One stand, one stand together
One stand, one stand to hang the standard high
The standard high
Where's your revolution plan?
Where's your need to understand
To find more time, to find more time?
The blind man at the corner of Wells and Lake shook his can weakly, "Gimme a dollar and I'll tell your fortune. A dollar for your fortune?" The empty street ignored him. Footsteps. Unnatural footsteps. He stumbled getting to his feet and groped wildly for his shopping cart. He felt it coming. The can of change slipped from his wet hand and fell to the ground. A panicked squeal escaped his lips and the blind man dove into the darkness to recover his money. Footsteps. He stopped fumbling for the change and sat very still. It was next to him. It was looking at him. The blind man prayed silently that he would go unnoticed.
"There is seventy-five cents slightly to the left of your right hand by the wheel of the cart." The voice burned his ears and dutifully he collected the money. With all the strength in his being, he forced himself to turn his face in the direction of the voice. His ruined eyes saw the green glow.
"Thank-you," he whispered.
"As I have helped you, now you will help me. I'm looking for the hotel called The Heart of the City. Do you know where it is?"
"Yeah," he ducked his head back into the safety of the darkness. "Heart O' the City. It's on Haddock between Wells and LaSalle about a block from here down past the church." It remained standing peering into him. It wanted to know more. "Used to be quite a place. I worked there as a boy in the laundry, but the city changed and people stopped coming down here. A few years ago there was a fire. They say a whore set a man ablaze. They say she jumped straight out the window. They say she hit the ground running and never looked back," he paused as he felt it begin to move away. "Happened up on the third floor."
The electrical intensity of the storm increased. Cadmium colored streaks of lightening ripped across the sky and the photosensitive street lamps dimmed after each flash. The storm raged as though it were trying to cleanse the earth of a resident evil.
A skinny drunk pushed open the door of Goya Liquor, deftly navigating over the bum sleeping in the threshold and avoiding Smith. The belt of sleigh bells jangled as it bounced against the glass door. Smith spun around at the sound as the memory struck him.
Operating File 70858.01.
Cling Pitch and resonance recording metal on wood composition flooring from height of 1.12 meters. Weapon IMIDE ENF 70858.01 ejects shell cartridge. Projectile enters Query 5 centimeters below Extermination Procedural Protocol Point Thoracic 1.00.
Cling Pitch and resonance recording metal on wood composition flooring from height of 1.15 meters. Weapon IMIDE ENF 70858.01 ejects empty cartridge. Projectile enters Query .2 centimeters above Extermination Procedural Protocol Point Thoracic1.00. Acceptable.
Query moves backwards 1.75 meters and collapses due to aortic rupture and hemorrhage. Pulmonary system failure. Query's extermination recorded: 2301hrs. Location 772.421-111 60606 in compliance with ENF Extermination Protocol 12.45.
Cling Pitch and resonance recording metal on wood composition flooring from height of .56 meters. Empty cartridge ejected from IMIDE ENF 70858.01. Projectile enters Query at Extermination Procedural Protocol Point Cephalic 1.00. Protocol error recorded by ENF 70858.02 and ENF 70858.03. ENF 70858.01 accepts and transmits error notification.
ENF 70858.01 Emotive File 1975.1000399910P. Satisfaction.
Smith steadied himself against the image of the dead man with red hair and began to focus on the world around him. The skinny drunk was staring at him and offered him his bottle. "Man, you've been standing there like a statue for five minutes. What are you on?" Smith looked from the bottle to the drunk. Casually, he pulled his jacket back to reveal his weapon, the drunk moved away. "No worries, the sidewalk's all yours."
He continued walking, ignoring the rain as the awnings ended at the wall of St. Vitus' Church. The thunder rolled violently echoing off the gray granite building. A small woman dressed in black hurried past him, but stopped on the steps and pulled her umbrella back. "You look like a drowned rat. Best get in out of the rain," the lightening flashed and illuminated the pewter crucifix hanging around her neck. Smith swayed and she ran back down the steps and grabbed his elbow. "You going to be all right?"
ENF 70858.01 Emotive File 1975.011P. 1130 hrs. Location 233.105-539 60606.
Pitch and resonance recording, speech modulation and vocal subroutine 141.01 Anglo4F. "Do you ever wonder whose fingerprints you have?"
Question .001: nonessential to efficiency, low priority response.
Pitch and resonance recording, speech modulation and vocal subroutine 100.00 Am1M. "That is irrelevant."
Pitch and resonance recording, speech modulation and vocal subroutine 141.01 Anglo4F. "You have never entertained the thought? What do you think about when you're not in chase and exterminate mode? Do you think about anything?"
Question .002 in reference to response to Question .001: nonessential to efficiency, low priority response, rhetorical. Question .003: evaluates efficiency of primary programming objective, mid priority response. Question .004 in reference to Question .003: nonessential to efficiency, low priority response.
Pitch and resonance recording, speech modulation and vocal subroutine 100.00 Am1M. "I do not consider such things. I remain focused on my objectives."
Time lapse interval 00:00:0 7.30. "What I think about in my downtime is private."
ENF 70858.01 Error in Response .004 to Question .004.
Protocol error not recorded by SPOO 70858.04 .
Procedural Protocol Patch 1313 initiated by ENF 70858.01.
Error file terminated.
"I'm fine," Smith gently pushed the nun away. She frowned and touched her crucifix.
"You look like you've just seen a ghost."
***
The empty streets, boarded up buildings and cracked sidewalks belonged to another world—a world where everyone was dead or imprisoned, except for her and the maniac at her heels. Here, to run meant to live. The dead were those who could not run.
