Prince in the Tower

by Stephan Morse

  12

  Censure Everything

  Daniel and I were lying on the roof. I couldn’t tell if we’d been there for days, or if this was some new chunk of life. Everything blurred at the wrong angles and compounded my confusion.

  “History class is boring. Extra boring, man,” he said. His voice broke in the middle which made me snort. I’d heard Roy do the same puberty cracking. Roy got all flustered when his composure couldn’t prevent the occasional squeaks.

  “Aren’t your parents giving you the secret version?” I said.

  “It’s still just quick notes. Battles here, fights there. Great War heroes who were Hunters. Hunters, and the bad guys seem to come from all walks.” Daniel sat up to look over at me. Behind him, I could see a new high-rise building that had been built a few months ago. It annoyed me and obstructed my skyline view.

  “Hitler was pure human you know,” Daniel said.

  “If you say so.” I had never met anyone named Hitler. Any name that sounded like it should be punched couldn’t be common. Maybe if I’d stayed in school instead of ditching to explore the town, I might have heard about this guy in need of a beating.

  He flopped back and resumed cloud watching. “It’s funny how clinical it all is,” Daniel said.

  I wanted to be up there. As soon as a storm rolled in, I would leap off the top of this building and take to the skies. From there I’d test out this new building’s supports and see if there were treasures on the top. One night I’d been up there, and a man came out with a bag full of jewels. It was easy enough to glide in and pluck them away while his back was turned.

  “Very distant,” Daniel continued.

  The memory of my nighttime capture of stolen goods had distracted me. “Huh?” I asked.

  “All these people, you know they lived entire lives, months, years, and all that’s left are some out of context quotes we use to judge their character. Turning mere mortals into saints and demons.”

  I didn’t answer. Daniel was working up to another philosophical rant. My prior distraction was far more useful. The jewels had apparently belonged to a store on one of the bottom floors. They were worth money, but I refused to return them.

  “Seriously, man, time distills us all down to the highlights. After a while even those become muddled. I read a book once where Aliens classified Earth as ‘Mostly Harmless.’”

  That caught my flighty attention. “Mostly harmless? That’s it?”

  “There’s this passage, where the author says he wrote out a long compelling story and editors cut it down to those two words. I think he even said mostly and harmless weren’t even next to each other. The alien editors changed that, too.”

  The moment disconnected me briefly. It made more sense in hindsight than it ever could have during the original conversation with Daniel.

  “Aliens, huh?”

  “Sure, man. Science Fiction generally makes it into the public. We, well, Western Sector, only guts the fantastical writing. It’s sad, man, really sad.”

  Western Sector had apparently spent hundreds of years censoring everything that crossed the ocean to our shores. In the Emerald Isles or anywhere in Europe, wide spread story suppression was harder. Secrets grew with a country’s age, and dirty laundry piled up.

  Daniel snorted. “Man. The government fears an accurate portrayal of our brutal history more than the idea of space invaders. All that’s left are clinical, barely tangible, out of proportion, highlights. Then my dad tells me to learn from the past.”

  “Aliens are unlikely.” I shrugged.

  “And ruling a Kingdom is a dirty business,” Daniel snapped.

  But, I could fly through the air, so maybe aliens were possible. Maybe one of them could turn into a leathery winged creature like myself. Wolves might be from a foreign moon.

  “But, man, how are you going to quote a guy and think that’s all he stood for? That he didn’t have dreams or hopes outside of one stupid line?”

  My shoulders rolled along the cement roofing. I said, “You signed up for it.”

  “I signed up to keep the peace. To help our blue marble keep rolling until our glorious overlords invade from far away planets. And someone has to ensure assholes like you don’t pester the future slaves. Might as well be me.”

  “But aliens can be put in books.” I chugged the remainder of my beer and stared upward. The sudden idea of a beer in my hand caused another disconnect.

  Right, I was almost seventeen. Daniel and I had been coming to the roof for years now, talking whenever he had a spare weekend. He’d been the one to steal beers from his dad and bring them over. No, wait, his voice was cracking.

