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The spirits don't let Arashk leave until 8:37.
He tries to open his door at 7:05 and finds that his muscles freeze up and suddenly they're assaulting his senses, darkening his vision, pushing him backwards, chilling him to the bone, screaming like banshees in the depths of his mind until tears are streaming down his face because it's just too much.
He makes a fresh attempt every five minutes for an hour and a half, and each time he meets the same result. He begs, he pleads, he tries appealing to their senses of reason if they have any. He tells them this could be his last chance to save Sebastian, but they are adamant. They won't, or perhaps can't, give him a reason, but there must be one.
This rationale does not stop him from staying doggedly at it until finally, they let him go, and he just about weeps from relief. (He doesn't, though. Full-on crying's not really his thing. At least that's what he used to tell himself.)
Getting into Loriss' apartment takes just over nine minutes of lock picking. It's full dark, and thank goodness the one time somebody walks by he has a psychic inkling about ten seconds before it happens. He manages to duck down underneath the train just in the nick of time, glad he elected to wear a dark grey button-down for this venture, and he stays there until he's sure it's safe.
When he hears that faint click, his heart just about stops beating. He holds his breath, pushes down on the handle, and releases.
The door swings inward, completely silent. It's dark inside, of course. After stepping cautiously inside he goes unhesitatingly to his right for a light switch, and sure enough, his hand falls on one almost immediately. He shuts his eyes, counts to three, flips it upwards, and finally allows himself to look.
He doesn't really know what he expected. It's a pretty ordinary-looking apartment, as far as he can tell. A bit larger than his and much more thoroughly furnished, with a very nice dresser covered in knickknacks, a bookshelf reaching the ceiling completely packed with books, and a neatly made bed. The carpet is immaculate, probably the closest to true whiteness Arashk has ever seen a carpet achieve.
All the furniture is new or at least in fairly good shape, and Arashk sees only three picture frames, which show Loriss with various combinations of two men and a woman who bear a strong resemblance to him, but they're fairly old photos, at least ten years. So he's not very sentimental, and he probably hasn't got a family of his own. Arashk strides over to the bookshelf to examine the selection, and to his surprise finds a lot of thick textbooks—mostly physics, with some chemistry and anatomy thrown in there.
There is so much more here than a victim of kidnapping would accumulate, even after years and years.
Spirits falling, Arashk quickly checks the clock on the dresser. Only three minutes have passed. He doesn't have as much time as he wanted, but he knows for a fact that Loriss won't be back for at least another hour. He almost tells himself to relax, but he knows that'll be a one-way ticket to overstaying his welcome and getting somebody killed. It's not like he could relax if he tried, anyway.
Moving swiftly, he checks underneath the bed, and finds the narrow space very clean and empty of any storage containers. Next he takes a peek behind each of the two doors he sees. Naturally, the first is a simple bathroom. The second is a closet.
As soon as Arashk opens the door his eyes are drawn downwards. The bottom of the small walk-in closet is uncharacteristically chaotic based on the neatness he's seen evidenced so far, with a surplus of shoes covering the floor and a few pieces of clothing discarded haphazardly on top of them.
He reaches out to start moving the shoes aside, but hesitates just before touching them. The possibility of Loriss being psychic is still in the back of his mind, but the more he thinks about it, the less plausible it seems. The way he sees it, if the Master already had a psychic, he would have no need of Arashk. It was one of the first possibilities he thought of simply because it was familiar, but it's so much more likely that whatever Loriss' ability is, it's something different. And dammit, he can't keep finding reasons to choose not to take action. This risk is a small one, and it's necessary.
Carefully, he begins to pull shoes out of the closet, trying to move them as little as possible so as to leave this place looking exactly as it did before he came. Fortunately, he has a lot of experience with that kind of thing, and manages to keep things very much in order even as he pulls out the sleek black box and places it carefully on the pristine carpet.
He doesn't even look at the dials. There's really no reason to. He closes his eyes, sliding his finger up on the first digit until he feels compelled to stop. He does the same with the second. Then the third. And following that, he sits still, not opening his eyes, for some reason not wanting to see whatever number he has just entered in, his finger resting lightly on the clasp.
If this doesn't work, he doesn't know what he's going to do.
Holding his breath, he pushes up on the clasp, and it opens with a snap.
