by Quil Carter
Perish chuckled. “Yes, your world is slowly imploding, isn’t it?” He rose and motioned for me to follow. I obliged. “You have questions for me… and you want me to help you find the answers, don’t you?”
I followed behind him as he walked out of his personal apartment, and into the main area of the laboratory. “Yes,” I said. “I need help cracking that immortal code. Silas won’t let me open Sky’s O.L.S, and I have no idea where yours is. In that device is the blueprints on how to keep a piece of brain alive, and I think that’s a vital clue on figuring out Sky’s lost research.”
Perish nodded. To my surprise, when he turned to the hallway, he didn’t go left which led deeper into the lab, he turned right which would lead us… outside.
“You’re most certainly right, Elish,” Perish said. He took his card key out of his pocket and slid it through the reader on the door. The red light turned green. “So let’s say we go take a look at that O.L.S then.”
I stared at Perish in puzzled astonishment. He had nothing in return for my look except for a wink, then he disappeared out the laboratory door.
“Where is it?” I asked as I continued to trail behind him. He was strolling towards his car with a confident gait, and I had to admit, I missed the old Perish even more in that moment. This cocksure asshole was scary and intimidating when I was little, but now that I was thirty-three, I found myself both admiring him in a strange way.
Perish smirked and opened the door of his car. “Silas has it, of course,” he said. He got into the car and the door slammed behind him.
I got in as well, still confused as all hell. “And you can access it?” I said. I wished I’d brought some of my laboratory equipment. I wanted to examine it in the comfort of the lab, not hiding in my apartment hoping Silas doesn’t barge in.
“I’ll be retreiving it, yes,” Perish said. He pulled out of the parking lot and pulled onto Sebastian Road. “I think you’ll be quite fascinated with what I will be showing you.”
“What do you mean?” I pressed. I was both excited and incredibly anxious about what was happening. I felt like he was withholding information from me. “Do you know how it’s done, Perish?”
Perish smiled, but he said nothing more, he continued to drive down the road, Alegria looming over us and approaching fast.
Excitement had me not pressing him for more information. There was an even mixture of anticipation and relief making roads through my veins. The anticipation was easy to explain, but the relief? It was as if the giant hand that had been crushing me from on high, had not only removed itself, but it had lifted me up to the sky.
Answers. Finally, answers.
If only Perish could also help me with rooting out that spider…
Who was I kidding… I knew it was Silas. I didn’t want to admit it, but if you followed the roads of every horrible thing that had happened in my life, each one would lead to that smirking king.
Limb from limb…
He’d gotten to my siblings too, hadn’t he? Had he also gotten to Julian?
The thought pushed ice into my chest.
But no, no that’s impossible… I was shot. Silas would’ve never let me get shot. That’s all there is to it.
I sighed, once again at a loss. There was no explanation and I couldn’t think of that now. Right now… I needed that O.L.S.
Soon Perish and I were walking through the glass doors and into Alegria. I followed him to the elevator, but when the doors closed, I was surprised to see him push the button for the basement.
“That lobby is just so damn fancy,” Perish said with a shake of his head. “You know I helped him install those grey marble floors? I wanted him to put in dark purple wainscoting on the walls, but he just had to go with the dark blue.” He opened his mouth to say more, but when he looked over at me, he chuckled. “There is no breaking the tension with you. You’re so uptight, even as a child.”
I swallowed hard and took in a deep breath. “I… Silas likes renovating the – the lobby. Next time he does, I’ll suggest dark purple. It is my favourite colour after all.”
This only made this chortling continue. “Well, it’s an attempt,” he said. “You really need to start smoking weed or something. You’re well on your way to another heart attack, golden boy.”
My mouth pulled into a frown but I said nothing back. It wasn’t like I had that much time to speak, the elevator stopped soon after, and the doors opened to… what didn’t resemble a skyscraper’s basement at all.
