Crimson, CH05 (Patreon)

Alex didn’t call out to Jack as he entered his apartment. He had stopped doing that after a week, letting the oppressive silence remind him he’d lost someone precious and needed to find him again.

He went to his computer and put the chip in, but instead of sitting down, he headed for the kitchen. He told himself it was because, after the day he’d had, he needed to eat something. Like each time he cooked, he tried to keep the portion small, but once the smell of the food surrounded him and the sound of the pots and utensils filled the silence, he forgot his promise to watch what he ate, and by the time he was done, he had enough food to feed three people.

Or Jack and him.

He ate everything he cooked, taking his time, savoring the food. He’d realized that the speed at which he ate was more of a factor than how hungry he was, and in how much food he could ingest before getting sick.

Once he was done he cleaned the dishes, put them away, and headed for the computer, but on the way there, he caught the scent of what he was wearing. Without the smell of food masking them, the scents of the day came from his clothes. So he washed them, and his sheets while he was at it. 

After the months he spent wearing the same thing, he couldn’t tolerate dirty clothing anymore. Instead of going to his computer while the machine worked, he inventoried the fridge, then had it place an order to restock it. After that he dusted the shelves, since he hadn’t done that in a day or two, or maybe it was three.

After the washing machine informed him his clothes were dry, he made his bed, organized his closet, and began dusting the shelves again.

He’d moved the Defender, to wipe the clean shelf under it, when the realization hit. He should be reading the information on the chip. He’d been looking for it for weeks now. Didn’t he want to know what was on it?

He placed the Defender down, left the cloth on the shelf, and turned to the computer, then stopped. Emerill’s words came back to him. “You will not be the same once you read this.” The concern on the man’s face had been genuine, Alex was sure of it. And Alex realized that the warning scared him, so he picked the cloth back up and went back to cleaning.

By the time he went to bed, his apartment was cleaner than it had ever been in his life, but the computer remained turned off.

It took him two days to reach his breaking point. He’d been in the process of moving things on his shelves around—he’d moved pictures and had just taken the Defender from the left side of the living room to the right, where he thought it fitted better.

In turning to see what else needed to be moved he’d seen the computer, and Emerill’s warning came to him again, but this time the fear it engendered make him angry. Why was he so fearful of being different? He was miserable right now. He was alone. What was so good about who he was? And hadn’t he promised himself he’d do whatever was necessary to find Tristan and save Jack? Was he really a coward? More importantly, did he want to remain one?

He sat at the computer and wondered if he’d done the wash today. He was almost out of the chair when he recognized the thought as procrastination. He forced himself down and brought the file up.

The first section was a physical description of Tristan: Samalian, dark brown fur, scattered white specks. Six-foot nine, two-hundred ninety pounds.

Right there, Alex knew his interrogator had been wrong. Yes, Jack and Tristan looked alike, but Jack wasn’t six-nine; he had only been a few inches more than Alex’s six-one, but she’d been so obsessed about blaming Alex for what had happened, she ignored such an obvious difference.

The next section spoke to his personality, describing him as a scheming psychopath with no compunction against killing. At least that was what Alex got; there were a lot of technical terms in there he didn’t understand and didn’t feel like searching for.

But he got enough from that to know his interrogator should have again seen the difference. Jack was sweet and loving, not a cold-blooded killer. And her assertions that Tristan simply acted that way was ludicrous; no cold-blooded killer could pull off the love Jack radiated.

The next section began the list and description of Tristan’s crimes. The first one was six murders on a transport ship called Junjager. Those six had formed the crew, and there was no information as to what Tristan was doing on board the ship. The only detail of the death were that he had dismembered them, and a link, which Alex brought up.

He took one look at the picture, then ran to the bathroom, barely making it to the toilet before throwing up. He closed his eyes and tried to chase the image out of his mind, but he couldn’t.

It had been a cockpit, and there had been blood everywhere. Dismembered didn’t do justice to the massacre Alex had glimpsed. One of the bodies had been opened from crotch to chest by something jagged, the guts spilled out on the floor. Another’s head had been smashed against the wall either often or hard, because it was crushed and brain matter leaked out down the wall.

Alex cursed his good memory and analytical mind that made him such a good coercionist. Now it wouldn’t let go of the image, bringing up details, like that the decapitated head placed on the control panel had a look of terror on his face, or that the body in the pilot’s seat, without his head, had been carefully cut open, the insides taken out and placed at the feet of the victim. Alex’s mind told him that he hadn’t been dead when that had happened.

When he was able to get up—and confident he wouldn’t throw up again—he went to the computer, took out the chip, and almost dropped it in the disposal unit. He hesitated, his hand over the unit, chip in two fingers. As horrible as the image had been, did he really want to destroy all hopes he had of ever finding and rescuing Jack? He placed the chip in a desk drawer, then went to bed and tried to sleep.

He had nightmares that night. He saw himself being locked in the pilot’s chair, screaming in pain as his guts, then his lungs, and finally his heart were removed, and when the killer looked up from his work, it wasn’t Tristan’s cold eyes that looked at him, but Jack’s loving gaze.

In another scene he was in his apartment, blood covering the floor and wall. There was a body on his bed, human, but not him. Strong, caring arms held him. A muzzle was pressed in the crook of his neck, licking and nibbling, and Alex felt himself get excited at the prospect of what was coming. He heard sounds, but they had no distinction, other than encouragement. The blood-covered furry arms placed something shiny in his hand, and Alex’s excitement was so strong it hurt. As one he and his lover moved to the body, bent down, and Alex planted the knife in his interrogator’s heart.