A tiny gasp escapes him, and he quickly pushes the lid up to see its contents. The box holds six file folders with their spines facing down. The tabs sticking up read, from back to front, "JR/SJ," "EJ/PT," "VN/DC," "CC/LI," "SS/AR," and "GH." For a long moment Arashk just sits on his feet, staring down into the box, utterly at a loss as to how to prepare himself for what he's about to see. He reaches a tentative hand out, and it vacillates over the folders, not sure which side to start on.
Something in the back of the box catches his eye—it appears to be a loose sheet of paper. He grasps it at both corners between his thumb and forefinger and pulls it gingerly out.
Written neatly and classily in flowing cursive in the middle of the paper is the sentence "Your name is Benedict Goodwin."
Arashk stares at the words, mind racing, cognitive dissonance beginning to take over. This paper can only be intended for one person, and it's probably the one who put it in a lockbox in his closet. The whole situation with a person writing down his own name and hiding it in his room so he doesn't forget is so familiar to him, and yet Loriss—Goodwin?—hasn't had his taken from him? Does this mean he is in fact a victim, just way better at hiding things than Arashk? How did he get a lockbox? How has the Master not just taken the whole thing away?
Though it seems colossally counterintuitive, Arashk tries to fit this piece of paper into the possibility of the man working with the Master. If he is… well, it's logical that he'd go by an alias anyway, right? And maybe… with all the instances of people's names actually vanishing from their memory he just… got nervous? Wanted to be sure in case something happened? It makes sense, Arashk supposes. More sense than the Master failing to find a lock box hidden in the back of a closet.
After ascertaining that the rest of the paper is blank, with infinite care he slides it back where it was and withdraws the folder closest to it: "JR/SJ."
He flips it open, and his eyes are immediately drawn to the large bold letters at the top of the first page, reading "James Randolf."
And on the line just underneath: "Sebastian Jaeger."
He blinks at the names, registering very, very slowly what this could mean. Even as he does this, his eyes slide down to the photographs paperclipped together but otherwise loose in the folder.
The top one is of Sebastian. He looks exactly the same as Arashk is used to, except his hair is markedly shorter, and he wonders how recently the photo was taken. Carefully he slides it out of the paperclip and flips it over.
On the back, written neatly in somewhat faded blue pen, are the words "James Randolf, 1996."
He stares at these words for the longest time, reading them over and over and over again, brain shutting down for a few minutes only to wake with a start and review the label just one more time.
Arashk releases a breath that's only moderately shaky—still a ways away from the level of calm he'd like to be able to claim, though, so he lowers the picture, closing his eyes and drawing in several deep breaths.
He's hit the motherlode. He can tell. Which means that he can't go trying to rework his perspective on this whole mess with every new photo and document he sees—he'll never have enough time if he does that. He has to take this in batches. Next step: look at the rest of the photos.
Tentatively he turns again towards the stack of pictures and starts flipping through them. Several pictures are various angles of a nice one-story brick house with pink carnations at all the windows, and several more of a university Arashk has never heard of. The rest are posed pictures of people, each with a name written on the back: "Marianne Randolf," an older African American woman with short hair and a gentle smile; "Richard Randolf," a skinny guy in the midst of losing his blond hair but looking pretty fit otherwise; and "Caroline Randolf," a young woman with a long thick braid and very familiar brown eyes.
The final picture, labeled "Randolf family, 1986," is also posed—a group photo of all the same people together, smiles plastered across their faces. Caroline standing with James serves only to affirm the resemblance between her and Sebastian.
Not Sebastian. James.
Okay. So Sebastian's real name is James.
Arashk would almost say that he prefers "Sebastian" for the guy, that it suits him better. Then he imagines someone saying that "Arashk" suits him, and he knows he can't really commit to this thought.
He stares down at the picture, noting how everyone is in some way connected, hands resting on each other's shoulders; how their clothes seem to be pretty expensive but not really stylish, even for '86; how the watch around Richard's wrist is the same one Arashk has seen Seb—James wear almost every day; how James' posture, the graphite stains on his hands, and the class ring on his finger give him away as a dedicated college student whose biggest concern is his GPA.
And all Arashk's mind can really focus on is the fact that three-fourths of the people in this picture are dead.
