Chapter 36

“Hey!”

A panicked voice came from below.

“No! Sir—Stop!"

The shouting wasn’t aimed at us. Sam and I weren't the ones who were in danger. The notes were sharp and frantic, like a wreckage alarm on the tarmac. Another voice piled on, rising in pitch and urgency. The tree trunk at my back thudded percussively as the leaves around me shivered in time to a lumberjack's chop: rhythmic and impactful. Every blow landed with a solid metronomic precision.

A chaotic symphony synchronized with the painful throb behind my eyes as my vision finally clawed its way out of the darkness. Beneath me, the first voice rang out clearly, a breathless plea. “Help me stop him dammit!”

I desperately tried to clear the haze.

Nothing. Just smears of light and a taste of trouble.

A dying neon warning blinked at the edge of my optics, and the world churned like wet cement to match the storm clouds above. Black bled into a dirty, rusted grey as vision flickered around me to cut jagged paths through the dark.

I risked a peek with one hesitant eye. 

Below was chaos.

Light skimmed across rain-laden branches, slick with water and beaded with dew like sweat strung along a wire. Below, the man identified as Nevens dangled in the air, suspended one-armed by another man who looked carved from concrete: Rob-sized, possibly larger. His boots were planted. Wide and unmoving like the roots of the tree within the boggy mud.

Nevens, like a marionette caught in a violent dance, his rifle pinned uselessly barrel-up between them, twitched with every impact as the larger man’s fist landed in a brutal rhythm. The flashlight at the end of the rifle was pointed skyward, its beam animated by the meaty thumps as the other two futilely struggled to stop the larger man's assault. One gripped his arm. The other his shoulder. For all their effectiveness, they might as well have attempted to wrestle a hydraulic press.

The larger man's face was blank. Not rage. Not frenzy, but more of a mechanical focus. Blow after piston-shot blow rained into the limp form of Nevens. The sound was wet now. Less impact, more rupture, but Nevens didn’t scream. He couldn’t. His optical implants had rolled back into his skull. The twin metallic orbs caught the light like discarded coins as streamers of blood issued from his ears, eyes, mouth, and nose.

I watched, frozen as the light continued to rock frantically. Not out of fear, not entirely; it was something colder—detachment, maybe. Or the slow realization that this wasn’t a fight. It was a purge valve finally blown, like a mind cracking under the weight of too many unspoken things.

One of the two men stepped back to abandon his failed attempts at physical restraint and trained his rifle on the attacker's spine. His stance was slack. Weak. The barrel trembled slightly, not from recoil, but from indecision and the tremor of doubt. The other man lunged sideways, frantic to pull himself clear of the line of fire as his eyes widened in panic and surprise.

The larger man halted mid-swing to glance over his shoulder at the newly armed officer. His breath came in heavy but deliberate huffs as he relinquished his grip on Nevens, who slid along the trunk to fold upon the ground, his position no longer anchored as he crumpled into an unnatural heap.

"The silence after violence is always the loudest," a faded echo of my mother's voice said to me.

Everyone stood like statues in a mausoleum. The rain whispered like ghosts between them in the silver light of the foggy morning as the armed man took a shuffled half-step forward.

"Shift Chief Jones! I demand that you stop by order of corporate mandate," he shouted in an officious manner. "Stand down!"

Blood, now visible in the light of the man's flashlight, pooled into the mud between them. Dark and vicious.

"No," Jones said. "Fuck the corporate mandate, and fuck you if you think that's going to protect you."

"What?" The man with the gun said nervously.

"I'm leaving." The larger man said gravely and without fear. "I suggest you start figuring out where your line is too because we went way past mine the day Golrich and his Goons were integrated into my command."

"He's still alive," the man without a rifle said by Nevens, "barely. We need to get him to the infirmary!"

"Let him die." Jones said, "Or don't. Either way, I'm still leaving. I don't give a care what you do anymore."

"I...wait—you can't leave!" The man with the rifle sputtered out. His hands tightened on the grip as if he'd just remembered he was still cinched onto a lifeline ready to pull away if he let go. "Y—you just killed Nevens! FREEZE!"

"We stood by and allowed them to do the things they did." Jones said. His fists, coated in blood and fluids, were steaming in the chill air.

"We never saw anything!" The man with the rifle screeched desperately.

"We knew!" Jones barked. His shoulders were tight. Ready. The bulky uniform swelled and expanded as hidden muscles rippled beneath. and the armed man jumped as if he’d been physically slapped.

"We had orders!" the man with the gun feebly retorted back.

"Fuck the orders!" Jones said. A vein popped out from the side of his temple. A writhing snake ready to strike. "Nevens? Paul?! They're everything I detest!" He took a step forward but stopped as the man with the rifle cowered backward to maintain the distance. "You know what? Forget it. The point is enough is enough. I'm leaving, and if you try to stop me, I'll do to you what I did to Nevens. That's not a threat; it's a warning."

