There were pellets of flesh on the wall and remnants of blood pooling on the floorboards. Clearly, this had been a close-range shot. And, according to the report, he had not survived it. But strangely, Bob thought, as he again surveyed the mess in the hallway before him, the body was gone. He had never seen that before. And even though his team had suggested to him that Nugent was just trying to find another way to mess with his psyche, Bob wasn’t convinced. There’s simply no reason he would take my body. What purpose for it would the Club have now that they didn’t have before? It just didn’t make sense.
“Are you alright, sir?” A voice penetrated Ludwick’s thoughts. The speaker was Nathan, one of the ops assigned to his team. Young and new to the program, Nathan was inexperienced, but he took the initiative whenever possible and was eager to please.
“Dandy,” Ludwick replied, the sarcasm clearly evident in his voice as he took another long look at the scene. It had been thoroughly photographed, 3D-imaged, and by now had probably even been holographically rendered back at the base for the virtual CSI analysts to review. Although all records of his home’s security feeds had been destroyed, the scene painted a clear picture. Glass on the ground and a broken sky-scraper above. The intruder got in through there, let himself down, and then shot me. Bob analyzed. Somehow . . . The guts on the wall had been positively matched to his DNA. The blood on the floor was also his alone. A stun gun had been found at the scene, with prints matching his own. And yet, that gun had never been utilized. I was blindsided, Ludwick realized. And yet, how could I have been? Certainly he would have been alerted to the sounds of breaking glass and concluded that an intruder was in house.
Clearly, he had been distracted when he had come into the hallway. That was the only explanation for how he had been shot down and murdered without even pulling the trigger of his own weapon.
Bob looked at Brooke, who stood in the doorway of her bedroom, watching them, but not saying anything. She had given her testimony and stuck to it: she had been awakened by a loud explosion – the gunshot – and had immediately rushed out of the bedroom, and into Benjamin’s room. The hallway was then, she said, as it was now – empty, with entrails on the wall and floorboards.
“I think we’re done here,” said Arnold Steinberg, the detective assigned to this case.
Steinberg threw a look at Bob as if to say we’re exhausting a dead end here, and Bob nodded. “Pack it up,” he said. “We’ll see what the word is back at base. Maybe they’ve got an idea about why the body would have been removed.”
“Beats me,” said Steinberg, waving at the team to clean up the scene. “But the Club’s a sick operation,” he continued, “and I wouldn’t put anything past them.”
Bob nodded thoughtfully, still thinking about the implications of the evidence. Something didn’t feel right. “I’m going to get some air,” he announced to no-one in particular, and headed downstairs and out the back door. He seated himself in a chair near the door, and reclined, looking out over his stately backyard, which was just now starting to get touched by the early morning rays of sunshine peeking up over the distant hills. He slipped into silent reverie. No matter how many times he did this, it didn’t get easier. But this time was different. He had awoken in the lab, at the base, approximately two hours before, and was immediately sent to investigate a murder. As was always the case, it had been his murder.
That hadn’t been strange; it was the way in which the investigation had been handled, and the oddness of the scene. His dead body was gone, killed by some sort of firearm, judging from the way in which his entrails had splattered, and he, himself, had not taken a single shot with his own weapon. Totally blindsided. Have I lost my edge? Or…was I distracted by something else?
Maybe a bit of both, but somehow it just didn’t add up.
The back door opened behind Ludwick, and Steinberg poked his head out. “We’re heading back to base, Bob,” he said. “You coming?”
“In a bit,” Ludwick said, without looking at Arnold. The investigation went too fast; not enough thought put into it, Bob thought. He needed some minutes to privately look over the scene without interruptions.
“Will you be alright?” Steinberg pressed, showing a rare sign of concern.
Bob stiffened visibly in response to the assumption of the question. “I am alright,” he corrected. But something was nagging at Bob’s mind. The murder was more or less identical to the two-dozen or so that had preceded it, but why would they have taken my body? Why . . .?
The door closed behind him as Steinberg retreated back into the house, and, in a few moments, Bob heard the engines of the law enforcement vehicles start up. A whir of hydrogen-powered turbines and low-frequency whines ushered them down the driveway, and past the gatehouse; beyond his property limits.
