“We can stay with Emily,” says Jon.
“Who’s Emily?”
“Perhaps the only person we can trust right now.”
“I’ll take your word for it. And what next?”
“I don’t know. I don’t care. I need to rest.” Edward looks at One Eye and they exchange half a glance. Jon has spent most of the time since the escape sleeping and yet he stills has black rings under his eyes. Edward didn’t know him before now but he doubts any human should be like this.
“Ok, we can go to Emily then,” says Edward. “Where does she live?”
“In the city. Right next to the ghost of the little girl and her dad the kidnapper,” says Jon.
“I know that ghost,” says Edward. One Eye nods.
They hide in another warehouse during the day and leave after the sun goes down, keeping to the back streets, not taking the steam train in case they’re being watched. The three of them make a motley crew and whenever they get near the general population, Jon immediately creates one of his illusions. They’re just three people on their way somewhere else, nothing more.
Chapter 21
Now
Candy. My daughter Candy. Just need the teleporter to work. Just need to get her and then we can go anywhere. The cops will never find us. We’ll be happy. So happy. I’ll tell her how beautiful her mom was and I’ll tell her she’s just as beautiful. I’ll keep her safe. I’ll tell her everything I know about the world, every poem, every joke, every place I’ve ever heard about and we can be happy. We will eat sugar and grapefruit, she loves sugar and grapefruit. I will make her pray before each meal, her mother would’ve liked that. There she is. Pick her up. Cops. Cops. Cops. My shoulder. My shoulder on fire. Gunshot. Must protect Candy. Doesn’t matter if I die. Must protect Candy. Get her through the teleporter. Candy. My daughter Candy. Just need the teleporter to work. Just need to get her and then we can go anywhere. The cops will never find us.
She, miles away, still has bright blue eyes that sparkle in the haze of the dying sun above. She works in an algae farm now with other The End orphans. It’s all she’s ever known since The End. She’s barefoot and her feet are cracked and tough from running through the fields and working on the old copper machines that process the algae, that bubble steam through the green soupy vats, which are then harvested and transmuted into a variety of different meals that are then beamed to the MicroPVRs of the people lucky enough to live in NewLand.
A plane flies overhead then touches down at the abandoned airfield. It’s the commercial flight. The last running plane on the planet. She hasn’t seen an airplane in years. When she last saw one, it was during one of the wars, during the chaos of one of the exoduses from the forgotten place she’s now in. One of the imperial captains of the United Government smashed his wedding implant against the wrist of his orphaned, peasant-girl lover, instantly binding them, which allowed her onto the departing plane to escape this hell.
She’d felt so much envy when that happened; but now, some part of her she thought long gone sparkles and fades inside. It feels like hope but only just.
Chapter 22
Now
A son falls asleep in his dying father’s arms and the last thing he sees before he closes his eyes is a tattoo of a heart with his mother’s name written across it.
“Give us your credits fools, and you might make it out of this alive,” says the little one. The three thugs think they can take the three strangers with hoods pulled low, especially looking at Jon. Thin, weak Jon. Jon knows this pattern. He’s seen it all his life. He’s so weak, Edward is holding him now. He needs Sadness. He needs Michelle. He needs Emily. He doesn’t need this.
“You’re making a mistake. You should leave,” says Jon. Edward growls under his breath and one of the big ones takes a step towards Jon. One Eye, on the other hand, explodes.
His body arcs through the air and seems to escape time for a second, like a frozen glint of light off a distant sword. And then his body comes crashing down into the thugs towering over Jon. For a moment things are still as the thugs try to work out what the black, lithe shadow in front of them is. One of the big ones opens his mouth for a second, managing only a guttural choking noise instead of the “get him!” he intends, as a blade secreted somewhere in the shadow before him finds his throat. The other big one has a Charge Club™ and he swings it, sparks shooting from it in pulses, at where the shadow is supposed to be but isn’t. He hits only air. The shadow raises his foot as he steps and kicks the Charge Club™ along, adding momentum to its swing and making it smash, sickeningly, into the jaw of the thug next to him. The shadow dips and rises once again and before he knows it, the thug with the Charge Club™ dies, a sharp pain behind his neck the only clue as to why or how.
