"So can you help me out?"
Felipe leans his head back, a head of orange and black (mostly orange), resting on the armrest of the armchair in the living room. "Mm. Well, I wanna."
"What do you need from me?"
"A direct approval from the boss."
The man on the other end chuckles. "Which one? The Ice Queen or the Plank?"
The orange-headed man laughs. "If you can put in a req to the Ice Queen, I can handle my partner."
"Thanks, Fel. You're a saint."
"Well, having a police sergeant owe you one is better than a cold beer."
"I got a case if you get this done smooth. And a bag of lemons on the side."
Arpeggio enters the apartment as Felipe hangs up. He has a bag of groceries in a reuseable bag on one arm and a book in the other, opened with his long fingers. His partner rises and takes the bag.
"They were out of the hair color you wanted so I bought you that powdered drink mix instead." He says it such deadpan calm, it nearly loops back into sounding like a joke. But it wasn't the first time Felipe had colored his hair with something other than hair coloring dye, and it always amazed Arpeggio, that DIY, use whatever you have on hand, improv style his partner always had.
"Ah, ok." He starts putting away the paltry amount of groceries: a loaf of sliced bread, tomatoes, a bag of apples, the drink mix, milk, and those packaged japanese noodles they both were so fond of. "Pege?"
"Mm?"
"You ever been to San Francisco?"
Arpeggio gives him a mildly curious look. "Once or twice. Why?"
"Wanna go?"
"We don't have the time."
"I'm not talking about for vacation or leisure time."
The raven-haired man looks at him and frowns. "You want to go there for work?"
"I have someone who needs our help."
He sniffs, indifferently. "If Emi gives us the assignment, I don't see why not, but I doubt she will." He smoothes his hair out. "Its not like you to request work."
"Like I said, someone needs our help."
"Why?" asks Arpeggio.
But his cellphone rings and he answers it. From the clipped and short answers, Felipe knows who it is. After he hangs up, he looks at him, and is openly curious. "How did you do that?"
Felipe grins. "When do we leave?"
~~
"So its like this," Felipe says when they get on the plane. Emi was sending them via a private jet. "I have a friend in the SFPD."
"How?" asks Arpeggio bluntly, buckling in.
Felipe laughs. "Well, he was he guy who was processing me before I got shuttled into the Corps."
The raven-haired man frowns ever so slightly. Its his version of an apologetic wince. "Ah."
"And he asked me for help." But he stops when the plane begins its journey down the runway. They watch the airport quickly rush by, and as the lights begin to blur then descend as the plane lifts off. A sort of ritual both young men savor; that moment of weightlessness, the stomach-tickling sensation of the freedom of flight. When the plane has made its way into the sky fully, going to altitude, the orange haired man continues. "Its a serious problem back in my old haunts."
"The easies you used to go to?"
"You could say that." Felipe gestures with his hands, delicate fluttering like birds. "More like my old city." Its the warmth with which he says it that Arpeggio feels a tug in his chest. That nostalgia of a hometown that he's never felt. But its that same warmth that allows him to accept it. For the first time he's going to his hometown, with him. A homecoming, even if Felipe didn't call it as much. Maybe that's why he so eagerly took the job, more than doing a favor for a friend.
"Last time I was in California without you was that christmas."
Both men are silent, but Felipe takes Arpeggio's hand gently and kisses the top, right on his middle finger's knuckle.
"You didn't go to SF?"
"I was in LA. Its why it took me so long to get back to you. In the fighter jet."
Felipe laughs, and there isn't a mote of melancholy so Arpeggio took that as a sign he was over the hurt of it. "Fucker took a fighter to come see me. How could I be mad at that?"
Gently, Arpeggio steers him back. "And so, your old city?"
The smile on his face fades considerably, and he turns his gaze to the window. His reflection grows grave in the silence until he finally speaks. "303."
