“Because I’m not delighting at the idea of Iilil-ja suffering and dying,” said the Creator. “Nor was I content to help you send those good men off to certain death.”
“You can’t make an omelet without breaking a few eggs, Daniel. Mm, that’s not a bad idea. Evangeline, would you be so kind as to call down to the kitchen for a few specialty omelets for us? One for you, Daniel?” The Creator glared at him. “Let’s just make that two then.”
Evangeline scoffed as she stood. “You know, I came here with you to help carry out the plan, not to fetch your breakfast.”
“I know, dear, but we all have to be patient. You’ll get your time, but for now we’re still waiting for all of the pieces to fall into place. And, of course, for Daniel to knock the next domino over.”
The Creator ignored his collaborator, keeping his stare at the empty plate in front of him. As Evangeline stepped away from the table, Mr. White took up his cup again and finished the last of the coffee before letting out a content sigh.
“Yes, I just know today is going to be a very grand day.”
Chapter 20
The Brink of Despair
Another heavy pot fell into the rightmost sink as Adam moved it aside after scrubbing off a thick layer of dried-on food. Without stopping, he grabbed the next deep pot in line and went to work with the scouring pad and a generous amount of soap. Keeping the scalding water running, he scrubbed away at the pot to return it to its former state. His shirt had become drenched from all of the dishes he had done and his bangs fell out of place, soaked with a mix of steam and sweat. It took a lot of pots and pans to cook for the entirety of the Khazaki, and from the looks of it almost all of them had been used prior to them leaving for Erebia. He had spent over an hour scrubbing them clean and was still not finished, but he wasn’t counting the number he had cleaned or how many were left to go. He just kept going through the line, letting himself be absorbed by the task.
He was finding his current pot to be a challenging one. Whatever had been inside was still crusted around the edges and the color of it stained the inner wall. Adam allowed the pot to fill with hot water, squirting in soap along with it so that a swarm of bubbles blew up from the vortex where the water mixed and filled up the filthy pot. Without giving time for the water to cool, Adam dunked his hands in with the scouring pad and continued to scrub and scrape. The water burned and his hands were shriveled, but he couldn’t stop now. He felt compelled to keep going, to get everything clean and perfect.
The water in the pot became murky and then flooded with a red color. Adam dropped the scouring pad and jerked backwards at the sight of the blood. His chest tightened and he started to hyperventilate, staring at his hands. He had worn his fingertips ragged and they had started to bleed. The water across his hands only helped spread the seeping blood down from his fingertips across his palms. Even when the wounds closed themselves up, the blood seemed to remain behind. Adam turned the faucet on and dunked his hands in, scrubbing them together to get rid of the blood. His panic failed to subside as he pulled his hands from the clean water and found that the blood had not washed off. He tried again, scrubbing with the scouring pad. Still the blood remained, dripping down into the sink and onto the soaking dishes.
Adam searched around for a dish towel, but he couldn’t find any lying around. In desperation he ripped his soaked shirt off and used that to dry his hands. He scrubbed them inside of the shirt, cleaning his hands methodically to get rid of the blood. As he pulled his hands out, he found that they were still just as stained as before, along with his shirt. Adam gazed wide-eyed as the blood on his hands dripped down his wrists, down to the floor, and onto everything that he touched. He held his trembling hands out in front of him and stared at the blood and knew it was not his own that covered them. Then as if he was ripped from a nightmare, the blood was gone, from his hands, from the floor, the dishes, and his shirt. It was as if it was never there, and Adam now questioned if it really was ever there at all.
“You’re slipping, Evans.”
The voice came from out of nowhere, and Adam spun around to see a man leaning against the back wall of the kitchen. He reached for his sword on instinct, but remember he had removed it because it was getting in the way of washing the dishes. Adam stared ahead, trying to identify the potential enemy in front of him. If there were Khazaki officers remaining behind, he would have just stumbled into their headquarters without consideration. The man staring back at him wore the jacket of the Khazaki, but it was cut apart and stained with blood. Adam shrunk back at the sight of the man’s face, realizing who was standing in front of him. He was in fact an enemy, but the figure appearing before Adam had been dead for forty years. Even without his dark glasses, Seb Ommati was someone Adam would not forget about as long as he lived.
