by J D Jacobs
“I, well, my dad needs me to get something from Jenkins.”
“This early in the morning? Jenkins is probably still asleep right now anyway. What does your dad need from him?”
“It’s personal,” I say as my mind races with possible excuses. “He wouldn’t tell me. He said that Jenkins would know about it.”
He nods his head. “Well, talk to me a little before you go. I haven’t seen you since your friend’s funeral,” he whispers as he walks with me out the door. “How are things holding up?”
I suppose it won’t hurt to tell him how I really feel. “Things aren’t the best. I haven’t been getting much sleep since Cody was killed. I thought walking around would help me out, but it doesn’t really.”
“It sucks, I know it does,” he assures me as the early morning air hits our faces. “I didn’t know him that well; he seemed like a good kid. I know it’s rough on you now, but it’ll get better, I promise. Just give it some time.”
Give it some time, he says. Yet right now, my life is reliant on me being impatient. “Thanks Grant, I really appreciate it,” I say, trying to hide my impatience and sound sincere. “And you’re completely right. Right now, though, I just… I need some time to myself. Think things over, you know.”
“I understand,” he tells me. “If you need anything, let me–”
He sharply stops. I turn to look at him and see that his eyes are focused on the letter in my hand. “What is that?” he asks, alarmed.
“It’s nothing,” I say as I jam the letter in my pocket as a weak attempt to hide it.
“Yes, it is. Where did you get that?”
“It’s, uhh… I wrote this. It’s a letter for Cody. I was going to put it on his grave, so give me some privacy, please.”
“Quit lying to me. Where did you get that?” He’s become uneasy now. He seems threatened by the letter, or maybe by me.
“Don’t worry about it,” I sternly tell him. “I need to go.”
I turn away from Grant and walk off. I hear him call off to me before I get too far.
“Second floor. Room 24.” He has to know about the letter and must know the real reason I’m looking for Jenkins. Perhaps he doesn’t have a clue. Doesn’t matter to me either way. I continue walking as the dark morning air chills my bones.
I haven’t seen a soul on the streets. That’s a good thing. But it’s eerie. Lonely. Like Westwood. Too much like Westwood.
I see a person in the distance, running toward me. As the person gets closer, I notice the one characteristic that I haven’t seen in a while: faceless. The Grim is wearing a long, black jacket and is in a dead sprint right at me.
I know what this is, Xander told me himself: this is just a way for Grims to try to convey me to do something else. They’re trying to scare me away; apparently I’m not supposed to be doing what I’m about to do. But I don’t give a damn. There’s no scaring me away. I know this faceless won’t touch me. There’s nothing to be afraid of.
I walk with confidence. The Grim continues sprinting toward me, no signs of slowing down. He gets mere inches from ramming straight into me before he suddenly disappears. I don’t flinch at all.
“If that’s all you have, Xander, then it’s not gonna work.”
Xander must’ve heard me because the rest of my walk is peacefully desolate.
44.
I reach the building Grant mentioned, right next to the post office. A three-storied office building with glass windows across the first floor. Curtains shield the windows from the inside, and the building looks empty. The front door is locked, and no matter how hard I tug on it, it’s not opening. It doesn’t take me long to find a clod of asphalt big enough to break one of the windows. No alarm and nobody around to see me. I carefully make my way in the building.
The lobby is dark and carpeted. I don’t spend too much time in it. I climb up the stairs to the second floor, walking by several medium-sized offices and conference rooms until I reach Room 24 enclosed and isolated at the end of a hall. I didn’t plan out what I would do if the door was locked, but luckily it isn’t. I quietly turn the door handle and push my way through. I see a large, cushioned chair turned backwards behind Jenkins’s desk. I make my way around his desk and sit down in his chair, the back still facing toward the door.
And I wait.
