Everything Falls Apart

by Micah B. Edwards

  We're escorted back to Peterson's office area, where he looks somehow even less happy to see me than usual. He waves to the chairs and we sit down. Peterson leans forward, folding one hand over the fist of the other, and stares me in the eye.

  “Mr. Everton. I want your solemn promise that you will work with the police on this.”

  “On what? I mean, absolutely, but on what?”

  “Rossum Medical Supply owns a number of properties around town. Five, to be specific, including the Rossum storefront you've been to.”

  I practically jump out of my chair. “Okay, awesome! Let's go!”

  Peterson motions to the chair, a look of mild disappointment on his face. “Stick with me on this, please. First of all: we do not have warrants, or any way of obtaining them whatsoever. 'My friend's superpowers drove him crazy' is a tabloid headline, not a convincing argument for a judge.

  “Second of all: we do not have the manpower to go check out more than one place at a time. And going to any one of them might alert your Dr. Amun that we're on to him.”

  “Oh, so you do think he's tracking me?” I ask.

  Peterson looks surprised. “Actually, I meant that an employee at any one of them might call him after we'd stopped by.”

  “Oh. Sure, yeah.”

  “Regardless,” Peterson resumes, “the point is that we can't just pick one at random and go to it. We need to do some reconnaissance, online and in person, to figure out the best order, the best time and the best method to go and gather information.

  “Once we've learned as much as we can, we'll try to narrow down which one is most likely to yield a cause for a warrant. Part of the problem is that a lot of what he's doing here probably isn't visibly illegal. But if we can find zoning infractions, mishandled animals, anything – even neighbor complaints of loud noises – we can parlay that into taking a look around. Possibly he'll tip his hand, or maybe we'll get very lucky and we'll find something solid to pin on him.”

  “All right, sounds like a plan,” I say. “So when are we doing this?”

  “We're aiming for tomorrow,” says Peterson.

  “Tomorrow?” I yelp. Beside me, Regina makes a startled sound as well.

  Peterson sighs. “As much as I would love to yell 'Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead!', that is not the way things actually get done. We'll finish doing our research today, get the broad overview and go in tomorrow.”

  “So what are we supposed to do today?”

  “Rest, I'd suggest. I hear that your friend has been contained, and since I did not have to hear it on the police scanner, I am happy with exactly that level of detail. It does not look like it was an easy morning for either one of you. Go home, rest, and come back here tomorrow at seven AM. We'll sort it out then.”

  I'm not satisfied with this plan. “You don't know this guy. He could already be planning something else. What's to stop me from just going to these five places today and finding him myself?”

  “Aside from the fact that you gave me your word that you wouldn't, Mr. Everton? I haven't told you any of the addresses.”

  “I – hm.” He's got me there. “Anyway, I was just asking.”

  “And I'm just asking you to wait until tomorrow morning. I'll see you then.”

  Peterson stares me down again as I reluctantly stand up to leave.

  “Look,” I tell him, “honestly, I know you're doing a good job here. I'm sorry. I'll see you tomorrow morning.”

  “I look forward to it,” he says, shaking my hand.

  As Regina and I walk back to our respective cars, she asks me, “So are you really just going to wait until tomorrow morning?”

  “Not if I can help it,” I say determinedly.

  Despite my bold words, though, I realize on the drive home that I have absolutely no idea what I can do without those addresses. I still don't have a real name for Ichabot, I don't know where he is, and I don't know what he's planning. This leaves me at something of a loose end.

  This is ordinarily the point where I'd bounce ideas off of Brian. With him out of commission, I feel like I'm missing half of my reasoning capability. I try to remember how I used to solve problems before I met him, but unfortunately the answer there is: basically, I didn't. I took the path of least resistance and coasted along doing as little as I possibly could. Prior to all of this, if someone had told me to come back at seven AM the next day to hear what their solution was, my only complaint would have been about being awake at seven AM.

  Now, though, I am a man of action. I go boldly forward, doing what my gut tells me to do.

  “So, gut, what shall we do?” I say out loud.

