Chapter Text
The sand shifts beneath your feet. You have to take slow steps. Slower, with Kim holding onto your shoulder for balance. His breathing is heavier than when you first stepped foot on the island. Despite the painkillers he’s still hobbling.
A two-millimeter hole in the universe is all kinds of bad. Now imagine it ripping up your internal organs. Go easy on him.
The reeds are tall here, golden stalks jutting high against the pale blue morning. The wind catches smoke from a small campfire.
“Lieutenant, there’s someone there, by the fire,” you warn Kim, pausing to give him a moment to draw his—your-- empty gun.
“Let’s see who it is,” Kim nods, straightening and letting go of your shoulder. It must be all kinds of agonizing to walk like nothing’s wrong, but he does it.
Beside you, it’s like he was never shot at all, back tall and resolute, easy grip on the gun.
You walk a few steps in front, and as the two of you emerge from the reeds you see a bedraggled, hooded figure sitting against a bone-white log of driftwood. He’s old, frail arms stick-thin, but he’s got one hand on the long frame stock of a rifle.
There’s a beautiful, delicate scent on the air. Little white blossoms decorate the sandy hills, and stray petals scatter like pearls on the beach. Your brain latches onto the smell, the feeling of holding fragile stems in your hand on the rooftop of the Whirling. The smoke of Klassje’s cigarette mingling with salt air.
He spits in the fire’s dead ash, lifting hooded, dark eyes to meet yours. They’re unclouded by cataracts, still sharp. His lip curls as you approach, eyes flicking to the Lieutenant.
“More little rats,” he mumbles thumb caressing the hard metal stock. “Come sniffing around, trying to give up the position.” His voice hardens on the last word, proud and gravelly.
“You must have good eyesight,” you say, by way of greeting. Kim doesn’t even flinch anymore at your poor excuses for small talk.
“My eyesight?” The old man clears his throat. “Helps me see all the sh*t.”
A shudder of disgust passes through his right side.
“Did you close the blast door? In the flak tower?”
“I did. And you opened it? How?”
“Fueled the generator, then used the console,” you explain, and his nostrils flare with a sudden spiteful breath.
“I should have burned that console down…”
He shakes his head. A bit of ash is lifted by the breeze, tossed towards the water.
“How did you know we were coming?” you ask, though you think you know the answer. He’s been watching you. Somehow, he’s seen everything.
“Reactionary rock and roll music… playing on the water.”
“Told you we shouldn’t play Sad FM,” Kim grumbles, and you raise an eyebrow despite keeping your gaze firmly on the old man and his rifle.
“But you didn’t say that,” you lower your voice, unable to help a smile.
Yes, I did,” he insists.
You have entered a world where he did. It’s the only one.
“The fascists were right about rock and roll,” the old man presses on, ignoring your little conversation. “It is degenerate… hip-gyrating mental-illness music.”
Now that’s a tagline if you ever heard one. Better run it by Egghead, he can make t-shirts.
Enough thinking about music advertising. He needs to drop the gun, before this talk of fascists riles him up.
Be gentle. Remember what happened at the tribunal… don’t go antagonizing him. Just do what you do best, ask questions.
“Is it a Belle-Magrave?” you wonder, trying to guess the year. It’s old, that’s all you know.
He looks at the gun, contemplating it like it’s a forlorn relic he just discovered on the beach.
“Triangong 4-46,” the man replies, his voice taking on a slanted edge. A bit of pride, for this battered old firearm.
The name isn’t familiar to you. It’s certainly not any modern manufacturer’s name.
Kim’s eyes widen, though.
“A Samaran rifle… how did you get a hold of one?”
“It was sent to us by our brothers in the Hsin-Yao commune. Military aid.” His hand tightens around it.
"The Hsin-Yao Commune?” That’s not familiar either. At least, it wasn’t covered in Joyce Messier’s reality low-down.
“You heard me,” the old man scoffs. “It’s good now, like chalk wiped from the board...”
He trails off. His gaze turns inwards.