He woke with a strangled scream, his stomach covered with the evidence of his excitement at killing someone. He thought he’d throw up again, but instead felt dirty, so he washed—for a long time.

After that he couldn’t stay in the apartment, close to the reminder of the dream he couldn’t manage to forget, so he went to work. He threw himself into attacking systems, using the focus required in that to push the nightmare away.

When he looked up between assignments and saw her watching him. The images came back to him, the feeling of the knife going in, how good it had felt to finally be rid of her.

Fortunately, now that he was awake, his body didn’t react with excitement at the memory of the dream, but revulsion. He found a toilet and threw up again.

For a week he spent as much time at work as he could, only going home to sleep. When he was home he stayed away from the computer, terrified that just by sitting at it, the chip would call to him and he’d see that image again, or other images like it.

Each day he’d catch her watching him, and the dream would come back to him. Feeling his alien lover’s body pressing against him, and them bending down, the encouraging words whispered in his ear, the climax as the knife pierced her heart.

On the second and third days he threw up again, but on the fourth, he didn’t. He was worried he was coming to accept his enjoyment of what he’d done, but he wasn’t; the dream’s overall impact was simply diminishing.

By the end of the week he remembered the dream when he saw her, but it was vague now, like most of them. It wasn’t him doing the act anymore, but a shadow version of himself. The words his lover whispered no longer carried any meaning. They’d become indistinct sounds.

When he went home that night, he’d understood what he needed to do if he wanted to understand Tristan. If he wanted any chance of finding him, he had to get used to seeing the result of his crimes. When he began actively hunting him, he’d see more than pictures. Alex was certain that in his hunt for the alien, he would come face to face with those crimes. He’d see dead bodies, desecrated bodies. He had to become desensitized to it.

A part of him screamed that he was insane for doing this. That he didn’t remember things as they truly were, but he pushed it away, locked it at the back of his mind. If becoming insane was what he had to do to save Jack, then that was what he’d do.

The Junjager had been found drifting at the edge of the Tournal system by an arriving transport. The only thing missing on the ship was one of the life pods. The investigators theorized that Tristan left the ship using it. They knew he was on the ship because he was logged as a passenger.

Alex noted it was sloppy of him not to have erased that evidence, but reminded himself this was Tristan’s first crime. He had to have been young, inexperienced. Why Tristan had killed the crew, the investigators didn’t postulate.

Alex forced himself to look at the picture again. He thought that after getting used to the dream, the picture wouldn’t affect him as much. He was wrong. This time he didn’t make it to the bathroom.

After cleaning up the mess, he sat back down and studied the picture again. He continued staring at it, analyzing every detail, until he no longer felt his stomach fight each time he thought about it. Only then did he move to the next report.

This one proved easier. The body count was higher, six-hundred and twenty-eight, but there were no detailed pictures of the result. The deaths had happened when Tristan blew up Tetsui station.

The Osagua Cruise ship was much the same, seventy-three dead during the explosion.

The next one, the killing at Uritual, was different. Tristan had only killed one person, a bounty hunter named Johanna Sheldon. He’d skinned and filleted her, drying the skin and muscles, and blanching the bones before dumping them at the doorsteps of the organization she had belonged to.

The action spoke of a coldness that brought Tristan’s eyes back to Alex when he’d said he’d used him.

Then there was a town on Ucoryla Two, which he’d bomb. The report only had an estimate of the dead, two-thousand.

The next six killings were vicious: six bounty hunters affiliated with the same organization Johanna had belonged to. Those killings spoke of rage and anger.

The days blended into one another as he read more and more of Tristan’s killings. Some executed coldly, some with burning anger. Tristan had been caught and imprisoned three times, and he escaped each one. Twice with a high body count, and once in such a way that no one had figured out how he had done it.

When he finished the last of the reports, Alex didn’t know what day it was, or even what time. All he knew was that Emerill had been right. In forcing himself to read them, he’d done something to himself. He’d lost something.

He took a long shower, but he still felt dirty afterward. He tried to sleep, but his dreams were filled with Tristan’s victims. Fortunately, Alex wasn’t in those. He didn’t have a repeat of the dream where he killed someone, but he did wake up to the memory of Tristan’s hand around his neck, screaming, “He’s mine! You’ll never get Jack back.” And then, pain in his chest as the alien ripped his heart out.

Alex swore to himself he’d prove the alien wrong. He would get Jack back, and if needed he’d kill Tristan in the process. He reread the reports, looking for any indication of where Tristan might be, places he might hang out. Any starting points for his search, but they didn’t have anything.

The most recent entry claimed Tristan was imprisoned on the prison ship Sayatoga, delivered there by a bounty hunter, Miranda Sunstar. He tried to locate her, thinking that since she’d caught him, she’d know more than what was in those files, but her information was buried too deep and too well for him to access it from home. He considered using Luminex’s system for that, but he’d promised Emerill he wouldn’t.

He contemplated breaking the promise. It wasn’t like he owed the company anything, not after the way it treated him, but Emerill had given him a second chance when he could have washed his hands of him. So he decided he’d have to find a different way of tracking Tristan.

He didn’t know how he was going to do that, but he wasn’t going to give up. No matter the cost to himself, he would get Jack back from Tristan.