What is it that Ascalon told me? That there’s nothing I can do that she hasn’t seen yet. Feathers burst and the glass door spiders from seam to seam. Then the carnival music shuts off. The birds peel away and head back to the tree. The Ferris wheel creaks to a standstill. I take a couple steps back. And I feel her there. I turn around.
There she is, flesh-colored now. Beautiful and terrible, like the birds outside. For a split second, looking even more like Akira than Akira did. But then the differences crystalize. They aren’t as numerous as they were the last time I saw her. Taller, more muscular. The scar. The tail. The gleaming yellow eye. I step back toward the sliding door and I knock out the glass with the hilt of my knife. I step through the shattered doorway, walking backward on clenched toes until I can feel my back hit the balcony railing.
“Give me the book,” she says.
Before she can say anything, I touch the heated blade to it. A flame sparks at the edge of the first page, her life’s work about to be incinerated. Ascalon sprints toward me. I wait until she’s at arm’s length, then lean back against the rail and let myself topple over, book still in hand. Ascalon grabs me by my ankle. But I’m way heavier than she is. She’s been dragged over the edge of the rail too—it looks like her tail wrapped around the rail just in time.
And here we are, dangling upside down over a railing. Me holding a heat blade and a burning book, her holding onto my ankle with both hands. “You’re certifiable,” she says, smiling.
“You didn’t think you were the only one,” I say.
She begins to pull us up. I start swinging. “Stop,” she says. “I’m trying to help you.”
I swing up and plunge the heat blade into her shoulder. She doesn’t even wince. In fact, I swear she’s smiling. But her tail spasms around the rail. I hear it begin to crack. I drop the burning book and scramble up Ascalon’s body. It’d be nice to have a pair of Akeem’s grip gloves right now. I grab onto the railing and pull myself over. I drop onto the artificial grass and look up. The rail snaps, but the barbed end of Ascalon’s tail plunges into the remaining concrete. I stand and look over the edge. Ascalon pulls the heat blade from her shoulder. I grab her tail and pull with everything I’ve got.
“I see why my mother loved you,” she says.
And I ask myself why I’m trying to save her, and the answer is immediate. Because it’s the hard thing to do.
I get her back over the balcony. We both fall hard into the chief’s puddle. I feel his blood sticking to my back. Ascalon’s struggling to get the end of her tail out of the concrete. I snatch the heat blade from her and get on top, kneeling over her, and the ease of it makes me feel like she’s letting me. She’s still smiling. I put the heat blade an inch from her eye. The fake one, not the one that’s the spitting image of her mother’s. The smile doesn’t fade. She wraps her hands around mine and pulls the blade closer to her. Now it’s me straining to pull away.
When I try to talk, I realize I’m out of breath. “I’m trying to help you,” I struggle to say.
“You don’t want to know what I found when I probed you?” she asks.
“You told me,” I say.
Still smiling, she sighs. “Then do you wonder what I left?”
I do. I imagine being back in Jerry’s penthouse, Ascalon’s tail reaching so far up, it felt like it was piercing my brain. Not searching for something, but planting something. It’s worried me since I woke up. But whatever’s buried up there, I don’t got it in me to try and dig it out.
“I knew you’d come here to Chang after reading what I wrote,” she says.
“Why’d you kill him? No one believed him then. They sure as hell weren’t about to now.”
“I will preserve my mother’s legacy. I’m more thorough than she was. Even a tiny, seemingly insignificant wound can fester. Can you see the extent of my abilities now?”
I look down at her serene face and know killing her is the smart thing to do. But when I see the plowed skin running from her forehead to her cheek in a straight line, I imagine the girl in the red sweater, back to her mother to hide her self-inflicted scar. The same kid, years later, put to sleep by Akira. No prince’s kiss to wake her, only her own will. Always alone. But she’s delusional and dangerous, which is probably one of the reasons why her mother put her to sleep in the first place.
“Tell me where you’ve hidden my mother’s iE,” she says.
Her insistence on this enrages me. “Even if she had one, should I know where the fuck it is?”
“You’ll find it. She had no one else to leave it to.”
“I’m not even gonna look for it.”
