Metro (26 page)

• • •

M
ark climbs over the half-destroyed gate and walks into the street, bringing the gun up as the older man twitches on the pavement, almost covered in his own blood, one arm mangled into a weird pretzel, bones and fingers rearranged. Moonie sees Mark coming toward him and sees the gun aimed at his head and spurts blood, trying to face it on his feet. But his feet are mangled too.

Doesn't matter.

Get up, old man.
Get up and avenge your shit-for-brains son.

And—amazingly—he does just that. He stands on two broken feet. He throws out his chest, which is filled with leaking fluid and shattered ribs—a collapsed lung for good measure. Faces his murderer with two good eyes, which might be the last thing he has left to his name that isn't shot to hell.

Mark smirks at him—the guy's wearing a white suit too, just like the kid was. They're a matching set. Like hospital orderlies, soaked in gore. It makes Mark laugh right out loud.

Moonie tries to spit at him but swallows a piece of his lower lip instead.

“Go ahead and laugh . . . you shit . . . go 'head . . . and kill me.”

“You're already dead,” Mark says, lowering the gun.

And then Moonie notices his throat has been cut.

Notices the thing that's jammed in his flesh.

Almost decides to call it and fall on his face right there. But he hangs in for a few more seconds. Stays on his feet.

My son
 . . .
my son
 . . .

And then he's gone.

• • •

S
irens, from far away.

Mark looks down on the dead man before he runs. Sees what killed him. It's something that looks like an ID card—something he had around his neck on a chain. A thick plastic laminate, lodged in his throat. Mark grabs it and runs back toward the truck.

H
e follows the map.

The old man's battered truck almost gets him ten miles before it gives up and throws a rod. He limps the battered old thing into a Sheraton Hotel parking lot off Oltorf and I-35. Plenty of fresh new rides here, and no one is looking. Mark uses his magic smartphone to bust into a shiny drug-dealer sports car. A 246 Ferrari Spider. Sexy. Taps in the make and model, talks to the robots in outer space, and they say okay, the lady's his now. They even start the engine for him. It's a very reliable ride—brand new, with an awesome stereo too.

He slams the package in the trunk and sits in the front seat with the motor running for longer than he should before he moves, his mind going faster than ever, doing laps around the buzzing and pounding in his skull. He's getting the hang of this weird new forced-sober rush, and wonders how long it will last.

Still hears the voice of Dictator Ken.

You idiot . . . you fucking idiot.

Shut up, Ken.

He starts the car and pulls out of the parking lot, gets back on I-35. He follows the map again, clutching the wheel with one hand, the phone in the other, his knuckles white.

The GPS signal puts him right on their radar.

No choice
, he thinks.
No choice
at all but to come right at them.

He wonders if a hit of pure ecstasy might help him come up with a better plan.

Wonders for three seconds before he slaps himself and drives on.

It's just now three in the morning.

• • •

O
n the far-north side of town, he parks on the shoulder of a winding lakeside road that snakes around a huge mountain and decides to make the last half mile on foot. Nudges the car off the shoulder and into a wooded glade. Checks the package in the trunk, making sure it's secure. Checks his head, making sure he's still sane—and he's not sure about that at all. Still buzzing. Still spinning. Fuck. No way to rig the trunk this time. No booby traps—just an alarm system that only he can cut through with the code he enters into the smartphone, feeding it back into the METRO satellite. Assuming they aren't following him from the same satellite, it'll have to do.

His hands are still shaking. He's going to blow, for sure.

Remembers his early training, before they made him a junkie. Uses it to pull himself to shore. Before he falls deeper. Before it's all over.

Jollie . . . I'm coming . . .

Weapons check. Still the two Glocks, with just five bullets in one clip. And the Vestika, of course—courtesy of the old man. He stashes the Vestika in the trunk because he's not sure about it—it's a plastic job with only a few shots left and the gun hasn't been fired once since he swam through a river of enemy blood. So he stashes it. Ditches the empty Glock and shoves the other one in his pocket. Zips up the Windbreaker, feeling so cold. His boots, heavy on his feet.

His mind . . . taking him back . . . Back so far now . . .
going home . . .

Flooding and overloading, flashing back and flashing forward.

