Futuristic Violence and Fancy Suits (41 page)

“Have you ever dealt with the Mormons, Zoey?”

She sighed in exasperation. “Anyway. Thank you. For coming back for me. That's what I'm trying to say.”

He shrugged. “It was Echo's idea.”

“Stop it.

They waited in awkward silence for a moment, then Zoey said, “So … what happens to you guys? After I'm gone?”

“What does it matter?”

Wu walked up and asked if she was ready to go. Zoey turned to Will and stuck out her hand, offering to shake. He didn't raise his in return.

She said, “Come on. There's no reason to be a dick now. I'm leaving. You're getting what you wanted.”

He looked at her, finally shaking her hand, his eyes never leaving hers. He worked his jaw, something grinding away inside his brain. The last time she had seen that expression, a game-show contestant was trying to work out a puzzle clue with the clock ticking down.

Will lowered his hand, seemed to consider for a moment longer, then reached into his pocket.

“There is one last piece of business, I suppose.” From his pocket, Will produced the lucky coin. “This trick is really three tricks, done in succession. The first trick has five steps. If you mess any one of them up, it's over, you understand?”

“I … am totally okay with forgoing the coin trick provision of Arthur's will. I was just joking about that before.”

“This was his final wish. At least let me have the peace of knowing I showed it to you once.”

She shrugged. “It's … whatever. Okay.”

“All magic is just misdirection. The mark's eyes will be focused on the hand that appears to snatch the coin, while the coin is secretly stashed in the other. So to start, we're going to do what magicians call a French Drop. You hold the coin like this, so your audience can see it, between thumb and forefinger. Don't start the next part until their eyes are focused on the coin. Now, step one—and I'm going to do it real slow, so you can watch it—is you appear to be closing the coin in your other palm, but instead you're going to drop the coin out of sight, and squeeze it between your knuckles and palm. But you can't close your hand, or else that gives it away—you have to let the coin hand fall to your side, like it's not involved in the trick anymore. That's what sells it. Like this. You see?”

He waited, demanding an answer.

Impatiently, Zoey said, “Yes, I see.”

“If that coin falls out of your hand, the trick is ruined. Now, what you have to do next—and this is the key to the whole trick, so listen carefully—is to take that coin and practice the French Drop over and over and over. And over, and over. Thousands and thousands of times, over hours and hours and weeks and months. Just sitting at home, dropping and catching, a little bit faster with each week and month that goes by, hearing the coin hit the floor, again and again. The improvement will be so incremental that you won't feel like you're accomplishing anything. But you'll keep doing it. And while your friends are all out drinking, or playing video games, or doing whatever you people do for fun these days, you'll be at home, practicing that coin trick. Over and over. In silence. Until one day, months or years from now, you'll be able to do that move so fast that the eye can't perceive it, even if the mark is looking right at your hand. The coin will never hit the floor. Then, after you've mastered that step, you'll be ready for step two, the Back Palm. Now—”

“No, that's enough. It already sounds awful.”

“And that,” said Will, “is what Arthur wanted me to show you.”

“That your cool magic trick is really just a bunch of tedious repetition?”

“
Yes
. That, right there, is the difference between the heroes and the nobodies. The difference between people like you and people like me. People like me know that there is no magic. There is only the grind. Work looks like magic to those unwilling to do it.”

He slipped the coin in his pocket and tugged down his sleeves.

“I get it, I'm lazy, I'm stupid, I'm—”

“You didn't hear a goddamned word I said. You say you're not a hero? Well, I'm going to tell you the best and the worst thing you've ever heard. Heroes aren't born. You just go out there and
grind it out
. You fail and you look foolish and you just keep grinding. There is nothing else. There is no ‘chosen one,' there is no destiny, nobody wakes up one day and finds out they're amazing at something. There's just slamming your head into the wall, refusing to take no for an answer. Being relentless, until either the wall or your head breaks. You want to be a hero? You don't have to make some grand decision. There's no inspirational music, there's no montage. You just
don't quit.
”

“What, like Armando? Charging in and winding up with his blood splattered all over the floor?”

“
Yes
. You take risks. You
get hurt.
And you put your head down and plow forward anyway and if you die, you die. That's the game. But don't tell me you're not a hero. You walk away, you're choosing to walk away. Whatever bad things happens as a result, you're choosing to let them happen. You can lie to yourself, say that you never had a choice, that you weren't cut out for this. But deep down you'll know. You'll know that humans aren't cut out for
anything.
We cut ourselves out. Slowly, with a rusty knife. Because otherwise, here's what's going to happen: you're going to die and you're going to stand at the gates of judgment and you're going to ask God what was the meaning of it all, and God will say, ‘I created the universe, you little shit. It was up to
you
to give it meaning.'”

“You really think God uses that kind of language?”

“
Yes
.”

“So was that little speech for me? Or you?”

“I
don't know
. Goddamnit.”

“I don't get you. I'm giving you what you wanted from the beginning. Just let me go.”

“You're giving me what
I
wanted. You're not giving Arthur what
he
wanted. He wanted you to have this. I don't know why. I'll never know why. But damn it, he was like a father to me and now the same deranged fool who took his life gets to piss all over his final wish?”

“So what, you're telling me to stay?”

“I can't tell you to do anything. But if it matters, I think Arthur would want you to stay, and see this through.”

“To do what? Kill Molech?”

“No, that's what he's expecting. That's what he wants.”

“He
wants us to kill him
?”

“He wants us to
try
. No, what we need to do is much, much harder.”

Zoey met Will's eyes.

“Here. We'll let my cat decide. I'm going to put him down. If he walks toward the car, I go. If he heads back toward the elevator, I stay.”

