Mutual Again
by Rob Morris
A TIME, A PLACE, A MAN...
He was guided to the start of their latest game. He was taken to a room, and shown a chair.
"Here you will sit, and you will wait for Number Two."
"Will I?"
"You will."
Threats were rarely spoken aloud, and they were vague and clean-sounding when they were voiced. Hunger was making him edgier, but he kept himself well on the outside, not permitting them more of a show than they had already staged.
"I wish to eat. I have not eaten in three or so days."
"Here you will sit, and you will wait for Number Two."
As he left, the captive soul gave silent thanks that at least this one talked. To keep conscious and coherent, he muttered a harmless poem about his situation. He hoped that the listening ears would find their task onerous as a result.
"There once was a man who led a life of danger; he tried to see that to those he met, he kept a stranger; But perhaps he was not careful in what he chose to say; In any wise he was given away; Now he ponders whether he will see tomorrow; Mystery Man, Mystery Man; Poor thing, to be branded with a false number, and divested of his very name."
The newcomer was very quick to enter and seat himself. He reminded the captive soul of an old saying, about men who traveled quickly when they should not travel at all.
"Names are things that contain and convey power, Number Six. Power that is best kept to certain ones, and best kept away from others."
"Power? Yes, you do wield power. The power to starve a man. A power you are using on me."
The pale man smiled.
"We do not intend to starve you, Number Six. Merely to change forever what you place upon your menu."
He pushed forward a bowl. In it was a reddish liquid that smelled very strongly of salt.
"Blood, now? Is that your game? Do you intend to make me into some sort of vampire?"
The captive soul's sarcasm was not returned.
"Yes, Number Six. We intend to make you a vampire---like myself. But you must ask for it. Eventually, hunger will have your appetite already turned to your new, protein-based diet. I wonder how long it will be before you start..."
Number Two stopped in surprise as his subject drank down the bowl's contents. Though near to gagging, he kept it in.
"If I am too hungry, I cannot coherently oppose you. If it is drugged, I am no worse off. Hunger would have had me hallucinating or otherwise malleable before too long. Was it human's blood?"
Number Two seemed a being on the far edge of his considered possibilities. Their plans had perhaps allowed for this, but only in the sketchiest manner.
"Once. That is to say, once it was. Some of that was my own blood, Number Six."
"Given up freely for me?"
Number Two chuckled at the near-blasphemous sarcasm.
"No, not freely. You are to be promoted, Number Six. Raised up in position and species. You will stand on top of a food chain with billions of plump, juicy cattle beneath your feet."
The captive soul shrugged.
"All in exchange for answering your repetitive question?"
Number Two stood up.
"Well, sir, that's the beauty of it all. Yours is a toll paid after the crossing. And you won't resist, then. Because the very thing that makes keeping your answer hidden away a priority will no longer be any sort of obstacle."
The captive soul nearly snorted in contempt.
"You cannot, even with all your devices and schemes, cause a man to remain largely who he was and yet no longer care about those things that make him who and what he is. That is a function of the soul itself, and the soul cannot be removed, except through death!"
Number Two caused his face to shift, and become feral in aspect.
"You are right, Number Six. Death is required. But then it can be undone. The soul can be removed. It can even be put back, though no one would ever seek that of their own will. You will tell florid, epic tales of why you resigned, and then you will cheerfully savage every last individual you ever cared for or lent aid to."
The captive soul faced the thing down with a stare that held no fear.
"Then you will have accomplished nothing, save for the shoddy construction of a sad duplicate of myself, and that has been done to me already. You'll have your information, but you won't have me, any more than you will ever render me gullible enough to believe in the walking dead. Your talk does not impress me at all, and the cinema-inspired face it comes from only serves to reinforce my belief that all of you are growing ever more desperate by turns."
Number Two resumed his human appearance.
"Go to your place, Number Six. A young girl awaits you there."
"My observer?"
"Your ally, if you are swift enough to use her as such. Otherwise, she will serve as your first meal, when the thing you have so loudly sworn to be impossible has come to pass."
