His lips moved again. Then he closed his eyes—and Boiled moved no more.
Balot held her breath. Suddenly her right glove slipped off her hand and fell to the ground, along with the gun it had held. She heard the clang as it hit the sidewalk repeating over and over in her mind, and she felt such sorrow she was amazed she wasn’t crying. She lost all her fighting spirit the moment the gun hit the ground.
She
Balot scrambled to pick up the gun. The muzzle was still red-hot.
She called him again and again. She wanted him to tell her what she should do. Suddenly, she realized something, and she stared at the gun. It revealed something about Oeufcoque’s actions—his
The gun had no trigger.
The pain that had once left Balot’s body was now returning.
05
The wound to her temple throbbed. All her muscles screamed with pain.
The pain still remained even after the emergency services had given her first aid and the effects of Boiled’s Area Device Weapon had been deactivated. Balot had taken it upon herself to feel the pain. It felt like it was the only thing she could do.
Oeufcoque remained a gun, utterly unresponsive.
Balot sat in the front passenger seat of the red convertible, cradling the gun in her lap, facing down the pain that racked her body. Without her realizing it, that rhyming ditty had somehow returned again.
The fire brigade, clad in red, sprayed fire-retardant foam here and there from atop their fire engines that were themselves the color of the fires they were dispatched to put out. Residents emerged with their claims for compensation and insurance, and their details were taken down by world-weary city officials.
The police had cordoned off the area and had located Shell’s body—it had been safely deposited in some landfill, and he was now being stretchered away. The media were out in force, their cameras snatching what they could before they were pushed back behind the police line.
People in white uniforms were taking blood samples and collecting body parts—Shell’s fingers, Boiled’s limbs—and wrapping them up in plastic bags before hauling them away. After that, the corpse was placed in a bag. There was only one dead body. Balot watched as the heavy bag was carted away with some difficulty.
The Doctor was nearby, speaking to the police. Among them were some of the DAs that they had met or seen at the trial. They smiled and cheered the Doctor, who thanked them and basked in their praise. He was delighted.
The Doctor parted from the police and came over to Balot.
The ditty had now finished, and the Doctor was right there to fill the gap.
“Well, looks like this will bring your case to an end. The second case will now progress from the preliminaries and on to the real thing.” The Doctor smiled gently. It was a smile of encouragement.
The Doctor rested both his arms on the car door and looked down at the gun that Balot was hugging close to her.
“If you wouldn’t mind, uh, I wonder if you’d stay with Oeufcoque for a while to try and give him some comfort. The outcome of this case…well, it’s pretty close to the bone for both me and Oeufcoque, as I’m sure you can tell.”
Balot looked toward the dead body that was being carted away as she
The Doctor’s face looked surprised at this unexpected news. “Boiled said that?”
Balot nodded ever so slightly. Then she asked another question.
“Uh, aren’t you a little tired, though? You know we still have the Humpty. You could always go and lie down there…”
“Boiled said something else?”
Balot nodded again.
The Doctor didn’t nod. He didn’t shake his head. He just stood there silently, as if he were waiting for the words to fully sink in.
“I was involved in that experiment myself… I was one of the ones who made him so that he would never need to sleep. Never be able to sleep.”
Balot’s eyes lowered.
The Doctor shook his head. “There’s still lots to do. That is, uh, there’s a lot we need to do right now…”
“We’re going to have to save our grieving till later.”
Balot nodded firmly. The Doctor needed someone to do that for him. The Doctor smiled, just a little, and left the scene.
?
Balot peeled her thick bulletproof clothing away from the bodysuit she wore underneath. It thudded to the floor of the car.
Then she pulled her gloves off and exposed her perspiring hands to the cool air.
The red convertible avoided the early morning rush hour traffic on the main roads and wound its way toward the coast. The car passed over a giant bridge that traversed the ocean and reached an area covered by a concrete platform. Beyond the clean and fresh coastal region lay the industrial zone, slick with oil, and beyond that were the multi-story apartments and public residences comingling with the graffiti of homeless teenagers, all sleeping under the same purple sky.
Balot gazed at the banks of the city, held her gun to her chest, and cried.
As she cried, she became keenly aware of the fact that she hadn’t died. She hadn’t died and was here, feeling pain.
She hadn’t lost her life. She hadn’t lost her body. She hadn’t lost her heart. She had been wounded, and hurt, but that was it.
Oeufcoque had protected her from everything. Right through to the bitter end. Even at that moment when, in order to live, she
Shell’s past had finally caught up with him and pushed its way back inside his mind. Boiled had welcomed the end to the senseless killing that he had so wanted. These were the final steps that the two would ever take up the
