by Ubukata, Tow
“Yaaargh!” A scream came at them from behind, though not before Balot and Oeufcoque both realized it was coming.
Skyscraper had emerged from the booth and was charging toward them, gun in hand.
Balot didn’t even turn around; she merely fired off a number of shots over her own shoulder.
Both of Skyscraper’s shoulders and both his knees were pulverized in an instant. His scream rose in pitch a few notches, and he writhed helplessly on the floor.
Balot’s eyes remained fixed on the giant figure on the other side of the mirror. After the gunshots, all thought of resistance had been wiped from Cleanwill John October’s mind, and he blubbered, “Peace! Let’s do this in peace!” Both his arms were raised in a wobbly surrender.
Balot would have rather seen him in pieces than in peace, but she managed to overcome this feeling to take a step back from the broken mirror and snarc her cell phone to call the police.
She left the rest to Oeufcoque. It was the only way she could get through this.
She was exhausted. There was much she still had to learn. It made her head spin.
≡
Police sirens converged on the bar. Balot was in the passenger seat of the red convertible, watching the young children as they were wrapped in blankets and escorted to safety.
John October had already been taken away in custody along with the other men in the bar.
“To think that we’d be able to catch one of OctoberCorp’s directors so easily,” said the Doctor. He was relaxed, still a little sleepy, but was focused on the task at hand. The second case could now progress.
Oeufcoque told him the details of his conversation with John, and the Doctor frowned. “Doesn’t that make Boiled more or less a fully paid employee of OctoberCorp?” the Doctor asked.
“It could be that Boiled is now planning on taking Shell prisoner. I suggest we play along with OctoberCorp for a little longer and make out that we’re interested in continuing discussions with them. That will buy us some time.”
“OctoberCorp is more ruthless than you give them credit for, Oeufcoque. At this stage it’s do or die. The only thing that’ll make the difference between victory and defeat is Shell and his memories. That Shell—” At this point the Doctor and Oeufcoque fell silent.
“Where’s Shell right now?” asked Oeufcoque sharply.
The Doctor fumbled with his PDA. “He’s been released on bail pending his final trial, and he’s permitted to travel within a two-kilometer radius of the hotel he’s staying at. There should be specialists from the DA’s office tailing him, of course, but…”
“How long before Boiled hears about what’s gone down here?”
“He’s probably already heard,” said the Doctor.
“We need to hurry, then.”
Without another moment’s notice, the Doctor revved up the car, and it sped off from a standing start. Balot, who had zoned out, was jolted back into consciousness and rushed to secure her seat belt.
–What’s the matter?
Balot spoke by snarcing the car stereo.
The Doctor shook his head. “It’s Boiled. Unless he gets an order from OctoberCorp to stop him, he might end up killing Shell. It’d be such a shame to lose our main piece of leverage now that we have one of OctoberCorp’s directors in the bag.”
–What are we going to do?
It was Oeufcoque who answered this. “The Doctor will head to the Broilerhouse. We’ll go to the hotel Shell is staying at and ensure his safety.”
–I’m going to go and save Shell’s life?
This time she didn’t use the car stereo, but rather snarced Oeufcoque directly.
“That’s right.”
–How strange…
Balot was silent, thoughtful.
They arrived at the Broilerhouse, and the Doctor jumped out and rushed in without even looking back. Balot programmed the name of Shell’s hotel into the display, and the car set off.
The car pulled into the hotel’s underground parking lot, and Oeufcoque gave Balot the latest news. “Just in from the Doctor. Shell’s in room 663.”
Balot took the key from the ignition and hurried toward the hotel lobby. She headed into an elevator, then suddenly realized that the buttons stopped at the fortieth floor.
“This is an emergency. Protecting Shell takes priority over any legal niceties,” Oeufcoque said, before Balot even had the opportunity to ask. She snarced the elevator, sending it up to the sixty-sixth floor. There was no one else in the elevator and no sign of anyone in the corridor when Balot stepped out.
