A Glitch in Reality - Chapter 0021

Chapter 21

Two weeks turned the old factory office into something that almost deserved the word home.

The change announced itself in the smell first. The shed had received them with the dry stink of rust and abandonment, decades of dust settled into the concrete, the faint sourness of rat droppings in the corners no one had touched since the place stopped operating. Now the air carried fresh joint compound, sawdust, the warm bitterness of cheap coffee left too long on the burner. Jack noticed it every time he climbed the metal stairs from the warehouse floor, that small daily proof that the work had gone somewhere. He stood at the top of the steps and looked at what they had built, and for a moment the calculating part of his mind went quiet and simply registered the fact: walls where there had been none.

They had raised the divisions themselves, sheet by sheet, screwing drywall into the metal profiles Kevin’s father’s contact had delivered to a property that did not exist on any registry. The work had been clumsy at the start, two men who had never lifted a level in their lives arguing over whether a wall was straight, and it showed in the seams if you looked closely. But it held. One partition cut the long room into a sleeping area, two beds bought secondhand from a closing motel on the edge of the city, mattresses that sagged a little in the middle but did not punish the spine the way the apartment’s floor mats had. A second partition closed off what they had started calling the living room with more irony than conviction, because it held only Jack’s old television, the one that had survived the move with its bent antenna and its habit of losing color in the upper left corner, and two armchairs whose upholstery did not match. The stove and the refrigerator stood against the far wall, both dented, both humming, both alive. Kevin had paid for almost all of it without making a show of it, the way a man pays who has never had to choose between rent and food, and Jack had let him, swallowing the discomfort that came with owing, because owing Kevin was the one debt in his life that did not feel like a trap.

A second partition isolated what they began to call the living room, more ironically than convincingly, because it contained only Jack’s old television—the one that had survived the move with its crooked antenna and the habit of fading in the upper left corner—and two armchairs whose upholstery didn’t match. The stove and refrigerator were against the back wall, both dented, both humming, both working. Kevin had paid almost everything without making a fuss, like a man who never had to choose between rent and food, and Jack let it go, swallowing the discomfort of being in debt, because owing Kevin was the only debt in his life that didn’t seem like a trap.

Below them, through the interior window that overlooked the warehouse, the floor lay swept and bare. They had spent days on it, dragging out the last of what the previous owners had abandoned, the swollen cardboard boxes that came apart in the hands, the coils of cable thick with grime, the broken pallets, the dead birds that had found their way in through the roof and never found their way out. Kevin did most of the hauling, and the work that would have taken two ordinary men a month took the two of them a week, because one of them could carry a rusted machine press across the room without changing his breathing. What remained now was a clean rectangle of concrete, lit by the long bars of afternoon sun coming through the high windows, waiting for whatever they decided to make of it. Empty, but in the way a blank page is empty, not the way a grave is.

Jack came down the stairs with two mugs and found Kevin in the wide doorway of the shed, looking out at the two vehicles parked on the packed dirt.

The Camaro sat where it always sat, black and low and faithful, the car his father had handed him at seventeen with more pride than he had ever handed Kevin a kind word. Beside it now stood the second one. A panel van, also black, no logo on the doors, no windows along the cargo side, the kind of vehicle that made mothers pull their children a little closer on the sidewalk without quite knowing why. They had bought it cheap and off the books from the same loose network that had furnished everything else, the seller asking no name and offering none. Kevin had taken one look at it on the lot and named it before they had even driven it home.

“Still can’t believe you call it that,” Jack said, handing him a mug.

“Bacon earned the name.” Kevin took the coffee in a hand that had grown wide enough to wrap the whole mug. He nodded at the van with the fondness of a man admiring an ugly dog. “Black van, no plates worth reading, no windows in the back. You know what a thing like that says to a cop?” He took a sip, and his voice dropped into something flat and amused, the heavy humor that had always been his way of touching the worst things without flinching. “It says don’t look inside. I can’t even keep candy in the glove box. One bag of lollipops in there and they’d give me twenty years before I finished explaining.”

Jack let out a short breath that was almost a laugh. The joke landed exactly as Kevin intended, ugly and true, and it was the kind of thing only Kevin could say and make funny instead of grim. The van was a tool, nothing more. The Camaro was for the city, for being seen and forgotten. Bacon was for the other work, the work without witnesses, and they both understood that without saying it, which was why Kevin said the joke instead.

