In a weird way, the two Marteneiss siblings' interactions reminded me of my struggles with Dana during the string of events that culminated in her institutionalization on account of her schizophrenia. Back then, I felt exactly what Vernon was feeling now: our older sisters had never been further away from us as they were now, even though they were within arm's reach.

It just goes to show that being within arm's reach isn't that close at all.

Vernon's eyes bore into mine. "You know what I want to tell her, don't you? Well, go on and tell her, 'cause I certainly can't!"

"Heggy, Vernon feels the same as you do. He hates the hypocrisy! It—"

She stepped toward me. "—Oh shut up already, Dr. Howle."

And then, rather unceremoniously, she threw herself onto me.

"No!" Vernon screamed.

I dispelled the forcefield at the back of the room and reconstituted it in between Heggy and I. Dr. Marteneiss groaned as she smacked into the invisible forcefield. Before she could do something even stupider, I wrapped the plexus around her like paper around a trout, binding her as tightly as her well-being permitted.

Then I hauled her up into the air.

Heggy struggled against my bindings, mostly in vain, though she did manage to kick her legs rather fiercely, forcing me to lift her a little bit higher.

"I can't take it anymore!" she yelled. "End it all! Fucking end it already! I'm tired of the truth bein' a damn taxidermied lie. I don't want to live in a world where nothing means anything! End it!"

"Stop this!" Vernon yelled. "Genneth, please, stop this!"

"You don't think I want to? Look at her?" I pointed with a claw. "She's a danger to herself, and if she dies like this, all that bitterness and negativity put her spirit at risk of being corrupted!"

"I can help her!" he said. "I can do it! It's my duty to, given how badly I've fucked up! Tell her how I feel!"

But how could I do that when I had Heggy in magical restraints?

Fudge.

Heggy needed to hear her brother's voice. But… how?

And then it hit me. Specifically, one of the many nurses whose spirits now resided in me made a positively brilliant suggestion.

"Dr. Howle, ALICE can recreate voices."

I paused time to riddle out the implications.

Vernon had made his speech using the hospital's PA system, and—after a quick conferral with the soul of an IT worker I'd picked up a couple days ago—I discovered that, as a consequence, ALICE would still have all the pertinent sounds on record.

My psychokinesis provided the final piece of the puzzle.

"What now!?" Vernon demanded.

I would have glared at him, had I been able to move. Listen, I thought-said, I need your help.

That took him aback. "W-What?"

I'm going to use my powers to grab Heggy's PortaCon off her desk.

"So, what do you need me for?"

I can't hold her in place like this and float her console over to me at the same time. The big fight took a lot out of me.

"Then eat more!"

My family is still out there, General. I want to talk to them one last time, while I still can.

General Marteneiss' expression turned somber.

Listen, I thought-said, I'm going to wrap a plexus around you. It will enable you to physically interact with solid objects. You're going to need to hold your sister in place for me while I get her console. Do you understand me?

"Yes." He nodded.

I unraveled my plexus and split it in two, wrapping one blue-gold chunk in rings around Vernon's spirit-body, and flinging the other at Heggy's desk like a used handkerchief, lassoing her console.

Here goes nothing…

I let time flow.

Heggy hit the floor with a thud. She pushed herself up as quickly as she could, and then, growling, ran at me, but Vernon intercepted her, wrapping her in his arms. She screamed, thrashing against her dead brother's grip.

Reaching out, I levitated Heggy's PortaCon into my grasp. I clutched it gingerly, like it was a shard of glass.

Now came the tricky part.

Following what the IT ghost had told me, I used a force needle to press the appropriate icons on Heggy's console. Then I looked up and spoke. "ALICE! Voice Synthesis! Vernon Marteneiss!"

It was an idea worthy of Jonan.

ALICE replied in a distorted warble. "Synthesizing…"

"Vernon!" I yelled. "Talk your heart out!"

"Heggy," he said, "it's me!"

I put a doppelgenneth in charge of my force needles, letting him/me manipulate them to type Vernon's words onto Heggy's console at lightning speed. The link I'd established between the console and what remained of ALICE then used its records of Vernon's voice to synthesize the sound of General Marteneiss' voice reading aloud the words I'd typed. The results came out through the speakers in the ceiling for all to hear.

