Blood Zero Sky (31 page)

—Chapter Ø24—

This is where the revolution ends.

Here, in this holding cell that smells like rancid ass—or maybe that’s just the stink of my own sweat. Of course I haven’t showered. I haven’t even eaten in three days, but it doesn’t matter. The hunger pangs haven’t come today. Today, I feel nothing at all. I don’t lift my arm, don’t flex a single muscle. The only part of me that’s still alive is my eyes, and they roam about the room, from the dirty steel crapper to the blaring imager on the far wall, outside my cell. Maddeningly, it’s too distant for me to smash it, so I have to listen every few hours when they announce details about my soon-to-be televised execution.

A ring of anarchists was broken up and several unprofitables killed when the security squad raided an anarchist camp yesterday in the old city of Detroit, according to an HR department spokesman. While there was no official word on what crimes were perpetrated by this particular group of anarchists, an unnamed squad source says they may be connected to the August 16 attack on N-Corp headquarters that killed seven people. Well, we’ll all certainly breathe a lot easier with those criminals off the streets. Hallelujah!

In financial news, the release of the new IC has earned the Company record sales, adding an exclamation point this historic week marked by the N-Corp/B&S merger. A statement released by N-Corp CFO Bernice Yao today confirms that the Company is now once again on track to report a profit for the coming year. . . .

Somehow, through the genius of digital image manipulation and simple lies, everything, from the headquarters attacks to high interest rates, has been blamed on me and my anarchist friends. And why not? At this point, what does it matter anyway?

I’ve made my peace with things. Sort of.

I do not hate Randal. He was simply weak. I do not hate Kali/Clair for not telling me who she was. She did what she had to do to survive. And I don’t hate Ethan, either, though the hurt of his lie and the suddenness of his death still make my gut feel sour—or maybe that’s just the feeling of my stomach eating itself as I starve to death.

Footsteps approach and I look up. It’s the Reverend Jimmy Shaw, with Blackwell in tow.

“Time for your debriefing,” says Blackwell cheerfully. It’s the first time I’ve ever seen him cheerful. One arm is in a sling, but otherwise he appears to be in perfect health. The bastard. He sets his suitcase down on the concrete floor and takes out a device that looks something like a black traffic cone.

“Your performance as a spy was quite disheartening, May,” says Shaw, shaking his head. He leans heavily, almost wearily on his cane. “There’s nothing left but to make an example of you, I’m afraid.”

A litany of colorful retorts fill my mind, but I discard them all. It’s too late for wisecracks. It’s too late for anything.

Blackwell points the traffic cone at me and nods to Shaw.

“Now,” Shaw says, “what can you tell us about your good friends the anarchists?”

“For starters, they weren’t anarchists,” I say, “and they’re all dead.”

When I speak, I can hardly feel my lips. Maybe it’s the dehydration. It’s a strange sensation.

“Do I really have to explain to you that we’ll be torturing you if you aren’t forthcoming?” Shaw says. “That should be obvious, my dear.”

Blackwell makes a movement and the device in his hand clicks on.

Suddenly, my head feels like it’s a hive filled with a million furious wasps. My vision blurs. My skull might collapse at any second; the pain is tremendous. Have to get it out, out of my skin, out of my mind, I’m dying—then it stops.

There’s a sound, a terrible gurgling, which I discover is me, puking and screaming at once. My face is pressed against the concrete wall behind my cot. My fingertips throb, bleeding. Apparently, I was trying to claw my way out of the cinderblock cell. Slowly, my skull regains its previous dimension and my brain ceases to feel crushed.

Blackwell is nodding, “See? Works pretty well, right?”

Shaw waves a hand dismissively, looking at me. “It’s a beam weapon of some sort. What did you say, Blackwell? Long wavelength microwaves? Anyway, it has enough battery power to last for four hours, so we can keep it on you for as long as you want, May—but I have a meeting at noon, so I’d rather keep it brief. What can you tell us?”

I glare at Shaw.

“You know it all,” I say, wiping vomit and sweat from my face with the bottom of my T-shirt. “We lived in the tunnels and basements in the industrial arc. Randal used his inside knowledge of Company security systems to keep us safe and informed. And . . . what else? I’ll tell you anything. It doesn’t matter. They’re all dead, everyone’s dead. It’s over. ”

“What about the leader?” says Shaw.

