John
Boss awoke to the buzzing sound of electrics, the touch of a
cold steel table and chair, and the metal bite of handcuffs. He
opened his eye and through the myopic fog of the anaesthetic he
could make out a haze of green intercut by five solid black
shapes; less people than voids where people should be. His head
lulled back and immediately he squinted and recoiled from the
piercing rectangles of light in the roof. In his dreamlike
state, the not-people spoke senselessly in their not-language.
One of them reached down into the corner of the room and picked
up some object made of blurry gray.
They strode towards him and hurled the bucket of freezing cold
water at his face, shocking him back into the world. As he
turned his head to the right and spat out the fluid, he noticed
the man sitting at the table in the mirror. He had all the
physical features of John Boss, yes, but something was
different; missing from behind his droopy eye. Maybe it was the
sleepy muck still sliding through his veins, maybe it was an
optical illusion of the grimy yellow-green light that seemed to
infest every tile crack and pore of exposed skin; buzzing and
flickering once every minute or so.
The large mirrors on either side of the room created the effect
of an endless tunnel: endless windows into endless rooms,
curving off into replicated infinity; a thousand unseen men
chained to tables, and their five thousand faceless captors.
Except for one.
Like her colleagues, she wore a heavy, padded uniform with a
litany of little pockets and compartments and, clipped to her
belt, a golden badge in the shape of a shield with letters too
small for John to read from his end of the room. Unlike her
colleagues, she had a face, eyes, and a mouth. She spoke
authoritatively to one of the shadows in an alien language
clogged with "leu"s and "ch"s. John decided that this
unfathomable syllable soup must be Elvish. With her arms folded,
she stared down at him as she walked towards the table.
"You have no markings indicating any terrorist cell that we know
of, you are unbranded and unchipped so you're not an escaped
labourer, and when this lot decided that following an anonymous
tip from an untraceable caller was a great idea, you were found
trying to steal the bodies of two ancient war heroes - not that
you'd find anything, those coffins have been empty for god knows
how long. Simply put: what the fuck?"
John stared woozily at the air between himself and the woman's
stern face. A word clumsily lurched out of his slack mouth:
"yyyyeess...?" Something from behind grabbed the back of his
head and smacked him face-first into the table. He lay there for
a moment, before giggling quietly to himself. As he dragged his
head back up he noticed the shadow standing behind him,
reflected in the visor of another one of these inquisitors;
disappearing in the dark as the light vanished for a millisecond
or two.
The One With The Face leaned over at the table. John noticed
that her right hand was covered up with the same gloves everyone
else wore, but her left hand was a shining steel mechanism that
clanged against the table. She spoke again: "Can you understand
anything I'm saying!?"
Boss smiled politely.
She sighed and walked back towards the door. "I'm going to be
nice and assume it's the tranquiliser affecting you. Then again,
maybe lobotomies are some new ritual punishment among you
things, or maybe you're just retarded. Who knows. We'll keep you
in a cell for a while and see if the drugs wear off. If not,
we'll just palm you off to someone who'll take you." She said
something in Elvish, and one of the shadowmen walked towards
Boss.
Without warning, all the lights went out and the low hum of
electrics died down into silence, leaving everyone in complete
darkness.
"Oh for-" she sighed. "Second time this month, right in the
middle of interrogation. What's even going wrong?"
"Well, your first mistake was not killing me when you had the
chance."
The silence exploded into a scream of agony, the clanging of
steel and sickening crunch of bone and plastic. She dived into a
corner, sensing some shard of debris flying past her cheek and
whipping through her blonde hair. She frantically huddled up
into a ball as the room flashed orange with a gunshot,
reflecting in the broken mirror a glimpse of the muscular beast
smacking someone in the face with his chair. Another gunshot,
someone slumping to the floor in muffled terror. A gun clattered
to the ground, bone and metal thudded together. Two mouths
breathed quickly.
"STOP OR I'LL SHOO-UGH!"
Something cracked and somebody screamed as the woman felt for
her gun.
