I hope you still remember me. I haven't forgotten you. Forgive me. The next and penultimate chapter of BP will be out next week. Thanks for still reading. I love you and I've missed you.
---22:30:01---
"Again," Vicious said with his viper glare still fixated on the man chained by his wrists in front of him. He was gasping now, attempting to hold in a cry. Spike headed towards the already beaten man and punched him on the two exposed lower ribs, tight and defined under the stretched bare skin. When his knuckles hit, he felt the bones fracture and the young man instantly screamed.
"We don't have to do this for much longer. All you have to do is tell us who bought you off." Vicious voice was collected, monotonous and indifferent toward the scream. His voice never changed tone or pitch. It was constant, but seductive—reeling your soul in as he wrapped himself around to suffocate, if not to crack the neck. Vicious was the politician in these instances. Spike was the silent and violent partner that carried out the punishment. He'd have to smirk on occasion to let the shackled perpetrator know he was enjoying it.
It's not that Spike enjoyed it, but this was one of the few times it was personal. Lin had gotten shot on the shoulder, because someone knew they were coming.
"You thought we wouldn't find you, but we did. We will keep going until you give us something in return, a slow death or information—it's your choice." Vicious paused and shook his head to the side, instructing Spike to lift the man's face. Spike grabbed him by the chin and forced his bloody swollen purple face up. "Who bought you off? The Venetian Cartel? White Tigers?"
Spike let go of the man's jaw and punched him on the other side of his ribcage. It was a robotic dance that happened between him and Vicious. They seemed to know what each other needed, even in the field. Vicious would slice throats open, but when he seldom missed, Spike would finish it off with his gun. Those moments, those everyday moments in his life, were dominated by a different consciousness. Something else took over for a little while. He would carry out the job in violent fantasies in his mind first—within that split second before he did it—and then kill whomever he needed to. He would summon some unearthly rage hidden within him and come undone. His limbs would react on their own and his body would fight back any resistance. His eyes would go blank and in the darkness, he would kill them. He would squeeze out their life always imagining how the bones cracked inside or what organ the bullet had penetrated.
"Who is it?" Vicious hit him with the hilt of his sword right on the sternum knocking out his breath and causing him to cough up blood and some vomit. After regaining his breath and after a few blind tears and groans, he opened his mouth, but shut it again. Spike pulled out his gun and aimed for the kneecaps.
"No! Stop," it sounded like a small child's voice. "White Tigers. Liu of the White Tigers." Vicious sighed and turned away. Spike lifted the aim of his gun toward the chained man's head and pulled the trigger.
That had been the last time he had ever tortured someone to death.
"What exactly do you plan to do?" Jet asked Spike referring to Nathan, who was tied up to a chair in a storage room and injected with a synthetic coagulator to keep him from bleeding to death.
"Whatever I have to," answered Spike not exactly knowing what that meant. The three Bebop crew members sat in the common room, but most of the arguing was between Spike and Jet. They argued over whether to clean Nathan up ("At least," Jet had said), take him to the hospital, turn him over the police (a suggestion made rather quickly and under the breath by Jet), or torture him to get the truth out of him. Spike mentioned the last suggestion so casually that Jet simply stared for a while waiting for him to complete a punch-line to a joke that was never made. As for Faye, she hadn't said one word after she told Father Giovanni to leave town. She still had that blank opaque look in her eyes—lost elsewhere—and with a dangerous lack of readability.
"So your great plan is just to beat it out of him?" Jet's glare had become commanding as a captain awaiting an explanation for his subordinate.
"I didn't say that. I said, 'persuade him into telling us the truth.' Besides, what would you have me do? Turn him in for the bounty, so then he can go ahead and tell ISSP about the bomb and Faye? Who do you think they'll choose?"
Stunned silence, then a cold chill. Jet didn't respond, and Spike wished he hadn't added that last part. He had as much tact in him as he did consideration. Faye hadn't moved from her position, but her stare wasn't glazed anymore. She was with them. She had heard him.
"I'm with Spike," she said after a while with her green eyes fixed on Spike, telling him something he didn't understand. "We should at least try to talk him into telling us where the hell she is. He has to know." Just as she turned to face Jet, Spike finally understood her glare. It was anger. It was blame.
"I'm all for interrogating him, but I won't tolerate torture on my ship. You hear me, Spike?"
But Spike didn't hear him, because a quick bark from Ein had interrupted the little attention span he had left. Ein had propped himself up on Spike's leg, and though Spike brushed him off with one hand forcing him to land on his paws, the dog didn't desist and gripped onto his pant leg with a growl.
