Triptych

Middle - Part X

SEVERAL WEEKS pass, and slowly the reporters slink back into the shadows. There is no story to be got out of such deep mourning, and even the most ruthless of paparazzi seem to have misgivings about mining the death of an infant.

Eventually, Gwen and Basil have to return to work.

Kalp is asked by the Institute to stay home. It is not an order, not exactly, but it might as well be. They fear it will not be safe enough for him to come out, not yet, and a security guard who is much better at Guitar Hero VI than Kalp is — especially with his new hand injury — stays to keep him company. The guard is Agent Aitken, the quiet, intimidating woman with enthusiastically curling hair and a stern mouth with which she alternately smiles or glowers. Kalp makes a pact with himself to never anger her.

It is also the day that Derx is shot between the eyes.

Kalp learns about it from the news first: a fatal shooting at the favoured restaurant of the employees who shun the canteen of the Institute. High powered bullets came through the plate glass window, sprinkling the diners around the tragic trio with shrapnel that sent nine more to the hospital. The reporters announce that there were two shot. One is dead, and one is en route to the hospital, in dangerous condition. A third bullet is furrowed in the back of one of the stoves, having travelled miraculously through the back wall of the dining room and into the kitchen without hitting a single body.

Kalp imagines it to be Gwen and Basil for an hour, before the news releases Barnowski's and Derx's names. Oh! If only Derx had not been such a snob, or if he had not been so against simple cafeteria fare...

Everyone from the Institute is sent home early, and Kalp is waiting at the door to usher Gwen and Basil in when they manage to force their car past the knot of reporters that has sprouted on the street outside of their house. Aitken shoves people away and yells things until the crowd disperses.

They lock the doors and draw the blinds.

Kalp feels like his life is spiralling down, slipping through his control, and he cannot quite get a grip on it, no matter how hard he squeezes. That night they perform intercourse again for the first time since the concert — they mark the date by the concert and not by whatever else happened the same evening — and it is frantic, desperate, clinging and gasping into mouths and holding each other tight enough to leave lurid marks behind; tight enough to prove that they are all still alive.

Nobody leaves the house the next morning, and the Institute does not call them to demand that they attend work. The whole building is shut down for the day, out of respect for Derx's death. Every section, except the secret police brigade. They are out searching for the murderer.

This time, Kalp does puke. He spends all morning by the toilet and for an absurd second fears that he might be pregnant. But it is just fear and horror and too much loss for a body to handle, too much shock to go through. He drinks ginger tea after ginger tea, brought to him by a worried Basil, until his stomach is settled but his hands are shaking. Gwen stands in the shower with him, helps get the sick out of his fur, and off his snout, and he kisses her scar, kneels down and kisses her flaccid belly over and over and over.

On the second day, there is no news on the killer, but only the humans are allowed to come into work, for fear of someone else being shot. Basil and Gwen leave reluctantly, and Kalp passes the day feeding his chickens and trying to beat his own high score on the video game machine and emailing answers to the questions Basil asks via his BlackBerry. They are strange questions, questions that are far more theoretical than Basil has ever asked before, and Kalp isn't sure how to answer many of them.

Kalp is only an engineer, not a quantum physicist.

Basil comes home with a thick, glossy black briefcase with a no- nonsense lock under the handle, and when Kalp asks if this is what Basil was asking him about all day, and could he see it, Basil turns pale and shakes his head and goes to put the thing away in the safe under his desk.