by Phil Rossi
“Fuck me. It wasn’t a dream,” Marisa said, and she thought of the imagery she’d seen so many times on her apartment’s comm terminal. Two women, hand in hand, walking into the shadows.
“Whoa, hey. Wait a goddamn minute.” Gerald pressed his face between two of the cell’s bars.
“You two know each other?”
“In a manner of speaking, though we’ve not been officially introduced.” The woman extended her hand and Marisa took it. “I’m Ina Cortez. Dr. Ina Cortez.”
“I know who you are. Gerald told me what you and your father have been getting into.” Marisa shook her hand once. “I’m Lieutenant Marisa Griffin.” Ina seemed nonplused.
“Good to meet you, Lieutenant. Marisa.”
“Can I ask—what are you doing here? Obviously, I know Gerald ran some salvage for you and your… ” Marisa began, but was cut off.
“Father, yes. And now my father is sick and I thought that Gerald should know.” Ina’s voice rang with defensiveness. The sound set Marisa on edge. She glanced over to Gerald, who was busy counting dust particles on the floor. He looked miserable. She felt bad for him, even though she knew beyond the shadow of a doubt that he had fucked Ina Cortez.
“I should leave you two alone,” Marisa said, turning to leave the cell block. The way Ina was looking at Gerald made her uncomfortable. “I didn’t mean to interrupt. I just wanted to check on Gerald.”
“No,” Ina said. “I should be the one leaving the two of you.” Ina began to move down the hall and paused beside Marisa. She placed a hand on her shoulder and Marisa felt the familiar sense of otherness swimming in the back of her mind. “I think you and I should talk soon.”
“Yes,” Marisa agreed. “Tonight.”
“Tonight,” Ina echoed.
Ina Cortez disappeared down the corridor leaving Marisa and Gerald alone. Marisa leaned against the bars with a heavy sigh and let exhaustion run over her.
“Did you screw her, Gerald?” she asked, not really caring for an answer.
“Yes,” he said.
“More than once?”
“I did. I tried…to use control. I’m sorry, Mari. I’m really…” Gerald said and continued to stare at the floor panels.
“Why are you sorry? You’re not obligated to me anymore than I’m obligated to you. We’re nothing to each other.” Gerald frowned from behind the bars and she could see that her words had stung him. If Marisa was honest with herself, she had little reason to feel jealous. Maybe I’m entitled to feel a little bit jealous. Even still, she had thrown him the cold shoulder as she spiraled further into her neuroses, so what did she expect would happen? Gerald Evans was human and male, and loneliness was only exacerbated by deep space. Besides, she hadn’t gone to him in the holding block to begrudge him anything. Minutes ago she was worried for his life.
“Okay. I guess that wasn’t really called for, was it?” Marisa said. “Look. It’s not like we were ever officially together.” She paused and weighed her thoughts. “For more than a little while, it’s been like quite the opposite, you know? And I don’t blame you. A man has his needs, right? She’s pretty.”
Gerald didn’t answer, and she shrugged.
“I’m not here to talk about our relationship. I’m here to talk about getting you out of here.”
“Do you have a plan?” Gerald looked up, his eyes bright.
“No. I don’t,” she admitted. His forlorn expression returned.
“I’m pretty much fucked then, don’t you think?” Gerald said.
“There’s something in the works, Gerry. If you can hold out a few days… ” Marisa tried to sound as reassuring as she could.
“Is Nigel captured? Dead?” He asked without looking at her.
“Nigel is fine, Gerry,” she said.
“Well, then get me out of here now.” His words were insistent, but he wasn’t pleading yet. Marisa was glad; she didn’t want to hear him beg. Although, were she on the other side of those bars with nothing more to look forward to than an up-close-and-personal with Kendall and the boys, she’d already be begging.
“We can’t, Gerry. We have to hold out just a little longer. There are plans in the works. There are people coming. We will get you out of here.”
“Holding out isn’t up to me. It’s up to Kendall and his posse.”
