Ancient History (2/2)
I don't like making people wait that long for fic. Enjoy it before the show makes it AU.
Kudos to anyone who guessed the big reveal!
Title: Ancient History
Author: DJ_the_Writer
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: Cursing
Pairings: None
Characters: Charles, Crozier, Selatcia
Summary: Charles has a brutal nine months. General Crozier doesn’t fair much better.
Part 1 is here.
The only advantage Charles could see to having one bad eye covered with a patch, other than a convincing reason to celebrate “talk like a pirate” day all year, was that it kept sand out. The same could not be said of his good eye. “Ow.” Now he knew why all the men around him in desert fatigues were wearing goggles. He wiped his eye with his sleeve and went back to shaking his iPhone, trying to get reception for the Dethklok minute. When he looked up at Selatcia, he could tell the bigger man was contemplating tearing the phone out of his much smaller hands.
Selatcia directed him to the massive archaeological dig in front of them. “What do you see?”
“A large hole in the ground. Or my ass. I’ve never been able to tell.”
“Remember the prophecy.”
“Right. This is where the aliens from Planet X are arriving in 2012 to destroy the Mayan Empire and put Lord Xenu on the throne.”
Selatcia glared at him.
“I did do the required reading. I just really hate archaeology.” He blinked. “And sand. I really hate sand.”
Selatcia began to recite the prophecy again. It sounded so much better in Sumerian, and the wind seemed to kick up around him. Selatcia was just like that. Charles was listening, and Selatcia knew that. He just didn’t need to say it.
In the heat of the day, which seemed to be all day, Charles rested in the tent, doing Sunday’s New York Times puzzle to keep from nodding off. He was always tired. He was healing, Selatcia kept reminding him. Bones didn’t knit overnight. He still had a metal knee brace on over his pants and walked with a limp. And his eye wasn’t going to get any better, for the time being. He hated the patch but it looked much worse without it.
To be back in his office at Mordhaus ... if it still existed, and wasn’t in pieces, burned down, or shattered if the house stopped hovering for some reason. He was used to being around fire from living with the most brutal metal band ever, but it brought back awful memories, especially when it was all around him ...
He woke in a panic. He was about to scream for or at Selatcia, but this one probably wasn’t his. There were no prophecies, no ancient wisdom, no medieval armor that looked more like it belonged in a Renaissance Faire than the Renaissance, and no associations with the number five. It was just a memory. He counted down from ten and his breathing slowed. He needed a shower. And to get away from all this sand.
*********************************
Crozier didn’t see Ofdensen again until he returned from yet another mission, this one to Europe to monitor some large packages being purchased by Dethklok for their upcoming concert. It turned out they contained nickels and filet minions. He would never figure these people out.
Ofdensen was more or less on his feet, but was almost always by Selatcia’s side, or it seemed that way when Crozier had a spare moment. The base was secluded enough that even the most central Tribunal members didn’t come here, and still didn’t know about his involvement, on whatever level it was. He didn’t contribute to conversations but he always seemed to know what they were talking about, no matter how classified. His interest in their discussion went in and out. Sometimes he was listening to music in the back corner (always Dethklok, audible through the ear buds) but he was there. There were rumors that Ofdensen was Selatcia’s new protégé. Crozier could see how those were started. Ofdensen was really on his guard perhaps, but he still didn’t worry about making Dethklok-related conversation in the hallway. He wanted to know what Crozier had found.
“The most expensive concert ever? Really? That’s a terrible idea.”
“That’s what you would say to them?”
“What kind of manager would I be if I didn’t? But I would basically have to trick them or threaten them into listening.”
“So you don’t think blowing up metal coinage is dangerous? Because that sounds like the plan.”
Ofdensen shrugged. “They’ve done things that are much safer and still managed to kill I don’t know ... thousands of people. Accidentally, I would add. You can’t prove anything legally.”
“You’ve made sure of that.”
“What kind of lawyer would I be if I didn’t? Anyway, these guys could hurt people with tinker toys. You’re standing in the path of a moving train here. You’ve got to think of them as a moving train. With rows and rows of unnecessary spikes.”
“You’re helping us out now?”
“Look, if you haven’t figured this out now with all your self-proclaimed experts, there is nothing I can do to help you,” Ofdensen said. “And when I’m not legally dead, I will write my Congressman.”
“Yes. You do that. Congress loves cutting military spending.”
Ofdensen grumbled. They met in the bar latter. This time, Ofdensen was properly attired.
“I spoke to your sister.”
“What?”
Crozier slid a singed book across the table. Rituals and Ceremonies in the Ancient Near East. There was a bookmark in it, but Ofdensen didn’t open it. He didn’t even want to touch it. He took his hands off the bar to get them further away from it. “That thing should have burned like everything else.”
“Who lit the fire?”
“First of all, the fire has no relation to my father’s current location. Second, I wouldn’t begin to answer that question without my lawyer present.”
“You are a lawyer.”
“And that’s why I know when I would need one.” Using a bar napkin so his hands would even touch the pages, he slid the book back. “What did my sister say?”
“She knows you’re alive, even if the rest of the world doesn’t.”
“She has good instincts. Not psychic abilities, if that’s what you’re thinking. Just instincts.” He sighed. “She makes bad choices, but in case you didn’t notice, so does everyone else.”
It was probably a bad choice to read that book, but Crozier did. Very little of it made sense, when taken as literally as he knew to take it. What he did understand was that all of the pieces would fall into place when he found Professor Ofdensen.
*********************************
Maybe he shouldn’t have told Crozier anything, have started him on this quest, because Crozier easily became obsessed. Charles couldn’t go back on it now, and there was no reason to. Charles exhausted all of his considerable resources long ago, when he first found out about the Tribunal from Rockso’s escapades (the only thing that fucking clown was good for). It wouldn’t stop anything, or move anything along. It was a morbid fascination more than anything else. He just knew that he couldn’t go on not knowing without drinking himself to death like his sister was trying to do, and she was barely involved, other than being related to both persons in question. She deserved to be in a normal family.
His last real conversation with his father - before he’d gone back to his dorm and inhaled what he thought was only weed with maybe a little acid, not formaldehyde (he wasn’t stupid, but his dealer was) - was not a good one. It wasn’t easy having a dad on campus.
“You said if I made Dean’s List, you would leave me alone.”
“Not to ruin your life!”
He sighed. “I like metal.”
“It’s a bad scene. And don’t think I don’t know! They’re dangerous people.”