  My stomach responds with a gurgle, telling me that what we do is go get something to eat before it gnaws its way out through my abdomen. This'll be my third meal of the day and it's barely past lunchtime, but accelerated healing demands accelerated caloric intake.

  My stomach says Indian food, but the open wound in my cheek says “no spices.” I compromise on Mediterranean and pick up a falafel wrap from a street cart. It's freshly made, warm and delicious, and I consume the entire thing in an embarrassingly short period of time.

  I'm just finishing up and licking the hummus from my fingers when my phone rings. I fumble it out of my pocket to see that it's Doc Simmons calling, so I subject my screen to a faint smear of hummus and answer the call.

  “What's –” shoot, I already did that joke “– going on?”

  “Do I even need to keep Brian sedated?”

  “What? I don't know, you're the doctor. If you think he'll be under control without it, then go for it.”

  “No, Dan.” The doc sighs in the manner that means “I have to explain this to an idiot.” ”I'm not asking your opinion on whether he can keep his emotions in check. I'm asking whether he still needs to.”

  There's a pause while I try desperately to think of a way to ask a clarifying question that doesn't make me sound dumb. I haven't come up with one before the doc takes pity on me and asks the question more directly.

  “Does he still have his powers, Dan? Which is to say, do you?”

  “Oh! Yeah, I'm pretty sure.” I focus on the tin foil wrap in my hand and allow myself to loathe it. It shrivels and vanishes. “Yeah, definitely.”

  “Why?”

  “I don't know, I usually have them until I defeat...huh.”

  The doc makes an excellent point. Traditionally, my powers fade – or are revoked, or whatever – immediately upon the defeat of my nemesis, in whatever form that takes. Outfighting, outthinking, outmaneuvering, anything like that.

  But I handed Brian a pretty solid loss at Stonefield. I took my lumps, sure, but in the end he was passed out, bundled off and neutralized. So by all logic, the nanos should have powered down while I was still in the mall, watching Brian sleep under a pile of chairs.

  And since mine are still active, something's not done here.

  “What does this mean, Doc?”

  “Well, the obvious answer is that you haven't won yet.”

  “Oh, come on. We bagged him and tagged him. What else is there to do?”

  The doc's silence hangs heavy in the air, and I find myself shaking my head at the phone.

  “No. No way. Not happening.”

  “I'm not suggesting you should, Dan. But if your Dr. A wants things to end with one or the other of you disintegrating each other, waking Brian back up could be very dangerous. For him and for you.”

  “So what do you want to do? Just keep him drugged unconscious?”

  “No, not unless I have to. I intend to wake him up while still under medication to keep him docile. I'll make further judgment calls from there.”

  She sighs, this time in resignation. “Honestly, I'd really hoped that you'd lost your powers again and just hadn't noticed amidst all the excitement.”

  “Sorry, Doc. I'm clueless, but I'm not that clueless.”

  “Not in this particular instance, unfortunately.”

  “Hey!”

&nb
sp; “As ever, Dan, when you can show me that I'm wrong I'll apologize for making statements that have offended you.” She says this with humor in her voice, not meanness. So fine, if mocking me helps her deal with this whole situation, I can let it pass.

  “Take care of Brian, yeah? I've got a bead on Ichabot. We'll see if this whole thing can't get wrapped up tomorrow.”

  “Dan,” says Simmons, all levity gone from her voice, “be careful. Be extremely careful. This man is brilliant, unscrupulous and determined. He's almost certainly still at least one step ahead of you, no matter what you think.

  “Remember you have help. Make a plan, involve your friends, and don't go in alone.”

  “Yeah, yeah,” I say. “You sound just like Peterson. 'Don't rush into the lab until you have backup. Stick to the plan.'“

  “You found his lab?” asks the doc. “Where is it?”

  “I don't know. Peterson won't tell me until he's ready to go in,” I complain.

  “Good,” says the doc, sounding relieved. “I knew he seemed like a smart man.”

  “Sure, ha ha, make fun of Dan. Just go take care of Brian, okay?”

