Chapter Text
Cecil can’t believe the words that just came out of Carlos’ mouth. In fact, Cecil hopes that he misheard Carlos- maybe the only time in his life that he’s wished that.“What?”
“I don’t know you,” Carlos repeated, looking into Cecil’s eyes. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen you before in my life. Are you one of them?”
“No!” Cecil almost shouts, which doesn’t help matters much. Carlos looks warily at him, and Cecil realizes that his outburst may have very well exacerbated the situation. “No, I’m not one of the Secret Police. I’m …” He’s about to say boyfriend, but then remembers that Carlos didn’t recognize him the slightest bit, so claiming he’s his boyfriend will probably create an even worse situation.
“I’m a friend. I’m Cecil, and I came to rescue you… you left a note when they took you, and I’ve been hunting you down. Are you sure that you don’t remember me? At all?”
Carlos shakes his head. “I’m really sorry, but I seem to have… gaps…”
Every word makes Cecil’s heart quiver in fear, but he doesn’t show it as he asks Carlos another question. “What do you remember?” He waits, his breath tight in his chest.
Carlos looks down at his hands, frowning. “I remember coming to Night Vale. I remember I have a lab by the Big Rico’s. There are all these strange rules that I have to follow, and there’s a house that doesn’t exist… and the clocks don’t work...”
“Do you remember why they locked you up here?”
He grimaces, rubbing his forehead with a knuckle. “I don’t know why they locked me up, they did it to mess with me somehow, and that’s all I know… I don’t remember much of it, honestly…”
He attempts to get up, but slides back down, groaning. Cecil slides a hand around his shoulders before he realizes he’s doing it, but Carlos doesn’t push him aside. Cecil chooses to believe that somewhere inside Carlos there’s at least a faint memory of him, some tactile remembrance lingering.
“Don’t get up yet, Carlos. We’re going to get you out, don’t worry, but you need to move slow, mi vida.” When Carlos doesn’t respond with a whispered “Querido,” but a bewildered look instead, Cecil realizes that he’s messed up. He should have thought, he should have remembered Carlos wouldn’t understand now, but it hurts, just the same.
Without thinking, he used the name that he’s taken to calling Carlos in moments of great peril or distress… it was something that they would do, as a sort of way to check in after danger had come, and passed over, to reassure each other. More than that, even, it was a way of saying “I’m all right, I can get through anything, I can survive as long as you’re here with me.”
Carlos had started it, so it was his fault, really. It had been a harder contract negotiation season at NVCR than usual, and when Cecil got home, trembling from a mixture of fear and adrenaline, Carlos had whispered in his ear, “Querido, are you all right?”
Of course, Cecil wanted something to call Carlos, and after that whispered Querido, “perfect” just didn’t sound lyrical enough. Cecil had wheedled Carlos into giving him a crash course in Spanish endearments, and Cecil had picked mi vida… my life. It seemed appropriate. Unlike “perfect,” it was not a term to be used lightly, but only after the greatest storms, the greatest perils had passed.
Now, Carlos only looks back in Cecil in bewilderment, and Cecil feels bits of his heart flaking away.
But instead of becoming despondent, he calls out, “Billy, Dana, can one of you get Carlos a chair… he’s pretty exhausted.”
Billy grabs a chair and moves it right beside the door of the glass cell, while Cecil slides has arm tighter around Carlos’s shoulders, helping him from the crouched position to his feet. They shuffle together out of the cell, and Carlos slides into the chair with obvious relief. Cecil notices bruises on Carlos’ knees and elbows, and feels the anger that’s been bubbling inside him ever since he discovered Carlos’ re-education intensify.
Cecil stalks toward Jerry, turning on him with a rage-filled hiss. “What did you do to him? I want the particulars, the little details… if you lie to me I will not be responsible for my actions!”
“This again,” Jerry drawls infuriatingly. "I’d thought you’d have realized it by now… you’ve had ample time to talk with him.”
Cecil grits his teeth. “Tell me everything.”
“Oh, all right. All we did was completely expunge any memory of you from his brain, seamlessly, we had just finished when you lot barged in here… you should be glad we stopped at that, or-”
“Or what?” Cecil snaps his fingers. “You know what? I don’t care. I realize you just told me a lie. Your life is on the line here, let me remind you, so please think back, remember how I interrupted you before you could finish!”
“What?”
“You said you finished wiping his memory, but he has gaps, which he shouldn’t have. You must not have finished the process.”
