Empire of the Sun
by Sophia Prester
Disclaimer and Author's Notes: If you don't know where these are by
now, you haven't been paying attention.
Brief note to readers: It's been a while since I last posted, so you
may want to skim the last two parts of Chapter 10 to be able to put
this section in context. I really, really am sorry about the delays
in posting this, but my ration of 'free time' has been radically
reduced this winter.
Please leave reviews, send feedback, etc. Also, please be honest with
me if there's anything that needs improvement. Feedback can be sent
to Sophia_Prester@hellokitty.com. (Yes, you read that correctly.)
Chapter Ten, concluded.: Fallen Heroes, part III
3:42 p.m. July 7, 2001/1:45 p.m. May 1, 1998
Hindsight was, as they say, always twenty-twenty. On occasion,
it even came with color commentary. No matter how many times he
replayed the events of that day, Jason always found some way he could
have prevented what happened. If only he had been more alert, he
could have called out a warning, or used his gift to keep the drawer
from opening, or... There were any number of things he could have
done differently if only he had been paying attention. If he had,
maybe he would have noticed just how much Junior Bunk had changed.
The first time Jason had encountered Junior Bunk was back in
December of ninety-six, when the little punk had been hauled in for
questioning in connection to the shooting of a dealer. Bunk's nerves
were wound so tight, he looked like he was about to wet himself, and
no wonder--he was the rabbity little sort who'd be eaten alive in
prison. He was painfully eager to make a deal. To everyone's delight,
Junior agreed to testify against his uncle under the condition that
he could remain 'monogamous.' With Mahoney in prison, pending trial,
Junior must have felt relatively safe in testifying.
Unfortunately, Mahoney's reach was longer than anyone had
thought. Even from prison, Mahoney was able to cow his nephew into
silence. There was no testimony, and Mahoney went free--again--but it
made little difference in the end. Five months later, Bunk was in
prison, and Mahoney was dead. The good guys had won. Sort of.
How stupid of them not to realize that prison was nothing.
Mahoney's reach could extend from the grave itself.
By the time May of ninety-eight rolled around, Jason's life was
going pretty well for a change. It finally seemed like the whole mess
was actually going to *end*. Judge 'Georgia-Rae-paid-for-my-yacht'
Gibbons was under investigation for corruption by the FBI. It also
came as no surprise that Georgia Rae's lawsuit against the police
department was summarily dismissed.
But then, Judge Gibbons was murdered. Stabbed to death. In
broad daylight. Right outside the courthouse. It was a killing of an
up-close and personal nature, and whoever did it didn't give a damn
about being caught. It didn't take them long to find and bring in the
killer: Georgia Rae's son and Luther's nephew--Junior Bunk.
Considering that Gibbons had recently finagled Bunk's early
release from prison, the whole situation had a delightfully ironic
symmetry to it. Also nice was the fact that the case was nicely open-
and-shut. Bunk did it, and Bunk was going away--for good. The legal
system didn't look too kindly on judge-murderers, even when the judge
in question was on the take. They hauled Bunk in, and that should
have been that. End of story, right?
Wrong.
The Junior who'd emerged from prison was not the same one who'd
gone in. The whimpering little mama's boy was now a stone-cold killer
with hard, dead eyes. Bunk had picked up some toughness in prison,
and Mama's little boy was primed for her to turn him into an
instrument of her vengeance. For him, killing Gibbons was probably
about as morally agonizing as swatting a bug. Pembleton and Bayliss
worked him over in the box, hoping to get some more dirt on Georgia
Rae, but Bunk proved that he could no longer be intimidated, not even
by the Dynamic Duo. So, they hauled him out into the squad room and
cuffed him to a bench until he could be hauled down to central
booking.
Jason's desk was less than twenty feet from where Bunk was
sitting, but it didn't even occur to him to be on his guard. He was
still on desk duty. Bunk was in cuffs. There were at least ten
detectives and uniforms around. They were in the *squad room*, for
crying out loud! It should have been the safest place in the world.
At least, it would have been if Bunk hadn't seen a gun being
put away in a nearby desk.
It wasn't until much later that Jason found out exactly what
had happened next.
Bunk asked to call his lawyer. He had the right, so they
couldn't exactly refuse the request. Someone freed one of Bunk's
wrists so he could reach the phone on the desk next to him. The desk
that just happened to have a loaded gun in the top drawer.
Jason was leaning against his desk, perusing a menu from a new
carry-out place when he heard the first shot. He looked up to see a
uniformed officer crash to the ground.
Seconds stretched out with horrible clarity as people dove for
cover or reached for their weapons. Another shot, and Gharty fell
back against the far wall, red blooming across the front of his shirt
as he slid to the floor. Jason fumbled for his gun, cursing his
slowness and instinctively turning to look for the shooter, praying
he would see him in time to knock his aim aside with a twist of his
mind, but...
It felt like he'd been hit square in the chest with a
sledgehammer. He stumbled back, getting tangled up with his own desk
chair before toppling to the floor.
His vision grayed out as he fought to stay awake. He was dimly
aware of seeing another officer go down and of hearing another body
tumble to the floor. A woman yelped in pain--oh God, Ballard had been
hit--but it was drowned out by another volley of shots. Then,
silence.
It was only later that Falsone told him that Bunk had been
gunned down by Gee, Bayliss, Lewis, and Kellerman.
His chest hurt. He kept trying to draw a breath, but his lungs
couldn't catch on anything. Things were moving, but there was no air
coming in. Just a bubbling, whistling sound. He fought to remain
awake, fought to breathe. His chest was on fire, but the rest of him
was cold. It would be so much easier just to sleep...
He was not even aware of when the paramedics started working on
him. The last thing he remembered was a sudden silence, like the
absence of a background noise he had hardly ever noticed before.
His heart stopped.
...
...
Sound returned, coming in like a rush of wind, and he snapped
violently back into consciousness. His vision was blurry, but at
least there was light, and he was standing on his own two feet. The
light wasn't anything like the warm, peaceful glow that all those
Discovery Channel specials said to expect--the famed 'go into the
light' light. It was more like a cold, flickering fluorescent light.
On the plus side, he didn't smell any sulfur or brimstone. What he
*did* smell was an oddly familiar blend of burnt coffee, damp
concrete, paper, air-freshener, and mildew.
His vision cleared, and he looked up to see the not-quite-
living-up-to-its-reputation light, and got the shock of his
li...afterlife. It looked like a fluorescent light because it *was* a
fluorescent light, just one of many set into the ceiling of...
...the squad room?
He'd never imagined that the afterlife would simply be showing
up for work the next day. What was he supposed to do now? Clock in or
something? Would someone show up and give him some instructions?
He gradually became aware of a host of shadowy figures milling
about the room. There were men, women, children, people of all races,
shapes, and sizes. He couldn't quite get a good look at any of them,
but he thought he recognized one or two of them, and he knew that
they were others who had died, some of them a long time ago. He
thought that one of them was the uniformed cop who'd fallen to Bunk's
first bullet. Another looked like an old informant of his who'd been
killed execution-style back in ninety-five. All of them had died at
someone else's hand.
All of a sudden, he *really* didn't want to look at the shadowy
figures any more. He didn't want to recognize anyone else. Wasn't
there somebody more solid hanging around? Someone who could tell him
what was going on? He checked his hands. They seemed solid enough.
There was no sign of a wound on his chest. He was wearing the blue
shirt and gray tie he'd put on that morning, but something seemed
off, as if he should have been wearing something else, something a
little more formal. His dress uniform, maybe?
Probably. After all, that's what you were *supposed* to wear to
a cop funeral, he thought hysterically.
His funeral. Somewhere out there, someone was probably writing
up his death certificate. He ran a hand down his chest and stomach,
suddenly queasy at the thought that even now, Dr. Scheiner might be
cutting the Y-incision for his autopsy. Someone was probably breaking
the news to his mom.
Two sons in less than a year...oh, God, this was going to
destroy her.
He had to get back. Maybe he wasn't so much dead as...as in
some sort of limbo or something. Maybe the doctors were still working
on him. There had to be some way of turning back. There were too many
things left unfinished. Too many regrets. It couldn't be over now,
damn it!
At the same time, what about all the murder victims he had
seen? How many of them had left things unfinished, or unsaid? Why
should he expect the rules to be any different for him?
He forced himself to ignore these doubts and kept looking
around, not sure what he was hoping to find. A lit 'EXIT' sign,
maybe? The door to the hallway led only into a gray fog, and he
wasn't quite ready to risk getting lost out there. The ghosties were
either fading, or he was getting better at ignoring them. On a whim,
he picked up the phone on Bayliss' desk. No dial tone. He tried all
the different lines and rattled the switch a couple of times, but
nothing happened. The other phones were just as helpful. Gee's office
was dark--no help there, not that he'd really expected any.
Jason wandered aimlessly around the squad room for a while,
wondering what on earth was supposed to happen next. The white-board
still stood where it always had, but instead of having victims listed
under the detectives' names--black for solved cases, red for
unsolved--the board was as white and unmarred as freshly fallen snow.
There wasn't even a hint of dry-erase dust in the corners. It was as
if the board had never even been used.
Weird.
He picked up one of the markers, half-tempted to write 'Kilroy
was here' or something else equally stupid on the board, when he
heard something from the break room--the sound of liquid sloshing
into a styrofoam cup, and the familiar squeak of one of the old
plastic chairs. Whatever made that noise was no ghost.
Someone far more solid than the ghosts walked by the open door,
and waved Jason over.
"C'mon in," the man said in a rich, almost gravelly voice. "We
just put another pot on. Have a cup while you're waiting."
Jason blinked a couple of times and slowly walked towards the
break room. The bald, pudgy man looked familiar, but he couldn't
place him right away. The small mustache and egg-like head were
unmistakeable, and Jason remembered seeing a picture of this man
somewhere. He just couldn't place the name
"Do I know you?" Jason asked. He stood just outside the door,
not sure if it was safe to accept the invitation.
"Nah, I was before your time," the man said. He started to hold
out his right hand, then realized that there was a cup of coffee in
it. He switched the cup to his other hand, then re-offered the
handshake. "Steve Crosetti."
Jason took Crosetti's hand, startled at the warm, calloused
*solidity* of it. "You were Lewis's old partner..."
Booze and prescription drugs had been found in his bloodstream.
The body had been found in the river. Lewis was the only one who
still believed that Crosetti's death wasn't a suicide.
"Yeah. You must be Wright, right?" Crosetti said, smirking at
his own joke. "We've been waiting for you. So how is old Meldrick
doing these days?"
"He's not here, so at least he's got that going for him," came
another voice from within the break room. The accent was pure South
Baltimore.
Jason finally stepped into the break room. It didn't look any
different. Dust-covered file boxes were still stacked up on top of
the antiquated vending machines. The tables and the blue plastic
chairs were the same ones he'd seen just that morning. The man who'd
spoken was sitting at one of the break room tables, his hands wrapped
around a styrofoam cup. He was a big, burly type, much like a high-
school football star gone to seed. His black hair was mostly slicked
back but bits of it kept escaping into cowlicks.
"Beau Felton," the man said, smiling wryly. "I'd say it's nice
to meet you, but under the circumstances..." He tilted his head to
one side, inviting Jason to fill in the rest of the comment on his
own.
