A Farewell to Trouble
25 NOVEMBER 2007
HEARTBRAKE HOTEL OFFICE16:25 PST
Chuck waited for a heavenly chorus to start.
He waited for an old woman to shout at him to run away from the light.
Hell, he even waited for Mario and Luigi to pop up and inform him that, yes, there was a heaven, and it had every gaming console known to mankind, and in heaven's version, Aeris didn't have to die.
None of that happened.
His ears ringing, Chuck cracked open one eye, and then the other. There was no fountain of blood spewing up from the center of his chest, and even though his head felt as though somebody had slammed a door on it a few times, it still felt whole.
What the hell?
If he had somehow died and passed onto the afterlife, he wanted to go back to the last save point, as the afterlife looked suspiciously like the lobby/office of the Heartbrake Hotel. He could smell the funk of the shag carpet, just inches away from his nose, and it reeked. Even worse, Leader had evidently followed him from the mortal realms into this one, wherever it was.
Oh no.
Chuck rolled onto his back and scuttled backward, like a crab. Leader stood in exactly the same place. This wasn't heaven, or hell. This was the Heartbrake Hotel still, and oh, God.
As Chuck watched, Leader raised the gun again, ready to fire. Chuck continued to scramble. That gun barrel loomed, unrealistically huge, more like a cannon than a pistol. He'd survived by miraculous odds once today, and Chuck didn't think he had another round left in him, Kevlar vest or no.
But Leader didn't shoot.
Leader dropped to his knees.
What the hell? Chuck stared in shock as the Fulcrum agent's gun hand lowered to the carpet, as if he had just lost all of the energy or will to live. The other man's face became a mask of shock, twisted grotesquely by fear. Chuck felt his own breath, already racing alongside his pulse, start to come faster, in pants and gasps. What was happening? Why hadn't the man killed him?
Why wasn't he dead?
It soon became clear. Leader's hand set the gun down on the carpet and, shaking, traveled up until it rested on his abdomen, to the left. Now, and only now, Chuck noticed the spreading stain, inky against the black T-shirt.
Leader yanked on something, grunting. He held it up to the light, and Chuck saw blood drip from one of the throwing knives Sarah always carried.
Chuck's hand flew to his own abdomen. The knife Sarah had tossed to him earlier, the one he'd used to tear up the sheets, was gone. His gaze traveled from his empty belt buckle to the weapon clutched in Leader's hand, and just like that, he understood.
Holy hell.
Leader curled forward, the knife hand dropping to the ugly carpet. He coughed, and blood spattered everywhere, even onto the white toes of Chuck's sneakers.
Chuck had thrown that knife.
He'd done that.
Leader's hand shook and picked up the gun. He started to lift it.
"Freeze!" Sarah burst into the room through the hallway, gun up, dirt-smudged, wild-eyed. She had always seemed like some vengeful guardian, always looking out for him, always protecting him from the world, from the bad guys, even from himself.
There was nothing she could do now.
Leader reared back in surprise, baring the stain on his shirt, the one spilling down onto his black jeans, to the world. Chuck saw Sarah's eyes take in the stain, take in the gun, the knife. He saw her eyes cut to him, understanding far too quickly. She turned back to face Leader.
When her gun barked once, Chuck flinched. The second time, he flinched again.
The third time, he didn't move. He couldn't.
Leader slumped to the carpet. He lay there face-first and Chuck stared at him, at the knife, until Sarah knelt between them. Then all he saw was her worried face.
"Chuck? Chuck, talk to me." Her voice came to him through a tunnel.
He shook his head. He'd thrown that knife.
"Chuck! Chuck, please, are you okay?"
Something pinched his arm just above the elbow. "Ow."
"Chuck! Are you hurt?"
Everything hurt. Chuck gave Sarah an odd look. Why was she worried about that when he had killed somebody? His hands had taken a life. He had thrown a knife, a knife that would have ended Leader's life. Even now, around Sarah, he could see the blood spreading, a dark badge on the carpet.
"Chuck," Sarah said again, and grabbed his chin. "Hey. Stay with me now. I need to know if you're hurt."
He wished she'd leave him alone. "I'm fine," he said, a bit waspish. "I'm fine, but—Jill!"
