This choice: Stick with the ones that rescued you • Go Back...Chapter #32The Stripping of Final Illusions by: Seuzz   "She was lying," Verity repeats.
Her assertion jolts you. We have to make one stop, then we'll head to the airport and home, Joe had said. Why would he lie? And about what? About making one stop? Or about going to the airport and home?
You rub your mouth. He'd whispered it in your ear, so that Verity couldn't hear. And if she hadn't heard, she wouldn't have detected the lie. She would have accepted your account of what Joe said.
Why would he lie?
"I'm sure it's okay," you say.
"Lie."
"Alright, I don't know why he--" You blink. "Maybe it's like those intro courses you were always complaining about? The way profs fudge things because the students don't know enough to understand the truth?"
Verity just stands with her eyes fast shut.
"That's got to be it," you say, trying to convince yourself. "This whole thing has been-- He wants us to know it'll be okay, not to worry, even though there's going to be a complication."
"So why not just trust us with the truth?"
"Because it's all so complicated and scary. Come on, Verity. I've been with these guys for awhile now. I trust them. They're the good guys."
But she remains obdurate as you tug at her. Sweat breaks out all over you. You'd trust yourself to Joe. But you have to take responsibility for her as well.
"And it's not like we have a choice," you say, reaching for the final argument. "We don't have money. We're in the middle of a foreign country. What else can we do?"
So she has to yield, and climbs into the back seat with you. But she's very stiff, even after you've put your arm in hers, and have squeezed her hand.
You wait nearly fifteen minutes, and then two figures fly from the door and into the car. One is Frank, who leaps behind the wheel and jams the car into drive. The other is Joe, out of Lydia's mask but still in her dress.
The car races toward the exit, and before you even reach it the metal gate blows off and across the street. Tires squeal as you peels into traffic. The neon and electrical lights of suburban London blaze in the nighttime.
"Is everything okay," you gasp. "What's this stop we have to make?"
"We got another lead from Patterson that we need to take care of," Frank says.
Verity clenches your hand so tightly that her nails dig into your flesh.
Joe turns to face you. "There are a lot of pieces coming together suddenly," he says in an even, reassuring tone. "Things that we didn't know and things that we didn't know that we knew. Trust us. It's going to be okay."
Again, Verity clenches your hand.
Joe stares first at you, then at Verity, then at you again. His eyes gleam in the dark, but his expression is gnomic. He turns back around.
You grip Verity's hand.
* * * * *
Frank guides the car onto some kind of highway, and you race through the night. Skyscrapers blaze around you. The car crosses a wide dark space--the Thames?--and plunges into their midst. After twenty minutes Frank exits onto a thoroughfare. Traffic is thick, but it moves briskly. You peer out the window, though of course you'll have no way of knowing where you're going or when you'll arrive. But after a few minutes a tall building, glowing palely against the sky, appears. The name "FANE" crowns its upper tiers.
Frank turns toward it, and slows down. He raises a phone to his ear and mutters into it. You pass through a gate in a high wall, and turn into an underground parking garage. He circles through, driving to lower and lower levels. You pass through a short, dark tunnel, and come out in a small underground garage lit by buzzing vapor lamps. Frank stops the car and turns it off. "Everybody out," he says.
You and Verity wait for a moment after they've exited and shut their doors. Then your doors open. Taking a deep breath, you pull Verity out with you.
The concrete bunker is lit with a harsh but ghostly light. Frank and Joe are standing nearby, slouching casually with their arms folded. Light smiles play on their faces as they coolly regard a third figure.
He's a young man, handsome, looking like he's in his early thirties. His hair is dark and stylishly cut. He's in an expensive-looking suit, but he's tieless, and his collar is open. He smiles around an unlit cigarette, and his hands are thrust casually in his pockets. His eyes gleam as he leans back to study you and Verity.
"So this is the girl," he says. His eye shifts to you. "And Will Prescott," he adds dismissively. "They give you any trouble?"
Frank snickers--an ugly sound.
"Girl lives up to her billing," Joe says. He buffs his nails on his shirt. "Fortunately, I'm real good at using the truth to tell lies."
"You're awful sure of yourself, Joseph," the man says. "But that's your charm."
"One of my charms, you mean," Joe retorts. "I got lots."
