#he just fucking. laughs. i can only imagine it's that tired exhausted manic state that makes him go 'haha ... sonic!!!'

[lowpolyshadow]

forced to once again remember how shadow is laughing when he says "i think i figured out what the ultimate lifeform is! it might be you!"

[waldos-writing]

The Dig Initiative: Chapter 32

Today I Am

“Thomas?” It was an echo through a dream. It came down to him through pitch, again and again. “Thomas?” Someone familiar calling to him. He’d been sleeping in a cocoon of hands, of familiar friends who had gone silent after the fever. They were warm and soft and silent compared to the rest of the world. One of them pushed their fingers into his left eye. It hurt, bruised, but he didn’t brush it away. “Thomas?” Fingers were going down his throat too, jabbing at his gums. He didn’t want to fight it. Not really. He wanted to sleep some more. Maybe forever. But they were calling out to him. Crisp, bright sounds. He had to get up.

The place was dark, but busy. There were people chatting nearby, nothing hurried or urgent. Someone turned a light his way, blinding. He flinched and shielded his face before figures started taking shape. A blurry man to his right. A distant one down near his feet. Someone to his left, but they were still dark.

“Thomas?” That was Dr. Fletcher next to him. He had to turn his head to see her. It was almost like there was a dark film over his left eye. “Oh, I can’t tell you how good it is to see you awake.”

“I can’t see,” he said calmly.

“What was that?”

Thomas waved a hand in front of his left eye, staring wide-eyed, even going so far as to close his right eye just in case, but didn’t see anything. His arms flopped back down on his chest and he said, with a small sigh, “I can’t see.”

“You can’t…at all?” asked Harvey, bless that worry wort, who hovered closer. He didn’t have to open his eyes to find him. He shimmered like a flash of light through cobwebs and lace.

“No, I can.”

“You can or you can’t?”

“I can.” And he sat up, ignoring Dr. Fletcher who crowed at him to take his time, with her “Okay, okay. Easy now.” When he was propped up, he looked right at Harvey and covered his useless eye. “I can’t.”

“Oh.” Then it dawned on him. “Oh! Oh, okay. Ah. Really blind, huh?”

“Just the one, though.”

“Ah.”

“Mm.”

Thomas opened his arms just as Harvey barreled into him, and the two embraced, so damn happy that the other one was alive and well. They laughed, clapping each other on the back and gripping onto shoulders and arms, saying how good it was to see the other.

They gave him time to come together, get used to his eye. He joked about taking Warren’s, but the hard woman was somewhere else and not up for jokes just yet. He took in the dark surroundings, squinting up at a low square light in the ceiling that pulsed down UV like the solar substitutes. There were other lights too, more orange, more organic. The girl, Alice, was back. Her head was cool but there was something dull in her eyes. Thomas decided he would see to that later. His head hurt and he had to chew flour paste and cold beans around the pain in his mouth. The teeth were ruined, and they screamed whenever he managed to bite down on them. It was exhausting to give them attention, so he pushed that back too.

“What happened while I was asleep?” Thomas asked the small group eating off of aluminum foil and paper plates. “Do we have word from the city?”

“Oh, we have word,” Harvey said. He nodded and shoved some more food between his teeth, scraping his finger on the rough patch of beard that covered his skin. Still wouldn’t grow in full. Harvey didn’t like to be teased about it, but it was such an ugly thing.

“And?”

They were all silently trying to figure out how to line up their answers, who was going to say what. Melissa wouldn’t look at him but stayed close by to make sure nothing happened. Warren was busy with the kids telling stories. Jay and Annalise were off comforting Alice. The new kid, the recruit, crouched nearby.

Thomas turned to Harvey and pressed him, impatiently grabbing at any thought. He heard …been five days…and…full lock down. Ask about Subject 01.

“Who’s Subject 01?” Thomas asked.

“Joe Diggs,” Melissa said with a defeated sigh, her back still to him. “Said his name was Joe Diggs.”

“He was a patient of yours.”

