.
Euphoria
Chapter 7: Depression
Saturday
3:20 pm
.
"ARI comment: Christopher Abbot's current place of residence is 1010 Massachusetts Avenue Northwest."
Agent Jayden stood in the middle of an empty apartment hall, facing a door painted a displeasingly off-white hue. Specifically, it was a front door, which lead to Mr Abbot's apartment. Norman took a momentary look up and down the corridor. Leaning forwards, he turned the door handle and felt the mechanism give way under his fingers. The door squeaked open: it was unlocked, carelessly abandoned, just as it had been left the day before.
The young man could tell from first glance that the police officer posted by the exterior of the building had been correct in his observations. Abbot had not yet returned to the flat. Everything lay in suspension, frozen where it had been put to rest less than 24 hours earlier, as if the room had hardly dared to breathe in the intervening time; the black ash tray remained upside-down on the floor, its contents deposited in an unceremonial mess, and the window was still wide open.
"The apartment appears have been untouched since approximately 7 pm yesterday. Abbot has temporarily deserted the premises."
As today's date flashed in the corner of ARI's interface, Norman couldn't help but notice that it was a Saturday. He didn't need to be here on a Saturday. The Bureau didn't generally expect its agents to work at weekends, unless their current case was truly a matter of life and death: in other words, Origami Killer situations. And yet here I am. He closed the door and crossed the room to shut the window.
The velvet wind caressed his features and then was gone as the glass pane was driven forcibly down.
Turning back to face the apartment, he brought a gloved hand up to his omniscient black glasses. It had rained the previous night, and Norman was reminded of this as he shifted the lenses on the bridge of his nose, perceiving a moist, damp odour which now lingered, able to pass through walls and floors alike. The drizzle had not lasted long - merely spattering the unresponsive buildings of Washington D.C. - leaving the dense veil of clouds pressing down on the city just as portentously as before, or perhaps even more so. It was a premonition of what was to come.
Jayden clenched and released his palm, observing the futuristic teal pulsation as it swept over the surrounding area and then dispersed harmlessly into the air. Without a moment's delay several virtual labels materialised, spinning above specific marked points, calling for his attention.
The first of these indicators was by the window, displaying the triple discovery of Abbot, Norman, and Melissa's fingerprints all muddled upon the transparent surface. Another label pointed out Christoper Abbot's prints on the ash tray, and also suggested that a minute fracture in the material was indicative of a high-speed impact with another object. Tell me something I don't know. Agent Jayden peered down at his right ankle. The bruised joint had been determined to disrupt his sleep the night before, but today it seemed better behaved. It had ceased to ache and only twinged when he stepped hard on it. He was able to walk now with no more than a slight limp.
Norman moved past the revolving markers quickly. There were lots of ARI tags in the small space, and he was aware that the majority of these would just identify Abbot's own prevalent set of fingerprints. Even so, he browsed each one briefly in turn. There's no way in hell I'm missing a single piece of potential evidence.
Ever since their only lead had wriggled free from their grip yesterday, the agent knew that things were rapidly spinning out of control; he had to take command of the situation. He had sworn that, the following day, he would return to Abbot's apartment on Massachusetts Avenue to acquire something, anything, allowing them to continue the investigation.
Jayden wanted to be angry with Agent Donahue for losing Abbot. He really, really wanted to be livid, to have something to direct towards her that might be more publicly acceptable than what he actually felt.
But he couldn't be angry - not when she had been the one researching, planning, enquiring, moving the case forward and still finding time to drag him along whilst he moped about with his own feeble concerns. He was more ashamed than anything. Time to put things right. And other, much more potent incidents were also influencing his emotions.
He remembered… warm, resplendent heat. A saccharine fragrance infiltrating to his very core. Sinuous skin pressing against him and extraordinarily returning his hunger.
Melissa had left his apartment the evening before like a passing daydream, elevating and elusive. It had taken only minutes for Jayden to realise what a colossal, unrectifiable mistake he'd made. He had stared, bewildered, into the distance, his mouth gaping like a fish. Did that just happen? Made reckless and lusty by wine he had disregarded the walls he had toiled to build up, surrendered to the churning in his chest, and in the process sacrificed all the blossoming amity between the two of them. And for what - a kiss? A single stupid, rushed, inappropriate, incomprehensible kiss. Any respect she might have held for him would be stolen away into the night, just as she herself had been. No wonder she ran away in disgust. He'd reached up to the golden Tree of Life and greedily torn down the fruit ripening there, shining and gilded, and feasted upon it until the sugary nectar ran all down his jaw. He had ruined everything.
