Slivers

5. He’s Back

5. He’s Back

Ben

Billy Crane.

The last time I saw him was in the Splinter’s Warehouse. He’d cut Splinter-Haley in half in an effort to help the Slivers jumpstart an invasion of Prospero. Only a technicality in the treaty they wished to exploit prevented it.

I never thought I’d see him again.

When I did, it was only a few seconds’ glimpse of him in that grave, tied up, covered in mud, and about as sick looking as I’d ever seen a Splinter get, before Mina slammed the lid and started reburying him.

Haley and I were all too glad to help her.

“Now, I can understand why you guys are still upset with me, but this is a little much, don’t you think?” Billy called through the flimsy lid of his poorly made casket.

“Not really,” Haley said, scooping a large handful of dirt onto Billy.

“You’re just going to leave me here?” Billy cried.

“Not just,” Mina said. “As soon as Aldo can get here, we’re going to rig some precautions to make sure you don’t sweat out whatever they dosed you with and dig yourself out. What was it, strychnine?”

“Cyanide,” Billy said quickly. “Let that be a lesson to never accept candy from friends who don’t like you much anymore.”

“Noted,” Mina said, calmly shoveling more dirt onto him. I didn’t know if he would suffocate down there, if any Splinter could, but if a hearty dose of strychnine from The Old Man had been good enough to sideline Shard-Robbie for a few months, it seemed possible that cyanide could weaken Billy enough to kill him by more conventional means.

The lid to the coffin was almost covered; soon we wouldn’t be able to hear him.

“This is messed up,” Kevin said quietly behind me. “We’re really going to bury a man alive?”

“A Splinter,” Haley shot back harshly. “One of the ones who kidnapped and replaced me!”

“This is personal,” Mina said. “He tricked us into the Warehouse, as good as forced me into one of their pods. He worked with Splinter-Haley in trying to instigate a war. He’s a Sliver!”

“I’m a what?” Billy cried.

“Shut up!” Haley yelled back at him.

“I can give you information! Information about the Splinters!” Billy said.

“We’ve got information on them,” I said.

“But do you know about the rebel movement that hired me to frame you?” he asked.

“Yes,” Mina said.

Billy paused, surprised, “s**t. Well, I can give you information about them! Insider information nobody else can give you!”

“Actually, we’ve got that too,” I said.

There was another muffled sound of dismay before he shouted, “You’ll kill me down here!”

“That’s the idea,” Haley said.

Billy was quiet for a long moment before he finally said, “You’ll kill Billy down here.”

Silence replaced our shoveling. We looked to each other, trying to gauge the depth of what he’d said.

He continued. “None of you know when exactly I got this body. Maybe it’s been less than fourteen months. Maybe you can still save the real Billy. Now I know what you’re thinking: Billy Crane is a liar; why should we believe him? And you’re right, I am a liar, but what if this is one of those rare moments when I’m telling you the truth? Could you live with yourselves if you doomed a good friend to die?”

Billy knew the answer before he asked the question.

I’m pretty sure we all did.

Mina looked to me with grudging doubt. I nodded agreement. With shovel in hand, she lowered herself back into the grave. Kevin followed.

Cursing in frustration, Haley stormed off and kicked a nearby tombstone.

***

Before he stood before us looking like hell, Billy had been trying damned hard to look respectable.

He wore a rumpled business suit, his long blonde hair was tied back in a ponytail, and it looked like he might have even had a manicure. Of course, it was hard to look respectable when you were covered in mud and tied up with a rotten length of rope. I’d never seen a Splinter poisoned before, but the way he was shuddering like a dry leaf and oozing marble-sized, milky white beads of sweat, I didn’t think he was lying.

He looked at us, grateful. “Thanks.”

Mina passed me the shovel, pulling a Taser from her bag and aiming it at him, “When did you take him?”

“Truthfully?” Billy asked.

“Yes,” Mina said.

