The artificial sun was starting to rise for the last time, after this passing day the next sun people would see would be a real star, and everyone couldn’t be happier for it. The West side seemed unusually chipper, even those sick or weary from starvation couldn’t help but bounce as they walked. The centre was somehow happier than usual with balloons and blaring music snaking past every open window, even the easterners couldn’t stop a smile slipping past their cold and unfeeling demeanours. Pillar 7 was alive, now more than ever.
*
“No…” Flick whispered, choking back the sick in his throat. He paced the room in small circles repeating the hushed word aloud. “Not all of it? Please don’t tell me all of it is…”
“I’m sorry Flick, it was our best chance, our only chance to liv-“
“Answer his question…” Scratch said, receding further back onto the table to hide the tremors in his body.
“…Around 70% is human. the rest is sheep, pig, your usual livestock.” The scientist responded.
“Have I…?” Flick spoke as he pointed to himself feebly.
His friend silently nodded.
He tried not to think about his mouth, and about the churning in his stomach. Flick desperately attempted to lead his mind anywhere as long as it wasn’t food based, but feeling his tongue poking around behind his teeth made it impossible not to. It wasn’t long before he ran to the bathroom down the hall, clutching vomit in his hands.
It left Simon and Scratch alone in the room for a while, stirring in their own shared silence. Whilst this something that usually would make the small boy teem with excitement, at all the different ways he could finally hurt the scumbag in front of him, instead Scratch felt scared. He pushed himself further towards the wall the behind him, trying not to think about the implications behind eating human meat, all while staring down Simon.
He thought he was hiding his fear well, but the scientist knew far better. Simon noticed the expression on his face written plain for him to see, it looked indistinguishable from one of anger and disgust but the boys eyes said much more. They screamed at him to get away, far away from Scratch so he couldn’t hurt him, it was the look of fake bravery someone would put on when faced with a monster.
“Fuck you” Scratch finally said,
“That it? After everything ‘fuck you’ is all you can think of?”
The boy felt the urge to say it again, but stopped himself when he realised it would just prove his point.
“Okay...” Scratch finally continued, shuffling of the desk, “You want more? Who’s he?”
Simon scrunched his face, “Who?”
“The guy! The one you said made six disease, the one who made all this shit happen in the first place?”
“Oh, him…”
Flick finally found his way back to the room, still washing the vomit taste from his mouth with old water. He didn’t say anything, but nodded at Simon to keep talking.
“…Isaac Melbourne”
Scratch got up and left the room the moment the words left his lips. It was clear he already had an inkling of an idea of who was behind it, but hearing the name confirmed in front of him pushed his stress beyond a point he could manage. Flick was left to process what he just learned by himself, with only Simon in the room as a companion.
He stood there for a while as if time had left him frozen, not entirely understanding what he heard. It was like the world had greyed out from his perspective; all the colour faded from his vision the moment Isaac’s name was mentioned like a numbing agent flooded his brain. It took Flick a couple second to realise he was still standing, not spinning in place like he thought, and soon after that he realised who him and SMILE were about to pay a visit to.
“Oh…” Flick finally said, barely able to feel the words in his throat.
Simon furrowed his brow, “Huh, I wasn’t expecting the two of you to react this harshly damn…”
“You don’t... we… its…” Flick sputtered, “…We were about to go to his tower after this-“
“WHAT?!”
Before Flick could explain himself another person walked in from behind him, expecting it to be Scratch he pivoted instead being greeted by Pop.
“Yo Flick,” she said, unable to pick up on the atmosphere of the situation, “We’ve got everyone stationed just outside, I was gonna tell Scratch first but he seemed… Occupied.”
He turned his head only slightly and spoke, “Don’t worry about him, I-I’ll tell him in a second you just-“
“Wait outside?” she responded snappily, “Nah i'm good, I think id rather stay.”
Flick gave her a surprised look as she folded her arms and planted herself firmly in the doorway.
“I wanna know what messed with Scratch so bad, go fuck yourself with the ‘waiting’ bullshit” Pop said, glaring at Flick the whole time.
“I’m fine, idiot” Scratch begrudgingly slid back into the room, “Apparently most meat is human, it just took me a bit to process is all,”
“What?!” the girl yelled, just barely keeping her voice from waking the street.
“Yep” Flick chimed in, “And Isaac is the one behind it”
“WHAT?!” Pop screamed, the noise just further dizzying Scratch in the process
“Okay okay you two just step outside for a second,” Flick said as he pushed them out the door, “I’ll explain everything on the way there, I just have to get a little bit more information out of this guy,”
Before the two could protest he leaned in closer so only they could hear what he said next, “I’ve got him on the ropes, just a couple more seconds okay?”
