Going Home, Part 08, Interlude, Pekin

The reception counter was unoccupied when Eric entered the motel. He looked around for a moment, wondering where they were. He couldn’t remember any time in the two weeks he’d been staying here when the desk wasn’t manned. Samantha was usually there, if not her, it would be Robert, or their father, Marc. He decided they’d probably gone to the bathroom and left it at that.

He had more pressing matters to deal with. Milton had paid him for another week’s work, and he wanted to stash this money inside the air conditioning unit with his other bundle as soon as possible. At least he didn’t have another brick to hide. The back of the cabinet under the sink was full of them, the brick he’d taken off the car the day before had barely fit.

He went up the stairs, and his leg didn’t bother him. He only had a few more days to go on the antibiotics, and he hadn’t had to rely on the painkillers except to sleep those first two nights.

He entered his apartment, locked the door behind him and had taken a step toward the air conditioning unit when he stopped. Something was off. He looked around the small room. The bed was still perfectly made, the Hamton’s Electronic monthly was where he’d left it on the table. The plate, glass and saucepan and utensils were on the dish towel on the counter, and the drawers were all fully—the door under the sink was ajar.

Its hinges needed to replaced, or at least oiled, but he hadn’t bothered doing either yet, instead always making sure the door was closed flush. Had Marc been in the room? No, if he had to come in for some reason, he always checked with him first. So who had opened and not closed the door properly?

His instincts warned him this room wasn’t safe anymore.

He looked for anyone hiding. He bent down to look under the bed, even if there was barely six inches between it and the floor. It wasn’t like his room had anywhere someone could hide, except—

He spun in time to see the form lunge out of the closet. Broad shoulders, black armor and mask with an indistinct muzzle and ear bumps. The man was holding a black box that he stabbed at Eric.

He dodged, and the diagram appeared. Battery, capacitors, release mechanism. That thing would give him one hell of a shock if it connected. The numbers appeared. He’d survive it, but staying conscious wasn’t certain.

They went around in the apartment, Eric mostly dodging, when he punched back, the man didn’t even bother trying to avoid it, letting the armor take the blow. When Eric passed by the counter he grabbed the saucepan and used it to block the man’s next lunge.

There was a joke he’d been told when he was younger, something about army cooks and their favorite weapons. He didn’t remember any of the details, but somehow he didn’t think it was a saucepan. The bottom was already dented.

He dodged the device twice more before finding an opening and he swung the pan at the man’s head. It connected with a muffled ringing and the man staggered back. Eric grabbed the device out of his hand, and stabbed it in the man’s chest. There was a clicking sound, the scent of ozone and the man shook.

When the device stopped making sounds, the man crumpled to the ground. There were two smoking spots on his chest where the device had made contact.

“Night, night.” Eric took a moment to catch his breath.

Black armor, muzzled mask. The same as the people who’d attacked him by the minivan the weekend before. How had they figured out where he lived? He had to let the police know.

He patted his pocket for the officer’s card as he turned to the door, and two things occurred to him. If he called the police, he’d have to explain why he’d lied about who they were, and there was someone standing in his open doorway.

How had he unlocked the door?

Eric lunged at him and pressed the device against the man’s chest. Nothing happened.

“Night, night,” a deep voice said, then pain exploded throughout Eric’s body.

*

“And I’m telling you, he has to be one of them.”

Eric hurt. He hurt everywhere.

And he was leaning forward, which pulled on his arms, adding to the pain. That told him they were behind him, so he should lean back to relieve the pressure. Only he couldn’t find the strength to move.

“He is not.” This other voice was distorted, like when the dial on the radio wasn’t set quite at the right spot.

Okay, he thought, so being unable to move might be a good thing. He knew he’d have given himself away in surprise if he’d been able to.

“Then how come he showed up to disarm the bombs? Not just the van, but the car too. It wasn’t a group of people like we initially thought. It was always only him. We found all the bricks under the sink.

“I do not know.” The distorted voice sounded dismissive, but it could be the distortion. “It is possible the enemy has enlisted help of his own.”

“Great, so not only do we have to deal with his creations, but now he’s got some of my people working for him too?”

“He is crafty.”

There was a low curse. “I didn’t sign up to kill my own.”

The voice erupted in static, and Eric winced. “This is war. You are all that stands between you and annihilation. The enemy will stop at nothing to bring about your end. He will even turn your people against you.”

“Alright, then put me in contact with the others. We’re going to be much more efficient if we coordinate our efforts. We can probably get rid of all of them in one strike.”

“No. Your ignorance of them protects you, and them. You have your targets. Eliminate them.”

“I’ve got one of them there, and now that this guy’s off the board, we’ll be able to terminate the other one.”

“Why is one here?” The voice’s displeasure was sharp, even through the static.

“One of my guys caught him by surprise. He was able to knock him out.”

