Saint of Whales - Chapter IX

The ride to Old Man Oh’s homestead up Bragg Creek way wasn’t a long one, only a three or four hour ride on horseback, but after a largely sleepless night the trip felt twice the length and Mz. X was grateful to see the small cabin coming into view. The burning sun beat down mercilessly, scorching the riders while a dry wind whipped across the foothills. A bandana pulled across nose and mouth kept the bandit from breathing dust, and the wide-brimmed cowboy hat helped keep them from totally burning up, though dressing in all black didn’t do much to prevent overheating.

Saint, on the other hand, suffered wordlessly on the ride, only occasionally croaking he needed a mouthful of water, which the bandit obliged. Gone was the heavy coat he’d been found in—though some of its fabric had been ripped away for a head covering—and while his sweater and shirt made for decent cover from the sun, they made for hot wearing. Mz. X had left more than a few bodies in their wake, but they weren’t a killer and until they knew more about Saint, him dying wasn’t an option. As much as the man’s white settler background rankled them, letting the man pass from thirst wasn't so far from the behaviour the imperials demonstrated when they swarmed over the land in their wars of betrayal and aggression, taking whatever they could for themselves and leaving little but scorched earth in their wake. 

Mz. X turned their head to the right and hawked onto the ground. Thinking about the attempts at conquest turned their stomach, and they wiped their nose on their right shoulder. Maybe they were a little extra surly because of the lack of sleep, and while Saint’s crying didn’t entirely interfere with the bandit’s rest, a few times his sobbing broke through the wall of sleep and woke them up. For the most part, the slumber had been defined by tossing and turning and fits and starts, and when Mz. X finally rose alongside the sun, they saw Saint dead to the world. Maybe it was the manner with which they’d treated the man that kept them from drifting to a peaceful rest, but Mz. X had met plenty of men who would piss their pants and beg and grovel when staring at the barrel of a revolver, and who would wash and kiss a pair of feet as soon as they were shown a blink of compassion. The same men, Mz. X knew, would also keep their mouths shut as tight as a fish’s asshole to save their own skin when the circumstance called for it. While Saint seemed like he might be wired differently from what the bandit had first assumed, it wouldn’t be long before things became clearer. With a light click of their spurs into the palomino’s ribs, Mz. X and Saint picked up the pace a bit, coming closer and closer to the cabin. 

Louis brayed loudly and bucked a little, leading Mz. X to rub his neck and lean in, whispering and hushing him. “It’s okay, Lou. It’s okay, Lou. Shhhh. We’re going to see Old Man. It’s okay. It’s okay.” Behind them, Saint shifted a bit on the saddle, though it was hard for him to do much when he was bound where he sat. If being tied down bothered him, he at least kept his mouth shut.

Ahead of them, a whooshing cut through the air as a pole extended up from the ground with a robotic eye attached to the top. The eye flicked open, its pupil contracting and expanding until it focused on Mz. X and Saint. Beside the eye, another pole rose up from out of the ground. A speaker fanned open. 

Sharp feedback filled the air for a moment before settling as the speaker crackled. “Who’s he, X? What are you doing here with him?” The eye turned on the pole and noticeably focused on Saint. 

“That's what I’m here for some help on, Old Man. Let us up on in there. I need to talk to you,” Mz. X answered. 

The response came by way of the robotic eye turning all white. A wide, green beam flared out and scanned them from head to toe and toe to head before blinking away. As quickly as they’d risen, the eye and speaker dropped back down into the ground, with grass-covered panels sliding back over top. Mz. X gave Louis a light tap with their spurs and the horse started forward again. If the Old Man didn’t mean for them to approach, they’d know soon enough. 

Within another minute or two, Mz. X pulled Louis to a stop and dismounted, tethering the reins to the hitching post. Turning back, they untied Saint’s hands. With a whistle and a sharp nod, they indicated he should dismount. “When we get in, you speak when spoken to and you answer the question you get asked. I’m not very nice and Old Man Oh is less nice. You got it?”

Saint looked the gunslinger in the eyes and gave a single nod. A night’s sleep hogtied under the stars after arriving wherever he’d arrived, however he’d arrived, had him doing as he was told. Maybe he’d hit his head harder than he thought. Maybe he’d had a stroke, or a brain haemorrhage or he was in a coma or fugue state or something. He didn’t know much about much, in general, and he knew much less about anything medical in nature. 

A few sharp whistles and snapping in his face brought his attention back and Mz. X jerked their head again, indicating to follow, and Saint stepped in line as the bandit walked towards the run-down cabin and gave a quick series of raps on the door. Saint looked at the shutters barely hanging onto window frames, the porch with holes in the floorboards, and the way the walls rested on a slight angle. He didn’t feel very good about any of the many directions things could go.

An eye-level panel slid open on the door, followed by a panel about stomach-level. The barrel of a shotgun popped out a lower panel. 

“You alone, X?” 

Mz. X nodded, and jammed their thumb back at Saint. “Just me and him, Old Man.” 

