The Rage Room Page 21

  I watched as Adwar emerged from the building. All the while Ava shouted at me and everyone saw it, and I took it, a slight smile on my face.

  “What the hell’s wrong with you?” Ava yelled. “Do you think you’ll have Mr. Williamson’s protection? He’s on his way out!” She raised her voice even louder, and heads were turning towards us. I waited for my portable comm to buzz, and when it did, I grabbed it.

  By the time u read this, I’ll be dead by my own hand. Sorry, Sharps. I couldn’t face it. I let u down. I let me down. Please get the SSOs. I don’t want to rot here or have my furballs eat my face. Sorry, buddy. Best Wishes.

  I called #Emr. Ava was still shouting at me but even she heard the words “EMR, what is your emergency?” and the colour drained from her face. Maybe she thought I was calling them about her harassing me.

  “I think my friend might have hurt himself,” I said, trying to infuse my tone with fear and panic. “I got a flash. He’s at 767 Marquis Way, Kingston and Johns. Apartment 302. Please send someone. It might be nothing, but I’m worried for his safety.”

  I ended the call. “I’ve got to go,” I said to Ava and she nodded, for once at a loss for words.

  “Where’s Jazza?” I heard her shout over my shoulder, but I ignored her.

  I had realized something. I didn’t owe Jazza anything. He had set me up. I needed him to die so he’d leave the suicide note. It was the only way to clear my name. OctoOne, whoever the hell that was, wanted him alive, but I needed him dead.

  I’d collect the suicide note with the police as my witnesses and my name would be cleared. That Ava! She’d be eating humble pie very soon, having to admit I was innocent and the guy she worked so closely with had stolen all the money. She’d be implicated, not me! She’d be banished to the Farms. And I’d track Janaelle down. I had figured out how to find Janaelle while Ava was shouting at me. I would find her through Norman, the rage room guy. I’d find him at my usual spot; he had been there the last time, and he’d lead me to her. I had it all figured out. And, with my name clear, I’d leave Celeste, prove she was an unfit mother and a drunk, and Janaelle and I would live with my kids and raise them with good values. Who knows, maybe even Mother would be a part of that. I’d like that. I’d prove myself to be a good boy, a good man. A good son, a good father. Janaelle had said I was a good father, and she had no reason to lie.

  The SSOs were at Jazza’s place when I arrived. Two officers took me aside, and I tried to stop myself from being too cheerful and chatty. The one guy was bald as an egg; the other was the exact opposite with an extravagant mullet.

  “Mr. Barkley?” I nodded.

  “We’ve got some bad news. We found a suicide note, and we’ve got some bad news.”

  I forced a solemn sad expression on my face. “Is he gone?” I asked, a tremor in my voice. The officers exchanged a glance.

  “What’s going on?” Things suddenly didn’t seem that simple. Why weren’t they telling me about Jazza? “What happened?” Oh god. Jazza pinned the thievery on me. I was going down after all. There was no salvation. I grabbed the officer by the arm. “Tell me what’s going on.”

  “There’s no easy way to do this,” Mr. Mullet said, and I wanted to hit him. “Do you have any close family we can call?”

  “My wife, Celeste.” I pulled out my portable comm and rang Celeste, but it went to voice-mail. I went to leave a message, but the officer took my comm and hung up.

  “What the hell?” I was incensed. “Give me that.” But then it occurred to me that something was very wrong. Why hadn’t Celeste called me about the furnace and Baxter’s tooth? I stared at the detective.

  “He killed your family, Mr. Barkley.”

  “What? Who did?”

  “Jazza Frings. We found his note when we got here and we called it in, but unfortunately we were too late.”

  “I don’t understand a thing you’re saying. What note?”

  The SSOs exchanged another glance, and I grabbed one by the shoulder and spun him around. “Stop messing with me! What happened?”

  “Here’s the note.” The detective held out a Police Services CrystalFlashDrive, and I took it from him and read the note.

  Sharps. I thought about it very carefully. I thought maybe they deserved to live their lives because it wasn’t their fault. But I just got so sick and tired of hearing about you and your perfect life. You deserve to lose everything.