You don't wanna look here, kid. You're still blowing it.

I told you to shut up, Ken.

You should have just laid down and died.

I said SHUT UP.

He brings his fists to his head, trying to block the voice, to stop the rush and the shakes and everything else. And then . . .

He sees it, the moment back in the safe house. Dictator Ken's lips moving in slow motion. The shape of his real words—what he said just before Mark shot him:

They're going to kill us all.

• • •

M
ark forces himself to march into the woods as he slips further, consumed by the smells of the leaves and the tree bark and the insects and the dirt under his feet. Goes forward as his mind plunges deep into the past, etching memories in his brain that almost come to vivid three-dimensional life . . . and he feels the rush . . .

The stone-hard terror of it . . .

• • •

H
e is a child,
right at the start of his life, and he is just a glimmer of humanity. He can hardly register anything but raw emotions, early impressions. The smell of bizarre things that are almost like truth but are really just raw vegetation and dirt, dead leaves, and the cold air of November, the hard stares of people who tell him he must be stronger than he can imagine. He must be a ma
n, not a boy. He must belong to THEM, not to the world . . .

• • •

H
e perches just at the the tree line. Has no idea how far he's hiked—maybe a few miles off the main road. But here he is. Yeah. No doubt about that.

The phone in his hand says so.

Says Jollie is right ahead.

She's dead, kid. Just lie down and die.

SHUT UP.

It's a big house, nestled right into the mountain, at the end of the gravel road. A mansion that hunches nearly a quarter mile across an estate that sprawls like a king's front lawn, with a cobblestone driveway and a fountain and a few fancy gardens here and there, all lit up in dim spills by overhead fixtures wrapped in elegant cut glass. No guards on the perimeter at first glance, no visible security of any kind. He checks the smartphone and it says there are a few motion sensors and a semi-sophisticated alarm system, all of which have been shut down for the night, apparently.

Which means there have to be security peeps, somewhere.

Which means he has to circle the place and find them.

He does the prowl, his head overwhelmed, hardly even seeing the world anymore, just feeling it. Forcing himself. Getting the fast-forward and rewind all at once.

The
rewind
 . . .

• • •

A
nd he hears someone tell him he is truly home when he comes to this place.
He steps into a garden filled with flowers and the smell overwhelms his entire body and he finds himself crying and has no idea why, and a hand comes out of the dark and slaps his face and tells him tears are for the weak and you cannot be weak now, my son, because you are different, you are special . . .

• • •

T
hree guards. Guys in white, walking perimeter in shifts that last a minute per rotation. Standard pattern. They don't even have guns. He watches them for six minutes, then moves on them one at a time. His hands are shaking bad. But he does it. Muscle memory. Does it without feeling. Does it on fast-forward. He thinks only of Jollie and Andy. Focuses on his panic. Uses the panic like a drug.

Then he pulls the bodies into the woods.

The area is secured.

He holds his heart rate under control, just barely.

He sucks in air and the air plunges down deep.

Deep into the past . . .

SNAP OUT OF IT, YOU ASSHOLE.

• • •

H
e is six years old and he doesn't understand
anything but Muppets and playtime. He is a blank slate, waiting to be filled. He is led by the hand to his destiny. And his destiny smells like open air and flowers in the dark . . .

• • •

H
e smells the flowers.

Fills himself with it, keeping in the moment, not letting himself slip again. Waves wash against the far-back chambers of his mind. Sense-memories almost taking him again.
Almost taking him back . . .

STAY HERE.

He wipes the tears away and looks down at the phone in his hand. The objective is not far at all now. Inside this house, down low in a sublevel of some sort.

It's almost four in the morning.

He reaches up and tries the door and it's unlocked, the alarms nice and gone, just for him.
And as he opens the door
 . . .

• • •

T
he smell of home hits him right in the face for the first time. They lead him down a long, dark hallway that seems to go on forever. He will remember this because it's really important. His first lessons, which begin right here . . .

• • •

N
o. It can't be. This can't be that place.

That was a million billion years ago. But the smell of the woods . . .
the smell of the hallway . . .

The corridor empties into the big living room full of books and toys.

Dark and vacant.