“Dad, this is college. It’s not going to turn into an episode of the History Channel’s Gangland. Which, by the way, you should stop recording.”
His father shook his head. It was hard for Ofdensen Senior to be intimidating, because he was even shorter than his son - who was pretty short, he would admit on a good day. “It’s not just the drugs, which are bad enough, or where you get them. That music - it’s worse than you think.”
“You said that about Snakes ‘n’ Barrels and that was glam rock.”
“And look what it did to your sister!”
Nothing that couldn’t be fixed with a run to the drugstore for a morning-after pill, really. And she had gone straight after that. She was also on Dean’s List, at Princeton. “You don’t understand.” Parents just didn’t understand.
No, he didn’t understand. Well, everyone had regrets. Just maybe not as severe as his.
On his way to the library he got a glare from Olaag, just for the sake of it, he supposed. Olaag was convinced that his position as Selatcia’s loyal right-hand man was threatened, and no amount of reasonable conversation with voices held at reasonable decibels could reassure him that he could not be more wrong. When Charles was healed, he was on the first plane or helicopter or whatever the hell would get him out of here back to Mordhaus. His part of the deal, as far as he was concerned, was done. Selatcia had shown him everything in cautious detail over several months, taking him across the world to do it. It wasn’t so much that Charles wasn’t convinced as that he didn’t care.
He cared about Dethklok.
*********************************
General Crozier knew he was running out of time. Ofdensen was on his feet and talking more openly about leaving. They all understood he wasn’t a prisoner here. Selatcia would let him walk out any day he wanted to. If anything, sometimes it seemed like he was calling the shots. And when he went, so did Crozier’s answers about Selatcia. This was a problem.
Crozier put his best and most-trustworthy men that Selatcia had never interacted with on the job. Hospitals were exhausted, public and private, as were all military bases in the United States. They were working their way through the secret ones, but where would Selatcia - and Crozier assumed it to be Selatcia - hide Professor Ofdensen?
Crozier stared at Professor Ofdensen’s CV, which was not easy to acquire despite how irrelevant it was to the current situation. All of the universities where he might have spoken, those towns were checked, even though Charles Ofdensen had no doubt thought of them. At this point, nothing wasn’t worth double-checking. Everything on the page - his birth date, his home address, his wife’s name, his wife’s -
His wife’s name. Crozier pounded so hard on the audio link to his troops he almost broke it.
“Sir?”
“Start a search for any long-term care patient named Arthur Bresinger.”
The next morning, he had a result - just one. Ten minutes later he was on a plane to Germany.
The United States had extensive military bases and hospitals in Germany, and Selatcia’s initial contact had been, as far as Crozier could tell, with the United States government. They had ex-soldiers as regular patients and at least one psychiatric hospital. They had facilities, but his assistant, who was getting a promotion, found only one that wasn’t officially listed but was still open to taking patients, at least off the books. Or, just one patient. A. Bresinger, male.
The outer shell of the base was nothing to look at. Technically, this was a former hospital from World War II that was used for wounded American soldiers after the Allied victory, only to close in the 1970’s. It now operated - again, officially - as a storage facility for medical supplies, which explained any comings and goings. There wasn’t any activity when he arrived, 4 am German time. There wasn’t even a guard at the door. The real security didn’t start until he found the back room elevator, this one in top-notch working order. Two American soldiers with assault rifles inspected his credentials very carefully despite him being in uniform, then wordlessly opened the elevator with a key to let him in. There was only one direction to go: down.
The basement was considerably larger than the building above it, and with only the best high tech in both military security and medical equipment. A single nurse sat at the desk, reading a magazine. She was startled. “Can I help you?”
“I’m here to see Arthur Ofdensen.”
“You can ‘see’ him but that’s about it. You’re aware of his condition?” She moved to put her hand into a fingerprint-taking device that opened a heavy, machine-sealed door to the actual ward.
“Yes.” Technically he wasn’t, not the full extent of it, but he wouldn’t be having any long conversations with Arthur Ofdensen, this morning or ever.
There were two beds and a curtain separating them, like any other hospital room. And like any long-term care ward, there are more tubes than he could possibly imagines uses for going into the tiny person swallowed by the bedding around him.
It wasn’t even really a person. It was a mummy, just one with a heartbeat, or so the monitor assured him. Arthur Ofdensen - and his wristband did read his correct name, no matter what was on outside records - must have been short in real life to shrink that much, leaving him little more than the size of a child. The flesh around his bones was no more than a thin covering. Some hair remained, all of it grey, on his chin and head, but only in patches, and it stuck out oddly because the skin had receded, like a dead person’s would. His finger nails were long, too, and for the same reason, not because of poor care. When a person died, their skin pulled back, revealing more nail and giving the false impression to someone who might open the coffin later that skin and fingernails grew after death. This was a myth, and Ofdensen also wasn’t dead. G-d, if Crozier looked closely, he could see his lungs. Not just the depression of his chest, but the two organs individually operating in concert. Ofdensen was living and breathing, but not by much.
Why Charles Ofdensen might be hesitant to find this at first, and his sister not want to at all, Crozier could understand. There was even a faint smell, despite the best detergents and cleansers working against it, of active decay. Crozier stepped back, not covering his nose out of respect for the, well, almost dead.
To his left, he could see that the other person wasn’t much better. The file he requested was only on one person, so that’s the information that he got, but the facility held two. Crozier didn’t want to see, but he couldn’t possibly leave without doing so. Not after coming so far. Maybe JFK was still alive in there, or Jimmy Hoffa.
It was not JFK, though to be fair his hair was brown. He had a complete skull, but that was a hell of a compliment. Like a mummy, his long fingers, made longer-looking by how thin they were, were turned inwards and his head to the side, like his last moment as - well, not this - were agony and he was crying out for death that would never come. The only thing that marked him as a living human worthy of a notice was his perfectly ordinary hospital wristband, which even pulled tight Crozier could have slipped off, as if he was going to touch that thing. He squinted. That thing had a name.
Charles Ofdensen.
Crozier really shouldn’t have been surprised to back into Selatcia. As it turned out, he would have backed into Ofdensen - the moving one - but Charles was busy retching into the garbage can.
Selatcia barely looked at Crozier. “I told you not to look.” The voice was without the double-speaker sound, or the hiss at the end that implied importance. It was Selatcia’s voice, but more human.