It was a sparse, yet it held the same refined royal air that the interiors of Alegria had. The walls were deep burgundy trimmed with smoky grey, and the floors black marble with twists of grey and white. The light fixtures were black track lighting that stretched across a roof boasting crown moulding, but the lights shone on only three pieces of furniture.
No… only two pieces of furniture: a cabinet made out of black wood, a daybed I recognized as the one we’d had in my childhood home, and… what looked like a concrete brick almost as tall as I.
“Interesting piece of furniture, huh?” Perish said beside me, the room so empty his words echoed. He walked to the concrete brick and put his hand on it. “You’ll learn to fear concrete one day, Elish.” Perish removed his hand, his mouth twitching down, then he turned and walked towards the wooden cabinet, his shoes clicking against the marble floor.
I didn’t know what to say to that, so I said nothing. I continued to follow Perish, and stood beside him as he opened up the black cabinet.
There were several things of interest in that cabinet, but my eyes went to something that I myself was familiar with.
“Tangerine,” I murmured. I picked up the stuffed orange cat, a treasure from my childhood. “I wondered what he did with him.” I’d thrown the stuffed cat out when I was a pre-teen, deep in depression and furious at Silas. I’d done it because I knew it would hurt him, but I’d always regretted the act.
Silas had found him in the trash anyway, and after yelling at me and smacking me around, he’d taken Tangerine and I had never seen him again.
I would be lying if I said there wasn’t a pull for me to take my stuffed cat back to my apartment. It was unfortunate he had to stay in this cabinet, but at least it looked like… he had a friend.
I watched Perish as he picked up another stuffed animal, this one I didn’t recognize. It was a leopard, worn from what looked like many years of love. My eyes were on him, Tangerine still in my hand, and although I said nothing, I winced when Perish pinched the top of the leopard’s head and tore a small hole between his two round ears.
But there was a reason for this, my eyes widened when Perish reached into the leopard, and pulled out a smooth round device made of a thin metal. It looked unassuming, but for a small hole in the top that held a tiny screw.
“I want to show you something interesting,” Perish said. I followed him to the daybed and we both sat down in front of it. “You want to take this O.L.S apart… because you want to see how it keeps the piece of brain alive?”
I nodded. “I think that’s a vital clue in how to make immortals… seeing how Silas’s brain grows and repairs itself… I don’t believe that area in the cerebellum ever dies, even if it’s damaged.” As I said this, Perish brought a miniature screw driver out of his pocket, and put it into the screw at the top of the O.L.S. “There’s something in that area, something eternal.”
“Our white flames,” Perish whispered. “The source of our immortality.” He turned the screw driver a quarter turn, then removed it.
And as he held out his palm, I stared in awe as the O.L.S began to move. Five vertical splits suddenly appeared in the shiny metal orb, then they fanned out like a flower in bloom.
In the middle of these metallic petals, was a piece of living brain encased, but bursting out of, a second thin metal cage. And attached to the pink mass, were dozens of fine wires that stretched out to the petals of the O.L.S like a spider’s web.
“Remarkable,” I whispered, my bre
ath taken from me as I stared in utter astonishment. I wanted to touch it, but it looked so delicate I worried I’d break it.
“I had several of these,” Perish explained. “Each one holding a piece of Sky’s brain matter, a large piece. But just bits from random areas, not like this O.L.S which was designed for implantation. The scientists used slices of that matter to help make the Sky clones. And as you know… Silas is extremely protective of those devices.” Then he chuckled. “I only knew where the others were though. After he altered me, this one was the only one he had. The clones he tried to make were from mere scraps of frozen brain matter. Serves him right.”
“Can you replicate these wires?” I asked Perish breathlessly.
He nodded. “Easily,” he said. “The altered me didn’t know how, as you can see from that pulser. But me now? I can do it with my eyes closed.”
My heart was racing, relief crippling me. I looked closer at the O.L.S, wanting to go over every detail of it.
