Authors: Sezin Koehler
Detective Synthia Günn
W
hat are you doing? What in the hell are you doing?! You did not just abandon your partner in the line of duty to go on a wild goose chase to rescue a cyclops girl who may or may not even need rescuing.
You rev the car faster, putting up the siren as you drive through red lights, screeching around station wagons, and putting dozens of peoples’ lives in jeopardy.
The realization hits you: You’re not running to save Lily, you’re running away from the hospital. You’re running away from the unbelievableness of today. You’re running away from the possibilities that science may never have predicted, all the things that before today were empirically impossible.
Slowing the car to a normal speed you take a deep breath. Maybe this isn’t working for you anymore. You can’t keep living like the world is a lab experiment, perfectly controlled, and your life is a mere footnote, closed off from the intimacy of human connection.
Why Lily? Why now?
Is it the baby? The baby you’re not even sure you want to keep? The baby who will surely ruin your career if you do? If you haven’t ruined your career already by taking off in the middle of an assignment?
You want to blame someone, reflect all these decisions back somewhere they won’t bounce off back onto you.
But this is all you, babe.
It’s time to accept you can’t control everything. Life is not sterile, ordered. It’s a big fucking mess, and maybe there’s beauty in that. All those incredible survivors, including Lily, will change the world, how people see and experience the world.
Why Lily?, you wonder again. Because someone has to snap you out of your resistance to change? Someone real needs to rescue you from the corner you’ve painted yourself into? Someone needs to help you accept that all the magic and miracles you’ve seen today are real?
She’s as good a someone as any.
Hold on, Lily, I’m coming.
The words are as much for Lily’s salvation as your own.
7:25 PM The Roswell Institute
T
he Roswell Institute’s extraction team boards a modified alien craft, dating back to when it crashed on Earth in 1943 but looking good as new. The very ship that inspired the term flying saucer when it made its appearance on the American skyline, effectively terrifying hundreds of people around the nation, some of whom never recovered and whose lives went downhill from the moment of the sighting.
You’ve got to give credit where credit is due: Extraterrestrials sure know how to make things that last. The pilot of the 1943 saucer lives in a cell deep in The Institute, having proven he will kill anyone and anything that comes near him. All he wants is to return to his planet several galaxies over, but Colonel Ransom won’t release the craft until their scientists have replicated it. They aren’t even close. Jason Mars knows how the dude feels, and is grateful that his own impending departure back to Mars does not rely upon the possession of a spaceship.
Tiburona, the shark girl, can hear the heartbeats and rushing blood of every suited human soldier on the craft. The sound is deafening. She unbuckles her seatbelt. Despite myriad protestations from her colleagues she walks away, finding a spot to hide in the upper level. When the grunt sent to find her does, she eats him. Relishing the blood as it drips down her throat, snuffling in to get every last drop before his heart stops beating. Continuing to gorge even though her shrunken stomach forces her to stop and vomit. Three times.
As above, the smog goddess Kaleanathi shudders and belches, as the grunt’s soul becomes the newest part of her cloak.
Gustave II, the croc boy, and the werewolf Growl, raise their noses, smelling blood. Trixter, the coyote god, soon follows suit. Questions in their eyes as they look to each other for answers. Gustave shakes his head, a gesture they all read as
Keep your traps shut. Not our goddamn problem.
The others are more than happy to comply. They couldn’t give a shit about the success of this mission. They are all prisoners here. And not of their own device.
A slight bump and shriek of shifting gears as they approach Spruce-Musa Hospital. Battle faces on.
Gustave II, The Croc Boy
Y
our “father”—the creature known in The Congo as Gustave, from whom you received your genetic base material—is the largest known crocodile on Earth, and one of few maneaters on record. During the civil war in Rwanda, when hundreds of thousands of Hutus were murdered by Tutsis and dumped in the Ruzizi River or buried in mass graves, Gustave I began developing his taste for human flesh. And when the war was over, his preference remained the flesh of humans.
You know this because Gustave I knows this. Sometimes, when he feeds you too can feel it. Other times, you can almost see through his eyes, though he’s on the other side of the planet from you. These were some of his genetic gifts. Seeing and tasting the world outside through him has been your coping method all these years at the Roswell Institute. You’re not like the dickless wonder Jason Mars, who passes for human and gets off-campus permission.