"WHER ARE YO-ACK!"
She aimed into the black void as somebody collapsed.
Silence.
"Your second mistake..." The electric lights snapped back on,
revealing a still-handcuffed John Boss sitting at the table
surrounded by a bloody mess of limbs and discarded weapons.
"...was trying to when you didn't." John Boss surveyed his
handiwork strewn across the room, and saw that it was good. He
turned to the woman pointing a gun at him. "Hi."
"...Hello."
"How was you day?"
She readjusted her grip on the gun. "Normal. Until people
started dying."
"Oh, no!" He waved off her concerns. "They're not dead, just
napping. Except that one." He gestured to one officer lying in
an expanding pool of blood. "But that wasn't me, that was..." He
looked back and forth between two other bodies "...him. With the
gun. Anyway, what's your name?" He smiled.
"Chel Hagar. Capital Police, Anti-Terror Unit."
Boss suppressed a chuckle. "You look rather terrified to me."
"I have a gun. Why would I be scared?"
"But, of course, you're not going to shoot me."
"Why not?"
"Because I, miss Hagar-"
"Officer."
"-Officer Hagar, I have a name." She looked confused.
John leaned forward, resting his elbows on the table. "See, once
upon a time, about two hundred years ago, there was a man. This
man was known far and wide throughout Wurld. Some knew him as a
hero, some knew him as a scoundrel, many didn't even believe he
was real. But wherever there was trouble to be got in, an
adventure to be had, buckles to be swashed, that man was there.
The old stories say this man had accrued bounties in every
kingdom over a thousand years old, and so phantasmagorically
high, that the person who handed him in dead or alive would
surely become the richest person on the planet. But nobody did.
Nobody ever could. Because legend has it that one night, after
saving the little town of Ludorena from a pack of rampaging
bandits, the man simply...disappeared off the face of the
continent."
"So? What does this have to do with anything?"
"Hello. My name is John Boss." He snapped his fingers, and the
handcuffs magically sprung off his wrists as he reclined in his
chair. "You may have heard of me."
Chel stood up without taking her aim off Boss' head. She glanced
down at the useless handcuffs. "How did you do that?"
"I'm a qualified magician, available for pubs, clubs and
children's birthday part-"
She shot him.
John Boss folded his arms in disapproval. "Were you never taught
that it's rude to shoot someone while they're talking?"
Her eyes widened, and the colour faded from her pale gold
cheeks. "What...what witchery is this?!"
"The kind that makes Little Timmy's 10th birthday unfor-fucking-gettable,
that's for sure."
"You dodged a bullet!"
"Did I?"
"How the hell aren't you dead?"
"It's no fun if I tell you, you're supposed to be deliberating
amongst yourselves!"
Chel looked around the room. "There's only one of me."
"Question is, did I spot the person crouched behind where that
smashed mirror used to be in the reflection of your eye..."
There was a pop from the darkness of the hidden room behind the
smashed one-way mirror. "...or are you just that terrible a
liar?"
Boss calmly removed the dart from his neck. "That's the second
issue here: these things! In what way are these necessary? It
really is just bad manners. They shouldn't even be working on
me, I'm ME! You need to give me the recipe for these though,
they're fantastic! And by "fantastic" I of course mean:
'terrible'."
He stumbled out of his chair, supporting himself on the table.
Officer Hagar tightened the grip on her gun as two more elves in
black uniforms appeared through the heavy metal door, one
carrying a rifle.
John began gesticulating clumsily "So! Before I go sleepy, can
someone just...EXPLAIN what's going on here? Exactly? I think
there was something about a war? 200 years, I need filling in!
Like, what is the vibe?"
An elf smacked John's face in with the butt of his rifle and he
fell to the ground, finally unconscious.
"Are you hurt?"
Hagar exhaled and turned on the safety on her pistol. She
slotted it back into its holster and pulled out a cigarette from
one of her pockets. "Fine."
"You go outside, we'll take care of this from here". People with
stretchers came streaming in for the wounded elves, the rifle
was kept trained on the brute of a man lying in the centre of
the room.
