Seas of blood, bury life
Smell your death as it burns deep inside of you
Abacinate, eyes that bleed
Praying for the end of your wide awake nightmare
Wings of pain reach out for you
"Angel Of Death"
Slayer
October 19, 2012
Tokyo, Japan
"Are you alright?"
Casey heard Gertrude's worried voice on the phone, a source of simultaneous comfort and agitation.
No! Nothing was alright! Nothing had been for so long…and it would never be again.
Stop!
She loves you. It's her way of telling you she's here…if you need her.
Damn it, he needed her. This was unbearable to face alone. Gertrude calmed the anger inside him like nothing else.
"I left Grimes at the hotel," Casey answered, non sequitur.
"Is it that bad?" she asked cautiously.
"He stayed with Bartowski. Beckman said only me." With the cold chill of the grave in her tone, something he had so rarely heard from her it frightened him.
Casey listened to Gertrude breathing on the line, sure she understood there was no peaceful resolution, no happy ending. Her silence was deafening.
"Beckman's in Japan, then?" Gertrude asked the obvious, to ground him, he thought. She knew when he needed that.
"She left D.C. as soon as she heard. Unofficially of course, but—"
"Her mission or not, this was her top priority. It has been for the better part of this year." More factual information he already knew.
"Gert, I know what they found—"
Casey's voice faltered, a fraction of a second. He coughed to hide it, but could not efficiently conceal it all from Gertrude.
"I know. It's…beyond imagining. But…you're strong. Tough. No matter how soft you think you've become." Her voice was quieter, gentler. "He'll need that, John. More than anything else."
"Roger that," Casey replied softly. He hung up, leaving any other words unsaid.
Casey tried to summon his anger. There was enough there—a raging inferno that could have ignited a murderous rampage…if it had a direction, a purpose.
His angry center, as Chuck sometimes called it, once his motivation, was now diluted with kindness and friendship. Growth, personal development, fulfillment in life—positivity had trickled into him, calmed his anger. There was no calming it now.
All of him railed, horrified and defeated— broken—as he searched for the courage to face what Beckman had called him to face.
His rage reignited, the once tempering solvents now working in reverse—like gasoline on a fire.
He cared for her. She was family. For him, few were included with such rank. He was not so choosy—just unapproachable, unknowable, but for the few who cared to understand. Casey and she were more alike than different, closer than family in the face of all they had endured together.
He blamed himself, although there was no shortage of that, it seemed. Casey's culpability was allowing his daughter to be used against him.
Had Morgan's decision to stay in California been wrong? Could he have helped if he had been there with them in Japan?
Ellie had pleaded with Sarah to let her remove the Intersect, begging her to not follow. But even Casey knew—there was no reasoning with Sarah when Chuck was in danger. Ellie could not have stopped her.
Chuck's guilt was worst, though his was the most unfounded. All Chuck had done was be himself—the man Sarah loved. He let Quinn go in Vail. A plea, a hope—that they could just walk away.
Casey, tainted as he was, knew better. He should have told Chuck it was ill advised.
The blame was back to himself again—for being soft, for wanting to be done, for forgetting evil never quit, never rested.
Again, it fell squarely on Casey's shoulders and he knew it. He had been the one to hold his two closest friends at gunpoint, forcing everything in motion that had cascaded into this tragic disaster.
Chuck didn't–couldn't–blame him. Of course.
She's your daughter. What choice did you have?
Kind words spoken in a miasma of despair and anxiety. That was Chuck. His friend.
Each moment it seemed, Chuck found some other reason to blame himself. For letting his guard down, for not protecting her, for leaving her in the compartment, for ten months of endless searching that found nothing but dead ends.
Dead ends.
The words chilled him.
There was no body, Beckman told him. But also no doubt.
Sarah was dead.
{}{}{}{}{}{}
In twenty years with the Marines, Casey had seen horrors no human should ever see. Atrocities untouchable by words. No words existed that could contact the raw nightmare.