Its a slang term for a type of banned music, known most familiarly as "Acid". From its choices of basslines and warping, it can send listeners into fugue states or hypnotic dazes, causing hallucinations. Prolonged exposure leads to brain death, though before that, a listener can become highly addicted to the state of Loss all Acid brings. There are many varieties, and thus many different exposure time windows, but its ban comes from the fact its one of the few types of music that kills in any prolonged exposure. A sort of Metal-grade electronic music weapon, Acid isn't used often in military situations, since the primary MC division capable of using it to that extent is a Trancer. Its considered on par with the deadliest of Metal motifs, and even then, there have been more Metals capable of playing some of the portions than Trancers willing to use it. Those who can play it often don't; even the player becomes susceptible to its effects if played long enough.
Arpeggio's dark blue eyes narrow slightly.
"Bad 303, Pege. I mean bad."
"How bad?"
"Bad bad."
"Bad, bad bad, or Bad-bad-bad?" He's glib, but at the same time just as grave as Felipe, to counterpoint his rare moment of seriousness.
"People have been dying."
Arpeggio stares at him. Its not shock, but cold business.
Felipe is quiet about it for a long time, his fingers intertwined with his partner's, staring out at the deep black night of the sky.
"Why do people…do that shit?"
"Acid?" asks Arpeggio.
"Yeah."
"….I don't know, Fel. Sometimes people do things to hurt themselves just to feel alive…or at least what they think is 'alive'."
"I mean. Why do people use it…on other people?"
Arpeggio squeezes his hand. "Sometimes…we have to."
The answer makes Felipe's hand twitch, and without even asking, Arpeggio knows what's going through Felipe's head. Its almost as if they see the same thing in their mind's eye.
bodies on the floor
blood in the ears
eyes
hands and fingers against and in ears, more blood
the groans and screams of people
begging
begging for it to stop
the lurch of a body
in the throes
of death
Felipe leans his head against his partner's shoulder and keeps his eyes shut. They listen to the sounds of the jet engine, feel the plane shift like a car driving over hills and bumps gently, and Arpeggio doesn't realize his partner has fallen asleep.
He doesn't want to wake him. This 4 hour flight won't nearly be long enough for him to sleep off that edge.
They fly into SFO about half past 2 am, and are picked up by the sergeant. Sergeant Corvin is a tall man in his 50s with sandy colored brown hair. Skin pale like Arpeggio's yet it still has a healthier glow, and hazel eyes that aren't too different than Felipe's. They have a life in them that isn't dulled by the hardness of life. He greets Felipe like a son, ruffling that colored hair, playfully poking at him and giving him a hard time. Arpeggio smiles on the inside, and does his best to let his eyes soften. He's gotten much better at it recently.
"This is Arpeggio," Felipe says, and his partner shakes his hand firmly.
The sergeant puts an arm around Arpeggio whom blinks in confusion over the friendliness and lets him guide him away from Felipe. "Now, that trouble maker? You don't let him get away with nothing, right?"
Smoothly, though he's slightly overwhelmed by the gesture, "No, I keep Felipe on a tight leash."
"Atta boy, Arpeggio. That lil fucker will take you for all your worth. He's like a gold-digger but he don'y got the tits or the face to pull it off."
"FUCK YOU, OLD MAN," Felipe shouts comically, flipping him off with both hands.
Arpeggio can see why he called him a friend. Though they're nearly like family.
They drive to an apartment in the Tenderloin, a neighborhood that's gone from ghetto, to gentrified hipster paradise, back down to a crime ridden ghetto in the last couple hundred years, yo-yoing back and forth as younger generations with money try their luck in taming the beast, only to be driven back by the hungry and uncaring youths with substantially less money. Its not a dive, his place, but its nothing like their apartment in Chicago, which Felipe gracefully points out in his not-so-graceful way.
"Place is still a shithole."
"It was your shithole once, ingrate."