Both panels snapped shut and the sound of locks disengaging filled the air before the door opened. 

Turning around, Mz. X whistled again at Saint and jabbed their chin at the door. “Get moving. I hope we’re gonna find out what’s up with you. Remember what I told you,” they said, eliciting a nod from Saint as he walked up the steps to the weather-beaten cabin and through the doorway. 

The interior of the cabin didn’t align much with the exterior. Where the outside was worn and rundown with shutters hanging off their frames and shingles looking years overdue in replacing, the interior was spotless. Saint shook his head and blinked his eyes repeatedly, trying to reconcile what he was seeing with what he saw with Mz X. He’d been hogtied at a camp by someone who looked like a western outlaw and ridden on horseback to a homestead that looked like it was from a history book. The interior, however, was filled with digital screens lining the walls, wiring running across the ceiling and framing the edges of the cabin’s single room. Straight ahead, in front of a massive screen stretching from ceiling to floor and wall-to-wall, a small-ish man stood, barrel of a shotgun resting on his left shoulder. The man’s features were slight with his jaw angling in a sharp v beneath his thin lips, pointed nose, and dark eyes. Wispy, silver-flecked hair tracked along his jawline and extending up to the corners of his mouth, though his upper lip was shaved clean. With his right hand, he rubbed at his cheeks, fingers travelling up and down across gentle, golden skin. 

“Why’d you bring him again, X?”

“That’s a good question, Old Man. I’m hoping you might have some answers for me.” 

The man turned his eyes from Mz. X to Saint and narrowed his stare. “You got a name?” 

Saint cleared his throat and nodded. “My name’s Saint.”

“And you’re from where?” 

Mz. X thumbed at Saint and scoffed. “He says he’s from Calgary, but he don’t look like anyone I ever seen in Calgary.” 

The old man looked at them for a minute, shaking his head slightly, before turning back to Saint. “And you’re from where?”

“Uh, I’m from… I’m from Calgary,” Saint answered. “B-b-born and raised in Calgary.” He cleared his throat again and looked around the cabin before looking back at the old man. “What’s your name?”

Mz. X smacked him in the back of the head and jabbed a finger in his face. “I told you to keep your mouth shut.” 

The old man waved a hand and shook his head, dropping his shotgun from his shoulder and setting it on the desk behind him. He looked at the gunslinger and flashed a light smile. “That’s fine, X. I appreciate you watching out for me,” he said. Turning his eyes to Saint, he clearly evaluated the man for a moment before continuing. “I’m Seamus Oh. Most people call me Old Man Oh. You can call me Old Man. I don’t want to ever hear you saying my name on the street. And I will hear if you do,” Old Man said. He looked back at Mz. X. “How did you find him?” 

A quick sigh and a shrug started the answer. “Good question. I took one of the Sargents’ card games in Burner Valley—”

“I heard about that. They are pissed,” Old Man interrupted, with a smile starting to creep onto his face. 

Mz. X returned the smile and nodded a few times. “Hell yeah. And they should be. I made away with some good coin.” They made a bit of a face and waggled a hand. “Had to ice their muscle and dealer and another guy who got a little too tough-guy for his own good, but that’s the way it goes, ain’t it?.” 

The smirk continued spreading across Old Man’s face. “Had to ice them?”

Mz. X waved the comment away. “So, I was sitting at my camp outside Burner and I seen this energy blast. Blue energy, so I knew it wasn’t a cannon or a rifle. I thought maybe it was one of them repulsor deals where he got shot in and then slowed his descent, but it ain’t anything like that.” 

“So, you were at your camp, you saw an energy burst, and all of a sudden this motherfucker is there?” 

“That’s exactly it.”

Old Man Oh scrunched his face and sat down at his desk, turning away from Mz. X and Saint. He tapped away at a keyboard quickly, and poked at a screen with his forefinger. The big screen blinked to life and showed a map of southern Alberta. Some more typing and tapping, and a series of grids dropped over the map. 

Mz. X let out a low whistle. “What the hell is all this, Old Man? You ain’t had this setup the last time I seen you. You was still just using them rinky-dink tubes.”

“Those rinky-dink tubes are fine, X. I know a gunslinger don’t need to understand how analog feels, but it’s got a feeling,” the old man answered. He waved at the ceiling-to-floor, wall-to-wall screen and shrugged. His long sigh, and slow shake of the head carried all the romance of a man seeing the world moving ahead and away. “The analog stuff is good, but there’s some stuff it just can’t do. This new one’s got all the goodies, all the bells, all the whistles, all the everything. The new software I put together needed different hardware and here we are.” 

Mz. X pursed their lips, looking the giant screen up and down before cocking their head and crouching down to check out the exposed computer towers sitting behind Old Man’s desk. They held a hand out and looked up and back. “What are these rigs runnin’? There ain’t no heat.” 

