tabi_essentially | Glitch

JANUARY

Three, Arthur thought, as he bashed one over the head with a glass bottle from the trash can.

He threw the trash can in his wake as he sprinted into the street.

With both devices tucked under one arm, he ran into the traffic. Jumping up onto the hood of an oncoming car, he took a few deep strides, and then leapt off of it.

Four, he counted as one of his pursuers tried to follow him and instead crashed into the side of the car.

He rounded an intersection and thought for a moment that he had lost them. Then a black car came screaming up beside him and pulled to a stop. The door opened. He had a second to see the man in the passenger seat looking at him with focused intent, and then start to get out of the car, drawing something from the holster at his hip.

Arthur turned the other way and ran, away from the busy streets.

Now they were chasing him in cars instead of on foot, and it was not a small group. He heard a helicopter. Glanced up and didn't see it. What he did see, though, was a man in a flak jacket crouched on a rooftop. He saw him only fleetingly, but he knew what it looked like when someone was aiming something at him.

What the fuck is this, he thought frantically, because this wasn't some small-time rival group. This was something much bigger, something that recalled the days of running from Cobol.

He had to start using his weapon soon, and he couldn't do that on a crowded street. Arthur dodged down another alley, one that was thankfully not a dead-end. He glanced up to the rooftops and saw no one lurking there.

The alley led out to a parking lot, mostly deserted and not yet plowed. A ridiculous winter storm had hit the night before and the snow was thigh-high. New York was a mess. Arthur wondered about the rest of his team, wondered how far they had gotten without him. He hoped that they'd had sense enough to get Allen to a hospital. He would clean up the details of who they were and what they were doing later. They had all been hooked up to the machine he now carried under his arm, but Arthur had the distinct feeling that it was him they were after, and that the rest of his team just happened to be in the way. They were small-time. Arthur knew that he wasn't.

The high snow was going to slow him down, but he had to cross the parking lot and get over the chain-link fence. He had no jacket, hat, gloves or boots – they were all back in the hotel. All he had was his drool-and-vomit stained suit, a red die in his pocket, the PASIV and the mystery device, his cell phone, and the gun.

If they showed up again, he would start shooting whether they opened fire first or not. Now might be a good time to call for help, though. He dug the phone out of his inside pocket and flipped it open.

The next sound he heard was that of an air-pressure rifle being fired. A tuft of snow burst up into a small cloud next to his thigh. Arthur looked down at it and saw a glint of metal in the snow beside him. The air-pressure rifle sounded again, and another dart flew over his head.

He didn't have time to look for the trajectory; he knew the shooter was behind him. He hit the snow, tucked the cell phone away, and started crawling. The snow offered him a little cover, if he kept low like this, tunneling instead of trying to walk.

His breath came harsh and cold. Within ten seconds his fingers were numb and he was desperate to hold onto the mystery device. If he had to, he'd let go of the PASIV first. Whoever was chasing him already knew what it was. He needed to know what was in the machine he'd been hooked up to.

The sound of the air-pressure rifle came again and he heard another chunk of snow fly up, too close.

Arthur turned to look over his shoulder and unholstered the Glock with his free hand. The sun behind him blinded him but he returned fire anyway, to let them know that he was serious. Maybe it would buy him some time.

The shooting stopped, but he realized that it wasn't because he had returned fire. They were just waiting for a clear shot at him. They knew that he couldn't bury himself in the snow and wait all day; and besides, they were only going to close in on him if he didn't keep moving forward.

He made it to the fence on his hands and knees, but had left a clearing in his wake that would make following him a breeze. His arm burned from holding both devices. His hands were numb and raw. A few more minutes in the snow like this and they wouldn't have to shoot him full of ketamine to slow him down.

He threw both devices as far as they could go, without revealing the dark of his suit in the snow. The smaller one, the mysterious one, went over the fence. The PASIV fell back down beside him.

Fuck it. It pissed him off to let go of it after having come this far, but he would never make it over the fence with the PASIV in his hands.

He counted to three, and then launched himself onto the chain-link fence, that was the height of two of him. He made it to the top and was vaulting himself over it when the dart hit him in the shoulder.

Arthur dropped to the other side of the fence, plucked the dart out as quickly as he could, and grabbed the machine.

Ketamine. He could go about fifteen minutes before he fell, or so he had heard, anyway. Depending on the dose.

