The man who opened the ancient apartment door with it's rusty doorknob and flaking paint didn't look anything like Victor Fries had expected, as much as he had been expecting anything at all. The word "magician" conjured up... well, an image like the one on the card right on the door, he supposed. He'd never been much for fantasy, even as a child he'd been more into science fiction and that hadn't changed as he grew up, but he'd absorbed some of the popular ideas about fantasy stories through cultural osmosis, there was so much of it that it really required mindful effort to avoid rather than just disinterest. The magician on the card fit the image as well as anything, a regal figure in colorful robes and a wand, though Victor vaguely thought that he should have a beard too. In fantasy stories, wizards almost always had beard, or at least that's how he seemed to remember them.
The man who answered the door did have a beard, but that's where any similarity to the standard magician ended. He was surprisingly tall, but also heavyset, with a disleved mohawk on his head rather than the neat hair of the Tarot magician. Rather than robes, he was dressed in a worn-looking denim jacket, with a pair of odd buttons decorating it, one a bright yellow smiley face, while the other had a symbol that it took Victor a few moments to recognize as the Peace sign. Underneath the jacket was a black t-shirt, paired with jeans and leather boots. He looked more like someone who'd wandered in from a low-rent biker bar than a detective, much less a magician.
"Can I... help you?" The man said, and Victor realised he hadn't actually said anything yet.
"Ah, yes, I'm looking for a... Randall Flagg? I understand this is his office?"
"That's what it says on the door, so congratulations, you found me!" The man answered and stepped back, holding the door open to allow Fries entry. "Come on in, Mr. Leech here was just leaving."
For the first time, Victor noticed the second man in the room, a short, chubby man in a rumpled suit, who's thinning hair had been tied back into a greasy ponytail. The unfortunately-named Leech nodded towards The Magician, picking up a briefcase that was sitting by his feet as he did so. "Yes, I should be hitting the road, my clients will be happy you retrieved their property for them, Flagg! I'll be sure to give you a call if I have need of any further business that require your type of discretion..." As he strode out, Leech gave Victor a surprise pat on the shoulder as he passed "Good luck with whatever your problem is, pal! Flagg ain't much to look at, but he gets the job done!" And with a wheezing laugh, Leech disappeared out the door, leaving a smell of hair products and a truly nose-curdling stench of cheap cologne in his trail.
"I'll take any paying gigs you can send my way, but maybe tell your clients to lock their shit up next time, so they can't just be stolen by any random asshole in a half-assed costume!" Flagg yelled after the vanishing Leech, before sighing and shaking his head "Shit, the things I do for a buck..." He suddenly seemed to remember that Victor was in the room, and looked up, pulling out the single spare chair in front of the desk and spun it towards him. "Ah, yes, sorry about that, just wrapping up my last case. Have a seat, Mr..?"
"Uh, yes, well, I'm Victor Fries. Doctor Victor Fries. And I need help."
....
You know, no matter how many times I meet people I "know" from the comics and cartoons of my own world, I never seem to get used to it, especially not when it's their civilian identities from before all the crazy shit happened to them. It takes effort not to show any reaction to the name as the man I know best as Mr. Freeze introduces himself, because there's absolutely no reason for me to know the name Victor Fries. Doing my best to keep my expression neutral, I finish pulling the guest chair out for him, before retreating behind my desk.
"Well, nice to meet you... Dr. Fries!" Nope, still feels weird! "So what can I help you with? Lost pet? Lost wedding ring? Lost person?"
As Fries awkwardly seats himself, I take a moment to take in his appearance. He looks more or less the way I remember him from the very brief footage of him from the 90's cartoon, before he got turned into a human popsicle. He's a somewhat slight, unassuming man, dressed in a neat suit and tie, with combed, blonde hair and a pair of glasses covering his icy blue eyes. Pretty much the exact opposite of the imposing, deep-voiced behemoth he became after his accident.
And my pitch aside, I think I can make a fair guess for why he's here...
He finishes sitting down, shuffling slightly as he tries to get comfortable, before putting his hands on his lap, and turning his attention to me. "First of all, I... I don't mean to be rude, I don't even believe in this sort of thing, but I'm desperate. I don't know where else to turn..."
"No, that's alright, I get a lot of that in this line of business, you don't go looking for someone calling themselves a magician if life is going the way it's supposed to."
"Right, well..." He clears his throat "That sign outside, it said... you offer healing? Is that true? Can you... heal people?"
"There ARE limits to what I can do, but yes, that's one of my services. I mean, I can't regrow lost limbs or eyeballs or anything, but broken bones, scar tissue, that sort of thing. There's quite a bit of those kinds of injuries in this neighborhood, and as you can guess, not a lot of people around here have health insurance."
