I'm a Mechanical, I'm a Mechanical, I'm a Mechanical Man

[swirlythingy†]

((Edgar Tolstoff continued from Don't Panic))

This place was like a car graveyard, or possibly the aftermath of a car massacre. Gruesome metallic corpses lay strewn all about the grim concrete canyons, mutilated beyond recognition by years of sea air and corrosion, left lying where they fell without even the slightest of dignities being afforded to them. It was as if a great rust-plague had swept through what was once a civilisation in a flash, felling those it hit where they stood, affording no mercy or even time for the survivors to look back before fleeing the scene of the devastation.

It was absolute car-nage.

Edgar smirked to himself, just a bit, when he thought of that. He couldn't help it. He had long since resigned himself to being slowly driven insane, and his surroundings were in no way helping.

He had holed up in one of the many garages flanking the streets of what passed for a commercial district, for little more reason than that it felt safer to be here on the other side of an enormous, wide open and uncloseable metal shutter, than twelve feet over yonder in just as plain view but without a roof over his head. Sprawled on the floor with his back propped against the side wall, as he had done for several hours now with as yet little desire to move, one's line of sight would pass straight under two cars hoisted up on metal car lifts, next to each other across the width of the garage. Both had their bonnets open, permitting a view of the havoc the omnipresent corrosion had wrought upon their innards as well as their ruined bodywork. Died on the operating table. Edgar wondered what they had been in for.

Beneath the nearest car, lying on the ground almost exactly in the centre of its shadow, was a shiny wrench. That had been there when Edgar got here. He hadn't dared touch it yet. It must have been made out of stainless steel to survive in that condition all these years. Somebody had dropped it there, somebody who hadn't even cared enough to put it back in the tool rack when they vanished. He could just about see what he suspected was the tool rack in question if he turned his head. It was full up except for one gap, around which was a painted outline in the exact same shape as the tool which was so near, and yet so far away. A thing which had not been put away in its proper place for over a decade. It was doing his head in.

The wrench had fallen with the claw end pointing more or less towards the exit to the street. He wasn't sure if that meant anything or not.

For as long as he could remember, Edgar would just zone out like this, drinking in the details and tuning out the world. Whether it was on the floor of the kindergarten during nap time, under a tree in Centennial Park with his sketchbook on his lap, in the corner of the lunch room while all around was noise and chaos, or, as in this case, slumped in a desolate garage while trying not to get murdered by his classmates - when things got too much, he could retreat into the sanctuary of his own mind, concentrate on the most trivial of things around him, appreciate the beauty in nature and look out into the world through nothing more than the eyes of an artist. The fact that there was precious little natural beauty to be had in these parts was neither here nor there. Just forget about what was happening, take the elements of the scene on their own terms, focus on the small things that nobody else noticed, and he didn't have to think about anything else.

His own mind wasn't the safe place it once was, though.

Lying over to one side, out of his line of sight but easily close enough to touch, was the water bottle Owen had given him. He hadn't opened it; he wasn't sure that he ever would. Regardless of any droll practical necessities which may have led to him obtaining it in the first place, it had taken on an almost totemic quality for him. It was a material reminder of what he had done, of what Owen had done in spite of what he had done, of what he owed Owen uncountably many times over. It was, and forever would be, Owen's bottle that he had stolen. To go as far as to actually use it for its intended purpose, denying it to its rightful owner, was unthinkable.

No such thoughts crossed his mind concerning the other item Owen had given to him. The knife - Owen's knife - was being turned over and over between Edgar's fingers, in blatant defiance of all the direst warnings his mother had ever given him. It wasn't that much of a weapon, no, even if it was an improvement on that bottle of whatever it was that Travis was doubtless even now chugging to figure out if it was some new and exciting form of illegal substance. But it was Owen's knife. Edgar didn't doubt there were twenty better weapons to be had on the shelves of this dingy repair shop alone, and he knew he was not going to take any of them.

He had decided on his course of action hours ago, he just didn't want to admit it yet. Maybe if he kept waiting, something good would happen. Maybe if he'd never come out of the woods in the first place everything would still be all right, or at least as all right as the isolation of the countryside had permitted him to temporarily convince himself of.