"Uh-uh, I was living with the rats in Chinatown, jake. Lil Saigon still around?"
"Nah. You gotta go south for that, like the old days." They enter the 2 bedroom apartment and set their things in the office, which has a pull-out couch. "There's a couch in the living room too if you boys don't wanna share a bed."
"Pft. We share one a lot," Felipe says, only to be smacked in the back of the head by Arpeggio's duffle bag. His partner is flushed. "WHAT?!"
"Who said you could just blab that out loud?!"
"We're 25, Pege, I think we're old enough to be adults about this."
"What the hell does that have to do with anything?!"
Corvin is too busy laughing and trying to stand to protest or butt in.
~~
They go out to breakfast the next morning at a donut shop. The sergeant has enough time to take off to brief them. He has only a few blurry photos, a stack of autopsy pictures and a metric load of reports on a laptop that run the gamut from noise disturbance to Acid declarations. Its a hefty dossier.
He points to one blurry photo of a DJ. Skinny, with skin so pale it takes the colors of the dim rave lights. In one a sickly yellow, another a garish gangrene. Bald head. Ears that don't stick out but look sharp, a mouth that's just a sharp, eyes like black dots. Dressed in black. He doesn't look earthly, or indeed real, but the picture quality takes some of that credit.
"So far all I got is that people call him Orlock."
"S'fucking weird ass name." Felipe chews a glazed donut hole.
"Appropriate," Arpeggio replies as he goes over the mountain of reports, even checking the short soundbites embedded in the files. He winces. "This Acid's fairly potent."
Felipe takes a listen but he keeps the single ear bud an inch or 2 away from his ear as he checks a few 5 second clips. He shakes his head as if to clear it. "Makes most Summer of Love's seem like an Aphro."
"That's why we need to stop him and soon. Its been 3 weeks, and we can't even get a scent on the guy. That level of Acid is some of the most highly addictive stuff there, and even a minute of this just makes the listener Loss so hard they don't have the will to even stand. Our Rocker and Trancers won't even process the files. Its why I had to call Felipe." The officer sips his coffee. "No one wants to touch this, especially since we don't even got positive ID. He's like a ghost."
"How many people have died listening to this?" asks Arpeggio.
"18 since we started getting calls. Nearly six a week, and the mayor is fucking going to have it out with us if we can't get this contained and fast. That's not the worst of it either."
"What's worse than 18 people dead?" asks Felipe, and his voice barely skids the barrier of becoming shrill.
The sergeant sighs and opens a file. There's pictures and that's about all Felipe needs to see before he gets up and shakes his head, pale.
Arpeggio gives him a concerned look. "Bathroom?"
"Outside." The orange-haired man, grabs his jacket and makes his way out. The pair watch as he fumbles with a pack of cigarettes, lights one, and takes a long drag. Even from the table, on the kitty-corner of the building inside, Arpeggio can see his partner's hand trembling.
He sighs and looks at the report. "So. How long did it take for a Trancer to break it up?"
"Too long. Half that crowd tore apart 2 people before they even got them semi-pacified."
Arpeggio exhales slowly. The victims barely resembled human, in the autopsy pictures, and the aftermath pictures.
"The ones with blood on their hands…most of them never came out of it completely…. A few did. They didn't even make it to trial, even with suicide watch. I guess that shit kills while you listen to it, or even if you don't listen to it…."
"That's the problem." Its a statement, and the sergeant is impressed with the young man's fortitude. He still can't get the sight out of his head, the lingering scent of a human torn open with bare hands. And he didn't even see the worst of it.
They're quiet as they stare at the files. Arpeggio hasn't lost his appetite, but doesn't eat out of consideration.
"I know its asking a lot…but, even if I didn't know Felipe, I think I'd still have asked for you. You guys are the best in the business. Can you handle it?"
"Yes," he answers without hesitation. The older man looks out at Felipe as the young man lights up a second cigarette. "We will."
"You're sure?"
