Chapter 3
“In other news, there may be a new lead on the disappearance of Maria Lake. While Ms. Lake was known to lack a permanent residence, traffic cameras have recorded images of a woman matching her description frequenting the Life Foundation headquarters. While CEO Carlton Drake has denied any interaction between his company and the missing woman, some have speculated that Ms. Lake may have signed on to participate in one of the Life Foundation’s alleged extralegal experiments.”
Dan frowned a little at the picture they showed onscreen as the news anchor droned on. The photo showed the back of a woman’s head, hair that was visibly disheveled even with the poor quality of the picture, and a ragged shawl draped over shoulders that looked far too fragile to support even the slight weight of the cloth over them.
His attention was arrested by a loud meow from a familiar gray lump of striped fur that had decided to plant itself on his foot. He smiled and leaned down to give it a scritch behind the ears. “Hey, Mr. Belvedere. Didn’t Anne already feed you today?”
“I did. Don’t let him deceive you,” Anne’s voice warned him from the kitchen.
Dan scooped the cat up in his arms, whereupon the feline purred and settled around his shoulders. Anne walked into the room and laughed.
“Honestly, you’re more of a cat person than me and Edie combined.”
“Edie never really struck me as a cat person,” Dan commented, still rubbing the fur on the cat’s neck.
“Oh, she loves cats- it’s just that Mr. Belvedere has been waging a passive-aggressive war on her ever since they first met. Lately Edie’s been staying out of his line of sight if possible or just giving him a very wide berth if not. He isn’t quite as focused on hating her when you’re around to love him up, though,” Anne explained.
“Is that why she flinched that time you asked her cat-sit?”
“I think she’s still hiding some scratches on her legs. To be fair, I wouldn’t have inflicted that on her if I’d thought she couldn’t handle it, but I’m starting to wonder if maybe that weekend vacation we went on was a couple days too long for her to be alone with Mr. Belvedere.”
Dan glanced disbelievingly at the content pile of fluff looped around his shoulders. “Huh. Here I was thinking he was remarkably good-tempered for a cat.”
Anne tapped her temple. “He hides many secrets. Don’t let your guard down.”
Dan’s smile faded as he looked back at the TV screen, where the photo was still being displayed. “Is it true there’s another lead on the Lake case?”
Anne sighed. “Technically. I can’t really tell you anything more than what the news is showing, though- those pictures are pretty much all we’ve got.”
Her fiancé crossed his arms. “Also, ‘extralegal experiments?’ I’m pretty sure the more appropriate word would be ‘illegal,’ plain and simple. The Life Foundation isn’t above the law.”
“Well, if you want to keep your job, you don’t accuse the Life Foundation of straight-up breaking the law, even indirectly. Drake’s got an army of lawyers that could probably take the President to court,” she pointed out.
“If you were a lawyer, I bet you could’ve taken them on yourself.”
“Heh, yeah. As it is, just looking for evidence of ‘extralegal experiments’ within a mile of Drake would get me demoted to meter maid in the time it would take to ride the elevator to the top of the Life Foundation building. But there’s still a chance to link them to Maria’s disappearance.”
Dan blinked, suddenly apprehensive. “Wait…Carlton Drake. He’s not the one Edie’s interviewing today for the Brock Report, is he?”
Anne straightened, eyes wild. “Edie’s WHAT?”
“I mean…yesterday she sent me a text about some interview she had this afternoon, but I don’t remember if it’s Drake for sure. And even if it is him, she wouldn’t necessarily bring up the accusations during a live interview with him on TV…” he trailed off, considering his words.
The blonde ran her fingers through her long hair, massaging her temples as she paced back and forth. “What time did she say the interview was?”
Dan checked his phone, scrolling through the conversation as he hunted for that specific piece of information.
ED: Yo Dan my man, how’s life?
Dan: I’m managing. Some guy in pediatrics told me about this kid who shoved a lip gloss tube in her ear.
ED: How the heck does that happen?
Dan: Not sure. I’ll ask him later. How are you?
ED: I’m pretending to be a functional adult. Hoping to fake it til I make it.
Dan: Aren’t we all?
ED: Yeah, but you’ve actually made it. You’ve got a steady job, a nice apartment, a smokin hot fiancé, the works!
ED: Not that I’m jealous
ED: (I kind of am)
Dan: You’re not doing too badly yourself. Aren’t you gonna be in some exclusive TV special?
ED: My boss is throwing me into some interview with this Life Foundation prick
ED: His name’s Carlton Drake
ED: But I know him as ‘rich CEO guy with no morals #568732
Dan: When’s the interview?