“Ethan? He worked for N-Psych then started the Protectorate. He was just a regular guy,” I say.

Shaw nods, “What else?”

“Nothing. He never told me anything else. You can cook me with that thing until I’m black.”

Blackwell raises the weapon again, but Shaw waves him off. “It’s okay. I believe her. The leader of that group was too smart to trust the likes of her.” Shaw turns back to me. “And what about the group, the organization?”

“The Protectorate,” I say.

“How strong are they now?”

I’m about to answer,
I told you they’re all dead,
but I hesitate. Suddenly, a thought dawns on me: maybe Ethan wasn’t really lying after all. Maybe founding fathers
did
envision a fourth branch of government, one designed to fight for democracy against any element of government, or foreign military, or greed-blinded corporation that might come to threaten it.

There has always been a Protectorate. It’s the people.

Shaw repeats: “How strong is this Protectorate now?”

A smile curls on my lips. “Strong.”

“Well, that’s funny, Miss Fields. You just said they’re all dead.”

Blackwell brandishes the cone of death, but Shaw stays him again.

“They’re strong anyway,” I say. “Stronger than before, if anyone will remember them.”

“I assure you, they won’t.” Shaw smiles. “But that was an interesting bit of rhetoric. Really, May, did you think you’d change the world? There are forces much larger than you, or anyone, at work here. Money is power, and power consolidates. The biggest fish gobbles up the rest. A child could understand that. It’s not evil; it’s evolution, nature. It’s inevitable, that’s what you people don’t understand! Money is the only power there is, it always has been, and the lure of it is unstoppable. Even if you killed us now, May, there’d still be a million more just like us fighting to take our place.”

“And when you kill me, Jimmy, there’ll be a million more like me, I promise you that.”

“Well,” Shaw says brusquely, “I think we’ll take our chances and kill you anyway.”

He nods to Blackwell, who puts the wave-gun away. “God have mercy on your soul, May,” Shaw says, and turns to leave.

I’m shaking with rage, but still smiling. Marshaling my strength, I fight to my feet and surge to the door of my cell, holding the cell bars with both hands, and call after them: “I have a debriefing for you, Shaw,” I shout.

He turns back to me, looking mildly amused.

“When you get to the gates of heaven and find out God exists after all, when the real Christ stands to judge you for all the killing and lying and stealing you did in his name, what will you say for yourself then?”

Shaw raps his cane on the floor, his face an unreadable, grinning mask, wilted and pink. “Then, May, at least I’ll have the comfort of knowing I died rich, fat, and smiling,” he says. “God bless.”

The hallway door hisses open as they depart.

“God bless
you
,” I yell. “You’ll need it!”

But the hall is empty, and so is the threat.

So here, finally, is the end. I’ll die with puke on my shirt, exhausted, with no food, no water, no blanket, no hope. So I take the one comfort I can and lay down to sleep.

