Chapter #13An Attachment to Dead Things by: Seuzz   You realize you are glaring at the two Fane executives, but you can't help yourself. After the cock up in the Nzingha job—
Which was successful. You fulfilled your assignment. But so what? You still left one of your teammates behind.
You left him behind because you killed him. Sure, it was because Banks outwitted you twice. And you outwitted Banks last. But it was still your hands that snapped Kips's neck.
You grind the heel of your hand into your eye. "Is this job over?" you ask. "You didn't want this meeting because—"
"Yes, it's over, Knotts," Dey says. "The official investigation will take a few weeks yet to conclude, but from everything we hear— The policemen you terminated, Banks's own behavior, the drugged-up girl you left behind in one of his rooms—"
"It all points to Mr. Banks as the amoral murderer-for-hire of his employer," says Hyde-White. "A neat and ironical conclusion to a long-standing vexation of ours."
"Neat?" you ask, and let your voice drop to its lowest registers. "You mean like cool, awesome, bad-ass?" Hyde-White's lips tighten. "Or do you mean all tied up neatly, with a little pink bow that has only one loop in it instead of the two it was supposed to come back home with?" Your voice cracks.
The professor stares at you, and a mirthless smile breaks his ivory façade. "I assume you enjoyed exacting revenge on Mr. Banks, by using his face to finish your assignment?" he asserts rather than asks.
"That was always part of the plan," you retort. "Except it was supposed to be Kips wearing Zack's face."
"So you took especial pleasure in taking it over." The professor's smile widens, but his eyes remain dead.
Your stomach heaves and your head aches, so that you barely hear Hyde-White as he continues. "Now, as to a job to take your mind off this last one—"
"She needs a rest, Jamie," says Dey.
"She needs a job, Julian."
"I need to get out of here," you say. You stagger from the conference room and slam the door behind you.
Tears stain your vision, so that you don't see where you're going as you stumble down the hallway. You're inside one of the Fane skyscrapers in London, and even when you're paying attention you can become lost in its winding and windowless corridors. Maybe your feet know better than your brain, for you end in a medical bay. Dimly you recognize it as the old Diana medical facility, before Diana moved to more private digs in the suburbs. So you don't recognize the doctor—who looks like he's just out of school—when you stumble in. "Gimme a shot," you say as you drop down hard onto a gurney.
"What's the matter," he stammers.
"I don't know. Doesn't matter. Just give me a shot. Vitamins or something." You swing your legs up onto the gurney and lay back. The doctor starts to speak again, and you throw your arm over your face and don't answer.
But you don't fight him either as he takes your blood pressure and temperature and flashes a light in your eyes. The examination is just distracting enough to keep you from thinking but not so distracting you have to concentrate on it. When he's done he pricks you with a hypodermic full of something that leaves you feeling soft and pink—though not appreciably happier—and you press your eyes shut.
* * * * *
You come to with the feeling that someone is squeezing your hand. You winch your eyes open and find Cox sitting next to you, and smiling down at you. "Dey called me," he says. "How are you feeling, Knotts?"
"Ha." You rub your face. "What did he say?"
"He said you had a rough time back in the States."
There's a long, lingering pause, which no one fills with the obvious reply: Kips had it rougher.
"When do we have the party," Cox finally asks.
"What party?"
"The one at the Harp."
You rub your eyes with your free hand. "Tell me what to do, Cox," you say in a voice that is firm only for being so very tight in your throat.
"You need to go to the party. You need to say good-bye."
"That won't be enough. I still have him in me."
"We all have a little bit of Kips in—"
"No, I mean—" Your throat aches, but you force the words through up your raw pipes. "I haven't got any tattoos, Cox. You know that. Silly Knotts, can't keep up with the times, sticks with masks, the tried and true." You sniff hard. "But I do have tattoos. You can't see them on me, because this skin is one of my tattoos."
Cox's eyes widen.
"I've got lots of tattoos, actually, all under this skin. I bet I've got more than anyone else at Diana."
Cox points dumbly at your face. "But you've looked like this since before we got the tattoos, before the Moustache—"
"It was a mask. It's a tattoo now."
"You mean this isn't your face?" You don't like the note of trepidation that has crept into Cox's voice. The asshole should be completely used to the idea that things aren't always what they seem, since he's regularly not what he seems either. "You're not—?"
"It's me, Cox," you snarl. "Always is and always will be. But I need another face because my other one, my old one—"
The one you were born with. The body of William Martin Prescott.
"Well, it's no good to anyone, not to me, not to you, not to Dey or Diana or anyone. It's busted, let's leave it at that. I stick with this look for the same reason you and everyone else sticks to their look when not on a job or at a party, okay? It's so we all have some kind of root we can all recognize. And this is my root!" You point at your face as your voice turns husky. "So don't forget it and don't weird out on me. As far as we're concerned, as far as I'm concerned, this is me."
You draw a haggard breath. "But I've got another face, one underneath, that's covered in tattoos, like you and the others." You draw another, even more haggard breath. "And one of them is of Kips."
The following silence at first is only a quiet kind of silence, but without altering in pitch it takes on a stunned quality. "You've got a tattoo of Kips," is all Cox can finally say.
"I've got a tattoo of all of you," you confess. "I'm the team leader, and I've got my team stenciled to my ass. In case it's ever necessary for me to—"
"When would that ever be necessary," Cox demands in a hard voice.
"It was necessary back in the States," you retort. "It was the only way I could get close to Banks to take him out. You always keep a card up your sleeve, and you guys are my most valuable—"
Cox turns away, but he doesn't let go of your hand. Finally, he shrugs. "So you've got a tat of Kips."
"So what do I do with it?" you ask. "Have the Moustache dig it out of—"
"Jesus, Knotts," Cox says in a horrified voice. "We're not even gonna get his body back from the States. You can't cut that tattoo out of yourself. 'Cos then what'll we have left of him?"
Tears well up in your eyes. "Thank you, Cox," you reply.
He squeezes your hand again.
* * * * *
You eventually sleep, and when you wake an later you find Cox gone and Hyde-White sitting by your side instead. He has on his half-moon spectacles and is reading something inside a manila folder. You lay quietly for some minutes before letting him know with a sniffle that you're awake. He looks at you gravely over the tops of his glasses before pulling them off and putting them away. "Have you quite wrung this foolishness from your system," he asks in a level voice.
You raise your head in surprise. What did he say? Is this old fucker presuming to—?
"I had a lengthy talk with Mr. Cox after I found him here with you," Hyde-White continues. "It was a healthy talk you had with him, less for what it did for you, though, than for what it revealed to me."
"And what's that," you raggedly demand.
"Will," he says in a very heavy and deliberate tone, and it takes you a moment to realize he is calling you by that archaic name. "I understand your attachment to Ms. Knotts. You have 'been' Paige Knotts for something like ten years now." He says it in a way that lets you hear the quotation marks around "been." "I suggest you become someone else for a while. Maybe forever. This girl is too emotional, always has been too emotional for my taste."
"I can be plenty of other people—"
"But you are always 'Paige Knotts' beneath, and you have absorbed too much of her personality." His voice hardens. "This breakdown you are talking yourself into is nothing but hysterical, feminine sentimentality about the death of a co-worker."
Rage erupts within you, but your frame is too tiny to express it adequately. "So you just want me to go on another 'job'—"
"Of a sort. But it will be a real change. More than an impersonation. It will be an evolution for you. And a revolution for all of us."
You can only stare.
"Come, Will, show me that you are an intelligent and balanced young man. Tell me you'll do it, and slough off this attachment to dead things."   indicates the next chapter needs to be written. |
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