Thereafter Chapter 25: Separate Ways
Michael takes a nighttime stroll, communicates poorly, and make a gamble for the future of Thereafter.
The Castle was quiet and dark in the night as Michael made his egress. His plan was simple and elegant, although he hated the mere thought of bragging. Staying awake until he could be sure everyone else was asleep was challenging, and in a world where his phone wasn’t long dead he’d just set a silent alarm for the witching hour. Such a world, however, probably wouldn’t allow the dodge he was about to do, so it was, perhaps, for the best that he had to wait it out.
Once his tremorsense had detected the remainder of his friends going to bed, and no further movement, he waited. They’d fall asleep with relative ease given how tired and demotivated everyone was being, but it was still worth it to wait for heavy sleep to overtake them.
The wait was challenging for more reasons than one. Michael was tired, and the part of him that he had usually identified as the sensible one, kept ruminating on the idea that he should fall asleep. That couldn’t be helped, though. He had to do this.
Once he was reasonably certain his friends were asleep, Michael got to work. The letter he had written wasn’t his best work, but it’d do. He left that on a table in the Exalted Room. They’d see that no doubt. Not first thing, but at some point in the morning for sure. The long hallway stretching from the Exalted Room felt especially perilous to navigate, even though it was quite deserted.
Michael had just about navigated to the spiral staircase on the way down when he became aware he wasn’t alone. It was not an all at once type thing, more like a steady drip of context clues. When he rounded the corner, he was faced with evidence.
“So, here you are Saint. Sneaking around in the dead of night.” Felipe didn’t sound like he was joking or implying something indecent for once. It was a strange hollowness to his voice that Michael wished dearly he did not understand so intimately. Felipe was leaning on a wall in a pose that Michael assumed was chosen to portray a mix of annoyance and relaxed impartiality.
“I can explain,”
“I damn well hope so, dude, you’ve been plotting this… whatever it is, for days now.”
Michael found his eyebrows raising. Sudden surprise, leading into comprehension. “Oh,” he said. “Was it that obvious?”
“Oh no, not at all, but you’re not as closed off to the world as you think.”
Felipe laughed, it was a brief but genuine little thing. “I didn’t tell anyone though. Mama didn’t raise a snitch you know? Besides I’ve decided to come with you.”
“Come with me?”
“Yeah, because whatever you’re going out there to do all by your lonesome it’s probably dangerous and sexy… and I’m not overly enamored by Eltern and his gang right now either.”
“It’s… this is not about Eltern. That might be hard to believe,”
“Because it is”
“This is about Nih-Ka,” Michael continued, ignoring Felipe’s jab. “The system he build up, the crime syndicate, if that’s even the right word here. It’s still out there, and right now it’s quiet, everyone’s scrambling to figure out what happened and what to do about it. Once that becomes clear there will be a power struggle, may even escalate into violence. It’s something this place doesn’t need right now.”
“And so what are you going to do about it?”
“That should be obvious shouldn’t it?”
“Let’s just pretend I’m not as familiar with gang culture as you are here…”
“I killed Nih-Ka,” Michael said. “While that gives me no extra claim to his position, it certainly doesn’t disqualify me. If I move quickly, and secure some key allies I can…”
“What, change the mafia from the inside? Are you even listening to yourself?” Felipe’s voice grew snappy, impatient, maybe even angry.
“I can seize control,” Michael said, his voice was calm by comparison. It was hardly a impressive trick, as any strong emotion seemed to escape him these last couple of days. “I can minimize the bloodshed, and if I’m lucky I can bend the whole enterprise towards something a bit more helpful to Thereafter.”
“Mhm you and Al Capone… listen,” Felipe rubbed his forehead with the heel of his hand, gently ruffling his hair in the process. “Maybe this plan will work. Maybe it’s another of these well-intentioned ideas that’ll lead to more problems. Maybe you’re lying to me and have been scheming to set yourself up here from day one. I don’t know, well, I don’t think it’s that last one.”