  “Don't teach grandma how to suck eggs,” says Simmons, and hangs up the phone before I can ask her what that's supposed to mean.

  I check my phone clock. It's still barely one PM. Seven AM never seemed so far away. I've got to find something to do with myself for the rest of the day, or I'm going to go crazy stressing about what tomorrow might look like.

  Netflix is no good for burning off nervous energy, but lifting weights is. I haul my bench and weights out of the closet and load up the bar. There's no particularly good place to store the weights in my house, so half of each session is spent just moving the weights to where they need to be. I thought about getting a gym membership instead, but thanks to the nanos, I can lift a fair bit more than my frame would indicate, and I don't really want people gawking. Anyway, this way I can pick what I want on TV.

  After setting everything up and starting up the reps, though, I realize that I'm in the wrong frame of mind for this. Usually focusing on the weights lets me block everything else out, but today it's just giving my mind free rein to run through worst case scenarios. I can't shake the doc's suggestion that I might have to fight Brian until one of us drops for good. I add on more weights, heavier and heavier, but can't drive away the image of me, bloodied and feral, pressing my hand against Brian's face while his flesh dissolves underneath it.

  “Never!” I grunt, pressing the bar towards the ceiling. “I won't! I'll beat you!”

  But will I? Doc Simmons thinks I'm underestimating Ichabot, and she's probably right; she usually is. So if I want to beat him, I've got to change the game.

  Okay. So what will he be expecting? I suppose that to answer that, I should just think like myself. I can do that! Once again, we're playing to my strengths. This is a good new habit.

  So, what's my automatic instinct? Hit him hard, as soon as possible. Kick down the front door and come in guns blazing. Go solo so that there's no chance of anyone else getting hurt. Subdue him without killing him.

  Assuming Doc Simmons is right, he'll be expecting every bit of that. Meaning he's already holed up in his lair, traps set at the front door, just waiting for me to barge in and set them off.

  Laid out in black and white like that, that sounds like a distressingly realistic scenario.

  What can I change, then? I can't fix the part where he's ready for me. It's tempting to tell myself that he isn't quite set yet, and that if I track him down tonight, I might be able to steal a march on him. But since that's the sort of thing I'd think – and in fact, am thinking – I have to assume that Ichabot would have predicted it. I'm pretty sure that makes sense, but I'm thinking myself into a knot.

  What won't he be expecting? Patience. Backup. A fallback plan. Everything Peterson's putting in place, essentially. That doesn't leave much for me to do.

  Weights up. Weights down. Dwell on the problem.

  If Ichabot can out-think me, he can out-think Peterson. Maybe not, but safest to assume that. So Peterson's plans will also fail. Ichabot's ready for him, too. It'll be much the same as for me: wait for us to come to him, have traps set at the front door.

  Easiest way around that, of course, is to come in the back door. Assuming it's not locked, assuming it's not trapped. Assuming it exists.

  Weights up. Weights down. Dwell on the problem.

  Actually, this one seems pretty easy, once I get far enough outside the box. If I need a back door, I can just make one.

  So, tomorrow we go in with a hybrid plan. Peterson provides the addresses and the backup. I provide the surprise entrance point. And Ichabot provides the satisfying look of shock when we take him down and make him undo everything he's done.

  Weights down. I'm dripping with sweat, but my mind is clear and I feel good about what's to come. I'm out in front of this at last, and it feels good.

  - Chapter Twelve -

  An early bedtime, rising excitement and months of getting up before the sun all conspire to wake me at half past three in the morning. I briefly attempt to fall back asleep to wait for my alarm, but as soon as I close my eyes I can tell it's a lost cause.

  By 4:30, I've showered, dressed, made coffee and had breakfast. I take a shot at doing a crossword puzzle online, since it seems like the sort of thing that people do in the mornings when they have time to kill, but I can't stay focused on it. I skim through the news headlines, but nothing particularly catches my eye. I'm practically jittering, and I've still got over two hours to go until it's time to meet Peterson.