Norman's thoughts were re-established in the present as ARI detected yet another series of fingerprints, belonging to Christopher Abbot, upon a bookshelf constructed from cheap laminate timber. He forced himself from the pool of his self-pity long enough to inspect the piece of furniture, which was wedged in a corner of the room just to the side of the television. The data, as expected, told him nothing new.
Imparting a cursory glace over the books in the shelves, Jayden saw mostly hardbacks on travel and history. Strange. Abbot was certainly more than your typical garden variety delinquent.
A yawn escaped the man's lips as he passed into the kitchen. Emitting another electromagnetic halo to scan the room, he saw that although it was an orderly space, with groceries lodged in the fridge and dry supplies in cupboards, ARI had picked up on tiny food spills on the counters and floor. A further circular pointer flagged a crumpled shopping list by the microwave. He even checked the trash can, but it had obviously been emptied not long before. Looking over the information, he slipped further into dull vacancy: none of it was any use.
When did it all go wrong? It had been the visit to Kellen - the letter from Raine - the world had unhinged itself then, and trapped him in a lethargic rut. No, look further. You know there's more. Norman tried to think back. As a young FBI profiler he had been unstoppable and unmatched, full to bursting with a zeal that almost bordered on obsession. He felt fulfilled by the work he did. God, I really believed I was making the world a better place. Every day he persevered it had become safer in his mind's eye, like humanity as a whole was taking small tentative steps into the light.
But of course he had been a young man then, still in his twenties. Now, at age thirty-three, Norman had already passed his prime, with all the rashness of a person who does not realise what they are leaving behind. He was no longer agile and nimble: that boyish identity had moulded into something subtly different, more jaded, as he'd shed the husk of his youth.
He was keenly aware that something had gone wrong somewhere. Maybe it was just the anguish of growing older, of watching a healthy body decay so gradually that it was barely noticeable, or scraping so close to death so many times that he couldn't help recognising his own brittle mortality. Maybe a loss of virtue and naïvety was an experience everyone had to trudge through during the long middle years; maybe it was these things which had caused the earth to exhaust its shine. Or perhaps it was something more.
It had all started, the agent grasped, with the soulless blue leaching into his life. Rain is often said to be blue but really, Norman knew it was grey and pitiless. ARI was imitation blue - a synthetic fraud of a colour composed from wavelengths and nanobytes. And Triptocaine was so intensely cobalt that the agent always kept a vial securely tucked in his pocket.
He was losing his way. As time marched ceaselessly on, he was no longer the prodigious profiler of yesteryear. The truth was becoming more concealed to him: cases he might have solved with ease a few years ago now required more brainpower, more time, more of his self. He almost felt drained by the amount of emotional exertion his job was beginning to demand.
The Origami Killer investigation was a cautionary distress signal that he had failed to heed. It had been over two months ago now, with plenty of time for reflection, and yet he was still incapable of seeing the light. It was likely that he couldn't even face thinking upon what had occurred.
Although dangerous enough by itself, Jayden's thoughtless overindulgence of both ARI and Tripto had amplified the risks involved in that volatile case a hundredfold. But fuck, I needed them! How else could he have kept himself driving single-mindedly on through the wind and the rain and the police bullshit and the corpses everywhere he looked?
Philadelphia was a hellhole for Norman. He never wanted to return to that infernal place. More than once he had been sure it was finally over; that his luck had at last run out; that he would die a lonely, anonymous agent grieved by no one, to be remembered only by frosty FBI annals; and yet some spark of fortune had remained, for he had been snatched from the beckoning maw of the abyss every single time.
