Chapter 26: Death
The pistol and revolver lie side by side, cousins at a sleepover. Nick slowly comes to, feeling like his head is screwed on loose and wound too tight. Blood pools atop his lip, running down to his chin. He can feel thick clots forming in his sinus. Every feeling returning to him is screaming for attention. His ribs, liver, busted lip, and bruised cheek are all vying for some special treatment.
“The result is… nothing short of extraordinary.” A voice floats somewhere in front of Nick, whose vision is still returning to him. His limbic system smolders with nightmares about being dropped off a cliff. His nervous system begins to burn back into existence. His eyes are closed, but he can feel his pulse behind his eyelids. The details slowly come out of the darkness, and he can make out white body bags and electrical equipment. Nick feels something supporting him, the back of a chair, a hard wooden seat under his backside. No handcuffs or anything binding him in place. He is free to get up. Behind him, he feels a presence; most likely the thing that looks like his former partner. Yes, it is all coming back to him now. He just got beaten into next week by a dead man.
“Tanzer’s research said that Nilalkali physiology is quite impressive, but for Orpheus to remove all biological safeguards is something else entirely,” Henry says. “I bet you’re pretty shocked, Nick. I would be too, if I were you.” Through heavy eyelids, Nick meets Henry’s gaze. “That stupid look on your face still hasn’t come off.” Henry looks at the figure behind Nick. “He is a thing of beauty. I call him John, and he answers to it. I wasn’t sure how to control him, but he’s half-aware of what is happening. He’s a dumb animal waiting for orders.”
“Doc…” Nick pushes out through his bruised windpipe. “Why? Why do it?”
“Oh, this is the part where I explain my evil plan, right, Nick? No, no, no. It’s really not like that.” Henry paces back and forth. His shirt sleeves are pulled up, with black surgical gloves covering his hands. In his hand, he holds a knife, twirling it and trying to show his willingness to use it. “I want you to know this is in no way directed towards you. You interfered with a plan I have put countless hours into, one I have devoted every second of my life to for the past two years, four months, and eleven days. You forced me to pivot more times than I can count. You, going around the Cherry Pit, asking all the right questions about the wrong people.”
Nick laughs deep in his throat. He throws his head back, grinning with teeth covered in dried blood. “You got lazy, Henry. Expected no one to care about some working girls.” Nick remembers how Liv stood up to him in the Cherry Pit girls’ apartment. “We cared. It’s how we found Dex.”
“Touché, Nick. You sure got me. You figured out what Orpheus is. You figured out how Holbrook was involved and how it all tied together. You figured out what I promised people, the loved ones I could bring back if I could just…” Henry grasps at a shape in the air. “Consolidate.”
“You failed.”
“You’re right, Nick.” Henry slicks his hair back. “Because I’m the one who’s beaten up and tied to a chair about to be executed, right?” He lets out a light chuckle. “I really am glad we got to reconnect, Nick. You know, beyond all the usual therapist bullshit we had between us, I really did enjoy our talks. You wouldn’t believe the dipshits I had to deal with. But not you… I always saw it in you. You saw them, that place, that fucking owl hanging over us, for what it all really was. A machine, taking our bodies, decency, relationships, and very souls, and turning them into meat. That’s all we are to them, you know.” His voice grows heavy, he sniffles and fights his anger before steadying himself. “When I heard you killed your partner, and when I heard how you let hundreds of children slip through that memory-erasure procedure they make you do, I have to admit I smiled like a little boy. I was so damn proud of you. By then I had lost…” He stops. “And then there was you, sticking it to those higher-ups, sitting in their ivory tower.” He purses his lips and leans against the table, on which lie the white body bags.
Nick takes stock of the situation. Anton is forty minutes away. Before those minutes are up, Project Orpheus needs to be destroyed, and Henry needs a hole between the eyes. For now, both seem unlikely. Liv is upstairs somewhere. Nick hopes—bad move—but he hopes Liv did not abandon him.
