Futuristic Violence and Fancy Suits (24 page)

“What I want don't matter, don't you see? I serve the juice. We all do, even if we try to deny it.”

“Are you trying to tell me you're high? Because that's never stopped me from negotiating before.”

“Nah, juice is a
natural
high, man. First time I felt it, I was out huntin' with my daddy. See, the way he hunted, you don't pack no food for the trip. You stay gone for a month, and the hunting grounds are a two-day hike from the car. You only eat what you kill, see, that's the idea. So my first time, we shot nothin' for three days. And we was starvin' at that point, I cried and begged, out there in the woods in Montana, just the two of us, beggin' him to take me home, to take me to McDonald's. I got so hungry I tried to catch and eat some crickets that had gotten into my tent. They got away and I just cried, like a little baby. Old man heard me and beat the piss outta me. Ha!

“And he sits me down and looks me in the eye and my old man told me how it was. Told me you got to let the hunger
drive
you, to motivate you. Next morning, I'm layin' in wait up in a tree and a big ol' wild boar comes gruntin' through the bush down below. The gun is shakin' in my hand, I know if I miss, that may be it for me, I might get too weak to hunt, might die out there in the woods, in the wet and the cold. But I shoot and the shot goes true and when that thing fell over, I felt it, man. I felt the
juice
. The adrenaline, the dopamine, all that pumpin' like fire through my veins and my brains and my balls. I had
won
. We built a fire and gutted and cooked that bastard and when my teeth sank into that tough, charred meat … mmmm. That was the first time I'd ever really eaten. The first time I was ever really alive. I was ten years old.”

Molech watched as the mechanical prosthetic flexed its fingers, mesmerized.

He continued, “My daddy told me what I was feelin'. He says, man evolved to have these juices that flow through your body to reward you for doin' somethin' good. All them hormones, the dopamine, the adrenaline—the
true
drugs. You get that high—the real high—when your body knows you did somethin' to advance survival, not just yours but the
species
, man. When you won a fight, or killed some food, or banged a chick. And he tells me how now all my friends are livin' off fake highs, smokin' meth or playin' video games or jerkin' it to porn—all these little tricks to try to trigger the juice without earning it. Fake sex, fake danger, fake victories. But if we're gonna survive, he says, we got to get back to the true juice. Get rid of all that other nonsense and live the way we was intended. Muscle. Blood. Sweat.”

There was a silence in the room that was broken by Molech snorting a sudden, crazy burst of laugher.

Arthur said calmly, “We're both businessmen, Molech.”

“You're a
business
man. I'm just a
man
.”

“All right, how about I put it like this—I'm a realist. I know what you're capable of and I know I don't have any choice but to cooperate. A man like me doesn't survive this long without knowing which way the wind is blowing.”

Molech tossed the mechanical arm from one hand to the other, grinning that stupid grin.

“Yeah, like one of them fat fish that sits on the bottom of the river and just waits for worms to float by, right? Just sittin' there and eatin' up everything that comes your way, gettin' fatter. But you know what I am? I'm a shark.”

Molech swung with his real hand, and connected with a blow that landed with a sickening crack of bone. Zoey jumped.

The camera's view spun and whirled, showing floor, and then ceiling.

Molech loomed over Arthur. “Nah. You know what, I thought of a better animal for you. You're a panda. You hear about that? The way they had 'em in zoos, tryin' to force 'em to hump because they wouldn't do it themselves. See, a long time ago, the pandas forgot they were bears. Stopped huntin', stopped fightin', started eatin' leaves instead of meat. They let the juice dry up and pretty soon, the pandas were all gone, too. If it was up to people like you, we humans would go the same way. Well, I've decided I'm gonna go ahead and save the world.”

Arthur gasped and tried to say, “Listen! Listen to me! It's not too late—”

Molech said, “Let's hope not.”

And then Molech struck again, and again, and again, each time with that horrible
crunch
of impact.

Then he grabbed the mechanical arm and reached down. There were wet, ripping noises.

Zoey yanked off the glasses. She stood up, tried to catch her breath, then ran into the bathroom and threw up.