Norman had captured the killer. He wasn't even sure how it happened, so intoxicated as he was with a cocktail of drugs and virtual reality - how by some astounding chance everything had come together smoothly at the last moment. The profiler had been dubbed a goddamn hero. There'd been glitzy interviews and a phoney fifteen minutes of fame. But it was a hollow victory, such a cold void victory. A little boy had been rescued from a fate worse than death, drowning and choking and knowing he was suffering because his father didn't love him enough, only for the same self-sacrificing father to die at the hands of his kidnapper. That fucking bastard. It still made Jayden want to punch things: the sheer vicious, excessive injustice. No kid deserves that. And after the tabloids had lost interest and packed their bags he was still left thinking, was any of it worthwhile? Did it matter that Shaun's life had been spared now that it would be forever be marred by the murder of his father? It was as though in the end, Norman had been incapable of saving either of them.
More fucking mistakes.
The young man tried to convince himself he'd done the best that could be expected, but his pleading words fell on deaf ears. It was his fault. Everything was always his fault.
What was the answer? What had caused his descent from heaven? Norman was lost. There were clues: there were always clues. But he couldn't accept them.
The pieces are all lined up in front of you. Why won't you connect the links?
No. Occam's razor isn't always right. Life is far more fucking complicated than that.
He was spiralling perpetually downward. It didn't matter how fast or slow he went, if he moved at the speed of light or if he practically froze his progress, because he would get there one day and he knew his destination could never change. So he took more Tripto when it cried to him, and he was ironically lackadaisical about using ARI, in spite of everything permanently grappling for a branch to cling to or a ledge to break his ungodly fall.
My world shattered when I opened the forbidden box and took the glasses and the tube. They're dragging me to my grave and my doom and I won't see it - I won't stop it - I'm so far down I've forgotten the light of the sun, I know only shadows - they've clawed under my skin too tightly - they're erasing my mind -
Without warning, the agent found himself on the verge of the apartment's single bedroom. It was a sparse and constricted room, scarcely big enough to move around in. ARI hadn't unearthed anything even remotely relevant in the living room or kitchen.
A single bed was aligned parallel to the window. Gauzy drapes fluttered before the pane, the result of some otherwise undetectable draught, their placid motions being the only movement in the entire forsaken flat. The trivial disturbance perturbed Norman in some intuitive way. He sent out another magnetic pulsation from his glove, hunting for an indication; an indication as to whom Abbot had been duped into assisting at the docks, or to where he had now fled. Anything would do - a note, a parking ticket, a receipt.
But there was nothing. Jesus Christ… nothing, nothing! Why is this place so fucking clean? He dashed impulsively past the bed to a closet, and flinging it open he ransacked the shirts and trousers hung inside until they were piled in a heap on the floor, but located only weak remnants of DNA in the form of sweat upon nylon collars.
His job was to divulge the shade, to find the grime which was inexorably buried underneath everyone's fingernails no matter how hard they scrubbed, but here there was nothing to find. In the bedside drawers: naught except perhaps the odd pen. In the bathroom, only a razor and a toothbrush. More fingerprints. There was no sign of bills, birth certificates, or anything a normal person might hoard away somewhere. Norman had never seen a lawbreaker's home so meticulously tidy. And it still managed to goad him, because there was an essence of uncleanliness pervading under the soap and water; with the nicotine stained walls, the lurking hint of cigarette smoke, and the mundane, vaguely musty furniture. The apartment recalled a hotel suite, scoured harshly and made to appear sterile, but fundamentally unable to shake an eternal sense of pollution.
Whatever this man's secrets were, they weren't here.
The agent had had enough. I've searched the entire goddamn place. I've done my part. That was the conclusion - Abbot had gone for good, and all he could do now was wait and pray the runaway would return to Massachusetts Avenue. Yet again their investigation had run dry, like a river parched by midday heat.
"Well, fuck," said Norman wearily as he traipsed back to the front door. He was too disheartened to return to the office today. Maybe at some point during the past few days he'd missed some evidence, which seemed likely taking into account his unruly state of mind; or the case needed to be looked at from a different perspective which hadn't occurred to him thus far; either way, at present it was time to go home. The young man begrudgingly conceded that there was nothing more he could do without first getting a good night's rest and attempting to clarify his brain. He shut the apartment door as he departed.
