Chapter Text
The building’s smaller than I expect it to be. I’m not sure why—it’s one of those off-to-the-side kinds of places made of red bricks and speckled with dirt. Wild spray paint that the landowner must’ve given up on washing away sometime ago is caked onto the side walls: It feels like it was rented to the local grafitto artists on this side of Boogie Street. Colorful and messy, weirdly nice to look at. The front wall’s almost all windows, heavily tinted, the tiny parking lot half-full. It barely even has a sign. If it weren’t for the tall iron tower climbing up into the sky, the satellite crown sending its waves to thousands of listeners in Jamrock and a quarter of Faubourg, I probably would’ve mistaken the Channel 8 radio station for just another nameless restaurant worthy of inspection.
But this isn’t a restaurant, and I’m not here for a health inspection, so I push my way through the door. The inside is dark, an old ceiling fan rotating slowly to halo a flickering yellow light. All it does is gently stir the stale, hot air, letting it slip through my clothes and itch my skin. I can’t tell if it’s warmer inside than it is outside. The sharp scent of a vanilla-soap candle floats up my nose and cradles me in a sweet, tired embrace.
I ignore it and walk—no, saunter. Like I have some kind of natural purpose and pride to my name—up to the receptionist, who’s a gothy, pretty little thing with a shock of dyed black hair. It either doesn’t agree with the humidity or it’s a bad dye job, so it just frizzes up. She blinks up at me and lifts up her head from the phone, black lips purring out the words “Just a moment, sweetie,” before I even get the chance to lean against the desk.
The breath I let out is impatient, sighing, almost a scoff, but I don’t go out of my way to take out my wallet or point out the rectangles neatly stitched onto my denim jacket. She’s talking on the phone, and it’s rude to interrupt, even if the soles of my feet prickle with the desire to get this done, get it done, get this shit done and move on to something else. Nerves tap out a nascent tune against the wood through the tips of my fingers, long before my leg begins to bounce and shake in an attempt to let out some of this horrible energy.
I don’t even count out the seconds. I’m a patient man like that. Instead I lean against the desk and don’t really listen in, tapping my fingernails, shaking my leg. My other hand thumbs at the strap of my messenger bag, slung securely over my shoulder. I don’t mind waiting, most of the time. I’m a very patient man.
What does get to me is the agony in my hip, the sweat, the sticky denim clinging to my arms. It prickles and rubs against fresh scabs and sensitive skin and my half-buttoned dress shirt. My cuffs have ridden up my forearms inside of the sleeves, and my jacket pulls at the sweat on my back, tucked even closer by this aching strap. It’s claustrophobic, see, makes the dark room feel darker and closer together than it already is. Makes it tight, like it’s not just the oppressive heat and pounding heart that’s making it hard to breathe.
I distract myself by glancing around. There’s chairs against the walls and the window. A small bookshelf in the corner. A neat little fish tank that looks like it’s empty but still filters bubbles that hum in the room, casting a blue light. There’s an aquarium in Grand Couron, I know, that has tanks a million times larger, some a hundred shades darker and many a thousand shades lighter. Corridors of jellyfish in rooms dimmer than this provided most of the light (or maybe the UV made them seem to glow more than they actually did), framing the passageway to a wall of swimming sea creatures like aqua fatuus. Small sharks and discus fish. Insulindic tuna. Manta rays. Oceanic shit.
My brother oohed and ahhed at the petting exhibit, reaching into the shallow pool of water to touch the backs of stingrays and horseshoe crabs. I made him cry once when I said the only reason there were no whales was because all the whales were dead at the bottom of the ocean, and the actual sea creatures were feasting off of their corpses, because I thought oceanic graveyards were cool and wanted to talk about them. Maybe I also felt like being an asshole, I don’t know. Mama had me crying before I could tell him all about it. Papa’s hand probably tingled about as badly as my ass even though I thought I’d outgrown the need to be disciplined by then, all just to wipe that smirk off my face.
This little aquarium, though, it has no life at all. No fish, no shrimp, no algae, just a sanitised tank with fake rainbow gravel and fake pink plants that drift in a manufactured cocoon of sanitation. The kind of place that dreams of whale fall, of the kind of ecosystem that subsists off of rot and death, but mankind is too stupid and obsessed with perfection to allow it to happen. So it’s just blue. Blue water, pink plants, rainbow gravel. Never had the chance to be a little grey graveyard.
