Her arms were folded in a way that brooked no arguments or discussion. She was unyielding, a study in femininity carved in stone. She knew me too well, knew exactly what buttons to push. I am, I’ll eventually admit under duress, the sort of guy who cares what happens to other people. It’s why, fifteen years ago, I became a cop, and it’s why I pursued private detective work after I was kicked off the force, even after I was literally stabbed in the back by Bodewell. At the end of the day, I hate to see innocent people suffer. I’d rather take the hit myself than let someone hurt who doesn’t deserve to. Vera Stewart knew this about me, knew saying what she had would rile me, and she went ahead and pushed that button and set me off.

  “There truly is no one else who can do this, Detective Hazzard,” she continued, her eyes locked with mine. “If not you, then no one can stop him. I cannot manage it myself, nor can the police. But you…you are always such an unknown, such a wild card. No one ever knows what to expect from you.” She unfolded her arms and leaned closer to me. “I know it sounds ridiculous and melodramatic, but only you can stop Kirkpatrick and his thugs from destroying this city.”

  As I considered her words, I realized that the whole speech sounded canned, rehearsed. She’d had this little appeal to my vanity and sense of duty planned before I ever woke up. “Lady, I can barely sit up. What the hell am I gonna do against a whole criminal consortium bent on using unusual weapons of mass destruction? I’m just one man. One badly-wounded, rather stupid man.” I laid back once more, completely spent and exhausted. “Just…just go away, Ms. Stewart. I need to rest.” Vera stood there a moment, as though she wished to argue the point, but apparently thought better of it. I heard her high heels click as she crossed the floor out of the room and I just lay there, eventually drifting off into restless sleep.

  XII.

  I spent several days in the hospital, recovering. Miss Typewell came by to visit on the day after my conversation with Ms. Stewart. She was pretty insistent that I do something about Maya’s abduction, too.

  “Eddie, you’re the reason she was kidnapped in the first place,” she pointed out.

  “Hey, she’s an employee of the Organization,” I countered, “so she’s technically a criminal. If she didn’t want to get caught up in a gang war, she should’ve found a different line of work.”

  “You are a tremendous ass, Edward Hazzard, and you ought to be ashamed of yourself.” She stormed out after that, and I didn’t see her again while I was in the hospital.

  No one else visited over the next few days. I managed to get hold of a computer so I could at least check on what was going on in Arcadia. There were
no mentions of strange new weapons killing people in strange new ways, which I took as a sign that wasn’t at least totally horrible.

  Granted, even if Kirkpatrick had the details on the alloy and the rail gun, there was no guarantee he’d be able to do anything with them. It’s not like he had a sample of the alloy or the necessary raw materials to create a batch of his own.

  I hoped.

  I was finally discharged on day six. No one came to meet me when I got out, so I caught a cab back to the office. I pushed open the door and slowly shuffled in, a cane in one hand to help me maintain balance. Miss Typewell looked up at me, then back to her screen without a word.

  “Why yes, I’m feeling much better,” I said snidely, shuffling into the room and slamming the door behind me.

  “Mm,” Miss Typewell said, still not looking up.

  I doffed my coat and hat in the closet, then proceeded—slowly—to my own office. I collapsed into my chair, exhaling slowly. I sat there, staring at the desk, for a full two minutes before Miss Typewell came in with a mug of coffee for me.

  “Thanks,” I said, taking a sip. It was cold. I put the mug on the desk, frowning.

  “Eddie, you need to take a look at this,” she said, handing me a datachip. I slipped it into the port in my desk, and a vid window popped up. In it was a video of Bodewell and Maya. Maya was handcuffed to a chair and gagged, but looked otherwise unharmed.

  “Eddie,” Bodewell said when I hit play, “if you’re watching this, it means you survived our encounter the other night. As I said, no hard feelings, it was all business, yadda yadda yadda.

  “As you can see, we got Miss Janovich, and you know I got a copy of all the files you grabbed from Calthus the other night.” Bodewell stepped away from the camera and walked toward Maya, who eyed him cautiously. “Now, you’d think this would mean we’d have everything we need to create some pretty impressive weaponry using that new alloy, but you’d be wrong.”