Billy sighed, “Nine years, give or take. The real Billy’s beyond saving, but if it’s any consolation, none of you ever knew him. I’m about as real as it gets.”

“Then why the hell should we let you live?” Haley said threateningly.

He smiled, unpleasantly. “So you got yourselves a source. Good for you. What have they given you? A name here? A picture there? Little information from a little fish. I can get you their inner circle. I can help you end this.”

“Prove it,” I said.

Billy let out a racking cough, spitting up more of those milky white globules on the ground. They sizzled in the dirt. He smiled up at me.

“I can, Superman, but only to you and Jailbait here. The others gotta split,” Billy said.

“How stupid do you think we are?” Haley asked, trying to push past Kevin. He blocked her with practiced ease.

“We’ll tell them whatever you tell us, so why not just spill it right now?” I asked.

“Call it trust issues,” Billy said. “Call it whatever you want, but I don’t want an audience. They don’t have to go far, just out of earshot so we can talk like old friends. They can keep an eye on us, ready to come to your rescue. It’s my only condition, and I don’t think it’s that unreasonable, considering that, if you turn me down, I’ll be forced to try and fight my way out of this. You’d probably manage to kill me with what weapons you’ve got on you, but considering what a hurry you must have left school in, I have no doubt that even feeling like I do now, I can kill one, maybe two of you first, because let’s face it, I’m a goddamn pinnacle of interdimensional evolution. So, how about, for once, we skip the killing part and just talk?”

Between Haley and Kevin’s obvious votes, that question fell on Mina and me.

“What do you think?” I asked.

Mina’s focus on him was steely, but she didn’t pull the trigger.

“Let’s hear him out?” I suggested, trying to guide Kevin and Haley to the side with my eyes. Haley didn’t want to budge, but Kevin got my cue, gently taking her arm. After yesterday, this wasn’t going to help things between Haley and me. Much as it pained me to watch her arguing with Kevin down in the parking lot, Billy commanded my attention.

“Why did they bury you?” I asked.

Billy looked hurt. “What, no playful banter first?”

“No,” Mina said flatly.

Billy sighed. “Well, I’m guessing you guys have figured out why Haley, I mean, the other Haley and I brought you two into The Warehouse, right?”

“Because you wanted to force me to break the treaty to facilitate an invasion of Prospero,” Mina said.

Billy nodded, “And you’ve figured out the plan didn’t work because of Superman here.”

“Yes,” we said, together.

Billy smirked, “You guys are really cute, you know?”

Seeing Mina tighten her grip on the trigger, he continued, faster, “Well, after Superman here messed things up, I wasn’t either side’s favorite guy. The Council looked at me like I was some kind of rebel traitor—”

“Which you were,” I added.

“—and the rebellion looked at me like I was a screwup.”

“Which you were,” I repeated.

“I had to keep a low profile for a while there to avoid both sides’ death squads, but when I heard everyone, rebel and Council, had egg on their faces because of the Robbie York debacle, I thought I’d try to get into some good graces by a little playing both sides action. Go to the rebellion, offer them my services, then go to the Council and offer them the rebellion. See which side offered me the better deal and sell out the other.”

He looked back at the empty grave, “I went to the rebels first. I… underestimated how upset they still were with me.”

“So they poisoned you and buried you alive to kill you? And they sent us after you as some kind of a sick joke?”

Billy laughed, slightly. “Not a joke. Strategy. Ezra’s a s******c son of a b***h, but he’s pretty good at multitasking. Once he got his claws into me, I’m sure he considered it killing two birds with one stone. Kill me, and send you off on a wild goose chase so he could steal another fixer like Robbie York from Home for the rebel army. Maybe even have you kill me when you opened the grave. Fun stuff.”

“What was that about an army?” Mina asked. “And stealing? From the Splinter dimension?”

“Oh, Ezra’s building an army of fixers for the rebel cause. Yeah, he and some of his cronies stole them from back Home and are grafting them onto your school’s outcasts to create an army of psychologically unstable supervillains. Kinda making his own Legion of Doom. Pretty cool, huh?” Billy said.