 

TWENTY-TWO

Armando appeared in the door of the bathroom with his gun drawn, because in his world even a vomiting woman was apparently a problem that could be cured with a well-placed bullet. Zoey told him she was fine and he kind of awkwardly put his hand on her shoulder, as if he had seen somebody do it on TV once. Zoey shrugged him off, flushed, gathered herself and was about to speak when Carlton appeared in the doorway and asked if all was well.

Zoey hesitated. Molech flat out told Arthur he had a traitor on his team, and he apparently wasn't referring to Singh because Singh was already in multiple pieces when he said it. If he wasn't just playing mind games, then the traitor was someone close enough to know the secret codes or keys that would get him into a structure built like a nuclear bunker. Aside from the Suits, who else would have that kind of access? Could it be Carlton?

Zoey said, “I'm fine, can you give us a minute?”

Carlton left and Zoey told Armando, “I just watched a Blink of Arthur Livingston getting murdered by Molech with a disembodied mechanical arm after the latter stole a bunch of magic weapons from the former.”

Armando furrowed his brow as he tried to untangle this sentence.

“Oh. I'm … sorry…”

“No, it's fine. I mean, it was awful, but I saw Molech's face clearly.”

“Everybody has left, but we can call—”

“Wait, there's more. Before he killed him, Molech said there was a traitor on Arthur's team.”

“You think he was telling the truth, or just making a play?”

“I don't know. What do I do?”

“Call Will.”

“How do we know he's not the traitor?”

“We can't ever know anything for sure, but I'd say he's by far the least likely to betray Arthur and he definitely wouldn't do it on Molech's behalf. I don't know Will but I know enough about him to say that with some confidence.”

“Maybe Molech forced him. Threatened him into doing it.”

“Ha. You don't know Will.”

Zoey thought back to the beginning of the second video, Will escorting Arthur, seemingly in the dark. If he had known at the time what was about to happen, the man hid it well.

“What about the rest of them?”

Armando ran his hand through his hair, thinking. “All I know is what I pick up from the grapevine, you understand. So … Echo hasn't been here as long as the rest, so there is that to consider. But the thing with the Suits—you're better off assuming that everything they present to you is a mirror image of the truth. That's their game. If you want to know who to be afraid of, start with who seems to have worked hardest to earn your trust.”

“Well, that's definitely not Echo.” Zoey considered. “That first night, it was Andre who came and found me, to talk me down.”

“Knowing what little I know, Zoey, I would not … well, I was about to say I would not turn my back on him. But this is Tabula Rasa. You do not turn your back on anyone here.”

Zoey made a decision. Will arrived at the Casa ten minutes later.

They watched the glasses video together on the Mold Room's wall display. Zoey warned Will about the graphic nature of the ending, and offered to simply describe it to him, so he wouldn't have to watch his friend get gutted by a backward cap-wearing frat boy. But Will insisted on watching it, which didn't surprise her. Will showed no emotion, right up to and including the moment when Arthur met his gruesome end. He let the video play out, then replayed it, stopping it at various points as if to notice minute details he'd missed the last time around. After he watched the video six times, he paused it on a clear view of Molech's face, then got up to pour himself a drink.

Will muttered, “Just a kid. Looked like he had to skip a frat party to be there. After all that. All these years. Just some goddamned kid.”

“Did you recognize him?”

“No, but either Budd will know who he is, or we can run him through facial recognition. Either way we'll have his real name by morning.”

“The first time I watched it, I thought Molech kept saying he served ‘the Jews.'”

“So did I.”

“I bet his real name is Chad, he looks like one. Did you hear the part where Arthur asked him how he got into the building and he said—”

“That somebody on the team had betrayed him. Yes, I picked up on that, Zoey.”

“So who is it?”

Will thought for a moment and said, “Why were you so sure it wasn't me?”

“Armando. He said you had too much history with Arthur.”

“Did he tell you the story? Of how we met?”

“No.”

“Good.”

“So who is it?”

“Nobody in the inner circle. Not Carlton, either.”

