Edgelord

Noir, Dystopian Speculative Fiction

You know, ‘there’s more than one way to skin a cat’ only matters if you’re not the cat. That’s what I was trying to explain to the man I was torturing.

“The people I save aren’t picky, Jack. If I have to break laws, or legs, or the entire goddam world to save their loved ones-you know they’re cool with that, right?” All I could see was the top of his head, so I twisted his dislocated arm again until he reared back and screamed. The pain kept him conscious.

“So, I’ll ask you again, Jack. When’s the delivery?”

Jack’s bloodied head dropped back down like one of those old Sippy Chicken toys from my granddad’s youth. Jack was weak. Typical. Goddam criminal.

Well, not technically. Technically, I was the criminal. Jack just was a high-end Lyf2ber driver-one of their quote-unquote managers: with special access to their company schedules. Jack’s main clients were executives of BellWeather. And BellWeather was the Pharma firm setting drug prices so high that my client couldn’t get the care she needed. And-as I’d just decided earlier that day-Jack was now gonna be my informant.

I held him there a while to let the gravity of his situation set in. I knew from experience he could see himself sweating in my helmet’s obsidian faceplate. I was sweating, too; but just because the battle armor is heavy and its built-in tech makes it warm.

A few minutes later, information in hand, I’d transferred some Cidence(Coin) to his car’s wallet, for his troubles-enough to compensate him for lost wages and the medical care he’d need.

Plus two more things. First, a large tip. More credits than he’d seen in a while. More than any of his executive clients could have possibly given him. The next time, he’d just answer my questions without all the drama. And second, a promise: If he told anyone it was me, I’d kill everyone he ever loved. Then I named them all, to underscore it.

People wonder where Edgelord could possibly get his intel. Well, I get it the same place everyone gets everything. From the real workers. The victims.

I used to be one, too. A victim. Before I figured out what needed to be done.

I left him there, alone with his car, near the abandoned dog park (the one with the inlaid chess board tables) where I’d lured him. I went through the building to the other side where my own car was parked.

###

Not long after I re-entered my vehicle, Martha’s call buzzed in my head. Here we go again. I tapped my hidden dongle, a simultaneous touch of the first knuckles on my first and third fingers with my thumb, middle finger extended.

“What.” I whispered under my breath, mostly out of habit, so only the subcutaneous mic could hear.

Her artificially altered voice responded: “Sorry to bother you, honey. I-um, I just wanted to let you know that your power levels are reaching low, um dangerously low-I mean, your levels might cut out on you. If you go straight to the…event, first, I mean. Is that okay?”

My stomach turned. She was right. Keeping the “Edgelord” costume, the battle armor, charged was obviously important. I just hated how meek and demure she had become since my true career started. The way she always acted afraid of me — Sorry this — Sorry that — Is that okay? — Didn’t she realize I was doing this for her?

Goddam it, she made me. She made me do all of this! It was the only way to save her, to make her happy, to keep us together.

While I grew up in the streets, developing the sorts of skills that kept my crew alive, Martha’s parents were well-placed in society. They were in The Party after Benediction Day. And the President-King’s coronation. Their privilege remained even after the Militia Drives. They were made of the kind of Teflon that only inherited wealth conferred.

To her credit, Martha never cared about any of that. Not into politics. Her only thought was to be with me. And any time I was within eyeshot of her, my thought was the same.

When I turned rogue after my crew was finally taken down right in front of me in the Drives, she stayed with me and turned her back on her family. Soon after that, her dad and oldest brother kidnapped me from the hospital and took me to a nice house in a gated community. They held me there for quite a while. I don’t remember much of those months. They let Martha visit me once or twice, I think.

Later on-when I was still being held but was able to better focus-they promised to let me live if I left town. Oh, and for good measure, I had to leave her. I agreed. I walked away.

Martha’s family thought they were being magnanimous.

What they were being was weak. I’ve always had a knack for explosives. Despite their personal residences being so far apart, it wasn’t difficult. I took out a dozen city blocks to remove them both without anyone being the wiser about the true motive. I adopted the alias Edgelord and concocted an elaborate manifesto to cover my tracks. Pretended it was a political motive.

