The outline of Nojank’s skyline appears on the horizon like a phalanx's last stand. So many buildings half-built by long-bankrupt developers have been accumulating for so long that at a certain point it ceased being economical to try and tear them back down. That’s why the view out the window of this lime-green light-rail locomotive, traveling over the remains of four or five formerly functional towers too fragile to withstand the frightful forces of financial entropy, is jaggedly piss-poor. A lot of rebar emerging from crumbling concrete edifices, piles of dust with mechanical bones sticking out, with skeletal scaffolding clinging to it all. Occasionally, some great contraption (original purpose: god-knows-what) rises from the grave as the train car passes by, showing off its incomprehensible remains. The sky is perpetually gray and cloudy. One could say the world was holding its breath up here, if not for the precariousness of this rickety elevated railway.
But it is no worse than flying. They let anything get airborne these days. The age of attempting air traffic control is long gone; now every pilot just signs a liability waiver before getting their license. That, along with the deregulation of the airports, means it’s safer to attempt amateur dental reconstruction on yourself than step on board an aircraft. The only people reckless or dumb enough to try it are busy business bros, adrenaline junkies, and catastrophe influencers. When hearing a distant explosion, you now have to reckon with the spectrum of backfiring cars, random fireworks, gunshots, and distant air disasters. It’s easier to just pretend you didn’t hear anything and carry on with your day.
Her last time here was fuzzy, but she can remember the boss coaxing her onto a helicopter, with a line about there being no other options for transport. Everything after that was blackout until two weeks later when she woke from the coma. The passenger railcar is somewhat safer, but this corridor really deserves a dedicated heavy rail line. That’s not happening tomorrow or Tuesday though, cities are reluctant to re-invest in a money pit when there’s shiny boondoggle schemes to invest in. Going along to get along is the prevailing attitude in city planning - if it’s not broken, that means nothing is wrong, so leave well enough alone for pete’s sake. When someone turns up dead you send in some private eye, mostly so you can say you didn’t do nothing. Cheaper than making sure it couldn’t have happened in the first place.
The passenger manifest for this railroad ride numbers fourteen workers, twenty-nine stockbrokers, five speculators, two bankers, the conductor, and one gumshoe. The ride is relatively quiet, so she has time to look over her notes. This place is one of complication and deception. An unknown suspect is acting outside the acceptable patterns of cruelty, stirring up enough noise to send her down to deal with it. Who knows what’s waiting for her at the end of the line, but she knows there are no unpickable locks; for a keyhole’s existence demands there be a way to unlock it.
* * *
Chief Trader Cooper Casey is having a less-than-stellar day. Far from his office, along what has to be the most circuitous route through all the pinball machine urban guts in all of the civilized world, descending towards bedrock. This is a freight elevator with delusions of grandeur, which goes on for more miles than most circulatory systems. Down here, heavy machinery sits gathering dust, cranes dangling aimlessly without any fuel to run on, bags of instant cement all all past their sell-by date. Some bean-counters somewhere in the food chain are making the executive decision that since the city hardly has anything left to break, they might as well just wash their hands of this stuff. The powers that be calculate that if they lose control, they can always nuke the joint.
There’s always some bleeding heart moaning to do something about it, so to placate those do-gooders there’s a concept of a plan floating around somewhere in city government. Contracts are supposedly gonna be signed to dig all this stuff up for ‘re-allocation’ any day now, but there have been logistical difficulties in the Department of Heavy Metal. Forty and change years on, nobody is seriously circling back on it. They probably never will. The terrain does not present nearly as much of a challenge as the rampant airlocking. Going this way requires as many login screens as the worst HR software imaginable. Every biometric scanner in the catalog, save for the tissue samplers. The hoops you have to jump through to get down to the bottom of this dump are almost as invasive as making a social media account. Thank god it's only locked down like this on the inbound side, just a quick appearance then a straight shot back up to his offices before second lunch.
