Kira's Kingdom
Scroll 13: Fate Favors the Bold
13.1: Lost and Found
"… Sorrow is the most sensitive of all created things. There is nothing that stirs in the whole world of thought to which sorrow does not vibrate in terrible and exquisite pulsations… It is a wound that bleeds when any hand but that of love touches it, and even then must bleed again, though not in pain. Where there is sorrow there is holy ground. Some day people will realize what that means. They will know nothing of life till they do, - and natures like his can realize it. It was in this spirit, and with this mode of love, that the saints knelt down to wash the feet of the poor, or stooped to kiss the leper on the cheek. Men have gone to heaven for smaller things than that. I have never said one single word to him about what he did. It is not a thing for which one can render formal thanks in formal words. I store it in the treasure-house of my heart… When wisdom has been profitless to me, philosophy barren, and the proverbs and phrases of those who have sought to give me consolation as dust and ashes in my mouth, the memory of that little, lovely, silent act of love has unsealed for me all the wells of pity: made the desert blossom like a rose, and brought me out of the bitterness of lonely exile into harmony with the wounded, broken, and great heart of the world." From De Profundis by Oscar Wilde.
April 26th 2019, Unknown location in the Hradec Králové Region:
As her 23rd birthday approached Black felt increasingly bitter. Her days stretched like false pearls on a string, each one the perfect plastic replica of the one before it. Sometimes she wished she could make a necklace out of those round, seamless beads and then choke herself with them and be done with it.
A few days back she was getting ready to take over the world and inaugurate a new age of peace, and now she was bedridden, utterly helpless. She couldn't even pee unaided. It was enough to drive anyone mad. But, paired up with the fact that she had recently lost the last member of her family and that she had been betrayed by the only man she had allowed herself to fall in love with, well, she would have welcomed if Kira had killed her. But she had realized soon enough that wasn't going to happen. Leaving her in the hands of her captors was a bigger punishment for her failure.
She had always consider herself a strong person, but this somehow seemed like the straw that would break the camel's back. She felt broken, perhaps past the point of no return. She knew she should have been planning, trying to negotiate with her captors, holding onto some sense of purpose. But something inside her had just snapped and she gave up.
For nearly twenty-three years she had been swimming uphill, always the rebel against forces greater, badder and certainly more powerful than her. She had never backed down, never surrendered; not right until the moment when she just did. It was not even a conscious decision. It was not like she woke up and she decided to stop fighting. She just let go.
On the morning of Friday April 26th, four days before the day when she would turn twenty three in Walpurgisnacht, as she felt consciousness creeping on her in the clinical bed that was her prison; the thought of opening her eyes and accepting one more day of life felt like just too much to handle. She couldn't face another day of immobility and trying uselessly to figure a way out. It was too much to bear, so she couldn't be bothered to try.
After fighting for so long, she found out -with more than a little amount of surprise- that giving up was incredibly easy. No wonder a lot of people opt for that out. But, then again, inertia is a bitch. It is a frigging Universal Law: The whole universe is traveling inexorably towards dissolution. So what can be easier for one measly little cog in that merciless blind machinery than to let go and roll with it? And baby, Black was rolling right out of existence.
It couldn't have been simpler. She didn't even have to fight to keep her eyes closed. At some point lying restful in the bed, as if she were already lying in her grave; she wondered why did her body insist on keeping breathing. It continue doing it with little participation and no encouragement from her part.
Marek had come and gone with breakfast thinking that she was essaying some new form of rebellion, but, truth be told, rebellion was the furthest thing from her mind. She wasn't rebellious, not anymore. Never in her life had she felt more cooperative with the forces of entropy dragging her towards oblivion.
Once upon a lifetime she had tried to do yoga and meditation, mostly to get an insistent roommate off her neck. After just one class the roommate had said she was a lost cause, seeing her meditating was like seeing a pressure cooker with a broken steam valve. She looked about to blow up. Wouldn't that hippie girl be surprised if she could see Black now?
She had finally achieved a state in which her mind was blank and she had given up on all her grudges, her grievances, her hopes, her desires, her needs and even her self. So much so that she barely noticed the presence of the man who just the day before had stung her as if she were wrapped in vines of poison ivy. She just didn't care anymore. After reaching a score of world one thousand, Black zero, her will was finally drained up.
Of course Marek was the first to notice, coming back from the room where Black was kept into the room that was functioning as their control room, he sighed so loudly that The Man in Shadows noticed.
"What is it?" He asked with little patience in his voice.
Marek scratched his incipient beard: "Something is wrong with her."
Marek couldn't see the creature that he now called boss, but it was easy to imagine him shrugging dismissively while he said: "She'll eat when she is hungry. I doubt she has the mettle of an Isocrates. She won't starve herself to death and I have no patience nor time to lose with her tantrums."