“All right, maybe we weren’t completely done, but-”
Cecil casually slides the barrel of the gun beneath the man’s temple. “I would advise you to think, very, very carefully, about what you’re going to say.”
Jerry gulps. “What do you want me to say?”
“Can Carlos’ memory be fixed?”
Jerry grimaces. “Why would we want to do something like that?”
“You tell me,” Cecil says evenly, smooth as if he’s describing the community calendar on the radio. “Why did you take his memories in the first place?”
“He made you a liability,” Jerry answers instantly. “You weren’t paying attention to the news, you moved in together, it was a mess…”
“We were in love,” Cecil growled into the other man’s face. “Of course it was a mess! You used Carlos, you treated him like he wasn’t even a person, just to get to me?”
“It was a job well done,” Jerry sneers. “I won’t help you reverse the process…”
“Can any of you reverse the process?” Dana asks the other lab techs. One of them, a lanky young woman, raises her hand so fast it’s a blur. Her name tag reads “Amy.”
“Then we won’t be needing you then,” Cecil says to Jerry, and shoots him in the shoulder. As Jerry begins to cry out, Cecil leans over and whispers in his ear, “Shut up.”
Jerry’s lips slide shut, with a sound like a staple being driven into paper.
“Right,” Cecil says, turning around. Billy is helping Carlos on with his labcoat, and Cecil is gratified to see how much better Carlos looks with it on- he’s standing straight, despite his obvious ill health, and looks more self-confident than he did before.
“I’ve called the angels for extraction,” Dana says, slipping her cellphone back into her jacket. “They’re working their way down here now.”
“Right,” Cecil says, barely listening. “Have them get you, Billy, and Carlos out first, then have them come back for me, and Amy here.”
“What?” Dana says, her brows tightly drawn with confusion. “No way am I leaving you alone here! The angels can take Billy, Carlos and Amy out, then come back for us!”
She crosses her arms in a way that indicates she will not be moved by any pleas, and Cecil gives in. “Right, but keep the Trans-Matter Ray on you, I’ve only got my pistol.”
A quick flapping of wings indicate the angels’ arrival. The black and green angels look fine, but the pink angel is limping slightly. “This Erika is injured,” says the green angel. “They can only make one flight, and one flight only before they must rest and restore themself. I and this other Erika will return for you and Cecil, Dana.”
All three Erikas disappear, taking with them Amy, Billy, and Carlos.
“I have an idea,” Cecil says. Dana looks worried, but he’s already turned to the other lab technicians, unbinding them, but before they can make a sound, he’s speaking.
“Why don’t you go find the other Secret Police, and engage in a friendly round of screaming your fears into the aether?” Cecil suggests. “Stop when I tell you to stop.”
They scurry off, taking Jerry with them, who now seems to be unaware of his gunshot wound, and instead is playing with some scraps of paper.
Cecil turns to Dana with a grin. She looks taken aback by his sudden vindictiveness, but not surprised.
“I’m not going to tell them to stop.”
Billy can tell the difference in his angel’s flight- they are halting, slow when they should be fast, fast when they should be slow, and it worries him, because it seems to pain Erika. When they finally land in the desert, he knows something’s wrong. They don’t seem to be in the right place- there’s no sign of Cecil’s car, for one thing, and there’s a large concrete building in front of them, for another. They’re no longer in the scrublands, either, for the slopes here are not covered in sagebrush and creosote, but in sand, and every so often a stand of scrubby brush or cacti.
“Erika?” he asks his angel. “Do you know where we are?”
They shake their head, and when Billy takes a closer look at the angel, he sees green tears trickling from their eyes. The other two angels are already there, along with Carlos and Amy, but Billy is too concerned about his angel to pay attention to them.
“What’s wrong?” he asks, worried. “What’s wrong, Erika?”
They put a hand to their stomach, and Billy stares at the green ichor soaking their robe.
“Oh, no, no, no,” he babbles, pressing a hand to their stomach. It’s the first thing that pops into his head. Pressure, gotta apply pressure to wounds…but the stuff coming from the wound isn’t even red, it’s green, and it’s everywhere… what if Erika has a different type of circulatory system, what if he can’t save them… Erika’s pink face is going paler and paler, and he know that, at least, is not a good sign.
Carlos is already beside Erika, guiding them down to the hard-packed sand, pillowing their head on his arm, Amy standing close behind him.
“Help me,” Carlos says to Erika. “Can you tell me what you feel?”
