Direct evidence, p.32
Direct Evidence, page 32
But Chase couldn’t raise her arms.
Was this just a case of twisted art imitating life? Was the fact that her arms were immobilized here, in Hell, the reason that she couldn’t move them back… wherever she was?
Cerberus’ breath was hot on her cheek and the animal stared at her with six oddly human eyes.
“Nobody leaves, Chase.”
The words didn’t come from any of the dog’s mouths, which would have broken the spell, but seemed to echo inside Chase’s head.
When the refrain was repeated, however, first by the veterans, then by someone with a softer voice, Chase could easily recognize the sources.
“Stay with me, Chase,” her sister pleaded. “Please, Chase. ”
“I—I can’t…” Chase whispered.
Georgina pleaded again this time only using her beautiful green eyes.
“Last chance,” Tony warned. “Last—“
The man holding Chase’s right hand, Geoffrey or Fred, she didn’t know which, suddenly just… let go. And with the tension gone, her arm shot forward, inadvertently smacking one of Tony’s three muzzles.
He pulled back, snarling, but Chase was only interested in one thing.
“Georgina…”
***
As soon as Floyd severed the zip-tie holding Chase’s wrist to the chair, her hand launched upward. The controller that was still taped to her hand collided with the underside of Floyd’s jaw. The blow was more jarring than actually painful, and he was forced to take two steps back.
“Georgina…” The word out of Chase’s mouth was haunting and Floyd didn’t want to even consider what she was viewing inside Tony’s twisted metaverse.
He collected himself and cut the other zip-tie, careful to lean backward this time to avoid being struck again.
***
The vet holding her left arm let go now, too. And with her hands free, Chase shoved Tony backward. The three-headed dog, surprised and confused by what was happening, by why his minions were releasing her without his command, scurried backward.
Chase spun around.
“Nobody leaves Hell, Chase!” Tony screamed behind her, his voice taking on the characteristics of a petulant child more than that of a malevolent leader.
Chase stared into her sister’s eyes. NPC or not, there was something cathartic about being able to speak to her sister one final time. To say what she should have said when Georgina lay dying in her arms.
“I’ll look after her,” Chase promised. “I’ll look after your daughter, Georgina. I swear. I won’t let anything happen to her. I may have failed my own family, but I won’t fail her, and I won’t fail you.”
Chase sobbed and Georgina’s eyes started to become wet.
“I—“
***
“No!” Chase screamed.
Floyd jumped back a good two feet, his heel colliding with thankfully one of the empty buckets. It rattled loudly, but he couldn’t look away from Chase. The goggles that he had started to remove still hung awkwardly on her head, half on, half off, and to his surprise, and equal horror, she wasn’t grateful for having been rescued. Chase didn’t even seem to recognize him. All she was concerned with was trying to put the goggles back on.
But that didn’t make sense.
“Chase?” Floyd’s words went ignored.
“Fucking thing,” she grumbled. Her hands still being taped to the controllers made what she was trying to do nearly impossible. “Please,” she nearly wept, “C’mon, please.”
“Chase, it’s me, it’s Floyd,” he said tentatively.
I’m too late. Her mind… her mind’s gone.
He cautiously stepped forward, trying to cross her monocular vision.
“Chase?”
She finally acknowledged Floyd, the one eye not in the visor finally focusing on him.
“She’s in here, Floyd,” Chase whispered. “She’s in here.” She indicated the goggles by tapping them with the controller in her right hand. “I have to go back. I have to.”
“What? Who?” Floyd asked. He knew that if there ever was a time to keep on rolling, to ignore whatever Chase was saying and completely remove her from the VR world, it was now. But there was something in her tone, in her eye, in her that made this impossible. Floyd could only stand there. “Who’s in there, Chase?”
Chase lowered her gaze and said something too softly for Floyd to hear.
“What?” He stepped forward. “What did you say?”
“Georgina—she’s in here. I need to go back… I have to, I have to go back to—“
Someone else finished the sentence for her.
“Hell.”
Floyd, having completely forgotten about Tony until this moment, swiveled. The man had since removed his goggles and in place of a controller in his right hand, he held a gun.
And it was aimed directly at Chase’s forehead.
“The thing about Hell, Chase,” Tony said, his voice lispy and cracked due to his mangled teeth. “Is that nobody ever leaves. Not while I’m in charge.”
And then, before Floyd could pull his own gun free, Tony Metcalfe fired a single shot.
Chapter 79
Tate was just pulling up to the gate outside U-Lock-it when he heard the shot ring out. Cursing, he pumped the gas, ramming the Maybach through the barricade, which smashed into a dozen pieces. He slammed on the brakes behind the car Floyd had borrowed from Stu and got out.
Peering down the rows of lockers, he only saw one whose door was open.
Tate sprinted toward it.
***
“Georgina!” Chase screamed. Having the goggles wrenched from her face was not just disorienting, but nauseating. One eye was stuck in Cerberus, in the metaverse, while the other was—where? Some sort of dark, stinking room.
Chase was caught in two places at once, in two worlds.
And she had to go back.
She tried desperately to put the goggles back on both eyes, mumbling incoherently as she did.