The captive soul left the one place under the microscope to go back to the place he slept in, also under the microscope, among other forms of scrutiny. In the place he would never call for his waited the girl, who was perhaps sixteen.
"Are you offered to me for favors?"
The young, short thing, perhaps once overweight as well, stood up in indignance.
"I am here for no one. I am a champion in the war between chaos and order. When I find chaos, I am bound and determined to destroy it."
The captive soul fought off the rampant urge to roll his eyes. The lines weren't even fresh or new, with this one.
"Well, which am I? Order or Chaos?"
She shrugged.
"I shouldn't know. I've had no time to make such a determination."
Her answer was almost too straightforward. The man who had spent so much time drowning in fetid lies was stung by the taste of fresh water.
"What has some for Order, and some for chaos? When you make your determination, how do you go about it?"
She sat down, perhaps seeing that he was not yet going to approach her.
"It's really quite simple. The chaos I refer to is the chaos before our kind ran this planet. The chaos of the demons that were here before all of us. They seek to rule again, and to see Humans gone entirely. So it is that I move forward and wipe away these demons and those who hold for them."
The captive soul offered her some water in a glass, which she took after nodding.
"Wipe away? Then you are a cleanser of this chaotic element?"
The girl spoke, and now looked decidedly less girlish.
"I am not a cleanser. I am The Slayer."
"A Slayer?"
The captive soul poured himself only a seltzer from the bar, to aid in the digestion of his wholly disgusting meal. From his own past, he had also found that it was more difficult to drug seltzer than liquor, the bubbles being highly reactive even to that which was otherwise odorless or colorless. He looked back at his young guest in suspicion, be she pawn, dupe or complete innocent, a concept he clung to despite knowing better.
"Indeed. A Slayer of demons, though chiefly of vampires. Except mainly for walking in the sunlight, they may appear exactly as you or I. That is among the factors that makes them the most dangerous sort of demon."
The game of his captors was not yet in sight, though he had bare notions. He put those aside, and pursued separate tacks from her words alone.
"So their hidden agendas and schemes must be brought out, and the conspirators destroyed when they prove not to be people."
The girl seemed equally suspicious of him, but that he took to be good schooling in her art.
"That is my task. Though I'm not always very good at it. I came to be here after I failed to destroy a very powerful female vampire. I made the mistake of assuming that her apparent insanity would make of her an easy target. I escaped, and got to my home, vowing loudly that I was done with this horrid game. But gas flooded my place, and tall gaunt figures came through. Then I was here, and that vampire called Two had protection against my wrath."
Her words evoked more memories than even the captive soul thought he had. He saw his own tall gaunt intruders anew. Yes, there was gas. Yes, they were one and all silent. Had he tried to cry out? He was sure he had, but could recall no sound coming from his throat.
"They wore no gas masks. There was gas, yet they wore no masks."
The girl looked at him, her suspicion still evident, whether real or a sham.
"Why would they? Their sort does not need to breathe, nor would they know vulnerability to that which renders us insensate."
"Your vampires?"
"They are not my vampires. And these were not such, for their faces never became distended, that is to say, more so than they already were. I chiefly recall seeing one hold fast a set of surgeon's cases, and being begged through gesture by the others to open them. They were well dressed and smiled wickedly. And my screams were not heard, even by myself."
The captive soul turned his face away from her. Their game was now apparent. Through some method, they had turned his straightforward memories of their admittedly efficient kidnapping into a cheap knockoff of a release from Hammer Studios. The how didn't concern him. Whether lifted from the OSS' interrogation of Nazi double-agents, or from the infamous glowing gulags of Eastern Siberia, their means into a man's head seemed nigh-infinite.
"So you were brought here for failure, or for quitting?"
The girl seemed to be growing impatient with him.
"I don't know. I don't know whether I am being punished by those that trained me, or if I became a target of opportunity to those I oppose. I only know that I came to be here. How is it that you came to be here, or are questions only allowed if you are asking them?"
"I was kidnapped, as you were. By similarly attired..."
He searched for a word that did not involve creature, monster or demon.
"....gentlemen."
"But why were you brought here?"
Now, he very nearly laughed out loud. This far on in their twisted effort, and she was actually going to ask that question.