Jayden left the building and made it to his car, although his legs felt like concrete beneath him. It was only 4 o'clock but the thunderhead heavens were smothering the city, enforcing a sadistic gloom so absolute that he almost believed nightfall had erroneously occurred whilst he had been indoors. The streetlights had already turned on: they fashioned regular spherical puddles of bronze in the dingy environment, like pallid replications of the real sun.
He drove home. He tried not to acknowledge the seething vial of narcotic in his jacket pocket. He parked his car outside the block of flats and made his way inside, shuffling, eyes to the ground. He just wanted to lie down and drink himself to sleep but it seemed fate had other things in store for him. Approaching his studio apartment door, his eyes trained onto a square lump positioned almost in the doorway.
Norman cleared his throat. He looked around. He knelt down for the article, and holding it in the crook of his arm as he retrieved his keys, realised it was a package parcelled in cheap brown wrapping paper. Withdrawing into the dusky refuge of his home, the door was shut and the lights turned on glaringly.
The keys were thrown with lax concern, and they clattered upon collision with a glass tabletop. Jayden was occupied with running eyes and hands all over the solid bundle.
His name was printed on one side, in typewriter lettering, but apart from that he could distinguish no other markings. There was no return address. It was a small item, perhaps with adequate dimensions for a thick, slightly deformed book. Norman knew enough about suspicious mail to be wary. Should I open this? That's when he saw it - the single word Raine, consigned to the very bottom corner.
The young man experienced a fright so great that it was akin to the life being knocked straight out of him, the dread of which manifested itself as a convulsion in his abdomen. Not more - not more! For more than a day he had been living as an incomplete being, withering under the burden of his self-imposed propaganda, and now the source of his disquiet, his aching deficiency, had found its second coming. It was like the omen of a vile and despicable god he had never asked to worship.
Lithe, long fingers were tearing at the brown covering before he had made the conscious decision to open the package. The casing melted away from its contents and fell to the floor.
No… you were supposed to be a lie. This can't be happening.
Exposed was a compact black box, lightweight, with a matte finish, which Norman correctly identified as a low-cost portable DVD player, the type that could be purchased for 50 dollars or less. A note was sellotaped to the electrical gadget and also composed in the distinctive font common to typewriters.
Norman.
I promised to contact you a second time, and now you will see that I have delivered on my oath. Forgive me for being so intrusive as to present this piece of communication to your home - however, with it being a weekend, I felt it more prudent to transport my offering directly to your apartment.
It is my sincere wish that enough time has passed since my last letter to allow you ample consideration of the accusations I have raised. Trust me that the more you think on the things I have said, and certainly once you have seen my proof, the more you will come to understand their validity. I do not envy you, for you must now accept a reality far more appalling than you can ever have conceived; but nevertheless I believe you will have the strength to prevail.
Before you view what I wish you to view, I have these words: I hope you will not loathe me for being the bearer of bad news. The evidence I have to show is critical, of utmost consequence, but it tells no pleasant truths. I urge you to watch with discretion and stoicism. Once again, ensure that the only eyes to observe the following are yours.
Enclosed is a DVD player, which you have no doubt already uncovered. The unit is fully charged and headphones are not required. Turn on the device and press the play button, and the inserted DVD should begin immediately.
Keep in mind what I have stated previously, about not only the nature of ARI and Triptocaine but also the danger we are both entailed in. Please shred, burn, or otherwise destroy the disc and this note once you have studied them.
I will be in touch again.
- Raine
Shuddering, quavering, he tried to curb the seismic aftershocks in his chest. As he tussled between logic and sensation he reached up to the object, flipping open the top so that the undersized screen was visible; upon finding the power switch he flicked it into the on position. The monitor whirred to itself for a moment. He counted the seconds neurotically under his breath, his eyes sodden marshes capable of drowning a man, and once he reached seven the DVD had begun playing.
Jayden leaned forwards. On the display were two middle-aged men, a little way from the camera: a glossy wooden plane filled the bottom half of the screen as if whatever was filming them had been placed on a tabletop. A strip of glass to one side implied a translucent article, perhaps a water pitcher, serving as camouflage. It became apparent that the men were in some sort of unoccupied conference area. One of the pair had only just entered the room, for he was seating himself in an office chair as the disc commenced. A standard video recorder tag at the bottom classified the date as 23rd January 2011, roughly one year in the past.