“You,” Adam said, stumbling with his words at the sight of the specter before him. “You’re not real.”
“I’m real enough,” said Seb, pushing away from the wall and slinking closer to Adam. “Now this is a laughable sight: a king who’s been reduced to scrubbing dirty dishes. Do you enjoy grunt work, Evans? I always figured you had higher aspirations.”
Adam squeezed his eyes tight, trying to dismiss the apparition. He opened his eyes, finding that Seb’s pale face was inches away. Seb put his hand on Adam’s naked shoulder; it felt cold and damp like earth from a grave and Adam flinched at the sensation. A wicked grin spread across Seb’s face.
“Hi,” Seb purred. “It’s been awhile, hasn’t it? How’ve you been? I’ve been doing pretty well, been real busy being dead and all. From the looks of things you’ve been pretty busy too. I bet your days are just packed.”
Adam tore away from the vision, refusing to accept that it was anything more than a delusion brought on by the stress he had been dealing with. But if it was a delusion, it was the most realistic one Adam had ever experienced, which worried him just as much. He still felt the cold touch on his shoulder, and the detail of the man in front of him seemed too real to be a figment of his imagination. Everything from his receding black hair that found length in the ponytail tied behind his head to his drawn in, serpent-like face, was just as Adam remembered it, and was even more vivid than the memories of the man that often filled his nightmares.
“You’re not real,” Adam said, turning away from Seb and returning to the sink. He dumped out the pot of hot water mixed with his blood and began to refill it with clean water while Seb watched.
“Keep on telling yourself that, Evans,” said Seb. “I just wanted to point out how funny it is that you’ve been reduced to one of the lowliest tasks in this building after spending so much time leading them, let alone leading a planet-sized country.” Adam ignored him, gripping the scouring pad with one hand and the edge of the pot with another and scrubbing away at the built up grime.
“Fine, you don’t have to talk back,” Seb went on. “I can do all the talking. You always were a quiet one, weren’t you, Evans? I just want to catch up, see how things have been going. I mean, they must be going fantastic. Why else would you be back in Khanka, elbows deep in hot greasy water scrubbing away at a mess you didn’t make? It’s not really your mess, is it? You’re not responsible for it. It’s the Khazaki who started it, right? No sense in you getting your hands dirty for something as meaningless as them.”
Adam dumped out the pot again, checking the sides for any leftover stuck on chunks. He polished a few specks off before dumping the pot in the rinse sink and moving on to the next one, banging it around the sink to drown out the voice of his antagonist.
Seb pulled up a chair and sat, putting his hands behind his head. “So what happened to that pretty young thing you had following you around like a lost kitten? Did you finally decide to leave her behind?”
Adam slammed the pot down into the bottom of the sink to send a resounding clang throughout the kitchen. Seb smiled again. “Have I finally hit a nerve?”
“The real Seb wouldn’t know anything about Dee, so you mig
ht as well drop the act and stop pretending you’re him,” Adam growled.
“Ah, finally! Some recognition! Well, you’re right, Evans. You killed me long before your little kitten was even born. But that doesn’t mean I don’t know her, or that I don’t know the man you’ve turned out to be. Weren’t you paying attention to that old hag when she went on about your spirit and how it was clouded by something that you’d picked up somewhere? Tada! I’ve stuck with you, Evans, and let me tell you that you’ve lived such a bizarre and interesting life, especially recently.”
Adam turned to face the demon. “If that’s true, why not speak up until now?”
“Because,” Seb said, “up until now I’ve never had a reason to. But come on: losing your kingdom, killing all your old comrades, and now stumbling around in a depressed stupor to wind up washing their dirty dishes? How could I not pass up this chance to rub it in your nose?”