He forces himself to tear his rapt attention from the photos and turn to the papers in the folder, though the photos remain gripped tightly in his hand even as he does.
The first few pages are a profile of James Randolf: his birthday (June of 1963), his address (a city in Michigan Arashk has never heard of), his daily schedule (he was a medical student), his friends (of which he had many), his organizations (intramurals, a service fraternity, and a Lutheran church), his finances (his family was pretty well off but he still worked hard), even his habits (he was more likely to get drunk on Fridays than on Saturdays, he called home most Thursday evenings, and his preferred place to study was on the quad).
Arashk finds himself reading more closely than he intended, morbidly fascinated by the level of detail, and stopping every third line to be surprised by something that doesn't match up with what he would expect from a younger version of Sebastian. Soon enough he realizes that he's spending too much time on this, and does his best to skim ahead to information that might actually help him.
But when the profile of James stops, what follows is another profile, equally as detailed, of his mother.
Arashk flips through the double-sided papers, gaze sweeping over the endless supply of information on each member of the Randolf family. Years' worth of masterfully succinct notes referring to the individuals by their initials indicate Marianne's love of knitting, hiking, and the ocean; how she met Richard at the tail end of college just as he was starting out as a freshman; the rough patch they hit a year into their marriage and the couple's therapy they underwent; Caroline's birth four years after James; all her hobbies and clubs, tennis and painting and volunteering at the animal shelter; the biweekly fishing trips Richard took Caroline on after her brother went away to college; all the times they were typically alone.
The underlying purpose of these notes becomes clearer and clearer as Arashk nears the end, and the times become more specific, even including some transcriptions of overheard snippets of conversation concerning upcoming schedules. Finally, at the top of a page labeled "Phase 1," he reaches the note that makes him feel almost physically ill:
"July 2 1990: RR will attend a 7:00 business dinner at Alexander's. Parking is usually bad so a fairly long walk will be necessary. Sunset is not until 9:14 so Goodwin will attempt to delay service. If all goes well Goodwin will mug and fatally shoot RR before he reaches his vehicle. His wallet and any valuables will be removed to ascertain that authorities will see him as a randomly selected victim."
Arashk takes a few deep breaths, involuntarily glancing back down at the family photo he still holds. Richard's hand is resting on his daughter's shoulder. His collared shirt is slightly rumpled but less so on the side facing his wife, as if she'd smoothed it over for him just before the picture was taken. His smile displays rather crooked but meticulously cleaned teeth, and his eyes are laughing.
Arashk shoves the photos into his vest. He may have to refer back to them later but at the moment they're just a distraction. He turns his attention back to the papers and forces himself to keep reading.
Seems the mugging didn't work out that night. Too many witnesses. Arashk feels an iota of relief even though he knows this is no victory, only a delay.
Two more attempts are planned and aborted due to various inconveniences. The note-taker begins to speculate that a mugging may not be the best way to go. But the magic day finally comes on August 17th of 1990, when Richard gets off work a bit late, but instead of going home, heads to the bookstore to look for a birthday present for his wife. The note-taker indicates prior knowledge of the day being a little long but it seems the extra stop was a surprise—one that they took advantage of.
The store was empty except for the last employee closing up shop, with Richard's car parked so that the driver's side faced away from the window. Moderately loud music was being played in the shop. It seems all the stars were aligned. The notes simply state, "A handgun with a silencer was used. RR was blindsided by the attack. Goodwin wore a mask and ostensibly played the part of a mugger in case of unknown security cameras, but did not directly ask for anything in case RR complied. After approximately thirty seconds of intimidation, Goodwin shot RR through the heart, took his wallet, and fled the scene. The body was discovered by the store employee eleven minutes later."
Arashk breathes out shakily, closing his eyes for a moment. More questions are forming in his mind with every new piece of information but he has to stick to his guns and just keep learning as much as he can. He just has to use the limited window he has to gather answers. He can match them up with the questions later.
He knew going in that this wouldn't be pretty, but somehow he's still not prepared for what comes next.
There's a gap of several years after that—the next entry, just below the heading "Phase 2," is labeled "March 19 1997," and displays an abrupt change of focus to Caroline Randolf.
Arashk wipes the sweat from his brow, trying to breathe normally.
