1.
Geneva, Takezo, Dima, and Thomas had all taken their place around the meeting-room table for the weekly status meeting. Their eyes were locked on the empty chair, belonging to Arthur. Arthur was stereotypically British: always punctual, if not in fact early, for any appointment or meeting. It had been joked by Dima that he even began sexual encounters precisely at pre-arranged times and not a lick earlier. His tardiness here was unusual, and all the faces present bore expressions of puzzlement, trying to figure out what this absence could mean.
“Should we start without him?” Takezo asked.
“I suppose so,” Geneva said, with a sigh. “We all have things to do. Arthur can explain himself later.” She turned to the Asian gentleman to her left. “We’ll start with the majors: Takezo, what’s the status of Agent Seraph?’
“She started as a school counselor yesterday,” he answered, his hands resting on the stack of papers in front of him. “She has not yet made contact with the student in question, however. She expects to take about a week to get settled in, and then she’ll begin the mission proper.”
“Excellent,” Geneva said with a nod. “Tell her to take two weeks; we’ve reason to suspect that one of the teachers is involved in the abuse, and it would be very helpful if she could figure out which one before approaching the student.”
“Noted,” Takezo answered, making a note on his pad.
Geneva moved on. “Thomas: Agent Orion?”
“Orion is. . .wait. Didn’t we skip Cipher?”
Geneva’s voice flattened. “I know exactly how Cipher is progressing on his current mission, Thomas, and there is currently no need to update the group at large on how he’s doing.”
Dima said nothing, silently reading the doubt on the faces of the other two men. They didn’t know about Cipher’s near rebellion six months ago, or that he’d tried to quit his current mission twice already, claiming it too difficult. While Dima would have loved to give the update and seek the advice of the others, Geneva had taken a very personal interest in this mission and sworn him to secrecy, in addition to personally talking Cipher into continuing the mission. He wondered if the doubt on the other men’s faces was visible on his face, as well. . .and sincerely hoped it wasn’t. He was obviously Geneva’s right hand, and any doubt in her from him would only increase the doubt among others.
“Agent Orion, please?” Geneva repeated.
“Orion is. . .”
Suddenly, the phone in front of Dima rang, startling everyone. During meetings, the secretaries were under strict orders to hold all calls. Reflexively, Dima answered it, ignoring Geneva’s glare.
“Dmitri.”
“Mr. Rossovich, Mr. Calibur is on line two. He insists it’s very urgent.”
“It’s Arthur,” Dima whispered to the others.
“Put him on speaker,” Geneva said.
“Thank you, Sarah, patch him through, please,” Dima said, and hung up the receiver.
The speakerphone crackled with the transfer. “Dima, it’s Arthur.” His voice, crackling in the bad connection, made everyone crowd around Dima’s chair, straining to hear. “I’m on the jet, inbound to Damocles’ location.”
“Why are you. . .” Takezo began.
Geneva interrupted him. “Arthur, what’s the status of Agent Damocles?”
Arthur seemed as shocked to say the words as the others were to hear them: “Agent Damocles is. . .” He took a breath, and tried again:
“Agent Damocles is down, repeat, Agent Damocles is down.”
2.
He could feel them, each and every single one.
Twenty seconds ago, he’d been helping Susan pack up her things and move out of the house while her husband was at work. She was bringing boxes down into the kitchen, and he – stupid stupid stupid, he thought to himself – hadn’t been as vigilant as he normally was, and he, moving boxes to the front door, had stopped to look at her, admire how beautiful she was, all sweaty and almost crying and yet hopeful and happy to be getting out of this situation, and he’d stopped right in front of the big picture window – stupid, stupid, stupid – and hadn’t been watching the window itself and then he’d heard the glass break behind him and saw the picture of a sailboat on the far wall shatter and then he’d felt the first bullet enter to the left of his spine, somewhere in his abdomen, and then the second, high on his right side, breaking a rib and putting a hole in the top of his right lung and breaking another rib on its way out and then he heard the echo of the shots, just for a second, because Susan started screaming right then, right as the third bullet hit him in the back of his head and even as he fell he could feel it skipping along the side of his head, stuck between his skull and his scalp, and then it found a weak point in the skull and broke through, too spent to do anything other than drift and as he landed on the floor, it lodged itself right behind his left eye, seeming somehow to put pressure on both his eye and his brain, and as he cursed himself all the way down – stupid, stupid, stupid still running through his head – he heard Susan screaming and running towards him, and he wanted to yell at her to run away instead, to get out, because her husband was here, he could hear him yelling and cursing from the yard, probably on his way in to finish her off, but his mouth wouldn’t work and he couldn’t tell her to run and now both of them were going to die here if he didn’t do something, anything, but his body just wasn’t listening at all, it was dancing to its own syncopated rhythm, and a successful mission was now a complete failure because he’d stopped paying attention – stupid, stupid, stupid.