"- be anyone to interrupt us," said the man to the right. Norman peered closer as he tried to make out his facial features.
The second man now spoke up as he tightened his tie with stout hands. The audio quality was a little bleary but the booming, resonant voice sounded recognisable. "Excellent. You brought the prototype?"
A nod was all that was needed as confirmation. The first man extracted something from outside the camera's scope, and as he turned to show it to his associate his face aligned almost directly with the lens. Oh my God! I know you! Jayden could make out a thin and taut visage, pursed lips, and owlish glasses. It was a grainy Sebastian Hyde, known to most at the FBI as Executive Assistant Director Hyde, head of the Bureau's Science and Technology Branch.
"This is model number 2.3," said the director. He was holding a pair of sunglasses in his hands, gripping them as someone might handle an infant or a precious stone. They were hefty and, Norman imagined, cumbersome to wear. "Still quite large, but we're decreasing the size all the time. The hope is that within a few months they'll be small enough to equip comfortably."
The man on the left side shifted and stretched his hand outwards to take hold of the glasses. Hyde let go of them reluctantly. Muttering inaudibly, the larger man turned the piece of equipment round as he scrutinised it, taking in all the protrusions and irregularities associated with raw technology, allowing the camera to glimpse the inscribed letters of the all too familiar acronym ARI. The young agent, his nose inching closer and closer to the screen, felt a lead ballast settle inside him.
Norman had worked out the identity of the second man. He was none other than Gregory Welles, Executive Assistant Director for the Human Resources Branch of the FBI. A well-built gentleman who ruled over his department with force and equality, he was determined to push the agency's employees to the very brink of breakdown but equally quick to reward them for their altruistic efforts.
Two of the Bureau's Executive Assistant Directors talking to each other? It was hardly a rare occurrence, but the meeting chilled Norman to the core.
Welles was speaking now, and his sonorous voice echoed through the DVD player's inbuilt speakers. "Very good. And the virtual capabilities?"
"They're coming along superbly. With the correct processing power we can create a visual ambience of close to 100 megapixels at one pixel per arc minute. Noises are easier; at the moment we're amassing a library of high-quality soundbytes. We're using a combination of augmented and virtual reality as is appropriate, to synthesise both unreal objects interacting in a real environment and -"
"Keep it simple Hyde, you know I don't understand half the hell of what you're saying."
The bespectacled man smirked and then slanted nearer to the centre of the table. "We're getting close to recreating the actual visual and aural aptitude of the human brain."
His colleague took a second to digest this information. "So eventually, it'll be impossible to distinguish between the real world and the world in the glasses?"
"Theoretically, yes: eventually we should reach a plateau where ARI's reality is just as detailed as our own."
Gregory Welles let out a low whistle. "And these things will have access the Bureau's database?"
"The function is being built in as we speak. Agents will have the power to retrieve almost all of the main intelligence files, and of course, new data is being added every day. Anything that might be relevant to them will be available at their fingertips. Combined with the ability to scan crime scene areas, we estimate efficiency in the FBI could be improved by up to seventy percent."
"How are the physical results proceeding? How addictive are the devices?"
"Early reports are good," said Hyde. "Side-effects appear to include migraines, nervous tics, nosebleeds, fatigue. We're expecting hallucinations to surface soon. The supernatural nature of the virtual reality means users are eager to continue using."
"And, and - the drug?"
Hyde nodded, evidently understanding the enquiry. "The drug is a narcotic capable of reducing pain levels and completely nullifying the negative effects of ARI. We've had nothing but successful outcomes from the tests. Just as planned, severe withdrawal symptoms also emerge if the substance is not consumed regularly."
"So they'll need to keep using both the glasses and the drug to remain healthy."
"Yes, exactly."
This seemed to greatly please Welles. He smiled, made a noise as if he was at a loss of whether to chuckle or to speak, and placed the sombre black glasses on the table so that they happened to face towards the camera, staring down the lens, boring into Jayden's soul.
Hyde laughed. It was a throaty, hoarse sound. "It's finally happening, Gregory. I think your army of superagents is fast becoming a likelihood."