"And... and what about disease? If someone is sick... can you fix that? Make them healthy again?"
I don't answer at first, instead leaning forward with my hands clasped together on the desk as I look him in the eye "Why don't you start by telling me what this is all about, Dr. Fries?"
He looks away, fiddling with his tie nervously "...It's my wife, her name's Nora, we just found out recently. She went in for a check-up, and... it's bad. Really bad. There's nowhere for us to turn to..."
"What did the doctors say? What's her prognosis?"
He scoffs "What doctors? The last one we saw only talked to her long enough to make a diagnosis, then basically had her thrown out of the hospital! No one else will even see us now, I had to bribe an old university colleague just to get a second opinion!"
I blink. What? That doesn't sound right. I thought she had some kind of fictional degenerative disease, that seems like kind of an extreme reaction, it's not like she'd be cont...agious...
Oh no. Ohhhhhh boy.
I already have a bad feeling about where this is going, but I ask anyway. "....Dr Fries, exactly what disease does your wife have?"
He let's out a shuddering breath. "...HIV. It's HIV."
Shit.
...
"HIV. You're asking me to cure AIDS?"
Victor winces at the flat tone in Flagg's voice as the magician leans back, the office chair he's sitting in creaking under him. He didn't blame the man for his reaction, even speaking the words out loud had made Victor feel like an absolute fool. For god's sake, what was he even doing here? What did he think was going to happen? That'd there'd be some miracle cure for Nora in some random ghetto? "I-I'm sorry... I shouldn't have come here, I'll just-" Victor was about to stand up from his chair and flee with what little dignity he could salvage, when Flagg spoke again.
"Dr. Fries, I didn't say no, so please don't jump to conclusions. I asked you a genuine question."
Victor paused mid-stand, before he slumped back down in his seat "I-it's not AIDS yet, it's still in the early stages, but... yes, yes, I suppose I am."
There was a deep sigh from the other man, who stared up at the ceiling for a few seconds before answering. "Dr. Fries, before I answer your request, let me explain to you how my healing works. Essentially, I offer two services, both of them with limited effects." He leaned forward, opening one of the drawers of the desk, and pulled out two plain, plastic bottles, each with a mark Fries didn't recognize drawn on them in black marker. He placed the first, slightly larger bottle on the desk frist "This is a healing potion, one of my most popular items. It'll heal damn near any injury you can name, short of dismemberment, and I've seen it bring men back from the brink of death. Unfortunately, it only works on physical trauma, not diseases or infections, making it useless to you..."
The second bottle was placed on the desk "This is an anti-disease salve, which prevents any foreign bodies from entering and infecting anyone using it, effective for 48 hours. Unfortunately, while this would prevent your wife from contracting any further diseases, it won't do anything to destroy the virus that's currently dismantling her immune system, nor will it do anything against the viruses and bacteria that already lie dormant inside her body. It might buy her some time, but not much."
Victor felt his stomach drop away as Flagg snatched away even the small hope he'd carried when he'd walked into this office. Even if the potions ("magic potions, is he kidding?!") worked the way the magician said, which seemed absolutely ludicrious to start with, they apparently wouldn't be able to help Nora, so why did he go through this whole speech? Was this just some sort of sick joke? "Why? Why did you ask me to stay if all you had to tell me was that there was nothing you could do?!"
Another sigh. "As I said, these are the services I offer. Or should I say, these are what I NORMALLY offer. Because..." He stopped suddenly, looking around like he was expecting someone to be eavesdropping from somewhere in the sparse, one-room apartment. Pulling a battered notebook from his back pocket, Flagg quickly scribbled a symbol on one page with a pen, before tearing the paper in half, and attaching the scrap to the wall right next to the window behind him, the paper sticking to the surface with no tape or thumbtack Victor could see. "Basic anti-spy ward. My apartment is already warded, but with what I'm about to tell you, you really can't be too careful." As if to illustrate his point, Flagg tugged down the rusty, dented blinders above the window, the metal sheets rattling down after a few moments of struggling, blocking off the outside light, and casting the room into a twilight gloom.
"Dr. Fries, what I'm about to tell you, you can't share with another living soul aside from your wife. Only a handful of other people besides myself know about it, and trust me, they're not the types you want anything to do with. There is one thing I can offer you, but the price is going to be a high one..."
"Look, I don't care what it costs, just charge me whatever you want, and I'll find the money, just-"
"That's not the kind of price I'm talking about. Oh, you better believe I'll be charging for this, but money isn't the real cost. Let me tell you about The Lazarus Pit..."1075