Looking back at the early chapters of Twist now I’m amazed at how much my writing style has already changed. I read some of the other installments and almost feel like I should be embarrassed.
Anyway, I would’ve finished and posted this chapter earlier during the week, but I’ve been on vacation in Florida. I did have a laptop with me, but I mostly used it for digital painting. Even if I had finished the chapter while I was there, I was without an internet connection… So oh well. Tough luck.
Oh, and by the way (I’ve already been asked this multiple times): Augmentations will be coming into play very, very soon.
Dominic was sitting in a chair. It was elevated from the ground slightly; His feet did not reach the floor. No, it was placed on a short pedestal. The carpet beneath was red, with gold lining. Where were the walls? There. He could see them now. The room was stone - Not the kind of decaying stone one might expect from ancient fortified castles, but a sort of polished stone. Almost like marble. Some sort of red draperies hung on all four sides of the chamber.
The wall before Dominic was penetrated by a single wide doorway. It cut through the stone a few feet, then ended in a curtain, which was suddenly pushed to one side. A figure passed through. It was a very large man, dressed in a very dark suit. Whether his head was placed incorrectly on his body or he was merely walking backwards, Dominic could not tell. His vision was not functioning at an optimal level.
“You still don’t know who I am,” the man said. It took Bishop a moment to realize he was being spoken to. “Would you like a drink?” The voice was deep, and resonated through the room as though it was no more than three feet wide.
Dominic tried to move his feet. He could not. “No,” he said, though his mouth was quite dry.
The man looked at him for a moment, then produced a rag from one pocket. “I’m afraid your forehead is dirtied. Use my handkerchief.”
Dominic saw his hand reach and remove the rag from the man’s grip, though he made no effort to do so. It was then applied to his forehead. Removing it seconds later he could see that it was completely drenched in blood.
Glass clinked. Bishop turned and saw that the man was pouring himself a shot of liquor.
“You still don’t know who I am,” he repeated, then turned to Dom (who suddenly realized that the man’s head was blue, and that it held the same blue face seen in his earlier hallucination). “You may have guesses.” Dominic opened his mouth, but the man raised one hand to silence him. “It does not matter now. You have operated efficiently. I am impressed by your progress. Frankly, I did not think you would perform so well under such accelerated strain.”
Dominic felt like a helpless child being addressed by his teacher. The room was beginning to fill with liquor.
Some words were in Dominic’s throat. He vomited them into the air: “What is this place?”
The man smiled, though he was reversed, and gave no answer. The liquor rose to Dominic’s knees. Then to his head. It was inhaled. He drowned, and was dead.
--- --- --- ---
“A lot of this has been hard to swallow,” Jock said. He rotated his beer bottle on the table, turning it so that the label became distorted, then faced him again, he, all the while, remaining expressionless… He paused and waved his hand in a general collecting gesture of his surroundings. “All this, I mean. What’s been going on.” There was silence. “But the world is very different… Everything’s changing. Occasionally I wonder if the whole mess we’ve gotten into is bigger than any of us. Sure as hell seems that way.”
Jess nodded. She lifted her bottle and drank. “Everything and everybody.” She couldn’t stop thinking about Dominic. None of them could. They had just witnessed him fall from a building and shoot himself in the head, and yet, there he slept, in Jock’s Hong Kong apartment, without a scratch on him. “Dominic’s not himself,” she continued, an obvious statement that had already been spoken multiple times.
“I know,” Jock said.
“No. I mean it. He’s never been this empty. This... dark.” Her eyes started to water. She still couldn’t believe or understand any of the transformation he’d gone through. She looked at her gun laid on the table. Light welled in one of its curves and trickled a piercing reflection.
Alex leaned in from a wooden doorway. “Jock,” he said, and motioned into the room behind him. “I checked out your machine. So far your e-mail hasn’t been traced, which means nobody knows you’re here. Yet. That’s definitely good. But they can and probably will figure it out soon enough, so I’m going to make backups of all your e-mail, and trash everything, probably install some new securities.” He paused and sighed. “We have to be very clean from now on. This is a very dangerous game we’re playing.”