He denied: "I don't think she is throwing a tantrum… I've seen people like her before. Lying listlessly where you leave them until they drop dead or get killed... She is not right."
"Monitor her, it is not like she is going anywhere."
"There are more ways of escaping than running. Whatever is left in that bed, the girl has escaped."
The Man in Shadows humphed pensively and continued flipping the pages of the odd books he had asked for.
But Marek was not ready to let go of the discussion. Lunch came and went by and their prisoner wasn't budging. By dinner time he hooked her to an IV drip to hydrate her. And by Saturday afternoon he went into the room with a feeding tube. Black didn't even look at him while he prepared the nasogastric tube, the soft tip syringes the tape and a couple of bags of high-caloric nutrition feed. Her eyes were glazed over while he manipulate her to insert the tube, extracted stomach fluid to test the placement and connected the pump.
He inhaled deeply, caressed her unresponsive cheek and asked between teeth: "What is your game, girl? What do you think you are going to gain by this?"
She didn't reply, when he was done feeding her she had sank back in the bed almost on the same spot she had been before. She didn't even seem bothered by the tube taped to her face. Wherever she had gone, he couldn't reach her.
By Sunday Black was getting all her nourishment from the tube. Marek had also had to put a urinary catheter connected to a drainage bag and diapers to keep her from soiling herself. She didn't acknowledge his presence not even when he came to empty the bag or change her diaper. He kept her body working but her soul was simply not there. By Sunday evening even the boss was worried.
He all but growled: "Do you think she is faking it?"
Marek sighed: "No, I don't think so."
As he often did when he needed to focus, he got out of the cloak of darkness stretched his wings and perched on a chair holding onto it with his naked feet and tilting his head sideways like an overgrown parrakeet. Looking at him, despite his stringy mane, dark eye rinds and a general air of unkempt carelessness, Marek had to mentally repeat a phrase like a mantra: he is not an angel, he is not an angel. I don't know what the hell he is, but he is not an angel. Angels don't wear crumpled up sweatshirts and jeans.
The Man in Shadows said: "Is there a way to verify it? Extreme measures may apply"
At first Marek shivered thinking that he had somehow heard his thoughts. Then he realized he was talking about the girl and answered sniggering: "I put a feeding tube and a urine catheter on her without eliciting any reaction. Some would say that is as extreme as it gets."
He omitted to mention that not two weeks ago the girl was trembling with desire under his fingers, though he hadn't gone through with was evidently what the both of them wanted, precisely because he was hiding crucial information from her. He could bet his head the boss wouldn't be interested neither on his personal feelings for the girl nor in his old fashioned chivalry. Good soldiers are not supposed to fall prey to emotion.
Marek stated: "I don't think she is that good an actress."
"What about a brain scan?"
"Even if we managed to get an MRI machine without getting caught that would only tell us what we already know. She is in there, she is just not interacting with the world."
"Do you think he could be controlling her from a distance?" The boss sighed: "If he is, she is as good as dead."
For certain he wasn't an angel. An angel wouldn't be having so much fun at the thought of playing chess with a demon with the fate of the world as the stakes. He almost jumped in anticipation when he mentioned him. Like a school girl before a date with her crush. Marek had to grit his teeth not to tell the creature exactly what he thought about that. Instead he tried to reason with him. The boss was the only chance the girl had and he wasn't ready to let her be another casualty, not on his tab.
Marek asked: "Why would he do that? Why not just kill her, if that is what he wants? What he could gain by it?"
"That is an interesting question: what he could gain, indeed…? I need to think. I need sugar."
"There is some vanilla ice-cream left in the freezer. I haven't had time to go shopping."
"Good, bring it. You know the drill by now, lots of chocolate syrup, walnuts and maraschino cherries." After a couple of rows Marek had managed to get him to say: "Please."
Though Marek didn't feel mollified by the use of the so called magical word. Turns out the magic word is not so magical, not when it is used as a weapon to show contempt.
He wasn't an angel, but the bastard was a little emperor, used to being tended to. Marek doubted he even knew where the kitchen was. But there was nothing to be gained by bringing it up. As the saying goes, they had bigger fishes to fry. So Marek went, scooped two big balls of vanilla ice-cream in a bowl, drenched them with chocolate syrup, sprinkled two spoonfuls of walnuts, a spoonful of maraschino cherries and brought it back.
After finishing half the bowl the big boss spoke: "We could leave her like that. She would be easier to move around."
Marek inhaled deeply: "What about your plan of using her like a Trojan horse?"
He sighed: "Yes, this can complicate things. But as long as no harm comes to her, we can still use her."
"That girl in the bed has given up. I don't know what was your experience with it, but dying can be very easy, easier than living in any case. She is ready to die and she will unless we do something to yank her away from the grip of death."
"We cannot let her die, not yet, we need to shake her out of it."
Marek cocked an eyebrow: "How?"