Arpeggio picks up his bear claw and chews it calmly. "Absolutely."
~~
The trio work with the department over the new 2 days, mapping out the easies, chasing leads until Felipe not only acknowledges the white elephant, but hops right on top. "Haven't you guys done undercover for this guy?"
A few of the officers and the MC members shift uncomfortably. One answers, "We tried that…."
"And?"
"If you bothered to read your files, Fel, you'd know they've lost 2 undercovers," Arpeggio says calmly, and a few of the task force wince openly.
Felipe throws his hands in the air. "Ok, then I'll do it."
The sergeant shakes his head. "I don't think so, 42. This is too dangerous to even consider that."
"Not necessarily," Interrupts Arpeggio. Calmly he gestures at Felipe. "It wouldn't be our first time. And if anything, Felipe knows how to handle himself if need be."
"Our best Trancers can't get close enough," a captain objects.
Felipe chuckles darkly.
Arpeggio continues. "I think it'd be best to try to see if we can't pinpoint his pattern. We have the beginnings of it, and I think we know where he's going next, but the first thing is not to rush and bust. Obviously, that's had its drawbacks." Its his tactical way of referring to the last riot scratch that ended up with the crowd turning on their own momentarily. "But if we send someone in that's deep enough, I think we have a better chance of maybe getting close enough. And we've done this before."
The sergeant sighs. "If that's what you think will work."
Felipe grins, and its a grin with anticipating eagerness. "Ok, its decided, I'll drop in deep, and see what bites I get from the bait."
"Let's hope that isn't literally," Arpeggio says glancing at the burry photos of Orlock in consternation.
Later that night, Felipe has dyed his hair into a blue-black combo, obliterating the orange with a quick bleach and color job. He ties his back though his bangs are so unruly that it makes the effort seem wasted. He tests his tap on the button of his coat with Arpeggio, whom parks himself in a nondescript Toyota Corolla. The sergeant is a few blocks away, with an open channel to listen in an unmarked squad car.
"What's your handle?" asks Arpeggio as Felipe reties his shoelaces around his ankles.
"Harker."
Witheringly, he retorts, "Fuck. Better hope this Orlock character isn't well read…and I have a feeling he is."
Felipe gives Arpeggio a quick peck on the head and gets ready to head over to the next street over, where the easy is being held in someone's basement.
Arpeggio catches him by the cuff of his jacket, though the window of the car.
"Seriously, Fel. Don't take that fucking Quincey Morris way out. I will end you myself."
"If he really was Orlock, shouldn't that be Ellen Hutter?"
Its not until Felipe is gone that the sergeant asks, "The hell's that about?"
"Bram Stoker's Dracula….except that Ellen Hutter's the name of Mina Harker's counterpart in the film Nosferatu. Coincidentally…that's where the name Orlock comes from."
There's doubt in the older man's voice. "Then…if Felipe rolls up to him with a name like Harker, isn't that basically waving flags saying 'I AM HERE FROM THE COPS, WELCOME ME WITH OPEN ARMS'?"
Arpeggio's voice grows darkly serious. "If this Orlock is half the man I think he is based on our profile, that's what we're counting on the most."
~~
Its a drug den. That's the first thought Felipe has when he manages to get in. Dark with only a few lights here and there. There's maybe 16 people in there and about half are doing hard drugs. There's a young lady with red hair in an unnatural tint by the stereo, but its not playing out its speakers, rather piping whatever its playing through a myriad of headphone jacks connected to half a dozen earbuds and headphones. One half of the pair is missing, so there'd be half a set of ear buds or only a single earphone on a set. Its how many people share the high but still are able to respond to outside stimulus.
Unless the Loss is so high it doesn't matter. And by the many people surrounding the unit, laying around it like beached dolphins, its a particularly potent mix. It reminds Felipe of some exotic monster, tentacles reaching into the skulls of its victims.
