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“Yeah. I’ll see you at The Drop,” Mike grinned into the darkness as he hung up the phone, Abby’s reply still echoing in his ears. The Bello case was progressing, and he was on it. He had a date with Abby—a second date. And Sauce Night was coming, and if it held up to even half of the team’s boasting about it, it might make his head explode with how delicious it was. He’d go home, hang around Charlie and the sauce-in-the-works, try not to breathe on it or anything else that would make her hit him with a wooden spoon, and then he’d go to bed.
Or, perhaps, the planets would align and it would be his day to get mugged. Whoever the assaulter was, they came out of the darkness behind the car and punched Mike in the stomach, too fast for Mike to really react despite all his training. The figure then grabbed him and flipped him over onto the street in the space between the cars, or would have if Mike’s head hadn’t hit the curb on the way down.
He woke up with a gun in his face, someone shouting. It was too dark to see. Everything swam. “What?” he asked, his mouth dry, and he swallowed thickly, squinting into the darkness. His head was resting in a puddle, but was it raining? His throat was so dry, his tongue swollen in his mouth. The gun pressed into his mouth, and he blinked again, trying to see into the darkness.
The gun was removed, and he tried to look beyond it, into the shouting face. The guy’s eye was covered in a bandage, and he had an accent of some kind. Was he supposed to be speaking English? None of the words were making any sense.
The pieces fell into place sort of all at once, like breaking through a window in reverse. Eddie. Bello. The question, the gun. Eddie was getting agitated. “Who are you?” he demanded, and Mike blinked.
“Who—who am I?” he asked, and tried to laugh. “What kind of question is that, who am I?”
And then he was walking, the streets were dark, pools of light stretching across the street from the lamps, and he was walking in the street. Had he fallen asleep somewhere? Horrible nightmares of Mike Warren, part five. He had no idea where he was going. His mouth was dry and his tongue was thick and the back of his neck was sticky, like someone had crushed an egg against the back of his head and it was sliding down into his shirt. His back was stiff. Where was he? How long had he been walking?
Mike stumbled to the sidewalk and sat down on it heavily, rubbing at his eyes with the back of his hand. Focus. Take out your phone. If this was a dream, he could probably call someone he couldn’t call in real life, right? What happened if you asked the people in your dreams if they were real? He had read about lucid dreaming in college, about how you could control your dreams once you knew they were dreams. Could he make Abby appear? Could he make Briggs show up out of nowhere and confess everything? Get a straight answer out of Badillo about what exactly he was supposed to be investigating?
The phone, Mike. The phone. Who would he call if he could, a number that definitely wouldn’t be in his phone? Any number of girls he had met in college, buddies from middle school. What were their names? Gina, once he’d met a girl named Gina at a bar in undergrad and she’d kissed him but they never exchanged contact info. He scrolled through the contacts, squinting at the too-bright screen, past names he knew wouldn’t be helpful. No Gina. So this wasn’t a dream? Or was he just failing to be lucid? He could call, should call someone back at the house and they could help him. Or he could walk home. He had been walking, it wasn’t far, he knew he could walk home, but something... he shouldn’t. He didn’t know how. He didn’t know where he was.
Call. He should call someone. It was sort of like being on the road when it was hot, and all the cars were wavy, but they weren’t really wavy. They just felt wavy. Like he could see the electricity in his phone, keeping the screen lit. He should call someone, someone real. Briggs. If he called Briggs, would Briggs be pissed at him? What happened? Was it his fault? He got back up to Briggs’s number in his contacts, the screen swimming, and he hit call and put it up to his ear, slumping forward with his other hand on his forehead, elbow resting on his knee. Shit. Should he have called Charlie? Should he call Badillo? The ringtone echoed through his head, like he was calling with his brain and not a phone. The sidewalk was hard and the back of his neck was sticky.
The other end came alive with a click and Briggs answered with his name, like always. Mike sat on the sidewalk and breathed. Briggs sounded so weird through the phone, sound waves distorted over great distances. Telegraphs didn’t distort sound, but they had gone out of style like the Pony Express. Replaced the Pony Express, then replaced by telephones and now there was texting, which was kind of like a telegraph but you didn’t have to know Morse code. Three short blips, three long ones, three short again. If he could remember Morse Code and the Pony Express, why couldn’t he remember the way home?
