Black Mirror

Chapter 11 - Micro Cuts

You'd think with all the health-care advances in Heaven compared to the other dimensions, we'd have cured all the incurables by now.

As I cross the border, I stop as my brain radiates spikes of energy through my head. For a moment, I'm an antenna, picking up on a signal to which only I'm capable of tuning in. But I can't be picking it up. I haven't been able to for months.

Almost as quickly as the spikes come, though, they die down, fading into a background thrum. The static you hear between channels on the radio.

But again, I know that static all too well.

As much as I'd love to locate the source, I can't. I have other business to attend to.

Kelly and Ty wait for me outside the Bridge entrance on the Hell side. I join them, feeling conspicuous because I'm the only one wearing anything heavier than a T-shirt. Even Kelly, whose pink and purple shirt is long-sleeved, she's keeping it light, along with her blue jeans. Ty, who's abandoned his usual flannel and is showing off his white V-neck (probably so he can put the arrowhead back in its proper place - force of habit, I think), eyeballs me oddly and asks, "Did you freeze yourself again?"

"My thermostat's just broken," I say. "So what's up? You guys are getting the arrowhead back, right?"

Kelly shakes her head. "They said something about it being missing."

Would that I could do a coffee spit-take right now. "What?"

"Yeah." Ty kicks a small rock on the ground, and it skips into the nearest storm drain. "That's why we're going down there - so I can give them a piece of my mind."

"And if they don't offer us proof," Kelly says, patting the small purse hanging from her shoulder, "we're gonna break in and find out for ourselves." She takes a hairpin out of her purse and lets the sunlight reflect off it before putting it back. "If you wanna help-"

"Gabe's here." I blurt it out without thinking.

"What, your brother?" Ty scratches his head. "The...Gabe, you said? The dead dude?"

"He's here." I cross my arms, trying not to smile at how amused to death Gabe would be if he ever found out Ty just called him that. "I know he is."

"You felt it in the Force?" Kelly laughs.

I'd glare at her, but she wins all the points for expressing herself in my language, so she gets a grin instead. "There's nobody else I'd be able to sense like that," I say.

"Oh man, don't tell me he stole the arrowhead from the cops," Ty says.

I look up and see that we're right outside the station. "I guess we'll soon find out." Before we go in, I turn to Kelly and whisper, "Uh, who taught you how to use a hairpin lockpick?"

"My mom. Who else?"

Inside, the station is pretty much exactly how I remember it from the night of Fionna's death. The officer at the front desk takes Ty's name, and tells us all to sit and wait on the bench near the front door. After an eternity, he calls us up (like there's been anyone waiting in line ahead of us) and opens a side door. Not the one that leads to the main office, where Gabe and I had to give statements that night. This one goes to the other side of the building, and down into the basement. Because where else would the evidence locker hide? It's not much of an evidence locker, either, but that's no surprise. It's Coldfire Creek. Not much happens in this town, and certainly not much crime.

Guess you won't need that hairpin after all, I think to Kelly. She says nothing, telepathically or otherwise, but she does pout at me.

At the back of the room, the woman in charge of this place shows us a cardboard box with "NATE BINAG (?)" written on the front. "Don't look like it's been broken into," Ty says with a short laugh.