“He did not kill it?”

“He looks like a kid, okay? My guy couldn’t bring himself to kill a kid, so he brought him here. Look, you’ve got to understand that killing kids isn’t easy for us. It doesn’t matter what he really is. He still looks like a kid.”

There was a long silence. If Eric were back in the thick of it, he’d associate this kind of silence to a superior officer conferring with others after hearing a report.

“It is why he made them this way,” the voice finally said.

“Yeah, I figured as much. Don’t worry about it. I sent a message to an old army buddy of mine. He’s going to be here tomorrow, and he’ll take care of the kid.

Eric couldn’t stop the gasp. There were going to kill a child?

“He is awake!” the voice squawked. “Destroy him.” There was an explosion of static and then a silence that sounded final to Eric.

More cursing. “I didn’t sign up for this.”

The man grasped Eric’s hair and pulled his head up. He wore the black armor, but no mask. He was canine, brown and white fur, short muzzle and short rounded ears.

“Who do you work for?” the dog asked.

“Milton Findley.”

“Who’s that? How does he know about us?”

Eric shrugged and caught sight of the machine covering the wall behind the dog. Designed began forming and the prickling at the back of his mind went insane. He closed his eyes and forced them away. He wouldn’t give into the madness, not now, not ever.

The man shook him. “I asked you a question!”

The diagrams were gone, the prickling quiet again. When he opened his eyes, he kept them fixed on the man’s face. “My boss, at the repair shop.”

“He sent you to remove the bombs?” Disbelief ran through the man’s voice.

Eric thought about saying yes, but then he’d be putting Milton in danger. He shouldn’t even have mentioned him at all. “No. No one sent me. No one told me about them. I just saw them and removed them.”

The dog let go with a curse and paced away. Eric was able to keep from falling forward. His strength was coming back. He was on a chair, his arms tied behind him. His legs were tied to the chair’s legs.

“Do you have any idea what’s going on here?”

“You mean other than you holding a child prisoner? Planning to have him killed? No, I can’t say that I do.”

“That isn’t a kid, he just looks like one.”

Eric shrugged and winced as the motions pulled on his bonds. “I don’t know anything about that.”

The man sighed. “Look, you were in the army too. You know how far enemies can go to get to us.”

“I know what war does to people who consider themselves good. It gives them excuses to do things they’d never consider doing any other time. Like killing a child.”

“He isn’t—” he growled in exasperation and rubbed his face. “I don’t care what you’ve been told. You are being used.”

“I haven’t been told anything. All I did was keep people safe by removing some bombs. I don’t care if you think this is war. Being willing to take out a block just to get at one target, that’s wrong. You might have told whoever you were talking to that you don’t want to kill any of ‘your people,’ but considering the amount of ExoClay that was in the minivan, you’re more than willing to kill anyone around your target.”

“You think I want that? You think I want to cause collateral damage? We’ve tried to take him out, just him, but things happened. Something always happens. Like you.”

Something Walter had said popped into his head. “Have you considered that maybe there’s a reason things keep stopping you? Maybe you’re the one who’s on the wrong side, and the Lord of Lightning has been putting me in your way.”

The man laughed. “Tiranis’ just a legend. Some furry who controlled the weather. He isn’t real. Just something scared people tell themselves so they can sleep at night. It’s men like me who keep the world safe, not some make believe protector.”

“Guys like you?” Eric raised an eyebrow. “You mean guys looking to kill a child?” he paused. “Children. That bomb, that was for a child.” Eric had a flash of a young lynx looking at him curiously.

‘It’s all safe now,’ Walter had said on hearing that Charlie would be late.

The car had been parked on the other side of the road from the hardware store, but that was the only side parking was allowed.

“That thing isn’t a kid.” The man stated.

Eric snorted. “If you believed that, you wouldn’t have to bring in some sicko to get the job done.”

With a scream of anger, the man stormed away. He stopped after a dozen steps and turned, pointing a gun at Eric. “Tell me who you work for.”

He saw the machine, and the pricking became loud. Diagrams formed. The madness demanded to be let loose, to be allowed to understand this incomprehensible, beautiful machine.

He shifted his focus to the gun, and the prickling whined. It didn’t want to deal with such a simple thing, not when there was this impossible machine behind it. Eric forced it to bring up the gun’s diagram. The hammer, cartridge, slide, and muzzle appeared, and the diagram divided them into individual parts. It was much more elegant than the guns he’d handled in the war, but the basic system was the same.

“I don’t want to kill you,” the dog said. “I don’t think you’re a bad guy. You’re just being used and too naive to see it. Tell me who you work for and where the others are.”

Eric didn’t say anything. He kept looking at the gun, its diagram. He found it interesting that the prickling wasn’t offering any changes to it. Was it because the gun was as advanced as it could be? Or was that part of his ability under control now?

