by K. C. Finn
The moment refuses to pass, and it is far greater than the pain from the chemicals before. Caecilius Rex cannot tear his eyes from her lifeless form.
“Now that’s what I call suffering,” Jack Lacroix observes.
17.
Jack kicks Caecilius’s chair until it swivels around. Cae moves limply with it, numb to the pain it drives into his back. Nothing seems real any more, and nothing can ever be right again.
“And now for you,” Jack says with a giggle in his tone. “Now that you’re destroyed on the inside, we’ll make the outside match.”
“What more can you do?” Cae says flatly. “Incinerate me, like you did to Brooks?” It doesn’t matter, because he feels like he’s already dead.
“Oh we have something much more grisly set up for the camera,” Jack replies.
The short man places the camera on a tripod that is pointed at the ceiling. Jack jumps down next to Cae, pulling his head up by his hair to make him look the same way.
“See your fate,” he whispers.
A revolving mass of fan-blades start to whirr above him, cutting through the air sharply. Then spin faster and faster three floors above the heads of those present, until they reach a deadly pace. Jack shakes a little bottle of powder into Cae’s face.
LIFT.
And now Cae knows what it does.
“It had to be here,” Jack explains. “For the architecture, you know.”
When Leroy shoves the powder into Cae’s mouth, he doesn’t struggle. There seems little point. Somebody releases Cae from his rope bonds and he falls to the floor, but does not land heavily.
And then, slowly but surely, he starts to rise into the air.
“The ascent’s a little slow,” Jack explains. “It’ll give you some time to think about how your foolishness killed your little friend here.”
The feeling is strange, like swimming without the water. And Cae only rises a centimetre or so at a time, so his body is hardly a foot off the ground when he sees the footsteps of the men exiting the room.
“I hope you don’t mind us not hanging around,” Jack says, crouching down to meet his eyes. “Only these suits are quite expensive. Don’t want what’s left of you spattered all over them. Blood stains are just murder to get out.”
And with that he leaves, and the door is closed.
Cae floats past the camera, but can think of nothing to say. Nobody will know how or why he died; he won’t even know whose plan it was to kill him in this brutal way. And the one person who might have avenged him sits dead in the same room.
And perhaps he could do something to resist the lifting force, find something to throw into the blades to jam them, before he gets too far away from the ground. But he doesn’t even try.
Caecilius Rex was about to die once before in his life. He thought he had been spared for a reason. Clearly he thought wrong.
Once he floats too far away to touch the ground, he knows the end will come. He closes his eyes, blocking the whirring blade noises from his ears. He thinks of Kendra’s little wink, and her stoicism, right to the end. He will honour her courage; he will not cry or fear.
It is time to accept the end.
Except that this is the moment when someone grabs his ankle. A shockwave runs through him as an enormous strength pulls him to the ground, trying to hold him against the drug’s effects.
The doors burst open again, but it is not Jack and his boys that enter. Panda Patrol swarm the room, and gunfire can be heard from outside the casino hall. The same young officer who reported on Brooks’ body grabs Cae’s shoulders and steadies him.
“Are you okay, detective?” He asks.
“Kendra,” Cae says in a broken sob. “Don’t leave her here. Don’t-‘
The young man nods. “She’s taken care of,” he says like it’s a simple matter. Cae wants to spit in his face for the lack of respect, but his head is starting to spin from all the emotions he’s been through.
The hand on his ankle is strong and steady, but he can’t turn his head to see the owner. In fact, he starts not to be able to see much at all, and though he can still feel the pull of the anti-gravity force upon him, his body feels heavy with exhaustion and pain.
“Try to stay awake, sir,” says the young cop. “Try to stay conscious. Your body’s been through a lot, but you need to stay with me.”
But Cae doesn’t agree. Everything inside him is shutting down. Shock, fatigue and pain are taking over, and once again he wants it to end. The pull on his body between the drug pushing him up and the hands holding him down is too much to bear. He doesn’t want to live it.