Ofdensen didn’t have any immediate response, being occupied, but he eventually got a hold of himself and sunk into the only chair as Selatcia pulled the curtain around on the track so it blocked the view of the other Charles. The real one, one might say.
“I didn’t know in which direction not to look!” Ofdensen was exasperated, and still pretty green. “You just teleported me in here. I had no directional bearings - “
“Insolence.”
“Just ... I cannot deal with this now.” Ofdensen looked at Crozier. “I may not seem very appreciativee at the moment, but thank you for locating this facility. Someone else wasn’t giving up the location and necessary measures were required. And menacing as he might look, my father is not about to kill you. In fact, nothing I say here matters, because he’s going to wipe your mind clean the second we walk out of here. He was always going to. But that doesn’t mean I shouldn’t keep up my end of the bargain.”
Selatcia seemed to be extra intimidating at this moment, even though he wasn’t trying to be, so Crozier directed his attention to Charles. “Did he always know?”
“No. I told him when I thought you were getting close. I don’t want to see my father - my real father - so much as I want him to see him. If you know what I mean.” Ofdensen glared at Selatcia. “Because he should know what he’s done to both of himself. To both of us.” He got up and pulled the curtain fully around, so the real Arthur Ofdensen was exposed and the real Charles Ofdensen was hidden. Selatcia’s expression was hidden behind his usual frown, but he was looking.
And he didn’t throw up.
Neither Charles, but maybe he had nothing left in him. He was a little wobbly as he approached the bedside of the shriveled little man who still technically was his father. He look at him closely, maybe because the shock was over, or maybe because it wasn’t him. All Charles Ofdensen had now for a father was this shriveled corpse and Selatcia, both bad choices.
Which, honestly, explained a lot. Almost everything. Ofdensen’s virtual run of the place at the compound and almost total disinterest in it. His sudden ability to act like a whiny brat in front of Selatcia without fear of retribution. His total assurance that at the end, he would go free to pursue his own destiny, even if everyone else in the Tribunal would agree that it was a terrible idea. His opinion that unlike everyone else, his brain could not be read by Selatcia, because maybe he couldn’t. Maybe it was a genetic thing.
“I made a deal with my father - and I do make deals with everyone, that’s just how I view them,” Ofdensen explained. “He wanted to show me everything about the prophecy, everything on his side, to see if I would join him. I agreed, but only if I really needed his help. He just waited for the opportunity. With my profession and the assassins you sent after Dethklok, it was only a matter of time. And now I’ve seen everything.” He turned away from the patient to the living thing, whatever it was. “But my answer’s still the same. I still like metal.”
Selatcia just stared. It was the only response needed.
“I still have one request. I would like some depth perception.”
“I am very bad at refusing you,” Selatcia said, and stretched out his arm. Behind the curtain, something went crunch in a wet, nasty way. It made Crozier sick to his stomach just hearing it, and his system had already taken a beating. Ofdensen shivered, then removed his eye patch to reveal a healthy if rather unfocused eye.
“You just keep yourself around for spare parts?” Crozier said. Hell, Ofdensen said they weren’t going to kill him. Besides, they probably would have done it already.
“I’m a little more sentimental than that, thank you very much,” Ofdensen said. Selatcia voiced no opinion.
“Who started the fire?” Crozier was too stunned to know why his questions were ordered that way. They just popped up and he said them.
“I did. I only meant to burn one book. I even did it in the bathtub so it wouldn’t catch,” Ofdensen said. “Which it didn’t, because now you have it and know all about Sumerian magic avatar creation rituals. I dropped the match on the rug, and that’s when the fight started. As you can imagine, we’re both very tough, so it went longer than it should have. So long the whole house burned down.” It was harder to tell if he was more sad or angry about losing his childhood home.
“It was not yours to burn,” Selatcia said.
“And I didn’t burn it so that’s besides the point now, isn’t it?” Ofdensen turned back to Crozier. “The rest, you’ve figured out. People are more familiar with Jewish golems, all mud and magic and no soul. Also, uncontrollable. More a parable, really. According to Dad, the Sumerians could do it for real - make a body out of dust and transfer the soul, and I didn’t believe him until I was ... well, whatever I am now. I like to think of myself as human, but maybe I’m just being nice.”
“Where does,” he didn’t want to say ‘Selatcia,’ “Professor Ofdensen come in?”
“This is where the story gets unpleasant - or I think it does. When he brought me back, it was from somewhere bad. The land of feeding tubes and persistent vegetative states. For the first few days, I was rather, shall we say, pliable to whatever he said, and he - a reasonably healthy middle-aged professor - wanted the same done to himself. Maybe to see if he could. Or to be so big. I should not have made him so big, but I did whatever I was told. Under command I killed my real father, just not too dead. From there, our relationship went downhill. He continued studying black magic and I wanted to go back to college. When he started about doing it to other people, drastic measures were taken to show I didn’t approve. The rest - well, you can see why Susie’s an alcoholic, seeing it all for herself. Sometimes I think she can only stand me because I look like I used to. My father went too far.”
“You do not yet know what it is like to be old,” Selatcia said to his son. He finally looked directly at Crozier. “You know too much. But I will be lenient ... this time.” He raised his hand to Crozier’s face.
The last thing Crozier heard was, “Dad, don’t be so dramatic.”
*********************************
General Crozier dropped to the ground, a blank look in his eyes visible before he was completely limp. Charles couldn’t help but feel sorry for him - he had done so much and received no appreciation that he would know about.
“He tried to kill you,” Selatcia said, not so much reading his mind as his expression. “On the field. He had the rifle, but I intervened.”
“Just about everyone seemed to be trying to kill me that night,” Charles said. He looked at Crozier’s body because it was easier than looking in the other direction, at his father’s body. He was still rather sick about the whole thing, but he had no regrets. “Thank you anyway.” It was half-hearted, partially because he wouldn’t bring himself to emotionally connect with Selatcia, and partially because he had some memory of the masked assassin beating the shit out of him and his father not doing anything about that.
Selatcia said nothing. As always. He was able to communicate so much with so little. It was ingenious but frustrating. Charles couldn’t tell if Selatcia put up walls between him and the rest of humanity or if they were already there. But at least if he didn’t speak, he did listen, perhaps better than anyone, even if he didn’t take their advice. He stayed out of Charles’s dreams now - he could only put thoughts in, not take them out, and only when Charles was asleep or impaired. They fought especially hard when Charles first pulled his morphine drip for precisely that reason, not because Selatcia wanted access but because (he claimed) Charles would heal faster if he wasn’t in constant pain.