Bob usually had a pretty good idea what he’d see, and the evidence he’d find at his murder scenes. And it all typically pointed at the club. But this time . . .
“Bob?”
Bob jerked around in his seat, shocked at the sound of his name being uttered. It wasn’t the fact that he wasn’t used to hearing his own name being pronounced, or even the fact that he hadn’t heard the door open, that surprised him. No, it was the voice that spoke his name. How long had it been since he had heard that voice speak his name . . . and in a non-threatening tone?!
Brooke.
She stood just outside the door – facing him, her features thinly accentuated by the slivers of early-morning sunlight.
“What?” Bob said, and then inwardly cursed his thick-headedness. What?! Is that all you can muster, man? It occurred to Bob that though he had thoroughly planned out what he would say to Brooke if she ever seemed willing to have a civil conversation with him, now that the opportunity suddenly seemed to afford itself, no words were coming to his mind. Perhaps it’s the fuzziness that always accompanies the first few hours, he thought. But he moved nearer to Brooke hoping that his brain would find the words. All thoughts of the murder, the blood on the floor, the guts on the walls, and the missing body, were gone. Bob had only one thought preeminent in his mind.
Brooke had just said his name.
If that had taken Bob by surprise, what came out of Brooke’s mouth next threw him completely off-balance.
“You didn’t die.”
He stopped in front of her, staring into her eyes, trying to comprehend what she had just said, and not finding himself quite able to do so.
“I don’t understand,” he fumbled, shocked at the unexpected turn. “But . . . they told me that exactly thirty-seven seconds after the skylight security system registered a breach, my vitals flatlined.”
“You didn’t die,” Brooke repeated, her brown eyes now visible in the growing light. Many cumulative years of investigative work, field operations, and interaction with criminals had sharpened Bob’s awareness of human thoughts and emotions, and several were evident in those orbs. Fear, pain, sadness . . .
But she’s not lying. He could see that clearly.
Hit with the sudden revelation and unable to withstand the rush of thoughts which accompanied it, Bob scrambled for absolutes in his life. The people he loved. Protect them. They were all he had. “Where’s Benjamin?” he said abruptly.
“Sleeping in the guest room,” Brooke answered quickly.
The guest room was just inside the back door and a few steps down the hall.
“Let’s go inside,” he said, trying to gather his thoughts. Brooke turned without a word, and walked straight to the guest-bedroom door. She opened it softly, and peeked inside.
“He’s asleep,” she said as she turned back to face him.
Briefly caught up in the moment, Bob stared at Brooke without saying anything. Benjamin is safe, and my wife is speaking to me again. He didn’t know exactly what to feel, but it was all . . . just . . . too much.
“Bob,” Brooke said, forcefully this time, “I saw it happen; I saw the intruder who shot you. I saw it all.”
“What . . . ?”
“We don’t have much time,” she interrupted him, her face creasing with evident urgency. “How much time before your next memory upload?”
Bob checked his watch.
“Eight minutes. But Brooke, what do you mean I didn’t die? If you saw him shoot me then . . .”
She pulled something small and black out of her pocket and held it up.
The object was vaguely familiar to him. Benjamin’s tape?
“Come on,” she said, grabbing his hand and leading him down the hallway and into the kitchen where a cassette player was already plugged into a wall-socket.
“Brooke, what are you doing? What about Benjamin?”
“I think we’re all safe for the time being, Bob,” Brooke said, her eyes boring into his with great intensity. “As long as they don’t suspect anything, we should be okay. But,” she cast a fleeting glance at his watch, “we don’t have much time.”
“What do you mean?” Bob interjected, feeling weak and slightly panicked. “What are you saying?”
Brooke popped the cassette tape into the player, pressed play, and said, “Just listen.”
Bob started to protest, and then stopped. And listened to the voice that was emanating from the tiny speaker.
My voice.
__________________
When the voice trailed off, Brooke stopped the tape.
“How much time until your next upload?”
“Three minutes,” Bob said, still trying to process what the voice had just said. What my voice said. He understood it all, but how could it be true?