His words seemed to have done enough to convince them to leave. At least for the time being, under the false pretence that Flick was actually getting anything from Simon that wasn’t already being handed to him on a platter. Once the door was closed, leaving just Flick and Simon alone once more, he turned around to see his friend staring at him with more concern than he had ever saw from him before.
“Flick you CAN’T be thinking of storming that place right?! You’ll fucking die!”
Flick parsed his lips to talk but couldn’t find the words, it was only when he turned his eyes away from Simon that he managed to speak, “I have to man, those kids will go regardless of what I say,”
“So?”
“So?!” Flick marched up to Simon, “So I cant let them die-“
Simon raised his voice, “Oh but you dying is okay right? Just drop it Flick there’s no need for you to go!”
“But there is Simon! Isaac can’t do this to people!” Before Simon could chime in to defend the idea Flick cut him off by raising his voice, “EATING PEOPLE IS WRONG! I don’t give a fuck what the ‘right decision’ is I’m gonna stop whatever dystopian psycho shit is going on here and nothing you say will stop me, got that?”
Simon bawled his hand into a fist, he contemplated knocking some sense into Flick with the little physical strength he actually had. But when he saw the terrified look in his friends eyes he couldn’t bring himself to cause him any more harm than he already had. It was clear that Flick didn’t want to go to Isaac’s tower, he was obligated to.
“…”
Flick wanted more than anything for Simon to say something to convince him not to go. just a couple words more, that’s all he needed at this point. Just three, maybe even two words and he’d give up on Scratch and Pop and the kids. It wasn’t hard, all Simon had to do was protest for just a little bit longer.
He slowly turned to his desk, pulling out a slip of paper with segments separated by dotted lines. Simon scribbled in some places around the sheet, mostly at the bottom and top altering between the two erratically. Eventually, he turned back to face Flick.
“Here,” he said, handing him the permission slip with his other hand still firmly bundled by his fist. “This will make it easier to get in at least, if you’re gonna do this you might as well have as much help as you can get right?”
Before Flick could respond he was hurried out of the room along with the door being locked shut behind him, all that was left to accompany him was the darkened hallway and the aged knick-knacks that adorned its walls. He knew enough about the world, with all twenty-two years of experiencing it, to know when he was living in the lull before a big storm.
This quiet, contained within the untouched walls of his childhood, would be the last in a long while, he reckoned.
“Thank you” He spoke, back towards the room he left with Simon inside. His friend said nothing in return.
Flick thought about how to break the news to Pop and Scratch outside. As he crept from the sterile walkway to cracked doors left ajar, he contemplated leaving the two in the dark about who they were about to confront. It was a tempting deal being proposed to himself, to pretend like nothing was happening, but when Flick considered the danger they now faced he felt it was only right for them to know.
They’ll be fine he thought, They’ll all be fine, I’m the one that’s gonna get hurt if anyone.
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They’ll be fine.
“DID HE FUCKING SAY ISAAC DID IT?!” Pop screamed down Scratch’s ear, shaking him by the shoulders as she did so.
“CALM DOWN, WE KNEW THIS COULD HAPPEN,” Scratch replied, just as if not more loud than Pop,
“Whoa Whoa Whoa!” Flick interrupted, waving his hands down in a desperate motion to get the two kids to lower their voices, “Lets calm down, like was Scratch said okay?
Out of the two, he expected Scratch to be the one who’d confront him on such a drastic reveal first, however to his surprise Pop seemed far more bothered than he ever expected her to be. And, once she quickly slapped Flick across the face after being told to ‘calm down’, Pop grabbed him by the fabric of his jacket to drag him down to her level.
“How in the fuck are we supposed to calm down after hearing that?” Her voice faltered by time she finished speaking, having to swallow back the fear. “We have to fight Isaac? That’s cra-“
“We don’t have to fight him!” Flick interrupted, “L-listen okay we don’t have to fight him!”
She hesitated, but eventually let go to let him speak. Brushing his jacket from where she folded the fabric, he continued, “Okay… Okay so… Scratch!”
Flick pointed at scratch, who flinched in response, “The plan was to break into the tower, right? To beat back all the security and impress Isaac enough for him to hear out yeah?”
Scratch nodded and shrugged at the same time, “So?”
“So…” Flick replied, looking off into the distance as he visualised his plan, “What if we just put that idea on its head?”
he continued speaking as though they had no idea what he was talking about, which was almost definitely true based off their dumbfound faces.
“… we break into the tower, push back all the security. Just us, against his whole tower and us winning. A-and then we-“
Scratch seemed to catch on to what Flick was (eventually) leading to because he immediately stepped in to cut him off, “Wait, are you trying to say we fucking intimidate him?!”
“Exactly! If we get through the whole tower and surround him he’ll have no choice but to do what we say right? Just a simple change of plan, from ‘impress’ to ‘intimidate’”
Pop and Scratch looked at each other, then back at Flick.
