The Sound of Wind

by Raegan Millhollin

  **

  The next time he woke up he was in bed and it was very light outside. The clock told him it was 7:30 am. He pushed himself into a sitting position, slowly glancing around his room like it was a foreign place. He only vaguely remembered Dr. McFadden guiding him there, pulling off his shoes, taking away the shirt that was wet and bloody. He’d left the bathtub on! Hugo tumbled out of bed, running into the bathroom. The tub was wet, and there were several completely soaked towels in it; Crysta must have turned it off. He wandered to the kitchenette; the glass was gone and the bottle was in the recycling bin. There was also a note on the table:

  I’m sorry I couldn’t stay, Mr. Gideon’s gotten worse and they’ve called me into the office. If you need anything please, PLEASE give me a call. Have some tea and take a bath. I’ll come by your place when I’m done there. Promise.

  Please take care of yourself,

  Crysta

  Hugo locked the door to his apartment and then started the water in the tub again, setting aside the wet towels. Mr. Gideon was doing worse. Did it matter? He had been poisoning people, both intentionally and unintentionally and he would be the cause of an explosion that would wipe out Seattle, did they really need to work on making him better? What good was he anymore, he was crazy and that made him dangerous. They should just let him die, that would be best. But no one would do it, Mr. Gideon was their friend, he made it that way. Even now Mr. Hansen still wanted to hide what Mr. Gideon had done, to wait till the point where things were too screwed up to fix. He would wait until the explosion wiped them all out. That’s fine, if they couldn’t do it, he would. Maybe then they'd call him a monster, but that was fine, he already was one, what was one more body added to the list? He wouldn't let Mr. Gideon hurt anyone else.

  Hugo took his bath, had a cup of tea, and then took the bus to Gideon Enterprises. He strode purposefully down the bright, white hallways, heading for the medical wing. It was clear the medical staff had heard what had happened, because people shuffled away from him, averted their eyes, conversation immediately dying on their lips. For once, he didn’t care.

  Hugo walked up to a terrified nurse and said calmly, near-silently, “Where is Mr. Gideon?”

  The woman’s hazel eyes widened and she cast her glance around looking for some support; there was none. “I…he’s…room 312.”

  Hugo nodded once, “Thank you,” then moved past her down the hallway and to room 312. Through the observation window he could see that Mr. Hansen and Dr. Arliss were talking quietly with Dr. McFadden. CJ was sitting in the corner, peering at the bed.

  “The insulin pump is the best solution. You know he won’t stick to the medication, he’ll think he knows what’s best and will stop taking it, and start taking the Substance again, and I won’t be able to reverse the changes at that point. This is…Hugo!”

  Everyone turned to look at him as he opened the door. The doctor had a solution and maybe it would work, or maybe it wouldn’t and the explosion would still happen. His solution was much more permanent. He walked into the room, brushing past them to get to Mr. Gideon, who was hooked up to several machines.

  “Hugo,” there was a warning tone in Mr. Hansen’s voice, but no one tried to stop him, no one told him to leave the frail-looking man alone. They wanted him to die too, they were just too afraid to do it. But that was ok, he would take care of it for them. Hugo touched Mr. Gideon’s bed. Things shifted. He was looking up at a presidential poster: ‘Gideon and Rouche, 2012’. He turned to see a room of smiling faces, Crysta was there, clapping as Mr. Gideon walked out to a podium.

  She smiled at Hugo, slipping her hand into his, “I think he’ll do an excellent job, don’t you?”

  Hugo shrugged, watching the stage, “He passed a psych evaluation with Mr. Hansen, Clem and me, and his platform’s pretty reasonable. He’ll win if he wins, I guess.”

  Crysta squeezed his hand, her smile still bright, “You know he’ll win."

  Hugo jerked his hand away from the bed. He didn’t kill Mr. Gideon. The doctor’s treatment worked and he got better. Mr. Gideon would be perfectly fine. It wasn’t fair. Hugo pushed his way through the gathering at the door to Mr. Gideon’s room and out into the hallway. The doctor and CJ trailed after him.

  “What’s wrong?” Crysta asked.

  “Nothing,” he spit out in response.

  She pulled up short, her retort quiet, “You’re lying.”

  “I know.” He needed to be someplace else, cold and isolated, away from everything, because the urge to destroy was growing, a hot knot in his chest. There was a rush of air and he was staring at Antarctica. Technically he should be able to survive it just as long as he kept his air shield up. Hugo stepped out into the biting cold, flurries of snow brushing past him into the warmer world, before he closed the portal behind him. He was dimly aware of the fact that CJ had followed him.

  In the end, he couldn't do it. He shouldn't have touched Mr. Gideon. He should have just listened to the evidence he'd been collecting for months, he should have replayed the explosion that would have killed so many people, but instead, he'd let Mr. Gideon tell him he would be fine. And now he couldn't do it, even though everyone had wanted him to free them from that decision. Even though he’d wanted to do it. Still wanted to do it. He couldn't.

