The Irreversible Reckoning

by T. Rudacille

  ***

  “Come on, Quinn, this is exactly what we’re looking for! The Elixir was there on the 30th, and gone on the 1st. Two whole rooms of it, gone! He took it!”

  “No patients coming in that were treated with Elixir.” I agreed, “But you know this isn’t enough to accuse him.”

  “Nope! But it’s a start. And it begs the question: Why? The bombing got rid of the people who were opposed to him, so why would he have to let the innocent people standing by die? They could have been healed, and he still would have gotten what he wanted.”

  “Why set off the second bomb?” I asked, because our minds were working through this complex conspiracy on different tracks, and yet we both knew that those track would soon converge. They had to. It was all becoming so apparent, so readily obvious. It had been there right in front of us the whole time. The brashness of it was unbelievable. It was so unlike Don, to be so bold and brave. But then, he thought now that Brynna was dead and Lara was gone that he was the smartest human-like creature on either planet, so he thought we wouldn’t figure it out. He thought no one would figure out his game.

  “I mean, it could have been to make it look like the Old Spirits were just being the terrible people that they are, but it just seems excessive, even for them.” Eli suggested, “How many times have they hit twice like that? Ever, in all of our years of cleaning up after Old Spirit attacks in other cities, villages, and towns? How many of their plans have we overturned where there has been more than one hit planned? More than one bomb? More than one shot? More than one sacking, even. They hit a place, they take who they want, they kill who they want, and they leave. They don’t double back to eat the leftovers like we do.”

  “Exactly. Now, for argument’s sake, we could say that they’ve been watching us do it, so they figured it was time they tried.”

  “It’s time they tried? After twenty-five years straight of us doing it, and them not doing it. Knowing Tyre, he probably has some moral justification for only hitting once. He’s called ‘the One God,’ so you only hit once, or something stupid like that.”

  “And you know what they say: Murderers never change their M.O. They don’t switch from guns to knives. They don’t switch from one hit to two hits. There was no desperation in this. If it were the Old Spirits, they’d see it as they had hit us once, taken out over one hundred of our people, pretty much guaranteed to have taken out Don, or so they would think…”

  “And that’s where all this started, Quinn. How the fuck did Don get off that stage when everyone else was killed? He had to have known it was coming. We all have instincts. We all can feel bad things right as they’re about to happen. You can’t tell me that the Military people up on that stage didn’t feel it before he would have felt it. We’re trained to hone those instincts into being of superhuman strength. He knew it was coming. And he darted off just before they threw the bomb.”

  “Exactly!” I said, and my heart was pounding. We were so close. We had so much evidence. All we needed was just a few more pieces, and the puzzle would be complete, and then the only step left would be to confront Don. “He made a mistake, you know. I mean, obviously, he made many mistakes, because we’re figuring out his master plan right now. But he put it on the books. He let the people take inventory, and put it on the books. The Elixir was there, and then it was gone, overnight. That was his biggest mistake. The fucking genius leader slash criminal mastermind left a goddamn paper trail.”

  “I know, right?” Eli actually laughed, “What a fucking douche. I’m surprised he didn’t pull a whole, ‘The Elixir has been stolen! We must find the culprit at once!’”

  “You and me both, bro. So now, we need to think about motive. Why did he bomb his own sermon?”

  “What were they fighting about?” He asked, “The Council? When we were in the meetings, what were they fighting about?”

  “I don’t know. I always stopped listening after we passed the Military part.”

  “I’m trying to remember. There was something about trying to level the rocks to make it easier to walk, which was proposed by a former Earthean and was opposed by all the native Pangaeans. They said that we’re wimps, basically.”

  I chuckled.

  “There was stuff about taxes,” He continued thoughtfully, “Because as we all know, Don has such a boner for taxes.”

  “That he does.”

  “And there was a lot of stuff about the Unallied.”

  “Right!” I snapped my fingers and pointed at him, realizing that we had just cracked the whole case wide open, “Allie told me about that! She had to go to all those other meetings for the higher-ups, and she says all Don is talking about is wanting to try to ally with the Unallied.”

  “What an idiot.” Eli replied, “They’re called the Unallied for a reason. They don’t want to be under the reign of Adam, who wrote Don’s whole creed. They don’t want to be under the reign of Tyre, who is a pious, sadistic, pent-up, asshole. So what did Allie say? A lot of people were opposed to trying to bring the Unallied in?”

  “Yes. Don kept arguing that the Old Spirits have way more people than we do, so we need to bring the Unallied in, and those who were opposed to it said that the Unallied are lawless and sadistic, and are worse than the Old Spirits.”

  “In some ways. They’re both savages, but at least the Unallied don’t use some old-ass creed to justify being savages. They are what they are.”

  “Sure,” I agreed, “But in terms of what they do to other people, they’re just as bad, if not worse.”

  “That’s debatable.”

  “Whatever, dude. Maybe that’s Don’s game. All the people who were opposed to joining up with the Unallied were killed, except for Allie and John and a few others.”

  “Do you know what I think?” He asked, “Do you know what would have put this entire issue to bed to begin with? If we knew who set off the bombs. For all we know, it was our own people.”

  “How will that help us? And how will we even be able to tell?”

  “Light Bomb residue, brother! It glows in the dark!”

  I slammed my fist on the table, because it was brilliant, and then jumped up onto my feet.

  “Do you think they’ve burned the bodies yet?”

  “No. You know the rule. ‘Not until the sun has risen and fallen once over the graves of the lost shall any perpetrator of violence be burned or buried.’”

  “So, how much time do we got?”

  He looked at the creepy cat clock with the moving eyes on the wall.

  “Only a couple hours. Let’s go.”