Even his mind was losing focus now, drifting off into its own places, perhaps trying to console itself in this situation by reminding him that he had been shot before, and remembering that he had survived that. . .
3.
His life was over. He just hadn’t died yet.
The flawless right hook that had ended his life was a year in his past now. His wife, his family, his job, everything that had been his life was a year in the past. In that year, he’d been living on the streets, and certainly no one from his life would recognize him in Hell: his face was hairy and unshaven, his hair long and wild, his clothes torn and dirty no matter how many times he dumped them for new ones. He’d become what he always thought of before as one of Them; the homeless, rambling, vagabond people that filled the streets of any major city, and to him, eating out of dumpsters and using alleys for restrooms and fighting for warm places to sleep was no sort of life at all.
To him, it was exactly what he deserved.
He didn’t beg for change or go to any of the missions or homeless shelters in the area. He didn’t feel he deserved the kindness of others, and besides, even as haggard as he was now, he feared someone might recognize him. If he was recognized, of course the police – his former coworkers, his colleagues, his brothers in blue – would try to revive him, bring him back to the life he’d had, and he knew he was undeserving of resurrection. He was dead, and he wanted to stay that way.
The other dead people had nicknamed him “Scrapper,” because he was good in a fight, even though he fought as little as possible. It wasn’t easy; no matter how little you have, there’s always someone willing to take it from you, out of their own need or just plain greed, and that particular lesson had been taught to him many times over the past year. He’d fought for shoes, blankets, boxes, jackets, food, everything. . .but what he’d fought the hardest for, the things he’d been willing to kill to keep, weren’t edible or wearable.
He kept the pictures in his wallet, after tossing the wallet itself off of a bridge. Pictures of his beautiful wife, her lovely and strong face, pictures of a young son with loving, adoration-filled eyes, pictures of them all in a time long gone. Even worse was that looking at them now, frozen in phosphor permanently, he couldn’t help but remember how they’d looked the last time he saw them: her bleeding from her lips, dazed, nearly unconscious, lying in the midst of a shattered table and lamp, two broken teeth beside a face lumpy with sweeling and broken bones, and his son with angry, hate-filled eyes. Often he looked at these pictures at the same time as he did his badge, remembering how proud he’d been to be a cop, how much he loved it, how much he’d believed in the motto “To Protect And Serve,” and how, ultimately, he’d betrayed that motto, and then, pictures in one hand, badge in the other, he would hold them close to his chest, curl up in a ball inside his box or blanket or bundle of newspapers, and quietly sob himself to sleep.
For, as he’d learned, even the dead can cry.
4.
The sound of the door being kicked in brought him out of his reverie. Susan was cradling his head in her lap, her tears falling onto his face, and while in the back of the mind, he thought it a sweet gesture, he was trying desperately to tell her to run, to get away, to call 911. All that came from his lips was a bloody bubble; his lung was definitely bleeding, and might even collapse soon. He wanted to tell her something, anything, even to get his gun from his jacket in the kitchen – stupid, stupid, stupid, he chided himself again, leaving your weapon so far away – but the words wouldn’t form, his body wouldn’t work, there was nothing he could do but listen to her incoherent wails and lie under a rain of her tears.
Then a new voice, began, the voice of Brett, Susan’s husband, and though he couldn’t make the words out, he knew it was a sentiment he’d heard many times before. He could imagine the curses and slurs being levelled at Susan right now, imagine the charges of infidelity and unfaithfulness, imagine the anger and indignance at her leaving, imagine the psychotic rage now filling Brett, and all he could do about it was wait for the shots that would end Susan’s life. Maybe she’d live as long after being shot as he had so far. Damocles hoped she wouldn’t; the bullets were rather hot and feeling them move around inside his body was quite painful. Stupid, stupid, stupid, he thought again, and now you’ve gotten both of you killed.