Inside the van, locked in a steel toolbox bolted to the wheel well, sat the only thing they owned that had not come from the gacha or a secondhand lot. A pistol. Plain, used, the bluing worn pale at the muzzle, two boxes of ammunition and two spare magazines beside it in the foam. It had cost them more discomfort than money. Jack had handled guns exactly never in his old life, and Kevin had fired one twice at cans behind his uncle’s property and missed both times. Neither of them pretended it made them dangerous. But a man who has decided to walk into rooms full of people who hurt others for a living does not walk in empty-handed, and the pistol was less a weapon than a statement they made to themselves. We are taking this seriously now. Jack thought of it the way he thought of the suit folded upstairs, or the strength sleeping in Kevin’s arms, or the cream that had rebuilt his face while he slept. Each one a piece. Not enough on its own. The beginning of enough.

“The line came up this morning,” Kevin said, reading the next question off Jack’s face before he asked it. “Stable, finally. Took the guy three tries but we’re connected.”

That had been the hardest part of the whole two weeks, harder than the walls, harder than the floor. In Jack’s world, in the real 2002 he had left behind, getting a household online had meant a screeching modem and a phone line you tied up for hours, and out here past the city limits it would have meant nothing at all, no infrastructure, no provider willing to run a cable to a property that did not officially exist. But this world ran on different rules, and the rules did not always agree with one another. The technology had climbed faster here, in strange uneven leaps, networks reaching places they had no business reaching, and yet half the city still conducted its business on landline telephones, receivers cradled on shoulders, numbers scrawled on paper. Jack had stopped being surprised by the contradiction and started using it. A world advanced enough to give them a connection and old enough not to ask who they were.

Technology had advanced faster here, in strange and uneven leaps, networks reaching places they shouldn’t, and yet half the city still used landline phones, devices on their shoulders, numbers scribbled on paper. Jack had stopped being surprised by the contradiction and had begun to use it. A world advanced enough to give them a connection and old enough not to ask who they were.

The solution had been Kevin’s, and it was the kind of solution that made Jack trust his friend’s instincts even when Kevin himself doubted them. They had bought the service under the name of one of the phantom companies in the father’s tax-dodging web, a shell with a bank account and no employees and no reason for anyone to look at it twice. The connection arrived billed to a business that existed only as ink, run out of a building that appeared on no map, and through that thin invisible thread they could now do the part of the work that did not require fists. Research. Reading. Watching the city talk to itself from a safe distance. For two men trying to map a war before they entered it, that thread was worth more than the pistol.

“Show me what you found,” Jack said.

They went back up. The third partition, the one Jack had argued against because it ate into the small space they had, held the reason Kevin had won the argument. It was Kevin’s wall. He had spent the two weeks at it while Jack measured and cut and screwed the home into existence around him, and what had started as a few printed pages had become something that made Jack stop in the doorway every time he passed. Newspaper clippings. Printouts gone soft at the edges from handling. Names in Kevin’s blocky handwriting, connected by lengths of string that crossed and recrossed until the wall looked less like research and more like a fever. Police-blotter summaries. A hand-drawn map of the harbor districts with neighborhoods circled in red.

“It’s worse than we thought,” Kevin said. He set his mug down on the desk and stood in front of the wall the way a man stands in front of weather coming in. “I’ve been pulling everything I can find. Local pages, the police bulletins that get posted, the stuff the papers bury on the inside columns where nobody reads. And the city’s coming apart, man. Not slow. Fast.”

Jack read the wall in silence, his eyes moving the way they always moved, taking the whole pattern before any single piece. Kevin filled the silence, because Kevin always filled silences, and because the numbers needed saying out loud to be believed.

“Drugs are everywhere now. Not the way they always were, the usual amount, the corners everybody knew to avoid. It’s flooding in. People sleeping in the doorways downtown who had jobs six months ago. The shelters are turning people away because there’s no room. And the killings.” He tapped a column of clippings, and his thick finger left a faint smudge on the paper. “Ten a week. At least ten. There were weeks last year with none. People are scared to leave their houses after dark, and the ones doing the killing aren’t even bothering to hide anymore. It’s like something pulled the floor out from under the whole place at once.”

Jack already knew why, or thought he did, but he let Kevin lay it out, because Kevin needed to arrive at it on his own. He turned from the wall and found the one clipping that mattered more than the body count, the headline about City Hall, and tapped it.