Charles looked at his father’s old body with just a glance and wondered if Arthur Ofdensen could feel anything. He hadn’t been effectively brain dead during the ritual, as Charles himself had been weeks earlier. There might still be neurons firing in there. “Do you like it? What you’ve done to yourself?”
Selatcia looked without any hesitation and said, “Do you really think looking at this thing is worse than other things I have seen?” Oddly, he added, “Someday perhaps, you will be a father.”
Meaning, looking at the old, definitely brain dead body of Charles Ofdensen was much, much worse. Arthur Ofdensen was a kind man who might have been able to say that outright, but Selatcia couldn’t. It was the worst part of the transformation. “You could have just told me the location,” Charles said, a bit on the defensive. “And saved Crozier the trouble. It was dangerous, letting him get this close.”
“You know my reasons,” Selatcia said. He wanted to spare him the pain. That wasn’t so implicit, but Charles could read between the lines. Selatcia glanced casually at his other body, as if it was a thing he could toss in the garbage, even though he couldn’t possibly think that. He could pull the plug and live - they were both fairly sure about that - but something made him keep both of them alive, even if they could never go back, the costs were high, and the applications minimal. “You do not know what it is like to be old. You do not know what is like to lose a wife. And you do not know what it is like to almost lose your only son. You are very bright, but you do not yet know these things. Hopefully you will never learn them.” It was his father’s longest speech in years. Selatcia gestured to his old body again. “I regret nothing.”
This time, it was Charles who said nothing. He had to stand his ground, too. Like father, like son. Facing Selatcia, it made his stomach churn to think it, and it was made worse by the fact that it was true.
And he really wished he hadn’t seen his body. Some things, one was better off not knowing.
“You will not join me,” Selatcia said, “but you will aid me.”
“If that’s what your prophecy says, sure. I am an expert at keeping Dethklok alive. Speaking of which ... But I have somewhere to go first.” Selatcia really couldn’t read his mind, it seemed, so he just told him.
*********************************
“Charlie!” Susan came running out into the sunbathed portico while Charles was still temporarily blinded by the glare. A moment ago he had been in partial darkness in Germany, so he couldn’t blame himself for not being more aware. She looked a little strange because he only had contacts for one of his eyes, but otherwise, basically the same. Too thin and too wobbly for so early in the morning. Or was it afternoon now? It was hard to keep up with Selatcia, who was now nowhere to be seen, or at least not visible. Charles stumbled a little bit when she hugged him because of the ferocity of it, but she didn’t appear to notice. “I knew you weren’t dead.”
“I’m sorry I couldn’t actually tell you,” he said, resuming his normal composure, “but you know how things are.”
She dragged him into the house, perhaps more because she didn’t want to let go of him, and offered him a drink. He had to be going soon so it wasn’t the best idea, but he needed to feel human again. “Maybe something to settle my stomach.” Teleporting was also a disquieting feeling, to say nothing of what happened to his breakfast.
“I have soda for Connor. He’s home on alternate weekends now.” She was suddenly the perfect housewife, serving him ginger ale and crackers while he sat at the table, staring at the empty wine bottles in the recycle bin. At least she recycled. He was a little put off because she usually wasn’t this excited to see him the few times a year that she did. “He’s applying to Yale. Maybe I should have told him not to.”
“There’s no reason he shouldn’t.”
She returned with the drinks and snacks and something for herself. “You were hurt.” She was referring to the scar.
“A lot worse than that. Surgery will fix it.”
“You were always so obsessed with your appearance. Do you have to go all the way to London for your suits?”
“They’re nice suits.”
“Your punk phase was the worst. Thank G-d you didn’t get a tattoo.” She had a number of them, none visible at the moment except the tribal band around her arm. It hadn’t aged well. “Where have you been?”
“I can’t tell you, and you wouldn’t want to know.”
“That’s the way it always is.”
She deserved better. He knew that. He did eat a cracker before having the courage to answer. “I was with Dad.”
“Dad like ...”
“The one who’s not in the hospital. And, a few hours ago, the one who’s in the hospital.”
“Oh! Some military guy came by, asking about the fire.”
“General Crozier. He was working for me.”
“Oh thank G-d. I thought I had done something really wrong.” Her fingers ran along the stem of her crystal wine glass. “How did he look?” She was not asking about General Crozier.
“I don’t really want to describe it. I don’t even want to think about it. And the living one ... is exactly the same as when you saw him last.” Meaning, huge and otherworldly. “He wanted to show me his business.”
“The Sumerian shit.”
“Yes.”
“Tell me you didn’t get into it.”
He shook his head. “I have prior obligations.”
“I thought you being around Dethklok was bad. Remember that time the rafter came down on your head? And it was on fire.”
That was way back, before the Crystal Mountains contract, when Dethklok was playing the same dives as everyone else and selling CDs out of the back of a van. It wasn’t the first or last time he was injured at a show, but it went with the territory. He distinctly remembered her arrival at the hospital to yell at him as they put surgical staples into the skin at the top of his head. The head bleed a lot more than other parts of the body, so it looked worse than it was. She thought she could talk him out of managing what she called a garage band, and he was still dealing with the ringing sound in his head from the pyrotechnic explosion. He only caught about half of what she said. No amount of “Can we do this later?”-s would make her go away, which was all he wanted at that exact moment. Now, over a decade later, she was just concerned.
“I do remember that,” he answered. “I would say things are safer now, but I’d be lying. But going into what Dad considers the family business would be worse.”
“Yeah.” She just believed him. She had good reason to take him on his word. “Are you going to see him again?”
“Eventually. Why? Do you want to see him?”
“No!” It was only her initial reaction. Then she softened. “But you could, you know, say hi for me. If you think it would be relevant to him. If part of him is still Dad.”
“I wouldn’t call him that if he wasn’t.” Charles wasn’t precisely sure how he really felt about Selatcia, but maybe he never would be. “I’ll pass the word along.” In the silence that followed he picked up on the television playing in the background on her kitchen counter. “Is that the Dethklok minute?”
“One track mind, Charlie.” She shook her head. “They have a concert tonight. I know because the news hasn’t shut up about it. And I might have been watching. In case.” In case he appeared, otherwise.
He finished the ginger ale and stood up. “In that case, I have to go.”
“To Dethklok’s daring rescue?”