“Are you sure? Maybe somebody else who worked for—”

“No. I will stake my life on it. I'm not using that as a figure of speech. I'm telling you I am literally going to stake my life on it tomorrow. If anyone was going behind our back, I'd know. End of discussion.”

“So these gadgets, this stuff that gives you murderous superpowers, Arthur is the one who unleashed it on the world.”

“It would appear so.”

“And you actually knew that this whole time, didn't you?”

Will set his glass on the conference table, then made like he was packing up to leave.

“Not the exact details, no. But enough to know whatever he was working on was dangerous in the wrong hands. Bodies started turning up, and it was clear Arthur was involved from the way he acted. Wouldn't talk to us about it, though, because at some point he decided he didn't know who he could trust. Including me. After everything, he still wasn't sure
I
wasn't going behind his back.”

Will worked his jaw. Grinding his molars, trying to push down rage and sadness before they bubbled up to where the world could see them. He almost got his face back to that of a chiseled, impassive robot. Almost.

Zoey said, “I'm sorry.”

“For what?”

“For your loss. I should have said that. You said it to me the first time you called me but that was stupid, it was your loss, not mine. I should have realized that.”

Will waved her off. “No, it's … fine. Anyway, that's why there was such a mad scramble for his vault key, we were trying to piece together what exactly he had been up to, because it seemed so … apocalyptic. What we were hoping to find in there were the schematics, or some prototypes, anything. Backups. Hoping it hadn't all gone up with the warehouse. Then we finally get it open and, you know the rest.”

“But that doesn't make sense, either. Molech
has
the gadgets. He's the one person who had no need to get into the vault. He should be happy, right? You saw the video—he won. He got what he wanted.”

“Well, now he wants the gold.”

“Whatever that is.”

Will finished his drink and said, “He's apparently going to tell us tomorrow, so there's that.”

“If he doesn't just kill us all first.”

 

TWENTY-THREE

Zoey woke up and for a blissful moment thought she was back home, and was waking up from an exceptionally weird dream. Then she realized she was in some kind of strange bed that she could actually roll over in without running into either a wall or a hot-water heater. Then the dead silence registered, that eerie feeling like she was the last human on earth. Nobody arguing outside, not even the sound of her mom clanking pans around in the kitchen. There could be a war raging outside the gates of the estate and not a peep would reach Zoey's bedroom.

She had forgotten about the talking toilet, and the startled fart she gave when it spoke up was interpreted as consent to show her the morning's alarming news. The lead story was the terror threats surrounding the upcoming memorial service in Tabula Ra$a, showing video of the city's park, where crews were already setting up for what looked less like a funeral service and more like a massive winter music festival. Were they inflating a bouncy castle out there?

The next story was new to Zoey. A ten-foot-tall bronze statue of Arthur Livingston had been stolen from its perch in front of an art gallery (accepting a gaudy statue was apparently the cost of taking a large donation from the man) by a pair of muscular men with some kind of flying apparatus on their backs—neither of them were Molech, but there was no doubt who they worked for. The statue was hauled a few blocks away to the financial district, where there sat a life-size bronze statue of a bull. The two men spent the next hour using blasts of electricity to weld the Livingston statue to the bull, in a position that made it appear he was having interspecies relations with it. The task took much longer than necessary because both men couldn't stop giggling, or pausing every five minutes to flex for the crowd. Finally, their work done, the men had stuck their arms in the air and zipped off into the sky, trailing tails of electric blue light. One second later, they both went spiraling off in different directions and crashed into nearby buildings. Zoey assumed that hadn't been part of the plan.

She turned it off, and when she wandered out of the guest room she was immediately accosted by Carlton, asking to make her breakfast. Her stomach was in knots, so instead she handed off to him the job of feeding Stench Machine. If Carlton considered this task below him, he showed no sign. They headed down the grand staircase and at the bottom Zoey found Armando, who was sitting in the lotus position on the floor, cleaning a gun he had taken apart and spread on a dirty towel. There seemed to be a ritualistic aspect to what he was doing, a ceremony to calm the nerves. Zoey didn't bother him.