Head tucked down into her cupped hands as her lighter snapped
into quivering life, Chel slipped out of the crowded
interrogation room and into the grotty corridors halls outside.
These police officers - more like soldiers most of the time -
with their shiny black shells of plastic were like insects
scuttling through the dusty veins of a towering corpse, where a
large and impressive building might once have stood. She sighed
with some kind of relief, the trails of smoke slithering up
towards the strip light which cast puddles of yellow over
nauseating green walls and chequered linoleum.
She turned a corner while two men pushed some restraining device
down the hall on squeaky wheels that reminded her of a mortuary
slab. She decided to go up to her desk where it was quiet, maybe
relax with some shit music on the radio and settle down with a
good book of ugly-coloured paperwork.
"Chel!"
She looked over her shoulder and smiled from behind her
cigarette. "Oh, hey Alvus" she said. "Oh, for fuck's sake,
what do you want now?" she thought.
Alvus slipped out from behind a door, closing it behind him with
a squeak. "I just heard what happened on the radio. I would've
been right there to help you but-"
"It's fine, Alvus."
"Was it an Alpha or something?"
She leaned on the wall, with chipped wood panels that must have
been put there to look elegant, once upon a time. "Dunno. It did
talk."
He stood looking pensively at the ground for a moment.
"...shit."
"Yeah." She took a drag on her cigarette.
"Are you okay?"
"Six guys unconscious, one maybe dead and you're asking how I
am." She blew out smoke and turned to him. "I'm standing right
here, aren't I?"
An awkward silence, one of a long career between the two.
"Well, yeah but, I was just making conversation, y'know? I just
care about y-"
"How's the wife, Neas?" She slipped the cigarette between her
lips, jamming shut a little smile."
"What? Oh, fine. Fine." His eyes darted around the empty hall.
"How's Dhac?"
"Oh, the usual." Another silence. "Anyway, I'll be off now. Lots
to do." She kicked herself off the wall and headed down the
corridor, tapping ash into a tray on top of a bin. "Ta-ta."
"Uh, yeah. See you around." Alvus watched her walk away until
she disappeared up a set of stairs. He breathed in and
straightened up his body, snapping himself out of whatever it
was before opening the door to the office, with Enos on one side
of the desk and Aerin Liette sat on the other. Enos swivelled
around in his creaky office chair to face Alvus. "Everything
alright?" He said in his nasal voice.
"Yeah, they dealt with it. Some of the guys got beat up pretty
badly but they'll pull through. Chel got out fine though."
Enos nodded and turned back to Aerin, who sat in a wiry chair
with patches of flayed padding, and habitually stared out of the
small, dirty window to his left. "Well, Mr. Liette, that's
everything really. Just waiting for this stupid thing to work."
He impatiently tapped on one of the buttons on the ugly gray box
with the glowing glass face which sat on the desk, and was
connected to another ugly gray box.
Alvus kneeled down to inspect the thing, and pressed a blinking
red button which caused the machine to whir as it spat out a
sheet of paper. Alvus gestured to the machine as if it were a
magical and mysterious object. "It's that simple."
Enos snatched the paper from the flimsy plastic tray and
scrutinised it. "The seal's in black and white."
"So?"
"It's supposed to be in colour. We live in a bloody police state
Alvus; you'd think that we, The Police, would feel some bloody
benefits!"
He handed the paper over to Aerin. Alvus was looking at the
glass screen on the gray box. "What kind of name's 'Brittany
Felliday'?"
"She filed Mr. Liette's 'Missing Persons' report," said Enos.
Alvus looked over at Aerin. "Where would you be without
Brittany?"
Aerin stretched the sides of his mouth outwards, in what he
immediately recognised as the single least convincing depiction
of joy on a face in history since...well, 200 years ago. As Enos
sat up, so did Aerin venture out of the chair, but not before
raising his arms and holding onto those of the chair as if to
say, "I am going to get out of this chair and leave now, do you
find this acceptable?"
