Chapter 81

The Multi Man brought Psychwatch to its knees in less than a year. All in the span of the employment and institutionalization of one Margo Sandoval. Twenty three years old. Empath and Neutralizer. Diagnosed with depression and paranoid schizophrenia. Lying on a table in a cold, pitch-black room, unaware of what day it was. How much time had passed since she’d nearly died fighting the Multi Man.

Plenty of time for sure, she realized. She could bend her fingers despite the Man breaking them during their last encounter. Her elbow could bend without any pain despite a knife tearing into it long ago. Her arms didn’t feel like patchwork wearing away. No fresh cuts, no bruises. Even her face felt untouched, as if she’d never received that laceration from the Man’s dagger.

I’m dead, she thought, which sent goosebumps rippling across her skin. Or Psychwatch lost, and I’ve been held hostage for a long time since then. So I’m still dead. Or I will be. And everyone I cared about.

You didn’t care about anyone.

Margo’s muscles tensed. That wasn’t her voice. It was a thought that belonged to her, but the words came from someone else.

You’re a Sandoval, said the voice. That’s what we do. We look out for ourselves.

“Ellie,” Margo whispered.

Margo held her breath as a hand reached around her neck, pressing a dagger to her throat.

And it all comes full circle, said the voice. We cared only about ourselves, and now that’s all we have left. Ourselves.

Margo lowered her eyes and exhaled slowly, a tear slipping through and sliding down her cheek. She repeated the voice beneath her breath, “That’s all we have left.”

“Open your eyes,” rumbled a voice like the shattering of Earth’s crust.

“That’s all we have left,” she whispered again.

“I said open your eyes.”

This is your worst psychotic episode yet, Margo thought, though she hardly felt relief. You just have to outlive it like all the others.

“You have no idea,” the Multi Man said, “how hard it is for me to restrain myself from killing you. After all the opportunities I gave you to bring an end to Psychwatch’s downfall. You had your Fatemaker to my head, and you still did nothing. You have no idea what that just cost you.”

Yeah? This is probably the better outcome compared to what would’ve happened if I’d just shot you then and there. Your blood was cold.

Fluorescent lights flickered to life overhead, Margo’s closed eyes rendering it a dim white haze to her.

“I can tell when you’re lost in your thoughts, Margo,” he said. “I know you. You’ve been getting lost on purpose lately. You’ve spent so much time with a ThoughtControl in your ear, you assume we can all hear your thoughts, and you’re right. I’ve yet to meet someone more predictable than you.”

I could say the same thing about you, Margo thought, though the other voices nearly scrambled everything up. Every time we meet, nothing but speeches and lectures. You’re not my father. He would’ve killed me without even saying anything.

“If I’m predictable,” Margo spoke, her voice alarmingly rough, “why do you keep giving me choices? You know what I’ll say. You know what I’ll do. If you want me and Psychwatch dead, why don’t you just get it over with?”

“I already did.”

Yep, you were right, said Ellie’s voice. You’re dead. This is Hell. 

“For God’s sake, open your fucking eyes already,” the Multi Man said, and he moved the blade away from Margo’s throat, resting its tip against her carotid artery.

Margo finally opened her eyes. She saw the Multi Man standing above her, his clothes and mask coated with dried blood. His lackeys stood around him, masked and unclean and barely keeping their rage in check. She couldn’t move her neck or her back. She felt encased in cement.

“I can see it in your eyes,” said the Man. “Your antipsychotic meds wore off a long time ago. There’s probably a hundred people in your head now, isn’t there?”

Nope, just me, said Ellie’s voice.

And me, said another.

And me.

And me.

And me. 

And me. And me. And me. We’re here. And me. Don’t forget. And me.

Margo squinted her eyes shut before the prickling of the dagger’s tip into her neck prompted her to open them once more.