  I turn on the television and flip through the list of shows and movies in my queue, but nothing seems worthwhile. I take a half-hearted stab at watching a few of them anyway, but everything's either too vapid for me to care, too involved for my limited focus, or too badly acted to serve as a distraction. I check my phone every few minutes to see if it's nearing seven o'clock yet.

  By 5:45, I give up. If I'm just going to be sitting around anxiously anyway, I might as well do it down at the police station, on the off-chance that Peterson's there and interested in getting started early. I'm certainly not accomplishing anything here.

  About ten minutes later, I've parked at City Hall and am heading inside to the makeshift police station. Peterson, unfortunately, is not in yet, so I get directed to a chair in the small waiting area and left to cool my heels. I jiggle my feet and drum my fingers impatiently before pulling out my phone in search of a distraction. What did people do to waste time in waiting areas before smartphones?

  “So you're working with Peterson on this new thing, huh?” A voice pulls my attention away from my phone, and I look up to see the officer behind the desk addressing me. Oh, right, that's what people used to do – strike up conversations.

  “I mean, 'working with' is pretty strong, but yeah, he's letting me help out.”

  “Good for you. That's good for you. Have you been wanting to be a police officer long?”

  There's something in his voice that makes that sound slightly mocking, but it's early morning for me and probably the end of a long overnight shift for him, so I brush it off. “Hah, not me. I'm in construction.”

  “Yeah? How's that?”

  “You know, it's really satisfying. You go out there, work hard all day, and at the end of the day you feel tired and you can see progress.” The cop nods, so I continue. “I spent a lot of years in a job where nothing ever changed from day to day, so it's nice to be doing something where you get tangible results.”

  “Yeah. Yeah, I bet. So you're good at it, then?”

  “I like to think so, yeah.”

  “Nice. That's real nice. You know, Peterson used to be good at his job, too.”

  I freeze, unsure how to respond. “Sorry, what?”

  “Yeah, he used to be real good. He was good at seeing the truth behind things, had a real intuitive sense for it. But that was only half of it. Once he knew what the answer had to be, h
e'd dig for the evidence that'd prove it. And he was great, so great, a real Sherlock Holmes. He'd find clues everyone else missed, spot inconsistencies in testimonies and get guys to crumple. He was a champ.”

  “He is a champ. Why are you using the past tense?”

  “It's a sad story, real sad. He found this guy, right? Convinced he was tied up in something, some sort of gang thing or something. And so he started working the case, digging for answers, doing his whole usual thing.”

  “And what happened?”

  The policeman spreads his arms wide in a shrug. “Who knows? One day, he's chipping away at this case like always. Next day, suddenly he drops the whole thing. And fine, maybe he was just wrong for once, things didn't pan out, except he changes. Withdraws, gets real secretive. Starts passing off cases to other guys, saying he's working on something. Won't tell anyone what, though. And in the middle of it all, there's this guy, this maybe-gang guy, Dan Everton.”

  I narrow my eyes. “You think I'm ruining Peterson?”

  He makes a big show of looking down at the sign-in roster. “Oh, hey! That's you! What a coincidence. Small world, huh?

  “And yeah,” he continues, “I think you're wasting one of our best guys. I think you got in his head somehow, convinced him he was wrong about you, and now you've got his own intuition working against him. And it's sick.”

  “Man, where do you get off?” I demand. “Listen, Officer...?”

  “Williams.”

  “Williams, you ever hear of need-to-know basis? Ever think that maybe Peterson's not telling you what he's up to because it's not the sort of thing that ought to get out to everyone?”

  “Yeah, the 'need-to-know basis' is that I need to know that I can trust the guys I work with! If he can tell some thickneck construction worker, he can tell us. He can sure tell us! You think I want to be in some showdown with a methed-out arson freak like last year, and not know if the guy behind me has my back?”

  “I had your back there, moron!” I say. Probably not the best choice of words, but he's really managed to push my buttons. I'm on my feet now, and so is Williams. The two of us glare at each other from across the waiting room. “I dragged officers out of that fire. And now, I'm rebuilding the station. Where were you? What have you done?”