Futuristic Violence and Fancy Suits (43 page)

Will's captor quickly backed off, getting his gun out of grabbing range but keeping it trained on the back of Will's skull.

The man said, “Don't even think about it,” but sounded like he had never been less confident in a situation in his life.

Will glanced back at him and said, “You're Terry Rizzo, right? Put down that gun, go to your apartment on Lake Street, get Sheldon and Jeremiah, and get out of town. Don't ever come back. You have five seconds.”

The man looked nervously at Will, then at Lee.

Will said, “My men are watching this on Blink. You'd never beat them there. Three. Two…”

The man hurried out of the room, apologizing to Lee as he went.

Lee said, “You like to threaten people? Well you can't threaten me. Molech is about to rain fire on you, and I'm your only—”

Zoey said, “Shut your idiocy vent. If you want to talk, tell this last guy to stop pointing a gun at my head. I don't know how to get it away from him, and I don't want to have to do some big macho thing where Wu comes over here and steals it using his karate powers. Just tell him to put it away, then we'll converse. I mean, do I have to say out loud what's already obvious? That shooting me is the same as shooting yourself? I'm getting seriously fed up with all this.”

Lee studied her for a moment, then gave the slightest nod to her captor. The guy backed off, then joined Lee and Vixxxen on the other side of the room.

Zoey said, “Okay, two things. First, I think that giving people the ability to punch over buildings is trusting them with quite a bit of power, and in the course of the day today I've kind of decided that the whole thing where we grant power based on who wants it most, is
probably
what has ruined society up to this point. Second, we can't actually give you what you're asking. It's a long story, but we can't do the limb enhancements, we're not set up for it.”

Andre said, “You know she's tellin' the truth, too, because otherwise my dong would still be in bandages.”

“But,” Zoey said, “I can offer you work. The kind of money you probably don't make in a whole year of bounty hunting. You can buy a new van and Vixxxen here will be able to afford the rest of her costume.”

Will looked dubious. He muttered, “Zoey…”

Lee said, “I'm listening.”

“Squatterville. You're familiar with it? The unfinished condos the poor people have moved into, a couple of blocks down from where Livingston Tower, uh, was?”

“Yeah.”

“They need protection. If Molech goes on his rampage, I need someone to get those people out of there, and to a safe place. Even if the chaos doesn't come to their block, you can help make sure the food and diapers and all that arrives safely.”

“Miss Ashe, this entire city is a target. Molech could go after the hospital, the art galleries, even the nuke plant. We're not going to sit back and let him do it.”

“Right, but those targets all have security because the people who own them have money. There's nobody left to protect Squatterville. You do that,
without
accidentally murdering everyone there, you get five hundred grand. Then after that, maybe we'll talk.”

“But if we take out Molech, then those people will be safe.”

“People like that are never safe. Take it or leave it, but here's where you get to decide if your fantasy is to actually be a hero, or to just murder people you don't like. Because in my mind, if you were
true
heroes, you'd already be down there, making sure all those poor kids don't have to go to bed scared every night.”

Lee clearly hated this plan, but not as much as he hated having to openly say no.

“I … need to discuss it with my team.”

“Zoey,” said Will. “Tell him the truth.”

“What?”

Will said to Lee, “Molech will almost certainly go to Squatterville. And we need it protected. But not because of the people there. We need it because of the coins.”

Zoey thought, “The
what
?” at the exact same time Lee spoke it out loud.

“Two hundred million dollars in rare gold and silver coins, recovered from a Spanish galleon off the coast of Florida about fifteen years ago. They were buried there by Molech's father, when it was still a vacant lot. Now they're under the concrete of the lobby—you can actually see cracks in the floor over the burial site, on account of the loose soil underneath. It's the real reason the building was never finished. Molech found out about it, and I have a feeling that's going to be his first stop. You keep Molech away, you get half.”

Lee gave no answer, but his gaze had kind of disconnected, focusing into the middle distance where a fantasy of unspeakable riches was playing out before him.

