Chapter Text
They don’t have to see his face or know his name; all they have to do now is listen to him, devour his message with their hungry brains. He’s an addict with a pen, the adrenaline-filled bomb that is about to explode on a makeshift stage.
He usually has up to twenty minutes before the cops arrive. In the twenty-first minute, all hell breaks loose.
“We don’t let them control us!”
The crowd repeats after him. All he can offer is a brief flash of motivation that’s supposed to light up a flame of rebellion in people’s minds and hearts. He’s just a faceless preacher to them, well-known for his provocative poetry on the brink of blasphemy and his flamboyant behavior. He’s worked on it, high school theater club be damned, he’s making too many things about him memorable so no one actually bothers to remember his true personality.
Once the handmade black mask covers his face, Tyler Joseph is gone. His words are loud, but he prefers to be talking action.
“How could you sleep at a time like this?”
People in the front row cheer and clap their hands. Good, it’s good, they need to get better protection to fight. He’s heard of the squads appearing here and there in the city — they call themselves the resistance — standing up against the new political norms and total censorship. People who work for the new media wish they could censor Tyler himself, but it only inspires him to keep going. He needs to make sure there’ll be people who’ll continue telling the truth.
“Don’t let them threaten you with a gun of standards. Be emotional, be creative, be wild!”
One day, he’s shirtless, with the razorblade in his hand. One day, he cuts himself in front of everyone just to draw their attention, to shock them, to research. His stomach is bleeding, and he sees a black car with red and blue lights flashing at an alarming pace.
“Run!” Tyler orders. The crowd runs down the street while he jumps from the stage and rounds the corner, then crawls into a narrow passageway between the buildings.
He prays for his audience.
He hopes that one day, they’ll pray for him too.
***
His family says he’s crazy. There’s nothing new about it, no matter how many newspapers he buys, or how many pictures he shows them. Something is happening, but the TV says everything is fine. Tyler wants to smash the screen as if this can help the truth leak out.
Tyler doesn’t know why he keeps coming back to his childhood house.
Tyler can’t cure his parents’ minds, which are poisoned with propaganda.
His siblings get married, have babies, and refuse to open the door when Tyler appears on their doorsteps. His sister’s husband threatens to call the police; his brother punches him in the face.
“Get some help,” he spits, while Tyler presses his shirt to his bleeding nose.
The TV in the living room keeps weaving the cobweb of lies.
***
He reads an article written by Chris E., a wild theory about what’s happening in the world, spiraling into a full-blown investigation. Chris ties together facts, pictures, and interviews; he also mentions Tyler, calling him the voice of the rebels. Tyler wishes there was a choir, though.
He sees graffiti appearing all over the city: THEY’RE LYING, and WE DON’T BELIEVE WHAT’S ON TV, and ONLY FEW UNDERSTAND. There are pictures of the rabbits being pursued by the dogs, fangs dripping red.
“That’s my clique,” Tyler says, adding one more spray-painted slogan to the lyric-covered wall:
THEY WANT TO MAKE YOU FORGET
He barely sleeps, the beehive of his mind never stops buzzing, thoughts sting his brain restlessly. There’s a black and white picture of him in the newspaper, shirtless and bloodied, with the dark lines crossing his stomach. He never wanted to be a martyr. People only gather around for a show, but even if one of them leaves the protest with just one seed of thought in their mind, Tyler’s job is done.
He can’t change everyone.
He wants to make them think and change themselves.
***
There’s a moment when he thinks he’s got good allies — Chris (not Chris E., a different one — Chris S.) and Nick, aspiring musicians, and rebels at heart; they work on the poetry together, they rent a tiny apartment next to the bookshop. They cut holes in black beanies and wear them like masks, and make leaflets that they glue on the streetlamps and the walls of the buildings. Tyler begins to work on the speech he’s going to recite when he gathers his audience in front of the administration building. He might not be able to do it alone, he needs some backup and someone who’ll provide the crowd with safety. He’s heard that the resistance is interested in his activism, because they need an alternative to television; Tyler never worked with them directly, but he’s eager to try.
This is it, Tyler thinks. They’ll pay attention.
There are already rumors that people are being taken from the streets and brainwashed, sent to secret labs to get “fixed”. This reminds Tyler of his entire childhood — his parents were obsessed with the idea of “fixing” him, because he was too twitchy, too mordant, too independent.
And his family was just too religious.
So finding at least a few people who will stay by his side felt like winning the lottery.
“They won’t get us,” Tyler says, heart full of nervous excitement.
“They don’t have the balls to get us,” Chris and Nick say.
***
Chris and Nick leave after the first riot. Tyler regrets he told them his real name.
***
He goes by different names — Morph, Message Man, Local; he learns that people have gone missing all across the states. They were diseased, someone says. Someone says that Morph is diseased too, he’s just a vulture feeding on pain that is not his own.
The atmosphere tenses up, enclosing Tyler in a scandal with the press.
DO NOT TRUST THIS MAN, the headlines say.
READ BETWEEN THE LINES, Chris E.’s headlines say.
Tyler can say he really likes this guy.
The picture of a shirtless Tyler attached to the material keeps circulating through the masses; people can recognize him by his tattoos by now, but Tyler tries his best to hide them under the hoodies and jackets in real life. He carries a beanie with the slits for eyes and mouth in his pocket just in case.
He can’t say he’s fully prepared for the performance in front of the administration building. The sun’s rolling into the grave of the horizon; there’s a few people strolling across the main square when Tyler arrives, wearing a long-sleeved black shirt and securing his face with a turned-to-the-ski-mask beanie. He’s holding a loudspeaker in his hand, going to scream for attention, going to be as invisibly visible as possible.
He spots the box of Molotov cocktails tucked safely into the bushes.
More people appear and clog the main square as soon as Tyler brings the loudspeaker to his lips.