Ignoring Sarah, he turned and half-scrambled, half-crawled to where the Fulcrum agent had fallen. She had tried to pull herself away, toward the front of the room. How she expected to get away in that condition, Chuck had no idea. But she wasn't dead. She wasn't fully conscious, but she wasn't dead.
He pushed against the wound in her side. So much blood, was all he could think. She'd lost so much blood just like Leader had, and now he was dead and soon she would be too. Her face had gone beyond pale, dark circles shouting like signs from under her eyes, and her jaw was clenched, even as her eyes fluttered like she was in the middle of a REM cycle. Chuck put his palm against the gunshot wound and pressed while Sarah called into the comm unit for Casey to call the EMTs and get a medkit into the office as soon as he subdued the shooters out front.
He didn't hear Casey's reply.
"Chuck." A hand pressed on his shoulder. At some point, Sarah had run back to the storage closet and she had come back with a load of motel towels. They were scratchy and off-white, but they would have to do. Sarah nudged Chuck to the side, a knife in her hand. For one terrified moment, Chuck thought she might end Jill then and there, a mercy kill, but that was ridiculous. Sarah merely cut Jill's shirt away from the wound so that she could get a better look. She made a "hmm" noise and pushed a towel into Chuck's hands. "Put this over the wound and push down, okay?"
He did so.
"Can you handle it? I need to…" Sarah, her hands bright red with Jill's blood, gestured toward the front window with her gun.
Chuck nodded and didn't look away from Jill. She had lost so much blood. Even now, more was pouring out of her, even though it had become a sluggish trickle rather than a gush.
A strand of hair fell into Jill's eyes. Even though she had them closed, Chuck reached over and pushed it away.
His fingertips left a bloody streak on her forehead, and he looked up and over at the fallen body of Leader.
25 NOVEMBER 2007
HEARTBRAKE HOTEL PARKING LOT19:21 PST
"Bartow—Chuck." Casey's voice, oddly gentle, broke through the haze that had descended over Chuck's vision, and he looked up. The other man stood, still in the dusty clothes from the fight, just behind the ambulance. Like always, he stood with one hand on his belt buckle, the other hand ready to go for his gun, but he looked exhausted.
They had given Chuck new clothes. Black sweatpants and an T-shirt, since his clothes had been covered in Jill's blood, and torn to pieces from everything that had happened during the gunfight and the meth lab explosion. Since the water at the Heartbrake Hotel no longer worked, Sarah had snagged a few water bottles from one of the emergency relief vehicles, and she had poured water while he scrubbed off the worst of the blood and dust. It should have made him nervous, knowing what Sarah thought of him, but she had been clinical and silent the whole time. When he'd finished, she'd stripped down to her underwear and had done the same thing for herself, only Chuck had held the water bottles this time while she had scrubbed, and she hadn't even seemed bothered when Chuck hadn't reacted. They were both in borrowed clothes now. The crime scene clean-up team would probably incinerate everything they had been wearing during the fight.
And now Casey stood in front of him, waiting for some kind of response.
"What?" Chuck asked, blinking back to the present.
Casey looked distinctly uncomfortable. "Have you eaten anything?"
"What?"
"C'mon." Casey hesitated, but reached down and grabbed Chuck's elbow. He hauled Chuck to his feet and began to pull. "Walker told me to make sure you got some of the pizza the crews brought. We're leaving for DC in a few minutes."
Chuck stumbled to a stop. "DC?"
"Yeah, the bosses want you on lock-down until we figure out the extent of the damage. C'mon." Casey jerked his head and tugged.
The parking lot of the Heartbrake Hotel had become a small village of emergency vehicles and scene clean-up. One group had even pitched a tent in the corner and had set up water bottles and other provisions to be handed out to the workers scurrying around, hurrying to clean up the obliterated motel. Thanks to Casey, Sarah, and the backup team, all of the Fulcrum agents had been either killed or subdued, and those that had survived were now in custody, on their way to be interrogated. The clerk had similarly been carted off, possibly to have his memories altered. Not that he was unfamiliar with that, as that had evidently been his meth lab that had been blown to smithereens by Fulcrum, but still, when feeling returned, Chuck would feel bad for the guy.