Alvus held the door open for Aerin, and he stepped out into the
dilapidated corridor. "It's okay now", he thought to
himself as he was escorted back to the entrance of the police
station. "No more questions, you're fine. Now we can get out
of here and go to the house and everything will be fi-"
"Shit, look at this big bastard!" said Alvus excitedly.
Aerin stopped dead. Three men were hauling the restraining
device up the corridor, John Boss was unconscious and tied down
to the thing with endless straps and buckles.
"You ever seen a fucker like this before Neas?" laughed one of
the elves pushing the trolley. Alvus wrapped two hands around
one of John's arms and squeezed. "How did he even get that size?
Most of them are just like worms basically." The elf at the
front started pulling him up the hall again, carting John's
still body past Aerin, who was still frozen in horror. "He
managed to break open his handcuffs, then apparently Chel shot
him in the head and he still didn't shut up."
Aerin didn't have time to process that, because one of the elves
pushing had stood up and was staring at Aerin with furrowed,
greying eyebrows. "You. Weren't you at the graveyard?" he said,
in a voice that was even more menacing in person than it was
blasting out of a metal beast.
Aerin snapped back into terrified life. "Um, I don't..."
"Alvus."
"Yes, Atair?"
"Did you check his hand?"
"Well, uh, everything he said checked out with the information
we wer-"
Alvus quickly stepped out of the way as Atair stormed over to
Aerin, who backed up against a wall. "Now look, sir, I'm sure
this is all just a big misunderstan-"
The officer grabbed Aerin's wrist, pulled some black plastic
block from his belt and pressed it to his palm. The machine
buzzed for a moment, glowing red against Aerin's palm. The
officer let go of Aerin. He felt his heart sink in his chest as
Atair silently watched the thing, keeping a suspicious eye on
Aerin. The machine made a beeping noise, and he inspected its
face - which was black glass with vibrant green numbers and
diagrams.
After a few seconds, the officer fastened the device back to his
belt. "Alright, your chip says you were downtown last night;
drinking, by the state of you, and went for a wander in the
countryside before falling asleep at about 2AM, waking up at 7
and wandering about the woods for a few hours before the track
glitches for a minute and you end up on a dirt road. No
graveyard."
"Right where we found him, see? It's fine." said Alvus.
"Now go." He ordered.
Aerin nodded and quickly walked away in the direction he'd been
going, Alvus went to catch up with him. He wanted out of this
place as fast as possible, nearly running down the stairs and
rushing through the station's entrance lobby too quick to take
notice of his surroundings; the receptionist behind her glass
and metal bars, the dirty faces of the people sitting by the
opposite wall, a screaming child dressed in filth.
"Can you make it home from here?" asked Alvus, trailing behind.
Aerin grabbed the faded gold handles of the heavy wooden door
and and pushed out into the world.
He stopped. He'd only caught glimpses of the future Dryadora
from inside the car's small windows. But now he wasn't protected
by glass, now he was part of it all.
It was worse than the inside of the building. It looked like
Hell carved in blocks of filthy granite. He slowly walked down
the large, cracked steps of the police station. Cars sped up and
down the black road, excreting something visible into the air
that made it sting to breathe. He looked upwards and could
barely see a sky, just uniform towers that looked like titanic
support columns for the infinite fog above them. The buildings
themselves were solid slabs of contempt for all things living
and smiling into which rooms and windows and staircases had been
cut to fit as many people as possible inside. They looked like
they had been un-designed, that all curvature and flourish had
been stripped away until there was nothing left, except for the
unfeeling will of stone gods to rise.
Aerin looked around, disoriented by every sight and sound around
him. Alvus put a hand on his shoulder. "Aerin?"
He turned around.
"Can you make it home from here?"
Aerin collected himself, shrugging off the officer's touch. "No.
I'm sort of...completely lost."
There was a short silence between the two. The world around them
deafened with beeping and rushing and skidding and sputtering.
"Right. The car park's not far from here. Where do you live
again?"