Dr. Micki
Hugo Brooke glanced at his watch (another antique – the thing actually ticked!) and cursed himself for never being on time. It was already five past eight, and he was still a few streets away from Dr. Micki’s office. He’d never gone around Sunny Pastures to get anywhere before, and he’d drastically underestimated the time it would take for someone in his physical condition (i.e. not the best) to get from one side of a City block to the other without bisecting it.
Finally, huffing, puffing and dying for a smoke, the clinic came into view ahead of him. The row of buildings it was a part of weren’t in the best shape (it had been years since the BID had invested any money into this part of the City) but Micki’s office stood out starkly against its dull, dirty neighbors. It still looked pretty dirty, but beneath the dirt was a bright coat of light-blue paint and above the door an LED sign blazed: Babylon Animal Care Clinic with a picture of a cat with a bandaged ear beneath it. One part of Hugo found the sign endearing while another part of him rolled his eyes at it, and he wasn’t sure which part was more reflective of his nature.
To Hugo’s surprise, despite the fact that he was almost ten minutes late at this point, he could see a good deal of activity was still going on in the clinic through the large window which filled the building’s front. He saw several people inside whom he felt reasonably sure would prefer female pronouns and a few others who might, but he had no idea which one was Dr. Micki. Norman hadn’t been able to dig up any pictures of her, even in the articles published about her work, or any videos of her lectures or presentations. He remembered what Micki had said about her being a “techno-phobe” and decided she must have a thing about having her picture taken. Odd, yes, but not unheard of, especially for someone from Jericho (or, in this case, a Jerichovian suburb); they were all backwards on the coast, or at least that’s what his father had always told him.
Not knowing what else to do and not wanting to be any later than he already was, Hugo pushed open the clinic’s door and heard a light chime sound as he entered the room. There were six people in the waiting room, and none of them looked up when he entered. Most were busy with whatever animals they’d come in with; a man seated closest to Hugo seemed to be completely engrossed in scratching his large, yellow dog behind its ear (the dog seemed equally invested in this venture) while a pair of older ladies sitting beside each other at the other end of the lobby were simultaneously whispering into separate cat-carriers.
Hugo did not mind people who loved animals, and he certainly didn’t hate them himself, but he’d never quite understood bonds of this degree. Sure, a dog might wag its tail at you, but does it really love you? Or does it love the fact that you feed it and water it and take it outside every once in a while? And are cats even capable of love? Hugo had his doubts.
He made his way to the desk at the end of the lobby and pressed the small call button built into the artificial wood-grain. Nothing happened at once, so he was about to press the button again when a door to Hugo’s left burst open and a small, orange cat dashed into the lobby. The yellow dog was on its feet in an instant, as was the small, white one and the other small, white one a young woman near the back of the lobby was doing her best to restrain. All three dogs, and several other animals Hugo couldn’t see within their carriers, began voicing their outrage at this feline interloper, and Hugo was quickly overwhelmed by the chaos surrounding him.
Just then a woman of average height and build with blonde hair tied back in a loose bun came rushing out into the lobby. She scooped the cat up in a quick, expert dash and silenced the dogs by blowing on a small, silver whistle she wore around her neck. Hugo didn’t hear anything when she blew the whistle, but the dogs immediately ceased their barking and the lobby fell into a shallow hush.
“Oh!” The woman exclaimed on catching sight of Hugo. “You must be Mr. Brooke!”
Hugo recognized the distinct twang of her accent. “And you must be Dr. Micki.”
“That’s me!” She said with a small laugh and a shake of her head. “I’m so sorry, but would you mind waiting just a bit? I’ve got to finish up with these folks and then I can be right with you.”
“I thought the clinic closed at eight?” Hugo reminded her, not wanting to delay their discussion of her possible case.
“Oh, it’s supposed to and it usually does!” Dr. Micki informed him with another small shake of her head. “I had no idea it was gonna be this busy, otherwise I’d’ve told you to stop by at nine instead of eight!”
She had a very wide, very bright smile, and her full cheeks turned her dark brown eyes into slits when she laughed. Hugo found it difficult not to like her, and decided not to try. “It’s okay, I understand. I’ll just hang out here if that’s alright.”
“Sure thing, sugarplum!” Dr. Micki tucked the cat under her arm and lowered her voice while she stepped closer to Hugo. “I appreciate you bein’ so accommodatin’ on such short notice. It’ll only take me a sec to clear this place out; most of these critters are just hypochondriacs.”
She reached out and gave Hugo’s arm a conspiratorial squeeze with the hand that wasn’t struggling to maintain its grip on the yowling cat and winked at him. He smiled back and pretended that he wasn’t bothered by her touching him. With her this close he had an opportunity to study her closer; he knew from Norman’s digging that she was in her early forties, but her skin (as far as Hugo could tell) still looked healthy and youthful. He remembered something his father had once said about the women from Jericho and Baghdad; their good genes more than made up for their lackluster homecities.
