Part XVII: Apocalypse Rising

Every action we make is a crime against nature. It demands nothing but our will for survival. We were only ever meant to be primitive, to exist at a basic level in which food and sustenance, food and sustenance kept us. The first of these, food, was always easy enough to define; it is a thing we eat, a thing we drink, and the methods we employ to gain them are matters of instinct, where habits are made from, desires. Of sustenance, that is where we found ourselves in the basic trouble. Sustenance is not merely what we consume, but what we need to motivate ourselves. Why continue to live if all we are meant for is to eat and rink? Sustenance is a question, the question we have asked a million variations of. Families are built around it, civilizations, philosophies, religions. Every story is the same, it is the story of sustenance. Each story is about a farmer who reaps what they sow. Farming is a form of sustenance because it is a construct we’ve devised, which we don’t need, but we’ve found useful. In our modern world, we don’t even think about it anymore except as an abstract source. It is sort of like a new religion. It is passed from family to family, who adopt working philosophies, which feed civilizations. You can link anything, because everything is linked. During the Great Depression, the dust bowls devastated farms, which in themselves were not related to stock market crashes that ruined banking institutions, but they were, all the same, linked. Was a second world war linked in the same way? Of course it was. There were revolutions all over the world two centuries ago. They were all linked. There was a Dark Age all over the world a millennium ago, all caused by the same basic cataclysm. Do you believe in the story of Noah? Gilgamesh does. And yet, mention the two names to two people, and they won’t understand the link. Mention Troy, and they won’t understand what it has to do with Rome, or Agincourt, and they won’t see America. Every action is linked, and it is all a crime against nature, which does its best to make us understand. The consequences are always inevitable, and there’s no stopping them once they’ve started. We live in an alarmist culture, and yet we still don’t understand. We say that we’re ruining the planet, and yet we are content to be as greedy as we have always been, because we allow the system to hide our hypocrisy, because saying what appears to be good has become just as good as the real thing, maybe even better than the real thing. We don’t learn.

Which is okay, because that’s what we’ve been doing, and we will never understand that, either, because we prefer our history to match our message, rather than our message to match history. There are two young combatants in the war at Traverse who are pursuing the deadliest agent left on the field. One is seeking a father, the other running from a past that has already doomed him, and his whole city. Cockeye, Lincoln Mather, has assumed the idea that once crippled him, because he was fortunate enough to stumble into a well of information, some of which revealed for him that his legacy does not belong with the man who shamed his early life, but another who abandoned him as an infant. In the neighborhood, the only home he has ever known, he has claimed as his own, he is prepared to take on the greatest challenge possible, and that is to put aside his own petty concerns and begin looking out for those of others, who do not yet understand that the power of destiny has always been within themselves. He has assumed a burden that has crushed many others, including the hero who started him on this path. All he has ever had he has taken for himself; the man he knew as father left him to fend for himself, and even so, he was only ever yearning for that approval, and the things he did to win it were always the result of the wrong choices he had no guidance to steer from. As a street thug, he ruined countless lives before he was given that very lesson himself, by the Eidolon, who made him realize what he’d become, and why. He turned on this father in that moment, and turned on himself, fell into utter destitution. He was lost.

At the bar he would one day inherit, when everyone else had abandoned it, Lincoln discovered that it was easier to find himself when he allowed others to come to him. Amidst the clamor of the clinking bottles and the hustling at the pool table, he found that in this confusion he was able to arrange order within his own mind. In the utter honesty of this environment, he could finally learn what it was that drove men’s hearts. It was in this way that he first heard the rumors of the Dread Poet, a forgotten icon of a bygone era, who nonetheless was said to possess the fountain of all knowledge, which he dedicated his life to unearthing. The men who spoke of the Poet knew him only as a legend, a figure who blessed the history of the city, and in turn its people, both from the past and in its present. They offered him blessings, and this was their sanctuary to perform the ritual, because it was the only place that would accept such arcane gestures. But Lincoln found word of the man elsewhere, too. On the subway, where travelers in the city were only concerned about destinations, he learned that the Poet had another name, too, and still other names. He was Tekamthi, he was Siddhartha, he was Sun Tzu, and he was Hammurabi. He was all of these, and he was none of these. He was no legend, but a man, who kept a library, one which would, in time, be lost, and become that legend after all. His time was drawing near, and Lincoln had only one decision left. He would seek this man, and discover his secrets.

