Out of the Box 7 - Sea Change (39 page)

Wolfe
…

Mmmm, on it. Now go eat his eyes.

“I’m not
that
hungry,” I said, regaining my strength. “Also, he looks unwashed.”

More spice for the—

EWWWWWWWWWWW.

Redbeard came in for a hard landing on the roof of his bolt-hole, and suddenly that already-discounted house was due for a pricing adjustment. I wondered at first why he would have bothered going solid, and then I realized he was probably using the marginally less hard material used in the roof to soften his landing, because otherwise he would have come crashing right onto the concrete sub-floor of the foundation with only a little carpet to maybe break the fall.

I went after him, but slower, hoping that he’d done a real number on himself, or better still, been knocked unconscious. Unfortunately, I couldn’t see very well because of the curtains. The hole in the roof was a big shadowy pit without a hint of what lay within.

“Oh, these are always the best situations,” I muttered to myself as I descended into the house. The sky was a little cloudy, occluding a lot of the light that would have been visible at this time of morning. The sun wasn’t totally up just yet, so it wasn’t as bright as it had been the last few days. I squinted into the dark, just hoping Redbeard was a puddle on the floor, but knowing that a fall from that height was probably not enough to kill him. I actually had no idea how his power would work in relation to falls; for all I know he’d opted to go insubstantial after crashing through the roof and was halfway to China by now.

I flipped upside down and stuck my head into the house first, experimentally, figuring it’d be better if a) I could see and b) if he had to jump to throw a punch at me. What I saw when my eyes adjusted a second or so later did not fill me with warm, happy feelings.

He’d landed in here, all right. The floor was busted up enough that I could tell he’d impacted, in between all the pieces of roof debris that were scattered on the tile. He was also not here any longer, which was more vexing.

“How are you still alive?” Karl’s voice echoed through the house.

“I could ask you the same,” I said, trying to triangulate his location. “But for me, it’s like that old Nietzsche quote—‘That which does not kill me really, really pisses me off.’”

He didn’t respond to my obvious misquotation, but I heard him moving around in the shadowy house. I looked around, trying to figure out which direction he was going to come at me from. I pulled out Shadow and readied myself, keeping my gun hidden out of sight so that he wouldn’t see it coming when I started shooting at him.

“It doesn’t matter how angry you are,” he said from somewhere off to my left, “it’s a pittance compared to how pissed off I am. Righteous indignation—”

“‘Righteous’ might be overselling it, loser.”

“—fuels the soul,” he said, getting way overdramatic. “It inflames the spirit. Those who are wronged but are given the course to redress those wrongs—”

I yawned theatrically, making it last like, ten seconds. That shut him up. “I’m not in the mood for a lecture, okay? Let’s just cut to the chase and fight to the death already.”

“It’s a common characteristic of the oppressors to try and dismiss the grievances of the oppressed,” Redbeard hissed from somewhere in the dark.

“And it’s a common characteristic of infants who don’t get their way to throw a tantrum, too,” I said, glancing around. “You’re a little older and a little more powerful than most of them, though, so naturally your tantrum has to have deadly consequences for people who have had nothing to do with your sad and pathetic self-inflicted butt hurt. Just use the toilet brush for its intended purpose and stop experimenting already—”

“You have no idea what I’ve been through.”

“Uhm, the earth?” I asked. “Of course, if you were a man about it you’d just bury your inability to function in everyday life inside and deal with it instead of blowing up like a volcano, thrashing around and hurting others. You want attention, like a toddler, you want someone to notice you,” I made my voice do that baby-talk thing, “to tell you you’re soooo pathetic, and of course it’s okay to be angry, little baby, to validate you and make you famous, because no one ever paid attention to you before. You want your face on a thousand channels, your name whispered in awe. Congrats, Redbeard, you’ve got a god complex, and you’ve confused notoriety and infamy as something actually desirable. It’s the least of your problems, but it’s causing most of ours.”

“You don’t know me,” he spat, stepping out of the darkness. “You know nothing about me.”

“You think I don’t know anything about how shitty life can be?” I pointed a hand at my chest. “Moi? You think I don’t know anything of hurt, you who just put a hand through my freaking heart and ripped it open? I know pain, asshole.” I glared at him. “I know more about pain than you ever will, but it’s not a competition, is it? Because here’s the difference between you and me—you want to be a victim—”

“And you make victims,” he shot at me.