  The past moments were blending poorly.

  “Can’t censor everything.” Daniel’s tone managed to shove a verbal shrug and surfer dude together. I couldn’t tell if this was the young preteen version, or the older man on the verge of going to college.

  I sat abruptly and dove for Daniel. “This needs to stop!” I shouted at him.

  He puffed into a cloud of pitch feathers. The sound of a raven’s caw filled my head as more memories came. My body rolled onto the rooftop, suddenly alone in a dim recreation of the past.

  I did remember later, I made the mistake of asking Rachel about Hitler. She beat my backside blue and screamed about him being a child killer.

  Her parting words, “You’d think a boy who lost his own family would know better than to ever speak such a horrible man’s name! You don’t celebrate monsters by putting them into history books, you bury them. Let the earth swallow them whole until nothing is left of their foulness. Mark my words, I’ve buried monsters, and the world is better for never learning their names.”

  I remembered running up the stairs to my room. Perhaps, if I had told her he sounded like a man that needed to be punched, she might have been kinder on me.

  The past faded and left me gasping from a welt on my rear that had long vanished. Each labored breath took conscious effort as it gasped. I shook my head violently to get out the emotions.

  Downstairs, a man was stabbed by a makeshift weapon. Two vampires cornered a human and laughed as they broke his arms. Three floors away a cook poured silver shavings into someone’s meal.

  Nearby, crisp clean footsteps came to the doorway.

  “Mr. Fields.” Warden Bennett stood in the doorway. His arms were clasped in front of him over a clipboard. It budged with papers.

  “Let me out,” I gasped.

  “If I do, it is very likely you will meet your third strike,” he said calmly.

  My eyelids fluttered as sensations poured over me. Twenty miles away Leo shouted to Stacy. The creature I’d felt before was no longer in range. The ground stayed still.

  “That’s fine. Send me over.”

  Leo was over there. It would be easier to protect him if we were closer. Though at this point my abilities lacked any sort of control. I briefly wondered about turning into my other form and simply blasting my way out. Would Warden Bennett look smug then? A fresh hole into daylight might help unfuck his internal clock.

  It would please me to no end to watch the vampire collapse suddenly as his vampire nature took over.

  “I cannot in good conscience enable your self-destruction. This, facility, is meant to be a place where people choose to turn away from the path of barbarism, or are put out with the other animals.”

  I snorted.

  “Your jail’s turning itself inside out. There’s…” I drifted, then coughed wetly. The floor felt cold, but there was comfort in sitting there. “Fewer people here every day. Being shipped off. Then that water snake, causing all these earthquakes.”

  “What did you say?”

  I shook my head. I’d said way too much about the events in my head. Isolation and a muddled mind were screwing up my self-control.

  Warden Bennett’s face appeared right next to mine. He’d gotten close while my mind replayed a memory of a living tree. It’d bound me with roots. I’d been twenty-one and sea
rching a forest for two lost girls.

  My hand reached out to grasp his head. The Warden moved faster. He stood in the doorway again, straightening his thin tie.

  “How can you tell? You’ve been in isolation, and none of my employees would have passed you notes.”

  “It’s a gift,” I muttered.

  Warden Bennett didn’t even flinch. His nose lifted slightly. That was the only sign of agitation.

  “That sounds dangerous. But, I suppose that is how you’ve gotten your current assignment. They would not have put someone here without the tools to handle their job,” Tal said.

  Only Tal wasn’t Tal. I closed my eyes tightly and shook my head again. The past had intruded upon current events once more. Tal was Warden Bennett. Still, the old man might have liked the Warden.

  “You’re clearly mentally unhinged. Isolation can do that.” Warden Bennett tightened his lips and made a note on his stack of papers.

  I stared blankly at the man and watched as my vision crossed. Warden Bennett wore a business suit, but he’d have been at home in a military uniform. Maybe he’d served with Tal. Daniel’s father and Tal had been army buddies, after boot camp. Remembering their connection triggered another tide of the past. It lapped like waves on the ocean shore outside.