The author's content has been appropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

The effect was instantaneous—and it had to be. With the effort required to pull off my psychokinetic texting trick, I was only able to sustain Vernon's plexus for a few more seconds.

But it did the trick.

At the sound of her brother speaking to her from beyond the grave, Heggy whipped her head up and turned toward the speakers.

"Heggy, listen to me," he said. Vernon's spirit stared into his sister's eyes as he spoke, even though she could not see him. "I'm sorry," he said, "I didn't know it would break you. But, dammit Sis, don't throw yourself away over that!"

Vernon's arms phased through her as she staggered and fell onto her bottom with her back pressing against the front of her desk.

She gave me a wide-eyed stare.

"This can't be real."

"It's r—" I started to say, but Vernon cut me off.

"—Let me do the talking, for once," he said.

"Oh, you've gotta be kidding me," Heggy said.

"You know I was much for kidding, Sis."

She laughed. "Well, I guess that settles it. Ghosts are real, after all. Vern," she said, "if that really is you—"

"—Who else would it be?" the ghost replied.

Heggy coughed. "Just let me die already. Then we can be together again."

She hiccuped and cried.

"Hell no!" Vernon said.

"I'm broken, Vernon! Broken!"

"Plenty of folks are broken," Vernon continued. "That doesn't mean we're trash, and it certainly doesn't make life not worth living."

"Fine, I'm not trash! Now let me die already!" she yelled. "Let me fucking die! I don't want to do this anymore! I'm tired of fighting to make a bad world good!"

Vernon looked down in shame. "So am I," he said.

Heggy stared. "…what?" The word was barely above a whisper.

"Heggy…" Vernon wept. "I always envied you. Come hell or high water, you never lost faith that you were doing the right thing." He looked up at the sky hidden beyond the ceiling. "Angel… what I wouldn't have given to feel like that."

"But I was wrong, Vern! I was wrong! I put my trust in people who weren't fit to even lick my boots. Angel's breath," Heggy's eyes welled up with tears, "whenever I close my eyes and stand still, all I can see and hear are the people I might have done wrong to when I was so cocksure that I was doing what was right. I separated patients from their families. I helped hide the truth about what was happening. Maybe worst of all, I had the audacity to tell folks to have trust, hope, and faith when not only was there none to be offered, but when I, myself, had already surrendered to fear. Congratulations, Heggy Marteneiss, you spent your life putting your trust in state-sanctioned murderers."

She lifted her gaze to me.

"I'm sorry, Genneth. I shouldn't have locked you up. I should have known better."

"You only did what you thought was right," I said, shaking my head. "I don't blame you."

Heggy thumped her fist against the side of her desk. "No, don't say that! I never, ever want to hear that excuse ever again. Fuck, what's wrong with people? Do you know what a terrorist and a doctor have in common, Genneth Howle? They both think they're doin' the right thing! Good intentions aren't worth shit, so stop trying to convince me otherwise!"

"Heggy… I'm not forgiving you because you acted with good intentions. I'm forgiving you because I know you won't make the same mistake again. I wish I could say the same about my own mistakes." I lowered my gaze. "I can't help but think that, if I'd been more like you, I wouldn't have lied about what was happening to me for as long as I did. But, all my life, I've held myself back, because that's just what I do. I'm a barrel full of doubts."

"Genneth," Heggy shook her head, her lips contorted with sentiment. "your doubts are one of your most attractive features. The way you try to settle them, even if they never stop houndin' you… it's downright courageous, if I do say so myself."

"Nothing in this world of ours is perfect, Heggy," Vernon said. "That's why you gotta beat the crap out of the parts that aren't; kick their asses out of the building and throw them to the wolves. But do it carefully, though; wolves are hungry son-of-a-bitches, and they'll bite off your hand and more the moment they get the chance."

I looked her in the eyes.

"We need you, Dr. Heggy Marteneiss. You can't give up, not yet. Not before we've all said our last goodbyes."

And then she broke down and wept.

— — —

I didn't say much for a long while after that, simply because there was nothing for me to say. Besides, it would have intruded on Heggy and Vernon's conversation. For a while, everything was draped in silence; I'd shifted my powers from my console-typing set-up to Vernon's arms and chest, to give him an opportunity to be physically there for his sister as best he could.