“You can’t help yourself. You’re drawn to murdered things.”
For once in my life, I’ve gotta be better than Akira. Not smarter, because that’s not possible. Just better. And something in me deep down truly believes she got what she deserved. “I don’t care what you’re planning,” I say. “Just leave me out of it.”
“You don’t understand,” she says calmly. “You cannot separate yourself from this. You are part of the fabric of it. And I will pull on your thread as necessary.” She grins at me. “You saw again, didn’t you?”
I nod.
“Why would you want to give up such a gift?”
I think about that. “Personal peace.”
“You were stupid to try to blind yourself. Now you can only half-see.”
I feel something sharp rip through my back. The tip of her tail protrudes from my shoulder. I grasp the heat blade and shuck Ascalon’s yellow eye. “Now you can only half-see, too,” I gasp.
She finally screams and throws me to the side with her tail. I form a fist and punch her in the temple. We both get up. I’m standing there, heat blade in one hand and her artificial eye in the other, vibrating, feeling like my second heart is gonna explode. Just like her, I won’t stop. She’s gonna have to fucking kill me.
“Now is not your time,” she says, standing there as if I haven’t just taken her eye out. “But soon, we will both be dead.”
After all the yammering she did at Jerry’s, I’m surprised this is the first time I notice she has Akira’s voice. Maybe it’s because Akira never said crazy stuff like this. Or because I worshipped her. But recognizing the similarity makes me hate Ascalon Lee. “I want zero to do with this. You keep coming for me, and I’ll end you.”
She smirks and climbs on the balcony. “Keep the eye. But you won’t want to see what I see.”
The end of her tail splits into a robotic hand, and she springs down to the giant tree, catching herself on a branch with it. The leaves rattle, and sleeping birds squawk and fly. I can’t see her in all that green, and I don’t know what I’d do if I could.
It’s the birds that worry me now. I back up and trip over the doorway frame, then hurry to scramble back to my feet. I stagger inside and rip off my shirt, bundle it, and press it against my wound. I’m losing blood. Fast. I step past the chief’s death predictor. It reads zero percent. I wonder if it’s reading him or me. I feel awful about what she did to him. What I did to him.
I step inside the chief’s bathroom to find a towel, maybe some gauze or a first aid kit. There’s gotta be something in this place, considering his age. A couple of white hand towels hang on rings to the left of the sink. I grab them and turn on the water. I rinse off the heat blade first. A puff of steam explodes from the sink, almost burning my face. The mirror clouds. I wipe it with the other towel and look in the mirror.
All I see is guilty man covered in red. Maybe Ascalon is right. It was a flawed experiment to give up the colorblindness, but it only seemed right after learning how it could be manipulated. I just wish I wasn’t still seeing what I used to. The blade, still hot, is clean now. I press it against my exit wound and scream. I’m barely able to stay conscious. I turn my back to the mirror and press the hot blade against my skin again, this tim
e to close the entry wound. I drop the blade and fall to the floor.
For some reason, I see my daughter Ascalon playing with her colored blocks. Carefully stacking them eight high. Then, like she always does, she knocks them down. We never stop doing that. It’s time to go home now.
I wake up. I was out for a few seconds there. I pull myself to my feet and think. I’ve got her iE. I’m guessing it’s all there—the numbers, the sleep, the grand conspiracy. Murder. A child ruined by her mother. I’ll turn it over to the Feds. It’s a better witness to a grand jury than I am. It should also contain evidence of Jerry’s murder. Of Akira’s. Of the murders I committed. It’s time I stopped trying to save my own ass.
As for Akira having an iE, impossible. I would have known. I would have seen it. Poor chief. Why did Ascalon come for him now? I suppose if I were her, I’d be paranoid, too. He was the last living dissenter, but he had no proof of anything, only wild accusations. But why kill him at this age, and in such an elaborate spectacle? Then I understand. This wasn’t for Chang. It was for me. If I didn’t get in line, this was my future.