But the shots didn’t come.
Looking out of the eye that didn’t have a bullet behind it (that eye was closed, because the pressure from the bullet hurt so much), Damocles saw Brett’s hand, the empty one, grab Susan’s hair and pull her up, dropping him to the floor. Damcoles still wasn’t able to hear much, but could make out bits and pieces of what Brett was saying: “Gave it to him. . .wouldn’t give it to me. . .fucking husband. . .will now. . .upstairs. . .stairs. . .fucking whore. . .stairs. . .”
And then Damocles couldn’t see either of them, only hear Susan being dragged towards the stairs, still sobbing and yelling, the thump of Brett’s work boots coming in an unsteady rhythm, meaning that Susan was probably not making it easy for him. Good girl, Damocles thought.
Stupid, stupid, stupid, he cursed himself again, but now. . .lucky too. She’s buying time. All I have to do is get up and use it. That’s all I have to do. That’s it. I can do it.
Laying flat on his back, Damocles struggled with himself, trying to get his nonresponsive body to work, to do something, to get up and go help this poor brave woman, because he was the only one that could, and even if the cops showed up, Brett would probably kill her and then himself, because he was just that kind of fucking coward, and he was trying and trying and trying but his fucking body wouldn’t listen, thought it deserved a break just because it had three goddamned bullets in it and it was wrong, he tried so hard, squeezed his eyes shut with the effort, trying and trying and trying to get this FUCKING GODDAMNED BODY TO DO WHAT IT’S TOLD, FOR FUCK’S SAKE. . .
He opened his eyes.
He was looking at the carpet, at his own blood pooled where he had been laying, at his own shoe standing in a puddle of him. Standing. Looking down.
Alright, he thought. Now I just have to make it up the stairs and save Susan by fighting a guy with a gun. That’s all I have to do. That’s it. I can do it.
He took a single, faltering step. . .and the darkness of rememberance rushed into his mind again.
5.
“Hey Scrapper,” Bugsy – named not for the mobster but for the fact that insects seemed to love him – had told him earlier that evening, “some guys been looking for ya, askin bout ya.”
“What kind of guys?”
“Guys in suits, real clean, real sharp-lookin. Two of em. Big Russian and some poncy guy. . .Australian, I think.”
Internal Affairs? Scrapper thought. After a year, certainly the police would have given up looking for him. . .but would Internal Affairs have given up? Or would they want to bring the wife-beating cop to justice more than the Blue Brotherhood would want to find him? It made him nervous, but he knew the bums would keep him safe. After all, he’d protected them from thrill-seeking kids and junkies looking for easy marks many times before. “Thanks, Bugsy. I’ll keep an eye out. Good looking out.”
“No prob,” Bugsy said, shuffling away to buy liquor with the $20 the men in suits had given him. That part, Scrapper didn’t need to know, and besides, Scrapper was tough enough to fight these guys if it came to it. After this was over, maybe he’d even share some of the money – more likely, some of the booze – with Scrapper, just to show there was no hard feelings.
Alone in his alley, Scrapper settled down inside his box, in a prime spot – next to the vent of a dry-cleaning place. Nice and warm. . .though somehow Bugsy’s news gave him a chill that the vent could not remove. As he always did when nervous or scared or just down, he pulled out the pictures and the badge, looking them both over, running his fingers over the faces he’d never see again, tracing the contours of the badge he’d fought for the right to wear and lost the right long ago, then clutched them to his chest and cried himself to sleep.
He awoke suddenly, realizing that the pictures and badge had been taken from his grasp. Sitting up, he saw a large man standing at the end of the alley, silhoutted by a streetlamp. . .and, the police officer’s training realized later, completely blocking the alley from outside view. Another man, shorter and thinner, was walking towards the larger man, away from Scrapper, looking at something in his hands. . .something that belonged to Scrapper.
“Is this the right one?” said a heavily-accented voice. Russian, Scrapper thought, as he stood and began to chase the smaller man.
“Spot on, lad,” said the smaller man, just as Scrapper was about to grab him. . .and then the Russian, moving far faster than his size should have allowed, swept Scrapper away from the smaller guy and a good fifteen feet back against the alley wall. Amazed, he could only sit there on his crumpled box and trash bags and stare for a moment, trying to gather himself and decide what to do next.
