Chapter 14

It goes like this. The bubble is growing, attracting news media and crowds. And some of them get swallowed up; the curious and the stupid, and they don’t return and the bubble grows bigger, strengthened by the ghosts resolve to kill Bateman and by the human life that is trapped inside and feeds. Nothing can kill it. Nothing can stop it. Squiggle is furious. There is no way to hide this. The military want to step in. He is happy, as they can take the flak, leaving him alone. Anything he does now is just merely to please those paying the contracts. 

He has forgotten about Bunuel trapped in a cell, desperate to get out, desperate to get to his parents, desperate to stop anybody and anything that will kill his parents. He screams and the guards do nothing. But he is forgotten about, by Squiggle and also maybe by his parents. 

And so Squiggle assigns his new team. Average agents who will do their job to the level that they will do it to. Squiggle doesn’t care. Everything is out of his control.

And as he leads them to the safe house, he is pleased to see that the lights are out, believing that the previous team have left. That is until he meets Crunchy, a shaken, tired and edgy Crunchy outside, wanting to know how he is able to get back home to Wales as his train tickets are not open return and are not valid for another week and a half. He sends the two agents inside whilst he deals with Crunchy, wanting to be assigned to the new team instead, finding polite ways to refuse Crunchy, but Crunchy is stubborn, asking again and again, making up reasons and excuses and continual demands. 

Entering the house, the two agents walk into Mitsuko’s gun. The lights are turned on to reveal Hemmingway and Mitsuko, pissed off and frightening. She wants to know how much they know about the F.I.B., not taking any ignorance as an answer. She needs to know just how far down the chain she is. She is not afraid to hurt to find out. Hemmingway protests at her grander and grander threats. Ultimately they are counter-productive. You can’t get information out of a dead body, and such actions will lose them their jobs. Inevitably, this was Mitsuko’s part of the plan, one that is being improvised on the spur of the moment, but not really coming as a surprise to Hemmingway. 

Enter Squiggle, Crunchy having been unable to delay him any longer, who follows uselessly behind. The gun is pointed at Squiggle, until it is knocked away by Hemmingway, uneasy at going this far. 

This was always an awkward plan, and the stakes are high and everything is in jeopardy. 

With Mitsuko distracted, the agents make their move. A fight breaks out, the four agents giving hell to each other, with Crunchy and Squiggle on the outskirts. Crunchy is numb, exhausted of all thoughts and all emotions. Nothing is real to him. He just exists, like a kettle exists. A process of breathing and eating and displacing energy according to entropy. Squiggle, however is mentally writing out P45’s.

That is, until Crunchy is dragged into the fray. He is punched, he is kicked, and he just takes it, without even bracing, just relaxed, just happy. It is finally Mitsuko who manages to squirm her way out of the ruckus. She has her gun pointed at Squiggle, and walks up to him. 

“What is that you want? What the fuck is all this about,” she demands. Squiggle merely shrugs.  “Do you want this fucking thing dead or not?”

“The strategy’s kind of changed since you were involved,” remarks one of the fuckwit agents, smugly. 

“Nobody ever tells me a fucking thing!” yells out Mitsuko in desperation. “What the fuck does it take?!” She fires the gun, the slug digging its way into the wall behind Squiggle. “Tell me!”

“Very well,” Squiggle sighs. “I can’t reveal to you any of the contracts, but yes, you and Hemmingway were assigned to get rid of this reflection monster. 

Then everything changed. 

This bubble thing –“

“What bubble thing?” Cuts in Hemmingway, concerned that he is missing vital information.

“It’s on the news. 

I’m surprised you haven’t seen it, with it being not very far away and fucking huge. 

It’s a big blue bubble thing that we have no data about, except that it shimmers, is made of an insubstantial material akin to water or light or gas, and it’s growing. 

People go inside, they don’t come back out. 

Well, anyway, you’d got yourself thrown off the case –“

“Why?” cuts in Hemmingway.

“Because it is in the employment handbook. 

“Any employee caught in illegal practices without furthering the interests of the F.I.B. are subject to examination, if not expulsion. 

Legal matters will be taken up accordingly with the police’. 

You’re the ones who got yourselves thrown off the case, nothing to do with me. 

But anyway, you were out of the way, conveniently, because with this bubble thing, other external sources became interested. 

What is this bubble? 

Why is it here? 

We had to tell them, it’s in our jurisdiction –“

“The military,” cuts in Hemmingway again. 

“We had to tell them. 

The details inevitably led back to this reflection monster. 

Well anyway. 

Our priorities are now the same as before, and different. 

That’s all I can tell you. 