At least they’re trying to create you a mate. You take what you can get. Actually, you’ll take what they give you. And you’ll say thank you for their trouble.
There may still be a way out. If those alien girls keep escaping, surely you could too one day. Maybe even today. The Shark Girl’s eaten three humans already. Chaos looks to be in the cards. If your crocodile countenance could smile, it would.
The coyote god Trixter keeps saying it’s a good day to die. No, you think. It’s a good day to live. Be free of The Institute once and for all.
If only you knew that each of the other hybrids is thinking the exact same thing, you might have actually made your first friends. You might have planned an escape together—seven hybrid heads always better than one—before it’ll become too late, your fates forever sealed by the sinister designs of the Roswell Institute.
7:30 PM LAPD Headquarters Interrogation Room 3
R
osario Quatro looks at the weeping creature before her. Tommy Cullen, brother of already-interviewed and lawyered-up Frank Cullen. An eighteen-year-old accessory to mass murder. A child. A baby. Zygote. She sighs, her heart on pain overload. These American kids. So spoiled. Even the poor ones. Fast food every day, mobile phones, money for drugs. A breed of their own. Looking at him makes her feel disappointed in humanity. Time to get this over with.
“Tommy,” Quatro says, throwing a packet of facial tissues at the boy. “Tommy, Tommy, Tommy.” Quatro shakes her head. “We know, Tommy. We already know. By not telling me you’re only adding years onto the forever it’ll feel like in prison. I don’t gotta tell you what happens to pretty boys like you in prison.” Tommy’s eye’s widen so far they’re gonna fall out his head. “Or do I?” Quatro pauses. “Do you know anything about life on the inside? Tommy?”
Tommy never knew he had so many tears in him. They stream. The packet of tissues gets smaller and smaller. Emptied, hiccupping, his face swollen, all he wants is to see his mom and sleep.
Quatro takes another folder from her magic carpet briefcase, the one from which photos of all the dead people she pulled out, forcing him to look at their faces, and which Tommy can’t believe still has room to hold more documents. “You leave me no choice, Tommy.” She opens the folder and once again begins to toss papers across the table. Some of them hit Tommy, some fall to the floor, some collect in a pile, growing higher and higher. “These are email printouts, Tommy. From your computer. And your brother’s. We know that Charles Wallace Crane, Mr. Motel Chain himself, paid you and your little friends to blow up that hill.”
“Not possible!” Tommy screams. “I deleted everything!”
Quatro looks at the camera, a sad smirk on her face.
“Oh Tommy.
Cariño
, you should have paid attention in school. You ever heard of a hard drive? You can delete, but you can never erase. All those ones and zeroes, reconstructed into this stunning display before you.” Quatro shakes her head. “I’m so disappointed, Tommy. This,” she indicates the stack of scattered papers, “is not what I expected. Not at all.” She begins to put the printouts back in order. “And. So. Now we’re on the same page.” Quatro compiles all the strewn pages and makes to leave the room. Tommy is spent, in the first stages of shock, head lolling, pupils way dilated.
“Where did you get all the dynamite, Tommy? Hmmmm?”
Tommy’s head hangs down. Quatro watches snot drip into his lap. He shudders, takes a breath, looks up, wiping his face with his sleeve.
“We found recipes on the Internet. Shane, one of the guys who got away, his dad’s a survivalist. Had all the other stuff we needed. Was happy to help us.”
“How much dynamite did you make?”
“Um, I dunno.” He looks up doing the math in his head. Fifty or so pounds in each car. Seven cars. “I guess about three hundred and fifty pounds of it. More or less.” Tommy’s head sinks back down.
Quatro’s brow furrows. She looks at Assistant Chief Ortiz, who looks as puzzled as she feels.
It’s not enough to vaporize the site. It looked like there had never been anything there at all. Ever.
Ortiz can almost hear her thinking it and agrees. Quatro puts the discrepancy aside for now and collects all the documents.
“This is where we say goodbye, Tommy.” Quatro moves to get out of her chair, reconsiders. “Out of curiosity, how much did Mr. Crane offer you to assist in this grand mass murder?”