Jill had been taken away in a screaming ambulance. Chuck had overheard the EMTs say it would be a miracle if she survived the trip to the hospital.
Sarah had called the ER later.
Jill had survived the trip to the hospital.
"Here." Casey shoved a flimsy paper plate holding an equally flimsy slice of pizza into his hands.
Chuck bit in. He didn't taste anything. "Where's Sarah?" he asked.
"Overseeing clean-up. Eat your pizza, and you can go see her." Casey said it like he was offering dessert to a child if he ate all of his vegetables. Chuck knew he should have protested, that the words had been spoken to get a rise out of him.
He didn't. He couldn't think.
He knew it was only a matter of time until he had to think, but until that moment, he couldn't—he wouldn't—think about Leader, wouldn't remember the way blood had dripped past the knife handle. The shock and fear and terror on a hardened bad guy's face, and all of it caused by something Chuck had done.
He couldn't think about it.
"Hey." Casey nudged him. "Eat something before Walker gets on my case."
Chuck looked down and realized he still had most of the piece of pizza in his hand. Because it was there and he didn't have a better idea, he took a bite, and followed it with a second. He couldn't taste a thing. His body had stopped talking to him. Sure, his chest throbbed, and his right hand hurt, and he felt oddly sunburned, and his ears probably wouldn't stop ringing for days, if ever. But he had just stopped caring.
He finished the pizza because Casey had told him to. When he finished, he put the paper plate in the garbage bag tied to the tent pole and looked around the parking lot, watching the crews clean up the foam they'd used to put out the fire from the meth lab explosion. Would somebody with a wrecking ball come during the night? Would the badger-chewed sign be all that remained of the Heartbrake Hotel?
Maybe it was fitting.
One of the clean-up crew trotted up and flagged down Casey. "Go find Wal—Sarah. Stay on the scene, and don't get into trouble," Casey said.
Chuck obeyed. He wandered through the miniature, impromptu village, trying to stay out of the way as best he could. The crew had been briefed that he was an FBI agent of some type who had been on scene, and they had been instructed not to talk to him. Even so, Chuck received a few nods, some of them sympathetic. He had no idea why people were looking at him like that, but he didn't really care.
He looked in room thirteen first, but there was no sign of her in the bullet-scarred hellhole. Chuck stared at the snacks he'd brought from the vending machine, still on top of the stripped mattress before he wandered on. His path took him the route Casey must have run to get to the office building, skirting wide around the doomed room eight, which was nothing but a charred, foam-covered skeleton now.
They were likely all getting a contact high from what was left over. He should probably worry about that. Maybe later.
He followed his chucks into the office, and paused in the doorway.
Even with the borrowed clothes draping over her frame, Sarah was easily recognizable. Her hair flared like a flame in the high-watt crime scene lights posted in the hotel lobby. She was kneeling on the ground, facing away from him and touching something in the carpet, an island of stillness even while crime scene techs moved around her. Her shoulders were wound so tight that he could trace the outline of each individual muscle even through the T-shirt.
She looked lonely.
Chuck's gaze wandered from her to the dark patch in the carpet. Leader's blood. The patch to Sarah's right was Jill's blood.
He stuck his hands in the pockets of the sweatpants and cleared his throat.
Sarah's hearing hadn't been compromised by the explosion. She heard him; he saw her shoulders tighten even further. She tried to smile at him, but her eyes were too bright. They gave her away.
Chuck crossed the room and crouched next to her. Up close, he could see what she had been staring at.
"It missed me," he said.
She didn't look at him. "By how much?"
Chuck almost shrugged, but thought better of it. He'd seen Sarah swipe at her eyes, and even if he couldn't think through the haze making everything disconnected in his head, he remembered her confession. And her challenge. Just say the word, Chuck. "By enough," he said, and deliberately put his foot over the bullet hole in the floor. His head had been two inches away.
She didn't need to know that.
He looked at the stain a few feet away. Somebody had put a numerical marker next to it, as well as a ruler. For later reference, Chuck figured, if somebody was ever allowed to review the photographs of the carnage that had gone down today.
Sarah followed his gaze. "Talk to me, Chuck."
Talk to me, Chuck. Tell me how you feel.