The hug was deep and wide.

The two Marteneiss ended up sitting next to one another, leaning against the foot of Heggy's desk. They could have reached out and touched, but the veil of life and death kept them apart.

Also, I'd brought the console-typing spell back into effect.

And they talked and talked.

"How much of it did you read?" Vernon asked.

"Maybe a third of the way?" Heggy replied.

Vernon laughed and shook his head. "Damn Sis, you've gotten soft. It gets so much worse after that."

Heggy stared at where she thought her brother was. It was more or less the right place.

"Is that one of your rare jokes?" she asked. "How much worse can it get than Great Uncle Jeb overseeing the deportation of dissidents to the camps during the prelatory?" she said.

Vernon sighed. "It's more about how deep the rot goes. Even Horace the Commodore was a piece of shit. His sailors were all convicts, and, no, not the nice kind that sings about how they got imprisoned for stealin' a loaf of bread. These were real monsters, Heggy. They served on the Commodore's ship in place of execution, and he let them do as they pleased to their victims. That's what made them so deadly. Horace's 'fearless braves' got off on killing people, and worse."

"Angel…" Heggy muttered.

It goes without saying that, for a history buff like me, the conversation had me hanging onto their every word. It's not like every day you get to hear your country's deepest, darkest national-security-adjacent secrets.

The minutes quickly ticked by.

Vernon nodded. "A couple months ago, Cousin Ernie sent me a message sayin' that DAISHU had identified Ilzee Rambone as a national security threat, and put in an order her to be liquidated."

What Heggy did next made my jaw drop: she turned her head to Vernon and asked, "Why would DAISHU ask you to liquidate Rambone? Dad told me that the State Department usually handled the hits." She stared at him. "Have you been doing side jobs for the State Department?"

"No," Vernon replied. "At first, I just thought it was an offhand mistake. DAISHU kills folks often enough that, sometimes, things fall through. And, incidentally, Jerry—"

"—Oh no, you better not mean Secretary Jerry?" Heggy said.

Vernon nodded. "The one and only. He told me that screw-ups involving DAISHU kill orders are the second leading cause of DAISHU kill orders."

"What's the first leading cause?" I asked, spellbound.

Vernon smirked. "Intellectual property law violations."

And Heggy laughed, and coughed, and laughed. "The whole world is fucking nuts," she said, after a struggle to clear her throat.

"Amen to that," Vernon added.

He looked at me.

Heggy looked at me, too. Then she lowered her head in shame.

"I'm sorry Genneth. For everything. And… thank you. Thank you for being you, weird bow-tie and all."

I bit my lip. "And thank you for being you, Heggy Marteneiss." I turned to Vernon. "And, Vernon—"

He lifted a hand, as if to tell a dog stay.

"—Let's just say we have a truce for now, Dr. Howle." He cast a glance at his sister. "You didn't just save my sister's life, you saved her spirit, and… well, that's not the kind of thing you can put a price tag on."

I saluted him. "Just doing my job, sir." I cleared my throat—at least, I hope that's what the sound I made meant. "Heggy, my family's still out there," I said. "I'll be heading out soon, and I—"

"—You gotta do what you gotta do, Genneth."

Vernon looked at me. "Does this mean it's time for us to get packin'?" he asked.

I nodded. "Yeah."

Heggy turned to her brother. "Well, see you sometime, Vernon. And, if you happen to see Granddaddy out there in the afterlife, tear him a new one for me, will ya?" she said.

"Will do."

Then I shut down my force-needle set-up and spirited Vernon's soul back into his retirement cabin in the afterlife inside my mind. Then I turned around and slithered out the door, where I saw a perplexed Zongman Lark staring at me very aggressively, arms crossed, and foot tapping like a woodpecker with a floor fetish.

He narrowed his eyes at me, but then staggered back in shock as he recognized me. Or, at least, the upper third of me.

"Oh fuck," he said, "please tell me this is some kind of whacked-out dream."

I shook my head.

"Sadly, it's not."

If you find any errors ( broken links, non-standard content, etc.. ), Please let us know < report chapter > so we can fix it as soon as possible.