Dead Roots (The Analyst)

Text Copyright © 2012 Brian G. Wood

All rights reserved

Acknowledgements

This book is dedicated to

My friends and test readers Gino, Jessica, Jesse, Greg and Yeoung

My best friend John, without whom I wouldn’t have written a word

My mother Robyn and brother Brandon for their love and support

My late father Malbour Lee, a voracious reader. I hope he enjoys it.

1

“Aki”

“Father, O Father! What do we here

In this land of unbelief and fear?”

-William Blake,
The Land of Dreams

Thomas' hand fiddled with the high woolen collar of his jacket. On its way down it brushed the protruding handle of his concealed handgun. It was a vague relief. The pistol couldn't have gone anywhere in the last ten minutes but Tom had made a habit of checking anyway.

He didn’t really drink coffee for pleasure anymore. It made him too jittery, made thinking rationally more effort than it would be to just go straight, but some days he needed it to get the job done. This coffee place allowed smoking, a fact of which he took liberal advantage to keep his nerves on point. He could quit some other day.

It was one of those shitty upscale places, pristine tables and jazz wafting down from the PA system. He didn't mind the tunes, but he couldn't help feeling like a jerk when he spotted some Twitter-checking douchebag on a tablet computer in one of the corners. There was a similarity in their appearances that threatened him with a headache. Noting his own short, dark hair and simple, fashionable jeans-and-zippered-jacket combo, Tom felt disdain upon realizing how nicely he fit in here, without even trying.

There was one patron who didn't fit in. The slick-haired, Asian youth stood up and put on his bulky headphones. Tom reached quietly into his pocket and felt around for the silver medication packet. He broke a tablet out with his thumb, popped it into his mouth and sipped his coffee.

The kid hadn't noticed him, too absorbed in putting on his purple sunglasses and zipping up his ridiculous jacket. More zippers than were needed, and a line of trendy studs running around the cuffs of the sleeves. Tom's hand brushed his side again. The element of surprise was his, sure as the pistol was still in its holster-- but you could never be too sure.

Tom recalled his briefing. Class-II, predominantly Subjective, or Invisible. Host was a sixteen-year-old, chosen at random-- no desire to cause trouble, or even the required knowledge to do so. The target would try and get into Tom's head, but as long as he kept on top of things, no members of the public would be wise to what was happening.

He let the kid leave the cafe and counted to ten. He stood up and left, looked down the street to his right. It was hard to miss the little Asian goth and his calculated brooding step, shoulders hunched and hearing closed off by the headphones. Sloppy. He wouldn't hear Tom's footsteps bearing up behind him, or his pistol being cocked. Or maybe the kid wasn't even worried about it?

Tom shook the thought out. No matter how many times you took these things down, the feeling that they were holding out on you, that they knew something you didn't, never really subsided. Tom, however, consoled himself in his briefing. This was just a dumb kid, who didn't know, or even want, what he had. Easy.

Two blocks and he felt the Xanax tablet taking hold. He had to act quickly. There were too many people around, now. His shoulders were budging against other pedestrians, and the pill made keeping track of the kid that much harder. Tom looked up past the roofs of skyscrapers and regarded the sky silently. The air was crisp, but his face felt warmth from the sun. A broader form of daylight, there couldn't be. Maybe not so easy.

He realized he was losing time and focus. Quietly formulating a plan, he quickened his step. He was closing in on the Asian youth and timed himself to catch up just as they reached a crosswalk. Tackling him to the ground in public was not an option. He'd risk bystanders getting involved. He'd accost the kid at the stoplight at the end of the block, hope he'd come quietly. In the more likely event that he didn't, he'd be ready for the shift. From there he'd have to play it by ear.

The foot traffic stopped. Tom popped his neck, reached his hand out. He clapped his hand on the kid's shoulder.

The target tensed, his hands stopping abruptly in the middle of turning up the volume on his mp3 player. Tom tapped him again. The kid brought the headphone down to his shoulders, scowling.

“Time to go home, Aki.”

Aki's host-- indeed, Aki himself-- stuffed his mp3 player into his pocket.

“I will level this entire block, if it means, that I don't have to go back. To that
shithole.”
Aki could only speak English as well as the host. His enunciation was very deliberate, a little broken.

“You should learn to appreciate home. It's not so--”

“In front of
everyone
,” Aki added, turning around gently. Tom flicked his eyes to the right, then the left. Noone had taken any notice of their conversation, at least. Things remained salvageable.

“ Aki, cut the shit.”

“You cut the
shit,
granddad.”

It stung a little. He was only in his twenties.

“So what? You going to kill me on a nice day like this?” Tom replied curtly.

“Your mistake, granddad, not
my mistake.”

“You can break character, you're not fooling anyone.”

“Aki and I
are one,
” the kid snarled. “He is
mine.
”

“This is getting old,” Tom jibed. “You want them to send the A-listers after you?”

“I will take all of them.”

“Right.”

Aki finally had nothing to say in response. He turned around, eyes hidden behind those purple sunglasses. The walk sign began beeping, a wave of pedestrians taking the signal to start crossing. Tom and Aki remained there, sizing each other up. Tom had to stop himself reaching for the cuffs already. There's no way it'd be this easy.

“If you're going to do something, do it,” Tom goaded gently, almost wearily.

Aki took the opportunity to grin broadly. The dossier mentioned he had a penchant for theatrics. Tom waited for his glib response, and waited, and waited. He noticed after a few seconds that the grin was getting wider. And wider.