Chuck didn't feel anything but the throbbing ache that had become his body. He barely heard anything; his skin was stiff and lifeless. And emotion seemed to be something that belonged to others, whereas his brain existed in nothingness, or at least a dense fog.
"I killed a man today," he said.
"No." Sarah startled him by grabbing his arm, and her grip actually hurt, outward pain versus what he had sustained during the fight. "No, you didn't, Chuck."
"I threw a knife at him."
"He was pointing a gun at you."
"Even so. I must have hit his liver, right? For him to bleed out that fast. That's what Casey says. Group your shots center mass, or aim for the head or liver. And I hit his liver."
"You didn't kill him," Sarah said, her grip tightening. "I fired the killshot, not you. Got it? You didn't kill him. I did."
"I hit his liver."
"The autopsy report is going to say that what killed him were the three bullets to center mass," Sarah said, pulling on Chuck's arm until he was facing her rather than the bloodstain. Mercifully, she loosened her grip, and circulation returned to his arm. "That is the official and actual cause of death. Not the knife."
"But if you hadn't—"
"But I did."
"But if you hadn't—"
"Chuck." Sarah put her hand on his other arm, and her skin was like ice. Her hand was also trembling a little, Chuck realized. "You can't do this. You'll go crazy, playing 'what if,' and 'what if that hadn't happened?' You have to accept that what happened, happened. Otherwise…" She looked down at the toe of his shoe, and swallowed hard. "Just don't dwell on it."
Chuck said nothing.
After a minute, Sarah let his arms go and patted him on the knee. She'd done so a million times, probably, in their short time together in Burbank, and even once when she had visited him in the bunker. It should have felt familiar.
Chuck felt nothing.
"Why don't you go outside and wait for me?" Sarah said. "I need to clear one thing, and we can leave. Just go outside and stay there. Can you do that for me?"
Chuck nodded.
"Good."
When Sarah rose to her feet, he did the same. When Sarah turned to talk to the person in charge of the crime scene, Chuck drifted more than walked out of the room. He paused at the threshold, but it was only out of habit. Fearing the open space, the amount of people, the amount of danger and possibility like he always did just seemed…disconnected. It required too much.
In the back of his mind, he wondered if he was going crazy. He figured he wasn't, since he was wondering. He stared out into the mini-village, watching the crew of faces and hands and government uniforms all milling about. There was an order there. People listening to people with clipboards, people working and conferring. They looked like ants.
The Heartbrake Hotel would be a ghost town come morning.
Leader was already a ghost.
Chuck had killed a man.
How was he supposed to feel about that? He was supposed to feel…something. But there was nothing but a fog where his mind had been, a void where everything he was supposed to feel rested.
If he squinted hard enough, he imagined, he would probably be able to see after-images of the unholy battle that had taken place. He could probably see Casey run along under that overhang there, gun in hand as he fought to get to him. He'd probably be able to see room eight explode out in a fiery mess of splinters and flame and narcotic gasses.
He could see nothing but a clean-up crew that would soon, too, be gone.
If he turned, he might see Jill's body crash to the ground. She had left something real behind, blood, possibly lifeblood, but he would watch an image of her, just a fragment, startled at the betrayal, face screwed up in agony. He would see Sarah's gun go off three times, protecting him from even himself. Or he would see her now, her physical body and not just a specter, in quiet conversation with the supervisor, ensuring that he got his story absolutely right in the reports. Still protecting Chuck.
He didn't want to see any of this.
An unmarked black SUV pulled up and men in G-man suits climbed out, another mass of government employees that would all tell lies about what had happened here, to clean up the mess. Chuck watched them flash badges at the people in charge, and head right into the crime scene, passing him by without a second look.
Like he was the one who was a ghost here, not Leader. Not Jill.
Chuck wished he felt something about either of them, but he didn't.
He had killed a man.
He felt nothing.
He had to get away from the ghosts and this ghost town to be.
Without a word to anybody, without looking at Casey or Sarah or even anybody else in this small army of his would-be protectors, he crossed the parking lot to the SUV that had just pulled up. He climbed into the driver's seat. The car was still warm from the heater on the trip over to the motel. Somebody had left the keys in the ignition. Chuck turned them, didn't look back at the crime scene.
He drove away.
END OF PART III: ATLAS
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