“You know,” Henry says, “after it happened, after my entire world lost all meaning…” Henry looks up at Nick, dead eyes and a grin. “The higher-ups sent me a fucking gift basket. And some balloons,” he says through gritted teeth before inhaling sharply, his eyes affixed on the ceiling four floors above. “They get to bend the rules. Even with death, they plot against it, cooking up shortcuts and compromises with the reaper. The very fabric of the universe is theirs to shape.” Henry looks back at Nick. “Why? Is there some cosmic order to it all? Who gets to die, who gets to be above death? You know, Nick, in a world where Luisa Tanzer stayed dead, I would have been less angry. I would have… gotten over it. Maybe went to therapy myself. It is the great equalizer, after all, death. We can all rest assured knowing our shelf-life is limited. But during one of our sessions, Tanzer had let it slip. He confused my professionalism with friendship in his grief. He got used to hitting the booze during our sessions as well. He was the Director, I wasn’t gonna say anything.” He chuckles. “And once, he lets it slip that his daughter will no longer be someone he grieves, but protects once again. I asked him what he meant, and he explained it to me vaguely. He was drunk at the time and didn’t remember it during our next session. He had this satisfied smile on his face. And then I thought about the fucking gift basket.” Henry itches at his knuckles. “I spent six months on it all, telling my wife about it, recruiting Holbrook, framing Dex for the murder, kidnapping the Nilalkali girls.”
“To bring back your kids…” Nick says in a low tone. “The ones that died in the car crash.”
“Yes,” Henry says curtly.
“The car crash that was an accident.”
“The one she put them in.”
“Elvira.”
“She was supposed to take them. But she ordered them a taxi. If that driver survived getting T-boned, I would have killed him myself,” Henry says. “I had a full schedule with patients. It was Friday, overcast and damp. Funnily enough, you and I had a session that day.”
“So it was you,” Nick says, feeling now the eternal weight of Henry’s insanity. “You killed your wife.”
“She put them in that car.”
“So what, it was her fault?”
“It definitely wasn’t theirs,” Henry answers politely as he can. “I couldn’t look at her. So when I proposed the plan, she thought we could finally heal. She went along with it.” His tone goes cold. “I don’t know what possessed her to think that I would EVER let her near my kids ever again.”
Nick remembers the burning car, the smell of gooey tire and waxy plastic.
“You’re sick, Henry.”
“Spare me the cliché, please.” Henry mocks. “You know, Nick, had you walked through that front door, I would have simply let you have whatever you want. If you had greeted me as a friend, we could have made all your problems go away. We could have brought back Gartz and been touted as visionaries. You of all people would have understood me, I thought at least. Who has the PNCD screwed over more than you? You were a good man, who sacrificed everything. Now you’re what, an attack dog?”
“I’m a hell of a lot more than you,” Nick says. “I bet it eats you up that you can’t blame it all on someone. I bet there’s a small part of you that realizes it really was a horrible accident. I hope you lost sleep over the thought that you murdered your wife for nothing.”
“Careful…”
“I’m sorry that you lost your kids, Henry, I really am. No child deserves that. I would be sorry for you if you didn’t make me fucking laugh.”
“Oh yeah?” Henry asks, getting closer, taking a scalpel from the table.
Nick laughs, preparing for pain. “Yeah, motherfucker. Yeah.”
“I’m funny, am I? My pain is a joke to you?” Henry pulls up a chair and sits across from Nick.
Nick keeps laughing as the scalpel enters his leg, just above the knee. It slides through his muscle. “Yeah. A riot.” The scalpel stops, and Nick pants, grinding his teeth. “Ivy League type. Military man.” The pain begins to vignette Nick’s vision. The world begins to go blank, but each word of mockery gives him time to say the next. “Loses his kids, then blames his wife, the only person who could help him move on. Blows her up in a car, only after committing the murder of one of the most powerful men in America.” Nick laughs, an inaudible laugh deep in his throat. “And on top of that, after all of that, you’re still such a fucking bore.”
The scalpel leaves Nick’s leg. Henry’s cold fingers grip the back of Nick’s head as he sticks the scalpel into his brow. Henry feels it poke the bone. Nick gets held down by Gartz as Henry cuts across the top of his face. Loud, searing agony claims Nick’s mind. It is all he can think about for a few seconds, that is, until he regains control over his thoughts. The scalpel moves with precision across his left brow and towards the center of his face. Blood runs like warm syrup down his face, making him close his left eye.
“Feel better, Doc?” Nick says through labored breathing.
