Chapter 50 - Undertow

"Richard Richard Richard," Dorothy called from her cell down the hall. "I know you are here, I can smell that stinking ADAM wafting off of you, I know it's you, we've been married for almost ten years, I know what you smell like Richard. I know you, I know you better than that whore I killed. She didn't know you, not like I know you."

Richard didn't move a muscle. Dorothy had been taunting him for over an hour now, presumably since she woke up. He hadn't said a word and no one else had even walked down there. Maybe she could smell him. He couldn't 'see' her like he could see the other slug implantees, but he couldn't see regular ADAM users anyway.

"Your dead whore didn't know you, did she? Not the real you. Not the drug addict. Not the distant and cold husband. Not the selfish and self-absorbed arrogant bastard who doesn't really care about anyone else," Dorothy continued, clearly enjoying her captive audience.

The ADAM had clearly sharpened her wit. She had never been this concisely cutting before. Or perhaps he was more vulnerable than usual. Richard didn't reply. He felt like crying again – he had felt like crying more or less constantly over the past day – but he had his hearing coming up soon and needed to be presentable.

"Do you think before she died she realized what an egotistical man she was dying for? Do you think it was the last thought she ever had?"

That thought, or ones similar, had been bouncing around Richard's head over the past day. Twenty-five percent chance. Unacceptable. He wouldn't release a product that had a twenty-five percent failure rate. Why was that considered good from a medical standpoint?

"Answer me, you miserable bastard!" Dorothy suddenly screamed at the top of her lungs. "I know you are listening. Did you cry when I killed her? ANSWER ME!"

Richard's hand ached for a cigarette but he had already smoked all the ones Rollie had given him. It was purely out of habit, he no longer got any chemical pleasure from tobacco, but the habit was comforting. It was the only comfort he had in the cell.

"Answer me RICHARD!"

There was nothing in heaven or hell that could compel him to say a word. She'd already gotten what she wanted, or at least believed it.

Twenty-five percent.

Richard checked his watch and saw that he had only fifteen minutes until he was due for his 'hearing' transport. The security officers had let him keep his watch, although he was pretty certain that at least half of the cash in his wallet would go walking when (if) they returned that to him. He had planned to tip heavily on his honeymoon.

Twenty-five percent.

Anthony would be at the hearing, despite his protestations that he wasn't a criminal attorney. According to Anthony all he needed to do was affirm that his statement to security was true, and that since it would be confirmed by evidence and witnesses that it was true, that he had been attacked first, he'd be let go again.

I'm a repeat client, he grimly considered as he stared at the iron bars. Anthony had warned him that there'd also be a repeat of the newspaper circus as well. Richard had no pithy quips to offer up this time. He had nothing for the reporters. They didn't matter anyway.

"What are you thinking about?" Dorothy eerily sweetly called to him. "Penny for your thoughts…tell me, my dear husband, tell your wife, your one and only sweetheart, forever, eternally, here…in the cold and the dark…is something troubling you? You are so quiet tonight, you've barely touched your supper."

At that last taunt he glanced at the untouched meal of cold peas with rancid grease that he had been brought. He couldn't imagine ever having an appetite again. He could still taste the gruesome stench that had radiated from Lupe as she burned.

"Come now, if you can't trust your wife, who can you trust?" Dorothy prattled on, so genuine in her unhinged rambling that there was no doubt left in Richard's mind that she was entirely mad, either from the ADAM or his behavior or both. "Shall I ring for the maid and have her pick up your plate and bring you something lighter? Something…more to your tastes? Your desires? Your needs?" She laughed sharply.

Richard could no longer find the moral high ground anymore to gum up the indignation at her continued verbal lashing. He was dimly aware of the fact that he should be mentally preparing himself for his hearing, but he was unable to collect his thoughts for longer than several seconds. He felt cold. And sick. Had he eaten any of the peas he could have thrown them up.

Dorothy's jeering continued nonstop. She was having fun. She could switch between seemingly lucid and full-on deranged in the blink of an eye. Each barbed word punctured him deeply and intimately in the stark nudity that the weight of his failure of responsibility wrought.

She didn't break her stride when the two security officers came down the hall, asking Richard if he saw Lupe's crispy corpse when he closed his eyes (he did) as they unlocked the door. Reluctantly he slunk past her cell. He didn't look at her, but she grasped his arm as he walked by.

