The patrons of the Candid Cantina didn’t typically view the establishment as a good place for entertainment. Like most bars, the customers only came for the drinks and anything interesting that happened after was just the cherry on top. However, in recent days, the place was livelier than ever. Word had spread that something had gone down between Mr. Ham and a couple of scraper outsiders, and to add some spice, it involved Vander Extemorst’s over-priced lottery too. The blond one, or so they called them, had been accused of the crime of killing the poor bastard that had won with his own gun. Strangely though, blondie hadn’t been splattered on the spot as the usual procedure would have it, instead, he was given a day to prove his innocence. Well, seeing how he was in prison he couldn’t do that very well on his own, so it made sense when people started talking about even more outsiders going around asking questions on his behalf. But the deadline was approaching, and there had been no news of a release, which was all well and good for the people of the Ring. They weren’t here for a polite resolution; they were here to see which way the body fell.
Three green aliens sat together in their booth with an absurdly large mug of dark swirling liquid. Out from the very top of the cup, three straws poked out, one of which was currently being used by the man known as Gleg. He had to lean up to reach it with his mouth due to his height, but it didn’t seem to be proving much of a challenge as he took in another big gulp.
“Oy, watch it Gleg!” Barked Qleg from his seat. “We only had enough for one!”
The soon-to-be drunk alien rolled his eyes. “Come off it, ain’t like we need cred! Boss lady made that score with Vander, remember?”
“We don’t even know if she is our boss lady anymore.” From his end of the table, Bleg was tapping his electric bat against the wall, sending sparks of electricity darting off in unpredictable directions. “We kinda sorta ditched her when that Corpus guy offered us that deal, who knows if we’re still on the payroll?”
“Hey, she can’t blame us for doin’ that!” Qleg cried. “What kinda pirate turns down the deal of a lifetime?”
Gleg took another big gulp from his straw. “I don’t know, she seemed pretty pissed when we left her! She had that strange look in her eye, kinda like she was staring a nothin.’”
“What are you now, a shrink?” He rolled his eyes. “Look, we’re tryin’ to watch the show here so save some grog for later, will ya?”
With a sneer, Qleg took his lips off the straw. “Fine! But when’s that scraper due to get blasted anyway?”
Stopping his bat-tapping, Bleg looked down at his wrist as a glow appeared around it. “Hour-ish.”
“Oh great!” Gleg moaned. “I wish they would hurry up already, ain’t like they can do nothin’ to stop it. Why don’t they just move along and get it over with?”
Suddenly the lights flickered and went out. The second of darkness was quickly followed by a loud click before switching back on. “Look!” Qleg whispered pointing a short green finger to the center of the room.
The blond one had just seemingly appeared out of nowhere and now he was waving his arms around like a lunatic. “What the hell is he doing?” Asked Gleg with a raise of his eyebrow.
“I don’t know, but he seems to be talkin’ to that girl the boss was chatting with,” Bleg observed. “Do ya think she’d want to know?”
“Why would she care?” Qleg asked.
Bleg could only shrug, “don’t know, but I’m gonna go tell her anyway. Maybe we can get on Jenny’s good side again.” Sliding out of his seat, the alien jogged out of the door and rushed to go get his captain.
Meanwhile, the blond one, or Timothy as he would prefer to be called, was running over to his friends. “Alex!” He cried again. “Alex you’ve got to leave! Mr. Ham is going to kill you!”
“Timothy?” Alex practically shouted in surprise. “What the fu…”
“Timbo, how are you even here?” Sophia gasped. “Did Mr. Ham let you go?”
The boy shook his head. “No, quite the opposite actually. I escaped from prison!”
“What?” Neil said with a twitch.
“I escaped from prison!” Timothy politely repeated way too loudly. “But we shouldn’t worry about that right now! Alex, Mr. Ham is going to take you up on the duel you proposed!”
The heart in Alex’s chest dropped- at this rate, it was going to get bruised. “But that doesn’t make sense? I didn’t challenge him to a fight, I said it was a duel of wits for god’s sake! It was a joke anyway; I was just trying to stall for time!”
Timothy clasped his hands together pleadingly. “It doesn’t matter, a duel is a duel apparently, or whatever that means. I escaped to warn you! If I don’t…” He stopped himself from continuing that sentence, he wouldn’t want to worry his friends. “Here’s some stuff for you, I hope it all fits!”
Taking the shopping bag from his arm, he slid it over to the table. The group looked at it confused. “You went on a shopping trip?” Neil asked, sounding alarmed.