"I was brought here after I resigned my position."
So sure was the captive soul of the ground beneath him that he failed to see other possibilities. The girl's next question was not part of the Village mantra.
"But is that why you were brought here?"
Of course he had asked himself this question. But by now, he had come to regard it as being irrelevant, just as the question of why he had resigned was surely one with an answer they already knew. He no longer pondered what they wanted, or why, unless this tied directly into the only thing that mattered to him at all. Escape, true permanent escape from that place and from the world he had once told himself could be a clean one, if only clean folk held the reins.
"Excuse me, please? I believe I asked you a question. It's still considered impolite to wholly ignore a person, you know."
He turned, got close to her face and looked at her harshly. It was time, the captive soul decided, to call this done with.
"Yes. Impolite. One might even call me--unmutual. A person who is no longer a person. A devil-snake to this false-fronted paradise. A parasite who bleeds off this place's efforts to break ever more souls in the name of the god called Power! All your talk of a hidden world, demons and champions made to oppose demons, and ugly things that believe the Earth to be theirs by right. Did you think that I wouldn't see through it all? A lead footed effort to force me to accept the patently absurd?!!"
She punched him square in the nose, pushing him away. She then rubbed her apparently sore fist.
"You get back from me! You're insane. I told you what I know to be the truth. It sounds absurd, that I'll concede. But I won't be crowded in and then called a liar. I won't have it!"
His nose was slightly bloodied, but not broken, and ice helped rapidly. By the time he was again summoned by the current Number Two, it had stopped bleeding. As he was led out, he again looked at the girl.
"Whatever else, I hadn't meant to be impolite."
But she was still silent and sullen as he went. The moon's light struck upon the water oddly. The captive soul once speculated that a series of mirrors and lights were used in the Village, so to keep their subjects from guessing their position by moon or starlight. But one odd light kept on, and this he took note of out of the corner of his eye.
"Number Six? Whatever happened to your nose?"
The man's concern neither fooled nor alarmed him, so he answered.
"The ally you lent me. I leaned too close while querying her, and she put her fist to it. Sorry for you, Mister Vampire, but the bleeding has stopped."
The man again shifted in appearance, slapped his captive, and sent him flying across the room. He looked furious.
"DO NOT lie to us so very blatantly, Number Six! She is a Slayer! IF she had punched you dead in the nose, then dead is what you would be. Their strength is enormous."
The captive soul righted both himself and his chair without even making a show of attacking the man he could not attack while so well guarded. He didn't need to. For there was now a chance that the invisible infallibles had gotten something wrong, and it was for those times that he kept on and endured the worst works of man and devil both.
"Well, perhaps she has been sick."
Number Two stared in blatant contempt.
"Number Six; this is not some manner of situation comedy from the colonies, where the bumbler spy deliberately inflicts his own wounds for foolish reasons. Why did you strike yourself, and then claim the Slayer did it?"
No, reasoned the captive soul. This was becoming a comedy of errors, and of at least one mistaken identity.
"Check your recordings of my residence. They're your best account."
The vampire seemed on the verge of shifting, and yet did not.
"You know that we will overcome your little trick with the cameras. We always do. How many times have you thought yourself to escape, Number Six? How many visits to London saw you opening a door to again see The Village? Tell me, was it particularly cruel when we made you Number One, declared you free, and then let you slowly realize on your own that you were still here?"
The captive soul folded his arms.
"Was I cruel to you in the fact that I have ever resisted your concerted efforts to break me? Bring in and line up all your machines, Peter Pans, abusive maids, facades and faux friends. I have grown diffident to your repeated druggings, and have gained vision to see through all the disguises. Your disguise, vampire. And the disguise of the girl slayer. You've injected the utterly absurd into this place before. Now you have regressed from Stalin to Tepesch. I knew you could sink ever lower. But now you slip backwards in time as well."
Number Two pushed the blood-bowl forward.
"Drink your soup, Number Six. And know that our next talk will be our last. If you will not be turned, you will be destroyed."
Again, blind hunger was doing to Number Six more than any drug ever could, so again he held his morals and took what he was offered. Then he himself was taken back to the residence. He looked at the girl, still waiting there.