"I want to start distributing as soon as possible." Welles was brimming with fervour. "How fast do you think you can -"
The video cut out sharply. As the image faded and that reverberating voice ebbed away, the monitor was restored to a film of shallow onyx, and all Agent Jayden could see was the ghost of his own wide-eyed reflection.
Are you convinced now, Norman? Is that proof enough for you?
His first reflex was to scuffle in his pocket for his glasses. A physical checklist was taking place in his mind, although he was ignorant to it: heart palpitations, sweating brow, deteriorating field of vision… He had the impression he might be yammering nonsensically to himself.
What was he thinking? Jayden didn't know any better than a random stranger adrift and destitute on the street might.
He fought just to place the glasses on his face. His fingers were shaped from oil; they were slippery, oozing in unwanted directions like those of an uncoordinated child. The liquid seemed to emanate from his very pores. His glove was even harder to arrange, in the way that it's difficult to pour reluctant tar into a mould.
Reawakening. The lenses were in position. He opened his overawed eyes and there it was again, all of it, saffron and flaxen - oh God, I've missed you. Please don't ever leave me again. He strained his head back just to remember all the specifics, all the little complexities he'd forgotten. Crisp leaves and the smell of waning life. He'd been getting sick of the sight of his apartment, anyway. Why did I forget you? He thought it had only been a day or so, but that was too long. Like a prodigal son he was returning to his origins, his place of peace, a true place. The jaundiced trees bent over him in an arching embrace. As he stood unmoving the autumnal woodland unfolded around him, stretching on to the far distance until it weakened to a fuzzy mass of scenery and droning birds, until he could perceive or dream no more. He didn't know which.
But something had altered. His fabricated home was still beautiful, but that splendour wasn't as he remembered it. It was a disgusting perilous beauty, too bright, too flawless, ridiculing his darkness. The sun thawed his wintry skin and he itched where its rays made contact. Lethal branches began to whip about, the leaves created anarchy, as a gale flayed through his only sanctuary.
Nothing's the same. Everything's changing. Everything's changing, everything is false, how am I supposed to stay afloat?
He flung off the glasses and they dropped to the blanketed foliage below. The shadowy forest was still present, rudely invading his senses. Nowadays it never left him that easily.
Norman sniffed and then brought a hand to his nose. The fingers came back warm and red. He started to breathe fitfully, rubbing his hand futilely underneath his nostrils until it was all smeared with blood, endeavouring to navigate through his persistent nightmare. I just need more air. If I have air, it will go away. He swayed into a tree which might have been a doorway. Now his palms were his guide, feeling along the walls while bloodshot eyes saw only in sepia and flicked around everywhere, anywhere, as useless as those of a blind man.
Some time passed in pandemonium. When the mirage had cleared, and his head returned to his shoulders, Norman Jayden found himself in his small lavatory, clinging to the sink for dear life. The bathroom mirror reflected a creature caked in blood and labouring just to inhale. He noticed a lone, humiliated tear drying on the side of his face.
The young man washed his lips and nose, dousing glacial water on the floor and the wall tiles in his frenzy. Droplets sprayed liberally onto the mirror, distorting his likeness. As he spat the metallic taste from his mouth threads of maroon defiled the crystalline purity of the basin water.
Then he took a moment to squint at his warped duplicate.
A single thought remained in the silence after the storm: I have to find them. I have to find the people who brought the twilight into my life.
In fifteen minutes he was sat in his car for a third time that day. Norman could have been mistaken for a madman who had somehow got his hands upon a working vehicle; a tint of crimson remained in his eye, his body juddered at intervals, and his hair was still wet, sticking up in odd places. His loaded gun lay like a promise on the seat beside him.
So Executive Assistant Directors Welles and Hyde have been planning this pretty picnic for a while now, huh? And God knows how many other officials. Jesus fucking Christ, fucking goddamned hypocrites. What gives them the right to fuck up a person's life? What the fuck happened to Fidelity, Bravery, Integrity, huh? I should - I oughta… What do they deserve? They deserve fucking fire and brimstone, that's what.
He didn't know where Hyde lived, or where Welles lived. But in D.C. a lot of large, stately houses were located at Kalorama Heights. It was a residential area for the big shots, the businessmen and the senators. This was where he drove at breakneck speed.
