missing marks -- grim maxwell

[swing]

part VII
The structure was impressive -- not as grandiose as Peterhof, but its frame jutted from the sloped side of the Tien Shan Mountains and swallowed their base in a stripe of concrete. There were no fountains, instead black trees sprung their branches toward an endless sky and shaded the building in splotches when leaves were full. It was almost inviting when the world hadn't turned blue, but now the rows of frosted windows looked hollow and even the brilliant architecture of the red door had lost its luster. Night had washed over the cerulean day of crystalline flakes and a sunless sky when suddenly everything changed.

Dark plumes of pre-industrialized smoke billowed out from the two stacks that sat heavily on the rooftop as one by one the windows glowed with electrical current like tiny candles. It shone and yawned its light across the suture marks of a railroad track until the crests of water could be seen. The thunder of noise was restricted to the buzzing of flood lamps and wailing of wind against loosely fitted windows.

It had been a ghost ship -- remnants of hospital beds and unfinished projects of wires and tubing like skeletons of eels hung suspended from the ceiling. Surgical steel operation tables tarnished like fine silver, but from this wreckage rebuilding had occurred.

Thousands of white coats lived and breathed over little rows of chemical tubes and burners, latex fingers swiped away dust particles only to collect them for fuel. These men and women were blind to the history that layered their advancements and still they reached out in the dark, groping for the only man who had a pair of eyes with sight.

Alexai.

Containers full of synthetic food graced the shelves of a glass cabinet like fine China. He inspected each with a kind eye while his tongue gave sharp criticisms. These projects were now obsolete, but instead of smashing their work these white coats simply reused them into something else. What couldn't be digested could be turned into fuel or stitched into fabric. Everything was created to be recycled, everything could be made into something new.

Recycled. Reformed. Reprogrammed.

Those days were gone. He reminded himself every day of his life. This place gave life and possibility to a future that would otherwise fail. A world without disease. A world without crime. A world without failure. These things would not fail. These minds would not let them.

As he walked away from one laboratory into the next, he found his own station in a disarray of mannequin parts. Arms that moved when sparked with a current, hearts that beat on their own and a pair of legs that were yet unfinished. He felt like Gepetto making puppet parts for broken dolls who someday hoped to be real again.

He could not save her life, not now, but perhaps he could improve it. That much, he owed to her.

[swing]

Part VIII

A shadow play of movements brought her across the floor without a sound as the men gathered in a circle around an exhibit from the museum?s restoration. Pressed against the wall like a Nazi mosaic, Anika stretched gloved fingers against the glass until the sun faded through clouded window. The heavy murmur coming from the other room was loud enough for her pull apart the pedestal that held a Faberge nativity. Her calculated movements suddenly shattered as brows knit together while hands blindly groped inside of the pedestal to find empty space. It was only when she rose, that the sharp edge of metal met with her spinal column.

?What did I tell you about stepping on my toes??

His words were hissed into her ear as she remained immobile, green eyes already gauged the fall from the window. She tipped her head until her chin slammed into a shoulder and spat words at him.

?Gehen Sie, Grimmig.?

The murmur in the other room had softened to silence, save for the clatter of expensive shoes heading away from their stand off separated only by a wall. He waited for the echo of spiral stairs being rounded before he shoved her forward.

?Move.?

Her limbs moved with a strange fluidity given her situation ? there was a confidence in each stride before she met the center of the nearly empty room. Its walls were covered in the progression of artistic movements, each painting seeming to blend into the next. A smile slowly spread over her features at the painting in the center ? its landscape was unremarkable, save for the red house perched along the side of a steep hill.

?You don?t know where it is, do you??

?I already have what I?ve come here for. Kneel.?

?The red house.?

?Kneel, Anika.?

?Listen to you, so tense at the menti??

?I?m not going to ask you again.?

Her attempt to spin sideways was anticipated and in a moment, she fell. Her body sprawled like a frayed ribbon as the notch in her spine began to bubble carmine. Instead of crying out, her hysteria came in waves of laughter ? a taunting echo that made Grim aim the gun at her head.

?You missed! You missed! Dummes Schwein, versuchend, mich zu t?ten.?

He bent over and pulled her head by the hair from the floor, so that when he spoke, she was sure to listen.

?I never miss. I didn?t say I?d kill you, just make you miserable.?

?You always did need the company!?

Her head landed against the floor with a loud crack before she fell still and he replaced the gun in his pocket before he lifted the painting of the red house from its mount and pulled the square folder from it, before everything was put back into place and he descended the stairs.