“Look. Kendall and his boys are going to ask what you’ve told Swaren. They’re going want to know how you side-stepped that ambush. Don’t tell them, Gerry. Hold out. You are the only witness that can incriminate or protect them.” A look of recognition dawned on his face. Marisa saw that he knew Kendall was going to come as close to killing him as possible without actually ending his life. Kendall would get his point across. Gerald suddenly looked very sad. Sad and scared.
“I’m really going to get my ass kicked before this all said and done, aren’t I?” he said at last.
“Probably. I’m sorry.”
Gerald gestured with his head in the direction that Ina had departed.
“How do you know her?” Gerald asked.
“It’s more than a little complicated.”
Gerald just looked at her with an expression that said it doesn’t get much more complicated than this.
“She was there when everything changed. We were there together. The fucking Vault, Gerry. It’s real. All the stories… ” Marisa looked first up and then down the hall. She didn’t want the Captain to hear her talking like this. She went on: “Your little friend there, she triggered an alarm on Z. I thought it was a rat or a glitch. We never hear a peep out of Z. So, I checked it out. Only, I had no recollection of being down there until I saw her. But, I know that’s where it all started. That’s when the station woke up. We were there, Gerry.”
“I’m going to be perfectly honest with you, Marisa,” Gerald said. “The hoodoo voodoo shit you and I chatted about in the auditorium is the furthest thing from my mind right now. Right now, I’m wondering what’s going to be clamped to my nipples in the near future and how many volts of electricity will be coursing through my body,” Gerald said.
“We’re gonna get you outta that cell. I promise.”
“I just hope it’s not in a body bag… Or in little pieces.” He looked at her, then turned and reclined on the cot. “You probably shouldn’t stick around here when Kendall and his boys show back up. You just might end up in here with me.”
She knew he was right.
“Take care of yourself, Ger. Hold out. You have to.”
He closed his eyes. Marisa spared him one last look, and then left.
(•••)
Marisa stood outside of Heathen’s. The neon sign above the batwings flickered tremulously; its glow looked like it would go dark at any second. Marisa’s had her arms wrapped tight around herself. The massive air handlers on either side of Main Street puffed out big blasts of cold air that moved like wind. The handling system throughout the station was way out of whack. The sun globes were at their lowest level of illumination, but she wasn’t convinced that it was really night.
Marisa thought of Gerald, laying in darkness of the small cell. Even worse, she thought of him in a room somewhere, strapped to a table and having god knows what done to him. She stopped herself before she could think of him screaming. Marisa thought of Ina then. Their brief conversation outside of Gerald’s cell earlier that day had been surreal enough—Marisa wasn’t really sure she needed to remember anything else about the Vault. The hoodoo voodoo shit, as Gerald had put it, was pretty far from her mind, too. She feared for her life and she feared for Gerald’s. She was even afraid for Swaren, who was partially to blame for stirring up the wasp’s nest.
“Fuck it,” she said. “Things can’t get worse than they already are.” She silently chided herself for even thinking it, and pushed through the batwing doors.
The familiar and pleasing stench of tobacco smoke and beer assaulted Marisa as she stepped through the doors. The bar was busy, the conversations a din of drunk and excited ba
bble. Everyone looked strung out—all dark circles and pale complexions. The bar was jammed with people drinking themselves to the point of forgetting that it was too hot one day and too cold the next. The wind was strangest of all. It made you wonder if Crescent wasn’t really decompressing. Yeah. Weird weather for a space station.
Ina sat a table at the far end of the dance floor. Some tall, homely son of a bitch was attempting to hit on her. Even from afar, Marisa could see his advances were amounting to nothing. The guy was annoyed; his gestures became more and more animated with each failed pickup line. Marisa forced her way through a crowd of half-hearted people dancing in the center pit of the club, bouncing off one another of one another in blasts of colored light. She stepped up a short flight of stairs and moved to Ina’s table.
“Take a hike, pal,” Marisa said.
“What? Fuck you, bitch.” Without a moment of hesitation, Marisa grabbed him by the ear and slammed his head into a nearby handrail. He cried out. Marisa twisted his ear and he cried out again. She shoved him down the short flight of stairs. He fell onto the dance floor and struggled back to his feet. The man was wasted. “You are a crazy bitch,” he growled and shuffled away.
