[for Eduardo] The Devil Comes to Town

[hasnobullets]

From my sodden jacket, I retrieve my billy club. Running my fingers along the familiar aluminum, I briefly fumble with the mechanism that converts a weapon into a blind man's cane -- something harmless. The motions are instinctive, though, and I find the switch quickly enough. I've spent most of the last year denying my life as Daredevil to anyone

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[hasnobullets]

In spite of the assurance that we're in the same boat, I doubt he's half expecting to wake up in the back of a fan filled with federal agents any second. (Or is he? If I think I'm unconscious or drugged, that would make him a figment of my imagination. So he'd know what I know. Which isn't much. But we've covered that. I'm already turned around. Retreading old territory in the hopes it'll make more sense the second time around isn't helpful when all it's doing is leading me in circles. So I need to operate on the assumption that this really happening, with the caveat that maybe it's not. And if it is happening, I can think of a laundry list's worth of reasons for why someone would want to get me out of the way. What I can't figure out is who has the motive and the power to send me to a tropical island without warning, let alone strip me of my abilities in the process. It's like I've stepped into someone else's story.)

His hand feels solid enough in mine (he's wearing some sort of ring), but the whole situation calls to mind Plato's allegory of the cave. My senses are unreliable. Even so, I use to excuse of the handshake to tuck my cane under my arm right along with my hat, and cover his hand with both of mine. I ghost the shape of his ring, but that's only a distraction from the fact that I'm currently pressing two fingers to his radial artery. Compared to my usual method of listening, it's a crude way to figure out if he's lying, but it's preferable to the other alternative.

"What's this?"

[pointzerothree]

It isn't what Eduardo is expecting, but then, he supposes he can't blame the guy. If he were blind and suddenly displaced to a potentially sentient island and talking to a stranger, he might pick up on a little detail like that, too. Eyes wide, he glances down at where Matt's hands are around his, looking up again before he responds. "It's a, a class ring," he explains, finding himself feeling sheepish for it the moment after the words leave his mouth. "I was halfway through my senior year when I showed up here."

[hasnobullets]

There's an engraving. The ring's big enough that I don't need my senses to trace the with the very tip of my index finger, carefully spelling out each letter, even if it's just a bid for time. I'm not so interested in the ring, after all, as I am in the veracity of his story. His pulse is strong and steady under my touch, signs consistent with telling the truth. At the very least, he really was halfway through his senior year when he showed up here, or so he believes. I don't yet let go, wanting what passes for confirmation before I do. I'll need to keep him talking.

"Harvard?"

[pointzerothree]

"Jesus Christ," Eduardo says, letting out a short, surprised laugh. It's both disarming and impressive, a combination that reminds him vaguely of Mark, though the circumstances, for obvious reasons, don't compare in the slightest. (Mark, he tells himself, remembering what Olive said while sitting on the bed in his dorm, was only blind in the metaphorical sense, unable to see the lengths he would have gone to and how much he cared.) He glances up again, having looked down at the ring as if to see just how obvious it would be to feel. He doesn't think it very, but then, he's never had to read it by touch before. "Yeah, Harvard. You're good."

[hasnobullets]

"I'm literate," I reply with the barest of smiles. Reading an engraving is nothing special, but for others, it makes for a neat trick. A distraction. But there's no indication that he's saying anything save the truth, and I've run out of reason to keep holding his hand without rousing suspicion. Whatever else, he attended Harvard, and, at some point, showed up in a pocket universe. The same one I've found myself in. (If I'm here at all.) I let go of him.

"I did go to Columbia."

[pointzerothree]

"Columbia," Eduardo echoes, mouth pulling into a crooked grin, "nice." For him, it doesn't change the fact that to be able to read the ring like that is impressive. After having been told once that the average IQ of this place is probably somewhere around genius, he can't say that meeting someone else with an Ivy League background is too big a deal. With an exhale that isn't quite a laugh, he adds, joking, "I didn't know they taught classes in being able to feel out engravings there."

[hasnobullets]

"It was an elective," I offer with a shrug, tucking my hat into the inside pocket of my jacket to free up my arm. I'm not in the habit of offering up insights into my abilities to strangers, least of all when the media is still on my back. (Or when those abilities are apparently gone.) Not that the media's followed me here, I don't think. The feds who were tailing me certainly didn't. (It occurs to me only now that Mr. Saverin, here, could actually be a fed, but I dismiss the thought. I've been around enough agents to recognize one. Besides, it wouldn't jibe with the Harvard story, and that much, at least, is the truth.)

"You've left out a crucial piece of information."