?Where were you?? One of the robust men narrowed eyes at Grim as he approached.

?I fell in love with one of the paintings, but it is a pity that it is a replica.?

?How do you know that??

?Nothing fell the same way in the composition.?

[swing]

Part IX

Rebirth held the same childish awe for her that it had when she had seen her first diamond. Now locked under glass, thousands of failed attempts to renew herself awaited potential prospects. She swiped her fingers over the ledges of the case where glass connected with metal and slowly spun the wheels of her chair to propel her forward toward the door. This, she thought, is my last attempt at rectification.

Russia still held that same bitter taste which congregated on the back of her tongue and forced the corners of her mouth downward as she squinted against the bright spot of the sun as it bled into the sky. Alexai waited on asphalt that held more memories than he would ever care to admit to anyone -- his small glasses caught the glare from the sun, but did not hold that same brilliance as diamonds. His reflection would never be multi-faceted in her mind; he had a specific purpose, one that hummed quietly in the hive of ??????? ??? behind him.

"You're late."

His voice was worn thin but still sharp beneath the accent that nearly grated Anika as much as her own. She offered no reply but instead threatened to take off his toes with her wheelchair as she headed in front of him as if she knew where she was going. He followed behind her with an unhurried pace, she had come all the way to him after all. The doors were opened for her, but his hands gripped the handles of her chair before she wheeled too far down the wrong hall. Everything in the building had the sterile quality of a biochemical factory -- but its cinematic allure was lost on the labyrinth of halls and doors that ended with one red door that was left half cracked and dark.

"I assume, this is where you would like me to stay."

"Three months, Anika."

"I don't have that kind of time."

"Make it."

His rules were unbending to her shrapnel laced voice. His tongue seemed sharper than hers even on her best day, but that was not always his demeanor. A doctor first and foremost, he only used that tone with patients that would prove to be the most difficult. He moved around her to turn on the light to the small room that held all the amenities that a hospital would normally provide, save for the surgical cart that gleamed like an empty mirror just waiting for something to reflect. Alexai turned the light off and moved back down the hallway with the assumption that she would follow.

His work station had never been in such an impeccable state -- neat rows of equipment and records lined the space around the table that seemed to hold the severed half of a cadaver covered with a stark white sheet. He waited until she had wheeled close enough before he worked his fingers slowly underneath the fabric to peel it back so that she could examine his work.

"Three months, Anika. I have to be certain there will be no complications."

<font color="#000000" size="1">[ July 28, 2005 07:35 PM: Message edited by: secondhand bruises ]</font>

[swing]

Part X

In a stabilized limbo, Grim Maxwell's life blipped across the screen in a series of valleys and peaks. His ribs resembled translucent paper lanterns as heavy rings swallowed eyes that seemed to recede with each rise and fall of breath. Fingers twitched on occasion, but eyes never opened. His mind swam the tranquil between nightmare and a voice he would have considered his second heart, though the words were warbled like a record player under water. Drapes opened and closed with the passing days of his transition from the first month to the second, and from the second to the third.

The hallway stretched on for an eternity as slow steps resembled trepidation while the floral print of scrubs was tugged at its hem as a hand fell into a pocket. The other took the sheet from the plastic box that was mounted on the wall outside of the hospital room, while she greeted the patient known as "Maxwell, G." Her smile sat crookedly on her face as her voice pitched to a chipper note that ended nearly as soon as the door had closed behind her.

The clipboard was abandoned on the chair, as she moved toward the bed with the same unhurried steps. She wrapped cold fingers around his wrist to feel the pulse that beat shallowly, but still caught the screen in a continuous movement. She bent slightly as her smile stretched wide over her face before a pin was removed from the side of her shirt and stabbed into the pad of a forefinger. Satisfied at the lack of response, she spat words at him like acid. "Grimmig, Sie Bastard. Even in my finest moment, you always seem to beat me."

This victory she held in a pocket was not nearly sweet enough for her liking. He was not supposed to die in a hospital bed, certainly not by something so painless as a heavily medicated sleep. She moved and close the curtains so that the day faded into a sliver of red light that fell over his weakened frame and turned him into something much more ghastly than he had ever been in life, before the syringe was pulled from her pocket and measured in the same light.

"Don't worry, I will make sure that bits and pieces of you find their way into every collection." She let the liquid drip drop into the IV slow enough that the pulse would take a few moments before fingers slammed the code button just as his pulse flat lined.

