Yes, child. You’ve come home.
• • •
The laminate around his neck is soaked in the blood of Moonie Raycraft, but it still works. The barcode passes under an infrared scanner and the elevator doors open. He steps inside and the world drops down into the corridor of love and freedom.
• • •
And there he stands, in the hallway.
In front of the big steel door.
It’s just after four in the morning.
Ten minutes past.
He knows he’s come too late, even when he brings the phone out of his pocket and thumbs it to his ear, making the call. The voice that answers is very familiar. It says hello.
And he speaks back: “Hello, Father.”
15
truth
“I thought you were dead.”
“I want my friends back.”
“You can have what’s left. But she’s a bit of a mess.”
“Goddamn you.”
“Yes, November Twelve. Goddamn me. Goddamn us both.”
Darian’s voice reaches him from a hundred feet away and a billion years ago, just on the other side of the door. It can’t be, but it is.
The phone clicks dead in his hand.
• • •
Three minutes later, the door unlocks with a huge metal sound, and Darian comes out into the hall.
Rolling what’s left of Jollie in front of him.
• • •
The three men in white bring up the rear, their hands holding pistols. They all come into the corridor single file, very slowly. The wheels of the dentist’s chair squeak and rattle, echoing off the sleek white walls, as Jollie struggles against the leather straps, trying to get free and run to him.
“Mark . . . oh my God . . . Mark . . .”
And Mark’s heart floods with something that might be sad joy soaked in gasoline, as his mind pulls back from the brink one final time.
Jollie. You’re alive. He didn’t kill you.
And then Darian’s voice cuts through everything.
His voice is saying Mark’s true name.
He looks into the face of his father.
• • •
A scalpel slides just under Jollie’s chin, held by a cruel, loving hand.
Darian smiles at her, slowly chewing his gum.
“Hello, November Twelve,” he says. “I’m afraid I’m not the man I used to be, at least not on the surface. I no longer have white hair like I did then. I am no longer young. And my face tells an undeniable truth, does it not?”
“It can’t be you,” Mark says.
“But it is. You could never forget my voice. Or my eyes. But first things first. Let’s lose the hand cannon, November Twelve.”
Mark looks down at the gun in his hand.
The scalpel cuts a micromillimeter into Jollie’s chin and she winces.
“If you hurt her . . . I’ll kill you.”
“No you won’t, November Twelve. You’re almost immobilized right now. And your gun is useless in this hallway, just like ours are. The walls are made of solid marble with a titanium alloy sealant. Absolutely bulletproof. One shot in here could kill us all, never mind two or three shots.”
“Then we’ll all die.”
“No, my son . . . you don’t want that for the lady. Or me, do you? This is quite a reunion, isn’t it? Why end things so terribly?”
Mark looks deep into him. The man is so different now, his skin ripped and torn, healed so badly. The scar down the middle splits his lip and his face, making him a monster. He might not have recognized him.
But Darian was right—the scars do not hide his eyes.
Or his voice when he speaks again: “Eddie Darling knew your real name, just like he knew so much about what was going on inside METRO. He was obsessively collecting information about the operation we were all part of. But he never knew that Mark Jones was really November Twelve. That surprised the hell out of me too. Only I could know that, of course. Do you know why you were named November Twelve in the first place? Do you remember?”
Darian smiles proudly.
“I named you that. November Twelve is my birthday.”
And Mark sees himself in the room again, filled with feelings he cannot assign a proper name to. Looking into the face of his teacher, who once told him love is for the weak. Loving something that seems like his father.
Because he knows no other family.
You’re not my family. You’re not my father. You’re a psychopathic killer—a spoiler of children. A MONSTER.
Mark staggers back two steps, feeling the gun loosen in his grip for a long terrible second. Then he steadies himself. Remembering the training.
But Darian Stanwell keeps talking.
“When I took the keys from Eddie and learned for sure that it was you who killed Marnie and blew the deal, I have to admit I was quite angry at first. We had such grand plans for Marnie. He was a diamond in the rough. I could have shaped that diamond into something so beautiful. But these things take time. And often . . . the present is tense.”
Stop talking. Just stop it. You are a liar and a maniac.
“And then my anger changed to love. For you, November Twelve. And then that love changed to sadness, because I was sure you’d died in that explosion. It’s probably some kind of perverted miracle that you survived.”
“I don’t believe in miracles.”
“And yet, here we are.”
The scalpel hovers at Jollie’s chin. Darian winks.
“I decided to wait on her death. At least until I’d heard from my boys that her information was genuine. We’ve been waiting for hours to hear from them. I assumed that meant they’d run into trouble. I resisted the temptation to slit her throat many times in the last hour. One small incision . . . one vein opened . . . and the scales would truly be balanced. Marnie would be avenged. But we don’t want that now. Do we, November Twelve?”
Mark clutches the pistol in his right hand tighter.
Brings it up, locking his father into his sights.