“Well,” the  Multi Man said, “I guess I was wrong. You’re not losing yourself on purpose. You’re being chased away by the fragments of your own mind. Brian Royce told me it had you down. I thought he was just a hypocrite and a coward, but it turns out he was right. Too bad he’s not around anymore.”

Margo looked up at the Man, her eyes asking for her, What did you do to him?

“It’s like anyone else. I only did so much. The rest he did on his own, including his death. I didn’t even know he brought that handgun with him.”

“He shot himself?” she said.

“That’s right. I made him lose his balance, but he chose where to fall. As did the rest of Psychwatch.”

Margo looked away from the Multi Man and gazed into the lights above her, staring until her eyes watered. She curled her fingers into a fist.

“Indeed, it’s been a long time since that day,” said the Multi Man. “Enough time for your wounds to heal. They put up a hell of a fight. Lots of bright lights and explosions and ash and smoke. But once they realized they were losing, they started killing each other. What few walls remained of Psychwatch were bathed in the blood of the very people who kept the system in power.”

“You’re lying,” Margo said.

“That really doesn’t matter anymore, Margo. But if it brings you any relief, Holden Sanger didn’t have to see what his colleagues had become.”

Nausea boiled in her stomach. Her pulse fired on all cylinders. She heard laughter amongst the masked crooks around her. She tried turning her head to see any of them, see which ones she’d kill first once she’d reunited with her Fatemaker, but her body betrayed her, left her motionless, nothing more than an object to mock.

“What did you do to him?” she said.

“Say that again, Margo,” the Multi Man replied.

“What the fuck did you do to him?”

More laughter amongst the masked men. All but their leader.

“Well,” he said, “it wasn’t exactly by my hands. And he went out far cleaner than the rest of them did. I saw his body on the floor with a broken neck. Maybe that uncle of his did it. Carl Maslow? Who knows what kind of people he gives control to—”

“FUCK YOU!” Margo shrieked. “FUCK YOU, YOU MONSTER…YOU…YOU…”

“You what, Margo?” said the Multi Man. “What else am I? Spit it out.”

The young officer couldn’t say much else. She screamed and cried and tried thrashing about, only to remain glued to the table she rested on, nothing more than a specimen to be sliced open and studied. Her face and eyes burnt so red, she’d expected herself to melt through the table and sink into the floor.

Then the anger washed away, and all that remained was a foreboding emptiness. The distant look in her eyes returned, and her face was wet with tears when she was done. All she could do was deny she was powerless while the evidence stood above her, holding a knife to a spot that could kill her instantly.

“He did nothing to deserve that!” she hissed. “Out of everyone at Psychwatch.”

“Out of everyone at Psychwatch,” the Multi Man repeated. “That name is a curse upon everyone who’s come in contact with it. It’s a disease. I got rid of the source, but there’s still people out there who carry its influence.”

“What is this influence anyway? What do you think they’re doing to the world? What do you think you’re doing?”

“You continue to entertain me with your guessing, Margo. I’ll miss that when you’re gone.”

“If you want me gone, then just get rid of me already! You’ve won! I won’t fight anymore! JUST KILL ME ALREADY!”

Silence fell on them again. Silence in the room. Margo’s head, however, rang with voices. Some laughed. Some threatened her. All of them drowned her.

The Man moved his knife away from Margo’s carotid. He took a step back.

“Everyone, leave,” he said. “Everyone but you two.”

The masked men vanished with most of the room’s lights, all but the one hovering over the Multi Man. Margo finally mustered the strength to crane her neck, and she looked up to see Whitey and Crimson standing beside the Multi Man. Crimson sported a smile so forced and stretched out, she’d resembled melted wax.

“It’s nice to finally meet you, you schizo bitch,” she hissed at Margo. “We’ve had to tear apart so many people to get to you, and now you’re right where we fucking need you. I don’t know what he sees in you, but—Hey, wait, sir. Sir! WAIT, SIR!”

