Chapter 2: Fire Escape to Sanctuary
The hand on his elbow was firm, but not forceful. It pulled him gently sideways, out of the direct line of the woman with the data-pad’s questioning stare.
“Come on, man, your ride’s here,” a low, calm voice said near his ear. It wasn’t Luka.
Michael allowed himself to be steered, his heart still a trapped bird against his ribs. The man guiding him moved with an actor’s awareness of space, creating a path through the lingering crowd with a subtle shift of his shoulders, a polite nod. They bypassed the door entirely, moving instead toward a dim archway marked by a rusting metal sign: EXIT. The man pushed the bar, and the door opened with a sigh of stale, cooler air onto a concrete stairwell.
The roar of the bar vanished, replaced by the hollow echo of their footsteps on grated metal stairs. The light was a sickly yellow.
“Up,” the man said, not unkindly. “They won’t follow. Crowds are lazy.”
Michael followed, climbing one, two, three flights, the adrenaline beginning to recede, leaving a thin, shaking fatigue in its wake. The man above him moved with a quiet economy. He was slim, dressed in dark, simple clothes, his most striking feature a profound stillness that seemed at odds with the urgency of their escape.
Another door, this one unlocked. The man pushed it open, and the world changed.
The rooftop garden was a secret. Ivy draped over mismatched planters, spilling emerald trails across weathered concrete. Solar-powered fairy lights, strung haphazardly between bamboo poles, twinkled like captured fireflies. The air here was different—it smelled of jasmine, damp soil, and the ozone hint of distant rain, scrubbed clean of the bar’s synthetic stench. The chaotic hum of the city was a distant, depthless orchestra thirty stories below. The only immediate sound was the gentle, rhythmic trickle of a small stone fountain, its water catching the starlight and city glow in a shimmering dance.
Michael stood just outside the door, breathing it in. He pulled off the sunglasses and the hat, running a hand through his hair. The night air was cool on his damp skin.
His rescuer walked over to a low bench nestled between two fragrant lemon trees and sat down. He pulled a small, brushed metal flask from his jacket pocket.
“Rough crowd for a private guy,” the man said, his voice carrying easily in the quiet. He unscrewed the cap and took a small sip, then extended the flask toward Michael. “Might take the edge off. It’s just whiskey. The cheap kind, sorry.”
Michael hesitated. The last time he’d tasted whiskey was in another century, in another body, during the Bad tour. The memory was a blur of pressure and exhaustion. He walked over slowly and accepted the flask. The metal was warm from the man’s pocket. He took a tentative sip. The liquor burned a familiar, unwelcome path down his throat, but the heat that pooled in his stomach was steadying.
“Thank you,” Michael said, his voice returning to its normal, softer register. He handed the flask back and sat on the opposite end of the bench, putting a respectful distance between them.
“No problem. I’m Rami.” He didn’t offer a hand, just took another sip. “I’ve been in that corner booth for a week, trying to learn the lines for this… well, it doesn’t matter what for. You’re a way better distraction than my script.”
Michael managed a small, tight smile. “Michael.”
“I know.”
A jolt of fear, cold and sharp. “You… know?”
“Luka called you ‘Mike’ when you first started coming in. Said you were a regular who never sang.” Rami’s gaze was direct but not invasive. He was observing, the way one might study a complex piece of art. “Until tonight. That was… not karaoke.”
Michael looked down at his hands. They were trembling slightly. He clasped them together. “It’s just a song I know well.”
“It’s a song everyone thinks they know well,” Rami corrected softly. He looked out over the neon-dusted canyon of the city. “You didn’t perform it. You inhabited it. I’ve spent my life trying to learn how to do that. How to stop acting and start being. You just walked up and did it. For no one. In a bar that smells like disinfectant and regret.” He glanced back at Michael. “It was unnerving. And the most honest thing I’ve seen in months.”
The words sank in, a balm and a provocation. This man, Rami, saw the craft. He saw the intention. He didn’t see the ghost; he saw the artist.
“It felt honest,” Michael admitted, the confession leaving him in a rush. “I didn’t mean for it to be… so much.”
“The good ones never do.” Rami was quiet for a long moment. The fountain whispered beside them. “You looked like a trapped animal down there. After. When they surrounded you. The admiration… it’s a kind of violence, isn’t it? When you didn’t ask for it.”
Michael’s head snapped up. He studied Rami’s profile—the thoughtful set of his mouth, the eyes that missed nothing. A kind of violence. He had never heard it described that way, but it was perfect. It was the tearing down of your walls under the guise of building you up.
“Yes,” Michael whispered, the word raw. “It is.”
“I get a taste of it. Not like that,” Rami said quickly, gesturing vaguely toward the bar below. “But enough to know I don’t want the full meal. The scrutiny. The dissection. They love the idea of you until they decide they need to understand the machinery. And then they take you apart to see how you work.” He took a final sip from the flask and screwed the cap back on. “You’ve already been taken apart, haven’t you?”
The question hung in the jasmine-scented air. It wasn’t an accusation. It was a statement of perceived fact, uttered with a startling empathy.
Michael didn’t speak. He couldn’t. He just looked at this stranger who had pulled him from the storm and now sat beside him, naming his oldest wounds in the dark.
“You don’t have to answer,” Rami said, standing up. He stretched, his silhouette stark against the glittering skyline. “I should get back. My agent thinks I’m method-preparing in a dive bar. She’s not entirely wrong.” He looked down at Michael. “This is a good place. No one comes up here. It’s my spot. Now it’s yours too, if you want it.”
He began to walk back toward the stairwell door, then paused.
“That song you sang. ‘Stranger in Moscow’.” He didn’t turn around. “There’s a line. ‘Here abandoned in my fame.’” He let the words sit. “You sang that like you were testifying. Like you were the witness and the crime scene. That’s not study. That’s memory.”
He opened the door, the yellow light from the stairwell slicing across the rooftop.
“If you ever want to not be a stranger,” Rami said, his voice almost lost in the city’s hum, “I’m usually in that corner booth. We can just… not talk. It’s underrated.”
The door closed with a soft click.
Michael was alone with the fountain and the stars and the echo of a truth he had never spoken aloud. The trembling in his hands had stopped. The panic was gone, replaced by a profound, aching solitude that was, for the first time in this new life, not entirely lonely. Someone had seen him. Not the icon, not the scandal, not the myth. The fractured man inside the craft. And instead of tearing, he had offered a retreat.
He lay back on the bench, looking up at the few stars strong enough to pierce the light pollution. The whiskey’s heat was a small sun in his core. For the first time since waking up in this bewildering 2026, the past and the present didn’t feel like warring nations. They felt like materials. The pain, the isolation, the joy—all of it was just pigment. And maybe, just maybe, he could start to paint something new.
Down in the city’ belly, the bar continued to throb. But up on the hidden rooftop, under a cloak of quiet green and twinkling light, Michael Jackson began, very tentatively, to feel the shape of a possible future—one where he might not have to hide all the pieces of who he was.