“Well, I wouldn’t have, but someone threatened to report me if I didn’t.” Replied Timothy with a frown.
“Tim… how long have you been out of your cell?” Alex sounded weak and strained, but none of that could mask the sheer fear in his voice. “How long?”
“A few hours.” The boy admitted. “The shopkeeper really loved to talk about clothes. I don’t want to be rude, but it seems like a bad habit to me.”
Sophia caught a look at Alex out of the corner of her eye- he was shaking again. “Are you okay?”
From his seat, Alex was staring into the distance like he was seeing a boulder tumbling toward him. His lips quivered as he spoke, “do you know what that means?”
The girl in green looked confused. “What are you talking about?”
Neil caught on, his eyes widening. “If Timothy was out of his cell when the casino got robbed…”
“Then he’s not off the hook.” Finished Alex.
Timothy looked puzzled as Sophia turned to him. He had never seen his friends look so distraught before, which was a bit horrifying considering that had escaped from a screaming planet a few days ago. “No.” She said, shaking her head. “No!” Her hand reached for her gun as she pulled her friend to her side.
“Sophia, what are you doing?” Neil cried.
“We have to go!” She shouted, nearly dragging Timothy to the door. “I won’t let them take him, I won’t!”
The girl felt a hand grab her shoulder and pull her back. “Soph, stop, you don’t know what you’re doing!” Pleaded the boy in the tattered coat. “Don’t you see?”
Sophia brushed the hand aside and turned back, her eyes flaring. “They’re going to kill him! I’m not going to stand around here and wait until I lose someone! Not now, not ever again!”
Reaching out, Neil took his friend's hand and gripped it tight in his own. It was the same way that she had always calmed him down before, but now it took on an entirely new meaning. As he peered into her eyes, Sophia saw a familiar look in him. He was frightened, which wasn’t surprising- they all were. But he had that look of suspicion that only he could muster.
“He’s not who you think he is.” He whispered, leading her slowly back to the booth.
“What the hell are you talking about, Neil?” Sophia said, very much not whispering.
Timothy, who had been watching quietly, walked up to the boy with a concerned expression. “What’s wrong?” He felt his heart flutter as Neil took a step back from him- it was the same way one jumps away from a live wire. “What happened?”
Still in a state of shock, Alex gripped his head in his hands. It was strange, right now he couldn’t feel his heartbeat. He wondered if it had stopped- no- he would be dead if it had. Perhaps it was simply beating so fast that it was impossible to tell the difference. “Why couldn’t you have just stayed in your cell, Tim? Why couldn’t you just do that?”
You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.
“I-I’m sorry, I didn’t know.” His eyes fluttered as he stammered to speak. “I was just trying to warn you! I’ll go back to my cell, I promise!”
“No one is going back into any cell!” Sophia put her foot down. “We’re going to run, okay? We’re just going to run. We’ll find a ship, and we’ll figure out how to fly it, and we’ll get out. Okay? Right, that’s what’s going to happen…” She noticed that her hand was trembling on the handle of her gun- was she really that brash to think they could do all that?
Neil took another few steps back, leading the girl away. “Tim, how did you escape?”
“I don’t really know,” he admitted. “There was this voice inside my head, and it told me what to do and…” The boy in the tattered coat looked away, gritting his teeth.
“Neil, what’s wrong?” Sophia asked, her voice failing her.
“Don’t you guys see?” He questioned, looking at his friends. “It doesn’t add up, does it?”
“Explain,” Sophia demanded.
“I’ve tried not to think this, I really did and I’m sorry! But Timothy isn’t the person we think he is.” Neil looked at the blond boy, his face twitching uncomfortably. “All this time we’ve been trying to save him, but the truth is all we’ve been doing is trying to convince ourselves that he didn’t actually kill Corpus! Soph, I’m sorry but he’s a killer!”
Sophia’s face went red, and she pulled her hand away with a jolt. “You’re just being paranoid like always! Look at him, he wouldn’t hurt a fly!”
“The same was said of most serial killers back on Earth!” He countered. “Look, think about it! What evidence do we have that he didn’t do it? None! What did we find on anybody else? Some vague clues that maybe someone else could have done it? He had the gun, Soph. He had the motive, the means, and the time to do it! What else do you need?”
“Shut up.” The words out of her mouth weren’t forceful, they seemed rather soft.
“Alex, you said this case was backward, didn’t you?” He asked, shooting his friend a twitchy glance. “Maybe it’s because we had the real murderer all along?”
