“Malketh,” Sean opened his eyes and jolted.
“Hey Malketh,” a man said at the door to the bedroom, “What’s got into you? The Reunion Festival hasn’t even started yet, what are you so tired for yet? They work you so hard at that fancy job of yours?”
Sean sat up and rubbed his head. He was… in a body? Shouldn’t he be some sort of ghost? Floating over someone’s shoulder?
“Where am I?” Sean asked as he looked around the unfamiliar room, “Who are you?”
The man snorted and just looked amused, “I don’t think you drank quite that much last night. So tired you just fell asleep right when the conversation was getting entertaining. But whatever, go clean yourself up. You look like shit. The big party starts in a few hours. See you there.”
The man waved and shut the door behind him. Sean rubbed his head and tried to understand as he heard his footsteps retreating into the distance. Sean turned and put his bare feet on the cold floor and stood up in the small minimally decorated room. He went outside into what appeared to be a common room and shivered at the temperature.
Sean paused mid motion. Shivered? Did that mean…
Sean was a mortal. What was happening? There was another door leading off the main room, presumably to the room of the man from before. A shared apartment? That man from before had been… Malketh’s… roommate?
Sean returned to malketh’s room and after rifling around for a bit managed to find some proper clothes for going out and put them on. As he moved he felt the creaks and slight pains that usually blended into the background when you lived with them constantly. But with Sean being an Immortal for so long, he could now feel each of them acutely now.
He looked in the mirror and put a hand up to his face. It was his face. Sean’s face. All his proportions and everything was the same as they’d always been. Interesting.
Sean needed more information. He searched through the apartment for some clues but didn’t find much. He didn’t know any of the passwords for his devices, and despite his mechanical knowledge he had never done much programming or hacking so wasn’t able to figure out how to break into any of them after making some probing attempts.
There were a few scraps of paper scattered about that gave Sean some of the basics. First and most importantly, he was on Gaia. And today was the beginning of the ‘Reunion festival’, whatever that was. His best piece of luck was a scrap of paper left behind by what Sean could only guess was the roommate that he’d just talked to. It gave the time and place where they would meet for the festival. Sean had a small device only a little bigger than his palm that he hadn’t known the password for. But a few of its functions were available even if any personal information on the device about this Malketh were locked.
So Sean was able to navigate to the guidance app and after tapping in the address on the written note was able to see a highlighted route that would bring him there. Well, that was a relief at least.
He wasn’t sure of the rules this time, things were far different than they’d been when he’d gone back in time with Emily last time. Could he change things in the past now that he had a body? Or would things be altered somehow to stop him?
More importantly… What had happened to the original owner of this body? Was there even an original owner? The man’s roommate seemed to know about him at least, but Sean wouldn’t put it past the Shadow to be able to alter people’s memories if it came down to it. Although he might just be acting paranoid.
From how he understood things, all of his actions from now on were already ingrained in the past somehow. So while his decisions were his own to his own perceptions, whatever he did would already be part of the pattern and have no effect on what had happened in the future.
Sean considered that. Yes, these journeys to the past had a purpose but changing things wasn’t one of them. It was to gather information for the future.
It was almost a relief to Sean that he had utterly no clue what had happened on Gaia or almost anything about it. Just that Emily and the other nine Founders were here, and something had happened to lead it to getting destroyed. Some basic details on this world. The Gaians had been uncomfortable discussing anything more than that besides more superficial things such as natural wonders or cultural aspects of their lives.
If Sean knew some of what happened in this time then he might feel constrained. Boxed in knowing that he couldn’t change whatever events he’d know already happened. Horrible event or good, whatever he knew about the future was already set in stone. But he was almost completely clueless about this time period. So from his perspective he could do almost whatever he wanted and not have to worry about screwing with whatever happened in the future. Or knowing that he couldn’t screw with it, more likely.
It was a sort of relief to be clueless, Sean mused as he sat down with his palm sized device and surfed the local planetary network and started researching some basic information.
Imagine if Sean knew exactly when or how this world had been destroyed? He’d have felt responsible to work to stop it despite knowing that it was fruitless to change things. But with no information on it, he was free to put the thought aside and treat his actions like he normally would.
After all, a world could end a thousand different ways. If Sean discovered something was about to happen then he could work his hardest to stop it and be reasonably sure that he might be able to succeed. After all, the world could have ended in a different way or at a different time since Sean had been there to stop it.
