Arc II, Chapter 71: Them

This wasn’t a heist movie. There would be no rappelling down from the ceiling to get past a laser beam security system. We weren’t going to grift our way past the five or so police officers in the building. We wouldn’t replace Isaac with a holographic replica.

But we weren’t without options. The jail was small. There was an office of sorts with a uniformed officer at reception. There were desks for the officers, an interrogation room, and an entire room devoted to phone banks and vending machines. Downstairs, the cells were lined up one by one, with each of them getting their little window. Isaac said there were a lot of cells and some of them were behind a large steel door that no one walked through.

Everything in the place had a fresh coat of white, rubbery-looking paint. Without that, the place looked old both inside and out, and it smelled old. If I had seen this place back in the real world, I would have thought it was in some sparsely populated panhandle town.

That’s just what we could see through the windows. Knowing how Carousel worked, this place had probably come from the historic downtown of some sinister little haunted world. It fit in the patchwork of the Carousel downtown well enough from the outside.

We had to get through a door with an electric lock that the receptionist would buzz you through, find the keys to Isaac’s cell, and get him up the stairs and out.

And that was just the first set of problems. This wasn’t a heist movie or a crime thriller. It was a horror movie, and as we took our last few moments to prepare, the horror showed up.

It started with a man screaming.

The Die Cast must have gotten powerful enough that it was targeting anyone and everyone.

The barista from across the street who had just recently closed the shop down, came out of his shop followed by a waft of steam. His face was boiled red. He clutched at it as he screamed. It looked like there had been a terrible accident.

“It’s almost here,” I said. “We have to move.”

And that was about as far as we got.

Whoever said failure wasn’t an option had never been to Carousel.

We had a plan. It never even got off the ground.

Carousel had a plan too. I had to admit, it wasn’t bad. It used us. I couldn’t even say whether things would have happened this way had we not tried to break Isaac out.

The first thing I did was go to the station’s entrance. The others stayed back. We didn’t need lots of people. I had good Hustle and Moxie, and that was what was needed to make this work.

I noticed that Moonlight Morrow was standing in the waiting room, giving a rousing speech to the officers. There wasn’t much room, so they propped open the electric locked door, and a couple of officers were standing behind it, hanging on Moonlight’s words. They really did seem to like him. His tropes and high Moxie probably had something to do with it, but more than that, Moonlight had a captivating way of speaking.

It was so captivating that when the alarm started going off on the electric door because they had held it open too long, one of the officers on the other side of it reached up and unplugged a small wire at the top of the door.

That was where the problems started.

Moonlight ended his speech with a wave and told them to keep doing their jobs to keep Carousel safe. Even in character, he knew how much irony was in that statement. Carousel was never safe.

The officers waved him goodbye, and he left.

He moved Off-Screen as he walked out the door. He reached out and grabbed my shoulder. Before I could question why he didn’t make the distraction we were expecting him to, he said, “It just isn’t in the cards today, my friend. They wouldn’t even let me in the room. Carousel is putting its foot down and we best not be under it.”

“Isaac’s still in there,” I said. “His death should not be guaranteed. This isn’t Second Blood yet.”

“Come on now, you’re lying to yourself,” Moonlight said. “Nothing guaranteed about it. Young Mr. Hughes sealed his own fate already. He had every choice, and there ain’t nothing you can do about that.”

In the back of my mind, I heard the barista still crying. A car crash had happened in the distance, but all I could focus on was my own heartbeat.

I felt the dark aura of the Die Cast. I didn’t care. I should have prepared Isaac better. He punched a guy On-Screen? He had to have known there would be consequences even if the guy he punched was a debt collector. Spoiled rich heirs like his character were on a tight leash in a story like this. They were below debt collectors in the pecking order. I was enraged. How was he supposed to recover from that on top of all the other marks against his character? The audience was going to enjoy watching Isaac get his comeuppance. I was an idiot to think I could prevent it.

Maybe if we had hidden him away instead of serving him up to the police to try to take the initiative from Carousel… I couldn’t think about it. If we weren’t going to save Isaac, there was still something else we could do.

“You said the battle continues after death?” I asked.

