Midnight, Water City

by Chris Mckinney

  “Are you ready to help me?”

  “You’ve threatened my family and almost killed me more than once, and you want me to help you?” I ask.

  “Let’s not go by the scoreboard. You murdered my father. You cut my eye out of my face and set fire to the book I spent months writing. I’m sorry about your shoulder. I lost my temper. And as for the explosion, I warned you. If you’d let the eye blow you to pieces, you weren’t the warrior I thought you were anyway. The one who can see murder.”

  She pauses. “Seeing yourself as superior can be helpful, you know.”

  “How’s that?”

  “Once you do, you have to live up to it,” she says.

  “Why not just be you?” I ask, already knowing the answer.

  “People worship her. No one worships me.” She pauses. “But perhaps this way, they will.”

  I stand up and sigh. I step to the AMP chamber and knock on it lightly with my knuckles, which don’t have any punch left. “They’ll never believe you,” I say.

  Ascalon calmly takes a sip of tea. “No, but they’ll believe you. And once you hand over her iE to me and I transfer her data to my own,” she says, tapping at the side of her eye, “it will be impossible to distinguish between us.”

  “Maybe,” I say.

  A holo shoots from her eye onto the table. It’s a live feed of the crowd outside. “Don’t you see it? They want so badly to believe.” It begins to rain, and a gust scoops up the lights of those not hanging on tightly enough.

  Ascalon refills her cup. “I will expunge all the data concerning your past transgressions. I’ll pay you handsomely. The kind of wealth that will provide amply for multiple generations. You’ve turned down my offer to make you like you were forty years ago. I extend that offer again.”

  I think about that. “I was less forty years ago.”

  Ascalon shrugs. “My mother’s wealth was vast, much greater than people knew. She inherited the bulk of the Idris Eshana estate. Your wealth would surpass your friend Akeem Buhari’s. And Jerry Caldwell’s. Which, by the way, I inherited as well.”

  The thought keeps me quiet. I run my hand along the chamber. It’s a tough hunk of metal. Even more bulletproof than the glass that surrounds us. “Maybe we’re better off now that she’s dead.”

  “We?” she says. “Who do you mean by that? Humanity?” She laughs, and her tail moves, which makes me reflexively point the gun at her. She ignores it. “You know, you have the tendency to imagine kinship with people you don’t even know when under duress. It’s remarkable, really. Stress typically leads people to do the opposite.”

  She’s looking down at her tea, calculating our next moves. It’s one of those conversations that could change everything. A single word can save or destroy us.

  “You should’ve been paid properly the first time,” Ascalon says. “It was disrespectful of them not to, considering the extent of your service. But I’ll make amends. And I promise you that I’ll never ask you to kill.”

  To become one of The Money. My wife, my daughter, future generations, all taken care of. What the Caldwells have, what the Eshanas have, what Akeem has—maybe it’s what I’ve always wanted, deep down. Maybe that’s why all my friends are rich. Why I’ve always spent money like I have. I was always trying to be one of them. Maybe I always did see it as the reward for the “extent of my service,” the one I was really hoping for. I was a goddamn unpaid assassin. And I never got a piece of that fame and fortune. I wanted them to give me something without me having to ask for it, which is exactly what Ascalon is doing right now. But I was blind to the color of blood and the color of money for most of my life. I couldn’t see the cost of either. I run my fingers over the AMP chamber’s control panel. See through your own head, I tell myself. See through your head.

  She points to her eye. “What was your self-diagnosis?”

  “Psychodynamic merging. Charles Bonnet syndrome delirium. Astronomer’s gambit.”

  “Which?” she asks.

  “All of the above.”

  She smiles. “Not even close,” she says. She eyes the 1911. “Some sniper you are. By the way, you never thanked me for ridding you of that ridiculous police captain.”

  “You want me to be grateful for that? Every time you do something, people wanna pin it on me.”

  “That’s not my fault.”

  I don’t say anything. I just stare at her. Impatient, Ascalon slams her hand down on the table. “My fingers are hers. My teeth. The very fiber of my organs. I’m one of world’s greatest surgeons. One of its greatest scholars. She owed me a life, so I took it.”

  I nod. “Hers.”

