“Sorry.” I waved it off dismissively. “I don’t want to impose. And even if I did, you and Naithe are just about to go on your honeymoon...” She winced. “I totally understand if you don’t have time, or – ”
“ – Stop. You got your ‘yes’, Meg. I’m your girl.” I smiled. “And honestly? I should really be doing this anyway. It is...y’know...kinda my job.”
“That was going to be the next part of my pitch, if you’d said ‘no’.” I ignored that:
“We’ve got a week before we head off. I’ll just have to plan it around all the sex.”
“Ugh. Disgusting. That’s my nephew...” She whined.
“And your niece, now, technically.” I noted, enjoying her play-acted discomfort.
“You’re the worst.”
“I thought I was the best?” I pouted, eyes wide and innocent.
“You can’t be both?” I shrugged, smiling. We smoked in silence for a minute. Slowly, a question began to occur to me:
“I have to ask: why is Lilum so certain it’s a Government thing, anyway? It’s been awhile, but I remember that everyone kind of wanted it to be, but there was nothing to suggest that it was and an awful lot to suggest that it wasn’t...”
“He’s not. He was at first – there’s some history to it, I think; and Craig seems to enjoy a bit of...y’know...conspiracy theorising – but the evidence just isn’t there, and the whole thing is a lot bigger than he originally suspected.”
“‘Craig’, is it?” I smirked.
“Don’t start.”
“Aren’t you married?” She sighed. She wasn’t smiling; she seemed genuinely bothered. It was a reaction that confused me. A reaction that – honestly – was an extremely poor choice for her if she actually did have something to hide but didn’t want me to know about it. I made an effort to brush the thought aside. Honestly...even though I assumed she’d be loyal to Eli, it wasn’t the idea that she might not be that made the scenario implausible. It was that idea she wouldn’t tell me about it. Unexpectedly...I also found myself far more bothered about the possibility of the latter than the former. “So...Lilum.” I said slowly, trying to redirect the conversation back a short way.
“Yes. Lilum.” She nodded.
“Bet he feels like a fucking moron for letting the dogs loose before he knew the whole story.”
“He’s Craig Lilum. I doubt he’s felt like a moron once in his entire life.”
“Still. It was pretty dumb.”
“As far as he’s concerned, I’m sure it was probably justified. At least that’s what it sounds like to me. What’s been passed down to us from the top is that the U.S. Government are putting brick walls in the middle of every pathway to investigating The Disappearances, and, for Lilum, that’s all we need to know to justify the initial approach. It makes a certain kind of sense. I mean...either they’re responsible, or working out who is responsible requires us to get past them.”
“‘Get past them’, Meg? They’re the U.S. Government.” She shrugged.
“And Lilum Multinational is Lilum Multinational. Mr. Lilum gets what he wants.”
Does he, now? Good for ‘Craig’.
Don’t...even.
“And what does he want? Does he even know? I mean...there may be nothing to even find out.”
“Right now...he wants blood. He’s going to get it, no matter who’s playing defence.”
“Well, whatever. It’s his funeral. Possibly literally, because aside from The Government being, in every possible way, the wrong group of people to fuck with...if I recall, he’s also like...super old – ”
“ – He’s not that old.” She scoffed. I hadn’t been able to resist. I knew her too well to not. I looked her in the eye...trying to convey that, regardless of what it was: I knew that there was something that she didn’t want me to know...and that yes, I was willing to leave it alone, but first I needed her to know: that if she wanted to share it with me, she could.
“Yes, Meg. He is that old.” I said. She smiled, pretending it didn’t matter one way or the other, but I saw her gulp down that lump in her throat. She didn’t realise that she was trying to hide something from someone whose life was, itself, an obfuscation. I had a lot more experience with – and was much, much better at – hiding than her. I knew what to look for. I knew how to find it.
“I’ll get started on this and get back to you as soon as I have something. If...I have something.” I sighed, letting it go for the time being.
“I knew I could count on you.”
“Always. Aunty Meg.” She cringed.