The gun, Harry.
“Sir, I’m going to need you to drop the gun, if we’re going to talk further,” you say, very officially. “We’re the police.”
You don’t dig for your badge. Rifling around suddenly in a pocket seems like a bad idea right now. Besides, he sees you’re both carrying. Kim closes his other hand around the gun, assuming a ready stance. His hands aren’t even trembling.
'You’re a glorified night-watchman,” the old man sneers. “This is a service rifle. I can only lay it down before an enemy commander of corresponding rank.”
You suck in salt air, let it pass through your teeth.
“I am an enemy commander,” you reply. The sound is cold iron from your lungs. “Lieutenant Double-Yefreitor.”
The old man chews another gob of spit, let’s it drop into the sand at his feet. For a moment, he doesn’t move. Then he uncurls his fingers from the stock.
“To hell with it,” he sighs. “It’s a walking stick anyway… it’s out of bullets.”
The rifle thunks heavily to the ground. Like an amputated limb in the sand. He whispers something you strain to hear.
“What did you say?”
“The future teaches you to be alone,” the man begins, taking a pained breath. “The present is to be afraid and cold.” With one hand he pushes the hood off his plastic rain cape and looks upwards at the slate sky, as blue and grey as the calm sea.
“Real music, real proletkult,” the words draw from his lips like he’s savoring them. “That’s La Revacholière, not your rock-and-roll misanthropy. Chanson de Soldat of the black-and-whites.”
“The marching song of the World Revolution,” Kim supplies, voice low. His arms are relaxed now that the gun is out of the old man’s hands. He stoops a little with weariness and the effort to keep his façade of painlessness in place.
“There you go,” the man chuckles, eyes still fixed on the sky.
Something else twinges at you. You’ve talked to her. In dreams.
A sudden cold spell takes hold. All around you, the air slowly circulates the islet, carrying little swallows and black-beaked seagulls in its slow drifts. They keep their distance.
You pick up the gun in the sand. His gaze follows your motions. It’s surprisingly light in your hand, frame stocked and patched in places with tape and wire. Kim’s watching closely as well, waiting for you to confirm what he suspects.
“It uses jacketed ammunition,” you nod, turning it over carefully. Kim’s gun is stashed in your holster now.
This looks very much like the murder weapon. It can be used against him to get a confession, in time. But be careful how you go about it. Start simple.
“Who are you?”
“My name is Iosef Lilianovich Dros, Political Commissar of the 114th Anti-Aircraft Division of the 4th Army of the Commune of Revachol. I am a deserter, a partisan, and a prisoner of war. This is my termless surrender.” His eyes turn to the reeds again, dead and dull.
As if waiting for them to speak back to him.
“The ICM?” Kim asks, surprise written all over his face. “You’re a holdover from the—”
“The Insulindian Citizens Militia,” Dros nods. “I was recruited in Jamrock in ‘07, trained in the Ecole de Contrôle Aérien and consigned to emergency defense duties in ‘08. I left my unit on the eve of the Landing. When I returned here on May 14th the Commune had fallen. Still-armed, and ideologically trained, I wrote a criticism of myself. And resumed partisan duties.”
The math is momentarily elusive.
“You’ve been on this island 43 years?”
“No,” Dros snaps. “I’ve been on other islands too. Some got eaten up…others washed over by the sea. Then I came back here. 43 years and ten months.”
In the Burnt-Out Quarter, a sick street dog limps into an alley, behind a garment factory. There’s a patch of grass that stretches all the way to the raised road, traveling along an iron fence. It’s coming here to die.
“That’s…” Steadfast? Pathological? “I don’t even know what that is.”
“It’s inhuman. It’s sick,” Dros slurs. “It’s not how a human being should live, but I had to… I couldn’t just forget. I couldn’t just forget what I saw.”
All this time, hiding, watching, waiting…
On Rue de Saint-Ghislaine the day is just beginning, women and men in thick canvas jackets lock their doors with lunch sacks in their hands. The streetlamps are being turned off as the sun fractures against their delicate glass. Altocumulus clouds form above Precinct 41.