Sean let out a sharp breath and firmly sent the thought away. He’d work with what he had, but ignorance was really bliss in this case.
He kept surfing the local planetary network and doing research for hours as he got himself situated. By the time he was done and it was nearly time to go meet his roommate and relax at whatever this festival was. Just as he was about to go out the door and lock them with the pair of keys he’d found in Malketh’s bedroom, his stomach rumbled. Oh, he’d nearly forgotten he had to eat now. Sean went inside and had a quick snack from one of the bags on the kitchen counter until his stomach stopped growling at him as much. Then he turned and left for real this time and locked the door behind him.
He used a physical metal key to close it. What a throwback, it had been a long long time since Sean had even seen one of those. Even on Enguli they used scanning keycards rather than physical keys for everything.
Sean went to the bar where Malketh’s friend was waiting. He went inside and seeing the man sitting at the bar walked over and sat next to him. They drank a few bottles of beer sitting there and casually talked. Sean did his best to keep up and act natural, but by the suspicious looks the other man was giving him it was clear that Sean’s strange behavior had been noticed. But the other man didn’t comment on it and passed over Sean’s stumbling and pauses as he tried to cover up his ignorance.
Sean was a mortal now, he had to situate himself and figure out what was happening before he thought about revealing himself to anybody. Let alone to malketh’s old friend/roommate. If malketh himself ever existed at all.
Eventually Malketh’s roommate looked up at the screen, Television he called it, hanging above the bar.
“Ah, Malketh,” he said, “Looks like it’s about time. You want to do some events? Or you want to go to the parade first?”
“The, ah, events?” Sean said, “They could be fun?”
“Right you are,” the man said before slapping Sean on the shoulder and standing up, “Axe throwing, sword fighting? Shooting? I’ll look up where the closest festival center for the events are…”
The man took out his smaller device from his device and started tapping into it to research the events. Sean had still never managed to figure out the man’s name during their conversation. The bartender came up and placed the bill in front of them before walking away. Sean reached into Malketh’s wallet and took out the square of plastic that he was sure must be a form of payment. At least that’s what he assumed it meant by credit card. He really hoped it wasn’t for social credit or something more sinister like he’d seen traveling around the galaxy occasionally.
Luckily it seems that he guessed right and after the bartender returned he swiped the piece of plastic through a handheld machine and nodded at Sean before handing Malketh’s ‘credit card’ back to him.
Sean stood and malketh’s distracted roommate stood as well, still glued to his device. They both walked outside into the bustling city streets filled with the partygoers and the roommate finally looked up.
“Alright, I’ve got some,” the man said, “Thanks for paying for the drinks. I’ll cover the entry fees for the events until we’re square. Closest competition’s about a mile that way…”
They walked through the bustling city with the sun high in the sky just after noon. Everybody seemed in a good mood and from what Sean could see the majority of the businesses besides the bars and restaurants were closed. Everybody was out and about and in a festive mood and chatting with their friends as they moved about in large clumps.
The city was much more open and filled with green space than Sean was used to in the larger galaxy. All the buildings had window boxes or hydroponic systems set up on their exteriors that let plants grow on their sides. He could see fruits and vegetables growing there and people occasionally leaning out and harvesting with long poles with little grabbing claws on the ends. There were plentiful parks and greenery on the ground level as well. They passed at least five small parks just in the roughly mile that Sean and malketh’s walked to their destination.
The fresh air from the plants was refreshing and made things much more pleasant than the more industrial and barren cities that Sean was used to seeing.
Eventually Sean and Malketh’s friend reached the edge of a much larger park with gathered crowds filling the whole space milling in and out of the space constantly. The two of them slowly made their way inside through the crowds and made it inside. The whole park was covered in little booths with food vendors selling food, and little booths with games of skill. Games of chance giving out little prizes for those who won.
Sean and Malketh’s roommate lingered in the crowded place and played a few of the games. Sean was sure that they must be rigged, but he did win one game and received a little handheld rattle that played the roar of some loud beast after you drew back the cord and let it wind back inwards towards the center.
After thirty minutes or so at the small games and another ten minutes waiting in line to buy some sizzling meat on a stick from one of the food vendors, the two of them continued deeper into the park.