Just like it was the first time they brought him here.

He almost collapses in the room, overloaded with smells and ghosts. He sees the room terminate into a longer corridor, and he remembers that too, the kids looking out at him, staring with wide eyes. Remembers how he used to walk here, every day. The training routine. Remembers it all.

He walks the corridor, halfway to the elevator. Looks at the phone in his hand. Jollie is just below him now. The map says so.

Just ahead of him, the elevator.

Just behind him, the playroom.

Where he learned his name a billion years ago.

The voice of Dictator Ken laughs at him:
Get it now, kid? Now you see what I was protecting your friends from? Now you see how I was serving the company? If you had just died . . . if you had just not looked for it . . . we'd all still be alive right now.

He closes his eyes and the voice fades away to nothing. Replaced by that
other voice
from his buried memories. From so long ago.

Yes, child.
You've come home.

• • •

T
he laminate around his neck is soaked in the blood of Moonie Raycraft, but it still works. The barcode passes under an infrared scanner and the elevator doors open. He steps inside and the world drops down into the corridor of love and freedom.

• • •

A
nd there he stands, in the hallway.

In front of the big steel door.

It's just after four in the morning.

Ten minutes past.

He knows he's come too late, even when he brings the phone out of his pocket and thumbs it to his ear, making the call. The voice that answers is very familiar. It says hello.

And he speaks back: “Hello, Father.”

“I
thought you were dead.”

“I want my friends back.”

“You can have what's left. But she's a bit of a mess.”

“Goddamn you.”

“Yes, November Twelve.
Goddamn me. Goddamn us both.”

Darian's voice reaches him from a hundred feet away and a billion years ago, just on the other side of the door. It can't be, but it is.

The phone clicks dead in his hand.

• • •

T
hree minutes later, the door unlocks with a huge metal sound, and Darian comes out into the hall.

Rolling what's left of Jollie in front of him.

• • •

T
he three men in white bring up the rear, their hands holding pistols. They all come into the corridor single file, very slowly. The wheels of the dentist's chair squeak and rattle, echoing off the sleek white walls, as Jollie struggles against the leather straps, trying to get free and run to him.

“Mark . . . oh my God . . .
Mark
 . . .”

And Mark's heart floods with something that might be sad joy soaked in gasoline, as his mind pulls back from the brink one final time.

Jollie. You're alive. He didn't kill you.

And then
Darian's voice cuts through everything.

His voice is saying Mark's true name.

He looks into the face of his father.

• • •

A
scalpel slides just under Jollie's chin, held by a cruel, loving hand.

Darian smiles at her, slowly chewing his gum.

“Hello, November Twelve,” he says. “I'm afraid I'm not the man I used to be, at least not on the surface. I no longer have white hair like I did then. I am no longer young. And my face tells an
undeniable truth
, does it not?”

“It can't be you,” Mark says.

“But it is. You could never forget my voice. Or my eyes. But first things first. Let's lose the hand cannon, November Twelve.”

Mark looks down at the gun in his hand.

The scalpel cuts a micromillimeter into Jollie's chin and she winces.

“If you hurt her . . . I'll kill you.”

“No you won't, November Twelve. You're almost immobilized right now. And your gun is useless in this hallway, just like ours are. The walls are made of solid marble with a titanium alloy sealant. Absolutely bulletproof. One shot in here could kill us all, never mind
two or three
shots.”

“Then we'll all die.”

“No, my son . . . you don't want that for the lady. Or
me
, do you? This is quite a reunion, isn't it? Why end things so terribly?”

Mark looks deep into him. The man is so different now, his skin ripped and torn, healed so badly. The scar down the middle splits his lip and his face, making him a monster. He might not have recognized him.

But Darian was right—the scars do not hide his eyes
.

Or his voice when he speaks again: “Eddie Darling knew your real name, just like he knew so much about what was going on inside METRO. He was obsessively collecting information about the operation we were all part of. But he never knew that Mark Jones was really November Twelve. That surprised the hell out of me too. Only
I
could know that, of course. Do you know
why
you were named November Twelve in the first place? Do you remember?”

Darian smiles proudly.

“I named you that. November Twelve is
my
birthday.”