“Are you sure?” asked the Russian.
“Bob’s your uncle,” said the smaller man, and then Scrapper realized that the man was British, not Australian, though the fact made his presence no less unusual. “Do it, and let’s get on our way. This place is horrid.”
“Da,” the Russian said. As Scrapper had gotten up and began to charge them again, the Russian’s hand flashed again, this time bearing a flash of metal as well, and just as Scrapper’s mind screamed GUN!, flame erupted from the metal’s end and the first bullet hit him in the face, glancing off his cheekbone and snapping his head back, giving him long enough to think I guess an open-casket funeral is out before the second bullet hit him in the chest, followed by a third in the chest, and a fourth in the stomach, and a fifth in the leg, and he felt them all for just a second before he couldn’t feel anything at all, then he couldn’t see anything at all, and then he heard the Russian voice say “You will forgive us later” and then he couldn’t hear anything at all and then he was just falling, onto the trash bags and the boxes, and only as he lay dying, just another bum dying in a dirty, stinking alley, this time dead for real, did he finally wish he could be back with his wife and child, wish he could go face them and apologize and maybe be taken back, and then he couldn’t think anymore and it was too late to do anything but die.
6.
“How. Did. This. HAPPEN!” Geneva demanded.
“All I know so far is that Observer 625 was following Brett – the husband – on his way to work, but Brett suddenly turned and went to a bar instead. Brett went into the bar, kept watch for a couple of hours, and then. . .he says he just lost sight of him in the crowd,” Arthur answered.
“Lost him?”
“Lost him.”
“Let’s lose 625 somewhere in the Middle East. Be sure to tattoo American flags all over him. . .oh, and give him a military haircut.”
“Geneva. . .” Dima began.
“What?”
“Let’s not worry about 625 right now. Damocles is the bigger priority,” Dima said, with a calm he hoped Geneva would reciprocate.
“Okay,” she answered. “Go on, Arthur.”
“Hang on, we’re turning. . .what’s our ETA, Captain?. . .okay. I got the call from 625 that he’d lost the target just as the Medical Monitoring people called me and said that Damocles’ readings had spiked and slumped. That was when I ran to the hangar and got on the Blackbird. We’re still about 15 minutes from landing; MM says his signs are weakening fast. . .”
“What can we do?” Thomas asked. As the newest of them, an agent in trouble was not a situation he’d been through before, and it frightened him. “Do we have anyone else on the ground there already?”
“No,” Arthur answered. “All the observers in the city are gone, except for 625. . .and as angry as I might be at him right now, I’m not sending him into a gunfight unarmed.”
Geneva spoke up. “Cipher’s in another city, as are Orion, Magdelene, all the others. . .Christ. What about. . .”
“Got her,” Takezo said. No one had noticed the quiet Asian go to his own phone as soon as Arthur delivered his news.
“Got who?” Geneva asked.
“Seraph,” he answered, his hand over the phone’s mouthpiece. “She is in the same city for her mission, and since she’s still on recon, she can step out and help.”
A collective sigh of relief rose from the others. “How fast can she get to him?” Dima asked.
“She says it depends on how many traffic laws she can break.”
Geneva smiled. “Tell her she can run over nuns and orphans if she wants. I don’t care, as long as I don’t lose another agent.”
“What’s going on? I can’t hear,” Arthur said.
“Seraph is on her way,” Thomas said, his hands clasped at his chest.
“Tell her to put a great bloody hurry on – MM says Damocles just flatlined!”
7.
When Damocles opened his eyes again, he was halfway up the stairs. Blacked out, he thought. Can’t do that again.
He could hear the struggle on the second floor, as Brett dragged Susan towards the bedroom. She was fighting all the way, from the sound of it, cursing and yelling at him just as much as he was at her. Good for you, Damocles thought. . .and then Susan broke away; he could hear her scrambling into the bathroom and trying to close the door. He could hear Brett screaming and cursing, fighting to get the door open, then the thunk of Susan falling against the tub, the yells as she threw everything within reach at him. . .and then two more shots rang out.