Casey can only imagine whose shit list this elevator operator has to be on for her to have to accompany him all the way down to be with the bottom-feeders. Maybe she was someone's daughter, maybe not from their wife. Whoever she is, they're both coming a long way down and going through a lot of trouble, likely for a whole lot of nothing. Nobody has died anywhere near the Despair Vortex in years. Everyone has long agreed that the Vortex is a good and necessary part of the city. Today’s unfortunate tragedy will hopefully end up as a simple accident. That’s probably why there’s only one investigator coming down all this way.
It's unbelievable, these allegations. Nobody priced this into the projection plans, this is an albino black swan event. It'll definitely galvanise those know-nothing do-gooder anti-wealth activists. The last thing anyone needs is for the masses to listen to those crackpots. Something is buzzing in Casey’s left pocket. Opening his lock screen, he’s immediately awash in mental anguish. No. Not again. Not this time. Not when he’s stuck here in this giant ugly elevator, just he and some random chick lucky enough to get executive elevator duty. Helpless, soon-to-be in single bar reception territory, and basically all alone, meanwhile out there the markets are all in a frenzy. Even worse than Black Tuesday III, the one where the pet food cartels tried to corner the market on magnesium which led to massive losses in the limited double liability special security bonds market, which of course tanks the whole stock market. It hurt to remember. Casey lost a lot of other people’s money in those days, which hurt his reputation as the big boss. Betting right on the boom in monetized envelope assets has led to a restored reptutation, but that can’t be taken for granted.
There’s a little tingle in his extremities, the kind that only comes at those certain timely tingling times. Standing almost totally completely still on that lonesome elevator platform excepting one other person, in that instant, his mind could not be racing farther away. Contingencies. Contingencies! Where are the contingencies?
“Crap.” Casey wipes his forehead, grimacing upon hearing his own voice. Casey hates the way it sounds, his underlings sometimes whisper in voices he pretends not to hear that it sounds like Kermit the Frog if he were a pack-a-day Marlboro Crimsons smoker. “This is awful. Just awful.”
“Chief?” asks the elevator operator, trepadatiously shifting from her heels to her toes. “Everything going to be alright, right?”
“No miss, everything's not alright. Not at all.” Casey’s stomach groans as his intestinal lining starts twisting into knots. Sweat is percolating on his brow. “Things are all screwed up. They’re running out of time to turn things around in the next quarter.”
“… am I going to be okay, Chief? Are you mad at me?” The first beads of sweat are forming on her brow. “What’s going to happen? I'm really sorry-”
Snapping to attention, Casey coos and comforts her with the desperate energy of a teenager dispelling a damning smoke cloud. “Oh, no, sorry, not like that, we’re fine. Nothing to fear. It’s just that the MicroJets are already down 18-9 at the end of the third, so, it’s just, you know, I’ve got fifty bucks riding on my little guys.”
“Oh… sure.” Bowing her head, the young woman keeps standing still with her eyes shut as the elevator arrives ultimately at the lower platform. Casey struts off the platform and into the bedrock trading floor. A few people give him salutary nods as he passes by but most people are too busy with their work to give him notice. These are semi-micro-mini-penny stock traders, they never know the light of day and are probably awestruck to be in the Chief Trader’s presence.
Predictably, there is white chalk outlining an approximation of a dead guy. A blood spatter from the head extends to a nearby desk corner. Other than that, the three stories of open concept offices and trading equipment are immaculate. The life-supporting systems of the city are visible all around them, cocooning the space with sewage pipes, telecommunications cables, electric lines, and more. At the center, suspended cylindrically through all three floors, is a green acid tank full of billowing bubbles. At the center of that, permeated by electrodes and measuring instruments, is a scaly blob of pink tissue with a long crevice through the center. Jagged teeth line the crevice, terminating with a single eyehole at each point. Each tooth has a cap on the tip, as if that was ever going to affect anything in any imaginable breach scenario.