Then something caught my interest. I held up Perish’s hand so I was eye level to the device, and took a closer look at the brain inside the second case.
It hit me like an apple falling on Newton, but in my case, the force of the realization was more attuned to it being chucked at my head.
“It’s expanding,” I whispered, my eyes widening. I looked at Perish, the air being sucked out of my lungs. “Perish… how big was the brain matter you put into this O.L.S?”
Perish looked at me curiously, an inquisitive smirk on his face. “About a quarter of the size,” he said. “The piece expands a bit, and then it stops. You cannot grow another Sky with it.” He said the last part with an amused chuckle.
But that’s not what was making my jaw hit the floor. No, no… it wasn’t that.
I carefully hovered my finger over a slice of the exposed pink that was pushing out of the second metal cage, then, with my tongue poking out of the corner of my mouth, I touched the tip of my finger to the warm brain.
It was immediate. The moment my finger made contact with the living mass of Sky, I could feel the slightest amount of returned pressure, and a surprising amount of heat. I retracted my finger then, and witnessed with my own eyes, the brain piece tear away from the digit like it had been covered in adhesive.
It was trying to graft onto my finger.
Of course.
It was just that simple.
“Perish,” I said, unable to hide the excitement in my voice. “You said you can replicate these wires?”
“I can.”
“Can you make me a device that can keep a piece of this brain alive… without the metal encasing it?”
“Keep a piece of brain alive for implantation?” Perish cocked an inquisitive eyebrow.
I nodded. “And let it graft onto the cerebellum.”
He smiled. “Tomorrow you’ll have it in your hands.”
My eyes lifted, and when they met with Perish’s, I couldn’t stop the grin breaking across my face.
“Perish,” I said. “It is wonderful to have you back.”
And then I laughed, and even though Perish was giving me a look that confirmed how much my mind was cracked, I didn’t stop. I got up off of the day bed with my head shaking, a belly laugh rocking my tall frame, and tossed Tangerine back into the open cabinet, beside Silas’s other treasures.
But as I turned away from that cabinet, the smile making my cheeks hurt, I heard something interesting when the stuffed orange cat hit the wood.
A hard thunk.
Perish glanced past me and I turned around. I walked back up to the stuffed cat, resting beside a bunch of loose papers and a grey stuffed cat, and picked him back up.
I began squeezing him, and found the source of the unexpected noise, there was something hiding in Tangerine too, something smaller than the O.L.S.
“Go ahead and take it out,” Perish said. “I’ll be coming back here with a needle and thread. I’ll stitch that one up too.” I nodded, curiosity on my shoulder peering down, and gently tore a hole behind the stuffed cat’s neck.
I dug two of my fingers into the hole, sifted around the soft stuffing, and grabbed the small object and pulled it out.
“Oh,” I said with a furrowed brow. I stared down at the twisted piece of metal and held it up to the light. “I believe this is the bullet that I was shot with.”
Perish was on his feet now, the O.L.S, now closed, in his hand. “Well, there’s a piece of the evidence you were seeking,” he said. He stepped towards the cabinet and began putting the items back in their original positions. “Keep it. You should have it anyway. I’ll be back here later; I’ll replace it with something similar.”
The pull I felt towards the melted, deformed piece of metal had me agreeing to that easily. I slipped the bullet into my pocket, and began to walk towards the door.
We went back to the lab and the two of us settled in for both work and conversation. It was still a surreal experience talking to the old Perish. I’d known Perish my entire adult life as the half-sane man who was brilliant, but also neurotic, easily overwhelmed, and full of odd quirks. Over the course of the day I found myself not only enjoying Perish’s company, but, well, I was actually having fun spending time with him.
“Joel is going to be quite pleased that you’re back,” I said. There was a half-finished bottle of beer in front of me and an opiate cigarette between my fingers. “He seemed to know a great deal about you.”
