“No, stick around. I don’t have any secrets.”
She shot me derisive glance. “Uh-huh. Famous last words, Matty.”
Detective Dzobiak answered my call on the first chime. The camera snapped into focus and his face appeared, displaying his downtown office in the backdrop; his back faced a window that opened to the drizzly grey Manhattan skyline.
“Mox, what have you got for me, man?” He seemed hurried, anxious.
“Well let me put you at ease, Detective. Kenneth isn’t hurting anyone. They’re all fine.”
He tilted his head. “Fine? So you saw the missing people…all of them?”
“We didn’t take a head count,” Peyton added, “but yeah, there were hundreds of people. All of them seemed…” her eyes flicked towards me, and back to the detective, “happy, I guess?”
I shrugged and nodded.
“Damn.” Dzobiak leaned into his chair, rubbing his hand along his neatly trimmed goatee. “So we don’t have missing people at all, then. We have a bunch of people joining a cult.”
“Hey, that’s not really fair,” Peyton replied. “They were more than happy. They were blissed out.”
“Like on drugs?” the detective asked.
Peyton shook her head. “No, not like that. At least I don’t think so. They just seemed overjoyed to be there. To be in Kenneth’s presence.”
“And they’re in a pyramid,” I added.
“A…” Dzobiak furrowed his brow. “Like, as in pharaohs and tombs and mummies? That type of shit?”
“I didn’t see any mummies,” I conceded. “But then again, we didn’t stay long. The pyramid wasn’t there before. It’s new. He made it using his abilities, if I had to guess. It seems like now, he can generate constructs that last indefinitely – it’s like an all new classification of superhuman. He’s an architect. And the way he took down Darmaki…his speed, his strength…”
“It was intimidating, to say the least,” Peyton added.
Dzobiak leaned in and folded his hands on his desk, his voice lowering in pitch. “I’ll tell you what: the DOJ knows that Livitski is the one who went all Texas Chainsaw on Darmaki and lopped off his hands. Not exactly legal. But, since he helped apprehend the guy who was behind the attacks around the world, the Justice Department and the UN are looking the other way. And since everyone missing is of legal age, and, if what you say is true, they’re going to the island of sound mind and all that, we can’t pin kidnapping on him.”
“So that’s that?” I asked.
“You say he built a pyramid there, and technically the Kerguelen island chain belongs to France. So if they want to pursue him for a building permit violation, they can do it themselves.”
“So he’s not on the hook for anything?” I asked.
“International real estate isn’t exactly in my job description,” he shrugged. “Our satellites can’t get a clear view of the island, and tech guys are working on that now. I don’t know whether he’s blocking us or if it’s just atmospheric…that could be something too. But for now, he’s in the clear.”
“Good,” Peyton said with a cautious smile. She squeezed my thigh, before adding, “This is a good thing…right?”
“Yeah, it’s a whole barrel of awesomeness.” I tried to force a smile of my own but I couldn’t manage one. Just the attempt was hurting my face and causing my temples to throb.
“So what’s the problem?” Dzobiak asked. “Are you holding back on me? Is there something else I need to know?”
I massaged my forehead, rubbing my fingertips in small circles. “No, not at all. It’s just…Kenneth said he was tracking me – that’s how he knew we were in the Liwa Desert. How he got Darmaki.”
“Uh-huh,” the detective grumbled. “And—?”
“And he was lying.”
“How can you be sure?” Dzobiak asked. I could tell by the way he leaned in towards the holoscreen that I’d piqued his interest.
“Because I just know,” I said. “You have to trust me.”
Dzobiak flashed a quick smile. “Hey man, I do. You’re right about a lot of crazy shit and I don’t know what goes on in that big fat brain of yours. I’m sure if you say he’s lying, he is. But I can’t arrest him for a fib, Mox.”
“And the cult?” I asked. “What do we do about that?”
He let out an exasperated sigh. “What every country does about every cult,” he said. “Nothing. They’re grown-ups, they can believe whatever the hell want, no matter how crazy or stupid or dangerous.”
