The Three Furies (Erec Rex) (59 page)

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family. You'd never be able to see them again. You would be stuck back in time."

"Jack, if anyone should go back, it's me," Erec said. "Let me go find him."

"You can't--" Bethany gasped in horror. "Oh,
no
! I can't believe it. This is all my fault!"

"What?" Jack and Erec looked at her, confused.

Bethany pulled a small jar out of a bag she was carrying. "I totally forgot I had this. Jack was holding it when he first came in, and he set it on a table. I guess I stuck it in my bag so it wouldn't get lost. But with everything going on, I wasn't thinking. I totally forgot I had it!" Oscar's eye floated in the jar, surveying the room.

Bethany huddled over the jar. She gasped and then let loose with a flood of tears. "It's my fault. If I had only remembered I had the jar, Oscar would have believed us. He wouldn't have gone back and--"

"I don't know, Bethany. I'm not sure we could have changed anything. He had to go after Rosco. . . ." Erec choked up. Tears streamed down his face. He looked at Jack, who was crying, soundlessly, too.

A loud sniff came from the corner of the room. From the shadows, a small and wiry figure with piercing green eyes appeared in a black cape. Thick olive-colored scales covered most of his face and bald head, revealing occasional blotches of pink skin. His jaw and nose protruded like a reptile, and his mouth was long and wide.

Rosco Kroc. Erec's breath caught in his throat and he jumped to his feet. Was he going to kill them? Capture them or call Baskania?

But he was confused, too, after what he had just seen. Who was Rosco Kroc?

Then he noticed that Rosco had tears streaming down his face. Nobody spoke, but everyone's eyes were searching his, looking for Oscar. . . .

"Oscar?" Bethany said. "Is that really you?"

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Rosco nodded, and she ran up and threw her arms around him. He bent his head into her shoulder, then pushed her away and sat on the floor, knees to his chest. "Don't . . . Stay away from me."

"But--what happened to you? I don't understand," Bethany said.

Rosco held a hand up and wiped his face. "I'll tell you everything. But then you have to go away and leave me alone. And . . . I'm sorry. I never deserved you as friends. I . . . didn't know. I really didn't know."

Jack sat next to him and spoke quietly. "What didn't you know?"

"That . . ." Rosco's voice choked up. "You really did care. Look," he pointed at the jar with his eye in it. "Bethany even really had my eye. You don't know how many years I looked back on this day and thought of you as liars. I was sure that the moment I disappeared, you all would be laughing and telling mean stories about me. You could care less that I was gone. All these years I believed what Baskania told me. I even . . ." His voice shut down on him as he contemplated the horrors of his life. "But I had to come back and watch today, see it all again for myself. Something made me. It was like . . . watching my own birth. I wanted to see you all as you really were, confirm how selfish you were, hear you with my own ears. But I never expected . . . never thought it was like this." He picked up the jar with his eye in it. "The Shadow Prince never told me that he didn't have my eye. I assumed he had it all along . . . but I never felt him using it like other people talked about."

"Rosco . . . Oscar?" Erec said. "What happened after you went back in time?"

"I remember it like it was five minutes ago. And, in a weird way, I guess it was five minutes ago. But twenty years have gone by since then, and here I am. I was so angry at all of you. So mad at Rosco for everything he had done." He took a breath, then laughed. "I still am, I guess. I became Rosco, and now I'm still angry at myself. But anyway, back then--I took the Time Bender back to go find Bobby

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Kroc, sure that he was going to grow up and become the Rosco Kroc I hated so much. And I did what I swore to myself I would. I killed him. I know how that must sound." He shook his head.

"But Bobby was never going to grow up to be Rosco, was he?" Bethany said.

"No. That's the joke of it, I guess. I didn't see that until he was dead. There I was with the face of a crocodile, and he was lying on the ground. I realized I was going to be in big trouble. I didn't know anyone who might help me. It occurred to me that I might be spending the rest of my life in jail. But with my face gone I could disguise myself as Bobby, and make him vanish so nobody would know what happened. I put his clothes on, made him disappear.

"And that's when the irony hit me. I was posing as Bobby Kroc. I was going to be Rosco Kroc. And I had the crocodile face now to go with it. I had set out to kill Rosco Kroc, and instead I had given birth to him. And his first act was murder."