Old Man gave a wave and shrugged. “Some tech headed for a mining company fell off a wagon and you know how it goes. Hard to get it back to the proper people all the way out here. Anyway, where was your camp, you said? Just outside Burner?” 

The bandit definitely knew about things falling off wagons. If something was headed for a mining company, Mz. X often found themself headed the same way and sometimes wagons ended up in situations of distress. Returning goods could be especially difficult if the serial numbers were damaged.

Pushing to a stand, Mz. X wiped their hands off on their jeans.  “Yeah, just outside Burner.” 

More typing, more tapping at a screen, and eventually, what looked to be a heat map, laid down over top.

“What time about, do you think?” 

Mz. X shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe, like, midnight? A little bit before, maybe?”

Old Man Oh typed away again, and a heat signature roared to life. It didn’t overwhelm the screen, but in a very specific portion of the map—a few miles northwest of Turner Valley—sat a bright white, flashing circle. The appearance of the circle brought a loud whistle from Old Man Oh, and Mz. X stepped towards the screen. 

“What the fuck is that,” they asked. 

Turning around in his chair, Old Man Oh looked at Saint with narrowed eyes. “That’s a real good question, X. Maybe our friend here can tell us a bit more about himself.”

As soon as the words fell from Old Man’s lips, Saint’s hands were up, palms facing forward waving asynchronously from his head. “Whoa whoa whoa. I don’t know anything about anything,” he said, letting his weight drift to his heels before taking a tiny step backwards. 

“You won’t get very far if you try to run,” Old Man said. “I don’t have anything imperial-level, but I got halfway decent tech.” He nodded to Mz. X and shrugged at Saint. “You know how X can operate, too, and that’s not always good for any of us.”

Mz. X glared at Old Man and folded their arms across their chest and looked back at Saint, shrugging to him and clicking their tongue. “The old man’s right, more or less. Probably best you have a seat,” they said, right hand clasping around the butt of the revolver at their left armpit. 

“I’ll go get the stove going and put on some coffee,” Old Man said, shuffling away from the screens and towards the kitchen, setting about getting the wood stove ready. 

“Go on now. Sit yourself down,” Mz. X ordered, nodding at a chair.

Dazedly, Saint shuffled over and sat down, letting his eyes track around the cabin again. The resolution on the screens, the keyboard and interface Old Man Oh used, the robotic eye and speaker outside, the green beam he’d been scanned with, none of it made sense with riding a horse for transport or a wood stove for preparing coffee. 

“Where am I?” He asked as he kept looking around. 

Mz. X rolled their eyes and scoffed openly.

“You’re just outside Bragg Creek there,” Old Man answered. “Why don’t you tell me where you’re from?”

Saint licked his lips and rubbed at his eyes a moment. “I’m from Calgary. I was born and raised there. I used to live at 16th Avenue Southwest and 14th Street Southwest for a good long time until I move to the Northwest and then I was living in Bankview up until…” He blinked and shook his head. “I… I live in Bankview,” he said, maybe trying to tell himself that more so than he was Mz. X and Old Man Oh. 

“Bankview?” Mz. X repeated, their face twisting up in knots and looking over to the kitchen for a moment, eyes connecting with Old Man’s, who’d jerked his head around at the mention, as well. “Did I hear that right? Bankview?” The outlaw asked. 

The already reigning state of confusion settled in even more strongly over Saint. His shoulders rolled forward and he started rubbing his forehead with his left hand. “Y-yeah. I live in Bankview. I’ve been there for three years. My address is 26—“

“That’s impossible,” Old Man said, walking back towards Saint, his hands clasped behind his back. 

“What do you mean it’s impossible?” Saint barked back. “I was there last night. I was walking home right up the 14th Street hill a—”

One of Mz. X’s sharp whistles cut Saint off as they looked at Old Man, their own face a mask of confusion. The old man shrugged and sucked at his teeth while he shook his head. Mz. X looked back to Saint, their eyes slightly less narrowed, a spark of curiosity flashing in the depths of green. For a moment, the presence of total distrust seemed to flicker. “Did you escape from the institution in Okotoks?” 

“What?”

“It’s a total lock-up there. There’s no news in or out. You been in there for a while or something?” 

Saint grunted and ran both hands across through his hair. “I don’t what the fuck you’re talking about.” He stood up from his chair and started pacing back and forth across the room. 

Old Man Oh shot a look at Mz. X who gave a little wave with their right hand. “You ain’t been in the can at all?” They asked, turning their eyes back to Saint. “How long you said you been in Bankview again?”

“I’ve had my place there like three years or something. Maybe four years. I moved in, I think, in 2012 or 2013.” 

“What?” Mz. X and Old Man Oh answered in unison. 

Saint looked at them both, leaning his head back, eyes narrowed, before craning his neck forward. “What?”

“How long you been there, you said?” Mz. X repeated. 

“I don’ know…” Saint answered, dropping his head and rubbing his eyes. “Maybe like, 3 or 4 years, I think. I moved in, maybe, like, in 2012. Might have been 2013."