“Mike. MIKE!” Briggs was shouting, and Mike squinted in the dark, closed his eyes, focused very hard on the distorted words. “Is this some kind of joke? I’m hanging up on you.”
“I think I’m in trouble.” The words rushed out of Mike all at once, like water, and Briggs was silent for so long Mike was afraid he’d hung up, except if he did hang up, there would be the dial tone again. “I don’t know how to get home.”
More silence from Briggs, then: “Mike, if you don’t know how to get home, just get into a cab.”
“I don’t see any cabs,” Mike squinted into the dark of the street.
“Well then go back the way you came until you find a street you recognize. What the hell is this, Mike?”
“I don’t remember how I got here.”
This time the silence was stuttered, like the pieces were coming together for Briggs too. “What do you mean you don’t remember?” he asked, sounding cautious even through the distortion of the phone.
“I... think I hit my head,” Mike said, and things started coming back to him in a trickle, the things that happened before he was there. “I—Eddie followed me, was waiting for me, I don’t know. I was walking by the pier. He grabbed me and flipped me over onto the ground and I hit my head on the curb.” Briggs sucked in a breath, the sound crackling over the phone, and Mike paused, waiting to see what he had to say.
“What did Eddie want?”
Mike rubbed his forehead with the heel of his hand. “I don’t know exactly,” he admitted. “He was asking me about my name, or... he asked me who I was. I told him he knew who I was, and then after that, I...” He sighed, leaning in on himself. “I don’t remember. The next thing I know, I was walking down this street that I don’t recognize.”
“Did you black out?”
“I don’t... it wasn’t like before, like waking up. I just don’t remember getting here. I’m sorry,” he winced into the phone.
Briggs exhaled again, the crackling like little bugs crawling into Mike’s head. “It’s okay, Mike. Listen. I need you to look around you. Is Eddie still there?”
“Hold on.” Mike climbed to his feet and looked around, up and down the street, for any other people. There weren’t even cars. He could hear the ocean. “I don’t think so,” he said back into the phone. “I think maybe I was trying to do a heat run, but I got lost. Or I woke up.”
Briggs actually laughed into the phone, and Mike could picture him shaking his head. There was a breeze against the phone, different from the sound of Briggs breathing—he must have been moving, walking, maybe. “Well, the Bureau did something right, beating heat runs into your head until you can do them while mostly unconscious.” Mike laughed at that, then winced. “Okay Mikey, where are you? Do you see any street signs?”
Mike squinted in the light and staggered towards what he thought perhaps was the end of the street. “I- I think maybe? A bunch of streets seem to dead-end into it. There are no cars on it, I don’t know if it’s even a real street.” He could hear Briggs’s impatient breathing on the other end. “I’m sorry,” he apologized automatically. “I can get to a major intersection, or at least a road cars are on, and give you that street?”
“No, Mike, I don’t want you walking anywhere else tonight. Sit tight. Stay on the phone. We’ll pick you up in the car. Charlie’s here with me, I’m going to hand you off.” There was the sound of a phone being tossed over, and then it was Charlie on the other end.
“Mike?” she asked, like the minute of no one talking to him meant he had somehow disappeared.
“I’m here, Charlie,” he responded. His eyes were getting heavy—all he wanted to do was go home and sleep. He sunk back to the sidewalk and covered his other ear with his free hand to make sure he could hear her.
“How’re you doing? Do you have a headache yet?”
“Not yet. Feel a little nauseous. Mostly tired.”
Another staggered silence, like she was giving Briggs a significant look. “Well no sleeping yet. How nauseous?” Her voice on the question was tight, and Mike wondered for a second if he was saying the wrong things.
“Not very,” he said. “It’s just hard to focus on things. I think it’s from looking at my phone.” He exhaled heavily. “Charlie, I’m really sorry about all of this-”
“Mike, stop apologizing. This wasn’t your fault,” she consoled him.
“You’re away from the sauce,” he realized suddenly. “Is that gonna ruin it?”
“Hey, no worries. Who knows who came into the kitchen and interrupted the cooking all those years ago?” She laughed a little bit. “Now with your head injury, does the math on that make any more sense?”