He smiled, because she was smiling, and she understood. “Something like that.”
End
Kudos to anyone who guessed the big reveal!
Title: Ancient History
Author: DJ_the_Writer
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: Cursing
Pairings: None
Characters: Charles, Crozier, Selatcia
Summary: Charles has a brutal nine months. General Crozier doesn’t fair much better.
Part 1 is here.
The only advantage Charles could see to having one bad eye covered with a patch, other than a convincing reason to celebrate “talk like a pirate” day all year, was that it kept sand out. The same could not be said of his good eye. “Ow.” Now he knew why all the men around him in desert fatigues were wearing goggles. He wiped his eye with his sleeve and went back to shaking his iPhone, trying to get reception for the Dethklok minute. When he looked up at Selatcia, he could tell the bigger man was contemplating tearing the phone out of his much smaller hands.
Selatcia directed him to the massive archaeological dig in front of them. “What do you see?”
“A large hole in the ground. Or my ass. I’ve never been able to tell.”
“Remember the prophecy.”
“Right. This is where the aliens from Planet X are arriving in 2012 to destroy the Mayan Empire and put Lord Xenu on the throne.”
Selatcia glared at him.
“I did do the required reading. I just really hate archaeology.” He blinked. “And sand. I really hate sand.”
Selatcia began to recite the prophecy again. It sounded so much better in Sumerian, and the wind seemed to kick up around him. Selatcia was just like that. Charles was listening, and Selatcia knew that. He just didn’t need to say it.
In the heat of the day, which seemed to be all day, Charles rested in the tent, doing Sunday’s New York Times puzzle to keep from nodding off. He was always tired. He was healing, Selatcia kept reminding him. Bones didn’t knit overnight. He still had a metal knee brace on over his pants and walked with a limp. And his eye wasn’t going to get any better, for the time being. He hated the patch but it looked much worse without it.
To be back in his office at Mordhaus ... if it still existed, and wasn’t in pieces, burned down, or shattered if the house stopped hovering for some reason. He was used to being around fire from living with the most brutal metal band ever, but it brought back awful memories, especially when it was all around him ...
He woke in a panic. He was about to scream for or at Selatcia, but this one probably wasn’t his. There were no prophecies, no ancient wisdom, no medieval armor that looked more like it belonged in a Renaissance Faire than the Renaissance, and no associations with the number five. It was just a memory. He counted down from ten and his breathing slowed. He needed a shower. And to get away from all this sand.
*********************************
Crozier didn’t see Ofdensen again until he returned from yet another mission, this one to Europe to monitor some large packages being purchased by Dethklok for their upcoming concert. It turned out they contained nickels and filet minions. He would never figure these people out.
Ofdensen was more or less on his feet, but was almost always by Selatcia’s side, or it seemed that way when Crozier had a spare moment. The base was secluded enough that even the most central Tribunal members didn’t come here, and still didn’t know about his involvement, on whatever level it was. He didn’t contribute to conversations but he always seemed to know what they were talking about, no matter how classified. His interest in their discussion went in and out. Sometimes he was listening to music in the back corner (always Dethklok, audible through the ear buds) but he was there. There were rumors that Ofdensen was Selatcia’s new protégé. Crozier could see how those were started. Ofdensen was really on his guard perhaps, but he still didn’t worry about making Dethklok-related conversation in the hallway. He wanted to know what Crozier had found.
“The most expensive concert ever? Really? That’s a terrible idea.”
“That’s what you would say to them?”
“What kind of manager would I be if I didn’t? But I would basically have to trick them or threaten them into listening.”
“So you don’t think blowing up metal coinage is dangerous? Because that sounds like the plan.”
Ofdensen shrugged. “They’ve done things that are much safer and still managed to kill I don’t know ... thousands of people. Accidentally, I would add. You can’t prove anything legally.”
“You’ve made sure of that.”
“What kind of lawyer would I be if I didn’t? Anyway, these guys could hurt people with tinker toys. You’re standing in the path of a moving train here. You’ve got to think of them as a moving train. With rows and rows of unnecessary spikes.”
“You’re helping us out now?”
“Look, if you haven’t figured this out now with all your self-proclaimed experts, there is nothing I can do to help you,” Ofdensen said. “And when I’m not legally dead, I will write my Congressman.”
“Yes. You do that. Congress loves cutting military spending.”
Ofdensen grumbled. They met in the bar latter. This time, Ofdensen was properly attired.
“I spoke to your sister.”
“What?”
Crozier slid a singed book across the table. Rituals and Ceremonies in the Ancient Near East. There was a bookmark in it, but Ofdensen didn’t open it. He didn’t even want to touch it. He took his hands off the bar to get them further away from it. “That thing should have burned like everything else.”
“Who lit the fire?”
“First of all, the fire has no relation to my father’s current location. Second, I wouldn’t begin to answer that question without my lawyer present.”
“You are a lawyer.”
“And that’s why I know when I would need one.” Using a bar napkin so his hands would even touch the pages, he slid the book back. “What did my sister say?”
“She knows you’re alive, even if the rest of the world doesn’t.”
“She has good instincts. Not psychic abilities, if that’s what you’re thinking. Just instincts.” He sighed. “She makes bad choices, but in case you didn’t notice, so does everyone else.”
It was probably a bad choice to read that book, but Crozier did. Very little of it made sense, when taken as literally as he knew to take it. What he did understand was that all of the pieces would fall into place when he found Professor Ofdensen.
*********************************
Maybe he shouldn’t have told Crozier anything, have started him on this quest, because Crozier easily became obsessed. Charles couldn’t go back on it now, and there was no reason to. Charles exhausted all of his considerable resources long ago, when he first found out about the Tribunal from Rockso’s escapades (the only thing that fucking clown was good for). It wouldn’t stop anything, or move anything along. It was a morbid fascination more than anything else. He just knew that he couldn’t go on not knowing without drinking himself to death like his sister was trying to do, and she was barely involved, other than being related to both persons in question. She deserved to be in a normal family.
His last real conversation with his father - before he’d gone back to his dorm and inhaled what he thought was only weed with maybe a little acid, not formaldehyde (he wasn’t stupid, but his dealer was) - was not a good one. It wasn’t easy having a dad on campus.
“You said if I made Dean’s List, you would leave me alone.”
“Not to ruin your life!”
He sighed. “I like metal.”
“It’s a bad scene. And don’t think I don’t know! They’re dangerous people.”