“This is the place where the real action’s at,” Malketh’s roommate said as the cluttered claustrophobic feeling of the former space opened into wider fields that were comparatively less crowded even if the crowds were still large. Sean glanced behind them at the relatively narrow path at the entrance of the park funneling them to walk by the enticing prize games and smell the food stands as they went by. He snorted. Well, he supposed that was one way to increase business.
He turned back to the field and saw that there all sorts of sporting events taking place at the moment. Just like Malketh’s roommate had said, it was all primitive events. Axe throwing, sword fighting, he even saw groups of burly men in the distance lifting heavy logs above their heads and roaring triumph before throwing them back to the ground.
“So, what do you want to tryout for first?” Malketh’s roommate asked.
“Tryouts? Where are those?” Sean asked as he took his eyes off of the competitors lifting the heavy logs.
“Over there,” Maltketh’s roommate pointed to a much more crowded little section of the fields squished up next to the larger ones. There were many people here spectating like Sean and Malketh’s roommate had just been, but what Sean had thought were more spectators were actually a very long line for those spots.
“I actually made it into the main event for the last two years,” Malketh’s roommate bragged as the two of them got in line for the axe throwing tryout, “Got a bullseye at twenty feet away in the real thing. Mostly by luck, but still…”
“How good do you have to throw it to get into the real thing?” Sean asked curiously.
“Oh, I think it’s above thirty points I think? More points the farther you throw it from, and the closer it is to the center. Bullseye at fifteen feet is fifteen points and they give you three throws for the try outs. I think thirty feet is the farthest they let you try until the main event where they let you just go for it since they’ve already weeded out the people who don’t know what they’re doing. You train for this? Go to one of those clubs to practice for the events?”
“No, nothing like that,” Sean said, “I just have a good feeling about it.”
They reached the front of the line and Malketh’s roommate was handed his axe and walked up to the line.
“Fifteen feet! First throw!” He called out loudly and the target slid back and clicked when it reached the proper distance away. It was running on a durable metal rail that had been placed on the grass. There were a few attendees running things and recording the results, but this part seemed mostly automated.
Malketh’s roommate threw and Sean clapped when the axe buried itself directly at the center of the target.
“Twenty feet! Second throw!”
Malketh’s next throw just barely landed on the edge of the target, but it remained stuck inside. But Sean saw that he had enough points to move onwards either way. Seeing this, Malketh’s roommate glanced back at Sean and smirked before turning back.
“Thirty feet! Third throw!”
The target shifted back and Malketh lifted the last axe and brought his arm back. He whipped his arm forward and the axe went flying and spinning through the air. It was a complete miss, the man’s fingers slipping and causing the axe to go flying to the side towards the watching the crowd. Several people flinched as the axe came barrelling towards them, before relaxing when the protective translucent shield flashed brightly as the axe impacted it. The axe bounced off and buried itself in the grass beneath.
“Pass!” The attendant announced before handing Malketh’s roommate a little pin and recording his name into his digital pad after having a short conversation with him. The other attendants rushed onto the field and recollected the three axes and inspected the wooden circular target before seeming to decide that they didn’t need to replace it again.
Then it was Sean’s turn. He carefully picked up the axe and weighed it in his hand carefully. He bounced it up and down to feel its weight before considering the target. He wondered if his skills would be the same…
“Twenty five feet! First throw!” Sean announced and the target moved. He drew back his arm and unleashed the axe. There was a small twinge of pain in his arm from the force of this throw, but the axe flew true and buried itself by the blade in the target.
That was thirty five points. He was done.
“Finished!” Sean said, not wanting to waste time. That throw had been comfortable, and he doubted throwing it five more feet would make that much a difference in the difficulty. He had been an Immortal and trained in combat with both Emily and Asuta. He knew plenty about how to throw whatever strange object was needed, let alone something as normal as an axe.
There was some cheering from the crowd while Malketh’s roommate looked stunned at Sean’s throw.
“Pass!”
“Name and contact information?” The attendant asked in a lower volume, although she gave him an impressed look as she did so unlike her more bored tone with Malketh’s roommate.
“Malketh Gaiason,” Sean said before giving the number for the palm sized device that he had discovered in the bar earlier was primarily supposed to be a ‘phone’ or communications device.
“Next preliminary round starts in an hour,” the attendant said as she finished writing everything down, “If you make it through then the real competition will start in about three hours… Good luck, Malketh.”