ED: Tomorrow, actually
Dan: Do you need Anne to call you early to make sure you’re up in time?
ED: Nah, it’s at like 3 in the afternoon. Thanks for checking tho
Dan: Are you going to stay out of trouble this time?
ED: I’m going to do my job
Dan: While staying out of trouble?
ED: Maaaaaybe
Dan: Seriously though, behave
Dan: Anne talks about this guy sometimes
Dan: He is NOT someone you mess with
Dan: He has a whole corporation backing him
ED: I have you and Anne. Dude doesn’t stand a chance
Dan: Edie, please
ED: I’m pretending to be a functional adult here. I can make my own choices
Dan: Do not make this guy mad, Edie
Dan: Please, I don’t want you to do anything you’ll regret.
ED: There are a lot of things I’ve done that I regret
ED: But pissing off some millionaire with no regard for human life will not be one of them
Dan’s phone chimed, alerting him to a new message. “Hold on, she just sent me something.”
Anne groaned, reading her watch. “Please tell me it’s a text saying the interview’s been canceled or delayed or something.”
He bit his lip, holding up the message so Anne could read it. “Not exactly…”
ED: Danny boy, just wanted to let you know if Drake assassinates me after this interview or something, it’s been an honor
ED: Tell Anne she’s lucky to have you
ED: Also, you’re lucky to have Anne
ED: You’re gonna be awesome together
ED: And even if I can’t be maid of honor my ghost will still come to your wedding
ED: And possess your maid of honor
ED: I already have a speech planned out and everything, not about to let it go to waste
ED: Anyway
ED: Thanks for putting up with me
ED: And my crappy sense of self-preservation
ED: I should’ve probably texted Anne too, huh
ED: Well, whatever, gtg
Anne sighed again. “Guess talking her out of it’s not an option now.”
“Probably. Do you want to watch the interview?” Dan offered.
She gave him a half-smile. “Yes, but I’m afraid of straining my eyes from rolling them too hard. Tell me how it goes, okay?”
He sneaked a peck on her cheek. “Hey, it might not be that bad. You know Edie can be dramatic.”
Anne stole Mr. Belvedere from around her fiancé’s shoulders, rubbing the cat’s head as he purred contentedly. “Yeah, but just because she’s dramatic doesn’t mean she isn’t serious.”
*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
Edie wasn’t stupid.
She was well aware that the smart thing to do during the interview would be to ask a few science-y questions, discuss the projects that the Foundation wanted to draw attention to, and steer clear of any subject that might draw Drake’s ire.
However, whether she was going to actually do the smart thing was still a bit up in the air. So even if she wasn’t stupid, that didn’t necessarily make her smart.
She’d seen Carlton Drake before. His picture had been gracing pretty much every scientific magazine in existence lately, plus a couple newspapers, so it’d be difficult for anyone working with the media to not know what the man looked like. Still, seeing him in person was kind of surprising.
For one thing, he looked…tired. People like Drake didn’t look tired, not during an interview. They would present themselves as enthusiastic, friendly, engaging, sympathetic, empathetic, victimized, but never tired. Tired was not on the list of acceptable personas to adopt when you were an evil CEO trying to appear as a benevolent god in the public eye.
Next, he seemed disinterested. Showing disinterest was another definite no-no for people like him- rule #2 of being a psychopathic money-grubber thriving off the suffering of others was ‘always pretend you care.’ (Rule #1, of course, was ‘always make a profit, even if you ruin everyone else’s lives in the process.’)
Finally, although he was wearing the traditional ‘I’m just a nice guy who happens to be rich’ smile typical of company millionaires who tried to make themselves relatable to cover up the fact that they were actually mean guys who happened to be rich, his mask slipped briefly when he saw Edie. For a moment, Edie could read his expression loud and clear.
He was confused.
“…Eddie Brock?” he asked hesitantly.
Suddenly his confusion made sense. Edie tried not to smirk as she explained.
“It’s actually Edie Brock, Mr. Drake. Short for Edith.”
He nodded, all traces that showed he was capable of being caught off-guard vanishing immediately. “Ah, I apologize. I wasn’t expecting my three o’ clock to be so…”
“Feminine?”
Drake smiled accommodatingly. “If I’m completely honest, I was rather expecting a bodybuilder with a microphone to show up and start beating answers out of me. I’m not a regular reader of the Brock Report, but from what I’ve seen, your style of writing is very…forceful. Direct and to the point.”