As I sit in dark silence, I try my best to read the letter. It isn’t very legible, and the darkness surely doesn’t help, but the rising light from the window in front of me makes a few words still readable. While I wait for Jenkins, I keep thinking that maybe this isn’t a good idea. When he comes, there will more than likely be people already in the building who will hear the gunshot. On top of that, I couldn’t imagine doing this to Sabrina. She’s my girlfriend, someone I love. Seeing her cry over the loss of her father would be bad enough, but me being the reason she’s crying? I promised her happiness, not that. Maybe it would be best to only confront Jenkins and not kill him. I even still have time to leave his office.
But then I reread the part of the letter where it says I’m too much of a nuisance to keep in Tryton. Then I reread the part that tells Ricardo to kill the extra, no exception. And every bit of reasoning and remorse is thrown out.
The door’s handle jiggles right before 6 AM. The door opens and the lights are flicked on.
“Close the door.”
I spin around to greet Jenkins, the pistol pointing square at his chest. For a brief second, Jenkins looks stunned, but he blows it off and smiles. He closes the door behind him, throws his belongings on the chair in front of him, and raises his hands, exposing the magenta Fuging bracelet on his wrist. “Good morning, Jaden. What do I owe this visit?”
“Shut up.” I stand up, glaring down the barrel of the gun that leads to Jenkins’s face. “You killed him. Stabbed him in the rain and left him to die on the loading dock.”
Jenkins now holds a questioned look on his face. “I’m assuming you’re talking about Mr. Goodwin? Look, his death was tragic. He was a good kid and had potential to be a terrific nurse, from what I had heard. I know that you two were very close, but I don’t know why you would think that I killed him. Why would I? He never did anything to me.”
I throw the letter at his feet, all while keeping my eyes locked down the barrel. “You told Ricardo to do it. When he couldn’t, you did.” Jenkins looks puzzled as he bends down to grab the letter. The puzzled look seems to grow the longer he stares at the paper. “You never liked Cody,” I continue as he reads. “He always talked back to you, always had an attitude with you. You two never liked each other. So you ordered Ricardo to kill him. Then you told Ricardo to keep me in Avvil, too. You could get rid of your two biggest headaches, and the people in Tryton wouldn’t even know you were behind it.”
I notice sweat starting to form at the base of Jenkins’s mustache. “Jaden, I’m being completely honest with you, I’ve never seen this letter in my life. This isn’t even my handwriting!” He tosses the letter on his desk in front of me. “Look at those other papers on my desk and compare it to that letter. There’s no way I wrote that!”
I carefully reach down and blindly grab a different paper off Jenkins’s desk. I quickly skim through the paper. He’s right; the handwriting is nothing like the one that appears on the letter. Unalarmed, I toss the letter down on the desk and wad the other paper into a ball. “You got someone else to write the letter for you. Or you made it not look like your handwriting. Who cares? It doesn’t matter how you got your message across.”
Jenkins shakes his head, trying to find a place to start. “I’m sorry, let me get this straight. You got this letter from Miguel Ricardo, is that what you’re saying?” I soberly nod. The sweat beads drip off the bristles above his lip. “Why on Earth would I ask Miguel to do this? He and I were not even remotely close to acquaintances or merely business partners. He murdered my brother-in-law and kidnapped my daughter! He put this damn bracelet on me, for Christ’s sake!”
“You didn’t know
that about him when you wrote the letter, though. Don’t lie to me, Jenkins. You’re done fooling me. You said it yourself that you two had made a deal.”
“Wait…” he says, thinking back. “Yes, he and I had made a deal, but it was nothing this dramatic! Did you think that the deal we made was this letter?”
I don’t answer, but instead cock the gun back.
“That wasn’t the deal!” he continues, perturbed. “I’ll admit, I sent Miguel a letter, but it wasn’t this one! You have to listen to me: I knew that he had Sabrina and I knew that Avvil was low on supplies because they couldn’t explore the surface without suits like we have. I wrote him a letter saying that we would visit Avvil and make a trade: hazmat suits for Sabrina. Simple as that. I should’ve known he wouldn’t go through with it, though. I knew it! I let him convince me that he’d make the trade, then he slaps these bracelets on me and Stewart as soon as we get there!”
“Okay,” I say, thinking of a follow-up question to ask. “If that’s the case, then why did you drag me on the trip? Why couldn’t you go to Avvil with a bin full of suits and get Sabrina back by yourself?”