“And this,” he said. “Tell me about this.”

Kevin’s jaw worked. “The mayor. They’re all over him. The council, the business owners, half the papers. Everybody’s screaming the same thing. Bring back Vought. Sign the contract, put the heroes back on the streets, let them clean it up the way they did before. It’s the easiest answer in the world.” He frowned, and the frown was the frown of a man genuinely confused, not performing it. “And he won’t. He keeps stalling. Press conferences where he says he’s exploring local solutions, internal task forces, whatever that means. He’s got the whole city furious with him and he won’t pick up the phone and make the one call everybody wants him to make. It doesn’t add up. The man’s burning his own career to keep them out. Why would anyone do that?”

Jack was quiet for a moment. Through the window the warehouse floor lay gold in the lowering light, the clean concrete they had earned, and beyond the open shed door the dry hills rolled toward the bright smear of the city where all of this was happening to people who would never know his name. When he spoke, his voice was low and even, the voice he used when he was being careful with his friend.

“Maybe he picked up the phone once already. Maybe he knows what answering it costs.”

Kevin looked at him.

“Maybe the mayor knows exactly what that company is,” Jack went on. “And he’s decided that ten dead a week is better than what comes through the door when you invite them in. That’s a man choosing the smaller monster. You only choose like that when you’ve already met the bigger one.”

The frown stayed on Kevin’s face, but it changed shape, the confusion in it folding slowly into something more troubled. This was the wall between them, the one that no drywall and no two weeks of work could put up or tear down, and Jack watched his friend press against it the way he had watched him press against it a dozen times since the night this all began. Kevin had not arrived in this world the way Jack had. Kevin had been born into it. He had grown up under the same posters Jack now saw from the bus window, the golden man in the cape soaring over the freeway, except that for Kevin the posters had not been cheap marketing for a dying series. They had been the sky he lived under. Homelander had been the face on his childhood lunchbox. Black Noir had been the silent one the boys at school argued about, the one nobody had ever heard speak. Translucent had been a name said with the easy reverence you give to something that has always been good and always will be. For thirty years those figures had stood in Kevin’s mind exactly where they were meant to stand, on the side of the people, and Jack had spent weeks now trying to pull them down, and you do not pull down a man’s whole childhood in a few conversations on the floor of a warehouse.

Kevin had been born into it. He had grown up under the same posters Jack now saw from the bus window, the golden caped man soaring over the highway, only for Kevin the posters weren’t cheap marketing for a fading TV show. They were the sky he lived under. Homelander was the face on his childhood lunchbox. Black Noir was the silent one the schoolboys talked about, the one no one had ever heard of. Translucent was a name pronounced with the natural reverence one dedicates to something that has always been good and always will be. For all those years, these figures had remained in Kevin’s mind exactly where they should be, on the side of the people, and Jack had spent weeks trying to take them down, and you don’t destroy a man’s entire childhood in a few conversations on a warehouse floor.

“You keep saying that,” Kevin said finally, and there was no anger in it, only the strain of a man trying to lift something heavier than he was used to. “That they’re not what everybody thinks. That the company’s rotten all the way through, that the heroes are something else underneath. I hear you. I do. And I keep trying to put it together with the guy I watched on the news my whole life, the one who pulled a school bus out of the bay when I was nine, and the two of them won’t fit in the same head.”

“I know,” Jack said.

“I’m not saying you’re wrong.” Kevin scrubbed a hand down his red beard, a habit from before all of this, from the boy who used to do it behind a keyboard. “I’m saying it’s like you’re telling me water flows up. Even if you showed me, I’d keep flinching.”

Jack understood it better than Kevin gave him credit for, and the understanding kept him patient when patience did not come easily to him. Because Jack carried his own version of the same problem, a heavier one, and he had never fully said it out loud. He knew this world the way you know a story you have read, and he knew it was no longer that story. The gacha had not dropped them into The Boys, and it had not dropped them into Invincible. It had taken the two of them, the two universes he had followed for years with the devotion he gave to nothing else in his life, and it had crushed them together into something new, a single reality where Vought’s rot and the silent judgment of beings who could split a planet now shared the same sky. He had the map of both worlds in his head and the map was wrong, because the territory was something neither author had ever drawn. He could not be certain which rules still held. The names he knew might mean what they had always meant, or they might mean something he had no way to predict until it was standing in front of him. That uncertainty was the real reason for the pragmatism Kevin was only now beginning to respect, the reason Jack planned for defeat before he let himself plan for anything else. A man who is sure of the ending can afford to be brave. A man who knows the ending has been rewritten can only afford to be careful.