Mike laughed, letting his free arm drop between his knees to pick at the road under his feet, moving around a small rock across the blacktop. “Don’t ask me to do any math when I’m like this,” he joked. “I’m pretty sure my brain can’t handle it.”
“Yeah, well, we’ll see when we get to you. Briggs thinks we’re close now.” He hadn’t heard Briggs speak at all, but he trusted Charlie that she was right. He hoped she was right. “Mike, we’re parking now and we’re gonna walk. Keep talking to me, okay?”
“Okay, uh...” Mike turned to look up both ends of the street to see if they were coming. “What do you want me to talk about?”
“What did you do with your day today?”
“Well, uh, I, um... I woke up...” From out of the shadows, up the street, he saw two figures emerge into a puddle of yellow street lamp light. He heard Briggs through the phone as well as from up the street, calling his name as they ran towards him, Charlie’s breathing heavy in his ear. He stood up slowly, stiffly, and hung up the call. Briggs reached him first, and grabbed his arm, easing him back down. Charlie was slower, but that was mostly because she was carrying the first aid kit.
“Back on the sidewalk, buddy,” Briggs said. “Jesus Christ is that blood?”
Mike sank back down and put a hand to the back of his head, came away with wet fingers. “I thought I fell into a puddle,” he explained, not entirely sure what to do.
“Briggs if that’s just from hitting it against the sidewalk, there might be a skull fracture,” Charlie said, glancing up at him. She was opening the first-aid kid, and handed Briggs a pair of gloves. “You didn’t fall into anything sharp, did you?” she asked Mike.
“I, I don’t think so,” Mike said as Briggs struggled into the gloves before probing his head gently. “I mean, I’m pretty sure I didn’t.”
“We’re gonna have to get him to a hospital,” Charlie said to Briggs, who was now examining the area around the cut on the back of Mike’s head. Mike winced as he rearranged the hair around the wound. “He’s gonna need a CT scan at the very least. A laceration pouring that much blood? They’ll probably want to keep him overnight.”
“I know, but there’s no bruising around his eyes, and I don’t feel any fracture...”
“Paul,” Charlie snapped, and Mike lowered his eyes to the ground, not sure what to say in this situation. “Raccoon eyes is a late-stage sign of a skull fracture. If he’s bleeding out now, we have to get him to a hospital before he dies.”
“Charlie, if you think I don’t understand that then I’d say you don’t know me very well,” Briggs snapped back. “He’s also undercover in an operation with one of the biggest crime lords in southern California, and if he blows that cover, that’s it, he’s dead. He has no idea what he said to Eddie, he only did a heat run because Quantico did its job, and who knows when Bello’s going to call him tomorrow.”
“So you’d prefer he die sleeping in the house than by Bello’s gun, is that it?”
“Hey, hey, guys!” Mike said, raising his hands. Both Charlie and Briggs looked at him, and Mike realized he had no idea what he was going to say next. “I didn’t, uh. I-” He blinked at them both, and Briggs quickly got down in his face, cradling Mike’s chin in his gloved hand.
“Charlie, light,” he said, and Charlie handed him a flashlight from the first aid kit, which Briggs shined into Mike’s eyes. Mike winced and leaned away from the light, hissing in pain. “Shit.”
“Do you want me to go get the car?” Charlie asked, already standing.
“Can you get it onto this street?”
“The thing’s got headlights. If I can see it, I can get it there. They just don’t want people parking so close to the beach and clogging up the area.”
Briggs nodded, and Mike watched her run away back the way that they had came. “What happened?” he asked Briggs nervously. Briggs was back to feeling in around his head, closer to the laceration on the back of his head than before.
“Your pupil in your right eye,” Briggs said. “It’s totally blown. Can you see okay out of it?”
“I think so—I’m not having any trouble seeing, if that’s what you’re asking.” Mike bit his lip as Briggs fell back on his heels, looking into his eyes again. “So what, my pupil’s blown—does that mean there’s some kind of brain damage?”
“Well I don’t have any kind of scanning equipment, so who knows,” Briggs said. “Hey, follow my finger with your eyes, okay?” Mike did, to the best of his ability. “How’s that nausea you mentioned over the phone?”