“Glad to see you all today,” he says, getting on the building’s steps. The windows are black and lifeless; Tyler flinches when the first stone hits the glass. “We’ve lost some people already. We know what’s happening, don’t we?” the crowd buzzes in agreement. “We need to stop it, and the only way to do so is to outsmart our enemy. To out-wit them. To out-bitch them!”
They need more press coverage, more honest opinions; the opposition is always considered a weak link, but their weakness is a myth birthed by propaganda.
And Tyler talks, and police cars begin to block the alleyways; usually gathering at least a few dozen listeners is a huge success. Tonight, he’s got hundreds. People in the crowd use makeshift shields to protect themselves from rubber batons and even spiked bats the cops swing left and right ruthlessly. Tyler doesn’t have to tell them to fight the regime. They know it, paying with blood and bone; someone throws a Molotov cocktail into the cracked window, setting the room aflame.
Tyler runs down the concrete steps and jumps straight into the crowd. He can’t just be a silent witness of a rampage when he’s the one who started it. Newspapers said he’s a criminal, almost a terrorist just for wanting to save people’s minds.
He wades through the bodies pressed into a tight ball of anger, as more police troops surround them. “We’re not lab rats! We’re not lab rats!” the activists chant, their voices overlapping the sirens. Tyler makes his way into the center of the main square, knowing where the violence will also be centered. Some people recognize him, touching him and tugging at his clothes.
“You’re crazy, man!” someone yells into his ear. “Love you!”
“I love you too,” Tyler replies automatically.
Their pent-up rage needs an outlet; Tyler needs them to get home safely, but at the same time he doesn’t want them to lose their spirit. They’re fighting against the police; Tyler ducks under someone’s fist and jumps sideways, along with the wave of the crowd. He sees the police breaking through the human corridor; they came for him. Tyler hands the loudspeaker to the guy standing next to him.
“Try to evacuate people on the left side,” Tyler pants out. “I’ll take the right side. See those guys?” he points at the group of men with yellow badges on their sleeves. “They’ll help you.”
“Okay,” the guy nods, looking shocked but determined.
“Cool,” Tyler pats his shoulder. “I believe in you.”
He sees the resistance squad located by the barricade, helping people get out of the officers’ way. Tyler needs to find a better spot to coordinate it; he sees one of the policemen attacking a middle-aged woman. Tyler’s mind fills with the red fog of adrenaline as he grabs the first weapon he can find — a metal rod — and hits the man across the back. His bulletproof vest doesn’t bend or break, but the center of his attention shifts drastically.
“You,” the man spits, disgusted.
Tyler is not the only one who wears a mask at the protests, but he doesn’t need to have a face for the enemy to remember him. They know his core, eager to break it.
Tyler cracks his neck.
“Me.”
The woman runs away; Tyler holds the rod in front of himself, ready to attack the cop again. He doesn’t have time to cover his own back; it’s only a flash of a shadow that outs a man standing behind him.
No one said they needed to take Message Man alive.
Tyler squats down and slams the rod into the other man’s ankle at the same time as a spiked bat hits him on the side of his head. He ducks, redirecting most of the force into the air, but blood sprays the asphalt like a firework. Tyler’s battered beanie hangs on one of the spikes as the time stops. He throws his hand in front of his face and prepares for the final blow, but a few guys armed with the pepper spray cans and rubber batons cut the guards away from Tyler.
“Dude! Run!” they yell at Tyler.
Tyler doesn’t think he can; he even manages to pick up his beanie from the ground and put it back onto his bleeding head. It’s pure adrenaline that doesn’t let him pass out yet. He runs and falls and gets up again as the stickiness runs down the right side of his neck, soaking through the collar of his black shirt. Vision doubled, he dips into the bushes and emerges in the alleyway facing the back door of the administration building. It’s a closed circle, a mousetrap.
He doesn’t dare to touch his head, too sure he can easily touch the inside of his brainpan. He moves on autopilot like a decapitated chicken, seeing drops of his blood landing on the ground. Behind his back, he hears gunshots. The ringing in his ears mixes with his heartbeat, turning into a painful staccato cracking his skull into pieces. His brain feels too big, too swollen it might start leaking out of his ears. His entire body goes numb and he clings to the dumpster and slouches down near the wall.
“We’re not lab rats! We’re not lab rats!” echoes at the distance.
Tyler knows he needs to keep going. All he can smell is his own blood and sweat, with the slight whiff of burning tires. He needs to get back. He needs to do something. The side of his head feels hot and cold at the same time, pain pulsating in steady waves and deafening him. Tyler’s whole body is shaking, and he realizes his nose is bleeding, too. He presses his wrist to it and closes his eyes.
“Hey, you,” someone’s voice makes Tyler flinch. Too loud. And too bright as the flashlight flickers right in front of his face. “Holy shit, stay awake, kid.”
They remove Tyler’s hands from his face.
“My head hurts,” Tyler groans as if his bloodied appearance is not enough for the person to understand it. It’s a tall man, his hair is cut short, almost an army-way short.
“No wonder,” he hastily inspects Tyler’s head. “You just got hit on the head with a spiked bat. Not the same as getting bonked with a dildo, don’t you think?”
Tyler doesn’t get half of the words while his system tries to decide whether it’s time for a shutdown or not.
“Oh, so you’re a dildo guy,” Tyler slurs.
“Name’s Paul, but I’ll be whoever you want, just don’t die on my watch,” the man says. “This one’s WIA,” he says to someone behind his back. “Get up, I’ll get you to a safer place.”
Tyler clings to him as he gets up on his wobbly legs; he’s probably too exhausted to even pass out at this point. The blood leaves a trail behind him; Paul quickly takes his windbreaker off and wraps it around Tyler’s head, pressing his poor beanie tighter to the wound so that the police couldn’t trace them by the red drops like bread crumbs.
“You’re from… the resistance?” Tyler whispers, spotting the badge on Paul’s sleeve.