Adam dropped the pot and reached for his sword. Seb only laughed. “Are you going to stab me with Moscov’s sword again, Evans? You haven’t even wiped off the blood from your last victims yet.” Adam held himself steady, unable to draw the sword. He released his tight grip on the hilt and set the sheathed sword back to rest against the counter.
“What do you want from me?” Adam asked.
“Like I said, I wanted to talk. So let’s chat, catch up on things. Maybe you want to share some of those feelings you’re keeping bottled up in your head, hm?”
Adam gathered his wet shirt and sword along with his jacket and cloak before moving out of the kitchen. Seb followed him, keeping up a jaunty step as he trailed behind. “That’s fine, that room was getting cramped anyway. Almost suffocating. Do you think any of the men you killed in Erebia suffocated, Evans? I know you favor a quick death, but with your unsteady performance that night I wouldn’t be surprised if some of them ended up choking on their own blood.”
“I’m not listening to you,” Adam called back.
“I know you are, or you wouldn’t respond,” said Seb. “You’ve already acknowledged me, and somewhere in that scrambled little brain of yours you’ve accepted that I’m not just a figment of your villainous imagination. I’m not going away anytime soon, so you might as well just accept it and help carry on this conversation, because let me tell you it is getting rather tiresome just babbling on here by myself.”
Adam stopped and turned around. “So why don’t you try just shutting up?” His outburst faded to surprise as he found himself alone again in the hall. He looked around, seeing nothing but the wide open space of the practice room. The room was quiet, and only the empty sound of silence ringing in his ears reached him. He stood still, listening, waiting for something more to fill his ears and occupy his thoughts. What he received was the murmuring voices of the Khazaki, traces left behind as memories, returning to their hall one last time. More and more spoke up and he could not discern between any of them as they swelled into a loud ruckus that blocked out everything else, and then in an instant they were gone and the terrible silence returned.
“It’s enough to drive you mad, isn’t it?” the specter’s cold voice whispered in Adam’s ear.
Adam dropped everything he was holding and fell to his knees. Behind him, Seb scoffed and walked around Adam.
“What was that for? Don’t tell me you’ve already given up. I’ve just gotten started with you.”
“Go away.” Adam’s voice came quiet and pathetic, and Seb made his amusement known with a mocking laugh.
“Go away? What are you, a child? Are you going to run to tell daddy that I’m being mean to you? Well good luck with that, because he doesn’t care about you any more either. He abandoned you, and not only that, he gave you over to be killed. You know as well as I do that he’s the only one who could have told the Khazaki where to find you and how to kill you. He doesn’t care about you, Evans. You should have known that from the moment he sent you away as an outcast with nothing but the seed of a conscience to keep you sane. From the beginning he knew how much of a failure you would be, and now that the time of reckoning is here, he’s turned his back on an overall poor investment.”
Adam kept his stare down at the wood floor as his tormentor pressed on. “Even the people who believed in you realized sooner or later that you were just one colossal screw up. Where should I begin? Why not with Moscov? Now there was a lack of judgment if I ever saw one. I mean, the old fool reached out and tried to save you from your aimless path of destruction and how was he repaid? Cut down in cold blood by the one he wanted to help, and then he had the police force he commanded usurped by the same man who killed him. I’m sure he’d be kicking himself if he could have seen the outcome of that little mistake. Then there’s that old hermit, The Baggins. I’m sure he never imagined he would be killed either, and if you had been doing a better job keeping tabs on Oracle he might still be alive.
“And last but not least, your little kitten. How badly has her life been ruined because of you? If you had just told her the truth about her master when you first found out, she would have just gone back home and lived an average life away from the string of troubles you attract. Instead, you allowed her to be thrust into danger time and again, brought a massacre to her home, and probably ruined any chance she had at happiness. And for what? To spare her feelings? Hardly. You didn’t tell her the truth because you couldn’t bring yourself to do it, and you couldn’t bear to lose her. You had some choice words for the Creator, but how is what you did any different, Evans? You’re as low as he is.”
