Something was wrong. I was weak. I looked down and lost my breath again. My legs were twigs, swimming in old flannel pajamas. I was a stick figure, desiccated, withered—
Somehow I’d become a scarecrow.
I ran fingers over my face. My cheekbones jutted like broken shelves of rock. Dear God, what had happened to me?
More chanting.
“Hey!” I screamed, my voice cracking. “Can’t a guy get a little quiet?”
In response, footfalls thumped heavily. A metal supply cabinet in the deepest shadows of the room swung forward on unseen hinges. A hidden entrance. How dramatic. A mannish form stepped half into the light, rendered in cartoon shades of black and white. He saw me, scowled, and vanished again.
Hey, that scowl looked familiar.
Think, damn it. What’s the last thing you remember?
No good. My scarecrow’s head was stuffed with straw. I needed to get a new brain from the Wizard. I’d go to the Emerald City and spit into the receptacle. They’d let me in.
There! Wait!
A building. A building that couldn’t decide what shape it wanted to be. And Maggie. Maggie was a pip. Even if she wasn’t real. But I’d held her heart in my hands. How could I hold Maggie’s heart?
The supply cabinet opened again. This time it was a nurse. Sandy, that was her name. A walking cliché in her starched uniform and rubber-soled shoes. Her phony pig-smile made me shudder. She was trying to decided whether to be afraid of me or not.
“You’re the new record holder,” she said finally.
“What… ?”
“Even Jesus only came back once.”
She took the handles of my chair and pushed me across the cement floor toward the secret entrance behind the cabinet.
Hey, maybe I’m a spy.
We traveled through a tunnel hewn from black bedrock. I could see the stone, the raw earth, the make-shift support beams. Low-intensity arc lights snapped on before us then went dark once we’d passed, giving me only strobe-like glimpses of the tunnel.
“Part of the Underground Railroad,” said Sandy. “Then, in the 1920s, a bootlegger’s tunnel. Now we use it.”
The chanting faded. Now I could only hear the moisture as it condensed on the ceiling. A drop hit me. It felt cool on my forehead.
We approached another portal, a rusted hatch in a cement casement. From behind it came new sounds. Smooth saxophone gyrations. Jazz? Something by Billie Holiday. Much better than the chanting.
The nurse took us through the hatch, ramming my wheels over the bottom lip and shooting all kinds of pain through me.
Rusted cables crisscrossed the space, banded into slack bundles like atrophied muscles. A control panel sat behind a mesh cage, its gauges dark, its levers frozen by corrosion. Against this background of decay, the cherry desk and oriental rug were startling.
Billie finished and it was Charlie Parker’s turn. “Relaxin’ At Camarillo,” about being committed to an asylum for his drinking and drugging.
The man behind the desk clicked on the bronze clerk’s lamp and chuckled as shock scrubbed my face clean. “Hello, buddy boy.”
Armitage. The one who’d blackmailed me into… what?
Behind him, Broken Nose and Jelly Legs, in their dark suits and glowing cream ties, were doing their best impression of a wall. I wondered where the third one had gone. The Cheshire Rat. Broken Nose still looked like he wanted to poke me in the teeth, but Jelly Legs’ expression was strangely warm. The men wore carnations. Fashion-plate gangsters.
Sandy rolled me to the desk. Armitage looked crisp in his turtleneck and pressed slacks. But there was mustard on his sweater. I still couldn’t figure his contradictions.
I realized my brain was working a little better.
Armitage picked up a pipe from the desk blotter and poked at the half-spent tobacco with his pinky. He seemed content to give me time to take everything in.
Then, all of a sudden—boom—a big chunk came back, in a single picture, like a slide dropped into a projector frame. Breaking into the lab. Finding Crandall. Nicole surprising us.
Dying.
The men straightened, seeing what was coming. They were too slow. I surged from the wheelchair at Armitage’s face. The blow barely connected, glancing off his jaw. Its momentum spilled us both onto the rug. The muscle boys were ready to do damage, but Armitage raised a hand, chuckling grimly. I was no threat. I struggled onto my elbows, stunned by my weakness.