Henry stops, cleaning the scalpel on Nick’s pants, smiling as he does. “I’m sorry you made me do that, Nick. Please understand, I have my own limits. I’m only human.” Henry walks to the table with the white body bag, lovingly unzipping it. “Okay, dokey, Nick. You seem to be unconvinced. That test run you saw upstairs was damaged goods. The body had been dead too long, and the DNA sample was contaminated. It ended up being confused about what it needed to be. John here,”—Henry gestures to Gartz—“is also the result of an old body. His mind is fragmented. For my children,” Henry wheels a metal table in front of Nick. On it is a file next to some syringes and assorted vials of dark liquid. Nick can barely make these details out with one eye. “I saved the best for last.”
He peels the body bag away, letting Clara rest on the cold table. He readies the syringe from the other table.
“The Wall requires the right mix of chemicals to prep the body, the right words and symbols to summon it.” Henry begins preparing everything. “Gartz can be written off by the higher-ups. We need undeniable proof, proof that shapeshifters can be used to bring people back. Not even your brother will be able to touch me. He’ll see reason.”
On the floor in front of Nick, Henry begins the esoteric ritual. In the same spot as he had done it before, evidenced by the cleaned-up chalk marks, he begins drawing once more. Around the table, he draws two circles close together, followed by strange sigils, all while holding the file close to him and checking it occasionally. “It’s a thing of beauty, Nick. You should be grateful. I’m giving you a sneak peek.”
Nick’s mind comes and goes, drifting between the library and somewhere far away. His neck is like a broken swivel. His left eye has now crusted shut with blood, leaving only his right eye to study his surroundings. There is still that stubborn feeling in the back of his head, the sense that somehow it will all work out. Where did it come from? Hell of a time to develop a habit like that. He looks up at the floor above them, the darkness barely contrasting with the walkway. He sees a familiar shape.
Smiling, he looks back at Henry, who is halfway done with the sigils.
“I thought this was about bringing back your kids.”
“Yes, it still is. But I’m not an idiot, Nick,” Henry says, still crouched and drawing. “Let’s say I bring them back, what then? The PNCD will find me eventually and skin me alive. What I need to do now is be smart. I’ve nearly perfected Orpheus and encrypted nearly all files on it. These files are merely one aspect of it.”
“So the project won’t work without you?”
“Exactly. The PNCD won’t dare touch me.” Henry looks at Gartz, pointing at Nick. “Cuff him and take him four paces back. The process cannot be interrupted.”
Henry begins the ritual, finalizing the chalk circle with some circular and looping symbols Nick has never seen. Henry rolls Clara to her side to inject the solution into her spine. The thick metal needle slides in laboriously, channeling the murky liquid inside. The body is taken by spasms, shaking lightly as Henry holds her down.
“Residuals…” Henry says nonchalantly. He continues, standing in the middle of the chalk circles, cutting his own palm with a clean scalpel and letting the blood drip inside the circle.
Henry takes a deep breath. He produces a paper from his back pocket and reads it carefully. His words are in a language Nick is not sure even exists anymore.
“Wan-hwe tuoji kalpeude’reng sillasipi bihelym-vinegrinin, ji-viisas berkea rauhku ez-hwe nikarim-takaisin, kyzyl gu muutosta hertin, kebul-aal bekaik an u ne tuoji ester’a jir-esta enim ku hwe en voi hyvasi-hwe.”
The next few moments are silent.
“Gesundheit,” Nick says before his throat is squeezed by Gartz’s arm.
The body convulses more violently this time. From the mouth rises a strange, whining, machine-like sound. Nick squints in discomfort as he sees Clara’s body sit up slowly.
“The timing on this is very sensitive…” Henry narrates to himself. Clara’s milky eyes open, no one behind the wheel. She is puppeted by something from beyond this world. Each movement is lethargic. Whatever is in control reaches out to Henry, who steps out of the way and retrieves a small vial from under the medical table. Nick understands that the ‘Wall’ his father and Dex researched is the thing piloting the body. The vial contains the DNA required to bring back the intended person.
“Moment of truth.” Henry gently opens the mouth of the mindless corpse. He slowly extends the vial, ready to pour it down the open mouth, like spoon-feeding a toddler. Nick jerks as he hears a deafening sound cut through the tension. The vial explodes in Henry’s hand as he screams. Chaos erupts in this tiny corner of the library. The creature sits still with its mouth open.
“No…” Henry looks at the shattered vial, his daughter’s blood seeping into the old parquet. “No, no, no… Daisy…” Henry says. He shoots a look at the floor above, failing to find who it is before directing his attention to the body, mouth still open.
“Fuck,” Henry says, as the creature that was supposed to help bring his daughter back sees an opportunity to step through the open doorway instead.