There was a moment when I thought the man with the gun would be stupid.

Jones spoke again, "You don't have it in you, Delmonte. Don't try it."

The second man's hand trembled as the rifle barrel dipped and wavered slightly. Faster than I would've expected, he turned and broke into an ungainly sprint and tumbled over the side of the embankment on the Spire side.

"DELMONTE!" The first man yelled out in alarm, "Wait! Where are you going?!"

Without a glance back, Delmonte fled into the tree line, his flashlight cast s jittery glow until it disappeared. We were left in an awkward silence.

Interesting. I thought. Seems like Security wasn't as coordinated as I thought. Rob was right...

The other man turned back to Jones, who had knelt beside Nevens and pulled a bundle of flares and the launcher from his belt. Identical to the ones Rob had taken from Tim and Paul.

So Nevens was the one with the signals...

"Sir! You can't just leave me here!" The first man said. There was an almost childlike naivety to his voice as he pleaded.

"Out of the way," Jones simply said, a steely look on his face.

"Harlan. What about Nevens?! Listen! If we can get him to the infirmary, we can fix this, okay? We can make it right! Nothing has to change! It's not too late, come on...please!"

There was a low noise above me as Sam shifted. The bark of the branch I was seated on bit into my palms as I balanced to look upward and pressed my back into the trunk behind me. Her rifle was swiveled around, across her front, to point the barrel downward as she prepared to ambush the two below.

I didn't think now was the moment. Something was off.

Stay. Still. Hold. Wait. Trust. I signaled.

She glared down at me and frowned but stopped her possible ambush, curious.

Jones continued to speak to the other man below.

"McCreed won't stop here," he said. "You know what they did to that kid at the Port and what they told us to say. There's nothing else here, Jasper. They've already started taking over, and it's only a matter of time before they plug the hole with our bodies to keep it quiet. You're a fool."

I looked up at Sam in surprise, whose face mirrored in my own.

It WAS a setup!

"No, listen. Please, Harlan!" Jasper pleaded, "I'm so close I can taste it! I'm only another class away from advancing; don't mess this up for me...please. I'm begging you!" He moved to block the larger man's path. Toward the direction of the bridge in the distance beyond.

Jones settled a steely glare onto Jasper's face.

"Out. Of. The. Way." Jones said, punctuating each word. "He wasn't worth the effort, and neither will you be if you try to stop me. There's nothing here, you get me? They've already begun flushing the unit of anyone who won't play along. If you're not with them, you'll eventually be forced to play a game you never wanted. I know it because I kept my head low enough to avoid it the first time, but I'm not going to sell my soul a second time..." He cut himself off and went silent.

Anger flashed over his expression.

"You know what? Screw every last one of you," he said as he stopped to retrieve the weapon he had tossed aside. He didn't wait for a reply. Just turned, took a few angry strides, and vanished down the embankment to disappear into the fog as if swallowed whole by some great creature in the mist.

Jasper didn’t move at first. Just stood there, his shoulders slumped, eyes fixed on the place Jones had vanished. He looked like a man who’d just been handed the punchline to a joke he didn’t get. Maybe never would.

The defeat was plainly written across his face as he lifted Nevens in a fireman’s carry the way one might shoulder a memory. It was awkward, intimate, and impossible to ignore. Limbs hung like broken promises as they swayed gently with each step.

There was a dejected look on Jasper's face when he finally turned to depart. The rain traced cold lines down his back as he walked through the fog like a man carrying more than flesh. He was headed in the same direction Delmonte had gone. Away from the path Jones had chosen for himself.

I exhaled. Let the breath slip out, more reflex than relief, and felt nothing at first.

I continued to watch them fade into the fog, the outline of Jasper’s frame blurred at the edges, Nevens hung over his shoulders like dead weight. My fingers twitched at my sides, damp and useless. A dull pressure built up behind my ribs, like something waiting to break loose but too tired to try. It was something I wasn't ready to name yet as I continued to breathe out slowly.

Would I have been Jasper if Rob and Sam hadn't decided to help? Abandoned and forced to beg to continue?

Above, Sam signaled it was time for us to climb down. I nodded in agreement, absolutely ready to be out of the tree and on our way to...wherever we'd go.

I picked my way downward cautiously as the hissing boom of a flare in the distance went off. An orange one. Followed by a green and red. Whatever they meant, we had no way to understand. I shelved the thought, useless without context, and made the choice to continue to move.

With a squelch, my foot finally settled into the mud at the base of the tree. Maybe we’re all just one choice away from being the one left behind, I thought. Sam landed lithely beside me. Her eyes were locked on the flares, now all directed toward what I assumed was an alert signal, only somehow pointed away as if we'd already been passed over as the other signals pushed inward instead of toward the canal.

Sam and I set off in the direction of what Rob had called "a bridge." The direction Jones had also gone toward.

Maybe we were all Jasper. I thought to myself as more flares went up further down the line.

Just not today.