Jock nodded. He had adapted to the risk long ago.
Jaime was unconscious on the couch. He had passed out minutes after their arrival. Everyone was tired. The night seemed omnipresent. Daylight would soon break.
There was a shuffling noise. It was Dominic. He had risen from his sleep, and was wrapped in the blanket of the bed, though he was already fully clothed. He shivered. His body dripped with a cold sweat. “Where are we?” he whispered hoarsely, to no one in particular.
Jock raised his brow. “This is my apartment... We’re safe here.”
Dom nodded faintly.
“What’s wrong?” Jock asked.
“Nothing,” Bishop said. “Bad dreams. Nothing.” He looked at Jock’s beer. “I’m thirsty as hell.”
“Right,” Jock said, and got up to grab a drink for him.
Dominic was staring at Jess. He had just noticed her presence in the room. His head had been swimming, but he saw her now. She seemed to bring to him some sort of ultimate steadiness, yet simultaneously, he felt completely broken and inadequate. She had never previously looked so beautiful to him than she did at that moment, and he abruptly realized that he was infinitely attracted to her, and could no longer deny himself of that fact.
Yet there he stood, shaken, manifesting no motion, feeling completely naked to the fact that he had just shot himself in the head and was still breathing.
--- --- --- ---
The Wan Chai market breathed around them, masses of people netting together and slithering through each others’ paths in the pockets of street created by the surrounding illuminated towers. Quaint little pottery shops and humble restaurants held their ground, opening each day to the wafting smell of flesh (mixed with the usual city scents) emanating from the nearby meat shop. There was a newspaper stand, a police station (which was dug into a small, protruding, thick-walled compound), and nearby could be found the intricately crafted temple, the Lucky Money, VersaLife, and the destination Jock sought: The secured, barricaded compound home to the Luminous Path.
Dominic stood shaded against a concrete pillar. There was a pet shop before him, and through the glass he viewed a small, short-haired puppy curl up and fall asleep in the midst of its own warmth. Dom couldn’t help but smile. He tried to remember the last time he’d smiled.
Jess put her hand on Dom’s shoulder. He hadn’t noticed her approach. She turned and pointed towards the approaching Jock, who they had been waiting for as he spoke to several police officers about an undisclosed subject. Dominic briefly wondered whether most, if not all, of the Wan Chai patrols were capable of speaking English. Probably. Wan Chai had been a bit of a haven for tourists, before the Triads started ripping at each other’s throats.
“Things have only gotten worse since the Dentons were killed,” Jock said as he grew closer. When he was a few feet away he stopped and looked around the market as though he was searching for a specific person. “The Triads aren’t being patient with each other. There’s been a lot of arguing and violence recently. It’s a very touchy subject.” He looked at Jess, then at Dom. “That’s all I could get out of the police. They told me to read the papers if I wanted news. Too bad I can’t read Chinese very well.”
Dominic watched a small boy walk over to the newspaper counter and say some unheard comment to the woman behind it, whose face began to burn with anger.
“The Luminous Path compound is right there,” Jock said, pointing towards a high wall of brick. What it encased could not be seen from their position, and the only opening piercing this impenetrable box was a rusted metal door, much too high and flat for scaling. In front of this door stood a man dressed in white. He held a harsh-looking automatic shotgun.
Dominic sighed lightly. “Are you sure we can trust them?”
“Yes.” Jock’s answer came immediately, and his faith in it was apparently strong. “I trust them. Paul Denton trusted them. Listen, Dom…” Jock removed his sunglasses and Dominic saw the deep, naked eyes concealed behind them for the first time. “Tracer Tong is the only ally we have right now. He’s a very important figure. More important than you think. We need to speak to him. Unfortunately, the Luminous Path is not going to let strangers like you two walk straight into their headquarters. They already know me. I can go in and try to convince Tong that you mean him and the Luminous Path no harm…” Jock’s voiced trailed a bit on the final words of the sentence, as though he suddenly realized that he, himself, was not completely confident in that statement. “I can convince him, but it won’t be easy. Honestly, I think his scientific curiosity will be our best shot, what with your, uh…” He waved his hand unknowingly. “Immortality.”