In a flurry, uniforms filed in to swarm around her while they shocked paddles together and slammed them onto his chest. She watched as they continued this motion while the screen still kept the same flat green line as she back pedaled further toward the door with the same repetition of "oh God" pouring from her lips like wine. Her path was momentarily disjointed as her shoulder connected with a blonde nurse who shoved past her to shout into the hallway.

Within moments, the paddles were packed back on to the cart as solemn faces moved out of the room to make way for the Chaplin who held his breath as he passed over the doorway. Anika turned her smile toward the floor as she heard the beginning of the benediction.

"Eternal rest, grant unto him O Lord...."

[swing]

Part XI

Three weeks earlier

The process had been lengthy ? spent under the fluorescent hum of laboratory lights which flickered like an erratic pulse. The stench of plaster and latex mingled with sour milk sterility that was common to hospitals. Gloved fingers were careful in maintaining a steady pulse in both patients that lay like separated twins on stretchers at either side of her.

This was not her work. Her work consisted of cleaning up the messes left behind by those who had a steadier hand than she, but now she watched her cousin come to life on a completely different person who had been hand selected due to the same state that he was in. Stuart Goodman had a life in Pennsylvania with a wife and a daughter, but a car accident had claimed his consciousness. His limbs were nearly as lanky and lean as the man he was in the process of becoming and Anastasia felt just a minute twinge of guilt as his fingerprints were shaved off in a meticulous manner.

David had given her all of the instructions necessary, but his stomach was too weak to finish this himself. What had been picked up on international static was universal ? Anika still held her grudge and people in certain places could easily find the walking dead. Ana rebuilt the structures of the man?s face beneath a cast of her cousin?s and within hours this man resembled the ghastly visage of Grim as he lay beside them both in an immobile state of awareness.

The words that Ana spoke into her cellphone, filtered through his thoughts but were nothing more than a drug-induced drone. Instead of seeing his cousin on the backs of heavy lids, he saw Goa in the beginning of twilight. Waves crashed against the shore and swept away sand castles that had been half abandoned earlier in the day. The pale haired woman to his right said something slowly through a smile and swept the hair that had fallen from her pony tail out of her face. He recognized Julia in a snapshot from the time before, when she was happy and her face lit like a thousand candles in the dark. Kate spun in circles through the house, but her music was unheard as he reached out his hand to rest it upon Julia?s shoulder. His speech caught in his throat as he felt her bones begin to shake beneath the weight of his palm and in a moment she crumbled like sand, washing over his feet until he was swept back into the black deep of dreamless sleep.

Ana watched his heart monitor jolt and level off with worried eyes while she listened to the crackle of David?s voice before the phone was snapped shut to sever the communication. Slowly fingers crawled over instruments in an attempt to attach the face at the notches of the man?s jaw in a seal that would be undetected. Every knick and every scar had been transferred to create a nearly exact duplicate of Grim Maxwell, the only thing that didn?t match were the blood types. That, she took care of by remaining as staff on the floor where the two men lay side by side in opposing rooms.

Carefully, she packed everything away and wheeled them both to their new rooms with little difficulty from the staff placed at the information desks. They watched curiously as the woman flashed a tired smile and placed their files back into their slots just outside the room doors. With the favor nearly returned, Ana only had to be patient. A virtue that no one in their family had ever really possessed.

<font color="#000000" size="1">[ July 28, 2005 07:33 PM: Message edited by: secondhand bruises ]</font>

[swing]

part XII

Moscow

"How are you feeling?"

The lilt of a woman drifted through his consciousness as his eyes peeled themselves open. He placed a hand over his heart, expectant to find a hole there but felt instead a syrupy mix of red liquid that was too bright to be his own blood. The woman handed him a mug of tea and shook her head with a faint smile.

"It's the same blood you use in your training biology labs to determine typing," she explained cooly.

"That still doesn't explain why you shot me with it."

"That's not important. Drink your tea, you've got a mess to clean up shortly."

--

Grim Maxwell was stretched on his stomach against the surgical steal examination table with his spine exposed and skin pulled back as if he were a moth ready for dissection -- pinioned down with clamps and pins until his muscle tissue made carmine colored wings. Though it was not an auditorium, Alexai still felt the chill of hundreds of eyes watching his hands as he used their latex coated finger tips to prod and press at the spinal column lightly. The minute twitches of Grim's unconscious frame did not distract Alexai as he peeled back tissue until he found what he was looking for.

David sat hunched over a garbage bin just outside of the room while Ana stood on the other side of the door in the shadows where operating lights didn't need to cast their glow. Her gun was trained at the doctor's head and with each twitch that Grim produced, she tightened her grip on the trigger.

