The Long Fall Into Darkness

by Charlie Cottrell

  I emerged into the new basement, which was nearly identical to the one I’d just left though with slightly less shrapnel in the walls. Vera, Maya, and Ellen were waiting by the stairs that led up into the building.

  “What took you?” Ellen asked.

  “Clarissa tried to explain it all to me. It didn’t go the way she thought it would.”

  “Is she dead?” Vera asked.

  I shrugged. “Depends on whether or not the building’s collapsed yet.” As yet further proof of the universe’s sense of narrative propriety, a low rumble filled the air and shook the ground beneath our feet. “Well, I guess that’s it for the Church Street headquarters,” I said. “I’m kinda sad. I really liked that place.”

  “We’ll find you a new building after we get out of this,” Vera said.

  “Great. Let’s get upstairs and get outta here.”

  Outside of the building, a small SUV sad idling at the curb. “Ah, the Clyde has provided,” I said, sliding in behind the steering wheel. The three ladies all got in as well. There was a sign attached to the steering wheel telling me to look in the center console. Inside, I found a stash with a few hundred dollars cash, another lightning gun in case mine ran out of charge or got lost, and…

  “A pack of smokes!” I said, barely able to contain my joy.

  “Are you…are you crying, Eddie?” Ellen asked.

  “I’m just so happy,” I said. “God, Clyde comes through in the clutch every damn time. None of you mind if I smoke in here, do you?”

  “Don’t you even dare,” Ellen hissed.

  “Okay, okay, I won’t smoke. Geez,” I said as I put the SUV in gear and pulled away from the curb. “So, where to?”

  XII.

  We pulled up in front of Fall Back Point Zeta an hour later. It was really just Maya’s parents’ house, but I liked the sound of Fall Back Point Zeta better. I didn’t feel we were scraping the bottom of the barrel that way.

  “You’re sure they’re out of town this week?” I asked as I pulled into the driveway.

  “Um, yes, they should be,” Maya said.

  “Uh, ‘should’ and ‘are’ are two very different verbs,” I said.

  “I’m not one hundred percent sure ‘should’ is a verb at all,” Ellen said.

  “It’s a helper verb,” I said defensively. “But we’re not here to debate conjugations, we’re here to hide. So, everyone into the suburban single-family home, please.”

  Inside, the house was everything you expected a suburban home to be: the living room was carpeted and had comfortable if dated chairs and a sofa, an old flat screen television hanging on the wall, and a whole host of old family photos.

  “The handsome little boy in these photos must be…” Vera said.

  “Yeah, that’s, um, me,” Maya said, embarrassed.

  I patted Maya on the shoulder. “Want me to photoshop your current photo into these?” I asked.

  Maya gave me a wan smile. “N-no, that’s okay,” she said.

  We settled into the chairs and heaved a temporary sigh of relief.

  “Don’t get too comfortable,” I said. “They’ll track us here eventually.”

  “So, what’s the endgame, then?” Vera asked. “We can’t just sit around waiting for them to track us to every hidey hole you have scattered across the city, Eddie. They’ll eventually catch you before you’re ready for them.”

  “I know, I know, I just need a few minutes to think,” I said. “We obviously can’t keep doing this, but I don’t know what the alternative is. The Church Street headquarters is gone. Most of the safe houses are compromised. Where can we go?”

  “We could leave town,” Ellen suggested.

  I gave her a weird look. “What?”

  “We could leave Arcadia,” Ellen said. “Head out somewhere else in America. Or go to Europe. We could go anywhere. There’s no reason to stay here.”

  “But…” How could I explain to Ellen how important the city was to me? How the idea of leaving felt like a tooth in the brain?

  “She’s right,” Vera said. “We should leave town.”

  “Et tu?” I said, wounded. “It’s…how can you even suggest leaving Arcadia?” I asked.

  “It just makes sense, Eddie,” Ellen said. “Why wouldn’t we leave?”

  “I can’t just…abandon the city,” I said, feeling a twisting in my guts.

  “Why not?” Vera said. “The city has certainly abandoned you.”