VIII – Sudo
~ Dio ~
23/11/2023
Dio sat in one corner, and Yvonne sat in the other. And they waited. They didn’t have to wait very long. Only about twenty minutes.
It seemed like hours. Particularly for Dio. Well...that was his evaluation, anyway. There did seem to be a strange, haunted, distance to Yvonne’s silent, blank stare. But Yvonne didn’t tell him things. Not things that mattered. And so – not because he was self-involved but because there wasn’t another option – he turned inwards.
It was the room that bothered him. As soon as his brain had connected it to the interrogation space the army had dragged him into after they found out about him...he just couldn’t let it go. It – and the associated agony – was branded indelibly into his memory. He wondered if the way the room looked was deliberate. After all, it was The Organisation that came for him, in the end. They must have known.
“Sorry to have kept you both waiting.” The voice from before was clearer, now. Female, as Dio had originally suspected. That much was obvious. Stern. Mostly American – a touch of Bostonian there, dragging the ‘A’ sounds slightly sideways of what was predictable – but with a hint of something else, too. South African, maybe? Dio was almost certain he could detect a touch of South African in that accent. In terms of where it came from...the voice didn’t seem to originate from any specific location. It was almost as if it came from the interior of the room itself. Perhaps it did. They had both seen Palatine Hill from the top down, after all: nothing was certain anymore. The room began to darken.
“Dio.” Yvonne hissed.
“Huh?”
“Come here.” Dio got to his feet, moving across the room. He reached for Yvonne’s hand, assuming she wanted him to help her up. With unnerving strength, she yanked him down, clinging to his arm as he rearranged himself into a sitting position next to her. “Whatever happens, just stay close to me, okay?” In the last of the rapidly dimming light, he raised an eyebrow at her. “Yeah, I know. It’s crazy. You get to be the grown-up for a change. Just shut up and do what I say.” She growled. He nodded. As the last of the light slipped away, leaving them blind...Dio still felt her there. Pressed into him.
“Dio Ben-Zeev.” The voice intoned. Then nothing.
“...Yes?” Dio tried. He felt Yvonne’s grip on his arm tighten. She was shaking. His experimental question hung in the air.
“Yvonne Kafni.” The voice stated.
“Koos ima shelcha...” Yvonne spat out in Hebrew. Dio snorted, stifling a disbelieving, horrified laugh. He elbowed her in the ribs. “Yes, ma’am...” She sneered out the revised affirmation.
“Mister Ben-Zeev...open your eyes as wide as possible and look directly into the light on the far wall.” As he heard the words, Dio realised that there was a blinking red light, directly across from where he and Yvonne sat. He did as he was told. Almost immediately, he felt his extremities begin to prickle with pins and needles. The feelings became sharper and sharper. They began to hurt. They spread up his arms, and down his legs. His teeth gritted involuntarily. And then he blinked.
§§§
The first thing that occurred to Dio as he reopened his eyes was that he could no longer feel Yvonne’s arm linked through – squeezing at – his own. Dio quickly realised that he was watching a memory; a memory that filled his vision; a recording, played back, that was a perfect representation – from another
angle – of a reality he’d lived. He was somewhere else. Somewhere familiar. It took him a moment to place his new location...which, though odd, was understandable: the interior of the bunker had gone through a series of revisions in the time that he and Yvonne had been there.
Over the months, the two of them had shifted furniture, taped up and taken down a range of newspaper clippings and work documents, and even switched bedrooms several times. Looking back, Dio was surprised by the vast profusion of minor changes that boredom had provoked the two of them to make. There were, when he actually gave it some thought, far more than he would have superficially estimated. More surprising still, however, was the way in which those minor changes coalesced to create ‘themes’ specific to a particular week, or fortnight, or month. These periodic shifts allowed him to use the look and feel of he and Yvonne’s temporary home, at any given point in time, to – roughly – determine the ‘when’ of what he was looking at. The somewhat disconcerting side effect, of course, was that – relative to the ‘when’ that he was more familiar with; the ‘when’ closest to ‘now’ – any given moment in the past seemed somehow...alien, to him.
