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“Would anyone like to say a few words for our late Macaroni?”
Aria debates whether or not she should say something—in her head, the answer is yes. Macaroni may have shot her, may have caused unimaginable amounts of panic along with the others, may have done fuck-all during that hostage situation.
In spite of all that, Aria can’t help but feel as if he was an honorable man. “I can.”
Chief gives her the go-ahead, a eulogy, for one detective who could never stop getting his nose into things he shouldn’t’ve. For one man who didn’t have to, but did anyway.
Aria decides that an introduction is appropriate for the circumstances.
“Hello. I’m Captain Adler.” Her eyes roam across the line of officers, detectives, people.
“As you may know, I am the only android on the force, and as a result, I have a particular interest in the thing called human life. It’s the one aspect I can’t.” An android can only copy a human’s mannerisms, not their innards or their flesh. A reality that Aria has long since understood.
“I recognize how fragile it is, I recognize how easily it can be taken away. But more importantly, I recognize that there are individuals who go above and beyond, even when they’re faced with their own mortality and their own fragility.”
She takes a brief pause, “And so… Detective Macaroni, though he is not here, he was among the bravest of us,” Mist reforms at the very back of the crowd, behind all of the cars where no one has turned their head to look. Aria continues, “And uh, I think he earned his place. So, one of these shots is for you, the rest, I hope you admire.”
When she finishes the speech and returns to her post, the shadow approaches her silently. Aria only notices once it’s right up against her, whispering, “I’m sorry, Adler. I didn’t mean it.”
When she slowly turns her head around to meet this Macaroni-sound-alike-and/or-ghost-of-Macaroni, the shadow disappears. Elusive as always, it seems.
When they all raise their pistols to the sky on Chief’s mark, Aria responds, “Now we’re even. You’re forgiven, you hear me?”
It could just be her imagination, but Aria swears she hears a faint, “Thank you.”
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The chief of the police is a coveted role, and with that honor comes heaps and piles of flaming hot stress.
It doesn’t help that Macaroni has presumably passed away today.
Orly had run off in tears, while Solomon, ever the idiot, couldn’t give more than a weak, “We did everything we could,” when in reality, they didn’t. They really didn’t did they. Do everything.
He’s the chief of police for god’s sake. Ignoring other officer’s worries will never solve problems.
But what more could he have done? Patrolled the entire city? That’s practically asking for health problems and an unfit chief for the next day. And who knows what that Macaroni bloke got himself into, to warrant all of this.
Nana’s words echo in his mind as he falls back on old habits.
Why are you hesitating? Does it only matter when one of your officers dies? Sloppy. Inefficient. A monster with no eyes and no ears, named negligence.
Every drag is another pointed comment, her yells bouncing off the corners of his head. It’s not like Solomon can blame her, the poor girl. She’s clearly distressed, and although he knows nothing of Nana and Macaroni’s relationship to each other, nor where her unimaginable rage comes from, her anger isn’t exactly misplaced.
It burns.
He promised he’d stop, especially after the other one a couple of days ago—but an officer has died, on top of all the bullshit cases happening in the city. An officer has died.
One of Chief Serpico’s officers has died.
He flicks the cigarette, stamps it out with the bottom of his boot. There’s no need for a second, Solomon won’t let it get that bad. It’s awfully tempting, though.
“I’m gonna sit here. I know it’s a special bench to you and—and Orly, but um…” Words fail as he situates himself on the teal bench.
Hunched over like a depressed homeless man, Solomon lets himself breathe for the first time in what feels like weeks. The sigh he lets out is synonymous to deflating one of those foil balloons.
“Marcus…”
A long pause, because where is he supposed to start?
“I don’t much know.. How the afterlife works—if it’s ghosts haunting places or—or… or if you’re keeping an eye on this place, but,” Solomon takes a swallow, as if that’s gonna fix anything, “At the moment… I think I've copped it. Fucked it all up, somehow."
Solomon doesn’t notice something taking form next to him. He’s too busy feeling an ache in his chest and staring into the sea of nothingness beyond the dome.