  I’ll bullet point it for you since you’ve got the attention span of a gnat.

  • It was your idea to steal the money. I went along with you because I was desperate to be your friend. You knew I’d take any level of friendship you offered and I did. I hated myself for it.

  • It’s in a bank account in your name. The statements are all on your kitchen table at home.

  What the hell was he talking about?

  He gave the money to Ava and her army. I didn’t want to read any more, but I had to.

  • You could have made me Bax’s godfather, but you didn’t. Or Sophie. You never invited me to their christenings or birthdays. You were ashamed of me. I was good to score games and shit for you, but you never took me home. I was your slum buddy. Remember what you said to me? Jazza, my boy, you know you need me! You wouldn’t have a job without me. You said that the day they promoted you. But Ava knew I was the brains. She knew and Mr. Williamson knew and you knew too, and I was never given any credit.

  • Have you ever had your brain scoured? No, you have not. You have no idea what it does to a person. It changed me, Sharps, and you never even noticed or cared because all you wanted was the money.

  • There are things about Celeste you don’t know. You know how she loves money, but you don’t know what else she loves.

  • Ava will flay you and hang you out to dry.

  Best Wishes, Jazza Frings

  33. DOING HELL IN PRESENT TIME

  I WAS STUNNED. I COULDN’T SPEAK. I turned to Mr. Mullet, waiting for him to tell me the entire situation was as crazy and stupid as his hair. What the fuck had gone wrong? And that’s when I realized the truth. I changed Jazza’s trajectory with the first jump. I’d done this to myself. That was why OctoOne had instructed me to go straight to Jazza’s apartment. And I’d thought I’d known better.

  I stared at the note. “I didn’t steal any money,” I whispered. “I didn’t know about the money. He did it. He’s setting me up. It wasn’t meant to be this way.”

  The SSO officer cleared his throat. “We’ll be looking into that,” he said gently. “But your family is dead, Mr. Barkley. Your mother is waiting for you at the station. You don’t want to go home. They’re taking your family to the morgue. Your mother will take care of you. Jazza also killed a woman by the name of Florence Garcia, do you know her?”

  “She’s our nanny. Oh god. Not her too.” But then his words registered, and I shivered like a dog in a hailstorm. “No! Not Mother! I can’t see Mother! What about Mr. Williamson and Mummy? His wife, I mean.”

  “They’ve been contacted.”

  I leaned against the roof of the cop car. It was snowing prettily, although I wasn’t in the mood to admire how atmospheric it all was. Big white flakes settled on me, and I welcomed the cold, turning my face up to the sky. My mouth opened in a silent scream, and I pounded the car with the palm of my hand, slapping it again and again, not feeling the stinging burn. And then a thought occurred to me.

  This was only jump number two. My goose wasn’t cooked! I still had a few aces up my sleeve. I just had to let time play out.

  I would see Janaelle again! I deserved real love, with Janaelle. And on the third jump, I’d come back and save my babies and Janaelle and I would end up together. This was all temporary. I was still in the game.

  “What happens now?” I turned to Mr. Mullet, who was standing next to me. I was exhausted. Regardless of what had happened, I wanted to g
o home, chew a couple of Celeste’s sleeping pills, and escape. I wanted to be alone. They’d taken my family away. I’d pretend they were all out shopping, perfectly fine, and coming home soon.

  I groaned, and the officer laid a sympathetic hand on my shoulder. “I know, it’s devastating. We’re very sorry for your loss.”

  “Losses, plural,” I wanted to tell him. Oh shit. I had no way of calculating how the future present and the consequential past would be affected. What would I find on the third jump?

  But first, I needed to play out the current time until the clock ran dry.

  I descended into hell. They made me stay with Mother, who seemed baffled as to how to deal with me. The police made me see a doctor, and thankfully, he numbed me. Pills for the day and pills for the night. Integratron, while sorry for my personal loss, were investigating the theft. And none of it pointed to Jazza. I had signed off on every single thing. Mr. Williamson and his wife, Mummy and Daddy to me no longer, refused to speak to me. Mrs. Williamson was sedated up to her eyeballs while Daddy, they said, had lost the will to live. From the moment he heard the news, he stared into space, unmoving. He had, however, said one thing: “I should never have trusted that boy with my princess. He was worse than a Blowfly.”