“I am. And you’re the one with a bounty on your head,” Paul smirks. “They nearly got your ass today, didn’t they?”
“I don’t remember how I got out,” Tyler says. Walking and talking at the same time is unbearably hard.
“Do you remember your name, at least?”
“Do you know it to tell if I’m lying?”
“You want me to retell your entire biography?”
“I do,” Tyler sniffles. If it wasn’t about an abrupt pain in his head, he’d argue with Paul more.
“Should I begin with the college you dropped out from six years ago or with your church?”
“The fuck,” Tyler exhales.
“No offense. The Josephs are quite noticeable in the community.”
“That’s in our bloodline.”
“Move, Tyler.”
“I can’t walk faster.”
He’s thinking too much, busted head feels both heavy and light. Paul mostly drags him down the deserted street, telling him there’s the basement the police don’t know about on the other side.
“We knew someone would need it,” Paul says. “Todd’s already getting some people there. You’re lucky to have your ear attached to your head, by the way.”
He’s lucky to still stay conscious even though his brain feels like paint in a shaker. Blood gathers on the inside of Paul’s windbreaker, and Tyler can’t focus on his swaying surroundings. It makes him feel sick. He keeps blacking out from time to time, only to find himself being held upright with Paul’s hands under his armpits.
“Hold on, you only need to cross the street and we’ll patch you up. Want me to carry you?”
Tyler shakes his head and almost vomits from the motion.
“Huh. Alright.”
Tyler nearly falls down the stairs when Paul opens the door; he doesn’t know how he makes it, but soon enough he finds himself in a room full of people he might’ve spotted at the protests. An old guy, a couple of teens, the two girls holding hands. There’s some more, but Tyler can’t even greet them as his legs finally give out underneath him.
Somebody carries him to the mattress, lowers him, and unwraps the windbreaker from his head.
“Shit.”
Tyler knows it doesn’t look good, and they ask him to stay awake, and he learns there’s more people from the resistance he hasn’t met yet. They all say, “it’s him,” and they say “we can’t leave him like that,” and someone offers to bring a stapler.
“His skull isn’t fractured.”
“Lucky bastard. The spikes only sliced the skin.”
“He’s severely concussed though.”
“I’m still here,” Tyler isn’t sure he even says it out loud.
“He’s pretty responsive,” Paul says, putting on medical gloves. “I’ve never done this before.”
Another guy plugs in a hair clipper.
“Let’s stitch the bitch.”
There’s a bowl with water and a towel, stained red already. Tyler winces and squints his eyes. He’s not scared by the sight of blood, and he’s not particularly squeamish, but he’s never seen such an amount of his own blood before. Not even when he had cut himself. That wasn’t even his first time, but he tried to be so recklessly careful, to only relieve the pressure. Now, his own blood pressure drops drastically.
“He lost a lot of blood.”
“Might need a transfusion?”
“Don’t think so.”
He sees the black thread dragging up and down, he sees his hair landing on his lap. Someone’s holding him by the shoulder and wiping the blood off his neck. He can’t even say that having his wounds stitched up hurts worse than the pain he’s already had to endure.
“Hey,” Paul hooks Tyler’s chin with his thumb. “Doing great here?”
He doesn’t let Tyler touch the bandages, finally applied to the wound. Looking at the brown tufts on the mattress and his clothes, Tyler realizes his hair’s gone too. It’s fine, it wasn’t that long anyway. Tyler sighs, wishing the haziness in his right eye would go away. He keeps rubbing it, but it feels like his eye socket is full of sand. Must be an eye hemorrhage. He hopes it’s not partial blindness.
“Gotta spend a couple of days here,” Paul explains. “We’re waiting for the bus to arrive. We’ll take you to our base, and then send you to the farms. It’s not safe for the civilians to wander the city like this.”
“It won’t stop them,” Tyler says.
“Yeah, but it’ll save you.”
This is not what Tyler wanted to hear from him, honestly. This is not about only saving him — this is about their guild’s publicity. People go missing. People come back wrong.
“I hate this.”
“I know, buddy,” Paul sighs. “I was working for them when the whole thing only started.”
His answer hits Tyler worse than the spiked bat.
“I’m not your buddy guy.”
He doesn’t want to be a part of this. Not like this, at least.
“I never stop cursing myself for it too. I just… can’t stop thinking of people I could save if I only knew what was going on,” Paul takes a deep breath, just in time for Tyler to fill the silence with,
“You were brainwashing people?”
Honesty is an alarming sign. Tyler might as well start writing a testament now. Nobody will be honest with you if they don’t want anything from you in return — he’s learned it from his family. “I’ll be honest with you, Tyler; your therapist says…” His parents always wanted to get rid of him, calling him a spoiled brat, too arrogant, too candid. They’d be happy to lock him up in one of the brainwashers’ hospitals.
“I was a tech,” Paul says. “Most of the time, I didn’t even know what was happening behind those doors.”
“Doesn’t make you less of an asshole.”
“I know. This is why I’m here now. Some runaways too. See Todd? He was already on the operation table when I sabotaged the experiment.”
“Yeah? And what did you do?”
“Started the fire in the equipment room.”
“Sounds like something I could do, too,” Tyler gives him an appraising glance.
“You inspired someone to set the administration building on fire,” Paul sounds oddly excited about it.
Tyler shrugs.
“Just some random room on the first floor. We could do better.”
“You’ll have a chance if they don’t crack your skull next time.”
It’s still hard to speak, and Tyler’s right eye is still out of focus. He should get some sleep; he still doesn’t know how he can even keep functioning like this. Exhaustion washes over him like a tidal wave, crashing him, pinning him to the ground. He feels like a little turtle who looked for salvation in the ocean but never learned to swim. Tyler wants to hide in his shell and emerge as a better version of himself.
His head still feels sticky under the bandages. He’s too tired and too dizzy to care about how the stitches look.