Margo didn’t see it happen directly, but she saw the girl disappear behind the Multi Man. She heard her screams as the Man slashed her face with his knife and stepped away. When Crimson returned to Margo’s line of sight, Margo saw a long incision stretching across the girl’s left cheek. Crimson stood there, eyes wide and body trembling, her left hand hovering by her face, tempted to pat the wound and wipe away the blood trickling down her face.

Then the Man turned to Whitey. His young subordinate tried to jump away but found himself knocked down to his knees as the Multi Man proceeded to choke him half to death with his bare hands. Whitey grabbed the Man’s arm, tried forcing him away, but even he was powerless.

“You said you want me to kill you,” the Multi Man said, hands tightening around the boy’s neck. “You want me to stop with the games and the destruction and to just put you out of your misery. Isn’t that right, Margo?”

Margo hoped she would’ve found the will to live by then. But instead she replied, “Yes.”

“Well, then, give me a reason to make it quick. Could it be so you don’t have to watch me kill this young boy and his sister right in front of you?”

Margo lost her voice. She glared at Crimson, whose smile had long disappeared, replaced with vacant, hateful eyes as she smudged her own blood across her cheek like warpaint.

“Could it be so that you don’t suffer a particularly painful and messy death by this girl’s hands once I’ve killed her brother here?” said the Multi Man. Whitey was starting to struggle less. His attempts at pushing back packed less of a punch.

Margo looked at Crimson again. She’d gotten her hands on a dagger identical to the Multi Man’s.

“Or how about this?” the Man said. “You tell me to spare these kids’ lives, and I’ll give you the greatest reason imaginable why I should kill you. But I have to warn you. I cannot guarantee your death will be fast or quick or dignified. Do you understand?”

Margo had let herself down once again. She’d hoped she’d be the symbol of moral purity, quickly taking the suffering of young individuals upon herself. But she hesitated.

Not fast, not quick, and undignified, she thought, nauseous. Does he mean…rape?

“Help,” Whitey gasped. “Please.”

“You’re gonna have to answer fast, Margo!” the Man said. “The light’s almost done draining out of his eyes, and out of all the blood I have on my hands, this young man is one I won’t feel the most proud of! Do you want these kids spared or not?”

Please be in my favor for once, Margo thought, and she exclaimed, “Let him go!”

The Multi Man shoved Whitey away, the young boy collapsing to the floor, coughing and gagging and trying his damndest to retrieve the oxygen stolen away from him. When Margo looked at Crimson once again, she saw that the girl was prepared to rush toward her and gut her alive. One glimpse of her superior with a knife in his hand rendered her feeble and wobbly, but the Man allowed her to run to her brother and comfort him.

Walking around his trembling subordinates, the Multi Man approached Margo, his breathing fast and heavy, as if he’d escaped a strangling of his own.

“Wow,” he said. “I thought you’d last longer than your colleagues. I thought you’d fight for your life. But now…”

Adrenaline fired through Margo’s body as the Multi Man reached for his mask.

“Now you have a perfectly good reason to die,” he said, and he slid the mask off.

Beneath the spectral glow of the fluorescent lights, Margo studied the crude and raggedy scars trailing across the Man’s face, still dark red and scabbed, very recent. The skin on his face sagged, and his colorless eyes sucked everything in and forced it through a meat grinder. Even with his lips pursed, his teeth remained visible as some of the skin on his mouth had worn away. His nose and ears were like crumpled sheets of paper, protruding from his face in the wrong directions.

Reverse psychology went to work within Margo, and while the sight of the Multi Man’s true face sent her pulse racing, she didn’t scream or gasp. Only one thought entered her head: He’s nobody.

“You don’t recognize me?” he said.

Margo shook her head. “Who are you supposed to be?”

“I’m everyone you’ve ever laid eyes on.” He raised a glove to his scarred face. “Very little of the skin you see here belongs to me.”

“What?”

“I took some souvenirs when I humbled Psychwatch. Your fellow officers, your former patients, Arthur Cohen, even your mother. I made them all into this.”