  “What’s worse, you might be suffering whatever the price is for your alternate gifts.”

  That’s right. Warden Bennett thought I was an undercover Western Sector agent. They clearly knew people beyond the normal four races existed. Why hadn’t it occurred to me before?

  Sandy, Shaggy, Ann, whomever Daniel’s fiancée was, knew about ‘weird’ cases. She’d known about Muni. The memory took over briefly. We were running from the Order of Merlin’s mercenaries and struggling to find Kahina. Shaggy led us into Julianne’s bar and confronted Muni.

  “I’ll have your papers revoked!” Sandy shouted.

  Muni’s face pinched tightly as she regarded the undercover Hunter. I could see the raven tresses now, a disguise covering up feathers and ribbons.

  I stared too hard and the memory turned into more goddamned feathers.

  “Fuck!” I yelled abruptly. “Fuck. Fucking hell. Where is Muni!”

  She’d promised to help straighten me out once the trinket failed. That bit of the past couldn’t be a lie.

  Based on a glance, Warden Bennett seemed lost. Maybe he had no clue what to make of me. My eyelids fluttered while he straightened his tie, again.

  “I will see about getting you a psychiatric waiver based on possible mental disorders,” the Warden said, before exiting quickly.

  Vampires treated mental health problems like other people treated cripples. Or maybe it was closer to humans and their damned kitten videos. I hated cats.

  I swam in between moments and growled. The chamber they’d shoved me in was less of a mess than the first time. Either I was better controlled as my memories progressed, or I’d grown weaker.

  My hand pressed in an eye socket to relieve imaginary pressure. Fingers on the other arm tightened and rubbed along the fabric. A dozen similar moments from the past flooded through. Daniel stood out in a lot of them. He rubbed a finger up and down fabric while talking to me.

  I grumbled at him and asked, “Why do you keep doing that?”

  “It calms you down, man. Your senses find focus in the tiny details. I’ve done it for years. Since you we were kids.” He grinned sheepishly.

  The past vanished before it gained more traction. Now I knew why he’d always had that habit. I got up, tore off the beddings and wound them tightly. One arm held it in place, while the other pulled desperately to give my senses a focus.

  Fabric rustled. The rough sound felt louder than chopping wood. I concentrated on each thread, rolling against each other as they passed by. I’d been in control of these senses once, and by the Gods, I would master myself again.

  It took a lot more effort. At times I was six and screaming. In the next second I felt twenty-five while bending a woman over, relishing the sensations pouring through her body. The tightening of skin, quickening of breath, rising temperature, all screwed me up.

  Each time a memory hit I struggled to sort it out by age. Teenage awkwardness was easy enough. Sex went into a more adult range. Kahina’s face only belonged in a few timeframes. She, and the various positions we engaged in, also did not belong to the childhood era.

  I continued mauling the twisted cloth until it frayed at the end. If Muni wasn’t around to solve my problems I had to force the pieces together with willpower, which I’d never been particularly heavy on.

  It was bad enough that I didn’t register them slipping food into a slot at the door. Worse still, by the time I noticed they’d deposited dinner, or breakfast, it was impossible to tell if the meal had ever been edible to begin with.

  My senses kept going out of control. They expanded like a heartbeat, taking in bits of sensation from all over the island. People were pushed to the outer walls by guards. A voice played across the loudspeaker, mumbling words distorted by the foliage.

  I could feel vaguely familiar footsteps. There weren’t many figures inside the jail cell proper that I knew. Leo was outside. Stacy too. Neither Ms. Sauter or Roy were anywhere nearby. I could feel the pathetic—

  Weak of flesh. Weak of will. A ball of Pink Meat sacrifice.

  My other mind cut in as I started to track our former cellmate, Nathan Simms. Nathan was currently in the infirmary. His leg had been thickly bundled by a solid feeling product. There were bandages across his chest.