“Thank you,” Sean said as he took his pin showing that he’d made it through the first test before moving to join Malketh’s roommate by the exit.
“Woah, you’ve been practicing Malketh?” the man said before giving Sean a slap on the shoulder while looking slightly confused, “That was quite the throw you pulled off there.”
Sean shrugged, “Something like that. You think we should try out for any of the others?”
The man paused before shaking his head, “Nah, I haven’t really trained for any of the others. You could go for it though. I think the others are coming soon.”
“Others?”
“Yeah? The others?” Malketh’s roommate said, “Everyone else that I’ve invited? They’ve messaged me. They should be able to meet us here in an hour or so. Seems like Lillith was late and they had to wait for her.”
“Oh, er, okay,” Sean said and nodded his head as the two of them walked over to the next event to observe.
— — —
“Hi, Malketh right?” the woman said as the larger group of eight or so people moved away from the food cart, steaming sugar covered snack in their hands. Fried dough the man had called it.
“Right,” Sean said after a moment and he registered that she must be talking to him. Him and Malketh’s roommate had just met up with them a few minutes ago.
“I didn’t realize that George had a new roommate,” the woman said, “He hasn’t talked about you until just yesterday. How long have you been rooming with him?”
“Oh, I’m not exactly sure…” Sean said before turning to Malketh’s roommate. George apparently, and stared at him to get his attention. The man glanced over them after taking a bite of his food and seemed to focus on them.
This story is posted elsewhere by the author. Help them out by reading the authentic version.
“What?” George said, “Something on my face?”
“Oh, I was just trying to remember,” Sean said, trying to stay as casual as he could, “How long have we been roommates again? I’ve forgotten exactly how long it was.”
“Oh,” George said, “You know, I don’t remember either. Few months probably. Something like that. You certainly didn’t go to the last Reunion festival with me.”
Sean waited and after George took another slow bite of his fried dough realized that he was done.
“A few months sounds right,” Sean said as he turned back to the woman.
“Oh, okay. He’s just never mentioned you before. I was just surprised,” she said, “Glad he finally managed to make use of that spare room of his, besides for piling up his junk. I’m Lillith by the way. Nice to meet you Malketh.”
“Nice to meet you, Lillith,” Sean replied as nodded to her before taking a bite of his food. As a mortal everything seemed so much tastier. His body knew that it needed the food, so maybe it made eating more enjoyable than it was as an Immortal, Sean mused to himself.
“You competing in any events, Lillith?” Sean asked after they had all finished their food and thrown away their paper plates in the nearby trash can.
“Yes, but just some of the fun ones. They’re doing a big game of Monster tag soon that I think that I’ll go to. You two want to come?”
“Monster tag?” George said sounding amused, “The kids game? How’s that work? I don’t think I heard about that one? Oh wait, was that the one with the big scandal last year?”
“Yes, the kids game,” Lillith said, “It’s all adults though. Twenty or older, strict limits on anyone with health conditions so the doctors can monitor them so they don’t get hurt in the event, you know the deal. I did it last year and I got pretty banged up, it gets rough. But they give you free healing afterwards, so it’s all good. Pretty much anything below a broken bone heals in less than a few days at the worst.”
“Huh. You do that on purpose?” George said, “Sounds painful.”
“Really, it’s not that bad,” Lillith insisted as she seemed to realize how it sounded, “Just bruises and scrapes is what I mean. You know what happened last year, sounds like. That guy was on drugs or something and it was a scandal that he managed to get through the checks…”
“Well, best of luck,” George said, “We’ll cheer you on at least. An hour, you say? Why don’t we all go together and cheer you on before we start splitting off any more?”
“Sure,” Lillith said. George approached the other five members of the group and explained Lillith’s event. Everyone moved to the marked off section and went into the stands. Sean and the others waited as they saw Lillith go to where the large crowd of people were waiting for the event to begin. She had changed out of her street clothes into something more breathable and athletic.
The event was about to start, and the official came out and spoke to everyone in the crowd of competitors for a little while before raising something and throwing it into the group. Everyone reached up and tried to catch the small object. An unfamiliar tall man managed to snag it before it fell into the sea of hands below him.
“The monster has been chosen!” The official shouted to the spectators as all the people participating walked into the marked off playing field. The large man stood in the center of the field and everyone else gathered around the sides in thick clumps.
There was a short pause before the official started counting down and then started the game.
