The Great Below

The Address

There were sunrises, when Octavia was a kid. The sky pulled back layer after layer of color like a show about to begin – purple, blue, yellow – before a blazing ball of orange took center stage. Of course, there were always sunrises. It ceased to impress her as she grew up, so she treated it like everyone else did: as the small, daily miracle no one cared about.

She would have liked a sunrise that morning. It would have marked the day as important, or grounded her in the understanding that the world was permanent. Comforting. She tried to imagine it from high above the ground, in the building where she'd done her scope training or the rooftop that neighbored Jacob Corrigan's office. She hadn't seen a sunrise then and she wouldn't see one now; she and her co-workers had always gone to bed at dawn and rose at dusk. If she really wanted to see a sunrise, she'd have to wait six more hours.

Maybe the sun was an illusion, a dispelled myth from her former life. It wouldn't surprise her if it never rose again. Victor turned to her in the sickly green of the dashboard display, smiling. He reached over the gear shift to pat her knee. "It's almost over," he said. "I'll take care of everything."

The Walther P38 weighed, cold and secret, against her stomach.

#

Dominic's door was left open. The halls were quiet, too – only one employee passed with a sidelong glance before sprinting to the stairs behind Alex.

Didn't. Billy hadn't said that Dominic doesn't see it that way. He said didn't.

Dominic was slumped over the desk, fingers curled toward the rich wood in what resembled a hug. Like he could drag it into the afterlife with him. Alex waited a long moment at the door, watching. Praying for movement. The scene in front of him a static frame of film.

Maybe a part of him knew that Victor would do it. He wasn't willing to think about it right now.

When he came closer, Alex could see that his uncle's leather belt had been removed and cinched around his throat. It had snapped apart at the false seam that appears when a man uses the same notch day after day. It must have been a favorite, that belt. But the stunted leftover belt had still been enough, though it had since unfurled itself into a browning puddle of blood.

Nick reached the room panting. "Shit, Alex," he said, though he'd barely looked in. "Most of the guys are gone. I'm watching the CCTV, and—" His face went slack, all of the emotion draining off his chin.

Alex reached two fingers inside the lip of the belt to feel a neck going cold. It wasn't quite skin. It was raw and torn in places, and it was the wrong color. The flesh of an uncooked chicken.

"Is he...?" Nick asked.

Dominic's computer sat open facing the wrong way, covered in fingerprints made of blood. Alex woke the screensaver. It too had been cued up to the closed-circuit televisions, and the small black-and-white form of Octavia sat curled on her own feet at one side of her bed. Alex tapped 'play' and she began to wriggle her arms behind her back. It looked like a game a child would play. Her arms shifted back and forth and passed under her bottom, which he realized was bare. It looked less like a game then. She struggled until she was on her knees, tugging her pants up and gripping the bed for support.

Alex slammed the laptop, causing Nick to flinch. He'd wanted to hate Victor so much and the feeling wouldn't come. Nothing came. The office around him blurred in tunnel vision, leaving only the crime scene in front of him, and Alex couldn't shake it off. He meant to rub at his temple, but it only woke the pain in his eye again. "Grab what you can and let's go."

In the hallway, they found Billy passing with several bags from the weapons cage. Alex and Nick stopped in a tense impression of calm; neither man retained the authority to stop a theft, under the circumstances. Victor had flipped their food chain upside-down. Billy stopped without looking in, shifting the weight of the straps on his shoulder. His face was a mask of indifference. "I tried to stop him," he said again, as if it meant something. "This was a good gig."