“That Erika doesn’t talk,” says the green angel. “They communicate in other ways. Ways that only other Erikas can hear.”
“Well, what are they saying now?” Billy asks.
The green angel shakes their head. “They are in too much pain to communicate.”
“Could you possibly try again?” Billy requests, hoping that they could garner more information.
The green angel closes their eyes, taking on an attitude of listening, then shakes their head rapidly, as if a fly has been bothering them. “They show me only pain. Located… in the diaphragm?”
Billy looks to Carlos hopefully- he has no idea what a diaphragm is.
“Muscle controlling the lungs,” Carlos mutters distractedly. “Could cause problems, but not if we get them to my lab, quickly.”
The black angel speaks. “There is a Good Samaritan approaching. He will help, do not fear.”
“How soon?” Carlos asks. “We need help now, not later…”
They nod, and raise one skeletal hand in an attempt at a thumbs-up. “You will receive help within the half-hour.”
Carlos nods. “They should be all right, if we can get them quickly to my lab.”
The green angel beckons. “We must return to gather Palmer and Dana from the field of battle before they are obliterated. I shall return to claim Erika. Keep them safe.” They vanish, and the black Erika looks after them, pausing for a moment, clearly wanting to stay.
“Help them,” they say over their shoulder, and vanish too.
Billy turns back to see Carlos wrestling a scalpel away from Amy.
“What were you doing!” he demanded angrily as Carlos finally wrenched the thing from her grasp.
“It’s not supposed to exist!” she snapped. “Clearly it’s a threat to us- it would be better if we were to kill it, quickly, before the others come back.”
“You are so stupid,” Billy says in disbelief. “Look at Erika, they’re bleeding!”
Carlos turns Amy loose, and she immediately tries to snatch the scalpel back. He pushes her away, towards Billy. He knows he won’t be able to match her physically, so he uses the Freeze Ray to immobilize her, setting it up on its collapsible stand so that he can help Carlos.
Carlos says to Erika, his voice soft and gentle, “I’m going to cut into your robe, okay? I need to do it to see the wound.”
Erika nods, twice in quick succession, and Billy holds the robe steady so that Carlos can cut it away from the large puddle of spreading ichor. He sucks in a noise of worry when he sees the puncture wound- Erika’s been stabbed, deeply, right below their ribcage. Carlos’ busy hands still when he sees the wound as well, and Billy knows it’s worse than he thought.
“There’s no way we can tend to the wound out here,” Carlos says, folding some of the cut away robe into a pad. “Press this into the wound, maintain pressure,” he says. “For Erika’s sake, I hope that they were right.”
Billy holds his breath, doing his best not to breathe in the ichor, but the smell of crushed leaves fill his nose anyway. He looks anywhere but at his own gloved hands, which are covered in ichor. He surveys the landscape, humming under his breath to Erika as he presses as hard as he dares against the wound. A cloud of dust is building, and he hopes it’s not a sandstorm or anything like that, because they have no way of finding shelter- they certainly can’t go back to the mineshaft, and Cecil’s car is not in sight. He points it out to Carlos.
“See that cloud of dust?”
Carlos raises his head, and peers at the oncoming cloud. “It looks as if it’s coming this way,” he says.
Before he finishes speaking, the cloud has tripled in size, and Billy thinks he can spy headlights, projecting though the haze of churned-up sand.
“It’s a car…” he says slowly.
The cloud of dust is upon them now, and then it slowly settles. A tan Corolla with mismatched, old hubcaps stands before them. Billy thinks that somehow it looks familiar, but he’s too busy coughing and waving the dust away from Erika that he doesn’t recognize the driver until he gets out.
“Steve Carlsberg?” Billy asks incredulously.
“That’s me,” the man says. “Looks like you’re in some trouble here…” He walks over, despite Billy’s bristling when he draws near.
“An angel… you two are in more trouble than I thought…” he says. “I told you that getting involved with Cecil Palmer wouldn’t lead you anywhere good, didn’t I?”
“You did,” Billy says shortly. He hopes that Carlsberg leaves soon. That Good Samaritan should be here any moment, at least, accord to what the angel said…
“Well, let’s get them in the car,” Steve Carlsberg says quickly. Billy shakes off his shock at once, and he and Carlos move to either side of Erika, while Steve holds open the car door. Carefully, they place Erika on the backseat, and Billy slides in, too, pillowing their head on his knees.
“We need to get Erika back to my lab,” Carlos tells Steve, taking shotgun. “Otherwise we’ll never make it in time.”