This is the Despair Vortex, the burial ground of all the FUD and FOMO that inevitably pops into a trader’s head. Whenever anyone working in Nojank’s feels the slightest doubt about the course they are charting financially, all they have to do is go to the nearest drainpipe and shout their worries away. Through a patent-pending process, the Despair Vortex extracts the memories and emotions through the oral cavity and takes them in to be part of its own essence. This is an essential component to making the city run smoothly. Without the complicated financial instruments only their no-doubt financiers could package, there would be no income for the population to sustain itself on. So, in other words, it’s pretty important.
Nobody can mess with anything down here before the Chief Trader gets to the floor. Yet somehow, there’s an indigo-haired young woman kneeling by the crime scene, shining a dim blue light pen at the ground. She is tall, almost as tall as Casey, with ruby-red lips and black eyeliner. She wears a dusty brown trench coat, with a shabby-looking backpack slung over her shoulder. An official investigator’s ID on a lanyard is hanging haphazardly around her neck. The hair is an outlier here but Casey is pretty sure she’s a Gen X, or, no, dead-to-rights millennial. Casey keeps it to himself. Even he knows it’s unwise to try guessing a woman’s age just from looking at her.
“Erm, who are you now, here to investigate the accident?” Casey steps forward trepadatiously, keeping himself within range to dive back onto the elevator should the need arise. Not that the interminable elevator will do much good if the need for a quick exit arises. Still, what’s a man to do when mysterious women are touching dead bodies in his vicinity? Running over to grab and throw the operator at her would probably take too long.
“Not quite. I’m here to determine what happened to our dearly departed friend, Craig Custer.” Rising and meeting his eyes, she smirks at him, instantly inflicting negative twenty points ego damage to his bravado. “Worried you’re next? You can relax, the Citizen's Militia sent me. This thing has angles to it that warrant their attention.”
“Oh. Then why didn’t they tell me you were already here?” Crossing his arms, Casey huffs. “These are my trading floors, my firms, I thought Since when did the powers that be get in the business of meddling in… in… in the other kids’ sandboxes!? Isn't this starting a slippery slope to regulations?”
The investigator closes her eyes, nodding and folding her hands in front of her. “I don’t think anyone intends for things to work out that way, I'm not your enemy, I've come here to help find the truth." She stands, and gives a small bow. "Apologies for meeting you in such dismal surroundings, but I had to make sure I got a look at things before the crime scene was further contaminated.”
Furrowing his brow, Casey begins wrenching his tie in his hands. “Well, anyone could say that. How do I know you’re not fooling? Who are you?” Glancing around, Casey sees a few blue evidence markers around the room at points of apparent interest. She’s not been wasting her time down here.
“Consider the following: I got to the scene of the crime before you, the Chief Trader, presumably you came right away as soon as you could. I’ve been here for some time. So either I’m from way, way up top, or I’m a dangerous operator. In either case, official procedure and common sense should both tell you to just play along.” A pause. Maybe a little smile, or is she smirking? “Our masters have given me orders for inspection, then detection. But I'm not a threat, sir. You’re mostly safe with me.”
Casey closes his eyes. “I see you can make a… it’s a compelling argument. I also happened to notice you’re saying this is a crime scene. Is that a sure thing?” He scratches his chin. “I was kind of hoping this might still roll out as an accident.”
“No. It’s a murder. The victim was killed by a single blow to the head. Cause of death was brain swelling caused by said blow, compounded by the victim hitting his head halfway down on the edge of that desk.” Gesturing to the blue plastic markers sitting atop the dried blood, she sighs. “My hope is by that point he was unconscious. Poor guy was already losing his life, no need to imagine him suffering more.”
“But that makes no sense.” Casey walks towards the Despair Vortex's giant green glass tank, knocking knuckles on its glossy exterior. The echo reverberates throughout the Despair Vortex like a vengeful ghost’s last whisper. “In case you hadn’t noticed, there are no holes in this ship-in-a-bottle. We got the bad vibes on a tight lockdown. How are you gonna tell me that someone murders a trader in cold blood, without anyone seeing anything, without even leaving a trace?”
