The Irreversible Reckoning

  ***

  It was a distinct possibility that we would look like we were up to something investigatory, considering we were walking around town wearing all black clothes and black sunglasses. But everyone was wearing black clothes. It had only been two days since the bombing. Everyone was still grieving, so anyone who might have wished us harm if they knew what we were up to wouldn’t have suspected us of anything, because we really were blending right into the crowd. On our way to the Infirmary, we had to pass the open field where the bombing had happened. Someone had cleaned up the rubble, and in its place, people had left flowers, cards, stuffed animals, incense, candles, and as a Pangaean custom, four torches, two on each side of the memorial, to represent the Four-Armed One God. When I homed in with my enhanced vision, I saw that each torch had one of the four symbols of the One God painted on the wicker holder just below the flame: The man with the arrows, called simply The Strong Man, The Eye of Knowledge, the Flame of Passion, and the Chalice of Desire. Herculians, Athenes, Ares, and Dionysians, standing in harmony, keeping watch together in a vigil to the dead. No Athenes had died in the bombing, because the last Athene had died many years earlier, and to my knowledge, we had no Dionysians in our camp. But it was about the symbolism. The torches represented each population, even if every member of the population had been turned to dust long ago.

  “Don’t look at it, man. We don’t have time to think about it, and we don’t have time to grieve.” Eli told me, “Remember the plan. Follow it exactly, and this should go off without a hitch, okay?”

  “Yup.”

  As much as I hated blood, and even though I was a total wimp when it came to pain, I pulled out my knife and sliced my arm so deep, a torrent of red poured onto the rocks just in front of the Greenhouse, which was by then doubling as the second Infirmary, because it was where the Medical Records and Inventory Lists had been stored even before the bombing. I walked inside, and immediately became overwhelmed by the damp, humid, heavy air, and the smell of wet greenery. It made me want to throw up or pass out. Well, I might have wanted to pass out because I was losing a lot of blood…

  “Had a run-in with some sheet metal.” I told the receptionist, who jumped up, took me by the elbow, and led me into a makeshift observation room. Beside me was a glass wall, and through the condensation on it, I could see the first room full of plants. When I didn’t see any Elixir, I reminded myself that it was just one room, and the Elixir had to be kept in the cold, and that they more than likely harvested it the minute it had grown to maturity. So it was probably kept in the storage rooms.

  Through the glass adjacent to the glass right beside me, I watched Eli stroll quickly up the hallway, not looking over his shoulder once, just walking by like he owned the place. As the doctor came in, rubbed my arm down with the wet leaves of the plant that coagulated blood, and then stitched the cut closed, I counted in my mind. Fifteen minutes. Just like Eli and I had planned.

  “Alright, Mr. Wesley. Let’s be a little more careful next time.” The young Earthean girl told me. She wasn’t as young as she looked physically. She had been in school with Violet under Dr. Miletus back in Shadow Village. She smiled up at me shyly, the way she had always smiled at everyone, and I thought how she kind of looked like Alice, with her heart-shaped face, and her blonde hair, and her blue eyes, but Alice was still prettier. Then I thought how I was supposed to be focused on this epic mission to prove Don was a treasonous asshole but instead, I was still thinking, totally selfishly, about my relationship problems. As they discharged me from the infirmary, I wasn’t thinking about how I hadn’t seen Eli hurry past. I was thinking about how I still wanted to tell Alice that I remembered the log cabin, and I wanted to be with her, because I loved her so much, and…

  I was outside, squinting even though the day was drearily overcast, just like it always tended to be in Luna Moors. The nights were beautiful enough to make you forget the dreary days, but the dreary days were long because of the anticipation that built for those beautiful nights. I was walking outside, still thinking about Alice, wondering where she was, when I remembered that there were windows all along the cinderblock bottom of the building, and through them, you could see into the storage rooms. Just as I ducked into the alley to start looking for Eli (finally returning to the mission at hand), I heard the very light, almost inaudible pound of shoes on the rocks behind me. I whipped around, and he was there, grinning, holding up three small, leather-bound books labeled with the dates of the previous three months.

  “Inventory of Medicinal Herbs, Fungi, and Substances.” He told me proudly.

  “Did you just jump off the roof?”

  “Yup!” He replied as he started to stride away, “Almost got caught by one of the other doctors, so I found this back stairway that led to the roof, and here we are.”

  “Did you see any Elixir stored up?”

  “None in the rooms I saw, but we’ve got exactly what we need. The Inventory logs, and the Patient lists. We’ll see where all the Elixir went, and that won’t prove what we’re trying to prove, at least not completely, but it’s a start.”