Reckless: Season 2: Memories - Act 4
by redmoon
Memories - Act 4
Hanna lay on her bed, angrily holding back tears. Logan sat on the bed’s edge, trying to be as gentle as he could, not fully understanding what she felt.
“Honey, you just can’t see him anymore. Not at school, not here, not ever.” He tried to touch her back, but she pulled away.
“Why not?” she demanded, her voice quivering.
Logan knew she knew what he could do, what some of the dangers of the real world were, but she obviously didn’t know Matt’s ‘secret’. “Because he’s dangerous,” Logan said regretfully. “Bad things hang around him, bad things happen to people he loves.”
“It doesn’t have to be like that,” she said, sitting up and turning to her father. He frowned and shook his head a little. “I know his parents were killed by vampires... but they don’t bother him anymore. He told me. He– he’s all alone now...” her eyes hardened again, “why can’t I see him?”
Logan doubted very much this kid was ‘all alone’ with a demon looking after him. Who knows what he’d been trained to do... what he’d been instructed to do with Hanna... Logan intended to find and kill the demon. That would be a start, at least.
“Trust me, honey. I know what’s best for you. To keep you safe.”
“Logan,” Rachel’s voice called him quietly from the hallway. “Can I talk to you for a minute?”
Logan slowly stood from his daughter’s bed and walked to the hall, closing the door behind him. He swallowed, seeing Rachel’s hard look. This wasn’t going to be a pleasant conversation.
“You made her break up with her boyfriend?” Rachel asked, maintaining a rational calm.
Logan took a deep breath. “I found out he’s into drugs. Lots and lots of drugs. And his supposed mother — never around. The kid is bad news and I don’t want our daughter anywhere near him.”
Rachel appraised him, hearing his words, but not appearing to believe one word of the lie. “He’s bad news,” she nodded. “Like Michael is bad news. Like we shouldn’t be anywhere near him?”
Logan grated his teeth. He had dropped the issue with Michael, the mysterious man with a blue tie when he had realized they couldn’t get by without Rachel’s income or afford to send Hanna to a private school.
“I stand by that,” he said indignantly. “You don’t know these people as well as I do.”
Rachel threw up her hands. “Well, I’d like to! I’d like a chance to get to know them and form my own opinions, but you won’t allow me to have them over!”
“They’re dangerous people,” Logan stressed, his voice earnest. He took Rachel by the shoulders and pulled her a little closer. “I’m trying to protect you! You have to believe me!”
“Why?” his wife demanded. “Why should I believe you?” She pulled herself from his grip to stare down his intense gaze. “You’re back to being out all night – I have no idea where you are. You never talk about what’s bothering you or why you think these people are dangerous! Why should I believe you?”
Logan’s mask of intensity melted to one of hurt. “Because I love you,” he said as if it were obvious. “I would do everything I could to protect you.”
“Protect us from what!?” Rachel shouted, marching away from him towards their bedroom. Stopping at the door she turned. “The only thing that’s ever hurt this family is you Logan Kilpatrick.”
Niki handed over the wad of cash to the taxi driver through his window. It hadn’t cost the arm and leg she thought, and she guessed she might have money left for a motel room for the night. And maybe some coffee. Assuming the prophet wasn’t too expensive.
Niki started walking for the overpass of the Long Island expressway, under which she had been told a crazy former business mogul turned prophet now lived. The taxi couldn’t stop anywhere close to it, so it was nearly dark when she finally got there.
The Doppler rise and fall of the sound of cars rushing past became almost hypnotic as she slowly walked towards the dark abyss that was the underside of the overpass. She was walking on the right shoulder, traffic flying past her from behind. For a few seconds each time, the world ahead of her was lit by headlights, then was drenched in blood red tail light and finally went dark again as two red eyes sped away ahead of her. In these flashes her eyes searched the shadows among the concrete pillars where light never reached. There was a mess of garbage and graffiti strewn about, but for a moment, Niki could have sworn she saw movement.
Carefully, she approached the cavern-like space between the concrete wall covering the embankment and the pillars which supported the broad dark roof above them which was the expressway. Passing cars now flooded the dark space with moving beams of light which tracked towards her between the massive pillars. In the light and darkness, the Slayer could see the shape of a person, moving hastily across the sloped wall, its arms moving wildly here and there. She stopped in her tracks and waited. The figure seemed to ignore her for several moments until she uncertainly cleared her throat.