Now, Martha and I live in a different nice house in a different gated community. She’s the socialite and I’m her nerdy consort. But, even though she agreed with my methods, she never looked at me the same again after that first event-she never came right out and said it. In fact, she cooly avoided ever speaking of her family again. I knew how to interpret her silence, her unspoken accusation: Did you have to kill them?

What was it about goddam loyalty to biological families?

Whatever. Martha gets the privilege of being afraid of me, while I keep the entire goddam world at bay for her. Right. Makes sense.

Still, she was sharp. Having her monitor my every move as Edgelord was a real benefit. After all, it wasn’t like I trusted my bosses or the Mandala AI.

Besides, she was good at it. Good at organizing. And good at acting…pretending to be the precious socialite when she was, in fact, my operative.

It was all good.

I do love her. I don’t know, she just wears on my nerves, sometimes.

While sitting inside my car, I finished removing my armor, robes, and plates. She was still patiently waiting. Eventually, I switched to our pre-arranged response channel and initiated a call back to her. The car could eavesdrop, but there’d be no connection to the previous conversation. Now, I could remove my mask. “Hey there! Right…I saw your message on the Fridge. Don’t worry, I’ll make sure and get those items before I get back. M’kay?”

“Okay. Love you, Matt!”

“I love you, too, honey,” I said.

And I meant it.

Everything was for her.

###

I paused for a moment, noticing the windshield start to fog on the inside. I was still sweating. My entire car interior stank of it. But the car’s filters also kept out the stench of industrial fumes in the general vicinity. Too much exposure to those chemicals and you lost your sense of smell, altogether. So, the locker room smell was comforting.

Then my teeth itched again. This time it was Z-D0nk, the Mandala AI client, buzzing me on the dongle. Cheezits, my dongle was blowing up! I flipped the bird again to activate it.

“What.” Same basic attitude. But, now that I was in my car, I assumed a normal volume.

“Don’t forget your appointment.”

Cheezits. Now it was my turn to slump my head. Goddam company shrinks and their mandatory check-ins. After every kill. It never ends. This was for that mugger I ran off the bridge last week. Like all the other therapy sessions, it’ll be sixty minutes I’ll never get back.

But it was the price of being deputized in the CVG. Gotta jump through HR’s hoops. Leaving a paper trail for the media was important.

“Okay, sending the CedenceCoin to the doc’s wallet-authorization, Edgelord, delta delta delta.” A little series of beeps indicated that my car understood.

“Great, Matt. Oh, and promise me you won’t skip it, okay? Good. Out.”

I just kept nodding as I disconnected the call. Such a pain in my ass. Officially, Z-D0nk was my AI field assistant. In reality, he was just an automated spy. A bot, designed, like all the others, to track me and keep my psychographic profile up to date. It made sure I only crossed certain lines…whatever. The AI’s “boss” was The Mandala, and, to a lesser extent, the government it fronted for.

The dongle itself measured most of my biometrics, but some were only triggered through verbal interactions. So, Z called and instigated conversations, to crystallize the data. It was all very sophisticated, but, it didn’t need to be. Sure, Z was one backstop. Martha was another. But, it was all quite simple: I only answered to my conscience.

###

I let my dongle’s randomizer decide which safe house I’d use to recharge the suit. Division Bell Lane. Good as any.

I parked out back in an alley. It was still “level three air warning”, so the car door refused to open until I put a mask on. I used a civilian one instead of my battle helmet.

I climbed the building’s fire escape tube and went inside. Plugging my armor into the generator I had long hidden there, I finally collapsed against one wall, with a beer and my usual meal of synthetic bean paste and seaweed pellets. My armor and its helmet sat opposite me on a table.

Letting my eyes unfocus, I enjoyed the show: the faceplate sparkled with intricate, mesmerizing multi-color designs while the suit recharged. I always thought those graphics were beautiful.