“—and I refuse to be one,” I said.

“Oh, classic,” he said with a sneer. “Your argument is ‘bad shit happens, get over it’? Typical oppressor.”

“Whine and lash out,” I said, “typical baby.” I took aim at his feet and shot.

He flinched slightly. “I’ve decreased the amount of flesh that I’ve made substantial to only a few microns. That won’t work anymore. It’s like pinpricks.”

“I agree you’re probably carrying a pin prick,” I said, saving my ammo for later. “But anything else you said, I’m tuning out.”

His face twisted. “You think you can ignore me?”

“Well, I’m not going to give you any more attention than I need to in order to deal with you, I can tell you that much.”

“You keep telling me I’m having a tantrum,” he said with a furious satisfaction, “but you’re ignoring the fact that I’ve killed hundreds of people.”

“And you’ve done it for truly glorious reasons,” I said, nodding my head, “You’re not even a proper nihilist. I mean, carrying out a real estate scheme for a guy like Buchanan Brock … that’s righteous.”

Redbeard flushed, and I could tell I’d scored a direct hit. “It’s not like that.”

“Oh, it is,” I said, keeping a straight face. “You’re blathering on about changing the world, but really all you care about is changing the property values of this area for an already wealthy real estate tycoon.”

Redbeard backpedaled. “You don’t understand. He provided the explosives so that I could change the world—”

“He provided the explosives so that you’d work for him, you corporate shill,” I said, and I could tell I was fishing with dynamite. Redbeard’s face was horrified, his internal motivation compromised in the worst way. “You act like you’re some glorious fighter for the common people or whatever—honestly, it’s all a bit blurry and crazyass to me—but really, you work for the highest bidder. I mean … you’re not even planning to really go out in the blaze of glory here in the neighborhood, are you?” I smirked at his horror. “You’re gonna … what? Get on a private plane and go somewhere sunny, aren’t you?”

“No,” he shook his head in fury. “I mean—I’m going to change things—”

“You’re going to change the size of your bank account, but I doubt the world is going to go rolling off its axis because you move a few zeroes into your assets column.”

“You don’t understand anything,” Redbeard said, near tears. “Not anything!”

“Yeah, you’re upset because I totally don’t get you,” I said with my usual dollop of sarcasm. “Or, alternatively, you’re currently mad enough to cry because I’m calling you out on all your bullshit instead of building you up like the news media has been doing—lionizing you into this spooky guy with a cause and a crusade. You’re just a paid hack, another guy with a job who’s sold out his so-called principles for the almighty dollar, another whining crybaby who can’t get his shit together enough to—you know what? Screw it. You’re not even worth talking to.” And I drifted out of the hole in his roof.

Now this was the moment of calculated risk, because he could easily go and be a shit head, decide he’d had enough, and blow the whole neighborhood. But at the same time, letting him stand there, insubstantial, going back and forth forever was not something that was going to result in victory for me and my team. In fact, the longer I insulted him, the more likely it was that he’d eventually get itchy and pull the detonator before I could stop him, because, let’s face it, I wasn’t going to be able to stop insulting him. It just wasn’t in my nature to let this spoiled brat vent his spleen about his—whatever without continuously shitting all over him about his massive life failures.

Yeah, I know. I’m meeting with a therapist weekly for a reason. I am also NOT ONE for the same reason.

I drifted out onto the front lawn, listening to the revving of an engine down the block. I whistled a jaunty tune as I went, my feet setting back down on grass as I walked for the street. I glanced back and saw Redbeard come shuffling out of the wall of the house, staring after me, mouth slightly open in disbelief that I’d walked away from him.

“Where are you going?” he asked. He sounded insulted. Good.

“Away from you,” I said. “You need a therapist, not a superhero.”

He gawked at me. “I’m—I’m going to destroy—”

“Yeah, yeah,” I waved him off, rolling my eyes. “But I can’t make you turn solid for a fight, so why am I wasting my time?”

“I’m going to do it,” he said, but his voice sounded flimsy.