The boss balanced a spoon in his puckering lips and spoke without dropping it: "You need to go get her plane."
"Does it have to be her airplane?"
The boss balanced on one foot and then on the other thinking. He explained his plan to Marek and finished saying: "It may work with another plane, but I wouldn't want to risk it."
Marek tried not to sound testy when he said: "So it is better to risk me getting killed. It is great to feel appreciated."
He smiled brightly, with that smile he almost looked innocent: "Oh, I appreciate you in your full worth, Black wolf. You are too good to get killed that easily. That is why I chose you."
Marek smirked: "I hope you are right on that one."
Before Marek went out the boss pointed out: "Dying was not easy, at least not for me." Then, almost as an afterthought, he'd said: "You can also buy groceries, if you manage to survive... It's spring so boysenberries, strawberries and cherries are in season, buy some along with some plain whipped cream and confectionery sugar. You don't happen to bake, do you?"
"No, I don't." He did, but he thought changing one set of diapers was more than enough. The creature didn't need to eat, Marek would only go so far in indulging his sweet tooth.
"That's a proper shame." Then he had retreated back into his shield of darkness.
Marek thought: it's a good thing you didn't die easily, bastards like you shouldn't have an easy death. It didn't escape him that he was also one of those bastards that seldom, if ever, die peacefully in their beds.
As he put on his leather jacket and motorbike helmet, as if they were a knight's armor, he thought that dying the hard way was what usually happens when you decide to become the lesser evil that protects the greater good. Then he went out to set in motion the boss' plan of doing a big romantic gesture to shake the girl from the grasp of death.
He hoped from the bottom of his heart that it would work. Then he felt incredibly stupid for thinking it. He had spent more years than he could count cultivating a carefully calculated distance from the world, a distance that would allow him to be close enough to perform his job efficiently and at the same time allowed him to avoid getting close enough to be hurt by what he was doing. And he chose the final apocalyptic battle of his infamous career to fall for a girl sixteen years younger than him. A girl he knew so little about that he didn't even know her real name. Yes, he was right to feel stupid, because he was being stupid. And a part of him, perhaps the most stupid of all, felt happy at the fluttering of real feeling that had managed to take hold inside of the moor his inner landscape had become over the years.
13.2: It comes around
"Instant Karma's gonna get you. Gonna knock you right on the head." Jonh Lennon.
Czech Republic, April 29th 2019; a rogue hangar near Kutná Hora:
Marek found the hangar unguarded and empty save for the girl's plane. That gave him all sorts of misgivings. He had entered cautiously, gun out, suspecting a trap until he saw an apple floating in the air. If it hadn't been for the debriefing the boss had given him on the Shinigami, he would have probably thought he had finally lost his mind. As it was, he was able to think straight.
He smiled in the general direction of the apple which was quickly disappearing: "You must be Ryuk."
The apple stopped being consumed mid-air.
"Hmm, I guess you don't have your notebook with you anymore. It is a pity. This place looks downright forlorn. I bet you could use a friendly chat."
Another apple was picked up from the bowl on the floor by invisible hands and rolled like a red bocce ball. It stopped with uncanny precision right by an all but invisible sliver of paper. The diminutive paper had rough edges and looked chemically burnt. Marek was weary of touching it with his bear hands. Alarms were still sounding in the back of his head. It is a trap they said. But his early alert system may have been screwed up by the residual paranoia of his last mental breakdown. In the end he touched the paper because that was the only way for it to work. Still, he didn't pick it up, he just graced it with the tip of a finger and when he picked it, he did it with a handkerchief.
The figure of the blue Shinigami appeared from thin air. He was smiling too, or at least Marek hoped that he was showing his pointy fangs in a friendly fashion. With the guy's shark like teeth, it was hard to tell for sure.
Ryuk said: "Hyuk! So it is true human criminals return to the scene of the crime."
Marek played coy: "I see my reputation precedes me. Or perhaps you are talking from personal experience. Sorry, have we seen each other before? It is hard to keep track of all those I have wronged. But I think I would remember you, if we had already met."
"I saw you, you didn't saw me. I was wondering about you. All I have now is time to wonder."
He made a courteous inclination with just the right amount of mockery in it for it to be thoroughly insulting: "I'm glad of being of service to one of the great Gods of Death. I'm guessing that you singing like a canary about me kidnapping his girl is the reason why he has kept you alive. He is hoping that you will help him find me. So he has kept you alive and given you apples...You were rather quick to sell your allegiances, weren't you? I also guess he is not around, or you wouldn't agree to talk with me so easily. I'm always happy to talk with traitors. It is my experience that backstabbers are very reasonable people."
Marek couldn't be sure of it but, even if he wasn't there, he must have left at least a couple of cameras rolling. Still, it seemed like the best course of action to act as if he wasn't aware of it. He was always ready to give a convincing performance.