Up ahead something that looked like a train graveyard loomed in the late afternoon sun. It was littered with torn-up tracks and old, broken down cargo-trains. A field full of potential weapons. Arthur ran towards it.

They came over the fence behind him, confident in his impending incapacitation. Arthur turned and fired his gun.

Five. This one a kill-shot.

Six. To the thigh of the second man.

He thought there were four of them. Maybe five. They went blurry, doubled.

Arthur turned, swayed, stumbled, and then righted himself and kept running.

He ducked into an open train-car and held on to the seat-backs for balance. He had maybe ten minutes left before he fell. There was another open door at the other end of the car. Arthur put the machine down on one of the seats and pulled out his phone.

His hand shook as he turned it on. "Eames," he said into it, and then heard the phone begin its auto-dial.

Three of his pursuers came cautiously into the car and Arthur aimed the Glock. They stopped as one and ducked behind the seats. Arthur fired anyway, hitting one old, torn up leather seat. The second shot went wild as his vision blurred and the world tilted.

Eames answered with a "Yes?" that sounded foggy, like it was coming through a blanket.

Arthur was about to say his name, at least get that much out, when someone grabbed him from behind. He was instantly disarmed, spun around against a shattered window of the train car, and held by the throat. He struggled to hold on to the phone, but the man (whose face he could hardly see by now) plucked it out of his fingers.

Arthur jerked his knee up as hard as it would go into the man's crotch. The man released his throat and doubled over. Arthur kicked him in the chin and heard the sound of teeth breaking.

Seven.

He stumbled over the unconscious man, scrambling for his phone, the Glock, the device. He couldn't find any of them in his darkening vision, by the dim light that filtered in through dirty windows. He was empty-handed. His blood pressure plummeted, he could actually feel it, like a trap-door letting his blood out. His ears rang and hummed; the world faded around the edges.

The three men who had been crouching behind the seats converged on him. Arthur vaguely heard a crunch that he assumed was one of them stepping on his phone. He cast around for his gun, caught sight of it on the floor, and lurched for it. One of the men kicked it away.

He pulled himself to his hands and knees and then scrambled to his feet, but by now he knew he wasn't getting much farther. If he could find a way to take out the last three, he could call for help on one of their phones, at least. Or he could wait it out and hopefully not freeze to death until the sedative wore off. Either way, it didn't look too hopeful. He did wonder why they hadn't killed him yet, and instead of reassuring him, this made him worry more. If they wanted him alive, they probably wanted something from him – and people like this had creative ways of getting what they wanted.

He was at the farthest door of the train when one of them grabbed his arm and jerked him backwards. He lost his balance and heard a bright *pop*. With it came a dull blur of pain as his shoulder was dislocated.

He did see someone's face close to his, though, and he rammed his head forward, smashing the guy's nose with his forehead. He felt the other man's blood run down his face, as hot sparks of pain shot through his head.

He fell again, before he could get out the door. Face-down, he looked under the seats for something, anything he could use as a last-resort weapon. He saw something dark and sharp, and grabbed for it. His hands were trembling and felt too weak to wield anything, but this was a rusty railroad spike and at least it was something.

Arthur pulled himself toward the man he'd just head-butted, raised the spike and brought it down onto the man's calf. It didn't go all the way through, but it did enough. The man screamed, curled in agony, gripping his leg.

Eight.

The last two were keeping their distance from him, which gratified him in a totally useless way. He was completely unarmed, drugged to stupidity, and they were still afraid of him.

The device, the one he had fought so hard to hold onto, had fallen to the ground in the scuffle. Arthur reached for it, grabbed it by one of the wires trailing from it, and pulled it closer.

"He thinks he can still steal it," one of the men said. His voice sounded distant and slow.

Arthur let his eyes close.

"Careful, he's not out yet. Takes longer than that."

"I dosed him for estimated body weight but I thought he'd be bigger. He should be out already."

It was strange hearing them discuss him in such impassive terms while he was lying drugged on the floor of an abandoned train-car.

"He still took out, what, six of our guys? Just go slow."

Eight, Arthur thought, but who's counting?

"Fucker stabbed me!" shouted the guy on the floor. "God, fucker stabbed me! Fuck that, kill him."

"You know we can't yet."

'Yet.' The word stuck in his head. And then he heard the phrase that would have made his skin go cold, if he wasn't already numb.

"He needs to stay alive to spread it to the others."