They dropped me back into the wheelchair. I was a sack of agony. They strap-cuffed my wrists to the arms of the chair.
I’d blown it, like an amateur. There wouldn’t be a second chance.
Armitage settled back into his chair. “I see you’re feeling better.” He explored his tender chin. “Glad you don’t have your full strength back.”
“You’d be bleeding out on the carpet right now.”
“Ooh,” said Legs.
“That’s gratitude for you,” added Nose.
Armitage laughed. “He thinks I set him up. Don’t you, Donner?”
I didn’t know what to think. But I wasn’t going to tell these pricks.
“Why?” he said. “Where’s the angle?”
“Maybe a big bag of credit marbles from Nicole.”
Armitage looked genuinely shocked. Which was even more confusing. Could I have this wrong?
“Sure, I used you to do my dirty work,” he said. “But that’s it. You got nicked because of your own sloppiness.”
I just stared.
“Fine. You want the 411?” Armitage nodded to Broken Nose. “Give it to him, Max.”
Max? Broken Nose’s name was Max?
The big man shifted, crossing his hands in front of him, like a schoolboy about to recite. It was oddly touching. “You’re sitting in what was New York Power Substation No. 53,” he said. “Back down that tunnel, where you woke up, is the basement of the Church of the Holy Epicenter.”
I blinked.
“He never heard of it,” smirked Legs.
“The Church was built on the site where the Shift started.”
I tried to wrap my brain around this. “It’s an Ender church?” Armitage nodded. “You’re an End-Timer?”
“No. Some of the Enders help us.” I waited. “This is a Cadre cell.”
“Cadre? The whack-jobs that blow up busses?”
“We’ve never blown up a damned thing!” said Jelly Legs.
“Tippit’s right,” said Armitage. “That’s the Secessionists.”
Max and Tippit. It sounded like the punch line to a bar joke.
“I know all these groups are hard to keep straight,” said Armitage. “The Secessionists want Necropolis to be an independent state, just for reborns. They think they can bring this about through terrorism.”
Max snorted. “They’re nuts is what they are.”
“We don’t share their beliefs or their methods. Now, the End-Timers, or Enders as they’re called, are a religious group created in reaction to the Shift. The government came down hard on them, and what’s left of them they stay non-political.” He shared a smile with the rest of the room. “At least, publically. They’ve been secretly sheltering some of our cells. We may not share their religious beliefs, but our goals are the same.”
“Your cells? The Cadre, you mean.” He nodded. I sighed. “Great. I’ve been taken hostage by the Dead Panthers.”
Armitage went back to poking his pipe. “Still with the wise-cracks, I see.”
“So you’re, what? A revolutionary?”
“We’re norm and reborn. Stockbrokers, teachers, construction workers, even mooks like me.”
I tried to smirk. “So it’s a club, then! Can I get a decoder ring?”
He darkened. “We’re trapped in a corporate gulag. Or hadn’t you noticed?”
I’d noticed.
“We’re arming. To fight the government and Surazal, if it comes to that. Not civilians, get me? No terrorism.”
“If you say so. How’d
I get here?”
“A tracer we planted on you,” said Max. “In the car, when we frisked you.” He winked. Maybe he wasn’t so dumb after all.
“It’s mostly dermal tissue. Melds with your own.”
“Why?”
“You wanted to get in there. So did we. If someone was gonna get pinched doing it…”
“Better me than you.” Armitage touched his nose. “So, if I’d gotten out safely,” I continued, “you would’ve debriefed me, then—”
“Let you go on your merry way.”
I believed that about as much as I believed the last couple wars were about freedom. “Can I have some water?”
Armitage nodded at Sandy. There was a pitcher on a bureau. She poured me a cup.
“I’d do better if I could hold it myself.”
Armitage smiled a no. Oh well, it’d been worth the try. Sandy put the cup to my mouth. When my throat wasn’t a blast furnace anymore, I pulled back. My lips felt coated in old paint.
Enough screwing around. Time to ask the question that scared me senseless. “Why do I look like this?”
Armitage looked to Sandy in surprise. “His last memories didn’t encode,” she said.