Two police officers step out of the Whirling-in-rags cafeteria, onto the plaza. They inspect a series of letters, painted in heavy fuel oil. Patrol officer Judit Minot points west. “The fishing village, we should meet there…”
“Waiting here, all this time? For what?”
Dros’s eyes dart from the reeds to the crumbling behemoth tower.
“Girl Child Revolution,” he replies, a sudden spark in his eyes before that, too, burns to nothing. “A waste. The material base for an uprising has eroded, the working class has betrayed mankind and themselves. The historic opportunity for a revolution has passed. It will not come back anymore. However hard I try, whatever I do.”
"You said you deserted your unit.”
Kim shifts slightly, moving his weight to his other leg. He’d rather you hurry this along.
“I was just sixteen years old, fifteen when I volunteered. I had a lapse of faith… and of courage too.”
A wheezing clearing of the throat. You try to imagine a boy that young blaming himself for turning tail against the firestorm of the Coalition’s beach landing.
We all like to think we would stand and fight. That we wouldn’t piss ourselves and lie in the dirt and cry when a 250 meter airship obliterates everyone in front of you, lungs filled with the stench of death.
“You could say I misunderstood the historic role of the proletariat,” Dros continues, eyes distant. “And thought Mazovian socio-economics were fallible. For a second I doubted the irreducible laws of historic materialism. A second… a second is all it took.”
“For what?”
“For Reaction to take hold,” the old man mumbles, sucking the inside of his cheek. The hatred on his face blooms once more, flushing his cheeks.
“It wasn’t Reaction, you were just afraid,” you try to console him.
Forty-three years and ten months.
“You haven’t seen it,” Dros insists. “Not really. Not naked. It’s impossible not to be afraid.”
“And this was… when?” Kim asks. He instinctively looks to his notebook, but doesn’t take it out.
He couldn’t forget this conversation if he tried. Besides, it hurts to move his arms.
“May the 13th. ‘08, 44 years ago.” He looks North, conjuring an image in his mind. “The horizon was black with Coalition airships. Their petroleum rose to the sky and it looked like… like it ‘formed’ the clouds. Storm clouds. When they started shelling it was… dark magic.”
“Dark magic,” you echo, his description raising gooseflesh on your arms.
You can see it. A skyline of dark, hungry birds. Nowhere to run.
“The combined might of International Capital,” Dros growls. “All at once. All the greed and terror in the world-- tore into Revachol. It lifted streets from the ground and turned houses into ghosts. We were in the flak tower…”
“… huddled on the floor. The artillery was eighty kilometers away in Ozonne but I knew, I knew the Commune would fall. We would all be turned to ash. I said I was going to the map room…”
He looks to the east. A gust of wind in the reeds startles a group of small birds, and they take flight for the tower.
A terrible shame, still within him. The smallness of what he has become.
“I climbed the chain link across the water and hid inland. In the bunkers there, like the weakest of the weak… a mouse. Frightened of the ordinance all night and the sound of the rotors in the morning, whirring…” he makes a thudding sound, air pressed between his teeth. “I climbed out into hell. The landing was complete. The chain was submerged, I had to swim back. The fortress was half-submerged too. Shattered.”
A tomb.
“They’d all drowned in the lower levels, or got torn to shreds above.” Dros licked dry lips. Even now, close to fifty years later, the images of what he’d seen were pressing onto the backs of his eyes. “The anti-aircraft gun had malfunctioned… so had I. I left them without ideological direction… it was real. I’d seen it. I’d seen it in reality.”
“Seen what?”
“The mask of humanity fall from capital. It has to take it off to kill everyone-- everything you love; all the hope and tenderness in the world. It has to take it off, just for one second. To do the deed. And then you see it. As it strangles and beats your friends to death… the sweetest, most courageous people in the world.”
He’s silent for a second. “You see the fear and power in its eyes. Then you know.”