'It,' he thought, being whatever they did to me. To the whole team. And it spreads through dreamsharing, probably.

Someone prodded him in the ribs with a boot, or maybe the butt of the tranq gun. Arthur didn't move.

"Get the Glitch machine, go real slow."

Glitch machine? Remember that.

He waited until he felt the man's fingers on his neck, checking for a pulse. He felt the man's breath on his face and then he surged up, rallying the last of his strength, and swung the metal machine. It bashed into the man's face, likely breaking his nose and some teeth.

Nine.

Arthur tried to turn over and scramble away, but the last man, the tenth, ignored his fallen comrades and grabbed Arthur by the ankle, dragging him back.

"You are one annoying son of a bitch," the last man said.

Arthur laughed a little. And that was all he had left in him.

** ** ** **

He woke up too hot, and trying to take his clothes off. There was no other thought aside from one of primal creature-hood: cool down to survive, protect his vulnerable parts, try to turn over.

Voices shouted and people touched, prodded, lifted, turned him. He fought to save himself from them, swung with his fists and kicked as hard as he could.

All throughout he had no sense of who he was or even why he was. One thought: Live.

But his assailants held him down, restrained him, pressed things to his face and body, and everything went black and smothering.

Some indeterminable time later, he opened his eyes again and looked at a white, tiled ceiling.

The air was pleasantly warm this time and he was very tired. He ached and throbbed with pain everywhere, but lacked the motivation to get up and do anything about it. He knew what the steady beeping sound meant. He'd been in hospitals before.

He just didn't know when, or why.

Voices floated down the hall. He knew what this meant, too: they were monitoring him and knew he was awake.

Good. Now he would get answers.

A woman's tired face loomed over his, studying him.

"Hello there," she said.

"Hi," he tried to answer, but nothing came out and his throat hurt. On top of that, it felt like someone had taped his lips shut.

"Don't try to talk yet, all right? We'll talk later." She squeezed his hand and prodded at his fingers with something sharp. "Can you feel that?"

He nodded. She moved to the edge of the bed and stuck his foot with something.

"And that?"

He nodded again.

"Good," she said. "You should be fine. You're very lucky."

That's good, he thought.

And waited for the burgeoning flood of understanding.

It didn't come.

** ** ** **

Four days later, as he watched the television and saw news about storms in New York – which he knew he was in – it still didn't come. He'd been here a week.

He knew most of the staff in passing. Dr. Grisham, the small, sharp lady with the dark, tired eyes. The tall, dark nurse Emma, short blond nurse Lizzie, and the mousie brown haired nurse Darlene. And they had no idea who he was.

"What would you like to be called?" Emma had asked him the day before, and he had inexplicably almost told her, 'Darling.' Instead he had just shrugged and asked her what sort of guy he looked like.

"You look like some kind of special agent, like Jason Bourne," she laughed. "Can you imagine? But, the name of the train they found you on was The Scout. We should just call you Scout."

The name 'Scout' had gone around the hospital staff, and soon it was how they referred to him. It was supposed to be against protocol to use names for someone with general amnesia like he had, but they had to call him something. So Scout it was.

The police came to talk to him. Psychiatrists came and went, in the first week. Specialists. The hospital deemed him still too fragile to move and honestly, he was glad for it. The police made him feel too cautious, like he had something to hide. The way they looked at him, at his injuries. The questions they asked about why he thought he'd been attacked. He answered honestly that he didn't know. They asked if he could remember any detail at all. If it was possible that he had enemies. If he remembered any specific enemies. He said no.

He felt deep down that he did. The hospital staff were all very pleasant to "Scout." He, on the other hand, had the feeling that he was someone dangerous. He looked at himself, when he was allowed into the bathroom alone. His body was scarred, and thin, but powerful. He was aware of his own strength. He felt as if he could hurt people if he had to.

So he played up the harmless image, to counteract what he thought was true. It helped. It kept people off his case.

And the truth was he was really terrified of himself. He must have done something very wrong, because no one was looking for him. No one had come to claim him.

** ** ** **

On the eighth day, Dr. Grisham came in to talk with him again when he was done eating (tomato soup and green beans. He'd discovered that he was a vegetarian, much to his surprise.) The TV was off and he was reading a book by Dean Koontz, who he wasn't sure he liked. None of it sounded familiar. He preferred reading over TV, though.

Dr. Grisham pulled up a chair next to his bed and he smiled at her, cheerful and harmless.

