The Director left us to our own devices while we awaited the tribunal.
Richard and Vanessa came up to where Nell and I were sitting quietly watching the snowfall.
“The crew is free to go, apparently,” Richard said.
“That’s great,” I said, forcing myself to meet his eyes.
Richard just stood there, frowning.
I sighed. “Richard, you’re loyal to a fault. I understand that you want to be here to defend us, but I’m not sure that this is your battleground. You’ve already done so much. You got me out of Sullivan’s den. You fought your way through Sillwood. Take a rest. Go to your wife. Figure out how you’ll support her now that the Rings are gone.”
Richard’s frown deepened. “Graham said as much.” He held out his hand. I took it and he pulled me into a shoulder hug. “Watch yourself, Nick. I don’t trust these people.”
I smiled softly. “Take care, Richard. See you again someday.”
Vanessa rolled her eyes even as her fingers moved incessantly across the touchscreen of her returned phone. “Thank God you convinced him, I was worried I would have to drive us outta here and I don’t have enough feet to use the clutch.” She held her robotic prosthetic across her lap. With a quick tap of her phone, she made the toes point at me. “I heard from Zola that these soldier meatheads had a nickname for you during the Sillwood incident. What was it?”
“Wickerman,” Richard said.
“Don’t-” I said too late. Richard looked at me with a puzzled expression. I just shook my head in exasperation as Vanessa grinned devilishly and typed at machspeed.
“Wickerman. Great, now I can tag all these videos of you that are popping up!”
“I’d appreciate it if you didn’t feed into this idea that I’m a bogeyman.”
“Too late for that, I’m afraid. Everyone is eating it up. Trust me, I’m doing you a favour steering things in this direction. If some of the other names for you got traction you’d die of embarrassment.”
“At least tell me how to contact you so we can chat sometime. I might need your expertise at some point.”
“We’ll keep in touch.” Vanessa winked at me. “It’s been a pleasure, Nick.” She pivoted her chair to face Nell who was listening but staying quiet.
“Don’t you worry, Nell. I’ve been giving you credit too. ‘The Wickerman listens to only one person, the woman who the very trees bow down to.’ I haven’t gotten as far as a nickname, but I’ll get there,” she said with a twinkle in her eye.
That brought a small smile to Nell’s face. “See ya,” she whispered.
The two waved goodbye and left.
I watched Zola trying to wrangle an AJ hyped up on three cups of caffeinated coffee, who was attempting to drag tables together to build a fort. “I’m going to try and pay Kay a visit,” I said to Nell. “Do you want to come?”
She nodded.
Tom was chatting up a guard by the door who seemed determined not to respond.
“-volleyball? You already have the kneepads for it. We could put one of the tables on its side as a net, use a helmet as a ball… Hey Nell! Howdy Nick!”
I smiled at him. “We have a bit more time before the tribunal. Could we say hi to Kay?”
“Sure,” Tom said, glancing at the guard. “If that’s okay with the silent protagonist over here.”
The guard was, in fact, capable of speech and agreed to take us to Kay, perhaps only to gain respite from Tom’s yapping.
We were brought down the hall to a locked room. Another soldier was standing guard outside and the two soldiers exchanged words before letting us inside. The soldier opened the door slowly, as if trying not to make noise.
A single black butterfly fluttered briefly at the doorknob, like a burnt flake drifting from a fireplace, before retreating into the room.
Despite being prepared, the sight of Kay still made my heart lurch. A silhouette made of fluttering black wings sat on a hospital bed. The room was bare, besides a window that had the curtains drawn and a book that lay open beside her.
One of the butterflies moved and I could see her spectacled face peeking past the wings. I breathed out. She hadn’t lost the rest of her body, the winged insects were only covering her. Tom shut the door gently, the click of the door eliciting some of the butterflies to leave Kay and fly towards the door.
Nell flinched as one of them touched her cheek.
“Sorry,” Kay said quietly. “I’m told touching them stings quite bad.”
“It’s not that bad,” Nell responded, reaching out to let one land on her finger as if to prove it.
Kay smiled warmly. She pushed up her glasses with an awkward motion, unaccustomed to having to use her non-dominant hand. I swallowed. She looked different without her arm. Even the shoulder was caved in, making the sleeve of her shirt sit in the hollow as a loose handful of cloth.
“Sorry,” I said.
Tom and Kay exchanged a knowing look.
“Told you,” Tom said.
“I agreed with you that he would apologize for nothing.”
I blinked. “What do you mean? It’s my fault you got involved. And if I had stopped Alek sooner-”
The butterflies surged, swirling inches from my face before pulling back. “Nick, I’m- We’re not children. Tom and I understood what we agreed to, despite what Tom’s jokester behavior might imply to the contrary. I’m happy that I’m still alive. I can think of a lot of outcomes much worse than this. I can handle this,” she said, gesturing to her missing limb.
“How is it?” Nell asked.