“Still not bad.” The headlights of the car got closer, and Mike flinched away from them. Briggs put a hand on his shoulder as he stood, then gestured for Mike to take his arm. Mike rose, with help, the world spinning, but he stayed standing as Charlie pulled up in front of them.
“You know you left the keys in the ignition,” she told Briggs as Briggs helped Mike into the car. “We’re lucky some smartass kid didn’t decide he was gonna take a look. Car was unlocked, too.”
“Yeah, yeah, I’ll be more responsible next time,” Briggs snapped, climbing in next to Mike and slamming the door shut. “Drive,” he told Charlie, who complied without any snarky comebacks, speeding off with the tires squealing.
Mike relaxed against the seat of the car, trying not to get any blood on the seat back. He blinked and slowly closed his eyes. “Mike,” Briggs said, but Mike kept his eyes closed. The sound the car engine was making was burrowing into his ears and making the world one large heat haze. “Mike,” Briggs repeated, and then suddenly he was jabbing Mike in the sternum. Mike’s eyes flickered open unhappily.
“Briggs I’m trying—my eyes are tired,” he complained, shutting them as he spoke.
“What’s your name?” That was Charlie’s voice, coming in from the front seat, blurry because of the distance it had to travel, like over the phone.
“What?” Mike asked, swaying a little bit even though his eyes were closed.
“What’s your name?” Briggs repeated, then dug his knuckle into Mike’s chest again. “What’s your name?!”
Mike’s eyes rolled open, but everything was fuzzy now. “Mike Warren,” he said thickly. He was really thirsty.
“You know where you are, Mike Warren?”
“In a car. I think I was by the ocean before, on a street with no cars.”
“You know what day it is?” Every question Briggs asked was cut short, like he was cutting off a breath, or holding it in.
Mike blinked. “...Thursday?” he tried. From the look on Briggs’s face and Charlie’s stream of curses, that was not the right answer. Shit.
“Charlie, we better get through this fucking traffic fast,” Briggs snapped. Mike’s body shuddered, and Briggs grabbed him painfully by the shoulder. “Mike!” he shouted loudly, lowering his head to look into Mike’s eyes. Mike tried to look back, really he did, but everything was swimming and his mouth was full of saliva.
“I think I’m gonna puke,” he said softly, his chin tilting towards his chest. “I’m really tired. Can’t I just go to sleep?”
“No!” Briggs shouted, and jabbed Mike in the chest again. Mike’s eyes opened heavily. Everything was blurry now, even Briggs’s face, and it took more concentration than he had in him to keep the number of Briggses in the car down to just one. “Mike, you gotta stay awake, okay? We’re almost there. We’re almost there.”
The car screeched to a halt, and Charlie was already unbuckled, leapt from the car practically before it had stopped, or so it seemed to Mike. He watched her disappear into the blurry lights of what he assumed was a hospital. “Briggs,” he slurred, leaning forward.
“Stay with me, Mike,” Briggs said, the tension in his voice making it sound tight as it came out of his mouth. “You gotta stay with me.” Mike’s eyes closed again, the world a bunch of noise, like static over the radio and underwater all at once. His own name was echoing in his ears, and maybe those were hands on his torso, but he didn’t open his eyes to look. “Mike! Mike!” It was like walking down a long hallway with someone shouting miles behind you. Cool air washed across his face and in his ears, a roar like an airplane was taking off right next to his head. The shouting was left behind, and Mike exhaled and the world was black.
He woke up to the electronic sound of his own heartbeat, the buzzing of the lights above his head. His throat was raw, and he coughed before opening his eyes. The light hurt them, and he closed them tightly again, whimpering a little bit—not something he was proud of, not something he would mention later, but nobody else would either. When he finally did pry his eyes open long enough to adjust to the light, he was laying in a hospital bed, a thin blanket pulled up to his hips, sitting up on an incline. There was an IV in the back of his hand, and, he noticed as he heard the whoosh of pressurized air and the tickling in his nose, they had him on oxygen.
Mike turned his head to the left, and saw Briggs sitting in a chair, sleeping, arms crossed over his chest. From the bags under his eyes and his rumpled clothing, it looked like he had been there for a while, but how long exactly, Mike couldn’t tell. When he turned his head the other way, he got a window with a halfway decent view. A hospital room all to himself. That was pretty impressive. Maybe the FBI insurance plan wasn’t half-bad. ...Unless it had something to do with his position in the Bello case, in which case, it was still nice but a little less comforting.