Dio watched himself and Yvonne moving around the bunker. Her hair was longer. He remembered that she’d cut most of it off after the first month, and that it had been slowly growing back since then. She was wearing a white tank-top: a top that she had – months beforehand – destroyed, for the sake of a makeshift bandage that she created for Dio when he’d fallen while changing a light.
She looked...slimmer. Not that she’d ever been anything other than slim, but...he was startled by how, relative to the Yvonne of later months, this iteration of his friend seemed to be bordering on malnourished.
They hadn’t been in the bunker for long, at that point. Perhaps a week. Maybe two, at most. On that day, he recalled, he’d been in a good mood. Most days in the bunker blended together indistinguishably...but this particular day stood out. It was a day that had started well, but ended poorly. A day that he preferred to, whenever possible, actively put out of his mind.
He was, at that point, still reeling from the change in diet: euphoric – literally – from the transition to some of the best food he’d ever eaten...from, without a doubt, the worst. While languishing in captivity, he’d been as good as starved: purple, maggot infested mash and stale, mould-blighted bread being the highlights of the traitor’s menu. Before that, he’d dealt with months of bland, mass-prepared military food. The bunker’s well-stocked refrigerator and small, functional kitchen was...an indescribable species of transition.
Observing Yvonne going about her business, he also remembered his initial feelings of attraction. Her beautiful, silken brown hair and taught, muscular physique had, from the outset, drawn his eye. Her seemingly timid behaviour had been disarming. He could still feel those feelings he’d felt...lingering like the half-remembered memory of a delicious – though deceptive – scent that had quickly turned bitter as it carried past him on the wind.
At that point, of course, he hadn’t even been sure who she was, or what line of work she was in. While, during his time with the IDF, Dio had learned to recognise specialists with an impressive level of accuracy, Yvonne’s attempts to mask her origins had been, if not entirely successful...then successful enough, at least, to misdirect Dio. He’d even – and he felt a creeping...crawling discomfort begin to make itself known in the pit of his stomach as he recalled it – misinterpreted certain unconscious, reflexive behaviours on her part, as parlour tricks. Like...relating to this particular case...her ability to mask the sound of her footsteps by effortlessly keeping time with his own; mimicking the speed and rhythm of his footfalls.
It was the day when – playfully – he’d fallen in line behind Yvonne as she lugged a box from one room to another; trying to replicate the ‘trick’. The image zoomed in closer; smoothly drawing in to view what was about to happen from in close and side on. The image and sound were perfect. The panorama was disturbingly, painfully lifelike.
Dio wished he could shut his eyes. But he didn’t seem to have any eyes to shut. Failing to recognise her actions for what they were – subconscious tendency; more muscle-memory and instinct than anything remotely purposeful – had been a significant error on Dio’s part.
One step...two steps...and already, she’d detected his presence, dropped the box, and whirled around. Her heel had found the box she’d been carrying, slamming it back and down the hall behind her with a frightening amount of ease. Dio remembered realising how heavy the box would have been. He’d known that, even preparing and from front-on, all he would have achieved by kicking it would’ve been laughter from Yvonne, and an hour or so holding a T-shirt with some ice in it to his throbbing, swollen foot. But – at the time – he hadn’t had the luxury of considering that aspect of her reaction in detail. As it turned out, there were more pressing considerations.
The response, overall, had clearly been reflexive. Even as it was happening, Dio had realised that this was the case. As the storm of whirling, chocolate-brown-brunette-hair subsided, Dio had found himself staring into twin vortices of freezing, empty, oblivion. He had never seen anything like it. He never, ever wanted to see anything like it again.
Yvonne’s face was ashen. Her nostrils were ever-so-slightly flared. Her fingers and hands were raised and slightly cupped. He could tell without looking down – too stunned to shift his eyes from hers – that her knees were slightly bent. There was nothing – nothing at all – that reassured or comforted him about her stance, despite the way in which it made appear slightly shorter – relative to himself – than she otherwise would have. As they stood there, he’d realised that she was shaking. For a second, he’d believed that it might have been because he had provoked some terrible memory in her; that he had called something forth, which had left her paralysed by its strength. He had realised, almost immediately after, that this was far from the case.