He shuts his eyes against the young officer’s pleas. He can hear the sirens of an ambulance; hear the patter of feet coming towards him. They strap him into a gurney, and he flickers in and out of consciousness as he is moved. Sometimes he feels like he is floating up again, but then in another moment he is heavy once more.
But one thing stays the same. Someone is holding his hand.
He can feel it through his leather glove, the strong grip of someone checking on him, in case he actually goes completely limp. He squeezes their fingers when he can, to let them know that he’s still there. They squeeze back.
And for a brief and stupid moment, Cae imagines that he knows who they are.
18.
When Caecilius Rex next awakes, he is lying flat on his back in a hospital bed. He feels like he’s been under the influence of some heavy drugs, and when he tries to lift his head the first time, a horrifying pain shoots through his skull.
He moans quietly to himself, and the sudden shuffle of footsteps tells him he was not alone when he awoke. He sees someone in plastic shoes rush out of the room from the corner of his eye. The door swings on its hinge, creaking. Just as it starts to slow down again, another person opens it. Cae recognises the shoes.
“You’re a damn reckless fool,” says Damian Jobe as he comes to the bedside of his number one detective.
“Howdy chief,” Cae replies, surprised to find his voice is even croakier than usual.
Jobe sits down in a chair right next to Cae’s face, his expression pained and deep. “Why the hell didn’t you tell anyone where you were going?” He asks.
“Because I didn’t even know where I was going, until I got there,” he explains.
The chief sighs, and lightly puts his hand to Cae’s brow for a moment. The young detective tries to turn his head to see Damian better, but the chief pushes his head back gently.
“Stop moving,” he says quietly. “You’ll hurt yourself.”
Cae does as he is told.
“Did you get the video camera?” Cae asks suddenly as the question pops into his head.
“Oh yes,” Damian replies. “I watched it all yesterday. Sick freaks.”
“Yesterday?” Cae repeats. “How long have I been out?”
“We induced a little coma to let you heal,” the chief explains. “You’ve been feeding off a drip for three days.”
Cae tries to process the information, but new ideas keep pushing to the front of his mind. He feels strangle impulses, like he wants to leap out of the bed, but his body doesn’t seem to let him do anything but think.
“Did you catch them?” Cae asks, his mind flooding with questions again. “Did you interrogate? Who are they working for?”
“Shhh now,” says the chief. “Don’t heat up that brain of yours when you’re in such a state. I want you off this case; you’re clearly too involved.”
“But I know things!” Cae says. The tone is too loud for his fragile throat, and his vocal chords crack again under the strain. “I found the Atomic Circus. The stuff going on there, I need to tell you.”
“And you can,” Damian answers. “And you will in time.”
He puts his hand on the young man’s forehead again, finding that he is clammy, and colder than before. Damian Jobe’s usually hard eyes run softly over the weakened form before him.
“You can tell me everything when you’re
well again,” says the chief. “Just rest now, Rex.”
He rises from his chair, and Cae cranes his neck to see him leaving the room. He can just see his form from the corner of his eye as Damian is about to go.
“I’m sorry,” says Cae in a small voice.
“For what lad?” Asks Jobe.
“Well, I failed. You didn’t get what you wanted,” he explains.
Damian pauses for a moment. “No,” he muses. “Not yet. Don’t worry about it now, Rex. I’ll think of something else.”
Cae drops his head exhaustedly back onto the pillow as he hears the creaky door start to swing open. A nurse says something in a high, admonishing sort of tone, and then Cae hears the chief of police speaking as clear as a bell.
“You’re right,” he begins. “He’s not ready for more visitors.”
19.
Cae spends the next few hours drifting in and out of an uncomfortable sleep. Horrific dreams invade his mind, visions of what he has seen coming back to haunt him. Dreams of deaths that have been, and those that were to follow.