  “That’s…” I could feel tears forming in the corners of my eyes. Why? What the hell was going on with me? “That’s not the point. I can’t just leave.”

  “We’re not that important,” Maya chipped in. “No one will miss us if we, um, go.”

  I gave Maya a harsh look. “You, too? I see how it is.” I stood up and started stalking around the perimeter of the living room. “Fine. Leave. Go. All of you. Traitors.”

  Ellen gave me a hurt look. “Eddie…” she started.

  “No,” I cut her off. “This city needs us. Who else would figure out what’s going on with Cornwallis? Who will take care of Carmen when she inevitably reemerges? And I’m sure Mayor Esperanza is tied up in all of this somehow. I just have to figure out how!”

  Vera looked at me strangely. “Eddie, are you…are you feeling okay? You look deranged.”

  I feel like I’m coming apart at the seams, but I couldn’t say that. Not to them. They didn’t understand. I walked to the door.

  “Where are you going?” Vera called after me.

  “I’m going to turn myself in,” I said. “You three do…do whatever you want.” I walked out the door, slamming it behind me.

  I didn’t expect to see Xavier standing outside.

  “Oh, uh, hey, Xavi,” I said, fishing a cigarette out of my pocket and lighting it. “Care for a smoke?” Xavier stared at me intently and did not answer. “How did you, um, how did you find us here?”

  “I followed you,” Xavier growled.

  I noticed he was holding a knife. “Hey, why don’t you put the knife down and we can have a chat, huh?” He raised the knife. “Yeah, that’s the knife I was talking about. Maybe not raise it threateningly?” He came toward me, slowly, the knife held menacingly, a glint in his eyes that spoke of murder. “Hey, please put that down, Xavi. There’s no reason to—” Xavier lunged at me, knife held high. I dodged back and dropped my cigarette, but he kept coming on, slashing at me with the blade. I kept jumping back, trying to keep out of reach. That worked until I tripped over the paving stone that marked the border between the sidewalk and the flower bed in front of the house. I fell back on my ass, and Xavier leapt at me. I managed to grab his knife hand with both of my hands, and he started pushing all of his weight down on me, trying to bury the knife in my eye. Even with both hands, I was struggling to stop him. The knife inched closer and closer.

  Ellen stepped up behind Xavier and clocked him smartly behind the ear with a cosh. The knife dropped from his limp hand and I managed to twist just enough to avoid losing an eye as Xavier collapsed onto me, unconscious.

  I shoved his inert body off me and sat up. “What the hell are you doing here? I thought you guys would be halfway to some non-extradition country by now.”

  “Shut up, you ungrateful bastard,” Ellen snapped, holding out a hand to help me up. “Come on, we’re leaving.”

  “No, I already told you, I’m not leaving Arcadia,” I said, dusting myself off. “I’m going to go turn myself in.”

  “No, you’re not,” Ellen said, smacking me. “You’re going to come with us, and we’re getting out of here.” She pointed toward our SUV, where Vera and Maya were already inside. Vera was behind the wheel.

  “Vera’s driving?” I asked.

  Ellen nodded. “In case you get any ideas about not leaving. C’mon, Eddie. We can start a new life somewhere else. Get away from all the nonsense this town creates. Won’t that be nice?”

  I had to admit, even if only to myself, that it did kinda sound nice, even if part of my s
tomach appeared to be eating itself at the very thought of leaving.

  Then, in one heart-wrenching moment, the decision was taken out of my hands.

  Ellen was pulling at my hand, dragging me to the SUV. I was about to insist they leave without me. Suddenly, flashing red and blue lights and the sound of a siren filled the air as a dozen cop cars screamed to a stop around the Janovich house. Cops came pouring out of the cars, guns raised, shouting things we couldn’t hear over the sirens. A single shot rang out, piercing the cacophony and freezing everything for an instant. I looked to Ellen, whose eyes had gone wide. We both looked to her chest, where a flower of blood was blossoming and spreading quickly. Far too quickly. Ellen looked me in the eye, opened her mouth to speak, then dropped.