"Know what?”
“That the bourgeois are not human,” he snarls, twisting his fingers before him, eyes fixed on the dead coals at his feet.
For some reason, the image of the ice bear fridge rears up in your mind, bizarre and almost cartoonish. The stench of a corpse in its belly.
Kim watches you carefully, thinking you might be about to launch into your own Mazovian theoretical tirade, but Dros is still mumbling.
“I had to, I had to fight it… I couldn’t stop anymore…”
“How have you survived all this time?” You wonder, trying to keep the old man focused. It would be easy for him to spiral into his memories, lost there.
“How does anyone? I steal,” Dros replies simply. The worn FALN track pants rolled up at his ankles, the plastic fashioned into a cape to keep off the rain… track shoes, worn but patched with care.
He descends into a fit of hacking coughs, holding an arm against his ribs.
“How is your health, Mr. Dros?” Kim asks, gently.
“I’ve been throwing up blood since winter,” Dros shrugs. “Red, like beet root-- been passing it in stool too.”
Trouble putting on weight could mean cancer...
The RCM can provide medical services,” Kim continues. “You need to be looked over.”
“I need to die,” Dros snaps back, a smile stretching his gums. “You don’t have medical facilities, you have guns. That’s all they give you, toy guns.”
Kim doesn’t move, but for a moment perhaps he thinks Dros knew he was bluffing. About the gun.
Don’t be silly. How would he know?
“How have you coped, mentally?” You press on, curious how this man could spend his life alone, with only the seagulls for company.
“I haven’t,” Dross sighs. “I have holes in my brain. Years missing, others filled with pain only. A decade of… I don’t even know what… inferno?”
Ah. This, sire, is familiar.
“I also live in hell,” you say without thinking. Dros chuckles.
“At least you know it. The traitors of this city turned the lights back on in the thirties, after the fighting stopped. Ruins, glittering in the dark, like a f*cking merry-go-round...”
Are they not heartbroken? How could they have moved on?
“You visited the city?” Kim asks, another twitch of the hand like he’s gripping a pen. “Without being seen?”
“From bunker to bunker… now, I don’t even have to hide. They think I’m just a vagrant, I could walk straight into that town if I wanted to. No-one cares now… traitors, pigs dogs…”
“Bunkers? Like the one in the commerce building?”
“All rusted to sh*t,” Dros mutters, nodding. “Sometimes I went there to sleep, sometimes to scrounge ammo…”
You and Kim exchange a look.
Kim does reach into his pocket now, and holds up a pack of Tioumoutiri cigarettes, courtesy of Germaine.
“Mr. Dros, do you smoke Tioumoutiris?”
The old deserter licks dry lips. “Sure. They’re good. Plenty of tar.”
Kim nods.
Little dots, connecting on a map.
"And this termless surrender you mentioned?” You ask, turning the conversation towards more violent subjects.
“You’re with the RCM,” Dros huffs. “The Coalition-appointed mob that enforces bourgeois morals in Revachol.”
This does offend your incredible leaflet-reading capacity and handsome Mazovian looks.
“Maybe it started out that way, but organizations change. We’re still people after all. Revacholian.”
Dros summons another gob of spit.
“Rock and roll posturing… you’re dogs. Not people. The RCM represents the Moralintern, the enemy of humanity. Take me to them as a prisoner of war, I can no longer serve. No superiors can relieve me of duty, you bulldozed them all to a mass grave for trying to free humanity…” he’s shaking, voice agitated. He trails off into another coughing fit.
“So you’re here because you never surrendered?” You ask, trying to recall what he called himself. “You still consider yourself a… commissar?”
The man doesn’t answer, silver head turning to gaze at the reeds.
Kim fills in. “His job was to ensure that the army answers to civilian control, and follows the ideology of the commune.”
“A knight-philosopher!” the old man cackles, suddenly re-animated. “A future human.”
He was like a cleric, a shepherd.
A shepherd with a traingong 4-46.