Caroline, it seems, had a great love of the water. The family lived relatively near the shores of Lake Michigan and had a small lake house there, where Caroline would often visit—a hobby for which the orchestrators of her death had a clear and sickening appreciation. Frequently her mother Marianne would accompany her, and if James was home, they would all go as a family.
It was the plan from the beginning.
And it is here that the notes get weird.
They start out normal enough, at least for a stalker's log: "May 16 1997: CR set out for lake house when workday ended at ~5:20. Sunset is at 8:35 and the drive is just under an hour. Goodwin and M had arrived at lake house at 4:00 and remained there for the duration of the proceedings."
M.
No need to wonder who that is.
Then comes "Goodwin killed the engine at approximately 5:55. CR exited vehicle and attempted to locate the problem for about 10 minutes. Finding nothing, she tried turning the key in the ignition again, and Goodwin allowed it to work. CR called MR to alert her of the problem but got back on the road."
Arashk blinks at the vague words, trying to figure out exactly how Goodwin inserted himself into the situation while remaining hidden. He allows himself only one reread before forcing himself to move on.
"CR drove more carefully moving forward. About ten minutes later, as she was driving at the edge of a sharp incline above the lake, Goodwin killed the engine again, locking the wheels and sending the vehicle over the edge and into the water.
"Less than two minutes later Goodwin realized that CR had survived and was pulling herself onto land. She had sustained serious injuries and probably would not have made it far enough to get help, but to be safe Goodwin accelerated her bleeding. She bled out and died within five minutes."
Arashk lowers the folder again, drawing in deep, even breaths, telling himself to remain objective, to stay calm, only how is he supposed to do that when he can practically hear Caroline's screams? Feel the warm, sticky rivulets of blood all down her face, her punctured lung, her cracked bones? How can he remain calm when he knows he's up against someone who can accelerate someone's bleeding, apparently without even touching that person or being anywhere near her?
Keep reading, Ronaldo. Keep freaking reading. Do not stop. Every second is precious.
He turns back to the veritable horror story he has found himself in the middle of, and finds his place again.
They're in Phase 3 now. After a few brief, callous bullet points on the discovery of the body and wreckage and the funeral, the notes launch right into detailing James' emotional reaction. Surprise, surprise—he was crushed, almost catatonic with grief for a long time, and though he did his best to put on a strong face and comfort his mother, his sister's death almost destroyed him. He did not return to work for several weeks.
"June 12 1997: M approached JR and introduced himself using prepared profile. JR was uneasy but clearly interested. M gave him contact information and departed."
Prepared profile? Arashk glances ahead through the papers, and sure enough, the next one is a slightly different style, a standalone profile of a college friend of Richard Randolf's who felt he owed a great debt to the Randolf family and wanted to protect its remaining members if possible. He was extremely superstitious and firmly believed that the Randolfs were cursed, and this was why Richard and Caroline had died in the ways they had. And he came to James with an opportunity to ensure that he stayed alive for his mother.
Oh, Seb… What did you do?
Arashk returns to the timeline. "June 20 1997: JR contacted M with questions—mainly what the process entailed, whether it would be reversible, and whether his mother could do it as well, the latter two of which were answered truthfully—and agreed to try it. He also asked whether there was anything he was expected to give in return. The following answer was given exactly, overtly in jest: 'Oh no, of course not. My traveling freak show could use a sword swallower, I suppose, if your medical career ever goes south, but that's just an idea.'"
That manipulative, conniving, scum-sucking, sociopathic son of a bitch.
The next page or so provides a detailed outline of the following months, during which the Master would come by on a somewhat biweekly basis, claiming to be using a natural gift to build physical and even retroactive resilience in others via meditation and contemplation. He would chant over James, spend up to an hour at a time just sitting in silence with a look of concentration, and he wasn't really doing anything, but James could feel a difference as the weeks went by because of what Goodwin was doing behind the scenes.
And his contribution is described very near the beginning as such: "Goodwin will temporarily move into an apartment .7 miles from JR's residence. He will constantly be on the watch for opportunities to introduce water into food and drink which JR intends to ingest."
There are so many pieces missing. The note is vague in so many ways. And Arashk is growing more impatient with every passing second to know what Goodwin's deal is, so in what would normally be a pretty useless subconscious attempt to find another source of information, he glances up, distancing himself from the folder's contents for just long enough for him to notice two things: there's a gun stashed in the drawer next to Goodwin's bed, and he can still hear Caroline screaming.