I’m just glad that you’d got yourselves out of the way. 

It’s saved a lot of hassle. 

You really were the wrong people for the job in the end.”

“Why was I the right person?” asks a suspicious Mitsuko.

“Because of Crunchy. 

I knew you would not get along, and we needed that.

I knew I’d be opening you up to an F.I.B. that you’d never seen before, but I believed you’d earned it.”

Mitsuko snaps inside at the irony. To think that she’d thrown everything away without knowing that she’d achieved it all. 

“You are going to kill it, though?” Hemmingway wants to know. He is suspicious.

“Our priorities are the same and different.”

“Because you’ve got two contracts. 

They conflict, right? 

One says kill it, the other says don’t.

 You want to cheat, say it’s dead, but keep it alive.”

“Why?” screams Mitsuko, firing her gun once again, but the bullet strays too close to Squiggle, not hitting him, but he can feel its presence in space and time just enough to recoil, grabbing his face. The shit hit the fans as the two shitbag agents rise to the occasion and guns are pulled out on all fronts, including Hemmingway, trying to cover the scumball agents, who in turn are covering Mitsuko. Crunchy just stands and watches. He has not moved a muscle, his eyes are unfocused. The action seems to be nothing more than shapes and colours and vague definitions moving in front of him. 

“Okay, Mitsuko. 

Calm down,” pleads Squiggle, uselessly. 

“I’ll tell you. But be warned, if this leaks, you will be taken out. 

The military are fascinated by this bubble. 

Now, I don’t know if they have any ideas, I’d be surprised if they do, but they are fascinated, likewise, finding out about the reflection monster. 

It was like taking a student to Toys ‘R’ Us. 

They want to play around, maybe create new weapons. 

They want us to capture the reflection and study it. 

They want us to explore the bubble and study it. 

I’m assuming the two are connected, I don’t know how, but if they are, that means we have a deadline. 

Two seemingly co-dependent events never coexist for too long. 

One ultimately destroys the other.”

“Bastard!” yells Mitsuko, punching him in the face. Chaos erupts again. 

Crunchy’s soul is empty. He might not love himself, but right now, he does not hate himself. But something registers. His mind absent, his body is left as a receptacle, as an antenna, that deep, deep inner need that every creature has of self protection finds its voice. Buried, hidden, but not destroyed, it digs itself out, building up momentum, building up fear. And it projects the fear outwards. Crunchy’s power, his ‘sensitivity’ has not all been eaten up by Bateman. An emergency reserve has been kept aside. It grips everybody. 

Just whiteness, more a glare than a light, watered down, a contrast that is too low, and everybody is gripped by primal fear, except Crunchy, emptying himself, trying to find an alternative fuel to fill him up, and back comes the rage, a convenient replacement. He, too, punches Squiggle, who is terrified of him, his fear keeping him conscious, Crunchy punching and punching until his arm complains of fatigue, blood spraying from the wounds opening up on his knuckles, and finally, Squiggle is out cold. 

Hemmingway and Mitsuko are the first to recover from Crunchy’s little splurge, used to him by now, and able to grasp what is happening. They are able to hold down the two ratfaced agents, using available clothing to tie them up until the clothing can be replaced by superior rope. The adventure is over, Crunchy is huddled in a corner, with fear and rage conflicting with each other in his mind body and soul, afraid of what he is likely to do to himself if he so much as moves a muscle. 

Mitsuko moves up to one of the arsetwat agents, using her favoured method of hair grabbing to pull him up to a level where she can spray “Where is he?” onto his face from pure disgust.

“Who?”

“Bunuel. The boy.”

“I don’t know.” He is kneed in the gonads. “I think there was a boy in the cells. 

Don’t know who he was. 

Looked about ten, perhaps twelve?” He is dropped to the floor. 

Mitsuko turns to Hemmingway. “I had it, Hemmingway. 

I had it in my hands, and I never knew it. 

Now I’ve just thrown it all away.”

“What do you mean?”

“My career. 

You heard him, I’d earned my dues, but I got too bitter believing that I was being pissed on.” She slumps against the wall, sliding down until she lands on her derriere. 

“I’ve got arrested. 

That I can live with. 

I shot at my superior. 

Twice. 

That I can also live with. 

Hindering an investigation. 

Couldn’t give two tosses about. 

Throwing away my career, that I can. 

I thought being suspended was bad enough. 

I’m out. 

I’m out, aren’t I?”

Hemmingway wishes he could be positive. If there was any way to do that, he would. “I believe so.”

Sighing, Mitsuko throws her head back against the wall. It’s not as if she can even blame it on somebody. “All I cared about was this job. 