Perish nodded. He had his own beer, fresh from the fridge with dew dripping down the side, and his laptop open in front of him. “Joel Madden is a great man,” he said. “Never did like the name Joel though, but he’s obsessed with his secrecy.” He took a drink, his eyes reflecting the screen of the laptop. “After all of this is done… I have some things I need to take care of, things out of Skyfall. Luckily, Silas will be so happy with his immortal children and his Sky clone, he won’t care what happens to me.”
“This is true,” I said. “I’m looking forward to not having him lose his mind on me whenever me or my siblings get hurt. Is he a secret boyfriend or something?”
Perish let out a snort. “Joel? No, not him. I have been secretly fucking Mantis though.”
Unfortunately, he told me this when I was taking a drink of my beer. I choked on it, and Perish laughed while I got up to grab a dish towel, cold beer running down my chin. “Mantis?” I said through coughing. “You’re fucking kidding me?”
“He’s the second person I spoke of earlier; he helped do the surgery on you,” Perish said with an uncharacteristically warm smile. “Like I said, I’ve grown rather attached to the man, and it seems the new me still has feelings for him.”
“Feelings?” I repeated. He wasn’t just a fuck buddy then. Well, that was… strange, but I suppose it was nice that Mantis had found someone. “Sounds serious.”
Perish gave a playful shrug. “I already sent him a message through my beeper… he’ll actually be here rather soon. After I make that fibernetic wire for you.” So, that’s what it was called? “I’ll be celebrating with that piece of ass.”
Mantis wasn’t that hard on the eyes, but hearing him described as a piece of ass was quite disconcerting.
But who was I to judge? I’d let Perish have his happiness.
“What’s happening with that mystery of yours?” Perish asked. He leaned back on his chair and began drumming the tips of his fingers together. “I know all about it, the foundation anyway, what new developments do you have?”
At first I soured at him bringing it up, but then felt a strange pull to tell him what was on my mind. Perhaps it was the effect of just being with someone I’d known for so long. Both old Perish, and the new one.
I found myself slipping a hand down my pant’s pocket, and I felt the two bullets I was now in possession of. One that had killed Finn, and one that had almost killed me. I believe I may carry those bullets around for a while. “I hope to have answers soon,” I admitted, my tone subdued. “Silas… Silas promised me help.”
Perish made a face, one that had his mouth pursing to the side and his eyebrows raising. “The conviction in your tone confuses me,” he said. He began digging around his pocket, for what I didn’t know, but he was depositing the contents on the table we were sitting around. “You seem almost hopeful that he’ll actually help.”
I watched him, my finger beginning to peel the label off of the beer bottle. “He’s been different lately…” I said. “I think Silas does honestly want to help me find out who did it.”
My words changed Perish’s expression as if I had uttered a shapeshifting spell. “He’s been different lately…” he repeated back slowly. “I think Silas does honestly want to help me…” His eyes flickered up, such a light blue the seemed like two jagged slabs of ice. “When you say that back to yourself… does that sound like something that fits Silas’s personality?”
I chuckled, the laugh so dry it was full of static. “I know,” I admitted. “But since it was an incident that involved me being shot… I have hopes he wants to figure out the culprit just as much as I do.”
“Yes,” Perish said. He put a small Ziploc bag in the middle of his pile of pocket trash, right beside a receipt and his miniature screw driver. I realized it was the one that had the strange substance in it, the substance that made me drool and pass out. “You were shot and your sengil was murdered. If my old memories serve correct… it was a Skyland Rebel who did it?”
I shook my head, my thumb continuing to pick off the blue beer label. “I think there’s more to it than that,” I admitted. I wasn’t going to go into detail, even though I enjoyed this Perish, I wasn’t stupid. “I have a suspicion that Vlad, the man who murdered Finn, was hired, or possibly set up. I’m not sure.” A long strip of paper came off of the label and began rolling it up with my finger and thumb. “I want to look at the evidence. My brother and my sister have been avoiding me, but Silas promised me that if I took three days off, he’ll bring me the evidence.”