"What the hell is the matter with this dog? Stop it." Spike shook off the mutt and, in the few seconds of silence, he thought he heard something coming from the back of the ship where Nathan was. It was an echo of something that fell, maybe a groan, or a voice. Had Nathan gone delirious? They weren't watching him for infections or fever. Was he trying to escape in his condition? Spike glanced down at Ein whose honey brown eyes widened as he barked again. "I'll be back," Spike told the rest of the crew and ignored Jet's nagging as where he thought he was going.
Spike crossed the gravity wheel and entered that dark hallway that led to the huge storage area. Once there, he could make out a muffled voice, but it wasn't Nathan's.
"So you don't have a nickname or you won't tell Ed about it? Nate, Nathan or something else?" There was a pause and Spike stealthily approached the entrance. He could hear the clicking of Ein's paws trailing behind him, so he turned around and told the dog to stop. Ein dipped his snout and stared back at Spike with regretful eyes. When Spike reached the door, he peeked inside to see Ed's back to the door while standing in front of Nathan who sat there, face down, hands still tied behind his back, his chest rising steadily and his eyes closed. He was conscious and tense because of Ed's presence.
"Ed will have to give you a nickname then. Do you know everybody's nicknames? There's Faye-Faye, Lunkhead, and well Jet is just Jet. You have to be the arch-nemesis, so your nickname is important." She regarded him for a bit. "You're different than Ed expected. Ed expected someone evil." She stepped closer and dipped her head in order to get a better look of his face. "But you don't look evil."
Nathan scoffed, and finally glanced up at her but with his neck still slumped forward. Tilting her head still to meet his face, she took one careful step forward, pointing her toes to the ground and then setting the ball of her foot down.
"No, not evil. Not a monster at all. Just tired and dirty," Ed added standing straight up again.
"Maybe that's all monsters are," Nathan said and Ed yelped and skipped back, Nathan sighed.
"No," responded Ed after nearing him carefully once again, "monsters are scary. Tired people are just tired people." In a random fit of curiosity, she poked his shoulder stained with blood and when Nathan flinched, so did she. Ed pulled her hand back instantly and stated at the red tip of her finger.
"You didn't say 'don't touch that,'" Ed murmured. "Most people say 'don't do that, or don't touch it.' A monster wouldn't have let me touch it."
"I'm tied up and in pain, kid. Get the fuck out of here," Nathan barked.
"You're just tired. You're not a monster at all. Not what Ed was expecting at all," she said slowly and quietly.
"Shut up already." Nathan was breathing heavy and he refused to looked over to his right side. "Just leave me alone."
"So then, why would you hurt Faye-Faye?"
"Get fuck away from me!" he screamed and Ed jumped back. Spike walked in and touched Ed's tense shoulder. She immediately turned around and grinned mischievously with her hands clasped behind her back.
"Ed, that's enough," Spike said. "Get out of here." Ed nodded with her wide smile still spread across her tanned face. As she walked out of the room, Spike heard footsteps rushing down the hall.
"Ed?" Spike heard Jet's voice say.
"Shh, it's Spike's turn now," Ed whispered and then the steps resumed, but withdrew farther and farther from the room.
"Let me guess, you'll be playing bad cop." Nathan chuckled.
"How's the pain?" Spike stood over him with a clenched jaw.
"Couldn't be worse," Nathan said and lifted his pale sickly teal eyes toward Spike.
"You know what they say though; it could always be worse." Spike felt a sudden onset of nausea. The smell of blood and sweat had become pervading and unavoidable. The screams of the people he hurt, the blood of the people he killed and the sweat of the fights he endured rushed back to him. He breathed in deep, suppressing his gag-reflex, and clearing the memories from his mind. He summoned the indifference he needed from deep within him. He couldn't feel even anger toward Nathan. Anger would invite an onset of other emotions along with it, none of which he could handle at the moment.
"How do you get in contact with Alyssa?" Spike asked as the muscles in his face relaxed and his eyes lost any emotion left in him. Nathan, for his part, laughed.
"The kid was better at this than you," he said. Spike's punch to Nathan's bleeding shoulder was not predetermined. It was a sudden reaction like that of the old syndicate days that stemmed from anger at his insolence and from Spike's own desperation. Nathan gasped, eyes moistened as he coughed and then gagged from the pain.
"Fuck you," Nathan muttered in a raspy voice as his limbs trembled from the rippling shock of the impact.
"Why are you protecting her still? You were planning to leave her, to escape. Why the hell protect her now?" Spike asked with his fist clenched and the bandages of his hand soaking with Nathan's blood. Spike could not manage that politician's cold indifference that Vicious had, but this would have to do.