Suddenly—without Balot having to snarc anything—she felt a squish about her left hand and realized that she was holding a gun. “Be careful.”
Balot progressed with the utmost care. She walked down the corridor with silent footfalls and stopped right in front of the target door. She sensed what was on the other side of the door—no sign of movement.
Balot snarced the electronic door lock open, calling on help from Oeufcoque to decode it.
No sooner had she opened the door than Balot was assaulted by a lukewarm blast of air.
The air conditioner wasn’t working. Next to the door was a large dresser coated with a layer of condensed water vapor.
There was the sound of running water; Balot headed slowly for the bathroom. An orange light was on, and steam billowed out, filling the room.
Balot steadied her gun and entered the bathroom. She was filled with an uneasy premonition. She was sure that there was no sign of movement from inside, and her mind couldn’t help but carry this observation through to its logical conclusion. She walked across the polished marble floor and past a large mirror toward the source of the steaming, bubbling water.
Balot’s feet stepped in flowing water.
She put her hand on the shower curtain and, taking a deep breath, yanked it back.
The sight that assailed her made her heart miss a beat.
A woman swayed in the water, her mouth O-shaped, as if she were screaming silently. Her head floated but her mouth was full of splashing water, and her eyes had started to go muddy, cooked by the near-boiling hot water.
The woman was naked, and her long blonde hair covered her body as the hot water continued to flow.
Her body was covered with black and blue bruises. Bruises that were no doubt inflicted on her when she resisted, or perhaps bruises she received because she couldn’t resist.
Finally, Balot exhaled. A stream of cold vapor in the steamy room.
“Looks like this was Shell’s fiancée…” Oeufcoque muttered.
Balot was suddenly overtaken by an urge. She left the bathroom and headed for the living room, positioning herself in front of the television. She snarced it to grasp its inner workings, then accessed the Internet.
“What’s this about, Balot?” Oeufcoque seemed concerned, but Balot ignored him, turning the television on and bringing up a map of the city. Her eyes remained wide open as she logged into a number of servers, cracking the encrypted passwords with ease.
“Stop it, Balot! What are you trying to do—find Shell? You’re hacking into public networks, you know! That’s a crime! There are official channels we need to go through for this sort of thing. Don’t you start running off the rails too!”
Balot stared at the television, tears suddenly filling her eyes. Her face crumpled and she sat down. She cried without making a sound, lifting her gun in her hand as she did so.
–Let me kill Shell.
Her face was painfully sad as she snarced Oeufcoque.
–Let me kill that man Cleanwill too.
“Balot, it’s no good thinking like—”
–Please. Let me. I don’t even care if I die afterward.
“Balot…are you angry? Or sad?”
Balot shook her head. Neither. Both. She felt her destiny swirling about her. Her terrible, terrible destiny. Why did Shell have to kill that woman in the bathroom? I’m going to make you clean. I’m going to clean you up. The words echoed
around Balot’s mind.
–I think that woman in there was the same as me.
Balot managed to snarc the words to Oeufcoque through the terrible memories that were resurfacing inside her.
“The same…? You mean, that is to say…” Oeufcoque started, but he didn’t need to finish. He’d understood perfectly. The woman in the bathroom had things done to her by her father. Or perhaps other men and women had done things to her.
–Please, let me kill them all. I don’t care if I die myself. I don’t care if I die.
“Calm down. This has nothing to do with you. Don’t get sucked in. Take a deep breath and calm down.”
Balot held on to her gun. Her whole body shook as she cried. Quietly, her breathing a mess.
Every possible horrible fate seemed to be in this room. For the first time ever, Balot experienced the feeling of seeing her sorrow transform not into anger but into sheer murderous intent. She wanted to kill Shell. She wanted to kill everyone who worked for OctoberCorp. She wanted to kill the others caught up in this case, Boiled and even the Doctor. Then, after she had done all that, she wanted to save the last bullet for herself.
–I can’t bear it. Help me. Save me.
