Chapter 42
EXTREME UNCTION
I finger the USB in my pocket. This could be my magic key, if it is what Dawid said it is. Though Dawid is dead, according to what I overheard from the other guests. While I wait, squatting against a wall of another residence, the police lights flash on the house.
They’ve switched them off now.
The cold grit of brickwork presses on my palm when I shift. I feel the need for someone to dump a bucket of ice water on me. Can I wake from this, please? I close my eyes, lean my head into the wall.
In the darkness of the night, I’m free to contemplate what I said to Hailey and what happened before that, when I had her bound and at my mercy.
I remember the second I saw it, felt it, and knew what I was.
How panic crumpled my heart, unraveled my bones, and turned my stomach to soup.
I almost collapsed while looking at her, inches away from killing her with the knife or whatever took my fancy. Fuck her, slice her up a little, wallow in her cries. Repeat ad nauseum.
Bile filled my mouth. That I managed to stagger away and not throw up was a miracle. Somewhere down inside me is this presence, a thing of dead-eyed, blank-brained, sadistic evil. When I try hard, I can sense it there…waiting.
It stares back at me.
Beware that, when fighting monsters, you yourself do not become a monster… for when you gaze long into an abyss the abyss gazes also into you.
Except I am the monster who thought he was human.
I’ve fucked up, no matter what happens. I know I have.
I made her sad. Me? I’m just full of crap, dangerous, and a man with two brains.
Who am I even? I may never know.
I said I’d fix things for her, so that much I will do. Somehow. Before I exit Revenant and go fuck knows where.
Fix things by getting her something concrete about the institute that she can use.
“Bodies, bodies, bodies,” I mutter. Some pics of dead people they should not have in their vaults would work.
Assuming those exist and they must. If they’re conducting research on cryogenically preserved bodies, why store them anywhere else?
The USB rotates under my fingers, hard, uncompromising plastic. It might be packed with nothing code.
I shove myself upright, and a vibration tells me the phone Esau gave me has a message.
I fumble my way in, punching the numbers.
Passcode not facial recognition, it trips me up every time.
The glow of the screen should be okay at this distance.
I glance up to check the police presence at the Laramie house then down at the text message.
ESAU: Need you here, K. My place, ASAP. Leave H wherever she wants to be. Just you.
KAIL: Okay. Just me coming.
Since Esau can’t know I’ve split from her, that requirement is odd. Unless she texted him?
I set off at a jog, slinking under cover when I need to but heading for his house as quickly as I can without being seen.
When I reach his place only one light is on at the rear, so I approach from that direction, checking for anything on the perimeter.
I only see him through a window with Rasmus sitting beside him.
Quietly, I move along to the rear entrance and knock.
From the direction of the room comes the sounds of chairs being moved then footsteps approach.
Esau opens the door, stares at me for a moment, then gestures. “In.”
I slip inside, and he shuts the door.
“Back here. My games room.”
“Rasmus is here too?”
“Yes.”
I follow him to the room which has a desk and a wraparound, three-screen set-up for a large desktop computer. I nod at Rasmus where he sits on a black leather sofa. When he nods back, I find myself a chair opposite. Esau picks the desk chair for his seat and rotates it to face us.
“Big problem.” He claps his hands together. “Rasmus was arrested tonight and taken to the station, kept there while they grabbed all his stuff, including that phone of yours.”
“Okay. That’s…bad.” Though not the same level of bad as my news. “Keep going. You’re out now, so that’s good?”
“Sort of.” Rasmus squints at me. “I cracked the phone. Got in, managed to read most of the data on it though none of the weblinks worked.”
“No?” And now I know why they only wanted me. “What did you find?”
“Well, first of all.” He leans his hands on his knees.
The jeans are threadbare. His T-shirt looks old and somewhat stained.
“Everything of mine has been confiscated, and that includes a copy of what I found and thought. Everything in that phone was simply wrong in a one-step-to-the-left wrongness. Operating system, wrong. Coding, weird though readable. Links, went nowhere, suggesting the whole web was down.”
“And?”
“You’re not from here, are you Kail? It said you were dangerous, but we know that. But this other stuff, and that you were sent by our institute—the same name, same logo as ours—to kill Simon Tarrant when he was already dead here?”
I wait, knowing there is no way to refute or deny this.
“I think you’re from an alternate timeline. From another world. Is this true, Kail?”
I’m pinned between their intent appraisals. “Yes. That is what I decided too.”
“Wow.” He sits back.
Esau gasps and says, “Fuck me.”
“Sorry.” I shake my head. “I never figured out how to prove it. Was never sure it was a good idea to say it, even. And tonight, in case you’re wondering, I told her I would fix her problems and then leave this town.” I look up. “So, if that dangerous label bothers you—”
Rasmus scratches his chin. The bruising on his face is noticeable. Did the cops rough him up? “Not as much as you being a Frankenstein man and from another timeline. These are crazy times.”