"If I don't see you at home tonight, then I'll see you in Hell," she loudly said to him as he yanked away from her grasp. "You and me and the Devil makes three!"

Richard couldn't help but see her out of the corner of his eye. Her hair was wild and her eyes matched, but the manic grin on her face would haunt him until the end of his days.

"Mr. Stone, Mr. Stone!"

Richard was blinded by a flurry of flashbulbs the moment he stepped out of the security station. He didn't look in any particular direction as his name was called by a half dozen reporters. He was barraged with rapid-fire questions, but the words all blended together and even if he wanted to answer them he'd be unable to parse what was being asked in the first place. The security agents shoved the reporters and photographers out of the way as they made their way down the block to the nearest council office.

"Richard, hurry," Anthony greeted him and directed him into the conference room. "You look like a wreck, good, shows remorse."

Richard gave a cursory glance around the empty room. A clock, a few chairs around a table, another table with a single chair, and a stenographer's typewriter. How odd that Hell was so mundane. Familiar even. "What…" mumbled, not sure where he was going with his thoughts. "What am I supposed to say?"

"The truth, assuming that you didn't have some big plot to lure Robert out at your wedding to kill him," Anthony said and gestured for him to sit behind a table. "Anthony set his briefcase down on the table. "Look here, I got a copy of the report and…"

The door opened again and in came not a judge, but some deeply bland man that Richard was vaguely acquainted with, probably through some work contract or another. Introductions were made. William Hayes. Names were so very unimportant, all that mattered was that William would be deciding if there was a criminal case or not. Two security officers and the stenographer followed.

An excruciating amount of time was taken up with formalities, each second ticking by as Anthony and William established the facts of the incident. She's dead, certainly, now, this second, or wondering why I'm not there, and struggling, and wondering, Richard disjointly thought as papers were signed and notes compared. William asked him some questions as well, and Richard replied with short, clipped answers.

"Well Mr. Stone," William finally said after more than thirty minutes, "I am of the opinion that you acted in self-defense, and as such no criminal charges will be pursued."

Richard's exoneration rang hollow, but he still stood wordlessly to leave immediately.

"Not so fast, there's still another issue we need to address," William continued. "Your wife."

"My client is in no way responsible for the actions of his estranged wife," Anthony quickly objected.

"Legally, he will be responsible for the fees for her incarceration. There is absolutely no question that she will be incarcerated for homicide-"

Homicide! That one word was a punch in the gut. Richard went lightheaded at the confirmation Lupe's assault was now a homicide. He collapsed into the chair. 'Make it stop!' she screamed in his head.

"Oh," William said, suddenly aware of Richard's interpretation. "Not your…pretend wife, I guess, she's still alive as far as I know. Your real wife killed…" William consulted his notes. "Annette Anderson. That's the wife of the man you killed." He chuckled to himself. "How do you like that? What a pair you are!"

Richard found it difficult to find the bottom of the rushing emotional river. Reeling from the brutal ups and downs, it was all he could do to nod. He didn't even wonder what had transpired between Dorothy and Annette.

"Whatever the particulars are, they can wait until she's sentenced," Anthony argued. "Now, if there is nothing else, I believe my client has pressing matters elsewhere."

William stared at Richard and frowned. "On an official level, you are free to go," he shortly stated, his disapproval of Richard's attempted bigamy evident in his stern gaze. "Try not to marry anyone else on your way out. I don't want to deal with another one of your homicidal wives."

His attempt at cutting words made no impact on Richard, as William's words lacked the bite that Dorothy had directed him earlier. Richard hurried to the door without a word and hustled down the street to the metro station. A tightness formed in his chest now that nothing but a short bathysphere ride stood between him and Lupe. His head spun on the transit over, but in the background of his consciousness a shadow lurked that he was only vaguely aware of in his periphery. He knew what had to be done.

It had been roughly twenty-six hours since the attack. The first two days…she could still die…yes, it had to be done, and fast, otherwise he would be unable to live with himself. The effort required to begin to meticulously plot his course of action stopped the world from spinning around him. This would solve so many problems.

He just hoped she would forgive him.

Would you kindly imagine a page break here?

Lupe couldn't see a thing. Not that she wanted to. She didn't want to see her burnt body.