“I am now the monster!” the man in the center shouted and raised his hands in front of him curled inwards like a pair of claws. “Rawr!”
Then he started moving and the game began. Each time the large man tagged somebody they locked forearms and spun in a circle while working to throw the other to the ground as they did so, until the one tagged would ‘turn into a monster’ and become a new tagger on the monster team.
Lillith managed to last until about half way through until she was finally tagged. Her tagger was the large man from the beginning who looked tired after running around for the whole game. Lillith managed to twist her hips and half way through their rotation threw the larger man from his feet so he fell to the grass below them.
Lillith released him as he fell and slammed to the ground, but after they both laughed and she reached out a hand and helped him back to his feet. She let go of him and struck a pose. “Rawr!” Sean saw her lips move to say as the shouting and noise from the game drowned out whatever noise she might have made.
The game continued and Lillith moved to tag the others now that she was the ‘monster’.
Everybody in Lillith’s group played for a total of three rounds using the survivor of the last round as the new initial monster for the next round. After about that thirty minutes of play, they all left the field and were treated by the doctors for their scrapes and bruises. As they were treated the next group that had been gathering behind them went onto the field and started their own game.
Lillith went into the bathroom and changed back into her normal clothes and returned to the main group. They all congratulated her on how long she lasted, even if they had mostly been talking with one another rather than paying full attention to the game itself. Lillith had a few bruises and her hair was a mess. Her face had a few streaks of dirt on it despite Sean seeing her making her best efforts to clean it off.
But it looked like she’d had some fun.
The day continued. Sean was mostly quiet as he absorbed the conversation of the rest. He went to the event and won the whole axe throwing competition, which made all of his companions rather excited and wanting to talk to him all the time after they left the event. Apparently there was some sort of prize of money because he was a winner. He hadn’t even known about it before the announcer had said so when Sean was standing on the winner’s podium after winning the event.
“And it’s four days like this? Everyone celebrating like this and partying?” Sean said, more than a little drunk after long hours partying with his companions as they wandered around and decided to bar hop as the sun went down and day turned to night.
“You’re… so clueless, Malketh,” George said and sloshed his beer on the table, “Honestly, not even the Reunion festival? It’s only once every ten years. It should be even longer than four days! I remember my first one, so great! They’ve got the little things like the smaller competitions every year of course. But nothing like it is now! So live it up Malketh! Hopefully you’ll be able to stomach your alcohol this time. Jade Congress and the Party are putting a good show for us all. Hopefully we don’t have to deal with any more of those damn protests or police searches of the city again this time though to catch them all…”
Sean was completely drunk at the end of the night as he and George started stumbling back to their apartment on the empty streets. It must be one or two in the morning by now, and Sean was struggling to walk straight as they moved through the nearly empty streets.
Suddenly Sean heard a female scream from an alleyway. In his blurry and hazed state of mind, he instinctively veered to the side and stumbled into the dark alleyway the scream had come from. He was Immortal, what was the harm?
“Malketh? Malketh, where in Gaia are you going?” George whispered before stumbling after Sean, “Dammit, Malketh. You’re gonna get yourself stabbed…”
The two men stumbled into the alleyway and after rounding a dumpster came across the scene. Three blue uniformed men were holding a half undressed woman against the wall as she struggled and shouted against their grip.
“Hey!” Sean shouted loudly while only slurring his words a little bit, “What are you doing? Get off of her!”
All three of the uniformed men froze, allowing the woman to slightly break free. One of the men shoved her back into the wall again as he adjusted the grip.
“I’d suggest you leave, citizen!” One of the men said breaking away from the struggling woman to turn back to them, “Police business. Drug addict. Making the arrest. Now leave unless you want to join her.”
The man reached down to his side and took a long black rod from a holster at his hip. He pressed a button at its base and an electric arc formed between two metal prongs at its tip.
“Go. Before anyone has to get hurt,” the police officer threatened them and brandished his electric stun baton.
“Malketh, this is a bad business,” George muttered, “Maybe we should go. She could be a dissident for all we know… I don’t want to get… arrested.”
“Fuck that,” Sean said as he raised his fists and stumbled forward. Seeing how drunk he was, the man holding the baton snorted and lazily lowered his weapon and jabbed it at Sean.
Even through the drunken haze Sean brushed aside the blow with an efficient tap of his hand and followed it up with a tight punch to the police officer’s nose, which broke with a wet crunch. Sean’s hand hurt. It usually didn’t hurt when he hit things.