  I realized it had been some time since I used an anchor to track anyone within my range. It might have been my screwed up perceptions. Normally tracking people required an object, or for them to be in a place I believed I owned, such as my apartment. Why then, could I sense the entire island?

  Mine. This is my home.

  The voice was wrong. But it spoke from a place that remembered being in my apartment basement. A dozen days passed by in a blink, causing me to lose focus. Each one involved my self-perceptions shouting ‘Mine’ over and over. The object my past self was being possessive over changed.

  In one moment, it was a plate of food Roy had reached out to take away. I snatched it back and growled.

  A voice of out the blue made my senses tingle. I felt a light body, thin, shorter, and annoying. There were two people pacing behind it who felt almost feline. They wore suits that reminded me of Kahina’s employees.

  My re-ex-girlfriend’s face flashed by. She smiled and I lost myself in those eyes, which were turning red along the inner irises. A soft light from a candle that smelled like peppermints illuminated one side of her face.

  Dangerous Mate. Mine.

  I shook my head and pretended not to hear that stupid echo of the past. I pretended not to remember I’d foolishly bought her those scented candles. She always smelled like freshly crushed mint leaves. There’d been hope that she’d smell what I did in her presence.

  Reality destroyed the past. I felt as the lighter person stepped quickly down a hallway. She shoved a hand against some door and it slammed backward hard enough to crack on the hinges. The sound, or more accurately, the feeling of concussive force rattled a wall.

  Men inside reached for guns. Warden Bennett stood in the office and raised a hand.

  “My target is here,” she said.

  For some reason I couldn’t quite pinpoint, that voice caused my body to shake and lips to tighten.

  “Agent Brand. I wasn’t aware you were visiting. Still chasing a ghost?”

  “I’m not required to check in with you,” said the tiny female. I managed a dry swallow and filed the name away. To burst into Warden Bennett’s office, she must have been someone special.

  “Why, of course not. As an esteemed member of the Special Task Forces, you’re not required to check in with anyone. Which tells me, yes. Your fool’s errand brings you to Atlas. Very well, how can I assist you? Within reason, of course.”

  I struggled to remember h
er tone and pitch. They were harder to place. Distance, despite my extra senses, distorted pitch and tone. I had to hear a person multiple times to file them away. Warden Bennett had interacted with me on multiple occasions, he was easy.

  “Has she been here?”

  “You mean the black bird? No.” Warden Bennett moved quickly to stare out a dark window. I hadn’t realized the sun had set. “I’ve read the reports. According to your allegations, I wouldn’t know if this, Muni, had been here. I might not know if she were in the room with us. Though it is my understanding she’s a fully licensed exception to the Accord of Caesar.”

  “Dee, Don, get an access card.” She pointed. “We’ll start with the altar on the far shore. If Muni is anywhere, it’s going to be with the rest of the dead bodies. Her kind can’t help themselves.”

  “Ah.” Warden Bennett turned and walked over to his desk. He sat down, pulled out a binder, and then a page. What was on it, I couldn’t tell. The finer points of ink weren’t obvious to my senses.

  Threads, air currents, limps, and tensed muscles stood out more than paper. Like every other stray thought in the last month or two, dozens of other memories were triggered and overlaid each other. The jumble made me lose Agent Brand and Warden Bennett’s conversation.

  I wondered if they had first names. The Warden’s words caught up with me and drove away the thought. He held out a plastic card to one of the twins. “Do be careful. While most prisoners have been conditioned to avoid the path to the altar, not everyone is civil enough to avoid lashing out. Especially if it allows them to skip being guests of honor to a quelling.”

  “I’m sure we can handle a pack of wild dogs,” the male, Don, said.

  “All bark,” Dee responded.

  “Or the vampires. All bite.”

  “And no bark? That’s silly. More like snakes.”

  “All rattle?” Don responded to his sister.

  “Are you two quite done?” Agent Brand asked.

  They strode across the room and grabbed the keycard, together, and fought over it. Warden Bennett’s posture remained stiff. He managed to ignore the insults being hurled his way, where the twins compared him to a snake.