“Briggs,” he said, and his voice rasped. He winced. Briggs’s eyes opened and he sniffed, blinking wearily. Mike did his best to grin at him. God he was still tired. Part of him wanted to just fall back asleep now, but he’d gone and woken Briggs up, and it didn’t seem right to just fall back asleep on him now.
“...Mike.” It seemed to take Briggs a minute to register that he was awake, and then he leaned forward, grinning. “How ya feeling?”
Mike sniffed, the smile on his face wan but still there. “Not great,” he said. Briggs leaned over and hit the nurse call button on the rail of his bed. “I’m really okay,” Mike began to protest, but Briggs just shook his head.
“If this isn’t just a moment of lucidity out of your minimal responsive state—you’ve had a few the past couple days—they’ll want to start testing you for post-traumatic amnesia. And while I’m not a fan of shrinks, we thought you might be dead after that whole ‘rapidly deteriorating in the car on the way here’ stunt you pulled.”
“...Couple of days?” Mike started at Briggs, hoping he had just misheard him. “How long have I been here, exactly?” Briggs inhaled, looked out the window over Mike’s head, nodded as he mentally counted. “Five days,” he said finally. There was a long pause as Mike tried to absorb that information. <i>Five days.</i> How could that have-
Nurses—way more than was necessary, Mike felt—filed in, as well as what looked like 5 doctors. That probably wasn’t the actual number (Mike had a significant brain injury, after all) but it felt a little intimidating. Briggs clapped him on the shoulder as he rose, grinning. “You’re gonna fail,” he said to Mike, who glanced at him, totally confused. “Good luck anyway. I’m gonna go get a coffee, and they’ll let me back in when they’re done.” He walked between the medical professionals, who parted like the Red Sea for him.
Briggs, as always, was right. Mike wasn’t sure how he was supposed to know what hospital he was being treated at when he had arrived unconscious, or the time of day when he had literally just woken up—ditto that reasoning on the day of the week. And while theoretically three pictures was not a lot to remember, it seemed like an overload when he also had to remember that today was Tuesday (making tomorrow Wednesday, and he’d have to remember that tomorrow) and the name of the hospital as well as the name of the doctor administering the test... By the time Briggs got back, Mike was practically dozing. His eyes were closed, at least, when Briggs sat down noisily in the chair, but he opened them as he heard what he had to assume was intentionally loud creaking as Briggs got comfortable. With a sigh, Mike’s eyes peeled open, and he glared at Briggs, who smiled cheerfully, much more awake now that he had coffee in his system.
“So,” he said casually, gripping a styrofoam cup and taking a sip. “How’d the test go?”
“Flower, rock, bug,” Mike repeated dully for him, and Briggs grinned evilly into the cup.
“That’s good,” he said. “Tell me them again after you go back to sleep and wake up.”
Mike scoffed, and shook his head. They lapsed into a moment of silence, during which Briggs drank more coffee and Mike looked at his legs and the IV in his arm. Briggs was obviously waiting for Mike to choose the right words, he just... couldn’t seem to find them, and not just because he had recently received major head trauma. “Five days,” he finally said, not looking up at Briggs. Briggs nodded, adjusting the coffee cup in his hand, not making eye contact with Mike. He stared instead at the bed railing. “Five days,” he repeated. “The first three, you were in a medically induced coma while they waited for the brain swelling to go down. You were intubated, too, which is why you sound like a barely pubescent chainsmoker.” That would explain the sore throat, too. “It was touch and go there for a while. They weren’t sure you were ever going to wake up, until... you did.”
Mike swallowed. “Jesus,” he said softly.
Briggs nodded again, still not making eye contact with Mike. He took a sip of his coffee and continued. “Once they had determined the swelling had gone down, they stopped the drugs, but said you might not wake up. You were in a minimally conscious state. Like I said, you’d sometimes be lucid—or rather, sometimes you weren’t totally unconscious. You’d open your eyes, but weren’t tracking well. I don’t know, that was all medical mumbo-jumbo. It would happen and all I know is I had to hit the call button every time you opened your eyes and they’d rush in here and shepherd me out and then six minutes later you’d be back in Comaland and they’d let me back in for a few more hours. But now, they tell me, it looks like you’re in the clear, for the most part. You remember a lot more than you’re supposed to, apparently. Your name and all that jazz.”