The young lady glances up. Her color theme is red, and he doesn't deny it does her good. "Wanna jack?"
He shakes his head and nods at her joint. She motions for him to come over to sit on the chair with her and he does so, passing the cherry to him. He takes a long drag, as she makes herself comfortable on his lap. In the back of his head Felipe sheepishly apologizes. Sorry, Pege. Part of the job, honest.
"Where'd you come from?" she asks him.
He gives the joint back and blows rings in smoke. "Budapest."
She cranes her neck to look at him, and he gives her his patented smirk. She laughs. "Oh really." She shifts, leans her back against the arm rest, her legs dangling off the other one.
He puts a hand on her thigh and leans back. "Where you from? Gotta be closer n' heaven, a body like this."
"They'd throw me out," she says, a puff of smoke accompanying each word.
He takes a long drag. "Gotta name, hotstuff, or do I just call you my laptop the rest of the night?"
"Lizzy."
Felipe raises an eyebrow. "Like 40 whacks?"
"You ain't from Europe, you think 40 whacks before you anything else."
He grins.
"Sure you don't want a lil?" She nods at the stereo.
"Whatcha got in there? Summer?"
She scoffs. "That shit's for preschool."
Felipe grins but inside he's feeling sick. "How hard then?"
She pulls a loose earbud off the floor and offers it to him. He represses the urge to recoil, and takes it, moves it to his right ear with the hidden earplug. But even with that plug there, he can feel the song reverberate in his ear. He shuts his eyes, feigning Loss, but he's mostly fighting the memories from pushing back into his mind. It gives off the right effect, and after counting to an agonizingly long 20 seconds, he hands it to her.
"Man, that shit's low-grade. You got anything harder?"
Lizzy raises an eyebrow. "You didn't even get to the good part."
"I can crap a better Acid line than this, hotstuff." He smirks at her. "I like my shit live, you know what I'm sayin'?"
"You play?"
"Damn right I do."
Lizzy slides her legs off the chair, and slides off his lap, but its slow and deliberate. Felipe admits its not a bad can. She gestures at him and he gets up, following her. Before she leaves, she puts out the end of the joint on the forehead of the nearest listener hooked up to the stereo.
Its the look of utter disinterest that bothers Felipe the most.
There's another room with a tiny DJ kit, barely longer than a card table, and there's a few people doing coke in the corner, but Lizzy merely looks at them and they go back to their business. He glances at the machine, and inwardly groans. The poor thing can barely be called a synth, and has definently seen some better years. Mostly the days before it was bought.
He touches the machine, and smirks with a hint of melancholy. You poor thing, he thinks as he starts. Let me impose on you a little longer. The setup next to the DJ kit can hardly be called much better; A laptop with a USB dock a with a usb dock for streams and sample playback, Ronald Z-90 BL MIDI controller, and a ratty old Ronald CS-25 hooked up to the laptop. A cheap acid machine. Brushing hair past his left ear, he quickly and adroitly slips his other tiny earplug. Lizzy's more interested in watching his hands on that synth than anything else, coming behind him and leaning her voluptuous breast against his back, her arms around his waist loosely.
He removes a small device from his pocket; a small MP3 device loaded with stems that he flicks through quickly, knowing he has to trust his instincts and pick something quick; upon stumbling across a file titled “DNE”, an idea comes to mind. Slipping the device into the dock with DNE loaded, everything loads up on the laptop ready to go.
Inhaling and praying to God this is over as soon as possible, he starts the track; as the song opens with lilting pads and a slight vocoder voice embedded in the mix, his fingers run wildly along the keys of the Z-90, and eventually the buttons atop as the song builds into a bass heavy twitch track, until finally, at the 1:00 mark, the acid bassline he programed on the fly comes in. He picks this song hoping the bigger bass hits, rave stabs and the more complex, breakbeat infused beat would offset the effects of the acid, and the result is mild, even as he sits there using the modulation wheel to effect the cutoff of the bassline, turning it from a squelch to a whine over the mix, but it’s still there.
