Hollow Read online

  Given Chicago’s infamous history, Crow wouldn’t have been surprised if this story was close to the truth, providing you either mixed in nepotism or bribes and maybe a mob threat or two.

  Crow had to admit though, the inside was quite pretty.

  The smudged and scarred doors of the train scraped open and Crow stepped out, holding to the metal handles at either side of the doorway to keep himself from falling as he stepped down to the level of the platform. He made his way carefully down the stairs to the street, not skimping on the handrail-holding, and walked toward the library entrance.

  As he approached, Crow noticed a man sitting alone on the far side of the street in a small green space that had long ago gone yellow and brown. Among the sparse black skeletons of dead trees, the man sat on a bench, but was unfortunately beginning to stand. Unfortunate, because he had recognized Crow and was now hobbling to intercept him. Crow knew that this was unfortunate because Crow also recognized him: Chrome, the captain of Delta, the league’s number two team. Crow halted and waited, leaning back on one of the many riveted steel supports for the elevated train above.

  Crow would have loved to avoid Chrome as he was obsessed with surpassing Phoenix on the leaderboards, and seemingly able to talk about nothing else. Unfortunately, as Chrome had now seen Crow, avoiding him would involve an embarrassing slow speed chase that would only increase the coming unpleasantness. Crow could imagine it now, each of them locked in a desperate chase at their maximum speed, which was that of a cantering limp. It would likely just be a contest of who would stumble and fall first. However distasteful it might be to trade barbs with Chrome, Crow was unwilling to take the risk of having to do it from the ground while Chrome gloated and panted above him.

  So Crow leaned into the ancient, spidery steel of the elevated tracks for support and waited.

  “Thinking of retiring?” Chrome asked as he crossed the street, gesturing toward the library. Crow was not sure that he’d ever heard Chrome say anything that was not bitterly sarcastic, but then he hadn’t seen him much before Phoenix had stolen Delta’s top position on the leaderboards. Still, Crow had the impression that event had only changed Chrome from an arrogant jerk into a bitter jerk.

  “I am in retirement now,” Crow said in a casually neutral tone, “otherwise Delta would be in third place.”

  Chrome’s face screwed itself into a contemplative rage, which is to say that rage which is focused on needing to contemplate another’s seemingly nonsensical statement when he’d rather be working on his next big “zinger”.

  After a moment, Chrome said, “You are slipping, Crow. That made no sense. Phoenix doing ten times as well wouldn’t move Delta back in the rankings.”

  Crow smiled wider, “You’re right, fourth place.”

  Chrome’s fists clenched, “Phoenix should be in fourth place!”

  Crow wasn’t sure if Chrome was trying to out-nonsense him or just trying to play a game as if he knew the rules when he did not, but either way, it was funny. “Yes, Chrome.” Crow said reasonably, “and we would be if only we could figure out a way to be a lot worse in the Hallow. Got any pointers?”

  Chrome’s glare burrowed into Crow for a moment before he said, “You here to rescue her?”

  Crow’s eyes narrowed, but he said nothing.

  “She’s been here all day.” Chrome smiled triumphantly, “She is not coming back to you.”

  Crow spent a second smoothing the expression of anger off of his face, “You’ve been here all day? Chrome… is this where you do your recruiting? This actually explains a lot.”

  Chrome’s scowl deepened, “I like to watch the ghosts stumble in and out.” He said, voice low. “They are dead, you know.”

  “I know how they get here, Chrome.”

  “No,” Chrome said, “They are dead in every way that matters.”

  “They come back.” Crow said, watching a blank-faced woman stumble out of the library, turn left and begin to hobble down the street.

  “Do they?” Chrome asked.

  “We are living proof.”

  “Are we, Crow?”

  “Of course… we both remember coming out of rehab.”

  “True.” Chrome said, watching the woman hobble away, “If this is life, maybe. But as many people as I’ve seen go in and out…” He trailed off. Another man came out of the library, his blank expression a mirror of the woman’s. He stumbled down the steps following the woman’s exact path with the woman’s exact cadence, diverging only as he reached the bottom of the steps and turned right instead of left.

