VII. Beneath the Black Umbrella

Gerald Solon pressed his thumb to the car's ID reader and pushed the starter, but nothing happened. He tried again, to no result. After the third try he got out and popped the hood.

"Fuel cell's depleted, I'd guess," called a gravelly voice from behind him. Solon turned to see a man with long graying hair leaning out the driver's side window of a black sedan. "I can take a look, if you want."

"Sure." said Solon, his hand surreptitiously moving toward the sidearm at his waste.

The black sedan slid into the driveway behind Solon's. It was a nice neighborhood, as New Liberty went. It could have passed for a suburb if not for the ancient (Darrus guessed late 20th century era) smokestack stabbing into the sky at the end of the street, dark with age in front of New Liberty's permanent haze of smoke (colloquially dubbed "The Black Umbrella").

The long haired man got out and popped the hood of Solon's car. "Sure enough, it's shot. Look here. Empty."

The gauge was on E, which didn't make a lot of sense to Solon. His dashboard indicators should have warned him when it was empty, and they had been silent. Solon detached the cell and it was light as a feather--definitely empty.

"Well, shit." he said. "I've gotta get to work."

The tall man looked up. "Where you headed?"

"Tower Zero, downtown. The big--"

"Government complex, I know. I go past it on my way to work almost every day. Hell I'll give a you a ride up there now if you want, it's on my way. You're on your own for a way home, but at least you won't be late."

"Sir," said Solon. "I appreciate your generosity, but I have to say this is a little suspicious. I'll thank you for the offer, but I'll get a cab."

"Suit yourself." said Darrus. "I know how it is; can't trust anyone these days." He reached through his window and pressed the left horn button.

*

"You all right?" asked the tall man from the driver's seat. "You passed out, so I decided to take you to the hospital."

Solon found himself buckled into the passenger's seat of the black sedan. All the windows were up. "Passed out?"

Darrus tapped the cruise control. "Yes, passed out. I'm going to drop the Good Samaritan act now, Mr. Solon, and we're going to have a conversation."

"Is that so?" said Solon, going for his gun. It was gone, the holster filled with nothing but air.

"I'll give you your gun back when I drop you off, which I still plan to do. I'm not going to injure your person, so tell me what I want to know and this will be easy."

"What do you want to know?" said Solon, willing to play ball. After all, what choice did he have?

"Shift times. When the shifts change for the first, eighth, twelfth, and sixteenth floors of Tower Zero. I want to know what positions have full clearance for those floors. I want to know which windows are monitored by the surveillance system."

"You do realize that giving out that informationis treason and could get me killed. Forget it."

"Well, I guess these will hit the press and the police stations by tomorrow, then." Darrus pulled a manilla folder from the back seat and tossed it onto Solon's lap. "Go on, take a look."

Solon opened the folder. It contained a dozen eight-and-a-half by eleven inch color photographs on extra glossy paper. The photographs showed a general continuity of Solon sexually violating a girl that he would guess was about eight years old. He scoffed. "These are fake."

"I know that. And you know that. But they're convincing, aren't they? You can't tell they're forgeries. Being accused of molestation with evidence like that against you? That'll certainly cost you your job, probably your marriage and custody of your kids, too."

"The charges will never stick."

"They won't have to." said Darrus. "Those photos are a cunning enough forgery it'll take weeks for the police to figure out they're fakes. Weeks for your superiors to heap doubt on you. Weeks for your family to revile you. Who knows, if the case is high profile enough, weeks for people to call you monster, and actually believe it. And even when they're proven false, no one's going to look at you the same. Even being accused of something like this will ruin you."

Solon swallowed.

"There we go, I knew you were a smart fellow." said Darrus. "Now then, let's play ball."

*

Gerald Solon walked up to Tower Zero twenty minutes later with a manilla folder in his hand and a gun at his hip. As soon as the sedan had pulled away, he's checked the clip, and wasn't surprised to find it empty.

VI. Malign Intervention

A crumpled wad of credit notes was pressed into the greasy hand across from Walt McKay. It closed and its companion deposited a brown paper bag in Walt's open hand.

"Don't spend it all in one place." growled the voice of the man in the broad brimmed hat. His position beneath the streetlight threw his face into shadow, making it compliment that voice. It was voice that seemed as though it had been made for leering even before it had been coated with years' worth of tobacco tar. Walt couldn't see the face beneath the brim, but he would have guessed the fucker was wearing a condescending grin--probably with bad teeth, just to complete the image.