Focusing back in, I could see my bedraggled face, reflected back at me. Sweat had matted down and darkened my hair, which made me look younger. The reflection wasn’t me so much as who I used to be before I took out Martha’s family.

Although what happened the next day, after my killing spree, was the real story: The city people rallied behind my manifesto. By the people, I mean the thirteen percent that were armed and organized per the Mandala AI app, also called the MFM (“Mindfulness Force Multipliers”) movement. A goddam AI.

But it worked. With my help, they eventually took over our city, just like most of the others across the country. That was a wild two years. By the time it ended, I claimed my rightful place as their de facto head-of-security apparatus (what the media dubbed The Civilian Vigilante Guild, or CVG, like we were in some comic book, a superhero team or some shit).

It was a good fit. The AI gave me bonus points for creativity when I fixed several missions that weren’t going well by killing our commanders and taking over the ops, in real time.

By the time it was over, I had the most points in the game. Almost by happenstance, we’d also won the war.

The LED lights on the suit eventually changed from red to yellow to green as I sat there, lost in memories of fallen comrades and bloody escapes. I don’t know how long it was before I heard the tapping noise from the hallway. Someone was at the front door.

While a keycard scraped from the other side, I used muscle memory to silently slide into place behind the door as it opened. I didn’t wait to see who it was. I kicked the door shut, causing my intruder to go sprawling.

“NO-Matt, stop!”

OH, goddam. And then my beautiful wife was lying on the floor, a bag of groceries spilled everywhere.

“Really?” I asked. She knew better than to visit one of my safe houses.

“Now, don’t be upset. I just wanted to bring you some real food. We just got our shipment this morning,” she let me help her to her feet, “which you’d know if you ever came home.”

“Cheezits, honey! I could have killed you, you know? We had an agreement. You said you’d stop dropping in on me while I’m on duty.”

“Oh, stop overreacting. You’re always on duty. I am sorry, honey. I just missed you,” she summed up as she regained her feet and pointed. “Now, are you going to clean this up?”

Once I’d put all the food on the counter, she turned me around for an affectionate hug.

After a long exhale and a married-person kiss, I said: “I missed you, too.” Then came a sudden wave of awareness in my groin. It had been a while.

If she noticed, she didn’t say so. “Here, let me cook this up. You should relax.” She looked pleased with herself-like the kiss had made it all worth it. She took off her coat and took her place in the kitchen.

I continued to look her over, like a boxer waiting for an opening. Damn. She was in her usual sweatsuit. My horniness immediately disappeared.

There was just something about that sweatsuit. She had had many, many nano-procedures to keep her charms healthy enough to get any man’s attention (the cliche about a husband not knowing their wife’s age-it was true, in this case).

Around the house it was always the dumpy, shapeless sweatsuit; but she did dress up when it was for others’ benefit — part of her disguise as a socialite. Or was the way she looked for me the lie? Either way, the bottom line: others got to see her dolled up in a dress, never me.

Whatever.

“Okay, thanks honey,” I said. This would be like all the other surprise visits. She only knew how to cook a few dishes, none of which I much liked. But, she’d happily eat the food she cooked while I poked at it and felt guilty for not liking it more.

Then we’d kiss again before I shooed Martha away like the distraction she was and then go on feeling terrible about it.

But, that’s as may be, it didn’t matter because I needed to stay sharp, anyway. There were probably going to be more people dying this night before I captured those drugs for my clients.

###

Later, I got to the drug delivery spot. In the end, my wife’s visit had only knocked me a few minutes behind. And it was still earlier than the scheduled delivery-still, I blamed Martha for missing the action.

Someone had set off a large explosive down at the small, private, gravel airstrip where the shipment of drugs was to be picked up. The charred bodies and the BellWeather van (another, larger Lyf2ber shuttle) were all still smoldering.

There were no tracks from a plane landing, or from any other vehicle, so the drugs had never been picked up. As I searched, I found evidence they had been destroyed, too, in the explosion.

In my head, I reviewed the next steps for this particular job. How do I get these drugs?