“I think it’s safe for you to get some sleep now,” Paul says.
And Tyler says,
“Finally.”
Paul offers him a bottle of water and some canned soup, but he’s not hungry. He doesn’t want to start puking in his sleep and choke accidentally. Well, Paul is mindful of this possibility, too. The only thing they can give him instead of a pillow is a rolled-up towel to stuff under his neck. Tyler hopes his brain isn’t going to actually burst, because it pretty much feels like it.
He can still see the orange flickers of the lamp in the ceiling when he closes his eyes.
***
His abused brain doesn’t register the next couple of days. The blood on his clothes dries into a crust, and he thinks he hears Paul apologize for not having any clean clothes yet. This is not the biggest of Tyler’s problems at the moment. They don’t even let him sleep much, shaking him awake nearly every hour and shining the flashlight into his eyes.
His head hurts.
He keeps rubbing his right eye until his palm is all sore.
Paul tells him they’re leaving today.
Tyler doesn’t have any things to pack, and that’s embarrassing. Paul shoves his bloodied windbreaker into the backpack, and that’s embarrassing too. Tyler should’ve been more cautious. Sometimes he feels he ruins everything, just trying to stop the world from crumbling.
They leave the basement when the bus arrives.
“It’s my turn to drive,” Paul says. “We’ll be in a shelter by midnight.”
Tyler mentally compares him to a stick insect — long limbs, too restless, good at mimicking his surroundings. He loses Paul from his sight when he blinks; maybe he zoned out again. Maybe Paul is a fast crawler. Like a spider.
Tyler is the last one to get on the bus, so disappointed to find all the seats taken — there were at least ten people on the bus when it arrived — except for the one. It’s a seat by the window, and Tyler has to bother a young pregnant woman sitting near the aisle.
“Hey,” Tyler rasps out. “Mind if I—”
“Oh, sure,” she nearly drops the book she is reading; she gets up to let Tyler squeeze himself into the seat. “I just don’t like the cold.”
“No worries, I’m a fan,” Tyler replies.
Her deep-red hoodie is the only bright spot here.
“You have blood on your neck,” she says, icy-blue eyes flashing with worry.
Tyler rubs at the spot behind his ear.
“I’m sorry.”
He licks his finger and tries to wipe it; he hasn’t looked at the mirror since he took a hit. He can only hope that his bandages are tucked securely underneath his black beanie.
“You don’t have to apologize for it,” she says. “I just hope you’re okay. I’m Jenna,” she outstretches her hand. Tyler squeezes her narrow palm with long fingers.
“Tyler.”
He’s tired of hiding. His name’s been circulating here and there anyway.
“I used to be a primary school teacher, and the school I was working at got turned into something truly ominous,” Jenna says. “Then these guys came and… evacuated us,” she puts her hands on her belly. “They’re taking us to the shelter, and then… I think I’ll go to my parents. I don’t even know what to do next, to be honest. People here are not quite talkative.”
Tyler feels a tingle of pity in his heart. Jenna looks too pure to be thrown into the whirlwind of a war alone. As if in response to his thoughts, she says,
“At least I’m not alone now.”
Tyler looks out the window when the bus begins to move; he’s worried about so many things at once it makes him dizzy. Or maybe it's the concussion. There are a few kids on the bus, all being oddly quiet. As if forced to grow up too soon.
Paul is a very careful driver, but it doesn’t help Tyler’s brain; it keeps rolling around his skull, hitting the walls like a wrecking ball. It’s sickening, it makes him break out in a cold sweat.
“I can shut up if you want.”
“No, no,” Tyler scratches his temple and winces. “Please, keep talking.”
Jenna’s voice is soothing, lulling him to sleep. His right eyelid twitches when he closes his eyes. Yesterday, when Tyler was still pretty much out of everything, he heard Paul and Todd discuss sending him to the hospital on the way to the shelter. They said Tyler’s brain might just bleed into itself; Tyler thinks he’d notice. Sure, it’s much worse than getting hit on the head with the basketball during the game, but he didn’t experience any alarming symptoms. No seizures, no fluids except for blood leaking out of his nose.
But riding the bus concussed is still an unpleasant experience.
Tyler pulls the hem of his beanie down to cover his face and leans back in the seat, trying to relax. It’s hard to do so when his bones are knocked loose from constant shaking. Having his eyes closed makes him feel disoriented.
It takes him nearly two hours to realize he’s getting carsick. He starts to fall asleep when his bruised brain begins to lag, sending the wrong signals all over his body. Tyler swallows a mouthful of sour saliva and pulls up the hem of his beanie. The twilight only begins to touch the ground, and there’s no way Tyler can handle another few hours of the ride. He tries to breathe deeper, but it only irritates his stomach more. He doesn’t even remember when he last ate, maybe yesterday? Paul definitely made him eat some canned soup at some point.
Tyler blankly stares at the trees swimming behind the window. The pain blooming behind his right eye worsens, making Tyler lurch forward and clutch tightly at his head.
“Hey, what’s wrong? Tyler?”
He’s going to be sick. Jenna rubs his hunched back as he falls apart.
“Hey! Hey, stop the bus, please! We need to take a breather!” Jenna stands up and waves her hand in the air. Tyler should be thankful that she doesn’t specify that he’s about to puke.
The bus stops with a jolt; Tyler throws his arm in front of himself not to hit his poor head on the row of seats in front of him. He’s glad that Jenna is already up from her seat, and that they’re not sitting that far from the door. He heaves and covers his mouth with his palm as he darts to the exit. He half jumps half falls out of the bus and lands clumsily onto his hands and knees to spit his insides on the ground.
Some people leave the bus, too. The kids probably need to do their business in the bushes since there are no proper bathrooms in sight.
Tyler coughs, his now empty stomach keeps sending warnings. He rubs the back of his sweaty neck only to see his palm coming off red. The stitches broke, he needs to rebandage his wound.