“I don’t ever recall suggesting any specific possibility. The problem you've articulated is certainly an interesting one.” She brushes some hair over her shoulder. “Try not to worry too much. This is an open investigation. I’m considering all possibilities here. There’s nothing I see that couldn’t have been accomplished with some clever tricks."
As she gets up to walk back towards the elevator platform, Casey glues himself to her side, circling her and peppering her with questions as they proceed together. “What do you mean then, some of our boys did this to each other? Down here, of all places? Who are your suspects? You have to tell me when you have a suspect, right? Is this going to affect our insurance premiums?”
“Sir, all I can say now is that the I give no special credence to the security surrounding the Despair Vortex. It is difficult to imagine how a murder could happen in its proximity, but that's why I'm here.”
There’s gurgling in the tank. Everyone momentarily stops what they’re doing to look up. The glass is opaque with a mottled green hue. Occasionally, the facsimile of an agonizing human face slides by. After a few moments, some large yellow bubbles rise up to the top of the tank, dissipating in a sickly yellow foamhead.
* * *
Cooper Casey awakens from a sleep of the sort that’s so good you linger in bed wanting for more. Sadly, a world of brushing teeth and inconvenient questions awaits just outside his bedroom door. That chick operating the elevator was nice, she didn’t ask any difficult questions. Murder investigators will not be tossing softballs. Pencil-necks pushing around real people adding value to society, what’s happening to this rotten world? At least Casey knows now to not meet up with this detective sans his retinue. One-on-one with her (if you don't count the help) was a bit too intense for his liking.
Ahead in the corridor, a crowd of rubbernecking looky-loos titter away, probably gossiping about yesterday's accident. Not an accident, but a murder. A real murder! But Casey already knows about the murder. He sips his coffee as an aide's hand pulls his elbow sleeve, guiding him away from his preferred path. They're steering to the day-trader dormitories, but didn't the murder take place in the Vortex's presence? If only somebody other than Casey knew anything about what was going on here. Harrumphing at nobody in particular, Casey takes a deep sip of his doppio tradebrew before turning the corner and seeing fresh horror.
There is a thoroughly perforated corpse on the ground, spilling out of a dormitory room. Stab wounds in the abdomen and neck, a look of shock frozen on her somewhat-familiar face. A food tray is on the ground by her outstretched hands and buckets of blood all over the walls and floor. The stink of rust and death attacks every one of his senses. Casey turns away, fighting the urge to vomit. Closing his eyes, he pinches himself. When he opens them again, everything is just the same and possibly even worse. This was all real. It can’t be real. It’s all happening again. Not even a day and it’s happening again. Oh god, it’s all over.
“Jesus Christ, not again!” The only thing louder than the shattering of Casey’s mug is his high-pitched scream. Falling to his knees with his hands in his hair, Casey barely avoids impaling himself on the ceramic remnants of his drinking vessel now littering the floor. “How can this be happening again?”
A familiar voice cuts through his fog of fear. “Good morning, sir, I thought you would have been briefed on this. Please take care not to contaminate the new crime scene.”
“So there’s…been another, uh, it happened again?” Looking up, Casey sees his hangers-on part like the red sea, revealing the investigator's now-familiar face. Casey hopes that sad look in her eyes isn't pity.
“Yes, there’s been another murder.” Returning her attention to the crime scene, the detective takes a photo of the body with a handheld digital camera. “Was it not the first thing you were told of when you rose to rejoin the living today?”
“Well, when they’d said to me about a murder I was hoping, y’know, maybe that it would be… that I heard them wrong, they were talking about yesterday. Fake news. Maybe a bad joke. A dream, even.”
“Improbable, sir." She pockets the camera, before crouching in front of the body and probing the wounds with gloved hands. "Please try not to engage in such wishful thinking, it's important that those in charge act on the most up-to-date information at all times.
"Isn't that your job to find out?" Casey turns his head to get a look at the body, but snaps it back away as soon as he gets part of a glimpse.
The investigator ignores his comment. "More importantly, I have determined that the victim in this case is the perpetrator of the first murder.”