For some reason, it's the second revelation that hits him harder.
Arashk sits there staring at the polished wood that he knows conceals a weapon, just listening to the echoes in his ear. It's passed beyond imagination. This is what they really sounded like. Ragged, primal, and terrified.
With his sudden awareness of what's happening the sensory input increases tremendously, and he's falling through the air and plunging into shockingly cold water, and pain explodes in too many places on his body to count, and everything is metal and water pulsating around him, and thinking becomes almost impossible. He doesn't even know if all parts of him are still attached and all he can taste is blood and iron and there's no air, no light, no escape—
He has to get out of this before it gets out of hand. Utilizing a skill born of intensive practice, he starts the involved process of removing himself from the vision. All it takes is locating a single stimulus that is, in fact, his own, and building on that to return to his own body and his own time. Normally the air entering and exiting his lungs is a good starting point. He breathes slowly and deliberately, and gradually the water begins to recede, the splitting agony fades into a dull ache, and his heartrate crawls its way back to "normal," until finally he's left with only the faint but relentless echoes of Caroline's death cry, and he finds himself sitting in the dimly lit apartment of Benedict Goodwin, still holding the folder, faced with the task of rationalizing what just happened.
Here's the thing: he hasn't touched anything that should logically lead to a vision like that. If he had a piece of the wreckage, sure. Maybe even something Caroline was wearing when she died could have done the trick, but there's none of that.
He has never had a vision triggered only by his own thoughts before.
If only there were time to consider the implications of this.
He forces himself to shove the development into the back of his mind, place the folder carefully next to the still-open lockbox, stand up, and cross the room, stopping in front of the drawer that's driving his psychic senses nuts.
He's not sure what he would call the piece of furniture—it's some weird nightstand-dresser hybrid, with two drawers of unequal size. Tentatively he reaches for the ornate brass handle on the lower and larger of the two, and pulls it open.
He doesn't immediately see any sort of firearm, and he releases a quiet sigh of trepidation as he instantly knows that this means he'll have to move stuff around. Which will involve some touching. There's a pretty reasonable amount of clutter, though—a tiny decorative pillow, pocket editions of two books, and a few packs of playing cards are all he sees at first glance. Bracing himself, still trying in vain to block out the screams, he reaches into the back of the drawer, the back of his hand barely brushing against the pillow, and his fingers quickly find something made of metal.
Arashk blinks, and finds himself in 1990.
He's standing in a small parking lot a little ways from a peaceful street, empty save for two cars, one of which is a grey Chevy belonging to one Richard Randolf. The man is holding a gift bag that seems to contain a tiny book and what is possibly a scented candle as he stands by the driver's door, fiddling with his keys. Always a bad idea.
Arashk supposes Richard didn't have a paranoid father who drilled such habits out of him at an unnecessarily young age.
Richard clearly doesn't notice the figure approaching him quickly from behind, but to his credit, Goodwin moves with almost unnatural silence and seems to be very agile. He's got on a ski mask but his youth relative to the way Arashk has come to know him is immediately evident by his build and his movements.
He stops just out of arm's reach of Richard, holds out the gun, and cocks it. Arashk sees every one of Richard's muscles immediately seize up. Before he has time to react in any capacity, Goodwin commands, voice low, "Turn around very slowly."
Richard complies; of course he does. Though to his credit, he's keeping a pretty firm lid on his panic. He eyes the gun, hands up slightly, palms facing outward, the gift bag dangling from his thumb. "Easy now," he says, voice trembling.
Goodwin adjusts his grip on the weapon, shoving it an inch or so closer to Richard, whose hands go up even higher. "Don't you dare move," he snarls.
Sweat is rolling from Richard's receding hairline, and his eyes fix on the gun, and Arashk senses in him an instinctive desire to empty his pockets and run as soon as he's allowed, but he can't make any unrequested movements. Several long seconds pass, filled only with the sound of Richard's labored breathing, until finally the man dares to glance up from the weapon trained on him, and at the mostly covered face of the stranger who's holding it. Arashk sees everything play out on his face—the slight rumple between his brows indicating confusion, only to be smoothed over, and a gentle understanding grace his features as he comes to a conclusion as to why nothing has been asked of him yet.