The sidewalk widened, too. Aki was making the first move.

Color seemed to wash from the world as it shifted around them, warping as if through a fisheye lens. Tom felt a wave of animal fear run through him as his surroundings expanded, giving him the sensation of shrinking. He took a deep breath and centered himself. Aki's mouth opened up and stretched impossibly. Tom released his grip and unhitched the gun in his jacket but delayed on pulling it out.

“
Tremble. Tremble. Tremble.”

A wispy voice rose from the back of Aki's exposed throat as he less stepped than
floated
back a few feet. Tom noted that as Aki continued to change, the world remained recognizable. He waited for his opening.

Aki's limbs contorted. His mouth, dislocated and opened now like a huge snake's, jittered and jerked. A huge, grotesque eye rose into view from its depths. Aki floated up several feet off the ground, and a sick cracking sound rent the chilled air. His body, from the neck down, twisted around as if on a hinge. He faced backwards and curled up as if suspended in midair by the chest. The eye stayed facing forward.

“
You resist. You resist. You resist.”

“You're going home, Aki.”

“
Your mind will feed me. Succumb.”

The floor seemed to drop out of the world. Tom found himself floating in place. The buildings around him twisted onto themselves until everything had formed a full circle, like a massive concrete tube. Surfaces shimmered, and the whole thing began to spin lazily around them.

The kid had some tricks, but the Xanax shut Aki out of the deepest parts of Tom's mind, and the coffee kept him lucid. Tom pulled out the pistol.

“No one can see us now, Aki. Don't make me do this.”

“
Tremble.
Tremble.
”

For all the horror movie-style posturing, there was desperation in Aki's voice. Tom willed himself forward, closing some distance between them. Aki quickly caught on and began floating backwards in midair. The world passed them by, slowly at first, until they were moving like cruise missiles through the twisted, unending concrete landscape.

Tom took note of his surroundings. Ghostly, distended faces bobbed gently past them in the aether. They pleaded in strangled voices for what Tom guessed was release, in a language he couldn't understand. He was not moved.

“These aren't mine. They're yours, aren't they?”

“
Arrogant.”

“What are they crying for, Aki? What did this kid do?”

“
You deign to...”

The distorted parody of a human form floating in front of Tom convulsed violently. Tom heard a gurgling, muffled sound coming from the boy's throat, blocked by the gigantic eyeball. It was a desperate scream for help.

“
Human meddling. It is insignificant to us. We will not be moved.
”

“
Too late.”

Tom swung the pistol forward, and fired three times. It struck the quivering body in the back and exposed shoulder. The giant eye receded with a wet slurping sound before the boy's distended mouth slid shut.

 Time began to slow back to normal. A dull roar shook the world, like the horn of a sinking ship. Tom shielded his face from an ethereal wind, and heard the rumble of the buildings uncurling themselves. Soon, familiarity returned.

 Tom stomped his foot on the ground as it came back into reach, grunting in satisfaction. The worst was over, he thought. Sunlight beat into his cheeks again. He looked up, taking a deep breath of inner city air through his nose to center himself. He reached into his jacket pocket for his cigarettes.

“There's a flight in six hours,” he began curtly with a filter between his teeth, lighting the tip of his smoke. He looked up and expected to see a perfectly intact, if shaken, young man.

Aki's body lay across the sidewalk, bleeding from two gunshot wounds. Bystanders disjointedly stopped and recoiled. Tom noted the looks of curiosity from some and the obliviousness of others, at least until passersby elbowed them or they heard some of the verbal commotion.

“Oh my fuck…”

“Jesus--”

Tom felt his heart rate speed up as passersby moved to detain him. As he blearily reached for the badge in his wallet he thanked God for benzodiazepines.

********

“You're not going to get fired, Tom.”

“I'd deserve it.”

“Oh, spare me. You used chems. It happens.”

“It shouldn't happen.”

Tom nursed at a bottle of brew, letting the gentle numbness wash across him. The patrons of the Kickoff Bar hooted and whooped around a seventy-inch flat screen on the other side of the bar's interior. Tom sunk quietly into the leather seat of the booth, casting an idle look to his right through the plate glass window at a simpler world of pickup trucks, jackets with football teams’ logos emblazoned across the backs, and 7-11 signs set across the sky as bright as the moon.

“This is nothing the DPSD can't deal with. You didn't do anything Visible. It's yourself you should be worried about.”

“Yeah.”

“You'll just have to slick a few high-end cocks to get them to pull the video.”

Tom rolled his eyes, trying to avoid looking at his scrawny friend, but unable to help himself. Artie's gap-toothed grin launched into one of those deep hyuck-hyucks of his. Tom watched Artie's long bangs, as usual, lolling about as they hung from the band of his stupid West Virginia Mountaineers cap. Artie continued to guffaw as he wrapped his lips around his own bottle of beer, upending half the bottle down his stubbly gullet in a single swig.

“I thought you were switching to contacts,” Tom jibed.

 “Aw, I like to look sophisticated.”

“You look like an engineering student.”

“
Fuck
you.”

More laughter. Tom had long since given up trying to avoid the metaphorical minefield of comments that would lead to hearing Artie's exuberant crowing, instead just quietly sipping his beer and bearing it.

“Look, look, you'll love this one,” Artie continued, picking his fancy smart phone up off the table. He punched the screen a few times with his index finger.