by Lucas Alpay
And with a hoarse voice, Frank chuckled, “Told you I can’t die.”
Fritz wanted to crush his jaw so he wouldn’t anymore laugh, or talk. He wanted to murder him so badly he thought he was falling in love of the idea. But Mark and Wilder were right, the office needed him for information. And then he pondered more about this, because when he’d shot him, Frank hadn’t expressed any sign of pain, he hadn’t even cursed him for doing such thing. And so what would it be like if they tortured him?
If they ever did, it would be eternally useless.
Frank would just laugh at them.
Fritz removed his gun from Frank’s head and sat down tiredly. He looked at the entrance and wondered what the call had been about, and why Wilder had screamed. Only one thing was for sure, and that was something terrible had happened. It was that obvious. He didn’t know who to, or where at, but he was sure it was more gruesome than last night.
He then pulled out his phone and dialed for their office. After three rings somebody picked up. It was a new voice, a voice that wasn’t from them.
“Hello?” a man said.
“Who’s this?”
“Uh… Ezra from Sf-Niner-36 office, edge of the city. I’m one of the reserves sent by the request of H.O Wilder. Uh… shit… Is there anything wrong with you? What’s your name? You with team 34?” There was both smoothness and urgency in his voice that Fritz really liked.
Instead of telling about Frank, he said, “My name is Fritz, 34-tandem 7. Do you know what’s happening out there?”
“I’ve already told you, you sons of bitches and bastards immortals are one by one dying,” Frank said.
Fritz didn’t mind it, he only wanted an answer from this Ezra.
“Something odd has happened to your team, to all who are in patrol tonight… I’m afraid the reports are sketchy, so I’m as unreliable source. Where are you? Are we picking you up? Because it’s better if you are here to know for yourself-that is if you still don’t know.”
Fritz told him where he was and, “Also bring a small cage, enough for a Rottweiler.”
Chapter 8
When he finally arrived in the office, it was filled with people he didn’t know. Even the people who had delivered him and Frank here were unfamiliar to him. When he had asked them what was happening, none of them had given him a direct answer. They’d just put their heads down and had done what they were supposed to do, the only things they were supposed to do (which was only deliver him to safety and close up his injuries). They’d just said that it was better for him to see it for himself, and please don’t ask any more questions, we’re as clueless as you are.
And as Fritz saw it for himself, he wanted to shit his pants and go back to bed. Maybe he could go as far as cementing his door shut so that he would be left alone for a certain period of time.
“So you’re saying…” he asked the stranger who was now temporarily residing inside Wilder’s office—his name in his knowledge, was Gordon. “But that can’t be, even and elect can’t possibly do that. It’s… It’s too complex!”
“Well then, you are proven wrong, because it already happened, is it not? The three assassins you have encountered last night could still possibly be from a rogue elect, but with this size, with this territory, this is something else we are looking at. Something unprecedented.” He added: “Something impossible.”
After a grimaced look on his face, “Do you have any news about Wilder? My partner… Mark?”
“They’re still helping kill all of those shadows of your brethren. They said they wouldn’t come back until sunrise.” He reached for the glass of scotch on the table and swigged it clean. “You on the other hand should rest…” he looked outside. “We all need to rest.”
Fritz nodded to this and just absorbed everything in his mind, “Are the survivors in the infirmary?”
It was the most unused level of their building, but tonight it was the busiest and nosiest and the bloodiest. There were these metal tables that were filled with gauzes of blood, there were buckets on the floor that were overflowing with something unspeakable, something foul. What they held Fritz didn’t want to know, he didn’t even want to imagine the possible contents, but it was too late, he knew they were various bodily fluids and some internal organs displaced from the putrid smell alone.
He went on and approached the gurney nearest to him after the elevator had opened. He moved to a woman named Alva and asked her the most obvious and tired question to be asked for this dawn.
“What in the hell happened?” he asked, looking at a damaged woman.
Alva’s whole stomach was bandaged from the front up to her back. There were blood splotches on the white, and as Fritz moved closer, he saw that she was missing one of her arms. She was crying now when she saw him, like a baby, producing that annoying face with her lips too much in a frown.
“Fritz,” Alva said, and there was even incredulity in her tone, as if she couldn’t believe Fritz was in one piece. “Where were you, Fritz? Where by God’s name have you been!?” The heart monitor on her bedside table started to beep in a dangerous pace. A nurse immediately went to her and told her to calm down.
Fritz stepped back and watched the scene unfold. Alva didn’t calm down, she actually wanted to stand up and attack him. She grabbed the sword next to her with her remaining arm and stared at him with this baneful eyes that Fritz hadn’t seen for a very long time.
The nurse went to him and put a hand over his chest, “I regret that you have to go, sir. It’s not a good time.”
“What happened out there?” he asked the nurse in a hushed voice, nervous that if someone in this office heard him, he would be once again attacked.
“Haven’t you been briefed by our Head?”
“I know what happened, but…” But he just couldn’t believe it.