But she could hear. She could hear the whispers from the nurses as they tried not to disturb her. She could hear the footsteps of passersby in the hall. She could hear the gentle ticking of the knitting needles Mimi brought with her to pass the time, as well as Mimi softly reading to her from the newspaper. She could hear Rollie mutter to himself and fidget with his lighter. Lupe was also on so many drugs that she struggled to remember who these people were, and her knowledge of them flitted in and out of her mind like excitable birds. She felt like someone was missing, but the morphine and the sedatives wouldn't permit her to dredge up a name or a face.

She couldn't speak. The flames had danced down her throat and demolished her vocal chords. But she could still let out primal yelps of agony – wordless, formless, inarticulate – but they got her point across. Raspy shouts of misery escaped from her whenever she was touched, whenever the nurses had to change her blood and pus soaked bandages or change the needles that kept her in a constant dazed haze when she was awake.

She couldn't smell for the same reasons she couldn't speak, but she knew there were flowers in her room. The nurses commented on it each time a new arrangement was delivered. "They just love her, don't they?" one said to another.

Who loves me? Lupe wondered, her drug addled mind curiously turning over the statement. Flowers…there was something about flowers wedged into her mind. Flowers. Fire.

Lupe floated in and out of consciousness. She dreamt deeply of abstracted absurdities – shapes that made no sense, people that morphed and flowed into the nonsense of the morphine, and places that were wholly impossible. Her blissful and bizarre escapes were interrupted by the nurses changing her bandages though. The residual pain from these changes did not allow for her to sleep, and several minutes after the nurses were done she heard the door open again.

"They're done, looks like." Lupe assigned that voice to Rollie. He's nice. Who he was she didn't know. Someone. That was all.

"Oh God," came a hushed male voice.

"No, don't, you aren't supposed to touch that curtain. She's real vulnerable to infection so just let her be," Rollie explained.

"Has she said anything? Has she wondered where I am?"

"No, not a peep, except for when they swap out her bandages," Rollie solemnly said. "But hey, she's alive, isn't she?"

Who is so worried? Lupe stumbled through the dark gray swampy morass that was her mind.

"Is she awake?"

"Nah, I reckon she's out like a light. At least I hope so."

Neither of them said anything for a minute, then the mystery man spoke again. "I can't bear this, not when there is something I can do about it."

"Richie, what in the blazes do you think you can do about this? You're no doctor."

Richie?

"I'm going to get her a slug too."

That just made no sense.

"They said the ADAM would-"

Richard cut off Rollie. "And what then, huh? Watch her deal with an ADAM addiction for the rest of her life? You know what the morphine did to me, and ADAM is tenfold. It drives people out of their minds. That bastard Robert was on it. They fixed his head with it but he paid the price. No, she needs a slug too, to keep her stable and normal."

"How are you going to do it? Like I said, you ain't a doc!"

"I got a plan." The confidence in his voice was remarkable. "And I'm not going to wait around for a formal invitation. If everything goes my way she'll be up and about by the end of the day."

"And what if it doesn't go your way, hm?" Rollie argued. "The doctors say she will probably pull through-"

"I am going to make this work!" Richard suddenly exclaimed, the cool confidence in his voice replaced by determination bordering on madness. "I will get her that surgery or I will bring this entire city down with me into Hell! I cannot be killed, do you understand what that means in regard to the havoc I can cause? And Rollie, oh, I've been thinking, if I cannot get addicted to ADAM, then I can do some powerful things with it, things that will make the average plasmid-slinging hooligan look like a child at play. I will tear this place apart, rivet by rivet, if I do not get what I want! And I want Lupe! She will no longer suffer the consequences of my mistakes. Either I raise her into immortality with me, or I turn this whole accursed city and everyone in it into her crypt!"

Richard's voice escalated in speed and tone and evidently stunned Rollie.

He must love me, Lupe dreamily thought. I wish I could remember what he looks like. I do hope he's handsome. I wish I could see him. But the bandages around her eyes were in place to protect her grotesquely blinded eyes.

"Jeez Richie," Rollie gently said after a minute. "You sound like you been nipping into that ADAM already."

"Stay here," Richard ordered. "Keep her company, I hate to think of her alone like this. This shouldn't take too long."

The door closed again. Before Lupe could think too hard about what he meant about making this city her crypt or what sort of surgery he wanted her to get or why she couldn't see anything to begin with, the undertow pulled back into the surreal depths of her mind.