WnW 1.5 Say Nothing

I slid into the booth across from Chase. It was loud and busy inside the restaurant. A sports team was jostling with each other around the drink machine. There were some tourists crowded around the windows on the far side, taking pictures of the towering Nentech building framed by the Sill. 

Chase grinned at me and nodded towards the tourists. “If only they knew, huh? We could give them a new attraction to snap pics of. What’s so special about Nentech, anyway?”

I shrugged. “They lead the race on medical tech. The main lobby is open to the public and they have a showcase with their robotic prosthetics that can do complex tasks or like, shoot a basketball.”

“This city gets more interesting with every day.”

“I don’t know any locals who’ve been, the billionaire who owns Nentech is kinda contentious for lobbying against the renewal of Old Town.”

I eyed him as he took a fry, dipped it in ketchup and tossed it into his mouth. The maneuver left a drop of red on his cheek.

I pointed to my cheek. “You got a little something…”

Chase grabbed a napkin and wiped his cheek, then proceeded to keep tossing fries into his mouth, creating even more of a mess. A mother shot him a nasty glare as her laughing toddler decided to try copying him.

He winked at the kid and when he lifted his arm to throw a fry, his shirt lifted up and I caught a glimpse of his abdomen, mottled with dark purple bruises. It looked painful.

“Did you get that checked?” I asked.

“It’ll heal,” he narrowed his eyes, staring at me. My leg bouncing under the table, I looked out the window. I tried to not let him get under my skin, he seemed to enjoy it.

“Some guy in a suit found me,” I said.

“Oh yeah? Did you tell him you murdered Beethoven?”

I ignored the joke. “No. Said he was from HESP. Do you know what that is?”

Chase shrugged. “It’s a government agency. The Commission of Humane Experimentation for Scientific Progress. They’re in on it.”

I leaned forward. “In on what?”

Chase gestured around him with a floppy fry. “This. The Pianist. The monsters,” he said that with a smirk, clearly trying to get me to ask more questions.

My horrified curiosity won out. “Is HESP responsible for them?”

Chase shook his head. “They’re just trying to keep this all under wraps. Oversight and control, they don’t want the public to know. But they aren’t the ones responsible.”

“Who is? How do you know all this?”

Chase leaned forward too, resting his arms on the table. “About five months ago, I was sold to an unknown buyer. There’s a long story there, but I was kidnapped and brought to an old abandoned insane asylum. It wasn’t just me in there. There were a lot of people. They seemed normal, no one knew who our captors were. But after a while, they all started to transform. Turning into things like our friend in the alley.”

I felt sick. “They used to be people…” I whispered.

Chase took the lid off his cup and poured ice cubes into his mouth. He crunched them loudly. “I made it out, but barely. It wasn’t just an old building. They had changed the place, installed cameras and remote operated doors, so they had full control of where we could go, like some fucked up house of horrors. I didn’t get many clues about what they were, just a name, Organ. They must have some deep pockets to pull something like this.”

“And you’ve been hunting the monsters down since? How many have you killed?” I asked.

“A dozen or so. I have some interesting leads. That’s what brought me here. I was hunting the Pianist, but before I knew it, it had found me.”

He rubbed his neck. “That one felt different than the others. Can’t quite put my finger on what.”

“Maybe it was the fact that you would’ve died if I hadn’t stumbled into this mess,” I muttered.

“You have a talent,” he said. Throughout this conversation, Chase was only half paying attention to me, but as I met his eyes, I felt the burn of his focused gaze.

I scoffed. “I’m not taking credit. You cut that monster to ribbons. I was stuck under it for the whole thing.”

Chase crumpled up a napkin into a brown crinkly ball and placed it on the table. “That’s not the whole truth, though, is it? You witnessed an abomination,” he flicked a fry a little closer to the ball, “and you took a step forward, not back.”

“I just did what you asked me to do,” I said.

