Callsign: King II- Underworld

“Holy shit,” he breathed. Someone had been shooting footage of the accident, and Becker realized that the answer to the bizarre disappearance might literally be in the palm of his hand.

He tapped at the ‘stop’ button, and saw a menu pop-up on the screen.



Upload video? [YES] [NO]



He tried to stab at the “no” button, but his gloved fingertip must have dragged across the alternative, because the menu changed to a progress bar that quickly registered “100%” and then flashed the message:



File Uploaded



“Crap.” Becker stripped off his right glove, knowing full well that it was a serious break in procedure, and with far more dexterity, he navigated through the phone’s files to locate the video segment by its timestamp. He tapped on the file icon and the display switched to a view of the crumpled front end of the Altima, as viewed from the driver’s seat.

Becker watched and listened with rapt attention as the Altima’s occupant—a young woman by the sound of her voice—recorded the aftermath of the experience.

Then something unbelievable happened.

After six years with DPS, Matt Becker thought he’d seen it all, but he had never seen anything like this.





EXCLUSION





1.


New York City — 1335 UTC (9:35 am Local)



George Pierce stared at the person sitting in the threadbare easy chair with a mixture of pity, revulsion and disbelief. When the man smiled, revealing missing and decayed teeth, the proportions remained about the same, but the emotional brew roiling in his gut spilled over like beer from a shaken bottle.

“George,” the man said, his voice grateful, but with an undercurrent that made Pierce wary. “Long time, brother.”

You aren’t my brother, Pierce wanted to say. You’re someone who happens to share some genetic material with me, but you sold your right to call me ‘brother’ for an eight-ball, and shot up, snorted, smoked…or whatever the hell it is you do with that crap. You burned that bridge a long time ago. My real brother is sitting downstairs, waiting for me.

But he didn’t say that or anything like it. Instead, he managed a weak smile and sat down. “Hey, Micah.”

“I’m glad you came,” Micah Pierce said. He nodded his head enthusiastically, but to George Pierce, it looked almost like an involuntary nervous tic. “I feel good about this. I think I’m really going to be able to kick it this time.”

Pierce also felt his head bobbing, but the confident utterance made no impression whatsoever. Micah was reading from an old script; they had played this scene out four times, was it? Five? I’ve lost track, Pierce thought.

The first time, Pierce had been wholeheartedly supportive of his sibling’s declared intent to end his narcotics addition. He had taken a leave of absence from his position at the University of Athens, effectively ceding control of a very important research project to one of his colleagues and along with it, the credit for the subsequent discovery, to give Micah his unconditional emotional support during the weeks of rehab and his subsequent effort to get established in society.

The second time, almost eighteen months later, Pierce had been more cautious, but still hopeful. Relapses happened, but Micah was family—his only remaining blood relative.

Micah’s second “clean” period, or rather the length of time between the end of his stint in rehab and his arrest for attempting to sell stolen property, which led to another court-ordered stay at an addiction treatment facility, had lasted only four months.

Pierce no longer felt any hope when Micah emerged from his personal darkness with another promise to throw the monkey off his back once and for all. Pierce felt only a profound weariness, and no small measure of guilt, partly because of his perceived failure to do the impossible and somehow lift his brother up, but mostly because he just wanted Micah to stop calling.

He nodded perfunctorily at Micah’s assurances, and chimed in with as few words as possible when his younger brother began reminiscing about experiences from their childhood—memories that were so colored and distorted as to bear little resemblance to anything that had really occurred. Pierce did not attempt to set the record straight. He had read a lot of literature about addiction over the years and recognized the classic behavior of an incorrigible addict.

On an earlier occasion, armed with academic knowledge, Pierce had confronted his brother with these realities, reducing Micah to tears, but in the end, it hadn’t made any difference. Now, Pierce no longer bothered.

He still took Micah’s calls and came to visit him when he made an apparent effort to get clean, but it wasn’t because he entertained hope that things would change. He came because he knew that someday, maybe someday soon, Micah would wind up on a slab, and then Pierce would really feel guilty. He didn’t want his last interaction with his only blood relative to be one of abject rejection.