The Multi Man removed the glove from his right hand. None of his fingers were the same skin color, nor the same size. Scars and crudely installed prosthetics adhered them to the rest of his hand.

Remember, you’re off your meds, Margo thought. Maybe none of this is real. He’s trying too hard.

“You’re losing it,” she said.

The Man lowered his hand down by his side.

“I know none of this is real,” Margo said. “You waited for my meds to wear off. You’re nothing.”

“I’m nothing,” the Man repeated, “yet I singlehandedly rendered Psychwatch to that very thing. Nothing! What does that word even mean anymore? Anyone can come from nothing. Anyone can become nothing after everything they’ve worked for, especially when they’re surrounded by a hundred other nobodies just like them. Psychwatch, Philadelphia, this country, society in general, it’s all just firewood waiting to ignite.”

The Man stepped toward Margo, the two of them tensing up.

“What makes me a nobody to you, Margo?” the Man asked. “Is it the mask? The lack of a name? The fact no SanityScan can see me coming? Or perhaps it’s because you see a little bit of yourself in me.”

“We are nothing alike,” Margo growled.

“I know you too well. We’re practically father and daughter.”

Margo slammed her fist down on the table. “I know you’re not him! If you were really him, you would’ve killed me a long time ago without saying a single word. He had no fucking reason to hurt me or my mom for so long! So what’s your reason for haunting me?”

The two of them remained silent. The Multi Man waved Crimson and Whitey away, and the two of them disappeared into the darkness, their bright red eyes the last thing to vanish from Margo’s sight.

“We want to pacify the world,” said the Man. “We see its insanity, and we want to bring it a peace of mind. Yet people fear us, Margo. They try to predict us and oftentimes succeed, but that is why they’re afraid of us. They think very little of us, yet that’s the standard we always reach. Impulsive, violent, and pathetic.”

“Don’t try talking to me like I’m supposed to be your friend,” Margo snapped. “I don’t want anything to do with you, and I am nothing like you. I don’t kill innocent people!”

“Neither do I.”

Margo scratched her nails across the surface of the table beneath her, hoping she’d leave claw marks behind.

“You’re a fucking murderer!” she screamed at him. “You’ve ruined lives!”

“So have you,” said the Multi Man.

“I am not the rest of Psychwatch!”

“Yes, you are, Margo. You are not an individual anymore. You’re just another one of their Fatemakers that’s been convinced it’s always on the right target.”

Margo glared at the Man. “Then what makes you the individual here? How do you think you can convince people that you’re not just another knife-wielding psychopath?”

The Man tried to smirk. The expression looked like it brought him physical pain.

“I’ve already done that,” he said. “I destroyed Psychwatch.”

He started pacing around the room.

“Society doesn’t care about the individual,” he said, “because it refuses to believe an individual can have enough power to overthrow it. That’s how organizations like Psychwatch get started. The founders who change the world are the individuals. Their employees and followers? They’re the change itself, the rippling effects of the individual’s actions. They are consequences, and they don’t even realize it. Do you really think you’re the only person who joined Psychwatch believing they could bring the agency a more peacekeeping nature?”

Margo stayed quiet, knowing the right words at the wrong time could work against her.

“For the longest time, society worked against the mentally ill. But now that it realizes that all that remains of its population are the very same people it spent years trying to get rid of, it’s picking favorites and pretending that it’s finally reached enlightenment. But the prejudice and the lack of empathy are still there. It’s Darwinism! Only the strong will survive, but there’s too many weak links around to say such a thing unfiltered. For instance, you thought your life and career were over the day you were diagnosed as a schizophrenic. Isn’t that right?”

Margo remained silent again, pondering her naive younger self who’d taken that elevator ride up to the Psychwatch graduation ceremony. Ellie was her sister and not a symptom. The Fatemaker was a last resort, not a reflex. The mantra she’d repeated to herself—Neutralize, empathize, stabilize—was just an honorable declaration to protect people, not a blood oath to mistreat the ones who needed her most.