Seb knelt down and got close to Adam’s face. Adam was clenching his teeth, trying to ignore all the venomous words that the specter threw at him. Seb was right about one thing: he had gotten into Adam’s head, and everything he said was hitting home. Adam’s hands fell to the floor in front of him as he hunched over. They found his sword and his fingers wrapped around the sheath and hilt. Seb smiled.
“All your life has added up to a mountain of dead bodies and disappointment. There’s no one left who would argue that the world would be a better place with you still in it. So why drag it on any longer? Remember Sean Walker’s final words. Do everyone a favor and just disappear.” He crept closer to Adam, spreading around him as his body distorted into more of a curtain than a man. An icy darkness covered Adam, and all that remained of the specter was a twisted smile in the shadow. There was a click of steel as Adam began to draw his sword.
“Greg?”
Adam jammed the sword back into its sheath. His heart skipped a beat at the sound of a soft voice carried from behind, one who called to him with a name like a secret shared word between lovers. He wanted so much to turn around, but his body was heavy and would not permit him to do so. He couldn’t even bring himself to speak. Instead he sat, half-naked and hunched over, paralyzed with a mix of emotions he found himself unable to define or explain. He listened to the sound of footsteps on the hardwood floor behind him and felt the presence of someone standing over him. The visitor knelt down and placed a warm, reassuring hand on Adam’s shoulder, and the feeling in his body returned. He turned his head around and saw Dee looking at him first with great concern followed by relief hidden behind tears of joy beginning to form.
“Thank goodness I found you,” she said. He stared at her with unsure eyes, his heart still racing, until with a sudden reach he wrapped his arms around Dee, pulling her close. The sudden embrace caught her off guard, causing her to drop her nap sack and the Sword of Magid still bound in cloth. She lost her breath as he tightened his hold on her, but as Adam shuddered and buried his head in her shoulder she held him close, shushing him and giving him comfort.
“It’s okay, Greg,” she said, placing her hand gently on the back of his head. “You’re alright. Just take a deep breath and calm down. You’re okay.” The two stayed in each other’s arms for a good while until Adam found it within himself to pull back and look Dee in the eyes.
“You shouldn’t have come, Dee.”
“You shouldn’t have let my
grandmother guilt you into leaving me behind,” she countered.
“She didn’t guilt me, I agreed with her. I don’t want to put you in any more danger.”
“I know you don’t, but it’s my decision and I made it. I’m staying with you until all of this gets worked out. If something happens to me, it’s my own damn fault so don’t worry about me.”
“What about your village?” Adam asked.
“They waited four years for me to come home, they can wait a little longer,” Dee answered.
Adam didn’t know what to think about it. He didn’t expect to see Dee again, and his mind had been so preoccupied with the Khazaki that he had neglected her loss. Now it appeared that it didn’t matter, because against all reason Dee had come back to him. He felt a strange happiness, marred by the knowledge that by choosing to stay with him she was risking all she had. There was little chance she would ever see her home again.
“I’m sorry,” Adam said, his head drooping.
Dee’s eyes widened with new sadness. “Why?”
“I’ve ruined everything.”
“Oh come on,” said Dee, patting him on the arm. “It’s not all that bad. You didn’t ruin everything.”
“I’ve had a lot of time to think. Everything that went wrong in Magid came back to me. I could have done more. I failed those people, Dee. I tried to be more than I was for them, and that drive burned me out to the point where everything fell apart.”
“You can’t blame yourself for that, Greg.”
“Why not? It’s true. I let them all down, just like I let the Khazaki down.”
“That was absolutely not your fault,” Dee said. Adam felt her grip tightening on his arm. “I don’t know what made them come after you, but it sure wasn’t because of anything that you did.”
Fallout (Tales of the Other Universe Book 2) Page 22