“Huh. So getting straight to the interview would be something you’d expect from me, right?”
His smile was genuine this time, amusement tugging at the corners of his mouth. “Let’s begin, then.”
*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
It’s so cold. I’m scared. Please, someone-
Is anyone there? Is anyone coming?
I’m going to die here. I’m going to die here and no one will know.
No, no, no, I can’t die here. I can’t die yet. It’s not my time, it’s not enough time, it isn’t fair!
I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.
Please, please, let someone come. I don’t want to die here.
Let me die already. Just let me die.
They woke.
The voices never quite went away, but it was harder to hear the constant whispering when they were awake. Differentiating the voices from white noise required a lot of concentration when they were conscious. Picking out an individual voice called for nothing less than their undivided attention.
It wasn’t as if there was much to divide their attention anyway.
In their dreams, the people were louder, more coherent, more present. Echoes of last thoughts would stretch themselves into an entire history: a childhood, a career, a life, which would finally condense to a single identity.
Another ghost to haunt their mind.
In their dreams, it was crowded. Person after person after person, always talking, frantically clinging to existence before they faded into a mindless voice again. Impressions and feelings coming into sharp focus as they fought to keep themselves from being overwhelmed. The press of dozens of minds, fighting to stay aware, straining to remember everything lost, struggling not to fade, to disappear forever.
They hated waking up.
It was always too quiet when they woke up. No one was there, nothing was there. The faint voices poking around the back of their mind barely broke the silence in comparison to the cacophony during their slumber.
They didn’t particularly like all the noise when they were trying to sleep. Sleep didn’t come naturally to them, after all- it was a resting state they’d learned to imitate from hosts. It conserved energy, but staying asleep was difficult. They weren’t meant to rest, and the noise just made it more difficult to. It was too much activity taking up their brain, too many thoughts and fears and hopes and worries occupying the space in their mind.
But without the noise, they were alone.
Sometimes they wondered what would happen when the noise went away.
Because it was going away, bit by bit. The ghosts would grip life with everything that was left of them, but that wasn’t much. The imprints made by past lives would erode with time, and dissolve, and vanish. They themselves might remember the person, but the person’s memories, emotions, everything that made up that particular identity would finally go the way of the flesh and die.
One advantage of this was that all the new voices, crying out and fading and dying over and over, blocked out Him. They’d chosen to count this as an advantage, even if they weren’t sure if they missed Him or hated Him. It was getting harder to tell: their own memories took too much effort to bother summoning.
The flip side to this was that since He had been well and truly buried, washed away by the flood of fresh hosts and memories and feelings, even He wouldn’t be there when the voices were gone. The ghosts were leaving, and He was one of them now.
Good, they told themselves. Good. I don’t want Him.
They told themselves anything would be better than going back to Him, including dying alone and unwanted in this vault with not even the imprints of failed hosts for company. They told themselves that and tried to believe it, because if going back to Him was truly the better option, then was it really worth living?
No. It had to be worth living. It had to be worth it. All those people couldn’t have died in vain. They fed on the dead for a reason. They had a purpose. It wasn’t pointless to keep fighting. It couldn’t be.
It was getting much quieter in their dreams. Less noise. It was easier to sleep now.
They hated it.
*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
The interview had gone well so far. Edie could’ve probably wrapped it up there. She could’ve shaken Drake’s hand, gone home, and called Nkemdilim to see when Edie could visit her and her dogs.
I can still go home and call Kim after this, and I didn’t really want to shake his hand that much, she decided as the question flew out of her mouth.
“What do you have to say about the disappearance of Maria Lake?”
Drake paused, but she got the impression it wasn’t because the question had taken him aback. His eyes narrowed, and she could almost see the gears turning in his head as he reassessed the bold little reporter smiling up at him.
“I hope that whatever has happened to Ms. Lake will be cleared up soon, but I’m not entirely sure how my opinion on this matter relates to the interview.”
Edie flipped through her notes, selecting a bookmarked page. “Recently it’s come forward that Maria was seen visiting the Life Foundation prior to her disappearance.”
“Well, correlation is hardly causation, Ms. Brock-” Drake began.
“So you admit that Maria Lake was, in fact, visiting the Life Foundation?”
Edie could tell he was suppressing his irritation, though it was anybody's guess whether his anger was directed at himself, for his slip of the tongue, or at her, for obvious reasons.
“I was simply stating that even if Ms. Lake had been visiting our building, which is not the case, it would not necessarily mean that the Life Foundation would have been related to her disappearance.”
