Peppermint

Chapter 8 - Où Est Le Soleil?

***ALEX***

AK whistles, finally breaking the long silence left in the wake of my reveal. "You're telling me that our twins are friends in the afterlife? Holy Christ, what a coincidence!"

I look up at him and the three cops surrounding us. (Oh wait, no, two cops and Bennet's a consultant. Don't tell him I forgot that, though he probably knows from hearing it in my thoughts anyway.) "Yeah..." I drawl. "Yeah, this is the part where you insist you believe me, but you're all lying through your teeth."

Khan and Moss exchange glances and small smirks, while Bennet folds his arms and says, "Kid, we know when people are lying to us, and you're not."

"In which case," says Khan, "that pretty much puts all our respective afterlife beliefs in the trash, am I right?"

"Don't act so surprised," says Moss. "We all knew that day was coming sooner or later, right? Turns out it was sooner." He looks up at the wraparound ground-level window again. "Oh, cool. Sanchez is back."

Sure enough, seconds later, Sanchez comes through the glass doors and back into the bullpen. At a fast clip, his wings still fluttering a bit through the back of his uniform (at least his has wing slits in the back, unlike, say, my school blazer and shirt), he returns to his cubicle and triumphantly slams down another lore compendium on his desk. "And thank you," he says, "for screwing with the order of the ones I keep here. Not that it really matters. I guess I'll just add this one to the pile..." He places the new compendium on top of the stack for a second, then lowers it back to the desktop and opens it up.

I catch the title a split second before the cover goes facedown and vanishes from view.

Logan.

"Wait, Logan?" I ask. "As in Wolverine?"

"As in the movie that bears his alias," Sanchez says.

I'm about to ask what he's talking about, but then it hits me. I've only seen that movie once, but there's one scene I remember all too well - when Logan's driving Laura and Professor X on a freeway in Oklahoma or someplace, and they get sideswiped by a passing truck. At first, I kept thinking the truck belonged to their enemies, but it just went on its way and was pretty much never seen again.

The reason for that, I think, is because the truck actually had a little something in common with Scoville's.

It was entirely automated.

"Yeah, you're getting it now, aren't you?" Sanchez nods to me with a smile on his face. "And you?" He turns to AK, who just stares into space, images from the movie spilling out of his head and into all of ours. "That's what I thought."

"Yeah, but..." AK scratches the back of his neck. Huh. Guess there's a little more family resemblance between the two of us than I thought. "I mean...is Scoville copying something he saw in the movie, or was the movie made with his concept in mind, or...?" He shakes his head, the longest parts of his hair flopping around loosely. "I'm so confused."

"You're not the only one," I say. "And as the only one who actually understands any of the Pirates of the Caribbean sequels-"

"Don't tell me we'll need my lore compendium for that series too," Sanchez says.

I purse my lips in thought for a moment. "Nah. Pirates aren't really a thing in my life."

"Your life?" Moss repeats.

"Like I said, weird shit happens to me all the time."

"So what do you propose we do?" Bennet asks. "Visit Scoville himself and ask him the truth? He's a little out of our jurisdiction, though, isn't he?"