Balot felt a soft warmth in her left hand. She realized that Oeufcoque was trying to materialize.
Balot clasped her hands together in prayer, and Oeufcoque’s upper body emerged. She almost smothered him completely, so desperate was her desire to have him comfort her.
Oeufcoque’s piercing red eyes stared straight at her.
Tears dripped from Balot’s face and splashed onto his little head, and he lifted his head toward the warm shower and said, “It’s a good smell.”
Balot’s eyes narrowed as she looked at the mouse, the ultimate weapon and the last word in morality.
“Your soul—it smells good. Pure. It’s telling me that if there’s one thing I should believe in, it’s you. I want to make myself believe in you. Shell and Boiled—they can’t find it in themselves to believe in anything, so they’re doomed to stay on the other side of the mirror forever. That place where Cleanwill was hiding. A place with no doubts or regrets to trouble you, but no hope either. I don’t want to go to such a place.”
Then Oeufcoque spread his arms out in a broad gesture, just like when the two of them had been introduced. “I entrust myself to you.”
Droplets of tears welled up in Balot’s eyes. She realized that he was indeed telling the truth.
He really was trusting everything to Balot. If Balot so wanted, she would have been able to snarc Oeufcoque away in an instant. Any abuse she wanted—she’d meet no further resistance. And yet it was this very lack of resistance that would prove to be the final restraint. It was the very fact that Oeufcoque was surrendering himself completely that would stop her.
Balot nodded. The sound of the water overflowing in the bathroom echoed all around.
Balot sniffed. She turned around where she sat so that she now faced in the direction of the bathroom.
As she did so, Oeufcoque turned back into a gun without saying anything.
She hadn’t promised him anything. Even so, Oeufcoque had slipped back into her palm, ready.
Balot took a deep breath so that she could feel her entire bodysuit the better—the suit Made by Oeufcoque. Her chest swelled and she exhaled calmly. She stood up silently, went to the bathroom, and turned off the hot water.
She turned her back to the floating corpse of the woman and headed for the underground parking lot.
She climbed into the car, snarced the monitor next to the steering wheel, and the car took off.
Outside the sun had just gone down, and a cold night was closing in.
Balot wiped the last of her tears away and focused on the road ahead. There was still a lot she had to learn. There really was.
≡
“Don’t tell the police yet! Do you want OctoberCorp to get wind of what’s happened?” Oeufcoque was speaking into the cell phone in Balot’s grip. “That’s right. Look up Shell’s file. Right away.”
There was a moment’s silence, then the Doctor’s voice, clearly surprised.
–Shell has a number of large outstanding debts that will be paid off by the woman’s life insurance policy. As ever, he’s made money out of the woman. Her death certificate reads two hours ago exactly. What sort of doctor would issue a certificate just like that?
The convertible was heading straight toward the Doctor at the Broilerhouse, but they were ready to change their course at a second’s notice should new information arise. New information being Shell’s whereabouts.
Balot stared ahead in a daze, thinking about the dead woman’s face.
“Cleanwill must have been expecting Shell to kill that woman. That’s what he meant by Shell losing his rights as a Concerned Party in the case. If the murder is made public, there’s nothing to stop Boiled from officially being hired as Trustee for OctoberCorp and apprehending Shell.”
–That’s incredible… Whatever else has happened, imagine sacrificing your own daughter…
“This is no time to start dissecting our opponent’s motives. It’s only a matter of time now before OctoberCorp brings their case against Shell. We have to track him down by whatever means necessary. Quickly and discreetly.”
–We have no idea of Boiled’s whereabouts either. What if he’s already with Shell?
“Use whatever pretext you can to track them down. The police are of no use at this stage. The one thing we have going for us is the fact that there are still negotiations that need to take place before OctoberCorp brings its case against Shell.”
–Are you planning on having Balot secure Shell’s person?
Balot’s eyes narrowed. Secure Shell—the words reminded Balot of something. What was it the Doctor had said this morning, just before the trial had started?