Gacha hadn’t placed them in The Boys, nor in Invincible. He’d taken both, the two universes he’d followed for years with the same devotion he devoted to nothing else in his life, and crushed them, transforming them into something new, a single reality where Vought’s corruption and the silent judgment of beings capable of shattering a planet now shared the same sky. He had the map of both worlds in his mind, and the map was wrong, because the territory was something neither author had ever drawn. He couldn’t be sure which rules still applied.

The names he knew could mean what they always meant, or they could mean something he couldn’t possibly foresee until it was right in front of him. This uncertainty was the real reason for the pragmatism Kevin was only now beginning to respect, the reason Jack planned for defeat before allowing himself to plan anything else. A man who is certain of the ending can afford to be courageous. A man who knows the ending has been rewritten can only afford to be cautious.

And Kevin was beginning to see it. That was the thing that had shifted in him over these two weeks, slower than the muscle and quieter, but no less real. He still doubted. He would go on doubting, probably, until the day something forced the doubt out of him for good, and Jack hoped that day would come on their terms and not on the city’s. But he had stopped treating Jack’s caution as paranoia. He had started to feel the weight of a situation that did not reduce to anything simple, where the heroes might be the danger and the agency that hunted danger might be its own kind of threat and the things in the sky did not need a reason to be merciless. Somewhere in the work of the last fourteen days, between hauling rust out of the warehouse and pinning the dead to the wall by name, Kevin had crossed from the friend who humored Jack’s warnings into the partner who was starting to share their cold logic. He was not all the way across. But he had left the far bank.

He had begun to feel the weight of a situation that was anything but simple, where the heroes could be the danger and the agency hunting the danger could be its own threat, and things in the sky didn’t need a reason to be merciless. At some point during the last fourteen days’ work, between hauling rust out of the warehouse and nailing the dead to the wall by name, Kevin had gone from a friend who tolerated Jack’s warnings to a partner who was beginning to share his cold logic. He hadn’t completely crossed over. But he had left the other side.

“At least,” Kevin said, and a corner of his mouth lifted, the dark humor surfacing again the way it always did when a moment got too heavy for him to hold straight, “if water does start flowing up, I can throw a table at it now.” He flexed one hand, looking at it, opening and closing the thick fingers. “Two weeks ago that joke would’ve just been sad. Now it’s a plan.”

Jack did almost smile at that. The strength was the one thing that had made the rest bearable for Kevin, and Jack would not begrudge him the comfort of it. The fruit had given his friend something Jack’s worry could not, a floor under his feet, a reason to walk into the dark without his hands shaking. Whatever was true about this rewritten world, whatever waited out past the dry hills in the bright sick glow of the city, Kevin no longer had to face it as the weak one. He had spent his whole life as the boy who watched, and now he was a man who could lift the room. That was worth something. It was worth enough that Jack let the joke stand and did not crush it with another caution, the way he usually would have.

They stood together a while longer in front of the wall, the strings and the names and the rising number of the dead, while the sun finished sinking and the warehouse below went from gold to grey to nothing, and the only light left in the shed came from the one bare bulb over Kevin’s research and the cold blue ghost of the old television muttering to itself in the room they jokingly called the living room. Outside, the city they were studying killed ten people a week and did not know it was being watched. The mayor held his line against the easy answer for reasons he would never explain to a soul. And the two of them stood in a building that existed on no map, with a van named after a pig, a pistol they could barely shoot, a strength still learning its own size, and a suit folded in the dark waiting for the day it would matter.

It was almost nothing. A clean floor, two beds, a thread of stolen connection, a wall full of the dead. Measured against everything they were planning to do, against Vought and the agency and the things that ruled the sky, it was so small it should have been laughable.

But it was a place to stand. And from a place to stand, Jack knew, you could move almost anything, if you only found the right point to push.

“Tomorrow we plan the next target,” he said into the dark. “A real one this time.”

Kevin reached up and pressed his palm flat against the wall, over the red-circled districts, the way you might press a hand to a window to feel the cold of the weather on the other side.

“Tomorrow,” he agreed.