I miss it, really. The aquarium, the time with my brother. Not the spanking. I’ll go back there someday, I told myself long ago, even though I hadn’t been able to afford anything similar for years by that point. Maybe now I shouldn’t, because who knows how much has changed, how empty it might be? No, it’s better not to dig up the past. All the better to keep it preserved, my dear, picture-perfect in my memory. It doesn’t matter how bad it was—it could’ve been worse, could be worse now. It doesn’t change if you don’t look at it. Don’t even bother going to the funeral to pay your respects. No one cares.
I look away from it eventually, mind foggy and vague, and find a potted succulent on the counter. As I reach out to touch it, Miss Secretary hangs up the receiver to tell me it’s plastic, sweetie, as if the texture and hollowness and everything about it doesn’t give it away.
“Oh,” I say, my hand lingering. As I pull away from it, I don’t tell her that succulents are easy to take care of, actually, and very hardy, and so why bother with this plastic shit anyway when the real thing could liven the place up so much more? Uncle used to tell me that keeping a couple of plants alive is a lot easier than it seems—people like to overcomplicate it, which is what apparently makes it so impressive.
Instead I tag on at the end, “Cool,” and try not to glance at the potted plants nestled in the corners, wondering whether those are all fake, too.
She perches her cheek against the palm of her hand, her makeup smudged from sweat. I can see a couple of freckles on her cheek. Young wrinkles, pretty little laugh lines. The quiet fan at her desk gently blows her hair in little wisps. Some part of me flutters at sweetie and wants to hear it again, to get close enough to smooth back the strands of hair sticking to her forehead.
The smarter part of me cuts my losses before they can develop, amputating the limb before it can grow ugly, all too eager to make it bleed. I’ve started to learn that it’s easier to do it that way, when it’s too young to even breathe. You don’t even get a chance to develop a real attachment with it. It doesn’t mean that it makes you want it any less. What matters is it’s easier to cauterise, before another monstrous hydra hand can sprout from the stump and reach out for someone to hold without knowing how to hang on. No one gets to bleed but me. That’s a good thing.
“Can I help you?”
“My name’s John McCoy,” I say, finally reaching into the inner pocket of my jacket to produce my badge. My wallet flips open—habit—and I hold it out for her to look, not to take. “I work at the 41st Precinct under the criminal investigations division as a lieutenant.”
She does a double take before she even puts on her glasses and leans in to look. There it is, I think, there goes the dream of lips pressed against my neck, leaving a smudgy tattoo to cradle… a bite, or a kiss? I don’t know. I say farewell to the notion and offer her an apologetic smile, knowing now that she knows who I am, and what I am, and what that means. And I know that she knows that I know. I suppose it’s impossible not to, when one works here. And on and on it goes.
“Okay, sir,” she says, nodding slowly. She drops the sweetie, confirming the dream is dead. “What, uh—what business do you have here, officer?”
“Guillaume Bevy,” I answer, flipping my wallet shut and sliding it back in its proper place. “I need to speak with him.”
“He’s in the recording booth…” Miss Secretary throws an uncertain glance at the door beside the counter, which doubtless leads to a hall that feeds into a neat little row of rooms. Recording booths, or whatever.
For a moment, I wonder what they look like, how effective their soundproofing is, what kinds of fancy little machines they use. It’s probably more complicated than the machine Jules uses to redirect and answer calls, flipping tiny little switches and pushing buttons over flashing lights. They probably have the budget. Microphones, probably; a table. Some way or another to play ads. I don’t know how any of it works: I’ve never been in a place like that. God willing, I never will.
“Could you let him know I’m here?” I’m not impatient when my fingertip taps the counter, no. That’s just the nervous energy, wound up, searching for a place to be grounded into. A listless tap, tap, tap to float my mind on. “At the very least.”
“Is it important, Mr. McCoy?”
I don’t say anything. My answer is in my raised eyebrows and the slight cock of my head, the way my body goes suddenly, deathly still aside from the slow and steady tap, tap, tap of my finger. Tapping out twice a second, every second, yet not counting each one. I stare her in the eye until she swallows thickly, mascara fluttering over hazel eyes, when she reaches hesitant fingers to the phone. “I’ll call them,” she says, and I smile and nod, cradling my chin in my arms while I wait, thanking her softly.