Tommy isn’t sure if she’s being rhetorical. He lifts his head, as heavy as ten watermelons, sees the agent being serious. “Ten million dollars,” he whispers.
Quatro feigns surprise. Puts her suitcase down and sits. “Each?!”
Tommy shakes his head, defeated. “No, for the whole job.”
“And how many ways are we splitting this cool ten million, again?” Quatro rests her chin on her palm.
“Eight.” He looks up. “There were eight of us.”
A coldness steals over Special Agent Quatro. “So, let me get this straight.” She pulls out a notebook and a pencil. “Ten million dollars divided by thirty-five thousand people.” Quatro looks into Tommy Cullen’s eyes. “Actually it was more, but let’s use an even number shall we?” Tommy is broken, but Quatro doesn’t care.
This isn’t the place for this, Agent.
She hears the voice, the good dog, telling her to stop. But, she doesn’t. Quatro begins doing the sums.
“Ten million dollars divided by thirty-five thousand people comes to roughly two hundred and eighty six dollars per head.” She looks at Tommy, who won’t meet her gaze. She reaches over and grabs his chin, forcing it to comply. “Oh sweetie. Didn’t you know that the going rate for a hired kill today is a thousand dollars a head on the low end? For a job this big, you shoulda made an easy thirty-five million, at least. Boy, what a discount.” She spits these last words.
“So, ten million for the whole job. Split eight ways. That comes to…” Quatro scratches at her pad, “one point two five million. That’s what all those thousands of life were worth to you.” Quatro throws her pen down at the table. It deflects and hits Tommy in the chest. He cries out. “No more bullshitting, Tommy. You start from the fucking beginning, and you don’t leave a goddamn thing out. I want to hear this all in your own words.” Quatro’s eyes are icicle daggers. Assistant Chief Ortiz feels the temperature in the room drop and shivers.
So this is why they pay her the big bucks.
Tommy nods.
“I need to hear you say it, Tommy.” Her voice, stilettos that cut glass.
“I’ll tell you everything.” And then Tommy’s eyes roll back in his head and he passes out, head clanging against the edge of the table before hitting the floor in a resounding thud.
Tommy Cullen
Y
ou come to and almost forget it wasn’t a dream. You helped your brother murder all those people. You’re in so much trouble you can’t think straight. That Latin woman is a bitch, but she’s right. You’re a spoiled little shit. And now you’re gonna pay.
You tell Agent Quatro everything. Chad Tanner was the drug dealer who started the Bad Vibe Kids. His first plot was to sell fake drugs and then he moved up to poison. All those cases in the news of overdoses at parties in the late 1990s? All Chad. He was the one who spiked the sno-cones at that one party, the one where the kids drove off the cliff. He wanted to create chaos. He wanted to be a master of mayhem. He wasn’t the only one.
The group grew. They started bigger projects. Sabotaging light shows to catch fire. Groups of thugs waiting in parking lots after parties to beat up ravers still high on whatever. Poisoning candy as well as pills. Robberies. Rapes. A lot of rapes. At the parties, after the parties, following girls home.
You only joined because your brother Frank forced you. He beat you up every day for a week until you agreed. You didn’t want to do it. You’d rather be in school. You didn’t want to hurt anybody, but it was easier to go with it. When Charles Wallace Crane approached Chad about the event of the century, Frank again bullied you into helping. You were the one who bought the supplies and kept them in your room. Nobody would suspect sweet little Tommy Cullen of planning a massacre. Your brother on the other hand, he’d be the first they’d point a finger at.
Of the thirty-seven members of the Bad Vibe Kids, only the eight were into the Crane Project. Less ways to split the money, Frank and Chad said. There were six cars that planted bombs around the mansion. They came at the end and were glad they did, there was no order to the parking. Had they been there earlier they all would have died, too, along with the ravers. You wish you had died.
The others skipped town right after the explosion. You write down their names for the agent. You write down all the names of the Bad Vibers. You can all go down together, just as it should be.
You apologize. Over and over. You realize there are not enough sorries in the world for the horror you helped create. You write out your confession and resign yourself to your fate. You avoid the agent’s gaze. You wonder if you’ll ever be able to look anyone in the eyes again after all these things you’ve done.
You begin praying for the sweet mercy of the death penalty you know you don’t deserve.