Blackjack Dead or Alive (The Blackjack Series Book 3) (41 page)

Ruby stood out of arm’s reach, studying me as if I were an unruly pet, fists shot into her waist, her face twisted and wrung with anger.

“That’s right, I’m talking to you, ya daft prick,” she said.

“How about you take it easy,” I said, my eyes drifting to the vitals board behind her, but unable to focus on anything but her angry eyes.

“How about you go and fuck yourself, and your fucking buddy boy that’s got me waking at six in the morning to give you messages,” she said. “And this morning most of all. Council’s meeting in an hour and I was hoping to get a little catnap before. Now I don’t even have time to get dressed properly.”

I could only stare at her, agog at the aggrieved rage she had mustered. I wanted to ask about the council and why she needed to change into something beyond the costume she was already wearing, but it was all my addled mind could do to translate her East End London Cockney into something approaching the English language.

“Are ya daft or something, mate? I’m talking to you.”

I ran a hand over my scalp, loose skin coming away in strips, the prickly growth of stubble pushing from underneath it. The same was happening on my arms and chest, and though it didn’t itch, it did annoy me enough that I was tempted to shave it. I wrung my hands together, digging the nails roughly into the palms. They were made from the same keratin as my hair, yet never burnt off.

“Water,” I said, reaching over for the glass on the nightstand next to my bed. I almost knocked the thing over, splashing water about, and she reached in and grabbed it.

“Start from the beginning, honey,” I said, after draining the glass. “And try to speak English.”

She shook her head in disbelief, “You’ve got a lot of balls, you know that?”

“Itchy balls,” I corrected, throwing the sheets aside and scratching them. The growing hairs were causing havoc down in my crotch.

“It’s a fucking wonder of God and science that she sees anything in you,” Ruby said, crossing her arms and looking down at me.

I spilled the last few drops of water from the glass down my throat and looked around the room for more to spare me from a parched throat.

“Well, I’m not your bloody secretary, know what I mean? Tell all your little friends.”

I stood, naked, and walked across the room to a jug of water, filling my glass and drinking it.

“Seriously, woman,” I said. “You-“

“Holy shit,” she said.

“Now you see what she sees in me,” I said, laying it thick.

“How’re you…” she paused, realizing what I had meant, then scoffed, “You’re too impressed with yourself, you know that? I’m not talking about your wanker, you wanker. I’m amazed you can even stand.”

I drank more water as Apogee entered the room in a rush. She was dressed in yoga pants and a t-shirt tied back at the midriff, her hair in a messy ponytail, worry painted deep on her face. She took one look at me and calmed down.

“Oh, I’m sorry, Apogee, I didn’t realize-“

“It’s okay. I just had the alarm go off. His vitals kind of spiked – what the fuck are you doing walking around naked?”

“Thirsty.”

“He had some message come into the tower,” Ruby said, still apologizing to Apogee who grabbed a hospital robe.

I waved her off, “I’m alright.”

“No, dammit,” she said, looking over at Ruby. “Get decent.”

“Decent, she says,” Ruby said.

I took the robe and drank some more.

“You were talking about some message,” Apogee said, snatching the robe and forcing me into it like a small child.

“I don’t like being manhandled,” I complained.

“Some bastard’s been through the phone boards, and to every damned department in the tower – calling for hours, it seems, for stupid here.”

Apogee looked at me.

“Fellow’s name wouldn’t happen to be Bubu?”

“Persistent little fucker, he is,” she said. “Must’ve called every available number, until they passed him on to me. Do you know what time it is?”

I finished getting into the robe and Apogee secured it with a tight knot.

“I’m sorry if he woke you, Ruby,” I said. “But it sounds like it’s an important message.”

“It damned well better be. He said, ‘tell the bro – check his email right now,’ and now I’ve done it. Good night to both of you.”

She paused as she regarded both Apogee and I, shaking her head, “Must be the sense of humor or something?”

Apogee laughed, “Night, hon, and thanks.”

“I need a computer,” I told Apogee and she turned to one of the solid-light walls, reconfiguring it, a monitor and keyboard popping into existence within easy reach. I went to our private email server, logged in and saw I had fifty-nine thousand emails waiting for me.

“Jesus,” Apogee said, as I scrolled through. Most of the emails were random fan mail, or junk offers for penile enlargement. Bubu had attached this email to the social media accounts and somehow it had gotten out.

I opened one at random. It had an attachment, and the title, “WE WANT TO FUXX YOU!!!!!!!” and inside was an image of a girl – a nice looking blonde who was a bit too tanned and had huge fake boobs, along with her friend who looked like a photocopy. They were naked, sticking dildos into each other. It was the most interesting selfie I had ever seen.

“Classy,” Apogee said.

“Flexible,” I added.

“You want to look for Bubu’s message now?”

I giggled at her squeamishness, “What’s with you, anyway?” I gestured to the robe. “It’s not like Ruby’s never seen – “

“This,” Apogee said waving her hand over my whole body, “belongs to me. Get it?”

“A little jealous, huh?”

“A lot,” she said, shoving past me and taking over the keyboard – she was keyed into Superdynamic’s system where I, as a visitor, wasn’t. The wall reconstituted itself, shifting the keyboard in front of her.

“First we delete the twin bitches,” she said, erasing the message.

“I don’t know,” I said. “Girls like that are persistent.”

The look she shot at me would have curdled the blood of a lesser man.

“I’m kidding!”

Her lips pressed into a humorless line but she turned back to the console, fast-forwarding until she saw Bubu’s most recent message. It read, simply “Watch this video” with a link to a private YouTube account. I didn’t need to be fully awake and healed to recall the username, and who it belonged to – Brutal.

There were only two videos on the account – the first of which I had already seen.