He wagged his finger. “I didn’t tell you how. You found a weapon. You assessed the Pianist for weaknesses.”

I squeezed my hands together under the table. “I told you, that’s way too much credit. I was terrified. I am terrified.”

Chase brushed the other fries away except for one, leaving streaks of ketchup across the table. “I’ve seen others in your position. They don’t act like you. They freeze. They run. Not you. I saw it in your eyes. Fear, yes. But more importantly, fascination, excitement.”

He knocked the ball into a pool of red. “You’re a monster hunter, just like me.”

I shook my head, feeling strange. What if we were caught? By HESP or by Organ, or just the cops. What would happen to my life?

“What you felt that day, you’re feeling right now,” Chase said hungrily, bumping the table as he practically stood up. “Tell me what you want.

All my worries, all the pressure I felt, the wrongness, it all fell away.

I gazed at Chase and I gripped the table, steadying it. “I want to hunt another one.”

He sat back down, a smug expression on his face as he pulled out his phone. “Take a look at this.”

He hit play on a video. The perspective was dark and blurry. Whoever was holding the camera was running down a flight of stairs, their panting breath loud in the phone’s mic. Leaping the last few stairs, they burst out of an emergency exit door onto the street. After running for a second, they turned back around to face the way they had come from. The building they had exited was made of blocky concrete shapes, with long black gaps of space, unlit by any interior lighting. It was a multi-leveled parkade. Something moved on the second floor and the person gasped before whirling back around to run. The video ended.

Chase kept his phone held up. “I found this, doing a little digging on paranormal websites. The owner of the video claimed to have seen a monster inside. He’s gone no contact since. Do you recognize the building?”

I shook my head. “Just a parkade. There’s a hundred that look like that. But let me see…” I swiped on the phone, reversing the video halfway and watched again. On the road, a tall barricade was set down, with yellow and black reflective stripes along it. City lights filtered through the gaps. “It’s just inside the Old Town. You can see the barricades.” I narrowed my eyes. There was something familiar about the layout. There was a fire hydrant, and close to it was a graffiti piece of a man with a caution road sign for a head. “Hold on, I think I…” That sick feeling returned and I quelled it, looking away from the phone. “I think I recognize the street. Brandt.”

Chase grinned. “Perfect. Let’s meet there tomorrow night.”

“So soon?” I asked, keeping my eyes on the floor and taking deep breaths. “What should I bring?”

Chase laughed. “There isn’t a handbook on hunting monsters, Nick. Bring whatever you want.” He got up from the table, humming. “This is gonna be fun.”

I watched him leave the restaurant. Tomorrow night.

The video kept playing over and over in my head as I took the bus back home. As a kid, I stared out the window, as my dad drove me through Old Town, back before it was closed off.

Bad thoughts. I tried to stifle them, thinking about what tools I should bring. Suddenly tomorrow night couldn’t come soon enough.

I was so lost in my own head that I almost walked into the car that was parked in the driveway of my house. Looking up, I saw my dad talking with my mom at the front door. My mom stopped talking as she saw me, looking away.

My dad turned. Wire glasses caught the light, masking his eyes for a moment. He gave me a small smile and came over.

“Nick! How are you doing?”

My eyes were locked in place. Bolted to the floor where I could see nothing but the tips of his white lab coat. “Good.”

He was quiet. “That’s good,” he said finally. Then he gave me a light hug. The smell hit me like a truck. Pungent, almost smelling like fruit, the scent of solvents penetrated my defenses, making me dizzy. The second he released me, I walked towards the house, keeping my eyes down.

“Hope you are excited for the wedding!” He called after me.

Mom touched my shoulder as I passed and my stomach flipped. I ran the last few steps to the bathroom and shut the door. Sinking to my knees, I quietly heaved into the toilet.

Don’t think about it. I ordered myself. Think about anything else. Don’t think about it. Don’t think about it. Don’t think-