And what had happened out there was something original, a novel act that would be told for centuries in their secret history. Everyone, literally everyone in the office had been cloned, had been dreamed exactly the way they were. And they attacked the original ones without mercy and with fury on the tip of their blades. It was ingenious, it was admirable, and it put the entire Sandmen Association in great danger.
“What happened to her?” Fritz finally asked.
The nurse looked at Alva first, and then at him. “You attacked her… You did that to her…”
Fritz moved to the cafeteria, and there sat in silence. In front of him was a coffee cup that had vodka in it. But even though he already had 8 cups of that Russian drink, he still couldn’t feel the alcohol melting his brain away. Maybe he needed something stronger, something that would knock him out immediately. But at the moment he couldn’t think of any, and even if he could, he was too lazy to stand, to walk, to think and to work.
The image of Alva’s face kept flashing in his mind. Somewhere out there there was another him, killing someone, killing one of his coworkers, and in the end putting the blame on him.
He looked around the cafeteria and couldn’t believe that yester night everything was still in place, in peace. Last night everyone was still enjoying a cup of coffee as he was now, everyone was appreciating their routine, everyone was just a cog of a watch that kept ticking and ticking.
This change is too fast, he thought and put the cup of vodka between his lips. He stared outside the window and looked at the dark skies and the moon finally shining. He wondered who could be the one behind all of this, and how could he, or she, be so powerful that this person dreamt every one of them for just one night. But it couldn’t be that easy, it couldn’t be just one night… It couldn’t be just one person.
“This could be planned,” he whispered to himself, secretly wanting someone to answer him, to agree on what he had just said.
He then started to get scared, because if such someone (or a couple of someones) was capable of doing that for tonight, what would it be like for them on the proceeding nights.
Mark retired 15 of the clones of his brethr
en. The only thing he could do to distinguish them from the original ones was to look at their clothing. The real versions of his friends were wearing armors and various weaponry hanging on their bodies, while the ones he had been murdering were wearing their common uniform. It wasn’t easy killing them, in fact, these shadows had the capability and experience in their movements, it was as if they were also living for a very long time; it was as if they were exactly like what they had been designed from.
The shadows also knew their movements in battle. One shadow even knew his signature move, which was stabbing below the sternum and pushing the blade upwards. Mark had to fight his way through the night, and if it wasn’t for some backups sent by the other offices surrounding the city, he’d be dead, all of them would be dead with stab wounds and from loss of blood. And, as the clock neared to 5 o’clock in the morning, they had successfully extinguished every doppelgänger with creator unknown.
They were immediately picked up by a pretend school bus and delivered back to their office. The first thing Mark ever did was bathe himself in the common shower stalls. He’d removed his armor in a frantic hurry, and then his clothing, and then the hastily bandaged dressings that covered his wound, a wound that had been caused by the one and only Frank. He stepped into the flowing shower and let the water cleanse the bullet wound, the fresh and the old blood fell with the rivulets. The injury itself wasn’t bad as previously thought. The bullet had been actually caught by the armor first before landing in his flesh, making Mark believe that someone up there on the clouds was watching him. If it wasn’t the case, then he couldn’t fight any of the clones, he might actually be dead right now with some of his friends that weren’t so lucky.
He needed to wash off everything that had happened hours before… And if he could wash his brain off the memories, he would happily do so.
Once he was done in everything, he finally went to the cafeteria and there he found Fritz sitting by himself. There were others in the floor, but they weren’t from here. Fritz could make friends, he could give a small talk just like a normal, sociable person would do, but Mark knew that Fritz didn’t like strangers that much, something that greatly affected why Fritz had chosen to sit alone. Although these people weren’t really that strange to him, because as immortal beings, they all knew each other. It was just that in the context of being a stranger, all of them, these new groups, were actually strangers for them. Fritz preferred people he had worked with for decades to speak to. Maybe Mark was wrong by this, but he hadn’t seen Fritz ever talk to an outsider sandman for a very long time, 7 years in his calculation—if his calculation was right.
He called for his attention.
Fritz’s face finally lit up and gave him a smile smiled by a crazy person who just found out that someone was visiting him.
“I’m glad to see you kicking…” Fritz added, “you’re one hard asshole to die,” and at that Fritz laughed and drank his coffee, but when he put the cup down, Mark saw that it was actually a clear liquid.
“What’s that? That’s not water, is it?” He took the cup from him and smelled it. “Shit. This early?”
“After what happened last night, I think this is most appropriate. And I’ll be surprised if you don’t think so.”
By that, Mark stood up and grabbed himself a bottle of vodka and a cup. He joined Fritz in looking outside as the sun rose and the clueless citizens woke up from their slumber.
“What have you seen there?” Fritz asked.
Mark was silent for a while. He was trying to construct a good sentence to describe it, a good prose to give justice to what had happened, but he couldn’t find any. He just shook his head and stared at the cup of vodka next to him. Which basically summed it up.
“How about you? What happened to your Frank?”