Probably I’ll have to hit the company’s own warehouse in an Inside Raid. Ugh, there’s always so much paperwork to do before Inside Raids! If the government (that was me, in this case) was going to steal something, the insurance company wanted to be able to bill for it. But shipments in transit were an exception.

As for who did this explosion? Could’ve been anyone. Not my problem.

I didn’t want to deal with the authorities that were eventually coming, so I left without thinking it all through. It was now obvious that the drugs weren’t the target for this incident; but, I didn’t piece together just who had been the target.

All I knew at that point was that suddenly my night was clear.

I started to call Martha, but then I remembered my appointment. It was only two am. Maybe I’d pay the doc a visit, after all?

###

No one bothered to climb the outside of the tram tubes, anymore. When I was younger, that was our main mode of travel. Not the trams, but the tubes.

I could still remember games of tag with my buddies in the middle of the night, our steps lit only by the light of the barrel fires below, reflected off nearby buildings. But since the poisonous vines have overtaken most of them, they’d become one less real thing to explore. Which was fine as most everyone continued to retreat further and further into their virtual realities during the war.

In fact, that might’ve been Edgelord’s main advantage. I was willing to leave the house.

Not to mention entering other people’s houses. I slipped my dagger into and through the window latch like the pro I was.

Had to give him credit, he didn’t cower in fear the way most people would after I forcibly unplugged him from whatever dream he was engaged with.

“Mister Mattick?” he said as he sat up in bed and removed his v-real helmet. “Your appointment isn’t until tomorrow.”

“It is tomorrow.” I pointed at his grandfather clock, before moving out of his bedroom and into his study to assume my usual chair. Sitting my mask on the coffee table, I thought about how few people used my real name. I made a mental note to make a list of everyone who did, for future elimination, if necessary.

It was a few minutes before he joined me. He cleaned up well. To his credit, you would’ve never known that it was two in the morning. He sat in the chair next to mine and proceeded to open a paper file folder on his lap. A few small pieces of paper slipped to the floor, which we both ignored.

“Brian Eckhardt Smith. Age thirty-seven. A long rap sheet, but nothing in the previous three years. The exception being an assault charge when he had an altercation with a local delivery person, taking the delivery even after his payment failed due to lack of social credits.”

I faked a look of concern and surprise. “The tip line said he was a mugger.” Of course, I didn’t just go by that. It was after I interviewed the complainant that I made Mr. Smith my target. The complainant was his ex-wife. She told me the story behind the delivery. How he was stealing food from his own kids’ child support packages. Now her child would get survivor support payments.

“Mister Mattick-,” he began.

“Edgelord,” I corrected.

“Mister Mattick, I know all about the backstory and I understand why you did what you did. Your unresolved issues with your own birth family-”

“Have nothing to do with this! This guy was firing at me, fucking awkwardly across his body, while running down a busy walk-bridge! He was such a shit shot, I was in no danger, but he was bound to hit someone else…I made split-second decision-”

“That ended the same way as all of your other split-second decisions, with the death of a citizen. Now, you know his family could have received the same support if he had just been disabled, or — now, stay with me, here — had he just been incarcerated. An arrest, Mister Mattick, how about that for a novel idea?”

I smiled.

He closed the file and took a long exhale as he stared at me. “By my count, this is nearly forty unnecessary deaths. And nearly half of them were helpless hires of the suspect you surprised or, they were unfortunate bystanders. The fact that he was your perp was an outlier and it was still more force used than what was needed. I’ve reported many-not all, but many-of them to the CVG as part of the various insurance claims; but, of course, the CVG has never recommended any punishment. You are too valuable.”

I adopted a more serious face. I knew all this and he was being tiresome, but there was no reason to deliberately antagonize him.

“However, the CVG has given me some leeway to insist on therapy before you are to go back out.” He got up to go grab something from a nearby bureau. His back was to me.

Insist — wait, what? This was new. “Isn’t that what this is?”

He returned with what looked like whiskey in a glass. He handed it to me. “Not quite. Here, have a drink while I get you the information,” the doc said.

I ignored the drink until he returned. He was carrying another file. A much older one held together with rubber bands.