“There’s no way I could’ve justified my trip with the city council! We only had a limited amount of suits and they wouldn’t want to give them up. I had to mention something that they couldn’t say no to, so I used you. I told them that we were leaving to boost morale in Avvil, and they bought it. You didn’t buy that claim, though, so to convince you, I mentioned that the purple color might be in Avvil. Jaden, you have to realize how desperate I was to get my daughter back. Sabrina is all I have left. And Miguel was a monster. He killed her uncle in cold-blood for no reason! There’s no telling what he would’ve done with her.”
I’m getting mixed emotions. He sounds sincere. But… No. The only ones who are perceived as evil are the ones who are bad at hiding their intentions. He’s lying to me again. Trying to convince me that he isn’t the bad guy, again. “You’re lying!” I shout at him, sweat raining off my neck. “You’ve been lying to my face this entire time! I know you killed Cody!”
There’s a long pause. “I don’t know what else to tell you,” Jenkins admits, defeated. “You came in here with a gun in your hand and your mind already made up. There’s nothing else I can say other than I didn’t do it. That letter… Wait a minute.” He takes a step forward and snatches the letter off the desk. My grip on the gun tightens as I unsteadily point it at him, but I can’t pull the trigger. Jenkins skims the letter. Sweat drenches my hair.
“You think this second person mentioned refers to Cody, right? The ‘extra?’” he continues, pointing to the paper. “But Cody’s name is never mentioned. It only says there’s a second person that needs to be killed. There’s no way that the person could be Cody! He came last minute, remember? This letter says th-that Tryton is visiting Avvil later that week. This was written days before we left. Cody came on the trip at the very last second! The extra isn’t referring to Cody; it’s referring to me!”
That was exactly what Cody’s argument was. I can’t stop my hands from violently shaking. Sweat filling my palms, my grip on the pistol loosening up. My breaths are now loud and struggling. “No, no it’s not.” I can’t even convince myself anymore. Cody was right all along. “You’ve always hated me, hated Cody. You killed my friends. Yeah, Mr. Armstrong and Scarlett and Ryan! Remember them? You beat them to a pulp and threw them out of the city! They came to YOU for shelter, and you killed them! You murdered them and you murdered Cody, too!”
My index finger glides on the trigger, itching to pull down on it. “Jaden…” Jenkins calmly responds, “…that wasn’t what you think. I didn’t let them in because I was told not to. I was told they were dangerous. I had no choice.”
“WHO!? WHO TOLD YOU THAT!?” My shouts are intense. My hands are heavy. “You’re the mayor of this city! Why are you taking orders from someone else!?”
“I know exactly who wrote that letter…”
Jenkins pauses and his eyes focus on something behind me. He nods his head for me to look, but I stand firm. There’s nothing behind me! He’s trying to distract me! He nods again, and this time, I slowly turn my head behind me.
I double-take. Perched on the outside of the office window is Abbi. Her beak is pointing directly at me, recording my every move. Her eye puncturing through the window with an insulting green shade.
“Abbi,” I weakly call out to the bird, “conclude recording.”
Her head tweaks and makes a high-pitched mechanical sound. Her eye remains green.
“Abbi!” I shout at her this time. “Conclude recording!”
No change. I can feel whoever is in the control room laughing at me.
I raise the pistol to the window. Before I can command Abbi one last time, she flaps her wings and flies off.
“Jaden…” Jenkins calls out, his weakening voice just now registering, “I didn’t write that letter.”
Every ounce of rage I’ve ever held in my body now boils through my nose. “Grant!”
45.
I run out of Jenkins’s office. He tries to stop me, but I shake him off. I sprint out of the building and next door to the courthouse.
“GRANT!” The few people that are in the courthouse shoot me bothered looks. The pistol being flaunted in my hand causes people to back away as I make my way toward the staircase. I scare off every person but one.
“Hey, Starfoxx,” Xander pops out, urgency in his voice.
“Get away from me!”
“You need to stop. You cannot carry this out; this is not your plan.”