Will straightened his tie and said, “Now, if you don't mind,
we have a lot of work to do.”

Will headed for the door, and no one stopped him.

 

FORTY-EIGHT

Andre was focused on his phone as they took the elevator up to the library. Will asked, “Anything?” and Andre shook his head.

Zoey asked, “What are we looking for?”

Will said, “The assault on the Fire Palace.”

“By who?”

“Everyone? I'd bet on the Co-Op first, though.”

“Maybe you convinced them to stay away.”

“I convinced them to go in. I told them we were moving in at dawn, there's no way in hell they'd let us steal their hero moment. I basically set a deadline for them.”

“Wait, you
wanted
them to go after Molech?”

“They were going to do it either way, I wanted to make sure they did it tonight.”

“Holy crap, you're diabolical.”

He shrugged. “The key is that Blake probably assumed I was lying about the timeline, meaning he thinks we're planning to go in much sooner, and that the dawn reference was a ruse specifically to prevent him from getting a jump on us. So he likely went back to his people and told them they needed to be ready to roll … pretty much now.”

“So, what do
we
do?”

“For the moment? We watch.”

Andre said, “Well, I for one need coffee.”

They all headed down to the kitchen, because that's where the coffee was, and Zoey flitted around the bar making drinks. Nobody had ordered anything, she just made some pretty ones and lined them up on the counter. The one she was working on at the moment had four shots of espresso, a mixture of coconut milk and whole milk, and was sweetened with bergamot syrup. She drew a “Z” in an old English font in the foam, and sprinkled it with chocolate shavings. Then she grabbed another mug and started again.

Andre said, “I could watch you do that all day. It's like a dance.”

“I can do any of these with my eyes closed. Java Lodge only had one barista at a time, it was a one-woman show. I liked it when it was busy, though, felt like a challenge. But now … I'm just trying to keep moving. If I stop and think about all this I'll have a panic attack.”

They had brought up a feed on the wall behind the bar, and Andre was flipping through locations. The Fire and Ice towers, the Co-Op's headquarters, the neighborhood around the Casa.

He glanced at Will and said, “Pirate treasure?
That
was the lie you came up with. You told them that there was pirate treasure buried under Squatterville?”

“Seemed like the sort of thing they'd believe. At least it gives them a reason to be on site.”

Budd and Echo walked in.

Budd said, “We got one.”

Echo said, “I smell coffee.”

Zoey said, “It's right there, drink it or it goes down the drain, I'm brewing as a coping mechanism. And we got one of what?”

Before Budd could answer, Andre said, “It's starting.”

The Co-Op hadn't waited long after nightfall to launch their assault. A pair of massive black helicopters sawed their way through the frigid evening air toward the Fire Palace, filmed by a swarm of following drones. When the view switched to ground level, a convoy of six hulking black trucks were shown rumbling down Fairfax Avenue, three from each direction. Planning to hit the tower from the ground and the air, simultaneously.

Zoey looked around. “Where's Wu?”

Andre said, “Outside. He found a spider in the hall. He scooped it up in a paper cup and said he was taking it out to the courtyard so it could go find its family.”

The feed cut back to the Fire Palace, which seemed completely dormant from the outside—if the building had any lights, they were enshrouded by the black tarp. It was just a dark void in the skyline. If bionic supervillains were scrambling into position, they certainly weren't making a public show of it.

But then, Echo said, “There. At street level.”

The Blink feeds noticed a moment after she did—they all started focusing down at the circular paved walk at the base of the tower. Blue lights lit up, one by one, forming a ring. The lights were eminating from waist-high objects rising from the sidewalk, which Zoey was pretty sure were shaped like extended middle fingers.

The trucks plowed forward, their rough tires making a high-pitched buzz on the pavement like a kicked beehive, approaching from the north and south. The first trucks were still two blocks away when the circle of the blue glowing hands pulsed in unison, like a row of camera flashbulbs all going off at once, making a noise like a giant cracking a bullwhip. The Blink cameras all switched toward the trucks, as if expecting explosions. None occurred. Still, the trucks slowed at the sight of the lights, as if the drivers were suddenly unsure of what they were barreling into.