  Time snapped back to attention, overcompensated and seemed to speed up. Vera and Maya took off in the SUV, the tires squealing across the pavement. A couple of cops jumped in a car and gave pursuit. A whole SWAT team surrounded me and Ellen. I was on the ground, cradling her head in my lap, as police officers grabbed my arms and cuffed them behind my back. I heard one guy calling for an ambulance over his walkie-talkie, and the guy behind me who was holding me by my cuffed wrists asked why they’d even want to bother.

  I sorta lost it then, headbutting the guy holding me and lashing out with a foot at the nearest cop. I was screaming and yelling and thrashing about, and the last thing I remember before blacking out was seeing a cop with a Taser and a nightstick coming my way.

  Part Four: It’s Not the Fall That Kills You…

  I.

  I don’t know how long I was out for. It was mercifully dreamless; I wasn’t up for dealing with logical me and feral me right now.

  I woke up in a cell, though not one in any Arcadian Precinct House I know of. The walls were the wrong color, for a start, and there were no beds or toilets to be seen. No, this was something different, and that probably wasn’t a good thing.

  No one seemed to be around, but they had at least taken my handcuffs off. I rubbed my wrists and looked around. The cell was about four meters by four, roughly seven meters high, and one wall was made completely of some kind of glass or transparent plastic. I assumed it was probably bulletproof, but I couldn’t test that theory since they’d taken all my stuff. Even my shoes were gone. All they’d left me were my pants and shirt. But that didn’t matter. Nothing really mattered, if Ellen was dead.

  And, try as I might, I had a hard time believing she could be anything but dead. That bullet caught her right in the heart, I was sure of it. If the best surgical team in the world had been there, on standby, ready to operate the second she was shot, they might have stood a chance of saving her. But I doubted even that would’ve done it. Ellen Typewell my oldest – and very probably only – friend in the world, was dead.

  I might’ve bowed my head and cried a little bit about that, if I’m being honest.

  When my self-pity finally ran dry, I stood up and started pacing the cell. There was nothing and no one else in it. The walls were an institutional grayish-blue, made of large cinderblocks mortared together. The clear wall had a door in it, but no obvious mechanism anywhere nearby to open it. I was stuck here until someone decided to come let me out.

  “Hey, assholes,” I shouted up at the ceiling. If there were listening or observation devices of some sort in here, they were probably up above. “How about coming and having a chat, huh? I’ve got a few choice words for the management.” Most of them would be in the angry, four-letter category.

  No response. I didn’t really expect one. I wondered if Vera and Maya had escaped. I hoped they had. No one else should have to pay for whatever mistakes I’d made. And I had to have made some whoppers to end up here.

  “So, a black site,” I said to myself. “Who could operate one of those in Arcadia?” There were only two real answers, as far as I could see: Vera and the Organization, or the military. And since Vera had been with me, and I didn’t think she had that much control over the APD that they’d just turn me over to her if she asked nicely, that left the military.

  “Is this all to do with Cornwallis?” I asked the ceiling. It didn’t answer, so I pressed on. “So, the military set up some science experiments in town? Guys like Cornwallis and the Albertson kid. Except, Cornwallis tricked you all, didn’t he? He figured you out, got out from under you. Serves you assholes right, if you ask me. At least he’s safe from you.”

  Footsteps in the corridor. Heavy, like there are several of them and they’re all wearing boots. A small contingent of men in camouflage fatigues with serious-looking assault rifles over their shoulders stops in front of my cell. “Gentlemen, it’s about time,” I said, crossing my arms. “I called management about these conditions quite some time ago. I demand you move me to the presidential suite right this minute, and I won’t be paying for my room this visit.”

  One of the soldiers signaled someone further up the corridor, and a buzzer went off near my door. The door slid open silently, and two of the soldiers pointed their guns at me while a third came in with a pair of handcuffs.

  “Sir, if you’ll come with us,” he said. His voice was polite, but there was the guns. You can afford to be polite when someone else has a gun pointed at the person you’re talking to.