“Okay I know it’s a bit of a stretch,” Flick continued, “But it could work! It’s a better plan than us trying to beat fucking Sky-saac in a fight!”
Despite how stupid Flick appeared on the surface to Scratch and Pop, the idea wasn’t actually that bad compared to the alternative. It still wasn’t all that good or anything, but at least it acted as a neat ‘best case scenario’ for the time being. Even if the idea wasn’t entirely secure, it was still enough of a plan to put Scratch and Pop at ease for the time being.
Flick sighed, relieved to see Scratch and Pop less anxious. “Alright, so that’s the plan yeah?” he loosened his shoulders and adjusted any parts of his jacket that were still misplaced by Pop’s strangle hold. “So if the kids are outside the tower, we’re ready to go?”
Pop nodded then, turning towards the direction of the tower, got ready to move. Scratch did the same, checking Caliburn and his old engine blade attached to it for any imperfections. Finally, Flick put his hands in his pockets in an attempt to hide his own fear from the kids and began walking towards where Isaac would be.
He knew better than to lie to a child, let alone two of them, but it was the only thing he could think up to put their worries to rest. There was going to be a fight, between an entire army of professional swordsmen guarding one of the most well renowned heroes of their day. By the time the night returns to greet them all, either Isaac or SMILE will be left standing.
Flick desperately hoped Isaac had gotten rusty.
Pop led Scratch and Flick through a series of twists and turns, snaking through pipes and steam dusted brick walls just like when Flick was younger. It was… Pleasant, for a time at least, for him to re-experience the hidden paths of his youth. However, at some point in the journey the young girl turned in a direction that he was sure led to a dead end. After all, there were many in the streets of the pillar and growing up it was necessary to know all of them, unless you were fond of being looked for by your terrified parents.
Flick was though, he loved making Miss Witcherton waste an entire afternoon searching for a single flea of a boy that she would otherwise ignore like the rest of her students. Which meant, more than anything, that Flick knew exactly where every dead end was within the pillar, at least those that existed when he was still dozing off on plastic desks.
Pop kept walking down the increasingly narrow alley until she found a walkway, one some several feet above their heads made of wood, real wood, sandwiched between the backs of a fashion outlet and jewellery store competing in a fierce battle for space.
If the wood wasn’t a sign of where they were, then the strewn bags of glittered jackets and shoes that hung just below it to be collected by the waste generals was. An alleyway in the east pillar.
It was just as Flick remembered from when he was young, out of all of his dead-end hiding spots this one was the arguably more comfortable than his actual home and was one of the only times he ever actually went into the richer side of the pillar. Even as Pop clambered up onto the walkway it was all so familiar to him, there was no way anything but brick lied in front of them and Flick was confident of it.
Sure enough, the trio followed the creaky oak planks only to find the disappointing face of a massive red wall, the unholy marriage of the Jewellery store and fashion outlet’s walls after decades of fighting over who would dominate the alleys between. Or at least this is what Flick pictured ten or so years ago when he first saw this particular dead end.
However just as he was turning around to go back, assuming the pink fleeced girl got lost as many tended to do around here, he saw from the corner of his eye Pop pull at a nearby fitted sheet of tin. Within three hearty heaves, putting her whole weight into pulling at the sheet’s sharp corner, it dislodged and gently swung from its remaining bolted hinge.
Behind it lied a spacious opening, enough to park two Geo bikes widthways and still have enough room to walk. Unsurprisingly, in this large space the remaining children from SMILE waited patiently for their friends to return and it was only once all three of them crept their way through their newly made opening that all the kids made themselves alive.
“POP” they all unanimously erupted,
She waved her hands down and pressed her finger to her lips, they all did as she commanded once they realised the building they were stood behind again.
Flick looked around to see why they needed to be any quieter than normal, with nothing grabbing his attention. It was a completely barren area besides the building obscurely placed in its centre, but as he looked closer towards the fine metal walls he quickly bit his tongue. Flick was shocked to find that this shortcut, one he had never seen before, led straight to Isaac Melbourne’s tower.
Flick’s own reflection stared back at him through the glass panes twice his size. It wasn’t exactly the most comforting sight, the black glass of his helmet that couldn’t portray the fear on his own face, watching Flick’s features as though they were separate people. It was a look that said.
Why are you doing this? And who did you used to be last week again?
He couldn’t find the answers to his own questions, he awkwardly stood in place watching the face in the automatic door leading to the lobby. He wasn’t even sure how he got here from where he was a couple moments ago it was all moving so fast; he took a deep breath to try and calm himself and entered through the door.
Flick cursed at himself for not being able to though, his stomach had suddenly twisted itself into knots and spun him around on his heels.
It must have been something I ate
he thought,
yes! I can’t be a terrorist with some gross disease inside of me! I should turn back…
He remembered his talk with Simon and suddenly didn’t want to think about what he ate.