She needed to see her sister again, just one more time. She had to hear Georgina say that she trusted her, that she knew Chase would look after her daughter.
That she would do a good job.
“Please,” Chase moaned.
Her hands were like stumps and she couldn’t manage.
One of her eyes picked up someone standing near her.
He could help her. This man, this stranger—it’s not a stranger it’s Floyd—he could put the mask back on. Why wouldn’t he?
“Chase, it’s me, Floyd.”
Floyd? I know a Floyd.
“Chase?”
It didn’t matter who he was.
“She’s in here, Floyd. She’s in here. I have to go back. I have to.”
“What? Who? Who’s in there, Chase?”
“My sister—my sister is in here. And she’s real.”
“What?” The man stepped forward. “What did you say?”
“Georgina—she’s in here. I need to go back… I have to, I have to go back to—“
“Hell.”
It wasn’t Floyd this time, but someone else.
Chase saw Tony Metcalfe, standing in the entrance of the garage, a gun in his filthy hand.
“The thing about Hell, Chase,” Tony said. “Is that nobody ever leaves. Not while I’m in charge.”
And then the gun went off.
Chase instinctively closed her eyes, waiting for the searing pain as the bullet tore through her skull.
But it never came, and Chase had a disturbing thought: what if this was actually the metaverse? What if this… garage or whatever it was… is Cerberus?
I have to go back… I have to go back… I have to go—
Floyd grunted and collapsed on the ground, sending buckets scattering.
“No!” Chase screamed.
The bullet had been meant for her, there was no question about that. But Floyd had put himself in its path.
This is real.
But rather than an exalted revelation this thought was met with sheer horror.
Chase didn’t want this to be real. Real meant pain, real meant consequences.
Real meant that Floyd had been shot.
Tony, also surprised by Floyd’s actions, adjusted his aim. Chase knocked the mask completely off her face and held her taped hands up in front of her.
“I told you, Chase,” Tony said, repeating what had clearly been a planned diatribe. While in this world, the man was all human, there was still something feral about the way his lips twisted, and he snarled. “I’m Cerberus and nobody leaves Hell.”
“This isn’t fucking hell!” Chase shouted. “This is real! This is fucking real!”
“Everything’s real.”
Tony closed one eye and extended the hand with the gun.
Time seemed to slow down and somewhere the sound of a car approaching registered with Chase.
As did Floyd’s breathing.
It was labored and irregular, punctuated by the occasion wet plop like a drop of water falling into a foamy sink.
“No, no, it’s not. Cerberus isn’t real. My sister isn’t real.”
Tony opened his other eye.
“Really? That wasn’t your sister?”
“No!” Chase exclaimed emphatically. “My real sister is dead.”
“But you saw her, you held her. You—“
“Yeah, I held her,” she countered. “I held her in my arms when she died.”
“You’re telling me that you felt nothing in Cerberus when you hugged your sister? Don’t lie to me, Chase.”
Chase had felt something. There was no denying that.
And she’d wanted to go back. But that was selfish, that was only for her. Most of what Chase had done over the past few years had been selfish—she knew that.
Shooting up, having sex with countless suspects and colleagues alike. That was all for her.
Going back to speak with fake Georgina was also for her.
She had to stop—Floyd was lying on the floor dying. Really dying.
Behind Tony, Chase caught sight of a man running toward them. Tony must have noticed her shifting gaze because he started to turn.
“Yes!” Chase shouted. “Yes, I felt something! And what I felt was real. Tony… I want—I want to go back. I want to see her again. I need to.” Her intention was to distract but Chase could not deny the truth of her words. “Can I go back?”
Tony’s lecherous grin returned.
“We can do whatever—“
“Put the fucking gun down!” Tate shouted. “Dickhead, put the fucking gun down before I blow a hole in your skull!”
Chapter 80
The scene before Tate Abernathy was as confusing as it was heart-wrenching. Tony Metcalfe, his back to the locker opening, had a gun trained on Chase.
The woman looked terrible, beaten, downtrodden, and oddly sad. Her hands were taped to hunks of plastic, and she was saying something as tears streaked her red cheeks.
And then there was Floyd. Tate didn’t notice him at first, didn’t recognize the prone body on the ground as being a person at all. But then light shimmered off a dark liquid pooling next to his body and drew his eye. With all the buckets, a handful of which had toppled, Tate initially thought that this fluid was shit, like back at Tony’s apartment. But this wasn’t coming from a bucket.
It was coming from Floyd. And it was blood, not shit.
Tate moved his finger from the trigger guard to the trigger proper.
Tony had shot Floyd. Floyd, who had been the one to figure out what the hell was going on in this case. Floyd, who was only here because Tate had gone to bat for him.
And now the man was dead.
Tate saw red.
“Put the fucking gun down! Dickhead, put the fucking gun down before I blow a hole in your skull!”
Despite his words, Tate didn’t want Tony to lower the gun. It would make explaining what happened next easier.
He was going to kill Tony Metcalfe. Even if the man chucked the gun into a dark corner of the garage and jumped to his knees, hands together, and begged for his life, he was going to die.