"How are you feeling today?" she asked.

"Good."

"Good. So, I've got clearance to ask you a few questions. The head-doctors from the clinic think you might be able to answer better if you didn't feel any pressure."

"Makes sense." He took a sip of orange juice with his good hand. The other one was still in a sling.

She reached into her pocket. "I have something of yours that I want you to look at."

"Okay." He was curious. She made it sound special.

Dr. Grisham held up a small red square that caught in the afternoon sunlight from his window.

Suddenly he was grabbing for it, immediately in a panic, almost vaulting himself out of the bed. He spilled the juice all over himself in his urgency to reach it. He didn't even know what it was yet, just that he needed it.

"Okay, okay Scout," Dr. Grisham said, opening her hand.

"That's not my name," he said, snatching the cube away from her. His breath came hard and fast as he clutched the red square.

Dr. Grisham looked alarmed and cautious. That look of apprehension was a dangerous thing for a man in his position and he couldn't afford the suspicion. He immediately regretted showing anything close to threatening behavior.

Instead of calming himself, he apologized profusely and pulled his knees up, trying to show more fear and confusion than aggression. He couldn't afford to scare them. Definitely couldn't afford to hurt anyone here. And absolutely had to make them think that he couldn't hurt them if he tried. He had no one else but them.

"I'm sorry, I didn't mean to," he said. "This is mine. It means I'm awake."

"That's all right," she said, her voice soothing as if she were talking to something wild that might attack. "It's yours. A red die that I believe is loaded. You said your name wasn't Scout. Did something come to you?"

He thought. Struggled to remember. Tried to force the words to come as he opened his palm and stared at the die. " I can't, I can't remember, I don't know, I'm sorry."

"It's okay," she said, taking a seat—slowly--on the edge of his bed. "Don't try to force it."

She was quiet as she took a towel from a nearby cart and started cleaning the spilled orange juice from his hospital gown.

"You said it meant that you were awake. Tell me. Do you think that you've had trouble distinguishing dreams from reality in the past?"

He looked at her, shocked into sudden clarity.

"I think I do," he whispered. "I don't know why that is." He rolled the die in his hand over and over. "If I can just look at it for a minute. I think I need you to turn away."

"It's interesting," she said, getting up and doing as he asked. "It always lands on three."

Her words struck fear into him, because somehow he knew that she wasn't supposed to know that. His throat went dry, his eyes felt too hot and this stranger, she knew his secret. He had no idea what it meant. He rolled the die onto the table next to his bed and watched it land on three. He knew it meant he was awake.

He just had no idea why.

** ** ** **

Days passed and he held onto the red die. The doctors clearly now thought him a mental patient with OCD and possibly delusions.

Night times were the worst. He had night terrors every time, but on the ninth day, he woke screaming, in pain, and gushing blood onto the tiles.

He had broken his nose careening into a wall and it took five people to get him back to his bed. He didn't let anyone near him until Dr. Grisham put the die in his hand (and now he knew it by weight, as if he'd never forgotten,) and he calmed immediately, and let them tape and bandage him up.

"REM sleep disorder," they diagnosed, and said it likely had something to do with his many other obvious disorders.

During the day he smiled at everyone because he knew that they liked it. He was as pleasant as he could be, he allowed all the poking and prodding with good humor. He read books and read aloud to Emma when she was on her breaks. He liked her.

He even helped them get him into the restraining jacket at night, so that he wouldn't wander around and re-dislocate his shoulder or do himself worse damage.

The restraints horrified him, if he was being honest with them. But he wasn't being honest with them, not at all.

On the tenth night, Emma came around at ten PM with the jacket, like she usually did, and sat on the edge of the bed.

"How are you, Scout?"

"Bored," he said.

"Well, you'll be out of here soon."

"Yeah?" he asked, trying not to make it a challenge. "You guys had enough of me? Sending me off?"

"No, not yet," she said, her smile regretful as she helped him slip his good arm into the sleeve. She must have known he hated it. "I just meant that someone'll be coming to look for you soon."

"You think so?"

"I do."

It was a trick to get his injured arm into the other sleeve, and more of a trick to fasten it. Because of the sling, both arms had to be fastened to one side of the bed, making it impossible for him to get comfortable.

Not that he slept anyway. He stayed awake as long as he could. Something blue and horrible pursued him in dreams. That's all he knew. Just that it was a blue thing, and his dreams had named it the Glitch.