"That you do," the man says, and takes the cigarette from his mouth. "So I tell you this as one, hundred-percent heterosexual male to another." He cups Joe's chin in his hand. "I could fuck you all night and most of the next morning." He leans in, and his mouth and Joe's open to a loud, long, furiously wet kiss. "Mm. You two, Frank." He pats the latter's chest. "My stars. Yes. My. Stars."
You can only tear your eyes away from this scene at the sound of a door opening behind you. Four burly men in uniforms and light armor enter. "We'll debrief upstairs," the man says to Frank and Joe. "Take the girl to holding cell alpha," he tells the guards. "The boy to beta."
A choking gasp escapes from Verity. Or is it from you? You cling to her hand, but it's ripped roughly away as two men seize you by the arms and hustle you away.
The last thing you see is Joe, smiling as he puts a cigarette in his mouth. It glows without benefit of match or lighter.
* * * * *
You're back in a cell. This one doesn't even have bars, just a metal door. Nor is there a bunk or a toilet, only a concrete floor. It's more like a storage closet. It doesn't seem like they intend to hold you long, since it has none of the most primitive comforts of a real cell. You don't know whether to hope that your confinement will be brief, or hope that it will be very miserable but very long. The hunger pains have returned--you've not eaten since breakfast on the plane this morning--but that will be the least of your worries.
You sprawl on the floor, your legs in front of you, your back against the wall, and that robe Patterson gave you your only comfort. Your bare feet are dirty. You feel dirty all over. When was the last time you showered? Days ago. An ocean away. Has your family missed you? Again, you're not sure what to hope: That they are frantic with worry at your disappearance, or in blissful ignorance because a duplicate "Will Prescott" has been slipped into their lives.
And you can only blink in a daze of confusion. You'd hoped--so foolishly you'd hoped--that Joe and Frank were rescuing you from that maze of mirrors. Instead, you're deeper inside than ever before. They are supposedly colleagues of Rick and Hal Swann, sons of that sweet old man in Olympia, magical-fu fighters battling corrupt conspiracies like this so-sinister-sounding Fane. You cannot connect them--the guys themselves or what they've told you--with Fane. And yet here you are.
They must be fakes. More doubles. But how? You don't have a real clue how this magic stuff works. But you remember that storm in Olympia, the one that stripped you and Joe of your masks. The man in Olympia seems powerful enough to pierce illusions. So these duplicates must have been inserted later. Maybe they got replaced after you arrived in London, while you were in the hotel, or after Patterson got you. Maybe this is another elaborate ruse by Patterson? But it doesn't feel like it.
Oh, but what would it feel like if it felt like another of his ruses?
And why set up a fake rescue attempt, just to put you back in another cell? What the hell is so important about you?
Nothing, the emptiness answers you back. Am an attendant lord, one that will do/To swell a progress, start a scene or two. That's more or less what Patterson implied, and the man out there didn't seem interested in you either. So why do they keep shuttling you around, staging rescues that turn out to be as fake as the rescuers? Almost everything you've seen, it seems, has turned out to be a lie--
Seen.
You squeeze your head between your hands. Seen. You've seen things that aren't true, and passed bad information to others, leading them astray. Like when Joe lied to you, so that you'd pass the lie to Verity without it being caught. Just an instance of a larger pattern. Is that your value to them: as a gullible fool who can be trusted with falsehoods so as to mislead others?
But why do they want you as that witness?
You groan. You want to stop seeing things. You want to stop being seen. You'd give anything to be invisible. You huddle up in a small ball, practically willing yourself to disappear.
You're still in this attitude when the door opens. You tilt your head to look up. It's one of the guards, standing in the doorway. He looks quickly around with a frown, at the walls, ceiling, floor, you-- He pales and runs out. An alarm blares. He looks back in the room, very briefly, then vanishes again. Hard footsteps sound, running off.
And he's left the door open.   indicates the next chapter needs to be written. |
| Members who added to this interactive
story also contributed to these: |
View Portfolio
Visit Notebook
Send Gift Points
Awards
Badges
Send Email
Get MORE!
Shop Memberships
Community Newsfeed
General Discussion
Sponsored Items
Book of Trinkets
Static Items
Books
Groups
Interactive Stories
Audio
Campfire Creatives
Community Notes
Crossword Puzzles
Documents
Folders
Images
In & Outs
Madlibs
Photo Albums
Polls
Product Reviews
Quizzes
Survey Forms
Web Pages
Word Searches