“Three minutes,” Brooke repeated. She paused for two significant seconds, seconds she used to stare directly into Bob’s eyes. “Do you trust me?”
Bob paused. Do I trust you? He felt sweat trickle past his hairline and slide over his wrinkled brow. Wrinkled with concentration. Wrinkled with experience. Wrinkled with distrust, with pain, with anger, with fear. Riveted by the despair of felt rejection, inflicted upon him by the one who now stared him full in the face and asked: “do you trust me?” Trust you? Do you know what you have done to me, Brooke?
Time’s ticking.
Do you know what you’ve done?! He felt like screaming into her quiet, firm, and resolute face all the things that had been bottled up inside of him for so long, thoughts and emotions that had been seething, roiling, aching to be released; to be vocalized.
Tick-tock, Ludwick. What’s it going to be?
Bob understood the severity of the situation. In approximately one hundred and fifty seconds this entire conversation will be uploaded to the servers at HQ for the instant review of the Monitors. And then they will know everything that has been said. Everything I’ve thought. Can I trust them? Can I trust you, Brooke?
“If you can’t trust me, will you trust yourself?” Brooke nodded significantly at the tape player.
Can I even trust myself? Bob felt so confused; so manipulated. He desperately yearned to trust, to believe the truth . . . but what was true?! He stared desperately at the tape player, and then at Brooke. If Brooke was lying and he resisted her and this conversation ultimately ended up at HQ, his loyalty for the organization would be confirmed beyond a shadow of a doubt, and he would probably be given free reign to conduct the rest of the investigation of the Club without any excessive monitoring by the agency’s bureaucratic upper-echelons. But if Brooke was right, then everything else he had known was a lie, and she was his only hope at learning the truth.
You didn’t die.
She knew the truth.
He checked his watch again. Ninety seconds.
Tick.
Tock.
“What happened, Brooke?”
Brooke looked at him for another long moment.
“He didn’t kill you,” she said. “I saw it all, from the closet.”
Bob knew what she was referring to. The “closet” was a small room between the wall of Bob’s room and Brooke and Benjamin’s room, accessible from both of their closets. Outfitted with food rations and a video monitor that revealed all security feeds in and outside the house, the closet was an ideal place to hide in the event of danger, and provided the occupants with a view of what was going on outside.
“I heard footsteps on the roof . . . and then glass shattering,” she said. “So I grabbed Ben and ran into the closet.” She paused again. “I could see a tall, lanky man in the hallway. Before the camera feeds were destroyed, that is. I could see him. I couldn’t see his face, though, because he was wearing a mask, but he was also carrying some sort of firearm. He hid himself in the closet at the far end of the hall, and when you came upstairs . . . he came out . . . and, shot you.”
“But I thought you said I didn’t die . . .”
“You didn’t,” Brooke said, shaking her head fervently.
“But what about the blood?!” He shouted. “It’s mine, isn’t it?!”
Brooke looked at the hand that bore the watch, and nodded. “It’s yours.”
“But then . . .?”
“There isn’t enough time,” Brooke yelled suddenly, cutting him off. She grabbed the tape player off the counter, pushed the red “record” button, and held the player in front of his face.
“Do you trust me, Bob?” She asked again.
For a moment Bob said nothing. Then, resolutely, he squelched the objections that had instantly arisen in his mind and spoke three words firmly “I do, Brooke.”
Brooke pressed the “stop” button, ran to the sink, and picked up a tall drinking glass that was sitting there. As she carried it towards him, he could clearly see the strange, brownish-looking liquid sloshing around inside of it.
“What’s th—?” he started to ask, but Brooke put a finger up to his lips, silencing him.
“Just drink it,” she commanded, taking another look at the watch, now appearing to glow eerily as the tiny digital numerals blinked in the upper left-hand corner of the display.
18, 17, 16, 15, 14 . . .
“Drink it now,” she urged.
Bob gave Brooke a piercing look, and then, without a word, took the glass, and drank it down.
For a few agonizing seconds in which they both wondered what would happen, nothing did.
And then, as the digits winked 5, 4, 3 . . . the glass dropped out of Bob’s hands, and he slumped forward, unconscious.