Damocles stopped in place on the stairs and didn’t move at all. Inside him, his mind whirred, praying that Susan hadn’t been killed, that he hadn’t been too late, that he hadn’t failed, that she wasn’t dead, maybe maybe maybe. . .
After a few seconds, he heard Susan crying, and Brett began yelling again for her to get into the bedroom. Damocles listened carefully and heard the sound of bathroom tiles falling; he guessed that Brett had fired wild or just warning shots to get her to stop fighting, and they’d apparently worked. Damocles thanked God for sparing Susan’s life, and continued trying to climb as Brett resumed dragging Suasn to the bedroom.
Just as he reached the top of the stairs, he saw Susan’s feet slide into the bedroom. Made it, he thought. Now all I have to do is. . .
Then his heart stopped.
He felt it stop, felt the curious absence of the belaboured thumping within his chest. He slumped against the wall, slowly sagging to the ground, wanting to do anything, curse scream, fight, anything other than die here, die a failure, die alone, but he couldn’t do anything, his body wasn’t responding again, and there was nothing he could do, nothing anyone could do but. . .
The first thump shocked him.
The second and third made him grin.
Alright, he thought, getting to his feet again. Not my time yet. Better finish this before that happens again.
8.
When Scrapper woke up, he thought he was blind.
“Great,” he said to nobody. “I survived getting shot but now I’m blind. Fuckin great.”
Scrapper realized his voice had an echo. In trying to move his hands, he realized he was in a very very confined, but velvet-lined space; someplace he’d seen quite a few of as a cop.
“Oh fucking shit, I’m in a fucking coffin,” he said. “HELP ME! SOMEBODY! GET ME OUT! FOR FUCK’S SAKE, SOMEBODY PLEASE HELP ME! SOMEBODY. . .”
“Please calm down in there,” a British accent said from somewhere outside the coffin. “We’ve almost got you out; we’re just getting the straps fixed. We’re trying to do this quietly, so please shut up.”
Scrapper calmed down as much as he could, and waited. Soon he felt the coffin being lifted, and, once it had stopped, the lid was opened.
“Good eve-” the British man was able to say before Scrapper leapt from the coffin and grabbed him by the throat, the pain of his wounds forgotten in an adrenaline surge.
“What the FUCK is wrong with you people? HUH? You fucking shot me and then buried me alive? What the FUCK!”
“Blame your wife, tovarisch,” said the Russian, who was suddenly behind Scrapper. “If she had not insisted upon open-casket funeral, we could have taken you sooner, not buried you at all. Also, if you do not drop my friend, I will be forced to hurt you, and as I do not wish to, I must ask you let him go.”
Scrapper couldn’t tell if the Russian was armed this time, and wasn’t really wanting to find out the hard way. While trying to decide what to do next, his adrenaline surge began to fade, and he felt how weak and tired his body was. His options waning along with his strength, he released the Brit and sat down on the ground, cradling his suddenly spinning head. “Who are you people?” he asked again. “What do you – why’d you shoot me?”
“Get in the car,” the Russian said. “Even though it’s 3 AM, we’d still prefer not to be seen in a cemetary, making off with a resident.”
“I’m not going anywhere until -”
“Get. In. Car. NOW.” the Russian said, with a glare that made a mockery of any possible dissention. Feeling weak and meek, Scrapper did as he was told, though he had to lean on the other two men for aid in getting there.
“Your life is over,” the Brit said as soon as all three were in the limousine. “Your body’s been found, you’ve had a funeral, you’ve been buried, the whole bit.”
Scrapper sat listening, his head in his hands. When he didn’t respond, the Brit chose to continue.
“Right now, you have two options. You can jump out of this limo and go start a new life all your own. . .”
“For which,” the Russian added with a smile, “we will not be slowing down.”
“. . .or you can come with us, and work for us.”
Scrapper looked up at that. “What would I be doing for you?”
The Russian answered. “The same as you were doing before: you’d be protecting and serving. The difference is, you won’t be a police officer.”
“What would I be, then? FBI? CIA?”
“Neither one. You’d be an agent, but you’d be OUR agent, answering only to us.”
“Who are you, exactly?”
The Russian shook his head and wagged a finger. “No, no, no, my undead friend. For answer to question, you must decide if you are with us or not.”