“I’m sure you will,” I said, shrugging, “as soon as the cameras show up, because you’re such a confident guy that you’d do it for nothing but love of the game—oh, wait, that’s right. You’re actually doing it for attention and for your boss, neither of whom is going to be served by having this go down without a huge meta battle that gets on all the TV networks first.” I glanced up and down the street. “Seems the TV news hasn’t gotten the message. Maybe you should have scheduled a press conference.”

“They’ll be here,” he said. It was probably the first time he’d voiced optimism in a while, because he sounded so pathetic about it.

“Probably not,” I said. “I staged some fights at major LA landmarks this morning to get their attention. I doubt they’ve noticed a squabble here in Elysium, especially since there aren’t any cops around for miles.” I shrugged. “Maybe if you blow something up it’ll get their attention, but—say, all the bombs in the neighborhood aren’t attached to one detonator, are they? Because then that probably won’t allow for using it as an attention-getter …”

He flushed, glancing down at his belt, telling me exactly where the location of the detonator was. Redbeard was clearly not the brightest bulb in the Christmas tree, and the way his brain was chunking along, his thoughts visible on his face, I couldn’t help but feel I’d gotten into a battle of wits with an unarmed man. Getting attention was his number one motive, and he needed to be seen doing meta shit before blowing up the neighborhood, but he’d failed to kill me, which—I mean, displaying my corpse on the end of his fist would have probably been worth a YouTube video or twelve. People on the street would have been lining up to film that, but like at everything else in his life, he’d failed.

Sooo … what was a loser to do next? Just give up on his dreams and run away? That would have been the smart play, maybe blowing up the neighborhood out of spite on the way out. It would have messed with Brock’s plan, not having evidence of acts of gods for insurance to deny the claims, but Karl Nash could have still gotten some infamy, albeit without any live video footage of him being a megalomaniacal destructive asshole and displaying all his personality defects to the world.

But then, that was his problem. He had to be seen, he had to be infamous, he had to be known. It was like the call of the wild to his coyote heart, the number one motivation. He needed to not only blow shit up, he wanted to be known for doing it, because it was the only way his cold and craven heart would feel like he’d taken actual revenge.

I could see the emotions playing across his face as he tried to figure out what to do next. Silently, I was egging him on, because I’d planned this much out in advance and already knew the logical answer. Crazy people don’t generally jump to the most logical answer, though, so I waited to see if he’d get to it.

“I’m going to kill you,” he said, face twisting even harder into hate, and my previously wounded heart sang. Oh, good. He got there, finally. “I’m going to make a mess of you, and people are going to film it, I’m going to film it, and the whole world is going to see.”

Uh, yeah. Yay. I guess.

He came at me in a menacing walk, and I stood my ground defiantly, letting him know I wasn’t scared of him. Which … I mostly wasn’t. Mostly. I mean, the guy could technically put his hand through my brain and kill me, and he was holding it out, the skin fading slightly as he advanced on me, as inevitable as the rain anywhere but in LA.

Okay, maybe I was a little afraid.

Kat shifted the car into gear. It had been years since she’d driven a stick shift, or even since she’d driven herself at all. She’d stalled the car multiple times, the transmission grinding and guttering as she failed to shift it at the appropriate times, the engine racing and screaming.

That was all fine with her, though. It was Taggert’s car, after all. His precious baby, his vintage Ferrari.

She had parked on the street, waiting for Sienna to show, and now there she was, backing slowly toward the street. Redbeard stepped into sight, anger on his face like a cloud of pestilence, advancing on the “helpless” Sienna.

Kat hit the accelerator, listened to the transmission scream at her again and she frantically shifted up to prevent another stall. It did, however, cause Redbeard to look up and see her, his eyes narrowing as he tried to figure out what he was looking at.

“Hold that pose, asshole,” she said. She thrust a hand forward, seizing the roots of the grass beneath Redbeard’s feet and causing them to reach upward to grab him just like she’d done to Grayson Dieter. His feet may not have been wholly there, but he was walking on something, and the roots found the thin soles and wrapped them up tight as Redbeard jerked in surprise at the unexpected resistance, looking up at her with his eyes now wide as she drove the Ferrari right at him in a hard slide, jamming the brakes as she mounted the curb and went onto the lawn.