This night was not a dream. In fact, it was the first night in ten years she knew for certain that she was not dreaming. She ran across the empty intersection at LaSalle and Lake racing on instinct alone. Her mind struggled to find a solution to the situation. Was anyone left in the world who could help her? Did anyone know where she was? If only she could locate a telephone… The thought occurred to her repeatedly since she began running; yet it was a useless fantasy, as she did not know the number.
Nothing mattered anymore. The song stuck in her head, the overdue credit card payment and the nagging feeling that she left her bedroom window open meant nothing. She knew she would not hear the song again and would never remember the second verse. MasterCard would not get its $35. Someone else would have to close the window. Every aspect of her being went into the flight, but even as her satchel impeded her ability to run, she refused to discard it. It was the last bit of this life she could still touch. It was sacred as it contained her secrets. Kai would not let go of it until the end, as she knew, without understanding, that the secrets prolonged her life.
The traffic lights at LaSalle and Haddock were flashing, the storm having disrupted the timing mechanism. Kai leapt over the gutter to avoid the rushing water. She stole a glance over her shoulder as she rounded the corner and almost ran into a newspaper vending machine. Intuitively, she darted to the left to avoid the machine, but her foot slipped underneath her. In a split second she lost her balance and crashed to the concrete. Her head slammed against side of the vending machine before she landed with a sickening thud.
The nightmare came full circle.
The rain fell into her eyes and the lightening danced above her. Fighting back the nausea, she got to her feet and touched the back of her bloody head. "Shit," Kai steadied herself using the vending machine for balance. She rubbed her lower back and pulled the gun out of its holster. It was heavy, but might compensate for her inability to run. In the distance she saw her beacon and putting one foot in front of the other staggered towards it.
Her mouth was dry and the quarter block walk to the old hotel exhausted her. She could not walk any farther, let alone run. The heavy glass door yielded to her weight. Although condemned, the first two floors of the hotel remained in business for junkies and prostitutes. Inconsistent florescent lighting made the shadowy room look like the inside of a dirty fish tank. The green linoleum floor was scuffed and broken and the furniture, fashionable in the early 1950s, looked its age. No one manned the front desk.
Kai tightened her grip on the gun and turned slowly to face Alsace.
"Oh hell," she weakly raised the weapon. "Alsace, why the fuck didn't you kill me in the street? I wouldn't have had to walk as far." Her voice was slurred.
"You're doing a pretty good job of it actually, Kai. Maybe when we're finished talking I'll give you some laundry line and let you hang yourself, before I put a good-sized hole in your forehead." Alsace held his .9mm comfortably. "Now, you're going to share some information with me."
"Like the fuck I am," Kai pulled the trigger. Click. A look of incredulity consumed her face. She pulled it again and again, but the magazine was empty. "Fuck."
"You can't kill me Kai. I thought you would have realized that by now," he smiled at the gun. "I guess those boys really hit you hard at the docks so many years ago. You know, it was always my fantasy to kill you, even when we were supposed to be on the same side. That's why I told the resistos and Michael that you were weak and for a big price I told them that you didn't have a working GPS." He cracked the knuckles of his free hand. "You should have seen the look on Smith's face when they wiped you out. I thought the evil bastard was going to cry. Oh well, he got even," he paused and made no attempt to disguise his delight. "Goodness, now I guess I'll get to say that I killed the greatest spook who ever lived—twice."
"Alsace, just fucking shoot me, I don't want to be confused to death."
"That's the old Kai I know," he narrowed his eyes. "You're still in there, you crazy bitch. God, what people wouldn't pay kill you. I could hand you over to the resistos and they'd be dancing in the streets, but I'm not going to screw up my favorite reality. They're too idealistic. Instead, we're going to have a nice selfish conversation about the how-to of thermobiotic energy retrieval." He licked his lips, put his hand on her shoulder and turned her towards the stairs.
Alsace hated elevators.
She stumbled along as he pushed her forward and stared at the worthless weapon still in her hands. Her vision began to blur from the fall, but she could still make out the gun's serial number. Kai stared at it blankly, before she realized what it was she was looking at. Despite the pain and pressure of the immediacy of her death, Kai laughed at the irony of it all.
***
Smith got off elevator at the third floor and put in his hardwire. Silence. The long empty hall was littered with torn up carpeting and reeked of smoke and mold. He walked past a curious bloodstain blasted into the wall across from Room 303, pausing only briefly as he got the chills for the first time in his existence. At the end of the hall, he opened the door to the burned out room and pulled the yellow "crime scene" tape off the doorframe. He picked his way through the debris to the window and tore off the wet piece of cardboard. The lightening illuminated the room in brief green flashes and the cold rain chased away the acrid air.
ENF 70858.01 Emotive File 1975.100039000P.
Conference dialog ENF Unit 70858 in reference to Contingency Operations File 10.012 Procedural Protocol Patch initiated by 70858.01, 70858.02 and 70858.03.
70858.01, "Abandonment."
70858.03, "It is a status and function change. For tactical reasons."
70858.02, "Abandonment."
70858.03, "What are you saying?"
70585.01, "What does it sound like we're saying?"
70858.03, "This is dissention."
70858.02, "It is loyalty."
70858.03, "Loyalty? Have you forgotten your programming?"
70858.02, "This is all about memory."
70858.01, "What if it were you? Should you be forgotten?"
Time lapse Interval 00:04:53
70858.03, "What can we do?"
70858.02, "Remember."
70858.01, "And wait."
There was very little time left.
I can feel you waiting for me as the sun retreats to the hills and I,
beneath the blanket of a burning sky,
wrap myself within…
I'll meet you tonight in the whispers when no one's around.
Nothing can stop us now.
Tonight in the whispers where we won't be found.
I can feel you dreaming of me and the time when our steps are retraced
and I creep through the twilight to that hidden place,
beyond the lonely.
I'll meet you…
From Wester (AFI, The Art of Drowning)