Dominic nodded comprehensively. In truth, he did not care where he would be dragged next. He had nothing better to do than let the leash lead him and follow obediently. He stopped questioning things when he started doubting his sanity, his very existence.
Abruptly, Jock raised one arm and pointed towards the man in white before the great metal doors. “That man is a brick. He won’t let you in unless it’s proven to him that you are not an enemy of the Luminous Path. Or, if he’s ordered to let you in.” There was a pause.
The woman at the newspaper stand could be heard yelling. The small boy ran away, wailing.
“Wait here,” Jock said. “I’ll see what I can do.”
He approached the man in white and, moments later, vanished into the compound.
--- --- --- ---
The luminescent glow of computer equipment draped across the light blue uniform of Tracer Tong. He had his back turned to Jock, and leaned stiffly with both hands pressed against the control panel before him. Through the large glass window he viewed the operation room a few floors down. The gargantuan machine within looked like something out of an old science fiction movie. It was unattended. The speech of the surrounding lab equipment was all that could be heard.
Tong raised one hand to his forehead and brushed his hair back, following through with a loud cracking of the neck. He was largely uncomfortable. “I don’t like it, Jock,” he said. “I don’t like it.”
Jock sighed. “I know. I don’t either. It’s complicated. And barely believable.” He thought for a moment. “The man out there… Dominic… Yes. He’s unstable. Yes. He’s violent. But, damnit…” Jock shook his head. “I don’t know what to tell you. I watched him put a gun… my gun… to his own head and pull the trigger. Jesus, he fell at least five stories and didn’t have a scratch on him.” Jock stepped closer. “I know everything’s been shit lately, Tong, everything’s just been really screwed up. But there is definitely something weird about this guy, and it’s huge. It’s very important, and I think it’s bigger than anything else we’ve seen so far. I don’t…” he suddenly realized he had been speaking very rapidly and took a deep breath. “I don’t think he means any harm to anyone. I don’t think he even knows what’s going on. Hell, he was part of the NSF. At least he was fighting for the right cause. But now he’s just broken, Tong. He’s just battered and confused. He didn’t even know about MJ12.”
Tong turned around. His aging face was very grim.
“What else have we got to work with, Tong? We’ve lost Paul and JC. We’re in pretty bad shape right now.”
Neither of them spoke. Tong seemed to be turning everything around in his head. Things had just gotten much more complicated. But Jock was right. They didn’t have anything else to work with.
“We'll let them in,” he said.
--- --- --- ---
The woman behind the news counter was screaming in panic. The man in red was screaming in anger. People were staring. The man in red reached into his clothing, probably to access a weapon and make use of it on the woman. The little boy watched from the shadows.
“Dominic!” Jess shouted. “Dom! Leave it alone!” Dom ignored her. He kept walking towards the disturbance. She swore under her breath.
Bishop grabbed the man’s shoulder. An elbow hit him in the face. Blackness swelled around his vision, but then he was still standing. Blood ran down his face.
The man in red realized that he had just stricken a complete stranger. He looked around, as guilty persons do when feeling the pressure of imminent authority.
Unfortunately he made no use of judgment. When he saw no officer or official in the general vicinity, he turned and hit the woman in the face. She fell.
Dominic was upon him. He knocked the man to the ground, and punched him heavily with one fist. Speckles of saliva flew. Dominic struck again. Blood trickled on the cement. A crowd started to gather.
Suddenly Bishop was pulled back. Jess restrained him with both arms. “That’s enough, Dom,” she whispered firmly. “Let’s go.”
Dominic shook himself from Jess’s grasp and looked down at the man in red, whose nose was broken. A hush had fallen upon the assembly. People stared.
Bishop disregarded them and approached the woman. She looked at him frightfully and raised her arms to protect herself from further blows.
“No, no,” Dominic said. “Here.” He lifted her to her feet. “Are you alright?”
There was blood on her shirt. “No,” she said quietly. “Never.”
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