  “How many people have you known who came out of rehab?” Chrome asked, voice neither bitter nor sarcastic, only hollow, like the echo of a real voice, of a real person.

  “Everyone.” Crow responded.

  Chrome smiled briefly, then looked away from the woman and into Crow’s eyes, “Of the Falcons you know who have died in the Hallow, how many died here?”

  “None. It doesn’t really happen that often…”

  “How many went into comas?”

  “Only one, Mellow.”

  “How many got suspended and ended up bumping around here.” Chrome waved a hand in the direction of the library.

  “Twelve.”

  Chrome nodded, “You’ve been out of rehab three years, right?”

  Crow nodded.

  “How many of the ones that you knew before they died in the Hallow came back after their suspension?”

  “Six.”

  “Any of them seem like the same people when they came back?”

  Crow thought… “I don’t know many of them well, but losing your memory has to change you, right? Aren’t we just the sum of our memories?”

  Chrome shrugged, “If so, then that…” he flicked his eyes to the man shuffling away, “is a ghost. I come here to remind myself that I am still alive, as much as I am, anyway… if this is life.”

  Crow stared at Chrome as Chrome’s eyes followed the man shuffling down the street.

  They stood silent for a moment, enemies surely, but surrounded by a black and uncaring universe, they each felt a grudging need, like strangers at a dying campfire in the middle of a dark and hostile prairie.

  At last, Chrome turned his eyes back to Crow, “You will not get her back.”

  Crow frowned, Chrome continued, “And even if you do, eventually you will both end up here, ghosts.”

  Chrome turned and limped back across the street, toward his dead green space and his cold stone bench.

  Crow stood, still leaning on the steel post as if trying to draw some kind of strength from it. It had stood here for decades or centuries, strong and unmoved in the face of an uncaring universe. Why couldn’t he?

  As he pushed away from the post and began to walk carefully toward the entrance to the ancient library, Crow felt the universe opening black around him. The Clerics kept that blackness at bay with prayers and discipline, with the promise of light and purpose… the vibrant sensuality of blood, purpose and mayhem that was the Hallow. But long ago, that visceral light had started to burn more than warm him. The Hallow’s torch had burned hotter and dimmer until there he only walked on coals through clouds of ashes, burning.

  In all the dark and lonely universe there was only a single feeble spark of light. In all the lone and wintry world, a single promise of warmth, of an incomprehensible purpose remained.

  In his mind’s eye, Crow saw Ash, smiling.

  ***

  Ash sat at scarred laminate table, her thin frame too small for the hard plastic chair. The ancient library stretched out around her, a gothic stone mausoleum to the accumulated knowledge of a race all but extinct. It was a maze of meticulously indexed nonfiction books and even some educational videos that Ash could use without entertainment credits. Her short but successful career in the League had left her with quite a few credits to spend, but she’d decided that there was no time like the present to get used to the life that waited for her when the credits finally ran out.


  She sat, staring down into the opened book that lay flat on the table before her, head in her hands as she pretended to read.

  “What’re you doing, Ash?” Crow asked from above her.

  “Just thinking.” she said, looking up from the book, but continuing to rest her head on her right hand. She gave him a weak smile.

  “I can see that…”

  “You can see my thoughts?” Ash said, raising her head, her brow furrowing with mock gravity, “I don’t like the sound of that at all.”

  “Very… ok, not funny at all. You’re slipping.”

  “Yeah,” she said with a sigh, “slipping.”

  “Learn anything interesting?” he said, carefully guiding himself into the chair across from her.

  “The sun goes around the earth.”

  “You can plainly see this from your window.” he said with an indulgent grin.

  “Seriously, they used to think that, but it doesn’t, you know. The sun is the center and the earth is going around it.””

  “Really?” Crow said with a wide-eyed nod that a fool might have taken for surprised interest. “That’s fascinating,”

  “Also, baking soda was commonly used to freshen refrigerators.”