Instantly, there was a blinding light in her eyes. She squinted and held a hand before her face to block the glare. Eventually, the flashlight was lowered and Niki got a good look at the figure who was holding it on her.
Somehow, Niki had just assumed the man to be old. Weren’t business moguls old? Weren’t crazy men who lived under overpasses old? The man who stood before her now was a very worn, very unkempt thirty seven year old. His hair was carrot-red and his eyes were wide. He wore several layers of clothes, none of which seemed to fit, and his hands were brightly colored.
“It’s you,” he said with a trace of disappointment. “I must be early.”
Niki blinked. This was a prophet? Maybe not. “Someone named Whistler told me there was a... uh... prophet who lived around here.”
“He’s exempt. No taxes, no audits.” The man switched off the flashlight, turned and continued whatever he had been doing. Niki squinted into the darkness to see, catching brief flashes of it as cars sped past.
“You know Whistler?” She asked tentatively, stepping closer.
“There’s a finite amount of Whistler in all of us,” the man said thoughtfully. “Not redeemable, though.” He turned to her with a puzzled look, as if this had just occurred to him. “Shame, really.”
“Are you the prophet?” Niki crossed her arms, getting a sinking feeling that prophet or no, this man was too far gone to be helpful.
“I am the Profit. The Assets minus the Expenses.” He looked over what was on the wall before him, running his fingers along it, as if inspecting it for errors.
Niki looked from him to the wall, seeing what was at first graffiti and at second glance dozens of rows of numbers written in three wide columns. Glancing down at the man’s hands, she could see he was writing in paint with his fingers; red, blue and green.
“What are you working on?” she asked with a little frown.
“My report...” he muttered distantly, scanning the numbers very carefully. “My editor went out for lunch, never came back. When he does, he’ll be facing disciplinary action.”
“What are all the numbers?” Niki asked, stepping closer. As her eyes grew accustomed to the darkness, she could see three distinct blocks of numbers. One written in red, one in blue and one in green. “What do they mean?”
The man suddenly turned on her, holding up a colored finger and waving it unsteadily. “Blue,” he said boldly. “Blue is you, what to do.” He quickly looked back to the center block of numbers, the one written in blue. “Here it is,” he pointed vaguely to some numbers at the center. “It’s all right here. All the stats, all the accounts.”
Niki squinted at the numbers. ...11 45 7 8 90 89... “I was told you know about the Deceivers. The Deception, how it works, who—”
“Seven,” the man interrupted, pointing to the number. “That’s the key. You see, over here,” he pointed at the green, “this is nine.” Indeed it was. “Nine is two more than seven.”
Niki’s frown deepened. “...Yes. Yes it is.”
The man turned away from the numbers and glared at her. “I’m not crazy!” he said angrily, crossing his arms. “I can still do the maths. Still do the numbers. I haven’t lost my mind, you know. Blue is due, who are you?”
“I’m Niki Valtaine,” the Slayer said uncertainly. “What’s blue?”
The man squinted, as if she were the crazy one, not him. “The numbers are blue,” he said patronizingly. “And blue for you and blue for you.” He turned back to the green numbers. “And here again. Eleven. Eleven is two more than nine, and...” he looked back to the blue numbers. “You’re nine.”
“I’m nine?” Niki shook her head. “What are you talking about?”
“Blue,” he said emphatically. “I’m talking about blue.”
“Who’s blue?” Niki shouted, at the end of her patience.
“You’re blue!” the man shouted in reply. He waved his hand over the center block of numbers. “This is you. All of you.”
“All of me?” Niki looked closer at the numbers. “I’m all blue?”
“Not you by yourself. All of you. Of them.” He returned to the numbers, running his fingers over the rows of numbers. “Like here. Seventeen. You’ve got seventeen left.”
“Seventeen what?” Niki was completely lost. All of her was blue?
“You’re all blue,” he said distantly, his hand caressing the blue numbers with care. “Well, not blue. Pink and brown and yellow and every color but blue. But blue.”
“What are you—” Niki squinted at him as he looked at the numbers. “Slayers. Slayers are blue. This...” she looked over the numbers in the center block, “this has something to do... this says something about Slayers — about me?”