The woman was lying on the ground twitching. It seems one of the other men had hit her with their own batons and now turned to deal with Sean as the first man stumbled back and swore through his nose that was gushing blood.
“Get him!” the man holding his nose ordered the other two, “Teach him a lesson, boys.”
The next man lunged at Sean and he stumbled to the side again before landing a full body uppercut into the man’s right side. With a groan, the man fell to the ground and curled into a ball while groaning in pain. The last strike came for Sean’s back, but he reached behind himself and with a sweep of his arm behind his back also diverted the strike from the last man. Sean curled his fist around the stun baton of the last man and with a heave ripped it out of his grip. Flipping it around, Sean pressed the sparking electric tip to the stunned empty handed police officer, who went falling to the ground twitching.
Sean angrily jabbed the man on the ground with the baton again sending him spasming as every muscle in his body locked up at once.
“That’s what you fucking get… Lars,” Sean muttered before looking up and seeing the last police officer staring at him and holding his bleeding nose while staring at Sean in shock.
“Who are you?” the man muttered as he took a step or two backwards. Sean answered him by stabbing him in the gut with the stun baton, sending the last man twitching to the ground as well.
Sean stumbled over to the woman slumped against the wall panting heavily even as her arms and legs twitched slightly. She was still recovering from being shocked earlier.
“Lira? Lira are you… okay?” Sean slurred as he stumbled towards her. She looked up and he stumbled to a stop and blinked. This wasn’t Lira. Sean looked back at the man he’d shocked twice. And that man wasn’t Lars. Well, he had saved the woman at least. There was that.
Sean stood there among the three groaning bodies of the three police officers as the woman slowly stood to her feet by sliding up the wall while eyeing Sean standing there with the stun baton fearfully.
George was long gone, having run away almost immediately at the start of the fight.
“Oh,” Sean slurred as it took a while for him to realize why she was so fearful of him, “I waaas saving you. Baton’s for… them. Sorry.”
The man that Sean had hit in the kidney had started to uncurl and looked up at Sean with an angry expression on his face. Sean stepped over and shocked him with the end of the baton, sending the man groaning and twitching on the ground again.
Sean looked back up at the sound of footsteps and saw that the half undressed woman was fleeing the alleyway, not even bothering to fix herself before fleeing from him at full speed.
Oh. Well, that worked too. Alright best to get out of here. Sean shocked the two recovering police officers for the road before stumbling away after tucking the baton under his shirt to disguise it from view as best as he could. In his breathable clothing it was highly visible, but at least it wasn’t completely out in the open.
Sean kept stumbling forward, but he didn’t even make it halfway back to his place before he saw a group of five more police officers standing in his way.
“Hands in the air! You’re under arrest!” A man who looked like he was in charge said from the center. He had a fancier uniform and a larger more intricate badge pinned to his chest in comparison to the others. He was holding a gun that he was pointing at Sean in comparison to all the others who were holding stun batons.
Sean stumbled to a stop and blinked. He slowly raised his hands into the air and the stun baton he’d been holding in place under his shirt fell out and clattered out onto the street. Sean had just remembered that he wasn’t Immortal anymore. If that man shot him he really might die… Or be sent out of the past to his real body. And he was sure that the Shadow wanted him to see more than what he’d already been shown.
Sean was arrested and cuffed roughly with his hands behind his back by the irate officers. The more important man who Sean was sure was a squad leader of some sort never let his pistol leave Sean’s head while they arrested him. By the way the gun shook slightly as it pressed against the back of Sean’s skull as he lay on the ground, the man probably feared him.
Sean was dragged into a nearby police vehicle and driven to the police station where he was thrown in a barred cell with a barebones cot. Sean was tired, and as soon as he collapsed into the uncomfortable bed he was out like a light between his drunken haze and the late hour. And the exhaustion from the long day partying and then exertion from fighting so suddenly.
— — —
Sean opened his eyes and hissed and shut them again. His head was throbbing painfully and he felt horrible and dehydrated. The bed that he was sleeping on was scratchy and uncomfortable. He opened his eyes fully as fuzzy memories of last night swirled in the back of his head. He looked around and everything came flooding back as he saw the barebones holding cell he was inside of with a metal toilet anchored to the wall across from his new bed.