“It was some time ago, maybe fifteen years, back when I first started as a psychologist. One of my first clients. Serial Killer named Phil Dealer. Anyway, I won’t bore you with the details of Mister Dealer’s case. What is important for our purposes was that the ‘Dealer Killings’ went on for about two years and claimed twenty-seven victims in total. And then he disappeared. No more Dealer Killings, as far as any of the profilers could tell.

“About five years later, he was caught by accident as part of another case. Some of his DNA turned up. Anyway, that’s when we met. And I asked him about his absence. You know, how did he hide his latest kills?

“But, here’s the weird part: he said that he hadn’t hidden anything. So, I did some hypnotic regression therapy and that’s where we had a breakthrough: Now he remembered that all of the kills were part of a conditioning scheme that he had been pressed into. Like a cult. He had no memory of them at all — either during or after they were done. Except he remembered beatings and drugs, and the like. He referred to sessions being held in a secluded place called The Tank.”

I nodded, still pretending to care.

“That matched the records. As a CVG-commissioned therapist, I have access to everyone’s online presence. And Mister Dealer had gone off the grid for about three months before the beginning of the killings. Of course, I asked for names but he didn’t remember any, except everyone else in The Tank kept referring to a single name as the big boss — a childhood icon, so it all didn’t make sense.

“I didn’t think much of it. Until he missed our next appointment. He had been brutally killed in his own home.” Now the doc was pausing for effect.

“The name he gave me was one you’ll recognize: The Momist.”

I laughed. “Momist? Geez, are you kiddin’ me?” The street gangs back in the day all tried to claim some kinship with that name. Supposedly, there was a person, a drug lord, who went by that name, like, a hundred years ago. But, really, it was like a brand name for scariness.” This was all such nonsense, momist tabs (or, more popularly, “momma’s tabs”) were slang for any street psychedelic that gave you a bad trip.

“Listen, Doc, you might as well tell me that the Boogey Man is the key to my therapy. We’re done here.” I stood up to leave, looming over him.

“Your victims, Mister Mattick! Look, there’s a pattern. They all have similar gaps in their backgrounds as Mister Dealer did. And it’s a lot harder to go off the grid now than it was then.”

That stopped me. I sat back down.

And, for the first time in a long time, I listened to what someone else had to say.

The doc just sat there and stared at me. Waiting.

Finally, I caught on. I touched my first and third fingers again, but with my opposite thumb, so as to turn off my dongle’s feed to Z-D0nk, altogether. The doc and I had said too much, already.

“So, what therapy are you recommending — sorry, insisting, that I take?”

He sipped his drink. “Well, for starters, a sabbatical.”

“What? What for?”

“Because there’s one other person who has that gap in their history, Mister Mattick.”

Oh, man. Of course.

I’m gonna need therapy, after all.

###

After doc and I finished playing a couple of games of chess to fill in the rest of the scheduled hour, I returned to my car in full Edgelord regalia.

The streets were empty except for a few commercial delivery trucks. Everything that time of the morning was a washed-out gray color, to match my mood.

Dammit. The Momist. Cheezits.

With his permission, I had given the doc a black eye to make his plan more convincing. Then I drove his ‘stolen’ car aimlessly for a while to confuse the algorithms until I parked about twenty blocks away from the lot where Martha’s Dad’s house used to stand. Now that site was a parking garage for the nearby stadium. That was the stadium that had been quickly erected to host the televised trials-after the revolution.

I thought the AI and the CVG had chosen that site for nostalgia. But, after my talk with the doc, it occurred to me that there was another reason.

Before I walked there, I disrobed and changed into more normal clothes and a civilian mask. I used one of my knives to surgically remove my dongle from my hand. Doc had already given me a shot to preemptively numb the pain.

Even with no suit and no dongle, there were still drones and other street cameras to worry about. And the trams leading to and from the stadium weren’t covered in poisonous ivy. They were clean, shiny, and well-covered by the surveillance of the CVG. So, that wouldn’t work.

I walked a few blocks from where I’d left the car and then just sat on one particular street corner, waiting for my favorite Lyf2ber driver.