Tate didn’t just see Tony, but he saw Marco, too. And his anger was bubbling over as it had back at Isaac’s.
“No!” Chase yelled, and this stayed his finger.
The FBI-issued Glock 9mm had a trigger weight of 5.5 pounds. Tate was fairly certain that the tension he’d applied had come close to 5 pounds.
No? Why did she shout, no?
“Don’t shoot him.”
But this time, Chase’s plea fell on deaf ears.
Tate had reached the point of no return.
He squeezed just a little more and a shot rang out.
***
Killing Tony Metcalfe would be a mistake. Not because it was inherently wrong, but because the man deserved to suffer.
And death would be a release for Tony.
The real horror for the man wasn’t the Hell that he’d created in Cerberus, Chase realized. It was the real world. Tony ruled hell. Back on earth, however, he was a nobody. A programmer who may or may not have had his code stolen and had committed murder, probably twice. A twisted man who had framed an innocent one. Here, on earth, Tony was just a common criminal.
And that was his hell. The three-headed dog that made sure Tony didn’t escape was a judge, a jury, and a jail cell.
But the look on Tate’s face…
Chase had seen this expression before and knew that he was going to pull the trigger. She also knew that there was nothing that she could say that would prevent this from happening.
Tate fired.
The sound was deafening, and the seismic pop confused Chase’s senses. Like when Tony had fired, she had no idea where the bullet went. With zero concern for her own safety, Chase leaped out of the chair, the cables going from her controllers to the goggles tearing free.
Her intention had nothing to do with Tony and everything to do with Floyd. She blanketed his body with her own.
“Nobody gets out of—“
Tate lunged, too, leading not with the barrel but the butt of his gun.
“Shut the fuck up.”
The violent blow to the back of Tony’s unsuspecting head was so forceful that he pitched forward and collided with Chase’s controller-bundled fist. There was a satisfying crunch as the hard plastic broke Tony’s nose, followed by an equally satisfying grunt from the man’s broken mouth. He collapsed on top of Floyd, and Chase had time for one inane thought—is that real enough for you?—before she shoved the unconscious man off her friend. Tony’s arm knocked over a full bucket of piss and shit and the foul liquid began to swirl about his head.
One more thought: Is he going to drown?
Tate was at her side now, helping roll Floyd onto his back.
“Where’s he shot?” Tate shouted, searching the man’s body for the entrance wound.
“I don’t—I don’t know!”
It didn’t take them long to find the source of the blood. There was a hole in Floyd’s chest, just beneath his right collarbone.
Instinct took over and Chase applied pressure to the wound, trying to stem the slow trickle of blood.
“Call someone! Tate, we need an ambulance, now!”
Chapter 81
Chase left the hospital room with her head low. Tate followed closely behind and while she couldn’t see him, she could tell from his breathing pattern that the man felt the same as she did.
He’s stable. We can airlift Floyd back to Virginia in the morning. He’s lost a lot of blood. For now, he’ll stay in an induced coma. As for a full recovery? I can’t say for sure. No one can.
Chase walked down the hall, not saying a word to Tate. They approached the police officer stationed outside another room. He saw them coming, nodded, and then stood. Chase watched him go to the coffee machine and started to fiddle absently with it.
There was a full cup of coffee on the ground just beneath his chair.
She didn’t want to go inside, didn’t have a need for it. There was nothing that Tony Metcalfe could say or do that would offer any insight into his actions, or anything of value at all.
But she felt compelled to look at him.
He was lying on his back, his hands tucked beneath the blankets. Chase caught a glint of the handcuff chaining to the thick metal bed.
Tony’s head was covered in a thick bandage, hiding the wound that had required the doctors to shave his hair before putting a stent in to relieve the pressure. In the movies, the butt end of a gun to the back of the skull made you sleep for a few hours. In the better production, you woke up with a headache.
In real life, such a blow was often deadly. In this case, Tate had eased up just enough and the doctors were certain that, unlike Floyd, Tony would make a full recovery. But for now, he too was in a medically induced coma.
The bullet Tate had fired missed entirely, although Chase would never know if this had been deliberate.
“Where do you think he is right now?” Tate asked.
Under other circumstances, the question might have been considered bizarre.
But not here.
Chase stared at Tony through the thick, reinforced glass.
“None of what I’ve been through, or the places I’ve visited, the metaverse or Cerberus, has turned me into a believer,” Chase said absently. “But I’ll tell you this… I really hope Tony’s in hell. Not his hell, but a place where he has zero control over anything.”
With this, Chase grabbed Tate by the arm and pulled him away from the glass. This was the last time she ever wanted to see Tony Metcalfe, in this world or others.
***
“What’s he doing here?” Will Porter asked, hooking a chin toward the surly detective standing at the back of the room with his arms crossed over his chest.
“Don’t worry about him,” Assistant District Attorney Matthew Lombardi said. “You should be more concerned about them.”
He didn’t indicate Chase and Tate, but they were the only two other people in the room. Will had advised against them joining him, just as he’d advised Stu to stay home, as well. But only Stu had taken the advice to heart.