“Oh, this is not good,” Jenna comments, handing him a bottle of water. She’s pretty chill considering that she has to see him bleed and puke his guts out. Tyler can’t promise this is his first and last time.
He knows the other travelers look at him, too scared to come closer; and Jenna just tries to treat him like an injured kid, as if he’s one of the pupils in her class. He’s strangely grateful.
He wants to decompose in the withered grass when Paul crouches down next to him.
Tyler chokes on water, and it spills out of his nose as he begins to hack his lungs up. It only makes his headache worse.
“We’ll get there soon, hold on,” he gives Tyler a cloth to wipe away the blood. “Then we’ll try to send you to the hospital.”
Tyler weakly jerks his head.
“I can’t go to the hospital.”
“Why?”
“They’ll find out who I am and let the brainwashers tear me to pieces,” Tyler blurts out. “I’m… I’m fine. Just got a little carsick.”
“You’re a stubborn one, huh?”
Tyler spits at the ground between his knees.
“I don’t want to be a burden.”
“I am very competitive at being a burden here,” Jenna chuckles.
“You got a little fighter inside of you.”
Tyler smiles faintly, Jenna smiles too.
Paul helps him get up.
“You alright to keep going?”
Tyler nods, what else he can do. He touches the side of his head, finding out some blood has leaked through his beanie too. He might’ve clutched it too hard when it started hurting. Back on the bus, he feels dizzy again; he wants to break this damn cycle.
Tyler closes his eyes again.
“Hey,” Jenna rubs his arm. “I think these might help. So silly of me for not offering them to you earlier.”
She gives him a pack of pills.
“Huh?” Tyler blinks in bewilderment. Thinking becomes a hard ordeal.
“For motion sickness,” Jenna explains. “That was my go-to meal during my first trimester.”
“And how far along are you now?”
He’s clueless. Maybe it was a rude question.
“Twenty-nine weeks,” she replies with a smile.
“That’s… impressive, I guess,” Tyler says.
He pops two pills out of the blister and swallows them dry.
And Jenna says,
“You’ll be fine.”
Tyler believes her.
The bus begins to move again.
***
He doesn’t notice how he falls asleep; he wakes up when the uninjured side of his head knocks against the window and groans. His brain is still hurting, and so does his neck, but he doesn’t feel like throwing up anymore.
“Leave the bus, one by one,” Paul commands. He stands in the aisle and looks right at Tyler and Jenna.
“Slept well?” she asks, getting up slowly.
They apparently couldn’t shake him awake. Tyler wants to hide from the worried glances behind his beanie.
“Got knocked out. Thank you.”
Tyler watches people passing by them and getting out of the bus. Some of them have backpacks; Jenna has a bag too. Paul helps her take it out from the luggage shelf. Tyler feels like one of those bags, labeled with the wrong tag and lost by the transport company.
“Now let’s get your ass into the shelter,” Paul points at the gray concrete building. Tyler hasn’t been to this part of the city before.
He nods and follows him and Jenna.
All he wants is to fall asleep again. That’s not healthy, probably; the pounding in his head never subsides. He keeps touching his busted temple and pressing down on his eyelid to calm the tics. Tyler doesn’t feel any better as he enters the building — damn these heavy doors; Paul has to hold them for him and Jenna — it looks pretty much like a prison or a mental hospital inside. There are rows of beds with metal headboards and tiny bedside tables. The bedsheets and scratchy-looking blankets are plain gray. Some of the beds are already taken, and the only thing Tyler can think about is that he’s not getting any personal space anytime soon.
“Here, make yourself at home. I’ll bring you some stuff soon,” Paul says before getting lost among the people.
“That bed looks rather comfy,” Tyler points at the corner. “I think you should take that one,” he tells Jenna. She looks in that direction and nods. A few girls are sitting in the neighboring beds, and Tyler doubts they want his company there.
He carries Jenna’s bag to the bed.
He forgets he still looks like he got lost on the way to his grave.
“You should change your clothes,” Jenna says softly.
Tyler smells awful.
“That’s the next thing on my to-do list.”
“Good to know you have one.”
Jenna begins to unpack her things and he doesn’t want to bother her anymore.
He takes the first available bed, debating whether he should go back to sleep or look for the bathroom first. Natural needs win, and he’s soon stumbling into a small tiled room with three sinks and a few stalls. It looks like a bathroom in the mall, but it’s something, at least. They only have cold water here; and Tyler splashes it on his face, looking at his reflection in the mirror for the first time.
He looks horrible.
There’s a long red trail running down the side of his neck, his right eye is so bloodshot that the white turned to red completely. No wonder his eyesight is playing tricks on him. The lighting is surprisingly bright, so he can take a look at all of the horrifying details of his remastered appearance.
He takes off his beanie, only now noticing a tear in the side of it; he unwraps the layer of red-streaked bandages and tosses them into the trash can. Luckily, his head stopped bleeding. The hair was cut unevenly, stitches wrinkled the skin, and Tyler winces as his stomach lurches again. He sheds his shirt off and shoves it under the tap, trying to get rid of blood. He’s cold, wearing nothing but a black tank top, the blood that’s still left in his body runs cold.
He needs to wash away the pain.
He cups water in his palms and scratches at his neck, but the blood keeps clogging his pores. He grabs a single bar of soap and rubs his beanie furiously, rinsing the copper out of the threads. It keeps coming. Tyler zones out until the water runs pink, not red.
He grips the sides of the sink and breathes heavily as panic tears his chest apart. Vision blurred, he hears someone’s footsteps and sees the shadow out of the corner of his eye.
“It’ll heal faster if you stop touching it.”
It’s Paul, Tyler can hear his voice through the cotton filling his ears. Tyler sniffles.
“It’s driving me crazy.”
“I brought you painkillers. Jenna showed me your bed, I left a backpack there,” Paul’s reflection joins Tyler’s in the mirror. “Let me help.”