“More a ward of Montemille.”

“But he was specifically your patient. What was he like?”

Her first reaction, of course, was to ask how he knew. She wanted to throw it at him like an accusation. Thomas held his hand over his blind eye, cupping it as he propped his elbow up on one knee. He wanted her to accuse. He wanted her to test him, but he was afraid of her anger and her fear and her scorn. He just wanted to be Thomas Carter. Back at the Center of Hope. Back with his mop and his watch and the quiet room with her photographs. He wanted to be Thomas Carter, that’s all. Instead of whatever this was.

“He was bullheaded, which is to be expected from a case like his. I preface this because he was textbook sociopath, and that doesn’t automatically make him evil or a bad person, no more than someone who is manic depressive or schizophrenic or autistic. All it meant was that he had no empathy towards others and he had learned to read someone like an open book and offer the emotion that would best suit the situation. A good trick, really. I could tell you how many CEOs…. Anyways. So, along with being a sociopath, he had delusions of grandeur. Pretty standard for people who claim what he claims.”

“What was that?”

“Oh, when they brought him in he claimed to be the Messiah. He was the fourth Jesus Christ I’d dealt with. The only reason he was at Montemille was because he had swindled dozens of families out of millions of dollars to support a church in his name. That was the reason for his arrest. This has happened before.”

“Yeah?’ asked Harvey with a laugh. “Got a lot of Gods running around?”

“We do,” said Dr. Fletcher matter-of-factly. “We have plenty of people around the United States who think they’re Jesus. There will be others.

“Joe was charming. He was. He was compliant to a point—he didn’t enjoy the meals and would arrange food strike protests until he eventually caused panic by suggesting that we were poisoning them and he was given a feeding tube for a stretch of time. That wasn’t my idea, but my advisor demanded it.”

Thomas wasn’t sure if he wanted to pry into that and discover Melissa was lying. Not that she had actively lied to him, of course, but she kept these secrets from him. It would be ugly to pry. He let her continue.  

“Joe was helpful to others in the program and offered to pray over them when they first started the injections. He had, I recall, a very sweet voice. Very convincing with that whole ‘I am the Shepard of my flock’ gimmick he liked to give.”

Melissa leaned back, the makeshift plate resting at a hazardous angle on her thigh. She closed her eyes and disappeared in there, recalling.

“When we got the first Westwood trial correct, he noticed that he was the only one who knew how to get through it. I’d been talking to him, reminding him of his humility, if there was any. He used to laugh and promise....” Melissa laughed and it was discordant and sad. “He promised me a place in heaven. I couldn’t get through to him, but the whole point was that we were re-developing the brain to overwrite these anomalies and correct disorders. I just told him I appreciated it and thanked him each time, because I thought it better to appease him then, right when he was fighting off the fever.”

“Now he thinks he’s a god,” Thomas said.

“He was the first successful patient. ‘Burned him clean’ is what he was always saying. He knew, I swear, that when he made it through he would be gifted with the unknown abilities attributed to the virus. I mean, we couldn’t detain him if we tried. I was gone before he broke out with his partner, the woman. I never learned her name, just that she was paired with him, this symbiotic nature that kept them both alive. Subject 47. Augmenter.”

“What do you think his connection is with the director? Lawrence DuVang?”

“I don’t know,” she answered with a helpless shrug. No eye contact. Maybe he appreciated that too, because he wasn’t sure what his blind eye saying. What his good eye was saying. “Working for him? Maybe he is Lawrence DuVang. I mean, it wouldn’t be hard to come up with a persona. Not for him.”

“But they’re going to do something with the CleanAire systems,” Harvey offered. He took Melissa’s plate, folding the tinfoil together into a tight ball and hooking it towards a large black plastic bag that they were using as a trash bin. “And, hey,” he added with pointed bitterness, “at least we have that Declan guy hacking away at them.”

“What?”