  “I’ll take you to your room,” Mother had said, when the SSOs delivered me into her care. She gave me tea and toast and watched me take my meds. “I knew you’d be back one day, Sharps. Because you’re a weak man. I tried so hard to make a feminist of you. Make you into a man. But you were so flawed, just like your father. He came back too, you know.”

  “Wha…?” My tongue felt thick in my mouth, fuzzy and fur-coated. My eyes were closing and it was hard to stay awake.

  She nodded. “I never told you. He left us. He ran away but he came back and said he was sorry. Sorry! As if that made everything all right. He just as well could have said, ‘Oh, right, I backed over you with a truck and broke every bone in your body but I’m sorry!’ Apologies are for losers.”

  “When?” I tried to keep the conversation on track.

  “Six months after he left. He had committed a fatal error by leaving. There was no way to make it right. What kind of man does that? Just leaves?”

  “Wha… happen…?” Wow, these meds were strong. I hoped I’d remember this conversation in the morning.

  Mother shrugged. “It was easy actually. He vanished without a trace and then he reappeared without a trace and then he vanished equally easily again. It was the only thing he ever did that I appreciated, being so traceless. I exterminated him, and no one knew any better. You were at camp. Remember camp?”

  I remembered all right. I hated it. Real life camp. The pits. Covered in black fly bites, I pierced my thumb with a fish hook and needed stitches, and let’s not forget the poison ivy. I was sent home early by the camp nurse.

  “I didn’t like it.”

  “Of course you didn’t. But fortuitously, your father turned up while you were away. Talk about good timing!” She sighed. “I guess I’ll have to organize the funerals. The Williamsons are a mess. They aren’t even coming back from Real Life Florida for the burials. I’ll take care of it, like I take care of everything. We’ll figure out what to do with your house. I gather you’ll be facing prison time for the money.”

  I nodded my head. “Be sent to a Farm, I guess.”

  I knew Integratron would back both Daddy and Ava. It was all on me. Jazza was irrelevant to Integratron, and Ava had stood up for him, saying Jazza hadn’t known a thing, that he had snapped after being scoured. For someone who hated him, Ava was spectacularly gutted by Jazza’s suicide. EmoHealthExecs at Integratron had sent her to a Grief Counselling Spa, and I had no way to contact her, not that I’d have had anything to say to her.

  And now, here was Mother, telling me she killed my father. I’d been doomed from the start. I cradled my heavy head in my arms. Janaelle would know what to do. I had to get back to her.

  “I’m not sorry I killed you, Mother,” I said, and she looked confused.

  “You didn’t, I’m here,” she said gently.

  “You’ll see.” I pushed myself to stand. “You’ll see. I’m going to lie down. You’ll see, Mother.”

  “Oh, Sharps,” she said, sadly, her face old and tired. “Do you know that we picked you out? You were handpicked. Well, I picked you. I admit you weren’t your father’s first choice.”

  I turned and looked at her. “What?”

  “Never mind. Go and lie down and try to sleep.”

  I went to my room, leaning against the wall the whole way. I had to remember this. But how? I had to write it down.

  I scrabbled around in my room for a pen and piece of paper. I couldn’t find anything to write on, but there was a pencil in the back of a drawer. I pulled my bed away from the wall and wrote a note where Mother wouldn’t see it.

  MOTHER IS NOT MY MOTHER!

  FATHER NEVER WANTED ME! FIND OUT MORE!

  Then I lay down and waited for time to pass.

  34. THINGS GET JUMBLED

  “WELL, THAT WAS FUCKED UP,” I said to the gang when I got back, or forward, or whatever. They’d been right—the jump was fine. There was no nausea, but Sting Ray Bob found internal bleeding when he scanned my brain and Jaxen was pissed off with me. “Why did you jump so soon?” He snapped at me.

  “You know why. Because I killed Knox. And I know, I shouldn’t have gone to see him, but I was lonely.” I looked at Janaelle pointedly. “You guys left me alone. But what the hell, Jazza killed my family. I had no idea. Did you know?”