"Yeah," said Jason. Somehow, this was a lot harder to take than
a room full of ghosties and an empty whiteboard. He'd never met
Felton--alive, that is. He'd assisted a little bit with the
investigation after Felton's undercover assignment with another
department had gone sour in the worst possible way.
"I'll get you a coffee, if you want," Crosetti offered again.
"There isn't any beer, is there?" Jason asked. He needed
something to calm him down rather than wind him up.
Crosetti snorted with laughter. "Beer? Whaddya think this is?
Heaven?" He rolled his eyes and looked at Felton. "New guy."
"Have a seat," Felton said. He certainly looked a lot better
than he had in the morgue. His face didn't look quite the way Jason
imagined it would. "We can play some poker, if you like, once your
friend over there is done with the cards."
Felton nodded his head towards the table at the back of the
break room. Jason turned to look, half afraid he might recognize this
person as well. Gharty and Ballard had also been hit...
Whoever was at the table was screened by an enormous house of
cards. The house was still being built, with cards seemingly flying
up of their own to add height and detail to the building.
Most people would have been astounded by such a structure. It
would have been better to call it a castle of cards, rather than a
house. The main part of the structure was a tall, thin tower, with
pairs of cards set end to end log cabin style, but somewhat angled,
so that the whole thing formed a gentle upwards spiral. Elegantly
cantilevered balconies jutted out from the tower at intervals that
seemed random but that somehow contributed to an overall sense of
balance. Two shorter towers flanked the larger one, and were
connected to it by elaborate trestles.
Jason's breath caught in his throat, and the room became bright
and wavery. As soon as he saw the tower, he knew *exactly* who was
sitting at the other side of that table, and this was not bad, no,
not bad at all.
"Jake?"
His brother held up one finger, silencing him. "Aaaaal-most
done," he said softly. One hand steadied the tower, quietly
convincing it that the support it needed would be there shortly, and
redirecting the stresses until he could slide that one last card into
place. Then, he picked up the card and placed it so that it stood on
one corner, with its opposite corner centered on a card above. Jake
gently flicked the card so that it spun on its axis. It didn't add
much to the appearance of the building, but Jason knew that the
integrity of the entire structure rested on this one card.
"Jake? Aren't you...didn't...there was a fire," he finished
lamely. Of all the things to say. Out of all the things he was so
*desperate* to say...
Jake nodded. "Yeah. History keeps on repeating itself and all
that jazz. Sucks, doesn't it?" His voice caught as he spoke. "So.
Here we are."
Jason nodded, and swallowed. "Yeah. Here we are."
Crosetti and Felton were talking just a little more loudly than
necessary, and Felton had angled his chair so that he wasn't looking
straight at them. Jason was grateful for the small attempt to give
them some privacy.
"What now?" Jason asked, his own voice trembling. He sat down
at Jake's table. Part of him wanted to crow with delight at finding
his brother, while the rest of him was trying not to curl up in a
ball and weep.
"We'll get to that in a minute or two, Jase." As the card
slowed, Jake gave it another flick to keep it spinning. "I need to
take this thing apart, first. Your two buddies there were nice enough
to let me borrow their cards."
"Even in the afterlife, you're always building shit, Jake."
Jake glared at him in mock indignation. "Like I'm supposed to
sit here doing squat while you take your time farting around and
checking out the scenery?"
"*Some* people like to play poker when other people aren't
hogging the cards," Crosetti warned. "You almost done with that
thing?"
For a moment, another image was superimposed over the cards. It
was a castle, with three connected towers that Jason knew were
supposed to symbolize a branching river. Intead of pasteboard, the
original castle was constructed of delicate, irregular layers of a
blue mica and quartz, arranged so that the intense light of the sun
rippled and refracted through them. Anyone looking at the castle
would have thought it was built out of cool, rushing water. He had
seen this place somewhere, if only in his imagination.
"I'm done," said Jake. "I was just killing time until Jase
showed up, that's all." He stopped the spinning card, and pulled it
out without disturbing any of the other cards around it. For a
moment, the structure stood in a strangely active stillness. Then,
the cards fluttered to the table without fanfare.
"Hey, you'd better pick those up," Felton warned. "I'm not in
the mood to play fifty-two pickup."
"Ah, put a sock in it," said Jake. He swept the cards together.
Jason noted with no little admiration that the cards had all fallen
face down. Jake always thought of little details like that when he
built stuff.
Jake squared the deck and handed it back to Felton. "What about
the card you yanked?" Felton asked.
Jake flicked the card through the air. Felton grabbed for it
and missed. "It's just a Joker," Jake said.
"Hey, it's not a game unless there's wild cards," Crosetti
said. "Wright, did you ever get yourself that cup of coffee?"
Simply mentioning it made the odor of coffee seem even
stronger. The coffee in the squad room wasn't exactly *good* coffee,
but it was the way coffee was supposed to be at work--either a little
too strong or a little too weak, always a little burnt tasting, and
with the slightly oily feel it got from powdered creamer. You weren't
supposed to enjoy it, but when you drank it, you knew you were giving
the body its recommended daily allowance of caffeine.
He was just starting to accept when Jake shook his head
sharply.
"Uh, I'll pass, thanks," Jason stammered. He turned back to
Jake. "What the hell crawled up your butt?" he hissed.
Then, he started to shake. He wrapped his arms across his
chest, clutching at his own shoulders as if trying to keep himself
from flying apart into a million pieces. It shouldn't be like this.
He shouldn't just be taking Jake--taking *them*--for granted like
this.
"I'm just looking out for my brother, that's all," Jake said,
as if nothing at all was wrong. "Sorry about the coffee, but there's
rules here. Eating or drinking anything would be a really bad idea
right now."
Right. Pomegranate seeds and a time-share in hell and all that.
Either there was something to be said for Greek myths, or his brain
was dredging up nearly forgotten bits of trivia to build an elaborate
near-death hallucination.
Still, it was unimportant compared to what he and Jake were
doing there. Before he could gather his wits together to ask another
question, Jake spoke up with the answer.
"Things got all screwed up this time around."
Jason heard exactly what Jake *didn't* say: "*You* screwed up
this time around."
It was the same exact thing he didn't say during those last few
months, as he had quietly and patiently pressed at Jason to talk
about things. Jason had kept quiet, so afraid of losing his brother,
only to lose him anyway.
"I'm sorry. I am so, so sorry."
Jake got up and went over to his brother. He crouched down by
Jason's chair and put an arm (oh so real...) around his shoulders,
gently rocking him and speaking to him softly in the mish-mosh of
Japanese and English that was their own private childhood language.
"It'll be okay, Jase. Shh. Everything's going to be just fine."
"I--I messed up big time, didn't I?"
For a moment Jake's arm tensed.
"That's in the past," he said carefully. "Things should have
been different this time around, but--"
"I can't live with it any more," Jason whispered. "I swear, if
I get out of this, I'll tell Gee everything I know about the Mahoney
shooting. I *swear*."
"This isn't about Mahoney!" Jake snapped. "Would you just shut
up for a second?"
Jason kept on speaking, everything he'd been wanting to say
spilling out over his brother's attempt to quiet him. "I need to tell
him how if Kellerman hadn't shot him, I would have--"
Jake's eyes grew cold. "No! Thinking something is *not* the
same as doing something! And don't go all altar boy on me and start
quoting the Sermon on the Mount. You held back. Kellerman didn't.
That's what's important. Temptation and obsession aren't the same
thing, okay?" His face softened and he shook Jason by the shoulders.
"This isn't about Mahoney, okay? That's all being wrapped up right
now. It's out of your hands. It's about what happened in Japan."
"Japan? That was ten, fifteen years ago! What am I supposed to
remember?"
"You don't remember? You were there just a couple of months
ago."
"I--" Whatever he was going to say died in his throat. He
pulled free of Jake's half-hug and paced across the room. Crosetti
and Felton had given up trying to be polite ane were watching the
show with poorly disguised interest.
He was about to protest that he didn't make it any further than
Toronto, but he now knew that was a lie. Fragments of memory
flickered and expired.
Getting on the plane with Michel, and getting the stewardess to
get seats reassigned so they could sit together and talk on the
flight out.
Arguing with someone in a dark, cavern-like room. At the edges
of the room were things that must have crept out of some nightmare.
Shaking his head in amusement and exasperation as a copper-
haired young woman begged him to keep something secret for her. He
was struck by the delight in her impossibly green eyes as he agreed
to cover for her.
Looking in quiet amazement and pride at the original of Jake's
house of cards, watching it shimmer in sunlight as it hung in the
darkness of space, its base ending not in a flat foundation, but in
cataracts of crystal like sheets of water suspended in time.
Watching beautiful dark eyes go wide with horror before the
life faded... Enough!
"What the hell is going on here! Tell me why I recognized that
thing you were building!"
Jake looked at him oddly for a moment. Jason could see the
worry in his brother's eyes, but he didn't know what had put it
there. "How much do you remember, Jase? About...before?"
"What the hell are you talking about, before?"
The worry faded to hurt. "Don't you remember? The games we
would play? The stories we'd make up?"
Of *course* he remembered the fantasy role-playing game he and
Jake used to dip into when they were younger. G.I. Joes, Micronauts,
Stretch Armstrong, Legos, and Emma's Bionic Woman action figure were
all brought into play to help create an elaborate serial adventure
story. Somewhere in his basement was a box that held a folder full of
the maps and drawings that they'd created over the years.
"Remember how the stories kinda wrote themselves?"
Jason froze. Things that had nearly been forgotten came back
with astonishing clarity.
"Didn't you ever wonder if we weren't making them up?"
The blue castle shimmering and floating in space. Mariner
Castle. The name wasn't in a language that he recognized, but the
meaning was absolutely clear. He could remember bending his mind
around pieces of fragile blue stone, shaping them and reconfiguring
them so they could take the stress of supporting a building.
"Didn't you ever wonder why we stopped playing? Why one day it
just stopped being fun?"
Other memories started to surface (he remembered pushing Jake
to the ground after Jake had asked about the game one too many times)
but he refused to look too closely at them.
"Jake, I don't want to talk about this," he said, his voice
shrill.
"Jase, what's past is past. You can't change it, you can't get
it back, and you sure as hell can't pretend it didn't happen."
"Please. Don't..."
"With us, though, something special happened. We got a one-in-
a-million chance at a do-over, a chance to maybe get things right
this time." Jake looked squarely at his brother. "Problem is, I died
in a stupid accident. I was supposed to be with you for the ride, but
I wasn't. That's how things got screwed up. Not because you messed
up--which you did, so don't think you're off the hook--but because I
wasn't there to help out. Seems there's some sort of loophole,
though, which is why we can talk like this one last time."
"Last?"
Jake smiled sadly. For a moment, Jason saw other clothes
superimposed over Jake's BCFD shirt, and somehow his brother's face
looked different--longer and more tanned--but the eyes were the same.
"Things may have gone wrong, but you haven't lost your chance
at a do-over. That's pretty much what I'm here to tell you."
"You mean I can go back and put everything right?" Jason still
didn't understand half of what Jake was talking about, but the
promise that he had another chance was something he could cling to as
a lifeline.