Ryuk stared at the man with no name through half closed eyes. He was clever, really clever. He would have probably believed that the man had no clue about being recorded, if it were not for the almost unconscious flickering stare he had thrown in every direction where a camera could be hidden the moment he had walked in the room.
In fact there were cameras hidden in two out of the six locations the man had briefly looked at. So this was a man accustomed to play dangerous games and take in his surroundings. And he had some knowledge of Shinigami lore. Perhaps even knowledge of the Synod, if Ryuk could guess from him calling him a traitor. Which made his lack of a name even more worrisome. The last time different names had flickered over his head whenever someone addressed him, but this time around he was just a big blank. As if he had no identity at all.
Ryuk decided that sometimes you have to give a little in hopes of getting something out the bargain, he conceded: "I'm in a bit of a disadvantage here, you know my name and I don't know yours. If you introduce yourself and come closer we could..."
Marek laughed good-humorously: "You are in more than a little disadvantage here, Ryuk. You are trapped like a rat by the looks of it." He narrowed his eyes: "Guessing by the trajectory of your apple and the distance to the residue of your notebook; I'd say you are not able to move outside a one foot radium, two feet tops of where you are standing right now. So I rather don't go any closer than this. As for formal introductions, you must think me really stupid, if you'd think I'd loose the only advantage I have against your kind."
Ryuk: "So you are aware I cannot see..."
With lighting bolt speed the man shot two bullets in the direction of the two cameras and said still smiling, though his smile was just as dangerous as Ryuk's now: "Are those the only cameras here?"
Ryuk pondered the question, then he decided to answer truthfully: "As far as I know, yes. But, given my current predicament, it is easy to deduce he might have other means of monitoring me that I'm unaware of."
"I have to cut our meeting short. I might have been able to fool the standard security, but I'm sure the cameras going off will raise other kind of alarms. In view of that, we have little time left. I'd appreciate it if you let me do the talking without interrupting me. I don't need you to answer me now. You can think our proposal over. It will give you something to occupy the abundant time you have with."
"How will I make my answer reach you, if I come to one eventually?"
"Two smart chaps like us, I'm sure we will figure it out in due time. Plus there is no better spice than a pinch of uncertainty to add flavor to the pot. Don't you find?"
As the man flew away with the girl's plane, Ryuk sat cross-legged on the cement floor and began eating another apple leisurely. He had much to consider. He did so smiling and thinking that humans -especially the smart ones- are so much fun to play with. The fact that both the human and the Shinigami worlds were in danger didn't seem to bother him at all.
Yes, Ryuk had much to ponder. The Shinigami had always been clear in one thing, his only allegiances were to himself, but, perhaps, the time had finally come in which he needed to pick sides. Which side that would be was something he needed to consider carefully.
Up in the air Marek thought that the boss would be pleased. The meeting with one of the trapped Shinigami was an unexpected bonus to risking his life getting the girl's airplane. At times fate does favor the bold. Fickle bitch fate is, with her you take it as it comes…
13.3: Breaking point
"True friends stab you in the front." attributed to Oscar Wilde.
Night between April 30th and May 1st 2019, Unknown location in the Hradec Králové Region:
They had to put Black in a gurney. She was lying too limply to put her in the wheelchair. The boss had decided to wait until the girl's birthday evening to set the plan in motion. As he sat her on his lap and strapped her as well as he could inside the one man cockpit of the Sea Harrier, Marek hoped it was not too late. The girl had retreated deep within herself, perhaps no even this would shake her out of it.
On the bright side, Marek was comfortable flying the plane. He had stolen a Harrier and used it to fly away in Sierra Leona nineteen years ago. The girl kept hers in impeccable shape.
The boss had helped him put the girl inside the cockpit and had retreated far away from the plane. Marek frowned: "Aren't you coming?"
"I won't fit in that tiny cockpit."
"It barely fits the two of us. But you can hover in the air. Can't you fly besides us? We are not going to reach too much altitude, just enough to look at the falling stars and avoid detection. I didn't log any fly plan with the local authorities."
"I think it is best if you two go alone. I trust you to do what needs be done. The radiant of the meteor shower will appear about 39 degrees above your eastern horizon around midnight. Tonight is the peak of the Lyrids Shower, so there will be around six meteors per hour. It is the best chance you have for some visibility this close to the full moon."
"You've already explained all this. This is why you decided to wait until now to do it."
The Man in Shadows poked out of his shield of darkness, smiling like a deranged clown in panda make-up and said: "It is also her true birthday. She was born at midnight."
"How is it that you know things like that?"
He shrugged: "I dunno. Ever since I died things like that pop into my mind. It's quite annoying. Most facts are completely useless. A few are useful."
Marek closed the cockpit and started rolling the plane to reach the speed for take off. He muttered between teeth: "Let's hope this fact is one of the useful ones."
