Nebbia

RED LIGHTS, BLUE SKIES

ARKELL

"We build ourselves to make the world a better place, but we end up getting made by the world."

Jack was gazing out of the window as he spoke, his raspy voice well in tune with the weather outside. It wasn't cold enough to call it winter yet; neither warm to pretend it was still summer.

      "That's the irony of being human." I lifted my gaze to the flickering lights of the ceiling, dimming out unhurried. "We get so focused on the things to do that we lose track of what we shouldn't."

      "When I was young, my father used to tell me that nobody was good or bad without having the same amount of the opposite." Jack was turned away, his frame partially blocking my view, with eyes staring deep at what laid far off the mountains. "We can believe that we are good people, but at the end of the day we feel the same intense, flooding attraction to blackness. How can we call ourselves virtuous, if we've never been wicked in the first place? It's like loving summer without ever having seen winter. Sometimes, people are good because they don't know how to be anything else."

      I followed the drizzling spots on the window as I walked to the main view. The sky looked heavy with grief. Signs of a bad weather were right on the corner, ready to scream it all out and later subside. In fact, it wasn't so unusual for Washington to be gloomy at this period of the year.

    "Do you already know what the world has made out of you?" Now that I was close by, I wondered whether or not he stopped a second to notice me; could he see the cut on my chin due to a distracted shaving or my bloodshot eyes staring back at him, tired and baggy?

     "Heartless," he gasped, almost like he had been rehearsing it in his mind all along, "It only made me heartless."

      I heeded the line of his gaze and looked down at the buildings over the barricade. It was easy to stare from a window and know everything for what it was. No intrigue nor mystery. So many windows shutting off one after another and despite the darkness, we fed on their family secrets and skeletons in the closet. There was no place left to hide. What was theirs was now predominantly ours. "It's collateral damage."

     Fort Mayne — or what it looked like from the outside — was a seven-story building on an ex-military camp a couple of miles away from downtown. Sometimes I wondered how easy things would be on the other side of the spectrum. All I wanted was to look at myself as a stranger and not have any clue about what I was and trust people the same way I trusted my guts, without questioning the what-ifs of every situation. I knew a thing or two about standing always on the right and still being wrong. Maybe this was it. That's what the world has planned out for me.

     "Vaughn?" Mike's husky voice burst into space, letting a breath of fresh air come in from the hallway.

     "I hope I didn't interrupt the conversation." He added, probably not expecting Director Walker here as well.

     "Oh, no worries, come on in," Jack cleared, darting across the table to give him a warmer welcome.

     "Arkell?" His hand reached my shoulder, calling for me and putting on stop everything that crushed and bumped inside of my head. When I turned around, I saw Cavanaugh right in front of me, his flannel shirt standing out softly under the white lights. "We need you at the Undercroft," he said.