It’s impossible to clearly make out the voice through the static—or maybe it isn’t, but settling down like this, my brain’s too tired and fried from work to parse through much of it. Thirty-eight hours of work straight, with only four of those being dedicated to a pitiful nap at your desk, will do that to a man. So I can’t make out much from the other end, and my brain floats in and out of what she’s saying, fluttering between here and the eighteen cases nestled against my side, the ten at home, but I get the gist of it, I think.
John McCoy is here to see Mr. Bevy, she says.
He says it’s important, she says.
All right, she says, I’ll let him know.
And she hangs up, metal receiver clicking loud. I blink and raise my head from my drowsy half-slumber, stomach clenching, mouth watering. “He says you’ll have to wait until after recording’s done,” she says, apologetic. “You can take a seat or come back later.”
My lungs feel cold. I squint at her, suspicious and weary. “Wait, didn’t you say it’s important?”
“I did, sir.” Miss Secretary nods, avoiding my eyes. “The producer said—”
“The producer?” I press, standing up straight. I know my tone is sharp and tight. I don’t mean it to be. I promise. My pulse is just making me dizzy, or maybe it’s the hunger or the pain, or maybe it’s the exhaustion. Am I dehydrated? When did I last drink water? “Did you tell Bevy himself?”
“He’s already recording for the day,” she explains, reaching across the desk and into some compartment that’s beneath me, some private hidey hole that I’m not allowed to be privy to. The twisting tattoo of a skull trails its way up her arm, lined with bones, with may bells and ribbons that snake around her skin. May bells are typical, boring flowers for tattoos, but it’s far cooler than an empty aquarium tank and fake potted plants.
It’s also mildly alarming. Suddenly ‘sweetie’ isn’t really so nice.
I hear a click underneath me. For a flighty second I think she’s called security. Then the slick voice of Guillaume Bevy winds its way into the air, smooth and boozy with smoke so thick I can already smell its rank stench from the noise alone.
He’s starting on another headline—no, he’s in the middle of another story, something about a riot starting up on the edge of Coal City, be safe, everybody—and Gareth Morrand—Traffic Cop extraordinaire—is talking back at him like he knows anything about being an actual cop. His voice is stuttery and slow at first before it picks up pace. I wonder if they heard the news that I’m here. I don’t know if that’d be good or bad, for Bevy to know that he’s managed to worm his way under my skin.
Miss Secretary looks up at me and gestures to the hidden radio, eyebrows raised, like she’s saying, See? What do you want me to do about it? I click my tongue and pat the counter, lean away, and take off my hat to card my fingers through my sweaty, greasy hair. It hurts to do so, pulling against my scalp. It makes me want to scratch it just to try to work the feeling out even though it’ll only make it worse. God, I miss when I was a child and my hair was soft, healthy, brown. I just don’t know how to get back to that anymore. I don’t know.
For a moment, I scrutinise the tank, waging war with myself and temper and patience (which is a virtue I have, I think).
I already lost the game of pride and power by coming here the moment I heard Bevy’s word on the radio. This alone is an admission of guilt, that there’s something to the story he can hold over me. In hindsight, I shouldn’t have reacted so rashly—I should have waited, maybe a day or two at least, cornered Bevy at the entrance of his workplace before he could get settled in. Give him a physical example of what fucking around will have him finding out.
Instead I’m here, and if I leave, he’s giddy with the knowledge and satisfaction that there’s something deeper to the story, something worth looking into without knowing its danger. If I stay, I’m subservient to his whims, his pretty little bitch sticking around to stroke his ego. I can’t barge in and drag him out, kicking and screaming—not if I want to maintain the peace, not if I want to keep any kind of semblance that his investigation isn’t as serious as it actually is. That’s probably exactly what he wants me to do—bust down the door, cause a ruckus in my desperation to fuck him over for answers at any cost.
Yeah, that’s right, John. Cause mass panic and hysteria over live radio, like the pretty little rabbit you are. Captain would love that.