[pointzerothree]

"You're wondering how to get back." The response takes a few seconds, Eduardo having to pause to work out what he could be referring to, and he winces when it finally comes to him. This is the worst news to have to break. At least he seems like he might take it better than Olive did, though it isn't as if he could fault her for getting so upset at the prospect. Worrying at his lower lip, he shifts his weight from one foot to the other. "That's, uh... That's kind of the catch. You, you can't."

[hasnobullets]

"What do you mean, I can't?" I ask, head canting sharply to the side like a cat. Even having already gathered as much from its exclusion in his explanation, the news doesn't come as any less of a surprise. (My optimism is bruised, not broken. Now, though, it just seems foolish that I had that much hope in the first place. I've been robbed of my senses and tossed aside into the middle of nowhere, and at least one of those situations is assuredly permanent.)

"You're telling me no one's ever left? You implied there were others, before. How many? How many people have been brought here against their will? How many people are stuck here... Wherever here is?"

[pointzerothree]

"A couple hundred," Eduardo answers, starting with what's simplest first, a solid fact instead of something he can't explain. This was never going to be easy, but the headache he feels setting in comes as a surprise anyway, his hand lifting to his forehead again in what will be a useless attempt to stave it off. He's been out of sorts since waking up anyway, the stress of the past two days combined with what feels like too much sleep and not enough food leaving him just slightly off-kilter, more noticeable without the distraction of Olive in his arms. "It isn't that no one's ever left, it's that it... It's like showing up. Leaving is, I mean. It happens out of nowhere, there's no way to predict it, it just... happens."

[hasnobullets]

A couple hundred people. My God. And those are just the ones who are still here. I wonder how many souls have been brought here. How long this has been going on. I've never heard of anything quite like it, my frame of reference, even extending beyond my own experiences, not providing me with a ready answer. (I might work the streets and I might be the Kingpin, but I keep an ear to the ground. I have contacts who do this sort of trip all the time, though I haven't been on speaking terms with most of them again until just recently.)

I turn on the spot, frustrated more so than panicked, though there's an edge of that, too. Loathe as I am to admit to it. Despite straining to understand, I can barely make sense of this new world around me, everything so strange and muted compared to the virility of Hell's Kitchen, and still he's telling me this is going to be my life for the indeterminate future. Forget about the day I've had -- after the year I've had, it's a bit much. Yet another change in my status quo, as though my life hasn't been upended enough. (It has.) My head spins.

"What's the connection?" I ask. "Between everyone who's shown up?"

[pointzerothree]

"There isn't." Eduardo shakes his head, frowning, none of this getting any easier. It's one thing he has no control over, the truth in what he has to tell, and he wishes that weren't so, that there could be a way to fix it, or at least make it easier to digest. There isn't, though, not really. Even if he were able to relay the information less awkwardly, the message, and therefore the reactions, would more likely than not still be the same. Matt doesn't seem to be outright freaking out, but that doesn't stop Eduardo from wanting to be more of a help even so. "Not that anyone can see, anyway. People come from all different times, all different places - different universes, even, weird as that sounds. All we have in common is showing up in the first place."

[hasnobullets]

I try to think of how Reed or Dr. Strange might phrase it. 'Temporal and spatial displacement,' maybe. But I meant what I said earlier, about this being outside my area of expertise. I might be able to pull the right words together from simple exposure, but making sense of them is a different matter entirely. I'm not a scientist, and my limited experience is proving itself unhelpful. (That none of it explains why my senses are dulled is equally frustrating, if not more so.) I press a hand to my forehead.

"Is there any of this that doesn't sound weird?"

[pointzerothree]

"No," Eduardo answers simply, after an appropriately thoughtful pause, though that much doesn't actually require any thought whatsoever. There are aspects of life here he's gotten used to, of course, and all in the space of a few hours, he's found that he doesn't mind it nearly as much as he used to (he has nothing back home, he reminds himself, and the one person who hasn't let him go is here); even so, it's all still weird as hell. "Most of it just sounds ridiculous, like the stuff of bad sci-fi."

[hasnobullets]

"Or a documentary on the Fantastic Four," I murmur under my breath, smoothing my free hand over my head. The longer we stand here, the warmer I get. I'm boiling.

"If people just... show up and disappear, how does this place run?"

Given that he hasn't tried to attack me yet, I'm going to assume this all a little more civilized than a Lord of the Flies scenario, but I'm not sure what that leaves us with. Suddenly, it strikes me as stranger that he's been so helpful, even if we're technically in the same boat.

[pointzerothree]

"There's a council that's the closest thing to a government we have," Eduardo explains. "It's all very... laid back, I guess, is the best way to describe it. I mean, there's no economy to speak of, which, let me tell you, really sucks when you're five months from an Econ degree, people do things just - out of the goodness of their hearts, I guess. But it's been functioning stably for five and a half years or so, which is the longest we have record of anyone being here."