But! There was always a “but”, and this was no exception, Flick always trusted his gut and something was wrong. Well, apart from the obvious fact that he was about to fight military professionals anyway. Yes, there was something wrong! His head was feeling funny and his legs were feeling nothing at all, there was no way he could continue with doing this.
What was he thinking getting this far in the first place? Before Sam woke up he was just cutting ice like a normal washed-up, dead-end man and now he was here? Flick thought to himself in a moment of clarity about what he was doing and came to the smart conclusion that he bit off way more than he could ever chew. He had his moment, his hours of being needed and integral to a bigger picture of sorts, with sword duels and explosions and death. His very own comic story.
But this was it, corporate espionage was the extent of his purpose and starry-eyed dreams, he could go home now.
“Sir?” a woman asked, leaning over polished marble counter as she spoke, “Sir are you okay?”
Flick looked down to find his legs had carried him beyond the threshold of being outside. In other words, he was inside Melbourne tower and currently shuffling across its glossy panelled floors.
“O-oh yes! I’m doing just fine thanks!” Flick replied sheepishly, flashing the permission slip from Simon as if she could ever read it from that distance. “Could you just point me towards the bathroom? I know its inconvenient its just-“
The woman leaned back in her leather padded chair and resumed typing away at her various spreadsheets and word files, losing interest in whoever Flick was the second she saw the familiar paperwork.
“Oh of course! Just over there on the left,” she pointed fiercely in some direction beyond flick without looking, as though she knew instinctively but couldn’t be bothered to be more specific.
“T-Thank you!”
Flick followed where she gestured with his eyes, finding nothing in particular and being far too overwhelmed to ask again. He did spot a grey door inconspicuously clashing with the surrounding décor though.
He moved for the ‘bathroom’ as fast as could without looking crazy, occasionally scraping the rubber linings of his shoes along the floor creating an ear-piercing squeak every five or so feet.
As the door slid shut behind him he screamed at himself for going through with this. Even though he hated entering, in possibly the most dangerous building on the planet, he assumed something inside him knew this was the right thing to do despite his own fear. He assumed this though, as all rational thought that occupied his mind at this point couldn’t possibly fathom why he was still here.
The bathroom, as luck would have it, was essentially abandoned save for the water drops strewn across the floor from whoever entered before him. Unsurprisingly the space was lavish, floor to ceiling covered in dark oak framed tiles which Flick wasn’t quite sure if he liked or found out of place. And, whilst real dark oak was about as expensive as a human soul compressed into gem form, Flick wouldn’t be surprised if the whole tower was lined in it.
He didn’t get a very good look at the reception area of the building before he made a dash for where he was now, but if it was anything like the atmosphere that circled the bathroom then it all but confirmed the power that Isaac held, at least monetarily.
He continued to eye the room, spotting the occasional solid gold ornament affixed some place it didn’t belong, until he eventually found a set of three slits hidden away in a corner. By the way it looked, the vent was designed to blend into the rest of the décor in some attempt to draw attention away from its presence. As a result the vent looked off putting and appeared as if the room itself had a grotesque pair of gills.
Flick approached it in all of its weird fish like glory, and quickly took it apart lazily placing any screws that fell in the sink below him. Once the small crawlspace was revealed, he stuck the nozzle of his fusion cutter deep inside and turned it on for just a second.
This was the signal for the SMILE members to come through, if Flick was remembering it correctly that is. The heat would snake through the vents and pop out near Scratch and the others, being just hot enough for them to tell a difference. It was haphazard to say the least, even the kids didn’t particularly think it would work as a signal, luckily though the message seemed to have gone through as in only a couple minutes Pop appeared.
After she lowered herself to the floor the rest of the kids began pouring out like hordes of mice and rats, some even skittered along the floor after misplacing a foot or a hand when they attempted to get down. By the time the whole nest of children finished entering the bathroom only a fraction of space remained, they attempted to organise themselves as much as possible with the youngest ones clambering on the shoulders of the eldest, but even with the gained height it was hard to see anything beyond the eyes or hair for many.
Only Flick could see the everyone with relative ease, but telling them apart was an entirely different situation. Pop was easy to spot, her white sheep like jacket could highlight her even in the dead of night, but Scratch was just a tad bit too short for any of his features to stand out in this much of a crowd.
Flick called out for him but got no response, his voice most likely being muffled by the cawing of the other children, Scratch only became visible once his arm suddenly shot into the air gripped tightly by Pop, raising it up mockingly.
He wade through the crowds of small bodies trying to avoid the various swords strapped on their backs before he eventually found the door he was looking for. On instinct, he formed a fist and raised it above his head. To his surprise everyone hushed down considerably and postured themselves like a small toy army. No further words needed to be said. In that moment, they were steeled.
