by Martin Rose
“There’s only room for one of us,” I muttered threateningly. A cigarette withdrawn from a pack, the hiss of the lighter against the tip, and I was inhaling fumes once more. My gaze never left the empty hollow of the helmet visor. Something about that emptiness shook me.
It’s a metaphor, idiot. The knight is empty like you are.
Perhaps, I considered. I thought of the basement beneath the fortune teller’s shop and Jessica within it. It was not difficult to recall those moments with her, when I had been oscillating between an animal self and a higher-functioning monster. I remembered my shadow-self, the Id Man, and my shuffling, pre-deceased corpse. All one, shattered person, a split consciousness.
Deep below the ground, Owen was descending to finish the job I had not been able to. I knew without being told and without having to ask that Owen should have been back by now. Would his better nature supersede him and cause him to fail at a critical moment? Did he have the courage to stare a child in the face and kill him if he had to? His fate could be determined by a wavering a gun, a missed target.
He could be dead already.
I considered all this with sober grimness.
I thought of the Id Man from the basement. But he was a part of me, wasn’t he? The Id Man and I were one and the same, but he was buried deep inside my subconscious and sleeping now, pacified by Atroxipine.
Are you there?
Silence. I was alone inside myself, bones upon bones.
I could use your help right now, if you are.
In the silence, I sensed a rustling in the deep membranes of my gray matter and there was an answer. A snaking voice from a distant plane.
Rescue the kid, come back, and kiss it all goodbye, if dying makes you happy. But do it with a shred of conviction and integrity. You want the son you never had? Fuck the consequences and take it.
I bowed my head and the ember burned like a lodestone in the darkness and cast feeble light upon the armor itself. Up close, I could see the armor was no reproduction; the metal was the real thing. Shoulder plates inlaid with swirling patterns and fine details. Exemplary craftsmanship that existed over hundreds of years but long forgotten in this new corrupt and modern age—along with the chivalry it once stood for, everything disposable and everything for sale and on credit, bought and sold and discarded like trash, people and objects alike.
Is this the world I belonged in, the one I wanted to continue living in?
No, I decided. My decision cemented, my certainty rigid and uncompromising. I flicked the cigarette away, extinguishing it with a grind of my bone-heel. “Not anymore,” I whispered, and reached for the knight.
*
Niko made a habit of looking delicious; part of her charm was she didn’t seem to know it—or she did and played upon it, turning perception to her advantage. Her hair gathered in generous black curls, except when she was working on a fresh corpse, and she would pull it up into a loose tie at the back of her head, letting raven-strands fall here and there. Her cheeks carved from the snowy mountain ranges of Nepal. Black clothes to frame her sapphire eyes as she strode through the front double doors and into the lobby and straight past the knight, trailing a sweet-smelling perfume through a path of putrid, acrid cigarette smoke. She never lost stride or even curled her nose, a veteran of unearthly gases and questionable aromas. If Pluto were embodied in a female form, Niko was its earthly manifestation.
“Niko,” a voice called out.
She stopped and her fingers unclenched, nearly dropping her bag as she sank back into the shadows as though they offered her protection.
From the other side of the room, a man entered from a far door.
Taller and widened and filled with the weight of years. He looked down at Niko as he came around the circumference of the interior slowly, carrying with him an air of entitlement and bureaucracy. His face expressionless. His suit favored an appearance designed to be bland and bureaucratic, a brown number with the collar undone. His five o’clock shadow testified to unforgiving deadlines and his red-rimmed eyes suggested he had not slept in some time. Perhaps he had been a kinder-looking man in his younger days, but the years gave cruel edges to his face and made his aging body solid and immovable as a bull’s. His hair was beginning to recede from the front.
“You didn’t call,” he accused her.
“I don’t answer to you,” she said.
“There was a time when you didn’t answer to me, Niko. And it must be something you’ve gotten used to all these years, because we’ve never asked anything of you since you put Mrs. Adamson and Clayton Adamson in the ground. Your service doesn’t end with a single job, Niko. You have not been released from duty. Do you understand?”