But he couldn't bring himself to wish that he hadn't panicked, or that he hadn't done the unthinkable almost without thinking about it, or that he'd failed even at the most basic test of moral worth when confronted with one of the very people he'd betrayed.

It was done, and now it was his job to fix it.

Loyalty might not mean much any more, but above all else he needed to prove to himself, on his own terms, in the face of all evidence to the contrary, that he wasn't a bad person.

As the sky grew darker and the shadows lengthened in the deserted street outside, Edgar knew that only one option lay before him.

He was going to have to kill Travis.

---

He wasn't sure when he fell asleep; perhaps he didn't, not really. His dreams were fractured and erratic, punctuated at frequent intervals by him suddenly becoming aware of his face sticking with cold sweat to the chilly concrete floor. Owen and Travis stalked through his subconscious, always there no matter where else he tried to look. Cody, too, featured; the largest in an array of bit parts which also included Matt, Rose, Francis and some others he couldn't even identify, all acting out, in different permutations, the scenes from the past few days of his life which weighed so heavily on his mind. Edgar threatening Travis who was cowering in the corner of the stairwell, while Owen's body lay lifeless beneath their feet; Owen intervening to stop Travis pointing a rifle at Edgar; Rose standing off to one side looking on while someone who looked like Cody but had Francis's head gurned uselessly by the side of the duck pond while Matt repeated the same few sentences reminding them about what they had done.

About half an hour before the announcement, he finally awoke from a particularly disturbing segment which had involved his sister's head getting blown in two by a blast from a rifle with a scalpel attached wielded by what looked like a skeleton wearing one of Kaitlyn's shirts, and he knew right then that it was useless trying to get back to sleep. He thought he'd read somewhere that dreams had meanings, but he wasn't going to sit around trying to work out what that little lot was trying to tell him. He'd wasted enough time already. Since he woke up from his very first blast of knockout gas, he'd done practically nothing but dither and prevaricate and run away from what needed to be done. Every five minutes he spent thinking, whether about the past, the present or the future, was another multiple of the total amount of time he'd spent actually accomplishing things in the last three days.

The first thing which struck him after regaining consciousness was how dry his throat was. He seized the still-full bottle from its resting place and gulped down about half of its contents in one go, before screwing the lid back on and preparing to get up.

At that point, he remembered that the announcement hadn't come on yet. Reluctantly, he sunk back against the wall for another wait. He shouldn't be doing it, he'd already done far too much of it, but it was only logical to stay put for the time being. Maybe he would actually manage to listen to all of this one for once.

He jumped slightly when the familiar mechanical screech started up again, partly through surprise, mainly through nerves. Time for the answer to the most important question: was he already too late?

For one terrible moment, it seemed as though the answer was "no."

The names streamed past. Some of the dead hit a little harder than others, some of the killers sounded downright alarming, but the thing Edgar found most worrying was just how little it seemed to be affecting him. Surely he couldn't be getting used to this? Did this mean he was going to forget what mattered most to him? On the other hand, was it because every time a name was mentioned and it wasn't one of the three names he was listening out for in particular, it felt like a little victory?

Then the announcement arrived at the danger zones, which accomplished the impossible and immediately shoved all his worries to one side.

The Southern Town.

Edgar's collar beeped again. This time, it didn't stop.

Seizing the knife in one hand and the bottle in the other, he leapt to his feet.

Mistake.

Only then did the ramifications of not eating anything for a day finally hit home. His legs buckled and the garage whirled nauseatingly around his head as he staggered towards what he hoped was the exit, his unsteady footsteps out of sync with the cold, regular, and accelerating mechanical beeping.

He forced himself into a run as soon as he could feel the breeze on his face, half-stumbling down the middle of the road, feeling as though he was going to fall over any second. He couldn't think about how tired he was, or the fire in his chest, or even the view flashing past on either side as it changed from monstrous skyscrapers to more modest houses to utility buildings on the outskirts of the beach. He couldn't concentrate on anything but the increasingly frantic beeping filling his ears.

He was concentrating on it so hard that he didn't even notice when it ended.

((Edgar Tolstoff continued in Sunrise))