“Jay and Alice,” said Harvey. He rolled his eyes. “They have this guy in their band who says he can hack the towers and take them offline. I mean, Christ, if he can do it, we’re saved. For now. But that’s a pretty huge if, you know? He does it or not, we still have to act on this Diggs guy or this Lawrence guy or whoever, don’t we?”

“How’s she holding up?” asked Thomas.

“She’s….” Harvey rolled his shoulder, glancing back at Jay and Annalise who sat next to her, stroking her hand occasionally or joking about nothing. “Found out about Devon. Remember that guy we found? That was Jay’s cousin. Doorman Devon. Apparently he was a DJ and then a priest or something, I don’t know. She was in love with him. Really wrecked her to hear about it. That and. Well. I mean, I can only imagine, but she….”

“She lost the kid,” the recruit said. He’d been watching the trio too, with big soft sighs and slumped shoulders. “Fucking sucked, man.”

“Yeah,” Harvey answered. “Yeah. Sucks.”

“Fucking sucks,” the Recruit corrected.

“Okay, so, who asked you anyway?”

The recruit just shrugged and got up without saying anything. They watched him go. Harvey was vocal about his displeasure at having him at all, though he was not actually unkind to him. Just tired. There was nothing cruel to Harvey, nothing that would force the kid out and back up there with the rest of the Black Jackets. Thomas wasn’t sure what he would do if Harvey ever did become cruel.

Thomas got up to take a walk. He couldn’t have imagined what the underground place would look like. There were so many people. So many more than he remembered in the nest. They came out of little garbage tents and makeshift rooms and hidden coves. It reminded Thomas of his time with Ma Stuff, with the homeless people near the river, but everyone here was warm and slower and calmer.

Everyone came up to him, in groups or one at a time, and asked him questions from “How are you” to “When are we getting out of here” to “I had a dream and it scared me and I want to know if everything is going to be okay.” He loved them each and listened because he wanted to. He found Warren and hugged her, even if she bristled and turned over to Kay like it was the most embarrassing thing she could do. He found Harlow and Kate and their young children, the twins who had needed so much care. He wiggled their feet and made them laugh. He helped the three trouble makers—Ian, Mijar, and Avrich—find a string of lights with some of the underground people and told them all to go decorate one of the corners. He took his time so that they each felt appreciated and content and, for a moment, assuaged from the cruelty of everything. He made his way over to Alice and sat with her as Jay and Annalise went to talk to some of the other people. The subway people.

“Hey,” he said and pressed his back against the wall. She was sitting on his right, so he didn’t have to turn his head to see her out of the corner of his eye. “Did you get some food?”

She offered him a shrug in response. He had to ask if she wanted anything, to which she shrugged again.

“Yeah,” he said and sighed, letting his head fall back so he could look up at the ceiling. Or maybe try. It was too dark to see it. “I wonder how it’s going up there.”

They both looked up, trying to imagine the Heights spread out like a map. He had heard Harvey squawk about an extended curfew, something he would have to ask about. But, just then, he thought of the people in the city. Mothers and fathers inside their homes, old guys named Jerry rubbing grease off their knuckles with turpentine, artists named Vivian pushing big globs of acrylic around a five-foot canvas. He imagined children doing homework or pretending to do homework or just watching TV until someone called them out of their room. He imagined a young man with locks tied up in a thick bunch, pouring over a computer, poisoning himself with water laced with anti-anxiety medication.

“I’m glad I lost it,” Alice said quietly. She pulled her knees up and wrapped her arms around them. “For lots of reasons. I just didn’t think I could be a mother, you know.”

“I don’t think I could be one either,” Thomas said and smiled. “Sorry.”

“Sounds like something he would say,” she answered with a laugh, but it was gone just as it started. “I can’t believe he’s gone.”

Thomas didn’t know him. They never had a chance to meet, and the cold body they found didn’t have any spark rattling around inside to get a read off of. He could see flashes of him drifting from her, though. They were yellow lens flares over a drum kit. Blue smoke in a dark room. Red sprinkles of wandering fingertips. The colors spooled around him and he started to feel a deep pit grow in his stomach.