Once airborne Marek started by locating the constellation of Lyra, which was easily done by locating the star of Vega -the third brightest star in the northern hemisphere right after Sirius and Arcturus.- Once having located the constellation he calculated the 39 degrees above the eastern horizon and, soon enough, a couple of shooting stars crossed the sky in front of them.
Black didn't seem to care. Her eyes were as glazed over as they had been since she had retreated from life.
He sighed: "It was foolish to think it would be this easy, wasn't it? You weren't going to look at the shooting stars like the first time your brother flew with you in an airplane and wake up like the princess in a fairy tale. Of course, these rather humble spring Lyrids are nothing like the summer Perseids of your childhood. But one could only hope. Guess great romantic gestures are wasted in your generation, my dear. You are too used to immediate satisfaction to cultivate awe in simple things."
She was not responding to that either.
Marek hadn't wanted to resort to it, but he really didn't have a choice. He softly kissed her cheek and said scornfully: "Though I cannot blame you for wanting to forget your brother. You did away with him like trash. It takes a special kind of fanatic to send his own family to a suicide mission for the sake of the cause. I should know. That is how my father and I broke our association, personal and professional. If it hadn't been for one minute break in his perfect mask, I would have gone and gotten myself killed. But not even the old man was cold enough to send me to Hades without spending one last day with me. He took me fishing and he even behaved like a decent human being. That was odd in itself. The old man seldom broke character, not even when we were alone. That sounded the alarms. For a minute or two I considered just going through with it and dying. But by then my views in honor and family had been quite changed by the job. I deflected. I knew the old man would hunt me like a dog for what he would see as my betrayal. That is why I hid behind several false identities. Each near missed attempt on my life left me a lesson. In the end, I got so good at hiding that I almost lost myself. I don't even remember my father's face or his name, or my name for that matter. In my mind eye I see father as a dark looming figure with a cane, but that's about it. Though, I must admit, not even my father was a big enough motherfucker to send me to my death in cold blood like you did with your brother, dear."
He felt her stir and thought: jackpot! It was going to be anger what shook up this one. He smiled sadly. It had been anger with him too. Anger keeping him through the years of hiding. Anger for anger's own sake as a life purpose when he had very little life left to live. In the end, after drifting in the streets of Paris as one of the homeless refugees of one war or another, he had almost lost his mind. What had gotten him through was holding onto his rage. Raging hatred against the man who in the end had assumed the persona of patriotic bigot so well that he had chosen his country over his son. The real joke was that Marek couldn't even remember the face of the man he hated enough to pull him out of insanity. If rage would be what made the girl want to live again, so be it.
He took the girl's hand and placed it against his face: "I guess in your case the expression should be cold heart, warm hands." He kissed her palm and felt her stirring again: "I've always liked to watch the stars. I find it rather comforting to look at them and think they are nothing but old vestiges of faraway suns that may already be gone for all we know. Quite frankly, I prefer the idea of a merciless sky that doesn't give a fuck about me than of being the pawn of the gods. I guess -given who your boss and my boss are- that comforting idea has turned out to be nothing more than an illusion. However, it would be a damn shame to waste the scenery. What do you say, shall we end what you started back at my hotel room, dear? You don't have to lift a finger. I must admit that after spending most of my adult life as a death dealer, I'm rather curious about necrophilia."
It was a good thing her legs were paralyzed and that the cockpit left her little room to move. If it weren't for that, and the fact that Marek was on the ready, Black would have poked out his eyes with her thumbs. As it were he had barely been able to tie up her hands and immobilize her head with the safety belt before regaining control of the plane.
He was breathing heavily when he managed: "Are you trying to get us killed, girl?"
She spoke for the first time in days with a raspy hollow voice: "Oh I'm going to kill you, alright. I'm going to watch you die in pain. That is a promise. And I always keep my promises, Black wolf." She spat his nickname like a curse.
Then she had started crying in long, drawn out sobs, leaning weakly against him. She didn't pull away when Marek passed his hand over her hair soothingly. By the time he had landed the plane she was fast asleep, purring softly like a kitten against his chest. He carried her back to the safe house without waking her up.
13.4: Carpe Noctem (Seize the Night)
"The first day of love never comes back. A passionate hour is never a wasted one"
From Nightwish's song 'While Your Lips Are Still Red'
April 28th 2019, Unknown location near Prague:
Red and Mac got on his motorbike and left the Kira HQ without looking back. They had spent the first night in a rickety motel where the bed springs creaked and Red swore there were beady red eyes staring at them from out of the corners of the room. Mac hadn't seen anything, but he hadn't done much to assuage the girl's fears, because he had enjoyed sleeping embracing her. Embracing was all they had done. Underneath her tough exterior Red could be very shy. But not necessarily about what she wanted, and before moving forward she had said she wanted to talk, in a private location. That's when Mac had decided to take her to Moby Dick.