The slight rush of endorphins firing off in his brain would normally be enough to take him under, but he’s not just fighting to keep control (gaining some foothold when the breakdown comes in, dropping the elements back down to just the pads, vocodes and a filtered beat), but the entire time he can’t shake the dirty feeling creeping over him. The sheer wrongness of playing this music again, for the first time since….
Then, knowing what it could do and what he had done with it. It sits at the bottom of his stomach and made him feel nauseous, an effect only applied as the song built back into itself, becoming a whirlwind of hard stabs, pounding beats, and that goddamn bassline cutting through it all. He continues to push the modulation wheel further and further until the bassline became a haze of high pitched white noise almost automatically, as if his mind itself had taken over in an attempt to fight the increasingly violent images forcing their way into his head, until finally, mercifully, four minutes into this nightmare, his hands give out on him, stopping just as the song itself starts to peter out.
He's trying to catch his breath, a marathon runner's pant. Felipe had never experienced Loss, not like other people. He doesn't shut the world out when music plays, and he's always keenly aware of everything outside the music. But this makes him do something entirely else. He's almost hyperaware of the world, the sounds of his own breathing, his heartbeat, the sounds of even his nails as they catch or drag from one part of the machine to another. He can hear it all so well its nearly deafening, and he knows that its not really even real. Its the hallucinogenic effects of Acid, which cuts through everyone, even those that play it. No one is immune to its gift.
And Lizzy is nearly delirious by the time he stops, and she collapses against him. He feels her breathing against him.
He manages to regain enough composure to huskily ask her, "Now that's how you do it."
She doesn't answer with words. She grabs him hard, shoves him against the machine and kisses him so hard, it crushes his lips. He has problems trying to regain motor control so they don't fall and hurt themselves, but she's ravenous, a wolf in red, and as they lapse into a near carnal frenzy, his thoughts blur.
~~
Arpeggio is driving back, and Felipe has reclined the seat to nearly horizontal. He reeks of smoke and drugs and sweat, but his partner doesn't object to it. By now, he understands the extents Felipe goes through to go that deep under cover.
He just wishes he could wash it all from him as if it never was there.
"I'm sorry."
Arpeggio glances at him in his peripheral. "What for?"
Felipe is silent a long time. He doesn't even speak as they go back to Corvin's apartment. The sergeant tells them to get some rest while he goes back to the department. Felipe turns the shower on, and instead of undressing, he goes in, clothes still on, sits on the floor of the tub, and leans his head against the wall. The water is cold at first, and gradually warms up. When Arpeggio comes in to bring a towel and finds him still clothed, his face opens into mild concern. For Arpeggio, that usually means extreme concern.
"Fel, you gotta take those off."
Felipe can barely have the energy to turn to look at him, sitting on the bottom of there tub. Its those tired eyes that make Arpeggio's chest ache slightly. The look of utter defeat. Exhaustion. Drained of life.
"I'm…sorry…."
He understands and begins to remove his clothes layer by layer, tossing them over into the sink. As if he's trying to remove the stain of the night off of him.
"Don't worry about it. You didn't go all the way anyway."
"That's not what I'm sorry about."
Arpeggio cocks his head and helps him peel off those dirty jeans.
"I'm sorry…I had to…. I promised myself I'd never touch the damn thing to play that ever again."
Felipe begins to cry, and Arpeggio holds his shaking body.
"I never want to play that ever again," he sobs.
Arpeggio holds him in the water and whispers his name over and over again until he's calm. And by then the water grows ice cold once more.
They slide into bed long after, and the black-eyed man clutches at his partner. The same way he had only once before.
In Egypt.
"I'm meeting Orlock 3 nights from now." Its all he says for the rest of the night.
To be continued….
--Dio (10/24/14)
Series and characters belong to me.