“Do you know the date?” Old Man asked. 

Saint looked up, blinking and rubbing at his eyes. “February something, I don’t know, maybe the 12th or something, 2016.”

“Two thousand sixteen?” Mz. X said. “It’s 1890. The imperials incinerated Bankview and Marda Loop two years ago. They sent in JENEEs to do the job. And there is no 14th Street hill in Calgary. There’s the 14th Street crater.” 

The blood drained from Saint’s face. A rubbery sensation rose up from his ankles and through his calves and knees. His legs took on an entirely unstable feeling and he just about flung himself into the chair so as not to collapse to the floor. He tried to blink away swirling vision and shook his head as though the action might settle the warbling in his ears. “1890?” 

“What the fuck is this, Old Man?” Mz. X asked, turning away from Saint and looking at their friend, who’d since walked back to the computer and sat down. He typed at the keyboard and tapped at the screen beside him, adding some different data layers to the heat signature on the big screens.

“This is like the wild west out here. Where the fuck am I?” Saint asked in the background, his words more for himself than anyone else.

“This energy signature doesn’t look like anything I’ve seen before, X. A straight heat scan just shows it as a major heat signature, maybe like it could be a lightning strike or something,” Old Man said, tapping at his screen a few times and dropping away what appeared to be the heat sensor. “When I filter for just straight energy though and remove the heat, it’s still showing here. And this is a huge burst of energy, X, and it ain’t lightning.” The old man tapped away at the keyboard while occasionally looking up and eyeballing the data. 

"You ever seen anything like this before?” He asked Mz. X, though he didn’t look away from the screen. 

The gunslinger scratched at their chin with their right hand, left hand across their body with fingers resting on their right hip. “Imperial charging signature Maybe?” 

Old Man Oh nodded a few times, cheeks puffing out as he exhaled through pursed lips. “It sure as hell looks like that, but it ain’t one. It looks like some kinda burst of energy, like a rubber band snapping, but in reverse. You see how it wobbles and snaps a bunch?” Old Man said, tapping something on his control screen and setting a playback of the energy signature. Sure enough, the screen was devoid of any energy signature until a wide ripple appeared before exploding and shrinking to nothing. 

Mz. X leaned forward and pressed their hands against the desk, their right knee bending a bit and shifting their left hip up. “This ain’t my wheelhouse, Old Man, but that don’t look right, do it?”

“I never seen any imperial signature do that. If it’s charging, it’s all consistent and then it stops. And when we seen the imperials use their energy bombs or mortars or whatever—” Old Man stopped and turned to face Saint. “They dropped one of their containment shields over Bankview and Marda Loop and detonated an energy bomb inside. Turned the place to dust. Then they sent the JENEEs in to take care of anyone with the misfortune to survive,” the old man said before turning back to the screen. Whether not Saint heard or processed the words was anyone’s guess. “When we seen imperials use their energy bombs, it’s a blast out, not in.”

“So, we know this is imperial?” Mz. X asked, standing up straight and crossing their arms across their chest.

“I don’t know. I don’t know,” Old Man said, turning around again and facing Saint. “Tell us what you remember the last day or so?” 

The other man swayed back and forth on his chair, rubbing at the sides of his head and mumbling to himself. 

“You still with us that, Saint?” The old man asked again, though to no avail. 

Never one to let a situation rest, Mz. X walked over to Saint and cuffed him in the back of the head, jarring him from whatever sort of reverie he’d drifted off into. Maybe a slap wasn’t the best way to catch someone’s attention, but it did the trick and Saint looked up at the other two people, still shaking his head.

“What the hell is going on here?” He asked. 

“Tell us what you remember about the last day. Tell us anything that jumps out to you,” Old Man said. 

“Is that coffee ready?” Saint asked.

The question prompted the old man up and out of his seat and into the kitchen where he started cussing and cursing. After some banging and crashing, Old Man came back to the centre of the cabin and set pot of coffee down on the table and handed a mug to both Mz. X and Saint. Old Man jabbed his chin at the coffee and gave a wave.

“Go ahead and have some. It ain’t the best, but it’ll hit the spot,” he said. 

Both Saint and Mz. X looked at one another and then at the coffee pot. Rarely in either of their experiences was it a good sign when someone served something and refused to partake. Saint stood up and took a few tentative steps to the table and poured himself a mug of coffee. He eyeballed the liquid in the mug. The coffee held the consistency of motor oil, moving slowly and viscously. However, aside from some mouthfuls of water, he didn’t remember when he last had something to drink, so he lifted the mug and blew across it before taking a small sip. Saint winced as the coffee touched his tongue and jerked back, exhaling sharply in an effort to cool his tongue. 

Old Man Oh eyeballed Saint as he sat down in front of his keyboard. “It came off the stove a little hot there. Sorry if I shoulda warned you,” he said, adjusting his position in the chair. “So, what do you remember about the last day or so?” 