Tyler freezes when Paul dabs a stitched-up wound with a paper towel.
“How can you be so casual about this?” Tyler mutters.
“I’m not. You’re just too frantic.”
“I think the hole in my head slowed me down a bit.”
The bags under his eyes look almost black. Paul notices it too, but he doesn’t comment on it. He’s brought the first aid kit with him; he helps Tyler apply some fresh bandages and looks at the result, satisfied.
“I bet it feels worse than it looks.”
Tyler shrugs.
“I’m just… feeling woozy.”
“Should pass in a couple weeks.”
Tyler’s heard this one before.
He finishes washing his shirt and beanie in the sink, and Paul stays with him the whole time. Tyler wishes he could say he hates being supervised; this stinks of his past when his parents wouldn’t leave him alone. He wills himself to think it’s different this time. He’s the only guy with a head injury among the refugees.
He hangs his clothes to dry on his bed’s headboard; then he checks the backpack Paul left for him on the mattress. Tyler indeed finds some painkillers here, along with a bottle of water and a GROUPLOVE hoodie. Tyler likes this band. He throws it on, instantly covering his bandaged head with the hood. People are staring at him; he liked attention more when he was faceless. Revealing his personality feels more intimate than sex sometimes. Someone once said that Message Man looked like a slutty preacher, and they’d join his cult; that was awkward.
He finds a can of beans and a pack of goldfish crackers in the backpack. The resistance is really taking care of them — Tyler spots a few similar backpacks by each one of the beds. Some people had to drop and leave everything to flee from the city; Tyler feels bad for them, because he didn’t pack his things too. He didn’t even know he’d get evacuated with half of his head sliced and diced.
Tyler wants to be helpful still.
“Hey,” he hands Jenna the pack of crackers. Crossing the shelter’s room felt like running a mile.
She smiles at him.
“I thought you’re more of a hunter than a gatherer.”
“They’re fish-shaped. Call me a fisherman then,” Tyler sits down on her bed and nods at her belly. “How is it going?”
“She’s having a party there,” Jenna sighs and puts Tyler’s hand on her lower stomach. “Here, feel it?”
“She kicked me,” he says as he feels a slight poke beneath the skin. “She hates me.”
“She just greets you!”
“Nah, she wants to kick my ass.”
When Tyler’s sister was pregnant, she refused to even talk to him over the phone let alone let him see his niece. Same with his brother. His other brother got married just recently — Tyler heard from their common friends.
So being this close with Jenna terrifies him.
She’s not scared of him, though — she doesn’t even ask what happened to him, or who he is, and this feels so right.
“You remind me of her father,” Jenna suddenly says.
Tyler doesn’t know whether it is a bad or a good sign.
“Where’s he now?”
“Gone,” Jenna lets go of Tyler’s hand. “Wanted to change the world. I wish he thought of us a bit more, though.”
What an asshole, Tyler wants to say. He knows himself, so he’s got the right to judge. Jenna knows it better.
“You didn’t deserve any of this,” Tyler says. The women from the neighboring beds keep looking at them, drawing conclusions without even having heard their conversation.
“But hey, I’ve got the crackers!” Jenna smiles even though her eyes are about to leak with sadness. “And you can go to the hospital tomorrow.”
Tyler shakes his head, pressing his fingers to the hood.
“I can’t. They need me here.”
“Do they know?”
“I know.”
Jenna nods and winces as the baby kicks again.
“I wonder what’s happening in your head right now.”
“Nothing,” Tyler says. “Just some concussed brain tossing and turning.”
They say their goodnights then, and Tyler goes back to his bed. He hears Jenna ripping the pack of crackers open and smiles to himself.
This is the oddest of friendships he’s ever had.
***
He stitches up his beanie early in the morning; he’s awake because most of the refugees are. He’s awake because he feels sick again. He thinks Jenna would make a joke or two about his morning sickness.
“I’m leaving today,” she says, flopping onto his bed. She looks well-rested, a bit pale, but that could just be the lighting.
Tyler tries to blink away the haziness in his right eye.
“Stay safe. Please.”
“You too,” she pats his shoulder. “Take care of this restless head of yours.”
“We’re not best friends yet,” Tyler admits. Never have been.
“Imagine how powerful you’ll be when you tame it.”
She’s wise, too wise. Even though Tyler is still like a kid to her; they’re pretty much the same age, but Jenna manages to find the words he wishes his mother had told him.
“I’ll be fine,” he says. “Hope you’ll be fine too.”
He means it, but he’s too pessimistic to promise.
Jenna understands.
***
A part of the sun is gone when Jenna leaves; she’s not the only one who gets into an armored car, but Tyler misses her the most. Tyler wishes her the best. She waves her hand at him and smiles again, and he’s confused. Meeting her felt like a gulp of fresh air.
Tyler gets back into the shelter and bumps into Paul. Tyler greets him hastily and wants to sneak back into his bed, but Paul grips his sleeve and leads him to the dark storage room, away from curious ears.
“Tyler,” Paul says sternly. “Why did your parents want to send you away?”
“How do you know?”
“You mentioned it when you were semiconscious.”
“Oh crap, did I?”
“You did. And now I need answers.”
Tyler chews on his bottom lip nervously, thinking about how to turn his wild journey of life into an innocent fairytale.
Because,
Tyler was nine when he accidentally set his tree house on fire; his mother was crying a lot, and his father kept pursing his lips but didn’t punish him. He could smell gas on his hands, he could see wooden boards being consumed by orange waves. It was a mesmerizing sight.
Tyler needs to turn it into a fairytale.
Because,
His parents thought it was the first and last time.
But things only escalated from that.
“We tested an IED* in the school backyard, and the dude I was with got his eyebrows and lashes singed. I swear, I didn’t hurt anyone, I never wanted to hurt anyone!” Tyler chokes, smelling smoke again. “I got suspended from school for two weeks and missed an important basketball game because of that. If you think that was terrible enough… My father was a principal.”