“And why did you think it was over? Because now you realize that once you’ve made one fatal mistake in Psychwatch’s eyes, they’ll have you in the same position you’ve put everyone else. Stunned, forced into a psych ward, fed medications, or killed. Isn’t that right?”

He’s right, said the voice once known as Ellie. About everything. But you know how we can fix all of this? We just have to kill ourselves. Find a nice ledge over a bottomless canyon and leap the fuck into it. We can start an entire religion out of that! Sandovalism! Where nothing matters at all once you realize that everything you’ve known is a lie, and everyone you care about is a liar.

“I can tell everything I’m saying is falling on deaf ears,” said the Man. “But I know it’s not your fault. Like I said, you’re not an individual, Margo. You’re a victim and a consequence all at once. You went farther in your life than someone like you was meant to go, and now you’re paying for it. So this is what I plan on doing differently from Psychwatch. You want to hear it?”

Margo curled into a fetal position, gazing off into the darkness in front of her. Yes? No? Was there even a choice? The ones with power endorse the illusion of choice to the ones beneath them.

“You should know,” the Man said, “that I’m saying all of this because I will keep my word. You will die by my hands, so I’m only really buying you time. Not for my own enjoyment, but so you can finally use this time you have left rather than have it taken away like your mother did to your memories.”

“How am I using my own time,” Margo said, “if you’re the one who’s gonna choose what happens to me once you’ve run out of things to say?”

The Man nodded his head, ignoring her question. “There are people in this world who are too far gone. But Psychwatch likes to blur the line where the possibility of healing ends and the irreparable insanity begins. It’s all eugenics. But my solution to this problem doesn’t discriminate at all.”

“Yes, it does. You say you destroyed Psychwatch, but some people still believe in them. So you’re planning on hunting those people down.”

“No, Margo. I plan on getting rid of everyone.”

The distant wailing of sirens startled Margo. I could actually get out of here?

“You ever wonder,” the Man said, “how this mental illness epidemic started? It’s because the world’s finally realized what it’s become. Humanity finally had the guts to hold a mirror to its face, and now it regrets it. It’s falling apart because it has nothing else to hide behind. We now understand how pointless our existence is, how meaningless our struggles are, yet we’re too afraid to let go of the one thing we have left, no matter how much we despise it. Life.”

The sirens grew louder.

“That’s what I’m going to fix, Margo. Humanity still wants life, even when it can’t think of a reason to hold onto it. It wants to survive for the sake of surviving, even when it’s accomplished more than it ever has before. We should see how it reacts when every one of its many privileges disappears.”

Dead silence. The sirens vanished, as if wiped out of existence entirely.

“Where are we?” Margo said. “What is this place?”

“That doesn’t matter, Margo. Everything I’ve worked for is about to pay off. The trucks should be in position.”

“Trucks? What the hell are you talking about?”

The Man brought his mask to his heart and held it there.

“Everything we say, think, and do are nothing more than symptoms of cognitive deviance,” he said. “The only cure left for humanity is our own extinction.”

“Wait!”

“I will cure newborns of the miserable lives that await them.”

“Don’t do this!”

“I will cure the youth of the outdated, mindless generation that brought them into this world to suffer for their mistakes.”

“Stop! Just listen to me!”

“And I will cure the elders of the future generations they’ve had to watch reduce everything they’ve created into dust.”

“STOP IT!”

Movement returned to Margo’s legs as the first explosion rang out miles away. The room was no longer pitch-black. Margo saw faded, charcoal gray walls boxing her in, shaking with the sounds of the subsequent explosions.

She jumped toward the Man and slammed him against the wall. She punched him in the face once, then again, then four more times until the stitches on his face popped open. Her fist ached with fresh bruises, and the Man’s face was a bloody mess that barely held on to the rest of his skull, as if it were another mask.