“Better not,” Darian says. “If you want the love of your life to die, all you have to do is pull that trigger. My hand will cut her throat just as surely as your bullet will fly. And then, who knows? A pistol like that one has a lot of stopping power. It will go right through my body and kill one of the men standing behind me. Then bounce off the wall and maybe kill another one, or blow poor Jollie’s brains out. Then maybe yours. That would be a nice punch line, wouldn’t it? It certainly wouldn’t be any miracle.”
The gun, trembling in his hand.
Aimed right at Darian to shut him up.
“But it also wouldn’t be truth, November Twelve. It wouldn’t be love. We must forgive one another if we are to become enlightened beings. We must bury our dead. We must heal our wounds. You must lower your weapon.”
No.
NO.
“We can start again, as father and son. You can take Marnie’s place, in the promised land. You have no idea what gods we can be.”
Jollie’s face, just above the cruel steel of Darian’s scalpel.
The gun, heavy in Mark’s hand now.
Mark’s teeth gritted and his voice, barely working now: “You’re insane . . . you’ve always been insane . . .”
“That’s shallow thinking, November Twelve. And you know it’s not true. Don’t you realize how destiny has rewarded us tonight? We were put here together, in this room to be the rulers of everything.”
Insane . . .
Crazy . . .
Jollie . . .
“Lower your weapon, November Twelve. Or this will be my last lesson to you. You’re in a zero-point-zero situation.”
Mark hears Marnie Stanwell and almost laughs. Remembers that moment when Marnie l
ooked him right in the eye and said the same exact goddamn thing.
And he felt it then, the familiarity of looking in the face of his own father.
His first teacher.
Fuck me.
• • •
Jollie’s voice suddenly cuts through everything.
Like a knife, it cuts.
Hard.
“Mark, I have to know. Please tell me. Did you kill Jackie?”
• • •
Darian’s voice again, calm as death.
“You’re not asking the right question, Jollie. Little Jackie never died in that backroom when Mark shot him, after all. It was a ten-to-one freak occurrence, but the boy survived. You should be asking a much more important question. You should be asking poor Mark who he really is, and who he has been all along. He might not even answer you. Not truthfully. He was trained to lie as well as kill.”
“Shut up,” Mark says.
“You know it’s true, Jollie. But shall I show you anyway? Would you like to see what he really is? And what he was in that moment when the job was more important than any of his so-called friends?”
“No,” she says weakly.
Too late.
Darian turns to the white-suited men and says: “Kill him.”
• • •
They shove their guns in the smalls of their backs and clomp forward like big dumb apes to obey their master.
Mark re-aims his weapon at them.
They close the gap between Jollie and Mark, single file.
One bullet will kill them all. And then kill Jollie.
Zero-point-zero.
• • •
The lead gorilla is less than six feet away when Mark lunges forward and uses the butt of the pistol to implode his nose. The strike happens damn fast and the guy has his block up a quarter second too late. And then Mark is using his other hand to slap away the block, and the gorilla howls like something wounded, something broken—he almost starts crying. Because that’s what you do with a big dumb gorilla.
Mark’s next strike drops him to one knee, then he twists the arm back in a series of instinctive maneuvers that come as easily as breathing, even with the shakes, even with the burning need for Popeye’s spinach.
He just ignores it, and everything comes easy again.
Jollie watches him work with sheer horror.
Mark, stop! Don’t kill them! That’s just what he wants!
She tries to scream at him—tries to make him hear her—but her words are like ice in her throat, choking into nothing, as Mark cleans house like an expert.
On his knees, the gorilla really starts crying, and his face explodes against another hard-balled fist. Then his arm cracks in six places. Bone tears through skin at bizarre, impossible angles. An eyeball hits the floor and bursts apart with crimson humors. The other two guys see the carnage, almost on top of Mark now, and they hesitate for the next half second that it takes for him to turn into a blur, sweeping and striking hard, mutilating flesh and bone between eyeblinks. Jollie can’t even see exactly what happens because it all goes down so fast and ends very quickly. She hears Mark scream wordlessly as he plunges someone’s skull into the marble wall. The last man standing yells curses that turn into blubbering nonsense as he goes for his gun and ends up on the floor real fast, his entire face caved in from a roundhouse kick. And that last man twitches there, almost lifeless, a bag of bloody meat at Mark’s feet.
Jollie thinks she cries out in this moment, finally screams for him to stop—but in the real world, the sound never leaves her mouth.
• • •
The three men lie dead, bleeding. Mark killed them all in fifteen seconds. And now he’s looking at Darian Stanwell, his face and fists soaked in blood.
Darian smiles down at Jollie, still holding the knife at her chin.
“Does that answer your question, girl?”
• • •
She keeps herself from crying, from seeing the moment. Holds it all back, to stop from going crazy. But it’s coming on fast . . .
And here’s the truth, she thinks. Mark is a murderer.
And he killed Jackie.
• • •
“Let her go,” Mark says. “Or I’ll kill you too.”