“Dad, this is college. It’s not going to turn into an episode of the History Channel’s Gangland. Which, by the way, you should stop recording.”
His father shook his head. It was hard for Ofdensen Senior to be intimidating, because he was even shorter than his son - who was pretty short, he would admit on a good day. “It’s not just the drugs, which are bad enough, or where you get them. That music - it’s worse than you think.”
“You said that about Snakes ‘n’ Barrels and that was glam rock.”
“And look what it did to your sister!”
Nothing that couldn’t be fixed with a run to the drugstore for a morning-after pill, really. And she had gone straight after that. She was also on Dean’s List, at Princeton. “You don’t understand.” Parents just didn’t understand.
No, he didn’t understand. Well, everyone had regrets. Just maybe not as severe as his.
On his way to the library he got a glare from Olaag, just for the sake of it, he supposed. Olaag was convinced that his position as Selatcia’s loyal right-hand man was threatened, and no amount of reasonable conversation with voices held at reasonable decibels could reassure him that he could not be more wrong. When Charles was healed, he was on the first plane or helicopter or whatever the hell would get him out of here back to Mordhaus. His part of the deal, as far as he was concerned, was done. Selatcia had shown him everything in cautious detail over several months, taking him across the world to do it. It wasn’t so much that Charles wasn’t convinced as that he didn’t care.
He cared about Dethklok.
*********************************
General Crozier knew he was running out of time. Ofdensen was on his feet and talking more openly about leaving. They all understood he wasn’t a prisoner here. Selatcia would let him walk out any day he wanted to. If anything, sometimes it seemed like he was calling the shots. And when he went, so did Crozier’s answers about Selatcia. This was a problem.
Crozier put his best and most-trustworthy men that Selatcia had never interacted with on the job. Hospitals were exhausted, public and private, as were all military bases in the United States. They were working their way through the secret ones, but where would Selatcia - and Crozier assumed it to be Selatcia - hide Professor Ofdensen?
Crozier stared at Professor Ofdensen’s CV, which was not easy to acquire despite how irrelevant it was to the current situation. All of the universities where he might have spoken, those towns were checked, even though Charles Ofdensen had no doubt thought of them. At this point, nothing wasn’t worth double-checking. Everything on the page - his birth date, his home address, his wife’s name, his wife’s -
His wife’s name. Crozier pounded so hard on the audio link to his troops he almost broke it.
“Sir?”
“Start a search for any long-term care patient named Arthur Bresinger.”
The next morning, he had a result - just one. Ten minutes later he was on a plane to Germany.
The United States had extensive military bases and hospitals in Germany, and Selatcia’s initial contact had been, as far as Crozier could tell, with the United States government. They had ex-soldiers as regular patients and at least one psychiatric hospital. They had facilities, but his assistant, who was getting a promotion, found only one that wasn’t officially listed but was still open to taking patients, at least off the books. Or, just one patient. A. Bresinger, male.
The outer shell of the base was nothing to look at. Technically, this was a former hospital from World War II that was used for wounded American soldiers after the Allied victory, only to close in the 1970’s. It now operated - again, officially - as a storage facility for medical supplies, which explained any comings and goings. There wasn’t any activity when he arrived, 4 am German time. There wasn’t even a guard at the door. The real security didn’t start until he found the back room elevator, this one in top-notch working order. Two American soldiers with assault rifles inspected his credentials very carefully despite him being in uniform, then wordlessly opened the elevator with a key to let him in. There was only one direction to go: down.
The basement was considerably larger than the building above it, and with only the best high tech in both military security and medical equipment. A single nurse sat at the desk, reading a magazine. She was startled. “Can I help you?”
“I’m here to see Arthur Ofdensen.”
“You can ‘see’ him but that’s about it. You’re aware of his condition?” She moved to put her hand into a fingerprint-taking device that opened a heavy, machine-sealed door to the actual ward.
“Yes.” Technically he wasn’t, not the full extent of it, but he wouldn’t be having any long conversations with Arthur Ofdensen, this morning or ever.
There were two beds and a curtain separating them, like any other hospital room. And like any long-term care ward, there are more tubes than he could possibly imagines uses for going into the tiny person swallowed by the bedding around him.
It wasn’t even really a person. It was a mummy, just one with a heartbeat, or so the monitor assured him. Arthur Ofdensen - and his wristband did read his correct name, no matter what was on outside records - must have been short in real life to shrink that much, leaving him little more than the size of a child. The flesh around his bones was no more than a thin covering. Some hair remained, all of it grey, on his chin and head, but only in patches, and it stuck out oddly because the skin had receded, like a dead person’s would. His finger nails were long, too, and for the same reason, not because of poor care. When a person died, their skin pulled back, revealing more nail and giving the false impression to someone who might open the coffin later that skin and fingernails grew after death. This was a myth, and Ofdensen also wasn’t dead. G-d, if Crozier looked closely, he could see his lungs. Not just the depression of his chest, but the two organs individually operating in concert. Ofdensen was living and breathing, but not by much.
Why Charles Ofdensen might be hesitant to find this at first, and his sister not want to at all, Crozier could understand. There was even a faint smell, despite the best detergents and cleansers working against it, of active decay. Crozier stepped back, not covering his nose out of respect for the, well, almost dead.
To his left, he could see that the other person wasn’t much better. The file he requested was only on one person, so that’s the information that he got, but the facility held two. Crozier didn’t want to see, but he couldn’t possibly leave without doing so. Not after coming so far. Maybe JFK was still alive in there, or Jimmy Hoffa.
It was not JFK, though to be fair his hair was brown. He had a complete skull, but that was a hell of a compliment. Like a mummy, his long fingers, made longer-looking by how thin they were, were turned inwards and his head to the side, like his last moment as - well, not this - were agony and he was crying out for death that would never come. The only thing that marked him as a living human worthy of a notice was his perfectly ordinary hospital wristband, which even pulled tight Crozier could have slipped off, as if he was going to touch that thing. He squinted. That thing had a name.
Charles Ofdensen.
Crozier really shouldn’t have been surprised to back into Selatcia. As it turned out, he would have backed into Ofdensen - the moving one - but Charles was busy retching into the garbage can.
Selatcia barely looked at Crozier. “I told you not to look.” The voice was without the double-speaker sound, or the hiss at the end that implied importance. It was Selatcia’s voice, but more human.