Hugo made himself as comfortable as could be expected in the lobby and pulled out his wireless. He instructed Norman to scour the Archive for anything recently recovered that might pique his interest. The ol’ well had been a bit dry lately, now that Hugo thought about it. For most of Hugo’s life the Archive had been updated daily as new files were decoded and more of humanity’s history was restored, but for the last several months fewer and fewer new books, movies or games were listed on the “Recent Acquisitions” page the Archivists ran. He still had many years’ worth of content to sort through in his backlog, but Hugo liked to stay on top of what new glimpses into the past had been discovered.
He flipped through today’s Acquisitions. There were a few movies (Metropolis (1927), Demons (2019) and Harold and Maude (1971)) and a couple of books (Vixen: Story of a Woman (1989) and Tales of a Magic Monastery (1981)) which had been completely restored to their former glory, with no missing chapters or scenes or anything, but nothing that especially interested Hugo. The only things that had been added to the list which did catch his eye were a few new chapters of The Unseeing Oracle (a novel Hugo had been following for years as its different sections were gradually restored), but a quick inspection told Hugo that the chapters that had been added were out of order and took place ahead of where he was in the story. This was the most frustrating aspect of the Archive, in Hugo’s opinion; you never knew what would be restored next and in what order it would be restored. These chapters of TUO were labeled “Rendezvous in the Asteroid Belt II” and “Rendezvous in the Asteroid Belt III”, but, apparently, none of the Archivists had gotten around to decoding “Rendezvous in the Asteroid Belt I” yet.
Hugo just could not catch a break lately.
He moved on from the Acquisitions page and combed through the Archive message boards. Archivists would often drop hints or just flat out announce what was being worked on that day and what was ready to be released to the public days before any official announcements, and Hugo was hoping one of them was working on a new Hammett or Chandler (hell, he’d even take a Christie at this point), but it didn’t look like his recent luck was improving any time soon. There was no mention of any current noir-themed restoration and it looked like most of the active Archivists were busy piecing together the last twelve acts of some ancient epic called Homestuck. Hugo checked it out and quickly moved on to search for something less staggering in length and scope.
He was continuing his fruitless search when Norman alerted him that he’d gotten a new message from Fiver.
Finally, he thought to himself. Some good news.
He had known (or at least been acquainted with) Fiver for almost a decade, and he counted them amongst his closest friends. He wasn’t sure how he felt about having a friend he knew virtually nothing about; they’d never shown him their face, told him where they were from or how old they were, but somehow their mutual obsession with the Archive had allowed them to slowly bond. Fiver wasn’t an Archivist (or at least so they claimed) and Hugo didn’t know how they got their hands on half the files they sent him, but they always seemed to have the inside scoop on what was being worked on and was able to squirrel away copies of everything.
Fiver did not share his interests in mysteries and those who solved them, but they had an insatiable appetite for science fiction (they were actually the one who had turned him onto TUO, as a matter of fact). According to the message they’d sent, they’d just seen Metropolis had been restored and, according to their message, they were “on the verge of shitting [themself]”. Hugo tried not to be jealous. It wasn’t Fiver’s fault that there was so much more content available in their preferred genre while he was in the middle of a noir-themed drought. He congratulated them and demanded they give him a thorough review of the film once they’d finished watching it for the fifth time.
“Mr. Brooke?” Dr. Micki’s voice cut through his reverie.
He looked up from his wireless and realized that while he’d been scouring the Archive the lobby had emptied around him. Micki had been good to her word; she’d cleared the entire crowd in roughly half an hour.
“So sorry to keep you waiting like that!” Dr. Micki apologized again as he stood and stretched his back.
“Don’t worry about it,” he assured her as he quickly typed a message to Fiver explaining he had to work. “Do you want to just talk here or…?”
“Oh, no, come on back to my office! The chairs are much more comfy back there.” She squeezed his arm and winked again, and again he tried not feel uncomfortable.
He followed her through the door he’d first seen her burst out of and down a long, narrow hallway lined with open doors leading into vacant examination rooms. At the end of the hall Micki turned and entered one of the rooms, but Hugo saw in place of an examination table and monitors this one was filled with a large, simple desk and several cloth-wrapped chairs. She walked around the desk and sat in the large, overstuffed office chair stationed in front of an ancient-looking computer. She glanced at him, still standing in the doorway, and gestured to one of the chairs on the opposite side of the desk from her with another chuckle and shake of her head.
He took her lead and sat. She’d been right again; these chairs were much more comfortable than the ones in the lobby.