Erec sank to the floor next to Rosco. "It's okay, Oscar. You didn't know."

"No," Oscar said, shaking his head. "I knew. I'm not worthy of any of you. Maybe I once was, a long time ago. But I've done many horrible things since then."

"What happened next, Oscar?" Bethany asked. "Were the Krocs nice to you?"

"I guess." He nodded. "I avoided them as much as I could. It was hard to face them, knowing what I had done to their son, Bobby, even if they never knew. Sometimes they would look at me, and I'd be afraid they could tell. But it was just my guilty conscience, I think. They took me to see Vulcan himself to try to change my looks back. I was so afraid that they would find out who I was, that I wasn't their son, Bobby. But"--he gestured to his face--"as you can see, there was no danger of that. It's impossible to make people's looks return

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to the way they were. And compared to having a crocodile head, this wasn't bad.

"It didn't take long for me to find Baskania. He took me in right away as his assistant. It was interesting, though. This time with him, things were different. I was already a murderer, a villain, in my own mind. I didn't trust a soul, and was more bitter than you can imagine. So I looked at him more like an equal, a friend, than a boss. And he treated me that way too. He didn't know why this croc-faced boy found him, but he was impressed with my abilities and interest in him. I just wanted to be a part of something, to be accepted. That was always my downfall, I guess. My father never really accepted me, and I had wanted that so badly. So I was always looking for it in other people. And now, with my face so deformed, nobody wanted to be around me.

"But Baskania did. He liked me. At the time . . . I guess I thought he even loved me like a son. When I first found him, I waited for him to recognize me as Oscar Felix. But then I realized that he would not have heard of me back then. I was just some new kid with scales on his face. Years later, when he befriended Oscar--my old self--in Alypium, I wondered if he would make the connection between us then. But he couldn't. Baskania could read Oscar's mind, but Oscar didn't know he was connected to me either."

"Couldn't Baskania read your mind?" Erec asked.

"Oddly, no. I don't know why . . . if the scales blocked him, or my distrust in everyone--maybe I was too guarded. Or maybe going back in time closed some pathway off in me. I'll never know, I guess. Perhaps that is one of the reasons that the Shadow Prince took an interest in me--I was a bit intriguing to him. And angry. That attracted him too.

"But he never could see that I was Oscar, and I wasn't about to tell him. That would only give him more power over me, of course.

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And one other thing I would never tell him about--" He pointed at the Novikov Time Bender. "This was my machine, not his. Baskania would have gone back in time to dominate the world if he knew about this."

"Is that why Baskania didn't appear the last time I saw Oscar down here?"

He nodded. "I wanted to turn you in and see you finally destroyed. I had hated all of you for so long. But not if it would risk the Shadow Prince finding the Time Bender."

"So ...
that
was your connection with Oscar?" Jack said. "You weren't reading his mind--"

"No, I wasn't. I didn't have to read his mind. Anything that Oscar lived through was in my own memory of my past. When you invited Oscar to the castle that time with King Piter gone, as soon as you made the decision and I decided to come, once it all happened, then boom--it had happened in my past. I just simply remembered it. And, of course, I was happy to tell Baskania that you were at the castle.

"So, from the moment that Baskania decided that he wanted to capture you--sometime after he lost the dragon eye to you and before your quests started--I turned you in each time that I remembered where you would be. Each time Oscar had seen you. Until now.

"It was strange. Some of the things I remembered all along--things that didn't change. But other things, like when you decided to write a letter to Oscar, or invite him to meet you somewhere, those would only pop into my memory after you invited him, or wrote the letter. So the memories would appear in my head just before things happened. I guess I learned a lot about how time works through all of this."

Bethany looked both fascinated and horrified. "Why aren't you calling Baskania here now? You could have turned us all in."

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Oscar shrugged, laughing under his breath. "Why would I? You don't get it, do you?"

Everyone watched him, waiting.

"I wanted to come here and see you all on this day for myself. See how terrible you were, revel in my pain and hurt. And then I was going to do something awful to you." He shuddered. "I am so sorry. I was wrong. All these years I lived a lie. Baskania had fed it to me a long time ago, when I was your age, as Oscar. He poisoned me against you. And as I changed into Rosco Kroc, that lie grew and grew until I had such a different view of you three. . . . You're just kids! And look at you. All wanting to go back in time to save me, at the expense of your own lives. Crying, missing me. Look, you even have my eye! Even that sick lie I thought you told me was true!