The other option for that would be I walk in there, into that recording studio. I’m all nice and calm. G-Bevy’s face breaks into a smile, he takes off his headphones or whatever, and suddenly announces my surprise presence to his adoring fans who loathe me. Suddenly I’m there for an interview I’ve been dodging over half my career, and he gets to ask me all the questions that’ve been burning a hole in his back pocket for the past fifteen or whatever years. It lasts hours, however long his show goes on for (he surely has a lot of questions, accusations, shit to pass the time), figures out what buttons to push to get me to erupt anyways. Audiences love reactionary anger, after all, or so I’ve heard.
Or maybe he takes pity on me and sends me off after thirty minutes or so, satisfied that he’s had his fill and thoroughly uninterested with either whatever I need to tell him or need him to tell me. It needs to be—has to be—off the record. He wins the game of cat and mouse; the appeal of the chase is gone. That’s what matters to him.
Fucked. I’m fucked.
I’ve fucked myself.
This is what happens when you’re an RCM officer in the high heat of summer, operating in the busiest section of Revachol during the busiest time of the year, being handed fifteen cases a week and working your ass off to finish two by Saturday. Three, if you’re lucky. More get dropped than they get finished. Tempers flare in summer, ACs stop working, people get murdered or killed or found dead on a nearly daily basis. You’ve got pavement to hit and the pavement’s so hot it burns through the soles of your boots. God forbid you struggle not to get heat stroke, or can barely afford food nowadays, or have to help manage the busiest wing on top of that because you’re the most qualified for the job. Probably. Maybe.
God forbid you’ve got plans for retribution stacked on top of that.
God forbid you’ve had a fucking news reporter breathing down your neck and jacking off every time he gets to harass your career for over a decade. God forbid that reporter find out about the revolutionary plans and fucks everything over, because reporters are always on the hunt for the next big scoop and just love chasing the next big high.
I will never give him the privilege. Not willingly.
But now I have to.
I pinch the bridge of my nose and clench my eyes shut, groaning, fingers squeezing against my tear ducts, but it’s not because I’m about to cry or because I can feel the pressure building up in the back of my throat. It’s because I’m angry and frustrated. Yeah. Yet I lift my nose to take a deep breath—breathe, recollect—and tilt my head back to Miss Secretary, pointing at the fish tank.
“Are there any fish?”
She blinks, follows my finger, and seems confused at the sudden change of subject. “I don’t think so,” she says, slowly. “Not since I’ve started working here, at least.”
“And how long ago would that be?”
“Three years.” Miss Secretary pauses, reconsiders. “...Three and a half.”
“Wow.” I look back at the fish tank, staring at its blue, abyssal artificiality. It’s just an empty husk of a home made for a small community of fish—neon tetras, maybe, or a couple of prawn, or even some snails. I shake my head, putting my boia hat back on. “Okay.”
I don’t mention how, as lonely it’d be, a single betta fish might like to call it home. I don’t even speculate about what kind of fish it was originally installed for, if the installers even had any idea at all. Maybe it was just built to be a flashy cemetery that’d never receive any bodies or love.
She’s watching me.
Call me paranoid, but I know she is. Glancing up from time to time, keeping tabs on me. Writing down notes to give away—notes with valuable information, cataloguing my movements and my very presence. From time to time, someone comes in or goes out, and every time, I glance up to watch her hands. She says such sweet things as, Hello, sweetie, or Have a good day, cher, or See you next week, love. “Cher” gets to me the most. It hurts my heart and fills me with a nauseous longing. It’s being used, specifically, to hurt me.
Call me paranoid, but I grab a book from the bookshelf after some time of standing there. I don’t know how long. Long enough that I start to worry about whether or not I look awkward, standing there. Long enough that every moment I shift my weight, I feel the sharp pain bubbling in the back of my throat.
I go to the fish tank and scrutinise it closely, because maybe there is some microscopic organism in there—some water bear, or a stray piece of algae—but I can smell the chlorine stench and know from that alone: This truly is a glass box of artificial nothing. I go to the corners and touch the plants, rubbing the leaves between my fingers, running fingertips against their edges. I listen to their plastic rustling, inspecting for flaky brown tips. Smell the hot, stale air.