Now...Dio had never been particularly good at Krav Maga. He was adequate, as was required – he was, after all, in the IDF – but he was adequate: at best. He’d always lagged behind, partially because he lacked enthusiasm and follow-through – but, more than that – because he lacked the ability to commit to the idea that, one day, he might need to actually apply the skills that he was learning. Even to save his own life, he was fundamentally aware that he would falter; that he would, in fact – not as a conscious decision, but no less actually for it – rather die.
But still: he knew enough to know what he saw that day. And what he saw, in Yvonne and in her reaction – based specifically and solely on what he knew from his training – was a woman that could murder him where he stood...using nothing but her hands...and who, if she wasn’t holding herself back from following her training; instincts; and reflexes with everything she had in her...would have already managed to get most of the way there, in about the same amount of time as it had taken her to drop...and kick...a box.
More to the point: the emptiness – the deep, dark, sucking blackness – of her pupils seemed to be telling him that she’d done it before. Many...times.
“Lech tizdayen, Dio” he could barely make out the words – ‘fuck off, Dio’ – as they hissed out from between Yvonne’s tightly closed lips. She almost hummed them: those warning words. Dio hadn’t expected it; wasn’t sure what to make of it. Even when they first met...Yvonne had spoken perfect – if, at that point, heavily accented – English. As a rule. She opened her mouth...just a tiny fraction: “Lech...mipo...Dio.” She whispered: ‘go...away...Dio’.
“Ani lo mevin...” Dio responded: ‘I don’t understand’.
“Lech...mipo. Azov oti be-sheket...” She said slowly, enunciating the words: ‘go...away. Leave me alone...’, with extreme precision and nodding her head – ever so slightly – with each syllable...as if coherent speech was, in her current state, an extremely difficult task. One which, it seemed, needed to be undertaken manually.
“Mitzta’er...” Dio murmured: ‘Sorry...’.
>
“Bevekshah...” Yvonne whispered: ‘Please...’.
“At beseder?” Dio asked: ‘Are you okay?’.
“Lo. Lech mipo. Ata mevin, Dio?” She almost pleaded: ‘No. Go away. Do you understand, Dio?” He nodded slowly...backing away from her slowly until he was at the door to his room. He slunk inside.
§§§
Dio watched himself – the image transitioning – walk into his room and collapse onto the thin mattress of his poorly sprung bed. He saw his eyes close and his lips squeeze together in pained uncertainty as the distant sounds of objects smashing echoed through the bunker. He remembered. Vividly. The screams...and the crunch of drywall under powerful fists, particularly. But Dio already knew every detail, here: by the morning after, there wouldn’t be a trace of any of the damage. The Organisation had taken care of everything; just as they would, several more times before the day that Wright came to take them to Palatine Hill. Silently. Invisibly. Without a word. Almost like they’d known. Like it had been expected: planned for. Watching himself cringe, Dio realised that, if the latter weren’t true...the former certainly was. He watched himself – as time sped up; spanning hours in little more than a blink – barely even move. He’d been shell-shocked.
Time slowed back down.
The door to his room slowly creaked open.
The scene he observed – the angle he observed it from, more critically – was looking down on them, from the corner of that room. He couldn’t quite make out his own face. As Yvonne drew closer, he realised that – a first mercy – he couldn’t see her bloody, crudely bandaged fists. He still saw his own reaction to them, though. He watched as he began to shake. He watched himself remembering the white room...and then – involuntarily – unable to stop himself, beginning to cry; turning away from Yvonne with shame in his heart. He recalled that it hadn’t been so much the idea of her seeing him cry...as the idea of what he was crying over – and that reaction being seen by anyone – that made his heart ache in the way that it did.
Abyss (Songs of Megiddo) Page 11