"Because it's all I can do for her. Don't you understand? I couldn't save her."
Spike's throat burned as he heaved several times until he vomited into the toilet. His eyes stung from tears of effort to let go of the pain churning in his stomach. He only lasted an hour and then he had to leave. The clammy sweat and blood were getting to be too much. It had been too long since he had smelled that vile scent and felt the warmth of blood on wounds that worked so hard to heal.
He flushed the toilet and slumped next to it with his face buried in his hands. His clothes were sticky from the anxious sweat that had spread throughout his skin like an infectious rash. For the first time in his life, he felt that he couldn't go through with something. He was afraid to go back into that room. To continue to question Nathan would mean having to endure that smell while Nathan simply avoided answering, while time ticked away his life, a city's life and a goddamn chance to survive this.
Too many deaths had made him weak, emotional and unstable. There were only so many times a man could die and come back without his psyche becoming worthless after a while. At that point, there had to have been some brain damage—that's what Faye would say. It was like a drug, like red eye—no—like heroin. There had to be a God, because God predetermined the amount oftrips a man could survive. For some it was one, but for others it was ten. It all depended on the soul taking the trip. The innocents died quicker. It happened with most drugs; the first time was the last for those young do-gooders that happened to slip only once. But the real sinner endured a lifetime of addiction until it corroded his soul. Not even a soul good enough to bargain for a decent spot in hell.
Spike had one trip too many. He had nothing to bargain anymore.
He stood up and washed his face without daring to look in the mirror. There was no need to depress himself any further. The bathroom door slid open and he stepped out as ready as he would ever be to go back into that room. Nathan had to know something, because if he didn't, then this was all for nothing.
As Spike walked back, he heard an exchange of voices again. He sighed, thinking to himself that he would have tie up Ed in the bridge to make her stay away. Kids shouldn't see crap like that. Spike knew that much.
"It's not like I can do this any other way. It's going to hurt." The voice was female, but not Ed's. Spike stopped just before stepping into view of the room.
"Why are you doing this? You don't have to." Nathan asked.
"What? Why am I doing this to the man that helped put this thing in me?" Faye chuckled. "Because I'm a bigger person—or something like that," she paused and then said, "No, nothing like that. Don't worry I'm not doing you any favor. It's because you and I have—unexpectedly—something in common. We care for people that can't be saved and it's gotten us into a lot of useless shit."
Spike leaned back against the wall and closed his eyes.
"I like to think to myself that I could have stopped her if I had really wanted to, but that's a lie," Nathan said.
"Stop. This doesn't mean I don't hate you. Don't get me wrong. I hate you more than her, probably, because it was your weakness and mine together that got us to this point." Silence dominated for a few minutes and then steps headed towards the door. As Faye exited the room, she stared into Spike's eyes and acknowledged his presence in a way of telling him that she had heard him coming. She handed him a metal pan filled with soaked bandages reeking of blood and rubbing alcohol.
"He's all yours, cowboy," she said and walked away. Her steps mingled with the heavier metallic clunks of Jet's boots.
"She cleaned him up?" Jet glanced down at the pan in Spike's hands. Spike shrugged. "Did either of you get anything out of him?" Spike shook his head.
Jet looked tired. Not an ordinary kind of tired, but like his shoulders were sinking and his eyelids were a bit swollen as if something was weighing on them forcing them to droop at the corners.
"Are you going in again?" Jet asked, but this time Spike didn't respond.
Spike entered the room with Jet following close behind. He was indifferent to the old cop's presence, and maybe it would work to Spike's favor. Part of him knew that Jet wouldn't say anything, but that's not why he was there. Jet understood what silent intimidation was all about. That was Jet in these kind of situations, just a large body looming around foreshadowing some kind of violent and heavy consequence in the near future.
Spike set the pan down on the floor and examined Nathan's clean and bandaged wound. Faye had also dabbed the scratches on his face and re-tied his arms on his front rather than his back so he could support his sprained arm on his lap. His breathing was hoarse and his face extremely pale, so Faye probably wasn't worried about him. However, she had tied his feet to the chair.
Spike's nausea ebbed back into his stomach and his head stopped aching for the first time during that day.
"You don't want to answer anything, that's fine. I don't have time to waste on you," Spike spoke up after a few minutes of silence.
"An irony just hit me," said Nathan looking down to his lap, "I'm a bit slow cause of all the injuries, you know." He took a deep breath—talking was too tiring at that point. "The irony is that if I had just let you die back at Sirius, then this would all be over now." He then laughed in a sporadic way that sounded like he was choking on sobs at the same time.