“I…” Alex shook his head. “Maybe… I don’t know.”
Sophia tried to speak, but all she could hear were the words of Jenny McClain in the back of her head. One day you will lose them.
Timothy took a step closer, “Neil, I promise you- I really, really, promise you that I would never do such a horrible thing!”
The look on Neil’s face was a painful one, but somehow it hurt Timothy even more. “I wish I could believe you, but I can’t.” He turned to Sophia, whose eyes were searching him up and down, like they were trying to make reason out of him. “I’m sorry, but I don’t want you to get hurt! We can’t trust him.”
“Idiot.” She muttered, her head shaking. “Why would he warn us about Mr. Ham if he really was the killer, huh? Explain that!”
“I can’t explain a lot of things, Soph.” He admitted. “But he’s never really been… right, you know?”
“What do you mean?” Timothy looked hurt. “Did I do something wrong?”
Neil rubbed his hands over his face, his flesh felt hot to the touch. “Tim, you don’t act… natural. It’s like there’s always been something that’s off about you, and I hoped it was just some weird quirk but now I see it’s much more serious.”
“I didn’t kill Corpus!” He pleaded. “And I didn’t go to the casino, or whatever happened when I got out!”
“No, you went on a shopping trip.” Neil chided. “You were so worried about Alex that you thought you may as well dip in for a new jacket?”
“It wasn’t like that, the lady said…”
“That she’d report you, yeah I heard you the first time.” He shook his head. “How convenient for you! Did you plan on coming back here with a gift, hoping that we wouldn’t question how you got out or where you’ve been?”
“Stop it! Just stop it!” Sophia shouted, her lungs feeling raw with every syllable. With a look in her eye that teetered on rage and sadness, she turned to the boy in the booth. “Tell him why this doesn’t make any sense! Tell him why he’s got it wrong!”
All Alex could feel was fear, overwhelming, soul-crushing fear. It rippled through his body, flooding his thoughts and overtaking every part of him until he was almost consumed by it. He felt lost in the flood of it, with no way to grab hold of anything to steady him. It was like he was drowning in open air, and the only thing he could think to do was ask, “was it the same voice you told me about before?”
Timothy nodded, “yes.”
“He’s told me about the voice too,” Neil admitted. “I didn’t worry about it at the time, but maybe I should have.”
Alex closed his eyes, lost in a wave of his own thoughts. “How did you get out?” He stammered. “T-tell us.”
All eyes were on Timothy as he choked down a deep, shaky breath. “Well, as I said before, there was a voice. It told me to do some things, and then when I did them, there was this sort of electricity that zapped through my hands. Then the barrier that was keeping me in seemed to explode! All I needed to do then was just run through the door, though that did give me a bit of trouble.”
“Explosion?” Alex echoed.
“There was a bit of one, yes.”
Neil’s shoulders perked up. “Were there blast marks?”
Timothy rubbed his shoulder, “now that I think of it, there were.” When he spoke this into the air, he felt a sizable shift in his friends. It was like some horrible thing had happened behind him, and it was taking him a moment to catch on.
“The grenade at the casino left marks like that,” Alex said, his voice low.
Neil turned to Sophia, his expression one of remorse. “Soph, I’m sorry, but that’s just too many coincidences to ignore.”
The girl looked angry, dangerously angry. Her fists clenched and her body rattled, but it was the tears welling in her eyes that took the most attention. Reaching up, she pinched herself on the arm- she would not cry, she refused. Looking around she saw the faces of her friends. They all were scared and on the brink of breaking down, none more so than Timothy. She’d never seen him like this, it was like the air in his chest was struggling to free itself, and an awkward smile was plastered onto his face, like a Victorian doll forced to grin.
Timothy watched as his friend, who he thought he was just getting to know, took a step away from him. “Sophia?” He asked, smiling. “I didn’t do it, please believe me.”
Just then Jenny McClain stepped through the door, and for a moment the two women’s eyes locked. The metal captain seemed to understand instantly what was happening, a soft frown forming on her face. Her words rang again inside Sophia’s head, though they were different this time. You should ditch ‘em and save yourself the trouble. “I…” Her voice wavered and trailed off.
