June 7, 2045 - 11:05 AM
Margo shot her arm out to catch the door before it could close behind her. Her other arm aimed toward the mysterious man in the rabbit costume before her, the outdated Fatemaker shaking in her hand. The longer she stared at the figure, the less intimidating he became, however. It might have been the realization that his attire consisted not of a BufferSuit, but a leather gimp suit. With his hands raised toward the sky, he appeared to be the most harmless creature in the entire club.
"I'm sorry," he said, his voice gargling with static, blatantly altered for anonymity.
"Sorry for what?" Margo rasped.
"That you had to be down here."
So much ambiguity behind his response, Margo thought. "What are you talking about?" she said.
"You're a doctor-cop."
"Maybe." She paused, suddenly aware of the harsh roaring of each breath through her mask. "Or maybe I just wanted to have a good time down here."
"This is the Rabbit Hole. No one who's aware of their surroundings ever has fun down here."
"And I'm guessing that's why you feed them that Wonderland shit? And all the other drugs you have down here?"
"I don't make them. I'm just supposed to pass them out. They have the freedom to fill themselves up with it or not."
Margo's finger curled around the trigger. "And you," she growled, "have the freedom not to pass the drugs out. Or do you just tell yourself you're being forced to help you get through your job?"
"I could say the same thing about you working for Psychwatch."
Margo let the door close behind her. No other person entering the room would've mattered to her.
"What makes you think they're forcing me?" she asked.
The man chuckled quietly.
"What's so funny?"
"Congratulations, Sandoval," Mason grumbled.
"What!"
"It was a bluff," the man said. "I had a suspicion you were a doctor-cop, and you just confirmed it. But I guess it all works out. Someone here is looking for you."
Her breathing developed a mind of its own, a hyper, parasitic beast hosted within her body. "Why? I don't mean anything down here."
"You're a doctor-cop. Everyone wants you dead down here. That or silenced into submission, which isn't any different."
"Including you?"
The man in the rabbit suit went silent. She feared the opacity in his eyes. They looked milky, almost as if he was blind. Maybe they were protective lenses linked to the mask itself, she thought. Maybe his own breath was fogging them up. Whatever it was, she wouldn't move any closer to him to find out for herself. At least not until she pulled the trigger.
"Why the hell aren't you saying anything?" Margo demanded. "Just say it. You want to kill me, right? Something worse? Whatever you want, it's not gonna happen. Not while you're on the other side of this gun."
"No," he said. "I don't want to hurt you."
"Then what do you want?"
"Someone here is looking for you."
"You said that already! Just tell me or I'll fucking shoot!"
"Sandoval, you idiot," Mason said. "Have you ever considered taking a minute to think that maybe he's referring to Slater?"
"Fuck you, Mason!" Margo screamed into her piece.
"I'll take you to him," the man said, ignoring her outburst. "Are there other officers with you here?"
"That doesn't matter," Margo barked. "Just show me who's looking for me. I'm sure I know them."
The rabbit man lowered his hands and took slow, brutish steps toward Margo, the leather of his boots pounding against the floor with a thud. He didn't fear the gun in the officer's hands because the thought of pulling the trigger tore her apart inside. He was safe from her, safer than she'd ever be from herself.
"Follow me," he said, and he shoved the door open, the two of them greeted by the screeching, pounding electronic music.
A drought overtook Margo's throat as she and the rabbit man approached the door to the men's restroom several feet away from the women's. No more screaming came from it. Whatever those monsters she saw in there wanted to accomplish, they'd done it. And their crazed, bestial laughter implied they would've done it again and again.
As the two of them stood immovable, their feet bolted to the ground by curiosity and disgust, Margo realized the noise emanating from the bathroom wasn't laughter. Excitement, pleasure, but not laughter.
The rabbit man's head twitched from side to side, like the arm of a clock counting down one's descent into madness.
His left hand lurched toward the ceiling, pausing beside his head, fingers extended. Margo knew he was commanding her to freeze, but the noise beyond the door did the job for him. His fingers curled into a fist, and his head stopped twitching.