  “Freshen ref… Ash! What are you doing!?” Crow said beyond the ragged fringes of patience.

  “I have no idea.” She buried her face in her hands, rubbing furiously. “This place is more boring than my bathroom! Why do the league suspensions come here? Does skipping a few league matches turn your brain to butt cheeks?”

  He laughed like he only did with her, “Butt cheeks?”

  “Seriously Crow… why do the league fatalities come here? I thought I’d see the charm after a day or so, but this place is terrible!”

  “I’m guessing that it’s because it’s free. No league victories, not even the training dole, means no entertainment credits for videos or games… though I must admit I’ve never thought about it before.” He scratched his chin for a few seconds, “Actually, I’m still not thinking about it.” he concluded. “Ash, you’ve missed practice twice now. What if we get a league invite?”

  “Then Phoenix will pull it off like always.” she said softly, closing the book before her.

  Crow stared, frustration and sorrow competing in his sunken eyes. “The clerics say I have to start recruiting… I have to fill the spot you left in a week or they’ll dissolve Phoenix.”

  “What?” Ash was surprised, both because he hadn’t already started recruiting, and because the Clerics were threatening to break up Phoenix. “But we’re first in the league by about forty percent aggregate. They’re bluffing.”

  “No team is bigger than the league.” Crow quoted their cleric, “Not even us.”

  “Wow. You better get on with it, then. You might be able to strip someone off of Delta; they’re already down one…”

  “I’m not recruiting!” he snapped, “Except for now, that is… please Ash, come back. If you won’t do it for yourself, then do it for us, do it for me.”

  Ash had never seen Crow agitated. In the Hallow, she’d seen him under pressure, seen him kill, seen him fight on horribly wounded but clear and focused and against impossible odds. She’d seen him in impossible positions, against unbeatable odds, but she’d never seen him agitated… and she’d certainly never seen him beg.

  “Ash, I can’t even see you out here…” he broke off, then resumed with diversion, “Where’s my fork when I need it?”

  “Why do with only one point when you can have all four, eh?” she went along with the distraction. They both smiled, eyes shifting about the room, each avoiding the other’s gaze.

  Through the faint eye of memory, she saw Crow, full of the intensity of the Hallow. She closed her eyes and could almost feel the rush and purpose she felt there—she saw the soldier’s shaking hands jerk, then fall away from the unused comlink, saw her pleading eyes touch horror lightly on the way to emptiness.

  Her eyes snapped open, “I can’t come back, Crow. If I did, I wouldn’t be any use to you.” She could tell he didn’t understand, but she didn’t understand her feelings enough to help him. “I’d hesitate. I’d blow it, or worse, I wouldn’t.”

  “You realize this isn’t making any sense at all.” his eyes found hers, “But you’ve got to understand… I don’t care. I don’t care if we get wiped out, if our missions fail, I don’t care if we all end up fatalities on suspension together… Ok, I care about the suspension because it’d be a lot like this, only we’d both enjoy learning about baking soda for some reason.” He stopped himself and slouched back into the unforgiving plastic of his seat.

  “I wasn’t made to kill, Crow. It just took me a while to realize.”

  “Your league stats argue against that quite convincingly… you’ve even got me by sixteen points… sweet Hallow! Sixteen! That still burns.”

  “I’m being serious. I still feel dirty, dizzy—broken.”

  “You don’t feel like that here?” Crow said, lips barely moving, “Isn’t that what this dead place is? What more is there for us than the Hallow?”

  “Stimulating conversation? Baking soda?” she said, pushing her book toward him.

  “Ash, please,” he said, leaning forward, “just one more time. I need to see you one more time in the Hallow, stripped of this dying flesh—alive. I don’t know why I need you, but I do. I don’t know why I’m afraid to tell you, but I am…” He broke off, but didn’t look away.

  She stared at him, speechless; a small, inexplicable smile on her face. She felt something—maybe it was just an inner echo of the intensity they shared in the Hallow—but here it was smaller, muted or diluted, yet somehow sweeter, seen more clearly without the distracting visceral intensity of the digital flesh of the Hallow.