“I know we all did our best, know we all followed the rules…” Dull nails press into clothed palms, “But I think a chief of police is supposed to be strong and I don’t feel very strong right now. I feel very—... I feel very small.”
Another pause.
“I hope that I never made you feel small.” Solomon looks down at his lap, at his clenched fists, the anger welling up inside of him for no good reason.
“Don’t know where you’ve gone… and if you’re not dead I'll bloody throttle you. But you probably are.” If Nana was that panicked, Marcus is definitely dead.
It’s a non-zero chance that he isn’t, but is Solomon going to take that gamble? Is he going to let himself hope? No. He’s lost too much to make that mistake again.
“I wish that I… I wish that I'd gotten to know you a little bit better. You were working too hard.” A third pause. For no other reason than uncertainty. Solomon wishes his dramatic pauses were for a nobler reason. Instead, they only serve as spaces between the letters to lie down and die in.
He musters up more words and continues, “But that’s the town that we’ve chosen to live in. There's never a dull moment.” The sounds of the waves permeate into the dull cavern of thought in Solomon’s head. Everything hurts, but he’s used to it.
“I hope you don’t mind me being sat here, I know it was important to you.”
“I don’t.” Solomon nearly flinches off the bench.
“Jesus bloody Christ.” Solomon clutches his bearings, turns his head to the source of the voice. Sitting next to him, one leg up like it was the most casual outing in the world, Macaroni, with his dulcet tones and aloofness that Solomon didn’t know whether to hate or revere.
One blink and he's gone, with just a sheen of particles left in his wake.
The world stops for a brief second. Out of incredulity or insanity, no one knows. Maybe it’s both. Solomon certainly thinks that way.
He takes another breathe, just to wash away whatever the fuck just happened, gets up on his two (admittedly wobbly) feet, and walks away, muttering, “The job’s not finished,” all the while.
Marcus Macaroni is dead, and will be avenged. Solomon will not question whether that was a hallucination or whether ghosts do haunt the streets. He simply doesn’t have the energy to.
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Marcus Macaroni is alive. At least, that’s what Justin tells himself.
He also tells himself that leaving is better, that committing crimes will solve everything.
That he could force one idiotic police officer to come out of the hole he’s buried himself in so Justin Thyme can patch him up. And maybe do more.
A date, at the pier. With all of the games they could dream of. A nice ride on the ferris wheel, with flowers and a cute confession and a kiss as fireworks go off in the background—because they never lack fireworks down at the pier.
But Cortado thinks differently. It hurt, when they talked. Because he’s lying. Marcus Macaroni presumed dead, what an illegal concept. He’s out there somewhere. Waiting for someone to catch.
Justin Sane will be that someone.
So he leaves the EMS, but not before having a fist fight with Suzukami.
Alice is fierce as always, she chases him down a hallway the second he says, “I thought you’d all be punching me.”
She does, eventually, punch the living daylights out of him. Glasses crooked, face turning purple. She says that he’s betrayed them, betrayed their family.
Maybe it was the idea of leaving the safe—sometimes—space he’s carved out for himself in this world, with nothing but a rusty scalpel. Maybe it was the assumption that he’d up and betray the family he’s worked so hard for. Maybe it was the cliché ‘turning of the tide’ instilled into the brain of someone who only knew how to punch back.
He knocked her to the ground, tousled blue hair tossed across the white tiles, angrily shouting, “I don’t want to leave my family,” until his throat hurt from overuse.
And then a hooded mist appears before him, standing halfway into the wall that Alice was cowering near. The air chills, the adrenaline instantly fades—this is familiar.
It feels like home, and home feels like bone-deep dread.
The mist dissipates, but not before “That’s your sister you’re killing” is whispered into the shell of the not-so-good doctor’s ear. Justin’s whole spine shivers, tingles, and then he turns and walks. Towards where, who knows?
“I’m leaving.” Justin Thyme walks out that day, nerves severed, ear tingling, heart in his stomach. Justin Thyme walks out and Justin Sane is born, with the same mask and the same hood and an entirely different heart. Set out to find and eventually fix a police officer who never looked back at him.
The mist was a sign, it had to be. Why else would it feel like him? Why else would it feel like when Macaroni's sharp, judging gaze landed on Justin’s form? Why else would it feel like that?