“What did you use this rifle for?” you ask, lifting it slightly.
“I’ve used it for killing people,” he answers simply. “That’s what it’s for.”
“During or after the war?” Kim asks innocently.
Dark rotten teeth flash a bitter smile. “There is no after the war. Class war is never over.”
Okay, okay, okay. Now we’re getting somewhere. He’s been alone so long, and he’s dying. He wants to tell someone.
You glance down at the stock of the rifle in your hand.
“Did you use this gun to shoot a Colonel of the military contractor Krenel?”
He cups his ear, brow pinching.
"The who now?”
“The body at the Whirling in Rags.”
Come on, sire, where’s the flare? The poetry? The disco? Describe that bloated decomposing body in all its multicolor madness!
No. This soul has seen enough murder, enough death. It haunts his dreams like it haunts yours.
“The paramilitary death squad leader?” You try again, trying with words he’ll respond to. It works. Dros perks up instantly.
“Oh yes, that one? Ugly piece of work that boy.”
“Did you kill him?” Kim presses. Too soon. Dros spits a gob of blood.
“I am a son of a welder, and an officer of the Commune of Revachol! I don’t collaborate with murderers and pederasts of the liberal regime!”
Exhaust him with proof. Pile it all on him, get a confession.
There’s a scent of blood in the air, but something else too. Something whispering at the edge of your consciousness. Your nerves are singed, raw to the islet’s wind and sun.
“We’ve done ballistics,” you offer. “The shot came from this island.”
“I saw you poking around there,” Dros snorts. “Looking for evidence. You’re damn diligent when it comes to dead fasces.” A jitter passes through him, like a strange electrical current is jumping under his skin. “Did you like the view?”
Kim smiles thinly. “There’s direct visibility from that sniper’s nest, Mr. Dros. Embrasures in the concrete specifically for a topfaller to use. And a long range rifle in your possession. You’ve been here a long time, Mr. Dros. Too long. And you clearly need medical aid…”
“I’m ready to die,” Dros interrupts, waving a hand. “I’ve done my part.”
Almost got him. Now--
Kim makes a sudden move, gripping his side. Sharp air pushes through his teeth as he winces.
“Lieutenant?” you say quickly, grabbing his arm. It’s two questions.
“I’m fine,” he says, wiping blood off his lip with the back of his glove. “I can manage."
There’s a dry, raspy gurgle from Dros. The old man is laughing.
“You could have used a real gun like that going up against those tin cans,” he hacks, wheezing. “No wonder you got those boys killed. Nearly this one, too. But fascists are slippery f*cks, aren’t they… like roaches, your foot comes down and they just peel off and skitter away.”
He saw it all happen. Of course he did. Probably had a great view from the nest.
“Sit,” you order Kim, handing him the medical bag from your coat. It doesn’t matter if he saves face in front of this old communist, the man doesn’t give a sh*t if you both keel over and die right in front of him.
Kim sits on driftwood, regaining his composure.
“I’m all right. Really, detective.”
He’s worried this has lost you some steam with Dros, but if anything, the old deserter seems more animated now. The scent of blood other than his own brings a little light to his eyes.
“At least it wasn’t my lead ball,” Dros rasps, looking at the Lieutenant. “I would have put it right through your heart. Saved you the pain.”
“I surely would have appreciated precision,” Kim jokes darkly without a twitch.
“Did you mean to put it right through the mercenary’s heart, when you shot him?” You ask, setting it up nicely for him. Dros smiles.
"Heh,” he chuckles weakly, looking at the gun in your hand. It’s useless, but he’s wondering if he should have given it up. Just to have something to hold.
Something else tugs at your insides. The wind blows a scattering of white petals over your boots.
You reach into your pocket, finding a handful of crushed flowers. The ones you pulled off the roof outside Klaasje’s room. Your heart beats faster.
“The may bells,” you say suddenly, earning an eyebrow from Kim for this dramatic topical shift. “They were on her roof. You.. did you leave them there? Do you know a woman named Klassje?”