Damn, this was going to be a hassle wasn’t it? Hopefully not all of the police were as corrupt as those three in the alleyway. Even if the woman was some sort of criminal, they’d been practically stripping her when he arrived. That was too far, and Sean had seen the look in their eyes when he and George arrived. They knew they were doing something wrong when they realized that they had been seen. What else was Sean supposed to do in response to that? But it was his word against theirs. The woman was gone, George had fled, and Sean was sure he’d be of no help.
It would be just his luck, to be thrown in jail after one day of being in this new body. But he’d done the right thing, he was sure of it.
After a few minutes it became clear that no one would be coming to check in on him in his cell. So Sean curled up his legs and sat in a meditative pose and let the time pass by him as he’d done so many times when he was an Immortal and forced to wait for something or other for long periods of time.
It felt like only moments when a stony faced police officer with a stun baton at her side arrived and hit her weapon against the bars of the cell to wake him up.
“Interrogation. Come to the bars and put your arms through the window to be cuffed.”
Sean walked up and after she opened a little window in the door, stuck his hands through. She put the handcuffs on him and he took his hands back to the other side, after which she opened the door.
He considered shoulder checking her and making a run for it. He could probably steal her stun baton and shock her as he looked for the keys she probably had in a pocket somewhere…
But that would probably make things worse for himself. Sean had no idea where the nearest spaceship would be to steal, and Malketh’s devices had been taken from him sometime last night. Best to wait and see how things went first.
With the suspicious policewoman standing behind him with a sparking stun baton held to his back, Sean was led into a bare room with only a metal table and two chairs inside. There was a large mirror on one wall that Sean knew was likely for any observers who’d want to watch his interrogation.
Sean’s handcuffs were connected to a chain connected to the table so he was forced to sit on the metal chair on one side. After checking that he was properly secured, the policewoman turned and left the room without another word.
Sean waited.
And waited.
And waited.
And no one else came into the room. Ugh, they were probably wasting his time deliberately. He’d had to deal with this before as he and his companions traveled around the galaxy. Sometimes the local officials would get greedy and arrest one of them on bogus charges in an attempt to blackmail them for money or something else they wanted.
It had mostly just been an annoyance for them since they were Immortals and nothing the local officials could do could actually hurt them. In two or three cases the officials had been so corrupt that it had appeared that they wouldn’t let whichever member of their crew out of jail even with a reasonable bribe. In that case the arrested person would just break out of jail since they were an Immortal and escape back to wherever they had parked the ship.
When you could eat through walls and any locks with your regenerating pieces of your body it was surprisingly easy for them to escape an Immortal to escape a normal jail.
Sean looked up and let out a sigh of relief as he saw a heavyset man with the thick pitch black mustache walk in. Finally, he had thought that they’d never come in.
“Hello. Malketh Gaiason. If that is your real name,” the man said as he sat down and opened a folder and spent a few seconds inspecting it as if to pretend that Sean wasn’t there.
“So, tell me about yourself,” the man said as he looked up from the folder, “Who are you? Where are you from? Where did you go to school? What’s your work history?”
Sean’s mind raced as he thought of what to say. He didn’t know any of those things. He didn’t know anything about Malketh besides his job had apparently been cushy enough that George had been slightly jealous of him.
Sean decided to remain silent and not say anything and just stared back at the heavyset man silently.
“Nothing?” the man said after a moment, “How about your supposed roommate? This George Tailor? Anything to say about him? He’s the one that turned you in, you know. Told the nearby officers about you attacking those officers in the alleyway. I could give him a message if you’d like.”
“I was defending a woman,” Sean said despite knowing that it was useless, “I told the officers to stop stripping her, but they threatened us and told us to go away. She ran off after I finished with them.”
“So he does speak!” the man said sarcastically, “And he admits to the assault openly. Well, I do suppose the evidence is overwhelming with you taking the weapon from the crime scene after all. A woman you say? Yes, a drug addict undergoing a routine search. Even your supposed friend Mr. Taylor agrees that she looked unhealthy and twitchy even in the darkness. The officers were only doing what they had to do to make sure she didn’t have any weapons on her. Nothing inappropriate in violation of police procedure happened according to any of them. Why should we believe you over three of our own officers and your own friend?”
Sean sighed, “That’s what happened,” he said in defeat, “They probably threatened George afterward somehow. But I guess it is my word against theirs then.”