"Sir," Margo said, "what's wrong?"
The rabbit man charged through the door, and the sounds of the masked killers became more distinguishable. They'd been desecrating the corpse and each other.
"Whoa, what the fuck—" one of them said, and Margo jumped as the sounds of loud thuds and shattering glass erupted beyond the door.
The screams returned. Not just one scream. All kinds. Both male and female. Young and old. All of them involved in the cruel murder of that girl. Each one enduring a wound characterized by a sickening crunch. Thirty seconds had passed, and only one more person remained screaming, the oldest man in there, a little older than Margo. He managed only a few shouts before getting cut off, as if he'd vanished without a trace.
When Margo entered the bathroom, she saw that the man responsible for such futile pleas for mercy was dead. The rabbit man's arms were wrapped around his neck while the rest of his body remained splayed out on the floor beneath him. The rabbit man released him, and Margo saw that he had shattered his neck to pieces, the skin a grotesque blend of purple and red. Everyone else in the room was stricken with similarly devastating fractures. Only two cadavers outdid the sight of the older man's neck: one of a masked woman with her trachea caved in, blood pouring out of her mouth and nostrils, and the girl whose life they'd claimed only minutes ago, a pool of blood stretching across the floor beneath her, her ribs and intestines on display as if she were nothing more than a dissected lab specimen.
Once again, Margo fought the urge to vomit, her hand rushing for her mouth as she fell on one knee, retching repeatedly to no avail. She cursed herself with each attempt, reassuring over and over that she was an embarrassment to Psychwatch, her hometown, and every single person who had come into her life.
"Goddamn—hurgh!" she tried to say before another gag took her voice.
"Toilet's over there," the rabbit man said, his hand gesturing toward the stalls. "Get it out if you need to."
"No, I can't. I need to—hurgh!" She collapsed to the floor, her head colliding with the floor with a clink of her mask against the ceramic tiles.
"Need to what?" the rabbit man asked.
I don't fucking know, she thought, her eyes gawking at the floor only centimeters away from her face. I think I was meant to die here.
"Ma'am?"
She lost the fight again. As she swung her head back up from the floor, she peeled the mask from her face, a blast of cool air from the vents rushing past her cheeks and through her hair. And the stench of death and bodily substances assaulted her nostrils.
Upon seeing her face, the rabbit man uttered a single word: "Fuck."
Margo scurried to the nearest stall and punched through the door, barely reaching the toilet as the heaving began once more. Like her missions and her life, nothing came of it. Nothing but pain as her muscles and stomach clenched tightly with each retch. Her body tried to get rid of something, anything, but the things she wanted to rid of herself were buried too deep beneath the surface.
Once the pain subsided, Margo crumpled to the floor beside the toilet, no longer caring that her face rested against possibly the filthiest floor in the world. She took her Fatemaker from her pocket, studied it. What she wanted to rid of herself was buried too deep, she thought. The question was how many times she'd have to shoot to destroy that part of herself she hated most.
"Lady, get up!" the rabbit man said, the distortion transforming his exclamation into a monstrous clamor. "And put your mask back on before someone sees you."
She propelled herself up from the floor, tempted to cover her nose to block out the room's revolting odors. "Isn't it a little too late for that?" she replied.
"You don't understand. I didn't recognize you with the mask on, but now that it's off, I realize there's more than one person looking for you here, none of them particularly good people."
She looked up at the rabbit man. He stood several feet away from her stall, one hand on the bathroom door while the other held her mask. "How do you know who I am?" she exhaled. "And how did you know I'm from Psychwatch?"
"You match the descriptions of the person these people are looking for. And only a doctor-cop would be smart enough to come down here in a BufferSuit. Not smart enough to realize the conspicuousness of wearing one, I'll admit, but at least you're protected."
"Sandoval!" Mason barked into her ear. "Who the fuck are you talking to?"
Margo took the piece from her ear and held it beside her, eyes trained on the rabbit man. She said, "Do you know if one of these guys' names is Malcolm Slater?"