“But you’re keeping an eye on him?” I asked.
“Absolutely,” he said, reaching for his coffee mug. He took a quick sip before adding, “but that’s the extent of my authority, here. We can look, but we can’t touch. Unless you bring me some evidence that he’s done something, he’s free to keep playing King Tut.”
“You want him arrested?” Peyton asked me, now growing concerned.
“No, I just…some things don’t add up, that’s all.”
“They rarely do,” the detective added. “People aren’t equations you can solve all the time, Mox. They’re not poker or blackjack hands that you can use your freaky calculator brain to work out. Sometimes there’s a wild card in the mix…and you don’t always see it coming.”
And with that our conversation ended. Dzobiak returned to work and I shut down the holo-session.
Peyton crossed the room to her dresser and went through the top drawer, pawing her way through the neatly folded piles in search of pajamas. “I don’t get you sometimes,” she chimed. “You wanted to see Kenneth, you did. You wanted to see if everyone on the island was okay, they were. And you found out how he helped us with Darmaki. Just let it go.”
I fell back on the pillowy white comforter and stared up at the ceiling. “I can’t,” I sighed. “It felt…wrong. Everything on that island, everything inside that stupid pyramid…it was just so bizarre.”
“That it was,” she agreed.
I continued to stare into the utter blankness of the white ceiling and I could hear her padding across the carpet towards me. When she came into view she was wearing one of my tattered old Swamp Thing t-shirts – a shirt I thought she’d incinerated. She leaped onto the bed, pinning me down.
My nostrils were invaded with my own pungent body odor. “Eww…I thought you threw all these old shirts out?”
“Not all of them,” she explained. “I kept a few of them as night shirts.”
“Could you have at least washed the ones you planned on keeping?”
“I like your sweaty smell,” she giggled. Her lips pressed to both my cheeks, then my lips. Then she drew back and pushed off my chest, sitting up on my thighs, before saying, “Go talk to her.”
I frowned. “Talk to who?”
Peyton rolled her eyes. “Don’t make me say the B-word,” she said with a tiny grin. “You know exactly who. I know Kenneth isn’t the only thing bothering you. She’s been locked in her room and something is most definitely wrong with her. She needs to talk to someone, and you’re her only friend here.”
Her breezy demeanor was troubling me, like the calm before a storm. Was I supposed to tell Peyton that I didn’t care about Brynja, and that I was going to stay in the room with her – or was this my girlfriend being cooler than I’d given her credit for, granting me permission to talk, alone, with her slightly more provocatively-dressed doppelganger? I could suddenly hear the immortal words of Admiral Ackbar resonating through my head: ‘It’s a trap!’
“Okaaay…” I said, easing back up on my elbows.
She blurted out a tiny chuckle and scooted back off the edge of the bed. “Just go,” she said, now more forcefully. “It’s no big deal, really. I’ll keep HoloFlix warmed up until you get back.”
“Okaaay…” I slid back to my feet and inched towards the door.
She raised her eyebrows, shooing me off with a playful flick of her hand.
“But,” she added, just as I neared the door frame, “we’re not doing an
other Battlestar Galactica marathon. Tonight we’re watching Cooking with Corben.”
I winced as I pressed my finger into the plate on the wall, triggering the doors to slide open.
“Damn,” I muttered under my breath. “It was a trap.”
I navigated the winding narrow hallway to Brynja’s quarters, where the door had been sealed shut since we’d arrived home from the Liwa Desert. I knocked. And knocked. And knocked again. No answer. I continued to rap until my knuckles ached.
I rubbed the sting from my hand and pressed my back into the metal door. “You can’t stay in there forever,” I called out. I knew she could hear me because these rooms weren’t soundproofed. I’d learned that while traipsing by the maintenance workers’ living quarters one evening, and had heard the moans of a young Australian scientist reverberating through the door with disturbing clarity, calling out the name of a man who most certainly wasn’t her husband.