“I did,” Moonlight said. “I’ll be there late. You think Mr. Hughes is ready to see the other side and help win the day?”

I didn’t.

“I will see you in the finale one way or the other, my friend,” Moonlight said. He started to walk away, but then he turned around and said, “Remember, dying ain’t the worst part, Mr. Lawrence. It’s the waiting around that really kills you.”

He gave a wink and walked off into the descending night.

As he did, I heard banging coming from inside the building.

I looked in through the glass door and saw what Carousel was up to. The plug that the police officer had unhooked had gotten caught in the door when it closed and was hanging out the other side. The officer in the reception area was desperately smashing the unlock button, but, of course, it couldn’t work because someone on the inside had unplugged it.

The officers rammed the electric door, but it held firm.

Somewhere inside, I heard sloshing. I heard water coming down the stairs.

I ran around to the side of the building where Isaac’s cell window was.

“What the fuck is going on!” he screamed. He was spooked. “The idiot cop handcuffed a guy to the water pipe for some reason, and he broke the damn thing. It’s flooding in here!”

“I can’t get inside,” I said. “The door is jammed shut. The officers can’t bust it down.”

“What do we do?” Isaac asked desperately.

I looked around. I needed a plan. What was all of this Savvy for if I couldn’t come up with a plan to use it on?

Past Isaac, the water rose faster than it could in real life. That was movie magic.

“Keep your head out and keep breathing,” I said. As long as he had the window, he couldn’t drown unless he exhausted himself. “I’ll be right back.”

Maybe if I got a large pipe, I could pry the bars apart. No. That wasn’t a real “plan” in the sense that Savvy would help it work. That was something you needed Mettle for. Heck, that was something you needed a Bruiser for. Maybe two of them.

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I ran around the building as fast as I could. I kept my inner eye firmly planted on the POV of the Die Cast to make sure I wasn’t running into it. I had a pretty good idea of where it was. It wasn’t moving. My worry was that it could come up to Isaac and kill him if he was sticking his head out for breath, but the Die Cast was standing still, its view steady on the police station.

If it wasn’t going to kill him physically, then what was the plan?

I didn’t see anything that could help. I thought I might try to steal a police car and ram the building, but the cars were gone. They had been parked there previously on the side of the building opposite Isaac’s window, but they were gone now. Carousel really saw me coming.

I spotted the brown car with Antoine, Kimberly, and Cassie in the distance. Antoine flashed the lights at me.

I ran over to them. Since I was Off-Screen, I didn’t need to look cool or calm, and I certainly wasn’t going to look collected.

When I got to them, Cassie was already out of the car and looking at me. “Where’s Isaac?”

“Cassie,” I said. I couldn’t think of the right way to let her down easy.

“No!” she said. “Why didn’t you get him?”

“It’s not happening,” I said. “The door is locked down. Not even the cops could get out.”

There was no back door because, of course, there wasn’t.

“The Die Cast isn’t moving,” she said. “Does that mean there is something you are supposed to be doing?”

“The basement is flooding,” I said.

Her eyes widened. “I can breathe for him,” she said. She wanted to use her Anguish trope to share his injuries. That would work for a time, but only a time.

“No!” I said. Cassie, all you will do is kill yourself, too. This is bad luck. We have to get to the end of the story to help him.”

“We can’t just give up,” she said, crying.

“I’m not giving up,” I said. “You guys have to go. I’ll take things from here.”

Antoine and Kimberly had gotten out of the car and were trying to help Cassie.

I looked at them. I knew what I needed to do.

“Listen to everything I am about to say,” I said. “It’s not going to make much sense, just listen.”

They waited for me.

“You had better run. Hide now. Follow my voice. It’s time to fight. I’m here with you. Don’t be afraid. It’s coming,” I said. Each phrase, I said slowly and deliberately with pauses in between. They didn’t make sense all spoken together, but I needed to have said them for later.

I had been thinking about this for some time.

“What are you talking about?” Cassie asked.

I took a deep breath and looked back at Kimberly and Antoine. They understood what I was doing. “It’s all up to you now,” I said.

Then I ran back to Isaac. It wasn’t too late, but the water was already pouring out of the window. He was floundering in some impossible turbulence in the water.

“Did you get something?” he asked.