"Something like that. I got a feeling it's a little more
complicated than that, though. C'mon, bro," Jake said, standing up.
It broke Jason's heart to see that familiar, crooked grin. "Time, she
is a wasting. We got things to see, people to do."
Jason tried to laugh at the stale old joke, but it came out as
more of a sob.
"Now, I'll tell you this," Jake said, clapping a warm, solid
hand on Jason's shoulder. "I've gotta be moving on..."
"But..." Jason protested. Was this all they got? A few minutes
to say goodbye and nothing more? That was *it*?
"...but *you* got places to go, my man." Jake looked up at him,
eyes narrowed mischievously. "If you want, that is. You can stay here
with these clowns," he said gesturing back to Felton and Crosetti.
Crosetti waved. "Or, you can go back out there and put up with
whatever life's going to throw at you."
Jason looked out the break room door. The squad room seemed
much darker than it had before. There were no more shadows wandering
around, but he couldn't help feeling that there was something--
someone--waiting for him in there.
Jake smiled at him, sadly. "I wish I could say it was going to
be easy." He reached out and squeezed Jason's hand. "I wish you
didn't have to go this alone. You know I'd do anything I could do to
help. Maybe there's some way I could..." He shook his head as if
chasing off that last thought. "I wish there was more I could do, but
I don't think I'd be here to talk to you if you didn't have some sort
of chance."
"Yeah." He was barely able to say that much and he didn't trust
himself to say any more.
"Well, the least I can do is see you off," Jake said as he
stood up. His voice didn't sound all that steady, either.
Jason stood up and his brother grabbed him in a bear hug. They
stood that way for a while, then let go.
Once again, Jake's features and clothing seemed to shift. The
person smiled at him with Jake's crooked smile, and when he spoke,
once again Jason could understand the meaning behind an alien
language. "Se phileo kai s'aphiemi, adelphe. 'Upage eirene."
I love you and forgive you, my brother. Go in peace.
Then, Jake was Jake again.
"I love you, too," said Jason. Saying goodbye was harder now
than it was at the funeral.
Jake gently punched him in the shoulder. "Everything's gonna be
just fine. Look after my girl for me, okay? Tell her I'm sorry things
didn't work out so good for us this time around. It would've been
nice to have a happy ending, but I guess it wasn't in the cards," he
said wistfully.
"Huh?" As far as he knew, Jake hadn't been seeing anyone
seriously for over a year.
"Ah, don't worry about it. Just be sure you don't waste *your*
chance at a do-over." Jake held his brother at arms length, hands on
his shoulders, as he studied him. "If you go through with this, it
ain't gonna be easy, you know that."
Jason blinked, trying to ignore the sting in his eyes. In the
end, there really wasn't a goodbye, just one last hug, and then Jason
turned and left.
So, he departed the break room and passed into the squad room
proper. It wasn't quite the River Styx, but he knew that he'd crossed
over an important line. He recalled just enough of Brother Anthony's
lectures on Greek mythology to know that he probably shouldn't turn
around for one last look at Jake.
The squad room was empty. The ghosts--if that was what they
were--had gone off to haunt someone else. The desks looked the same
as they always did. As he walked slowly towards the center of the
room, he ran his fingers along the edge of Bayliss's desk, feeling
the slight stickiness of coffee rings. He could even smell the faint
odor of stale cigarette smoke that lingered in the walls years after
they'd banned smoking in the workplace. Whatever this was, it was no
dream or vision. It was solid, and it was true.
The only hint of unreality was that nothing cast a shadow. A
soft, dull light grayed everything ever so slightly. No, not
everything--he caught a flicker of red out of the corner of his eye.
He turned to look, but it was gone.
There it was again, even larger this time, but again it
vanished as soon as he tried to focus. Another bit of red flashed by
like a gnat, and then another. He was so distracted by trying to find
out what they were that he almost didn't notice that the light in
Gee's office was on.
His heart hammered in his throat. Bunk hadn't gotten Gee, had
he? Gee was too big, too *alive* to have been gunned down by someone
like that little punk. Jason took a deep breath and headed for Gee's
office, ignoring the motes of red that were now rushing past him just
on the edge of vision.
Gee's door was flung open and there was Lieutenant Giardello
himself, big as the wrath of God and twice as angry.
"Wright! What are you loafing around here for?" he roared. He
strode out into the squad room.
Jason started to protest that he was dead--well, mostly dead,
but Gee cut him off.
"I don't want excuses, Wright. I want results!" He pointed over
Wright's shoulder. "See that board? See all that red?"
But there *wasn't* any red on the board. He'd seen it when he'd
come in. The board was clean. In the land of the dead, it was the
victims who were on trial, not their killers. He started to say
something, but Giardello's expression stopped the words before they
could even form.
"The *board*, Wright," he repeated. "The city isn't paying you
to stand around and be decorative."
He didn't want to turn around. In places like this, turning
around was a very bad idea. If you weren't careful, people turned
into pillars of salt. Other times, you'd have to watch someone you
loved being sucked back into hell. He'd stepped through the door, so
he was going to live, wasn't he? Wasn't that enough? That he go on
living and find some way to atone for what he had done?
Giardello's expression softened and he laid one huge hand on
Jason's shoulder. "Look, I know it's not fair, but you're the only
man for the job right now."
Jason looked into Gee's eyes. The dark face and even darker
eyes were the same ones he remembered, but he had a feeling that it
was someone other than Al Giardello looking out at him. He thought he
saw a hint of red in Gee's irises, but he could have been imagining
things.
Speaking of red...
Jason turned to look at the board and cried out in horror.
The board was covered in names. Red kept flowing onto the board
like blood trickling across slabs of marble.
"You're a detective. Those are crimes. Solve them." Gee's voice
was not unkind.
The names were written in impossibly tiny script that looked
like sandpiper tracks. There were so many names, and the motes of red
kept flying to the board, adding name after name to the list. His own
name was written large at the top of the board in strange black
letters that looked as if they'd been carved deep into the white. He
was the primary. These were *his* cases. *His* responsibility.
"I can't do it, Gee," he said. "There are too many! How can
I..."
He was going to say 'solve them all,' but the words that wanted
to come out of his mouth were something else altogether.
"You have a choice, Talusidhis," Not-Gee said. Jason looked up
at him. He still saw Gee, but he also saw someone else, with red eyes
as opposed to Gee's brown, and pale golden skin as opposed to Gee's
deep ebony.
"That's not my name," he whispered harshly, but he couldn't
deny that something in him sat up in recognition.
"As I said, you have a choice." Not-Gee's voice had tones under
it like warm, golden trumpets. "Face the truth, or..."
What choice? He'd been trying to convince himself that things
had not happened as they had, or to simply forget that they had
happened at all, and he didn't want to live with that any more. He
*couldn't* live with that any more.
He answered before he could even hear what the 'or' might have
been. "Okay. I don't know what the hell you're talking about, but
I'll..."
At that very instant, everything from those seven missing weeks
came flooding back into his mind. Everything from the moment he had
been offered a choice and had so carelessly made the wrong one.
Everything he had seen. Everything--oh, Lord have mercy on his soul!
--everything he had done!
He had his seven weeks back, but memories kept flooding in,
pressing in on his brain, nearly pushing *him* out.
"Stop..." he croaked. "It hurts... NO! This isn't me! I never
did these things!" He was half sobbing, half screaming. The memories
kept on coming, far too many memories for one lifetime. He pressed
his fists to his temples, babbling and begging for it to stop. He was
getting lost in these memories, so lost he wasn't sure he could ever
find himself again.
"No...it wasn't supposed to happen like this!" Not-Gee cried to
someone Jason couldn't see. "It's too much. He wasn't supposed to see
this much!"
It was no use. Jason saw it all, everything, all at once. Dark
eyes, sad eyes, confused, and accusing, even as the life-light faded
from them. Bodies, burned and bleeding, strewn across the floor of a
marble palace. A figure, shrouded with fire, falling screaming from
the sky like a murdered angel.
Jason fell to his knees, battered down by the weight of the
memories, screaming and screaming until his throat was raw and
bloody.
# # #
Back in Taiyouko's apartment, three years and half a world
away, Jason blinked his eyes. Taiyouko was watching him intently,
even as she continued to work on a quilt she'd picked up to occupy
her hands while Jason told his story.
"That's when I woke up in the hospital. I started freaking out,
not just because of all the stuff rattling around my head, but also
because I had this big old tube jammed down my throat. It's weird
because it's like you're choking, but this thing is what's *helping*
you breathe, only it doesn't feel like it."
Just thinking about it brought back an echo of frantic fear and
panic. When the nurse de-intubated him, it was even worse. He'd felt
like bits of *him* were coming out with the tube. For a couple of
days after that, it hurt to speak.
"According to the docs, I was pretty lucky. The bullet
ricocheted off a rib, and bounced through me like a pachinko ball."
Taiyouko nearly rammed the needle through her finger. "They
call that *lucky?*"
Jason shrugged. "It missed a major artery by about a
millimeter. If it had hit that, I'd have bled out before the
paramedics could get to me. That's why the diagnosis of 'lucky.' As
it was, they wound up having to take out a bit of my left lung along
with my..." His hand hovered over the lower edge of his rib cage.
"It's 'spleen' in English, if that helps."
Taiyouko looked properly horrified, and slightly ill. "They
took parts of you *out*? Wouldn't that cause problems?"
"It just means that I have to take heavy-duty antibiotics if I
get so much as a cold," he said, exaggerating slightly. It was kind
of fun to see Taiyouko knocked off balance like this. He had a
feeling it didn't happen very often.
"What happened to the others you mentioned?" Taiyouko didn't
even attempt to pronounce their names. "And did you talk to this
'Gee' person about Mahoney?"
"I tried to, but he said it had all come clean while I was in
the hospital, and all he wanted was for everyone to forget about it."
Taiyouko looked less than pleased at that, and her stitching
started to look more like repeated stabbing.
"Kellerman agreed to resign, and that seemed to settle matters
as far as Gee was concerned." He didn't mention that Frank Pembleton
had also resigned in disgust over Giardello's refusal to take matters
any further than that. He didn't want to hear Taiyouko's comments on
the matter. "Still, it doesn't change the fact that three cops were
dead. When they went after Georgia Rae that night, Bayliss got shot
and was messed up even worse than I was. Gharty's wound looked a lot
worse than it was, from what I understand. Ballard got shot in the
ankle, which doesn't sound so bad, but she wound up having to go
through more surgery and physical therapy than the rest of us, if you
can believe that. Giardello thought that more than enough damage had
been done to the department already, and pretty much told me that if
I needed to ease my conscience, to go to my parish priest."
"And did you?"
"No."
He realized with no little shock that this was the first time
he'd ever sat down and told anyone even this much of the story. He
had told the story to himself so many times that he felt that
everyone else must be as sick of it as he was.
"It's three years later, Wonder-boy. Are you trying to tell me
that it's been that long since you've done anything about what you
saw?" she asked derisively. "It sounds to me like someone has a
slight problem with follow-through."