"Come. We're going to the beach."
She looked at his face.
"Why? So you can drown me?"
He shook his head.
"Because for reasons I cannot discern, you seem to be proof against their tracking devices. This means that either you truly are proofed, or they wish it to seem so. In any event, I was informed by light-signals that there is a boat awaiting us at the the beach, to take us away from here."
At that, she did as she was asked. The way there saw no one about her and the captive soul, which of course meant nothing. Arriving at the beach, they saw a small boat. An older woman was in it, as was a very young man trying to look like a tough. The girl was elated at seeing them.
"Mrs? Ru? Oh, you have come for me! This is the worst place I have ever seen. It has no life of its own."
"Come home now, Georgina. Your husband and your child need you."
The older woman hugged the girl, and despite his ragged looks, the young tough had a thermos and sandwich ready for her, and a smile. 'Mrs.' looked at the captive soul.
"Thank you. She is an innocent in all this nasty business, and she was taken here not merely by conspiracy, but by mistake."
The captive soul eyed the girl-woman, now sporting a life-vest.
"She is not a Slayer? And did I hear you say she was married with a child?"
'Mrs.' nodded.
"It's all the weight she's taken off. Makes her look rather a teenager again, when she's nearly twenty-two. Yes, she has a husband, an older gentleman who adores her. Her child was the child of her late roommate. She was the Slayer. Georgina felt guilty to such a great degree, she took on her friend's mantle without the attendant abilities fate grants a Slayer. The forces that have targeted you wanted a Slayer as part of one of their sick games. But my Council has deep connections, and we called this thing done. Now you are both free. Please get in, sir."
The captive soul turned and began to walk back to the Village.
"If you are as you say, Madame, I ask your forgiveness. But I must refuse your hospitality. Good evening."
In the boat as it sped away, the confused woman heard her grandson ask a question.
"Gran? Has he lost his mind? We offered him a ride out from there."
She shrugged.
"Perhaps that place has played at breaking him so often, he wishes to return the favor. All that matters, Rupert, is that we have Georgy back. That man will find his own way out, I'd bet money on it."
Now, she thought to herself, if only I knew a way to keep Terri Rayne's boy away from you.
Two items in hand, the captive soul made his own way back to the place where Number Two was waiting. Waiting, and smiling as well.
"So you helped the Slayer to escape, but refused safe passage yourself. Idiot! Her Watcher would have taken you away. You refused the true freedom that you have so plotted for. You are so made ours by this. This is twice you have in fear rejected a safe ally."
The captive soul played stretching with a rubber band, taken from the young woman's hair.
"I knew that she was real. But I came back to destroy you. Oh, and just to be clear on matters..."
The taut rubber band launched a missile in the form of a sharpened stick, which struck Number Two in the heart. The vampire gasped.
"...that girl was not a Slayer. You were in error."
In a moment or two, another man emerged from a hidden door behind where the vampire had stood. The captive soul nodded.
"Hello, Number Two. And before you say it--yes, I rejected the power the monster offered me."
"Well, you did far more than that, Number Six. Our Number Two of shadows was misled, as you guessed. But you were far in to his hold. Having drunk of his blood, it would not require much to have made you a vampire. Oh, and we made no error. A real Slayer would not be so easily controlled as that deluded girl. Or as you."
A real Slayer. A real vampire. If he was ever to truly leave that place, the captive soul would have to grab the thread he saw before him.
"What of my memories of how I was brought here? Were they altered by yet another machine?"
"Nothing so crude, Number Six. You see, magic exists, as you shall see in the coming months. We, who wield power here, along with those who wish to, have signed a contract with a so-called demon. Standard sort."
The flaw now stood clearly apart from their carefully set dominoes.
"You say that magic is real, yet you speak of demons as 'so-called'. It seems incongruent."
Number Two gestured, and a gallery was revealed above them. The captive soul saw many familiar faces seated none of them well-liked by him.
"You dwell in a medieval world, Number Six. The demons are simply another species of animal, and they possess a resource we can make use of. The Slayer-girls are merely a recessive gene. All of it natural. They all will be harnessed, and their magic will prove the same as oil, wheat or any other traded and fought over commodity. Magic will break you."