  Ascalon frowns. “It was the only one worth having.”

  I nod, mesmerized by the steam still rising from the kettle. I focus back on her. See through your head, old man.

  “One last thing I’ll do for you,” she says. “To satisfy your deluded notion that you’re pursuing the truth. I’ll finance a probe mission to travel to Ascalon’s Scar, where we’ll analyze the supposed point of impact. I’ll show you what’s there.” Ascalon shrugs. “Whether she did what she claimed she did, and your crimes were justified. We will, of course, keep the results to ourselves.”

  I sit back down, gun still pointed at her. In my heart of hearts, I believe the chief, but a part of me wonders what Akira shot up into space. What Ascalon’s Scar really is. Why Akira left me her iE, what she wanted me to do with it. I take the gem out of my pocket and put it on the table. It’s just about the greenest thing I’ve ever seen. “Maybe a probe mission isn’t necessary.”

  She stands from behind the table, and it’s tough not to be in awe. I can’t really imagine her as a once-helpless baby being carried out of the woods by her father. It feels like the woman standing in front of me is incapable of any weakness, past, present, or future.

  I wonder if Akira had any expectations when she was pregnant. If she wanted her baby to coo, laugh, be affectionate, and to be the same with that child. Probably not. And I’m so much like her. I don’t coo or laugh. I’m not affectionate. I just complain. And when I think about all the things I love, that makes me ache.

  She leans over me. “You have no idea the kind of pain she’s caused me,” she says.

  I nod. “I know.”

  “It’s beautiful,” Ascalon says. She reaches down for the gem with Akira’s hand, but I pick it back up off the table. I see cold fury light up in her eyes, but she pauses.

  “Wait,” I say. “What if there’s nothing in it?”

  “It’s the final piece,” she says.

  “If her thoughts are on it, you will become her.”

  “You know, I see why my mother loved you,” Ascalon says. “Your brain chemistry is perfect—it makes you curious but deferential to expertise. Violent but obedient. Chemically analyzed psychological profiles are as reliable as oracles.”

  “Why did she leave this to me?” I say.

  “Do you even care at this point? I’m about to make you a very rich man.”

  “And the improvements.” I say.

  “I’ll make them myself. And if you really do want me to balance those chemicals out and fix your nose. I’ll do that, too. A pity, but I’ll accommodate.”

  “And I want the truth,” I say. “About everything.”

  “We’ll discover it together. We’ll work closely, just like all those years ago.”

  If I’m being honest, I want all of those things she just offered. Every single one of them, more than I’ve ever wanted anything. For some weird reason, a childhood memory pops up at this moment. My great-grandmother. She’s speaking a foreign language, telling me to eat slowly. But I don’t listen. I just keep shoveling the food in my mouth. I don’t eat slowly. I devour.

  I grab the gem and pocket it. Her eyes, open so wide I can see all their whites, are focused on my face. Without even
looking at it, she cranks up the heat on the little burner sitting between us. Blue light beneath the kettle flares. It begins to whistle, and steam jets out. “I am Akira Kimura,” she says. She smiles, eyes still locked on mine. And what she does next, I don’t see coming.

  She blows the steam coming from the kettle into my face. I blink. Then I begin to choke. Something whips through the air and lashes my hand. I feel the skin on my knuckles peel. The gun goes spinning across the floor.

  Ascalon stands. She walks to me. I’m in a ball, clutching my face. She reaches into my pocket and pulls out the gem. “My apologies,” she says, gazing at the gem. “It’s quite a clever poison. It only activates when it hits three degrees beyond boiling point. It enters through the nose and throat, much like the anesthetics of old, but far more powerful. Non-lethal, of course. It’s the same one I used on my mother.”

  I cough until my throat is hoarse. Then I suck in air. “You don’t need it to become her,” I manage to sputter. “You’re close enough, and the world is hungry for her return.”

  “Perhaps.”

  I have to keep distracting her while I catch my breath. “You need it for peace of mind. To make sure she never actually comes back. After you analyze it, you’re going to destroy it.”

  “My mother was right. We cannot exist at the same time.”

  “The tomb wasn’t for Akira. It was for you. The old Ascalon Lee.”

  “Yes.”

