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THEN
— - —
A phone is ringing.
Ivan Hilohiko stands outside of a church. Its walls, rotted and crumbling, strain to hold up the towering, pockmarked roof above it. One of the doors hangs loose on a single hinge, swaying softly in the wind. The windows, long since stripped of their panes and frames, whistle an eerie song as the wind slices through them. The entire structure creaks and groans.
A phone is ringing.
Ivan looks behind him. He can see Aleksander standing next to their car, watching him. Between the haze of the dust and the setting sun, he almost looks like a mirage. He’s too far away, and Ivan can’t make out his features. All he sees is his brother’s coat, whipping in the wind, and the dark glasses on his face.
A phone is ringing.
Ivan looks off in the distance, and sees fire. He hears the moaning and screeching of metal on metal, and sees smoke rising over the mountains. Every so often he hears the thunderous cacophony of an explosion rip across the badlands and sees lights flashing across the horizon. He sees, very briefly, a clockwork mountain, illuminated by an inferno. A dark star hangs low in the sky.
A phone is ringing.
Ivan hears voices. Nine voices, calling to him from the earth. They know. They know he carries the trigger, and they ache for its release. They cry out to him, begging him for the elation of their own torment. They cannot hear each other, but they can hear him. Each footstep sends their tiny bodies writhing in their concrete tombs, their broken arms outstretched, grasping towards a god they cannot see. “Come back,” they say. “Make us whole again.”
A phone is ringing.
Ivan steps towards the church, but his gait is unsure and his pace wavers. Inside the church, he will find truth. The sky burns bright in the light of a blighted god. Horror seeps through the soil, wrapping tiny, shredded fingers around his shoes. He pulls away, and struggles towards the church. The sun sinks below the mountains, and as it does he sees a Red Right Hand hanging in the heavens. The wind knocks the doors of the church wide, and from within its ruined hall he hears the sound of a man laughing.
Inside the church, a phone is ringing.
NOW
— - —
A gentle drizzle created an ambiance of soft pits and pats on the roof of the estate. The long, empty halls echoed the sound like constant, quiet thunder. One wing of the manor, long since burned and fallen into disarray, was naked to the elements, its furnishings ruined by looters or exposure. Standing in the doorway was a man with lightly tanned skin and black hair that ran down behind him. He stared out across the wreckage, unmoving.
His hand lingered for a moment over a picture frame, shattered on a long scorched end table. The glass had bubbled and cracked and the frame was blackened with soot, but the smiling faces of the image’s subjects still beamed through. He brushed away the ashes and picked away the errant pieces of glass, and pulled the photo out. His tears mixed with the rain that soaked his skin.
“I know you’re there,” he said quietly, to nobody in particular. “You can come out now.”
Karl emerged slowly from the shadows behind him, and Sam from another corner. He didn’t turn to see them.
“I’m probably not who you’re looking for, huh?” He said, wiping his cheek with the back of his sleeve.
“No, you’re not,” Karl said.
He nodded. He gestured up and down on himself, “I was just a man, who ran afoul of the consensus.” He turned towards him, the picture in his hand clutched to his chest. “So, I became the Seventh Consulate, money didn't help me at all.”
“Who are you?” Sam said.
He smiled. “At one point, my name was Nathanial MacKenzie. I was a-” he sniffled, “-sorry, I was an agent. I took over for, uh… well, I don’t know who, to be honest. But needless to say, the Council offered me something I needed very much at the time, and I didn’t know better.” He looked down at the picture. “Quite the coincidence, don’t you think?”
They didn’t respond.
He continued. “I didn’t seem to notice. I was glad to be employed, and the things they told me… work beyond my wildest dreams. I didn’t realize… it doesn’t matter. I’m sorry, I’ve been thinking about this a lot these past few weeks. I knew my day would come here before too long.”
“You know why I’m here.” Karl said. It wasn’t a question.
He nodded again, wiping more tears from his eyes. “Yes, I… I do. I understand, I think. I don’t agree with you, you know, but I think I would see it different from your point of view.” He panned her eyes around behind him. “I thought there would be more of you.”
“They’re following a lead,” Sam said, slowly drawing his sidearm. “Looking for the Eighth.”
He winced slightly. “You’re going to need some backup for that one.”
She nodded.
He looked at the gun in his hand. “You don’t have to do that. I don’t- I don’t want it to go that way.” He reached into his pocket and with a flick of his wrist produced a switchblade. He held it out in front of himself, his eyes fixed on the blade’s edge.
“You know, at one point I used to think that serving a higher cause would immortalize you,” he said. “I thought that- that maybe a life given in service to something greater than yourself would make your death somehow more meaningful.” He laughed, tears freely streaming down his face. “It doesn’t really matter where you end up, though. Any death can be meaningless. Any life can be wasted.”
Suddenly he locked eyes with Karl, and he felt an intensity surge through his body like nothing he’d ever felt before. The gun in his hand trembled, and the hairs on the back of his arms stood up. In his mind’s eye, he saw the manor around him restored, its halls filled with magnificence and its rooms full of laughter. He saw a father and his daughters and sons fishing at the lake behind the house, and two boys wrestling over a toy nearby. He saw Christmases, and happy faces, and long night hours of studying over immense textbooks. He saw Nathanial MacKenzie and his loving parents, beaming towards a photographer after earning his position. Then he saw fire, and heard screaming, and then he saw him standing in front of him again.
He was older now, he noticed. His posture was slanted and his hair was thinner. With every breath he drew he could see the years weighing on him. But his eyes scorched the air around them with their intensity, and he could see the last desperate clarion call of a life unlived. He felt anger and hate building inside of him, so much that he might suffocate in it- his entirety overcome by unbridled emotion. He gasped and stumbled as his vision grew blurry, as the pain in his chest split his skin and collapsed his veins. His heart groaned against the strain until it too caught fire and burst, and he was enveloped in flames.
And then he was standing in front of him again, her eyes dark. Karl looked himself over, trembling in relief that he was unharmed. Sam was grimacing from across the room. When Karl looked up, he saw that the Consulate had collapsed into a burnt chair, and long streams of red were cascading down his wrists. he smiled weakly, his breath ragged and airy.
He holstered his gun and walked slowly towards him, careful to avoid the blood-stained knife on the ground. As he approached, he raised one pale arm towards him, and handed him the picture in his hand. He took it, and he relaxed.
“Why?” Karl asked.
He shrugged. “It doesn’t matter.” He coughed, and blood pulsed out of his veins. His eyes, hazy now and struggling to focus, caught his. “Are you afraid of death?”
He paused. “No.”
He grinned at him, his eyes closing as her consciousness began to drift away. He put one hand on his face, droplets of blood smearing across Karl’s cheek.
“You’re lying,” he said. And then he died.
- BACK -