The tedious process of separating the damaged microchips from nerve endings caused his brow to bead with sweat that fogged his glasses faintly. Ana began to pace, clicking heels as a marker of the seconds that were slow in forming into minutes while he worked. The slight sound of suction made Ana's stomach turn as Alexai pulled out one of the chips that still carried threads of spinal tissue on its corners. The second was not far behind and it clinked inside of a bowl like gold coins.

Alexai filled Grim's back with sutures before he peeled the gloves from his hand and tossed them into the trash. From his pocket, he pulled out a tissue and wiped the sweat from his brow as he crossed into the shadows toward where he guessed Ana was standing.

"He needs new blood before I can administer the shot."

"Are you sure this will work?"

"I designed the weaponry, I am confident that I designed the solution."

"There are live rounds in this gun, Mr. Vermeil, remember that."

[swing]

Part XIII

David sat by the bed where Grim's heart was continuously monitored with a book opened in his lap. Nervous glances were shot at the monitor when it blipped a little too rapidly or a little too slowly as his blunted nails scraped at the wood varnish on the chair. The room was too quiet, even with the mechanical humming of life saving devices and David's nerves only seemed to worsen with each heavy breath that he drew into his lungs to hold. Eventually, eased into a half-slumber with arms crossed as his head rolled onto his shoulder.

As David sunk easily into the dreaming world, Grim tore back into the living. Mangled lashes untangled from their spider weave as fingers clawed at the places where the tubing was punctured into his arms. He pulled the weight of his body off of the bed with his spine's signature arc lifting his ribcage toward the ceiling as he gasped for breath. Blue eyes were open to the drug-induced haze of lighted fixtures and the ribcage structure of the ceiling. The ashen tone of his voice choked in his throat as his tongue had yet to gain its reflex of enunciation.

David jolted from his position in the chair but was sat back into it by the strong hand of Alexai as he stormed into the room and jabbed a syringe into Grim's raised jugular, forcing him to plummet back to the bed. Alexai's face was set in a solemn sort of rage as his glasses bore the reflection of a waste-thin man on their lenses.

"Stay still you fool! You could rip out the sutures and bleed to death! Do you hear me?!" Alexai tapped his fingers against Grim's cheek hard enough to make him wince. "In thirty seconds, the medication that I put in your system will wear off. If you try to remove yourself from this bed, I will not be so kind."

The voice filtered through Grim's ears at a sluggish pace until he felt himself relax from the temporary paralysis that he was experiencing. He recognized the man from the fragments of his comatose dreams but did as he was instructed and kept his tongue still. Alexai wiped his hands on a towel and turned back to examine David who had visibly blanched with wide eyes looking between the two of them.

"David," Alexai snapped. "Go out and get the wheelchair, there is something that I want to show him."

[swing]

Part XIV

Grim?s eyes stayed at half-mast as his body was wheeled down a brightly lit hallway toward a large window. He closed his eyes fully as a sigh rattled out of his throat before he was violently jerked to face the window completely. Alexai rested a heavy hand on Grim?s shoulder and peered out toward the cracked pavement that was now surrounded with biochemical trucks and slow moving technicians.

?Do you know where you are?? Alexai?s words were softly spoken as Grim forced his eyelids open to look out the window.

It looked more like a skeleton playground, everything had been stripped away or painted into something new but the spider webbing of the pavement brought back the sound of a gun and shattered glass. Grim saw himself as a young boy firing a gun before he shut his eyes and dropped his head into a nod. Alexai released the grip he had held on Grim?s shoulder and removed his glasses in order to wipe them clean. As Grim reopened his eyes he saw the distinct symbol between forefinger and thumb that had haunted his sleep.

?Red House,? Grim rasped.

Alexai settled his glasses back onto his face before he turned the wheelchair and headed off down the hall again, this time to a large room where he sat Grim at the end of the table. He stood at the other end of the table and watched the face of his watch. ?Alright, get up and walk to me.?

Grim gripped both sides of the chair and attempted to pull his cadaverous frame up from the chair but couldn?t. He fell back into the chair and Alexai stopped looking at his watch. He rounded the table and began to wheel Grim out of the room.

?You will have to rehabilitate your muscles. I will put you in the care of my top physicians and when you are ready, call for me. There is something which you and I must discuss.?