Saint cleared his throat and looked from Old Man to Mz. X, the former leaning casually in his seat, the latter leaning against a desk, arms crossed over chest. Whatever they wanted to know, he wasn’t sure he could give them. There was a certain directness about Mz. X within which Saint found a tiny bit of comfort. They gave the impression there wasn’t much discussion in their decision-making, no humming or hawing, and what they decided would happen was what happened. Not that Saint had spent a great deal of time around Mz. X, of course, but he felt more sure in his first take of them than he did Old Man, someone he couldn’t quite put a finger on yet. 

“Um, I don’t know. It was a day like any other day,” Saint said. He scratched at the back of his head with his right thumb, wincing as he passed over the goose egg from banging his head on the ice. “I was hungover most of the day. I went to work. Had a shitty day at work and a shitty night and here we are.” He blew across his coffee and took another sip, wincing this time at the consistency and flavour rather than the temperature. 

“Where you work in Calgary?” Old Man asked, starting to rock in his seat.

“I work at an insurance company.”

The old man waved his hands a couple of times, watching the other man’s eyes track with the gesture. “Where though? What’s the location?”

“Oh, it’s at… it’s at like 6th Avenue Southwest and 2nd Street,” Saint said. Sweat started beading across his forehead and he wiped at it with his right forearm.

“That’s an imperial block,” Old Man said, nodding while he typed at the keyboard. The screen zoomed into to a familiar setting and Saint stared at the map of the city, struggling keep to focus on his city and his reality, while trying to wrap his head around how locations he gave could be relevant wherever he was now. He told Old Man and Mz. X the date, the year, the month, the season, and it seemed like he was talking gibberish. He shook his head and blew across his coffee before taking another sip. 

“What I’m going to do is run a scan here at this location over a period of time, X, and see if that same signature appears. Maybe there’s something there,” Old Man said. 

“Sure, sure. Whatever you think there.” 

Nodding, Old Man tapped at his keyboard for a few moment, clicking his teeth together and whispering lowly to himself as he worked away. “What else you remember, Saint?” He asked without turning around. 

“I… I stepped in dog shit,” Saint answered, fighting to keep his head atop his shoulders. His chin felt so heavy, acting like a magnet to his chest. He pulled his head around to the side and down, before he could use momentum to swing it back up the other direction. Something didn’t feel right. A leaden sensation began spreading from his core out to his extremities. His chin rolled forward again and he pulled it back up, fighting to keep his head upright. He tried to push himself to standing, but his legs had no strength in them and he tumbled to the floor, grabbing at the chair like it would support him as he fell.

Mz. X, who hadn’t yet sipped their own mug, simply set it onto the table and pushed it towards the centre. Their eyes turned to Old Man Oh, a disappointed glare settling on the man as they stood up straight.  For better or for worse, the bandit wasn’t about subtlety either in word or action, as each hand dropped to the sawed-offs hanging at their hips. “You trying to poison us here, Old Man?”

The old man’s right hand crept under the desk, though his movements stopped immediately as Mz. X’s one blackened steel sawed-off, the one they called Shadow, levelled towards him. 

“Aim don’t matter this close, fella, so think extra on what you’re thinking about doing.”

Their words obviously landed, and Old Man drew his hand back from under the desk and raised both up beside him. 

“Go on and move your chair to the middle of the room there,” Mz. X ordered, drawing the other shotgun, Smoke, and waving to the centre of the room. They looked quickly around the cabin, checking out the cameras and microphones lining the space. It was an absolute certainty there were security measures in the cabin and Old Man Oh would have a variety of triggers and trigger points, though how inclined might be to activate them when he was in the middle of it all was up in the air. Mz. X was prepared to bet he wouldn’t be able to trigger anything verbally with enough precision to take himself out of the line of fire, but they wouldn’t put it past him to try. 

Surprise began swelling in their guts as Old Man moved his chair into the middle of the room, though why Mz. X felt any degree of disbelief was a surprise unto itself. While they held a code about how one approached crime and honour, they also knew holding true to beliefs was becoming less and less common all the time. Still, they’d known Old Man Oh for a good while and he’d always proven trustworthy. In truth, it wasn’t drugging Saint that proved hard to swallow, it was serving the same coffee to both he and Mz. X. Two separate cups of already poured coffee could have sent the message maybe the intention was only to drug Saint—and what he’d been drugged with still remained to be seen—while a single pot of coffee and two empty mugs said something else entirely. 

“What’s the deal here, Old Man? What are you trying to pull?”

“I just thought I’d make the questioning process a bit easier, that’s all.”

Mz. X looked over at Saint, who’d since rolled onto his back and was waving his fingers in front of his eyes and pressing his tongue around the inside of his mouth. The gunslinger looked back at Old Man and narrowed their eyes. “LSD? Is that what you gave him?” 

“He’ll be fine, X. Tru—”

A few quick steps over and Shadow’s barrel was pressed up against Old Man’s chest. “You were gonna dose me, too. So, what’s up? What are you playing at?”