"If you really thought that would stop her, you would have done it," Jet said. Nathan lifted his gaze up to meet Jet's and then turned to Spike. His light green eyes were moist at the edges. He suddenly laughed harder than before and tears ran down his cheeks.
"Oh God," he said between his loud chuckles. Spike's emotions returned to the surface and coursed back through his veins.
"Shut the hell up!" Spike yelled at Nathan, who instantaneously stopped his fit of laughter. "You killed all those people. You murdered them. You let her get away with it. You're just as goddamn guilty."
"Don't you think I know that? Fuck you, Spiegel! Fuck all of you!" Nathan's shouts nearly sent him wheezing, but he regained his composure quickly thereafter. "She was fine when I met her," Nathan began speaking in a low tone. "She was a genius, but not that kind of genius you'd expect. She has this amazing memory." His eyes, a darkened beryl green, glared down towards the floor. He gasped for a couple of breaths and then continued speaking.
"She wasn't exactly normal, but she was for the most part calm and composed. I was under the head engineer at the time, so I met her and trained her. She'd been recruited by Sirius to help them finish her father's work." Nathan bit his lip as if sudden pang of pain had interrupted him. "She was like a human database and knew everything he'd ever done by heart. She wasn't an incredible engineering genius; she just spoke her father's language. She proved she could do it and she was fine until that day."
Spike narrowed his glare—that day—Nathan had mentioned something about it back at the church. What day?
"I'm the one that took her there," he continued, "I took her to you." His face paled as his eyes shifted from side to side. "She'd heard something about a coup on the news, about the explosions downtown and she begged me to go there. I don't think she knew you'd be there. I didn't even know that she knew the men that had killed her father were Red Dragons. But bad luck had it, we found you there at the steps. What are the odds?" Nathan ran out of breath and hyperventilated for a while. Spike looked uncomfortably away, but he didn't know what to do. He glanced toward Jet who simply had a frown on his face and shook his head at him.
"She begged me," Nathan whispered. "She begged me in tears, so I lifted you up, and we put you in the monopod. She held you in her lap. Then we landed nearby and laid you down. Both of us knew you wouldn't survive a trip to anywhere, but when she checked your pulse, you were dead. She went hysterical—started screaming while I got out the first aid. She asked for epinephrine and pumped it all into you." His tone was becoming hysterical and his words rapid and slurred.
"And somehow, you lived. You must have wanted to live, or she must have wanted it badly enough for the both of you. Whatever it was, you were alive. I left you to get help. She had begged me again, and I ran into Celia—pure coincidence that she happened to be a nurse. And when I went back with her, Alyssa and my monopod were gone, but you were still there. So I ran. No direction. I just ran. She picked me up a few blocks later, and didn't say a word. Didn't say a damn word about it and acted like normal for two weeks until one day she says to me, 'I've had the most wonderful revelation.' And that's when it started."
"Stop," Spike said. "Why are you telling me this?" His voice was almost inaudible.
"Because it's not what you think," Nathan said.
"And what do I think?" Spike's tone became indignant. What was he supposed to do? Feel sorry for them?
"You think she was mastermind from the beginning, a sort of evil bitch out for revenge. You're forgetting that she's just a girl. She was abandoned!"
"A girl?" Spike grabbed him by the jaw.
"Spike." Jet tried to intervene.
"That girl has fucked me over. I don't give a shit about her. I don't give a shit what I did or didn't do. She can go to hell for all I care. I just want to fucking stop this." He forcefully let go of Nathan's chin. He then began undoing the wires around his hand and then his feet. "You can go to hell with her for all I care," Spike said after he had freed him and began to walk off.
"Wait," Nathan called to him. "There's only one transmitter receiving Faye's signal. It was too complex to program all the bombs to receive the same signal, so the bomb that has that particular transmitter sends the detonation code to the rest. I don't know which one it is. I stopped helping her way before that."
Spike sighed and kept walking. As he reached the door, he turned to Jet and said, "I'll go tell Ed."
"He needs to go to a hospital," Jet muttered. "He can't even walk on his own." Spike turned his head towards him, but his eyes stared past him.
"Take him to Doc. He'll take care of him without getting him arrested."
Jet cleared his throat and nodded. "I'll do it," he said and paused as exited the common room. "You should get some sleep. Ed is looking for it. She'll find it," Jet added.
Spike's reaction had slowed down to where he could barely feel his body. He turned towards Jet to respond, but a good twenty minutes had already passed and the Hammerhead had already taken off. Jet had dragged Nathan's body, probably muttered something to him and left, but Spike hadn't noticed any of it. He had sat on his couch just staring, perhaps even sleeping like a half-dead creature.