The man paused and then nodded, “Hm. It seems you understand your situation that you’re in. Let’s speak about your character then. I asked you some questions before. Why don’t you answer some of them? You know if you were part of something more important than some… belligerent behavior, then we might be able to let this slide. Give you a new identity if you join the right team.”
“Right team?” Sean asked, genuinely confused now, “What do you mean? What more important things?”
“So that’s how you’re going to play it. Alright,” the man who Sean was sure was a detective said as he threw his open folder onto the table in front of Sean.
“You see that?” the man said, “That’s the file we have on you. Go ahead, read it.”
Sean picked up the folder through his cuffed hands and started reading through. As soon as he saw the documents one thing immediately became apparent. Most of the boxes were completely blank. Even the ones that were filled in were suspiciously sparse in detail. The sum of the information was about what Sean had figured out in those first few hours of entering this body. His name was Malketh Gaiason, he was roommates with George Taylor, and he had a job that let him have plenty of money.
“You know the funny thing?” the detective said as Sean kept inspecting the file, “Seems that George there is the only one who’s ever known you. Even he has no clue what your actual job is. You never told him apparently. His memory is suspiciously spotty about how exactly you ended up staying at his apartment. Without a signed rental agreement even. You know one thing that’s true about that file? It’s a fake. Not a single trace of government records, past, anything are in that useless piece of paper. Whoever made your new identity is either an idiot or a genius, I’m not sure which yet. Somehow you’ve managed to be completely undetectable for months at least if not more. Someone’s erased everything about you from the government databases. Someone with serious connections. And if you know people like that… then maybe you’ve got something to bargain with here. Because you’re a security risk, and without flipping you’ll never see the outside of a jail cell again.”
Sean’s mind raced as his eyes kept playing over the empty file on him over and over and the implications. Maybe this Malketh had been involved in some serious business and had some serious hacker do what this man described… But that wasn’t what Sean believed. It was too thorough of erasure. There were devices and cameras everywhere in any major city. Sean had even researched it and checked, and yes the Gaian cities were the same way even in these times. Anyone living somewhere for months should have at least have a digital presence through those. All the government would have to do was take an image of his face and run a facial recognition scan from any footage they could get of Malketh’s building over the last few months. Yet there was nothing like that in here. No evidence at all of anything that ‘Malketh’ had done before yesterday and the Reunion festival. Not the smallest scrap or image of him.
The Shadow… hadn’t bothered to create an identity for him. Sean was sure of it. Malketh was a fiction that had popped into existence somehow fully formed. Malketh was Sean. And presumably the memories of Malketh from his roommates were fake too, which is why all of George’s friends were confused about Sean being there with them for the Reunion festival activities…
“What about the credit cards? My phone?” Sean asked, “Can’t those be tied to me?”
“No. Completely untraceable. Phone’s brand new, must have been taken out of the box barely a few days ago. You’ve never even put in the right password for it once. The engineers who cracked it open scratched their heads for that one. Usually you have to put it in at least once while setting up the phone. But somehow you managed to bypass it.
“That phone may as well be a prop, your contact list in there is empty. The Credit card isn’t real. It’s actually a device that hacks the common card readers that people use. Infiltrates the software and makes it display the money was paid despite not being connected to anything. Those aren’t things that just anyone can get access to.
“So I’ll ask again. Who are you? And why shouldn’t I throw you in some deep dark hole somewhere where no one will find you again?”
“You aren’t from the police are you…” Sean said slowly.
The man snorted, “Ah, he gets it. No. I’m from farther up the chain. Your case caught some eyes once the locals around here tried to do some digging. So speak up. Give me the information on who you are and your backers and maybe I can find some leeway to help you out in return.”
Sean opened his mouth and then closed it. Welp, he was screwed. Completely and utterly screwed. He had literally no explanation for any of that except for time travel and the Shadow. And somehow based on the determined look in the mysterious man’s eyes, Sean didn’t think that that explanation would cut it. And he had no clue what the man wanted, so he couldn’t even try to lie before being discovered in moments. There really was only one option. One that might make him valuable enough that he wouldn’t be killed. Hopefully.
“No,” Sean said in a cold tone, “I won’t betray my employers. It is what it is. I’ll take my jail time.”
“No, no,” the man across from him said after an angry grimace, “I have a much better place for you than jail. We’ll get our answers. We’ve got our ways…”