The next time he wakes he intends to stay awake, and he props himself up a few more inches on his pillow. Though his mind is still addled and largely absent from his actions, Caecilius Rex can almost say that he feels a little better. Until he remembers the ordeal that he’s recovering from.
The nurse with the plastic shoes comes squeaking into the room as soon as he’s awake, checking his monitors and his IV drip. Cae is certain she must be watching him from outside when he is sleeping. She smiles at him and shows her gums and huge teeth.
“Do you think you might be ready for another visitor, Mr Rex?” She asks.
“I don’t give a damn if he’s ready. I’m not waiting any longer.”
The voice shoots into Caecilius and makes him feel sick, but at the same time a huge burst of adrenalin hits his brain. He struggles to sit up more, but finds he is tucked in with tight hospital corners.
She has to come closer. Because it can’t be. It shouldn’t be.
“Now don’t freak out on me, Cae.”
And yet it is.
“Kendra?”
“The one and only,” she says as she throws herself gracelessly into the chair beside him. “As far as I know anyway. After seeing that circus place, I’m starting to think anything is possible.”
Cae’s mind can’t process what’s happening. He’s in shock all over again. The plastic-shoed nurse checks his stats again, smiles at Kendra and leaves. So the nurse can see her too. Which must mean that she’s here.
“Was it a dream?” Cae asks.
Kendra shakes her head. “No it was real alright. Painfully real.”
“Then is this a dream?” He challenges. “This right now?”
She considers this for a moment. “Sorry, don’t think so,” she says.
Cae furrows his brow at her.
“Are you dead?” He asks gingerly.
“Nope,” she replies.
“Am I dead?” He attempts, quickly running out of possible explanations.
“Nope,” she says again, this time with an uneven smirk falling onto her lips.
Cae looks at her, his mouth falling open and touching the place where the blanket is up to his chin. He wriggles against the hospital corners, and Kendra loosens his sheet on her side.
“Shall I just tell you?” She says. He just nods. “Those powders…they didn’t work on me. Not at all.”
“But how?” Cae asks.
“Don’t ask me,” Kendra replies quickly. “I have no idea. It’s funny, though, ‘cause it used to happen in the army too. They’d give you an anaesthetic if you got shot or something, but they never seemed to take on me. Jab after jab and nothing. I guess I don’t have good absorption or something.’
“So you pretended?” Cae asks, a little horrified. What he had seen looked so real.
“More than once,” Kendra answers. “When you took the KNOCKOUT I did the same, and it didn’t do anything to me, so I just copied you. I watched them take us to that casino. They left us tied up in that room for at least an hour before you woke up. That’s when I remembered that you still had a knife.”
“Taped to my back,” Cae finishes. “I’d forgotten.”
“I took it,” Kendra says with a nod. “But there were too many guns around. And not enough brains apparently, because those idiots left your phone in your pocket. I messaged the co-ordinates to the Pandas, just like you do.”
Cae nods and follows along as the story comes together.
“Then I put myself back into loose ropes in the chair and waited for the cavalry,” Kendra explains. “Which didn’t quite go like I planned, especially since they were so freakin’ late. That DEATH powder is sour, by the way.”
“How could you know for sure that you’d survive it?” Cae asks in disbelief.
“I didn’t,” is the simple reply. “But I’d made the call, so I hoped at least one of us would get out. That LIFT thing threw me though,” she admits. “I didn’t realise you were gonna go up in the air, hence the delay before I caught you. Had to get creative with the leaping.”
“That’s right,” Cae answers with a little nod. “The hand caught me before the doors burst open. It had to be you.”
“Except that I was dead,” she replies with a laugh. “I’m kind of glad you didn’t open your eyes in the ambulance. It might have given you a heart attack.”
“You’re incredible,” says Cae with a smile.
“Well yeah,” Kendra agrees.
Cae tries to lift his head from the pillow to see her better, but the pain from the mini-coma hits the back of his skull like a lead brick. He wriggles a hand out from under his bed sheets to soothe the back of his cranium.