“You’re going out with the rest of us,” she hissed.

“That was the plan,” the Man replied. “Did you really think that my death would derail everything? I told you, Margo, I don’t discriminate. My death, your death, they mean nothing in the grand scheme of things. But then again…you and I might not leave this earth the way the rest of this city will.”

“Yeah? What do you mean by that?”

“Well, for starters, it’s been a long time since your antipsychotics have worn off. Who’s to say any of this is even real?”

Hopefully we’re dead, said Ellie. That way, we can do whatever the fuck we want.

Margo punched the Man across his face again. “Did that feel real?” she spat at him.

With her fist hovering in the air, Margo froze as sirens returned to her ears for a split second, their vanishings far more violent and cacophonous than before. They’d distort and reach discomforting pitches before fizzling out, and the walls and floor around her trembled.

“I should ask you the same thing,” said the Man. “Did that feel real to you?”

A loud rumble thundered toward Margo on the other side of the wall. There were more explosions, deafening crashes and alarms in every direction. Then screams, faint but collective, like souls disappearing into the next plane of existence.

Suddenly, Margo felt awake, done with a dream and inhabiting flesh and bone. But it wasn’t hers. Something covered her face. A mask perhaps. There were gloves on her hands, and a dozen other individuals surrounded her, each sporting the mask that haunted her in the waking world as well as her dreams. White, raggedy, with red Xs over the eyes.

With another blink, the body was gone. She stood before the Multi Man once more, the walls and floor trembling, and something loud and dangerous barreling towards her.

“What the hell was that?” Margo said.

“What was what?” the Multi Man replied.

“I fucking knew it. This isn’t real. This is a dream! Or another episode! Or…”

“You might want to duck behind the table.”

The Man shoved her toward the metal table with such a force, she flipped over its surface and landed on the other side, planting on the floor. A thunderous roar like a runaway train filled her ears, and a wave of sky blue flames engulfed the building, reducing everything to ash and dust, including the Multi Man. A layer of sweat coated Margo’s forehead and brows in seconds as the flames blanketed her with unforgiving heat, yet she remained unharmed or burned. 

What is going on? What the fuck is happening?

The floor beneath Margo caved in, and she and the table collapsed downward, sailing through the avalanche of debris and glass toward ground level. Her limbs passed through the fragments as if she were in water, and the end of her descent was marked by the thud of her back against the ground. Oxygen fled her body in an instant, and dust and rubble rained upon her. She remained still and clenched her eyes shut.

Margo rested in the building’s remains until the sounds of the building’s destruction faded out. When no other structure made its violent descent to her level, she squinted her eyes and found herself laying in a cloud of dust. Through the dust, she saw a hazy blue-gray sky above her, the early morning of a new day.

She sat up, looked around. The Multi Man had her in an abandoned warehouse somewhere in an offline neighborhood. All that remained of the building were the rooms and closets in the building’s center, their walls still burnt to a crisp and dangling apart like shredded pieces of paper. The rest of it was nothing more than bricks, drywall, cables, and pipes melted to a crisp by whatever had detonated miles away.

Margo rose to her feet, her legs shaky and her throat sore. She coughed and rubbed the soot from her eyes, and more voices returned, though she only focused on the one she once called Ellie.

We’re dead now, it said. We’re very dead. Lie back in the dust and die already. Go to sleep. Forever.

Margo ignored it and remained still, looking out on the horizon. The city of Philadelphia, once towering to the heavens, was in desolate ruins. Skyscrapers were reduced to flaming towers of shattered glass. Ash coated the abandoned vehicles and streets like snow. Lights blinked in and out of existence like a monitor moments before flatlining. There wasn’t a single living creature in sight.

Yet Margo heard the Man’s voice rush through the streets like a powerful breeze, rattling her bones and causing her head to ache.

“You’re all that remains. It’s up to you how long that will last.”