###

Once he arrived at that corner, it turned out Jack — my newly minted informant — was even smarter than I gave him credit for.

For example, even though I wasn’t in my armor, just some guy, carrying a knife, and with his other hand covered in bloody, soiled underwear, I didn’t need to do anything really dramatic to convince him who I was. I had thought it at least would take a beating or something. But once I got into his cab and started talking, he seemed to recognize me right away. Didn’t question it. Must’ve been something in the tone of my voice.

He took me straight to the parking garage. That time of the morning, it was only ten minutes or so from where I was at. If some AI subroutine in the Lyf2ber dispatch server recognized me in my civilian identity, they didn’t do it fast enough for it to flag anything anywhere else.

As we arrived, I noticed that the parking garage was entirely above-ground. I asked him to stay on the ground level while I went to the stairwell to see whatever basement this place might have had.

It was definitely a basement. My memories were at least that clear about it.

I jimmied open the door with the single knife I still carried. There was a stairway leading down. As I went inside, I glanced behind to see Jack’s car, still idling behind the glare of its headlights in the gloomy shadows.

The door closed and I descended.

###

The basement wasn’t just unfinished, it was unclean. Without my armor, the rats made me jumpy and the smell was more powerful than my ability to ignore.

It looked like various families had sheltered there. All of them had found an untimely end. Some skeletons had bullet wounds. Most of their necks were cracked.

None were children. This no doubt meant the kids had all been taken to much worse fates.

I tried to sidestep wooden crates and piles of clothes stacked next to overturned shopping carts. My footsteps creaked on the occasional, rotted wooden board-indicating that there had been some old structure down here before.

Maybe it was that sound that triggered the memories.

Momist. No, that name wasn’t there. But I did see more flashes of my now deceased in-laws, standing around my table (a standing table, I was strapped down), their stoic faces only sometimes betraying a sad concern. As though they were helpless to free me.

Someone, The Momist?…patting me on the cheek…

I retched right there on the ground.

As I coughed up the last of my vomit, I heard the stairwell door open.

I saw the beam of light enter before they did.

Whoever it was had shoulder-mounted flashlight cameras, just like the ones on my armor.

As I no longer had the tactical comfort of darkness, I rolled aside and hid behind a nearby pile of clothes. Ow. Putting weight on my dongle hand started it bleeding again.

Who was this? As they entered, it became clear. It wasn’t just like my armor, it was my armor.

This new imposter Edgelord walked in, swishing back and forth like a b-movie robot, to spread the light.

What an amateur. Walking askew, in battle stance, you only need to use one shoulder-light at a time.

I found a piece of broken floorboard and mentally measured the distance between me and the imposter. It was like thirty yards. Too far to engage by hand. But, I had a chance, if he was distracted.

There were kill switches in the armor that Martha had me build in, for just such an occasion. If either of us said the correct code in earshot of the suit, the circuitry sewn into the outfit would electrocute the wearer. So, there was a chance. Just needed that distraction.

I raised my arm to fling the wood against the far wall, for a distraction —

And, as I did, phony Edgelord leveled a goddam gun at me and shot me square in the chest.

###

I woke up in a bed at the hospital. Martha was seated next to me, holding my hand.

“Oh, Matt! Thank god!” She was tearing up.

I blinked in pain, as I tried to shift my position and sit up to see better.

“Here, let me help,” she said, as she pushed a button and my bed became more of a recliner. A wave of nausea revisited me.

After a long pause and some water, I found my voice: “What — happen…?”

She nodded solemnly, “Someone stole your armor and followed you, tried to kill you, to become you. Once I saw the armor moving and you weren’t responding, I patched in to see what was happening. I didn’t see you until it was too late-Oh, I thought he had killed you, honey! But, I fried him, honey. Don’t you worry. He won’t be hurting anyone, again.” For the first time, I noticed that Martha was dressed up, like she had just come from a party or something.

She was always so beautiful.

“How am I…?”