The man continued muttering. “And the Nobel Prize goes to...”
“What does it say?” Niki demanded, taking his arm and turning him to face her. “What it say about me?”
“It says everything there is to know,” he pulled his arm from her grip. “Everything is in blue.”
Niki looked at the numbers, seemingly random. “But I can’t read it,” she argued. “How can it say anything?”
“Blue was never very smart,” the man mumbled as he kept tracing a finger over the numbers. “Until it was green.”
“Who’s green?” Niki turned to the third block of numbers.
“Blue is x plus y where y is zero,” the man pointed to the topmost line of the blue block where the equation was written. “Green is x plus y where y goes to infinity.”
Niki stared blankly at the rows of green numbers. “Yeah, but who is green.”
“They’ll all be green,” the man replied. “All the pink, brown, yellow, red... all the blue. They’ll all be green.” He held up a finger and a smile spread across his face revealing mottled teeth. “But not for fifteen.”
The Slayer looked at the numbers for a good long time, trying to extract some meaning. “You don’t have anything in... words I could look at?” she was shaking her head.
“My editor,” the man muttered, “out for lunch and all that...”
Niki nodded. “Sure,” she turned and started back the way she had come, but the prophet stood straighter and frowned.
“Where are you going? I’m not that early.” He indicated the block of blue numbers. “Don’t you want a peek at your future? At the plan?”
Niki’s frown melted. “Now you’re talking.”
Hanna was awoken by a tapping at her window. Before she had fully resolved where she was and what time it was, she heard the noise again. Very carefully, she pulled back the covers and slipped out of bed. She padded through the darkness to the dim pink glow coming from her window. She squinted out into the night and saw a figure standing below. He was lit from behind by the nearby streetlight and she could tell from the way he stood that it was Matt. He tossed another pebble at her window and it hit the glass with a tap.
Moments later she stood in the darkness of the front hall, staring at the closed front door. It loomed before her, silent and terrifying. She didn’t remember everything about that night —the night she had found out who her father really was— but she recalled she had woken up outside with vampires pawing at her.
Hanna swallowed, slowly moving forward and taking the doorhandle with a clammy hand. She turned it and pulled, realizing after a moment that the deadbolt was still in place. She turned the lock and then turned the door handle again. With a brave tug she pulled the door wide open.
She let out a little yelp when she saw a figure standing right in the doorway. She calmed, however, as soon as he reached in and took her hand, leading her out the door with urgency. It was Matt.
“What are you doing?” she hissed as he hurried her to the street where the taxi idled.
“Don’t worry, I’ll have you back before sunrise,” he said over his shoulder. “I just had to see you.” He opened the door of the taxi and motioned for her to get in. Hanna glanced uncertainly over her shoulder at the dark house and then back at her forbidden boyfriend. Her Montague. In the space of a heartbeat she was in the car, waiting for him to hurry and get in the other door. Her eyes were on nothing but him as the taxi took off into the night.
Niki looked over the blue numbers in the grey of the pre-dawn hours. Her rising comprehension had faded to a sort of sick feeling when she had realized she was looking at her entire life. Seven hundred and twelve numbers summed her up completely. Past, present and future. And it wasn’t so early as the prophet had thought. Not just her life either, but the lives of all slayers before her and after until they became ‘green’. Each number, even though their lives differed, applied in a different way to each slayer. And they were never wrong.
She wasn’t too clear on the relationship between the blue and the green, or what the red was at all, but the blue was starting to make sense. Terrible, stomach turning sense.
“Seventeen,” she said with a cold chill down her back. “That’s all?”
The man nodded. “Less than or equal to the cube of the sum of the integers,” he answered, “is the number of instants.” He slowly traced a blue finger over the four which was the very last number. “Instants and instances.”
“What does it say about the Deceivers? How many are there? How many until they’re gone?” Niki reached out and touched the numbers, feeling the paint was still wet near the end. She ran her fingers over the numbers, smudging some of them, but he didn’t seem to care.
The prophet slowly lifted his finger from the four and scanned the rows, selecting the next number carefully. “We’re at now,” he said distantly, landing on a zero. The zero was on the third last line of numbers, near the bottom. “And they’re lost at five. Three and two and free as blue.”