She had looked at him suspiciously: "What is Moby Dick? Besides the fictional white whale nemesis of a peg-legged prick. I dunno if I'm ready for being bossed around by another holier-than-thou prick; not so soon after the last one."
Mac smiled: "Moby Dick is a safe harbor, luv. Think kind of Île de la Tortue back in 1640. We were actually thinking of calling the place 20B0 02B4 23B4B4 4E 72B0 47B4 24B4B4 57, but then we got into this gruesome fight about the name being too long and how confusing it was mixing hex with denary. The contraction 2-o-B-o didn't sound right. And, even though we agreed that secrecy and misdirection were good, we couldn't agree on much anything else… Words were spoken, guns were pulled out. It got ugly. We have a leave weapons on the door strict policy now. But that is the only rule there is. Anyways, to make a long story short: Moby Dick won by three votes. There are no prick bosses up there. We are into self-determination. We are probably the only working anarchic democracy in the world right now. The name allows us to have these really cool Ahab's doubloons communicators." He ended up flipping a coin with a smile: "They don't only look stylish, babe, they can work even after a HEMP detonates. Most things in Moby Dick are hardened or immune to electromagnetic pulses. And, of course, the place and everything in it is untraceable. We are a suspicious lot. This coin is for you. It is an encoded aleatory passkey, you have to sinc three in order to have access. You have been accepted as a member of the brethren after I vouched for you. To be frank, one look at Galileo's code got most on board to welcome you in our midst."
He threw her the coin. She caught it mid-air. She examined it carefully between her index finger and thumb. It looked just like a gold coin. She read slowly in Spanish: "Republica de Ecuador, 8 Escudos 1847. That's cute but inaccurate. The Quito mints had stopped making these doubloons by 1843."
"Screw accuracy. 1847 is a prime number and, like all primes, it is the opposite of a perfect number 'cause it is strictly larger than the sum of its proper divisor."
Red stopped him: "I know what a deficient number is and all primes are 'cause their only proper divisor is 1."
He smiled: "I prefer imperfect to deficient. I kinda like imperfect stuff." He looked at her suggestively.
She stiffened her resolve and cocked an eyebrow: "You could have used 1831, that is a prime number too."
"That would still be inaccurate. The Quito mints started doing sixteen dollar pieces in 1838. And 1847 is the year Bram Stocker was born, the Brontë sisters published Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights and Samuel Colt sold his first revolver; so I thought it would be cool."
She knew she was stalling by making roundabouts; but she really didn't want to have to say to him what she knew she had to tell him. Instead she said: "In 1831 they located the magnetic north pole. Charles Darwin embarked on the Beagle. And Victor Hugo published The Hunchback of Notre-Dame. I think that is pretty cool stuff too."
"Luv, we'll make you one with the year 1831, if that's what you want." He gave his own coin, which he had taken out of his pocket, two impatient flips and said: "Our ride is ready whenever you are. Come on! You are really gonna love Moby Dick. It's the perfect playground for kids like us, Red."
She bit her lip: "I'm sure I will love it. But, before I meet your brethren of the coast, Mac, I really need to talk to you in private. I mean private, private… No other privateers in sight."
"Red, darling, don't insult me. I've never worked under any fucking crown. At my worst I've sold my mercenary services, like I did when I was working for your Ghostie." He shuddered: "And even that made me feel dirty. I'm an honest pirate here."
She giggled and kissed him: "Oh, I love you so much. And that bastard is nothing of mine. I've only dealt with him and his crazy bitches 'cause it could be argued I was one of L's successors and I don't want to get killed on account of my unfortunate association to Wammy's. Now you are involved in that too and I need to be honest with you. I really don't wanna, but we need to talk now. Or perhaps..."
He sighed: "Luv, I don't care about your past. The past is done. And I don't give a fuck about the zebra lines, either. You say you are your own person and I have every reason to believe you. You are one of a kind. You can trust me. And if this is about sex, I won't put pressure on you. You know I really care for you. I'm willing to wait 'til you are ready. There are lots of rooms in Moby Dick, this is a no strings attached deal."
"Oh this ain't about sex or about chimeras, well, not exactly about them. And I'm ready, believe me, I was ready the moment I laid eyes on you. But you don't have the full picture and my own moral compass is a bit screwed up..." She rolled her eyes upwards: "Thank you so much Wammy Comprehensive for that one… So I honestly dunno if it is worse if I tell you before or after we do it. Maybe you should be a part of the decision making too… I have something kinda disturbing to tell you. Not disturbing like finding I'm HIV positive, you idiot written in lipstick on the motel mirror or anything that can physically harm you; but something regular folks would find disturbing… I'm kinda OK with it myself. But, again, my moral compass is a bit skewed… Would you rather find out before or after we fucked?"