"Yes," he replied. "He's expecting you and a young man."
"Who else is looking for me? A man in a blue suit? A pair of albino twins?"
He paused. "I think it's best I take you to Slater first."
Margo's expression darkened. "Who are you then?"
"That's not important right now."
The rabbit man quickly found the barrel of Margo's Fatemaker pressed against his neck.
"I think so," she said. "And I know that's not a BufferSuit you're wearing. I could blast your neck open right now if I wanted to."
"No, you couldn't."
She coiled her finger around the trigger. "Are you tempting me?"
"No, I'm stating my observations. The truth will destroy you. It always does to people like you."
Margo scoffed. "What truth? And what are 'people like me' supposed to be exactly?"
"People who think your job comes easy. That reading textbooks and case studies will prepare you for the real world. You blow my neck open, the image of my death will be burned into your brain for the rest of your life. Along with every other thing that'll come after."
"I've killed people before. I was at the rally weeks ago."
"But I'm sure the only reason you pulled the trigger was because the adrenaline did the decision-making for you. Right? You're the kind who doesn't fire lethal shots, aren't you?"
Margo felt her grip on the trigger loosen. It astonished her, considering how the rabbit man had made himself much more dangerous with the flawless conclusions he'd reached.
"You wouldn't pull the trigger unless it was the only choice," he said. "And right now, it's just a choice, not an urgency. And when you make the wrong choices, it hurts you. Do you really want to hurt yourself more?"
Margo's hand shook, the firearm rattling in her hand. Feeling as though her lungs would burst open like overfilled balloons, she withdrew the gun and slid it back into her pocket. Her eyelids hung low as she glanced at her mask in the man's left hand, the ears floundering against the draft of the air conditioners. Her head zipped back up toward the man before her as the pool of blood from the girl she failed to save reached the tip of her right shoe.
Knowing fully well that the more harm she'd endure, the longer the mission went, she took the mask back from him. Holding it before her like a newspaper, she looked up at his own mask and groaned upon discovering his eyes weren't anymore visible. Just fogged-up lenses, even up close.
The door shot open, and Jack emerged from the neon-drenched chaos outside. His mask, gloves, sleeves, and chest were doused in blood. And by the coarseness of his breathing, Margo realized he was far from happy.
"There you are," he rasped, his voice a soft, shrill growl. "Put in your fucking piece."
"What?" Margo replied.
"PUT ON YOUR MASK AND PUT ON YOUR FUCKING EARPIECE!"
The rabbit man took two steps toward Jack before Margo placed her hand on his shoulder. When he looked back, she shook her head, not knowing how long a skirmish between the two would last but knowing fully well Jack would lose. She pressed the mask firmly into her face before nudging the piece back into her left ear.
"You have no idea," Jack muttered, "how pissed off Mason is, babe."
"Shut up," Margo said. "Hello, Mason."
"What the fuck happened in here?" Jack said.
"Sandoval!" Margo's superior shouted into her ear. "You better have a damn good reason for removing your piece and a better reason for cooperating with someone outside of Psychwatch."
"Any luck contacting Andrade and Kusanagi yet?" she asked.
"No!" Holden yelped. "We've been trying, but not—"
"Sanger, at ease!" Mason said. "Forget about them. They won't mean anything to this mission anymore. Just tell us the reason behind your absence."
"You see this man right here?" Margo asked, gesturing her hand toward her mysterious ally.
Jack's eyes dashed over to the rabbit man, not only because it was necessary for his superiors to see, but because he himself may have realized, as Margo predicted, that the man could overpower him without breaking a sweat. His bright blue eyes were visible unlike their enigmatic accomplice, making him the far more predictable one. Not that he'd ever admit it to anyone.
"He knows where Slater is," Margo said, "and he might even know where the masked men from the rally and Arthur Cohen could be."
"Is this man your commanding officer?" the rabbit man asked, pointing at Jack.
"No, I'm talking with her right now on my earpiece," she told him. "But she can see us through his eyes."
The rabbit man took a step forward, his face only three feet away from Jack's. "Optical surveillance implants?" he asked.