“I did my job. I prepare people for burial. I don’t owe you a goddamn thing and you know it. You owe Vitus.”
He sighed, annoyed. The slack flesh of his face shook with the clenching of his jaw and, with an angry spasm of his hands, he reached into an inner pocket to whip out a folded paper. It snapped in the air as he produced it and held it open for her to study the contents.
“Is that your signature, down here?” he asked, his voice terse as he tapped at the bottom with a finger.
“No one told me what I was signing. They said it was release form, that we couldn’t talk about what we’d seen,” she hissed.
“This appears to be a standard CIA recruitment form,” he explained as might a bored professor, an unenthusiastic actor reciting a mediocre play. “This swears you to service when the country calls for it, to give us any information you might have on behalf of the United States government. Refusal to do so can result in undesirable repercussions.”
She said nothing. He took a step forward and ceiling lights turned his face into the caricature of a skull with his eyes black sockets and the paper trembling in his hand. She took a step back until her spine met against the armor display. Metal plates jangling with the vibration.
I struggled to be motionless from inside the suit.
“There’s nothing you can do to me that hasn’t already been done,” she seethed.
“Been to prison yet? Because I can assure you, we can do that. And if that doesn’t terrify you, think of your family. It’s not to suggest we would be so cruel as to hurt your family. We’re not the mafia, after all. But nothing can compel us to continue to help and treat your ailing relatives on our good will if you refuse to do something for us in return. Is that so unreasonable?”
She said nothing. In that moment, she had the time to imagine any number of scenarios and with it the social shame attached to imprisonment, the loss of her job, her security, her home—and all of these could have been negotiable for the right reasons, but family, ah—how to justify and explain their increase in suffering? All this could be taken from her on the strength of a single piece of paper.
“It doesn’t even have to be a federal prison, you know. We could pack you off to a Black Site. And all those high-end treatments at state of the art facilities your mother has been enjoying? All those prescriptions healing your loved ones, how do you think we developed those? If not pioneered off the largesse of Vitus’s pain, than who? You owe Vitus. People all across this country owe him and may never know of it. But we can take it all away.”
“I won’t do it!”
“You will do it!” he yelled in return, and his booming voice filled the room and turned it into a thousand echoes that vibrated the plates of armor like strings of an instrument. “You will convince Vitus to do what is right, and this government authorizes you to use whatever means necessary. Make no mistake, Niko—I make every sacrifice required of me to repay the debt I owe to my brother. You make me out to be a monster, when all I have ever wanted to do is put an end to death, to stop this useless human suffering. With your help, it’s not too late.”
The silence spun out again, broken only by her ragged breathing.
“It will break his heart, Jamie,” she whispered, her fist unfurling in a gesture of surrender.
&nbs
p; “At least he will have one worth breaking, then,” the man only responded, and with a flick of the paper, he disappeared it into his suit and faded away.
*
I held my breath as though I had one; the memory of lungs compelled me. I held and held, but I could hold my breath forever and I would not die, I would not expire; it is the humanity that lingers inside me, no matter how many times I try to drown it with a thousand cigarettes, with a thousand bullets and a thousand dead. It makes no difference. I held my breath like a man who has been stabbed and my ears boxed with Niko’s words:
It will break his heart, Jamie.
And deep inside me, a raw and empty laughter from the other.
You’re a fool, Vitus.
The silence stretched out long after she had left the lobby, turning down the sterile hall to her corpses on their gurneys, to tinker with their bones and flesh, to mold them into caricatures of living things for their viewings and their wakes. The silence lasted long after I knew Jamie was gone through the shadows and out the back door. I waited longer than reason to ponder this fresh agony I’d borne witness to.
I had no sooner managed to pull on the final plate of armor when I heard the lock turning in the door. Frozen, I allowed the drama to play out before me. At any moment, I could have put a stop to it, I could have cried out, made my presence known—and the desire had been there. To draw the sword. Pin Jamie against the wall. And was I really so surprised?