“You’re joking. How d’you figure?” Casey realizes he is kneeling in a puddle, which is wicking up from his shins. Rising, he brushes at the fresh coffee and blood stains on his pants as though that will do anything. “Was there a confession or something?”
“Digital forensics came through this time. The suspect tried erasing the analog security videotape, but failed to destroy the backup nor do enough damage to render the data irretrievable. She simply taped over it with new footage; with modern restoration techniques it was trivial to retrieve it. She could have taped over it again four more times and I still would have been able to make a 68KHD reconstruction of it. It looks like she was tailgating the victim as they went down together using his biometric credentials.”
“Yeah, yeah, I’m sure you know how to prompt an AI to do a literal CSI ‘computer, enhance.’ That's very impressive. I'm impressed.” Casey frowns, unconsciously rummaging around in his pocket for something his hands can fiddle with, but to no avail. “Enough bragging. What does this all mean?”
“That’s what I’m less certain of, sir.” The detective reaches into the corpses’ pocket, retrieving the identification of the victim. “They were alive and chose to return to the scene of the crime yesterday, which at first glance seems bold. But given how they weren’t trying to get themselves involved in the investigation or influence me at all, I don’t think it was their plan to go down again. I’m not sure if there was any plan at all.” The investigator tosses Casey the ID card. “Here’s our victim-perpetrator, Darcy Debussy.”
Casey looks and nearly jumps up out of his boots. “Wait hold on, you mean the girl that I rode down with alone to the crime scene was a murderer? That’s outrageous, are you actually certain? You’re completely sure?”
“Positive, sir.”
“Now she’s dead?”
She gestures towards the crime scene. “As you can see, sir.”
“Awful Why does this keep happening? This is gonna snowball into a bloodbath isn’t it?” Casey starts pacing back and forth, in a manner suggesting he could break out into a sprinting pace at any moment. “Red Wednesday all over again?”
Touching a finger to her lip, the detective sighs. “Do you study history, sir?”
Casey stops mid-stride. ”Uh, well, I suppose everyone did in school, plus whatever I have to know for work. Not something I study all that often in my free time, though I know an awful lot about the history of this place.“
Cutting him off with a wave of her hand, the detective closes in two strides closer. “We don’t have to get into dirty laundry. Do you study Egyptian history?”
“Nile, pharaohs, sphinx, Alexander the Great and Napoleon? Sure, I know a thing or two about that. I've got an education, I know about as much as anyone else. I’m not sure what the relevance is, though.”
The investigator spreads open her hands and begins gesticulating. “Relevant in terms of historical pedagogy. Ancient Egypt wasn’t as concerned with the facts as we are. When faced with the overwhelming confusion of the universe, of a sky not yet poisoned by light, the uncertainty of life, constant death, and the infinite cosmos therein, they’d frame everything as glimpses into the next place.”
Scratching the tip of his nose, Casey sniffs. “Makes sense, I guess. So what’s the connection with all this?”
The detective smiles. “You keep asking me without inquiring, spinning and speculating instead of taking the facts as they stand. Do you think you are seeing glimpses of heaven, sir?”
“You don’t have to keep saying ‘sir’ all the time like that, I get it.” Casey squats to scoop up the remains of his mug with both hands. “To answer your question, I guess the killers probably won’t, but, I hope they all go to heaven. That's the only thing that makes the crap we do down here worthwhile.”
Returning her attention to the crime scene, the detective turns her head to speak once more over her shoulder. “Concern yourself with prayers then, sir. I’ll stick to finding the facts.”
* * *
The crime scene is empty now, everyone finishing up and going to bed one by one except for her. Staying to stare at everything, lost in thought, conjuring in her mind palace the total sum of evidence in this case. Two victims, with their connections and schedules surrounding them in a perfectly beautiful mess of threads. A dense and delicate arrangement one yank away from becoming an instant imaginary quilt.
Somehow this will make sense, but she can tell pieces are missing. These people are all colleagues, there’s no reason for any of them to start a bloodbath. So the question becomes not how or who, but why?