She watches me, looking for the little signs just like I know they are looking for the little signs outside, making my body itch, making it twitch. She hungers for the contents of my bag—my bag, these cases, mine. She cannot have them. No one can. I hold onto it just a little bit tighter, just to make sure.
Eventually I grab a book from the bookshelf. Don’t pay attention to what it is. I sit down beside the aquarium, swaying and swallowing, and turn it to the first page. I pretend to read it, like I’m not. Thinking. About.
May bells.
I’m an overthinker. I know, I know, and I call it a problem. But the real problem is this: Sometimes overthinking is good. Sometimes it leads me to be cautious when I otherwise wouldn’t be. It saves my life, draws my gun and fires the shot. I run through calculations and hypotheticals minutes at a time—contingencies and caution, plans and preparation. I look into things I normally wouldn’t.
And here’s the real, real problem: May bells are the Moralintern’s flower.
So she could be a spy. That’s the real problem.
It’s irrational. I know, I know, but as it turns out, just knowing that isn’t enough to dismiss the thought. So I sit there, flipping pages and pretending like I’m reading. I pretend like I’m not running through the possibilities in my head. My heart isn’t racing through to my fingertips. My lungs don’t feel tight. This is fine. I just need to pay attention. Figure out how best to kill her.
Or maybe I’m doing that overthinking thing again. Maybe she isn’t a spy.
Maybe. Maybe… may bells, may bells, maybe, may, in May, come May, it’s already past May…
May-be she is a spy.
Do I dare to look up?
I take a breath and hold it as I lift my head, staring toward the desk, where Miss Secretary is still sitting. I can see the top of her head from behind the tall counter, shuffling up and down and around, and—I hear the chewing of some food. Sometimes she hums, grunts, shakes the top of her head and scoffs as she listens to Bevy’s voice on the radio. How long has it been now? How long hasn’t she been watching me?
For the longest time, I stare, waiting for her to look over, book steady and still in my hand. The glass box of water bubbles gently beside me. The radio continues playing, and the steady munch, munch, munch of her teeth is occasionally broken up by her swallowing. At some point, my breathing turns shallow. Meandering through the chlorine, taking a leisurely stroll between the vanilla-soap candle, I fucking swear I smell seafood.
It strokes my stomach in the most unpleasant way. Pain cinches in my stomach, drawing me tight around myself. I hug my belly, licking my lips while saliva wells up in my mouth to chase it down, some kind of attempt to delude my body into thinking there’s something inside of me, after all. It’s not the first time I’ve had hunger pangs today, but I’d hoped that I could speak with fucking Bevy, promptly be on my way and grab something the work fridge before collapsing at work again.
This time it’s bad. Bad enough to make me pant, squint my eyes shut, and make pitiful little whining noises in the back of my throat that I hope the world either chooses to ignore or simply doesn’t hear.
“Mr. McCoy?”
I take a breath to steady myself, look up again. Miss Secretary peers over the counter at me. I can’t easily tell what her expression is at this angle. Despite the spit welling in my mouth, my throat’s dry as a desert when I swallow. “Yeah?”
“It’ll be a couple hours before Mr. Bevy’s done, you know,” she says. “He usually wraps up around five.”
I squint down at my watch. It’s not even two, and I have no idea how long I’ve been here. What I do know is that if I leave, I risk coming back to being too late, and then all of this posturing is for nothing. It means I took a risk and didn’t even stick with it, and it’s going to make him wonder, Why? He’ll look into it deeper. I’d need to kill him. Unfortunately, he feeds good morale to the locals—or maybe it’s fortunate, I don’t know. People generally like what he has to say because at least he’s honest about it. I’ll give him that. He’s honest.
“Okay,” I say. I take another deep breath, using it to flood my lungs and ease my spine. Vertebrae crack as I straighten myself before sinking back into the chair. It’s passed, for now, but my hands feel cold, and when I look down at them, they’re shaking. My blood pressure’s low. I really need to get this shit sorted soon, I realise suddenly—water, food, sleep. “Cool.”
“Are you okay?” I look at her again, blinking, and realise I probably look a lot like a startled owl. On my lap, the book I haven’t been reading is still nestled in my hand. The only reason I haven’t let it go is because it’s been warmed by my body heat. Now it’s cozy and warm in my fingers—it’s the perfect size, and it’s made itself feel at home. “You looked like you were in pain.”
