Always You Part 15
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Just catching up? Read the previous installment here.
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6.
Surrounded by grown men taking part in a teenager’s organization, backed up against my former wife, Jeanette the White Jeep Cherokee (rest in peace, baby), and bleeding from my back, I felt like the world was just plain botched.
I hoped the rest of the gang didn’t feel that way. Odds were that outside of not getting killed here, everybody was kind of lacking in fucks to give anyway. Kenneth’s and the Jack’s unbending stances for combat proved that well enough. My paling features and numb legs had to be putting a damper on the bravado, though.
Zack Forest’s men helped Rodney get to his feet. I would have felt bad for the fellow on any other occasion. I mean, really; you get beaten up by pure coincidence the first time, and the second time, when you’re just flat-out pissed off, you get beaten down like a child who stole something.
That said, he did, you know, fatally stab me.
I like this whole dying thing, to be honest. It’s relaxing. I don’t even feel angry enough to have some kind of scathing narration concerning politics, girlfriends, food, or whatever the hell I usually insult. It’s just…I don’t know. Peaceful.
Forest watched as I blinked in and out of the situation, then grumbled like an old man annoyed with young people. “Wake up, Collins,” he said. “I’m not letting you go to sleep yet. We still have work to do.”
Looks like he didn’t get the memo. “I’m not working for you anymore. Not that I ever was.” I clarified.
“Oh, and if you ever touch another hair on Carina’s head, I’ll kill you.”
Carina’s breathing skipped for a quick beat, but her lifeline hold on my upper body never dimmed.
“You’re funny, Collins. You keep thinking that I haven’t already won, that there’s a way to stop the world from ending. I imagine…it’s like trying to predict the ending to a book by reading the summary and the first half of the story.”
His analogies suck. There could have been at least one jab at Republicans in there somewhere.
“You did get quite far, however. I didn’t think you could find the four Familiars and actually devote this much time to ending the inevitable, but what do I know? Evangeline never doubted you for a minute, but you already knew that.”
Evangeline, the red-haired and blue-eyed first Familiar, got me started on this whole quest. It’d be a little annoying if not even she thought I could make it this far.
Look at me; I’m talking like I’m dead already. Sure, I’m not exactly in the position to declare a victory boast…or any kind of boast…or a victory…you get it.
“At any rate, you played into my hand.”
“Not even!” Jack and Kenneth shot me death glares, but come on. Can’t I get a last request?
Request: “You didn’t even tell me how you’re planning to end the world.”
I dare you to come up with a better request than that. And no, asking for there to be another Matrix movie does not overcome my heroic and self-sacrificing request for the token supervillain to out himself, although believe me, I did briefly consider asking for that instead.
Forest shrugged.
Bear with me here.
I just asked this guy what his diabolical plan to kill seven billion people was, and he shrugged at me. No powerful laugh. No twiddling of the fingers. No dramatic wind blowing through his expensive black jacket or his carefully managed hairstyle. Not even a long and drawn out ‘yes’.
For the first time, I understood what he had tried to get at.
He was winning. I hadn’t seen that much confidence, or even a lack of confidence, since the Lakers went to the playoffs against the New Jersey Nets back in 2002. When the press asked the Nets’ coach what his plans were for ‘stopping Shaq’, the coach took the microphone and said, ‘next question’.
Unrelated, but horribly memorable. When I die and go to my personal heaven, I’ll tell Michelangelo the Ninja Turtle all about it. And hell, Mikey would probably get a kick out of that. He’s a party dude, after all.
Raphael could go screw himself, though. He’s cool, but crude.
“Collins, if you have to know…this reality is set to expire at the end of the day.”
…This reality?
That sounds a bit different from ‘the whole world’. Correct me if I’m wrong.
“If that sounds weird to you, it should. This reality is not the entire world. It is this….this class-warfare spurring, smog-ridden trash heap you call a home. Miranda Cove will be cease to exist.”
“You can’t just erase a chunk of reality,” the Jack said, sounding a bit more knowledgeable than before. Color me crazy, but he sounded like he actually understood what the doomsday plan was supposed to be about. “What’s supposed to go in this one? Blank, unmapped existence?”
“Precisely. Miranda Cove sits on something I need. This…’chunk of reality,’ Jack, is located right where it should be, and yet it is the one thing blocking the path to a place that cannot be. If I’m going to get there, then I’ll need Miranda Cove evaporated.
“The pieces have been put into motion. At midnight tonight, the essence of my will that has been injected into the fabric of reality will begin to affect. When that does, Miranda Cove will crumble under its own complicated, corrupted life. I will be standing in that which cannot exist.”
That laugh must have been directed at the blank look on our faces.
Fabric of reality?
The place that cannot be?
Doomsday plan? Who the hell has a doomsday plan?
…It was at this moment that I noticed: only one person saw this coming. Only one member of the House—I should put that on a shirt!—looked both horrified and content, as though he had won a small victory. In the face of this ridiculous, sounds-deep-but-is-probably-all-smoke-and-mirrors villainous gloat, one of us smiled like a child on Christmas.
That person, of course, was the Jack of All Trades.
Jack grinned and dropped his stance. Kenneth raised an eyebrow, but his fists stayed balled and ready for throwing against jaws.
“Forest, you just lost the game.”
…Internet jokes?
“Trying to find Ultima isn’t just stupid, it’s a waste of time. On top of that, you’re delusional. Your will won’t affect Miranda Cove that much. Evangeline told us that.”
“Evangeline? Now you’re delusional.”
“Sure thing, kid. We’ll see you in a few hours, m’kay?”
‘M’kay’ says the Jack. You don’t hear that unless you’re talking to a flirty fourteen-year-old, or something is so going your way that it’d be crazy not to act like it’s the Second Coming.
Forest rolled his eyes and walked away. With every step away, the goon squad took another toward us. Kenneth stood before all of us, ready but nowhere near adequate enough.
“As soon as I give the signal, you run, you hear me?” Jack commanded. Look at that, he can command people now. Kenneth nodded, with nary a quip or exasperated groan to be heard. That was new.
Jack looked back at me, his icy demeanor suddenly noticeably rushed. “Henry, Carina, I need the two of you to trust me.”
Don’t we already?
“Not like that. You have to understand that we have already lost this war.”
War?
Did he say war?
“That said, we’re getting out of here, and we’ll still win. I just need you to trust me.”
“Jack, he’s dying. We don’t have time for—“
“Paloma, do it!”
Paloma dropped me and lunged for the silent and catatonic Becky. Their light, feminine hands met with a graceful smack of porcelain skin.
Cue the world fading to white. The secret service wanna-be’s melted away from the sky downward, like a turpentine’d painting. Kenneth and Jeanette vanished with them, and before I knew it, we floated in the sky like something out of a music video.
What was this place?
“…Welcome to Ultima,” Paloma said.
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Read the next installment here.