“It won’t help, I know. But, if I find the bastard who started this? And I take him down? It’s all I can offer.”

Alice snaked her hand towards his and entwined their fingers in a loose knot. She gave it a squeeze then. He would miss that warmth when he was back in the city, marching towards the end of the street with an army of black and white boiling around him. He tried to keep hold of her colorful memories. Maybe that would comfort him in the gray.

“Take his head and I’d call it square.”

“You want it delivered on a silver platter?”

“I like gold better,” she said, and there was that little smirk at the side of her face again.

“Golds harder to come by.”

“Hey. Steal one of those ceramic platters from like a grandmother’s pantry or something, okay?”

“Okay.”

“Thanksgiving dinner style,” she added, and laughed, short and simple, before she took her hand away.

Harvey had stowed away in the largest shed, the one where he had been sleeping. He enjoyed a kind of privilege there, but the man who governed the subway people was nearby, mending some clothes with a big ugly needle and a spool of fishing wire. Clause. Thomas would need to talk to him too. Harvey was busy with Melissa, distracting themselves with camping trips when they were younger, sharing recipes to make the right S’mores.

“I’ll be back,” said Thomas as he got back up. He was lying.

“Okay,” said Alice, her knees up by her chest. She knew.

Thomas left Harvey and Melissa, veering off instead towards Clause. The big man with his big white beard didn’t look up as Thomas approached.

“So you’re their guy,” said Clause, tugging the needle through the leather sleeve of his jacket. “The top dog.”

“Not by choice,” said Thomas. “Is this seat taken.”

“Taken in that it was stolen from up top? Yes. Taken as in occupied? No.” He motioned to the milk crate near him. “It’s yours.”

“Thanks.” Thomas sat on the milk crate, leaning on his knees to give the illusion that he was shorter than Clause. Even with the different heights in chairs, Thomas was right there at his eye-level. “How’s it going down here?”

“Well enough,” said Clause, still not looking up. “You got a lot of people with you.”

“So do you.”

“First come, first serve.”

“Do you think you can keep them a little longer for me?” Thomas asked, bracing himself on the milk crate.

“How long?”

“Only a little longer.”

“I need more than that,” said Clause and finished up his stitch in the sleeve. It was ragged and lumpy, but it would hold well. He admired his work by shaking the jacket and cutting the extra wire with a short knife from his belt. “How’s that?”

“Looks good,” said Thomas with a nod.

“Looks like shit.” Clause shook it out again, giving it a good once over, before he nodded and shrugged himself into it. It barely fit. He appeared to be very proud of it all the same. “Anyways, you going to give me a time and I’ll tell you yes or no, or we’re going to end this now.”

“And where would everyone go if we did?” Thomas asked, just because he felt up to a little challenge.

“I dunno. Not here.”

“Up there?”

They both looked up at the ceiling, imagining the empty streets above and the cold gray clouds above that. It was a dead world up there compared to the warm fires and Christmas lights in the subway tunnel.

“Up there with the Black Jackets?” Thomas continued.

Clause’s whole face scrunched up at the words “Black Jacket.” He huffed and started respooling the fishing wire. But he was firm in his beliefs and his need to protect not only his people, but what he perceived to be rightfully his, if anything could be belong to anyone in that dark little world of theirs.

“Two days,” Thomas said at last.

He got up before Clause said anything, dusting his hands on the side of his pants. It was good enough. Thomas knew the offer was valid and he’d make sure he kept his end of the bargain.

“But what’re you going to do?” Clause asked after him, still on his seat, still holding the needle and thread.

“I need to find Joe Diggs.” Before Clause could ask why, he continued, “I owe someone a head on a platter.”

“Well.” Clause wasn’t getting up. In fact, he sank further into the shadows. Someone came to them with a basket, leaning in towards Clause to share a few words. If he wanted, Thomas could listen in, but he didn’t. Clause nodded and turned back to say, “Give ‘im hell for us.”

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