  The silence stretched out between them as she struggled between confusion and conviction, passion and damnation. “I will go,” she gave him a halting smile, trying to keep her eyes from darting away, “anywhere you go.”

  Terror, relief, joy—confusion and clarity moved through them both as they sat motionless in the stillness of the ancient library.

  Unseen in the maze of the bookshelves, a gray-robed cleric peered at them. His lips moved fractionally. “Say ‘kiss me’,” he muttered, then turned away.

  The cleric maneuvered between the old bookshelves, turning seemingly at random, losing himself in the ancient literary forest. He moved through pools of light and darkness which seemed to dim and blur as he progressed until he walked only through smudged tones of gray; finally arriving at a long, colorless hallway with the vague outlines of books on both sides. The cleric continued at his metronomic pace, shoes clicking on the dull floor until he arrived at a lazily shifting black curtain that blocked the hallway from floor to ceiling, from edge to edge. Without slowing, the cleric stepped into the folds of the curtains and walked through the dark velvet cumulus of shifting black cloth.

  Half a minute later, the cleric exited the last of the enveloping curtains and stood at the edge of a circular room, surrounded on all sides by the same black curtains. The room’s flat tones were illuminated by a uniform and diffuse, and not at all obvious, light source. The artificial light seemed to fill the air like cloudy water might fill a glass, leaving no room for shadow. In the center of the circle, at a small round desk, another cleric waited in robes of purest white, shaking his synthetic head.

  “You saw?” the new arrival said with a glance back over his shoulder.

  The cleric at the desk was heavier, more sturdily built; his large blocky hands typing at an ancient mechanical typewriter, his eyes set blankly ahead. After a moment, he stopped typing and rubbed briefly at his eyes before looking to the grey-clad cleric. “I see everything, Bai.” He shrugged his shoulders, “This mission is too important to trust to a couple of donors so clearly compromised.” He said with an air of finality.

  “It’s too important to trust to anyone else.” the standing cleric jerked his thumb over his shoulder, “Those two
are the best birds we’ve got… have you seen their telemetry? Distracted or not, they’re the only ones who…”

  “Distracted? Those two are ready to let their team and mission burn if it means they get to spend a few more moments staring into each other’s eyes.”

  “Then we’ve got to focus them, turn their infatuation into an advantage.”

  The sitting cleric raised a curious eyebrow, “What are you suggesting?”

  “We focus them with what they want… what they think they need.” He paused for emphasis, “We promise them the chance to be together, the chance to live, to really live.”

  “You’ve got to be joking! No way management approves something that ridiculous, even if I thought it was a good idea…”

  “I didn’t say we’d do it.” The gray cleric took a step toward the table, “just that we’d promise it… right, like I’m suggesting we just let them wander the Hallow on some kind of homicidal eunuch dating spree. I’ve seen the 2017 remake of Natural Born Killers…” He gave a theatrical shudder.

  “That was a remake? Why would anyone re-shovel that crap?”

  The gray-cloaked cleric shrugged, “No idea. Hollywood writer’s strike?”

  “That’s still a dangerous idea, what if they spread word of this to the other teams? This system only works with tight controls and firm boundaries… rituals and dogmas, even a rumor could cause lasting problems. Plus, you know every second they keep breathing is an opportunity for us to flame out like the Betas.”

  “Beta? Don’t even say it. We’re not going down like that. Look, I’ve got a way we can explain it to them that will guarantee their cooperation, and we can isolate them in the DMZ just to be sure.”

  “Why do we even make female Falcons?” The white robed cleric said, rubbing his temples, elbows on the top of his antique typewriter.

  “You’re joking, right?” Bai snapped back, his grey vestments snapping round his wrists as he gestured emphatically. “Have you looked at Ash’s stats? Do you remember Shiva? A better question is why we make the males.” He took a deep, steadying breath, “I don’t understand this. We’ve kept all of the boy-girl interaction out of the media, out of the library; we’ve got their biology completely locked down, so there’s no way this is an animal thing; how could this have happened?”