“Klaasje,” Dros mutters, dragging out the sound of the name. He knows her, but hadn’t heard the name. “My ears don’t reach the city.”
“What kind of boots are you wearing, Mr. Dros? Show me the soles, please?”
“Everything is brands with you individualists,” Dros grumbles. “f*cking inbiciles…”
But he stretches out his leg anyway. A spiral pattern is etched into the sole of the running shoes. Size 43.”
You share a look with Kim. These are the right size shoes to match the prints from the workshop. Different pair, perhaps, but after all, people do change shoes.
Dros seems to pick up on this silent communication. He can sense where you’re headed with this, he can feel the noose tightening.
“You bloodhounds get so thorough when a trained killer dies. I haven’t seen you on this coast for forty years, maybe I should have killed one sooner?” He smiles at the way your faces both turn back to him at the same time. “Got your attention? Now you come to investigate… tired of beating druggies and prostitutes in your basem*nt? But when they die by the hundreds…” He breathes heavily.
You’re silent. The ball is rolling. Dros presses on, anger making the tips of his fingers tremble.
“I had them in my sights, both of them… him and the whor*. I was breathing with them, in phase, and I pulled the trigger and flew on the air until I landed in his mouth…” he smiles widely. “I didn’t think I had a shot like that in me anymore. I did. I saw him kneel there with his mouth full of death and that stupid look on his face, his dick still inside of her...”
“And then?”
“Nothing,” Dros shrugs. “I went to sleep. Next morning there were may bells everywhere, the world turned white-- or what’s left of it anyway. My last spring here… I knew the fascists would come to avenge their own. And so they did.” His eyes twitch towards Kim, a satisfied gleam at his pain. “I didn’t even need to take another shot, I should have known you fascist dogs would turn on one another first…”
“Mr. Dros, are you aware you’re confessing to a murder?” Kim asks, unfazed.
“Yes,” Dros replies with equal brevity.
The motive, now for the motive. Why was he watching them that night, having sex?
“You’ve seen a lot through the scope of this rifle,” you suggests slowly. “If you don’t like what you see, you… pull the trigger?”
Watching, always watching.
“Think of it as a form of critique,” Dros mutters.
You ask him about the first time he saw the mercenary, and Dros rambles. About the ‘rich hag’ coming on her galley, the ‘wights’ that came with her, killers and drunks. When you ask about that night, he spits more blood into the fire.
“I didn’t like the reaver enjoying himself,” Dros growled in anger. “Drugged out, soothed in the arms of a woman. I wanted him to die so he couldn’t enjoy life anymore. I wasn’t even aiming for the mouth, I wanted his brains to spill over her. But, you can’t have everything,” he huffs with mock resignation.
He saw past her, like you did. He wanted to see her covered in blood. As punishment.
“How long have you been watching her?”
“Since she came to Martinaise. Skulking around, hiding something in the reeds… she had a face like an archipelago with those birthmarks, and bruised all over. She’d taken a beating. I could tell she was a spook, all the bagmen with their hands dirty from sordid bourgeois affairs, washing up on the shores of this city.”
You can’t see bruises through the scope of a rifle.
"You watched her more closely, didn’t you? Through a hole in the wall of her room?”
“Oh, yes. Cutting those drugs of hers into little lines with a knife, masturbating…”
“Did you make that hole?” Kim asks.
“With a clip point knife,” Dros nods.
“So it wasn’t about him, it was about her,” you realize.
You stare at them too. Her Innocence Dei still turns to leave, airport bag in hand, silks flowing in her wake…
“There’s nothing to hold onto,” he sighs quietly. “Only this. It’s not enough. It helps to have your eye on something there… it’s weakness, I know, but… it’s not un-proletariat to feel something.”
“And you brought her may bells?”
“The day after I killed him…” he trails off, unsure. “I told you, I have holes in my brain now. I wouldn’t just sit here waiting for you… where is she, that Klaasje?”
“Gone,” you tell him. “Before the shootout.”