And then Caecilius Rex hears something he’s never heard before.
Kendra gasps.
Cae looks at her shocked expression, then feels the sensation of his hand moving against the back of his head. And the penny drops.
He isn’t wearing his gloves.
The Fourth Motive
20.
Cae sits upright in his hospital bed, constantly pulling the blankets back up to his chin, trying desperately to hide his arms and hands before Kendra gets back. She’s made some excuse about getting water, but he knows the real reason she has stepped out.
He could practically see her gagging when she saw his skin, like she could have thrown her guts up right there on the hospital bed. Her horrified eyes aren’t likely to leave his memory for the rest of his life. And Caecilius Rex never gets used to it; the way people look at him when they’ve seen it. Revulsion, pure and undiluted.
When she returns in three or four minutes, Kendra is smiling at him. She puts two drinks down on his overbed table and fishes a few packets of biscuits out of her pocket.
“The guy next door was sleeping,” she says, eyeing the sugary treats. “So I’m guessing he won’t mind.”
Cae wants to laugh, but the air is too tense for mirth. Now that she’s seen his skin, she’s going to want to know about it.
“I’m sorry you had to see,” he says in a quiet tone. “I forgot that they’d taken my gloves. I hadn’t even thought about it until now.”
“It’s okay,” Kendra says comfortingly, but with an expression that suggests the exact opposite. “I don’t know why I was so surprised. I figured you must have a skin condition or something, to keep covered up in those polo necks all the time.”
“But it’s not a skin condition,” Cae adds.
“Well I know that now,” Kendra replies. “I figured it out when I was at the water cooler. That’s the reason you were so interested in those acids at the circus.”
Cae just nods, a well of strange feelings building up inside him like a damn ready to burst.
“Everything is chemical.” Kendra echoes his words, and it seems like a lifetime since he said them. “So someone tried to kill you once before,” she suggests. “It could be the same guy. What was the motive then?”
&
nbsp; Cae feels his mouth run dry, flashes of luminous green invading his thoughts. The sound of his own cries. The toxic smell of skin burning.
“Cruelty,” he says in a darker tone. “Just plain evil.”
He desperately wants to take the water she’s brought for him, but he can’t bear to bring his hands out from under the covers again. After a moment Kendra sees his eye-line and picks up the cup, bringing it to his lips. Cae takes an unexpectedly huge gulp from her heavy-handed pouring. It almost chokes him, but it’s more than welcome.
“Don’t think about that anyway,” Cae says after in a lighter tone. “It’s not connected.”
“You’re certain?” Kendra asks, attacking the biscuits and passing Cae one between his teeth. He crunches it down with a nod. “Well then it’s forgotten,” Kendra adds, and now she looks a little more comfortable. “Having said that, we do have a much bigger mystery on our hands now.”
“Indeed,” Cae replies when the last crumbs are down his aching throat.
“So, who do you think wants to kill you?” She inquires.
Cae gives a dry chuckle.
“Take your pick,” he says. “Any inmate of Dartley Prison put away in the last seven years, for a start. I’ve given evidence against some of them, interrogated almost all of them, put away about half with my own hands.”
“Aren’t you Mr Popular?” Kendra drawls. “Well that really narrows it down.”
“It’s got to be someone who could command quite a lot of power,” Cae adds, his braining struggling to get into action. “Whoever it was orchestrated the entire Atomic Circus to lead us to our doom.”
“Your doom,” corrects Kendra. “My doom wasn’t on the menu. I just happened to be there.”
A pang of guilt hits Cae in the chest. “Don’t remind me,” he says, trying to match her jokey tone. “I need to go through my records. How soon can I get out of here?”
Kendra looks at his face carefully. “Well, you look marginally better already,” she observes. “You want me to go intimidate the nurses?”
“I think that would be best,” he replies with a smile.
Kendra gets up, taking the rest of the biscuits with her, and starts to move towards the door.