Chapter 3, Part 1

bleakly

I was being carried. Every part of me was tingling and I had trouble putting one thought in front of another. I almost wished I had all my old problems.

My non-acquaintance the monologuer was very busy yelling at someone at about the point I’d recovered enough of myself to hear.“We’ve got no use for him anymore. He’s gone totally starkers, anyone could see that. He won’t be missed. Make him disappear.”

There’s monologue guy… They have no use for me? Meaning…

“Ha, no. No, no, no, no, and categorically, NO, you fucktard, you are missing the point. He contacted Smith’s daughter, who knows what she knows?”

Not the monologuer, now. Someone else. Someone… familiar? I feel like I’d know that voice anywhere. But whose is it? It’s… it’s…

” They are collectively a greater threat than you are apparently capable of seeing.“

“One wrong note, anything to tip her off, and BAM. She’s useless. She burns out. She’s programmed to. Follow Bleakly. Monitor the daughter. And don’t fuck this up. Ah, the man of the hour. Give him here.”

I was lifted up onto some kind of table. I struggled to open my eyes, but the collar either wasn’t forgiving me for speaking to the Neithermen, or there was something else acting on me. Hell, it could be the drugs. Great going. Way to prove the old kid’s shows right. Just say no, kids.

“He’s been erratic. But he’s been out of contact with everyone, for the most part. Still safe until we need him.”

A new voice. Cold. Soft. “And if something should go wrong?”

The familiar one replied. “We have prepared for that contingency.”

Where the hell do I know that voice from? He’s… he’s touching my neck. What is he-

And I heard no more and felt no more.

———

Jacobson couldn’t have come at a more perfect time. He was warm and understanding… he reminded me of my father.

He searched the house, asking questions, taking notes. Unlike Bleakly, he seemed to have a method. Everything he did made sense.

Until his cell phone rang.

“Hello? Dear God, Tom, where? What?”

His jaw dropped.

“Judas? The Judas? I see. Very well.”

He looked at me with more sadness in his eyes than I was prepared to expect from this calm, gentlemanly octogenarian. “We need to leave. Immediately. We’ll be meeting with Thomas.”

I followed him into the night, locking the front door as quickly as I could. “What’s going on? Who’s Judas?”

Even in his haste he held open the car door for me. “He’s someone from whom Thomas would not ask a favor unless he found it absolutely necessary to do so. They were friends, once.”

“And why are we going to him now?” I barely fastened my seat-belt before he ran a red light and two stop signs.

“Because, my dear, in Judas’ care is the very last place anyone who knows anything about Thomas Bleakly would think to search for him. And the people who are searching for him will be looking for you directly.”

The first few drops of rain started to hit the windshield. Jacobson clicked the wipers on.

The wipers thrummed and the rain pattered and music whispered lightly from the radio.

Jacobson pulled onto the highway and exhaustion covered me like a warm blanket.

I dreamed of my father. His smile, his absent-minded days, the way he’d get lost in his books and his equations.

I dreamed about one day in particular, after my father had spent a weekend locked up in his study and when he came out, he’d written me a piece of music. It was elegant and moving and I could play it effortlessly on piano, but he pulled out his old guitar and awkwardly plucked the strings, trying to keep the rhythm of the piece he’d written himself. I’d laughed and hugged him and he spent the rest of the evening by the fire, tinkering on the guitar and singingly softly to himself and me.

I miss you.