Scrapper turned it over in his head. His family thought he was dead, so going back to them, even if he hadn’t hit his wife, was out. Even now, she’d be making plans to move on, to keep on with her life. She didn’t need him to come back and drag her down now. Being homeless again was an option, but. . .
“I’m in,” he said.
“Okay,” the Brit replied. “I’m Arthur. This is Dmitri. Welcome to your new life.”
9.
Damocles could hear them fighting in the bedroom, and he was grateful for it: the noise covered the thumping and dragging of his footsteps. From what he could tell, Brett was attempting to tie Susan up, and even at gunpoint, Susan wasn’t having it. He wondered if she knew that help was on the way (such as it is, he added to himself), or if she was just stalling, hoping for the police to arrive. Either way, she was buying time, and, since sirens weren’t yet audible, it was completely up to him. Just to make sure, he stopped and strained his ears, hoping to hear any kind of wailing siren.
Instead, he heard a wheezing in his own breath.
Lung’s punctured, he thought, probably gonna collapse soon. Shit. Gotta hurry. . .as if there wasn’t a need to hurry before, he thought, looking at the holes in him and the blood spilling onto the carpet.
Just as he reached the bedroom door, he noticed that Susan had stopped fighting; instead, she was only crying as Brett ordered her onto the floor and on her knees. Fight’s gone out of her. . .or been knocked out of her. Gotta do something. . .Carefully he peeked around the doorframe.
From where he stood, Damocles was looking at Brett’s back. In front of Brett, Susan sat kneeling before him, he r hands apparently tied behind her back. Though Damocles couldn’t see her eyes, he could see the ugly mark on her cheek, where he guessed Brett had pistol-whipped her into submission. He could also tell that Brett was holding the gun in her face with his right hand, and unbuckling his pants with the left.
Perfect, Damocles thought.
Damocles stepped in as light and quietly as he could, even holding his breath so that the wheezing wouldn’t give him away. When Brett’s pants and underwear were to his knees, and his threats against Susan at their peak, Damocles readied himself. . .and acted.
“Hey. . .jackass. . .behind you,” Damocles said, surprising even himself with how raspy his voice sounded.
Susan, open-mouthed and resigned to the coming oral violation, half-gasped half-screamed in surprise and sudden hope.
Brett, exactly as Damocles had hoped, began turning to face the new threat, the fire in both his mind and loins removing considerations for future consequences, his finger already starting to squeeze the trigger as he turned to his right, ready to shoot as soon as he could see this person. . .
But Damocles was ready.
As Brett began turning, Damocles stepped closer to him, extending his left hand to catch Brett’s right wrist as he turned, using his remaining strength to keep the arm down as Brett kept turning and Damocles stepped in closer, his fingers pressing the nerves inside Brett’s wrist, hoping to make the fingers contract, his thumb sliding up to the trigger if not, and then they were so close Damocles couldn’t see down there, could only see the rage and anger in Brett’s face, could smell the alcohol on his breath, and Damocles could only pray and hope he’d done the positioning correctly as he squeezed Brett’s wrist again, hard, harder, and Brett leveled curses and accusations at him and his thumb pressed on Brett’s forefinger and
BANG.
Nobody spoke, no one made a sound. It seemed that Susan had even stopped crying, so absolute was the silence after the gunshot.
The first sound was the wet plop of raw, blood-filled meat falling to the floor, then soft dripping as it, and the wound it left behind, bled onto the carpet.
The second was a high-pitched, strangled, keening cry of anguish from Brett, as his nerves notified him of what had just happened. His eyes, still inches from Damocles’, went wide in shock. . .as did his hands. He dropped the gun; it seemed to have lost all importance now as he sank to his knees, his hands going to his crotch and completely failing to contain the spurting blood.
Damocles watched him as he sank, almost feeling some pity for Brett. . .then he lifted his foot and crushed the sympathy, just as he crushed (and, in fact, twisted his foot to grind into the carpet) any hope Brett might have had of ever getting his penis and testicles re-attached. Brett gave another strange wail, able only to watch the twisting foot, shock and disbelief keeping him still and inactive.
His blood pounding in his ears, some strange thumping vibrating his feet, Damocles looked at the shell of a man before him, and thought of the formerly-eager member now crushed beneath his boot-heel, and the morbid satisfaction that Brett’s life was over, as figuratively certain as Damocles’ life was now literally over (again, some part of him interjected) and did the only thing he could.