And most nights he lay awake wondering about himself anyway, his mind unable to shut down.

Why hadn't anyone come for him? He suspected that he had no one. If he was the kind of man he thought he was, he probably was alone. Perhaps no one would ever come to tell him who he was (or what he had done,) and that void was more terrifying than the blue dreams, the Glitch.

"Who do you think will come for me?" he asked her, as she fastened the straps of the arms. "Get creative."

She wrinkled her nose and laughed. "Let's see. Hmm." She finished strapping his arms down and sat back a little, studying him. "I guess you must have a beautiful woman somewhere looking for you."

A beautiful man, his mind corrected, stunning him again into clarity. Holy shit. He liked men. He liked women, too, but he also liked men, and maybe even one in particular.

She must have seen the look on his face because she smiled, maybe a little ruefully. "Oh?" she asked. "Did I trigger a memory?"

He gave her his best smile, the one he knew slew them all. "No. Nothing like that. So, I've got some dame out looking for me? Does she look like you?"

She blushed, like he had meant for her to.

"What's my job?" he asked her. He knew she had to leave soon and go about the rest of her duties, but he hated the night, hated being left alone to struggle against sleep, and against the thing that pursued him into it.

"You do something fancy, that's for sure," she said. "Your clothes were really fine. I think you're Jason Bourne. Or! Actually, maybe you're an entertainer in Las Vegas." She nodded toward the die on the cart next to him. "You're a magician."

"I pull shit out of hats?"

"No, an illusionist. Like Criss Angel."

He barked out a loud laugh, trying to picture that. It amazed and frustrated him that he knew who Criss Angel was, but not his own name. "Okay, I'm a Las Vegas magician. That's cool, I guess. I pull rabbits out of hats."

"You probably don't live there though. You live in some mansion in the desert with horses. Or something."

"I don't think I have any horses."

"Cats?"

He thought about that one. "No," he answered honestly. "No cats. No dogs. No pets." He frowned, mystified at this. "I don't think I have …"

Anything. I don't think I have anything.

He thought the words, but couldn't say them.

She sensed the change in him. "Someone will come for you, Scout."

He battered down a wave of self-pity. He also knew he wasn't the type to sit and wallow. Get things done, was a phrase he associated with himself. But maybe he was just flattering himself.

She patted his good arm gently and got up to leave.

That night, the Glitch took the form of a wall of blue water, as great and inexorable as the hand of a god, bearing down on him. Blue, it was always blue.

He struggled so hard against the jacket that he tore it, and tore his shoulder free from the socket again.

After that, they tried sedatives. They worked for a few days, at least to keep him still during the night. They did nothing to quell the actual nightmares, which came on as strong and as hysteria-inducing as ever, although now he just couldn't move at all in the dreams.

And the dreams and excess sedatives in his blood left him so exhausted that he began to fall asleep during the daytime too, where the Glitch hunted him by sunlight. He wasn't getting better, he was getting worse.

He hadn't remembered anything. And no one was looking for him.

In February, at the end of two weeks, the hospital conceded defeat. His time was up, and he was deemed physically stable enough to be moved to a specialty center farther up north.

Emma was clearly fighting tears as she helped him into the restraint jacket on the final night.

"I guess this is the last time you're tying me up," he said, still smiling. He smiled through the whole thing every time. He smiled because he knew to his soul that he could kill everyone who was kind to him if he lost his mind enough. Could kill with his hands. He had no doubt. It was why he'd been left for dead. No one was looking for him and that was probably a blessing.

Until the day that someone realized he was still alive and they came after him again. And this time he'd never see them coming.

"Come on now, Scout," Emma said. "When you're better, you just come on back and I'll tie you up again, huh?"

"Yeah, something to look forward to," he said. "I doubt the people at the new place will be quite so good at it." This he meant. He'd won over the people who worked here. He wasn't so sure about the psychs and sleep specialists. Once they started digging around in his head, they would find things that he didn't want them to find. He was certain of this.

"I'll see you off tomorrow," she said.

He nodded, still smiling. "Hey, I really appreciate it, Emma. Tell everyone, okay? You guys were great to me. Seriously, when I find out that I'm a mystery Las Vegas billionaire, I'll take you all on a cruise."

She patted his arm like she always did when she was done strapping him. And in a moment of unprofessionalism that he really liked her for, she leaned in and kissed him good night.

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