“Do you mind if I record this?” He asked, holding Norman up for her to see. “It helps me stay on top of my paperwork.”
This was a lie. In fact, Hugo liked to record his meetings with clients so that he could listen to them afterward and pick apart everything he had said. He was constantly trying to improve the noir-esque aura he gave off, and proper use of language and terminology was a crucial aspect of this.
“Oh,” Micki said, seeming bashful for the first time sicne Hugo had met her. “Well, no, I guess not, but I’m a bit particular about havin’ my picture taken.”
“Don’t worry, it’s voice only.” Hugo assured her. He set the wireless between them on the desk and instructed it to begin recording. “So, how can I help you, Dr. Micki?”
“Right. Well, this is a little embarrassing.” She shifted in her chair, her eyes still on Norman’s shiny, black casing. “You see, I have some interests which might seem a bit… well, odd to the casual outside observer.”
“You mean the cryptozoology stuff?” Hugo asked before he could stop himself. He tried not to let on that he researched clients before taking their cases.
“Oh! Well, yeah!” Micki laughed again, but Hugo could tell she was taken off guard.
“Sorry if that seems creepy,” Hugo rushed, feeling his cheeks redden. “I like to know who I’m meeting before I meet them, if that makes any sense.”
“Don’t you worry, sugarplum,” Micki assured him, looking at him with what he could only describe as a maternal expression. “I’d’ve probably done the same thing.”
Hugo was about to thank her for being so understanding when a loud noise startled both of them. Hugo thought it sounded like metal hinges creaking, and he thought it was close.
“What the hell was that?” Micki asked, quickly rising from her chair.
“I don’t –” Hugo was cut off by another noise, a muffled crash this time, and he too rose from his seat. Dr. Micki was already around the desk and headed for the door. He whispered to her: “Wait a second! You don’t know who’s out there!”
“This is my clinic,” Micki said, her bright, twangy voice seeming suddenly darker to Hugo’s ears. “I’ll be damned ‘fore I let some goldfiend break in and start tearin’ the place apart.”
With this she strode past Hugo and peeked her head out into the hallway.
Another crash came then, and the sound of a hushed voice.
Only one? Hugo thought. Goldfiends always travel in packs…
It did not occur to him that he had no reason to believe a goldfiend, or any other kind of addict, was currently in the clinic with the two of them. Dr. Micki’s suggestion had been enough for him to build an entire scenario out of, and he rarely took time to thoroughly examine his thoughts when his heart was beating this fast.
Micki waited for a moment to see if another crash would come. When it didn’t, she slowly entered the hallway. Not knowing what else to do with himself, Hugo followed. Nothing seemed to have change in the minute or so the two of them had last been in the hallway, but to Hugo it suddenly felt like a very different sort of hallway.
CRASH! An explosion of metal scraping against stone caused Hugo to jump about a foot in the air. He and Micki whipped around to face the large, metal door just beyond Micki’s office.
“That’s the supply room.” Micki muttered, more to herself than Hugo. She approached the door and tried the handle. It wasn’t locked.
“Hang on a sec!” Hugo pleaded before she could open the door. “Let’s just go flag down some beatcops! They can handle this!”
Micki looked at him with a quizzical look on her face, then pressed a finger to her pursed lips and shushed him before turning back to the door. She pulled on the handle and the door swung open. Hugo recognized the squeaking hinges he’d heard earlier.
The room was dark inside, so Micki fished around along the wall beside the door until she found a switch. She pressed it and the fluorescent lights suspended from the low ceiling slowly flickered to life.
At first all Hugo could see were rows and rows of metal shelves lined with hundreds and hundreds of boxes and prescription bottles. There were also a few boxy machines he didn’t recognize and a few tools scattered around on the floor. The center of the room was filled by a low, metal table, in front of which was a spilled tray of surgical equipment. Hugo assumed the falling of the tray had been the last crash they’d heard.
Dr. Micki gasped, and Hugo looked up and realized something was laying on top of the table. He couldn’t make sense of it at first; all he saw was a massive, black lump. Then it slowly raised its head and fixed them with a cold, glittering glare and Hugo realized it was a dog of some kind. It shifted slowly (and with some difficulty, Hugo thought) on the table and its stomach, stretched and hideously swollen, came into view. A low growl filled the room around them, but Hugo and Micki were completely silent.
Then, it seemed, Dr. Micki remembered herself. She took a slow, deliberate step toward the monster before Hugo could reach out a hand to stop her. She raised her hands in front of her and began to make several friendly, quiet noises and she took another step. Again, not knowing what else to do, Hugo decided to follow her.
