Futuristic Violence and Fancy Suits (19 page)

Zoey said, “First item on the agenda, Will Blackwater has thirty seconds to somehow make me feel better about the severed hand in my house.”

Budd said, “Oh, was that Sanzenbacher's hand?”

Will nodded and said, “Kowalski was able to get it from the coroner's office after the autopsy. Not like they were going to convict anyway.”

Zoey said, “Who?”

Budd answered, “Brandon Sanzenbacher. The crazy fella with the doll heads who you dong-roasted to death. The Soul Collector.”

“Who cut his hand off?”

Andre said, “No one. It happened on its own. Did you not watch the news coverage of your own hostage situation?”

“Why would I? I was there.”

Budd said, “He exploded, into little pieces, just as you were leaving the train station. Like he had a stick of dynamite up his ass. I wasn't playing dumb back at the house, I honestly didn't know they were gonna bring chunks of the guy in for examination.” He shot an admonishing glance at Echo. “
I eat on that table.
”

Andre said, “To me, looked like a transformer blew. You ever seen that happen? I mean a transformer like you have on utility poles, not them robots that turn into cars. Looks just like that, a flash of white and blue, bright enough to leave spots in your eyes.”

Zoey said, “And …
why
would he spontaneously explode?”

Will answered, “The device he had inside him—the thing that was generating the electricity—it failed. Overloaded, shorted out, whatever. I'm going to speculate that if it had discharged properly, that you, Zoey, and everything within ten feet of you would have been charred to a crisp. I don't know how much juice this guy had inside him, but…”

“
Inside
him?”

“Do you really want to know this?”

Zoey threw up her hands. “I apparently have to!”

Echo said, “Here. This is what we were looking at when your cat tried to eat the hand.”

She laid her phone on the hood of the armored sedan and tapped through menus until a holographic projection of a hand floated above it, rotating slowly. Echo tapped the phone again and the flesh vanished from the hand, revealing the bones underneath.

Andre grimaced at the ghostly skeleton hand hovering menacingly over the car, then glanced up at the vagrants in the building above him and said, “Man, these people are gonna think we're doin' some kind of voodoo ritual down here.”

Echo said, “See these white lines running down his fingers? Along the bone here? Those are wires, conductive graphene braids, to be exact. This is how he did the lightning—they all run back to a device in his palm, that's this square here, which was wired up to … we're not sure what.”

Zoey said, “So he had something implanted in his body.”

Will said, “Something incredible. There's a device the military uses, called a laser-induced plasma channel. It fires a beam through the air, a pulse so strong that it creates plasma by separating electrons from air molecules, basically unleashing a bolt of lightning. To me, this looks like a micro version of one of those. But here's the thing—the military version has to be able to generate a pulse of around fifty
billion
watts. That's why their version is so big it has to be carried on the back of a tank.”

“But this guy,” said Echo, “seemed to have the equivalent stashed in the palm of his hand.”

Zoey said, “How does a crazy guy on a train get something like that installed?”

Echo said, “Presumably the same way an even crazier guy would get strength implants added to his limbs, or jaws that can bite through steel. That's not even the question we're asking right now. The issue at the moment is that the device
shouldn't even be possible
.”

Andre said, “There were weird rumors, over the last couple of months. Dead bodies with freaky injuries, or their brains fried. Couple guys spontaneously combusted. One guy managed to get himself lodged into the engine of an airliner at thirty thousand feet, somehow. At first it came off like a viral Blink hoax, but … yeah. It turns out some of the shady characters in this city now have …
powers
.”

Zoey grabbed her hair and growled in frustration. “Okay, just
how much more information are you people withholding from me
? Because every new layer of this thing is more terrifying than the last.”

Will said, “So now you understand the state of mind we were in when you arrived.”

“Oh, yeah, you've convinced me. I want no part of this nonsense. This whole city is a butt that farts horror.”

Another of the vagrants had wondered over, this one also shouting about someone's mother. Either he was copycatting the first guy, or else the mother thing was some kind of popular insult in Squatterville.

Zoey looked to Armando, who was standing between them and the unruly masses, looking ready to draw several guns.

She said, “I've got a bodyguard question. There's this huge bounty on my head, is there a way to buy myself out of it? If I just pay off this Molech and leave town, will his henchmen follow me?”

Will interjected, “Zoey, that's not the question. The issue is if you stay
—
”

“Hush. I asked Armando.”

Armando gave careful thought to it and, without taking his eyes off the crowd, said, “Remember what I said, about how if a threat gets close enough to you that I have to physically deal with it, that I have already failed at my job? That's because my job is to deter adversaries long before conflict even begins—to make it clear that any attempt to harm you is so futile that it doesn't warrant leaving the house. In a city where there's no authority, that fear, that reputation, is all you have to keep the wolves at bay. A name that follows you like a black cloud. Do you understand?”

“It's the same reason the crazy guy on the train glued doll heads to his crotch.”

“Exactly. A while back, a snitch started working with the prosecutors, back when this city still had them. Said he was going to give up Molech's identity, and tie him to this mass shooting at a nightclub. That snitch was dragged out of his home by Molech's men. They strung him up in the park by the fountain, upside down, hanging by his ankles, and poured molten glass into his nostrils. It burned through his sinuses, and ran out his eye sockets, before it finally burned through his brain. See, they do it upside down, so the man can continue screaming the whole time, right up until it finally cooks the part of his brain that controls that particular function. And of course, there were cameras there for the whole thing. If you wish to see the video, go to Blink and search for the name Marvin Hammett.”

“Jesus.”

“
That
is the reaction they seek. One you feel in your gut more than your brain. So now we apply that to your situation. There was a highly publicized chase to find Arthur Livingston's daughter. Molech's man won. All of the cameras were there to see it. Then, with everyone watching, well…”

Budd said, “You couldn't have known this, but in this part of the world it's considered a grave insult to set a man's pecker on fire.”