The killer-killer struck in a busy hallway, surrounded by other people. They wore a disguise and seem to know to turn their back to the cameras. The way they disappear into the crowd also seems to indicate camera-consciousness but they should know that would only buy them so much time. It might not have even been intentional, as with much else about this case it all seems too sloppy for much premeditation.
Records show both victims working the late night shift at trading desks not far from the Despair Vortex. Not a particularly desirable post. The atmosphere around it is always drenched in foreboding; it would take some cycles to fully wash it out of your clothes. Witnesses all said that even when you felt you'd gotten used to it, you never really fully got used to it. But yet somehow these same people volunteered for it consistently. Nobody questioning them on it, they were most likely happy just to get the post filled.
The victims knew one another, but not friend-friends, just in the same social circles. Which means that the killer-killer was likely the central node that connected the two of them. That narrows down the suspect pool considerably. Between that and the DNA evidence, it’s only a matter of time.
There's a name. Alfred Albertson, a trader known to be close with the first victim from a previous job. Records show he attended a workplace soiree at the home of the second. No history of violence. She remembers his name. One of those dependable volunteers regularly working the graveyard shift. The pieces are coming together more easily than expected.
Records show he should be working another shift there tonight. Might be a good time to have a private conversation about recent events.
* * *
The bloodhound inside the investigator's brain is baying. She’s already halfway there, power-stepping like she’s going for gold in race-walking. She squawks a walkie-talkie radio set to the security detail's frequency. “I'm going for a suspect. I need a couple men to shadow me, but hang back. We don’t know how desperate he’ll get if cornered. Do traders always have clearance for going all the way down?”
“Affirmative. Do you want us to suspend that access?”
“Leave it be for now. If he’s heading down to his posted assignment, then he isn’t running yet. Put the guards at all checkpoints above him, then standby at my word. I’m going to go down alone to question him before we take him into custody.”
“Alone? Ma’am are you certain that you wanna be alone with a murderer?”
“Did I stutter? I will give word if I require backup, but don’t expect me to call barring any emergencies.”
There’s a pause. “Affirmative. Key the radio a few times if something happens and you can't talk. Over and out.”
The Despair Vortex's room is always bright as a summer’s day. Not a single inch of it can be left to the shadows. If there’s not maximum light giving full coverage, it leaves the potential for something scary to happen. Unfortunately, bad things do not happen only in the dark. The investigator steps lightly, listening for any sounds out of the ordinary.
It’s all quiet here, no sign of any killer-killer. Only the electronic hum of a few computers and computer monitors displaying a recent downturn in the electrical commodities market. Theoretically, one could hear a pin drop, but a croaky voice breaks the silence like a snapping twig. “Welcome back, detective. It's good to have you back.”
The investigator does not break stride as she walks towards the Vortex, while desperately searching the room with her eyes for the source of the voice. Were there hidden speakers? Megaphone? “I can’t recall us ever having been formally introduced.”
“Yes, but you have made me laugh. I feel as though that is at least as good as a handshake.”
Stepping with caution, the detective surreptitiously checks the trim of desks and other small crevices as she slowly walks forward, keeping her head on a swivel. “If you’re so happy to meet again, you should come out so I can see you, Alfred. There’s not any way out of here for you now.”
“Oh, ha ha, I’m not Alfred. He’s here, though. We’ve just been hanging out. You’re actually not too far from him now. Just around the corner. I’m right behind him.”
As the voice spoke, the detective turns the corner to see a man’s body hanging from a noose. The blood coming out of his nose is still wet and dripping on the floor. Suppressing a scream, she takes an involuntary step back while covering her mouth with one hand.
She can hear the voice smiling. “When this place is empty, the smallest taps of the glass are enough to fill the whole room with my tips and well-sourced rumors. You might not even be able to see me, but my influence, my atmosphere, remain.”
A finger hovers over her radio call key. “I’m going to give you one more chance to come out here and show yourself, before we start doing things the hard way.”