He could feel the heat rising to his face. "Why should I have
done anything?" he snapped. "I kept telling myself that it wasn't
real. Also, I had enough to do with getting over being shot. It's not
like it is on TV, where you're back on the job the next week like
nothing happened. I had twelve weeks of recovery and therapy before I
could even go back on desk duty." Twelve weeks of forcing himself to
cough up the gunk from his lungs even though it felt like the effort
would kill him. Twelve weeks of being left alone all too often with
nothing but his own thoughts for company. "It was worse than the
hospital in Norfolk. Then, I was missing memories. This time, I had
too many."
"And what are these memories about, anyway? You were starting
to tell me, but then you cut away into a recitation of your internal
organs."
He pressed his hands to his temples and squeezed his eyes shut.
"You never let go, do you? You just want to get right to the answer,
no matter what."
Taiyouko didn't answer that. She just sat there with a quilting
frame and piles of yellow and green calico in her lap, stitching away
implacably. For a moment, he thought he saw her face subtly shift
from expression to expression as it had earlier that day.
"So, you're sure that what you saw wasn't just a dream?" she
said, once the flurry of expressions had passed. "Most people don't
believe in dreams or visions. I'm not saying I think you're crazy. I
just want to know why *you* think you aren't."
"Sometimes, I think I *am* more than a little crazy," he
muttered. "It would be easier if I was, but you know what it's like,
being a detective. You have to follow the evidence, even if you don't
like where it takes you. Too bad for me, every bit of evidence I've
found only leads me to think that all that shit I saw was real. You
handed me one piece of it yourself."
"The phone number. Have you called?" she asked matter-of-
factly, as if asking if he'd called to schedule a dentist's
appointment.
He shook his head. From the feel of things, he was blushing
again. "Too scared," he said. "Scared of what I might hear. Scared of
screwing up someone's life the way mine's been screwed up. I wouldn't
wish this on anyone, you know?"
"What other evidence have you found?" Taiyouko seemed to be
completely immune to any kind of bid for sympathy.
He shrugged. "I've got a few names, but that's it. One of them
has some weird foreign spelling, and I haven't been able to get
anywhere. The first lead I followed was the guy I met in Toronto. I
had a chance to talk with him and hear something about his life. To
be honest, I first started digging into this because I was hoping to
find out that I was wrong, and all of this was only some sort of
dream. Too bad for me, I find out that not only was Michel real, he'd
gone missing at about the same time that I took off for seven weeks."
"Let me guess," she drawled. "Unlike someone else we know, he
didn't just reappear out of the blue one day."
Jason nodded. "About six months ago friend of a friend got me
in touch with someone in the RCMP. I passed along what I knew to this
Constable Fraser, and a few days later I get a scary phone call from
an Inspector Thatcher. She tells me that not only is the Celeste
disappearance still an open case, I just might be in a shitload of
trouble since my getting on the plane with him in Toronto makes me
one of the last people to ever see the guy. Getting raked over the
coals by a Mountie did a lot to get rid of some of my doubts."
"Given the fact that you can move objects with your mind, I'm
surprised you stayed a doubter as long as you did."
"It's not the same," he grumbled. His dad, his siblings,
several of his uncles, and his grandfather were all similarly gifted.
He'd grown up thinking it was normal, but one of those things that
you kept hidden from those outside the family, like a family tendency
towards kleptomania. "Celeste and Ellwood have paper trails. I bet
the other guy would, too, if I could get his name right. That's
*evidence*. You know, the stuff you take to court? The problem I'm
running into is all the other stuff that got poured into my head
while I was on the operating table."
She raised an eyebrow. "What kind of 'stuff?' I've noticed that
you keep sidling up to telling me something, then backing off.
Earlier, you told me that this all was somehow connected to the Chiba
case, so you know I'm not going to let you get away with skirting the
issue forever. What's the problem with just telling me?"
"The problem I have is that I don't like people thinking I've
gone completely nuts! Don't I get even a little credit for telling
you as much as I have?"
Taiyouko made a little 'hmph' sound. She was listening, but she
was also occupied with a tricky bit of stitching.
"I already told you I believed you when you told me about Chiba
being a king and his girlfriends being some sort of superheroes. So,
now that you've finished acting out, why don't we try approaching
this from another direction. You told me that some extra memories
found their way into your head, correct? You have nothing against
which to check these memories to see if they're true or nothing more
than a hallucination, also correct?"
She took her scissors and snipped the quilting thread close to
the fabric. "Assume for a moment that someone has come up to you and
recounted a set of memories that matched several aspects of your own.
Let's imagine that this person told you about a large marble palace--
somewhat Indian in design, I'd say--with a spectacular view of the
Earth hanging in space. Unfortunately, this person also tells you
that there's some sort of war with people flinging lightning and
firebolts left and right. This war..."
She was taken with a sudden coughing fit, but held up a finger
to tell Jason that she wasn't done speaking.
He didn't wait for her to recover.
"You..." he pointed at her. "You... know about this?" His voice
went up several octaves. "I've been sitting here turning my brain
inside out, and you've known all along what I was going to say?"
Taiyouko shrugged. She wiped her eyes clear of the tears the
cough had shaken loose.
"To be honest, I was taking a shot in the dark. You're not the
only one with memories that seem to have taken place in another life
that's very different from this one," she said with surprising
gentleness. "I was hoping you could tell me more about the Chiba
case, but I wasn't expecting to get some confirmation that *I* wasn't
crazy."
He turned that over in his head for a bit, trying to fit these
new facts into what he knew. For a moment, he studied the older
detective, taking in anew the short, dumpy form and pinched face.
"You... you're not trying to tell me that you're one of those
Sailor Senshi, are you?"
Her mouth pursed and her hazel eyes narrowed in amused disgust.
"I should hope not! Let's just say that after a certain age, butt-
bows and mini-skirts are not exactly a good idea."
Jason, in a move born of sheer self-preservation, clapped one
hand over his mouth.
"You'd better not be laughing,"
"Er...sorry."
"As it turns out, I haven't a clue about whether I'm a Sailor
Senshi or something else altogether. All I know is that there's this
other person in my head..." She scowled and rolled her eyes. "Fine!
Be that way! Apparently," she said, enunciating with the precision of
the well and truly pissed off, "there's another aspect of *me* in
here. It *claims* that it *is* me, that I'm *it*, that it's always
*been* me, that it's always *been* here." She shook her head in
disgust.
Jason blinked a couple of times. "You've been possessed by
Ambassador Kosh?"
She stared at him, then waved his failed joke aside.
"Possession, past life, who cares? All I know is that I'd better not
start coughing up pea soup and having my head spin round and round."
"I'm with you there," he said in all sincerity. He got up and
paced around the apartment, trying to find something in the folksy-
country dŽcor to take his mind off the implications of what she was
telling him. "So, I've told you my freaky story. What now?"
Taiyouko raised one eyebrow. "Now? Now you tell me about those
missing seven weeks and what this has to do with the case we're
investigating. I'm not done with you, Wonder-boy."
"Do I have to?" God, that sounded whiny. He wished he could
rewind, erase, and say something that didn't make him sound like a
six-year-old.
Taiyouko thought about that for a while. Then, she cocked her
head and smiled nastily. "Yes."
Well, that didn't give him much wiggle room, did it? He was
torn between running for the door and launching right into the worst
part of his story.
It wasn't that he didn't want to tell the story. What he wanted
was to tell the story to someone who could offer him some kind of
absolution. Taiyouko wasn't that person. In fact, she was likely to
rake him over the coals for each little transgression.
A small, traitorous part of himself told him that this was
*exactly* why he had opened up to the curmudgeonly little detective.
"Let me tell you something, Wonder-boy," she said, interrupting
his thoughts. "I was the primary on this case fourteen years ago.
That's when this whatever-it-is in my mind woke up for the first
time."
Her voice trailed off for a moment, then she shook her head and
continued. "Maybe not the *first* time, but that's beside the point.
What's important here is that these extra memories didn't start
winkling their way back in until the Chiba case was reopened--and
reopened with no good explanation, mind you. Once I add you and your
experiences into the equation, things move past coincidental to
pretty damned fishy. Oh! And let's not forget that you recognized
something about those mud creatures that attacked us."
His heart sank. "Yes. I did." He'd recognized the enchantment,
all right. It was just one more sign that he if he kept following
this road, he wasn't going to like what he found.
He held up a hand, stopping Taiyouko before she could say
anything else. "I'll tell you everything I can, but can you give me--
I don't know--an hour? This isn't easy for me, you know? I need to
get out, think a little."
"Sure." Taiyouko chuckled, but her eyes were still cold and
fierce. "Get me a pack of cigarettes--Mild Sevens--while you're at
the bar."
That stung far more than he would have expected. Jason risked
glaring at Taiyouko. Sure enough, she was smirking at him. She'd
scored a hit, and she knew it.
The smirk softened to an almost-smile. "I think we both deserve
a little recreational self-destruction right about now. Just don't
get plastered, okay? Get back here by six, and I'll order us in some
dinner. What do you think goes best with past-life regression? Pizza?
Chicken korma?"
Jason slammed the door on his way out.
She could just sit there wondering if he'd be back, he thought
bitterly, but she probably knew as well as he did that he'd come back
to finish his story. Right now, he just needed to get out and see the
real world for a while, and remind himself...
Remind himself of what, exactly? Of what was real?
He shook his head. He'd learned from hard experience that
thinking in that way was pretty much the opposite of helpful.
One flight down from Taiyouko's floor, he paused, almost
continued on down the stairs, but turned and headed down the second
floor hallway instead.
This was no doubt a *spectacularly* bad idea, he told himself
even as he knocked on Makoto's door.
A minute later, he knocked again. No answer. He leaned down to
see if he could tell if the light coming from under the door was just
the last of the afternoon light, or a sign that someone was home.
After another minute he wandered off, feeling strangely bereft.
He was grateful for Taiyouko's demand for cigarettes. It was good to
have even a little sense of direction for a while.
# # #
Author's Notes: Thanks again to Ice Princess and Luna Hope for their
help as beta readers.
Writing process and progress. Some of the delays in posting the last
part of this chapter were work related. In other ways, this was a
difficult chapter to write. The timing and placement of the last
several scenes was tricky. Originally, Jason's telling of the Mahoney
killing and his dream were all one, long scene, with the
Setsuna/Haruka confrontation occurring before Jason appeared at
Taiyouko's apartment. By putting the first part of the Jason/Taiyouko
scene right after the scene with Mother, I hoped to carry over some
of the notion that the past still has the power to hurt us. Also,
there was a boatload of exposition to shoehorn in here.
"Homicide" fans will probably notice that Jason's after-life vision
was quite similar to the one at the end of the movie-length series
finale. The title of this chapter was also lifted directly from the
sixth-season two-parter where Junior Bunk shot up the squad room, but
that's not the only reason I used that title. In that episode, three
uniformed officers were shot and killed. Gharty was shot in the
chest, and Ballard was shot in the ankle. Figuring that there were
six bullets in the gun, I decided I could add Jason to the casualty
list.
Question to my devoted (or at least mildly bemused) readers: Would a
supplemental chapter with timelines, etc. be welcome or not?
Music listened to during this chapter: "Scarlet's Walk" by Tori Amos.
The first "due South" soundtrack (and yes, that was a shout-out you
saw earlier on). "When I Wake" by Rusted Root.