Ofdensen didn’t have any immediate response, being occupied, but he eventually got a hold of himself and sunk into the only chair as Selatcia pulled the curtain around on the track so it blocked the view of the other Charles. The real one, one might say.
“I didn’t know in which direction not to look!” Ofdensen was exasperated, and still pretty green. “You just teleported me in here. I had no directional bearings - “
“Insolence.”
“Just ... I cannot deal with this now.” Ofdensen looked at Crozier. “I may not seem very appreciativee at the moment, but thank you for locating this facility. Someone else wasn’t giving up the location and necessary measures were required. And menacing as he might look, my father is not about to kill you. In fact, nothing I say here matters, because he’s going to wipe your mind clean the second we walk out of here. He was always going to. But that doesn’t mean I shouldn’t keep up my end of the bargain.”
Selatcia seemed to be extra intimidating at this moment, even though he wasn’t trying to be, so Crozier directed his attention to Charles. “Did he always know?”
“No. I told him when I thought you were getting close. I don’t want to see my father - my real father - so much as I want him to see him. If you know what I mean.” Ofdensen glared at Selatcia. “Because he should know what he’s done to both of himself. To both of us.” He got up and pulled the curtain fully around, so the real Arthur Ofdensen was exposed and the real Charles Ofdensen was hidden. Selatcia’s expression was hidden behind his usual frown, but he was looking.
And he didn’t throw up.
Neither Charles, but maybe he had nothing left in him. He was a little wobbly as he approached the bedside of the shriveled little man who still technically was his father. He look at him closely, maybe because the shock was over, or maybe because it wasn’t him. All Charles Ofdensen had now for a father was this shriveled corpse and Selatcia, both bad choices.
Which, honestly, explained a lot. Almost everything. Ofdensen’s virtual run of the place at the compound and almost total disinterest in it. His sudden ability to act like a whiny brat in front of Selatcia without fear of retribution. His total assurance that at the end, he would go free to pursue his own destiny, even if everyone else in the Tribunal would agree that it was a terrible idea. His opinion that unlike everyone else, his brain could not be read by Selatcia, because maybe he couldn’t. Maybe it was a genetic thing.
“I made a deal with my father - and I do make deals with everyone, that’s just how I view them,” Ofdensen explained. “He wanted to show me everything about the prophecy, everything on his side, to see if I would join him. I agreed, but only if I really needed his help. He just waited for the opportunity. With my profession and the assassins you sent after Dethklok, it was only a matter of time. And now I’ve seen everything.” He turned away from the patient to the living thing, whatever it was. “But my answer’s still the same. I still like metal.”
Selatcia just stared. It was the only response needed.
“I still have one request. I would like some depth perception.”
“I am very bad at refusing you,” Selatcia said, and stretched out his arm. Behind the curtain, something went crunch in a wet, nasty way. It made Crozier sick to his stomach just hearing it, and his system had already taken a beating. Ofdensen shivered, then removed his eye patch to reveal a healthy if rather unfocused eye.
“You just keep yourself around for spare parts?” Crozier said. Hell, Ofdensen said they weren’t going to kill him. Besides, they probably would have done it already.
“I’m a little more sentimental than that, thank you very much,” Ofdensen said. Selatcia voiced no opinion.
“Who started the fire?” Crozier was too stunned to know why his questions were ordered that way. They just popped up and he said them.
“I did. I only meant to burn one book. I even did it in the bathtub so it wouldn’t catch,” Ofdensen said. “Which it didn’t, because now you have it and know all about Sumerian magic avatar creation rituals. I dropped the match on the rug, and that’s when the fight started. As you can imagine, we’re both very tough, so it went longer than it should have. So long the whole house burned down.” It was harder to tell if he was more sad or angry about losing his childhood home.
“It was not yours to burn,” Selatcia said.
“And I didn’t burn it so that’s besides the point now, isn’t it?” Ofdensen turned back to Crozier. “The rest, you’ve figured out. People are more familiar with Jewish golems, all mud and magic and no soul. Also, uncontrollable. More a parable, really. According to Dad, the Sumerians could do it for real - make a body out of dust and transfer the soul, and I didn’t believe him until I was ... well, whatever I am now. I like to think of myself as human, but maybe I’m just being nice.”
“Where does,” he didn’t want to say ‘Selatcia,’ “Professor Ofdensen come in?”
“This is where the story gets unpleasant - or I think it does. When he brought me back, it was from somewhere bad. The land of feeding tubes and persistent vegetative states. For the first few days, I was rather, shall we say, pliable to whatever he said, and he - a reasonably healthy middle-aged professor - wanted the same done to himself. Maybe to see if he could. Or to be so big. I should not have made him so big, but I did whatever I was told. Under command I killed my real father, just not too dead. From there, our relationship went downhill. He continued studying black magic and I wanted to go back to college. When he started about doing it to other people, drastic measures were taken to show I didn’t approve. The rest - well, you can see why Susie’s an alcoholic, seeing it all for herself. Sometimes I think she can only stand me because I look like I used to. My father went too far.”
“You do not yet know what it is like to be old,” Selatcia said to his son. He finally looked directly at Crozier. “You know too much. But I will be lenient ... this time.” He raised his hand to Crozier’s face.
The last thing Crozier heard was, “Dad, don’t be so dramatic.”
*********************************
General Crozier dropped to the ground, a blank look in his eyes visible before he was completely limp. Charles couldn’t help but feel sorry for him - he had done so much and received no appreciation that he would know about.
“He tried to kill you,” Selatcia said, not so much reading his mind as his expression. “On the field. He had the rifle, but I intervened.”
“Just about everyone seemed to be trying to kill me that night,” Charles said. He looked at Crozier’s body because it was easier than looking in the other direction, at his father’s body. He was still rather sick about the whole thing, but he had no regrets. “Thank you anyway.” It was half-hearted, partially because he wouldn’t bring himself to emotionally connect with Selatcia, and partially because he had some memory of the masked assassin beating the shit out of him and his father not doing anything about that.
Selatcia said nothing. As always. He was able to communicate so much with so little. It was ingenious but frustrating. Charles couldn’t tell if Selatcia put up walls between him and the rest of humanity or if they were already there. But at least if he didn’t speak, he did listen, perhaps better than anyone, even if he didn’t take their advice. He stayed out of Charles’s dreams now - he could only put thoughts in, not take them out, and only when Charles was asleep or impaired. They fought especially hard when Charles first pulled his morphine drip for precisely that reason, not because Selatcia wanted access but because (he claimed) Charles would heal faster if he wasn’t in constant pain.