There’s a long, drawn-out sigh which keeps echoing and echoing until it reaches cacophonous proportions, before suddenly arresting itself and surrendering back to the silence. Then, the voice speaks: “Detective, don’t be dense. It’s not like you. Look in front of your eyes. When the hours grow lonely, my voice owns these suffocating walls.”
Looking past the hanging body, the detective sees bubbles in the tank rise past the faceless mass floating in the center. They float through the murky green water and gather in foam at the top. “The loneliest ones work these shifts, and I am a friend who can’t be transferred out. A few of them will recognize me. Maybe even take my side, ha ha.”
The investigator grimaces. “Nobody would come to you. A disgusting monster like you only belongs to the incinerator.”
“The feeling is mutual. You know, Alfred is such a sad case. He expected to be caught right away, so when it didn’t happen he came to me for help. Can you imagine? The damnedest thing! Someone did actually come to me in their hour of need, with you hot on his heels. These meek, humble missing puzzle pieces, the ones who don’t fit in anywhere else, they’ll turn into wild things when Janey Law is coming after them.”
Grabbing an office chair, the detective collapses into it, trying to control her breathing. In-and-out, hold for three seconds. This is no time to panic. Averting her gaze from the corpse swinging like a pendulum between her and it, trying to speak with her suspect voice but all that comes out is a squeaking mouse. “You’re…you just manipulated him.”
“Perhaps to your eyes. But to him, I was his confidant and friend. I told him what everyone was worrying about to help give him a trading edge. I told him the truth of what his loved ones said and did. In his hour of need, he came to me for help. I told him what the odds were, then gave a suggestion on how to lighten to load.”
The investigator is biting down on her lip and it is beginning to bleed. “Forcing someone to kill themselves is still murder.” Breathing a little easier, the detective grips her radio. It almost slips out from the sweat on her fingers, but she keys in three times. “I know a beast like you doesn’t care to understand that distinction.”
“Ah, I’ve heard that one before. To tell you the truth, I really just watched. It wasn’t his first time getting as far as tying the knot. He knew where the rope was and what to do. I didn’t even have to encourage him after he started losing heart. It was his time.”
She tries to pretend she can’t hear the groaning of the rope at the edge of her senses. “This is still your doing.”
“You’re wrong, but you’re right. The root of it all is simple password-sharing kills. I watch these little rodents scampering every day. I saw Darcy had a bit of a volatile head, she was going through personal problems because of insecurity and parents getting sick far away from her. So then when she found out that our boy Craig was stealing her data, from a password known in confidence, the betrayal was too much. It was an accident. I told her I wouldn’t tell but, well…”
It laughs for a long time.
“Then I tell Alfie who killed his boyfriend, betrayal times two! They were all easy to tell. They all listen. No friends, no family, haven’t seen the sun in six months. Thirty minutes of personal time isn’t enough, they say to me, when work takes all day. I feign curiosity. I ask what it feels like, to imagine it for me. They feel a second of happiness and I snatch it away from them when I remind them of how oh so far away that feeling is now.”
The tone of the voice is like a toddler excitedly regaling you all about how they pushed their younger sibling in a drainage ditch. “But they’re so happy to have a friend like me to confide in, they never thought I would be like this. Most of them never even knew I could speak. While you guys provided the stifling culture of pressure that made them pop, all I did was provide friendship and a listening ear. Who could say no?”
“I will not be lectured on workplace culture by a monster that killed three young people.”
“Ha-ha! I’m telling you now because I know you know. The game is up. I didn’t even have to lie for most of it, you know. Some things were mostly true but hurt only to know. Next time we meet I’ll bathe in your blood, but for now I can revel in satisfaction that you can never stop me. You can make lawful procedures and lock me up but eventually you will all die. The next generation may yearn for a life free of despair when their turn comes, or to spare your grandchildren, the unborn, of sad pains. They will abandon their fear and let me out, and then when I am free they will be helpless, no matter what you do. So, don’t lose focus. Or maybe your grandkids never get a chance to be born into my maw.”