But who could I blame but myself? All I had to do was think about it; there had to be strings attached. The only reason Niko would have been allowed to see the bodies of my wife and child, to witness me there with Jamie, was because she had been taken into the ranks. Who knew better than I the dirty tricks of my father’s meddling? I had time to wonder how much the hand of the old gray fox had been at work here. Counseling Jamie. Advising him. Whispering in his ear and pouring forth a multitude of poisons: we can use him, Jamie, there’s a lot of money in pharmaceuticals. Think of the people it would help. The diseases it would give relief to. Think of the money.
And Jamie would have fallen into line as he always did. Obedient son. First for my father’s love. Feeding me to the meat grinder for his approval. Perhaps Niko’s greatest function for the government had been to provide a lie, both to me and to others who might ask too many questions about the dead soldiers they’d no doubt hired her to dispose of, to steer away uncomfortable questions about the remains.
They were old and dirty CIA tricks; I’d heard of it done through rumor and gossip but never met the proof of it. Popular on college campuses, the Central Intelligence Agency had been known to recruit students, persuade them into signing papers without realizing they were entering such dubious employment; once under the auspices of the CIA, they were little more than pawns, good for intelligence, but little else. It was my understanding that, as leverage, the CIA often threatened to “oust” the identities of the reluctantly recruited students, resulting in the claim that a portion of school suicides occur from the stress and fear of exposure as double agents.
And now, Niko was one of them.
Was he holding her hostage by threatening to expose her duplicity? Perhaps even by exposing her CIA status to me? What of her home, her people?
I chewed over the possibilities. Motive was the slippery issue—for what purpose was Jamie here, pulling Niko’s strings? What was the end game? Was Owen involved as well? He was a helluva shot. Too good.
Had they hired him to kill me?
Now, that had a promising ring. It would be a lot easier to have Owen kill me than to have Jamie do it himself. Maybe I had used up my usefulness to Uncle Sam and the tab had been called due. The old gray fox bent before the firelight with a whiskey in one hand and a balance sheet in the other, and in that list of debits, crosses my name out. As simple as that. Jamie would arrange for someone else to kill me. For all I knew, Owen might be in the same boat as Niko.
Alone in the lobby at last, I stepped off the pedestal to the plush carpet. I plundered every conspiracy theory I could conjure from my head. The metal casing of the armor followed the command of my tired bones. I checked the firearm. The world reduced to a horizontal slit, and I missed the sensation of grinning, of a face that could express all that I was feeling inside, the tumult that electrified my neurons.
I didn’t know why I hadn’t thought of the armor sooner; it was like taking a Mustang for a ride. To think that I had feared the empty suit, registered sinister feeling in its presence. I had spent so long terrified of my unity with it, I had not stopped to think it could offer me something neither my rotting flesh or fragile bones could—restore strength where it had been stolen, integrity where it had been corrupted, and the opportunity, just maybe, to put things right. For once in my life, in the last hours I possessed it, I wanted to do the right thing—make this armor sing with purpose, absolve the blood of the crimes of the past.
“One way or another,” I whispered, “I’m coming for you, Owen.”
Jamie and Niko would have to wait. My son came first.
I turned on my heel and left, metal clanking emptily as I slammed the door closed behind me.
*
I boosted a car from the near-empty lot. An old Chevy Beretta. Aromatic with spilled beer and piss and cigarette burns dotting the fabric interior. The vehicle gurgled to life reluctantly. If knights were supposed to ride noble steeds, this was definitely not it.
You left the Thunderbird at Astra’s fortune telling shop.
Gasoline hit the air as I turned the car onto the main drag. The visor cut down on my peripheral vision, but provided me with a soothing line of sight. Something about the metal structure of the armor gave comfort. Not quite as good as having skin and flesh and blood, but better than nothing but bare bones. I could at least not be reminded of my inhumanity by the unsettling sight of my skeletal structure as I went about my business. I wondered just how unnerving the experience was for Niko.