When he had done this, he found the Poet’s lair abandoned, and the library ripe, and with its revelations, he discovered that the secrets were kept here for a reason, kept away, the sum of a lifetime left to rot because of what their librarian had discovered. The Dread Poet had learned that the world destroys what it cannot handle. His work was useless, but his legacy was not. Passed on, as he knew it would be, if not by his own disciples, and surely there were, then by those who would discovery this treasure hidden beneath the earth, interpreted, maybe, for new meaning, but treasured all the same. And once he had learned all he could, Lincoln burned the lair hollow, as he knew the Poet would have wanted. He vowed that day that he would carry on the work in the only way he knew how.

Once born, Cockeye took on the world with his skewed perspective as another vigilante on the streets of Traverse, in time for a war to engulf it as the Dread Poet’s lair had been, in fire, which was destined to consume it. He had his own goals, of course, but his only objective was to perform the deeds of a selfless martyr, who would sacrifice himself for the cause of others. And now that goal becomes one of self-preservation, because the war demands it toll be paid until it has been quenched. Barracuda, who has taken his share of flesh, has become the last lightning rod in the city, and he will be struck.

Unity, meanwhile, Odin Roy, who stole the heart of Elizabeth Mueller and in doing so led the final chain of events that only the Staged Man was able to untangle, has put his sights on the same villain, Barracuda, who fights for the same reasons as Unity and his brethren, but without honor, without integrity. Unity opposes the sheer presumption of telling someone who operates within the system that they’re wrong, even though the system supports them. He opposes those who believe they are better than the system, who believe it is their right to rewrite that system, or operate outside of it because they don’t believe in it, even though they claim they have only its values in mind, its best interests. He doesn’t believe that, he doesn’t believe that they have the right. He believes that people must be punished when they break rules within the system, but by the system itself, so that the order that is being maintained might be seen to be working. He believes that the system is imperfect because it is meant to be broken, but from within, and not from without. That is what his family has been doing. That is what he has been doing. He has bent, perhaps, even broken the rules, when he has claimed things that are not his, or withheld when it is wrong. That is what happened to his cousin, the one who was there that day when the Eidolon thought he killed Odin himself. He had been there to reason with his cousin, because he thought, in that moment, that was the easiest way to resolve the issues that had come between them, not relenting, as he should have, but to help his cousin see terms that would benefit both of them.

As Unity, that is what Odin represents, terms of agreement, and Barracuda has been excluded. He watched as his brother Malcolm turned away from those terms, saw the toll it took on him, and maybe for the first time began to understand that he might have been wrong, especially when Malcolm took the final steps toward his sacrifice. They all knew it was going to end like that for Malcolm, and they all saw that it was not fair. He had never done anything to bring that fate upon himself. All this had been brought to him, so that he had no other choice. He was an example of the honor they had, each of them, turned away from, and because he couldn’t, he had his life taken from him. A little of Unity died the same day. Odin no longer believes as strongly in the cause he champions, but there is that final task ahead of him, the confrontation with Barracuda. What to make of it? What to make of the life he finds himself in?

Does he admit that he has been wrong all this time? No, and he doesn’t arrive at this response because he refuses to admit failure. He regards the role he represents as misguidance, not as wrong. He believes in the cause as much as before, when his brother still lived. There were things that should never have happened, should never have been allowed, and yet, he already sees how far he traveled before his brother’s death. He wanted Barracuda eliminated long ago. Barracuda, the agent who would do others’ bidding without question, was a maverick element who targeted not out of real threat but out of fear. What was Xenon but a sign for a more hopeful future? With him gone, that future was thrown into doubt again. All youth is a new instance of promise, of atonement, another chance to start over again. Is that what Odin has been doing? Is that what his father has been doing?