His grandfather had the ability to do that—to sleep with his eyes wide open as if all he did during the lazy afternoons was stare at the ceiling form his recliner. Spike had only visited him once at his Venus home, when he was four or something like that. It happened during those Freudian childhood years when everything that happens supposedly determines what a person becomes. After Spike's grandmother's funeral—he never met her, but that was the first time he met his grandfather—he went to his grandfather's house and the first thing the old man did was sit on his recliner. With his two yellowy index fingers, he rubbed and stretched the wrinkles at the corners of his eyes and then leaned back against the chair, his face up towards the ceiling. Spike's father pulled a chair from the dining room and set it in front of the recliner. He asked his grandfather if he was okay, because they would only be staying for two more days and then they had to go back to Mars.
"If you need anything now's the time to tell me." Spike's father waited for an answer, but the old man just waved him off with one hand. His son scoffed and left for the kitchen to complain to Spike's mother as she started on some kind of dinner.
Spike sat down on the couch next to chair—it was a velvety dark fabric which he liked stroking—and leaned back on the cushions to look up at the ceiling. In his small voice, he asked his grandfather what he was staring at, but didn't get a response.
"Granpa?" Spike called to him. His eyes were wide open and the black pupils fixated on the roof. "Granpa?" he whispered a little bit louder. Spike stood up and neared the recliner. He examined his grandfather's slightly parted raisin lips and his light gray eyes. Leaning forward a bit on his toes, he slipped his little index finger under his granpa's nose because like any kid who had just been to a cemetery, he had a new awareness that anything and everything around him might abruptly die. But he felt the slight tingling of warm breath on his small finger and just as he became a little braver and got closer to further inspect his sudden discovery of little gray hairs poking out of his grandfather's ears, the old man spoke.
"Minerva," his mouth uttered while his eyes remained fixed above them as if he had just seen someone and couldn't stop staring.
Now that Spike was much older, he had gained a new—dormant until then—hereditary trait, but then stress was supposed to do these things. People would have new allergies and new ticks in the middle of their lives that they had never had before. In light of his exhaustion, he headed towards his room to find some nicotine. It would keep him awake, or at least not as dizzy and nauseous, until Ed found the transmitter. Then he could run and buy coffee on his way to stopping the bomb.
When he entered his room, his heart sped up and he suddenlyregretted his decision. He could feel her presence around him and when he turned on the lights, he saw her sitting on his bed staring at him.
"You ran out of cigarettes, remember?" Julia told him. "You ought to listen to Jet and get some sleep. There's nothing you can do."
Spike moved fast towards her about to hit her, but stopped when she said, "There's nothing you can do at the moment—not until Ed finds it." After a brief pause, she sighed and stood up. With her hand, she propped up his chin and tilted her head to the side, giving him that half tight-lipped smile of hers.
"What do you want?" He pushed her hand away. He was sick of his little imaginary ghost friend. "Why are you here? Why won't you leave me the hell alone!"
Her sapphire blue eyes rounded out in a compassionate expression, but her red lips frowned.
"I'm here because I can tell you things—because you won't listen to anyone else but me. That's how it always was, remember? You'd do such reckless things, but when I asked, you would stop if only for a little bit."
"Get out," he said, but she neared him and wrapped her arms around his body. He stiffened, but still unable to feel her touch. All he could tell is that something was compressing him and ready to break him in half. She stood on her tiptoes and pressed her lips against his ear. He could feel warm breath and her voice was as clear as he had ever heard it. "Get out," he repeated in a whisper.
"You know," Julia said, "They say that our minds are always storing information. Even after our hearts have stopped. Even in comas. We can perceive everything around us and our minds record it like a traumatic event, but if you dig deep enough you'll find it. Your eyes may have not seen anything, but the rest of your senses can piece it together."
He couldn't breathe anymore. His heart was stopping. His body was failing him.
"Do you remember the first time we made love?" She simply continued as he was dying. He was dying and she was reminiscing. "Vicious was away on this trip to make some deal on the comeback of an old drug. I don't know how it happened really. You came over and we started talking about my childhood, about my father and then we were in the bed together as if our bodies had found each other much better than we ever would." She unclasped the embrace and placed her right hand over his chest. He was still stiff, unable to breathe, and his sight began blacking out.
"What I remember the most about that moment is that my heart felt like it stopped," Julia whispered and Spike lost complete sight. When he opened his eyes again, he was on the ground, his body numb, and Faye was on top of him—her mouth wide, screaming his name, though it sounded so faint—and then looked up around her as if she were lost. Then she yelled for Jet as Spike ebbed back into unconsciousness.