An understandable conclusion, but the wrong one.
"Calm down, son," he says, voice low and cracking slightly, and even ventures to lower his hands a bit. "Deep breaths now. You don't really want to do this. Let's talk about it, huh?"
Goodwin hisses through his teeth and straightens his arms ever further, pointing the gun very purposefully at Richard's chest.
The hands go up again. Clearly he hoped the attempt would be immediately successful and is finding it difficult to convince himself it's worth continuing. "What do you want? I'll give it to you. Just put the gun away. I have to get back to my family."
Arashk sees what Richard is doing, and he's gotta give him props for having the presence of mind to try to appeal to his attacker's humanity. Not that it has any hope of working.
"My wife and I have been married for almost twenty years," Richard continues, encouraged by the lack of aggressive response. "We celebrate our anniversary in three months. And we have two beautiful children. Their names are Caroline and—"
"James." A wicked grin curves Goodwin's face, and the full enjoyment he's getting out of what he just said is not in the least obscured by the ski mask. "Oh, I know."
His index finger pulls back on the trigger.
A muffled shot rings through the air.
Arashk, even though he knew exactly what was coming, can't keep himself from jumping, hands covering his mouth.
Richard goes down with a look of shock and horror on his face.
Goodwin stands still, peering over the roof of his victim's car through the mostly-glass walls of the bookstore. The music is the only thing audible aside from Richard's desperate gurgling. The employee is nowhere in sight.
Blood is blossoming over Richard's clean blue button-down and pooling on the concrete beneath him. He makes a single grasp at his murderer's ankle before his hand goes limp. The panic and horror in his eyes does not fade, but instead freezes into place, not advancing any further, just remaining a snapshot of the last thing he felt.
Goodwin wastes no time in crouching down over the body, reaching for the left front pocket of his pants. Arashk notes in disgust that he doesn't even hesitate. He knows exactly where Richard always carries his wallet.
Only he doesn't even have to place his hand inside the pocket.
The wallet slides out on its own, entering Goodwin's palm as if rushing into the arms of an old friend.
The scene freezes. Goodwin is in mid-turn as he begins his retreat, still in the midst of placing the pilfered wallet into his own pocket. The blood has stopped making progress in its mass exodus from Richard's body. Sound is no longer a factor. Arashk is left wondering whether he's being affected by whatever this is as well, because his brain sure as hell isn't doing anything right now. He tries blinking, and is able to.
The wallet moved.
Goodwin made it move.
Without touching it.
And just like that, he is no longer in that lonely bookstore parking lot in 1990. He is in the much more recent past, standing on a quiet road among a multitude of police officers, most of whom he knows, some of whom he's known and loved for many years, and there are police vehicles everywhere and just off the road is an overturned army green station wagon, and his own voice echoes around him, unheard by anyone else at the scene, carrying the words "Is he making you say that?" and as soon as the locution wraps up he feels the station wagon's engine coming apart, metal flying in all directions, and he can feel every drop of gasoline and piece of shrapnel, including the ones that embed themselves into his best friend's back, and his own body is gone from the equation because he is the force throwing these people back, cracking bones against asphalt.
Somewhere in the dim recesses of his mind he recalls reading once, years ago, that there's not really anything that can make car engines explode like they do in the movies. It just doesn't happen in real life.
That wasn't an explosion.
That was surgery.
He blinks, and then he's in the office where his psychic detective business is based, holding a gun, even though his hands aren't present—but he's also out on the pier, closely watching two men, and his window is closing and the detective is about to leave, so even though there's no wind, he chances pushing a lure out of the tackle box at his target's feet. It works, and when the man stands up to retrieve it, he seizes the opportunity, pulling back the trigger and sending the bullet flying through the cracked window, gently and masterfully altering its course so that it ends up in the man's shoulder, where it will cause plenty of bleeding but no further damage. The detective's heart pounds like the drums of war, and even though the wood of the rail isn't weak enough that it ought to break when the man stumbles against it, matter is his to control and command, and he says it is. So the wood gives way, the man falls from his sight, and just as he hoped and expected, the detective is displaying clear intentions of going in after him. But he can't let them come up too quickly, so he tosses the water around them and holds them under until the very last second.
