Delta - 7

December 21, 4140
5:00 AM

As always Harry woke up that morning without the beeping or screeching of any alarm. She started to pull the comforter off and as the cloth brushed against her legs, the pain started. This was how it went every morning and unless she magically made her way back to Tanis, it would continue to be a standard of her morning routine.

The long stumble crawl to the bathroom seemed to be more painful than usual, perhaps a result from yesterday’s events. After helping Will organize the library last night, nightmare memories coursing the entire time, she had collapsed onto the hard bed. The mattress had to be stiff or there was no way she could support herself enough to get up in the morning.

From the door frame of the bathroom, Harry hopped over to the railing Jud had installed the summer before, after she broke her leg stepping up to the sink. Her condition hadn’t improved since then, in fact it was getting worse. In hindsight, it was probably a bad sign that her legs were getting weaker but not bad enough to reveal such a fact to Will.

And now as she awoke and inched her way to the sink, Harry realized that the shower had been running this entire time.

“God damn plumbing. I swear if I have to crawl up in the attic again and look at the pipes, it’ll be the death of me.”

In her mind, Harry had said this quietly to herself but it more of a proclaiming shout. From inside the shower stall there came a shriek followed by a series of crashes and several more shrieks.

“Will, what the hell are you doing up?”

Will collected herself from the floor of the shower stall.
“Don’t bother helping me up.”
“I can’t. I don’t have my braces on.”
“Sorry, of course. I just didn’t sleep last night.”

She pulled her towel over the curtain rod and started covering up.
“After you went to bed, not that I’m complaining, I spent the rest of the time organizing more of the books.”

Harry did feel some guilt for backing out of helping Will the night before and she couldn’t explain her exhaustion. Will might be okay with the occasional hired arson job, but she certainly wouldn’t stand for murder, especially if it was a personal grudge versus a hit.

“I am sorry about not helping you last night, darling. These cases have just been tiring me out easily. Now if you excuse me, I need to soak in the tub for the next half hour.”
“Do you need me?”

Yes.

“No. I’ll be fine. If I scream, you’ll come help?”
Will laughed as she said, “Yes.”

She took her robe off the hook and walked away without saying anything else. The silence was starting to bother Harry, as it did every time when they had one of these “talks”. Her legs started to tense up as her anxiety returned, the color shifted back to a grayish purple. The image of Vinconni lying on the floor flashed back into her mind and the features on the floor changed to her own.

The orange and crimson scales along his arms and legs turned to dark blue and purple, with splashes of green every so often. His short and wide webbed feet changed in design to her own long and slender ones. And then his face started to shift around –

“What the fuck is that?”

Harry jumped back out of her dream at the sound of Will screaming from a few floors down. The water was starting to drain out of the tub and as she scrambled for her braces, Harry fell to the floor again.

I need to get downstairs.

She slipped the braces on, leather and steel tightening against her hips. It was another long and slow crawl to the handrail before she was able to stand up and find a way into the bedroom. The bedroom didn’t have the same balance rails as the bathroom and instead had a table or chair every three feet.

Downstairs, there was some sort of altercation going but she couldn’t hear properly until she reached the top of the stairwell.

“Who are you? Put that down.”

A shot rang out as Harry scrambled down the stairs to see what was happening. Time seemed to slow down for a moment as she outstretched her hand, sat down on the middle step of the first floor and focused on the movement of the bullet.

The front window of the office shattered, and shrieks occurred from in and outside of the building. Harry looked over to all the people in the room, the lady on the street with the baby carriage and the cats staring down from the rafters.

As Harry walked across the shards of glass on the floor, many thoughts rushed through her head.
We need to get rid of the cats.
What the fuck is the lady with the baby carriage doing?
Oh my god Will.

The gunman stood across from her on the very silent battlefield, where the witnesses just kept standing there, instead of calling authorities or running to a safe place. He was a bean poll shaking in the wind that came flowing in through the drafty window. At his side hung the gun, what appeared to be a small pistol but obviously something more to have shattered the glass.

“You.”

He backed off and looked down at the gun in his hand, perhaps considering doing something more.

“You broke my window and tried to kill my girlfriend. And I can’t decide which one I’m more pissed about.”

With absolutely no doubt in his eye, the young man said, “My-my name is Leo Vinconni. You killed my father. Prepare to die.”
“So you’re the other Vinconni? What have I ever done to make you treat me so disrespectfully?”

Now another thought flashed to Harry’s mind, even more troubling than the ones she had approached before.
How did he know?

“Harry? What’s he talking about? Who-who did you hurt this time?”
“You believe him? The man who just broke into our offices and tried to kill you?”

Will hesitantly looked between the armed bandit that Jud was now handcuffing to a desk and Harry.

“I know you’re probably trying to protect me by not telling me anything about the work that you do but I have to believe that young man came here with a mission. And even if you didn’t kill his father, as a detective you should find the person responsible.”
“So now I’m a liar?”
“I didn’t say that. Omitting important information though is just as bad as lying.”

