“You just couldn’t give it up,” a voice said behind him. Cotton knew immediately who it was. He should have known long ago, but because he had heard it in two contexts for so long, even the minor hushes of Peter Cooley should have told him that his archenemy was present, for so long, for all those years. Of course, Viper had not been the Eidolon’s archenemy from the start, or at least not seemed that way. He had calculated his reveal, and it had come the day Cotton killed Rodrigo Ramirez in cold blood. Cotton himself had made the reintroduction. It was the kind of realization Viper had planned for, but he had miscalculated the impact. Cotton no longer cared.
“Whatever you thought I did to you, it was always in your mind, Viper,” he said.
“It was nothing you did to me,” Viper said, “but rather what you represented. After all this time, you still don’t understand. There is a limit to the imposition of will.”
“And you happen to draw the line at costumed heroes,” Cotton said.
“Because they assume too much,” Viper said. “Because they think they can operate out of the system to protect it.”
“So you did the same,” Cotton said, “only on the opposite side.”
“We all make compromises, Cotton,” Viper said. “Turn around. Drop the rags on the ground.”
Cotton did as he was told, even to the point of looking his enemy in the eye, which he had never done before. He was going to make a point of it from then on. “Compromises define us,” he said. “Congratulations on the obvious. But we don’t have to let them compromise ourselves.”
“You don’t know me,” Viper said. “You thought you did, but you didn’t, and you never bothered to try. Peter Cooley was the deaf man who helped you gather information at the Traverse Tracks. Viper was a nuisance. Don’t bother to say otherwise.”
“You were those things to me,” Cotton said. “I freely admit that. You also had my respect, in both identities. But it wasn’t enough. What did you need, Viper?”
“I needed nothing,” Viper said. “That was exactly the point. I needed nothing and you needed everything. I’m doing you a favor. I’m putting an end to your self-serving charade.”
Cotton heard the click on the barrel he knew was mounted to Viper’s wrist, the barrel that had murdered Calypso. He did not look at it, but he knew Viper was lifting it toward his head. “I will not play your games,” he said. “If you want to do that, go ahead. If you want to see this war of yours and live, you won’t. Yes, Viper, I don’t wish to see you dead. Even this calamity you’ve brought upon yourself, I won’t let it collapse around you, if I can help it. That’s all I can do, all I know how to do. If you don’t want me to try, kill me now. You think I brought this on you. You brought it on yourself. This costume is mine. The Eidolon is mine. You may think you can take it away from me, but you are mistaken. You have always been mistaken.”
“Fine,” Viper said, lifting his arm. “I’d like to see you try. I’d like to see what you think you can do in this war. And it isn’t mine. It belongs to the city of Traverse. It brought this upon itself. I will try my best, and while I do so, I will watch you fail. Again.”
Cotton watched as Viper made his exit, with no attempt to obscure his tracks. He had once played that game, but no longer found it necessary. Now everyone knew about him, and he reveled in it. For his part, Cotton determined to stage his transformation in the last ruins of the Dread Poet, the underground bunker on Culver St, long a legend and recently revealed to be fact. Balthazar had as much as told him so, Balthazar who no longer occupied the space in his mind as he had. There was something happening, something neither could understand.
“I did have more to lose,” Balthazar said. “I didn’t think so, but I did. I’m losing my mind. It’s not how I would have imagined it. When someone says they’re losing their mind, it’s to say that they’re becoming less rational. That’s not what’s happening. I feel myself fading away, and I can’t fight it. I don’t even want to try. I know I can’t. I don’t have the strength. It feels natural, somehow, as if this is supposed to be happening. I’m losing strands of myself, like threadwork coming undone, a lifetime uncoiling. I can’t even remember my wife’s name. What was she like? What did I do for Boy Benjamin? What is my earliest memory of him? I can’t remember. It’s as if they were never truly there to begin with, that they were somehow figments of my imagination. I know they were real, but their connection to me, they’re like lies, piercing into me, digging their way out again. I’m still rational, but my life begins to seem less and less so. How am I supposed to understand this? I feel as if I should accept it, and I don’t even know why.”
“I wish I knew what to say,” Cotton said. “You’ve been inside my head. I feel as if I should know, should be able to help you, but I can’t.”
“I’m getting what I should have gotten,” Balthazar said. “It’s finally come. This is the end.”
“Then don’t surrender to it,” Cotton said. “That’s the last thing you should be doing.”