It happened as soon as he stepped inside the room. Pain exploded through his knee and he fell to the ground, crying out as he fell, and only saw the man once he was down. The man had been waiting for him and had kicked his leg out from under him as soon as he’d had the chance. He loomed over Hugo (at least ten feet tall, he thought) and stared at him with his large, dark eyes. Hugo told himself he should get up and run, he should cry out again, at least, but for some reason he couldn’t move. A small voice in his head questioned whether he’d ever been able move; maybe this was all there had ever been and he was only just realizing it.
What’s that noise?
It swirled and billowed around him like a dust storm, coming in waves as it washed over more and more of him. There was a beat to it, some sort of rhythm he couldn’t quite keep up with; was it drums? As it continued to flow through him it got louder and louder until all he could think of was the pounding of the drums and those eyes boring into his and –
Where am I?
But he knew where he was. He’d always known, because he’d always been here. Hadn’t he?
It was his tenth birthday. Saturday, still only thirteen and not nearly as nasty as she would become, was there, seated between their father and their –
Hugo could see his mother’s face clear as day. This wasn’t like a memory, where her features faded together to form a faded half-face, or a dream, where more often than not her features were twisted in rage or anguish like they’d been the day –
Hugo didn’t want to be here. He didn’t want to see her so close, to smell her perfume or hear her sweet, musical laugh as she pushed her gift toward him. He didn’t want to open it but his hands reached out just like they’d done the first time and he greedily ripped the wrapping paper from the packboard box.
There it was, shining and new; his first drone. He admired the sleek, elegant curve of its body, the gleaming metal of its rotors and blades. He’d wanted it more than anything, he recalled. It had a mounted camera that could sync directly to his wireless (not yet named Norman), so he could see as it flew above the skyscrapers and the smog.
“Now you can see the sun for yourself, Hugo.” His mother said as she leaned in and kissed his forehead.
Hugo would not stand for this. He fought with everything he had, lashing out not with his arms or legs but with his will, until he felt the grip on him begin to lessen. It was like his hands hand been held tightly behind him and now, while they weren’t exactly free, he’d at least won enough room to flex his wrists a bit.
He was somewhere else, then, standing in front of a river he knew like the back of his hand despite never seeing it before now. He stared down at the gently flowing river and suddenly plunged his hand (That isn’t my hand! he cried out) below the surface of the cool water. He gripped something cold and slimy and reared back, a gasping fish now clutched tightly in his hand. It squirmed and writhed against his grip, but he held fast (say true) (What?). He looked to the woman standing behind him, a woman who was his mother and was the furthest thing from his mother; Hugo’s mother had never had a tattoo in her life, but this tall, muscular, black-eyed woman was covered in them. Even so he knew she was his mother and he wanted her to be so proud of him. And she was; she beamed at him even as the fish struggled against his grip. Didn’t it understand? He couldn’t let go, he –
Hugo felt himself pulled away from this memory that had not been his to see and suddenly he was in his old school again. The grip on him was tight again and he knew he was only thirteen and that’s all he’d ever been.
Oh, god, he thought. He remembered this day well.
There before him stood Rennes Dront, the bane of his prepubescent years. What had he done again? He remembered he’d said something, maybe some crack about Rennes’ secondhand bike, and Rennes would not stand for disrespect.
He could see the rage in Rennes beady, blue eyes building up as he tried to talk his way out of the situation, and then Rennes drawing his fist back and driving it hard into Hugo’s nose. Hugo hadn’t known what to do other than simply take the beating, so that’s what he’d done. It hadn’t lasted long, and the only serious result was a split lip he’d had to explain to his father. What had he told the old man? A random mugging, something like that.
There was a shift, then, Hugo thought; something had changed.
He found what he wants, Hugo thought to himself without fully understanding what he meant.
But the grip still held Hugo tightly, and he found himself before a cat with a broken leg. This was a few years ago, when he’d still been working in Beijing (Hugo was more confused than ever, now, as he’d never been to another City). He knew what he was doing; set the bone, a few sutures here, mold a cast. It was easy as breathing.
It was as if all the air rushed out of Hugo’s chest at once, and then his lungs themselves followed and then every bone and muscle he had inside him were all pulled out in one savage tug and he knew he wouldn’t survive, no one could endure –
He was back, still sitting on the storage room’s cold, paved floor. He looked up, his eyes wide, and saw the man still loomed over him. How much time had passed? But the man wasn’t looking at him anymore; he’d turned his dark gaze on Dr. Micki instead. He slumped forward and then fell to his knees in front of her, looking up at the doctor with a pleading expression on his mess of a face.
“Please,” he said, his voice quiet and rough. Hugo shivered at the sound of it; he’d heard that voice before, he knew, but he had no idea when or where.
Micki looked from the man to the dog, still lying on the table where it had been however long ago, and back to the man again. She had the same disjointed, startled expression on her face Hugo was sure he had on his.
“Please,” the man said again. “Save my dog.”