"Back the fuck away, man," Jack growled.
Searching for the cameras in Jack's eyes, the rabbit man gazed five seconds longer before stepping away. "Interesting," he said. "I'm surprised it took this long for people to apply this for infiltration."
"He's nosey," Mason said. "Kill him if you feel he's asking too many questions."
"Yes, Commissioner," her officers replied.
"And no matter what you do to him, make sure you reach the EMP device somehow. The plans got messed up thanks to Andrade and Kusanagi's absence, so I'm sending in reinforcements early in—"
The officers winced as static blared out of their earpieces. A familiar voice took Mason's place, hacked apart by audio glitches.
"Commi—Commissioner! We—" Static again. "Comm—are you th—"
"Andrade?" Margo asked.
"Somethin...hap...in the...We're on our w...Hello? Commission..."
"C-C-Commissioner!" Nikki said. "W-W-We've tracked her location. She and Kusanagi are on Batty, three blocks east of Bradbury."
"Alert reinforcements to pick them up before the infiltration," Mason replied. "If we can track them, at least that means there are Scans nearby."
"But poor connection means the Scans are being damaged or blocked somehow. Should we ask them—"
"Andrade! Kusanagi! Respond!"
"We're being—" Kusanagi replied this time, drowning in static like his colleague beside him. "More are com...Send them...Now! They're heading to the Rabbit Hole!"
"What the..." Holden said. "What is he talking ab—"
"Sandoval, Holloway, you've got fifteen minutes to find Slater and the EMP!" Mason barked. "Please don't force us to improvise anymore than we already have to!"
Their pieces went silent. Margo, Jack, and the rabbit man stood by amongst the bodies, the bathroom mirror vibrating with the pounding music outside. The rabbit man hadn't moved a muscle since Jack entered the room, and for a second, Margo had suspected he had ulterior motives of his own. His intrigue regarding Jack's optical implants, the uncertainty behind all of his responses. What could it have meant?
Further tension built as he stared down the barrel of Jack's gun.
"You bullshit us," Jack hissed, waving his Fatemaker in the man's face, "I'll blow your eyes out of your sockets and skull-fuck you."
"That," the rabbit man said, "won't be necessary."
* * *
Two minutes later, they'd returned to the loud, colorful discord outside. The rabbit man led their way, Jack's Fatemaker prodding the back of his head, only a thin layer of black leather between him and a fatal blow. Margo followed behind them, fearing the world around her would ambush them in an instant, swamp them like tidal waves rushing in from every corner. She didn't know what to think of this rabbit man. A part of her believed his fate was sealed, and by the end of the mission, Psychwatch would paint the walls with his innards like everyone else in the club. Another part believed they'd struck gold running into him, another individual who welcomed the fall of a kingdom built on corruption and hedonism.
But he only passed the drugs out, he'd said earlier. What if he was just another infiltrator independent of Psychwatch? Maybe he was just another Slater, a traitorous crook who'd rather sacrifice other lowlifes to the authorities than share the deplorable lifestyle any longer. He was a harbinger for things to come.
Beams of blue and pink light burned her eyes, bending and waltzing about the cavernous room to the music. When her eyes readjusted, the club made itself known to her again, filling her head with images far more painful than the disorienting lights could ever be.
To her right, on a couch torn to shreds, a stark-naked young man kneeled behind a woman, his back soaked in sweat as he thrusted into her over and over. There was anger, sheer hatred, in his movements, and every other word that left his mouth demeaned either himself or his partner. With each flash of light, Margo noticed blood seeped down the thighs of the woman before him—far too much to ignore—and the closer she got, the more she realized he was sodomizing her. The woman, however, didn't react in the slightest, and her arm dangled off the edge of the couch as if paralyzed. Margo discovered seconds later that the woman was dead, her head smashed open with a crowbar, the pieces scattered across the cushions and the floor. The sickened doctor-cop gagged upon discovering she'd stepped on one of the woman's eyeballs.
"Fucking hurry up," Jack growled at her, and she stumbled forward, her legs on the verge of giving out.