“But I have no other choice,” Balthazar said. “Don’t you understand? That’s what I’m trying to tell you. I’m sitting here, watching things fall apart, and I feel helpless, and that is not a terrifying thought. It fills me with peace, Cotton. I can’t explain it, but it fills me with peace. I now understand that I have never known such a thing.”
“We’re going to Tekamthi’s bunker,” Cotton said. “That’s all you need to know. He said that he did not keep his memoirs, but he could have just been saying that. We’re going there and from there we will make our stand.”
“It’s very kind of you, to hold out strength for me,” Balthazar said. “But I don’t need it. I have to let this happen.”
“I’m telling you, Balthazar,” Cotton said. “You don’t! You don’t have to let this happen!”
“Believe what you want to,” Balthazar said. “We can go to William Tekamthi’s bunker. We can search through his files. Even if we did that, there would not be enough time. I wouldn’t last long enough. You don’t even have the time. There is so much to see there, and so much for you to do. You made the resolution to reclaim the Eidolon, now you’ve got to live up to that. Traverse needs you, more than I do, more than I ever did, more than you ever needed me. Don’t you understand?”
“We’re going,” Cotton said. “We’ll sort out the rest later. But we’re going. That’s all there is to it. I have to try.”
“Tell me, Cotton,” Balthazar said, “what happened to doing the smart thing? I can feel more of myself fading, as if I was never really here. Lotus took everything from me. He took everything. And now the rest of it is leaving me, what even he couldn’t take. I wonder what he would say? I wonder why he thought he had to do this. I wonder why he thought he had to plunge this city into Armageddon. How tormented a soul is he? Doesn’t he understand we all are?”
“Of course he does,” Cotton said. “We all know that. Some of us just care more than others, some of us can ignore it, because we only care about ourselves. I cared only for myself for so long.”
“You only thought you did,” Balthazar said. “You didn’t understand yourself, Cotton. You only thought you did. And you know what? You never will. You will find peace when you accept that. And that‘s what you‘ve been doing, Cotton, trying to find peace. That‘s all we have ever done.
“Cotton? Who is Cotton? Who am I? I don’t even know anymore. I don’t know anything. I’ve lost everything. I watch it as it fades away. I can follow its trail. It makes a lovely light.”
With these words, Cotton felt Balthazar Romero leave him, for the last time. Once again, Cotton Colinaude was alone, almost as if he had always been that way, and that it was only delusion that told him otherwise. He continued onward, to Tekamthi’s bunker. Thanks to Balthazar, he knew where it was, how he could access it. Such a clever man, Tekamthi had been, to accepted cleverness as the only redeeming quality of man, to understand all that it gave mankind, to realize that it alone gave mankind anything.
He was already failing Balthazar’s memory, for he had no idea what he had been talking about, and could feel nothing in regards to what Balthazar had lost, before he lost himself utterly. He should have felt something, but there was nothing, nothing but emptiness, and it troubled him, this void that Balthazar had created, as if he had been there forever, inside Cotton’s mind, and once gone, had taken a part of Cotton with him. All he could do was continue on, and he was angry with himself for doing so. He had not allowed himself to be angry in ages, and the fact that he was troubled him all the more. Anger led to worse things. He knew this all too well.
So he walked, onward in his torment, as if the walking was his own punishment. He passed the gas station again and noticed that two more cents had dropped. This time he could say that it had finally, unequivocally, fallen below two dollars, and that cheered him a little, like a triumph, even though he had no part of it and would not be in the least bit directly affected. He had no car. Still, he accepted it for what it was. He would have liked to have had that conversation with his father. Just the thought of it cheered him more. He could use all of that, all of the cheer he could muster. As dark as the days were he was finally escaping, darker days yet loomed ahead, darker than he had ever known, had ever expected to know, and nothing like he would ever had expected. This war that lay ahead, it would be like none other, and yet like every other in history. It would bring about devastation, destruction. No one could say what would be lost, but it would be great, incalculable, unfathomable. He could not face it alone.
And he knew who to turn to. It had been so long, like everything else he had once known. But he would have to see the Alabama Lamb, one more time. He would need to ask for one more favor. This time, it would not be personal. He had that much consolation. He wondered if Godsend would listen, if Godsend already knew what was about to happen, and why. He wondered what Godsend would say. He wondered if Godsend was already fighting it.
But first Tekamthi’s bunker, where the Eidolon would be reborn.
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