“Oh.” My gaze lists to the side, trying to determine the best course of action. Fuck it, I decide suddenly, I don’t give a shit. I turn back to face her, flashing my best smile. “Yeah, no, I’m good. Just haven’t really eaten since yesterday, you know? You know how it is, officer pay and whatnot.”
“Oh, sweetie.”
She says it with some degree of pity, all soft and gentle on the syllables. The softness of it tingles in my spine with a familiar uncertainty but the pity makes me want to pull my gun on her. She shifts in her seat and glances around, going still for a moment like she’s deciding upon something—then, decision apparently made, she stands to her feet, mutters that she’ll be right back, and goes through the recording booth hallway door.
I look down at her ankles where they clack against the linoleum, eyes incidentally roving down short but thick and sturdy legs. Anyone watching would think that I’m undressing her with my eyes. All I can think in this moment, though, is How the fuck do people walk in two-inch stilletos?
I turn the book over on my lap when she’s gone and grimace. If I’d known that I’d plucked out Bevy’s book of all things, I would’ve tossed it to the side a long time ago. Pretty hair so blond and well-groomed that it pools over his shoulders, sunglasses dark and grisly. I know them to be scuffed up by now, particularly on the left lens. I like to imagine it bothers him. The expression on his face is implacable—his lips a little tight, his brows furrowed.
Behind him is a drug den—or a crack house, or whatever people like to call it nowadays. Papers, pillows, clothes strewn all about in a living room. If it weren’t for the blocks wrapped in tight blue packaging, or the needles on the table, or the illicit, unbranded bottles of speed, you’d be forgiven for mistaking it for just another hoarding situation. It isn't staged, I can tell—or if it is staged, then they did so in a way that looks like the dealers were recently arrested. Signs of a struggle. If I squint real hard and lean in even closer, then pull the cover far enough away, there might be some blood on the wall. A bullet hole, even. I don't know.
I try to remember if I've heard of Bevy working with a drug bust and doing a photo shoot but come up empty, likely because the moment I hear about that bastard outside of feeling out where in Jamrock he is on any given day, I just tune him out.
Still can’t see his eyes for the fucking glasses, and that pisses me off the most right now. I want to grab them off his fucking face and snap them like a twig in front of him. I want to see a flicker of humanity, whether that be a trace of despair or anger—something, anything. But instead he hides behind scuffed-up glasses, emotions perfectly anonymous in all the ways he expects his interviewees not to be. I don’t think I even know what color his eyes are. Fuck it, maybe they’re purple. Bitches love purple.
It’s not the book itself or the contents within it. Not what he looks like, because who fucking cares? Not the title, either (When Does A House Become A Den?). It’s not even whatever the fuck Bevy does (or at least, tries to do, to some extent).
It’s the way that he acts when he does it, so holier-than-thou and so confident that he knows so much more than anyone else about pretty much anything. Like all reporters, he’s invasive, clumsy, private about everything that doesn’t concern him, specifically. Doesn’t know when the fuck to stop. Doesn’t know when to stay in his lane. Doesn’t know how to take ‘no’ for an answer. And doesn’t even give you the fucking privilege of being able to look him in the eye while he he makes you ride his dick.
Tries to read your book, essentially, but never lets you read his—not unless it’s published. It’s almost violating. It’s definitely exposing. Imagine being ushered to a stage in front of a judgmental crowd of people who already hate you, then stripped naked by his own two hands, made a fucking joke of—a goddamn mockery. One of those people who—so I’ve heard—does it so subtly and carefully, you don’t even realise he’s unbuttoning your trousers until they’re pooling around your ankles. Harry Du Bois but worse, because once upon a time, Harry was on my side, and Bevy has never once been on mine. At least Harry allowed himself to be vulnerable a lot of the time, gentling the blow.
And Bevy’s been trying to interview me for over a decade—something that I’ve been dodging the second I heard of it and was hoping to take advantage of today, to get this shit over with as soon as possible.
I can’t begin to count how many cases he inadvertently fucked up. But see, I'm polite about it. I keep it to myself. I try not to be a complainer, and maybe that's one of my problems, is that I don't complain enough. But nobody likes a whiner, and John McCoy is renowned for taking the blows as they come. It's too late to change that now. Mama raised me differently than that, anyway. Papa, too, all suck it up, buttercup. Put your big boy pants on and take it like a man.