He doesn’t feel the glaring eyes of the mist for the few days he spends as Justin Sane. Hope is nigh lost.
Perhaps Justin Thyme thinks it’s over. Perhaps Justin Sane needs retiring. Justine certainly thinks so.
Justin waits, every day, to see that mist again.
But it never comes back.
He’ll move on. One day.
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Roku Nana’s week has been more than a whirlwind, and more than the grief that gnaws at her. The monster keeps rearing its head over her shoulder, and even after talking to a now somewhat redeemed Chief Serpico, that eyeless earless shadow looms heavy.
“Watch your six.” So she does. Constantly. But she can never shake off the feeling of dread. The feeling of being watched at any given moment, every given moment.
It isn’t the same dread and pure panic as the beach and the car and the transmitter.
Nonetheless, it’s something similar. That’s what scares her the most. It’s as if the world is constantly spinning the wrong way and only Nana can hear it whispering with the wrong tone.
The moon’s out, waning gibbous, illuminating the facade of the police department as Nana returns from yet another robbery in this forsaken city. Sterile lighting and familiar cold floors greet her, deserted, thankfully. She makes her way through winding passages, hears the voices of her colleagues discussing god knows what further into the offices.
And then she hears something else. Something echoey. Something that sounds far too much like the voice of a transmitter sitting in a locked filing cabinet in Nana’s cubicle.
“Hey.” Merely a whisper on the wind. In a familiar cadence, with a familiar timbre.
She whips her head around. Nothing stands there but a light dusting of mist, too dark for chemical beams of light to shine upon it. It’s familiar. Terrifying. That’s the dumb, nonchalant greeting he always used, no matter what situation they were in. Stupid, stupid Macaroni. God.
(...Mac’s not stupid. Nana’s the stupid one..)
The officer rushes over to her cubicle, by the back corner of the room, fumbling with an unassuming key. She rips open the cabinet, no doubt alerting numerous colleagues nearby with the loud bang—she couldn’t care less about them.
Nana clutches the transmitter and she re-listens the entire thing over, hunched over her desk like her life depends on it. “86. 10-42.” The voice matches. There’s no mistaking it, that was definitely Mac’s voice. Right behind her. In the stern halls of the PD.
“Didn’t I tell you to watch your six?” The wind takes form.
Behind her, too close for comfort, his voice ringing loud and clear, long after the transmitter had stopped playing.
Nana whips her head around again, intent on catching a proper look at whatever’s behind that mist. A familiar hooded masked figure maybe. “Mac?” Her voice sounds bleak and small, even to her own ears.
She’s met with mist, disappointingly.
The fleeting hope in her heart for that damn pasta man to be alive vanishes instantly. She sighs.
Defeated, Nana parks herself into her chair, the soft cushions allowing her to sink into something that wasn’t the ocean. It’s almost a comfort, the near-new state of the stiff backing, as if the flimsy plastic was enough to hold up an entire mental state.
She’d never admit how much she misses Marcus out loud.
They had only known each other for 6 days, after all. And 5 of those days were spent resenting him. But she would be lying if she said that his presence wasn’t missed.
Roku Nana wishes. Wishes she had even one picture of him—the face beneath the mask, beneath the layers of hurt and guilt that she should’ve fixed. Wishes she had a picture of the Marcus that she could’ve helped. Of the Marcus Macaroni that could still be alive today, if she’d just supported him back. Roku Nana wishes she was more vulnerable that day, that fateful day. Roku Nana wishes she’d just made him stay. Wishes she could’ve talked with him more, told him her real name, told him more about her family and that criminal—something.
But there’s no use questioning the ‘what if’s.
“Watch your six.”
Damn you, Macaroni. Damn you.
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It is eleven thirty-five a.m.
Orly Flores is distraught. More than usual.
It’s only been a handful of days since her suicide attempt, she’d thought things might turn their eyes back to normalcy. She allowed herself to hope for a better future, to put things behind her, for once.
And of course, the world has another idea.
It’s nine twenty-three a.m. when a flicker of darkness occurs at the cat cafe, right in front of the otherwise empty front desk.
