Schism

Chapter 34 part 2

"I'm gonna get the crazy look again."  Bryan hoped he wouldn't get the look, or that thought, from Meyers.  He hoped that one person would believe in him, no matter how crazy the facts sounded.  He pointed at a small cube again.  "Again, this is you and me, our consciousness."  Then, he pointed at the big cube.  "This is what he's listening to.  Or maybe a bigger one than that.  I don't know what level he's at.  But he's got access to it, and it tells him where people are, how to fight them."

The crazy look didn't come, but maybe only because Meyers stared down into his glass.   He cocked his head and looked up at Bryan.  "What do you mean?  We're talking about your guy?"

"We're all part of the same system, you, I, William, the Klan assholes.  We're all components in a bigger physical system and also of the non-physical consciousness or mind that's tied to it.  In a way, it's aware of where we all are, what we are doing.  He gets that information and uses it."

"Yeah," Meyers said to his glass.  "I am gonna need more beer."

Bryan decided to plow on.  He had to get to the important part before he lost Meyers completely.  "And like I said, it's bigger than two dimensions.  There are other analogies, too.  Take it down to our own bodies.  I think William, my guy, is like a T cell.  Like one of those white blood cells that kills cells that are infected or part of a tumor."

"Now you are really losing me," Meyers said.

"Okay," Bryan said.  "Here's the whole thing.  There is this larger consciousness that is giving him directions to protect certain things, people, and destroy others."

"Your escaped mental patient?"  Meyers swirled the rest of his beer in its glass.

It was all in or fold, Bryan knew.  "He's the vigilante."

That brought Meyers' attention up.  "What?"  Bryan didn't answer, let it sink into the other detective for a moment.  "You saw him.  When you saved that couple, you saw him and recognized him."

"Uh."  Bryan looked down at his own empty glass, wished he had more.  "There's a bit more to it than that." 

He waited, but Meyers just sat there, waiting.

"I kind of had dinner with him.  He led me there."

Meyers squinted at him a moment.  "You went out on a man date with a multiple murderer?"

"A couple of times," Bryan said.

"And you didn't bring him in?"

Bryan shook his head.  "I don't think I could.  And now, I don't think I should.  Both of which are reasons I'm telling you about all this."

"What do you mean?" Meyers asked.

"First, I need your help, and Hayes' in getting his ex-fiancée out of town, to someplace safe.  Second, I think he's here to stop the fires," Bryan said.  "And we should let him."

Meyers just sat there and looked at him.  Bryan had known that was the key to bringing the other detective along.  He didn't mention it to manipulate, he knew he'd have Meyers' help no matter what, but the fires were the key to it all.  Figuring them out had been the most important thing to both detectives for the last two years.  Or had been for Bryan, until he'd met Jess.

"He's been stopping the small fires, keeping the racial cleansing from happening by stopping or killing the assholes who were starting them," Bryan said.

"And the big fires?' Meyers asked.  "Your fire?"

This one was harder to answer.  If Meyers wasn't with him so far, there was no way he'd buy Bryan's next theory.  "There's someone else.  Someone like William who is starting those.  I don't know who yet, but I'm pretty sure."  He stopped, wished again for more to drink. 

"Another white blood cell?" Meyers asked.

"I don't think so.  More like a cancer cell.  Similar weird abilities, but different.  Like the profiler said, a pyromaniac, maybe, but able to start fires without matches."

"Delightful thought," Meyers said.  "Okay, I'll play along.  You said your guy is going after the bad ones, getting directions from some big mind about how to kill skinheads and Klansmen.  Makes him okay in my book.  Why don't we just sit back and let him?  Maybe he'll take out the pyromaniac cancer cell too."

Bryan nodded.  "Yeah.  Thought about that."  He stopped a moment, pulled his thoughts together.  "Thing is, I don't think he's here just to protect her.  There's more to it.  If this is some bigger form of consciousness, why would it be out to save just one woman, or stop a few fires?  It feels like a set up for something bigger.  I just don't know what yet." 

He stared down at his glass.  He'd turned his back on William when he should have been helping him, but he was growing more frightened of what someone like William meant.  "This thing that he's listening to, that's directing him, it isn't like us.  It doesn't think like us, feel like us.  What if it suddenly decides that we're tumors that need to be cut out?  And I think he is bringing the racists and the pyro all together, which, you're right, is good if he gets them, but that puts this woman, Jessica Moore, in a lot of danger.  I can't let her be a victim in all this."

A frown from Meyers.  "All right, I'm holding back the crazy look.  What evidence do you have?"

"Aside from the growing pile of eyewitnesses that say he moves like a superhero?  The pile of bodies of armed, trained men he's waltzed through?" Bryan paused.  Meyers didn't think he was crazy, but what he said next might spoil that.  "Well, he showed them to me."

"Showed who to you?" Meyers asked.

"The voices.  The way it communicates with him.  There are more analogies, but I think he's anthropomorphizing.  He sees these figures, hears their voices.  They're the ones who tell him what to do, help him do it.  He showed them to me."  Bryan knew how it would sound to someone who hadn't seen them.

It took a while for Meyers to say anything.  Bryan knew he'd gone too far.  He'd said too much and lost the good opinion Meyers had held of him.  At the same time, he realized that the situation had been reversed when he was with William.  He had been the only one to believe that William wasn't insane, just as Meyers had believed in him.  And yet, he had tried to drug William and lock him up.  He'd let William down in a way so fundamental that he hadn't seen it until he'd been in the position himself.

William wasn't a lunatic or a superhero.  Those were simply the only ways that most people could understand him.  He was a man whose only real difference from Bryan was that he had more information.  Bryan had been the only one to see that, and he had turned his back on a friend who needed him.

Finally, Meyers answered.  "Hayes."

"Yeah, you can see why I can't tell him a lot of this," Bryan said.

"Yeah, no shit.  But no, that's not what I meant.  Hayes is here."  Meyers rose as Lieutenant Hayes came up to the booth.

"Gentlemen," he said, then pointed to the cubes.  "What the hell?"

Bryan scooped them up, covered up his notes about William.  "Bar trick." 

Meyers waved Hayes to the booth and took a backward step toward the bar.  "We're gonna need a lot more beer."

*

(Author's note:  Is Bryan finally coming to his senses, now that he's figured out what the voices are?  Or, will his emotions get the better of him?  And...is anything that Bryan decides going to make a difference now that Jared and Harold are working together?  The end is coming...read on...the end is coming!  Thank you all for all the votes and comments!  I'm so glad you are enjoying the book!)