“Open the second one,” I told Apogee and she double clicked on the link.

Brutal filled the frame, the setting exactly the same as the previous message. He was sipping at a drink. The bar’s dark ambiance cast him half in shadow, over his shoulder, people danced to the sound of electronic dance music. It was loud enough to give the impression that Brutal was part of the festivities, though it was obvious he was in an area cordoned off from the rest.

“Are we ready?” he said, and put down his drink. Apogee gave me a severe look, almost as if expecting some sort of hidden betrayal.

Brutal sat back on the couch and took a deep breath before smiling.

“Hi,” he said, pausing then growing suddenly concerned. “I understand what happened,” he went on. “When those guys attacked us, I thought they were with you. I mean, you’re the one that likes to keep the company of others, no?”

Apogee scoffed, “Fucking psycho.”

“Anyway, I’m sorry,” Brutal said. “I’m sorry for my reaction to all of it, I’m sorry for thinking you were involved – though you have to admit, the whole having a double running around mucking things up has to be pretty fun, right? I mean no greater form of flattery.”

He paused, eyeing the drink, “Though I guess this one’s trying to kill you, so maybe not so much.”

Brutal was tense, more serious than he had been before – almost as if he was somehow embarrassed. Well, no apology was going to erase the deaths of thousands, maybe tens of thousands.

“So I hope we have that settled,” he said. “And I hope you understand what I had to go through to get your attention – so we could even have our meeting. I went through a lot of trouble, you know? Doing this kind of thing-” he gestured at the camera, “requires people with expertise in things I know nothing of. And you can imagine that it’s hard for me to find people who want to work with me.”

“Throw one little tantrum and the whole world freaks out,” he giggled, finally succumbing and taking a long sip.

“One little tantrum, he says,” Apogee said. “Wait until you have my hands around your throat and-“

“Apogee,” I stopped her. “He can’t hear you.”

She was about to snap at me, when Brutal started again.

“They didn’t freak out enough to put me back on top of the list, though,” Brutal said. “Somehow you’re still on top. Can you believe that?”

“Now maybe you understand,” he said. “I kill all those people, and they don’t care one bit. You kill one guy and you’re on everyone’s hit list. Pity Senator Asshole doesn’t have any more kids.”

“Crazy sonofabitch wants to be number one on the list,” Apogee said, bewildered that Brutal could be motivated by something so banal.

I shook my head, holding my tongue, waiting for the video to finish.

“It’s all a sham, you know,” he said. “It’s a sick joke. Like Tennyson said, ‘Though much is taken, much abides; and though we are not now that strength which in old days moved earth and heaven; that which we are, we are.’”

He smiled, satisfied.

“You get it, don’t you?” Brutal said. “You of all people get it.”

Pausing the video, Apogee said, “I was a basketball player in college. Can you explain this shit to me like I’m five years old?”

“It’s from Ulysses,” I said. “He refuses to see himself as a victim. Instead, he’s saying the only way to respond to the irony is with one thing: an unbreakable will.”

She shook her head, not following.

“According to him, there are worse people than him out there, worse than me, but they are fixated with making us pay. He sees it as an inequity of reputation. He means to do us both a favor and kill Ashbourne.”

Apogee regarded me for some time before turning back to the video and letting it play.

“Without us to fear,” Brutal went on. “People might actually start worrying about their pathetic lives, and how hard the man is screwing them in the arse.”

He paused for a breath, his dark eyes wide.

“Don’t you see? It’s always been that way. We were too powerful to contain, too strong to keep bottled up. Some of us were actually saying things that might damage their status quo. So we had to be put away. They had to get rid of us at any cost.”

“Then there was the Soviet menace of the late sixties and seventies. They didn’t care about us that much then, did they? Well, except when your buddy Retcon stole the Soviet’s missiles. They turned on Retcon, Blackjack – can you believe that? Without the scary red threat, we couldn’t spend a five hundred quid on a bloody hammer could we?”

Brutal drained his drink and waved to an off-camera waitress but wasn’t able to get her attention. Instead, he put his glass down on the table, sighing in defeat.

“I know, I’m insane,” he said, full of giggles. “But you know what I’m saying is true. After the Soviet Union went down, we cultivated the enemy of terrorism, didn’t we? Did you know your government’s CIA were helping and training the same guy that brought down the towers? Same with Saddam Hussein – that guy was our ally until we needed a villain.”

“Now it’s you, Blackjack,” he said. “Because you’re easier to control. Why do you think they let you keep the pretty girl, huh? So they can manipulate you, and now that’s how they’ll control you, with your cock, mate. Well, I’ve had enough of it.”

The waitress passed by behind him and he saw her too late, shrugging at the lost opportunity to get a fresh drink.

“I wanted you with me,” he said. “You of all people understand how fucked up everything is, and how there’s only one answer to the madness.”

He stared into the camera, nodding finally.

“I’ll see you around,” he said and the shot faded to black.

Apogee and I stared at the dark screen for a moment, both lost in thought. I wondered if she was worried about me, worried if I was tempted by Brutal somehow. As if following that psycho was even an option just because things weren’t fair. Despite all the years and all of his experiences, it was impressive how much of a petulant child he was – and it broke my heart to think of myself in the same sorry state, during my romp in Australia. I guess it was easier to blame others for one’s mistakes and shortcomings.

“Today is June 15th, right” I said.

Apogee nodded.

“Let me get that,” I gestured to the computer. I wasn’t linked to the system, so I had to use the keyboard. It took a quick web search for me to find the right Wiki page.

“Search: “Dartmouth Incident”

It came up, detailing the accident that led to the Original Seven traveling across time and space to a Bok globule, where they met the Lightbringers. On their return, they had powers like the ones that Apogee and I have. Today was the sixtieth anniversary of the day that altered humanity forever.