“Says you, I could be incredibly sneaky,”
“Yeah no, Saint, that’s not you. You’re a good guy. Some times compulsively so.”
“It is how I’ve chosen to meet the slings and arrows of life,” Michael found himself shrugging. “It’s my To Be.”
“Or maybe it’s why you’re miserable all the time, but let’s not get into that right now.” Felipe said, and Michael could almost see the fun banter drain out of him. “So, if this isn’t some kind of bullheaded self-punishment shit, why can’t I come with you?”
Michael rubbed the bridge of his nose. He felt like he knew the answers to Felipe’s question, but it was one of those things that was easier to think than it was to say. “I don’t think this is some “self-punishment shit” as you put it, but that doesn’t have anything to do with you not coming along. See, it was shit like this that’s the reason I chose to sneak out.”
“Mhm, so what is it?”
Michael steeled himself for a second before he answered. “Eltern is an asshole, I’m glad we agree, but what he’s trying to build here is important, and he’s going to need help to make it happen.”
“I suppose that is true. Wouldn’t do anyone any good if the council collapses over this mess, right?”
“Exactly. Also, I trust you three to keep him from pulling any more shit.”
The mood in the hallway shifted, although Michael couldn’t quite put into words what it had shifted from, or to. There was a certain sourness, he figured, that was only perceptible in its absence.
“That’s not the stupidest idea I’ve ever heard, but it still feels like a justification,” Felipe said.
“It probably is.”
“You should’ve told us, Saint. I still don’t agree you should do this alone, but if I can get it I’m pretty sure Lex and Alica would understand as well.”
“I’m not doing this alone,” Michael insisted. “I will reach out if I need help,”
“When you need help”
“Yeah sure. Same goes for you three by the way. We probably shouldn’t be seen together too much, but ask for me in Worship if you need me or just want to talk.”
“Your mind is really made up about this whole thing, huh?”
“It is. Please Felipe, I’ve thought this through.”
The implied “please don’t raise an alarm” hung heavily in the air for a few seconds before Felipe spoke up.
“Very well. I suppose it’s only fair that I tell you about the whole Saint thing.”
“Oh yes. That puzzled me for a while,” Michael said, try as he might there was a wry grin on his face. “You never struck me as a fan of the Technicians"1
If Michael could bottle the expression on Felipe’s face for a rainy day, he would. There was such a complete bafflement on the athlete’s face, a cresting wave of both confusion and elation in equal measure. Michael did feel a little bad for sitting on the key to the little mystery on the “Saint” nickname for so long, but there was no denying that the payoff was considerable.
“I didn’t know you were into free fighting”2 Felipe managed to say once the shock had passed enough for him to speak.
“Oh, I was more of an US Wrestling fan myself,” Michael said. “But you gotta recognize the greats, right?”
Felipe laughed. “Michael, you really are something else.”
They kissed, then. Michael wasn’t really planning to do so, and judging by the split second of stiff response from Felipe, he hadn’t either. How, then, it had happened, Michael was sure he couldn’t say. It was Michael who ended the kiss. Parts of him screamed to not walk out on this strange, frustrating, wonderful man, screamed the same about Lex and Alicia if he was honest, but it didn’t scream loud enough. Felipe closed his eyes to gather his wits about him, and when he opened them again, Michael was gone.
After leaving Felipe behind, Michael found no trouble escaping The Castle with nary a soul the wiser. He had spent some time convincing Felipe, and by extension himself, that this wasn’t going to be such a huge deal or big change. It was, however, quite transparently, a lie. Everything would change. It always did. The only thing was new was that things would change based on this new situation. Michael knew how he wanted them to change, and what he wanted to preserve through it all, but he also recognized that it wasn’t up to him alone. Ultimately, how much of his future was amenable to him depended on if he had read the situation in Thereafter correctly, and to which degree he had burned bridges to the other Exalted Heroes.