Darian nods, smiling. “You’ve let your emotions rule so much lately. I suspect the lady here had much to do with breaking your conditioning. I see a lot of her in your actions tonight. Still . . . I’m proud of what you’ve become. You’re what we made you to be.”
He strokes Jollie’s chin with a gentle finger, right next to the blade. Looks down at her and chuckles: “Does that shock you, my child?”
Tears are running down her face.
“Yes, it has shocked you quite a lot. Do you see what you’ve wrought, November Twelve? Do you think these ordinary people know anything about real love? About true enlightenment?”
“Shut up,” Mark says.
“A lady like Jollie Meeker thinks she knows the awful truth. But that’s something only men like you and I can truly understand. That’s a real corker, isn’t it?”
“Just shut your mouth and let her go!”
Mark takes two steps forward, over the dead bodies, coming closer.
“LET HER GO OR I’LL KILL YOU!”
It’s a primal scream, and Darian smiles.
“You could try to kill me, November Twelve. But I wouldn’t let you. Even if you could bring yourself to break my neck with your bare hands, the way you’ve broken these men, I still wouldn’t let you do it. I wouldn’t let you destroy our family.”
Mark comes closer, just twenty feet separating them now.
Darian keeps on smiling. “That’s what we are now, November Twelve. We are family. The three of us. I’ll prove it to you.”
The scalpel comes away from Jollie’s chin. Mark stops and Darian tosses away the blade. Shows that his hands are empty. Reaches down and begins to unbuckle her straps.
“See?” Darian says when it’s done.
Then he gets a handful of her hair and dumps her on the floor in front of the chair. She sprawls forward on her hands, stumbling like a boneless thing, her arms and legs almost numb. Darian smiles at her, pushing aside the chair.
Mark falls on her, and she recoils, gagging and choking. Crying. He tries to embrace her. He never wants to let go of her.
But she pulls away from him, her eyes wide and bloodshot.
“Mark . . . you’re just like him . . . you’re just like all of them!”
YOU KILLED JACKIE!
She tears herself from his arms, slaps his face weakly, trying to get past him and run for the goddamn elevator. Then she hits him harder. And harder.
And Darian smiles.
• • •
And Mark can’t do anything, because she’s the love of his life, as she jumps on top of him and beats him, because that’s all there is left to do. Her fists pound at his face as he goes to the floor. And she gives herself over to it, the rage thundering in her molecules, and she grits her teeth and bites him hard, tastes blood in her mouth, and she’s snarling like an animal and he’s not fighting her because he says he loves her, says he’s always loved her, says he’ll never love anyone else, says he’ll die for her, and she dies for him in this moment, dies in her heart, dies in her mind, and I hate you Mark because you let Andy burn and I hate you Mark because you made me love you with stories about mutant monsters and stolen kisses and I HATE YOU MARK because I gave you the last gift I had left to give—my innocence, my womanhood, my body on my bed and YOU KILLED JACKIE YOU KILLED JACKIE YOU KILLED JACKIE YOU KILLED—
And she pulls away.
Her mouth filled with blood.
Mark lies at her feet, his face and throat splattered.
Looking up at her.
Crying.
; Finally seeing the ring on her finger.
The ring he gave her.
Jollie. My love. Please.
She realizes what she’s done, and her mind almost snaps. Sees the wound in his neck, oozing slowly between his fingers and she brings her hands to her face, almost screaming in horror. Then she runs for the goddamn elevator.
• • •
Mark looks up at Darian, oozing blood.
“Look at what she’s done to you, my son. Look what you’ve let her do.”
“Please . . .”
That’s all Mark can get out, choking on his own backwash.
“Please what, my son? Please help you? I can do that, you know. She didn’t take a very big bite. Missed the carotid artery. Just a few stitches and you’ll be right as rain again. But you will die if I don’t help you.”
Darian extends his hand and smiles.
“I can save you, my son. Just ask for my help.”
No, Mark thinks. Please kill me.
• • •
Jollie stabs at the controls of the elevator. Nothing happening. The door won’t open for her. Her mind races, her senses filled with blood. She is an animal in a maze, screaming to be free, bloody and horrible.
• • •
Darian crouches down and brings Mark to his breast, his hand over the oozing wound, cradling him like a newborn. Smiling so proudly.
Mark feels himself go deep into a cloud of sharp sweetness. Strawberry slime, forgiving him in some weird nightmare.
“You’ll be fine, my son. I will make it right.”
• • •
And Jollie sinks to the floor, surrounded by dead bodies and the sharp stench of death and chewing gum. Feeling like she’s failed so terribly. Gushing with anguish and wanting to be free. Tasting Mark’s blood in her mouth.
She looks around quickly and sees the Glock on the floor.
Right where Mark dropped it.
• • •
“You will never again find the rage that made you want to kill me, my son. And yet I am the same man I was before. I am your teacher. These are my lessons. Your scars will remind you, years from now. Your scars, which I will mend.”
No, Father. Please end it now. End it because I don’t want to live. Let her kill me. Because that’s the way it should be.
Metro Page 25