Chapter Forty-five – Fragments
The storm was still raging the next day. Hertz took note of which two students failed to appear in lessons, which member of staff failed to turn up to teach and which test subject failed to respond to any test in the Laboratory. He knew perfectly well of their connections to each other and to the dead boy still lying in his bunk with a bedpost through his chest. DuBois was going to be a liability for some time to come.
Schuldig arrived in Crawford's apartment at about three in the afternoon. It was pouring with rain outside, but Crawford hadn't able to bring himself to enter the bedroom so he could look out of the window. Schuldig ignored him as he marched past into the bathroom, carrying an armful of clothing.
After some swearing and the intermittent sound of running water Crawford's curiousty was aroused enough to draw him off of the sofa and towards the bathroom door. Schuldig was standing next to a distinctly pink bath with his arms submerged up to his elbows. The clothes made soft squelching noises as he kneeded them.
"Students have their own laundry facilities," Crawford said eventually.
"They're watched," Schuldig replied shortly. "Do you have any detergent?"
"No," Crawford said calmly. "Staff have their own laundry facilities as well."
"What about bubble bath?" Schuldig suggested. "Or bleach. I bet you have bleach."
"Who did you kill?"
"Rammi. You know, the leech."
Crawford nodded. "They already know it was you."
"Of course they do," Schuldig shrugged it off, "but that's no reason to leave them with actual evidence."
"And bringing your clothes here to wash won't look a tad suspicious?" Crawford rasied an eyebrow.
"You think of a better idea," Schuldig sniffed. On a whim he flicked bloody water at Crawford, almost playfully. Crawford didn't even blink as the pink sud slid down his glasses and landed on his shirt to be lost among a path of red wine stains.
"I'd rather you left," Crawford said eventually.
"Busy," Schuldig said dismissively.
"You have been, recently," Crawford observed. "I feel quite left out."
"That's intentional," Schuldig said calmly.
"Why?" Crawford asked, confused and less than sober.
"I lock you in a dungeon, you don't ask why. I leave you out of one little plan to save a boy you hardly know and you start whining." Schuldig tossed his hair over his shoulder as he turned to look at Crawford. "And I did talk to you about it."
"Really? Was I sober at the time?" Crawford reached out to brush the hair from Schuldig's face.
"I'm beginning to think you haven't been sober for a looong time," Schuldig sneered.
"You're going to be there," Crawford told him. "And I am. And god knows who. Half of Rosenkreuz, apparantly. And some Japanese people."
"Nagi's family?" Schuldig asked curiously.
Crawford frowned. "I think he's an orphan."
"Look, I don't know how this future thing works." Schuldig threw his clothes down in the tub and crossed his arms. "I don't know if it's absolute, or if it's the best bet, or if it's simply a probability. I want it to come true. I do. But with you like this, you're probably going to chuck up half way through the ceremony or something. So, I'm taking charge. My plans are probably a bit different to yours, but I'm in charge. Nagi and Farfarello are behind me. They barely know you. So until further notice, you're going to be left out of it all, you understand. All."
Crawford sat heavily on the toilet, lid already fastidiously down, and looked up at Schuldig. He leant back and spread his arms, a sort of shoulderless shrug. Schuldig's stomach clenched. So, he was in charge. Crawford was waiting for orders. Crawford. Oh, it was all just head games, but he was in charge and whatever he told Crawford to do, he would.
Schuldig went back to kneading his clothes in the bath.
Nagi lay under his blanket, face inches away from a glowing laptop screen. It was comforting. Rather familiar, and there were the emails he'd exchanged, over a few days and weeks, with the mouldering corpse on the bed above. The blanket over his head was not some comforting cave, but rather a shelter from the dripping blood. The corpse was still fresh, in relative terms. The corpse. The body, at best. Not the person. Not Ra-
Nagi couldn't even allow himself to think the name. It was like an imaginary friend, in a way. Some one who's never existed. He'd never had a friend who'd supported him and helped him defend himself against an already deceased foe. That person had never existed. So, therefore, and even hence, he wasn't dead. Just some young man, some leech, some son of seer, had died deceitfully and was oozing through the thin mattress above him. Or logic along those lines. Despite that very firm, if slightly derailed, train of thought Nagi had cried a little.
He stared at the screen. Currently it was showing a view from the CCTV cameras in the laboratories. Farfarello was limp in his bindings. Asleep. Comatose, maybe. Probably, definitely. Nagi tried to make sense, in physical terms, of what had happened last night. Memories had imprinted themselves into his head, and the accompanying thought patterns. Some of his own memories, he felt certain, had been overwritten. Schuldig hadn't actually done that, though. He had projected his thoughts, manipulated Nagi's brainwaves, but he had irrevocably altered anything. Farfarello had probably done the same. That would have killed him. Rammi and... and him had overwritten bits of Nagi's mind. Illusionists had to, if they wanted to make the illusions permanent. Which had put both Schuldig and Farfarello at a disadvantage.
In some ways, thinking about Rammi being dead wasn't so hard, not when compared to thinking about Farfarello being dead. No matter how sternly Nagi reminded himself he'd barely known the older boy, he knew how badly he'd wanted him. Farfarello had helped him, and expected nothing. Farfarello had never particularly hurt him. Farfarello had died for him, and now his body was just going through the motions in some sickeningly sterilised lab.
His thoughts shied away from that again. Rammi. Think of Rammi instead. Poor dead Rammi in the bed above. Except he'd done something to Nagi, hadn't he? If he'd written bits of himself into Nagi, then he was still around, in a way. But Farfarello was gone completely, without even that record remaining.