Coming soon (in geological terms): Chapter 11: Flashpoint
by Sophia Prester
Disclaimer and Author's Notes: If you don't know where these are by
now, you haven't been paying attention.
Brief note to readers: It's been a while since I last posted, so you
may want to skim the last two parts of Chapter 10 to be able to put
this section in context. I really, really am sorry about the delays
in posting this, but my ration of 'free time' has been radically
reduced this winter.
Please leave reviews, send feedback, etc. Also, please be honest with
me if there's anything that needs improvement. Feedback can be sent
to Sophia_Prester@hellokitty.com. (Yes, you read that correctly.)
Chapter Ten, concluded.: Fallen Heroes, part III
3:42 p.m. July 7, 2001/1:45 p.m. May 1, 1998
Hindsight was, as they say, always twenty-twenty. On occasion,
it even came with color commentary. No matter how many times he
replayed the events of that day, Jason always found some way he could
have prevented what happened. If only he had been more alert, he
could have called out a warning, or used his gift to keep the drawer
from opening, or... There were any number of things he could have
done differently if only he had been paying attention. If he had,
maybe he would have noticed just how much Junior Bunk had changed.
The first time Jason had encountered Junior Bunk was back in
December of ninety-six, when the little punk had been hauled in for
questioning in connection to the shooting of a dealer. Bunk's nerves
were wound so tight, he looked like he was about to wet himself, and
no wonder--he was the rabbity little sort who'd be eaten alive in
prison. He was painfully eager to make a deal. To everyone's delight,
Junior agreed to testify against his uncle under the condition that
he could remain 'monogamous.' With Mahoney in prison, pending trial,
Junior must have felt relatively safe in testifying.
Unfortunately, Mahoney's reach was longer than anyone had
thought. Even from prison, Mahoney was able to cow his nephew into
silence. There was no testimony, and Mahoney went free--again--but it
made little difference in the end. Five months later, Bunk was in
prison, and Mahoney was dead. The good guys had won. Sort of.
How stupid of them not to realize that prison was nothing.
Mahoney's reach could extend from the grave itself.
By the time May of ninety-eight rolled around, Jason's life was
going pretty well for a change. It finally seemed like the whole mess
was actually going to *end*. Judge 'Georgia-Rae-paid-for-my-yacht'
Gibbons was under investigation for corruption by the FBI. It also
came as no surprise that Georgia Rae's lawsuit against the police
department was summarily dismissed.
But then, Judge Gibbons was murdered. Stabbed to death. In
broad daylight. Right outside the courthouse. It was a killing of an
up-close and personal nature, and whoever did it didn't give a damn
about being caught. It didn't take them long to find and bring in the
killer: Georgia Rae's son and Luther's nephew--Junior Bunk.
Considering that Gibbons had recently finagled Bunk's early
release from prison, the whole situation had a delightfully ironic
symmetry to it. Also nice was the fact that the case was nicely open-
and-shut. Bunk did it, and Bunk was going away--for good. The legal
system didn't look too kindly on judge-murderers, even when the judge
in question was on the take. They hauled Bunk in, and that should
have been that. End of story, right?
Wrong.
The Junior who'd emerged from prison was not the same one who'd
gone in. The whimpering little mama's boy was now a stone-cold killer
with hard, dead eyes. Bunk had picked up some toughness in prison,
and Mama's little boy was primed for her to turn him into an
instrument of her vengeance. For him, killing Gibbons was probably
about as morally agonizing as swatting a bug. Pembleton and Bayliss
worked him over in the box, hoping to get some more dirt on Georgia
Rae, but Bunk proved that he could no longer be intimidated, not even
by the Dynamic Duo. So, they hauled him out into the squad room and
cuffed him to a bench until he could be hauled down to central
booking.
Jason's desk was less than twenty feet from where Bunk was
sitting, but it didn't even occur to him to be on his guard. He was
still on desk duty. Bunk was in cuffs. There were at least ten
detectives and uniforms around. They were in the *squad room*, for
crying out loud! It should have been the safest place in the world.
At least, it would have been if Bunk hadn't seen a gun being
put away in a nearby desk.
It wasn't until much later that Jason found out exactly what
had happened next.
Bunk asked to call his lawyer. He had the right, so they
couldn't exactly refuse the request. Someone freed one of Bunk's
wrists so he could reach the phone on the desk next to him. The desk
that just happened to have a loaded gun in the top drawer.
Jason was leaning against his desk, perusing a menu from a new
carry-out place when he heard the first shot. He looked up to see a
uniformed officer crash to the ground.
Seconds stretched out with horrible clarity as people dove for
cover or reached for their weapons. Another shot, and Gharty fell
back against the far wall, red blooming across the front of his shirt
as he slid to the floor. Jason fumbled for his gun, cursing his
slowness and instinctively turning to look for the shooter, praying
he would see him in time to knock his aim aside with a twist of his
mind, but...
It felt like he'd been hit square in the chest with a
sledgehammer. He stumbled back, getting tangled up with his own desk
chair before toppling to the floor.
His vision grayed out as he fought to stay awake. He was dimly
aware of seeing another officer go down and of hearing another body
tumble to the floor. A woman yelped in pain--oh God, Ballard had been
hit--but it was drowned out by another volley of shots. Then,
silence.
It was only later that Falsone told him that Bunk had been
gunned down by Gee, Bayliss, Lewis, and Kellerman.
His chest hurt. He kept trying to draw a breath, but his lungs
couldn't catch on anything. Things were moving, but there was no air
coming in. Just a bubbling, whistling sound. He fought to remain
awake, fought to breathe. His chest was on fire, but the rest of him
was cold. It would be so much easier just to sleep...
He was not even aware of when the paramedics started working on
him. The last thing he remembered was a sudden silence, like the
absence of a background noise he had hardly ever noticed before.
His heart stopped.
...
...
Sound returned, coming in like a rush of wind, and he snapped
violently back into consciousness. His vision was blurry, but at
least there was light, and he was standing on his own two feet. The
light wasn't anything like the warm, peaceful glow that all those
Discovery Channel specials said to expect--the famed 'go into the
light' light. It was more like a cold, flickering fluorescent light.
On the plus side, he didn't smell any sulfur or brimstone. What he
*did* smell was an oddly familiar blend of burnt coffee, damp
concrete, paper, air-freshener, and mildew.
His vision cleared, and he looked up to see the not-quite-
living-up-to-its-reputation light, and got the shock of his
li...afterlife. It looked like a fluorescent light because it *was* a
fluorescent light, just one of many set into the ceiling of...
...the squad room?
He'd never imagined that the afterlife would simply be showing
up for work the next day. What was he supposed to do now? Clock in or
something? Would someone show up and give him some instructions?
He gradually became aware of a host of shadowy figures milling
about the room. There were men, women, children, people of all races,
shapes, and sizes. He couldn't quite get a good look at any of them,
but he thought he recognized one or two of them, and he knew that
they were others who had died, some of them a long time ago. He
thought that one of them was the uniformed cop who'd fallen to Bunk's
first bullet. Another looked like an old informant of his who'd been
killed execution-style back in ninety-five. All of them had died at
someone else's hand.
All of a sudden, he *really* didn't want to look at the shadowy
figures any more. He didn't want to recognize anyone else. Wasn't
there somebody more solid hanging around? Someone who could tell him
what was going on? He checked his hands. They seemed solid enough.
There was no sign of a wound on his chest. He was wearing the blue
shirt and gray tie he'd put on that morning, but something seemed
off, as if he should have been wearing something else, something a
little more formal. His dress uniform, maybe?
Probably. After all, that's what you were *supposed* to wear to
a cop funeral, he thought hysterically.
His funeral. Somewhere out there, someone was probably writing
up his death certificate. He ran a hand down his chest and stomach,
suddenly queasy at the thought that even now, Dr. Scheiner might be
cutting the Y-incision for his autopsy. Someone was probably breaking
the news to his mom.
Two sons in less than a year...oh, God, this was going to
destroy her.
He had to get back. Maybe he wasn't so much dead as...as in
some sort of limbo or something. Maybe the doctors were still working
on him. There had to be some way of turning back. There were too many
things left unfinished. Too many regrets. It couldn't be over now,
damn it!
At the same time, what about all the murder victims he had
seen? How many of them had left things unfinished, or unsaid? Why
should he expect the rules to be any different for him?
He forced himself to ignore these doubts and kept looking
around, not sure what he was hoping to find. A lit 'EXIT' sign,
maybe? The door to the hallway led only into a gray fog, and he
wasn't quite ready to risk getting lost out there. The ghosties were
either fading, or he was getting better at ignoring them. On a whim,
he picked up the phone on Bayliss' desk. No dial tone. He tried all
the different lines and rattled the switch a couple of times, but
nothing happened. The other phones were just as helpful. Gee's office
was dark--no help there, not that he'd really expected any.
Jason wandered aimlessly around the squad room for a while,
wondering what on earth was supposed to happen next. The white-board
still stood where it always had, but instead of having victims listed
under the detectives' names--black for solved cases, red for
unsolved--the board was as white and unmarred as freshly fallen snow.
There wasn't even a hint of dry-erase dust in the corners. It was as
if the board had never even been used.
Weird.
He picked up one of the markers, half-tempted to write 'Kilroy
was here' or something else equally stupid on the board, when he
heard something from the break room--the sound of liquid sloshing
into a styrofoam cup, and the familiar squeak of one of the old
plastic chairs. Whatever made that noise was no ghost.
Someone far more solid than the ghosts walked by the open door,
and waved Jason over.
"C'mon in," the man said in a rich, almost gravelly voice. "We
just put another pot on. Have a cup while you're waiting."
Jason blinked a couple of times and slowly walked towards the
break room. The bald, pudgy man looked familiar, but he couldn't
place him right away. The small mustache and egg-like head were
unmistakeable, and Jason remembered seeing a picture of this man
somewhere. He just couldn't place the name
"Do I know you?" Jason asked. He stood just outside the door,
not sure if it was safe to accept the invitation.
"Nah, I was before your time," the man said. He started to hold
out his right hand, then realized that there was a cup of coffee in
it. He switched the cup to his other hand, then re-offered the
handshake. "Steve Crosetti."
Jason took Crosetti's hand, startled at the warm, calloused
*solidity* of it. "You were Lewis's old partner..."
Booze and prescription drugs had been found in his bloodstream.
The body had been found in the river. Lewis was the only one who
still believed that Crosetti's death wasn't a suicide.
"Yeah. You must be Wright, right?" Crosetti said, smirking at
his own joke. "We've been waiting for you. So how is old Meldrick
doing these days?"
"He's not here, so at least he's got that going for him," came
another voice from within the break room. The accent was pure South
Baltimore.
Jason finally stepped into the break room. It didn't look any
different. Dust-covered file boxes were still stacked up on top of
the antiquated vending machines. The tables and the blue plastic
chairs were the same ones he'd seen just that morning. The man who'd
spoken was sitting at one of the break room tables, his hands wrapped
around a styrofoam cup. He was a big, burly type, much like a high-
school football star gone to seed. His black hair was mostly slicked
back but bits of it kept escaping into cowlicks.
"Beau Felton," the man said, smiling wryly. "I'd say it's nice
to meet you, but under the circumstances..." He tilted his head to
one side, inviting Jason to fill in the rest of the comment on his
own.