That lined up better than I would have liked with what The Owl had shown us.

“How do we know anything you say is true?” I asked.

“You don’t,” Billy said. “But promise me you’ll consider keeping me alive after you take them down, put in a good word with Sam Todd to do the same, and I can tell you where they meet and keep their pods. I can tell you their membership. I can tell you their history and what their ultimate plans are for Prospero, and you.”

He looked over my shoulder at Kevin and Haley, “I can even tell you ways to sort out who’s human and who’s not.”

That thought sent a chill up my spine.

Mina and Aldo had tried for years, unsuccessfully, to come up with a test to sort human from Splinter. If he was telling us the truth, this could change everything.

“Tell us,” Mina said, forceful.

Billy laughed. “Come on, do you think I’m that stupid? No, no, no, if we’re going to do this, we’re doing this on my terms. You let me go, let me hide, let me clean myself up and regain some of my dignity, and I will give you the rebellion, a piece at a time. And since I want to start this relationship on the right foot, I’ll give you the first piece of information now for free. Their leader’s real name is Locusta.”

“Locusta? That’s all we get? We don’t even get a last name?” I asked.

Billy said, “Give that name to Jailbait’s daddy. See how he responds. Watch his face. You’ll know I’m telling the truth. After that, I’ll find you, and we’ll talk for real.”

Mina was silent for a long time, processing. I can’t say I was doing any better. Billy had betrayed us, and there was nothing stopping him from doing it again. Unfortunately, the chance that he might be telling the truth was something we could not ignore.

What if Billy Crane was the secret to taking down the Slivers?

“That’s not going to happen,” Mina said, taking another threatening step toward him.

“I was afraid you were going to say something like that,” Billy said, doubling over with a racking cough. The surprise of this act was just enough to make Mina take a step back, and that was all he needed. One of his hands detached and fell to the ground, jumping at Mina with elongated fingers and wrapping tightly around her chest. She fell back in surprise, struggling with the detached piece of Splinter. I moved to help her, giving Billy just enough time to break through the ropes and take off across the cemetery. Haley and Kevin ran for us, but they seemed to move so slowly.

“I’m fine,” Mina said, struggling. “Get Billy!”

I didn’t want to leave her alone, but I knew she’d manage and that there’d be more hell to pay if I didn’t try.

Despite his condition, Billy was very fast, especially dodging between the cemetery’s ancient tombstones. If I didn’t get him soon, he’d make it to the tree line, and then he’d be impossible to find. I could run faster if I dropped the shovel, but then I’d be defenseless. I put on every bit of speed I could, closing the gap. Almost… almost…

Eyes opened on the back of Billy’s head, locking onto me before he darted behind one of the cemetery’s few crumbling mausoleums. I ran around it, but he’d disappeared.

Where the hell did he go?

There was a sound nearby. Digging. There was a mound of recently disturbed dirt close by.

I approached the open grave carefully. When I saw who was standing in there, I relaxed my grip on the shovel and swore under my breath. It wasn’t Billy Crane, but it was someone almost as bad. When he looked up at me, he smiled.

“Heya, Benji. I won’t ask what you’re doin’ here if you don’t ask what I’m doin’,” The Old Man said, looking at my shovel. He stood about waist-deep in an open grave, a shovel nearby, pulling out a muddy, heavy-looking wooden box that had the words DANGER! DYNAMITE written on it.

“Did you see him?” I asked.

“Who?” The Old Man asked.

“Billy Crane,” I said.

His smile disappeared. “He’s back?”

I looked over my shoulder, back where Mina and the rest should have been. I couldn’t see any of them from this distance. That was probably a good thing. I didn’t like The Old Man, but when it came to Splinters, he knew what he was doing probably better than any of us.

It looked like today was turning into a day for making deals with devils.

“We need to talk,” I said.