That phrase… I’d heard that before. Suddenly the moisture from the pipes was impossibly loud, each drop hitting the floor like a grenade. Parker’s saxophone was flaying me alive in B flat.
“Your remains were found in the Bronx.”
“My… my…”
“It took a long time to track you down,” said Armitage. “Debris masked your signal. We had to do a block-by-block search.”
I didn’t have the strength to hold up my head. My chin hit my chest, my hair cascading over my face. Suddenly I didn’t want to hear any more, ever again.
“You’d decomposed pretty badly.”
I gripped the chair. The music ended. Only the dripping remained. “I didn’t…”
“What’s that?”
I tried to focus my lips. “I didn’t know someone could come back more than once.”
“Can’t. Not without help, anyway.”
I looked from face to face. Max snorted. “The guy’s toast. I told you.”
“He just needs time.”
“We don’t have time.”
Armitage shot a look, and Max relented, mumbling.
“We don’t know how the Retrozine works yet,” said Armitage.
My insides lurched another couple feet. Sandy patted my head absently like I was a German Shepherd. There was a click, the Bird took wing, and the next record dropped. Tommy Dorsey.
“Retrozine,” I managed in a whisper. “The youthing drug.”
“It does a lot of things.”
“How’d you get the formula?”
“Maggie uploaded the formula.”
I could feel my blood drain. “You didn’t hurt her, did you?”
“She’s with us,” said Armitage. “Cadre. She’s worked for us all along.”
“Bullshit!”
Then I caught Tippit looking shamefully at his shoes, and I knew they were telling the truth. I closed my eyes. She’d been the only person who hadn’t tried to play me. Until this moment, I hadn’t realized how hard I’d hung on to that. “Why? Why go to the trouble of finding me? Bringing me back?”
“We needed to know what happened, what you’d learned.”
“If Maggie’s part of this, then you already know.”
“She doesn’t have a trained eye, like you. Plus she had to run for it before it was over.”
“Before I died, you mean.”
Armitage looked at his watch. “Donner, I’d love to be a pal, give you time to adjust to all this, but things have gotten a lot worse since you’ve been away. So I need you to tell me everything you know.”
I managed a smile at that.
“We saved your ass,” said Max. “You were rat food!”
A laugh exploded out of me. “You threatened to kill my friend to get me to break into the lab, got me killed, then used me as a guinea pig to test your stolen drug. Did I leave out any of your amazing generosity?”
Armitage laid down the pipe and leaned forward, his voice low and controlled. “You got screwed? Welcome to the planet.” His fist came down hard. Even the boys jumped. “We’re all guinea pigs. Surazal’s out there, running things, testing their serum and God knows what else on us, and we’re still in the dark!”
I didn’t reply. His hands fell on the chair arms, twisting. Then he sighed. “We’ll talk tomorrow. You’ll feel more cooperative.”
“Hope springs eternal.”
“You’ll stay restrained.”
“These pajamas itch.”
“It’s your new skin. Give it a few days.”
I searched Armitage’s eyes. I wasn’t sure what I found. I’d been disposable. So why did he seem on the level now? I saw pit bull loyalty in his men, the kind that came from respect, not fear. That meant something. But I was too tired to know what. I closed my eyes and Sandy wheeled me away.
***
The platter spun and another record dropped. Nina Simone sounded throaty and depressed. Armitage pulled a silver lighter from the desk. He lit the pipe, exhaling a cloud that fanned off towards the shadows.
“We helped him. Fine,” he said. “But you’ve used up your favors.”
Maggie Chi resolved into coherence. “I’m doing this for—”
“I think we both know why you’re doing this,” he said. “And I think it’s time you decided whose side you’re on.”
30
BRIAN
Brian walked home from school.
Carl had disappeared. No more limo, no more caramels. That was okay. The air helped him clear his jumbled thoughts.
He took his regular shortcut, past a block of peep shows. He hurried past the garish signs promising adult wonders within: “All Nude, all Norm!” Despite his raging hormones, he didn’t understand porn. It seemed so mechanical. And the close-ups were gross. Who wanted to look at pubes the size of redwoods?