It wasn’t important to me what it was, I could be working at Burger King, I’d still be doing whatever I could to get up the career ladder.”

“You can still do that. You’re young, employable.”

“It’s not like that, though. 

I’m one of those people who define themselves by their career. 

I got a gun and a badge in some secret organisation and I created the character. 

I lived the character. 

I am the character. 

I go do something else, it’s not just a job, it’s who I am. 

I don’t know who to be, other than this now. 

I’m lost.

I’ve lost my identity.”

“You’ll get another job, Mitsuko.”

“It’s not like that, Hemmingway. 

What if I get an office job?

I’m doomed to going out with the office guys every week, lose contact with anyone else, because they are not in the office.  

I’d do these things to impress those people. 

I’d have to be desperate to get their acceptance, to be one of the crowd, faceless and bland, and worrying about pay rises, how a one grand pay rise is not good enough and I deserve more. 

Sitting, looking at fucking crap internet pages, chatting on MSN. 

I’d have to change myself, become a flirtier, socially attractive Mitsuko. 

I’d have to become someone who can deal with all that, because I wouldn’t want to. 

I’d be anonymous due to my facelessness, my blandness, not anonymous because I’m undercover, hard, tough.”

“You don’t have to change yourself, just be yourself.”

“I would have to change myself because I don’t know who I am. 

I don’t know how to be anybody else other than the person I have been the last few years. 

I wasn’t happy, but I believed I was somebody.”

“Well, what you gonna do?”

“I think I’m going to get Bunuel. 

Maybe this is a good thing. 

The last couple of days, when he’s been around, I’ve felt like someone else. 

And it’s been natural.

I haven’t needed to act, I haven’t needed to force anything. 

I just want to be around him, care for him. 

It’s kind of scary. 

But if I need to do something, I need to find him. 

Maybe I’ll find my answers that way. 

Save him, get him out of that cell for a starter, try and adopt him.”

“He’s not your child.”

“Why do you think I’m going to have to adopt him?”

“That’s not what I’m saying. 

I’m saying be careful. 

You feel like you’ve got to save him, which is no bad thing. 

But maybe he doesn’t want to be saved. 

Not by you, at least. 

A lot of bad things have happened very recently, and he’s got to sort all that out. 

And you’re a part of all that. 

Maybe he doesn’t see you as a saviour. 

Maybe he just sees you as pat of the crazy shit he needs to put away. 

He’s got to do that alone. 

Maybe he just needs to save himself.”

Mitsuko gets up and heads to the door. “We’ll see about that. 

If I haven’t got him, then I haven’t got anything. 

Maybe he needs to save me. 

Goodbye, Hemmingway. 

It was good working with you.”

“Wait! 

We still need you. 

Are you sure you want to go? 

Stay, please.”

“I’m going.”

“Then once again, be careful.”

“Goodbye.”

And she is gone. Damn! Hemmingway had not counted on her departure. He is left with Crunchy. Oh joy. He really doesn’t want to be left alone with him. He’d kill himself before Crunchy even had the gun loaded. And on top of that, he’s got to go and save the world tonight as well. His body complains, citing exhaustion as a reference. Even his mind tries to get in on the act. Fuck it. The world can wait ‘til the morning. Enough has happened today, who would willingly face up to doing any more? He remembers a line from his days of training, one that he has willingly ignored ever since, pushing himself through more and more, trying to achieve too much in one sitting. That piece of advice was ‘rest is a weapon’. Well, he’ll follow that advice, at least use it as an excuse to go back to his proper home and get into his proper bed and have a decent night’s rest.  Enough is enough, he knows he can’t cope with any more tonight, but it’s a reasonable excuse. 

He contemplates leaving Crunchy here alone, picking him up in the morning, but knows he can’t do it. He crouches down next to him and takes him gently by the shoulder. “Come on, you little freak. 

You’ll be staying with me tonight.”

Crunchy turns to face him, his eyes look as if they are non-existent, so scared that they have retreated leaving nothing more than black, fearful holes in his face. “Don’t let me hurt myself,” he says in a small but terrified voice.

He pulls Crunchy slowly up, unable not to notice just how much Crunchy is trembling. He takes his jacket off and places it over Crunchy, allowing Crunchy to lean on him as he walks him to his car. 

As they drive off, Hemmingway cannot help but mourn a little at the loss of Annette, regretting that he killed her and his access to fantasies he never knew could be so fulfilling. Fantasies that he can never play out again without killing someone. No matter how much he tries to rationalise it as a Medusa type charm she held over him, he has lost a part of himself today. That, maybe more than anything, is perhaps the reason for Hemmingway’s exhaustion.