11. Predestination

The wide circle of the train track sped around the city, sometimes briefly rising out of the tunnels to avoid the complex sewage system. In these moments, I could see an angry orange sun trying to shine from behind the greasy smudge of the downtown skies.

I was lost.

Then a soft voice licked my eardrum, crossing the precipice of my panic attack. A female voice sung out behind me, lips only millimeters from my ear. Felt her warm breath, the percussive, wet tap of her tongue on her teeth, and the slight crack of her lips parting.

“’Turning and turning in the widening gyre

The falcon cannot hear the falconer;

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;

Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,

The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere

The ceremony of innocence is drowned;

The best lack all conviction, while the worst

Are full of passionate intensity.’

That’s Yeats. 'The Second Coming.' It’s one of His favorites.”

A warm, furry creature jumped into my lap and pressed itself against my face, coiling around my neck before stalking flirtatiously across me to gaze out the window. The Strangers.

I turned around expecting to bump noses with Whisper but instead found her to be at the back of the train, walking steadily toward me.

When I turned around and looked up toward the front of the bus, giant brown aviator glasses took up my view so completely I might have been wearing them myself.

Escher’s face and mine filled the same space, and I was four years old, being scolded by my father again.

“Surely some revelation is at hand;

Surely the Second Coming is at hand.

The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out

When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi troubles my sight,” he said. “Do you know what the Spiritus Mundi is, Frightened Boy?”

“No,” I whimpered.

“Yeats believed it was the spirit of the world—the common knowledge we all share, the symbols that are universally true to every human, no matter the breadth of his experience or knowledge.”

“It’s a fantastic concept,” Whisper said, “but to believe in it requires a belief in God.”

“This is true,” Escher said. “Or a belief that you are God. I think the Spiritus Mundi is one's own vision, because whose vision do we have to trust but our own? Can I ever see through another person’s eyes?” he appeared to be trying “No, I cannot. Therefore, objectivity as you know it is a lie. There is no such thing. There is only your subjective interpretation of reality. So there is no shared experience, there is only me,” Escher said.

I turned away, and something hard scraped across my skull. Out of my peripheral, I see Whisper is holding a pistol against my skin.

“Don’t kill me,” I said, closing my eyes. “I’m bait. You have to get out of here. That Voice—that person on the cell phone—he can do things. He cheated me. He tricked me. Please don’t kill me.”

“My work is a game, a very serious game,” Escher said.

Escher stared through my eyes, a pair of high-voltage blind-the-shit-out-of-you spotlights blasting into my two dim candles. I was staring right back, but I couldn’t see a thing. “You’ve been working for the other side,” Escher said.

“He didn’t know he was,” Whisper said. “The other side can be very convincing. Besides, they must be done with him. Police after him, us after him? I think he was meant to be disposed of.”

“By us,” Escher said, “and if we fail, I’m sure Little Brother will use this opportunity to try and kill all of us—just as I’m sure he did tonight after this shit told him where we kept camp.”

I clenched my fists and my teeth so hard that my gums hurt and my fingernails ached. Could feel the bullet.

“I had a good feeling about you, Frightened Boy,” Escher said. “And you immediately betrayed me.”

“But you can’t be wrong,” I pointed out. “If I only exist in your head.” Didn’t believe it, but might keep me alive.

“So then why did I trust you?”

“He was only trying to save himself, and probably the girl.”

“She worships him. I find that idea both offensive and disarmingly naïve at the same time, but you are right. His motivation was pure, even if the results were disastrous,” Escher admits.

“I didn’t do what the Voice wanted me to do, either,” I pointed out. “I ran from both of you equally.”

He smirks.

“What will it be, Escher?” Whisper asked.

The cat mewed pitifully.

Escher’s gaze continued to violate my most delicate opening—the tight enclosure of my iris.

And then he backed away.

“Let’s see how long he lasts,” Escher said. “The cat wants it, anyway.”

I exhaled what felt like an hour’s worth of stagnating breath.

“He’s going to live, but he’s going to work for us,” Escher said. “He has a large debt to repay—especially since we have to fight our way out of this goddamn tunnel.”

“Anything you want,” I squeaked. “As long as—”

“As long as what?” Escher interrupted.

“As long as Erika is okay.”

“We’ll see about that,” Escher said. “You’re going to need a real bomb if you want to stand up to the Voice.”

“It was The Voice. He told me to do that.”

“Is that what you’ll tell the police? They have you on film. They’ll know your friend didn’t work alone.”

“The police?” I gulped.