"Yeah," said Jason. Somehow, this was a lot harder to take than
a room full of ghosties and an empty whiteboard. He'd never met
Felton--alive, that is. He'd assisted a little bit with the
investigation after Felton's undercover assignment with another
department had gone sour in the worst possible way.
"I'll get you a coffee, if you want," Crosetti offered again.
"There isn't any beer, is there?" Jason asked. He needed
something to calm him down rather than wind him up.
Crosetti snorted with laughter. "Beer? Whaddya think this is?
Heaven?" He rolled his eyes and looked at Felton. "New guy."
"Have a seat," Felton said. He certainly looked a lot better
than he had in the morgue. His face didn't look quite the way Jason
imagined it would. "We can play some poker, if you like, once your
friend over there is done with the cards."
Felton nodded his head towards the table at the back of the
break room. Jason turned to look, half afraid he might recognize this
person as well. Gharty and Ballard had also been hit...
Whoever was at the table was screened by an enormous house of
cards. The house was still being built, with cards seemingly flying
up of their own to add height and detail to the building.
Most people would have been astounded by such a structure. It
would have been better to call it a castle of cards, rather than a
house. The main part of the structure was a tall, thin tower, with
pairs of cards set end to end log cabin style, but somewhat angled,
so that the whole thing formed a gentle upwards spiral. Elegantly
cantilevered balconies jutted out from the tower at intervals that
seemed random but that somehow contributed to an overall sense of
balance. Two shorter towers flanked the larger one, and were
connected to it by elaborate trestles.
Jason's breath caught in his throat, and the room became bright
and wavery. As soon as he saw the tower, he knew *exactly* who was
sitting at the other side of that table, and this was not bad, no,
not bad at all.
"Jake?"
His brother held up one finger, silencing him. "Aaaaal-most
done," he said softly. One hand steadied the tower, quietly
convincing it that the support it needed would be there shortly, and
redirecting the stresses until he could slide that one last card into
place. Then, he picked up the card and placed it so that it stood on
one corner, with its opposite corner centered on a card above. Jake
gently flicked the card so that it spun on its axis. It didn't add
much to the appearance of the building, but Jason knew that the
integrity of the entire structure rested on this one card.
"Jake? Aren't you...didn't...there was a fire," he finished
lamely. Of all the things to say. Out of all the things he was so
*desperate* to say...
Jake nodded. "Yeah. History keeps on repeating itself and all
that jazz. Sucks, doesn't it?" His voice caught as he spoke. "So.
Here we are."
Jason nodded, and swallowed. "Yeah. Here we are."
Crosetti and Felton were talking just a little more loudly than
necessary, and Felton had angled his chair so that he wasn't looking
straight at them. Jason was grateful for the small attempt to give
them some privacy.
"What now?" Jason asked, his own voice trembling. He sat down
at Jake's table. Part of him wanted to crow with delight at finding
his brother, while the rest of him was trying not to curl up in a
ball and weep.
"We'll get to that in a minute or two, Jase." As the card
slowed, Jake gave it another flick to keep it spinning. "I need to
take this thing apart, first. Your two buddies there were nice enough
to let me borrow their cards."
"Even in the afterlife, you're always building shit, Jake."
Jake glared at him in mock indignation. "Like I'm supposed to
sit here doing squat while you take your time farting around and
checking out the scenery?"
"*Some* people like to play poker when other people aren't
hogging the cards," Crosetti warned. "You almost done with that
thing?"
For a moment, another image was superimposed over the cards. It
was a castle, with three connected towers that Jason knew were
supposed to symbolize a branching river. Intead of pasteboard, the
original castle was constructed of delicate, irregular layers of a
blue mica and quartz, arranged so that the intense light of the sun
rippled and refracted through them. Anyone looking at the castle
would have thought it was built out of cool, rushing water. He had
seen this place somewhere, if only in his imagination.
"I'm done," said Jake. "I was just killing time until Jase
showed up, that's all." He stopped the spinning card, and pulled it
out without disturbing any of the other cards around it. For a
moment, the structure stood in a strangely active stillness. Then,
the cards fluttered to the table without fanfare.
"Hey, you'd better pick those up," Felton warned. "I'm not in
the mood to play fifty-two pickup."
"Ah, put a sock in it," said Jake. He swept the cards together.
Jason noted with no little admiration that the cards had all fallen
face down. Jake always thought of little details like that when he
built stuff.
Jake squared the deck and handed it back to Felton. "What about
the card you yanked?" Felton asked.
Jake flicked the card through the air. Felton grabbed for it
and missed. "It's just a Joker," Jake said.
"Hey, it's not a game unless there's wild cards," Crosetti
said. "Wright, did you ever get yourself that cup of coffee?"
Simply mentioning it made the odor of coffee seem even
stronger. The coffee in the squad room wasn't exactly *good* coffee,
but it was the way coffee was supposed to be at work--either a little
too strong or a little too weak, always a little burnt tasting, and
with the slightly oily feel it got from powdered creamer. You weren't
supposed to enjoy it, but when you drank it, you knew you were giving
the body its recommended daily allowance of caffeine.
He was just starting to accept when Jake shook his head
sharply.
"Uh, I'll pass, thanks," Jason stammered. He turned back to
Jake. "What the hell crawled up your butt?" he hissed.
Then, he started to shake. He wrapped his arms across his
chest, clutching at his own shoulders as if trying to keep himself
from flying apart into a million pieces. It shouldn't be like this.
He shouldn't just be taking Jake--taking *them*--for granted like
this.
"I'm just looking out for my brother, that's all," Jake said,
as if nothing at all was wrong. "Sorry about the coffee, but there's
rules here. Eating or drinking anything would be a really bad idea
right now."
Right. Pomegranate seeds and a time-share in hell and all that.
Either there was something to be said for Greek myths, or his brain
was dredging up nearly forgotten bits of trivia to build an elaborate
near-death hallucination.
Still, it was unimportant compared to what he and Jake were
doing there. Before he could gather his wits together to ask another
question, Jake spoke up with the answer.
"Things got all screwed up this time around."
Jason heard exactly what Jake *didn't* say: "*You* screwed up
this time around."
It was the same exact thing he didn't say during those last few
months, as he had quietly and patiently pressed at Jason to talk
about things. Jason had kept quiet, so afraid of losing his brother,
only to lose him anyway.
"I'm sorry. I am so, so sorry."
Jake got up and went over to his brother. He crouched down by
Jason's chair and put an arm (oh so real...) around his shoulders,
gently rocking him and speaking to him softly in the mish-mosh of
Japanese and English that was their own private childhood language.
"It'll be okay, Jase. Shh. Everything's going to be just fine."
"I--I messed up big time, didn't I?"
For a moment Jake's arm tensed.
"That's in the past," he said carefully. "Things should have
been different this time around, but--"
"I can't live with it any more," Jason whispered. "I swear, if
I get out of this, I'll tell Gee everything I know about the Mahoney
shooting. I *swear*."
"This isn't about Mahoney!" Jake snapped. "Would you just shut
up for a second?"
Jason kept on speaking, everything he'd been wanting to say
spilling out over his brother's attempt to quiet him. "I need to tell
him how if Kellerman hadn't shot him, I would have--"
Jake's eyes grew cold. "No! Thinking something is *not* the
same as doing something! And don't go all altar boy on me and start
quoting the Sermon on the Mount. You held back. Kellerman didn't.
That's what's important. Temptation and obsession aren't the same
thing, okay?" His face softened and he shook Jason by the shoulders.
"This isn't about Mahoney, okay? That's all being wrapped up right
now. It's out of your hands. It's about what happened in Japan."
"Japan? That was ten, fifteen years ago! What am I supposed to
remember?"
"You don't remember? You were there just a couple of months
ago."
"I--" Whatever he was going to say died in his throat. He
pulled free of Jake's half-hug and paced across the room. Crosetti
and Felton had given up trying to be polite ane were watching the
show with poorly disguised interest.
He was about to protest that he didn't make it any further than
Toronto, but he now knew that was a lie. Fragments of memory
flickered and expired.
Getting on the plane with Michel, and getting the stewardess to
get seats reassigned so they could sit together and talk on the
flight out.
Arguing with someone in a dark, cavern-like room. At the edges
of the room were things that must have crept out of some nightmare.
Shaking his head in amusement and exasperation as a copper-
haired young woman begged him to keep something secret for her. He
was struck by the delight in her impossibly green eyes as he agreed
to cover for her.
Looking in quiet amazement and pride at the original of Jake's
house of cards, watching it shimmer in sunlight as it hung in the
darkness of space, its base ending not in a flat foundation, but in
cataracts of crystal like sheets of water suspended in time.
Watching beautiful dark eyes go wide with horror before the
life faded... Enough!
"What the hell is going on here! Tell me why I recognized that
thing you were building!"
Jake looked at him oddly for a moment. Jason could see the
worry in his brother's eyes, but he didn't know what had put it
there. "How much do you remember, Jase? About...before?"
"What the hell are you talking about, before?"
The worry faded to hurt. "Don't you remember? The games we
would play? The stories we'd make up?"
Of *course* he remembered the fantasy role-playing game he and
Jake used to dip into when they were younger. G.I. Joes, Micronauts,
Stretch Armstrong, Legos, and Emma's Bionic Woman action figure were
all brought into play to help create an elaborate serial adventure
story. Somewhere in his basement was a box that held a folder full of
the maps and drawings that they'd created over the years.
"Remember how the stories kinda wrote themselves?"
Jason froze. Things that had nearly been forgotten came back
with astonishing clarity.
"Didn't you ever wonder if we weren't making them up?"
The blue castle shimmering and floating in space. Mariner
Castle. The name wasn't in a language that he recognized, but the
meaning was absolutely clear. He could remember bending his mind
around pieces of fragile blue stone, shaping them and reconfiguring
them so they could take the stress of supporting a building.
"Didn't you ever wonder why we stopped playing? Why one day it
just stopped being fun?"
Other memories started to surface (he remembered pushing Jake
to the ground after Jake had asked about the game one too many times)
but he refused to look too closely at them.
"Jake, I don't want to talk about this," he said, his voice
shrill.
"Jase, what's past is past. You can't change it, you can't get
it back, and you sure as hell can't pretend it didn't happen."
"Please. Don't..."
"With us, though, something special happened. We got a one-in-
a-million chance at a do-over, a chance to maybe get things right
this time." Jake looked squarely at his brother. "Problem is, I died
in a stupid accident. I was supposed to be with you for the ride, but
I wasn't. That's how things got screwed up. Not because you messed
up--which you did, so don't think you're off the hook--but because I
wasn't there to help out. Seems there's some sort of loophole,
though, which is why we can talk like this one last time."
"Last?"
Jake smiled sadly. For a moment, Jason saw other clothes
superimposed over Jake's BCFD shirt, and somehow his brother's face
looked different--longer and more tanned--but the eyes were the same.
"Things may have gone wrong, but you haven't lost your chance
at a do-over. That's pretty much what I'm here to tell you."
"You mean I can go back and put everything right?" Jason still
didn't understand half of what Jake was talking about, but the
promise that he had another chance was something he could cling to as
a lifeline.