Through the mostly dark streets of Thereafter, Michael moved like yet another shadow. He needn’t, he realized once he was about halfway to his goal, have bothered. The streets of Thereafter were quiet and empty of its many inhabitants. Whether this was random luck, or a portent of things to come, Michael didn’t know, but either way he did not feel comfortable stepping out of the hiding dark before he approached the Pyramid/Temple combination that was Worship. The building was, for no readily apparent reason, lit with a strange neon-like light in a color that Michael’s brain alternated between understanding as purple and not understanding at all.
Cane in hand, Michael approached Worship. There was a line to get in, and a burly-looking man working the door. Michael knew how this was supposed to work. He got in line like normal people, the bouncer gave him shit but let him in, eventually. There was nothing wrong with that approach, but Michael was well aware that this was about much more than entry into Worship. And so, he approached the bouncer, passing the line with the only slightly uneven gait he had managed to employ now that he was good and used to his cane. He locked eyes with the bouncer. There was no challenge in it from Michael’s side. “Step aside” he’d say, “I’m coming in.” The bouncer’s red eyes were domineering, exuding not so much authority as a promise of sudden aggression in face of any and all protests, which in many cases was just as good. Michael, much to his surprise, did not give an inch. He could feel the hostility from the tall, broad bouncer, but he didn’t much care. If he had to fight this lug, he’d fight the lug.
The bouncer’s gaze intensified. This was not a man who was used to have what he understood to be his authority undermined. Michael would argue he didn’t undermine it as much as refused to acknowledge it, but that was a finer point he wasn’t really in the mood to get into. For now, his stance was “go on, if you’re gonna kill me, kill me.”
Michael wasn’t quite shocked when the huge man stepped aside to let him pass, but there certainly was a part of his brain that noted that the situation was highly unusual, and that the trick, such as it was, probably wouldn’t work a second time.
Inside, Worship was more raucous than Michael expected. The calm, or quiet before the storm as he had come to understand it, was nowhere to be seen. The band played some sort of drum-based music that made Michael think of house music clubs back on earth, and the dance floor was filled with revelers. There was, Michael supposed, a bit of a mania to it, like the collective stresses of Thereafter’s still highly imperiled existence had tipped people over the end. Either that, Michael thought to himself, or there’s some kind of Fantasy Drugs in circulation. He made the mental note to look into that. While he didn’t cherish the thought of Nih-Ka’s organization distributing drugs, the thought of some other scoundrel profiting off it wasn’t good either.
Michael approached the bar. The relative quiet around the watering hole seemed to support the drug theory, as only a scattered few hung around with drinks in their hands or in front of them around the bar counter. Michael motioned for the barkeeper, a bald-headed green-skinned man of some variety or other.
“Can I help you?”
“Beer,” Michael said, holding up one finger. “Also, I have a message for Bartholomew.”
The barkeeper grunted, one of those easily deniable sounds that came as second nature after some time in customer-facing work. “What’s the message?”
Michael took a deep breath, a final postponement of crossing the threshold, of stepping out into the unknown. “Tell him the Dayshadow wants to talk about a change in management.”
Author’s Note: And thus ends book 1 of Thereafter. There is an epilogue coming on the 15th, but after that I will be going on hiatus while I chart out (and find a title for) Book 2. I won’t spoil too much, but Alicia will be our POV character for that one, and we’ll be spending large amounts of time in a location we have not been to yet.
Now, for this chapter, in earlier drafts and pre-drafts, it was the character that eventually turned into Lex who caught Michael sneaking out. Then, for a good long while I was convinced it should be Alicia. Eventually, I realized that it had to be Felipe, if nothing else to end that whole “Santos/Saint nickname” thing in a way I found satisfying. Real talk, though, I have grown more fond of Felipe throughout this book. He’s still a bit of a fuckboy, but I like the dynamic he has with Michael, and he’s fun to have low-impact bad things happen to for yucks.
Happy International Workers Day everybody! Catch you in the epilogue
VSD