Now only the little one remains. Eyes wide and no big ones left, he flees, leaving the dead bodies and the three strangers behind.
“Run,” breathes Edward under his hood, holding Jon. And they do, Edward helping Jon every step of the way.
“Stop, please fucking stop,” Jon says, several city blocks later, collapsing against Edward. Edward looks up; Jon’s fallen against a make-shift cafe made out of old corrugated iron. An old, bent-over man with a thick mop of grey hair comes up to them and waves his hand at them to beckon them.
“Come inside, please, you must be hungry.” Edward looks at Jon and he nods. Something, besides the fact that he’s being so friendly to three out of breath strangers, doesn’t seem quite right about the old man but Jon can’t pin it down.
The old man seats them at the lone table inside and gives them all menus. Jon hasn’t seen a menu in ten years. All his food just comes out of the MicroPVR. He tries to focus on it. It feels so alien, to be looking at a menu now and for some reason, he welcomes it. It’s a part of a world long gone. Edward and One Eye are scanning the outside door for more thugs or Peace Patrols but slowly they relax.
“I haven’t thought about food in ages,” says Edward.
“I didn’t even know you ate food. I though you just lived off sunlight,” says Jon, only half joking.
“No, I can do that if I want to but I enjoy eating. It reminds me of what I was like before.” Edward looks away at something not visible to the rest of them before carrying on, “I used to eat everything: pizzas, hamburgers, spaghetti, even salads although for some reason that seems a bit wrong these days.” Jon manages a laugh. The old man comes back to their table.
“Do you know what you want?”
“Yes,” Jon points at the lasagna on the menu. The old man doesn’t react. That’s what’s wrong, thinks Jon. He’s blind. No wonder he’s serving them. No one would normally serve a half-ent or a silencer.
“I’ll have the lasagna,” says Jon.
“As will we,” says Edward. He looks across at One Eye and One Eye nods.
“Excellent,” says the old man and he takes their menus. He returns a minute later with three bowls of soup.
“This isn’t what we asked for,” says Jon. He doesn’t want to upset the old man but maybe he’s just made a mistake.
“I know. You wanted lasagna. But I don’t have lasagna. I just have soup. I just wanted to know what you wanted, in case it was soup,” says the old man.
“What kind of soup is it?” asks Edward.
“It’s just soup,” says the old man.
“It doesn’t have a name?” asks Edward.
“Do you?” asks the old man with a smile on his face.
“Thank you,” says Jon, interrupting quickly. He and Edward look at each other and Edward starts laughing softly to himself behind his hand. Jon finds himself struggling to contain his own laughter. Suddenly, One Eye’s hand shoots out and grabs his wrist. Jon looks at him. One Eye is scrawling on the table with his knife.
You must remember this feeling, Jon.
“What feeling?”
The feeling of being happy. It doesn’t happen often but when it does, you must grab it with both hands and hold it close. Let it overwhe
lm you. Don’t over-analyse any emotion. But remember it. Always remember it.
Edward looks over at what One Eye has written and asks the question both Jon and he have had on their minds.
“Who are you, One Eye?” One Eye slowly returns his knife to the table and starts carving out words.
Just a man who made a mistake. And like all mistakes, it must be paid for. My servitude is that payment.
Jon and Edward don’t say anymore and they finish their soup together in silence, only broken by Edward’s occasionally slurping.
“Let’s go,” says Edward after they’re done and they get up to leave.
“How much do we owe you?” asks Jon to the old man, who gets up to see them out the door.
“Nothing,” says the old man. “I feed anyone who comes here.” It’s strange that while this man seems happy, Jon thinks, he doesn’t seem to have the chemically induced grin and haze across his eyes common to the rest of the population.