The rabbit man was yet to make a move or an attempt to escape. Margo knew he didn't fear Jack's threats. The gun planted against the nape of his neck was undoubtedly one of many. But Margo still pondered the inner workings of these men's brains, how they could casually stride past demonstrations that could hardly be described as mere sadism. Maybe she just hadn't seen enough yet to cultivate such a stoic veneer as they had.
Or was it something she had to lose to be the way they were? How much could a person see before they can declare they've seen it all?
Amidst the neon stains of blue, green, and red engulfing the hellhole around her as she and her colleagues ascended the stairs to the dance floor, more grisly sights came into view. Another woman around her age trudged across the floor, shrieking at the top of her lungs as needles protruded from her crotch and breasts. A man lay on the floor with a deep incision stretching across his neck, his mask blotched with dark crimson stains. A younger couple, a boy and a girl, fought hard to dance to the hellish electronic music blaring around them, the boy wailing with despair as he stared down at his fractured arm, blood and pus bubbling out of his wounds. The girl, swaying side to side and overlooking her partner's pain, suffered a similar predicament; there wasn't a single finger on either of her hands, just crude, mutilated stubs.
The rabbit man pivoted his head toward his captor. "Do you officers have the authority to—"
He went silent as Jack smacked the back of his head with his Fatemaker. "I didn't say you could fucking talk!" he shouted over the music.
"Jack!" Margo said, struggling to repress her persistent nausea. "Just let him talk!"
"I didn't say you could talk either!"
"Let him talk! He's just trying to help us!"
"So what? He'll be dead by the time we're done needing him!"
The rabbit man stopped, and Jack crashed into his back, the two of them stumbling forward like drunkards. Margo froze in place, nervously awaiting what would come of the hostility between her two volatile compatriots.
"Hey, asshole!" Jack said. "Why did you stop?"
The rabbit man pivoted to the left once again, ignoring Jack's threat.
"You deaf? Why did you fucking stop?!"
"Where did the bloodstains on your clothes come from?" the rabbit man asked.
"What?"
"Whose blood is that?"
"I don't fucking know, man! Just take us where we need to—"
"There he is!"
"What the..." Margo said as she and her colleagues followed the voice, shouted from the floor above them.
Sure enough, the first person she saw upon glancing up at the balcony above her was one of the masked men. Raggedy white mask, red Xs painted over the eyes, everything. And he had a friend with him, an identical mask hiding his face as well. Two large fans were positioned over the rails before them.
"We found him!" the other shouted. "Motherfucker nailed Mark in the nose earlier."
"What do we do then? We gonna fuck him up?"
"Nah, let's hotbox the place. Let them fuck him up for us."
Jack's hand fired up to the sky, Fatemaker at the ready. He took a shot, burning a hole through one masked man's knee, a spray of red mist spurting against the wall behind him.
"Fuck!" the man shouted, crashing into the wall behind him as a growing red splotch overtook his pant leg. "Get the Mist out! Start the fucking hotbox!"
"Run!" the rabbit man blurted, and he grabbed Jack by the arm and yanked him forward, the two of them suddenly speeding for the end of the atrium.
"Wait!" Margo yelled as she jogged behind them, and as she looked back, she saw the masked men standing behind the fans, each one bearing two tubes of Wonderland Mist in each hand. Before she knew it, bright blue mist geysered out of the fans like a sandstorm.
Run!
She bolted off to rejoin her colleagues. Her heart beat like it wanted to escape her shell of a body. The blue fog was approaching behind her. A quick glimpse back and she discovered the dance floor had instantaneously been enshrouded in a large cloud of translucent vapor, all the partygoers replaced by convulsing silhouettes.
Don't breathe, she thought. Even with the mask on, don't fucking breathe.
"Lady!" she heard the rabbit man call out, but he was out of sight. Her eyes darted from place to place, only finding everything she didn't hope to see. Blinding lights. The club DJs hidden behind a clear, shimmering force field. And the furnace Slater had told her about. All she saw of it was an enormous wall of fire blazing behind a door. But her legs and her mind worked too fast to make the image clear. It was all as blurry as the memories of her past.