And Mark sees himself in the room again, filled with feelings he cannot assign a proper name to. Looking into the face of his teacher, who once told him love is for the weak. Loving something that seems like his father.

Because he knows no other family.

You're not my family. You're not my father. You're a psychopathic killer—a spoiler of children. A MONSTER.

Mark staggers back two steps, feeling the gun loosen in his grip for a long terrible second. Then he steadies himself. Remembering the training.

But Darian Stanwell keeps talking.

“When I took the keys from Eddie and learned for sure that it was
you
who killed Marnie and blew the deal, I have to admit I was quite angry at first. We had such grand plans for Marnie. He was a diamond in the rough. I could have shaped that diamond into something so beautiful. But these things take time. And often . . . the present is tense.”

Stop talking. Just stop it. You are a liar and a maniac.

“And then my anger changed to love. For you, November Twelve. And then that love changed to sadness, because I was sure you'd died in that explosion. It's probably some kind of perverted miracle that you survived.”

“I don't believe in miracles.”

“And yet, here we are.”

The scalpel hovers at Jollie's chin. Darian winks.

“I decided to wait on her death. At least until I'd heard from my boys that her information was genuine. We've been waiting for hours to hear from them. I assumed that meant they'd run into trouble. I resisted the temptation to slit her throat many times in the last hour. One small incision . . . one vein opened . . . and the scales would truly be balanced. Marnie would be avenged. But we don't want that now. Do we, November Twelve?”

Mark clutches the pistol in his right hand tighter.

Brings it up, locking his father into his sights.

“Better not,” Darian says. “If you want the love of your life to die, all you have to do is pull that trigger. My hand
will
cut her throat just as surely as your bullet will fly. And then, who knows? A pistol like that one has a lot of stopping power. It will go right through my body and kill one of the men standing behind me. Then bounce off the wall and maybe kill another one, or blow poor Jollie's brains out. Then maybe yours. That would be a nice punch line, wouldn't it? It certainly wouldn't be any miracle.”

The gun, trembling in his hand.

Aimed right at Darian to shut him up.

“But it also wouldn't be
truth
, November Twelve. It wouldn't be love. We must forgive one another if we are to become enlightened beings. We must bury our dead. We must heal our wounds. You must lower your weapon.”

No.

NO.

“We can start again, as father and son. You can take Marnie's place, in the promised land. You have no idea what gods we can be.”

Jollie's face, just above the cruel steel of Darian's scalpel.

The gun, heavy in Mark's hand now.

Mark's teeth gritted and his voice, barely working now: “You're insane . . . you've always been insane . . .”

“That's shallow thinking, November Twelve. And you know it's not true. Don't you realize how destiny has rewarded us tonight? We were put here together, in this room
to be the rulers of everything
.”

Insane . . .

Crazy . . .

Jollie . . .

“Lower your weapon, November Twelve. Or this will be my last lesson to you. You're in a zero-point-zero situation.”

Mark hears Marnie Stanwell and almost laughs. Remembers that moment when Marnie looked him right in the eye and said the same exact goddamn thing.

And he felt it then, the familiarity of looking in the face of his own father.

His first teacher.

Fuck me.

• • •

J
ollie's voice suddenly cuts through everything.

Like a knife, it cuts.

Hard.

“Mark, I have to know. Please tell me.
Did you kill Jackie
?”

• • •

D
arian's voice again, calm as death.

“You're not asking the right question, Jollie. Little Jackie never
died
in that backroom when Mark shot him, after all. It was a ten-to-one freak occurrence, but the boy survived. You should be asking a much more important question. You should be asking poor Mark who he
really is
, and who he has been all along. He might not even answer you. Not truthfully. He was trained to lie as well as kill.”

“Shut up,” Mark says.

“You know it's true, Jollie. But shall I show you anyway? Would you like to
see
what he really is? And what he was in that moment when
the job
was more important than any of his so-called friends?”

“No,” she says weakly.

Too late.

Darian turns to the white-suited men and says: “Kill him.”

• • •

T
hey shove their guns in the smalls of their backs and clomp forward like big dumb apes to obey their master.

Mark re-aims his weapon at them.

They close the gap between Jollie and Mark, single file.