I called out and knocked again with the back of my hand.
Silence.
“Well I suppose you could stay in there forever, technically speaking,” I continued. “Because like all my fortresses, this one is self-sustaining. Theoretically you’d have access to desalinated sea water, eco-energy, 3D printed clothing, and whatever else you need for a hundred years. It’s funny because when I’d lock myself in the bathroom as a kid, my mom or my sister would shout ‘you have to come out sometime, Matt!’, which was very true twenty years ago. Now? Not so much.”
The metal door whooshed open at my back, causing me to tumble and splat on the hard tiled floor. Now my back ached more than my knuckles did.
“If I let you in will you shut the hell up?” Brynja said with a heavy groan. She hovered overhead, hands on hips, staring down with a frustrated shake of her head.
As I regained my footing my knees creaked and my muscles flared (probably more from my general lack of fitness than the fall, though it didn’t help matters much). I winced, running the heels of my palms up and down my lower lumbar.
“I can’t promise I’ll stop talking,” I said, “but I’ll try to keep it brief. Fair enough?”
She waved me in with a resigned sweep of her arm.
With Brynja’s length of blue hair pulled into a braid and her face washed clean of make-up, it was more of a mental challenge to carry on conversations with her. Her similarities to Peyton became more apparent; the angle of her cheek bones, the shape of her eyes, the full bottom lip that always curled like a pout even when she smiled. I found myself studying her more often than not; I was lost in thought as I compared the two, letting whatever it was that I was going to say float away into the aether.
She snapped her fingers, inches from my face. “Hey, wake up, buttercup. If you’re sleepy go back to your own room and zone out. I’m busy here.”
My eyes fluttered. “No, sorry, I’m just…sorry.” I glanced around her room; towels, clothes and food containers had been scattered throughout her chamber as if they’d been shot out of a cannon just moments before I’d arrived. “Did I interrupt Fall cleaning?”
I went to her bed and brushed aside a mound of twisted sheets, sending potato chips and empty bags to the floor.
She folded her arms.
I glanced at the bed next to me, raising my brow.
After a few more obligatory grumbles she walked over and sat at my side.
“So,” she huffed. “What’s up?”
“What’s up,” I said, “is that you’ve been locked in your room alone, and it’s not healthy.”
“So what?” she fired back, more defensive that I’d anticipated. “You lock yourself away all the time, Mox.”
“I know, and look how fucked up I am.” I pointed to my face. “Is this what you want to end up like in ten years?”
Her shoulders sagged, the anger draining from her face. “Yeah, fair point.” She rubbed her forearm, massaging the skin that had been sliced open during the raid on Darmaki’s palace.
“So…Kenneth is living in a pyramid, now. That’s different. I always pictured him as a French Colonial type of guy. I didn’t know Egyptian-chic was his style.”
“How did you know?” I asked.
She rapped her blue-painted fingernail into the face of her wrist com. “McGarrity sent me the footage. He was recording the entire conversation. Kenneth has really changed, huh?”
I nodded. “Yeah, time will do that to people.”
“Except for me,” she said weakly, her eyes trailing along the floor.
“You’re awesome just the way you are,” I assured her. “Change is overrated.”
“But everyone gets to grow, expand. Become a better version of themselves. Look at you, helping innovate ways to feed people and get water to the poorest places on Earth. Peyton is becoming a veterinarian. Gavin re-built his entire business. Even that dick McGarrity has a freaking book deal. Everyone is a better version of who they were, and I’m like…”
“A great friend,” I added. “And a good person. Plus you’re a very adequate cosplayer, if you don’t mind my saying.”
“I’m an echo. I’m like that superhuman clone Jonathan Ma: just a fragile copy of a copy. It’s like I’m living out the same experiences, wearing the same face each and every day, but nothing improves. I’m always just a blurrier, more busted copy of who I was the day before.”