"Something like that. I got a feeling it's a little more
complicated than that, though. C'mon, bro," Jake said, standing up.
It broke Jason's heart to see that familiar, crooked grin. "Time, she
is a wasting. We got things to see, people to do."
Jason tried to laugh at the stale old joke, but it came out as
more of a sob.
"Now, I'll tell you this," Jake said, clapping a warm, solid
hand on Jason's shoulder. "I've gotta be moving on..."
"But..." Jason protested. Was this all they got? A few minutes
to say goodbye and nothing more? That was *it*?
"...but *you* got places to go, my man." Jake looked up at him,
eyes narrowed mischievously. "If you want, that is. You can stay here
with these clowns," he said gesturing back to Felton and Crosetti.
Crosetti waved. "Or, you can go back out there and put up with
whatever life's going to throw at you."
Jason looked out the break room door. The squad room seemed
much darker than it had before. There were no more shadows wandering
around, but he couldn't help feeling that there was something--
someone--waiting for him in there.
Jake smiled at him, sadly. "I wish I could say it was going to
be easy." He reached out and squeezed Jason's hand. "I wish you
didn't have to go this alone. You know I'd do anything I could do to
help. Maybe there's some way I could..." He shook his head as if
chasing off that last thought. "I wish there was more I could do, but
I don't think I'd be here to talk to you if you didn't have some sort
of chance."
"Yeah." He was barely able to say that much and he didn't trust
himself to say any more.
"Well, the least I can do is see you off," Jake said as he
stood up. His voice didn't sound all that steady, either.
Jason stood up and his brother grabbed him in a bear hug. They
stood that way for a while, then let go.
Once again, Jake's features and clothing seemed to shift. The
person smiled at him with Jake's crooked smile, and when he spoke,
once again Jason could understand the meaning behind an alien
language. "Se phileo kai s'aphiemi, adelphe. 'Upage eirene."
I love you and forgive you, my brother. Go in peace.
Then, Jake was Jake again.
"I love you, too," said Jason. Saying goodbye was harder now
than it was at the funeral.
Jake gently punched him in the shoulder. "Everything's gonna be
just fine. Look after my girl for me, okay? Tell her I'm sorry things
didn't work out so good for us this time around. It would've been
nice to have a happy ending, but I guess it wasn't in the cards," he
said wistfully.
"Huh?" As far as he knew, Jake hadn't been seeing anyone
seriously for over a year.
"Ah, don't worry about it. Just be sure you don't waste *your*
chance at a do-over." Jake held his brother at arms length, hands on
his shoulders, as he studied him. "If you go through with this, it
ain't gonna be easy, you know that."
Jason blinked, trying to ignore the sting in his eyes. In the
end, there really wasn't a goodbye, just one last hug, and then Jason
turned and left.
So, he departed the break room and passed into the squad room
proper. It wasn't quite the River Styx, but he knew that he'd crossed
over an important line. He recalled just enough of Brother Anthony's
lectures on Greek mythology to know that he probably shouldn't turn
around for one last look at Jake.
The squad room was empty. The ghosts--if that was what they
were--had gone off to haunt someone else. The desks looked the same
as they always did. As he walked slowly towards the center of the
room, he ran his fingers along the edge of Bayliss's desk, feeling
the slight stickiness of coffee rings. He could even smell the faint
odor of stale cigarette smoke that lingered in the walls years after
they'd banned smoking in the workplace. Whatever this was, it was no
dream or vision. It was solid, and it was true.
The only hint of unreality was that nothing cast a shadow. A
soft, dull light grayed everything ever so slightly. No, not
everything--he caught a flicker of red out of the corner of his eye.
He turned to look, but it was gone.
There it was again, even larger this time, but again it
vanished as soon as he tried to focus. Another bit of red flashed by
like a gnat, and then another. He was so distracted by trying to find
out what they were that he almost didn't notice that the light in
Gee's office was on.
His heart hammered in his throat. Bunk hadn't gotten Gee, had
he? Gee was too big, too *alive* to have been gunned down by someone
like that little punk. Jason took a deep breath and headed for Gee's
office, ignoring the motes of red that were now rushing past him just
on the edge of vision.
Gee's door was flung open and there was Lieutenant Giardello
himself, big as the wrath of God and twice as angry.
"Wright! What are you loafing around here for?" he roared. He
strode out into the squad room.
Jason started to protest that he was dead--well, mostly dead,
but Gee cut him off.
"I don't want excuses, Wright. I want results!" He pointed over
Wright's shoulder. "See that board? See all that red?"
But there *wasn't* any red on the board. He'd seen it when he'd
come in. The board was clean. In the land of the dead, it was the
victims who were on trial, not their killers. He started to say
something, but Giardello's expression stopped the words before they
could even form.
"The *board*, Wright," he repeated. "The city isn't paying you
to stand around and be decorative."
He didn't want to turn around. In places like this, turning
around was a very bad idea. If you weren't careful, people turned
into pillars of salt. Other times, you'd have to watch someone you
loved being sucked back into hell. He'd stepped through the door, so
he was going to live, wasn't he? Wasn't that enough? That he go on
living and find some way to atone for what he had done?
Giardello's expression softened and he laid one huge hand on
Jason's shoulder. "Look, I know it's not fair, but you're the only
man for the job right now."
Jason looked into Gee's eyes. The dark face and even darker
eyes were the same ones he remembered, but he had a feeling that it
was someone other than Al Giardello looking out at him. He thought he
saw a hint of red in Gee's irises, but he could have been imagining
things.
Speaking of red...
Jason turned to look at the board and cried out in horror.
The board was covered in names. Red kept flowing onto the board
like blood trickling across slabs of marble.
"You're a detective. Those are crimes. Solve them." Gee's voice
was not unkind.
The names were written in impossibly tiny script that looked
like sandpiper tracks. There were so many names, and the motes of red
kept flying to the board, adding name after name to the list. His own
name was written large at the top of the board in strange black
letters that looked as if they'd been carved deep into the white. He
was the primary. These were *his* cases. *His* responsibility.
"I can't do it, Gee," he said. "There are too many! How can
I..."
He was going to say 'solve them all,' but the words that wanted
to come out of his mouth were something else altogether.
"You have a choice, Talusidhis," Not-Gee said. Jason looked up
at him. He still saw Gee, but he also saw someone else, with red eyes
as opposed to Gee's brown, and pale golden skin as opposed to Gee's
deep ebony.
"That's not my name," he whispered harshly, but he couldn't
deny that something in him sat up in recognition.
"As I said, you have a choice." Not-Gee's voice had tones under
it like warm, golden trumpets. "Face the truth, or..."
What choice? He'd been trying to convince himself that things
had not happened as they had, or to simply forget that they had
happened at all, and he didn't want to live with that any more. He
*couldn't* live with that any more.
He answered before he could even hear what the 'or' might have
been. "Okay. I don't know what the hell you're talking about, but
I'll..."
At that very instant, everything from those seven missing weeks
came flooding back into his mind. Everything from the moment he had
been offered a choice and had so carelessly made the wrong one.
Everything he had seen. Everything--oh, Lord have mercy on his soul!
--everything he had done!
He had his seven weeks back, but memories kept flooding in,
pressing in on his brain, nearly pushing *him* out.
"Stop..." he croaked. "It hurts... NO! This isn't me! I never
did these things!" He was half sobbing, half screaming. The memories
kept on coming, far too many memories for one lifetime. He pressed
his fists to his temples, babbling and begging for it to stop. He was
getting lost in these memories, so lost he wasn't sure he could ever
find himself again.
"No...it wasn't supposed to happen like this!" Not-Gee cried to
someone Jason couldn't see. "It's too much. He wasn't supposed to see
this much!"
It was no use. Jason saw it all, everything, all at once. Dark
eyes, sad eyes, confused, and accusing, even as the life-light faded
from them. Bodies, burned and bleeding, strewn across the floor of a
marble palace. A figure, shrouded with fire, falling screaming from
the sky like a murdered angel.
Jason fell to his knees, battered down by the weight of the
memories, screaming and screaming until his throat was raw and
bloody.
# # #
Back in Taiyouko's apartment, three years and half a world
away, Jason blinked his eyes. Taiyouko was watching him intently,
even as she continued to work on a quilt she'd picked up to occupy
her hands while Jason told his story.
"That's when I woke up in the hospital. I started freaking out,
not just because of all the stuff rattling around my head, but also
because I had this big old tube jammed down my throat. It's weird
because it's like you're choking, but this thing is what's *helping*
you breathe, only it doesn't feel like it."
Just thinking about it brought back an echo of frantic fear and
panic. When the nurse de-intubated him, it was even worse. He'd felt
like bits of *him* were coming out with the tube. For a couple of
days after that, it hurt to speak.
"According to the docs, I was pretty lucky. The bullet
ricocheted off a rib, and bounced through me like a pachinko ball."
Taiyouko nearly rammed the needle through her finger. "They
call that *lucky?*"
Jason shrugged. "It missed a major artery by about a
millimeter. If it had hit that, I'd have bled out before the
paramedics could get to me. That's why the diagnosis of 'lucky.' As
it was, they wound up having to take out a bit of my left lung along
with my..." His hand hovered over the lower edge of his rib cage.
"It's 'spleen' in English, if that helps."
Taiyouko looked properly horrified, and slightly ill. "They
took parts of you *out*? Wouldn't that cause problems?"
"It just means that I have to take heavy-duty antibiotics if I
get so much as a cold," he said, exaggerating slightly. It was kind
of fun to see Taiyouko knocked off balance like this. He had a
feeling it didn't happen very often.
"What happened to the others you mentioned?" Taiyouko didn't
even attempt to pronounce their names. "And did you talk to this
'Gee' person about Mahoney?"
"I tried to, but he said it had all come clean while I was in
the hospital, and all he wanted was for everyone to forget about it."
Taiyouko looked less than pleased at that, and her stitching
started to look more like repeated stabbing.
"Kellerman agreed to resign, and that seemed to settle matters
as far as Gee was concerned." He didn't mention that Frank Pembleton
had also resigned in disgust over Giardello's refusal to take matters
any further than that. He didn't want to hear Taiyouko's comments on
the matter. "Still, it doesn't change the fact that three cops were
dead. When they went after Georgia Rae that night, Bayliss got shot
and was messed up even worse than I was. Gharty's wound looked a lot
worse than it was, from what I understand. Ballard got shot in the
ankle, which doesn't sound so bad, but she wound up having to go
through more surgery and physical therapy than the rest of us, if you
can believe that. Giardello thought that more than enough damage had
been done to the department already, and pretty much told me that if
I needed to ease my conscience, to go to my parish priest."
"And did you?"
"No."
He realized with no little shock that this was the first time
he'd ever sat down and told anyone even this much of the story. He
had told the story to himself so many times that he felt that
everyone else must be as sick of it as he was.
"It's three years later, Wonder-boy. Are you trying to tell me
that it's been that long since you've done anything about what you
saw?" she asked derisively. "It sounds to me like someone has a
slight problem with follow-through."
