Soul Patrol: Badge of the Forgotten

The Gray One

 

The Forge looked different in the morning.

Elias couldn't say how. The furnace still burned in colors that shouldn't exist, and the cavern still shimmered with heat. But when he looked up at the cloud of burned memories drifting under the black stone ceiling, something in his gut said there were fewer of them than there had been.

He didn't say it out loud. He didn't have proof. He filed it under Things That Are Wrong Down Here, which was becoming a very long list.

"Vial," said Hattie.

Boone set the corked glass on the anvil. Inside, the tiny gray smear pressed against the glass, glowing softly, like a moth trying to reach a lamp.

"Here's how this works, love," Hattie said, rolling up her sleeves. "A Forgotten's identity is gone, but the last thing it felt strongly stays behind like a scar. An echo. Your badge can read it. But it'll cost you."

"Fragment," said Vega, from the stairs.

Everyone turned. The captain stood at the bottom step with her arms crossed, cigarette burning, looking like she hadn't slept.

"I said Scraps only, Thorne. This one I'm signing off on." She walked over and glared at the vial. "Don't get fucking used to it."

"Wasn't planning on it," said Elias.

"Nobody ever is."

Hattie didn't look up. She was staring at a squat iron cabinet against the far wall, locked with three padlocks, as if it had said something rude. Then she shook herself and picked up her tongs.

"You're jumpy," said Boone.

"I work with fire, Cyrus. I'm always fucking jumpy."

Boone leaned close to the vial. "Hold still, you gray son of a bitch. Nobody's gonna hurt you."

The smear pulsed. Almost like it understood.

Elias took a breath. He pinned the badge tight to his chest, put two fingers on the glass, and thought the word.

Burn.

BURN FRAGMENT? Power: Echo Reading Cost: One memory of a full day Confirm?

"Yes."

The tug came behind his eyes, deep and slow, and this time he could feel the badge choose. It wasn't random. It felt like a hand sliding through a drawer of old photographs, and stopping.

Smoke poured up from the anvil. It swirled in front of him, and for one second Elias saw what the badge was taking.

Thunder. A bedsheet clipped to two kitchen chairs. A flashlight under a blanket, throwing a yellow moon on the ceiling. A small voice, whispering, a little scared and a little proud: You're the roof, Eli. You have to hold it up, or it falls down.

Somebody's laughter. Somebody's small warm weight, asleep against his arm.

Then the smoke went gray, and the picture was gone. And it took something with it.

BURNED: The night he and Mara built a blanket fort.

Memory Reserve: 79%

Elias stood very still. He tried to remember what he'd just seen. He knew there had been thunder. He knew somebody had said something.

He couldn't remember what.

"Kid?" Boone said. "You good?"

"Yeah." His voice came out rough. "Yeah. It's fucking fine."

It wasn't fine. He had lost her face already. He'd been holding on to her voice like a rope. And now some of the rope was gone.

"It dulls," Vega said, without looking at him. "Not the hole. Just how often you trip over it."

Hattie's big hand landed on his shoulder. She didn't say anything. She didn't have to.

Then the smoke thickened, and the Forge went dark, and a scene rose up out of it.

A bridge.

Elias knew it instantly. Rain sheeted down. Streetlights glowed orange along the railing. A river moved below, black and oily, and at the center of the span stood a man in a long Patrol coat, his back to them. Older than Boone. Gray mustache. A notebook in his hand.

The badge on his coat read TALBOT, W.

"Fourth this year," the man said to the rain, and his voice was tired and clear and terribly alive. He flipped a page. "Fourth in twelve months. Same bridge. Same hour. Same story, every time. Accidental death. Blunt trauma. Processed, judged, filed."

"That's my line," Elias whispered. "That's what was in my ledger."

"Shh," said Hattie.

Talbot turned a page. Elias leaned forward. The notebook was full of neat handwriting, four names in a column, and beside three of them were the words ERASED WITHIN 24 HOURS.

"Those are people," Elias said. "Those aren't case numbers. Somebody killed three people on that bridge, and then somebody erased them before they could even finish dying."

"That's how you get a Forgotten," said Hattie grimly. "You don't make one. You steal one."

The fourth name had no note.

E. THORNE. TUES.

The whole Forge went silent.

"That's my name," Elias said. His mouth had gone dry. "He wrote my name. That's, Boone, that's my name, and that's a Tuesday. That's the Tuesday I fucking died."

"When's that date?" Vega said sharply.

Talbot flipped the notebook toward the light. In the corner of the page, small and neat, was a date.

"Eight days," said Boone, very quietly. "That's eight days before you died, kid."

Elias couldn't breathe. Eight days. Eight days before he was ever on that bridge, some stranger had already known he would die on it. Somebody had picked him out of a hat weeks ago, and then arranged the rest of the world around the decision.

Above the cavern, in the black stone, the crack where his own stolen memory had slipped away glittered faintly, like it was listening.

In the echo, Talbot shut the notebook. Somewhere far off, a bell began to ring. Slow. Deep. Wrong, somehow, like a church bell played underwater.

Talbot went rigid. "I know that sound," he whispered. His hand went to his badge, and for the first time, the tired calm in his voice cracked. "Oh, Christ."

He spun around.

Standing at the far end of the bridge, in the rain, was a shape that Elias couldn't make out. Tall. Still. The whole street seemed to lean toward it, like water toward a drain.

"You," said Talbot. "It was you the whole time. I should have known. I should have fucking known."

A stamp rose in the dark.

Talbot didn't run. He pulled a sheet of paper from his coat and held it up, and Elias caught only the smallest glimpse: a drawing, a row of lines that looked almost like a door. Then Talbot turned his face toward the echo, toward the future, toward whoever would someday be watching.

"Tell Marisol," he said. "The bridge is a door."

The stamp came down.

The bridge shattered into gray. The smoke rushed backward into the vial, and the tiny glowing smear inside it went dim and still. Whatever it had wanted to say, it had said.

Nobody moved.

Boone swore, low and long and creative, in three languages, one of which Elias was pretty sure was dead.

Elias stared at the glass. "That was him. That was the Forgotten from the morgue."

"Wren Talbot," said Hattie, softly, reading the badge in the smoke. "Patrol. Badge forty-four seventy-one."

"He was investigating the bridge," said Boone. "Somebody's been killing people on that fucking bridge and calling them accidents. And you were next on his list. Eight days before."

"That means it was fucking planned," Elias said. "That means I was picked." He looked at the vial. "He tried to strangle me. In the morgue."

"Forgotten don't choose, love," said Hattie. "They're hungry. All they've got left is want. But some scrap of him remembered your name, and it came looking for you."

"And nobody told him he was next," said Boone, rough-voiced. "He found out. And he got stamped for it."

"How long ago was that?" Vega asked. She hadn't moved. "The echo."

"A week," said Hattie. "Maybe more."

"A week?" Boone rubbed his face with both hands. "Fuck me. A week, and nobody..." He stopped. He looked at Vega.

She didn't look back.

Then Elias remembered the last thing the man had said.

He turned around slowly.

Vega stood beside the anvil, and she had gone completely white. The cigarette in her fingers, the one that never burned down, that had never once in all the time he'd known her gotten any shorter, flickered.

And went out.

"Cap?" said Boone.

She stared at the vial for a very long moment, at the little gray thing inside it. When she spoke, her voice was so quiet Elias almost didn't hear it.

"I knew him," she said.