Paul wordlessly lets him continue. This feels like one of those sessions with his shrink. But Tyler is all cornered up now, so it’s better to be honest.
“As a teen, I was talking about guns a lot. Also about explosives, Molotov cocktails, and all that. That seemed a bit suspicious, but I never meant to look like a creep. I only visited the gun shop once, but someone spotted me there. You see where the story’s going? Someone called my father, told him that I was planning out a shooting. At that point, I had a shit ton of literature about guns and grenades, and my father found all of it in my room. Man, I’ve never seen him that mad before. I never got back to school.”
Being homeschooled only turned him into a freak. The rumors paved their way all up to his house. He expects Paul to judge him, because judging is the only thing he receives when he talks about his life.
Paul’s voice is low and hoarse with emotion as he asks,
“How old were you?”
“Fourteen,” Tyler sucks in a shaky sigh. “The guns just looked… so threatening, and I wanted to know more about them to learn how to fight them. My parents tried to send me away because they couldn’t trust me anymore? They thought I was a fucking pyro. I moved out, I still went to college, dropped out of it because real-life global economics is not what they’re trying to teach you. And when this whole brainwashing shit started, the first thing I learned was how to shoot the gun.”
People usually say, “this is not normal” and “get help” and “don’t talk to me ever again”, but Paul says,
“I can take you to the shooting range when your head feels better.”
“Cool.”
Tyler thinks that Paul might be one of the weird ones, too. A creative weirdo, Tyler’s mind prompts. He hopes to take a breather, but the next question knocks the air out of his lungs.
“Tyler. Did your father hit you?”
Tyler doesn’t have to nod for Paul to understand.
He used to hurt himself to forget about the pain his family caused him. So doing that in front of the crowd felt almost soothing.
Tyler wonders what this conversation with Paul will cost him.
On the next day, Paul hands him a book — “Bombs, bombings and bomb disposal study guide”, and says,
“Might be helpful.”
Tyler reads until he feels dizzy.
***
Tyler refuses to take a ride to the hospital when another bus with refugees arrives. It’s time to remove the stitches; a week passed, and Tyler can’t stop scratching them with his raw nails.
Yet, he’s staying at the shelter.
“You’re so stubborn, kid,” Paul says.
And Tyler says,
“You know how old I am.”
“Doesn’t make you look mature,” Paul smirks, tugging at one of the threads with metal tweezers. “Look at me, I’m older.”
There’s a 12-year gap between them, but it shouldn’t have given Paul the right to treat Tyler like a baby. Many people have already tried it. They’re just not taking him seriously. Tyler thought about starting to lie about his age because he looks too young anyway.
“I want to save someone,” Tyler winces as the thread slides past his ear. “Not everyone will get out, but… It better be me than anyone.”
Paul drops a long black thread into a metal bowl.
“It’d be better for you if you stopped being so damn suicidal.”
“I’m not suicidal.”
Not anymore, at least.
“So you’re going to just continue doing your activism?”
“Yeah,” Tyler rubs his aching forehead. “People only want shows and violence, and my activism is both.”
“You’re a masochist then,” Paul chuckles. There’s nothing funny about that.
“I’m not!.. They notice blood first and good intentions second. I can’t help it.”
The mud in Tyler’s brain has settled down a bit for him to think chronologically. He’s seen the circulation of people, coming and going out of this place, and he didn’t stick with any of them. He’s had a few conversations with Todd who keeps taking rides to the city and back. He keeps offering Tyler to leave, as if he doesn’t belong here.
Paul is right — Tyler is stubborn, because his stubbornness is all he has.
Tyler checks himself in the mirror; he’s still pale and his right eyeball is still mostly pink, wired with burst capillaries, but his vision clears little by little. The right side of his head is lined with scars and scabs, making him look too pathetic with his hair shaved off.
He tries to never take off his patched-up beanie, turning the slits to the back. This makes him look almost normal.
He wants to get back on stage.
***
When Paul says the group they evacuated from the riot is coming to the shelter, Tyler gets oddly excited. Being isolated from civilians, he started to think that his activism died.
So it feels nice to finally meet his kind.
They’re not badly injured — just a few bruised limbs and skinned knuckles, and, most importantly, they remember everything Tyler did.
“We thought you were dead!” they scream, and they cheer, and Tyler feels at home.
He thought he was dead, too.
They stay in the shelter for three days, making plans and picking a place where they could keep a low profile in the city. Tyler says he knows the place.
“The Basement.”
“The club?” one of the guys asks.
“Yeah, I read about it in the newspaper. That was a limited edition, and I think we could stay here,” Tyler rubs his palms together. “The resistance curates that area.”
“And you’re the bestest of buds already.”
“I don’t ask anyone to go with me,” Tyler shrugs. “I’m just saying.”
He plays his “everything or nothing” card again, and his ostentatious self-confidence works like a magnet for his audience sometimes. Most of the guys who arrived here recently were musicians and writers and therefore are censored or banned out of existence. They understand each other, or at least Tyler hopes so.
“You guys are crazy,” Todd says.
That’s who they are. For the first time, Tyler is proud of it.
They don’t hate him for who he is.
Tyler keeps covering his freshly scarred head with a beanie, and they don’t ask him questions.
He appreciates it.
Their ride is arranged for tomorrow — there’s lots of be careful’s and take care of yourself’s and Tyler feels like he might be finally free from whatever fetters were holding him back.
***
Tyler gets dizzy when he climbs the scaffolding, but it will pass. He’s healing, and the world is still infected with propaganda.
“They’re drilling holes in the heads,” someone says.
And someone says,
“No, they’re using thick needles.”
Tyler thinks they’re actually lucky to not have known the truth.