Only Orly is working, today’s a slow day—and a fast day for the gang, probably. She’s there for coverup work, so people don’t get suspicious, or something. Thankfully, doing this coverup act means she can easily inform the chief of police about anything happening over the radio.
But the flicker is different.
Orly thinks nothing of it, and continues to scroll on her phone to pass the time.
It’s ten o’clock sharp when the flicker turns into something else.
In front of the brightly-lit display case is a hooded man with a mask on, hood pulled over the top half of his face. Who never came in, because the bell never rang. Orly nearly jumps out of her skin, muttering a “Jesus Christ” under her breath. When she looks back up, imaginary-Marcus greets her with a faint nod.
“Marcus?” Orly warily asks.
He just stands there. But he’s fidgeting as if he wants to say something. The girl behind the counter eyes him. Maybe if she stares hard enough, she can unravel this strange man, bring him back to life or something childish like that.
Another few seconds of silence pass and the fidgeting stops.
“I’m hungry. You got anything?”
The words sound so mundane, as if Orly isn’t hallucinating a dead police officer that she never got to say goodbye to. Because that’s what’s happening, isn’t it?
His body dissipates before she can respond. The fuck?
Orly Flores desperately needs a therapist. Too bad they’re so expensive.
It’s eleven thirty-three a.m. when he comes back, right after Orly’s waving off a few customers out the door, “Thank you so much, come back soon!” she says, in a cheerful and hospitable tone.
He’s there, sitting in one of the booths, alone. The table’s empty, of course it is, but Orly swears she smells omurice.
Approaching him seems to be the wrong move. Her body betrays her and does so anyway.
“Hey.” He says, not even looking up from the empty table.
Greeting with a noncommital Hey, how Marcus of him. Orly can’t even believe her imagination is this accurate to real life—in her head, she can barely dredge up the voice of the officer, even if she thinks extra hard about it. Six days since they talked for the last time and the voice of her closest confidant is already gone. Ironic, because his only distinguishing factor was his voice. She sighs.
“You’re a hallucination, aren’t you.” Not a question, but maybe it should be.
“Maybe, maybe not.” Marcus shrugs like the cryptic bastard he is, Orly laughs uneasily as a response. She really needs that therapist.
The uncomfortable quiet rings out within the empty cafe, for more than a few seconds this time. And then Marcus finally looks up at her from where he’s sitting. Those teal and purple eyes that once brought to Orly so much relief, joy, worry—they’re concerningly dull, blurry even. Cataracts? But Marcus was never blind. He saw her laying on this very floor, bruised and battered. He saw her sitting in the PD hall, shaken, terrified—in that interrogation room too. He saw her, with a cigarette hanging from his lips, at the dome, near the water. Where they last spoke. Ever.
And then he says something truly cryptic, in a perfectly Marcus Macaroni fashion.
“The ghost of 86 demands sacrifice, Orly.”
Orly blinks, he’s gone. A light sheen of dark mist is the only evidence he was even there.
So yes, Orly Flores is heavily distraught. Who wouldn’t be, after that?
The ghost of 86? Sacrifice?
It matters little that Marcus could’ve been a hallucination, because either way, Orly definitely needs a therapist now.
86 was Marcus’ officer number, wasn’t it? And 86 just so happens to also mean ‘to discard’ and ‘eject.’ Was everything a ruse? Did he plan his death from the start? Are ghosts even real? Was that really the ghost of Marcus Macaroni?
What is going on…?
But there’s no use asking, really.
Orly will never find what she’s looking for. Overthinking everything that has happened and everything that is going to happen won’t help in the slightest.
She at least hopes Officer Nana will find answers. For both of them.
For everyone.
Maybe Marcus wouldn’t want that. Maybe he wouldn’t want people to find out anything about him—god knows barely anyone has ever even seen his face.
It’s not that he needs it, or wants it. It’s because he deserves at least that much. Deserves to be seen. To be known.
Sacrifice begets answers. Is that what Marcus was trying to say?
Orly will never know.
Nor will she ever find out, because Marcus, in his usual mysterious ways, never appears again.