<font color="#000000" size="1">[ August 03, 2005 04:41 PM: Message edited by: secondhand bruises ]</font>

[swing]

Part XV

Months had passed before muscle and tissue filled out underneath translucent skin that became slightly less opaque. Eye sockets looked less bruised and more jaundice discolored as the bitter bite of blue irises regained its usual sharp edge. His process of walking was slow on crutches, each step seemed to take a lifetime as the scar along his back reformed in a thick red line ? at least it wasn?t tearing open any more. David had stayed as long as he could, but his things were packed up early that morning while he ate breakfast with the physicians who were working on rehabilitating Grim. When he returned to his room, he was informed to stay at a Moscow hostel while his plane ticket was wired to him and David did as he was told.

The narrow stretch hallways seemed like singular eternities that wove their way in a labyrinthine manner toward the pulsing heart of the building. Alexai watched the face of his watch as he heard the slow ticking of crutches as Grim pulled himself toward the room and finally into it. It was familiar, like the taste of blood in his mouth that immediately entered as soon as he walked into the room. He fell, exhausted, into the chair across from Alexai underneath the glaring white light of fixtures that hung heavily overhead. The stripe of a two way mirror had been left darkened like an empty televison control room, it was then that Grim realized he was on the other side of the plexiglass.

?Do you know why I brought you here?? Alexai asked quietly as he turned his face toward the room that was empty.

?To show me something,? Grim?s response was sharp as he studied the man?s face rather than the room that illuminated in his mind from days prior.

?Partially,? Alexai replied before he drew his hands together and busied his eyes upon the heavy grooves of his aging fingers. ?Your father used to watch you right in that chair.?

Grim turned eyes toward the room and back again before he rested his hands upon the smooth surface of the table. ?What are you talking about??

?Landon Maxwell. That name is not your father?s name, just as Alexai Vermeil is not mine,? Alexai began. ?How much do you know about your father??

?He died on a train when I was very young with my mother and brother.?

?Do you know what he did for a living??

?He was an engineer.?

Alexai paused his questioning as he pulled his glasses from his face. ?How long have you been having blackouts, Graham??
Grim?s mouth cinched shut at the usage of his formal name and the knowledge that very few had ever been privy to. ?I don?t know, you tell me. You seem to know me better than I know myself.?

?I will tell you what I know if you promise to listen to me and take into account what I am saying is true. I have a syringe in my pocket that will sedate you if necessary, but I would really like to have an honest conversation with you.?

?Start talking.?

?Your father?s name was Robert Phillips. He was the foremost weapons engineer in London?s underground circuit. These people were a black-ops unit that not even the MI-5 had heard of. In the beginning, they had no name but later partnered with an organization that you are very familiar with; the Order. The Order commissioned your father and I to create a new kind of biological warfare, one that could be spread like the common cold and still be contained within city limits. At first neither of us wanted to take the job, but we decided that we should take it together as brothers. My name is Thomas Phillips and I have always been a biochemical engineer, but as all agents in the field must, I chose a new name.?

Grim took in a breath as he listened to Alexai?s speech.

?We were never meant to be field agents just as your friend, the doctor, is not designed for combat. Our job was merely to design the weaponry that was used. We both had started families before we were called in by our supervisors and told of a new assignment. Our assignment was to fabricate the perfect field agent using our own children. I had no children at the time, but your father readily agreed to putting in his first son and daughter. What do you remember about your brother and sister??

Grim felt the slow slap of shock creep over him, as a man programmed not to feel the experience was rattling and his breath began to shallow out as he rifled through his memory banks for information on the both of them. ?Keith was in the military and Kiajara had epilepsy.?

?Both of your siblings suffered severe complications from the devices that were implanted. Keith, you shot when you first learned to fire a gun.?

?That?s impossible, he died on the train.?

?There was no train accident!? Alexai slammed his fist on the table. ?That is a false memory that they put into your head. Your father was executed in nineteen ninety-eight by an African militia group known as the Ituri. Your mother was assassinated in front of him before he was killed. How did Alana die, Graham.?

?She shot herself,? Grim?s response was unflinching as this new story came out.

?She shot herself because we told her to do it.?

At this, Grim began to launch himself over the table but Alexai kept his voice steady.

?You are completely relaxed. Count back from ten. Ten...Nine...Eight...?

Grim?s body collapsed on the table as his eyes sealed themselves shut. Alexai stabbed two fingers at his jugular and kept his pulse before he continued speaking.

?Everything that I have just told you is the truth. There are directories in Klavier?s old house. If you really wish to know the truth, look there. Forget what you know. When I close the door you will wake up remembering what I said.?