“You’re wrong. It was a rotten trick, you got us this time. But we’re not doomed to this back-talk and hate. We can make sure to remember, we'll starve you of sadness. We'll feel through our despondency ourselves and find happiness that is impossible without it. ”
It grunts, sending a blob of bubbles to the acid foaming atop the tank. “Your leaders know that I do this. That is why they don’t send their best. They’re sending second stringer expendable grunts who just need to live long enough to keep my pH levels balanced."
“Even so, we will defeat you. Now everyone will know what you’re capable of, whatever new forms of awfulness you’re planning to unleash will be similarly countered. We’ll narrow and narrow your sphere of influence until you’re nothing to us but a canned beet in the back of the root cellar. Whispering nothing to nobody.”
There are boots pounding down the emergency staircase now. The detective stands, straightening and speaking from her chest. “In a few seconds, all of this will be over.”
“If you say so. But don’t forget, nothing ever happens, nothing ever ends.”
* * *
The final freight elevator up to the helipad is huge and full of a whole lotta nothing. Just the detective and her pilot. Even when they emerge onto the helipad, with the rotors are moving and making all the noise they can, the vast emptiness before her makes all this powerful motion feel quite pitiful and small.
Sucking her breath in through her nose, she takes the last whiff of this place’s odd chemical sent, before the overwhelming smell of ashes from outside washes it out of her nostrils. Pulling a piece of stationary from her jacket pocket, she reads the executive summary of her after-action report one more time.
To my masters,
The investigation is complete. The culprit was not a rogue trader, as we suspected, but the Vortex itself, through unexpectedly novel means. Enclosed, please find some specific recommendations for alterations to the advanced despondency release procedures to counter this newfound vector for violence.
I am not qualified to speak of any changes in the philosophical approach to its existence in order to prevent the possibility of these incidents from happening again, as I understand the situation is controversial. Social violence is a particularly disruptive and virulent phenomenon.
Although I have noted numerous deficiencies in leadership, I do not have knowledge of any candidates who are suitable for the positions given the difficult reputation this assignment carries.
We can discuss this further during my debriefing.
Thank you.
The pilot’s voice calls out from by the elevator operation mechanism. “Inspector, are you sure you’re ready?”
Turning towards the sound, the detective stuffs the letter in her jacket pocket. “Absolutely. Let’s get this bird in the air.”
The pilot, in her full flight gear, runs up next to her and gives a short two-finger salute. “If I may, I gotta ask, why the change of heart? I remember the last blue moon you came here it was a whole thing to get you in a whirlybird.”
“I’m not afraid of dying in the air anymore. There’s just as much danger in a conversation as there is in the sky.”
“Oh, you think so? I actually make most of my piloting errors while having conversations.” Putting her arms behind her head, she grins. “It probably doesn’t help that I had the dolls down at the chop shop put a custom sound system in. You won’t believe how good the bass sounds up there. Makes my babygirl handle like we’re flying through a thunderstorm but man, does it get my blood pumping!”
“Don’t tell me that. I’m not mad at you but if you keep up this talk we’re not speaking during the flight.”
“I’ll keep my books-on-tape on wrap as well then. I’ve been listening to a set on how to fly these things but I think I’ve got enough of a handle to let it rip without guidance.” Arriving at the chopper, the pilot checks and chuckles about everything at the same time.
“I ask that you stop this.”
“Okay, okay. I’ll keep it down to three personal phone calls, max. I promise.”
“Please.” The detective closes her eyes, sucking in air. “You didn’t misremember earlier, about my not enjoying this sort of thing.”
“Sorry! I’m only kidding, this thing doesn’t even have a CD player or commercial radio. I wish!” Throwing the door open, the pilot hops inside. “Now strap in, kiddo, I’ll get you home safe.”
Climbing in and buckling her seatbelt, she dry-swallows her anti-nausea pill, and sighs. The helicopter takes off, ascending past the cloudline and out of sight.