One bullet will kill them all. And then kill Jollie.

Zero-point-zero.

• • •

T
he lead gorilla is less than six feet away when Mark lunges forward and uses the butt of the pistol to implode his nose. The strike happens damn fast and the guy has his block up a quarter second too late. And then Mark is using his other hand to slap away the block, and the gorilla howls like something wounded, something broken—he almost starts crying. Because that's what you do with a big dumb gorilla.

Mark's next strike drops him to one knee, then he twists the arm back in a series of instinctive maneuvers that come as easily as breathing, even with the shakes, even with the burning need for Popeye's spinach.

He just ignores it, and everything comes easy again.

Jollie watches him work with sheer horror.

Mark, stop!
Don't kill them! That's just what he wants!

She tries to scream at him—tries to make him hear her—but her words are like ice in her throat, choking into nothing, as Mark cleans house like an expert.

On his knees, the gorilla really starts crying, and his face explodes against another hard-balled fist. Then his arm cracks in six places. Bone tears through skin at bizarre, impossible angles. An eyeball hits the floor and bursts apart with crimson humors. The other two guys see the carnage, almost on top of Mark now, and they hesitate for the next half second that it takes for him to turn into a blur, sweeping and striking hard, mutilating flesh and bone between eyeblinks. Jollie can't even see exactly what happens because it all goes down so fast and ends very quickly. She hears Mark scream wordlessly as he plunges someone's skull into the marble wall. The last man standing yells curses that turn into blubbering nonsense as he goes for his gun and ends up on the floor real fast, his entire face caved in from a roundhouse kick. And that last man twitches there, almost lifeless, a bag of bloody meat at Mark's feet.

Jollie thinks she cries out in this moment, finally screams for him to stop—but in the real world, the sound never leaves her mouth.

• • •

T
he three men lie dead, bleeding. Mark killed them all in fifteen seconds. And now he's looking at Darian Stanwell, his face and fists soaked in blood.

Darian smiles down at Jollie, still holding the knife at her chin.

“Does that answer your question, girl?”

• • •

S
he keeps herself from crying, from seeing the moment. Holds it all back, to stop from going crazy. But it's coming on fast . . .

And here's the truth
, she thinks.
Mark is a murderer.

And he killed Jackie.

• • •

“L
et her go,” Mark says. “Or I'll kill you too.”

Darian nods, smiling. “You've let your emotions rule so much lately. I suspect the lady here had much to do with breaking your conditioning. I see a lot of
her
in your actions tonight. Still . . . I'm proud of what you've become. You're what we made you to be.”

He strokes Jollie's chin with a gentle finger, right next to the blade. Looks down at her and chuckles: “Does that shock
you
, my child?”

Tears are running down her face.

“Yes, it has shocked you quite a lot. Do you see what you've wrought, November Twelve? Do you think these ordinary people know anything about
real love
? About true
enlightenment
?”

“Shut up,” Mark says.

“A lady like Jollie Meeker thinks she knows the awful truth. But that's something only men like you and I can truly understand. That's a real corker, isn't it?”

“Just shut your mouth and let her go!”

Mark takes two steps forward, over the dead bodies, coming closer.

“LET HER GO OR I'LL KILL YOU!”

It's a primal scream, and Darian smiles.

“You could try to kill me, November Twelve. But I wouldn't let you. Even if you
could
bring yourself to break my neck with your bare hands, the way you've broken these men, I still wouldn't let you do it. I wouldn't let you destroy our family.”

Mark comes closer, just twenty feet separating them now.

Darian keeps on smiling. “That's what we
are
now, November Twelve. We are
family
. The three of us. I'll prove it to you.”

The scalpel comes away from Jollie's chin. Mark stops and Darian tosses away the blade. Shows that his hands are empty. Reaches down and begins to unbuckle her straps.

“See?” Darian says when it's done.

Then he gets a handful of her hair and dumps her on the floor in front of the chair. She sprawls forward on her hands, stumbling like a boneless thing, her arms and legs almost numb. Darian smiles at her, pushing aside the chair.

Mark falls on her, and she recoils, gagging and choking. Crying. He tries to embrace her. He never wants to let go of her.