“Three and two,” Niki considered this. “I guess you couldn’t give me a name,” she wondered, not really to him. “Five is good enough. Seventeen is bad, though, really bad.”
“Numbers aren’t bad,” he said with a shrug. “They are just and true. Even and odd. Interesting and tedious. Thirteen, for example. Very misunderstood. Seven? Blown way out of proportion.”
“It’s just one more than six,” Niki added, before she realized she had begun to think like him.
His eyes lit up and he smiled. “Exactly,” he held his grin and moved away from the wall to a small pile of junk. “Now you have to go,” he said suddenly with a worried note in his voice. “Go now, take the blue away, don’t let it ever come back. Only black here, only white.”
“Why?” Niki returned her attention to the here and now.
The prophet turned and tapped the last number of the red column. “It’s seventeen too,” he said with an apologetic shrug. “But this seventeen is much smaller. Much more red.” Niki was shaking her head in confusion when the man walked back to his pile of junk. “So much paint,” he said with a scolding tone. “Improperly stored. Disciplinary actions. Too many fumes...”
A car sped by and the colored blocks of numbers were caught in the traveling beam. Niki slowly began to back away as the man began tossing garbage here and there.
“Seventeen,” he muttered, “sixteen... fifteen... fourteen... thirteen....”
Niki’s eyes widened and she turned to run. Her Slayer legs carrying her as quickly and smoothly as they could. As she ran back down the shoulder of the road, each car caught her with its headlights. Soon she was running with her eyes closed, sensing through her eyelids each time a car past. The rush of the engine and whoosh of air.
After a good ten seconds, another sound made her open her eyes. A scraping sound was approaching from ahead and when Niki opened her eyes, she could see a badly dented car swerving back and forth across the road. Behind it, its bumper was hanging down onto the pavement and sending a plume of sparks onto the shoulder.
Niki dove out of the way as the car swerved past her and headed to the overpass. Looking up from the grass embankment beside the shoulder Niki saw the damaged car disappear under the overpass. Two... one... With a roar, the darkness under the overpass was consumed with a fireball. Bright red, it shot out on either side of the expressway above, followed by the screeching of tires and the honking of horns.
Niki frowned. Paint fumes? He had foreseen his own death... He was numbered at seventeen too. Slowly Niki stood from the grass and brushed off her white T-shirt and jeans. The wind was a bit chilly and she hugged her bare arms together for warmth.
Next to the confusion of the traffic, she walked slowly and silently back down the highway. No place to go. Not until morning.
It took an hour and a half of walking through the dim early morning hours before she recognized the signs of the kind of bar she wanted. She slowly descended the steps and pushed the door open.
Demon bars in Queens were quite nice compared to the Malleus or even the Nail Biter. The place was adequately lit and only dark in purposeful sections. There was distant, not-too awful music playing and several televisions hanging from the ceiling. The floor was tiled and looked as though it had actually been cleaned, once.
Niki approached the bar and sat herself down. The demon serving drinks approached and looked her over. “What can I get for you tonight?” he asked with a friendly enough tone.
Niki reached into her pocket and pulled out the wad of money she had been saving for a place to sleep. She took a deep breath and slowly let it out, her eyes locked on a small glass bottle behind the barkeep’s back. He followed her gaze and gave a knowing nod.
“That kinda night, eh?” He took the bottle of Stuff and began mixing it into a golden drink.
Niki slowly slumped forward, resting her forearms on the bar as her gaze dropped from the drink being prepared to the blue paint on the tips of her fingers. “That kind of life."
Park Avenue, New York City, June 17, 1984
The young Slayer slowly drew her hand across the bare chest of her sleeping lover. Her new lover. Logan was amazing. He did things that Jimmy would never even dream of. No question, she was hooked on this handsome, blond, small claims lawyer. At least, hooked on parts of him.
She still ached in all the right places. There was a sheen over their skin, reflected silvery blue in the moonlight streaming through the window. She felt like she could live in this moment forever. No stresses, no commitments, just fantastic sex with no strings attached.
Addison would be pissed when he found out. Niki grinned. Even better. She leisurely stretched out naked on the sweat-soaked sheets next to her silvery blue addiction. With a smile on her lips, she closed her eyes and drifted off to sleep. Like a dream. What a night. What a life.
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