“You can’t believe that, Brynja. You’re so much more than this.” I waved my hand up and down her body. “This is just a shell, it’s not you. Just like this,” I poked my fingertip into the side of my forehead. “This isn’t me. My condition – this shit I’m going through – it doesn’t define who I am.”
Her eyes widened. “Oh, Mox…I didn’t mean to compare. What you’re going through is so much more serious.”
“What I’m going through is called life,” I smiled. “And sometimes it sucks worse than we can possibly imagine. And sometimes it feels like a game of Whack-a-Mole: one shitty problem pops up, you gather the strength to slam it down, and another even shittier one pops up right next to it. You just keep whacking away over and over again, until you can’t whack any—” I paused, realizing I was miming the motion of holding a handle, moving it up and down in a ‘whacking’ motion, dangerously close to the zipper of my jeans.
She giggled like a young girl, covering her mouth. “You might wanna work on your metaphors a little, but yeah, I hear what you’re saying.”
Brynja’s smile faded and she leaned in, resting her head on my shoulder. “How do you do it?” She whispered.
“Do what?” I asked.
“Stay so freaking positive?”
My memory continued to fade with each passing day, but that was the first time I could recall anyone accuse me of being ‘positive’ about anything. I was historically the one prepared to throw in the towel at the first sign of adversity.
I let out a short laugh. “Are we talking about the same person, here?”
“The Matthew Moxon from Arena Mode would’ve never come here just to cheer me up – especially not with an inoperable tumor eating away at his brain.” She held up her thumb and index finger, barely an inch apart. “How many times were you this close to quitting during the tournament?”
“I guess…”
“And it took a life or death situation to shake you out of your apathy,” she said, pivoting towards me, hugging a knee to her chest. “A bullet flying at your head, your friends being threatened…now, you’re back in the same spot you were back then – worse, actually – and you’re not only strong enough to keep moving forward, you’re trying to pick me up, and drag my sorry ass along with you.”
I suddenly had visions of following in Steve McGarrity’s footsteps, writing my own autobiography – but with a more inspirational twist.
“I’ve learned a lot about myself since Arena Mode,” I said. “And I realized the only thing that sucks more than life is living it alone.” I put my hand on top of hers, lacing our fingers together. “We both have a shit-load of moles that we need to w
hack the hell out of…if you’re feeling up to it, maybe we can whack them together?”
“Sounds like a plan.” She said with a weak smile. “So, now that I’m all cheered up, is there anything else you wanted to talk about?”
“The video that McGarrity sent you: did you see the part where Kenneth claimed he was tracking me to the Liwa Desert?”
“Sure,” she shrugged.
“He lied.”
“Okay…so say you’re right about this,”
“I am,” I assured her.
“So that means he knew we were there some other way.” She paused, bringing a fingertip to her lips. “Satellite imaging?”
“I don’t think so. Fortress 18 is cloaked; he’d have no idea when we were coming or going. Plus I don’t see ‘The Living Eye’ as someone who relies on technology all that much. Not his style.”
“An insider? A mole?” she glared at my suspiciously. “Wait…what about your pilot? The one Peyton hired.”
“Karin? Doubtful. I’ve had my eye on her since the moment she came on board at the Moxon Corporation.”
“But how can you be sure?” Brynja asked.
“I also monitor all her transmissions. She hasn’t called anyone outside of her on-again/off-again boyfriend, her mom, and the pizza delivery place in Manhattan that uses drones to drop the box on your doorstep.”
“Damn,” she said, rubbing her stomach, “I could use some Drone and Drop right now…”
“Focus,” I said with a laugh.
“Right, sorry. So are you going to make me guess all night or are you going to stop being an asshole and share this mind-blowing theory of yours?”
“All right,” I said, “My problem is that I thought this was all about me.”
She narrowed her eyes. “Surprise, surprise.”
“But it’s not. It’s about you.”
“Me?” She asked, her eyes snapping open.
“Kenneth didn’t come to save me from being attacked by Sultan Darmaki – he came because he knew you were there. And he didn’t know until McGarrity accidentally sliced your arm.”
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