He's at the carnival, noticing the book that pitiful fortuneteller is hiding in his vest, and alerting the Master about it. It's a few days before the man has the chance to question him about it, and as he does Goodwin keeps careful tabs on the fortuneteller's heartrate, and it's elevated, so he reaches out with his mind and slightly tugs on the Master's sleeve—the signal they agreed upon to indicate deception. But then the fortuneteller is having a genuine panic attack and suddenly there is an explanation for his irregular heartrate that matches the one he gave and all seems to be well, after all.
He's somewhere else, maybe a year into the past, strategically hiding cheap cameras all over the hometown of his upcoming victim so that later he can go back and slightly adjust their positions to snap pictures from afar. He is locating all the people he will hold over that victim's head, thoroughly familiarizing himself with their mannerisms, their height, their weight, the structures of their faces, so that he'll be able to find them again no matter how far away he is.
Through all of this, Arashk remains in whatever position he was last in when he touched that damn gun, on the floor of Goodwin's apartment, but he is also seeing out of Goodwin's eyes as he commits all these deeds from the comfort of his own bed, eyes shut, legs crossed, breathing deep, mind and influence extending over thousands of miles.
All these locations and events and plans and sensations are already overlapping and Arashk isn't sure he can tell them apart anymore, until one more inserts itself into the flood of information and memories.
He is sitting in the passenger's seat of a van two streets from the house of the man who will soon be calling himself Arashk Ronaldo. He is waiting for him to arrive home. When he does, as soon as he removes the keys from his motorcycle, he cuts off blood flow to his brain. The victim's alarm increases as his mobility decreases, and he loses consciousness shortly before reaching the front door—but his body is kept upright, and his limbs are made to move, and his body walks drunkenly like a marionette with a string or two cut, down the street, to the right, until it reaches the van that will spirit him away from everything he knows and loves. It hauls itself into the back and goes limp, and just like that, it's over.
At any given moment, not that he can tell those apart anymore, Arashk has no idea where his mind is or where it's going next. Connections are being made too quickly and sometimes names pop up that he thinks might spark something like recognition in him but everything is just a flood of sensory input that doesn't even belong to him and he is swept away in the chaos of his mind and what's been done to it.
And then, without warning, he is pulled from the flood as if by a chopper, but it still rages beneath him and debris clings to his skin and he is shivering and replaying what he has just experienced on a loop in his mind. And he's in the apartment again, falling back onto the spotless carpet, the gun somehow having found its way into his shaking hand. He pushes himself desperately backwards, eyes trained on the still-open drawer simply because he doesn't want to see anything new for a few seconds at least, and he thinks he might be giving himself a rug burn on his lower back where his shirt has rolled up a bit, but who the hell cares about that now.
His mind, already taxed beyond belief, races to figure out why it stopped—or at least why he was slightly distanced from it. Because as it was happening, it felt like it never would. Like he was going to be at the mercy of the visions until he was able to understand every single detail that came his way—or until his brain simply stopped working.
The hairs on the back of his neck stand on end. A tingle, beginning at the same site, travels down his spine, and he springs to his feet just as the door creaks open.
The old man he once thought might be his friend appears to barely have time to register surprise before Arashk grabs him by the front of his shirt, yanks him inside, and slams the door shut behind him. The man is sprawled on his back on the floor, the contents of his pockets spilling out onto his infuriatingly white carpet.
Arashk takes the gun he's still holding and points it at Goodwin. He himself has no idea what his intention is—to pull the trigger, to just use it as a way to maintain distance between them—but the decision is taken, quite literally, out of his hands when the weapon flies forward to Goodwin's outstretched hand, and Arashk himself flies backward, his back slamming against the front door and pain flaring up in his knees as he falls four feet to the floor.
The object that brought on the visions is no longer touching him, but the blood, the screams, the sensory overload… none of it has stopped. He lies on his stomach for a moment, winded, aware of nothing but the sound of people dying, going back and forth between deafening and fuzzy with the throbbing in his head.
As he goes to sit up, he finds that movement is… difficult. It's the strangest feeling, almost like his muscles have seized up, but he can tell there's nothing weird going on inside his body—something is being done to him. He manages to tilt his head up enough to have a limited view of what Goodwin is doing. He can't hear much other than the screams, he can't smell much other than the blood, and flashes of red keep obscuring his vision, but he can tell enough to know that Goodwin is holding the gun in one hand and very casually gathering all the items he dropped with the other.