He laughed: "See, only you would ask a question like that… Babe, I've wanted to fuck you since before I laid eyes on you. I didn't even care if you were a boy or a girl. I just needed one look at that crazy elegant code of yours to know we were meant for each other. Then I saw you and I walked in the leon's den to be with you. Does that clarify the issue for you?"
"OK, but don't say I didn't warn you." Then she had kissed him hard on the lips.
He wasn't going to protest. They had very little clothes on to take off and he only stopped to look for his jacket where he kept the condoms. While he put one on, she played Zeppelin's When The Levee Breaks in her phablet. When he went back inside the bed covers, she had looked appreciatively at his hard on and said smiling: "I've always thought that I'd like to lose my virginity to this particular song." He was happy to oblige.
Two fanfares later, she was lying on top of him with an exultant smile and whistled: "O.M.G! No wonder people can't shut up about sex! Is it always this good? If it is, I can't figure out how those who've done it manage to get anything else done. This is so much better than..." She paused for a couple of seconds and then blurted: "Yeah, it's better than chocolate!"
He sniggered, he loved chocolate, 75% cocoa or higher: "Chocolate is a hard high to top, luv. I mean, it always delivers. And, unlike heroin, you don't build up a resistance. Sex has its ups and downs. But something tells me that making love to you will always be this good."
She hid her face in the soft down of his chest and muttered something he couldn't make out.
"What is it that you just said, luv?"
She rolled off him and turned around; not able to face him: "I said: if you still want to make love to me after I tell you the kinda disturbing thing we were just talking about."
He sat on the bed and caressed her back: "If you are OK with it, I'll probably will be too. I've seen and done more stuff than most regular folks do in a couple of lifetimes. I'm not easy to spook. But I think that the sooner we get this out of the way, the better. Spit it out, luv."
She covered her eyes and then her mouth. Finally she stood up and went to look for something in her back-pack. She came back with a Badtz-Maru tin can, which she opened and handed him a photograph: "An image is worth a thousand words."
It was a picture of him getting on a Harley taken with telephoto lens. He chuckled: "Is that your big secret, luv? You don't have to worry about spying on me. We were both trying to find out as much as we could about each other before we met."
"Oh, you are not getting the picture… At all... Perhaps this will help you understand."
She handed him another picture: An old black and white paper rectangle in a white frame with jagged deckle edges. It was of another guy that looked just like him, except for the hairdo and aviator jacket, posing besides a Hummer 1948 Harley.
Mac started to feel dizzy: "That's not me. He looks just like me, but he cannot be me."
Red sighed: "Neither is the other guy." She tapped her fingernail over the more recent photograph and said: "This guy is code name Mello, real name Mihael Keehl. He is one of the two guys that took up the fight against Kira after L died. Near threw him under the bus and got him killed. This picture was taken in 2005, Wammy's had him under surveillance..."
Mac didn't let her finish. He jumped out of the bed and wrapped a towel around his waist. He paced the room: "Holy fucking Oedipus Rex! What does this mean? Am I...? Are you...?"
She pulled the sheets covering herself with one hand and covered her mouth with the other: "Oh, I knew you weren't going to be OK with it. We probably shouldn't have..."
He was barely able to breathe. He crossed his arms protectively around his chest: "Moral compass a bit screwed up my ass! What the fuck do they teach you at Wammy's? Of course we shouldn't have! Holy Shit! How could I be OK with something like this? Am I L's clone too? Are you my…?" He stumbled on the word looking perfectly horrified for a couple of seconds. Then his eyes fixed in a steely stare: "Did I just sleep with the clone of my clone's mother? Goddammit! I did you every which way! Why didn't you stop me? Answer me!"
She got off the bed too and looked at him with disgust: "Yuck! Do you really think I would have slept with you if you were L's clone? Who the fuck do you take me for?"
He let out air slowly: "I'm not L's clone?"
"No, of course you aren't! And we are not clones, dumbass. I've already told you that we are chimeras."
He sat on the edge of the bed: "But if I'm not L's, then whose chimera am I?"
She sat on the other edge of the bed and signaled the photo of the guy with the Hummer: "This guy is code name Watari, real name Maximilian Quillsh Wammy. Max was 16 when this photo was taken back in 1949. He was Elijah's dad and Laura's husband."
"So, you and I... we are not related?"
She laughed despondently: "If by related you mean that we share DNA, no, we aren't related. But if by related you mean we are part of the same screwed up clan of genetically modified monsters, well, that can very easily be verified."
He denied: "This is crazy. How did my mom and dad got involved with the people at Wammy's? This can't be happening. This must be some sort of mistake."
Red smiled sadly: "As I've said, there is a very easy way to find out. We can shed the black light on you and see if you have Blaschko's lines. Granted, there are other conditions that could explain you having them. But, in view of the fact that you are the spitting image of the instigator of this whole damn mess and given that you seem healthy; I'd say if you have them, then you are one of us."