“I knew it. She kept staring into the scope this last week, right into me… it doesn’t matter.”
Dros looks into the reeds once more, as a shiver runs through his body. His head tilts, like he’s following the lateral movement of the reed stalks, bobbing slightly. He retreats into himself.
“You could get more,” Kim says softly. It’s true. He likes talking. Who knows what he’s seen and done over the years.
There will be time for that later, once he’s in custody. Kim’s suffering, a lot.
Kim’s a tough cookie. He knows what he can handle. Let him ask what he wants.
“You’ve probably kept an eye on the harbor these years too, haven’t you Mr. Dros? The Claire’s wouldn’t miss someone hiding in their own backyard, not for this long…”
A spark in your mind. Kim’s prodding at a larger animal now. An old revolutionary, armed and looking for fascists to kill? Now, if the Claires knew about him…
“Did they ever approach you?” you add, sensing a connection about to be made. “Edgar, or Evrart?”
“Not that fat corrupt toad, the other one,” Dros grumbles. “Some kids told him about a monster on the island… he has brains.”
Little Meryl, hugging uncle Titus’s legs. Nobody unknown in Martinaise. Everyone attached to someone else… even the Pigs, taken to be looked after… no loner would survive without someone. Maybe it was Titus, as a youngster, exploring the ruins.
This is definitely something to press on, later. Edgar could have used Dros to terminal effect. He didn’t do the hanged man for them, but maybe…
A gust of wind disrupts the camp site, blowing may bell petals across the sand. The reeds shudder, and it runs right down your spine. You want to press this, but something else is happening around you. The air is suddenly humid, charged.
Kim sees your distraction, and tries to press it. “Mr. Dros, if you’ve done anything for the Claires, anything you could testify to… you could walk. We could strike everything you’ve done, process you as a POW. We could even extradite you to the Samaran People’s Republic—”
“A degenerate worker’s state,” Dros slurs. “Goat sh*t? No, thank you. I’m Revacholian. I’ll rot away here, in a Moralintern Cell. I won’t testify to anything.” He coughs roughly.
On the village jetty, Satellite-Officer Jean Vicquemare paces the wooden planks. “What could he be doing over there for so long?” he demands. “Policework?” Patrol Officer Judit Minot replies, a tinge of hope in her voice.
Kim heaves a breath. He uses your arm to haul himself up, stiff but resolved. He wants to be standing for this.
“Iosef Lilianovich Dros, you’re under arrest for the murder of Ellis Kortenaer.”
“What?” The old man’s eyes fill with sudden fear, “But I thought you said…” he gazes around him, terror in his trembling hands. He doesn’t want to leave.
“Your Wayfarer rights have been suspended. Information provided to the officers on the scene will be used against you by the prosecution…” he continues, but for some reason, you have trouble focusing on his words.
This is it, the end of the case rearing up like the head of a great sea-beast. But your focus is divided. Your blood is pounding in your veins, some electrical pulse of wind and weather and welled-up motion in the island’s gentle gait is rising.
Dros is rocking back and forth. He is unravelling. He’s been so strong, for so long, but… his body is giving out. He’s not just fighting his sickness, there’s something tugging at him. A fierce, invisible wind from within.
There’s something else here. On the island. This pulse of life and limb, connecting flesh and deep water and the insistent pull of the tides… it’s in your shivering drug-less tissues, in Dros’s patched shoes, in the stitches holding Kim’s stomach together.
Kim is still talking to Dros, gentle now that he’s read him his rights, trying to ask if he’s all right. Your eyes are fixed on the reeds.
God.
What…. What is that?
You move slowly, as if in a trance, putting yourself between Kim and the unfolding thing emerging from the island’s hidden shell. Kim sputters a little, not sure what madness has taken a hold of you now, and you let the rifle rest against the driftwood. One hand on Kim, one held out midair, as if unsure to go for your gun.
The reeds part. Your heart washes against your ribcage, tidal.
“Kim, do you see that?!”