Well, I’ve stopped falling apart. I think I’m getting a grasp on how I did that. At first it was an unbearable pressure, like forgetting how to breathe. I had to put my entire focus on staying together. But with time it’s gotten easier. Now I’m trying to figure out how to focus on things without also covering it.” She pointed in frustration at the open book beside her. “Mostly because I would love to read without these little bastards covering the pages.”
“That’s good. Are you getting any feedback from the little bastards?” Nell asked as the sides of her mouth quirked.
Kay shrugged. “Something is there. I can tell what position the butterflies lie on a surface in relation to each other, like a topography map almost. There are other sensations but I’ve been shutting them out for now. It’s too easy to lose focus and lose more of my body.”
“You’ll get your body back eventually,” Tom said. He scratched his head. “I don’t know if that’s my power talking or just my optimism. But I believe it.”
“I appreciate that. But even if that doesn’t happen, I’m not worried about it, really. I don’t regret a thing.” She stared at each of us in turn, before settling on me. Butterflies stung my face, almost like she was grabbing my attention. “Let’s stop worrying about the what ifs, okay? What happened, happened. Now we get to look forward to something brighter.”
I wasn’t sure if I could. The guilt was heavy. But I wanted to try. If anything because Nell needed an example. She was doubting herself hard. I could really use some of Kay’s ability to talk so honestly, forthright and unafraid of how her words would be taken.
And if I could channel that as I stood in front of the tribunal, maybe I could make a difference.
I listened to Tom bemoan the loss of Sillwood’s arcades and Kay describing a trip to Japan that she had taken as a child, where they had arcades that dwarfed the ones in Sillwood. The minutes ticked by too quickly, until a soldier knocked on the door.
“It’s time,” they said.
Nell and I said goodbye to Tom and Kay and went with them.
We passed through the cafeteria on our way out and AJ ran up to me.
“Zola is taking me back to Sillwood. I gotta meet back up with my mom,” he said.
I looked at Zola who nodded seriously.
“Okay,” I said. “Be as safe as you can. We know it’s still dangerous.”
“‘kayyy.”
“I’ll come visit when I can.”
AJ crossed his arms. “Ajna has it under control. So you don’t have to.”
I grinned. “What if I want to see you?”
“That’s okay, I guess.” AJ mumbled and gave me a quick fistbump, then ran back to Zola, who mouthed good luck.
I could really use some. It seemed like despite Kay’s pep talk, any and all possible bad outcomes were swirling around in my head as we came to a large auditorium.
The room was set up in two tiers. A raised semi-circle looked down on a row of seats that the Director led me to sit at. There was a wooden paneled wall, high enough that I could only see the upper-half of the people that sat around the semi-circle. Their faces were obscured by large black panels that only left a silhouette show through. This audience of anonymous torsos observed us.
Graham, Nell, and I were seated as the Director walked to the middle of the room and addressed the onlookers.
“Leaders of Canada. We have gathered today to discuss the fallout of the events at Sillwood. We acknowledge that we are meeting on the land of the Indigenous Peoples of Turtle Island, now called Canada. We want to honor-”
“Get on with it!” a deep male voice boomed, cutting them off. “Every second wasted is a life lost to this madness.”
The Director paused and then continued, “I think this is precisely the time to be reflecting on this country’s past so that we do not repeat the same mistakes. Let us consider the impact of our actions before we take them. But very well. As head of the department of H.E.S.P., I recognize that my operations have been furtive and undefined to many of you. This council is here to hear my explanation, as well as for me and these knowledgeable folk to advise on the plan of action moving forward.”
One by one, screens behind us flickered on. I turned to view them. The first depicted a man with needle-point teeth. He was elbow deep in the innards of a dead horse, taking fistfuls of guts and bringing them to his hungry mouth as he stared directly into the camera capturing him.
The second screen showed a building with strange fluid moving in and out of the broken windows. Debris was caught in the flow, moving as if suspended in space. The building itself was severed into several floating pieces, somehow not collapsing.
On the third screen was a fractal woman. She moved as though sliding across a broken mirror, limbs elongating and retracting, never returning to the same position twice. Her face moved around her body without care to uphold proper anatomy.
The fourth and fifth screens showed Sillwood burning with the sixth screen displaying a pile of dead Aleks, all staring lifelessly as they were incinerated by flamethrowers.
Each screen would switch to a new scene every so often, rotating videos that displayed all sorts of locations across the globe.
The Director took these images in stride. “Paints quite the hellish picture, I know. But I’m here to help contextualize all the horror that you’ve had to catch up with all at once.”
One of the leaders spoke, a man’s voice that sounded falsely light-hearted. I could practically hear the polite politician’s smile on his face. “I’m not sure all the context in the world could help you here, Director. I’m frankly more interested at the moment in implementable strategies. So tell me. Do you have a way to identify Shapers? And more importantly, a way to neutralize them?”