“I think he’s in the basement. Last I heard from our acquaintances is that they would be interrogating him until he breaks.” He drank his cup clean and poured another. “But I know he wouldn’t break, I shot him in the head and I still heard him laughing… He’s unnatural. The kind of him is not an ordinary nightmare. He kept murmuring and murmuring that he couldn’t die, and somehow, deep inside of me, I think that’s true.”
“He couldn’t die?” Mark suddenly chuckled and went back in looking at the sun, “let’s see what Wilder would do to him. He’s pissed. He’s looking for someone to blame, and I think… I know that it would be our Frank.”
“I think I want to see that…”
Chapter 9
They hadn’t slept that morning. After the vodka and some sips of coffee, they helped their acquaintances in the infirmary. The infirmary itself was cleaner now than what it had been last night. There was also an absence of that smell, that deathly aroma that had hovered over the room so proudly. The only scents that now lingered were of alcohol in some toxic smelling medicines, the smell of illness, or recovery, depending on your taste.
Various monitoring machines were beside each and every one who had been injured. Mark helped those who needed some extra bandaging, while Fritz helped monitor and document the vital signs of his coworkers. In Fritz’s estimate, those who had survived the attack without bruises or major wounds were about 20% of their original number. And their original number? 50, the minimum sandmen required in any functioning office. Now, the only active agents they could send for tonight were 10. That was the dilemma in every small manned office in any city; they were always under-manned. In a big office on the other hand, sandmen were expendables. The heads of those places had no problem in replacing any injured sandmen (sandmen in those parts could even ask for a sick leave, ridiculous). The main office in California for example, the Los Angeles precinct, it was manned by 500 sandmen, all in which were very expert in killing. Some of them were young, some of them were as old as they were. This made Fritz think, because if one looked closer at the details, their office, their precinct, was not that important. Or to be more clear, it wasn’t important at all. If there was the possibility of a “rogue elect”, then he, or she, should have attacked Los Angeles, not the small fry. At least that what Fritz would’ve done.
“You’re William, right?” one of their helpers from the other office asked, a man with a boyish face. Fritz nodded. “Do you remember me? They called me once Timothy, now they call me Jeremy.”
“Fritz… I want you to call me Fritz, and only that.” The joy in Jeremy’s face faded.
“I’m sorry but… You were one of the investigators in the werewolf incident in England, yes?”
“That’s a long time ago.”
“I know, but what do you think of this, this freaky attack? I want to know, they said you are… er… one of the best.” Fritz stared at him. “I know, hearsays. So… what do you think?”
He shook his head and told himself that trying to figure this out wasn’t his job anymore. It was in another life, specifically in the early 1800s, a time where excrements were still thrown out the window, a time without human rights, a time where sex was practically easy, a time of conservative women—to be more precise, it was 1843. And do you know what was in those years that needed his expertise? It was an elect, a child that didn’t know she could create anything through her dreams. It was a love-hate era, and during that year he almost died because the werewolf had slit his throat. Good times.
“I’m sorry, I don’t do that kind of thing anymore.” Stay away from me.
Fritz smiled a sour smile, left the infirmary, and went to the elevator, his destination: the basement. He wanted to stay away from any memory of those years as much as possible. He wanted to stay away from that cute faced Jeremy. He wanted to smack him when he heard his past name. He wanted to…
“Wait up!” someone called, making Fritz hold the doors of the elevator. “Thank you,” this someone, which was actually Gordon, said. He looked disheveled, his eyes were red, and it seemed to be that he had an addition of a leathery scowl on his forehead.
“Have you heard the news?” Gordon said and then mumbled so
mething.
“I expected it. With the things going on.”
“It’s not that much bigger of a deal, actually. The elect of California just wanted a joint investigation about the case, he said to be just ready in case of another attack—the worst thing is he won’t be sending any help.” He mumbled something again.
Fritz shrugged, he couldn’t care less. “Couldn’t blame him in not helping us though, there could be much more in this plate other than this attack.”
“God, man!” Gordon looked at him with sudden rage, “This is the first legitimate attack that happened in decades. I can’t imagine anything much more important than this—”
“We’re just a minority in sandmen, the elect is managing all in California. You think he has time here?”
Gordon was suddenly silent, thinking if what Fritz had said was correct.
“You know, I’ve reviewed every single file about everyone in this office, I know your history, Fritz. I’m aware of the things you have done. I know who created you. I even know your psychological profile that shifted during 1995. And trust me when I say this… I know you’re just fucking kidding yourself. Stop it.”
The elevator doors opened to the basement. Gordon was the first to get out and Fritz followed him until they arrived in a makeshift interrogation room. The Mop up team was there, helping Wilder and various sandmen in torturing nightmare-Frank.
Fritz found Frank submerged in a glass tank of cloudy water. He wasn’t moving, and his crushed skull was bowed down, making you think that his head was a cracked egg. Omelet, Fritz thought.
“Did he talk?” asked Gordon.
Wilder shook his head and was suddenly surprised when he saw Fritz there. “What are you doing here?”
“Enjoying the view,” he said and went closer to Frank, tapped the glass, and smiled when he didn’t move. Where’s your laugh now?