Remote (21 page)

“Yeah, and I could almost buy it.  Guys do stupid things for sex, you don’t have to tell me.  But here’s the thing: what if we got lucky?  What if the decoy we grabbed for our cover turned out to be the real thing?”

He stared at her, his mouth open.  “You—you think
I’m
—no!  No way!  I’m not, I swear!”

“Well, there’s really only one way to know for sure—but lucky for you, my partner isn’t here.”  Nikki’s finger stroked the trigger.  “So I’m gonna do something incredibly risky.  I’m gonna give you a rain check.”

“A—what?”

“A temporary pass.  Because if you
are
the guy we’re after, you’re either gonna run, go right back to work, or lay low.  If you run, we’ll know it was you and we’ll hunt you down.  If another working girl turns up dead, we know who you are and where you live . . . and believe me, you do
not
want us paying you a visit.  My partner is—well, let’s just say I’m the nice one.

“If, on the other hand, you decide to lay low, then the sudden lack of homicides is gonna tip us off, too.  Which means either you get nervous and run—see option one—or we pay you a visit; see option two.”

“So the only way I don’t look guilty is if another prostitute dies and I happen to have an alibi—but not one that involves leaving town.”

She nodded.  “Pretty much.  And even so, we’re
still
gonna have to verify any alibi you give us.  I know it sounds like a shit deal, but it’s the only one on the table.”

“So you’re—letting me go?”

“Hang on, we’re not finished yet.”  She got up, holding the gun at her side, never taking her eyes off him.  She dug in her overnight bag, pulled out a manila envelope, handed it to him.  “Open it.  Take a look at the contents.”

He did.  The envelope contained a number of photographs, home-printed on cheap paper.  The blood drained from Parkins face as he leafed through them.  “These are—these are horrible.”

“Consider this my partner’s resume.  This is what’s waiting for you if you aren’t who you say you are.  That, and a shallow grave.”

He looked up from the photos, his hands trembling.  “Oh, God.  Oh Jesus.”

“Yeah, I’m gonna let you go.  But I’ve got two pieces of advice for you before I do.”  For the first time, she raised the gun and pointed it at him.  Her hands didn’t shake at all.  “If you’re just some poor schmuck who got caught up in something bad?  Go home, lie through your teeth, and try to spend a lot of time in public places with plenty of witnesses until we contact you.  And if you’re not?”

Nikki met his eyes, let him stare into their blank coldness for a long moment before speaking.  “Then I’d advise you to go home and blow your brains out.  You’d be doing yourself a big, big favor.”

***

 “You and I want the same thing,” said Remote.  “Only our methods differ.  I’m willing to compromise.  Are you?”

“You’ve already made that offer,” Jack said.  “I thought breaking into your home and taking you prisoner made my response very clear.”

“I don’t give up that easily, Mr. Closer.  We have that in common, among other things.  Or am I wrong?  Do you actually enjoy what you do, despite what you claim?  Do you care more for the process than the outcome?”

“I told you.  I do what I do out of necessity.”

Jack turned away from his captive, back to the monitors in front of him.  The room seemed uncomfortably warm; he could feel sweat trickling down his torso inside the borrowed sweatshirt, stinging where it intersected a cut. 

“If that’s true, then you should be interested in what I’m proposing.  Or is revenge for the fallen more important than saving the lives of the innocent?”

“If all I wanted was revenge, I’d have killed you already.”

“But you haven’t.  You can’t, because that will condemn innocent victims to an undeserving death.  You need to know what
I
know, but your usual methods are worthless; your only recourse at this point is to agree to whatever I say, then betray me when you have what you need.  Yes?”

Jack sighed.  “Now, how are we ever going to be partners if that’s the kind of attitude you’re going to have?”

“Just laying my cards on the table, Mr. Closer.  I believe this is the point in the negotiations where you either make a counter-offer or leave the table.  Of course, you can’t go very far . . .”

Jack stared at the monitor in front of him, thinking.  Given enough time, he was sure he could break out of Remote’s fortress, find his way back to Nikki—but then all this would have been for nothing.  And Remote’s next victims were running out of time.