  “Sure, I’d love to,” I said, holding my hands out to be cuffed. The soldier did it and led me out and down the corridor, surrounded on all sides by armed guards. These weren’t your usual brainless goons who could be distracted by something shiny so you could make your escape. No, these were serious, we-will-shoot-you-without-warning guys, the sort where you just did what you were told and hoped they didn’t decide to shoot you anyway.

  The corridor dead-ended into a door made of solid metal. One of the soldiers made a complicated gesture at the door, a buzzer went off, and the door swung open on silent hinges.

  “Everything in this building seems very well-oiled,” I commented. None of the soldiers even glanced at me. “I mean, the door hinges, your guns, that guy’s knees—” I gestured at the guard to my right “—no one would even suspect you’re robots.”

  “Sir, please be silent, or we will be forced to gag you,” said my lead guard.

  “Duly noted,” I replied, promptly shutting my mouth.

  On the other side of the door was a set of stairs, which was followed by another set of stairs, which was followed by another set of stairs. At the fifth or sixth set of stairs that they all climbed effortlessly, I finally dropped to my hands and knees and wheezed, “Guys, you gotta give me a breather. I’m dyin’ here.” Two of the guards automatically handed off their guns to their compatriots, grabbed me by the elbows, and lifted me like I weighed nothing. We then double-timed it up the next three flights of stairs to another door, where the same complicated gesture was made, the same buzzer buzzed, and the door opened on the same silent hinges.

  Behind this door was a room.

  It was a simple, dimly-lit room. There were two comfortable-looking armchairs in there, set across from one another over a coffee table made of glass and wood. I was ushered into the room and placed in the chair farthest from the door, then all of my guards left. The last one closed the door behind him.

  “Well, I can’t say this is what I expected,” I muttered.

  “You’re not what I expected, either,” a gruff voice rumbled from the opposite chair.

  I jumped a bit, having not realized there was anyone in that chair. “Jesus Horatio Christ, don’t sneak up on a guy like that!”

  “Call yer tits, kid,” the man growled. I peered at him through the poor lighting; it seemed like he’d chosen that chair specifically because it was shrouded in shadows.

  “Who the hell are you?” I asked.

  “The name’s Oliver Hazzard,” the man said. “I’m your father.”

  II.

  I blinked at the guy, then squinted at him. If you looked at him just right, you could see some of my features in his face: we had the same nose, that was definite, and around the eyes there
was a certain shape that seemed familiar. His mouth was thinner than mine, his lips more hinted at than anything else. It was difficult to see if we had any hair in common, since he kept his gray hair cut close to the scalp like he was still in the military.

  “Like hell you are,” I said defensively, reflexively. He might have been; hell, I didn’t remember my father at all. For all I knew, my dad might’ve been the clown Pagliacci. Or he could’ve been this slab of well-muscled asshole. That didn’t mean he deserved the benefit of the doubt.

  “I deserve that response,” he said, standing up. He was about my height, maybe a couple inches taller. “I’m General Oliver Hazzard, and I really am your father. I left your mother about thirty-five, thirty-six years ago, right around the time the experiment started. Not your fault you don’t know me.”

  “No, I was just a—” I started.

  “No, it’s your mother’s fault,” he continued, cutting me off. “Would it have killed her to keep a couple of pictures around?” He stalked across the room to the wall by the door and flipped a switch. The lights came up in the room, revealing that the chairs and the table were the only things in here with us.

  “So,” he said in a conversational tone, “we have a lot to talk about, I suppose.”

  “Do we?” I asked, sitting back in my chair. “You disappeared without a trace almost forty years ago, then you have me kidnapped from the police and dropped in a damn jail cell for who-knows how long? And now you pop up with your, ‘Luke, I am your father’ schtick and you think we need to ‘talk?’ I think you need to see a fuckin’ therapist.”

  “I expected this,” he said with a sigh. “We’ll try this again when you are in a more receptive mood.” He pushed a button, and I felt a pin prick on my wrist. I looked down and noticed for the first time that I was wearing a bracelet of some sort, and it had just injected me with something.