Armando said, “You made him look weak, in front of the whole world. So. You tell me, Zoey. Do you think Molech can let that slide, even if you gave him
everything
?”

“Even though it wasn't my fault? Even though he caused the whole thing?”

“It is not about fairness. It is about building a brand.” Armando looked back at the group and asked, “Do any of you disagree with anything I said?”

Will said, “If she stays here and keeps the inheritance, then she'll be a high-profile target with ten figures in assets for an aspiring kidnapper to ransom. If she goes on the run and leaves everything behind, makes it clear there is no financial gain to be had from going after her, then maybe she has a fighting chance.”

The impact of what they were saying finally hit Zoey, all at once. She bent over, and tried to breathe.

“I think I'm going to be sick.”

She was, quite simply, going to die. She would probably not see Christmas. She would likely never see her mother again. Stench Machine would get stuck with some owner who probably didn't understand him. Or he'd wind up getting euthanized in a shelter.

Armando put a hand on her shoulder and said, “Come on, let's get you out of here.”

She shook off his hand.

“Just … let me summarize. One of you says I'm dead if I stay and the other says I'm dead if I go, but reading between the lines, it's pretty obvious that I'm dead
no matter what I do.
You people—you've given me a terminal diagnosis with like two days to live, and you're all just so
casual
about it. Because apparently in this awful town, this sort of thing just happens all the time? Is that how it is? Girls come here and just get chewed up and spat out as part of this dick-swinging game you rich gangsters play with each other?”

She was drawing attention now. People from the crowd were actually giving up their place in line to come see the drama with the rich folks in the parking lot. A teenage girl with a shaved head shouted something about her mother.

Zoey met Will's eyes and said, “You just look
annoyed
by this, you know that? Like I've messed up your weekend plans. I'm imagining you in that room, with the stupid buffalo head on the wall, with all of your other suit buddies, saying ‘Sorry we had to reschedule the golf game, this thing happened last week, my boss died and his daughter came into town and inconvenienced everybody, but that's okay because yesterday she was dragged screaming from her bed and gutted like fish while millions of people cheered on the Blink feed. So it's all better now, guys, that little glitch, that little bump in the road is gone forever, and now the
men
can get back to work.'”

Zoey found a wadded-up tissue in the pocket of her cardigan and tried to dry her eyes and wipe the running mascara.

From behind her, Armando said, “Zoey, whatever decision you make, stay or go, you must factor in one thing. You are not going to be hurt as long as I am on the payroll. Period.”

Armando glanced back at the crowd. Many of them were recording the scene with their phones—if they hadn't known who Zoey was when they pulled up, they certainly knew now.

He said, “Come on. We should go.”

Zoey stared at the crowd. A little girl was sitting cross-legged at the base of one of the concrete columns, trying to pick through the vegetable stew for the parts she liked. Her older brother was standing over her, he had discarded the bread from his sandwich and rolled the cheese and meat into a tube he was trying to play like a horn.

Zoey turned and found Echo, who was already heading back to Will's fancy sports car, eager to get away from a situation that was about to turn ugly.

“Hey, Echo. How many pizzas would it take to feed the building?”

She stopped. “How many what?”

“Pizzas. It's Pizza Day in Squatterville. You want to come back to work for me? Well, this is your first job. Call Boselli's, and order enough pizzas to feed everybody here. And get me a Meatocalypse.”

Echo scrunched her brow. “I'm not totally clear as to whether that second part is a separate request or if it's elaborating on the first. And there are over two thousand people in that building, you'd need seven hundred pizzas. That restaurant would need a week to—”

“Then you'll need to call multiple places, won't you? Figure it out.”

Will said, “That's a nice gesture, but what those people need isn't pizza. They need real housing, and heat, and running water. And diapers, and doctors, and daycare. And job training. And those kids need to be in school.”

Zoey nodded. “Right, right. Echo, are you writing all that down?”

Echo asked, “Are you serious or are you being sarcastic? I honestly can't tell.”

“Dead serious.”

“And do you have any concept of what that will cost?”

“Will it cost
less than a billion dollars
? Just do what you can and let me know if we run out of money.”

Andre said, “Zoey, I think what those people need most of all is some condoms and a time machine.”

Zoey said, “Congratulations, you're now partnering with Echo on the Squatterville charity.”

Zoey rounded the sedan and opened the passenger door. A huge man approached from the crowd—the tattoo-headed guy, the one who had taken Will's wallet. The man had an expression of one headed for the guillotine. He held out the wallet to Will.

“Mr. Blackwater, I am—If I'd had any idea it was you, I'd have never have—”

“I know.”

“You should have said somethin'. I thought you were one of them lawyers that are always comin' by. I would've never—”

“I know. Forget about it.”

“Mr. Blackwater … I got a wife and two kids up there. And I don't know what they'd do if—”

“You're fine. Walk away.”

Will headed back to his car, the man stood frozen, watching him go.

Zoey closed her door but by the time Armando started the sedan, the dam had broken on the crowd, as if seeing the bald guy approach one of the Suits had breached some invisible barrier that gave permission to the rest. They spilled out around the cars, led by a few instigators who were shouting and laughing, too drunk for a Friday afternoon. Armando rolled the sedan forward, then stopped, finding his path blocked.

Zoey asked, “What are they saying?”

“I'm going to take a wild guess and say they're asking for money.”

“No. Listen.”

They were chanting something. Zoey cracked a window, and heard dozens of people in the crowd shouting the same phrase, over and over:

“Say hi to your mom.”

They were intentionally blocking the car now, hands on the hood, chanting at the windshield. Chanting at Zoey.