Old Man scoffed and rolled his eyes. “Come on, X. LaRoy Sargent wants whoever stuck that game up and he wants them bad. You know how it is.”

“You signalled them yet that I’m here?” 

“Nah, I ain’t done that.”

Mz. X clicked their tongue and looked around the cabin again. “You told them at all that I’m here?”

“No, not yet. The call only went out this morning. I ain’t even know you were on your way yet.”

Another few clicks of the tongue signalled Mz. X’s processing the situation and they looked from Saint to Old Man to the cabin and back around until settling on Old Man. “Get on the floor now.” 

“Come on, X. What are you doing?” 

“You heard me. Now move it.” 

Old Man started to argue, and Mz. X jammed Smoke’s barrels into his left cheek. “Is this how you want to go? You need to ask yourself that,” they barked. “You need to ask yourself: do I really want to have my brains sprayed all over my cabin? Do I want no one to find me for a good minute, and when someone asks what happened they hear I was a sellout rat who got what he deserved?” Mz. X pushed the shotgun barrels into the cheek more forcefully. “Get on the floor or I’ll put you on the floor. You got it?” 

The old man got it and slid out of the chair and laid down onto his belly, interlocking his hands behind his head. 

“You don’t have to do this, X. It’s just a misun—”

“Selling me out’s just a misunderstanding?” The gunslinger hissed back. “Where’d you get all this tech anyway?” 

“It was on its way to a mine. I j-j-just got a line on it falling off a wagon. That’s all,” Old Man answered. 

Mz. X looked over at Saint who’d pushed himself up to sit on his knees, infatuated with the texture of his pants. Mz. X looked back to Old Man Oh and grimaced. If they had just left Saint out where they’d found him, or packed up camp and split as soon as the energy charge had appeared, they wouldn’t be in the current situation. They gave another look around the cabin, at the monitors, the wiring, the computer towers and how cooly the computers ran. Whatever software Old Man said he was running wouldn’t have been able to do what it did except on high-end tech pushing out a ton of heat, and without any heat coming out, the gear had to be at the top end of the spectrum. Old Man’s story didn’t add up. No one got that kind of gear unless they were cooperating. 

“Motherfucker,” Mz. X cursed. They looked over at Saint. “Can you hear me, Saint?” 

The man turned to look at them, his head bobbing and waving side to side. “Oh yeah, I can you hear Mzzzzzz. X,” he said, stopping to run his tongue along the inside of his mouth and along his teeth. “Mzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz. X. MMMMZZZZzzzzzzz X.” 

“Fuck fuck fuck.”

There was a good chance the imperials had the place wired up and bugged, with every piece of Old Man’s own surveillance hardware feeding back to an imperial office somewhere. 

“You worked for them long, Old Man? You been a sellout for a minute or what?” Mz. X kicked the old man in the side for good measure, drawing a grunt. 

“Don’t act like you don’t know how it is, X. I gotta do what I gotta to survive out here. Even the summer’s cold now and it ain’t getting any warmer and you know that.” 

The answer drew a grunt from Mz. X. What Old Man said was the truth. Every day under the heel of the imperial Canadian government was a bad day, and the future didn’t look any brighter. Everything had gone downhill—quickly downhill—from the moment the imperials lied their way into the Great Belly deep in the Rockies and stole the meteor that had laid there since time immemorial. The meteor and its radiant energy shot technology ahead who-knows how many years, so far ahead that repulsor beams, energy cannons, airships, cybernetics, and human-computer interfaces were commonplace. Everyone suffered under imperial rule, with love of community and connection to the land feeling like things of the past. The JENEE robots and the Royal Imperial Mounted Guard didn’t care who was who and they didn’t discriminate between settler or Indigenous. Robot and mountie alike distributed violence and pain and suffering simply to do so, and it wasn’t as though anything they did could or would violate some sort of moral code adhered to by Sir John A. MacDonald. The heartless tyrant and cybernetic overlord—more machine than man and addicted to alcohol and human blood—sought to completely and utterly dominate the land. Only when every human was in suffering, when every animal was penned up, and every resource depleted would Sir John A. MacDonald be content, and then he would move onto the next parcel of land to repeat the pillaging he’d carried out in Canada. 

Looking down at Old Man, Mz. X grunted and kicked him again. While he might have been right about the summer being cold, and the world only growing colder, collaboration was never an option. Too many men did what they needed to do and too few did what they ought to do. Worse still, most didn’t know the difference between the two things. 

“You gonna kill me, X? Is that what you’re gonna do?” 