“Thank you. I must ask one more thing of you,” says Jon.
“Yes?”
“You must tell no one we were here.”
“I know.”
“You know?”
“I know who you and your half-ent and your silencer friend are. I don’t know your names or what you’ve done but I know you’re good people and that’s enough. I am not as blind as I look. And I can still feel things. Even here, in the dark.” He suddenly reaches out and grabs Jon’s hand, holding it tightly and his blind eyes seem to stare into Jon’s soul.
“The point is to remember. You should listen to your mute friend. This is all a dream. You will come this way again.” The voice doesn’t sound like it belongs to him.
Jon backs away slowly and they leave the strange shop. Jon is too tired to question the old man’s words.
They carry on. When they finally get to Emily’s house, Jon slams his hands on the front door. They’re answered only by silence and a distant neighbour yelling at them to shut up.
“Emily,” says Jon against the door.
“No one’s inside,” says Edward looking through one of the windows. Below them, the ghost of the little girl and her father the kidnapper are shot at, again and again, by the same police as always. Nothing changes.
“She must be at the club,” says Jon. He stumbles and holds himself up against the side of the building, growing weak. The soup helped but he needs his Sadness.
“What club?”
“Cabaret du Néant,” says Jon.
“That’s not a club, that’s a front for Duer and his drug money,” says Edward, spitting on the ground.
“I guess everyone really does know,” says Jon.
“It’s the worst kept secret ever, I think even the fleas know,” says Edward. One Eye hangs back from the conversation.
“Let’s go,” says Jon.
“Go to Cabaret du Néant? You think we’re going to find safe haven there?” asks Edward.
“I don’t know, Edward, but maybe they’ll let me sleep,” says Jon, snapping just a little.
“Fine. Let’s go,” says Edward, brushing off Jon’s increasingly strange behavior, and they head off into the shadows of the city.
Chapter 23
Now
I’m sorry, Jon. I thought we were doing the right thing. I can feel the blackness coming. I can feel the shadows crawling up and out of my skin. I know I’m killing the world and I’m sorry. I can feel my body dying. I think of the things that protect you, Jon. I think of the oak tree and your comic books. I think of the things that protect you as I die. I’m so sorry. I will always love you. I will always love you. I will.…
“Where’s Emily?” asks Jon, and Barnston wakes with a start, nearly falling off his stool and sending his top hat tumbling. The barman looks up from the glasses he’s polishing and he eyes Jon up and down. Then he does the same to Jon’s friends. It’s late afternoon and the Cabaret hasn’t opened yet but the doors still recognised Jon’s biometrics and they let him in, even without his wrist implant.
“You haven’t shown up for a performance in days and then you just appear, out of the blue, asking questions you expect me to answer?” says Barnston. “How about you answer some of my questions first?”
Jon’s barely hanging on to consciousness, his mind is reeling and his muscles ache with every breath he takes.
“Just tell me where Emily is, Barnston,” says Jon, again, this time a little more forcefully. Edward pulls back his hood and un-hunches his shoulders, rustling his leaves and giving Barnston and the barman an idea of just how big he really is. The club has half-ent bouncers of its own but none of them are at work yet. The barman looks at Edward, then at Jon and then slowly his gaze falls on One Eye, standing at the back. He shrugs. None of it really matters to him.
Barnston sighs, puts his head in his hands and speaks through his fingers, “Fuck it, I’ve got bigger acts than you. She’s in the back with Duer. She owes him money so I’d be careful what you say in there, he’s not in the best of moods.”
Before he’s even finished talking, Jon is making his way to the back where Duer keeps court with the Geisslerlieder, his clan, and personal army: the ones who control the flow of Sadness through the city.
He throws open the door marked Staff Only and on a makeshift wooden throne, a man with long curly black hair looks up, surprised at the disturbance. The packed room of thugs, assassins, and thieves looks at Jon and his friends.