I head to the elevator with no idea how I’m gonna get back to Akeem’s shuttle. I can’t call a cab, not covered in blood like this. And I’m still worried about those damn birds. I press the down button. It doesn’t light up. I head for the stairs and find that I can’t stop shaking. I stop and breathe. Think, old man. You can’t just walk back in this condition. Maybe the chief kept some kind of transport on the roof. I’m crawling up the stairs and barely manage to make it all the way.
I stumble out onto the roof. There’s nothing up here except for gravel and a pink-clouded sunset. I’m out of ideas. Except one. Quit your hang-ups, I tell myself. I ping Sabrina my location and ask for help. I keep an eye out for the birds. They’ve vanished. Sabrina tells me she and Akeem are coming. I tell her not to bring Ascalon. She says Akeem’s kids adore her and will keep an eye on her.
Sabrina’s trip to Oklahoma will be at least a couple hours, so I slouch against what looks like an air vent and look for anything that will distract me from the pain. And I see it. Outside of town, miles beyond the tree and broken-down Ferris wheel, fields and fields of stacked and scrapped nuclear warheads fronting The Great Leachate like toppled pillars. Within a year after Sessho-seki, global nuclear disarmament. It might’ve taken a grand lie to do it, but she did it. Fucking Akira. How I sometimes forget everything she did for us. How we all do. I wonder how long it takes man to ruin a good world. To rebuild another one. Just like my daughter and me, stacking up blocks, knocking them down, and stacking them right back up. I think about Akira’s daughter and the painting and the perfect scar running from the top of her forehead to her cheek, traversing across the crater that once held her human eye. Then I look up and spot Ascalon’s Scar, twinkling in the now-dark sky. I laugh to myself. It’s all fake, isn’t it? An illusion, although it doesn’t matter if it is one. All that matters is we believe it. I stare at the Scar in wonder as things fade from green to red to black.
24
I’m dreaming and I know it. It’s a simple dream. I wake up. My iE tells me it’s 1:54 a.m., so I go back to sleep. After what feels like a few hours, I wake up again. It’s still 1:54. I stand, the usual creaky morning pain absent. I immediately wonder if I’m dead. I step forward. It works, so space, it seems, still exists. But I’m unsure about time. It’s still 1:54. I lie back down, tell myself Fuck it, and go back to sleep.
This time, when I come to, I’m onboard Akeem’s private intercontinental shuttle, or PIS, in the sleep quarters in the rear of the ship. First, I ask for the time. I quickly remember that my iE is back at Chang’s, fried just like his. Then I check my pockets and am relieved to feel Ascalon’s eye there. On the bed beside me is the remains of the chief, covered in plastic. I focus and try to spot green rising from him, leading me somewhere. Nothing. I look out the window. We’re in dive mode, coming down from the stratosphere. Sitting up, I look around the sleeping quarters, which are decorated with ancient Roman artifacts encased in glass. It’s one of the things me and Akeem have in common, a hobbyist’s interest in the Roman Empire, but mine culminates in some downloaded history holo casts on my iE. His, The Money version, culminates in priceless six-sided dice carved from animal bone. A bronze arrowhead. Various coins. The biggest case contains what appear to be surgical instruments, which makes me squirm.
The door to the SQ slides open, and Akeem walks in with a military-grade med drone behind him. It’s only when I see the hovering drone that I become conscious of the pain. “Where’s Sabrina?” I ask.
“In the copilot’s seat,” he says. “She’s not very happy with you right now.”
“I figured.”
“Plus,” Akeem nods at the chief’s body, “she had to lug what was left of him onboard. I thought she was crazy for picking up all the bones, but she said it was evidence to get you off the hook. Do you ever wonder if you’re worth it, man?”
I nod. “Every day.”
“She told me about the grand jury thing. What the hell’s going on?” Akeem asks.
“You don’t wanna know,” I say. “Listen, my friend. Don’t get too close to this. I’m toxic right now.”
Akeem sighs and nods. “The med drone stitched you up. Put some healing gel on that wound. You’re pumped full of pain meds right now, so take it easy.”
“Thanks.” I point at the glass case with surgical instruments. “I gotta tell you,” I say. “That’s the last thing I wanna see right now.”