The people who hung out here were twitchy and seedy. The whores loved teasing him. They’d muss his hair and say: “Hey honey, how about a poke! Your wanna poke?” And then cackle.
To his relief, the sidewalk was deserted today. But as he passed the alley between one building and the next, he paused.
Something was going on. A flutter of motion buried in the gloomy brick gauntlet. The space smelled foul, a toilet for the godsmackers and a place where the whores did business. He was risking getting his nose sliced off by sticking it into that murk. But someone could be in trouble. He took a few steps into the alley, squinting. The dimness resolved into two forms.
Two kids. No, wait… It was a kid, talking to… a reebie hooker. The whore was saying, “I did it myself. Easy money.”
“They’ll give me that much just to test their new medicine?” the kid said. “Is it safe?”
“C’mon, sweetie. Do you really care?”
The voice— A teenager, maybe fifteen, with a crop of white hair—
No! No, that was impossible!
Brian ran home as fast as his legs would take him. He locked his door, put the chair against it, and dove under the covers. He refused dinner than night. His mother was content to leave him alone as she cracked the seal on a fresh bottle of brandy.
In his darkness, Brian worked through what he’d witnessed. He’d seen that hooker before. She always wore this flapper’s dress with tassels that twirled as she strutted around in her Victorian ankle boots. Loretta. The other girls call her Loretta. Why in God’s name was his father talking to Loretta? He knew his parents had probably stopped having sex. But to go to a street whore— But what else could it be? To buy drugs? That was crazier than his dad buying sex.
Over the next couple hours, Brian’s confusion evolved into outrage. After all they’d done for him, all they’d endured on his behalf, his father was out there with street whores.
His fury was a creaking, many-branched thing.
> Bastard!
***
His father never came home.
His mother reported his disappearance to the police. Reebs vanish every day, they said. If you hear anything concrete, call us. Otherwise, put his face on a milk carton.
Just like that, his dad was gone.
31
MAGGIE
For a couple weeks she watched Donner like a ghost would, incorporeal. She wasn’t used to feeling confused. To a smarty, action was usually a simple choice between probabilities.
But when Donner had died, she’d felt his absence. An empty space. It had made it hard to concentrate. Her colleagues had noticed. She’d laughed and brushed it off. Tried to ignore it. But the truth was, she’d been shaken to her core. She found herself replaying certain memories. The crooked way he smiled. The dime novel jokes at the bleakest moment. Before, she’d written the behaviors off as defense mechanisms. Now she missed them.
Donner’s recovery was slow. He’d been kept unconscious for the weeks necessary to repair his broken and burned body. Now he faced a slow climb back to normalcy.
He ate whatever he could. He created an exercise regime for himself in the basement—isometrics, lifting paint cans, boxes, anything not nailed down. And some kind of martial arts routine, endless moves, focusing his meager energy, throwing kicks and stabs. It was painful to watch the sweat pour from his emaciated form. At first he could hardly manage a couple push-ups, a few chin-ups on an overhead pipe. Then he’d collapse on the cement floor, cursing. But he kept at it, attacking his frailty with a determination that was frightening.
That she should find solace in remaining a phantom while he worked so single-mindedly on becoming more concrete was an irony that didn’t occur to her.
The young pastor of the Ender church above, Jonathan, was Donner’s only human contact. Maggie didn’t know Jonathan well, but he seemed gentle. After hours, the two men would stroll through the tiny garden in back. Donner often became passionate, waving his hands. Jonathan would nod, and sometimes laugh, and sometimes look very sad. Twice Donner broke down. Maggie envied their intimacy.
Among end-timers, Jonathan was revered. He was the pastor of the Church of the Holy Epicenter. No Ender church was as important. Situated in a two-story building on Chambers and North End Avenue, it was the former site of Maury’s Deli. Maury’s, with its homemade sauerkraut and towering corned beef sandwiches, had been a neighborhood favorite for decades, especially among the school crowd from nearby Stuveysant High. It had survived many things over the years—recessions, gentrification, terrorism—but it wasn’t until the Shift that it finally succumbed to its demise in the form of the religiously fanatic End-Timers.
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