In the environment Malcolm created before his death, as the mayor of the city, Barracuda lost any reason to hide. Anyone caring to find him knew instantly where to find him, just as they knew where everyone else was. That was why it was so easy for Agog to find Malcolm, and for Godsend to after him. Everyone and everything became accounted for, because in the chaos, order was enforced in such a rigid sense that it was seen as a barrier protecting chaos more than order. The boundary was broken in its creation. Barracuda made no effort to conceal his locations nonetheless. Where he went, destruction followed, crushing down upon his victims like the mighty power of the sea. He spared few; his foes, the invaders, the heroes, they fell before him, and anyone, even his allies, who could not live up to his standards. In this way, he invited Unity to fight him. He saw Odin’s wavering as weakness, even though there was real cause for his pain. They met in a park at city’s center, where all things converged. It became another moment that could not unstuck itself from time. They have been staring at each other for hours now. Unity’s main interest lies in a form not far from Barracuda, a form he seems to think he should recognize. It is clad, not surprisingly, in a costume, a blue tracksuit that would stand out even at a gym or a field. There is red staining it, but the blue still overwhelms this hue, as if by authority. Unity sees that this person is his own age, and in his face, he sees more to identify with, a defiance, even though it has known circumstances vastly different from his own. This person has had to scrap for everything it has ever gotten, whereas he, Odin, has only ever had the luxury of choice. He chose to confront Barracuda. This figure probably didn’t, not in the sense he did. Barracuda himself is impatient, and yet in his own eyes, there is a serenity that is entirely out of place. What is he so at peace about? In all this bloodshed, where has he found tranquility? He is not a killer, and yet he has murdered untold numbers. He has untold conviction, and yet he has never been certain a day of his life. The fate of that figure is meant for Unity, too, but there is already regret. All this can be found in Barracuda’s eyes.

The figure stirs. He isn’t dead after all, not yet at least. Barracuda’s crude iron jaw gauntlets gleam beside him, but in the face of his looming mortality, the figure isn’t through. “You coward,” he says.

“It is better to be a coward than dead,” Barracuda says, lulled away from his stalemate.

“Your kind will always say that,” Unity says. “Now are you ready to fight, or would you like a few more moments of life?”

“You have not earned that hubris,” Barracuda says. “Do you want to know what it costs? You will never know. You don’t want to earn it. You want to assume it. That is never enough. It has never been enough.”

He swipes one of his claws at Unity then, and connects. Where there was orange before, there is red, a gash Unity feels every inch of. Just like that, he sees his life forfeiting. “You can’t win that easily,” he says. “That has been your biggest fault. You think you’ll win? You’ve already lost. You see that man you’ve already beaten? His name is Cockeye, and he is my enemy as well as yours. And yet he is my ally. And he is my cousin.”

“Then die with your blood,” Barracuda says with another lunge of his weapon, which connects again. Unity has never been prepared for this. He feels it connect again, plunge into his flesh. It is unlike anything he has experienced before, even the bullet that to all witnesses looked fatal. He barely felt it, even as a ghost when it had been taken out. He had recovered with little ceremony. He could never understand how that could have meant so much to another soul when it had meant so little to him. Will his death solve anything now? He will not be here to find out.

***

Catalyst comes, bearing the body of Malcolm Bidd. Benjamin does very little these days, even as his kingdom crumbles around him. He is an old man, and there is little he can do, but he still has the heart of a thriving desire, and that has, for days now, been longing for the recovery of his son. He does not want to live and see it defiled, as the life had been. “Should an old man live to see such days?” he muses, without particular aim, an old thought many have shared before him.

“I am sorry you have had to,” Catalyst says. “I have shared your pain, too. Your son was an honorable man, and I will only show him the honor that he has earned. My father receives a memorial, your son deserves a funeral, and I have only made sure that he gets it.”

“You have come for more,” Benjamin says.

“Are you surprised?” Catalyst says.

“Relieved,” Benjamin says. “An old man does not wish to see these days befall his work. He deserves more, too. Has he truly wasted his efforts, that they come to this? Have I been so foolish?”

“I have heard much about you,” Catalyst says. “I have heard of what you have done, and what you had to do to accomplish it, what you had to make of yourself first, and why that defined the legacy you would leave behind. I will tell you, none of this matters. You may be remembered as a failure, but you will be remembered, and honored, for the man you were. You deserve that much, as your son deserves this honor. If I am to be the one to give it, then so be it. I will cherish this moment for the rest of my days.”

With these words, Benjamin Russ’s days come to an end, a mercy killing to mark the end of a war before the final plunder tallies itself, to render a final verdict on them all. It is a strange moment to behold, an act of forgiveness between two men too closely connected yet too far apart for it to be believed. And yet, it is not the most unbelievable moment in these final days of the war. The strangest elements are yet to be revealed, and the final tragedies. Below the power of the Palomar rests one whose life impacts the whole field, whose life is about to be called into judgment. He is about to rise from his grave.