“Once we have him in our care, use the police or special forces or whatever necessary to cordon off the area.”
–If Shell had his memories back, Shell would stop killing people.
–Roger that. Wait, what was that? Shell’s memories? Balot, is that you speaking?
–You said so yourself before the trial started, Doctor. Shell can’t restrain his own urges because he has no memories.
–Ah…yes, that’s right. Shell’s amnesia means that his urges grow and grow and have nowhere to go, no escape, that’s what we were—
–Will you let me borrow something? I’ll be sure to return it safely.
–What’s that? Borrow? Are you talking about…
The Doctor gulped.
Oeufcoque took advantage of the small pause to interject. “Doctor, if Balot says she needs something, you trust her judgment and hand it over without further ado. Got that?”
Something seemed to have got the Doctor’s tongue for a moment, but eventually he managed to speak.
–Fine, I’ll leave Shell’s security completely in your hands. The pair of you. Come over to the Broilerhouse to—
His tone of voice changed abruptly.
–Just in! The first information disclosure on Boiled’s whereabouts. Shell called Boiled from a pay phone on the banks of the East River. At around seventeen hundred hours. I’m going to publish the fact that we’ve just had some negotiations with OctoberCorp ourselves, okay?
“Do it, Doctor. Force their hand, make them give us as much information as possible.”
–There’s every chance that Shell is now hiding out somewhere in the vicinity of the phone booth. Let’s use the pretext that he may be armed and dangerous in order to force the other side into disclosing his exact location. I’ll get the DA to gather what information he can, top secret. So… Balot, I’ll have what you need ready for you—just come on over to the Broilerhouse to pick it up.
–Thank you.
The phone cut off. The car sped on toward the Broilerhouse, and the monitor already showed a map that displayed the likely whereabouts of Shell.
03
Shell arrived at
the hotel room that Boiled had told him to come to. He sat down on the bed, and the first thing he thought was Now I can become a different person again.
He was even prepared. Thoroughly. Or so Shell thought, at least.
He had his overnight Boston bag on his lap, and he pulled out a bottle of Heroic Pills from inside his jacket pocket and washed them down one by one, chugging a bottle of scotch as he did so. The Blue Diamonds on the seven rings on his hands shone brilliantly.
The lenses on his Chameleon Sunglasses were a fawn color.
Before long the bottle of pills dropped out of his hand, and the bottle of scotch tipped over onto the floor, its contents seeping into the carpet.
Why am I here? The question arose as Shell’s mind passed into an increasingly euphoric state. Is it a good or bad thing that I’m here? Bad, if you consider that I’ve lost the battle that I’ve been fighting for the last few months. But also good—that having lost the battle, I’m still here now, safe and sound.
He’d managed to run away. He had left the horrors firmly behind him and was now in a safe place.
The slate would be wiped clean. The past, so disagreeable—all that would be washed away. There were no cracks in his shell—only the contents had been removed.
Shell hugged his Boston bag tight as he was filled with desire for his new life.
What good friends he had! That burly friend of his had proven himself indispensable in helping him to acquire another one of these. Helping him turn that crazy woman into another one of these. While Shell was strangling the woman in the bath, his burly friend had taken care of all the details. It was wonderful. That other girl might still be chasing after him, but now he would always be able to repel her, destroy her, subsume all thoughts of her.
Shell opened up his bag at one end and stuck a hand inside to feel its contents—newly minted bills. He flipped through a wad of notes, and as the bills brushed against his fingertips he muttered. You like that, don’t you, my little ones? You want some more, don’t you? Then he stopped suddenly and withdrew his hand in haste. The corners of the bills had given him a number of paper cuts on his fingertips, and blood was welling up.
Shell put his bleeding finger in his mouth and sucked away. The taste of his own blood spread to the corners of his mouth. The taste brought to mind vestiges of an old memory. A memory that should have been long since erased, but that clung tenaciously to the void of his inner mind nonetheless.