“Dug up from Vesuvius.” He opens the case and pulls them out one by one. It’s the first time I notice he’s wearing one of those beaded bracelets in honor of Akira. “Forceps,” he says. “Catheter. Scalpel. Vaginal speculum. I’m not sure we’ve come very far since then.”
I force myself to stand. My body is creaking, especially my hip and shoulder. I step to the glass case, look at the ancient surgical instruments, and shiver. I remember sitting in class sixty-plus years ago learning about the Romans. I remember the fifth emperor, Nero, and the story that he played his fiddle while Rome burned, which was impossible because the fiddle hadn’t been invented yet. All of this is over 2,200 years old. I wonder what will pass as fact and fiction in another 2,200 years. Will Akira still be a god? Will her “accomplishments” eclipse the crimes committed for her to be great? Now her transgressions have found their consequences in her daughter, who has perpetuated the killing.
I glance once more at what’s left of the chief. No green. I feel like I’m experiencing withdrawals. I attempted to kick this, but now I’m desperate for its directional pull. That ambergris scent. Especially when it showed up above the chief—why only then? Because of the sheer magnitude of her intent?
“I don’t suppose you heard,” Akeem says.
I turn to Akeem. “Heard what?”
“The islanders are turning Akira’s crypt into a little town for tourists. They’re lobbying for her remains to be buried there once her body’s finished going around the world.”
Ascalon made that, not Akira. I wonder if the islanders know who they’re rebuilding for. I eye Akeem’s bracelet. His beads are pure platinum. The Money even spends more in tribute. “Where is she now?”
“They postponed the funeral procession indefinitely.”
“Why?”
“Too many spectators demanding to see the body.”
I shake my head. “Believe me. They don’t want to.” I wanna relay what Chief Chang said before he died. But then he chimes in.
“I’m tired of the whole thing at this point,” he says. “It’s all anyone talks about. I’ve got Akira fatigue.”
“Thanks, Akeem. I owe you one.”
“Then do this for me.”
“What?”
“When we land, apologize to your wife. And . . .”
“And what?”
“Stop acting so goddamn crazy.”
/> Akeem exits the SQ. I think about what he’s said. Crazy might be underplaying it. In the past five days, I’ve broken procedure at a murder scene, withheld crucial information, quit my job, nearly abandoned my wife and child, pulled a heat blade on one of my best friends, burned down a mausoleum, almost voluntarily went to prison for life, had life-altering eye surgery, and flew to Muskogee, Oklahoma, just to watch parakeets tear a person apart. What the fuck am I doing with my life? I’m eighty years old and feel two hundred. But I’m not tired of this. Despite everything, I feel even more alive than the day Akira came to me at the skeleton of Volcano Vista and asked for my help. Ascalon has the same power over me as her mother. I hope that’s not because she drugged me or planted some explosive in my brain.
I take her eye out of my pocket and I look at it. It’s beautiful. Smaller than an iE, a brilliant bird’s-eye yellow with a black pupil. We all have specific mini-singularities built into our eyes. Her eye lacks the facets of a normal iE. It’s smooth. Perfect. Except for the bio tissue that dangles from it that was connected to Ascalon’s brain. This tech is impossible. Maybe she really is as brilliant as the mother was. If Akira had an eye like this, I would have noticed.
As for Ascalon, I don’t want to fight her. I don’t want to kill her. And I definitely don’t want to know what it is she ultimately wants. Because I’m afraid I’ll discover that I want the same thing. I look back at the eye and picture it being cracked, like one of Akeem’s chicken eggs, the yolk mixed with a shaman’s stick to glimpse into the past. But not by me.
Then the tissue begins to shrivel, like death in fast-forward. The roots fall from the eye. Then the green begins to pulse. Maybe I’ve been pumped with too many meds. I don’t want to watch, but I do anyway. The greens grow thin and long, orbiting the sphere, streamers of color twirling around it. I squeeze my eyes shut and open them again. The wisps are still there. I blow on them, but they don’t disperse. Instead, they spin faster like a pinwheel when my breath hits them. The yellow eye turns to gaze directly at me. I should just put it back in my pocket and chalk all this up to drug-induced hallucination, but I blow on it again.
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