The way the old man talked, it sounded like it was something he wanted. Mz. X clicked their tongue and sucked at their teeth. With one quick head shake, they pulled the trigger and put a hole in Old Man’s back and chest. The booming sound filled the room and Mz. X stood stoically, the noise barely registering. Their eyes focused on the blood pooling under the body before turning focus over to Saint, who’d picked himself up off the floor and perched himself on the seat. If he’d heard the shotgun blast, he didn’t appear to pay it much mind. The gunslinger turned their eyes back to the body and a sizzle of regret ran through their belly, thought it didn’t last very long. Old Man Oh may have been a friend or acquaintance or whatever at one time, but a collaborator couldn’t be trusted. There was no way of knowing how many people Old Man had sold out, how many pieces of critical information had been passed along to the imperials. It wasn’t like there was any type of formal resistance—at least not that Mz. X was aware of— but there were a lot of people, settler and Indigenous alike, who wanted nothing more than to throw their shoes in the wheels of imperial Canada. Knowing Old Man had been a sellout and a rat, it would have been tough for Mz. X to leave him breathing. Even if he wouldn’t have dimed them out to the imperials, he might have dimed out the next person who came by, or he might have blackmailed the next group of people trying to get away and live off grid. Everyone in Alberta loved to talk about how there weren’t any rats on their side of the mountains and that was a damn lie. There were plenty of rats, just a lot bigger than what most people expected. 

Mz. X’s eyes flicked to the wall-to-wall screen as it snapped from a map and grid to a series of cameras, all of which clearly showed a half-dozen brutes from the Royal Imperial Mounted Guard riding their cybernetic horses about a mile out from the cabin. They didn’t normally travel in groups as small as six. Usually, the imperials moved in groups of fifteen or twenty at the smallest, with their goal to always be ready to inflict maximum damage when and where they could. 

“Motherfucker.”

The words hung in the air as the gunslinger looked around, a sense of desperation started to tingle in the bottom of their guts. It wouldn’t take a long search in the computer database to find Mz. X and laundry list of crimes they’d committed, the dozens of bodies they’d left in their wake. Not to mention, if they didn’t move quickly, the imperials would find them standing right over a body with a hole the size of a fist in the back and chest and the slug matching one of the shotguns the gunslinger kept at their waist.

“Saint, you with me over there?”

The man rolled his head towards Mz. X, and waggled his fingers, a goofy smile shooting their way. His eyes being all pupils was clear even from across the room. Mz. X shot a look around the cabin. They’d known Old Man Oh a long time and doubted he would live anywhere without a way out, or without a safe room or a panic room. Mz. X’s eyes flicked around the room, looking anything resembling a button or a trigger, but it dawned on them hiding in the cabin would be nothing more than a total waste of time. Even if there were a panic room, no one just disappeared, not without leaving some sort of trail. 

“We might really be fucked here,” Mz. X declared, setting their hands on their hips. The option of making a stand always existed, but the imperials didn’t travel anywhere unless they were armed to the teeth and as much as Mz. X trusted the sidearms and shotguns they carried the bullets and shells would barely make a dent against imperial energy shields and imperial armour. They turned to look at Saint, who’d pushed himself to his feet and dragged himself to the control station and sat down, starting to tap and push at buttons and keys, sending a spiral of worry through the gunslinger’s guts. Mz. X started towards him, still holding the shotgun. Killing him wasn’t really an option, as he exuded the distinct vibe of being a civilian. Where the hell he came from was another issue entirely, but Mz. X didn’t kill civilians, so whacking him wasn’t an option, nor was leaving him to fend for himself. While the imperials might not kill him outright, they would most certainly torture him until he gave up whatever it was they wanted him to give up, and then they would kill him just he same. Leaving him behind would put his blood on Mz. X’s hands, and that was something they didn’t need. 

Looking up at the screens, the imperials rode closer and closer, though not appearing to be in too great of a rush. From that, Mz. X could at least parse out that Old Man Oh hadn’t alerted them. If there was a bet to be made, Mz. X would have put money on it being time to settle up on the new equipment Old Man had, or that it was time to pay up the weekly safety and security fees individual imperial guards liked to levy when and where they could. If it was the case where they were on their way to extort Old Man, they might not have been logging their trip and they might have actually covered their own tracks in a way that gave Mz. X and Saint a bit of breathing room.

With the push of a glowing red button at the control station, Saint killed the main lights in the cabin and turned on what seemed to be a low, mostly red light mode. He pushed another button on the screen and the imperials on the screen slowed to a halt, the guard in front holding up a hand and twirling a finger, directing everyone to circle up. A whining sound filled the air and, from the muffled nature of it in the cabin itself, there was a good chance it was at ear-splitting volume outside. Quite plainly, all of the imperials lifted their laser rifles to ready positions, though they were clearly trying to communicate with one another and having little success while also trying to keep their mounts steady. Mz. X looked at the screen, at their own horse whinnying and braying, stamping his feet and shaking his head with his discomfort clearly building towards pain.