"Why would I ever hand you over to Baskania now? I've finally found my old friends from my distant past. The only real friends I ever had in my life." He laughed loudly. "And after all this time, you're still kids at that same age. How strange is that?"

Nobody was sure what to do. They sat a while in silence, and then Bethany pushed the jar with Oscar's eye toward him. "Here. Maybe you can get it reattached. It doesn't even look like your eye is gone."

"It's one of the new substitute eyes. They look pretty good, don't they?" He picked up the jar. "I don't know. It's probably too late to put this thing back in. It's been sitting in a jar for twenty years now."

"No, it hasn't," Bethany said. "Erec found it only a few weeks ago. He stole it back for you when he broke me out of Baskania's fortress in Jakarta."

"Only a few weeks? I guess so. How strange." He looked at his eye. "You really stole this for me?" Oscar-Rosco shook his head in disbelief. "And I was trying to get you killed." He pushed the eye away, sounding miserable. "I don't deserve this. I don't deserve any

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of you. But don't worry. I promise I will never harm you again."

"Oscar, you deserve everything you can get." Bethany patted his arm. "After what you've been through, you need a friend. And we're all still your friends. No matter what."

Oscar-Rosco's voice sounded bitter. "You don't know what you're talking about. I've done more terrible things than you know. With Baskania, one thing led to another. . . . I was a murderer when I met him, and I had lost myself. I would have done anything to be accepted, honored, a part of things. And he gave me all that . . . for a price. It's too late for me, kids. I'll do what I can for you. But I don't deserve your friendship."

"That's too bad." Jack's face was red, defiant. "It seems to me, though, that you don't have a choice. We're your friends, like it or not. Do what you want, Oscar, but we're here for you."

Oscar's voice rose, sounding pitiful. "You want to hang around with a murderer? A power-hungry criminal? What's wrong with you?"

"That's all in the past now," Erec said, trying to smile. "We just lost you, but now we have you back again, don't we? All of the bad stuff you did when you became Rosco, we all understand why that happened. You turned evil from hanging out with Baskania too much. That's what he does to people, right? But you don't have to stay that way. Do you? I think a brand-new part of your life could start now."

"Start brand-new," Oscar-Rosco mused. "I don't think I have a choice, really. Everything is different now. All of the lies I was living are exposed."

"That settles it." Bethany took his hand. "Time for Rosco to disappear, and Oscar to become our friend again."

Going to Rosco's apartment was strange, but he assured them that it was the safest place for them now. Erec could not help but wonder

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if Rosco was really setting them up. Maybe Baskania would barge in at any second. But he was acting like their old friend Oscar, and Erec decided to trust him.

The apartment was luxurious, filled with beautiful art and expensive furniture. Erec kept thinking how strange it was to be looking at his friend as an adult. He found himself staring at Rosco, searching for hints of Oscar. His eyes were the same as Oscar's. Erec noticed that one of Rosco's eyes looked slightly lighter--that was probably his fake eye. Even the way he tilted his head when he laughed and the sound of his chuckle were the same as they used to be.

"You have to stay away from King Piter's house," Rosco told them. "Baskania removed the water wall, and soon he is going to plant guards there, looking for you. They're building Balor Stain a huge castle right on the grounds where King Piter's castle used to be. Baskania could have put it anywhere, but he wanted to rub it in your father's face."

That reminded Erec. "Oscar wrote to me . . . I mean, you wrote to me in a letter that you--Rosco--somehow forged my father's signature on an official proclamation. It said that he was handing over his kingdom to Balor Stain. I don't believe that, obviously. But how did you do it? His real signature is not something you can fake. . . ."

Rosco looked away, ashamed. "I told you, I've done a lot of bad things. This one was nothing compared to . . . But I'm sorry. A long time ago I got King Piter's autograph, when I was a kid. I always carried it around with me in my pocket. Didn't think it would travel back in time with me, but it did. I kept it as the years went by, like a souvenir from the past--or future. But don't get me wrong. I was more than happy to use it against the king." He shrugged. "Still want to hang around with me?"