Part 5 – Dean Deserved It
We left you here earlier because Dean ruined it. We didn’t want you turning on us. But now? Maybe this will encourage people to dig into it, look for us.
They’re both in the penthouse, Izzie has just mashed the button.
Izzie was back and if she had anything to say about it, she would never ever go away again.
‘Give it to me. I need to take it back. This isn’t right. Look at you,’ Dean said.
He bent and tried to coax it, gently at first, then harder as Izzie clung onto the button.
He kept muttering and even though Izzie was glassy-eyed and enjoying a high quite like no other, she heard him.
‘It was just meant to be one more time. Fuck sake, they’ll kill me.’
‘Why, Dean?’ Her eyes cleared and she was back, looking at him like dinner.
He pinwheeled back on his arms, butting his head against the far-side wall. The same wall that Izzie would later be back against in her chair with John.
‘It’s not what I said it was. The button isn’t therapeutic.’
She batted it a little, like a ball on a string. ‘This old thing? It feels mighty therapeutic to me.’
‘Coincidental side effect. Collateral, but good collateral. Fuck, Izzie, they chose you. But you weren’t meant to press that many times.’
Like a can of Pringles, once he popped, he just couldn’t stop. It was something about talking truth to someone who had been wronged. Someone who just listened.
His skin had turned pale. Izzie thought to touch him would be to touch a ghost.
‘It’s a weapon. Lumora took a military contract. All very hush-hush. I’m dead anyway, so what does it matter? But the button was their idea for winning a war without firing a bullet. Or as many bullets. What if we could keep our troops happy and carefree and at the same time dump a bunch of shitty, dark thoughts onto them? Carpet bomb them with anxiety, OCD, paranoia and hate.’
Izzie started to stand, a smile on her face. He could do with a press of the button himself, she thought. ‘Don’t worry about it, Dean. We’re not at war. Stevenage is grim, but the worst you’re going to get is a hoody on a bike nicking your phone.’
‘Stevenage is different. Thoughts respond differently here, they rebound and echo back and forth. They theorised that could be weaponised. The button, pressed here, changes them. Gives them a mission. Like a heat seeking missile, their purpose is to spread, multiply and find unaffected people that they can ravage. It would be genetically coded or something. It would mean it didn’t cause friendly fire, I don’t know. But they said, every time you push it, that one subject would experience exponential issues.’
‘You said you chose me?’
‘Kind of. We just wanted a quick test, off the books. You work for the company so we’d get you to sign an NDA or whatever. Pay you millions. I was going to come and find you, take you down there. But they were curious that the effect was so short-lived, so they told me to try it again.’
‘Friendly fire.’ The words tasted funny in her mouth. ‘But I feel fine.’ She dipped into her kitchen whilst he paced in the foyer. There it was. She picked it up.
By this point, even this soon after treating the button like a whack-a-mole, the first little troopers of a new batch had started to form. Each press made it more virulent, more hateful.
We don’t know if it was us or her that pulled the knife out of the block, that chose to hide it behind her back. We do know that either way, she wanted Dean to finish what he was saying. To plead his case.
‘Izzie, I need to take you back to the lab now. We need to try and contain it if we can. They have tools to look for the dispersed thoughts. They’ll use the path, the spindle tech.’
‘You mean you want to put them back in?’
‘I don’t know. Destroy them, maybe. That’s the protocol.’
‘Destroy me?’
‘No, I didn’t say—’
His breath hitched. The knife through the chest nicked the lung. She planted a wet kiss on his lips, he tasted sweaty. It was a goodbye, a thank you, a fuck you. Out came the knife and back in again, this time through the heart, and then one again in the stomach for good measure. The blood pooled onto the lying floor. It suited Izzie. It would be easier to clean.
‘Izzie, don’t.’
She helped him down gently with one arm, as the other opened the cupboard door.
‘Shush, it’s okay, Dean. It’s not as clean as your garage floor, but you’ll understand that I’ve not been able to give it a good spring clean—’
She started to close the door.
‘—I’ve had an awful lot on my mind.’
So concludes The Button - thank you reading. This will likely be my last post on Substack for a while. The platform is not something I believe in any longer.