When I returned, I intended to put that all to rest; she wouldn’t have to look at me or fix me anymore once I was out of the picture. We would all be better off for it. By taking myself off the chessboard, I could change the game in ways both dynamic and irrevocable. I imagined the old gray fox, gnashing his teeth and wailing—not in grief as a father for a son, but that I was no longer a useful pawn for his advancement.
Owen first, I reminded myself, and pressed the gas, burning rubber on the main road. The Glock remained in my shoulder holster, slung over the metal plates, while the shield lay against the tattered fabric car interior beside the sword. Fifteen bullets in the magazine, one chambered. Sixteen shots against a hundred kids are bad odds—and I hoped the sword would be sharp enough.
Call it a hunch, but I had a feeling the kids trapped in the basement weren’t going to be singing show tunes and tap dancing on that stage by the time I got down there.
Ah, fatherhood, I thought grimly, and pressed on.
*
When I arrived at the shop, the moon was full and trekking across the sky with purpose. Niko would have noticed I had gone missing by now; I hoped and prayed Owen was still whole, still human. I had already decided that if he were not—if he had been turned, then I would do what Jamie should have done for me: I was going to kill him.
The shop was empty. Neon lights still advertised fortunes in brilliant, nightmarish color as I broke through the glass door with a metal fist. Glass flew and tinkled across the floor. Armor insulated the impact. Without the padding of flesh to protect my structure, I had to take into consideration how I moved and touched objects. Putting a bony fist through a window would have been out of the question before. The suit of armor changed everything.
I turned the knob from the inside and jerked open the door over the broken glass. Oddments and ornaments of crystals and tarot decks; pendulums and crystal balls shuddered on their shelves as I slammed the broken door behind me and marched toward the back. I took down the fabric strung from the corridors with a sweep of my armored
hand. Jerked new age decorations from their supports and sent them cascading to the floor in reds, oranges, and burgundies.
I came to a stop in the stock room. A trace memory surfaced of Jessica leading me through these halls, through the black door, and down the steps to the waiting children. The moment sent a shiver through me and rattled me down to my metal. There would be no going through the door here; Owen had said they cemented it shut on the other side, and a brief attempt at breaking the lock and opening the door confirmed it. It budged half an inch inward, then stopped and could not be persuaded to move farther. I cursed, my breath icy against the underside of my metal helmet. I retreated to reassess my options.
Owen said he had used a ventilation shaft, and he had most likely used the same route to ferret us out when he rescued me and brought me back to the funeral home. I cast my eyes over the stock room. Empty boxes, dust bunnies waving in the faint wind. I watched their gray, frayed tendrils. Air flows close to here. I pulled at a set of industrial shelves, moving them away from the wall several inches. They scraped white lines across the dirty linoleum, squealing as empty boxes cascaded down, a set of tarot cards spilling across the floor. I stared at images of the Nine of Swords and the Knight of Wands exposed before me and, if it were possible, they inspired a deep unease, greater than the Death card itself. I dismissed them and continued until I was satisfied that I had enough clearance and stood back to examine what my efforts had uncovered.
A grate breathed air into the room from beyond the shelving and the covering to the ventilation shaft hung askew, marking the place Owen had used to penetrate the basement. I knelt before it, my metal knees scraping the concrete floor. This armor made enough racket to raise the dead—there was no way I was going to be able to quiet my approach. Owen had the advantage of soft material clothing, but in this suit, I was as clumsy as a zombie in a china shop.
A gap in the floor caught my eye. Half in and half out of the shadow of the shelves. I crawled closer and cut the distance until I was running a hand over the spot and then latching on with my fingers. The gap opened wide and gave way. A broken piece of concrete came away in my hand. I looked down into the hole in the ground and expected to see a secret chamber. A helpful flight of stairs to lead me to my destination.