Tomorrow, they’ll execute me. Even my dreams are miserable.

~~~

Awake again. I sit up instantly.

There’s a rush of air on my face as the heavy, Plexiglas door on the far end of the room whooshes open. When I stop blinking, I see a man standing before me, leaning against the bars.

He looks like my father, except older, more tired.

“Well, well. My little Napoleon,” he says.

“Dad?” My tongue feels dry and swollen. I glance over and realize that while I slept, the guards must’ve tossed a bottle of water in to me. It sits in one corner of the cell, tempting me, but I feel too weak to walk over and pick it up.

“You don’t look good, sweetie,” he says. “They feeding you?”

I shake my head. “I guess they want me to look appropriately gaunt when they fry me,” I say.

Dad sighs. “Why did you do it, May?”

Our eyes meet.

“You know why. And if you don’t, I can’t make you understand.”

He nods. He looks a bit sick, I suddenly realize. Unhealthy.

“First, May, I promise you I didn’t know what they had planned for the merger. I asked around once you left, and after I found out you tore out your cross and went to the other side, that’s when I started really digging. The more I learned, the more I realized you were right. I found out that they did kill a lot of people in Africa Division, and I swore I’d get to the bottom of it. I hopped the first plane I could find and went there myself, started interviewing members of the security squad who’d carried out the murders. They all said they were just doing their job—following orders. So I went to their supervisor; she said that the head of the division told her to do whatever was necessary to create a hospitable environment for Company growth. So I went to the head of the division, Elton Weiss. He got all defensive and told me that his salary was entirely based on the profits of Africa Division, so he’d simply told his underlings to do whatever was necessary to generate a profit, as long as it wasn’t prohibited by the Department of Expansion Policy Handbook. So I talked to the VP of Expansion Denise Willard and asked her who on earth authorized her to write a policy that allowed such horrors to take place. You know what she said? Her eyes got wide, and she says, ‘You did, sir. You told me to make Africa Division profitable or I’d be out on my ass. You said you didn’t give a damn how I did it. You said,
Denise, there are four things that are important in this world: first-quarter profits, second-quarter profits, third-quarter profits, and fourth-quarter profits. Now get the hell out of my office and make me proud
.’”

Dad shakes his head bitterly. “I remember saying it, too. . . . All of them thought they were just doing their job, fulfilling their duty, making the Company profitable. And no one took a damned bit of responsibility.
It wasn’t me, it was the Company
, they said. Africa Division wasn’t the only place things like that happened, either,” he said. “No, it happened all over the world. Then this horrible business with the merger. . . . You were right about it all. I was sick when I learned about all of it. Furious. I spoke about it in a board meeting, too. Pissed a lot of people off. You’d have been proud,” he smiles wanly.

“It won’t make a difference, though. I used to have power, but not anymore. Nobody does. The Company is too big now for any one person, or maybe even any group of people, to change its course. That’s what I’ve learned. It’s just . . . too big.”

“I noticed that,” I say. Only my lips move. I feel for a second as if I might black out, but fight back into consciousness.

“I could have told you it’s impossible to change things by force, May. Blackwell has a hundred weapons systems he hasn’t even played with yet.”

“Well . . . ” I begin, but don’t know what to say. I almost nod off. When I open my eyes again, they’re drawn to the cross on my father’s cheek. Beneath his haggard, gray skin, it looks less like a tattoo or an implant and more like a lesion, like a cancer eating him from the inside out.

“A lot of things changed for me after you left,” he continues. “I realized things. I got rid of the drugs—although it was hard, let me tell you. They were marvelous drugs, and now, without them, I feel like a steaming pile of horse manure. I got rid of the whore, too. And that was hard, because she was a marvelous whore,” he pauses, as if collecting his thoughts. “I’ve been offered a severance package, since I’ve had so many differences of opinion with the board lately. I got an island in the Caribbean. Just a small one, but it has a house, servants. I’m taking it, flying out tomorrow. This is the last thing I’m doing before I leave, and they didn’t even want me to come and see you. They warned me not to, actually. By coming here, I might lose the package altogether. I don’t know, I didn’t check the fine print. . . .

“Oh, God,” he says, realizing something. He takes an N-Nourishe bar out of his pocket and tosses it to me. “I completely forgot I had that with me, and here you are, starving.”

The bar hits my chest and falls into my lap. It takes me a minute, but I peel the wrapper open with leaden fingers and manage to nibble off a small bite. At first, the food elicits only nausea, but as I eat more, a small measure of strength returns to me. At last, I’m able to stand up on shaky legs, cross the room, pick up the water bottle, and take a careful sip.

My father watches all this silently. When I glance over, he’s holding a cell bar with each hand, staring at the empty space between them.

“May,” he says finally, “I’m sorry.”

“I know,” I say.

Dad nods. He glances over his shoulder. “They’re watching us now, I’m sure. Blackwell, Yao, and that damned Jimmy Shaw. They never trusted me completely; now they don’t trust me at all. They’re listening to us right now, reading my thoughts, I guarantee it.”

I notice something.

“Is that the new IC?” I ask, pointing at a small, metallic green device strapped to his arm like an old-fashioned wristwatch.

“Oh,” he says, sounding distracted. “It’s marvelous. Worth every dollar. . . . ” he trails off, staring at nothing again, seemingly fighting some massive struggle in his mind. “They use tiny cards instead of the old memory sticks. Little triangles, but they hold unbelievable amounts of data. Marvelous. . . . ” he trails off again.