“You’re convinced I’m going to betray you,” said Jack, swiveling the chair to face Remote. “I’m convinced you’re a sociopath, which more or less
defines
the term untrustworthy.  Any transaction between us is going to have to be based on mutual interest and pragmatism.  Agreed?”

Remote smiled, but it was a subtler expression than before.  “Agreed.”

“My priority is stopping your current project.  Once I do, you lose all bargaining power.  How do propose we resolve this?”

“A temporary suspension.  The failsafe code has to be transmitted every three hours to block the prearranged instructions from being sent to my drone.  The code changes every time.  I’ll give you the first one.”

“And in return?”

“Tell me your name.”

Jack blinked.

“Just your first name.  Feel free to lie.  I just want something else to call you rather than
Mister
--partners should be on a first-name basis, don’t you think?”

Jack stared at him for a long moment.

“Jack,” he said at last.  “My name is Jack.”

***

Goliath heard Nikki and Parkins’ conversation.

He hadn’t slept well.  His eye ached and his head was still buzzing, his thoughts slamming around in his head the same way he’d bounced off the metal walls of the trailer.  It had taken all his willpower to not just rip the sink out of the wall and throw it through the closed bathroom door.

But he hadn’t, and eventually sank into a confused kind of stupor, stumbling in and out of dreams like a drunken ghost.  The woman holding him hostage was there too, but she didn’t have a gun anymore; instead, razor-sharp, serrated blades jutted from her too-long forearms and her triangular skull had huge, cartoony eyes and a tiny, red-lipped mouth—an insectoid slasher by way of Disney.  She glared at him from the bathroom doorway, waving arms that bent the wrong way at the elbows. 

I’m going to rip your soul out and eat it,
she hissed. 
You’re no Godfucker.  You couldn’t even fuck ME!
  And then she’d laughed while he glowered at her from the floor, laughed and taunted him with her naked body.  Long, feathery antennae twitched at the end of her nipples.

Things had gotten hazy right about there.   The next time he heard her voice she was talking to someone else—her other prisoner, he guessed.  Was she making some kind of deal with him?

She must have, because now she was letting him go.  Not only that, she was giving him money to catch a Greyhound, too. 
What the fuck?

He was still groggy, and the door blocked some of their low voices.  But he still got the general idea of the conversation: she was releasing the guy, and if he screwed up she and her partner would come after him.  There was something about an envelope, and a shocked, horrified reaction from the man right afterward.  Threats or blackmail, Goliath wasn’t sure which.  But the woman and her partner were after someone, that much was clear, and the guy she was letting go wasn’t that someone. 

Was Goliath?

He couldn’t tell.  The door blocked enough of the voices to turn whole sentences into random muttering—but they didn’t
stay
random was the strange thing; his brain resolved them into words an instant after he heard them, like some kind of internal echo off the walls of his skull.  He heard
Godfucker
more than once, and
there will be a great flame
, and
the testing of the giant.

He wasn’t stupid.  He understood what was going on.

There was more than one candidate for Godfucker, of course.  What was the point in testing someone unless you already had a replacement lined up in case of failure?  That made perfect sense to Goliath; he’d never had anything just handed to him, he’d always had to fight and cheat and steal to get what he wanted.  That was just how things were, how the universe worked.  For the weak, rules existed to keep them in line; for the strong, they were something to break, a way to
prove
how strong you were.  It was that simple. 

The woman must be a Mantis High Priestess, one of the ruling class that made the rules.

 Goliath had to break
her
.

But not right away.  No, if you wanted to destroy something—really, completely break it down—you didn’t just mindlessly smash it.  You took your time, you studied it, you found its weak points. 

Then
you went apeshit.

He didn’t know who the other guy was, or why the Priestess had let him go instead of just obliterating him.  He suspected it was a lie he was meant to overhear, so he’d think that his own failure would mean release.  Goliath wasn’t fooled.