“Thanks,” Ina said, not visibly swayed by the scene either way. “Won’t you sit down?”
“Yeah. Why not,” Marisa replied and seated herself across from the wisp of a girl. There were several beats of silence. “So… ” Marisa said.
“I know this is awkward,” Ina said. No shit, it was awkward, Marisa mused as she shifted in her seat. “But I know you feel it,” Ina went on and glanced around the bar. She then returned her eyes to Marisa’s. “Everything changed after you and I met at that bulkhead at the… ”
“Don’t say it,” Marisa said, cutting Ina off. She didn’t want to hear the word.
“It’s hard to talk about.” Ina smiled softly. “Believe me, I know. There is so little logic to any of it. And the periods of not being in control of ourselves. That’s the most difficult. I’ve acted in ways… that… I,” Ina shook her head. “Regardless. Right now, Marisa. Right now I feel in control, which is why I wanted to talk to you. I’m worried about my father. He’s wrapped up in all this and is not in control at all. And whatever it is that is happening, it’s killing him.”
“Is that why you had me meet you? So you could tell me we’ve bonded? That we’re blood sisters or some shit? And that I should be inspired to help your sick dad? Look Ms. Cortez. Ina. I’ve got enough to worry about.”
“Things are happening here, Marisa. Big things. Look—Dad’s not the only reason I wanted to meet with you. I just needed to not feel alone in this anymore. I know you’ve felt that same bitter isolation. You can’t tell me that you haven’t.”
Marisa sighed.
“Okay. Tell me, then,” Marisa said. “What happening on Crescent, Doctor Cortez?” Aside from corrupt mayors, gun running, and secret plans to decommission the whole works.
“It’s life that’s happening on Crescent, Marisa. I’m sure of it. A life that has always been here, long before Crescent was even a thought in an engineer’s head. Existing just on the other side of,” Ina looked down at the table for several seconds and then looked back up. “Just on the other side of the glass. Maybe it had always been aware of our side, but when people first came to Anrar it began to care.” Marisa could tell Ina was working things out as she spoke. “And then… sensing human life, it wanted to come through, to say hello—to make contact. But things went wrong when it tried to come through. It became… split up. Dissociated. Like light through a prism. The Three were born. The Violet, the Red, and the Black. Now it’s stuck. Halfway here, halfway there. Three pieces. It craves unity,” Ina’s voice trailed off and Marisa took the opportunity to interject.
“That makes little sense,” Marisa said, but she knew she understood.
Ina groaned. “Does it really? Are you that limited by a standard notion of life that it’s beyond you to grasp that we might be dealing with some completely new form of life?”
Marisa wasn’t limited in her thinking. And putting a scientific spin on things made her feel a little bit better. Saner. Marisa thought on it for several seconds. The academic approach seemed to bring the pieces a little closer together—a little nearer to forming a whole picture. Whatever this force was, maybe it was using them to communicate its wishes? To fulfill its wishes.
“You’ve been blacking out. You’ve been having strange dreams. This thing talks to you as much as it talks to me. And whenever it communicates it sucks the life right out of you, right? We’re not wired for this. You’re probably more tired than you’ve ever been.”
Marisa was tired. That was no secret.
“Why are you telling me all this?” Marisa said. She wanted a drink. She looked around for a server.
“I want you to help me help my father. Like I said. He’s been…contacted, too. But his body can’t handle it. It’s killing him,” Ina said. Suddenly, the blonde’s eyes glistened with unshed tears.
“You’re a smart girl. A doctor to boot, right? I’m sure you can figure it out on your own,” Marisa replied.
“I can’t help him alone,” Ina said.
“Why the hell not?”
“Because all three of us are involved. We are part of the whole now. And we have to make sure whatever needs to be finished here is finished here. And then my dad’ll be set free, along with us.”
“Last I checked, I wasn’t trapped, honey.”
Ina laughed.
“You’re wrong. You couldn’t leave this sector of space, even if you wanted to,” Ina said.
“So, what the hell do you want me to do about this?”
“I want you to stop fighting it. The sooner it can accomplish what it needs to accomplish, the sooner we’re done, too. Don’t you see? Resisting only slows it down,” Ina said.