The sound inside the cabin had built to a point where Mz. X had holstered their shotgun and started grabbing at their own ears while Saint did the same thing. Outside the cabin, the imperials were in disarray, shouting at one another and pointing, with their rifles no longer levelled and no longer pointing in any clear direction. Their behaviours were clearly becoming more frantic with a few jabbing at the control panel for their horses’ augmentations, maybe trying to insulate the poor animals’ ears against the wailing outside. The actions proved fruitless as the horses began rearing up. One horse bucked with such force its rider’s centre of gravity carried the horse up and to the side, the imperial’s neck bending at close to a ninety degree angle and the horse’s weight landing directly atop. Mz. X winced and shook their head, not out of sympathy or pity, but rather out of knowing if the imperials didn’t insist on latching themselves onto their saddles the soldier might have had a chance to survive. Another imperial’s laser rifle dropped towards the ground as the rider crouched forward, both hands covering the sides of their helmet, as though that might keep the noise from penetrating. 

At the control panel, Saint jabbed at another glowing green button. In any other case, Mz. X might have said or done something, but whatever he was doing—whether he had a clue or not—was saving their bacon at the moment. While watching the screen, the gunslinger tried to blink away disbelief as a series of rotary guns popped up out of the ground and opened fired on the five remaining imperials. From the visual, it was clear the guns were laser-powered. The bullets ripped through imperial armour and dropped the guards to the ground. Old Man Oh, if nothing else, had always been overzealous in many aspects of his work and it came as no surprise to Mz. X as they watched the rotary guns tilt down and continue firing until nothing more than smouldering messes remained of the imperial riders. Running his tongue around his lips and mouth, Saint eyeballed the control panel and pushed at another glowing button. As quickly as the whining sound filled the air, it cut out, and the smoking barrels of the rotary guns dropped almost straight towards the ground. 

“What the fuck,” Mz. X said, still staring at the screen in disbelief. Five minutes ago, they’d been staring at likely execution at the hands of imperial soldiers. Maybe they would have rounded Mz. X and Saint up and maybe there would have been a trial in Calgary, but that was doubtful. In Alberta, there wasn’t much of a concept of due process. On the fringes of the imperial borders, Canada meted out frontier punishment to anyone deemed guilty of whatever charge had been levied against them. While Mz. X counted few friends in their life, they knew a great many who’d been hauled away for some dreamt-up infraction and sent to hang or put in front of a firing squad to serve as an example. The gross empowerment of the most junior member of the imperial structure turned Mz. X’s stomach, and, as much as they knew the corpses outside had once been human beings just the same as them, it was next to impossible to think anything other than the only good imperial was a dead imperial. 

At the control panel, Saint rolled his head side to side and waggled his fingers as he stared at touchscreen. The colours had faded and the big screen had flipped back to the map and grid setup they’d been looking at earlier. Mz. X really had to give it to the late Old Man Oh. If nothing else, the old man had been prepared for an attack, and, in that instance, Mz. X was glad to have been on the inside rather than the outside. What they—along with Saint—needed to worry about was getting away from the cabin as soon as possible. If the six imperials had been working off-the-clock, there stood a good chance there was a day, maybe two, to get away from Bragg Creek and somewhere relatively safer. What still needed to be determined was exactly who Saint was and where he came from. For Mz. X, the smart play would have been to ditch the man and go off on their own way, but, again, that wasn’t feasible. They wouldn’t be any different from the imperial pigs if they left the man—seemingly unaware of anything around him, and his current LSD-induced state notwithstanding—to his own devices. Even the quickest eyeball showed him to be woefully unprepared for any type of rough living, let alone living on the fringe of society where knowing how and when to shoot a man was the difference between living and dying. 

“Hey Saint, we’re gonna get moving here,” Mz. X said, walking to him. “You sit tight. I’m making up some quick grub for us and then we’re on our way. You got it?” 

The other man flicked his head towards the gunslinger and nodded, though his eyes and smile seemed to be a million miles away. “Oh I got. Oh I got it. Oh I got it,” he said, standing up from the chair and lying down on the floor where he resumed staring at the ceiling. He didn’t seem to notice or care about the body and pooling blood not all that far away from him. Mz. X sighed and shook their head as they watched the man’s tether to reality continue to loosen. For the time being, there wasn’t much they could do but Mz. X would raid the kitchen and put together some grub before hitting the road. The gunslinger knew a few people they could reach out to on the underside in Calgary. A half day’s ride or so and they’d be there, provided, of course, Louis wasn’t dead or driven mad from the security measures outside the cabin. 

“Fuck. I loved that goddamn horse,” Mz. X grunted before shaking their head quickly. As much as they cared about their mount, it didn’t really matter. If Louis were lame, they’d need to find another way to Calgary. Whatever the case ended up being, they needed to get to the city and connect with someone who might be able to clue them in as to where in the hell Saint came from, and who the hell he was. Why Mz. X felt a need to do such a thing was another issue entirely. However, in 1890, things hit differently. Maybe the situation was that he was on the run from the imperials, even if he didn’t know it. If that were the case, Mz. X would gladly help him until it didn’t serve them to do so, because sticking it to the imperials was always worth it. 

The gunslinger allowed themself one more deep breath followed by a long sigh before heading into the kitchen. Time was a-wasting, as the saying went.