Charles looked at his father’s old body with just a glance and wondered if Arthur Ofdensen could feel anything. He hadn’t been effectively brain dead during the ritual, as Charles himself had been weeks earlier. There might still be neurons firing in there. “Do you like it? What you’ve done to yourself?”
Selatcia looked without any hesitation and said, “Do you really think looking at this thing is worse than other things I have seen?” Oddly, he added, “Someday perhaps, you will be a father.”
Meaning, looking at the old, definitely brain dead body of Charles Ofdensen was much, much worse. Arthur Ofdensen was a kind man who might have been able to say that outright, but Selatcia couldn’t. It was the worst part of the transformation. “You could have just told me the location,” Charles said, a bit on the defensive. “And saved Crozier the trouble. It was dangerous, letting him get this close.”
“You know my reasons,” Selatcia said. He wanted to spare him the pain. That wasn’t so implicit, but Charles could read between the lines. Selatcia glanced casually at his other body, as if it was a thing he could toss in the garbage, even though he couldn’t possibly think that. He could pull the plug and live - they were both fairly sure about that - but something made him keep both of them alive, even if they could never go back, the costs were high, and the applications minimal. “You do not know what it is like to be old. You do not know what is like to lose a wife. And you do not know what it is like to almost lose your only son. You are very bright, but you do not yet know these things. Hopefully you will never learn them.” It was his father’s longest speech in years. Selatcia gestured to his old body again. “I regret nothing.”
This time, it was Charles who said nothing. He had to stand his ground, too. Like father, like son. Facing Selatcia, it made his stomach churn to think it, and it was made worse by the fact that it was true.
And he really wished he hadn’t seen his body. Some things, one was better off not knowing.
“You will not join me,” Selatcia said, “but you will aid me.”
“If that’s what your prophecy says, sure. I am an expert at keeping Dethklok alive. Speaking of which ... But I have somewhere to go first.” Selatcia really couldn’t read his mind, it seemed, so he just told him.
*********************************
“Charlie!” Susan came running out into the sunbathed portico while Charles was still temporarily blinded by the glare. A moment ago he had been in partial darkness in Germany, so he couldn’t blame himself for not being more aware. She looked a little strange because he only had contacts for one of his eyes, but otherwise, basically the same. Too thin and too wobbly for so early in the morning. Or was it afternoon now? It was hard to keep up with Selatcia, who was now nowhere to be seen, or at least not visible. Charles stumbled a little bit when she hugged him because of the ferocity of it, but she didn’t appear to notice. “I knew you weren’t dead.”
“I’m sorry I couldn’t actually tell you,” he said, resuming his normal composure, “but you know how things are.”
She dragged him into the house, perhaps more because she didn’t want to let go of him, and offered him a drink. He had to be going soon so it wasn’t the best idea, but he needed to feel human again. “Maybe something to settle my stomach.” Teleporting was also a disquieting feeling, to say nothing of what happened to his breakfast.
“I have soda for Connor. He’s home on alternate weekends now.” She was suddenly the perfect housewife, serving him ginger ale and crackers while he sat at the table, staring at the empty wine bottles in the recycle bin. At least she recycled. He was a little put off because she usually wasn’t this excited to see him the few times a year that she did. “He’s applying to Yale. Maybe I should have told him not to.”
“There’s no reason he shouldn’t.”
She returned with the drinks and snacks and something for herself. “You were hurt.” She was referring to the scar.
“A lot worse than that. Surgery will fix it.”
“You were always so obsessed with your appearance. Do you have to go all the way to London for your suits?”
“They’re nice suits.”
“Your punk phase was the worst. Thank G-d you didn’t get a tattoo.” She had a number of them, none visible at the moment except the tribal band around her arm. It hadn’t aged well. “Where have you been?”
“I can’t tell you, and you wouldn’t want to know.”
“That’s the way it always is.”
She deserved better. He knew that. He did eat a cracker before having the courage to answer. “I was with Dad.”
“Dad like ...”
“The one who’s not in the hospital. And, a few hours ago, the one who’s in the hospital.”
“Oh! Some military guy came by, asking about the fire.”
“General Crozier. He was working for me.”
“Oh thank G-d. I thought I had done something really wrong.” Her fingers ran along the stem of her crystal wine glass. “How did he look?” She was not asking about General Crozier.
“I don’t really want to describe it. I don’t even want to think about it. And the living one ... is exactly the same as when you saw him last.” Meaning, huge and otherworldly. “He wanted to show me his business.”
“The Sumerian shit.”
“Yes.”
“Tell me you didn’t get into it.”
He shook his head. “I have prior obligations.”
“I thought you being around Dethklok was bad. Remember that time the rafter came down on your head? And it was on fire.”
That was way back, before the Crystal Mountains contract, when Dethklok was playing the same dives as everyone else and selling CDs out of the back of a van. It wasn’t the first or last time he was injured at a show, but it went with the territory. He distinctly remembered her arrival at the hospital to yell at him as they put surgical staples into the skin at the top of his head. The head bleed a lot more than other parts of the body, so it looked worse than it was. She thought she could talk him out of managing what she called a garage band, and he was still dealing with the ringing sound in his head from the pyrotechnic explosion. He only caught about half of what she said. No amount of “Can we do this later?”-s would make her go away, which was all he wanted at that exact moment. Now, over a decade later, she was just concerned.
“I do remember that,” he answered. “I would say things are safer now, but I’d be lying. But going into what Dad considers the family business would be worse.”
“Yeah.” She just believed him. She had good reason to take him on his word. “Are you going to see him again?”
“Eventually. Why? Do you want to see him?”
“No!” It was only her initial reaction. Then she softened. “But you could, you know, say hi for me. If you think it would be relevant to him. If part of him is still Dad.”
“I wouldn’t call him that if he wasn’t.” Charles wasn’t precisely sure how he really felt about Selatcia, but maybe he never would be. “I’ll pass the word along.” In the silence that followed he picked up on the television playing in the background on her kitchen counter. “Is that the Dethklok minute?”
“One track mind, Charlie.” She shook her head. “They have a concert tonight. I know because the news hasn’t shut up about it. And I might have been watching. In case.” In case he appeared, otherwise.
He finished the ginger ale and stood up. “In that case, I have to go.”
“To Dethklok’s daring rescue?”
He smiled, because she was smiling, and she understood. “Something like that.”
End