But he could play their game.  Right up until the moment it was time to stop playing and show them who they were dealing with.

C
HAPTER
E
IGHTEEN

Remote gave him the code.  Jack entered it, and hoped Remote was telling the truth—that the code was preventing a message from being sent and not sending a message of its own.  He had no way to know for sure.

“We’ve got three hours until the next one, Jack,” said Remote.  “What do you suggest we do to pass the time?”

“I’ll get you some food, let you use the bathroom.”

“Excellent idea.  I should tell you that I relieve myself on a very strict schedule; otherwise, I risk a burst bladder or even kidney failure.”

“You can’t even feel when you have to—“

“No, Jack, I can’t.  Even the smallest discomfort is beyond my capabilities.  I’m used to it, though—I’ve been following the same routine since I was a small child.  You could set your watch by me.”

The only thing approximating a sharp blade Jack had been able to find was a pair of children’s safety scissors.  He used them to snip through the plastic zipties binding Remote to his chair—he’d found more in the storeroom to replace them.  He kept a firm grip on the shotgun. 

Remote stood up slowly as soon as he was free, and waited until Jack motioned him forward.  He used the bathroom, then returned to the chair without complaining.  Jack used new zipties to secure him, but decided to not replace the gag while he prepared some food. 

“I’ll be right back.”  He crawled out beneath the electrified plate dangling in the hall, then stopped and waited once he was out of sight.  If Remote had some sort of voice protocol programmed into his equipment, Jack figured that now would be the time he’d activate it. Several minutes passed, but he heard nothing; eventually he gave up and went downstairs to get some food, rummaging in the fridge blocking the entryway first, then raiding the kitchen.  He made sandwiches out of the cold cuts, bread, and cheese he found and wolfed one down himself before returning—he didn’t know how long it had been since he’d eaten last, but he was starving.

He had to sever Remote’s bonds again to let him eat, but there were plenty of zipties left.  Jack sat twenty feet away in the rolling chair with the shotgun on the desk beside him as they both ate.

“I notice you haven’t asked my name in return,” Remote said. Jack noticed how carefully he chewed and swallowed before talking.  “I know why, too.  Dehumanization is an important part of the process—though it’s more important for the captor than the subject.  Certain acts must be impossible to perform without some emotional distance.”

“No offense,” said Jack around a mouthful of sandwich, “but I prefer not to talk shop during meals.”

Remote smiled, and went back to eating.

Jack finished first, washing the meal down with gulps of cold water from a plastic tumbler.  He didn’t think any food he’d ever had tasted so good. 

“So,” Jack said.  “Mr. Remote.  Depersonalization.  You would seem to be the expert on that.”

Remote swallowed before answering.  “Because of my methods, you mean?  Or my condition?”

“I mean the way you live.  You seem very isolated.”

Remote chuckled.  “Yes and no.  It’s true I have no immediate circle of friends, not in meatspace—but I have numerous contacts throughout the world, all via the Internet.  It may not seem like much of an existence to you, but I find it both stimulating and fulfilling.”

“Not fulfilling enough, though.”

“Ultimately, no.  I discovered I needed to accomplish something more than just writing videogame code—I had to do something with
meaning
, something with
purpose
.   I wanted to affect the world in a way that made a difference—a
positive
difference.  I can’t stress that last part enough.”

Jack nodded, his face carefully neutral.

“And it had to be something only I could do, something suited to my particular talents.  It was like I was a delicately crafted gear, and I had to find that perfect place in the mechanism, that perfect spot where I would mesh seamlessly and start something grand in motion.  It was
waiting
for me, I knew.  All I had to do was find that spot and lock into it.  Do you know that feeling?”

“Yes.”  Jack wouldn’t have described it in that way, but he’d experienced what Remote was talking about as an artist: of being connected to something greater than yourself, something that was working through you.  Of that sudden
click
when things just aligned.

“And I did, Jack.  I found it.  I found something that the world desperately needed to have done, that no one else could do.  I could
remove
people.  Eliminate them like erasing bad lines of code.”