“I’ll be perfectly honest with you,” Marisa said. “I showed up tonight expecting not to like you. And now that I’ve sat down and chatted with you a little bit, I’m not surprised in the least to discover that I don’t like you. With all due respect, I’m done here.”
“Is this because I slept with Gerald?”
Marisa sat back in her chair. Now she was surprised. It was stated so matter-of-factly, with the batting of innocent lashes, no less.
“Lady, you’re crazy. And I’m done.”
(•••)
Albin sat at the corner of the bar in Heathen’s nursing his third glass of scotch. The corner seat was the best seat in the house, as far as he was concerned. The scowl Albin wore on his weathered features was nothing short of menacing.
Albin couldn’t help but think of Jacob, and every time he did, Albin shuddered. Chopped his own cock right off. When Albin had gone to visit Jacob, his friend had been a babbling fool. Jacob had gone on and on about shadows with teeth and the black. Jacob had also said something about Marisa Griffin in his ramblings. That she had been there in the alley. That he had seen her, or some nonsense. Albin didn’t know for sure. What he did know was that Griffin had kicked Taylor’s ass and that she was a loon. Anything was possible. So, Albin now watched her guardedly as she had her little chat with Ina Cortez on the opposite end of Heathen’s. He knew those two bitches were up to no good. He took another swill of the scotch and as it went down his throat he recognized his own paranoia. He’d been feeling that way a lot lately. The messed up systems on the stations—the screwy light cycles and the confused environmental zones—it was fucking with everyone’s heads. His included.
As if to prove the point, two men were busy getting into an excited verbal altercation several tables over from the bar. One guy, a fat man with two small puffs of hair on either side of his bald head, was yelling with such ferocity that the vein that ran across his polished dome was bulging. Bulging so dramatically that Albin thought it would burst.
And it did actually burst. Right when another bar-goer broke a bottle over the man’s shiny scalp. From the point of impact, fig
hting surged out across the bar like a tsunami. The brawl spread as fast as wildfire and was quite unlike anything Albin had seen in his life. Albin emptied the last of the scotch down his throat and slid off his stool. The fighting rippled down the bar toward him, a frothing mix of flying fists, shouts, and broken glass. Albin was too drunk for dodging punches and pool cues, but he wasn’t too drunk to shoot his way out. He slipped the needle gun out from under his armpit and let death fly. A different body fell with each concussive thwap. Albin began to move toward the batwing doors; he fired as he went and felt a bit more sober with each step. Killing had that effect. No one seemed to notice the gunfire. They were too busy beating the shit out of each other. A chair sailed over his head, almost braining him. Something wet hit him in the cheek. He touched the spot and his hand came away bloody. A palm sized hunk of flesh—it looked like rare roast beef—hung from the lapel of his jacket. He brushed it off and picked up the pace. People were literally tearing each other apart and he only had so much ammo on him.
(•••)
Marisa got up from the table and contemplated giving Ina the finger. Instead, she decided to walk away in her best indignant swagger, but the fighting stopped her dead in her tracks. It was like someone had dropped a rock of aggression into the pool of drinkers and the brawl extended outward in sustained waves of violence. The frenzy was a spectacle both horrible and mesmerizing. Marisa knew there was no way she could make to the exit. She looked back toward Ina—her palms were splayed out on the table and her eyes were wide with panic. Her mouth gaped stupidly. Goddamnit, Marisa thought, can’t this shit ever be simple?
Marisa grabbed Ina by the wrist and yanked her out of her seat. Ina yelped but protested no further. They hustled past a small sidebar, ducking as debris flew overhead. Behind the sidebar, a female bartender was being savagely raped by two male assailants. Ina hesitated and pulled free of Marisa’s grip. Marisa knew they couldn’t help the girl, so she regained her hold on Ina and continued to pull her along until they came to a storage closet door. What is it with fucking storage closets? Marisa thought as she checked the access handle. It turned, and Marisa threw the door open, slamming it against the wall with a crack. She pushed Ina into the small space with both hands. The blonde stumbled across the threshold and Marisa dashed in behind her. She pulled the door shut and looked around for something—anything—to brace it.