"Lady, down here!" the rabbit man called out again.
Margo had found him. A steep incline was coming up in the northwest corner of her line of sight, and the Wonderland Mist lagged behind her like a beast in the wild. She was only a few feet ahead of it, only a bit faster. She saw more rows of fluorescent lights slumping downward, and beneath them was the incline leading to her next location.
She thought she'd screwed up once more, fated to tumble from the apex of the incline all the way to the bottom. But she descended perfectly. No friction or lack of it got in her way. Within the blink of an eye, she'd found herself standing before a new set of doors at the bottom beside Jack and the rabbit man, and the cloud of Wonderland Mist remained six feet above them at the top, as if sealed away from them.
"What is this place?" Margo gasped.
"Somewhere few have entered," the rabbit man said. "Somewhere you two should see."
He pushed through the door, and there stood Slater before them, clad in a BufferSuit but gripping his rabbit mask in his hands.
"You finally made it!" he laughed. With his arms extended, he said, "Welcome to the Rabbit Hole, ladies and gentlemen."
"You're gonna have a hell of a time here," Margo muttered.
Slater laughed again. "You took the words right out of my mouth, Miss Sandoval."
"I thought you said you'd be up in the suites."
"Oh, I was earlier. Got plenty of action up there, too. But then all these commotions broke out because of those masked assholes. Then when I peeked out the door, I saw them attacking Mr. W right here as he was passing along some Blue Caterpillars. He put up a hell of a fight, though! Although, he and I had to flee down here once the psycho albinos came into the mix."
"You still high on that shit or what?" Jack said.
"I swear to God, I couldn't have made all of that up if I tried. And like I told you all before, no one ever comes down here except for the cooks. And they're all dressed like this guy, Mr. W."
Marked by several confused expressions that no one else saw, Margo realized Slater was referring to the rabbit man. "Why do you keep calling him that?" she asked.
Slater's simper dropped into a bewildered gape. "That's funny, there used to be a blue letter W right in the middle of his forehead," he said.
"The albino boy tore it off earlier," the rabbit man said.
That was enough to get Slater guffawing again. "Oh! Yeah, that kid and his sister were a pair of nutcases, weren't they?"
"I bet they were the ones at the rally," Margo said.
"Oh, I'm sure, Miss Sandoval! Half the creeps who caused the incident are up in the suites, even the guy with the blue suit and the multiple identities." He snapped his fingers. "But we're here to drive 'em out like bats, right?"
"Sure."
"I've always hated his eagerness," Mason chimed in through the officers' ThoughtControl pieces. "You've both got eight minutes. Alert us of all entryways you find."
Margo nodded her head, not caring that her superior couldn't see.
"Alright," Slater declared, clapping his hands together. "Jack, come with me. We gotta roll the device out of the other room. Miss Sandoval, Mr. W, watch the door for us, please. We'll be back out in a sec."
Margo glanced over at Jack, fearful of the thoughts that entered Jack's head now that he'd be in a room alone with Slater. The sight and sound of his knuckles cracking only reassured her that the worst was yet to come. Despite the careless violence that would ensue, she somehow couldn't blame him.
As he pursued Slater, Margo stopped Jack to warn, "Mason's watching you. Don't do anything to him."
"Fuck off," he said, and he resumed his march, disappearing behind another door with Slater.
Margo stood alone in the hall with Mr. W, the two of them bathed by the blue-green glow of the fluorescent lights above them. Concrete walls enveloped them on all sides, and at the far end of the hall was another hall, opaque windows peering into a room shrouded in light blue smoke. The music was distant but still packing a punch, like the roll of thunder in a faraway storm.
"You make that stuff?" Margo asked him, vexation in her words.
"No," he said.
"Then what are you doing here?"
"I already told you. The truth would destroy you."
"Alright!" Slater chirped, marching back out of the room. "You two ready?"
"Where's Jack?" Margo asked.
"Oh, don't mind him. He just had to use the bathroom."