"You're pathetic" somehow reaches him through the pounding in his ears. He tries to focus enough to see Goodwin's expression, but it's too much. His voice continues, and Arashk barely catches the end of his next sentence: "…what you've done to them."
Arashk struggles mightily against the force keeping him pressed to the floor, but can make no headway. He grunts something, and immediately isn't sure what it was—something vague about the future, bad things happening if he continues down this path… A twang of shame goes off in the back of his mind. Here he is, an honest-to-God psychic, and he's using the same classic techniques used by every no-good swindling fake soothsayer ever to walk the planet.
Goodwin, clearly not impressed, laughs. It goes disturbingly well with the murder scene he can still hear, nearly overlapping with the smile he bore as he buried a bullet in Richard's heart, and he wishes the entire world would just go quiet for a minute, but no dice. His head clears up enough for him to say, "If you kill me, fine. But I just gotta tell you this one thing first."
Goodwin, as far as he can tell, says nothing.
Arashk hisses the words through his teeth, not quite able to hear them intelligibly himself: "I've spoken with the Randolfs, and they are gonna haunt the hell out of you for what you did. And you better believe I'm gonna join them."
There are three things he knows at the moment that give him even the slightest shred of hope that he and the people he loves the most might live to see another day. The first and most recently learned is, of course, that Richard, Marianne, and Caroline were real people in whose premature deaths Goodwin had a definite hand. Though their presence is, for reasons Arashk might never figure out, not strong enough to do any real haunting, Goodwin doesn't know that.
The second thing is that Goodwin is, to use what Arashk is pretty sure is the technical term, a telekinetic. And he's good. Good enough to locate specific people he's never met and a nearby engine and make said engine explode from hundreds of miles away, good enough to aim a gun out of a window and direct the bullet so that it wounds but doesn't kill his target, and definitely good enough to a) tell when somebody has a thick stack of old photos in his pocket, and b) tell when somebody's heart is beating rapidly, when his breathing is different, when he's sweating a lot, when he's lying.
And the third and longest-standing fact, and the one that just might save his ass, is that Arashk is one of the few people who can reliably fool a polygraph.
Goodwin's essence pales. Arashk can feel the difference in the guy's mood, even if he can't quite see him clearly. He believes in ghosts, and with good reason. And he believes Arashk.
Everything slows. Goodwin takes the few steps to close the distance between them, clutching the gun tightly. As he moves, the pressure on Arashk's shoulders increases, though he notes that his legs are pretty much free.
As Goodwin leans over him to reach for his pockets, he presses the barrel of the gun into Arashk's neck.
And the pain of a bullet ripping through his chest taking a face full of glass his neck splitting open the metallic taste of blood in his mouth water bursting all around him his ears ringing like the knells of death his every heartbeat like an explosion in his chest the screams the crash the blood the screams—
His body twists in a way it never has before, his actions guided by more than just sight, and his foot connects with the side of Goodwin's head.
All at once the weight on his upper body is gone and he leaps up to his feet like a spring trap. Screams still sounding in his head, every one of his senses in overdrive, Arashk gropes around until he finds something that's moderately difficult to lift, and lets his instincts take over.
He loses count of how many times he brings the object down. Shouts echo in his ears, but he has no idea whether they're his own, Goodwin's, or residue of the glimpses into the past that seem to have gotten stuck on repeat in his mind. All rational thought has left his head. He barely even feels present. He's become like one of the ghosts with which he so often converses of late—a shadow in the background, unable to influence the physical world, save for utterly tormenting the resident psychic. The only difference is that his body is still alive.
When he finally begins to slow, coming back to himself, his heart is still doing its damnedest to burst out of his chest cavity but his senses are beginning to return to him. He automatically goes through a quick reality check—he's Arashk Ronaldo, he's in Benedict Goodwin's apartment, and… and…
The bloody bookend falls from his hands and strikes Goodwin's still foot. Arashk very nearly vomits on seeing what remains of his face. He doesn't know how much noise either of them made, how long this lasted, whether anyone's coming, where he is, what he's doing, if he's alive, what's real, what's remembered, where to go from here—
And Arashk, following what every single one of his instincts is telling him—which he's learned to trust a lot more of late—bolts out of the train car and into the night.