“Yeah. They told me I did pretty well, for the first test.” Flower, rock, bug. It was somehow still in there. All he could do was hope he could still remember it tomorrow. The conversation lapsed into another silence as Mike fiddled with the tape on the back of his hand, peeling back the edges until Briggs cleared his throat, and then he pressed it down with his finger. “So what happens with Bello?”
Briggs shook his head. “Mike, now isn’t the time-”
“It’s fair to say I’m off the case, isn’t it? If he tried to make any contact in the past five days, I wasn’t there to receive it...”
“Mike,” Briggs said, the warning obvious in his voice, and Mike sat there in silence, looking at his lap, trying not to tighten his jaw too tightly. Briggs sighed and sat back in the chair and finally looked at Mike, who raised his head to meet Briggs’s gaze. “We released a story that a reservist with the 316th Quartermaster company out of Pendleton was mugged, severely beaten, and was in a coma and not expected to recover.”
Mike breathed in as deeply as the flow of oxygen he was receiving would allow. “So I’m dead, effectively,” he said. “What happens if one of Bello’s guys—if Eddie—sees me?” Assuming I’m not permanently disabled.
Briggs exhaled heavily, rubbed his face with his hands. “Eddie’s body was found two days ago,” he said. “From what little we can gather—because we don’t have anybody on the inside any more—Bello was pretty pissed when he found out he was out a shooting instructor. You can imagine the conversation from there.”
Eddie dead. Their single contact gone. “Shit,” Mike muttered, exhaling heavily and leaning back against the bed. “God I fucked this up.” He covered his eyes with his hands and just breathed for a second.
“No, that’s not true,” Briggs cut in sharply. “Look, this wasn’t your fault, Mike. We had no idea that Eddie was going to come after you the way he did. I don’t think he intended to hurt you, based on the questions you said he was asking you. It just spun out of everyone’s control.”
Mike lifted his hands from his face and exhaled heavily, spread his fingers across the blanket, blinked, then turned back to Briggs. “What about Sauce Night?” he asked, and he saw the corners of Briggs’s mouth twitch.
“Sauce Night was kind of a downer, I heard,” he said. “The sauce was good—it always is—but people just weren’t as into it this year.” “You heard?” Mike asked. “You didn’t go yourself?”
“No, man. Someone had to be here with your unconscious ass. What if the miracle of Sauce Night meant that Charlie’s great-great-great-great-grandmother’s spirit came down and used the sauce to heal the swelling of your brain? We didn’t want you to wake up alone.” Mike just stared at Briggs blankly. The oxygen was pumped into his lungs, but he just held it there.
“You missed Sauce Night for me?” he finally managed to choke out. Briggs practically rolled his eyes.
“Look, Mike,” he said, leaning in. “We take care of one another in the house, okay? Technically you’re my responsibility; I’m supposed to be training you. That’s how this thing works. You got hurt on my case. There will be other Sauce Nights, trust me. But if you died while I was stuffing myself with spaghetti, the Bureau would have some serious questions for me—and I would have some serious questions for myself. I’d do the same thing for Johnny or Charlie or Paige or Jakes. I’d hope you’d do the same thing for me.” He was looking straight through Mike’s eyes, into the back of his skull, and Mike wondered if he knew somehow, knew about Badillo and the real reason he was at Graceland.
“Of course,” he said, his throat thick, and he looked away, back at his hands. “Still,” he continued. “Thank you.”
“You’re welcome,” Briggs said, leaning back in his seat. “Now get some rest. I’m gonna call Charlie and give her your update. She’ll like to know that, even if you did fail the test.”
“Flower, rock, bug,” Mike repeated, closing his eyes and letting the whoosh of oxygen take over. Briggs gripped his shoulder, and Mike could imagine his grin as he left the room and let Mike fall back asleep to the soft chorus of beeps from the monitors, eyelids fluttering as sleep took over again.