Damocles laughed.
It was hard, wheezing, rasping, laugh, but a laugh nonetheless, a laugh that shook his whole body as he fell to the carpet, on his left side, facing Brett and Susan, all his strength finally expended, all his hope finally gone, all that had gotten him to this point finally worn out, leaked out and staining the carpet, and he kept laughing, the sound of it filling his ears so much that he couldn’t hear Brett’s curses, even though he could see Brett reaching for the gun again, picking it up and aiming it at Damocles head, determination and vengeance etched deep into his face, and Damocles’s breath hitched; he couldn’t laugh anymore, but that was okay, he didn’t want to, he only wanted to say the thought that just enetered his head, which was “I’ll be dead but I’ll still have a dick,” and then he realized what the thumping that vibrated the floor was and he smiled a split second before the
BANG.
Damocles had never seen anything like it, and knew he probably never would again. One second, the angry hand had been holding a gun at him; the next, there was no gun and only mangled remains of the hand itself. Brett, after another of those banshee-like wails, finally passed out from shock and fell to the floor, as Damocles rolled onto his back, hoping to see who’d given him a few more seconds of life before his injuries killed him anyway. . .
Seraph stood there, her gun still smoking and pointed at Brett as she slowly entered the bedroom. Once she was sure he was out, she looked at Damocles.
“Cheers, Dam,” she said, with a wholly inappropiate smile. “You’re saved, boy. . .what the fuck happened to you?”
Damocles couldn’t help but smile back; even as he felt himself go numb, even as he felt his eyes close against his will, as the familiar thumping of his heart stopped once again, as all thoughts left him, he kept his smile.
10.
Damocles awoke slowly, consciousness approaching his body as if from a great distance, afraid of what might happen once it re-entered. He opened his eyes gently, against the harshness of the lights, and had been looking at Arthur and Dima for two minutes before realizing that something was wrong with his vision. Arthur seemed to see the question on his face and answered it before he could speak.
“You’ve been out for two weeks. Your left eye is bandaged. We’re still not sure if it will recover or if you’ll. . .well, you might come out of this looking a bit like a pirate.”
“Avast, ye mateys,” Dima said with a smile. “Arr, captain awakens!”
Opening his chapped lips, Damocles felt like his mouth was filled with cobwebs and dust. Still, he managed – barely – to eke out one word.
“Su. . .Susan?”
“Such a good solider,” Arthur said, with a smile of his own. “Mind always on the mission. Susan is fine. However, she thinks you’re dead. She’s not exactly wrong, as you were dead the last time she saw you, when the ambulance finally arrived, a minute or two after Seraph got there. Given the information you’d provided us about her self-esteem problems, we decided it would be most helpful for her to feel that you had sacrified your life for hers. Give her a martyr to her own importance, so to speak.”
Dima answered his next unspoken question: “Yes, it worked. Knowing someone she valued so highly gave themselves for her has made quite the difference to her. The only hard part was getting her to realize that while she was determined to feel she was to blame for death.”
“Seraph handled that admirably,” Arthur interjected. “She posed as your sister, saying that you’d called and told her about Susan and that you were moving her out that night, she had a bad feeling and came to check it out, blah blah blah. Excellent improvisation, really. She also insured a closed casket funeral.
“As for Brett, well. . .due to the state of the old chap, it couldn’t be re-attached. In addition, the surgery was somehow mysteriously and expensively botched so that creating a new member from other body tissue couldn’t be done, due to improper preservation of the attachment site. All that could be done was the insertion of a catheter tube, one of a removable variety, as his cellmates have doubtless discovered by now, and, I assume, as per your plan.”
The thought of Brett, one-handed, dickless, with a hole in his crotch and in prison with people much meaner and more desperate than him, made Damocles smile, even though smiling made his face hurt.
“Overall,” Arthur said, getting back to business, “well done, Agent Damocles. You are now on ordered medical leave until our doctors declare you fit to return to work. Try to do some relaxing. . .oh, figure out a better way to accomplish your next mission than dying in front of her, would you please?”
“Please,” Dima added. “Your funerals are not cheap.”
Damocles nodded and, smiling, settled back into his pillows, closing his eyes – eye, he reminded himself – and relaxed into sleep.
February 23 – March 28, 2005
©PCB 2005