From his handcuffed position on the floor, Leo gave some relationship advice.
“Man, it isn’t cool to lie to your SO.”
“Don’t make me hurt you.”
“Fine.”

Harry turned back around to face Will, who was starting to cry and no matter how much she resisted, judgmental comments ran through her head. She started thinking about how weak Will was and how this was all done to protect her.

“I killed him because I had to. Now let’s call the cops and get this over with.”
“What?”
“I killed Vinconni because – “
Because what, Harry?
Because he was going to kill you?
Because he was going to go to the Feds?
Because he was going to hurt you.

“Because what, Harry?”
“Because he was going to hurt you. If I didn’t follow through with all of the parts of his new trade agreement and I certainly wasn’t going to do that.”

She glanced around the room to the continuing bystanders, stepped closer to Will and began to drag her to the second-floor offices.
“What are you doing?”
“Discussing this in somewhere more private than the foyer.”

From the detective’s desk section, Jud and Leo both voiced their concerns but soon turned back to their respective cups of coffee. Harry glanced back on them as she went up the stairs, half wondering how they could change so quickly into the calm pace. On the streets outside, people had finally started to move along and mind their own business, instead of looking inside to the broken glass.

Everything was going right for one world and wrong in another.

And as she reached the last step with Will, starting to argue once again about the state of their relationship and how Harry needed to share more, another shot rang out.

The events started to play out downstairs. The screaming. The sirens.

Harry stood frozen on the step, in between many different situations and soon she felt dizzy. And by the next moment of realizing what was going, she had tumbled backwards down the flight. People rushed to her side and she heard voices shouting at her, but all she could see was the flickering image of Vinconni Sr.

The sound faded out more and she was soon brought to the middle of the river. Harry had no idea who she was talking to, but she found herself talking aloud again.

The river was freezing cold, which in hindsight should have been expected for the December weather. The gators on the other bank were still paying no attention to me and I waded further out. Once I reached the middle, I couldn’t touch anymore but it wasn’t any work to float once I got into that natural place.

It had been so long since I was able to be immersed. At first, I couldn’t even think of the right language to speak, let alone the right words to say. The water looked clear and clean below me, something I could probably dive down into safely but maybe not something I would want to breathe through.

I slipped down a few more feet and floated beneath the surface, not quite touching the bottom. All sorts of fish started to swirl around me to investigate what this sound was resonating through the water. The gators from the other bank slithered into the water, jaws open for the hunt but soon closed when they came close enough to hear.

The language underwater was like music, to move the water and the inhabitants of it. Above sea level it would only sound like the whale’s wail. Here it was a melody.

I tried to keep my eyes shut because the water was started to sting. If I looked up, I could see the faint outline of the water moving into the bath tub in the middle of the warehouse.

It was getting harder to concentrate and then I slipped back into the other side. I can remember getting out of the river and having to crawl and stumble all the way up the bank. The walk back to warehouse was one without braces and for the few moments it lasted, there was no pain in my legs.

“So, you can walk. I thought the females were usually too weak for that.”

No matter how many rats were gnawing at his legs, Vinconni managed to maintain his own conversational skills.

“And you’re a dick. Last time I checked, that organ couldn’t talk.”
“Hmm. Funny how your humor is so strong and your humerus is not.”

The bathtub was still filling up with the cold water from the Texan River and I stared at him, wondering if I had enough strength to move him into the basin.

“Are you planning on using that to torture me?”
He gestured towards the tub with his right foot while using the left to kick away the rat chewing on his pant leg. It scattered back a few feet but remained close enough to jump onto any of the open wounds.

“Do you have enough pity for me to move the rats?”
“Did the nuns have enough pity?”
“The nun massacre was forever ago, you can’t still be mad about that.”

I turned back to the table, trying to remain focused on the goal at hand but the blades started to tempt me. On the end, there lay the silver one with the ivory handle. It would be very painful for him, silver being a sensitive metal for land bound Neros.

The image fades for the moment when the knife is plunged into his other thigh. The screams called more creatures to the scene, rather than driving them away like the first time.

“At least we know which way you’re going.”
“And we all know that you’re going the same direction as me. Have fun while this lasts because then it will haunt you forever.”
“I’m not going to let a punk ass bitch like you haunt me forever. Say good bye to the sunlight for a little while.”

I don’t remember picking up the glass bottle and I barely remember swinging it into his head. After that it becomes a blur again and –

Harry woke up to the sound of another argument happening in the common are of the second floor.

“There are negotiations being made that are going to answer all of your questions and solve all of your problems. That’s all I can tell you right now.”

She couldn’t hear any of the voices clearly and thought, Robe?

A heavier voice coughed, and cigar smoke flowed into her office. It had to be Jud talking when the voice said, “It’s a leap of faith.”