“I don’t want to hear it, Xander!” I yell out as I reach the staircase. “You’re trying to save your brother’s skin. He wrote that letter! He killed Cody!”
“Jaden, you can’t do this,” he insists, basically begging.
I hustle down the stairs. “If I can’t, then tell me the truth! Did he write that letter? Did Grant kill Cody? Tell me everything!”
Xander’s acting fidgety now. “You know I can’t do–”
“THEN LEAVE!” There’s a man at the bottom of the stairs that tries to stop me from going further. I point the gun at his face. “Get out of my way or I’ll blow your brains out!” The man tries to grab my gun, so I take off down the hall away from him and toward the control room. “Grant, you son of a bitch! GET OUT HERE!”
“Fine, Foxx! You win.” I feel an intense numbness fall over me, sending me face-first into the floor. My vision fades away.
My eyes bleed sepia as I regain my vision. I’m standing in a hospital. Not the Tryton hospital, but the Westwood hospital. The place is crowded. People are acting frantic, sick, worried, terrified. This must be Westwood during their Saidsod Zone.
I search through the never-ending crowd of people for a specific face. Even though everyone is wearing a surgical mask, I can still recognize nearly everybody in here. I’m seeing people that I’ve totally forgotten even existed, some closer to me than others. But in the end, it doesn’t matter. They all reached the same outcome. I don’t worry too much about these people. I instead search through, looking for Grant.
I find him. He looks weak, leaning on Phil for full reliance in order to walk. Phil basically drags Grant away from the desk they were standing at. I make my way to them and listen in.
“It’s pointless, Phil,” Grant says, his voice insanely feeble. “I was going to die from it anyway. Leave me here. You don’t need to be in this hospital.”
“Quit talkin’, Grant,” Phil says. “Wer gonna find a nurse r’ sumbody t’help you. What ‘bout that guy over tere?”
Phil points to a man sitting in the waiting room. The man stares at the floor, lost in thought, with rolled-up scrubs tightly clutched in his hands.
The man is my dad.
“S’cuse us,” Phil calls out to Dad as he drags Grant over. “Mah frien’ ‘ere needs help. This place is packed, n’ wer’ desperate. Ya look like a doctor. Please, sir, can ya help mah frien’?”
Dad looks
up from the floor at the two. Grant groans in agony as they wait for a response. “Sorry. I can’t help you. This disease is… There’s nothing I can do.”
“Are you serious?” Grant asks. His voice is gearing up like it will be his last hoorah speech. “Why are you here if you’re not even going to try to help anybody? Those scrubs you’re holding have to mean something to you. If you’re going to be in a hospital and refuse to help people, then at least move so I can die sitting down.”
Dad goes back to being lost in thought. I feel like he’s going to ignore Grant, at first, but he then springs up from the chair and grabs Grant’s shoulder. “Come with me. And you…” he turns around to Phil and points outside the hospital, “…get out of the hospital. It’s a death sentence in here.”
The scene spirals out, and my surroundings disappear.
I wait for the sepia to go away, but it doesn’t. Instead, in a blink of an eye, I’m cast into another environment. This one is in a room that’s formatted similar to a hospital room but not necessarily identical to the ones I’ve been in. There’s a bed to the side, with Grant lying in it. Throughout the room is… I actually can’t believe what I see in the room…
Grant’s eyes open, and after he realizes that he doesn’t know where he is, he sits up in a frenzy.
“Hello? Anybody?” he calls out into the room. He looks lost; afraid, even. Grant waits for someone to enter, but nobody ever does. Across the room are a few cages that are occupied with animals. Not just any animals, though. Two rats share a cage, five dogs are individually locked up, and a one-eyed eagle rests by herself in a larger cage. Although it’s barely distinguishable with the sepia color filling the scene, every single animal there has purple somewhere in their body. The rats I recognize by their purple tails: Scar and Scat. Each of the dogs have matted, purple fur, but they don’t look as ferocious and intimidating as they did when they attacked me in Westwood. As for the eagle, there’s no doubt who that is, even without her metal coat.