***
Their life in the Basement is almost stable; they do a few performances in the streets, but these actions don’t get much attention from both citizens and the police. Tyler mostly goes by just Joseph, because who cares anyway.
He’s sure some people think it’s his real name.
He’s so disappointed to find out that Chris E. doesn’t write his articles anymore; he only hears that the administration building is being reconstructed and that the official’s son died a horrible death, but it didn’t get much press coverage. Tyler thinks it’s weird. A missed opportunity for the government to blame the opposition.
They host a few shows right here in the Basement, and people come to listen; they’ve made a strict system of passwords to get into the club. Tyler doesn’t like newcomers, but he remembers some faces. The two guys keep coming into the Basement nearly every couple days; one of them has a bear print on his hoodie, and another one has a silver ring in his nostril.
Tyler makes mental notes about them.
***
Tyler makes fun of the pink-haired bus driver. Mostly because he just hates the buses — he pretends he doesn’t know what’s happening, and that the evacuation doesn’t bother him at all. The bus driver — his name’s Josh, he’s heard — and the Bear guy come to take them to one of the resistance locations. He recognizes Josh — the guy thought that dyeing his hair would camouflage him from Tyler’s hawkeye memory. Even with some cogs rattled loose, Tyler kept a mental portrait of him.
Josh breaks the speaker with his weird weapon — a frankensteined version of a hammer that looks far too modern. Far too dangerous. And Tyler is an adrenaline addict and also a reckless idiot. That’s not even his words, to be honest.
He swallows the last two pills and prays that his brain to not start conflicting with his stomach. He even squeezes himself right next to the driver, earning a death glare.
“Go, go, go, go, come on!” the Bear guy screams. His hoodie is bearless today, but Tyler has already given him the nickname. He’s the choleric type, Tyler notes. He likes it.
The only bright thing about the ride is that Tyler doesn’t throw up. It’s a miracle, because his brain backflips into a pool of vertigo when the bus turns in place and lands on the side; Josh’s hammer hits Tyler’s thigh and he curses everything at once, religious upbringing be damned.
Josh passes out on top of him, Josh doesn’t look good when he wakes up — they exchange a few witty comments before getting out of the bus, and getting people into the relatively safe zone.
Josh says they’ll have to walk to the location now.
“You okay?” the Bear guy asks, clutching at his bloodied sleeve.
Tyler feels a bruise forming on his upper thigh, and that his brain has probably been re-concussed, but otherwise… Otherwise, he’s fine.
“Take care of the dudes,” Tyler says.
The Bear guy nods wordlessly.
Tyler defuses a landmine — thanks to the book Paul gave him — and he can’t read any of the emotions Josh tries his best not to give out.
Just in case, Tyler thinks Josh hates him.
***
Josh calls him the razorblade idiot.
That wasn’t even meant for Tyler’s ears, but he hears it anyway. He can’t say he’s offended even. He spends the night in an actual prison cell, for the first time in his life — somehow, he thought it’d happen sooner. But this subdivision of the resistance lives here, they had to fight for this place like for a fortress, someone from the neighboring cell says.
“We’ll think about what to do with you tomorrow,” their boss, Michael, says.
It’s the same old song.
***
The Bear guy’s name is Mark, he’s a local paramedic, and Tyler is sent to his office for a medical examination. The “office” is just a small room with a single desk; Mark’s right forearm is bandaged, and he keeps squinting at Tyler through his glasses.
Tyler’s standing shirtless in front of him, pants undone; the bruise has only grown bigger, but it remains surprisingly painless.
“The bone’s not broken,” Mark says.
And Tyler says,
“I noticed.”
Mark sees the old scars on his stomach, too.
“Message Man,” he says.
“You know me?” Tyler hunches forward, covering the tattoos on his chest.
Mark stretches his lips in a sheepish smile.
“I wrote a ton of articles about you.”
“No way!” Tyler gasps. “You’re Chris E.!” he sits down on the chair next to Mark’s table, suddenly dizzy.
“My middle name is Christopher. I go by just E. because my last name’s too hard to remember anyway,” Mark explains, tapping the pen on the paper. “Now tell me what you’ve been up to while no one could spot you.”
That sounds oddly stern.
Tyler knows that they’ll be trying to send him “somewhere” again if they know about his head injury. He’s mostly fine by now, really. He just walks weird sometimes, has trouble focusing his eyes on objects sometimes, and the tics he had since he was a kid have somehow increased. Paul said that was a long-term post-concussion syndrome, but it’s getting better now.
Tyler’s memory is still messed up about the dates. He tries his best to tell Mark about his journey, avoiding the spiked bat story.
Mark doesn’t buy it.
“You know, man,” he drawls. “You’re either indeed crazy, suffering from amnesia, or, which is the worst, you’re lying to me,” he scans Tyler with his gaze. “Hat off.”
“It’s cold here,” Tyler tries, feeling stupid.
“Man, we all had a long day, and I don’t have time to let you mess with me,” Mark rubs his eyelids under his glasses. “Just tell me the truth.”
Tyler sighs and pulls his beanie off, scars exposed, past exposed.
Mark gapes at him.
“I swear it’s not as bad as it looks,” Tyler tries, putting his elbows on the table and locking his hands behind his neck. He realizes how dumb it sounds.
Mark puts his professionalism to work.
“You’re gonna tell me what happened, aren’t you?”
“Deal,” Tyler outstretches his hand. “Just promise to sign my examination sheet. And don’t tell anyone about…” he gestures at his head. “I know tons of useful shit. I just… Don’t have much time. Sign me up, for whatever it is.”
Tyler knows they need specialists here, and he can boldly consider himself one. Also Mark knew him before they even met, so Tyler thinks it’s a sign; and he’s waiting for the verdict, and he knows he’s gonna have to tell Mark everything about his nasty concussion to help him alleviate the negative effects.
Mark squeezes Tyler’s sweaty palm and says,
“Well… It looks like you might be one of us.”