“Alive?” She answered: “The bullet passed by, it missed all the vital organs.” And then she started tearing up. “Except for-except the spine. Oh, honey?” And then she wept openly, pressing her cheek to my hand, covering it with tears.

That’s when I realized it. I couldn’t move my legs. I tried again. And again.

Holding back my own tears of shock, I asked: “Who…?”

“Just some guy. It doesn’t matter,” she said with steel in her voice. “Look, you just rest. I spoke with the CVG. They’ve already approved your vacation. So, you can heal. We can be together at home. I can take care of you. Okay, honey?” She smiled through the tears.

I looked at my hand. The dongle had already been replaced, a neat bandage covering it. And right about then the hospital staff arrived and turned up the IV drip; and then I did indeed rest, my last thoughts being ones of sadness for the doc.

###

Months later. Physical therapy. Cybernetic implants for the wheelchair. Various drugs, for depression.

I refused IVs, but Martha made sure I always took my pills. This was at least until the dongle reported that I had started acting more energetic and upbeat around the house. I was joking around with the house staff, and the neighbors.

That’s when she relaxed the regimen. She said she was so happy to see me getting back to my old self.

But, honey, when before did I ever act upbeat? I never asked her.

One breakfast in particular. We were both seated at our dining room table, me in my chair, and I noticed she was dressed up. So, I knew she’d be leaving the house soon. I suppressed a wave of depression and anger with a few deep breaths.

“Honey,” I said, “I was thinking. Do I have access to our old recreational files?”

Those files were what we used to keep ourselves busy in our early days, right after the war. We were home alone, physically and mentally recovering, with nothing but credits and time.

Those were the days we truly developed what would become our lives. Our identities, our routines-even my suit. We had no idea what we were doing, back then. The prototype of the helmet was transparent, for example, until we figured out the whole secret identity thing. Anyway, we laughed about how she was learning about street-level warfare technology while I was learning how to sew. And how I was having a much more difficult time.

“Sure, honey. That makes sense. It’s a good way for you to plan your next steps.” She warmly extended her hand for me to hold. Her hand was cold, as usual. We often joked about how I was only kept around for my body heat.

But, that was about it. Now that my bottom half no longer worked, the saddest part was that it didn’t affect our sex life that much. I mean, she happily did whatever I asked. But, I always had to ask. And, since my paralysis, there was a much shorter menu of things I could ask for.

“Maybe then you’ll be ready to leave the house again, yes, Matt? I really would like us to go out together more…”

I took back my hand and grabbed the utensil to continue eating. It had increased to every single conversation. She was always trying to get me out of the house, ‘for my own good’, she said.

That’s when she told me about her upcoming trip. Yes, dear. Of course, dear. I’ll miss you. I promise we can go out soon. I’m almost ready, dear. You gotta go? Oh, okay. All right, dear. Have a good trip (to wherever you just said you’re going). And the kiss.

After she left, I went into our bedroom. I looked through her dresser drawers for what I needed. While in there, I noticed that there were several pieces of her jewelry that she had taken out of our safe and placed in there, instead.

I figured I didn’t have much time.

###

She returned the very next day, way earlier than she was supposed to.

As she arrived at the front door, she nearly tripped over the first dead body.

“Oh my god, Matt? MATT!” She covered her mouth in horror.

Every surface was riddled with bullet holes: the walls, the furniture. The strike team had been thorough, entering not just at the front, but also from several windows on several floors.

They had converged on me, as I slept in my chair, in the den. Now, I lay underneath the overturned chair, covered in blood and fragments of the desk, behind which I’d been sitting.

She just kept screaming as she moved through the rooms until she finally found my body. She cradled my head and chest in her arms as she rocked back and forth, weeping out loud to the dark room of corpses and her dongle.

###

She had calmed down and changed clothes. Sitting at our dining room table, she had poured herself a drink, maybe preparing to call the authorities.

“Should you be drinking at your age?”

She turned to the sound of my voice and that’s when she saw me sitting on the floor of the hallway, pointing one of Edgelord’s old guns at her.

She was wearing that damn sweatsuit, of course.