"Well?" said the sepulchral figure of the dealer. "You gonna sit here and stare all night?"

"No, no." mumbled Walt. His voice was deep and somehow scruffy. The sort of thing that gets swept into corners, and likely devoured by voices like the one across from him. "Same time next week."

"You know where to find me." growled the dealer.

The contents of Walt's bag varied by decade. It was currently called slip, crash, or dimmer. Police reports still listed it as cocaine. At least, about 60% of what was in that bag was cocaine; the rest was some foul cut that Walt did his best not to think about. Exactly how Walt McKay had gotten himself hooked on this stuff eluded him now; he supposed it was back in college, back when there had been college. That was three years in the past, and at the age of twenty-five, Walter McKay had to deny daily that there were more days ahead than behind; and a certain part of him failed even at that. Nowadays, Walt wasn't good for much that didn't involve pushing a broom.

He'd tried to get off the junk, had even gone to one of those meetings where people as desperate as him pooled their resources to help each other. It hadn't worked. He'd been clean maybe six days before the withdrawal had just been too much. He'd kept going to the meetings for six months, hoping that maybe one more time would shed light on his situation, give him just enough...just enough whatever it was he needed to get over this. But they hadn't, and so Walter McKay's name had vanished from the roster a few weeks after that. He had resigned himself to the fact that death was the only thing short of divine intervention that was going to save him.

He walked from the place where he bought his fixes back to his apartment. It was run down, but that was more do to the general state of New Liberty than to his personal failings. It seemed like every day a few feet of decent neighborhood gave way to slums and ghettos. Walt didn't care. His world was shit and had been shit for long enough that seeing people in shit no longer gave him pause. He clambered up the rickety stairs to the little nook he called home.

It was sparsely furnished; a mattress in the corner, a big wooden spool used as a table, and a rickety old chair that he was relatively certain had come from his mother's house at some time in the distant past. He locked the door--probably the most well-maintained item in the room, thus proving the junk hadn't destroyed his mind completely--behind him and sat at his makeshift kitchen table and spread out the small plastic bag that had devoured half his paycheck.

It looked a bit like sugar in the dim light that filtered through the window from the city beyond. He carefully measured the powder out into three lines, saving most of the bag's contents for the rest of the week, and indulged himself.

The next thing he was conscious of was being shaken to consciousness. He was still in his room, spread out on the mattress, but there was a beautiful young woman standing over him. She had auburn hair and the most enchanting blue eyes Walt could ever remember seeing. She wore a pure white dress and seemed to be glowing. The apartment was filled with dazzling white light.

"Wake up, Walter." she said. "It's time for you to wake up, from a very long sleep."

Walter was confused. He didn't feel right. He looked out on the city--it was still dark out. He shouldn't be out of it yet. But somehow this woman's presence was comforting, calming his confusion.

"Are..." he stammered. His voice wasn't quite working, but he tried again. "Are you an angel?"

She smiled. "I was sent to help you, Walter. I'm going to help you save yourself from the poison in you. I've taken it all out of you."

Walt should have felt alarmed, but he didn't. Couldn't. There was a beautiful angel here. He couldn't believe it; divine intervention had happened!

"It's not going to be easy for the next few weeks, Walter. But you can do it, Walter! You can beat this! And I'm going to help you."

"You're nice." he said, half-dreamily. A wave of euphoria washed over him, purer than anything the bag on the table had delivered.

She smiled again and he felt like his heart would burst. "I think you're nice, Walter. And I think you'll be even nicer once you're back to your old self."

"What's your name?" Walt asked the beautiful apparition.

"You can call me Lily." she said.

"Thank you, Lily. But I'm really sleepy." It was true; he could barely keep his eyes open.

"That's all right, Walter. You can sleep now. In the morning, your new life begins."

Walter drifted off into a deep sleep. Towards morning, he dreamed of the angel who had come to rescue him.

When Walter awoke, the sound of the city was pouring through his open window. The bag of what had been cocaine last night now contained nothing but sawdust. Walt was a little troubled; he had woken in a cold sweat with a headache, and now what he would have used as medicine was gone. He dressed himself and went off to work.