Or rather, most of them did.

The first trucks—the ones that had been closest to the blast in each direction—continued to plow forward, unabated. The first started to swerve off to the left, away from the Fire Palace, toward the Ice Palace across the street. The next rolled on toward the Fire Palace, but weaved, as if the driver was steering the vehicle with his knees. Eventually both trucks rumbled lazily to a stop, one bumping gently into one of the glowing hands outside the Fire Palace, the other rolling up onto the sidewalk across the street. The rest of the trucks skidded to a halt, uncertain, keeping their distance.

For a moment, there was nothing. No SWAT teams came spilling out of the trucks, nothing exploded, no enhanced horrors came sprinting out of the tower. Instead, after a few minutes a dozen or so shirtless Molech henchmen came strolling out toward the vehicles, calmly. One of them was eating a sandwich. They walked up to both vehicles and opened the rear doors. Zoey gasped as a bundle of charred limbs tumbled out. The henchmen rooted around inside the trucks, gathering up the weapons and gear from within and hauling it all back into the Fire Palace. One of the henchmen pulled out a can of spray paint, and in glow-in-the-dark blue paint, tagged both of the vehicles with a drawing of a hand giving the middle finger.

Next to Zoey, Andre gave a tired sigh. Zoey kept her eyes on the feed as she started grinding another batch of espresso beans.

The collective gaze of Blink switched to the roof of the Fire Palace, where the two choppers had already dropped ziplines onto a rooftop that was still smoldering from the aftermath of Armando's battle with Rodzilla earlier in the day.

Another ring of blue hands glowed to life around the rim of the circular rooftop.

There was another flash.

A rain of flaming corpses tumbled out of the helicopters.

The choppers swerved and lurched and then tumbled down onto Fairfax Avenue, joining the dead trucks nearby. The comment bar alongside the feed went wild with Team Molech cheers.

Zoey whispered, “We should have stopped them. We should have talked them out of it.”

Will said, “You still have much to learn about this world.”

The rest of the Co-Op's armored column was now backing up, slowly enough to make it appear to be a strategic repositioning rather than a full-on retreat. The world waited to see what else the hired guns of Tabula Ra$a would throw at Molech, but the feeds for each of the major security services were full of stunned professionals trying to hide their terror in detached discussion of strategy. Suggestions were made about cutting off power to the building to shut down the energy weapons, but someone noted that the Co-Op had actually already done that—the buildings apparently had their own power source. Analysts tried to study and identify the defenses, and quickly came to the conclusion that they were nothing currently known to science.

But then the feed switched to a group of men surrounding a single olive green truck, parked outside of town, in the desert. It had a ramp on the back aimed toward the sky at a forty-five-degree angle, covered in a green tarp. When they yanked the tarp aside, it revealed what looked to Zoey like a miniature fighter jet, about the size of one you'd make for a baby or a small dog to fly. She assumed it was neither of those things.

At the sight of it, Andre choked on his drink.

Zoey said, “What is
that
?”

Echo said, “Remote control heavy ordinance drone. Basically a cruise missile. Looks Russian.”

Will said, “They're going to try to bring down the building.” He seemed mildly annoyed, as if frustrated by the amateurs' unsubtle technique.

Budd said, “Those crazy sons of bitches. That's the Black Dawn militia. Guess we know who hijacked that convoy last year—”

The missile blasted into the night sky on a pillar of yellow fire, as the men on the ground hooted and yelped, several of them drinking beers. The missile had a nose camera that was patched in to Blink, because of course it was, and the feed showed the landscape whipping by underneath, the glimmering skyline of downtown Tabula Ra$a just ahead. The radio voice of the guy controlling the device narrated its trip, announcing altitude and wind direction, a red box on the screen hovering over its target in the distance.