The captive soul smiled.
"An overly secularized view. This time, it is all of you who have failed to make the next step, to take the next leap in logic. You make book on the supernatural, yet you choose to view it as you see everything else, when it has proven to be quite real, and beyond your control. Tell me, when does the demon claim your souls?"
Number Two laughed out loud, and chuckles went up through the gallery.
"Number Six, what a caveman you are. The demon is an animal, which we have tricked out of his best things. Our 'souls' are part and parcel of an antiquated theory of existence. Therefore, we cannot have taken from us what does not exist by a creature who could not take them if they did."
The man who would never be called Number Six again saw that his chair was bolted down, and asked a last question.
"According to your contract, could the demon in theory take your souls at any time?"
Dismissively, the very last Number Two spoke telling words.
"Yes. It may take our souls at any time it wishes. Of course, with me being the chief signatory, the legalities say that only I can activate such..."
The words were never finished. Above the captive soul, those in the gallery began to burn quite spontaneously. To some few, the prisoner gave a little wave good-bye. A sucking sound was heard, and past him flew a parade of spies, torturers and very smart people. He held onto his chair, and when he saw Number Two torn apart by the winds and the remains fall in a portal, he closed his eyes. He felt a thud.
"It is done."
Around him, there was no Village. His chair had unbolted and landed in empty sand.
"Alright. Now, we wait."
NORTHERN CALIFORNIA, 1996
"But what were you waiting for?"
The man answered as best he could.
"To see if this was yet another step in their game. It wasn't. But you can understand why I would wait. I wouldn't be taunted again, without a good show. In time, the woman I'd met returned with her boat. When she told me that she could not help me with anything more than getting back, I knew she was for real, although for months I awaited yet another Number Two, laughing about how long I'd been duped. For the record, that has yet to occur. I never truly returned to my old life, though I did well enough. In the company of an old friend--the one whose family has been in all those novels and movies about the business--I still can manage to pull off the odd trick."
Her next question was direct.
"Why are you telling me all this?"
He sat down next to her.
"In my case, others wished to expose a truth I wanted kept secret, or so they said. In your case, you are kept here because others wish to hide away a truth they find troubling. Do you wish to leave here?"
"More than anything."
"Then tell them the lie they wish to hear. The lie that ended my captivity can also end yours."
The girl shook her head.
"I've tried that. I've tried telling them that the people who attacked me were only dressed up in strange costumes. They just say I'm not sincere, call my folks, and get another week put on."
The former prisoner waved his hand in the air.
"No. You must surrender. Do not tell them an adjusted version of what you and I know is the truth. Lie. Say that what is is not. Say that the truth is a delusion. For they will have won a false victory, you will retain the truth, and regain your freedom. Your parents are here on this day, and I will act to neutralize their bias. Tell your quack his lie, give the child his lolly. Resume the fight you cannot win while in here. Use the differences between our plights to make this place go away, as surely as the Village did."
"I will. But how did you know about me?"
He smiled.
"Let us just say that I know a certain former would-be rebel, and leave matters at that. You may even meet him, one day."
While a vapid quack happily heard his own regurgitated words, the man who most assumed was a doctor went to work.
"Oh. And did her psychiatrist reveal that he was in fact part owner of this clinic, when he made his recommendation? Did he make you aware of the alternatives to putting your daughter under guarded care? And did he make clear to you that the extra twelve weeks he now recommends carries you to the limits of her health insurance coverage?"
When a beaming doctor talked glowingly of the patient's progress, he was cut off before he could talk about the next twelve weeks. Accusations were made, and bags were packed.
As she stood outside, breathing free air, the Slayer whose journey had only begun had gyms to burn and Hellmouths to move to. But she made her way over to the 'doctor' who would soon vanish. Buffy Summers smiled.
"Bet you were tops in your class."
He shrugged.
"Actually--I was Number Six."
And then in a blur of blue, yellow and green, a sporty roadster shot down the magnificent highways of the California coast, carrying forth a very free man.
THE END