“I’m already killing one person today, I can easily make it four. Tell me who you are so that my assistants know what to write on your gravestone,” says who, Jon assumes, must be Duer.
“I’m Jon, this is Edward and One Eye,” says Jon as the others fill the room.
“Really? That’s fascinating. I do know who you are then. Mainly because of that,” says Duer, pointing towards the edge of the dark hall. Jon’s eyes have been adjusting to the light but things have gotten clearer. A naked, bald and pale man covered in tattoos of 1s and 0s from head to toe is lying up against a wall, quite dead, disemboweled and quartered, violently.
“Jesus,” says Edward looking over Jon’s shoulder.
“No, we believe his name was Gerald. Or at least that was one of the words he screamed before he died,” says Duer.
“What’s he got to do with us?” asks Jon.
“Besides the fact you might die in a similar manner? This man was one of the United Government’s new universal messengers and he was carrying a message about you.”
“What’s a universal messenger?” asks Edward.
“You are an inquisitive shrub. The theory goes that if you want to transmit an absolutely ridiculous amount of data and be absolutely sure no one’s going intercept it, you use one of these guys. He is, or at least was, a human flash drive.”
“That’s ridiculous, there’s no way those 1s and 0s tattooed on him could hold more than a few kilobytes of data,” say Jon.
“You are correct and an idiot at the same time, which is a strange combination. The 1s and 0s are merely the encryption method, the password if you will. The data is encoded into his DNA itself.”
“How do you get the password?” asks Edward.
Duer grins like a Cheshire cat. “Well, there’s the easy way and the hard way. The easy way is if you’re the person the data is intended for, the messenger simply willingly steps into a specially designed photo booth, naked, and is then photographed. The 1s and 0s are collated and entered as a password, a piece of hair or a drop of spit or whatever contains his DNA is taken from the messenger and the information is extracted. The messenger goes home and has a nice cup of tea. Then there’s the hard way. The hard way is five of my boys drop down off the roof into a dark alley the messenger happens to be walking through and they beat the ever-loving fuck out of him, without tearing his skin or damaging any of the tattoos. Then the messenger, unwillingly, is divided up into pieces and his entire body is photographed individually. The code on his body is then written down into one long password and we take wha
tever’s left of him to make a DNA sample. We extract the information from that sample and then enter the password. Simple really,” says Duer, cleaning his nails while he explains this.
“I still don’t understand what this has to do with us,” says Jon.
“This is what his DNA contained,” says Duer and he motions with his hand at one of his lackeys, who pushes play on a holo-projector.
The room is suddenly filled with objects with writing on them—diaries, guitars, screenshots, rocks, photographs—and in the centre of all this are three-dimensional representations of Jon, One Eye and Edward.
“I know you’re important gentlemen, especially if you’re important to the government, I just don’t know why yet,” says Duer.
Jon pays special attention to the fact that the room is filled with Duer’s thugs and pushers. He has no doubt that the three of them could probably take them all on but he still doesn’t know where Emily is and he suddenly feels their roles reverse. He came here so she could save him. Now, he’ll have to save her.
“I’ve got news that may impact not just your little gang of thugs here, Duer, but perhaps the entire world. The United Government wants to make The End happen, again.”
Duer looks up and a silence falls over those assembled in his back alley throne room.
“What do you mean? My parents died in The End. I would advise not lying to me or messing me around on this one,” says Duer and his feigned disinterest is replaced by a hint of steel in his voice.
“I’m not. I can tell you what they’re planning but first we need to see Emily,” says Jon.
“Emily? That little whore owes me more money than she can count,” says Duer and Jon has to stop himself from using the last of his fading energy to charge the throne.
A thought suddenly strikes Jon. It almost kills him. He hasn’t paid Emily for the Sadness she’s been feeding him for months now. She’s never brought it up. There’s every chance he’s the reason she’s in this mess. The thought is cold and hard and slices through the mush that Jon’s brain has become in its withdrawn state.
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