  Hugo threw his head back and screamed; hurtling curses at the sky. The wind caught them, tore them to shreds and scattered them across the frozen desert. Coherent thought drowned in a sea of hatred and blind, formless rage, as the wind, howling now, scraped snow and debris from the ground, flinging it upwards into the icy windstorm now raging across the flat wasteland. There were loud, rumbling crashes in the wail of the wind; bright flashes of light. The air smelled like ozone.

  He didn't know how long it lasted, but eventually everything bled out of him and he sank to his knees. The ground he landed on was bare, wiped clean of ice and life. Slowly his breathing stumbled to something bearable; his throat was raw. Snow sifted around him from the air that was calm and sharp again. CJ, solid now, folded her legs to sit down beside him, quietly glancing at him out of the corner of her eye. He felt hollow, like he'd poured everything in him onto the ground; He never wanted it to come back.

  He stared blankly down at the palms of his hands, folded neatly one on top of the other in his lap, "I joined Gideon Enterprises because of the explosion," his voice was gravely, his throat stinging. He wasn't talking to CJ, just hoped the words would help him figure out what exactly had happened, "It seemed like the easiest way to find out why. To expose him or stop him...somehow. It's what I've spent the last two months of my life on. It's the base reason behind every terrible thing I've done." He drew in a long, deep breath, the cold was like inhaling shrapnel. His hands flexed idly in his lap. CJ didn't speak and he would have thanked her for it, if he could have remembered the words.

  "I knew he was crazy, I knew what he would do and I waited and waited, because I couldn't seem to make anyone else understand it. So I couldn't do...what...I thought was right. And in the end I could have just waited...he undid himself. Nothing I did was worth shit.

  “And then today..." Hugo's chest tightened, "Everyone was ready, but they were afraid. They talked about fixing him, but I wanted to kill him. And I would have done it. I would do it. But I touched him." He pulled in and pushed out another razor breath and then another. Shook his head of flakes of snow and ice; his eyes changed their focus to the dark sky. There was nothing up there but space, so he returned his attention to the ground.

  "She saves him. And he’s going to be president. And I still almost killed him. No one would have known. To everyone I would have saved an untold number of lives. A terrible, mercilessly thing, but in the end, they would all tell themselves it was necessary. The right thing to do. It's what I wanted... and I couldn't do it," his words wobbled, so he breathed slowly, trying to get everything back under control. He closed his eyes, tried to center himself, like he'd been taught in Aikido, but all he found, too plain to
ignore, were hatred and self-loathing.

  Giving up, Hugo opened his eyes again, his breath rattling as it left him. His right hand curled into a fist, but there was no force behind it, "I hate him. So much...I didn't realize. I hate everything that's happened...everything I've done. I didn't realize I was blaming him for it, that I thought, 'if I kill him, everything will be ok'...that it would justify everything I've done. But that's...pathetic. I'm responsible..." Hugo stood up abruptly, shedding snow. CJ belatedly followed suit. He turned towards her, finally acknowledging her, "I can't go back. Not yet."

  She titled her head, "To the company? Why?"

  "I don't want..." Hugo trailed off, searched the blank landscape for the right words, or at least ones that hurt less than the knowledge that he wasn't entirely sure that he still wouldn't try to kill Mr. Gideon, or the horrifying fact that the people he cared about had expected him to kill him, and they were right. Or was it because he'd been too short-sighted to find a different solution in the first place? "I just...I need some time to think."

  CJ frowned, but nodded, "Promise that's all you're going to do, is think. And then you're going to come right back."

  Hugo nodded, the accompanying smile almost breaking into tears. He dug his nails into the palm of his hand, trying to keep everything.

  CJ searched his face for the deception she was expecting to be there, "Say it."

  It was hard to force the words out, "I promise," he let out a breath, "I'll sort things out in my head, and then I'll come back. I promise."

  CJ didn't move for several seconds, her eyes wary, and then she gave him a very short nod, "Alright. You promised." She backed up a few steps. Her mouth turned down, and for a moment there was all the sadness and confusion, hopelessness and concern, and then she was heat and light and energy and gone.

  Hugo stood there for what seemed like all of his life. He was so tired and he swayed for a moment when he finally created a portal, his vision dimming. He stepped through it onto a sidewalk and into daylight. The snow and ice sticking to his clothing instantly started melting in the much more temperate climate, as he stared at the Agency building across the street. Soon he was forming a puddle on the sidewalk, his hands sliding into his wet pockets. He just stood there, staring.

  He could go inside, let them drug him up, cage him, or experiment on him. He'd never kill anyone else. Never cause anyone anymore harm. He'd never again screw up or feel like he was being crushed under everything. It wouldn't be his responsibility, he wouldn't fail, because he couldn't even try.

  But it wouldn't fix what he'd already done and he wouldn't be able to at least try and protect his friends.

  Besides, CJ would kill him for lying.

  Hugo turned off his cell phone and stepped backwards into another portal. He was back in his apartment. He nearly blacked out, and had to brace himself with the wall. He wandered over to his bed, slid down and curled into a damp little ball and dropped into the emptiness of sleep.