“If you’re lucky… if they don’t just take you to a basement and shoot you. I saw your face on the news. The next time you unleash a wave of unholy terror on the general populace, try and do it without making that face.”

“What face?” I asked defensively.

Escher screwed up his face into a look of mock horror. Whisper laughed. I blushed.

“You saw me?” I asked.

“You were on camera. Congratulations.”

“So, wait, they think I’m… what?” I asked, horrified.

“One of us,” Whisper said. “Now, we’re stopping. Stay low.”

A body slammed into mine and tripped me into the floor so that I was lying on the ground as a horizontal hailstorm of gunfire ripped through the glass of the train. After a dozen seconds, it stopped.

I craned my neck to see Escher standing tall with Whisper behind him, aviator glasses somehow a darker shade of brown than before, blood-red beard and long purple bathrobe contrasting the military fatigues beneath it.

The person who had pushed me to the ground—had saved my life—was Sam.

Of course I hadn’t seen him before.

Escher stood in front of the sliding metallic doors with his feet parted at shoulder width and his hands at his sides. As frantic voices shouted at him to drop to his knees, he slowly and defiantly lit a cigarette.

“The barking and braying of dogs,” Escher murmured in the direction of the policemen. “Whisper,” he said.

Whisper nodded and opened her mouth. I felt hands clamp over my ears. I turned, shocked, to see Sam still kneeling behind me. There were yellow foam plugs in his ears.

I saw Whisper mouth some words—what she said, I have no idea. She spoke for some time with the expression of a college professor explaining to a child the very rudiments of the subject she taught. Through the bullet-ridden glass of the train, I watched the expressions on the officers' faces begin to droop. Their tense mouths distorted into weak frowns. Tears began to roll freely down the staunchest of faces, and others had fallen completely apart and were bawling into their hands, all thoughts of combat forgotten. One by one, each of them dropped onto the ground in a fetal position, some crying softly and others howling in lament.

Whisper stopped talking, and Sam released my head.

I stood. Escher walked out over them, carefully sidestepping each sniveling man. I rushed after him.

The policemen lay whimpering on the ground. I wondered if I could affect an escape, if I could run up into the streets of the city and get away from the Strangers. I glanced behind me and saw Escher watching me closely.

“What did you do to them?” I asked Whisper, horrified.

“I only told them the truth,” she said. The cats that were always at her side were mewling pitifully, as though they were echoing the sentiments of the men who were curled up on the ground.

I knelt down beside one of the men. “What’s the matter?” I asked, very curious what one woman could have said to depress a dozen men to this degree.

“Go away,” he said in a deadpan voice. “It’s not worth it. Just go away. Go away! Or better yet, just kill yourself. That’d be easier. That’s probably the best way to go.”

“C’mon,” Escher said impatiently.

“What’d she do to them?” I asked, abandoning the shivering cop.

“She told them the truth,” he said. “She told them it was all their fault.”

We didn’t walk up into the open air of the city, as I hoped. Rather, Sam dashed ahead of us and began to lead us further down into the maze of access tunnels that allowed workers to keep the subway system running.

“We don’t go into the city without a large force,” Escher explained. “The Voice, as you call him—we call him Little Brother, or the Ministry for Popular Culture—is too strong up there. He and his cohorts can manipulate the system, as you have seen. He can see through the cameras, set off the alarms, and send out the police. There’s really no way around him except brute force.”

"Little Brother?”

“George Orwell predicted the government would spawn Big Brother, an immutable force that watched our every move and monitored us for compliance. That’s just not likely," Escher said. "Mankind won’t respect that kind of obtrusion. Little Brother is a lot cleverer, but he’s smaller, weaker. He whines, he tattles, and he scares. He leaves people with their control, but he makes sure no one wants to use it. He makes them afraid to do anything.”

“Is he some kind of government agency then? I bet it is. They’re always planning shit like that,” I said.

“I don’t know,” Escher said. “That day in Tasumec Tower, I thought I might find out. Unfortunately, that wasn’t the case.”

“So those two men you killed were—”

“Part of his network. What he does is too much for one man to accomplish. The Voice you spoke to was their director. He is the tumor in my brain that poisons the city, and he is what I must excise to save myself,” he said. “He is the reason I cannot wake up. He has me trapped in this nightmare.”

Escher stopped suddenly, and so did the rest of the group. He reached down into his snakeskin boot and pulled out a syringe filled with a viscous red liquid. Without a word or a pause, he injected it into his arm.

Whisper and Sam politely looked away, but I could only stare stupidly. It was blood.

After he was done, Escher carelessly flicked the empty syringe onto the ground.

“Things fall apart,” he said with a grin, and the group started marching again.