“Matt! Oh my god, honey…!” she started to lean towards me before I engaged the gun to make it power-cycle for effect. Then she dropped the act and sat back down. “Well, you are resourceful. How did you survive all this?”

I reached back around the corner of the doorway and produced the clear prototype helmet from back in the day. “They couldn’t see I was wearing armor until it was too late.”

She nodded her appreciation, one survivor to another.

“So that was you in my battle suit?” I asked.

She nodded and took a sip of her drink, seemingly unconcerned.

“I don’t get it. Why did you keep me around this long? You could have killed me in the garage?”

“Well, honestly, I was half-expecting you to carry on as some kind of chair-bound Edgelord…I hadn’t thought it through, yet. I figured we could work out the details…maybe you’re always in a car. But, you’ve been such a fucking head case the past few months, I had to keep waiting until you were ready to talk about it.”

“Well, I was getting over my wife being the literal devil.”

She shrugged and took another sip.

“So, you are the Momist?”

“I was. And so mas my Dad before me. And before that, his mother. Lots of uncles, too. It was sort of the family business, being crime-lords. We were running this town, back when the criminals and the government at least pretended to be two different groups.”

I pushed that aside for the moment. “So, you used me…”

“You were just going to be another agent, another programmed patsy, in the beginning. But, after you took out my family-thank you for removing my rivals, by the way-Once I realized what I had in you, I decided that you were the perfect loose-end remover. You were so hyper-violent that you would kill not just your target, but basically anyone near your target. This created a cloud of uncertainly that no AI could un-jumble to trace back to me.”

“Except the doc did.”

“Yes.”

“I hope you didn’t torture him.”

“That’s funny, coming from you.”

“Well, as I’ve recently found out, people do change,” I said, as I leveled the gun and pulled the trigger.

###

And watched as absolutely nothing happened. The gun powered off in my hand. She must’ve had something built-in…

“None of your guns will work if aimed at me. One of my precautions.”

I stared at it for a second and back to her, to see her holding a different gun, an old-fashioned revolver. The one from the silverware drawer.

“Oh, Matt. I wish it hadn’t come to this…I really do love you.” She had the shot, but she just couldn’t help herself. I guess she thought she was being magnanimous, to stop and say that.

What she was being was weak.

As she started to pull the trigger, I said the trigger word for the circuitry that I had sewn into all of her sweatsuits while she was gone. And I watched as my beautiful wife was fried in a flash of sparks and smoke.

###

The next day, I sat across from the doc, at the dog park, on opposite sides of a chess board. Each of us moved our pieces with a hand that was wrapped in surgical gauze.

“I don’t get how you were okay with it.” I was still legitimately shocked.

“Well, I knew if Edgelord kept being you, I would never get a good night’s sleep,” the doc said.

“No, I mean, when you put your neighbor in your bed to die in an arson house fire, as the bait.”

He shrugged. “Hey, I just tendered my resignation from the CVG and went into hiding. Technically, you did that other part.”

I made a frumpy face. “I see. And when you selected him for me, was that choice covered in your hypocritical oath?”

He laughed. “Well, he wasn’t just a neighbor, he was a client. A former convicted sex offender who was always going on about his fantasies with little children…”

I nodded. I understood that sort of reasoning. I’m glad he shared it; I glanced down at the duffle bag containing the Edgelord armor that I had given him. There was going to be a lot of training for him in the weeks and months ahead. He was only a few years older than me, but he wasn’t in street shape.

He also wasn’t as naturally cruel. But, then again, neither was I-not anymore. Now that I’d been a complete tool of somebody else, I felt a new kind of empathy for the innocent bystander. Or at least now I believed bystanders could actually be innocent.

But still, it was good that Doc had that anger, that righteous fire, to fuel him during all of what was to come. Plus, this time, we’ll do the Robin Hood thing while keeping the CVG out of it, altogether. We were one hundred percent in agreement on that.

“Long live Edgelord.” I toasted him with a captured pawn.

“Many thanks, Mister Mattick” he replied, lifting his queen in salute.

“Momist,” I corrected.

Originally published at https://markharbinger.substack.com.