Her throat might have lost the power of speech, but just when she wanted it the least she found it was perfectly capable of making a series of unearthly retching sounds.
Sour liquid filled her nostrils and mouth, and the pain and discomfort caused tears to well up in her eyes.
The Doctor jumped up to comfort her, putting one hand on her back and thrusting out a towel with the other.
–I’m so sorry.
Balot just about managed to vocalize the words before grabbing the towel and burying her face in it. She was crying silently now. Everything was so unpleasant, so frustrating, so sad.
–I’ve made the floor all dirty…
The moment she said the words the corrupted memories started coming back to her again, triggered by the word dirty. I’m going to make you clean. That’s my job. Into a Blue Diamond. That’s the answer. I’m going to make you clean. Clean you up.
“Try not to panic. You’ll settle down soon enough. You’re just a bit frazzled from all your labors,” said the Doctor’s voice, nearby. Suddenly, she realized that something was being injected into her arm. “Tranquilizers and sleeping pills. You’ll be asleep in no time. You’ve done well, really well. Take it easy now. You won’t have any more nightmares. Oeufcoque will be here right next to you. Won’t you, Oeufcoque?”
Oeufcoque was wrapped around her tightly as her bodysuit, and he said something in response.
Right here—or something like that. As Balot’s awareness grew dimmer, she thought she saw the face of the girl who was killed by despair. She wondered what it was exactly that girl had wanted from Shell.
Probably the same as me, Balot thought. The same sort of answer as the one I wanted. A simple answer. Why me? Because I love you. The girl had probably thought all that mattered was to be loved. And, as a result, she ended up burnt out.
Balot slowly closed her eyes. She felt all her sorrows dissipate. The other person’s memories were no more—they had disappeared, silently—and Balot began to regain her confidence and started to believe for certain that she was now the only one.
Balot felt her whole body aching for the being that now wrapped her up in a warm cocoon, and she fell asleep.
≡
When Balot woke again, she was a little surprised to find herself in bed wearing pajamas. She sensed that her pajama top was connected to her pants, and then realized that they were in fact Oeufcoque. There was an intravenous drip in her arm. Careful not to dislodge the tubing, Balot hugged her pajamas tightly, wrapping her arms around her knees. She stayed like that for a while, not thinking, just crying.
Oeufcoque stayed with her, silently keeping her company.
When finally she got out of bed and headed into the dining room, she found that the various contraptions had all been tidied away.
The Doctor had just finished sending his latest email to the DA, and he spun around to greet Balot with the words, “We have a date for the trial.”
And so it came to pass that, one week after she had obtained the chips from the casino, Balot found herself standing in front of the Broilerhouse again.
In order to climb her own stairway to heaven. The symbol of this city. Mardock.
Chapter 12
NAVIGATION
01
“Why am I here?” Shell repeated the words to himself over and over, muttering in a state of near delirium.
Boiled watched with steely eyes as Shell sat there on the bench, head in his hands. The two of them were the only ones currently in the Broilerhouse waiting room. Shell removed his Chameleon Sunglasses. Holding the deep violet sunglasses in his hand, he turned to Boiled, his voice a pitiful mess of self-recrimination. He should have worked it out long ago.
“If only I’d told you everything right from the beginning, none of this would have happened… I was a fool to imagine that it would be easy to kill the girl.”
Boiled sat there. He didn’t make a sound; his expression remained constant. He didn’t nod and he didn’t shake his head.
“I can change. I can become anyone you want me to be. I can clean up any dirt. I’ll make the best of any situation. So, please, just get me out of here,” Shell continued.
Boiled crossed his legs and met Shell’s gaze. Still he said nothing.
“I’m frightened, Boiled, and I have absolutely no idea what it is that frightens me so. That’s the worst part of it.” Shell sounded as if he were about to burst, his innards ready to spill out of him at any moment.
“I’ll make everything disappear,” Boiled replied, his voice soft.
Shell’s eyes, so full of pain and distress, opened up ever so slightly.
“It’s time to talk to your lawyers,” Boiled continued and started to rise, when Shell clamped his hand on Boiled’s arm.
“I’m begging you… Help me… Help me become a different person again.”
Boiled nodded.
≡
“So it was a matricide, after all…” the Doctor said. His face was calm, almost respectful. “That must have been the root of all his deviant behavior. Despite losing his memories—no, because he’s lost his memories—he was left with no other way to control his emotions, to keep his urges in check.”
–Why?
Balot snarced the words through the choker on her neck, Oeufcoque.
“Imagine that you’re experiencing constant feelings of terrible fear and anger and have absolutely no idea how to deal with those emotions—you have no idea what will help you calm down. Then you’ll get a sense of what it is to be Shell. Wouldn’t you do whatever you could to try and stop the terrifying feelings that are gnawing away at your mind? Sure, you’d be fine so long as you could find a way to successfully sublimate those feelings—in your professional and social ambitions, maybe—but what happens when you’re no longer able to sublimate the urges? Self-restraint goes out the window.”
“And as Shell grew used to the whole process, he became inured to it and started to believe that what he was doing was entirely normal,” added Oeufcoque, now taking the shape of a geometric pattern inside the crystal pendant on the choker. “It was probably a self-defense mechanism against his memory loss. He was afraid of the spirit of his dead mother coming back to haunt him, but even stronger than that was the feeling that he was responsible for the girls’ deaths, that their sacrifice was all his fault.”
–Because his first lover died, I think.
Balot found herself contributing to the conversation.
–The girl that Shell really did love. It was a real shock to him to find out that she had an abusive past, similar to his. A shock to discover that they might have chosen one another because of their similar histories.
Balot felt a pang of sadness in her chest. Sure, she felt uncomfortable and irritated too, but the feeling of sorrow was winning out over all other emotions. She hadn’t imagined for a moment that Shell had lived through experiences similar to her own. On the contrary, Shell had always looked for such girls in order to convert them into that which was beautiful to him—Blue Diamonds, money, the stairway to success.