Alex only then noticed how much the room had changed. Every patron had their attention turned away from their drinks and were leaning in closer to see what was happening. It made him sick, knowing what was happening to them was just a spectacle to others. Familiar faces littered the crowd as well, faces that he was slowly wishing he had never seen at all. Short-Barrel John-John was one of the customers who seemed so enamored with the proceedings. He was slouched on a barstool, a full drink in his hand and with an oddly calm expression. WaldAcker was here too, sitting in a booth in the corner. He also seemed interested, though whether it was with concern or malice was concealed by his odd helmet. Sally was leaning against a corner, her small compactable gun twilling idly between her fingers. He realized that he was wrong, there would be a show here after all. Even Pollum Mock had stopped serving drinks, being way too invested to even move one of his six arms.
Just then another person entered the fray, followed closely by his robot. Vander Extemorst walked through the door, quickly noticing that everyone was looking in the same direction. Following their gaze, he spotted the scrapers he’d grown too loath. But something was different about him, Alex observed, he seemed to not be the man he was before.
“Oh, you.” Spoke the businessman, ARI-47 rolling up behind him. “What’s with all those looks, have you finally put together that your friend was the one that robbed me?”
“Yeah,” Neil murmured. “We have.”
To everyone’s surprise, Vander merely nodded. “Good.” Turning away he stepped to the bar, plopping down on a seat right next to John-John.
“Sir, ever since your father called, you’ve been acting down.” The Robot worried. “Would you like me to provide you with a tissue?” A little compartment opened up on its side presenting a box of white paper.
Vander looked up at the robot, a look of pure unadulterated disdain in his eyes. “If your programming didn’t prevent it, I would have you jump off my roof until that number of yours reached its max.”
“Apologizes, sir.” Came the reply as ARI cautiously rolled by his side.
Now it was Timothy’s turn to take a step back, “guys, please.” He said, still smiling. “I would never kill someone, ever! I would never want to put you guys in danger, that would be the worst thing I could possibly imagine!” He reached a hand out to Neil, but the boy only retreated backward. “I-I’m sorry, I never meant for any of this to happen! Oh no, I’m causing a bother again, aren’t I?”
“Why are you grinning, Tim?” Sophia asked, coldly.
Timothy reached to his face and touched his mouth, seeming almost surprised to feel himself making the expression. “I always smile when I’m sad, doesn’t everybody?”
The whole room was silent.
Until, of course, they heard the footsteps.
The massive stomping of Mr. Ham’s boots became louder and louder. Many patrons leaned back from the edges of their seats and ducked their heads, not wanting to stand out in a crowd. Lowering himself through the doorway, the hulking behemoth entered like a shadow being cast from a mountain. There was a look in his eye, the kind of look one sees before they are blown to pieces. Anger was what it was, and now those eyes were looking at Timothy.
“Oh no!” The boy shuddered, looking at his friend. “Alex, please, get out of here! He’s going hurt you!”
Alex barely had time to process any of this, and his ability to run was prevented by his overwhelming tiredness. “What?”
“Alex, please, get out of here!” Timothy pleaded, waving him away. “He’ll kill you!”
Mr. Ham was never one for words, so he used his actions instead. Pulling out the cannon from his back, he took aim at the blond boy. It didn’t take long before the all-too-familiar sound of charging began to ring out. Simultaneously, all the spectators held their breaths.
Even with a gun to his head, Timothy still turned to his friend. “Run Alex, get out while you still can!”
One day you will lose them.
Without warning, a shot rang out in the casino, but it wasn’t from the cannon. In Sophia’s hand, she held her gun, having just fired a round directly into Mr. Ham’s head. She couldn’t believe that she had just done what she did, she hadn’t even felt herself doing it. Her eyes widened as she turned to Timothy, her hands shaking.
But Mr. Ham wasn’t hired just for his height, and the slight burn of energy on the side of his head fizzled out quickly- revealing not a single scratch in its place. The spectators watched as the man reached out an impossibly large fist for the girl. Sophia knew that he could crush her skull like a gnat without a single bit of effort given, but there was nothing she could do as it got closer. Instead of her head, however, the hand formed around her gun. Like a poorly baked cookie, the pieces of the weapon crumbled to the ground mutely as the behemoth squeezed.
For an anxious moment, Sophia wondered if he would move on to crush her now, but he didn’t. Instead, he refocused on Timothy, and the charge was almost done. “No one gets away.” He boomed.
“I’m sorry,” Timothy said, genuinely. “I didn’t mean to make you upset, I… I-I just wanted to…” He looked at Alex.
So did Mr. Ham. “You.” He spoke, and the boy knew what was coming. “I accept…”
“I confess!” Everyone in the bar collectively took in a breath as Timothy screamed the words from the top of his lungs. “I killed Corpus Rex!”