  “Of course we didn’t,” Janaelle sounded short. “We would have told you. We’re on your side, but who knows what side you’re on, Sharps. You keep screwing up. You were supposed to go to Jazza’s place first. Why didn’t you?”

  “I’m sorry. I had no idea what would happen if I didn’t go and see him. I thought I had a great plan figured out. I tried really hard. And I found a vital clue to my past.” Darn it. What was it? “Hang on,” I said, screwing up my face. “It has to do with Mother.” I closed my eyes, but it was a blank. “Oh shit. It was important. I know it was. Didn’t you guys record me when I was over there?”

  “No. The capacitor failed because we weren’t ready. You weren’t supposed to jump when you did, remember?”

  Jaxen stood up and walked around. I could see he wasn’t about to forgive me any time soon. I was back in the hotel room and eating enough food for half a dozen people. “Look,” I said, my mouth full, “there has to be a way around this. I’ve got three jumps left, right?”

  “Maybe.” Sting Ray Bob was still flipping through X-rays. “This time you’re under house arrest until we get you healed. The way you’re going, you’ll last one more, tops. And given your failure rate, you’re going to need more than one.”

  “Ease up on him,” Janaelle said, and I looked at her gratefully. “Time travel is a bitch,” she said. “We all know that.” She chewed her lip and stared out the window.

  “Do the cops know I killed Knox?”

  “They do. Your mug shot is flashing on every optic nerve in the city on the hour. We’ll have to disguise you the next time you go to St. Drogo’s. What matters is that the device is still working. The diagnostics on that are sound, but your body is failing, Sharps. You lost ten pounds in your last jump.”

  “If all else fails, you can use time travel as the new weight loss schtick,” I joked, but no one else thought it was funny. Losers.

  And then it happened.

  The lights went out. Not just in our room. The entire world rippled into darkness as if a dropcloth had fallen from the sky.

  “What’s going on?” Janaelle sounded annoyed. I couldn’t see her until Jaxen turned on a flashlight, and it was great to see their faces. We moved into a comfort scrum, hearts pounding. At least mine was anyway.

  “No news flashes,” Jaxen sai
d, tapping his temples, trying to jolt his optics into action. “Blackout.” He shone the flashlight on Janaelle’s face. “Do you think they went ahead without telling us?”

  “I don’t know. Looks like it. The fuckers!”

  “What and who are you talking about?”

  “The World Wide Warriors. It’s an underground international group we subscribe to. The Eden Collective is St. Polycarp’s chapter. There was a plan to shut down the satellites and restore the Earth to its natural rhythms and let it detox. Goodbye Crystal Path; goodbye controlled weather patterns. No more fake digital life.”

  Panic pierced my heart like a sword. “But,” I stammered, “what about my kids?” And where had I heard of the Eden Collective before? From Mother! Mother was involved in this. And Ava! This was all Ava’s fault. The Eden Collective had published her book. She wasn’t at any spa for grief—she was rebooting the world, using funds I had supposedly given her! “It’s all Ava!” I yelled. “She’s doing this! And Mother too! We have to send me back. I have to get Bax and Sophie to safety.”

  Sting Ray Bob cut me off. “Oh, so now you care about your kids,” he said sarcastically.

  “Of course I care! I thought I had three more tries! None of us knew that Jazza would kill them! And if you had known, you should have told me. Yeah, maybe I did want to come back to see Janaelle, but I didn’t think it would mean leaving my kids forever! You know that’s true! Oh, man!” I went to the window and stared down at the blackness. hit my head against the glass until Jaxen came and got me.

  “Dude,” he said, “we’ve got generators. We’re ready. We still need you to follow through. And maybe this will instill a greater sense of urgency in you. You’ve been cavalier and all over the map. And,” he cast a glance at Janaelle, “our leader dropping her panties didn’t exactly keep you focused. Sorry,” he said to Janaelle, “but it’s the truth, and you know it.”

  Janaelle didn’t rush in to tell him it was worth it. In fact, she kept distressingly silent.