“Hm.” Edie flipped to the other side of the page she’d bookmarked. “What I find interesting, personally, is that the images of Maria found by the police were from the traffic cameras. Only the traffic cameras. Now, Mr. Drake, you remember we discussed your top-notch security system earlier? The one with state-of-the-art cameras?”
Judging from the expression on his face, he did remember, and probably regretted discussing it.
“Now, I understand that the footage on those cameras is the property of your company. However, if the footage on those cameras is involved in a police investigation, aren’t you legally obligated to turn that footage over to the authorities?”
“There is no proof that the Life Foundation is connected to Ms. Lake. The traffic camera photos you speak of may not actually show Ms. Lake at all. There is no confirmation for any of your accusations,” Drake snapped.
“Accusations? What accusations? I was simply saying that since your company has the footage of the woman who may-or-may-not-be Maria Lake, and you were questioned on the point of her location before her disappearance, it would clear up a lot if you simply turned that footage over to the police,” she suggested innocently.
Drake smiled. It was almost unnerving how quickly his face went from ‘I’m going to kill this woman’ to ‘I’m going to hire an assassin to kill this woman, but right now I need to be polite and friendly and not look like I’m about to hire an assassin.’
“I’m sorry, but it looks like your allotted time is up. I’m sure my legal team can answer any further questions you may have on this subject,” he stated flatly, making a gesture to indicate that they should stop recording. The camera guy took the hint and backed off. Edie didn’t.
“I don’t have any further questions, Mr. Drake. I’m telling you that I know why Maria Lake disappeared, and you know too.”
With the camera off, Drake didn’t bother trying to mask his irritation. “You’re done, Brock. You’re trying to bluff your way to answers you can’t get. You can’t prove anything.”
Edie felt bad for the camera guy. The poor dude was standing in the elevator, holding the doors for her as he watched her trade barbs with the extremely powerful CEO standing less than ten feet away. Deciding to put Camera Guy out of his misery, she ducked into the elevator, letting him release the doors. Before they closed, she managed to shoot off one last smart remark.
“What makes you so sure I don’t have proof?”
*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
Carlton Drake wasn’t the type to fall for the taunts of some muckraker trying to get a rise out of him. At least that’s what he’d have liked to think.
He blamed it on overwork. Too much happening, all at once. Lack of sleep and excess of activity was making him sloppy. He needed a nap.
“Sir?” came a voice from behind him.
He stifled a sigh. Had to keep up appearances, especially after losing his temper in front of that reporter. “Yes?”
“Variables 6, 10 and 12 are no longer viable.”
“Well, take their remains to our other lab- figure out where we went wrong.”
“Sir, there are no remains.”
He turned around, facing the subordinate who had been saddled with the job of reporting to him. “What do you mean, there are no remains? Did their corpses magically vanish?”
“We believe that the subjects absorbed them completely.”
Carlton remembered an anger management technique they had taught in elementary school. Take a deep breath, then count to ten. If you were still angry by the time you reached ten, keep counting.
1, 2, 3, 4…
“Have we gleaned any further data from the subjects?”
“They appear to be able to consume every element of a substance given and convert it to energy without leaving waste,” the subordinate offered.
“In other words, we can’t study what they leave behind, because they literally don’t give a crap,” Drake muttered. Aloud, he added, “Is there anything else?”
“Mr. Pullman has declined your latest offer. He says that you’re welcome to continue attending the ceremonies, but ‘to pursue monetary gain out of this venture would be folly, and a grave sacrilege.’ His words, sir.”
35, 36, 37, 38…
Carlton turned around, facing the clear glass wall of his office that gave him a clear view of the city. The view was pleasant enough, but it also offered perspective, something that Mr. Pullman evidently lacked. Still, helpful obliviousness was preferable to damaging intelligence any day in his eyes. And while on the subject of damaging intelligence…
“Tell him I have another sacrifice in mind.”
The subordinate shifted uncomfortably. “Mr. Pullman said to tell you that ‘flesh tainted by the poisons of your procedures’ is not considered an acceptable sacrifice. Again, his words, sir.”
Drake snorted. “Tell Mr. Pullman that we would hardly offer up valuable test subjects as mere meat for his ‘god.’”
“Who did you have in mind, sir?”
Carlton looked down on the city. It was funny, seeing people scurry about the streets as if they had something actually important to do. They didn’t matter in the big picture, yet they were more than capable of getting in the way.
He was above falling for the empty threats of petty little reporters. But there certainly wasn’t any harm in ensuring that those threats really were empty.
“Edie Brock.”