  “And once I give this to you, you’ll kill me.”

  I don’t wait for an answer, scrambling for the gun.

  A morning star with heat-blade spikes slams the glass floor in front of me. It cracks. My eyes follow the handle. It’s the end of Ascalon’s tail. I roll to the side and go for the gun again. I grab it milliseconds before the morning star strikes the spot where it lay. Coughing, I roll on my back and point the 1911 at Ascalon.

  She hits the gun out of my hand with her tail before I can fire. My hand sizzles in pain. I scramble for the pistol again and manage to get hold of it with my other hand, but her tail comes swinging at my head before I can point it at her. I roll away, and the lit spikes of the tail hits the glass wall, which spiders. It’s a gun. Get some distance, I tell myself. I head for the door.

  “You should be paralyzed by now,” she says. “What is this nonsense?”

  The door slides shut on me before I can get out. She slams her tail against another panel. It hits so hard, my ears hurt. I turn and fire recklessly, not hitting a thing. Next thing I know, she’s tackled me. We tumble to the floor, and she pins me. “This is pointless,” she says.

  I don’t know how many more strikes the glass floor and walls can take before shattering. I can almost hear them groaning against the pressure of the midnight zone. If the water bursts in, neither of us will survive. For all I know, the entire scraper could crumble. “Okay,” I say. I blow both nostrils as hard as I can. The two small orbs shoot out of my nose. I had a feeling they’d be useful. I just didn’t know how.

  “Clever man,” she says. I slowly pull my blade from its sheath with my unbattered hand.

  Now the reds and greens are flowing out of her, snaking into every crack and crevice in the glass walls. She swipes the tea table and smashes it to pieces. “It took her three and a half years to fool the world,” she says. “I’ll do it in less. How much does your wife know?”

  “Fuck you,” I snarl, almost afraid raising my voice will start a death flood. The walls groan even louder around us, but she doesn’t so much as glance at them.

  “It doesn’t matter. I’ll find out,” she says. “She won’t make it through anyway.”

  I slip the blade through her ribs. She spins off me and screams.

  I throw the knife at the AMP chamber’s outer control panel. The capsule pops open, and the blade clangs on the floor. Her scream sounds like the pain of her entire life is coming out of her.

  I sprint to the chamber and dive in, gun still with me. I catch a glimpse of her storming toward me, tail raging. I press the “on” button inside the chamber and roll on my back. The hatch slowly begins to close. I aim and pop off a round. She spins, and I hit her in the shoulder. Fuck, she’s quick. She drops the gem, and it slides across the floor.

  She chases it.

  My mother, a glass engineer, taught me about its structure and its limits. I fire. Again and again. I empty the clip. Not at Ascalon, but thirteen rounds at a single spot on the glass before the chamber shuts. I turn to the control panel and pump up the AMP.

  The penthouse glass walls explode. Ascalon leaps onto the capsule, gem in hand. She ignores the water bursting in and hammers away at the window. Her screams are muffled.

  The AMP chamber is sucked out and tumbles across the seafloor. Ascalon, imbued with superhuman strength, still manages to hold on. We’re on the seafloor. The end of her tail strikes the glass again and again. Cracks form. I’m waiting for her lungs to collapse. For her sinuses and ears to rupture. Maybe they have, but the tail won’t stop. Ascalon’s face, pressed against the now cracked window and surprisingly intact, bears a look of pure hatred. The same look she had on her face in the painting. She screams again. But down here, nobody’s listening. Just like nobody was listening up there her whole life.

  Ascalon headbutts the glass while her tail goes to work on the capsule. I hear the crunch of twisting hoses and metal being torn off the chamber—they’re mere echoes this deep. The AMP kicks in hard, overriding my fear. My consciousness flickers, transitioning to a lullaby.

  Ascalon is not just the name of the savior

  It’s the name of the daughter

  The one I gave up

  Find her for me and tell her that I’m sorry

  “I’m sorry,” I whisper. The last thing I see is her banging on the glass with the gem. She looks terrified. And I know it’s not just of dying, but of being alone. She wants me to enter the endless darkness with her. Love me. I see her mouth the words. I hate myself for being the final disappointment of her life.