I smile, tilt my head. “You get used to the craziness. Sorry you got that done to you. My fault all this happened. Nothing has gone down how I wished it had. Nothing.” I sigh then elevate my chin toward him. “The cops, I guess?”
“Yep.”
“No sorry needed, Kail,” Esau says slowly, drawing out the words. “You’re from another world? You’re leaving? I feel like I should nail you down and stare at you. What does that even mean?”
“I’m leaving. Yes. My world?” I sigh. “It’s the same as yours, but it’s like got strange differences.
” I purse my mouth, thinking on that. “But I have a question for Rasmus. An important one since it might let me help you weirdos nail down Clay Skinner and the institute for murder, body snatching, and whatever else you feel like accusing him of.” I pull out the USB.
“We got this off a hacker Zedder vouched for. I need to know if it really will let me get through security at the Revenant Institute.”
I pass it across to Rasmus, and he stands and goes to the PC.
“There is a chance that this has a virus or some other malignant code on it, Esau.” He holds the USB on the flat of his palm. “I can try to mitigate whatever it might do, isolate it, but I can’t—”
Esau rises from the desk chair. “Do it. Kail, if you go there because you want to find out about the cryo and how the research is happening…I’m coming too. And don’t tell me it’s too risky for me. I’m coming.”
I frown at him while Rasmus kicks the computer into gear and the screen warms up. “Why?” But I think I figured it out.
“Niamh. If Clay took her, there’s a chance she is there. Her body has never been found.”
Cryogenically preserved. The image that conjures is macabre, even for me, and I was once on a slab.
“If he did that, that man deserves an evil death, and I will help you deliver him to it.”
“Amen. Thanks, Kail. Mr. Future Man.” He grins at me as he shakes my hand.
“One day,” Rasmus murmurs, as he stares devotedly at the screen and types on the keyboard. “I am questioning you in detail about how you got here, Kail.”
I grunt at that. “If I knew, maybe I’d have gone back the other way?”
“Back to Narnia?” Rasmus is joking, of course.
“Narnia.” Esau laughs. “Do you even have a Narnia story over there?”
“Yes, we do.”
I wouldn’t have gone. I’m dead there, and Hailey is here.
If only things had gone right. If only I was not a good man with an evil one hiding at my core.
If he ever emerges properly, I will kill myself, fast. My jaw tightens, and I think that through.
What if I can’t? What if I’m the one relegated to the back of my brain?
Rasmus lets out a mild whoop. “This looks genuine. It’s definitely the way in.
I can’t guarantee it will work, but it’s come from there, and if current and not some old system they used, it’s probably good.
” He types some more. “But give me a bit longer to check this. This opens up all sorts of possibilities. I can see how to do things like mine their systems for data, once you get in.”
“So, we might not need to take photos?” I ask.
“It depends on what they store digitally.”
Well now. I glance at Esau. “I plan to do this today, before they figure out we’re coming. Once they’re open for employees to enter, it’s on.” I lock eyes with him. “Esau, lethal force is likely going to be used if they see us. Are you still in?”
“Today? Sure. I’ll close my shop. I know where to steal some uniforms too. The local laundromat. We’ll need those.”
“Doing this fast will increase the chance of mistakes, decrease the chance of a leak. Let’s discuss everything we will take with us and do, very carefully, Esau.”
“Sounds good.”
This seems so normal, even if we are planning mayhem. It’s like a bunch of guys discussing where to go for breakfast. “How come you two aren’t freaking out more about, you know, other worlds?”
“That? It’s going to hit the science peeps like an atom bomb, once they find out. Me? I’m screaming inside, don’t you worry.” Rasmus says, still staring at the screen while typing.
“Ditto.” Esau rocks forward and clasps his big hands between his knees.
“But what you want to do suits me. I’ve been itching to do more.
I don’t care if anything happens to me. I need this.
” His expression, his eyes, go dark with introspection.
“There needs to be a reckoning for things people have done. And you, you’re in love with Hailey yet doing this? ”
“I’m doing it to save her from having to. I didn’t tell her anything. Again, this is likely to be fucking dangerous, and knowing her, she’d want to come.”
“So, you’re doing it for her. Just count me in, freaky man. I need this. I’m doing it for Niamh.” He sniffs, shakes his head. “She should be here, alive.”
“We won’t be getting much sleep, if any.”
He only shrugs. “Sleep? Pfft.”
“Hey. Just so you know.” Rasmus eyes me, looks worried, goes back to his screen staring. “I sent Hailey and the McCluskers a link to my conclusions about your phone.”
Motherfucker.
Esau interjects. “Also, if this goes okay, there is no way me and Rasmus are letting you leave Revenant.”
“You don’t understand.”
“We will, once you tell us why. We’re still not letting you go. Right, Rasmus? You’re a good man, no matter what stupid idea you’ve arrived at.”
Motherfucker, again.