She set Stench Machine on the floor. He flopped down onto the concrete and started licking himself.

After another long awkward silence in which all three of them watched the white cat noisily lick his own crotch, Will said, “Well, I assume you're not going to do
that.
”

“If I could do that, I'd have been famous long before all this started.”

Will's phone rang. It was Andre.

“Get up to the salon. Molech's about to make another announcement.”

Will said, “We're on our way.” He strode off toward the elevator and, after a moment, Zoey followed.

 

FORTY-FIVE

The Suits were gathered under the buffalo head, watching two feeds on a split screen—one was black with the words “
AWAITING MOLECH
” in stark white letters, the placeholder for the Molech announcement that was to start at any moment. The other was drone video of the massive crowds gathering downtown, in the aftermath of the tower collapse. Zoey noted a half dozen street vendors and food trucks had rolled up to serve snacks to the onlookers. At that moment, the synchronized skyline feed switched away from the ad it had been playing (for the film
James Bond Infiltrates a Space Station Full of Ninjas and Has Sex with Four Women
) and replaced it with a single gigantic face, looming over the city.

Molech's face was bathed in a menacing shadow. When he spoke, his voice was modulated to sound like a god calling down from the heavens, the bass vibrating the streets below. The crowd went nuts, reacting like it was a concert and the headliner had just taken the stage.

“My name is Molech,” boomed the voice. “I am a man the likes of which you have never seen before. You could say that, in fact, I am no longer a man, but something more. I mean, am still a man, in terms of gender, that's not what I meant when I said I wasn't a man. I'm
all
man. More man than you can possibly comprehend. I am well endowed. I am male on a level that you … just won't even believe it when you see it.”

Molech paused and glanced off to the right, as if someone off-screen was reminding him of something.

“Right. As you saw, I destroyed Livingston Tower, with the power from my right hand. And this is just a small preview of what is coming, as I reveal my true strength to this city, and to the world. The dirty money that built Livingston's skyscrapers and slums is collected by scheming men who hide behind gated walls and grow fat on your paychecks. Men with false power, built on weasel lies buried in fine print. Well, for them the sun has set, and now the long night has begun. And thus, their reckoning comes at noon on December 21, the day before the longest night of the year.

“In forty-eight hours I will reach out with my mighty hand and destroy seven targets, seven symbols of the false powers in this city, to demonstrate
real
power, in full view of Tabula Rasa and all of mankind. The false powers are guns, money, and superstition—the smoke and mirrors that keeps beta cowards in mansions and limousines. So first will be the home office of the Tabula Rasa Security Co-Op—big, bad guns hired by fat cats, as if they deserve police but we don't. Then, in no particular order I'm going to smash the Tabula Rasa mosque, and the Catholic church the next block over, so you can watch as neither of your gods strike me with lightning even while I take a messy burrito shit on the smoking ruins of your precious faith. Then I'm going to execute a foreclosure of the Bank One tower. And guess what—you rebuild it, I'm just gonna knock it down again.

“There'll be a couple of surprises thrown in, before my tour of destruction will culminate with the estate of Arthur Livingston, which I will reduce to rubble while on the spikes of the front gate I will impale the bodies of his piglet daughter and shitwind crew, who've controlled this city behind the scenes since before it was a city. You have forty-eight hours. To do what, you ask? Nothing. I am making no demands, I will carry out my attack regardless of what action you take. See you then.”

Molech stared in silence from across the skyline, then turned and said, “Did you cut the feed? The light is still on. No. Push the—”

Molech disappeared from the buildings, and across every surface the feed was replaced by a countdown, in digits thirty stories high.

Zoey said, “I don't get it. What does he gain by warning everybody? Why not just start blowing stuff up?”

Will said, “Back up, and walk through it. What do all of his targets have in common?”

“They're all, uh, prominent?”

“And?”

“And … their owners aren't gonna sit back and let him do it. They're going to stand up to him.”

“More than you know—he's going after Co-Op's main office—that place is a fortress, and they have some military-grade hardware they can put on the street. But—”

“That's what he wants,” finished Zoey. “To be caught on camera ripping through tanks with his bare hands, to make a demonstration. So he gives everybody plenty of notice so they can all tune in to see it. Gotcha.”

Budd said, “Then he'll sit back and wait for the bids to come rollin' in. Just a big, ol' infomercial, for his new product line.”

Andre said, “Plus he's going to blow up this house, so there's that. Somebody should probably tell Carlton.”

Echo said, “The Co-Op isn't going to sit back and wait for him to come to their door. The Fire Palace will be riddled with bullets by morning, it's not like that place is a secret any longer.”

Will said, “You think Molech doesn't know that? That's not going to go well.”

Zoey said, “Well, what's
our
plan? Because I was about to suggest paying somebody to go level those buildings myself.”

Will said, “First, we need to assess what we have to work with. We need to go through the coin, and figure out exactly what we have there.”

Andre said, “And by ‘we,' he means Echo will go through it while the rest of us stay far out of her way, occasionally muttering words of encouragement and giving her shoulder rubs.”

Zoey said, “What difference does the coin make now? None of us have the implants, what good is the software to us?” She looked at Will and said, “Wait, you don't have the implants, do you?”

“No.”

“Like you didn't get some augmentation that lets you metabolize alcohol faster?”

Echo said, “The gold drivers are just a small fraction of the data on the coin—the rest is schematics for the devices themselves. There are two petabytes of files on there—fabricator instructions for implants, prototypes, and all sorts of other gear we can't even identify because most of it isn't in any kind of human language.”

“But what good does
that
do us, considering the workshop where this stuff got built is now a giant black crater?”

Will had nodded and said, “Exactly. Budd?”