He had never lost control of himself the way he had in the underground base where he now stood, bent, arms around his middle, dry heaving in the empty corridor. His eyes watered, his throat and nasal passages burned with bile. He was cold, shivering, yet sweating.
The metallic smell of blood permeated the entire base, heaviest in the room he had just rushed out of.
The blood was partially congealed, sticking to the bottom of his shoes. Puddles on the floor, splatter on the walls and ceiling. A layer of debris—shattered glass, splintered wood, scattered pieces of unknown machinery, a smashed computer monitor, other things Casey couldn't identify beneath the coating of maroon sludge—littered the floor. Smeared partial footprints, partial handprints…all signs of a violent struggle for life and death, a partial re-enactment of final moments.
Death won.
God in heaven, what happened to her?
Beckman, tough as nails, stood her ground. She was not without compassion—allowing Casey time to regain his composure after the involuntary emptying of his stomach. Her eyes were shaded, hardened, as she stepped carefully through the rivulets of blood. Her arms were folded behind her back, her chin jutting out in defiance. Holding herself together.
Her eyes scanned the footprints, the handprints. "She endured that. The least I can do…is bear witness to it." Beckman's words, a dark eulogy, edged with unspeakable sadness.
She answered the questions Casey was thinking but couldn't vocalize.
"The lab took samples. The preliminary findings were…irrefutable. It's Sarah's blood type. Sarah's DNA…all of this is her blood. God, all of it." Casey saw the slightest of tremors in Beckman's jaw before she grit her teeth. "Forensics is sweeping the area, although there is little they could hope to find in all this."
The cold seeped into his bones at the thought.
"They estimated this to be almost two liters of blood. That blood loss is not survivable, no matter what exactly happened here."
{}{}{}{}
Casey had almost no memory of the drive back to the hotel. He was in his vehicle, in one place and then another, like the car had driven itself.
He heard the disgusting sucking sound as he pulled his foot from the pedal, the blood on his sole sticky now as it dried, gluing foot to pedal. He swallowed hard to keep his stomach from rebelling again, though the urge to vomit was strong.
He had delivered bad news hundreds of times. He was a professional, coached on all the appropriate things to say that were respectful but not sentimental.
Nothing seemed adequate. Respectful words, like he had always been instructed to give, were useless here. He had no distance, no clinical detachment.
He knew he was about to irrevocably alter the life of his best friend—a man he considered a brother. Shatter his entire world. Not even sentiment, had he been able to muster any, would have been appropriate.
She was everything to Chuck. What happened when the entire foundation of one's world was demolished?
He knew. And it gutted him. He was the Angel of Death again.
As he approached the door of the hotel room, Casey noticed too late the splashes of blood on his pant legs above his shoes. He was wearing her death.
Grimes opened the door.
Casey's eyes burned with the unfamiliar feeling of unshed tears.
He had no idea what he was going to say. But his expression communicated without words.
All the blood drained from Morgan's face. He sobbed out loud.
Chuck appeared, his approach unnoticed, until he looked at Casey, until Chuck screamed. Morgan held him back, held him up, as his legs gave out and he crashed to his knees, howling in agony.
Agony beheld, agony shared.
Morgan wept along with his friend, but Casey saw the panic.
The window. The balcony.
Morgan was worried Chuck would throw himself from the window? It seemed drastic, an overreaction. But Chuck was…transmogrified, otherworldly, consumed and changed by grief…into something Casey had never seen before, something he had never thought possible to see in his friend. Barely human, incoherent, like a rabid wolf.
Soon Morgan needed Casey's strength to hold Chuck back as Chuck twisted and writhed toward the balcony.
Frightened, Casey asked Morgan to call a doctor. They waited, holding their friend as he raved, Chuck's wailing anguish echoing down the corridor.
It took a double dose of tranquilizer to calm him.
Chuck slept. It was a fleeting relief.
The nightmare would still be waiting when he woke.