It had begun to rain. The cataclysmic moment that had threatened for so long had finally arrived. Fat, bitter beads of rainwater bombarded rooftops and windows and Jayden's windscreen until the wipers dashed them furiously away. A premature night had descended upon the city as cumulonimbus clouds rolled in and families sheltered themselves in their homes. Trees along the side of the road thrashed this way and that whilst a great tempest howled along the streets. There were few cars on the road; as such thankfully few were at risk from Norman's hazardous swerving. Racing into Kalorama Heights, he braked hard, sending a spray of water into the air, and parked his Ford on the curb.
The agent exited the car. He was impervious to the rain, although it ran down his shoulders and drenched his suit. The grandiose manors which overwhelmed the district fell under his examination even as drops ran all the way from his forehead to his chin, huddling on his eyelashes, letting out a thunderous din as they collectively hit the sodden ground.
He paced up and down the street, listening to the squelching of his ruined shoes.
Time passed like a kaleidoscope of sensation. There was so much - the hissing of the chilled rain as it flew past his ears, frost-bound shards driving through flesh, blood and rain mixed on his tongue. Pain, so much red angry pain, the memory of which he could still feel coated over his fingers.
God, I'm so fucking confused.
Norman stopped in front of a particularly huge and particularly splendid house. Streams of water were forming on the front lawn. Through a set of wide windows, somewhat obfuscated by the drizzly mist, an affable yellow light glowed. Somebody was sitting in front of the windowpane, from what he could make of the silhouette, probably curled up in an armchair with a good book, probably laughing with rosy-cheeked children, probably sipping on scotch; though it might have just been a piece of furniture.
The solitary figure standing outside in a thunderstorm took a deep breath and steadied himself on the concrete wall bordering the house. Just like that, he realised how insane he had become. What had he fantasised of doing? Driving to an influential neighbourhood and just happening to find the men he was looking for? Exacting revenge? Killing an FBI director?
Clutching his sides, Jayden floundered in the direction where he thought he had left his car.
But he couldn't find it.
His inhale, exhale, was degrading to sobs now. He was issuing a low but plaintive moan reminiscent of a wounded animal. Discovering exactly the length of his tether and upon reaching its frayed end, his recuperating ankle failed him, he sank to his knees, and fluid pooled around his limbs. Half of his body functioned as if it were paralysed.
Sometimes when the physical shell is at its most frail, the mind can surprise with vast mental ability.
Where do I go from here?
Everything I have ever believed in is a lie.
How do I live now? How do I get up and place one foot in front of the other?
ARI isn't helping me, it's murdering me. Tripto is bringing along the body bag. A couple of my superiors are destroying all that I am and I didn't even notice, I didn't even put up a fight. They're annihilating all I believe in but I'm too scared to admit to the truth. How can I deny video evidence after I've seen it with my own eyes? No, this has all been planned.
So there's only one explanation - nothing is real anymore.
Fuck. How can I accept that?
That's what this madness was, this slumping in the middle of a Washington sidewalk in the driving rain: a refusal to believe an ugly truth. Just as Raine had predicted. Has he been right about everything? Norman didn't know if he could stand it.
Tears came freely now. Spear after spear of rainwater lances detonated in a torrent over him, barraging him. Purging him.
Everything hurt. Every piece of him hurt, from his being as a whole to each individual atom which was repulsed by the falsehoods, by the corruption. And it hurt because he knew a part of him had been aware, had always been aware, and yet he had still hid it from himself, and it was like a double betrayal. I knew - didn't I always know? Wasn't the truth always there, lying under a layer of deceit, whispering to me in the dark? The pain overcame his heart and he could not longer breathe.
The sky split open high above in a surge of tyrannical supremacy. With every eruption of thunder and lighting the setting around him snapped in and out of focus: flash, fall trees and dappled rays, flash, sheets of downpour flying in his eyes, flash, yellow, flash, blue, flash, flash, flash.
He hated it all; he hated the rain; he hated his addictions and his facades; but most of all he hated himself.
So he spread his fingers in his pocket, drew out an aqua tube, drew in a clammy breath of shuddering eyelids and sickly inebriation and rapture - one, two, three times - and everything was good.