Nagi probed his own mind like a tongue probing a wobbly tooth. If his theories were right, Rammi was still around. But... Schuldig had killed him. Perhaps the shock had wiped the memories clear. The illusionist had based the majority of his memories in Rammi, which was why his presence had faded rapidly. There wasn't enough of him in Nagi's brain to survive, so that last image had been... what? Something that could erase Farfarello from a distance.
Nagi didn't want to consider the possibility of yet another presence in his head. Let the illusionist be powerful. Let him be very powerful, but let him not be powerful enough to be in Nagi's head now. He wondered if any schizophrenic had attacked the voices so rationally. He wondered if begging and praying to something he didn't believe in counted as rational. He wondered who defined rational.
Everything was going insane. Easier to think of it that way than he was going insane. And everything was. People were dying, people were planning to take over the world, people were in and out of other people's heads. It was insane, and apparently it was to be his life from now on.
Aye
Yes.
Something occurred to Crawford, leaning on his knees in the tiny bathroom, watching Schuldig fail to scrub blood from his clothes. He was remembering scrubbing blood out of his own clothes, too ashamed to take them to the laundry where they were used to it. As always, his mind followed the path back, sliding over the act - the 'act'? He hated that he couldn't even say rape in his own head - and to the moments preceding it, and today back into Hertz's office, where Schuldig had held up his head and used that tone he was using now. Power. When Schuldig had first shown to him that not only did he want power, but he could handle it. He'd failed, obviously, but Crawford knew that Schuldig could lead, if he wanted to.
He had mixed feelings about that. Right now, he wanted to be led. He hated himself was wanting to be led. He was surrendering responsibility for himself. He knew he could take care of himself, knew in a cold knowledge, but part of him was still insisting so violently that he couldn't. He understood regression now. Be a child again. Be what you were before the bad things happened to you, back when people used to protect them for you.
He snorted, which made Schuldig look at him for a second before returning to his washing. He hadn't exactly had a happy, protected childhood, had he? But he'd emerged from it stronger than anyone else he'd met. Not strong like Schuldig, strong with bravado and occasionally strong under pressure, but actually strong, always strong. He knew who he was. Completely. Schuldig had made him doubt that, and he'd hated him for it at first, until he realised that the doubt was part of who he was as well. He'd never liked doubt, but it was very much a fact of life.
And he had had no regrets.
No, he had no regrets. Still didn't.
Crawford blinked at the wall. So… was he still expecting to emerge from this yet stronger? He'd given up on that idea weeks ago, he was sure. Or perhaps… perhaps things he had no control over didn't count as regrets. Though surely he regretted his lack of control.
No, he didn't. He didn't regret it. He hadn't lacked control before, not like that. Now he had. Now he knew what it could do to a person. A useful weapon. Being chained up, completely dependent: very demoralising. Being tortured and raped: last resorts. Most people, especially if they've lost hope already, aren't going to be much use after that. The only worse thing you can do is kill them. They might want to die.
It occurred to Brad that he didn't want to die. He kept that thought, filed it away like he did the visions, ready to be retrieved at a moments notice. Hertz wanted him to curl up and die. He wasn't going to pander to that man. But… He wasn't strong, just yet. Wasn't ready. Not wanting to die was just a start, like the not regretting. It still didn't mean the repercussions of what had happened to him weren't echoing around his skull. He still felt sick thinking about it, he still wanted to avoid humanity for eternity. He still wanted to do something equally painful and demoralising to Hertz. And kill those who had done it. He wanted to kill a lot of people, but it wouldn't help, would it?
Brad could feel the hangover creeping up on him. A little bit queasy, a slightly sore head. Teeth that felt like carpet and lips that felt swollen. Dry eyes. He needed more alcohol. It took him two attempts to get to his feet, but Schuldig was ignoring him now. He found a half drunk bottle of wine by the couch and collapsed onto the seat, drinking straight from the bottle. It was very hard to wash cups and glasses when you were drunk, he'd found.
He hung so limp and so empty he might as well have been dead. When he didn't respond to tests there was some debate as to whether he was, but one enterprising technician managed to take the creature's pulse. So slow he ought to be dead, he was, in fact, alive. They were used to a lack of response to physical tests, but now he wasn't responding to mental tests.
A telempath was called in, a tall blond man with sharpened teeth. Every mental psychic in the facility knew Farfarello's distinctive mental signature, even if they'd never met him face to face. A telepath might have been more accurate, but no one dared ask Hertz for Schuldig. It wasn't as though he could be trusted to be truthful anyway. For all they knew he was harbouring the creature.
Someone was, the telempath confirmed. No, he couldn't pinpoint who. Their own signature was weak and contained, and practically smothered by the black and red blot of Farfarello's consciousness. They might be aware of him, they might not. They might be completely controlled by him. Watch for messy deaths.
At least Hertz was happy now, one of the technicians commented as he spoonfed the living corpse. The creature dead, the boy weak and vulnerable, the seer abandoned by his powerful allies and the telepath who had overcome the last principle. They were tearing each other apart, he said confidently. The boy won't stay with anyone who kills, the telepath won't take orders any more and the seer is basically powerless alone. The only group that could have stood against Hertz, May and DuBois was fragmenting as they spoke.
They might even have been able to stand against the Estet, an awestruck girl breathed.
On the other hand, a quiet technician pointed out, did they really want things to stay the same?
The next day only the original speaker lived. You do not talk heresy in front of one of Hertz's pet telepaths.