He passed a hand through his hair: "OK, let's do this: shine a light on me."
She took the black light from her back-pack and seemed reluctant to light it up.
He smiled encouragingly: "It is better to know, luv."
"I know. That's why I needed to tell you. It's just I don't think it is very wise to light a black light inside this crummy motel room. Lord knows what kind of luminescent material we may find and we just rolled naked over the covers." She shuddered.
He chuckled: "It's alright. You close your eyes and I'll check for the lines."
"The best place to look is in your back. How are you going to look at your back?"
"I'll use the mirror in the bathroom."
She repeated slowly: "The bathroom, really? Ugh! You are one brave man, Mac."
He wasn't feeling particularly brave as he stood in front of the mirror with the lights out. He had to steady his hand to be able to turn on the black light. He didn't have to turn around and try to look at his back, there was an S pattern in his chest. Nevertheless, he turned around, just to be sure, the V pattern was also there. He cursed under his breath. The real irony was that he had been under black lights a couple of times while partying in Ibiza with very little clothes on; but he was still hooked then and was higher than a kite, so he hadn't noticed the lines. He wondered if anyone else ever noticed and if they would have known what they were if they had. They had probably thought it was some kind of weird tattoo.
He got out of the bathroom, sat on the bed with his head in his hands and said: "How can it be possible? I don't know anyone else who owns a blood red vest or black patent leather cargo pants. For crying out loud, he even had a 2006 VRSCSE2 in black and electric orange! That is my absolute favorite Harley of all times, you can maneuver it through a crack in the wall and the Revolution engine is one damn fine machine. What are the odds of that?"
Red sighed deeply: "About the same of you liking chocolate as much as they did… On that note. I would have told you earlier, but I was trying to figure out something first."
He frowned: "What were you trying to figure out?"
She bit her lip: "I was trying to figure out if you -the real you- liked me -the real me- for me... Or if you liked me because the Max in you recognized the Laura in me. I didn't know how to feel about us liking each other 'cause we are programmed to." She sniggered: "Talk about meant to be." She finished looking down: "Then I figured out I don't wanna know… As long as you like me, I don't give a fuck about why you do."
He made her look up and kissed her lightly on the lips: "Never doubt that me, the real me, likes you, the real you. We are not programmed to do shit. And even if we were, what one person can program another can crack. Especially a pair of kickass coders like us, baby. Still, I'd really love to have some words with the guys running your Wammy's House."
She smiled meanly: "Get in line, bro. And that's a very long line of crafty people. But before we have that chat with them bastards, I think we have to get rid of Ghostie and his fallen angels. And as a first step to do that, we should go to the Archives."
He sighed: "I don't know if I'm in the right mind-frame to start planning that now."
She opened the tin can again and he held his breath. She took out a Grand Cru Valrhona Abinao 85% cocoa tasting bar which she split in two. She gave half of it to him.
It melted in his mouth bitter and sweet like a lover's kiss. He thought, yeah, we are meant to be. Then he felt a pang of self doubt and said: "This is good, luv, real good, but..."
She interrupted him: "I should hope so, this is the Rolls-Royce of chocolate bars. I ordered it on-line and was saving it for when we..." She blushed.
He smiled: "You are jewel, luv… Chocolate helps, it really does. But I still need some time to process things before I can..."
She smiled: "I agree. We need a time out. But what we don't need is planning. At least not to get inside the Archives. We have a free pass, babe."
He frowned: "A free pass?"
She chuckled: "I really rattled your cage, didn't I? If you were in your right mind, you would have figured it out already, Mac."
He narrowed his eyes: "Of course. I'm the free pass. All chimeras are welcomed..."
"Ding, ding, ding! The price goes to the gentleman wearing nuthin' but a sexy towel."
He smiled a lopsided grin: "There is just one thing that I don't understand. Why ask the bastard for three months to figure out how to break into the Archives, if you already knew we could just walk right in?"
She smiled an ungodly grin: "I figured out we two kids deserved a holiday before going back to the front line. Plus the Archives don't have a fixed location, we still need to find them. Three months also give us time to figure how we are gonna bring the bastard down."
He laughed raucously and dropped the towel to the floor: "We are birds of a feather, luv. The guys won't come pick us for another couple of hours."
She frowned: "Why would we need a couple of hours?" Then it dawned on her: "Oh, a couple of hours, really?"
"Really, I'm young, healthy and I haven't been with anyone else since I met you."
"Damn! Well, I haven't been with anyone but you ever. Two hours sound great for starters."
AN: Thanks for reviews. Haven't been here in a while and I'm surprised to see people are still reading this fic. After an eleven years hiatus, I'm back. I've taken liberties with the dates of the Lyrids Meteor Shower on April, the meteor shower will actually take place from April 16th up to 25th with the peak on the 23th, 2019. I'm moving the peak to Walpurgisnacht to better fit my story. Please be lenient