He could feel the heat rising to his face. "Why should I have
done anything?" he snapped. "I kept telling myself that it wasn't
real. Also, I had enough to do with getting over being shot. It's not
like it is on TV, where you're back on the job the next week like
nothing happened. I had twelve weeks of recovery and therapy before I
could even go back on desk duty." Twelve weeks of forcing himself to
cough up the gunk from his lungs even though it felt like the effort
would kill him. Twelve weeks of being left alone all too often with
nothing but his own thoughts for company. "It was worse than the
hospital in Norfolk. Then, I was missing memories. This time, I had
too many."
"And what are these memories about, anyway? You were starting
to tell me, but then you cut away into a recitation of your internal
organs."
He pressed his hands to his temples and squeezed his eyes shut.
"You never let go, do you? You just want to get right to the answer,
no matter what."
Taiyouko didn't answer that. She just sat there with a quilting
frame and piles of yellow and green calico in her lap, stitching away
implacably. For a moment, he thought he saw her face subtly shift
from expression to expression as it had earlier that day.
"So, you're sure that what you saw wasn't just a dream?" she
said, once the flurry of expressions had passed. "Most people don't
believe in dreams or visions. I'm not saying I think you're crazy. I
just want to know why *you* think you aren't."
"Sometimes, I think I *am* more than a little crazy," he
muttered. "It would be easier if I was, but you know what it's like,
being a detective. You have to follow the evidence, even if you don't
like where it takes you. Too bad for me, every bit of evidence I've
found only leads me to think that all that shit I saw was real. You
handed me one piece of it yourself."
"The phone number. Have you called?" she asked matter-of-
factly, as if asking if he'd called to schedule a dentist's
appointment.
He shook his head. From the feel of things, he was blushing
again. "Too scared," he said. "Scared of what I might hear. Scared of
screwing up someone's life the way mine's been screwed up. I wouldn't
wish this on anyone, you know?"
"What other evidence have you found?" Taiyouko seemed to be
completely immune to any kind of bid for sympathy.
He shrugged. "I've got a few names, but that's it. One of them
has some weird foreign spelling, and I haven't been able to get
anywhere. The first lead I followed was the guy I met in Toronto. I
had a chance to talk with him and hear something about his life. To
be honest, I first started digging into this because I was hoping to
find out that I was wrong, and all of this was only some sort of
dream. Too bad for me, I find out that not only was Michel real, he'd
gone missing at about the same time that I took off for seven weeks."
"Let me guess," she drawled. "Unlike someone else we know, he
didn't just reappear out of the blue one day."
Jason nodded. "About six months ago friend of a friend got me
in touch with someone in the RCMP. I passed along what I knew to this
Constable Fraser, and a few days later I get a scary phone call from
an Inspector Thatcher. She tells me that not only is the Celeste
disappearance still an open case, I just might be in a shitload of
trouble since my getting on the plane with him in Toronto makes me
one of the last people to ever see the guy. Getting raked over the
coals by a Mountie did a lot to get rid of some of my doubts."
"Given the fact that you can move objects with your mind, I'm
surprised you stayed a doubter as long as you did."
"It's not the same," he grumbled. His dad, his siblings,
several of his uncles, and his grandfather were all similarly gifted.
He'd grown up thinking it was normal, but one of those things that
you kept hidden from those outside the family, like a family tendency
towards kleptomania. "Celeste and Ellwood have paper trails. I bet
the other guy would, too, if I could get his name right. That's
*evidence*. You know, the stuff you take to court? The problem I'm
running into is all the other stuff that got poured into my head
while I was on the operating table."
She raised an eyebrow. "What kind of 'stuff?' I've noticed that
you keep sidling up to telling me something, then backing off.
Earlier, you told me that this all was somehow connected to the Chiba
case, so you know I'm not going to let you get away with skirting the
issue forever. What's the problem with just telling me?"
"The problem I have is that I don't like people thinking I've
gone completely nuts! Don't I get even a little credit for telling
you as much as I have?"
Taiyouko made a little 'hmph' sound. She was listening, but she
was also occupied with a tricky bit of stitching.
"I already told you I believed you when you told me about Chiba
being a king and his girlfriends being some sort of superheroes. So,
now that you've finished acting out, why don't we try approaching
this from another direction. You told me that some extra memories
found their way into your head, correct? You have nothing against
which to check these memories to see if they're true or nothing more
than a hallucination, also correct?"
She took her scissors and snipped the quilting thread close to
the fabric. "Assume for a moment that someone has come up to you and
recounted a set of memories that matched several aspects of your own.
Let's imagine that this person told you about a large marble palace--
somewhat Indian in design, I'd say--with a spectacular view of the
Earth hanging in space. Unfortunately, this person also tells you
that there's some sort of war with people flinging lightning and
firebolts left and right. This war..."
She was taken with a sudden coughing fit, but held up a finger
to tell Jason that she wasn't done speaking.
He didn't wait for her to recover.
"You..." he pointed at her. "You... know about this?" His voice
went up several octaves. "I've been sitting here turning my brain
inside out, and you've known all along what I was going to say?"
Taiyouko shrugged. She wiped her eyes clear of the tears the
cough had shaken loose.
"To be honest, I was taking a shot in the dark. You're not the
only one with memories that seem to have taken place in another life
that's very different from this one," she said with surprising
gentleness. "I was hoping you could tell me more about the Chiba
case, but I wasn't expecting to get some confirmation that *I* wasn't
crazy."
He turned that over in his head for a bit, trying to fit these
new facts into what he knew. For a moment, he studied the older
detective, taking in anew the short, dumpy form and pinched face.
"You... you're not trying to tell me that you're one of those
Sailor Senshi, are you?"
Her mouth pursed and her hazel eyes narrowed in amused disgust.
"I should hope not! Let's just say that after a certain age, butt-
bows and mini-skirts are not exactly a good idea."
Jason, in a move born of sheer self-preservation, clapped one
hand over his mouth.
"You'd better not be laughing,"
"Er...sorry."
"As it turns out, I haven't a clue about whether I'm a Sailor
Senshi or something else altogether. All I know is that there's this
other person in my head..." She scowled and rolled her eyes. "Fine!
Be that way! Apparently," she said, enunciating with the precision of
the well and truly pissed off, "there's another aspect of *me* in
here. It *claims* that it *is* me, that I'm *it*, that it's always
*been* me, that it's always *been* here." She shook her head in
disgust.
Jason blinked a couple of times. "You've been possessed by
Ambassador Kosh?"
She stared at him, then waved his failed joke aside.
"Possession, past life, who cares? All I know is that I'd better not
start coughing up pea soup and having my head spin round and round."
"I'm with you there," he said in all sincerity. He got up and
paced around the apartment, trying to find something in the folksy-
country dŽcor to take his mind off the implications of what she was
telling him. "So, I've told you my freaky story. What now?"
Taiyouko raised one eyebrow. "Now? Now you tell me about those
missing seven weeks and what this has to do with the case we're
investigating. I'm not done with you, Wonder-boy."
"Do I have to?" God, that sounded whiny. He wished he could
rewind, erase, and say something that didn't make him sound like a
six-year-old.
Taiyouko thought about that for a while. Then, she cocked her
head and smiled nastily. "Yes."
Well, that didn't give him much wiggle room, did it? He was
torn between running for the door and launching right into the worst
part of his story.
It wasn't that he didn't want to tell the story. What he wanted
was to tell the story to someone who could offer him some kind of
absolution. Taiyouko wasn't that person. In fact, she was likely to
rake him over the coals for each little transgression.
A small, traitorous part of himself told him that this was
*exactly* why he had opened up to the curmudgeonly little detective.
"Let me tell you something, Wonder-boy," she said, interrupting
his thoughts. "I was the primary on this case fourteen years ago.
That's when this whatever-it-is in my mind woke up for the first
time."
Her voice trailed off for a moment, then she shook her head and
continued. "Maybe not the *first* time, but that's beside the point.
What's important here is that these extra memories didn't start
winkling their way back in until the Chiba case was reopened--and
reopened with no good explanation, mind you. Once I add you and your
experiences into the equation, things move past coincidental to
pretty damned fishy. Oh! And let's not forget that you recognized
something about those mud creatures that attacked us."
His heart sank. "Yes. I did." He'd recognized the enchantment,
all right. It was just one more sign that he if he kept following
this road, he wasn't going to like what he found.
He held up a hand, stopping Taiyouko before she could say
anything else. "I'll tell you everything I can, but can you give me--
I don't know--an hour? This isn't easy for me, you know? I need to
get out, think a little."
"Sure." Taiyouko chuckled, but her eyes were still cold and
fierce. "Get me a pack of cigarettes--Mild Sevens--while you're at
the bar."
That stung far more than he would have expected. Jason risked
glaring at Taiyouko. Sure enough, she was smirking at him. She'd
scored a hit, and she knew it.
The smirk softened to an almost-smile. "I think we both deserve
a little recreational self-destruction right about now. Just don't
get plastered, okay? Get back here by six, and I'll order us in some
dinner. What do you think goes best with past-life regression? Pizza?
Chicken korma?"
Jason slammed the door on his way out.
She could just sit there wondering if he'd be back, he thought
bitterly, but she probably knew as well as he did that he'd come back
to finish his story. Right now, he just needed to get out and see the
real world for a while, and remind himself...
Remind himself of what, exactly? Of what was real?
He shook his head. He'd learned from hard experience that
thinking in that way was pretty much the opposite of helpful.
One flight down from Taiyouko's floor, he paused, almost
continued on down the stairs, but turned and headed down the second
floor hallway instead.
This was no doubt a *spectacularly* bad idea, he told himself
even as he knocked on Makoto's door.
A minute later, he knocked again. No answer. He leaned down to
see if he could tell if the light coming from under the door was just
the last of the afternoon light, or a sign that someone was home.
After another minute he wandered off, feeling strangely bereft.
He was grateful for Taiyouko's demand for cigarettes. It was good to
have even a little sense of direction for a while.
# # #
Author's Notes: Thanks again to Ice Princess and Luna Hope for their
help as beta readers.
Writing process and progress. Some of the delays in posting the last
part of this chapter were work related. In other ways, this was a
difficult chapter to write. The timing and placement of the last
several scenes was tricky. Originally, Jason's telling of the Mahoney
killing and his dream were all one, long scene, with the
Setsuna/Haruka confrontation occurring before Jason appeared at
Taiyouko's apartment. By putting the first part of the Jason/Taiyouko
scene right after the scene with Mother, I hoped to carry over some
of the notion that the past still has the power to hurt us. Also,
there was a boatload of exposition to shoehorn in here.
"Homicide" fans will probably notice that Jason's after-life vision
was quite similar to the one at the end of the movie-length series
finale. The title of this chapter was also lifted directly from the
sixth-season two-parter where Junior Bunk shot up the squad room, but
that's not the only reason I used that title. In that episode, three
uniformed officers were shot and killed. Gharty was shot in the
chest, and Ballard was shot in the ankle. Figuring that there were
six bullets in the gun, I decided I could add Jason to the casualty
list.
Question to my devoted (or at least mildly bemused) readers: Would a
supplemental chapter with timelines, etc. be welcome or not?
Music listened to during this chapter: "Scarlet's Walk" by Tori Amos.
The first "due South" soundtrack (and yes, that was a shout-out you
saw earlier on). "When I Wake" by Rusted Root.
Coming soon (in geological terms): Chapter 11: Flashpoint