“Tell me!”

“No.” Eric couldn’t believe how calm he was. He was going to die. The gun was pointed at him, and from this distance, even if the guy had no training, he couldn’t miss. Numbers appeared next to the diagrams, recoil, the change in angle from the gun bucking. They confirmed he’d be hit. At worse, it might not be fatal, but he wasn’t an amateur. This man had training. He’d said he had been in the army, and his stance, the way he held the gun, confirmed it.

When he shot Eric, he’d hit exactly what he intended to.

The finger went from being on the guard to curling around the trigger. Eric couldn’t see the man’s eyes. He couldn’t risk looking away from the gun, its diagram, and seeing the machine. He wouldn’t die with madness in his mind. He was going to die sane.

The dog growled. “Fuck this. I’m not killing an enemy combatant in cold blood.” He lowered his gun.

Eric closed his eyes before those insane diagrams filled his mind. “You going to let the child killer do that too?”

“Shut up.” The man was closer.

He tugged at Eric’s legs and he looked down.

“You try anything and I will shoot you.” The man cut the ropes holding his feet to the chair. Then he went behind him and cut the ones holding arms.

Before Eric could do anything, he felt the gun at the back of his head. “Stand up.” He did as instructed, closing his eyes. “Turn around and start walking.”

He looked at the floor and raised his gaze until he was sure there were no machines in that direction. Just a bare wall and a door. The man pushed him, and he began walking.

The door opened onto a corridor. The walls were concrete and gray, just like in the room, and had white doors at regular intervals. The man had him stop at the fourth. He unlocked it and pushed Eric inside.

“Get comfortable. You’re going to be here for a very long time.”

The door closed, leaving him alone in a room lit by a bare incandescent bulb. He did a quick inspection. Five paces across, six deep. There was a small cot, which looked identical to what he’d slept on while on the battlefield, a toilet and a sink. The walls were concrete, and when he tapped on it, the sound told him the door was metal.

Since he still had his tools he scraped one of the walls, but all that did was chip the paint. He didn’t think there was any chance he’d manage to make a hole in that.

He looked through his bag and found they had taken out the knife, but none of his other tools. He still had all his screwdrivers, small and larger ones, and the pliers.

Why leave him all that? Didn’t they realize what he could do with them? The dog had been in the army, didn’t he know about the Builder Corp? What a builder could do with only a few tools? Was it possible that after all this time there wasn’t a Builder Corp anymore?

He looked around the room again. Of course, tools weren’t much help without material to work with. What did he have? A light bulb, the electrical wire tacked on the concrete ceiling and wall. Not much.

He tapped on the door again, to determine its thickness. It was thick. A muffled voice came from the other side, telling him to quiet down. A woman, he thought and had the impression she’d yelled, but very little had made it through the door.

He sat on the cot, took the tools out and placed them on it. There had to be something he could do, a way he could escape from this room. He was a Builder, there had to be something he could make. Except that all he had was a light and plumbing. He couldn’t do anything with that.

Except, that wasn’t true, was it?

The prickling surfaced, and a diagram began to form. Eric stopped it.

“No,” he whispered. “Not again.”

He couldn’t risk what had happened before. He’d been lucky, somehow he’d been able to become sane again, but he didn’t know how it had happened. He couldn’t risk causing that kind of destruction again.

He went around the room, upturned the cot, looked for anything he could use while sane to get himself out of this room, out of this predicament.

Two hours later he was looking at his reflection in the mirror over the sink. They hadn’t left him anything to work it. He cursed; absolutely nothing.

He looked at his reflection, and for a moment he thought it smirked at him. “I’m not going there,” he told it. “No again.”

His reflection didn’t say anything, even the prickling stayed quiet.

How much time did he have? How long until that man arrived to kill him and the child?

A child. How could anyone make arrangement to kill a child? That wasn’t war; that was an atrocity.

He looked at his reflection. “If I do this, I won’t be saving him. I won’t care about him anymore.”

Could he push himself to the edge? Just far enough to get out of this cell, but remain sane enough to rescue the child?

A chuckle escaped his lips unbidden, and he forced himself to stop. He forced the insane laughter down and glared at his reflection. “There’s a child to save. Do that Eric. Save him, and the rest won’t matter. I have to do at least that.”

The prickling increased, and in the mirror a diagram began forming, but he pushed it away. He wasn’t ready. He wasn’t sure he could do this. Stay focused on a goal like that. He couldn’t let himself fall down that hole until he was certain he would do the right thing.

Save the child.

Save the child.

Save the child.

Focus on that, Eric. You can do that. You can save the child, get him to safety, and then do whatever the madness wants. He closed his eyes.

When the chuckle came this time, he didn’t stop it. Then it became a full-on laugh. It was really funny, it was.

“Just who do they think I am?” he said between bouts of laughter.