Like it’s my fault every fucking case I'm on always seems to put me waist-deep in shit. So put this bitch in my shoes for a few days while I hound after his ass instead. See how he feels about that.
Feels good, don’t it? Retribution, that is.
When Miss Secretary comes back, the book’s been tossed unceremoniously two chairs down, narrowly escaping drowning in a tank full of water by sheer lack of energy. It'd be a mercy upon it, though. Promise. She approaches me with something in her hand, and for a terrifying second, I think it’s a gun. Then I hear the crinkling of plastic, and the sudden surge of adrenaline has nowhere to go but down. I ride it out through my leg, bouncing it against the ground, asking “What’s this?” even as I reach out to take it.
I realise it’s a curry bun at the same time she says it. The plastic’s open and it’s warm—almost hot—but before I can even think she might’ve poisoned it, my mouth’s full of vending machine food. It’s mostly sweet dough; a puck of ground meat and curry’s nestled somewhere inside its warm, hollow cavity. I barely taste anything by the time I’m struggling to swallow the final bite down, so grateful I can cry. Not just for myself, but because I didn’t even think for a heartbeat to save it for my little brother at home. I don’t, though. Thankfully. Narrowly.
“Wow, you really were hungry,” she says, amazed, and hands me a bottle of water before I can even think to take out my flask.
Thank you, I say, once the curry’s been washed down by half a bottle of cool, sweet, delectable water. I ask her how much I owe her as I reach for my wallet, and she smiles and waves her hand, says nothing, and we talk for a few minutes longer. It almost feels as though, through hunger and vulnerability, some part of the scary monster John McCoy is has been humanised in her mind—though I know better than to think that for long. She just knows that people who are hungry have shorter tempers. She’s nervous that I’m here to shoot Guillaume Bevy through the empty cavity of his skull. How dare I think otherwise, even for a moment.
As she moves to go back to her desk, though, I have to say to her—nice tattoo. Hope she talks more about it, what it represents to her, what it means. Thanks, she says, stopping. She looks down at it. Looks kind of sad. Gentle as I can, I ask her what it’s for.
“My dad,” she murmurs, frowning. “He was taken away by the Coalition during the Revolution. So…”
She stops, lifting a head to scrutinise me, no small trace of skepticism in her eye. Suddenly it’s as if I am the spy, as if I am the one who’ll rat her out to the squad. Break her legs, pull her teeth, steal her nails one by one before breaking every finger and toe in order. This little piggy went to the market, I’d say, whisper-soft. Singsong. I’d tap her pinky toe with a hammer, one, two. Wait until she stops crying, when she loses the trail of what to expect. Slam—then wait until she stops sobbing, screaming; this little piggy stayed home…
Until she can’t take it anymore. Mentally breaks, that is, or loses her fucking mind, whatever you want to call it. Can’t ever be re-introduced into decent society again. That’s how the game works sometimes.
The RCM works under the Moralintern payroll, after all. We’re all cogs in the great machine.
Allegedly. As far as they know.
“Oh,” I say, dumbfounded. My eyes drift down to the tattoo, then away, toward the windows and the street. It’s hard to say I feel much of anything about this revelation other than relief. It should be sad. I should feel sad for her, but I don’t. I just feel tired. Like, oh, here we go again, one of these old things, I’ve heard this one before. I wish I wasn’t so tired. Still, I try. “I’m sorry you had to go through that.”
“Thanks.” She looks me up and down and smiles a little, as if by sheer virtue of saying, wow, that fucking sucks, something about her perception of me has changed. Her lips are slow and hesitant, very gentle about it. It’s not what most people would expect of a pretty goth woman like her—she’s not the stereotype, that is.
But then, stereotypes very often aren’t true, except in my unique case. They’re all I am, just a handful of them in a trench coat, walking around and pretending to be human. Maybe I can pretend hard enough. Puff out my chest to seem more threatening, land enough lethal blows. Maybe then no one will ever want to get close enough to touch.
And if they do, I plan to bite before they can, before they tear the trench coat away and find—not a person, not a concept, not a monster, but the utter absence of a human. Nothing at all.