  The song and the muffled hammering fade in this echo chamber, which is the only thing keeping me isolated from the deadly cold and pressure outside. Here I am, in my midnight zone coffin of regrets and terrible mistakes. I hear something shatter. Has she succeeded? I fall asleep in the deep-water blackout. Maybe all of us are destined to rest at the bottom of the ocean.

  27

  It’s been a year since the death of Akira, and no one’s at work because it’s a global holiday. Everybody on the island is crowded around The Savior’s Eye, waiting for the president to flip the switch and turn on the water statue that will commemorate the life and death of the greatest scientist who has ever walked the earth, Akira Kimura, the Savior. The massive crowd is breathless in anticipation, whispering words to each other like “hero,” “genius,” “martyr,” words that remind us what we aspire to but often think we are. I’m there, too, with Sabrina and Ascalon, still on the mend from being presumed dead and sitting there at the bottom of the ocean. It took a week for Akeem’s geothermal mining company to find me. It took another week to figure out how to bring me up safely alongside Volcano Vista, which miraculously survived its bottom floor being swept out from under it. It took another month to safely wake me. And finally, a few more months on top of that to gradually shrink the nitrogen bubbles that had ballooned throughout my body during that time. I’ve still got joint pain. One doc tells me it’s just age. Another tells me I’ve got bone necrosis from the “accident.” Me, I’m tired of being in the middle of an argument, so I just take my meds and live my life. Sabrina says she needs me around to watch Ascalon grow up. I like to think that she also wants me to stick around because I’m decent company.

  The president gives his speech, and I’m thinking about all the things he doesn’t say. After I came to, I talked to the FBI, then testified in front of a senate oversight committee. Half of them believed me before I testified, hal
f didn’t, which was coincidentally how the results turned out. There was no hard evidence for me to present to the committee, anyway. Ascalon’s book and old iE data were burned up, along with my own iE. And her body, along with the gem, were never recovered. Akira’s body had indeed incinerated itself spontaneously before her funeral tour. Maybe Ascalon knew what she was doing all along. The completion of Akira’s deification needed one last component to be cemented. Heresy. Something that contradicted her work, a foil to her perfection. Only when a swell of opposition is crushed does deification become permanent. Most people didn’t believe Ascalon Lee existed—even when I said her name over and over, I knew how false it rang. The most generic name in the world. And when it was calculated that the cost of sending a probe to investigate Ascalon’s Scar was almost as much as the Ascalon Project forty years before, the opposition was firmly silenced—certainly none of the skeptics would be willing to put up that kind of money on the word of a burned-out cop. I think about what Akira once said to me, long ago. Science isn’t genius. It’s budget. There would be no probe, not in my lifetime.

  I look down at my kid, who has her face buried in her mother’s shoulder. She hates crowds. I wonder if her generation will discover the truth.

  Akira always said everything was binary. But what she didn’t acknowledge is that the binary becomes one. Those zeroes and ones, they’re a single message. Light and dark, sides of the same coin. This is what Ascalon tried and failed to achieve. In the end, Akira became the singularity, leaving no room for the real Ascalon who so desperately sought love—who killed for it, just not quite in the way I did. The only Ascalon that will be remembered is the one whose scar cuts across the sky.

  The president turns the spigot. The crowd cheers. This president is pretty much the same as most of the ones who came before her. My dad used to say a presidential election was a way to reassure us how stupid America is every four years. And every single time, America has passed the test.

  At first, the fountain just gurgles up a stream of water a couple stories high. The president looks embarrassed, then visibly sighs in relief when the water shoots up hundreds of feet and begins to take form. I’m still thinking about what I’m going to do for a living. The one thing the senate oversight committee did believe, as well as the Feds and locals, is that I didn’t kill Jerry Caldwell, so Sabrina, Ascalon, and I are living comfortably on the returned bail money that Akeem refused to take back. He offered me a job at one of his geothermal plants, but I owe him too damn much at this point, and I’m hesitant to go down deep again. The department says they’ll take me back, but looking for greens and reds is something I’m worried I’ll get addicted to if I spend too much time on the job. So now I start most of my days by taking my meds, then going out before sunrise to watch the seabirds glide over the float burbs.